As Grand Avenue gears up to host the 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.
St. Paul Winter Carnival buttons from 1886 through the early 2000s are showcased on a board on display in a window show along Grand Avenue on Jan. 20, 2025. The buttons are owned by former Vulcanus Rex and Winter Carnival historian Tom Barrett. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
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 on Saturday, Jan. 25. 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 bleach company.
Two vintage Hi-lex “gnome” costumes, built in the 1940s as advertising for the then-local bleach company, sit ready to be placed into window displays along Grand Avenue on Jan. 20, 2025. Many of the gnomes were destroyed about 25 years ago when the Hi-lex company was purchased, but the ones that remain in existence are now owned by Wescott Station Antiques on West Seventh Street. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
Most of the original fleet of 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 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. Barrett, the carnival history guru, is the chairman of the parade.
“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.”
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