Chicago History | Fall 1994

Page 1

EDGEWATER BEACH HOTEL , CHICAGO




Chicago H istor ical Society OFFICERS Ph ilip W. Bummer, Ch.air Char les T. Brumbac k, Treasurer Richard M. Jaffee, Vire Chair R. Eden Mart in, Secretary Edgar D. J annotta, Vire Chair Phi lip D . Block lll , J111mediate Past Chair Doug las Greenberg, Presidentand Director

Lerone Bennett Jr. Phi lip D. Block III Laurence Booth Char les T. Brumback Robert N. Burt Miche lle L. Co llins Mrs. Gary C . Comer John \\T. Croghan Stewart . Dixon M ichae l H. Ebner

TRUSTEES Sharon Gist Gi lliam Phi lip W. Hummer Richard M. Jaffee Edgar D. J annotta Barbara Levy Kipper \V. Pau l Krauss Fred A. Krehb ie l Joseph TI. Levy Jr. Mrs.JohnJ. Louis J r. R. Eden Martin

Wayne A. McCoy Robert Meers J osep hi ne Bask in Minow Po tt er Pa lmer Margar ita Perez Art h ur F. Quern Gordon I. Sega l Edward Byro n Sm it h .Jr. Mrs . Tho m as J. Ta usche .Jame · R. T hompson

LI FE T RUSTEES Bowen Blair P hi lip E. Kel ley Mrs. Frank D. Mayer John T. McCutcheon .Jr . Andrew McNally Il l Bryan S. Reid Jr. Gardner I I. tern Dempsey .J.Tra, ·is HO OR.J--\RYTRUSTEES Richard M. Daley, Mayor, City of Chirngo John \ V. Rogers Jr., President, Chirago Park District The Chicago Historical Society is a private!) endowed, independent institution devoted to collecting, interpreting, and p1·esenting the rich multicultural hi tOI) of Chicago and Illinois, as well as ,elected areas of American history, to the public through exhibitions, program,, research collection,, and publications. lt must look to its membe1·s and friends for continuing financial support. Contributiom to the Society are tax-deductib le, and appropriate recognition is acco1·ded majo1· gifts. The Chicago H istorical Society gratefully ackno\\ ledge, 1he Chicago Pa1·k Di,trict \ generous support or all of the Sociery·s activities. Memb ers hip Benefits inc lude 1'1 ·ee admission to the Societ), imitations to special events , Chicago History magaz ine, Past Times, and discounts on all special programs and Museum Sto 1·e purchases. Fami ly/ Dual $35; Student/Senior Family $30; Indi, ·idual 30; Student/Senior Individua l 25. Hour s The Museum is open daily from 9:30 \.\!. to ..J:'.lOl'.,1.; Sunday rrom 12:00 ,oo, lo 5:00 P.\1. The Librar-y and the Archives and Manusuipts Collection ai·e open Tuesday thrnugh Saturday from 9:30 A.)-1. to 4:30 P.~1. All other research collections are open by appointment. The Society is clo,ed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's days. Education and Public Pro gram s Guided tour , lidc lectures, gallery talks, crart demon trations, and a variety of special programs for all ages, from preschool through senior citi1.en, are offered. Suggest ed Admi ss ion Fees for N onm embe rs Adu lts, $3: tudents (17-22 with va lid schoo l ID ) and Sen ior Cit izens, $2; Children (6-17), I. Admission is free on Mondays. Chicago Hi storical Soci ety

Clark Street at North Avenu e

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CHICAGO HISTORY The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society

ACTING EDITOR

Fall 1994

RO SEMA RY ADAM S

Volume XXIII, Number 2

EDI TORIAL

ASS ISTANT

LYDI A B. FIELD DESIGNER

Do :--:D1SA:--: Ti-:

CO TE TS

PH OTOGRAPHY jOII N Al.l)ERSO;s; J AY CR A WFORD

4 An Uneasy Alliance

Co pyright I 9!J.l by the Chicago I li;w rica l ·ociety

DOUGL AS GREE

BERG

1o nh

Clark Street at Avenue Chicago. IL 6061~-6099 ISSN 0272-s,;~o

.\nicle ; a ppe ar ing in thi, jo urnal an : ab.,tractcd and indexed in / folonrn/ , lb1tracl.1 a nd Amenta: I/ Him) and Liff.

20

The Edgewater Beach Hotel

44

Dream Making EIL HARRIS

Foot noted rnanu~cript , of

the anitlc ~ appct1ringin thi, issue arc ::H" ailabk: rrom die Chicago I li~turical ~otiety\

Publica tion; Ollicc . Cmer: Po.1/l{m/uf the F:dgeu•aln Beach ll otel. (:I IS Pnn/1 and Plwtogrnph, Co/1,rtum.

58 Yesterday's City


,,1l17 tJJ-ry;u JOJJ.h R~

THOUSH/\LTNOTSTAND iDLYBl~

The phrase "771011 shalt 1101 stand idly by" refersto the Biblirnl entreatyforjeuis lo hrl/Jfight sorial ll!Jllslice.Throughout A111erican his/01)',} ews and Afi'ican Americans have bem both united and dtvided over issue., o(raci.1111 and civil rights. 4


An Uneasy Alliance Douglas Greenberg

Throughout the country'shistory,Jewish and African Americans have confrontedeach other over a divide that is cultural as well as religious and racial.

The alliance between African Americans and Jews ha been a fruitful one throughout American history. Yet tensions and un eas iness have also characterized this relationship. These two groups have much in common, but their separate hi torical experiences have created a divide that is cultural and economic as well as religious and racial. This essay analyses this intense relationship and attempts to interpret its larger signi(icance for the history of American society. The alliance that African and Jewish Americans have developed has roots in the beginnings of .American histor y. Although for most of the period before the Civil \Var, most African Americans were slaves living in the South and most Jews were living in the I orth, an extensive population of free African Americans lived in the North, especially in cities such as New York and Philadelphia , whose populations were between 10 and 25 percent African American in the pre-Civil \Var era. As minorities outnumbered by the white majority, northern African Americans and Jews in this period made common cau e with each other. The situation in the South was quite different. The Mrican population was much larger and almost entirely enslaved. The Jewish population was smaller than in the North , although in some ways more inOuential. By and large, Jews tended to be concentrated in the commercial and professional classes and in cities such as Atlanta and New Orleans rather than on the cotton plantatiom of the rural South. The most famous southern .Jew of this period wa · the la,,1 erJ udah P. Beruamin. ,-\ leader of the Confederacy, Benjamin earned the di dain of some D011glm(;11'1'llbe1g 1-1/nrs1denlom/ dirn/01 of/hf Ch1t111;0 I //stonml Socit'ly.

of his fellow southerners with his plans to loosen restrictions on slaves and arm them to fight against the northern armies. In the late nineteenth century, as large numbers of Jews immigrated to the United States and as African Americans began to emerge from the long nightmare of slavery, relations between the two groups increased in intensity and frequency. By the encl of the nineteenth century, African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois found allies in the Jewish community, such as Arthur and Joel Spingarn, who helped to found the ational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. They remained stalwart supporters of a burgeoning organized movement to push for greater civil liberties for African Americans. Simultaneou ly, the Ku Klux Klan, which had emerged during Reconstruction to contro l what some whites thought was a dangerous population of newly freed slaves, began to focus its hatred upon Jews and Catholics . Educated Jews in particular quickly recognized that they had important things in common with African Americans. The 1913 lynching in Atlanta of Leo Frank, a Jew accused of brutally murdering a young girl, only reinforced for African and Jewish Americans the perception that they shared dangerous enemies in common, which by itself encouraged an alliance to develop . In the notorious case of the Scottsboro Boys, unjustly accused of raping two white girls in a freight car, Jewish groups, particularly those on the political left, helped to defend the innocent African American teenagers accused of the crime . The lead defense la\\')'er was Samue l LeibowitL, who eventually became one of the great trial la,,1·ers of the twentieth century. 5


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994 Early in the twentieth century, a vast migration of African Americans rrom the rural South to the urban orth began, while an equally dramatic emigration of Jews fleeing the pogroms and persecutions or Eastern Europe continued . These simultaneous and dramatic demographic shifts put Jews and African Americans into close physical contact with each other in northern cities, and they frequently found they had important interests in common. They shared a commitment to the trade union movement and to better working conditions. Both groups tended to support and to join new professions, such as social work; they relied upon institutions of public education; and they were generally inclined to involve themselves in reformist , progressive political causes. Despite this very significant common experience, however, it wa a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who cemented the political alliance between African and Jewish Americans. Roosevelt weaned African Americans from the Republican party, the party of Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt's political genius united African Americans and Jews in the great Democratic political coalition that helped elect him president. From that time almost to the present, J ewi h and African Americans worked together in the Democratic party and in other forums Lopre a common political agenda. From the election of Roosevelt until the election of Ronald Reagan, a majority ofJewish Americans and a majority of .African Americans stood on the same side of the presidential fence in general elections. In cultural matters as well, African Americans and Jews found significant points of common interest. Music was particularly fertile ground for this sort of relation hip, and the music or Chicagoan Benny Goodman and other Je\\ ish jazz musicians demonstrated the appeal as did the compositions of George and Ira Gershwin, despite the occasionally ambiguous relationship of their music to its roots in the African American community. Other, more subtle evidences of the alliance between African and Jewish Americans can be found in day-to-day relations. Among African Americans, for example, it was common to distinguish Jews from other whites. A common format for African American humor was to tell 6

The 19/3 lynrhinK of Lfo Fra11krei11Jorredforboth Afi"iw11a11djl'wi.1hA111nirn11 s the /1ercej,tio11that they .1/wred a da11gnous 1'111'111_\' .

a joke that involved an African American, a.Jew, and a white man. The content of such jokes frequently contained both racist and anti-Semitic implications , but they always distinguished.Jews from other whites . By the mid-19-!0s, therefore, African and Jewish Americans had forged an alliance in politics and in American culture that relied partially upon the perception ofa common enemy, but also reflected deep material interests in common and the perception that social inequality founded upon racially or religiously motivated oppression had no place in a democratic society. This perception and its impact on the life of the nation found their apotheosis in the civil rights movement or the 1950s and 1960s. The civil rights movement had been ajoint project of.Jewish and African Americans almost


An UneasyAlliance

While most A111erirn11 newspapers relegatedstories of lynchings to the back pages, if they printed them al all, black and Viddishpublirntion.1and 01ganizatio11s rnntinually remindedthe public of these brutal ocrnrences.The NMCP hung this bamierjimn the windmi•of their New York ojjicPeach day a person was lynchnl.

7


Chicago History, Fall 1994

from its beginning. Jewish organizations and labor unions had cooperated with the MCP and ot her civil rights groups in the first march on Washington , organ ized by A. Philip Randolph in 1943. Jewish lawyers had worked for the MCP Legal Defense Fund from its beginnin gs in the thirtie , and, in the fifties , Jewish lawyers played a cruc ial role in the series of cases, from Sweatt v. Painter to Brown v. Bo{//d of Education, designed to desegregate educational inst ituti ons from law schools and graduate schoo ls right clown Lokindergarten. These efforts attained their most significant victory in the Brown case in 1954, which declared segregated schools to be inh erentl y un equa l. Among the lawyers who wrote the briers for that case was .Jack Greenberg, who went on to become one of the leading civil rights lawyers of hi s generation. The role of.Jewish lawyers, such as Floyd Abrams and Joseph Rauh , among many other , in the American Civ il Liberties Un ion a lso expressed the commitment of the Jewish community to principles

Fight school segregation! LET CHICAGO KNOW YOU WANT EQUAL EDUCATION FOR YO U R CHILDREN ! HIT BACK AT CZAR BEN WILLIS AND HIS DOORMAT SCHOOL BOARD ! to tri: the wor'.d how YoU rf'f'! •bout th~ ~•hL-d . ot.trurt~t ?ub!k- Sthoo: om:!alc .. i.o r.f'Uw lo 11"11AU.:>: Ouc.-ap'1 cllildrff! an PC;llailfflar.N !O Ht a 1ood

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KEEP ·YOUR · CHILDREN OUT OFSCHOOL for this oneday! Letthemknowyouw111t a betterfutureforthe11

fflFREEDOM DAY SCHOOLBOYCOTT , ~ r-.

