The Big Shoe building was built in 1947 by Chester Deschwanden, who had been a cobbler from a very young age and had several shoe repair businesses; one near his hometown of Grass Valley, CA, another in Taft, CA before settling in Bakersfield and opening a shop at 1007 Chester Ave, across the street from the present day location of The Big Shoe.
At some point, he got the idea to design and build a giant shoe on the property adjacent to his house and spent nights and weekends building his vision using lath and plaster, finishing the new Deschwanden’s Shoe Repair Shop in 1947. It measures 16 feet at its highest point, is 30 feet long, 10 feet wide, and has a 50ft rope that serves as the shoe’s laces. The shoe is roughly a size 768.
Unfortunately, Chester only got to work inside his architectural masterpiece for 3 years before passing away in 1950. His son Donald took over the business, having worked beside his father since the age of 9 and ran the business with his mother, Margaret, for the next 40 years until Donald unfortunately passed away in 1992.
Afterwards, the shop remained vacant for a decade, with unclaimed shoes piled up in the front window. A car slammed into the Shoe’s sole in 2000, but the damage was fixed by Margaret, who eventually sold the house and shoe business to Salomon Olvera in 2002, who owns several buildings along Chester Ave, including one that serves as headquarters for his Lifetime Family Cookware Co.
Salomon had several offers to rent the Big Shoe building and turn it into another business, including a bail bondsman office, a snack shop, and a cell phone store. But he always felt that the building should remain a shoe repair shop.
As Salomon said in an interview: “I admire the passion that Mr Deschwanden had* for his profession, to build something like this. I know Mrs. Deschwanden wanted the “shoe’ to stay in the business as a shoe repair. I understand…I have a passion to sell cookware and he had passion to repair shoes. I don’t have the heart to change it to something else. I like to make money but I like to honor people’s passions too.”
Fortunately, he found Felipe Torres, a life long cobbler from Leon, Guanajuato, the hub of Mexico’s shoe manufacturing, who rented the building, which came with all the shoe repair machinery that Felipe could ever need. Felipe also changed the name of the shop from Deschwanden’s to—what else—The Big Shoe Repair Shop and has worked there for over 20 years.
He’s joked that the only shoe that he can’t repair is the one that he works in, which unfortunately did need some repairs recently after another car crashed into the shop in February 2023. Felipe feared that he would have to close the building for an extended time, but fortunately, the building was repaired and is back in business.
So if you ever need to give new life to some old shoes, there really isn’t anything better than getting them repaired inside a giant shoe and helping to keep this business and outstanding example of programmatic architecture, open for many years to come.
References:
“The Big Shoe: A Bakersfield Treasure that Provides More than Shoe Repairs” by Jacqueline Gutierrez and Robert Price, KGET News July 21, 2022.
“A Big Shoe to Fill, but Owner up to Task” by Robert Price, Bakersfield Californian. Oct. 4, 2002.
“The Old man who Works in a Shoe Pulls off a Small Miracle” by Robert Price, The Bakersfield California. Aug. 6, 2022.
“Damage to Bakersfield’s Big Shoe Leaves Future Uncertain” by 23 ABC News YouTube Channel, Feb. 22, 2023.
“The Big Shoe” by Cristina Carbone | Society of Architectural Historians Archipedia