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STORIED HISTORY: Sid and Larry Rosenbaum have a small collection valued at $1 million retail.
STORIED HISTORY: Sid and Larry Rosenbaum have a small collection valued at $1 million retail.

Business Spotlight: Square Dealers

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The story of brothers Larry and Sid Rosenbaum is one for the history books – literally.

The co-owners of downtown fixture Rosenbaum’s Jewelry have plenty of stories to tell, but it’s their tale of the American dream that led them to Park Central Square.

On most days, you’ll find Larry sitting in the back office of the 156 Park Central Square building sandwiched between the History Museum on the Square and the Fox Theatre. Behind his desk, the two-story wall is lined with ornate wooden carvings that draw the eye aloft to a balcony giving a glimpse into the brothers’ second-floor apartment. Hanging on hand-carved wooden chains from the ceiling are multiple chess sets, one of them among the first the eldest Rosenbaum ever carved. Larry’s handiwork can be seen throughout the shop, from the dozen claw-foot display cases to the abundance of carved canes.

“We’re a fun shop,” Larry says with a chuckle.

Specializing in antique and estate jewelry, the collection valued at over $1 million retail ranges from a 250-year-old ring to cameos, pendants, watches and costume jewelry the brothers sell for $3-$5.

“We always wanted to be a unique shop. You never know what you’re going to get when you buy an estate,” says Sid, noting the cheap costume jewelry typically satisfies the curiosity of walk-ins.

Jewish roots
This isn’t the Rosenbaums’ first business together. After a career in retail – from the Famous Barr shoe department in St. Louis to jewelry manager at Biederman’s Department store in downtown Springfield – the elder Larry went back to college for his accounting degree.

“I hated it,” he says. “Seriously.”

After then helping a friend with a day care business, Larry liked the experience so much he earned a degree in recreational studies and opened a day care of his own. Five years later in 1978, he retired but didn’t stay idle for long. The brothers bought the Pearl Apartments at Jefferson Avenue and Madison Street and started a flea market booth with $500 in silver coins and $300 in cash.

“Everything we have has grown from that $800,” Larry says.

Coins turned to jewelry and by 1980, the brothers moved the growing business into an alcove at the Fox Theatre before buying their current location in 1984.

The only thing more prolific in Rosenbaum’s Jewelry than Larry’s woodcarvings are the brothers’ memories. Three decades of two lives lived in the building add up to a showroom and office walls lined with framed pieces of the past, from promotions through the ranks of the Fraternal Order of the Masons, to years proudly served in the Air Force, obituaries of friends that read like a who’s who of Springfield and commendations and letters of recognition from the likes of the Missouri Legislature and Steven Spielberg. Larry recalls the latter fondly.

“Spielberg – great man – had people interview all of us,” he says, of the “Schindler’s List” director.  “I have the DVD upstairs.”

The 85-year-old Larry escaped the Holocaust. He and seven family members fled Nazi Germany in 1936 through a series of luck and pressure points from the Tammany Hall political machine.

“I owe my life to a ward boss and a gambling uncle,” Larry says, recalling his walk through Ellis Island as a 6-year-old. “Do you know the saying ‘Arbeit macht frei’? It means ‘work sets you free.’ I was a fat, Jewish kid. Work would not set me free.”

That saying hung over the entrance to Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Thirty-seven Rosenbaum family members were among the 6 million Jews killed in the gas chambers.

The family lived in New York for a time, but a former cattle dealer in Germany, father Rosenbaum yearned for open land.

“It was fashionable at that time for churches to adopt boat people,” says Larry. “That’s how we ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. There were 10 other Jewish families in the whole town.”

Museum interests
It’s midday and Sid shuffles around the shop doing paperwork and greeting the occasional patron. The two sole employees, the brothers take turns eating lunch. An older computer sits on Sid’s desk, the only sign of technology in the building listed on the National Historic Register.

“Larry does nothing and I’m his assistant,” he says with a laugh.

But there’s high interest in their building.

In the $9.4 million Phase I of a multiyear expansion and renovation, the History Museum on the Square is eager to occupy the Rosenbaum’s building to ultimately give it control of the square’s northeast side. The brothers aren’t eager to sell.

“Rick McQueary – nice man – came to me and said we have a dream for the history museum,” Larry says. “I said it’s nice you have a dream, but I did, too, and I had mine first.”

Originally paying $37,500 for the building, Larry says museum officials have offered him 10 times that amount.

Museum project manager and architect Allen Casey has worked up an interim fix. The museum would build above the Rosenbaum’s building on the backside, connecting the Fox and the Sherwood building.

“It’s a good plan, but it all depends on the timing of when we can acquire the Rosenbaum building,” Casey says, noting Phase II is $20 million for the total renovation of the Fox. “Should that be sooner, before we start Phase II construction, we would rework the plan.”

Larry says one way or the other, the building will end up with the museum.

“Sid is 14 years younger, but I’d imagine should one of us die, the other would sell,” Larry says.

Right now, History Museum developers are playing it by ear, says Casey, adding the brothers have every right to be proud of what they’ve built.

“This place keeps me alive,” Larry says.

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