Picture South Windsor - Then And Now

SOUTH WINDSOR, CT — Today's throwback offering is a bit different than our usual format, since we are going to rely on our readers to help us out with the actual location of this longtime South Windsor spot. We found 14 years' worth of ads in high school yearbooks for Dell's Ice Cream, but each and every one just states "Route 5, South Windsor" as the address.

The first Dell's ad was spotted in the 1959 edition of Ellsworth High School's yearbook, The Ellsworthian. The owner started out in a very clever manner the first three years, showing pictures of students eating at the counter, with captions like "Eddie and Mickey stopped at..." and "Roger and Bob highly recommend the hot dogs at..."

In 1962, which was also the final Ellsworthian, what are presumably the owners are shown. They went back to the student pictures in 1964, and a year later, the only ad ever to show the outside of the building ran (our lead photo above).

By 1966, just words appeared on the page. An attempt was made in 1970 to add a cartoon logo, but by the final ad in 1973, it was back to words alone.

Not being from South Windsor (for full disclosure, I'm an Enfield boy), if I had to guess, I'd think the shop was near the south end of Route 5, next to the ice hockey arena. Please confirm if I am correct, or tell me how far off base I am; my email is tim.jensen@patch.com.

We normally show a current photo of the site, but can't do that until someone tells us the actual address. Meanwhile, here are some ads from the yearbooks, corresponding to the dates mentioned earlier in the story.

UPDATE: Just after publishing this story, the mystery was solved by Pat (Capano) Bartomeli, who wrote, "I graduated SWHS in 1966. Dells was located where you indicated in the article. It was the primary hangout for our class (Henry's Pizza was second)." Thank you Pat!

Here is a recent photo, courtesy of Google Maps.

Do you have a photo of an old South Windsor business which no longer exists, to which you own the rights and which we could feature in this column? Email tim.jensen@patch.com.

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