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r, ( /~ _ c, The strugglefor integrated education,from kindergarten to university, unifiedjeu ish and rlfriran American organiwtions. Above: Broadsidefor a 1963 Chicago/notest against segregated/mblic schools. 1

8

of justice and free expression, principles that members of the African Amer ican community recognized were a l o essential to the achievement of racial ju tice. By the 1960s the a lliance of African Americans and Jews in the civil rights movement was so clear that the racists and anti-Sem ites themse lves lin ked the two groups, even fa lse ly accusing the Amer ican .Jewish community of stirring up African America ns for their own sin ister , u ually communist purposes. J ewish students from the ort h had joined African American students in all the major civil rights campaigns of the late fifties and ear ly sixtie . Moreover, they did so in greater numbers than other whites . The power and the influence of the alliance was clearly visib le in the second march on Washington in August l 963 when Dr. King de livered his "I llave a Dream" speech. Tt was a moment that, in retrospect at least, was the high point of the close relationship between African Americans and.Jewish Americans. One of the darkest moments for the alliance came during the summer of 196{, the Mississippi Freedom Summer. [n .June , three civil rights workers disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi. By summer's encl the bodies of James Chaney, r\ndrew Goodman, and Michae l Schwerner had been found buried in an earthen clam outside of Philadelphia. Schwerner and Goodman were Jewish co llege students from cw York , while Chaney was an Afi·ican American student from the rural South. While these three certain ly recogni1.ecl the differences among them, they also shared a common vision of justice and equality. It was for this vision, as much as for their race or religion, that they were murdered not simply by the racist citi1.ens of Philadelphia, but br the police and sheriffs deputies who were sworn lo protect them. They died as they had li\·ed , in an alliance for which they paid the ultimate price . The relationship between African American~ and Jews was born not merely of common oppression and discrimination but also out of common values and an abiding sense orjustice. This alliance, however, was not a complete success, nor was it without tensions . The a lliance has been one of elites (actua lly fragment of elites) rather than a broad-based cooperat i\'e arrangement among the mass of African and


An UneasyAlliance J ewish Americans, wh o hav e lived and work ed in virtu ally separate communiti es fro m th e beg innin g . T here are h istori ca l reaso ns for the tensio ns in th e alliance that extend beyo nd blac k anti- Se m itism and J ewish racism . Co ntrasting th e histor ies of the two gr oup s in Am erica n society revea ls th at it is in their separate ex p eriences, rath er th an in the share d ex periences, th at sour ces of conni ct can be found . Alth ough Afri cans and J ews have bee n in North Am e rica fro m th e beg innin g o r th e Euro pea n conqu est o r the cont inent, th e circum sta nces of th e ir co min g here as well as th eir subse qu ent histories are dr amatically different. J ewish immi grat ion to th e Amer icas has bee n vo lunt a ry. J ews have frequ en tly come to thi s

countr y flee in g oppr ess ion e lsewhe re, but th e choice o f th e Unit ed Sta tes-o r, in an ea rli er period , th e Briti sh co loni es-w as entir ely vo lun tary. In fact, Euro pea n J ews also immi grated in signifi ca nt numb ers to o th er co untri es thr oughout thi s hem isph ere, particularly to Argen tin a and Brazil. T hi s volunt ary imm igration can be ge nerally di vided in to thr ee periods that corr esp ond to immi gr ation from thr ee part s of Eur ope. In th e ea rliest period of our h istory, from appr ox imately 160 0 to 182 0, most .Jewish immi gra nt s to th ese shores ca me from Portu ga l, Sp ain , or their co lo nies, or th ey came from th ose p laces by way o r England or ot her western Europ ea n coun tries. T hese J ews, usually called Seph ardi c,

THE FBI IS SEEKING INFORMATION CONCERNING THE DISAPPEARANCEAT PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI, OF THESE THREE INDIVIDUALS ON JUNE 21, 196~. EXTENSIVE INVESTIGATION IS BEING CONDUCTEDTO LOCATE GOODMAN, CHANEY, AND SCHWERNER WHOARE DESCRIBED AS FOLLOWS , ' ANDREW GOODMAN

RACE·

JAMES EARL CHANEY

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MICHA EL HENRY SCHWERNER

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SHOULD YOU HAVE OR IN THE FUTURE RECEIVE ANY INFORMATION CON CERNING THE WHEREABOUTS OF THESE INDIVIDUALS, YOU ARE REQUESTED TO NO TIFY ME OR THE NEAREST OFFICE OF THE FBI. TELEPHON E NUMBER IS LISTED BELO W.

June29, 1964

9


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994 carried with them strong cultural connections to the world of Islam. Indeed, three great events in 1492-the voyages of Columbus , the expulsion of the Arabs from Spain, and the Spanish Inquisition-all played an imponant role in sending these Arabized, even Africanized, Jews to the Americas. Their numbers in orth America were small at first and, for the most part , they were received without much anti-Semitism. The educated classes of colonial America demonstrated an admiration for Jewish learning and scholarship , and little evidence of explicit anti-Semitism exists. According to most accounts , the Sephardic Jews of early America were admired and their tradition was honored as one that accorded well with the values of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Protestantism. This brand of Christianity focused more on the Old Testament rather than the ew and placed much more emphasis on Biblical scholarship and secular learning than Catholicism had. Along with Latin and Greek, Hebrew was a required language at Harvard , Yale, and Princeton throughout the colonial period. The second great wave of Jewish immigration came from German y in the mid-nineteenth century. Largely well-to-do , oriented both to ward education and business , German Jews soon spread throughout the country, establishing large communities not only in New York, but also in smaller cities such as Newark, Cincinnati , Pittsburgh, Chicago , and Atlanta. These German Jews thought of themselves as more German than Jewish, and they soon transported and adapted from Germany a separate religious movement , the Reform movement, that suited their assimilationist point of view. In the late nineteenth century, the third phase of Jewish immigration from Europe commenced, and it is from this third pha e that the majority of American Jews now trace their ancestry. These so-called Aschkenazic Jews came largely, though not exclusively, from Eastern Europe and from Russia. They spoke Yiddish, they were usually poorer than their predecessors, and they did not come from social traditions that had encouraged or from countries that permitted them to assimilate with their Gentile neighbors. 10

By the early twentieth century, the Ku Klux Klan had expanded its hatred to includl'.f ews and Catholics as well as Aji-ican Americans, its original target. This pamphlet explor!'sthe relationship between the Klan and.Jews.

All of these Jews , whether they came in 1600 or 1900, whether Sephardic, German, or Aschkenazic, whether rich or poor , shared several important traits in common. First they all came in conditions of freedom and were immediately accorded the rights of citizens, even though such rights might be circumscribed by anti-Semitism. Second , their new compatriots thought of them as white and, despite anti-Semitism , rarely said that Jews were genetically or racially inferior. There were many defenses of anti-Semitism, but that was a very uncommon one . Third, Jews tended to come to this country in groups and usually in families. They came with a shared language , whether Portuguese or German or Yiddish , and it was sometimes a generation before they learned to speak English. o effort was made by the majority culture to break up Jewish families or to prohibit the traditions of Jewish culture. In the history of American bigotry, public and violent anti-Semitism was actually a rather


_-l.11 [ 'neasy.-11/ia nee

minor theme until the beginning of the twentieth centu1·y. The anti-Serniti m that exi ted wa neither as Yirulent nor as \'iolent as it wa to become. Tho e ,rho might haYe adopted anti- emitic \'ie" ·s \\·ere more concerned \l'ith other ..out ider ,-· such as Catholic . particularly Iri h Catholic . The t\l"emieth century i a different tory. Once large numbers of poorer, strangely dre sed, Yiddish-speaking. usually Orthodox Jews began arriving at the end of the nineteenth century, anti-Semiti m grew dramatically because these ne\\· immigrants seemed more threatening to the con\'entional standard of American life. In addition, their numbers were so great that they threatened important bases of power in the country that neither the lowerclass ami-Semites, like the Ku Klux Klan, nor upper-class anti-Semites, like the Ivy League universities, wished to ee endangered. The re ult was anti-Semitic violence from the Klan and other groups and aggressive discrimination against Jews in every aspect of Amer-

ican life from busine s to higher education to goYernment. Despite the formidable barriers that anti- emit ism erected, ho\\·e, er.Jew managed eventually to succeed in e,·ery area of A..merican life from which others tried to exclude them. By the second o-eneration of the n,·entieth century. Jew entered the professions and the business \\"Orld in large numbers. mainly because they came from a tradition that emphasized education O\'er the immediate acquisition of property. Other ethnic group tended to send their children out to work as soon a they were eligible to quit school in order to help the familr sa\'e enough money to purchase its o,,·n property. Comino- from peasant societies in Ireland or Italy or Poland, these groups sa,'" propert:y as the key to independence from the landlord. Even if it meant sacrificing a child's education, therefore, they did all they could to acquire property. Jews, in contrast, frequently came from societie "·here the actual mrnership of property

hmnigranls crowd lhe dnks of a .1hi/1in the early lweniPthcentury. By this lime,Jews who immigrated to Americafaced more vim/mt anti-Semitism than those who arriver/at earlierperiods. 11


Chicago His/my, Fafl 1994 was forbidd en to th em by law. Long, la ndl ess yea rs in the sht e LI or th e ghetto had tau ght th em th e value of edu cation, not only beca use it led to success in bu siness, but also for its own sake. In comp arin g J ews and Italians who ca me to thi s countr y at the e nd of"the nin etee nth ce ntu ry, it is clea r th at Italians did mu ch bette r in th e first ge nerati on. Th ey acquir ed better apartment s, furni tur e, a nd mater ial goo ds and more savin gs than J ews. In th e seco nd ge neratio n, however, as th e edu ca tion for which th e first ge nera tion had sac rifice d so mu ch bega n to h ave its effec t, J ewish families rapidl y out str ipp ed th e pr ospe rity or· th eir Ita lian, Polish, and Iri sh neighb ors as daught ers beca me socia l work ers a nd teac hers and sons beca me teac hers, bu sin ess men, lawye rs, a nd , omet im es, eve n doctor s a nd pro f"e sors At th at p o int , th e J ewish famili es ten ded to mov e to better ne ighb orh oo ds in th e city or out of th e city altoge th e r. Int o th ese a partm ent s, m oreover, o fte n abuttin g Iri sh , Italian, an d Po lish neigh bo rh oo d s, soo n m ove d Africa n Am erica ns rece ntl y arr ived fro m the South . Th ere in is anoth er Lory, of cour se, a tOt) ' LhaL helps to ex pla in th e rac ism of so-called "whit e ethni cs" th at p ers ists LOth is day. ,f eanw hil e, J ews, eve n whe n th ey move d out , freq ue ntl y kept th eir bu sinesses a nd prop ert y in th ese form erly J ewish a nd now N 'ri ca n Ame rica n neighborh oo ds.

Broadsidefor a11 1823 slave auction. UnlikeJ ews, the overwhrlming majority of Africans came to the United tales against their will. Once here, they could be sold al the whim of their owners and se/Jaratedji-0111 theirfr1111ilie.1.

Th e histor y o l' Afr ica n immi gratio n to th is countr y bea rs ha rdl y a ny simi larit y to th e hisLOry of J ews in thi s part o f th e wor ld . First, exce pt for a sma ll and, until rece nt ly, historica lly insignifica nt min orit y, Africa ns ca me to this countt )' in chain s and aga inst th eir will. Th e forced migra tion o f Africa ns to the Ame ricas is o ne o r th e mos t susta ined ac ts o f bru ta lity in hum a n history. Be twee n 1492 a nd th e e ncl o f th e slave tr ade abo ut fo ur hundr ed yea rs late r, appr ox imat ely te n to twe lve million peo ple were kidn app ed fro m th e ir ho mes a nd bro ug ht in th e hold s o r slave ship s to thi s hemisph e re; a pp ro xim ately o ne- ha lf to two-third s of th e "cargo" of the slave ship s died from starvation, thir st, or di sease. O f th at numb e r, pe rh a ps thr ee milli o n le ft from a sing le port in Africa, th e pl ace now called Dakar, Senega l. In th e harb or of Dakar is a n isla nd , Go ree Island , which is th e closes t po int on th e co ntin e nt o f Africa to th e Am e ricas. O n th at i ·Ja nel th e re is a buildin g with two doo n-vays. On e doo rway faces east LOth e isla nd and back towar d the co ntin e nt. Th e oth er faces th e ope n sea. T here is nothin g betwee n th a t doo rway and th e Amer icas but the Atla nti c Ocean. T hr oug h th at single doo rway thr ee million peo pl e walked o r, more like ly, were d ragge d in cha ins. Sta nd ing a lo ne in th at door way is as chillin g and te rrifying a n ex pe rience as one ca n imag ine.

