Banana split unites Latrobe for history, festival

Visitors will have plenty of activities, entertainment and sweet frozen treats to sample Friday and over the weekend during downtown Latrobe's fifth annual Valley Dairy Great American Banana Split Celebration .

A new display organized by the Greater Latrobe-Laurel Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce, a festival sponsor, explores the history behind the event.

Visitors each day can join in an afternoon Banana March, led by a band, that will end at the display.

“It's our way of having a parade,” chamber interim President Allen Martello said.

Information and historic images relating to Latrobe's claim to fame as the place where banana splits originated will be presented, appropriately, on Strickler Way — an alley connecting with Jefferson Street between the Valley Dairy restaurant and the NAPA auto parts store.

There, before digging into a banana split at the restaurant, the curious will find tasty tidbits about the treat and its inventor, Latrobe pharmacist David Evans Strickler.

A series of images, produced by digital media technology students at the Eastern Westmoreland Career and Technology Center, will illustrate the steps in constructing a classic banana split.

“The trick to it is putting the ice cream in the dish first,” said Martello, who has demonstrated the technique for a local television program. “If you slide the banana halves in after the ice cream, they kind of hold the ice cream in there.”

Martello said the project provided local students a lesson in the nuances of photographing food. Because it quickly melts once out of the freezer, he said, “Photographing ice cream is really complicated. They had to learn the different ways you can photograph it, and the different things you can use besides ice cream to create the same effect.”

By taking a short stroll to the block of Ligonier Street between Main and Depot streets, visitors can view at the Latrobe Art Center a section of the soda bar, complete with stools, where patrons once enjoyed Strickler's splits. The artifact was donated by a former worker at the now-demolished pharmacy.

Several doors down, at the site of the former pharmacy, a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker relates how Strickler created the first documented banana split in 1904 while working as an apprentice pharmacist at Tassell Pharmacy, the predecessor to Strickler's. The lavish treat — combining a split banana with one scoop each of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream and appropriate toppings — initially cost 10 cents.

Strickler also is credited with designing a boat-shaped glass dish — manufactured by the Westmoreland Glass Company — for serving his confection.

While Wilmington, Ohio, has advanced its own claim as the birthplace of the banana split, Martello said there is hard evidence to back up Strickler's and Latrobe's claim — including an order form for the distinctive glass dishes.

According to research by the Latrobe Area Historical Society , Strickler was born in 1881 in Unity Township, the son of a local auctioneer. One of just two students to graduate from Latrobe High School in 1901, he studied to be a pharmacist at the Western University of Pennsylvania, predecessor to the University of Pittsburgh.

Strickler became sole owner of the Latrobe pharmacy in 1913. Switching his focus to optometry, he sold the business in 1929, but it retained the Strickler's name until it closed in 2000.

Strickler died in 1971, but his legacy, the banana split, has remained a perennial favorite with ice cream lovers.

Another of his ventures met with less success.

The historical society notes he constructed a miniature golf course in 1930 at his Latrobe home at Avenue B and Ligonier Street, but patronage petered out in the face of the Great Depression. A barrel-shaped building that supplied golfing equipment and refreshments was sold and became part of a roadside curiosity along Route 30 near Chester, W. Va., that is dubbed the “World's Largest Teapot.”

Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6622, jhimler@tribweb.com or via Twitter @jhimler_news.