Big Shoe repair shop

Bakersfield, California, United States

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The Big Shoe is a shoe-shaped building at Chester Avenue and 10th Street in Bakersfield, California, built in 1947 by Chester Deschwanden. His son Donald ran the shoe repair business there for about 40 years; after Donald's death the building stood empty for roughly a decade. Local news reported a shoe and leather repair shop operating inside in 2022 and 2023. A 2022 report described its laces as thick rope painted black.

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Big Shoe repair shop

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Site-level location · 35.3733° N, 119.0212° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A Bakersfield shoe repairer built his shop in the shape of a shoe.

KGET reported in 2022 that Chester Deschwanden built the Big Shoe at 10th and Chester in 1947. His son Donald ran the business for 40 years, until Donald's death. The shop then sat vacant for 10 years, with unclaimed shoes piled against the front windows. Later a new owner bought the building and hired a cobbler to run it. A community timeline puts Donald's death in 1992 and the sale in 2002; Roadside America says the owner died in 1992 and the shop reopened in 2003.

KGET describes a black sole over a reddish base, and laces made of three-inch-thick rope painted black, replaced about four years before the report with rope from a marina. It gives the size as about 25 feet tall and 32 feet long, while Roadside America lists 30 feet long and 20 feet high and describes plaster and wood-frame construction. KGET adds that the shoe appeared in a 1989 national DuPont carpeting campaign and has been marked by an unauthorised Nike swoosh and by a driver who veered off Chester Avenue.

Bakersfield Now reported that on 15 February 2023 a car crashed into the front of the building, that nobody was seriously hurt, and that the door was torn off. The report called it at least the second crash since the building opened in 1947. It also described the shop as repairing shoes, purses, belts, holsters and other leather goods.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

A retail shoe-repair business on Chester Avenue. Opening hours and whether the exterior can be viewed at all times are not documented in the sources reviewed; check locally before visiting.

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931 Chester Ave, Bakersfield, CA 93301.

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47 km away

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