10 LIKELY and V ALGABL E

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In front of our Office, u,ithout any /.:ind of , 'li l or rcsi:rve for cash, AT 11 O'CLOCK; 1

10 /1.S LIKELY

NEGROES

As any ever olfered in thi s market ; nmong them is n mnn who is I\ superior Cook and H ouse Servant, and a girl about 17 years old, a fu'St rate H ouse Servant, and an excellent enmstr es .

BROOKE & HUBBARD, Wednesday, July :2.:1,18~ .

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An UneasyAlliance

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Enslaved African Americansplanting sweet potatoesonJames Hopkinson's jJLantationon EdistoIsland, South Carolina, in 1862. The conditions of slave life were explicitly designed lo dehu111anize the victims and to destroytheir ca/Jacityfor independentrnltural activity.

Some or those people threw themselves and their children into the sea rather than be enslaved; some of them died horribly in the fetid holds of slaYe ships before reaching this hemisphere; others died in the sugar plantations of the West Indies and Brazil ; and a small fraction of them (about 3 percent or the total), the "lucky" ones, survived to become slaves in orth America. Thus, Africans came to this country in a continuous wa\'e or forced migration that lasted rrom 1619, \\'hen the first sla\'e arri, ·ed at Jame town , until 1808 when that most ambiguous or our early leaders, Thomas Jefferson, signed into law an abolition or the trade in human flesh from ,\frica to the United States. The e people came from many cliflerent ethnic group~ and many different cultural traditions.

In the Senegal today, a country only a little larger than New Jersey, seven distinct African languages are spoken. In Zaire, there may be as many as five hundred; no one knows for sure. Newly arrived slaves had neither language nor common culture to rely upon for sustenance. They were abruptly cut off from their African roots, and they soon found that the language and the religion of their captors was the only alternative a\'ailable to them for shared cultural experience. They were illiterate in English; they came without their families. If they did establish families, their children or their spouses could be sold away, never to be seen again. They had no recour e to law; for most of the history of sla\'ery the crime of raping an African woman did not exist. Neither did the crime of murdering one's own slave. For purposes of 13


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994

An Afrirnn American ji:1111ily rirrivi11gin Chicago,c. 1925. During the Great Migration more than one million African Americans moved .from the South lo norlhem cities in searrh ofjobs.

apportioning congressional seats, the ConsLitution defined slaves as being only three-fifths human. In practical and legal terms, however, a slave was not a person at all, but a piece of property to be bought and sold like a table or a chair or a cow. And all of this was justified by a systematic ideology that we now call racism. The conditions of slave life, in other words, were explicitly designed to dehumanize the victims and to destroy rheir capacity for independent cultural activity. The critical variable in this diabolical equation is racism, which, unlike anti-Semitism, was virulent and current in the majority culture from the very beginning. o whites admired the accomplishments of African civilization or the achievements oC for example, the Malian empire. Even those who thoughL themselve the friends of blacks and the opponents or slavery believed more or less consistently that Africans were genetically and racially inferior to whites, more violent, less intelligent, perhaps not even members of the same species. When the Civil War ended, moreover, and slavery was finally destroyed, racism continued unabated, enforced explicitly and implicitly by state and federal governments. Indeed, what resulted was the single longest wave of murders in American history, the lynching of African American men in the South between about 14

1880 and about 1965. Estimates of the number or murders vary, of course, because the police nol only kept no records, bul they were usually complicit in these acts. Bul between 1900 and 1914, to choose a period that has been sLUdied closely, at least eleven hundred of these legal murders occurred. That is almost one hundred lynchings per year that we know about. Many African Americans cvenlually did escape the virulence of southern racism by 0eeing to Lhe onh, where they hoped LO find employment, freedom, political power, and ju ·tice. The Grear Migration or African Americans out of the South began about 1920 and did not end unLil the 1960s. Jn 1924, Congress barred further unrestricted immigration or Jews and others from Easlern and Southern Europe. Thus,just as the number orJews entering the industrial labo1- market and American cities declined, the number of African Americans increased. Like Jews, African Americans chose to educate thei1- children if their resources perm ittecl it. Black women, like Jewish women, entered the teaching and social work profession in large numbers, and, when it was possible, African American families sacrificed material gains to provide an education for their children. Unfortunately, the options even for educated African Americans were more limited


An UneasyA/Lianre than those for Jews. An African American schoolteacher would not be permitted to teach Gentiles. An African American lawyer would not be hired by a white firm at all. A Jewish lawyer would be hired by a Gentile firm , but would only be permitted to handle Jewish clients. The alliance between these two groups, therefore, emerged out of two very different historical experiences, and it is the difference between these experiences that has imparted a consistent uneasiness. Despite common voting behavior, share d social concerns, and similar educational and professional ambitions, Jewish and African Americans have also treated each other with considerable mutual suspicion. This suspicion appears in the writings of African American writers such as Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and James Baldwin and in the work ofJ ewish

writers such as Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, and Phillip Roth. It is inherent as well in the relationship between those Jewish landlords and merchants and the black customers and tenants who moved in after the Jews had moved to the suburbs. This tension has also been reOected in film. Al Jolson 's Jazz Singer is a rabbi's son who dresses in black face to sing secular music, turning his back on his tradition and on his father. For Jews, the portrayal is usually thought to be poignant and moving, but for African Americans it is offensive, an example of the racism of the minstrel show being immortalized on screen. In recent times, Spike Lee has paid considerable attention to the tension-especially in Mo' Beller Blues, a film that was unfairly attacked for being anti-Semitic in its portrayal of

ThL, drau 1i11[;by l-la111e_\' Dinnerstein J;ortmy.1 the marchers the artist saw when he traveled from New York City to Mo11to{;1111'1) ', , lfllbr111w,to w1/ne.,.1!hf' 195(5bu., boycott.Jewsand Aji'icanAmericans often came togetherin the civil rights IIIOI 11'1/ll'll/.

15


ChicagoHistory,Fall 1994 Jews in the music business'. Lee's use of tereotypes of Jews is no more offensive than the use of stereotypes of African Americans in innumerable television shows and films made by whites. He does, however, expose the tension in the relationship. Moreover, the uneasiness of the relationship has also appeared all too often in the civil rights movement itself, where African Americans frequently resented Jewish leadership and money, preferring to control their own organizations. Previously submerged Jewish racism and African American anti-Semitism frequently came to the surface, particularly in the later years of the civil rights movement, when cultural nationalism became such an important theme. The political alliance between African Americans and Jews began to fall apart under the social and political pressures of the 1960s and 1970s. During the Reagan years, Jewish and African Americans frequently found themselves on opposite sides of the political fence as Jews deserted the Democratic party in large numbers and African Americans came to regard Ronald Reagan as antagonistic to their social goals and economic needs. In our own time, affirmative action has certainly aroused tensions between African Americans and Jews. Jews and Jewi h organizations, especially the Antidefamation League, have tended to oppose affirmative action programs as introducing the invidious quotas that they struggled so long to remove. African Americans have argued that affirmative action is designed to correct historical irtjustices by giving minority group members guaranteed acces Lo institutions that have been completely closed to them in the past. Similarly, Zionism and black nationalism, which are actually quite similar ideologically, have exacerbated tensions between African and Jewish An1ericans. Jews see in Louis Farrakhan and Leonard Jeffries a form ofrace hatred and anti-Semitism that arouses their every impulse for self-protection. Many African Americans see in Zionism an ideology that wa designed to create and now to maintain a state based entirely upon religious distinctions of the most invidious sort. Many view the policies of Israel with contempt, noting not only its refusal to grant to Palestinians the same privileges for 16

which Jews have struggled, but also the close a liance between Israel and the still racist stale South Africa, an alliance that, it is argued, b trays the historical association of the Jewis people with social justice. Yet these tensions, which have increas dramatically since 1945, are only sympton of a larger set of circumstances of which 1 need to be aware if we arc to understand ti intensity or feelings that they generate. Sever, cultural facts underscore the nature the problem. The first is that anti-Semitism, as measur by public opinion polls, has been declini, steadily since World \Var II. In the past fort five years, the intensity and extent or an · Semitism, as well as its concrete renection in i stitutions, has declined precipitously. In co trast, despite the successes of the civil righ movement and the increased access of Africa Americans to main tream institutions, racis remains an utterly defining component American life. Polls show that most whites st' avoid African American in their personal an working lives whenever they can. Polls al show that such racist sentiments have actuall increased among Jews in the last twenty year The general problem of' race and power, a though omewhat different in shape than it w at the end of\Vorld \\'ar II, remains, or at lea should remain, at the ccmer of our nation agenda.Jews are in a fairly powerfol position protect themselves against anti-Semitisn Blacks are much less well-positioned. And th is the essence of the unea iness in the allianc The history of the two groups has opened t them very different socioeconomic experience Historically, African Americans haYe simply n had aYailable to them the ame opportuniti for social and economic mobility that ha\ 'e bee available to Jews. Anti-Semitism demonstrabl has not been as debilitating as racism has. Je1\ have largely succeeded in this society and h,n gained access to virtually all the institutions American economic, social,and political liC Collective success has been much harder i1 coming to African Americans. The film Driving i'vlissDaisy, the story of wealthy Jewi h woman, Mi s Daisy, and h black chauf1eur, Hoke, epitomizes the dinicu ties of the relationship between blacks and Jew


An Uneasyrlllia11ce

1

e e

I [

I g

,f

s t I

0

0

e

f

a r

Rabbi Abraham I leschel and Dr. Jvlartin Luther KingJr. al a memorialservice in 1965. Rabbi Heschelonce commented:"The whole future of America ... will depend on thefuture of Dr. King. "

Most peop le probably saw it as the story of two peop le discovering that they had much in common, despite their di£ferences , and finding real friendship in the end. On another level , however, the film aims at a far more complex and disturbing reality that bears directly upon the relationship between African Americans and Jews. First, Hoke, as Miss Daisy's servant, must defer to her no matter how much she abuses him with her irrational instructions and suspicions. Under most normal circumstances, no one would tolerate . from another person what Hoke tolerates from Miss Daisy. But Hoke and Daisy are not equals, and they do not see the world in the same way. When Miss Daisy's temple is bombed , she is horrified , but cannot understand why Hoke takes the occasion to tell her the story of a lynching he witnessed. Miss Daisy cannot see the connection, even when Hoke points out that prec isely the same people who lynch black people also bomb temples. \\'hen the two are stopped along the highway in Alabama by the police, Iloke knows immediately that the outside world see~ Jews and blacks as objects of scorn. Miss Daisy d enies the connection. And later in the movie, when i\fos Dais y's son dodges attending a dinner for Dr. King in order to protect his busine s associations, 1iss Daisy docs attend but fails to invite l loke be-

cause she claims to assume that he must know Dr. King. She prattles on about how things have changed and how wonderful chat is, but Hoke mutLers in tones so low she cannot hear them: "Ta lk about things changing, they ain't changed that much." Finally, at the end of the film, Miss Daisy first admits to Hoke that he is her best friend and then becomes pitifu lly dependent on him co feed her a piece of pie. This is turnabout with a vengeance, for Miss Daisy has insen itively abused Hoke for the entire time they have been together. In the end, Hoke knows and understands Miss Daisy better than she knows or understands him The relationship bet.ween these two charac ters serves as a metaphor for the relationship between Jewish and African Americans. Miss Daisy possesses all the power in the relationship. Indeed, the re lationship depends absolutely upon that power and upon Hoke's willingness, despite his great personal dignity, co defer to it absolutely. Miss Daisy remembers her own pri\'ation as a child, but she has difficult) · identifying her own experience with Hoke 's. She and her son do not even know whether Hoke has a family until he has been driving for her for thirt) ' years. This is preci ely the situation in which Jewish and African ,\mericans find themselves. They are friends who care deeply about each 17


Chicago History, Fall 1994

other's welfare. But the plain historical fact is that most of the power in the relationship, whether in the rlomestic sphere or the civil rights movement, has resided in Jewish hands , and the relationship has depended upon African American agreement with Jewish positions in politics. American policy toward Israel is but one example where dissent from the African American community is wrongly described in the Jewish community as antiSemitism. It is an alliance, but it is not an alliance bet:vveen equals, for African Americans have only rarely been in a position in this country where their relations with any group could be conducted on an equilateral basis. Yet, for all the uneasiness and recent hostility, the alliance is still alive. The first reason is simply a shared knowledge of the precariousness of their position in a society where neither African Americans nor Jews are or wiII ever be a numerical majority . Contemporary Jewish and African Americans must know, as their ancestors did, that racists tend to be anti-Semites and anti-Semites tend to be racists. A common enemy makes for a strong alliance, and the alliance between Jews and African .Americans has been the best defense against the bigotry and intolerance that are rife in this society. The power of lhefriendship between Jewish and AfricanAmericansgrows from their deepes/and mos/ central religiousimagery.J ewish a rti~IIsac Friedlanderportrayedtheji-eeingof AfricanAmericans/,avesin !hiswood engraving Exodus (right), whose titl,eevokesthe s101yof/heJ ewishpassagefrom slave,y lofreedom.African American arli.slWilmerAngierJennings's Sanctuary (ojJposile )representseitherlhe undergroundrailroad or the Holocaust and bearsa visual resemblancelo Exodus.

