See Winter Carnival parade — and learn its history

ST. PAUL WINTER CARNIVAL

Displays set up along Grand Avenue route

St. Paul Winter Carnival historian Tom Barrett holds an original Pioneer Press lithograph illustration of the 1887 Winter Carnival ice palace. It’s part of a carnival history display in the windows of the former Pottery Barn on Grand Avenue. JARED KAUFMAN — PIONEER PRESS

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By Jared Kaufman

jkaufman@pioneerpress.com

As Grand Avenue gears up to host the St. Paul Winter Carnival’s King Boreas Grande Day Parade for the first time, new window displays show off more than a century and a half of carnival history.

On display at the corner of Grand and Victoria Street, in the former Pottery Barn, are Boreas and Vulcanus Rex capes and parade marching uniforms, various photos and newspaper clippings from the 1930s onward and dozens of carnival buttons dating back to 1886, the festival’s inaugural year.

There’s also a trio of Pioneer Press lithograph prints from late-1880s ice palaces, the red cape worn by children’s TV character Captain Kangaroo when he was a parade grand marshal in the late 1960s and more. Most of the items come from the personal collection of Tom Barrett, a former Vulcanus Rex and the enthusiastic keeper of Winter Carnival history.

The displays are currently scheduled to remain on view for the first weekend of Winter Carnival to coincide with the Grande Day Parade, which takes place Saturday. The displays are currently set to come down early next week, Barrett said, but the show could be extended later into the winter pending the approval of the building’s owner, the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio.

Another highlight of the window displays are three Hi-lex “gnomes,” the somewhat goofy-looking and infamously heavy costumes worn initially to promote the St. Paul bleach company.

Most of the original costumes, which were constructed in about the 1940s, were inadvertently destroyed after the company was bought by out-of-town owners about 25 years ago, said Kurt Wescott, whose father, Wally Wescott, owns Wescott Station Antiques on West Seventh Street.

But a local worker managed to salvage two tall “Hi” and “lex” costumes and several smaller droplet costumes and brought them to Wescott Station Antiques, and Wally and Kurt Wescott are now the “keepers of the gnomes,” Kurt Wescott said.

Last summer, these Grand Avenue windows were home to a display of Circus Juventas costumes to mark the school’s 30th anniversary.

The Grande Day Parade’s new route along Grand Avenue comes as a result of partnerships between the Winter Carnival and the Grand Avenue Business Association, the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors and Russell’s, a new Grand Avenue restaurant run by former Vulcanus Rex Todd Russell, Winter Carnival CEO Lisa Jacobson said previously.

“A lot of the business owners here are excited to see the parade come through; community members are pumped,” said Rich Segar, a board member of the Grand Avenue Business Association who was helping set up the window displays. “It’s going to be neat. And the fact that we’re able to put this display up and show people the history of Winter Carnival when they come out to watch, it’s going to be cool.”