Mar 27, 2016 2 min read

There is a place on Jefferson Avenue just beyond Washington’s Tylerdale neighborhood where memories are made. It’s the Brownson House, where the current Mystery Photo was taken in the late 1940s.

“Back then, everyone was hanging out at the Brownson House,” said Joan Foglia Calabro. “There were parties and dances and basketball … it was just a great place for teenagers.”

Calabro, who is the girl at left pouring the tea, can’t recall what specific event was photographed, but she was able to identify the location as the Brownson House kitchen and three of the other high-school girls in the picture. She was alerted to the photo in the newspaper by her friend Mary Hurzon McNary, who is standing at far right.

Calabro recognized her 1950 Trinity High School classmate, Maryann Gniewkoski Petronka, as the girl standing on the stool in the background. Petronka died at age 79 in 2013.

Calabro and several other readers were quick to identify Clara “Chuddy” DiVincenzo Butterfield, who is second from right. One of those readers was Patricia Havener.

“Chuddy was a nursery school teacher at the Brownson House when my daughter was there, when she was 3 years old,” Havener said. Her daughter, Keely, is now 57.

Though we were unable to contact her ourselves, our readers inform us that Butterfield also taught nursery school at St. Hilary Church and is still working in after-school care at John F. Kennedy Catholic School.

As for those scuffed-up saddle shoes, Havener said, “I don’t know why we wore them like that, we just did. Everybody wore them. Buckskins. We all bought them at Sylvia Kauffman’s,” the shoe store on West Chestnut Street.

“I don’t know why they look like that,” Calabro said. “I used to keep mine polished.”

The Brownson House’s history dates to the late 1920s, when the Daughters of Current Events Club started giving sewing and cooking classes. A few years later, a boys club was formed, and the activities were later combined in the Neighborhood House Association. The organization found a permanent home in 1937, moving into the former administration building of the Tyler Tube Works.

The organization is primarily involved in youth sports these days and still occupies the same building, where many more memories are surely being made.