18

Second, the power of the friendship betwee Jewish and African Americans grows from thei1 deepest and most central religious imagery The Exodus story particularly is at the heart 0 the main imagery of African American an Jewish religion. The Promised Land and th story of the Jewish passage from slavery t freedom were the main metaphors of slave religion. They found their way into song an sermon on every possible occasion. Th . crossing of the River Jordan to freedom and th Promised Land was directly compared to th historical experience of the African American Indeed, on the night before Dr. King was murdered , he gave a stirring speech in which h clearly connected himself to Moses and told hi followers that he might not get to the Promise Land with them but that, like Moses, he ha looked upon it and knew it was there waiting L be achieved. The curator of the slave house on Gore Island from which those three million peopl left for the r\mericas is an old man who speak only \Volo[, the dominant language of Senegal He has never been out of Dakar, no less out o Africa. Yet he recognizes that the Holocaust i one of the few events in human history that cat com par e to the slave trade for sheer horrifyin


An UneasyAllianre brutality, and he has posted on the wall near the door facing the ocean a small sign, handwritten in French , that makes this comparison explicit and that reminds anyone who cares to notice that.Jews and Africans share a history of blood and horror and misery at the hands of Europeans that binds them to each other, whether they wish to be so bound or not. The alliance between Jewish and African Americans is no accident, no random artifact or fate or coincidence. It is instead inherent in the identity of the two peoples and in the ethical bases of their cultural, social, and historical experience . The most powerful lesson of.Judaism is its enduring commitment to justice and to freedom, a commitment that Jews renew at Chanukah and Passover each year. African Americans share this faith, and for all the uneasiness of the alliance, neither group can afford to permit this fidelity to their highe t ideals and best aspirations, as expressed in the Biblical injunction "To do justice and to love mercy, " to fade or diminish. If the alliance withers and dies, that would be a tragedy not only for Jewish and African Americans, but for the entire nation whose conscience they have collectively been for almost three hundred years.

For Further Reading To learn more about the uneasy alliance between these two group see Bridges and Boundaries:Aji-ican A111erirans and AmericanJews, a book that accompanied a traveling exhibition organized by the Jewish Museum of New York (New York: George Bra1.iller, l 992). Fo,- a theoretical discussion on the basi of racism see Kinfe Abraham's Politicsof Black Nationalism From Harlem to Soweto (T,-enton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, Inc., 1991). The civil rights movement united African Americans and American Jews in the fight against American bigotry. For a better understanding of the successes and failures of the movement see Reynolds Farley's Blaclt5 and Whites:Narrowing the Gap? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press , 1984) and Ha1Ty S. Ashmore 's Civil Rights and Wrongs: A Memoir of Race and Politics 1944-1994 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994) . To view a collection of essays on the NAACP, Mississippi, and Dr. King 's march on Washington see Black Protestin the Sixties, edited by August Meier , John Bracey Jr., and Elliot Rudwick (New York: Markus Wiener Publishing Company, 1991). For more information on American Jews see Jewish Identity in America, edited by David M. Gordis and Yoav Ben-Ho,-in (Los Angeles: University of Judaism, 1991 ). African Americans and American Jews have been a target of hate for a variety of groups, including the Ku KJux Klan. David M. Chalmers provide a terrifying look into the Klan in The Historyof the Ku Klux Klan (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, l 987). Richard K. Tucker ,-eveals the brutality, hypocrisy , bribery , fraud, and danger surrounding the Klan in The Dragon and the Cross:The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1991).

Illustration 4, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton; 6, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Campus, Hebrew Union College; 7, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Librnry, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; 8, CHS, ICHi-20839; 9, Federal Bureau of Investigation; 10, CHS Library ·; l I , Marilyn Golden; 12, CHS, ICHi-22000; 13, Courtesy The New York Historical Society , N.Y.C.; 14, ...\ugustu~ Sherman, ational Park Service, Ellis Island l\luseum; 15, The Parrish An Museum; 17, Courtesy or Kee/1ing Posted; 18. Courtesy of Sragow Gallery; 19, The ational Cente,- for Afro-American Artists , Boston , Massachusetts.

19


THE EDGEWATER BEACH HOTEL

$

20


FOR DECADES THIS STUCCO BY THE LAKE EPITOMIZED

PALACE

GRANDEUR

AND LUXURY

I

n recent years , Chicago 's hotel industry has experienced a renaissance. New facilities , from family-

oriented budget motels to posh , upscale hotels , have been built , while some elegant older establishments have been restored to their former splendor. But none of these will ever recapture the spirit of Chicago's famed Edgewater Beach Hotel , which in its heyday was among the grandest , most luxurious hotels in the world. Benjamin Marsha ll designed the eighteen-story Spanish-style

,

stucco building , which opened in 1916

with four hundred rooms. In the mid- 1920s , a second building , linked to the first by a promenade , added six hundred rooms. The hotel 's chief attraction beachfront

was its

location ; for decades couples danced lake-

side under the stars on a marble floor. In the days before central air-conditioning vacationers-especially

became commonplace ,

those from the South-

welcomed the cool lake breezes. The hotel hosted a range of guests , from high school students attending

their proms to Hollywood

stars ,

from European royalty to American presidents , including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower. In the elegant Marine Room , the hotel 's main restaurant , couples celebrated

their wedding anniversaries

to

the music of big bands led by greats such as Glen Miller , Tommy Dorsey , and Paul Whiteman.

During

the Great Depression , the restaurant offered a special "College

ight " every Thursday , where guests could

dine and dance for one dollar. Baseball players often stayed at the Edgewater Beach , since it was near Wrigley Field . An obsessed fan shot Cubs player Eddie Waitkus there , an incident Bernard Malamud incorporated into his novel The Natural. 21


CHICAGO

HISTORY , FALL 1994

In addition to its twelve-hundred-foot

private

beach , the hotel offered amenities such as a tennis court (which was converted into an ice rink in the winter ), a putting green , its own radio station (WEBH ), a shuttle bus to Marshall Field's State Street store , and even a seap lane to transport guests to the Loop. For many years manager William M . Dewey reigned over the hotel, inspiring awe and respect in both the staff and guests . Dewey was responsible for booking the big-name entertainment

acts in the

Marine Room and on the radio station. He also maintained strict rules of propriety: dancing was forbidden on Sundays , women were not allowed in the hotel 's

--~-:..

••

bars , and couples who were suspected of not being

.. ..... . .,· ~

married were strongly encouraged to check out as soon as possible . The hotel's decline began in the mid - I 950s when Lake Shore Drive was extended to Hollywood Avenue , cutting off access to the lake . Although a pool was added soon afterwards , the resort was never the same. After several changes in ownership the hotel filed for bankruptcy and closed , literally overnight , in December

1967. Guests , many of whom

had lived there for decades , were turned out with only a few hours warning . In 1968 the hotel was briefly resurrected as a dormitory for Loyola Univer sity students (serving as the school's first coed resi dence hall ). In 1969-70 , however , the grande dame of Chicago 's hotels was demolished to make way for a high-rise apartment complex . The photographs

on the following pages are from

a scrapbook at the Chicago Historical Society . Taken by the Chicago Architectural Photographing

Com -

pany , these images are unlabeled but they date from about 1920 and show various exterior and interior views of the hotel.

22

..


THE EDGEWATER

'

•,

,,

'

BEACH HOTEL


CHICAC.0

24

HISTORY,

f7ALL 1994


THE EDGEWAHR

8EAC.H HOT! I.

25


CHICAGO

26

H ISTORY , FALL 1994


T HE EDGEWATER BEACH H OT[L

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CH ICACO H ISTORY , FALL 1994

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T HE EDGEWATER Br AU I H OTEL


CHICAGO

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HI STORY, FALL 1994


THE EDGEWATER BEACH HOTEL

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CHICAGO

HI STORY , FALL 1994


THE EDCEW'ATER BEACH HOTFL


CHICAGO

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HISTORY , FALL 1994


THEE DGEWATER 8 EACH HOTEL




CHICAGO

38

HI STORY , FALL I 994


THE EDGEWATER BEACH HOTl'l

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CH ICAGO HI STORY, FALL 1994

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THE EDGEWATER BEACH H OTEL

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CHICAGO

HI STORY, FA! L 1994


THI

EDGEWATER

BEACH HOTI

l

43


Dream Making eil Harris

The year 1893 marked a turning point in American cultural marketing~as Chicago'sWorld'sColumbianExpositionset a new standardfor extravagant spectacleand the projectionoffantasy.

Editor'sNote: ht Chicago History's final articlein the series Grand Illusions: Chicago 's World's Fair of 1893, Neil Harri examinesthe marketing, mereha nclising, a 11d promotion of the fl/or/d's ColumbianExposition, e.\/J/oring how devt lo/m1ents in theseareas in the decadesbeforethe 1890s influenced their use in rtlatio11to thefair.

GRAN D

The spate of exhibitions and publications appearing in the last twenty-four months (with more promised) testifies to the aggressi\ ·e rediscovery of Chicago's 1893 world's fair. Languishing comfortably for decades in genteel obscurity, the 1893 Columbian Exposition is now, if not precisely a household phrase, both popu larly documented and widely discussed. Many in Chicago and elsewhere have become newly conversant or reacquainted with its symbols and can easily recognize its prominent structures and dominant personalities. The Court of Honor with its great water basin, the Midway and the Ferris \\'heel, the Wooded Island, Louis Sullivan's Golden Door, the Water Gate, the Statue of the Republic-these exposition icons and their luminous photographs have been painstakingly analyzed. The White City has been revived in our day, however, not as much as a slice of historical time and space or an experiment in city planning and architectural harmony, but as an exercise in marketing, an experiment in merchandising and promotion, a colossal management of

HPJSIONS: CHICAGO 's

WOR lOsFAIR Of1893

ii I

I

Neil Harris is Preston and Sterling Morton Professor of Hist01)'al the University of Chicago and served as consulting historian for the exhibition Grand Illusions: Chicago's World's Fair of 1893.

44

images, ideas, commodities, and sensations lacking apparent precedent but with plenty of progeny. The fair has been widely he1·alded as an augury of modernity. Reconstructing the event in our more skeptical, critical, multicultural era, we tend to see, in place of accomplishment, a tortuous process . Where once the exposition symbolized consen us, unity, and agreed-upon values, we now spot smothered dispute , diverted discord, ambitious manipulation , and only temporary, evanescent resolution, whatever the magnificence of the chosen vocabulary. The fair's function as an arena of contest seems almost uni\'ersally acknowledged. This interpretation does not mean we should denigrate the extraorclinar 1 triumph of the fair a a space, as a Dream City, as a digested, controlled environment designed Lodazzle , entertain, police , insLrncL,and ser\'ice great throngs of people \\'iLhellicienc.y and elan. All that is accepted. The fair was an ama;,ing accomplishment. But, as Montgomery Schuyler, the major architectural critic of that period pointed out in his summary re\'iew, written in the 1890s, 'The consciousness of illusion is part ol'the pleasure of the illusion. It is not a diminution but an increase of our delight to know that the cloudcapped Lowers, the gorgeous palaces, and the solemn temples, the images of which scenic art summons before us are in sober reality 'the baseless fabric of a vision."' He called the White City the "most illusive piece of scenic arcbitecLure that has ever been seen." Complicity, then, between illusion maker and spectator was pre ent in Chicago in 1893. Fair managers had the Lask of selling the exposition to a large, somewhat undefined, and often unsophisticated audience, and, even more vital, fixing it permanently in their


Dream Making

'

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...

Vo

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MON6Tt:2 GO/tGfR,T · GRAND GI\ORUf>--------.11[ r n::) r 4 )if Ir:C I/,~. y~~ ,Pil>·\ ~ 19_ ,,,,._.<,:;11/NA~r;,nR(AFormm_gm ifs erdtrety the _mos " "-S,.l!Jn(ncant 1

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•fr.lR.,.,.~.'~n!Ltr(U• and Gra"rfest

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Sp eetac le o: ,':!fodem Ttmes.

This lithograph rncressfully/z1ml thowruuls of vL1itors lo the ChicagoDay celebrational thefair, October9, I 893. -15


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994

memory. The fair's promotional contr ibutions are almost, if not more, significant than its architectural planning. The exposition's subsLantial force rested largely upon marketing genius. Placing images, depictions, and representations of the fair within a spectrum of promotional imagery Lhat came before and after can suggest ways in which the fair made a difference, not only to city planning, institution building, public an, crowd management, technological innovation, and product markeLing, but also to the field that twentieth-cemury Americans have made their own: dream projection, the dispersal of popular desires, values, and ambiLions on a truly imperial scale, for export as well as for domestic consumption. The year 1893 stands as an important moment in American cultural marketing. It proved a turning point in the management and promotion of spectacle, which until then had been conceded by many Americans to European experts, especially culLivated in Paris. Paris had become the chosen home of haute couture, international expositions, and great museum display. The 1889 Paris fair innuenced Chicago, right down to the ethnic villages, while the 1900 Paris fair would, in some aspects, surpass it. But, to the surprise of many, the Chicago exposition set a new standard for polish, extravagant spectacle, and the projection of fantasy. "In the world of dreams," to quote Schuyler once again, "illusion is all that we require." From a technical standpoint the fair constituted a multimedia blitz comparable to campaigns that flourished sixty or eighty years later. The Chicago fair did not, of course, take place in a vacuum. The years before the exposition constituted a period of great innovation for the production of publicity. Several key instruments for advenising purposes emerged in the 1880s. Among Lhem, six serve as examples: the first central power stations for electric light and power (actually 1879 in San Francisco was litei-ally the first); the first halftone engravings, permitting photomechanical reproduction of illustrations in books, magazines, and newspapers; the first practical linotype machine, which revolutionized the speed and efficiency of typesetting and increased the capacity of news coverage; the first commercial phonograph; the

46

Ear(vfonns of ad,,ertisingincludfd j){/inlfdsigns that rm,l'rfd everythingfimn buildings to rork.1. I'hf sign:,011this DearbomStreetbuilding (r. 1890) attestto the continuing use ofthi.1fon11ofadvertising. Photograj1hby). W. Taylor.

first long-disLance telephone connection; and the first celluloid photographic film. The promotional implications of these inventions-personal photography and the snapshoL, recorded music and speaking, the easier and more accurate produnion of type and images, the spread of incandescent electric lighLs and illuminated advenising signs; the more rapid communication of information-were fundamental. The differences they made to conceptions of space and time, conditions of darkness and light, and control of the environment within less than a decade must have been breathLaking. These were, one must remember, Lheyears just preceding and accompanying the planning and construction of' the exposition. Those who


Dream Making put the fair together, and many of its visitors, were being exposed to revolutions that seemed as fundamental and extraordinary as our recent encounters with computers and microprocessors. The generat ion that created the fair had exper ienced sudden and dramatic changes in the forms of receiving and processing information; even the typewriter and the te lephone were on ly fifteen years old in the ear ly 1890s. These instruments would transform industry and commerce and set the scene for extraordinary changes in the area of advertising and visual representation. Well before the 1880s Americans had become associated with aggressive, intrusive, pervasive methods of promotion. Generations of foreign trave lers commented on the painted signs in Amer ican cities that advertised every kind of product. Sandwich men stro lled sidewalks bearing signs. Fences, doors, walls, rooftops, storefronts, rocks, boulder , bridges, mountainsides-nothing was free from disfiguring advertis ing paint. The tradition went back as far as the 1830s or 1840s, and included institutions as various as Barnum's American Museum and patent medicine manufacturers. Silas Lapham, the fictional businessman who gave his name to William Dean Howells's famous novel, reca lled that when his new paint appeared in the 1860s "t here wasn't a board fence, not a bridge girder, nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that who le region that didn 't have 'Lapham's Mineral PaintSpecimen' on it in the three colors we begun by making." Lapham was unapologetic. "I never saw anything so very sacred about a big rock , along a river or in a pasture," he added, "that it wouldn 't do to put mineral paint on it in three colors .... I say the landscape was made for man , and not man for the landscape. " Advertising was frequently heavy-handed and crude. Nothing succeeded so well, it seemed, as excess. Newspapers and magazines emphasized complex and varied typography. Illustration was crowded, both on the printed page and on labels and poster ·. The effects sought were frequently garish and highly melodramatic. But in se\'eral areas Americans had been producing interesting visual publicity. One was the circus posrer, such as those designed for Barnum and Baile/s "Greatest Show

This 1884 broadside for Adam Forepaugh'scircusis another of earlyadvertisingejf01ts. e'Ca111ple

47


ChicagoHistOI)', Fall 1994 black and white that listed the names of entertainments and performers. But the posters indicated the possibilities for bold and inventive publicists. Finally, there was the highly energetic and ingenious American tradition of political advertising . For almost a century, and much more intensely since the spread of democratic politics in the J 830s and 1840s, banners, buttons, china, bandannas, posters, and other memorabilia had been designed to promote electoral candidates and the two major parties. This an was, again, frequently naive and primitive, but colorful and exuberant, and, once again , national in scale. Circus, theater, and politics did not exhaust advanced commercial art in the pre-fair years. Improvements in color printing stimulated manufacturers and retailers also , particularly makers and sellers of pianos, packaged foods, liquor, and patent medicines. On the eve of the fair their posters, trade cards , and souvenirs were becoming more ingenious. The Columbian Exposition, therefore , took place as the repertory and palette of visual persuasion was expanding. Most of these developments were recem, and they did not apply to areas or cultural promotion-museums, art , music, books, magazines, or events. Even here the 1880s were innovative, however, providing powerful and innuential example for the promoters of the Columbian Exposition. Specifically, this inrnlved the staging of public events-building openings and dedications, patriotic anniversaries, the unveiling of monuments. \Vhile not exactly new as a genre, the scale was novel. E\·en more significant , in the intere t of attracting attention, rai ing monc) , or sometimes merely to sell newspapers and magazines , the celebrations were painstakingly described and illustrated , gaining national attention. New York City, a the undi~puted metropolis of the country, had hosted several such events in the 1880s, notable among them the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in J883 and the dedication of the Statue of Liberty just a few years later. The siLe of these projects, their longevity, their international visibility, their symbolism, and their ideological or commercial implications made them notable in themselves.

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on Earth" or Adam Forepaugh's establishment in Philadelphia. The e imaginative and engaging images had been used for decades by the 1880s, supposedly inspiring European poster artists such as Jules Cheret in Paris. This advertising was significant also because it was national in scope, appearing wherever the circus was schedu led, and because it publicized events rather than products. Advertisements for the American theater were another well-developed, if closely related area of poster art. Here the melodramas and stars that had been so popular inspired artists to design lurid or enticing visions of the actual performances. These images existed alongside simpler traditions of broadsides and notices in

48


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But they were also packaged [or vast audiences by print makers, magazine illustrators, souvenir producers, and others. While these public holidays drew hundreds or thousands as witnesses, millions more could share the excitement through woodcuts, chromolithographs, and, by the 1880s, photographic illustrations. Firewo1-ks, parades, pageants, presidential visits, all added to their appeal. These clements would help form the repertory drawn upon by promoters of the Columbian Exposition. In the case of the Statue of Liberty, the publicity was even more ~elf-conscious and instrumental, arising from the need to raise money to erect its base. Jo~eph Puliuer used his campaign to draw pennies from New York schoolchilclren ,

simultaneously populariLing his recently purchased newspaper , the New York World. Promoters advertised the Statue of Liberty by displaying its fragments-the torch at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876, and the head at the Paris fair of 1878 and later in ew York City. Artists, such as the western landscapist Thomas Moran, were called in to paint their impressions of the future statue, as it would appear when installed on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor. This custom of using a projected image, a portrait of what a structure would look like upon completion, had been part of the architectural repertory for centuries; learning how to produce renderings, either as parts of competitions or to encourage specific clients, was a part of formal architectural training. ow popular artists were being commissioned to trans late the architectural or sculptural vision, and these special versions were reproduced and printed in multiple copies to encourage public interest and support. More than tools to promote the design, these images were also a device to stimulate the appetite of a large public for a scene that would soon be possible for them to enjoy, provided they agreed to support it with taxes or contributions. This techn ique was employed to popularize Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicagoin 1909 and a host of other City Beautiful schemes in the early twentieth century. Once bui ldin gs and landscapes were completed, artists aga in would be called in by owners and authorities, both to encourage visits and to establish the significance of the completed work, often promoted as a symbol of progress, artistry, and high principles. These festivities of the 1880s helped define expectations and disperse practices that the publicists of the fair would draw upon. Moses Handy and his publicity bureau were or igina l and innovative, yet they happily exp loited a series of recent achievements. But it mu t also be admitted that, as big as these earlier events were, the scale o[ the exposition would dwarf them. And while the Columbian Exposition promoters could adopt the methods, they also moved well beyond them to engage the fantasies and desire of an enormous regional and national audience. While the [air's promoters incorporated the repertory and assumptions al-!9


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994

TheStarr Piano

THE STARR PL\!\'0 CO,, Jfanufnctnrer~,

Send for Catalogue and Price List

To foster /1ublic interest in new products, manufacturers like the Starr Piano Co111/1a11y used images of fair buildings and landsca/m on their trade rards.

ready established, five particular applications also served to transform them. The first, and in ome ways the most important, was the phase of' preparation and anticipation. Between late 1890 and the spring of 1893, American magazine were treated toillustrated reports on the progress of construction and renditions of' what the completed fair would look like. These view , increasingly precise as the months passed, were partly exercises in technical virtuo ity, given the scale of the project, and partly efforts at reassuring a skeptical audience, principally on the East Coast , that Chicago was capable of bringing off the whole immense effort . The campaign also had to whet appetites of potential visitors for the fair's attractions . Thirty months of' visual teas ing began, to crea1e expectarions of' what would be seen, even before ii was built. The campaign resembled one of today's cinematic coming-attractions promotions. Running huge ads weeks or months ahead of' a movie premiere, running film clips on television or in theaters , and having celebrities tout the new film on talk shows are common tactics today. But in the 1890s a campaign of' coming attractions was something of' a no, ·elty. Twelve months before the fair opened, hundreds of', ·i itors were coming daily to Jackson Park, often in organized groups, to observe and, perhaps even 50

more importantly, report on and sketch the progress of' the enterprise. On weekend days as many as ten thousand visitors were recorded , paying the twenty-five cents admission f'ee. The work of'visual stimulation was aided by the fact that, to a surprising extent, the appearance of' the exposition was firmly fixed a good two years in advance. Examining the maps and the visual portrayals that maga,ine began to run in 1891 and 1892, we find the placement and appearance of' the major palaces correponcling to what e\'entually would be achie\'ed. There would be important changes here and there, since a number of' planned features were never built, but these were accents, grace notes, cleLailsthat were not consequential to the larger experience of' the exposition. More than a year before it opened, illustrators and journalists were preparing the visiting public, not only for what they would be seeing, but for the ways in which to see them , anticipating, that is, the grand vistas so emphasi1.ed by official photographers C. D. Arnold and William Henry Jackson. Journalists were choosing certain structures for special attention, like Charles B. Atwood's Palace of Fine Arts , insisting that the e represented the finest examples of' the ensemble's architectural style. "Even to the great general public who are as yet awaiting with eager anticipation the indispensable


DrN1111 Making

outing at the Fair," W. Hamilton Gibson, a journalist, wrote before the opening , "its surpassing architectural features are already enticingly familiar. The 'White City' is already a heritage of delight and inspiration. " This detailed vision of the future was actually a protracted gaze. All this was accompanied , as well, by verbal and graphic presentations of Chicago's own urban landscape. Many of the lair 's visitors were both attracted to and worried about a city that had already become known for its bluster, energy, danger, activity, and fast pace. Many of its chief amenities were only a decade or tvm old and were not yet familiar icons . Magazines and newspapers ran a series of illustrated articles in the early 1890s describing Chicago's hothouse growth, its new hotels, theaters , office buildings, parks, transit system, and stores.

