HUMBOLDT PARK — While updating the library at Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School, staff found a mysterious canvas featuring the outline of a painting.

That painting is now complete thanks to some of Stowe’s middle school students who, in finishing the work of art, helped preserve the history of a long-lost clock manufacturer and helped cement their artistic legacy in the school for years to come.

It all started when Jimmy Lugo, principal of the school at 3444 W. Wabansia Ave., wanted to upgrade Stowe’s library and community room with new projectors and TVs. That required moving old bookshelves, behind which the canvas was hiding.

The large canvas contained an outlined sketch drawn in pencil of a storefront belonging to an old West Town clock manufacturer Darche Manufacturing Co., which was located at 1824 W. Grand Ave. before its address switched to 599 W. Grand Ave. when Chicago renumbered its streets in 1909.

“What in the world is this?” Lugo remembers thinking. “Is this a real company?”

Students at Stowe Elementary School painted a canvas that was found behind old bookcases at the Humboldt Park school, as shown on July 10, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

This photo of the Darche company storefront formerly at 1824 W. Grand Ave. circa 1908 was seemingly the inspiration for the canvas found at Stowe Elementary School. Credit: Provided

Lugo began researching Darche Manufacturing and discovered that it was a family-run local clock and alarm clock company that operated from 1882-1929, according to Illinois historian Dr. Neil Gale, author of the Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal. He also found the photo that served as the basis of the painting.

Darche Manufacturing made electric alarm clocks and stands, and it received multiple patents for its products under the leadership of August Darche, the first woman president of the company from 1909-1928, a fact that was considered revolutionary at the time.

The company created “the nucleus of an excellent electric clock” and was considered leaders in the industry, wrote Gale, who did not return a request for comment.

“The company survived until the Great Depression in 1929. While short-lived, the company produced multiple patents and became a real innovator in battery-powered alarm clocks,” Gale wrote.

The canvas showed August Darche standing with her children in front of their West Town store. In the window, their many clocks can be seen on display.

Lugo wasn’t sure why, how or when the canvas ended up behind the bookshelves, but he estimated it’s about 40-50 years old as the bookcases were there since at least the ’80s. Even the type of canvas isn’t made anymore, Stowe art teacher Tiffani Kuhn said.

Lugo, born and raised in Humboldt Park, then had an idea. Recalling his own elementary school days in the ’70s when he painted a cardboard mural of the founding fathers for a school project, he thought finishing the painting could honor the legacy of the students who started it and the business it depicts.

“It’d be kind of cute to have our students finish it,” he said.

Students at Stowe Elementary School paint a canvas that was found behind old bookcases at the Humboldt Park school during art class at the end of the 2025-2026 school year. Credit: Provided

So, during the last few weeks of school earlier this year, Kuhn’s seventh and eighth grade students worked to fill in the canvas, adding color and learning more about the company history.

“It was bittersweet to see this [completed] because I watched those kids grow up. I’ve had them since kindergarten,” Kuhn said. “It’s nice to kind of see them do this final project, like a piece of them will still be here.”

The canvas was completed in June and will soon be hung up in the Stowe auditorium — just in time for returning students to flood the hallways — to honor the past and show off the student-led project, Lugo said.

“This is a time capsule piece,” he said. “All that because we needed to change the projector.”

Students at Stowe Elementary School painted a canvas that was found behind old bookcases at the Humboldt Park school, as shown on July 10, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Students at Stowe Elementary School painted a canvas that was found behind old bookcases at the Humboldt Park school, as shown on July 10, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Lugo, who has been Stowe’s principal for over a decade, still has questions about the artwork’s origins and wonders if anyone remembers the company, has personal ties to it or knows why the canvas was hidden at Stowe.

Without answers, Lugo, Kuhn and the students who completed the project are left to wonder about the canvas’s history — but they are happy to preserve the work for the school and the Humboldt Park community at large.

“The project, and the students finishing it, is a bookend,” Lugo said. “Who knows, these might have been some eighth graders in the ’70s or ’60s who started it, and it took eighth graders from 2026 to finish it.”

Students at Stowe Elementary School painted a canvas that was found behind old bookcases at the Humboldt Park school, as shown on July 10, 2026. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago