When sorting through files from the family business, Delores Heinsohn recently pulled out a yellowed envelope and found letters and photographs dating back 50 years. As she read the hand-printed notes, she realized what she had found – a historical record of the famous Dutch Couple outside her family business and local landmark, Roadside America in Shartlesville.
“I just accidentally came across them,” Heinsohn said, sorting through the letters and pictures. All the notes are handwritten by Rod Shutt of Shutt Advertising Displays, Strasburg, outlining the progress on the giant couple he created and helped install.
“The man and woman are shaping up very nicely,” he wrote on January 30, 1964, then outlined the next step in his process as well as detailed instructions on preparing for the foundation in Shartlesville. “I am still not satisfied with the woman’s face and hands,” he wrote on February 27, 1964, “and will keep working on them until I get them right.”
The documents include the artist’s sketch of platform specifications, as well as old black and white photos indicating the status and scale of the work. As promised in the letter, the completed project was installed beside Roadside America, where is has been easily spotted by drivers on Interstate 78 ever since.
The landmark couple is included in many books on roadside attractions, Heinsohn said, and locals and tourists quickly associate them with the business her grandfather, Laurence Gieringer, built based on his boyhood fascination with miniature houses and landscapes.
Heinsohn was a high school sophomore when the Dutch Couple was commissioned, she said, and was not overly interested in the process as it transpired. Her grandfather had died by that time, and her grandmother was running the business with the assistance of her family. Heinsohn vaguely recalls the idea for the Dutch couple being her mother’s.
Today, Heinsohn runs the business with her husband and her daughter, Felicia Heinsohn, who is the fourth generation involved in this family-built and family-friendly stop. In fact, mother and daughter teamed up to refurbish the Dutch Couple earlier this year, not realizing at the time it was the couple’s 50th “anniversary.”
“They were just fading,” Heinsohn said, “and we wanted to brighten them up.”
They spent about three months on the project, fitting work into the odd hours between other business matters.
“First we had to fiberglass certain areas that were broken,” she explained. After priming the piece, “we painted the faces. We were working on it after dark sometimes. We had headlights on.”
“Generation after generation have had their picture taken in front of these statues,” she added. “It’s a landmark. There isn’t a day that goes by that you don’t have people out there taking photos. But now,” she added with a laugh, “they take selfies.”
