by Eavin Moore
Former Cop Shop, A Potential Museum for Milwaukee Music Man
I first heard about Greg Filardo’s place from a mutual friend. “You won’t believe it,” he told me, “You’ve never seen any thing like it.”
Of course I’ve heard that kind of talk a hundred times before. But usually, when I get there all excited, camera and notebook in hand, I most often find somebody’s old maid aunt with a drawer full of souvenir shot glasses. So it was with my usual skeptical attitude that I climbed out of the C.L.A.M.S. van in front of the old Police Station at 710 S. 9th in St. Joseph on a recent September morning.
The old building still looked pretty good for her age. The classic art deco brick structure looks like it could still function as its original purpose. I half expect Dick Tracy or Joe Friday to come busting through the doors as I come up the walk.
I’m a few minutes early for my appointment, and the place is locked up tight, so after I knock, I cup my hands to the glass, and peer down a short entry hall stacked high on both sides with boxes. My heart starts beating a little faster, as the treasure hunter radar in my head begins to hum.
After a few minutes I hear movement inside and the owner unbolts the door to let me in. Greg Filardo, 58 has a silver beard, wire frame glasses, and a twinkle in his eye. Greg tells me that he was born and raised in Milwaukee, where he parlayed his early piano training into a career as a music educator.
He bought his first antique piano at 14, and continued his collecting and restoration until he eventually owned what looks from the pictures to be one of the most beautifully restored mansions in the upper Midwest. A love of history and architecture as well as a need for more space for his ever expanding collection led him to sell the mansion and come check out a real estate listing in St. Joseph for the 18,000 square ft. former Police Station. He made the purchase and completed the move with 40 semi loads of cargo, which completely filled the two lower floors and the basement with his collections.
“Now you’re going to really see something”, he says as he leads me through a narrow path that veers to the right and into a much larger space.
I have to stop at this point and slowly pivot left to right as I try to process everything before me. To the left I mainly see architectural salvage; huge wooden columns, fireplace mantles, ornately carved moldings. Oak, walnut, and marble. Everything piled nearly to the 15 ft ceiling. There is a row of stacked wood stoves and antique sewing machines. There are beautiful old doors and windows too numerous to count. I have been through plenty of architectural salvage stores around the country where similar items of lesser quality are neatly displayed and sold at ridiculously high prices to yuppie redecorators. Greg has enough in this room alone to stock a store like that for years.
As I work my way down a narrow path to my right, I see what at first appear to be several pianos in various stages of repair. Closer inspection shows that most are actually player pianos, charming relics from the days before ipods, or even boom boxes for that matter. These beautiful instruments could either be played as a normal piano, or with the throw of a lever and pumping of foot pedals, would move the keys automatically to the design of a perforated paper roll.
Greg sits down at one of the older looking models. This particular piano he tells me was rescued from a trip to the dump. He has the mechanism working properly again, and is presently re-gluing the wood veneer finish. He loads a roll from the stack on top, and starts pumping. The keys start flying all by themselves, and the big room fills with the sound of ragtime piano like very few live practitioners could hope to reproduce.
At the end of the number, Greg trips the lever again to turn off the mechanics, and displays his own musical prowess, as he attacks the keys with a Liberace like flourish. A virtuoso concert performance in a most unconventional setting. As the number ends he rises from the bench and resumes the tour through the narrow winding path lined with nickelodeons, calliopes, and various other mechanical music machines.
It was about this point that I encountered the first bust of Beethoven. As we moved along I started noticing more and more of the plaster statues in sizes from one to three feet, colored mostly black and white. They were peeking from behind boxes, lined up on piano tops, in groups, and standing alone. I can’t say exactly how many I saw throughout the building, but surely a hundred or more. Certainly enough for a giant Beethoven chess set. They started to creep me out a little. I just know I’ll be having dead composer nightmares sometime soon.
A little farther along brings us to the taxidermy area. Now here is a collection right up my own personal alley. But while my collection is highlighted by a mangy goat and a waterbuffalo foot ashtray, Greg has some really unusual specimens. It’s not every day you see a stuffed porcupine. The male peacock in full plume is a also a sight to behold. Smaller in stature but still a treasure is the two-headed calf. I am green with envy.
My head is spinning as we board the elevator for the second floor. Space restraints do not allow me to go into appropriate detail to convey the wonders of the Radio room, where floor to ceiling is packed with dials, tubes, and speaker cones. There are hifi’s, short waves, and every other relic from the days before transistors. The radio room is a museum unto itself, or at least it should be.
The TV room is next, and again, floor to ceiling stacks of early models look like totem poles of primitive technology. I notice the tiny bakelite set, just like the one in my grandparent’s basement, where we watched Wrestling with Bob on Saturday nights.
Another crammed hallway leads to the former jail area, where cells that used to be filled with local trouble makers now hold shelf after shelf of player piano rolls. Greg has no accurate count, but estimates that 20,000 or more are on hand. Maybe not the largest accumulation on earth, but no doubt on the short list.
By now I’ve spent over two hours on the tour, my feet are barking and the camera battery is fading. I haven’t begun to see everything in Greg Filardo’s Police Station of Memorabilia, but I’m on sensory overload. I make my apologies and promise to come back when I can stay longer. Besides, I can’t wait to get back to the office to see how the pictures look, and try to make some sense out of my pages of notes.
Later, as I put the story together, an obvious question for Greg pops to mind; “What are you going to do with this stuff?” I call back for the answer.
“It’s hard to say”, he tells me, “I hoped the city would be supportive of some kind of museum here, but the museum situation here is a mess”. “Hopefully this article will stimulate some interest”.
In the meantime Greg has had overtures from other cities including Sedalia, Missouri, where his instrument collection would fit well with the Scott Joplin heritage.
Put your thinking caps on St. Joe. There’s the makings of an awesome display of musical and architectural history right under our noses, if the right entrepreneurial spirit steps forward to get involved. It would be a shame for all this stuff to leave town.
I had hoped when I made the appointment that this stop might be good fodder for my first column. I know now, that I’ve set the bar higher than I expected. How will I ever top this? Only with your help. Call, write, or email The Regular Joe with leads on other outrageous collections, and tell us “Come Look At My Stuff!”.