Guidebooks offered advice for getting around both the city and the fair. In fact, the fair provided an unparalleled opportunity ror promoting the virtues of Chicago, for elling visual imagery of the metropolis; the local promoters, in their efforts to bring the exposition to Chicago, understood the need to promote the city. Municipal tourism and local boosterism were just getting started, on any sophisticated competitive basis, in this period; Chicago's concerted effort to sell itself, linking its fortunes to the fair, would be common enough in future years as Buffalo, St. Louis, San Francisco, Omaha , Seattle, and other cities took advantage of hosting international fairs to create posters, guidebooks, and new facilities to welcome tourists and investors. Today, cities use jazz festivals, international sports meets, political conventions, religious conclaves, and art fairs to

"Official" images like this C. D. / lmold J;/wtographoft he Court o/'f-lonorarPthe mostwell knownfonns affair J;romotion. 51


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994 carry the word forward on their climate, amenities, and special attractions. Similar efforts had preceded the Columbian Exposition, but never with such unabashed enthusiasm and comprehensivene s, to the point where the fair as an event and the city's own institutions-its stores, museums, and businesses-became inextricably linked for advertising purposes. Department stores and railroads, for example, used the fair as the basis for their local promotional campaigns, even while the fair was itself exploiting them for its own purposes. A second promotional device that has ince become common but that was specially developed by the fair authorities was the tie-in, the deliberate linkage between the exposition and the professional, occupational, and avocational interests of potential visitors. For example, printing journals distributed to the trade carried articles and ads featuring exhibitions in Chicago that were likely to prove of special interest to their readers-who included printers, ink and paper manufacturers, and engravers. Photographs of various pavilions and machines, dates for special meetings and conferences, and maps and guide were inserted in the journal issues. Given the number of professional meetings scheduled for Chicago during the fair and the incredible variety of exhibition subjects, there was hardly a trade in the United States, from medicine to dentistry to carpentry and dry-goods selling that did not have a direct connection. The 1880s and 1890s were the formative period for national professional conventions, and the fair authorities shrewdly made Chicago figure in hundreds of these events, defining an industry that the city still exploits effectively. The publicity managers at the fair reinforced these efforts with special days, which included religious and ethnic groups as well as occupations. The United States was just at the start or its multiethnic spectacle obsession, and the fair, as many have pointed out, could be rather narrow and dogmatic in its definitions or Americanism. Nonetheless in its holiday-making and its occupational conventioneering, as well as its municipal advertising, the exposition experimented with the promotional ystems that have since served American cities well, resulting in the blend of tourism, multicultur52

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alism, professional and occupational meetings, and sports activities that constitute the economic base for many communities that today are shorn or their older manufacturing and retailing strengths. A third a pect or visual promotion that the Columbian Exposition seeded, and one or its most spectacular, was its sustained effort to harness high art in the interests or mass advertising and popular product marketing. The year 1893 was a particularly fertile moment, and Chicago, with its budding art schools, was a particularly apt location for such a development. Advertising and commercial art were still relatively undeveloped in graphic sophistication. Despairing or obtaining e!Tective designs from their own staff~ companies had already begun to purchase high art from established artists to use to promote their products. But these instances were exceptions. Hiring serious painters, not merely to decorate the fairgrounds but to provide promotional paintings or the fair that could then be lithographed and


Dream Making

Char/e1Craha111's painting of the Administration Building is an ewmple of the spectacularhigh art used lo /JrO'/note thl'}r1ir.

53


The 1890s art poster movement allowed commercial artists to /Jrosperduring thefair. Will Bradley designed this pen and ink broadside,r.189 5.

reproduced for broad popular distribution, had not yet been done before on this scale. The artists involved- Charles C. Graham, Kenyon Cox, Willard Metcalf, Lawrence Earle, Andre Castaigne, Caryl Colman, Childe Hassamwere, or would become, some of the best knrnYn and most successful in the country. Several were academically trained and already doing illustration work for newspapers and magazines. A number were exhibiting in the Palace of Fine Arts. These artists promoted the wonders of the 54

exposition in extremely nattering ways, not by vulgarizing or simplif) 1 ing the landscape, but by treating it as they would a scene in Paris, Vienna, Rome, or Florence, places where American artists welll to study and paint. The fair offered, in its polished if transient landscapes, unparalleled opportunities for artists who were bred on European scenes to work. fn some ways the exposition could be said to have encouraged the development of an American urban art genre, already under way in the l 880s, but one that would flower in a series of phases, including the Ashcan School, in the years after the exposition had closed. At the same time, The A.rt [nstitute of Chicago was serving as one of the country's m.:tjor training grounds for commercial artists. It is not entirely coincidental that the art poster movement, one of the defining episodes or the 1890s both in Europe and America, began in this country just as the Columbian Exposition was opening, and that Chicago artists would be major contributors to it. Art posters, deliberate!)' designed, aesthetically framed rendition that elegantly, ironically, or fantastically featured an activity, a product, or a publication, effectively began a an American movement in the pring of 1893 with Edward Penfield's posters for Harper's. MagaLines, publishers, and newspapers commissioned these posters, many of which were highly styliLecl art nouveau efforts. Will Bradley, perhaps the single most famous practitioner of' this art and an important t)'pogTapher as well, worked in Chicago at this time, designing certain fair materials, notably The Columbian Ode written by the poet Haniet lonroe. By the end of' the 1890s these artistic po ters, maga,ine covers, catalogues, brochures, stationery, and labels had become common. Fair promoters fostered the alliance between serious artists and commercial employers-and that between high and popular culture-through enormous art shows, concerts, and stimulation or cultural institutions. The fair may ha\'e sharpened the contrast between high and low, codifying and deepening the cultural codes that defined patterns of American li\'ing, but it also rendered some of the divisions more porous, less self'-contained, mingling the commercial, the aesthetic, the high-minded, and the profit-making.


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Fourth, the Columbian Exposition pioneered another technique that recent advertisers have perfected: getting others to carry the advertising message and, when possible, per5uading them to pay for the privilege. This technique encouraged the makers or commodities displayed or honored at the fair, or private interests who produced commercial souvenirs, to evoke the themes of the exposition. Awarding medals for excellence in thousands of categories was one avenue for this. Another was the licensing of' official producers, in return for royalt) payments, to create sanctioned represelllations, the most famous of which were probably picture postcards. Here can be round the progenitors of' the T-shirts, hat , models, and toys that everyone from \Vair Disney to the Vatican relies upon as a source of income. The souvenir itself, the portable demonstration of experience, the proof of atLendancc at places and events, was a relatively recent product of American life on any broad scale. Precedents stretch back to the Middle Ages and the movement of religious pilgrims, and to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the tourism of wealthy Europeans. But these earlier versions-jewelry, buttons of precious materials, porcelain plates-were anticipatory; created for a relatively small and dedicated audience, they were usually expensive and not promotional. By contrast, the products or late nineteenth centLU-)'expositions and local tourist bureausspoons, figurines, thimbles, salt shakers, pins, watch fobs-were common, cheap, made in the millions, and intended to promote a product or event. Other nineteenth-century events such as the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and the dedication or the Statue of Liberty, used sou,·enirs as promotional gimmicks. But in their numbers and varieties, they were enthusiastically outdone by the Chicago fair.

55


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994

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Dream Making Finally, the Columbian Exposition encouraged another promotional strategy that is still used today: that of focusing attention as much upon the audience as upon the spectacle. Journalists, cartoonists, caricaturists, photographers, artists, delighted in highlighting those who were catching their first glimpse or"exotic" peoples , or getting their initial exposure to electricity, the telephone, photography, and a variety of foods. They also portrayed somewhat more experienced spectators, examining the exhibitions and one another. Spectators, in short, were made part of the attraction. One realized, J. A. Mitchell wrote in Scribner's, "in studying this infinite stream of humanity how little he really knows personally, of his own countrymen. New types seem to have sprung into existence for the sole purpose or appearing at the fair." The most absorbing part or the great exposition might well have been its audience. In the end, despite the undeniable attraction of the buildings, the setting, and the exhibits, human self-absorption was probably the most powerful promotional appeal. All or the techniques-the coming attractions, the principle of the protracted gaze, the tic-ins and testimonials, the imaginary projections, the souvenirs (licensed and unlicensed) , the mobilization of academic artists as cheerleaders, the focu upon audience-could be seen, from the distance of our vantage point, as efforts to create a sto1y line for the fair, to produce a master narrative that would structure reactions to it. Jes promotional literature turned the Columbian Exposition into a theme park. If this massive publicity were reducible to any single statement, it might 1\"ellbe the fair's effort to project a depiction of America itself. The fair was packaged as a triumphalist, selr-centered, and highly selective self-portrait. [ts narrative was, at heart , the virtue, progres , and energy of a people determined simultaneously to learn about and outdo history, geography, and ethnography. The presentation was designed to wheedle, cajole, sometimes lightly to criticize, but ultimately to llatter the potential audience, by assuming not only that they would respond po~itively to its lure , but that they would admire and applaud this same re ponse in others, when they saw it. ,\s artists, journalists, and promoter made certain, this was often.

Promotion has at lea t as much to do with the audience as with the product. The succes of the fair was built around shrewd speculation concerning its visitors and what they wanted to see, hear, and talk about. This same formula would work for advertisers and promoters in the twentieth century, when commercial publicity had developed into a national art form. The Columbian Exposition can fairly claim to be the nineteenth century's greatest single sales job . No other commercial mass promotion outdid it. As we learn more about its methods and scope, we should find continuing evidence of its profound effect upon this central area of our national life. For Further Reading For more information on advertising see Edgar Robert.Jones 's Those Werethe GoodOld Days;A Happy Loo'1at American Advertising, 1880-1930 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959) Poster an had a major impact on the success of fair advertising. Victor Margolin's American Poster Renaissance ( ew York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1975) and Joseph Goddu's AmericanArt Posters of/he 1890s (New York: Hirschi and Alder Galleries, Inc., 1989) explore the rise of the genre. American Advertising Posters of the Nineteenth Centwy, by Mary Black ( ew York: Dover Publications, 1976), examines the use of posters in turn-of-the-century advertising. The White City was a grand experiment in marketing, merchandising, and promotion. Neil Ha1Tis's essay in Grand Illusions: Chicago'sWorld Fair of 1893 (Chicago Historical Society, 1993) examines in greater detail the impact that thi management of ideas and images had on fair vi itors. Reid Badger 's The CrealAmericanFair: The World'.1ColumbianExposition and AmericanCulture(Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1979) contains a chapter on fair finance and promotion.

