[bright holiday music]
- Angela Fitzgerald: The holidays in downtown Manitowoc
sparkle, shimmer, and shine.
It's officially Evergleam season.
- This all started in 2015.
A man gave birth to an idea, and that man is over here.
His name is Steve Siehr.
- Angela: Steve Siehr is a hometown boy
who put these retro Christmas trees
back in the spotlight.
- Steve Siehr: This year, I got seven trees
over at Maritime.
Sometimes, I might have up to a dozen.
- Angela: At the historic Schuette Building,
there is a high shine collector showcase.
Every branch tells a story about the city
and that vintage aluminum glow.
- Steve: There's probably more trees in this space
than any other.
I set up a four-foot, a six-foot,
and a seven-foot pink that are right behind me.
The story always was there's only one pink tree made
for every 10,000 trees.
- Angela: Resurrecting these shiny gems
became a quest for Steve
in this, the aluminum tree capital of the world.
- Steve: I would go from store to store kind of
and just cold-call 'em.
Just talk to 'em about the aluminum trees
and what they thought about maybe doing a show
where we put the trees in the windows.
- Cathy Karl: Have a nice holiday!
- Angela: Cathy Karl owns a store
in the city's historic district
and is described as the heart and hustle of downtown.
- He came into my store and I thought he was crazy.
[laughs] He's been here three times today already.
[both laugh]
I knew nothing about them except that they were silver
and made in Manitowoc.
I said, "Well, dude, if you wanna do all the work,
I don't really care."
We were looking for a holiday event, so we tried it.
- Angela: In 2015,
Steve's midcentury dreamscape became reality
with the show Evergleams on Eighth.
- It got started because I collected a lot of trees
over a number of years. - [whispers] How many trees?
- Well, I've got over 200 trees.
- Angela: Steve was the guardian of the glow,
making sure everything twinkled.
- Steve: This is pretty personal for me.
Every night, I would get in the car
and drive through downtown to make sure
all the trees were behaving themselves, they were all lit.
The show looked good.
It didn't have any problems.
That's the nice tree with the color wheel on it.
- Angela: Word spread,
and other collectors wanted to share the nostalgia.
- All of a sudden, the community embraced it,
embraced the whole idea.
- Angela: At the library, an enchanted Evergleam forest,
displaying some of the rarest of the rare.
- Cathy: That's one gal's collection of 50 trees.
- Steve: That is an exceptional collection.
- Angela: Vintage treasures radiating a metallic glow.
- Cathy: And then, we also have the 14-footer there
that nobody knew even existed.
- My God, that is... that's amazing.
- Guide: 14 feet, again.
- Angela: Today, the nonprofit
Manitowoc Aluminum Kitschmas Incorporated runs the show,
with tours paying tribute to the trees
and local companies that created the sparkle.
- That was very different than anything
anybody had ever seen for Christmas in 1958.
- That was like a space age metal.
That was something new and exciting.
- Steve: We start in November
and we don't take down 'til January.
- Cathy: We have over 150 trees.
We have 40 locations.
You either love these trees or you hate these trees.
- Angela: Love them or loathe them,
Aluminum Specialty made its mark on pop culture
when they began manufacturing these trees in the late '50s.
And other local companies followed.
- They had the market.
They were bigger.
They were the big dog.
- Cathy: It's prettiness in a box.
And they sold for cheaper than $5 up to maybe $25.
- Angela: The meteoric rise of the Evergleam era
was a fleeting fad.
Within a decade, the cool factor began to feel cold.
- Cathy: I'm fascinated by the history of it.
- Angela: Now, more than 65 years later,
history is repeating itself.
Everything old is cool again.
- Cathy: They have become really popular.
- Steve: You know, they made a few million trees,
so there's enough of them out there
to create a collector base.
- Angela: The iconic space age silhouettes are back,
and collectors can't get enough.
- Well, I did just get one this year. [laughs]
I think I have maybe, 25 maybe?
But don't tell my husband. [laughs]
- Steve: There's a lot of money chasing trees now.
- Angela: Rare, colored Evergleam trees
are the crown jewels,
commanding fierce competition and higher prices.
- Steve: You had the gold and the green and the pink.
The pink being the most rare.
Well, the last one, which was kind of outside of the box,
was a tree called the blue frost.
That is a clean, spectacular tree.
The aluminum's still nice and shiny.
Whoa.
A tree in that condition is not always easy to find.
- I think the last one that was on eBay sold for over $10,000.
We have some pretty valuable trees in these windows.
- Angela: For more than a decade,
these iridescent trees have sparkled downtown.
- Guide: Look at how beautiful that is, Steve.
All the beautiful lights.
- Steve: They're coming to see the trees,
but they're also experiencing downtown Manitowoc.
- Angela: Turning a simple hometown tribute
into a collective celebration that is uniquely Manitowoc.
- If it wasn't my hometown, I wouldn't have done it.
Made all the difference in the world.