II lustration 45, CHS, ICHi-25164; 46, CHS, ICHi-20719; 47: CHS, ICHi-24582; 48, CHS, ICHi-24577; 49, CHS Decoi-ative and Industrial Arts Collection; 50, CHS Libra, -y; 51, CHS, ICHi-02524; 52, CHS, ICHi06355; 53, CHS Paintings and Sculpture Collection; 54, CI IS, LCHi 2-1-578: 55 top, CHS Library; 55 bonom, CHS Decorative and Industrial Arts Collection; 56, CHS, lCHi-06291. 57


YESTERDAY'S CITY Critiquing Cubism Randolph J. Ploog

The Chicago newspapers a1·e putting out the su·angest headings and the silliest comments. The articles in the newspapers ound far more ci-azy than are the pictures which they arc shouting about.

Manierre Dawson , a young Chicago artist, recorded these comments in his personal journal on March 27, 1913. The pictures to which he referred were those hanging in the InternationalExhibitionof Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, which opened on March 24 at The Art Institute of Chicago. The (irst major exhibition of both European and American avant-garde art in the United States, it was organized by the ew York-based Association of American Painters and Sculptors and was displayed in ew York's Sixty-ninth Infantry Regiment Armory before coming to Chicago and subsequently traveling to Boston. Many historians consider the exhibition the single most important event in the history of American art. The Armory Show provided the first opportunity for most Americans to see examples of recent developments by European artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, and Constantin Brancusi, as well as those by many progTessiYe American artists. In New York the exhibition was considered a success by scandal. Some ninety thousand ew Yorkers flocked to see the paintings sensationalized by the press. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Desce11di11g o Staircase was made infamous by newspaper descriptions of it as "an explosion in a shingle factory" and 'The Rude Descending a Staircase." The Chicago public and press, however, were not to be outdone. Attendance at the Art Institute during the exhibition reached 188,650, and the Chicago newspapers surpassed New York's in their rnthRandolphj. Ploog is a Ph.D. candidate in art histo1yal Penn Stale University. 58

lessness and wit. Most Chicago journalists perceived the progressive artists as insincere in their attempts to create serious art and responded by lampooning the exhibition through reviews, cartoons, and parodies. George B. Zug, art critic for the ChicagoIuter-Orea11,echoed the opinions of many of his colleagues when he wrote, "as far as real artistic merit is concerned the International Exhibition is the poorest show of equal extent I have ever seen al the Art Institute, yet so far as fun-provoking elements go it beats the record. " Examples of the headlines in Chicago's papers included, "Futurist Paint Puz,,Jes Arrive," "An Show Open Lo Freaks," and "Hit Mud with Brick; Result, Cubist Art." It should be noted , howe, ·er, that Chicago journalists, like their readers, were at a distinct disadYantage as compared to New Yorkers in understanding the most progressive modern art styles included in the Armory Show. New York was the home of the exhibition organizers, and at least some or the ew \'01·k art critics supported the association's efforts to prepare the public to view the exhibition. For example, to educate its readers the New Vork Times printed a special guest editorial written by r\Jfred Stieglitt, one of America's most knowledgeable ackocates of the European m ant-garde. ,\s proprietor of Gallery 29 I, Stiegliu had been presenting small exhibitions of modern European art in New York for six years. In his Times article Stieglitz explained the importance of the avantgarde artists as "revitali1ers," breathing life into an art world content with imitating the past. Chicago's newspapers had no one with Stieglitz's insights and notoriety upon which to call for guidance. Furthermore, Chicago did not receive the entire exhibition. Many works of art, including paintings by nineteenth-century masters such as Goya , Delacroix, Courbet, Corot, Daumier, Manet, and Monet, which in the New York Armory were arranged chronologically


In an ujten inacrnrale article in the Chicago Record Herald , critic Herman Landon announced the arrival of the A r111ory Show al The Art fn,titule of Chicagoin Alarrh 1913. 59


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994 leading to the contemporary works, were eliminated due to economic and space limitations. Another cause of confusion was the continued reliance on early and outdated news releases. After the original press materials were distributed, the Italian futurist artists declined to participate in the exhibition because their demand for a separate and exclusive gallery was refused. Some Chicago art critics were unaware of their withdrawal, while other journalists made no distinction between styles, referring to all modern art as "fi.1turist." Most of the Chicago newspapers printed weekly arts columns contributed by critics of various qualifications. Herman Landon, the arts reviewer for the ChicagoRecord Herald, appears to have been the least competent. Landon announced the opening of the exhibition in a full-page spread with illustrations and headline proclaiming, "Hark! Hark! The

Some of the Chicago Tribune's articleson the show's openingfocused on viewers'confusedreactionsto the /Jaintings. One of the 11ews/x1per's critics,poet Harriet Monroe, offereda more thollghtful,balanced pers/Jectiveon the art.

60

Critics Bark! The Cubists are Coming to Town with Cubist Hags and Cubist Nags and Even a Cubist Gown." In his review he criticized the exhibition as a "great circus of' insurgent souls" and for "making insanity profitable." Given the strength of his opinion, one would expect that he had visited the exhibition, or at least made a study of' his subject before making such pronouncements, but judging f'rom the f'actual errors in his article he did neither. For example, he critiqued at some length Brancusi's Mlle. Pogany, commenting that "the beholder's first vulgar glance mar liken it unto an elongated and violently distorted cabbage whose husks have just returned from the dry cleaners. " Throughout his assault on the plaster sculpture, however, he repeatedly referred to it as a painting. Landon waged a similar attack on Picasso's Woman with a M11slardPot, all the while crediting the painting to Henry Kahnweiler,

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Yesterday'sCity

Chimgocritirsdenouncedworkssuch as Picasso's Woman wiL11a Mustard Pot (above)and Constantin Brancusi's Mlle. Pogany (aboveright), believing that the artists were insinrere in their desire to create "serious" art.

the artist's dealer. Landon concluded his review with a detailed history of Italian futurism, apparently unaware that no real futurists were represented. Compared to Landon, H. Effra Webster and George B. Zug were somewhat better informed but no more tolerant. Webster sought the moral high ground in his weekly art re\'iew column for the ChicagoExaminer. "Our splendid Art Institute is being desecrated, " he wrote. "T his pollution is materialized in several paintings of the nude; portrayals that unite in an insult to the great, self~respecting public of Chicago." Zug, an assistant professor of art histo1-y at the Univer ity of Chicago, wrote a weekly column, "Among the r\rt Galleries," for the lnll'r-Ocea11.He traveled to ew York to pr evic\\' the ex hibition a nd rea d extensively on European mod ernism , yet his opinions remained grounded in nineteenth -ce ntury academic att itudes . He believed that \'an Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse "ap parently never learn ed to paint." Van Gogh's paintings, he said, "a rc simply heavy handed attempts at im-

pressionism , with all the attractiveness of that style-its vibrating color and luminous effects-left out." Gauguin 's work, he added, "fa ils more completely than Van Gogh's." He was even more critical of the cubists. "Let others take cubism seriously," he wrote, "but for myself I am convinced that it is merely refuse for bunko artists." The notable except ions among the Chicago art critics were Lena May McCauley and Harriet Monroe , both of whom eagerly welcomed the exhibition. McCauley, who had been writing an arts column for the ChicagoEvening Post for thirteen years, announced the exhibition with heightened curiosity, "The air is alive with questions-what are the impressionists, the post-impressionists , the cubists and futurists?" While she did not appreciate all of the art in the exhibition, she was tolerant of even the most radical. She wrote: "There are some things we may not understand because we have not quite learned the language of the artist, but that is no reason why we should throw stones at his work." Harriet Monroe 's early treatment of the ex hibition was similar to McCauley's, but while McCaul ey remained noncommittal in her opinion of the art, Monroe eventually solidified her thoughts. Monroe 's understanding and ap61


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994

62


Yesterday'sCity

·- -=-:---:---------

Here Site ls: White Outline Shows "Nude Descendini a Staircase."

The exhibition's mostnotoriouswork was Duchamp'sNude Descending a Staircase (left). Visiton reportedlyhad a diffirnlttime deci/Jheringthe "nude,"so the Tribune publisheda diagram outlining thefigure (above).

colo1·; Matisse is dancing a wild tango on some wei1·d ba1·barous shore. \Ve cannot always tell what the y mean, but at leas t they a re having a good time.

When the exhibition came to Chicago, however, Monroe's enthusiasm was replaced by cautious evaluation. On opening day she wrote of the French contingent, "Their art, if it is art, would seem to be in an experimental stage, and time alone can determine whether it will lead to anything." Although her early opinions or the new styles were tentative, she had little patience for her colleagues who broadly dismissed the entire exhibition. Echoing McCauley's rationale, Monroe argued that recognition by European critics, connoisseurs, and students was reason enough to consider the contemporary art seriously. "Under these circumstances," she wrote, "why should we not acquaint ourselves with the facts, learn what is going on." She added, "We are fighting one of those battles of intellect-those ofus who have any-which are common enough in Paris , but altogether too rare in our provincially shortsighted and self-satisfied community." She even offered space in her column for opposing views, adding, "but, alas, the conservatives have little to say, and they can't keep their tempers long enough to say it." As Monroe's appreciation or the exhibition developed, she reconsidered her earlier opinions. For example, at first she was critical of the cubist paintings for being "so completely the product of theory that there is little picture left. " Before the exhibition closed, however, she wrote:

preciation of the art grew throughout the duration of the exhibition, culminating in articles that demonstrated a level of sensitivity surpassing all of her fellow Chicago critics. A poet and the founding editor of Poetry magazine , Monroe had been writing a weekly arts column for the ChicagoTribune for eight years. She attended the exhib ition in New York and telegraphed to Chicago articles that con\'eyed her exciteme nt. In her second re\'iew ~he wrote:

These cubist pictures seem to me, as I grow more fami liar with them, a curious example of the logical exactness and consistency of the Latin mind, its way o[ carrying an idea to its legitimate conclusion . . .. Thus the mental processes of Francis Picabia are faultless, his 1·eason ing has a precision so beautiful one ar rives at the result, his pictures , with a quoderat de111011stra11dum sense of triumph.

It i, a li,e ,how. It ha, an air orcosmopo litanism. unbound b)' academic ,tandards. It i, ent hmia stic, exube1·ant. ... The Cubist, ,eem to be playing interesting games with ka leidoscopic polygons of

ot only had Monroe ultimately formed an overwhelmingly positive opinion of the exhibition, but she also provided perhaps the most sophisticated explanation of avant-garde painting to appear in a Chicago paper to that 63


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994

Many Chicagoans considered all modem arl obscene. A co/Jyof the pai11li11 g September lorn (le.fl), which was not /Jar/ of the Armory Show, was seized by /Jo/iceji-0111 a Chicagosho/Jwindow on gro1wd1of obscenity . The i11cidenlreceived much pub/icilyand colored Chirngoans' reactionslo the JI n1101yShow.

date. From a conversation with Picabia in New York she quoted the artist as saying: Aristotle said that an is a copy of life, but that is exactly what art is not. An is a successful attempt to rende1· external an internal state or mind or feeling. So ... absolutely consistent art would make no attempt to reproduce suqjcct at all.

Thus, Monroe concluded, "Attempting absolute consistency, Picabia would have his pictures contain no objects-they should mirror nothing in the external world." The Chicago papers also carried numerous news stories reported by anonymous staff journalists about events related to the exhibition. Even when reported accurately and objectively, some of these news items are amusing from today's perspective . For example, William M. R. French, director of the Art Institute, apparently to distance himself from the anticipated controversy, chose precisely the period when the exhibition was at his museum to take his vacation. He boarded a train for the West Coast three days before the exhibition opened and returned one week after it closed. Although he had begun planning his trip before the exhibition was proposed, the convenience of his scheduling did not go unnoticed by the press; the Record Herald ran stories headlined, "Dir. 64

French Flees Deluge of Cubist Art," on March 21 and "Cubists Gone, French Back," on April 26. French, admitting that he had little appreciation of modern European art , never wanted to bring the exhibition to the Art Institute, but he succumbed to the pressure ofa few µowerful Art Institute tru tees and members led by Arthur T. Aldis. Aldis learned of the exhibition when he met some of its organizers while traveling in Paris. Back in Chicago he maintained contact with the New York group while he developed interest in the exhibition among his influential friends. After an initial period of hesitation, French put Newton 11. Carpenter, secretary of the Art Institute, in charge of the exhibition and continued planning his vacation. Much of the newspaper's reportage dealt with the record crowds attracted to the exhibition and their reactions to the art. These stories include accounts of children becoming dizq and adults sighing in confusion , while others offered their own explanations of paintings. One vi itor thought Picasso's Wo111a11 with a J\luslard Pol depicted "the morning after " in the Des Plaines Street police court, with the mu tard pot as exhibit "A." Another visitor offered his formula for viewing Duchamp's Nude Descendinga Staircase: while standing before the picture, "whirl around three times, close your eyes, count twenty, bump your head twice against the


Yesterday'sCity wall, and if you bump hard enough the picture will be perfectly obvious." The Tribune made a somewhat serious effort to help viewers understand Duchamp's painting by reproducing it with the title figure outlined in white. The paper credits the discovery of the figure to Arthur Jerome Eddy, Chicago's leading proponent of modern painting. A subsequent article reported that a visitor to the exhibition proposed that diagrams should be provided for all the paintings. An event entirely unrelated Lo the exhibition, but one which might have been associated with it in the minds of many Chicagoans, was the trial concerning September Morn, an idyllic depiction of a young woman bathing in a stream by French academic painter Paul Chabas. A reproduction of the painting displayed in the window of a Chicago an supply sLOrewas declared obscene and was removed by police order. Purely by coincidence the trial began a few days before the Armory Show opened at the Art Institute and continued to resurface in the news throughout the month. AILhough the SeptemberMorn trial bore no direcL relationship to the Armory Show, it did

set Lhe stage for the exhibition in Chicago. Because of the strong public opinion the trial generated, Mayor Carter H. Harrison fell obligated to inspect the exhibition before it opened to the public. As the Art lnsLiLute staff uncrated the art, each piece was paraded before the mayor for his approval. Despite these effons, many schoolteachers and ministers refused to take their students to the museum during the exhibition. One art educator petitioned the board of education to sanction a united protest against the "nasty, obscene, indecent, immoral, lewd and demoralizing" exhibition because he needed "to keep the minds of these children as pure as possible. " The Illinois State SenaLe's Vice Commis ion, popularly known as the "White Slave Commission," in the midst of a crackdown on prostitution, announced a probe of the exhibition. M. Blair Coan, the committee's appointed investigator, emerged from the exhibition to inform the press that "futurist" art was immoral, that "eve ry girl in Chicago was gazing at examples of 'distorted art,"' and The An1101yShow gallery at the Art Institute.


Cliimgo Histo,y, Fall 1994 thaL a woman in Matisse's u Luxe had only four toes. As the exhibition closed, students of the School of the Art Institute staged a mock trial of Henri Matisse. The manacled defendant, dubbed "Henry Hair-Mattress," was charged with "artistic murder, pictorial arson, artistic rapine, total degeneracy of color, criminal misuse of line , general aesthetic aberration, and contumacious abuse of title." Members or the jury feigned fainting as they caught sight of the evidence, crude copies of three of Matisse's paintings. The defendant was found guilty of "everything in the first degree" and sentenced to death. He convenient])' fell dead, "overcome by his own conscience" as the executioner approached him. The students intended to burn the artist in effigy but Newton H. Carpenter, the museum's acting director, stopped them. Instead , they burned the three Matisse copies.

FUTURIST

EXHIBIT,

In addition to reviews of the exhibiti on and news coverage of related events, Chicago newspapers sat irized the artists and their art in a variety of articles and cartoons. The Tribune was by far the most creative in its satire. Its staff apparently had free rein to develop stories and cartoons pertaining to the exhibition and to incorporate jabs at the art in unrelated news stories. Sarcastic allusions could be found in nearly every section of the Tribune including the sports section, the financial page, the Sunday comics, and in editorial cartoons on the front page. On page one of the sports section of April 6, a cartoon by Sidney Smith anticipated opening day of the 1913 baseba ll season with a cartoon entitled "Futurist Exhibit, Cub Park, April 10," which consisted of ten images from the baseball park as if recorded by modern artists. A visual pun Lhat uniquely linked Chicago with the leading European art movement appeared in

CUB

PARK,

APRIL

Cartoo11ist Sidney Smith rrea/NI a rnbist vision of the ChicagoCubs' 1913 oJ;eningday.

66

10.

]


Yesterday'sCity

Students on !he steps at the Ari Institute. The tudents

staged a demonstration against the artists whose work was displayed in the exhibition, holding a mock trial and burning co/Jies of paintings.

OUR

OWN

LITTLE

CUB-I.ST.

L. W. Newbre's visual pun linked modern art with the

Chicago Cubs.

the March 25 sports section. L. W. Newbre 's drawing of a faceted Chicago Cub mascot is entitled "Our Own Little Cub-ist." Claire Briggs 's cartoon of a grandmotherl y woman stitching a quilt under the title 'The Original Cubist," likens th e faceted image of cubist paintings to the modern pat chwork of a craz y quilt. Th e meanings of other cartoons , especiall y those pertaining to current events, are mor e complex. For exampl e, a drawing by John T. McCutcheon on the front page of the Tribune on April 3 depicted President Woodrow Wil on with Congr essman Oscar W. Under-

wood and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan putting the finishing touches on a painting labeled "Tariff Descending Downward ," an obvious parody of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. In Washington that week, Wilson and his associates were finalizing a sweeping tariff reduction bill. McCutcheon 's title for the cartoon, "A Near -Futurist Painting," accurately predicted the bill's passage. Appropriately enough the legislation included reduced tariffs on imported modern art. Another McCutcheon cartoon that derives from a contemporary event is "A Futurist Picture if the Hunger Strike Becomes General," on the front page of the Tribune on April 19. The hunger strike was a common tactic of the suffragists, especially in England. Echoing the style of a cubist painting, McCutcheon's cartoon is fragmented into scenes of the potential results if this tactic spread to other sectors of society. For example, President Wilson would not eat to pressure the Senate to pass his tariff reduction bill ; Congressman Lee 0' 1eil Browne wou ld starve unless he was given his way in the Illinois State Legislature; young boys would turn away th eir breakfast in want of a new baseball; and infants in their cribs would refuse their bottles in support of the "Vote for Babies " movement. McCut cheon included another passing reference to the exhib ition of modern art in an 67


ChicagoHistory, FalL1994

A

NEAR-FUTURIST

PAINTING.

Claire Briggs's cartoo11(left) comfJaredrnbism lo crazy quills.J ohn McCutcheo11'co111111t 'l1lary011current political even/J (right)featured a prominent referenceto DuchamJJ's ude Descending a Stai,-case.

earlier cartoon mocking the English suffragists' civil disobedience. The cartoon predicted an escalation of the women's violent tactics to include, among other things, the emptying of London 's National Gallery and the burning of thousands of paintings in Trafalgar Square. The cartoonist added that "the suffragists then committed their crowning act of vandalism in sparing the Exhibition of Post Impressionist Art." McCutcheon 's association of modern art with the hunger strikes and vandalism of the suffragists suggests the popular perception of the artists represented in the Armory Show asrebels or even anarchists. The phrase "insurgent art" was commonly used in Chicago papers in describing the exhibition; "futurist," "cubist," and "post-impressionist" were often used synonymously with chaos and confi.tsion. A news item on the March 30 financial page next to the Board of Trade u-ansactions contains the most bizarre example. The story, headlined "Studies Futuri t Finance," recounted the conning of a Hyde Park upholsterer by two young men. The scam began with one customer purchasing a forty-cent mirror with a twenty-dollar bill. As the proprietor was counting out the 68

change, the other man a keel for two fives for a ten and then two tens for a five. Meanwhile, the first man produced the forty cents for the mirror and asked the shopkeeper to return his twenty dollar . By the time the two left the store, the upholsterer was hon one mirror and fifty-nine dollars in cash. The Tribune's report of the event concluded, "When the unhappy upholsterer recovered his equanimity he was seeing mirrors and deceptively amiable young men in cubist and other post-impressions. He saw no futurist impre sions of the money." As the exhibition was about to open, the Trib1111eprinted an article entitled "Dunning Cubist Art Center." A reporter interviewed a patient at the Illinois State Hospital for the lnsane , located in Dunning, who claimed to have invented the new modern an styles. King Manuel, as the patient wished to be addressed, contended that all paintings in the Armory Show were copied from his work. To allow the reader to judge King Manuel' claim, the article was accompanied by four unidentified illustrations; two were paintings from the exhibition and two were drawings by King Manuel. The headline read: "F uturist Pictures-Two of Them from Dunning. Which Are Which?" The


Yesterday's City

A Ft)TURJSTPIC1VRE IF THE HUNGER STRIKE BECOMES GENERAL. (~

1 lU t -

l.._ T. If~

J

In thi.,rnr/0011, MrCutcheonechoedthe 11111lli/aceted styleofa rnbi..1//Jainli11g lo satirizehunger strikes,a commonprotesttactic.

69


ChicagoHistory, Fall 1994

Futurist Pictures-Two

•of Them from Dunning.

Which Are Which?

DUNNING CUBIST ART CENTER OFF GOBS TAIL; THEN THE WAJL Kll1g :llanuol 01\Ze• on Futurist ·work &ndClalnt1 It u O"n,

Honore Palmer'• Frnj:Zl\lCook Triee C'andolomyon On-n Hook.

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JbrlP8if of(knflemvi endLady. Two ot u,- toior ru1u111t plet u rM r,produeld 1bor1 •1r, ol>UID .-d llr • T1u au1t• npe,n,, er... •• l nffl&h M u,. L•~ntoi Mrlnm tor th, lne&n, 1'211 orla:11'\&U,t th1 o1hv tw o •Ill b1 &ho .. ,, • t ll "• • • I 11hlb tt k,, n1,~n Laa: o n T•-1 1 1 lulou • I), t>u-. nln• utlaiit ln-l•t-.:1 hla l11'at.. h14 1tol .. 11-"'W1&a &.o 0...t ha .. ._. lb& c,rl,r\111111, o f th, n •• •MoQI • ta rt.

The Tribune 's f eatur e on the mental hospital in Dunnin g, Ill inois, challenged readers to identify which paintin gs were created by hospital patients and which were fr om the Armory Show.

implication was that some of the artists represented in the exhibition shou ld be in an asylum . Ironically, within a decade surrealist artists would be seriously examining the art of the insane, as well as the art of ch ild ren , to better understand the elemental innocence they convey. A similar irony is present in the March 16 episode of the Sunday comic strip , "Mama's Angel Child " by Penny Ross. In this strip , little Esther and her mother visit the studio of"Mon sieur Paul Vincent Cezanne Yan Cogen Ganguin." As the artist attempts to exp lain his paintings to her mother , the young girl falls asleep. She immediately dreams that she is in

70

"Cubist Land " where everything, including each feature of the inhabitants, is rectangu lar. Esther is caught in a rain of brightly colored pigments that covers her body and clothing with multicolored stripes. Seeing her in this condition, an artist insists on painting her portrait explaining , "My method of painting is to blindfold myself so that I can't see my subject and then cast my colors gracefully on the canvas , without the use of the brushes ." As the artist throws a square bucket full of paint at the canvas , the little girl awakes, screaming for her mother to take her home. This satire closely predicted the future of painting. Some thirtyfive years later, artists condu cted experiments


}'esterdoy'_,City very simi lar to the process described by Ross's fictional painter. Jackson Pollock, for example, dripped paint from his brush, from a stick, or directly from the can as he moved around the canvas, which lay flat on the floor. Willem de Kooning would close his eyes or look away from the canvas as he painted to reduce the control of his conscious mind over the brush, allowing his unconscious to emerge. Another strange mix of satire and reality surrounds the article "The Cubist Costume Milady in Crazyquilt," which appeared in the April 6 issue of the Tribune. Assuming the influence of the modern art styles on women's dress designs, the article describes cubist- and futurist-inspired gowns designed for celebrities such as Billie Burke and Sarah Bernhardt. Playing on the personal and expressive nature of modern art, the anonymous author, assisted by the geometric illustrations of Harvey Peakes, attempted to create outrageous designs that reflected some aspect of the client's personality or lifestyle. As explained in the article, "In these designs the artist expresses the soul of the woman in blocks." ovelist Edith Wharton, for example, who rendered somber subjects in finely crafted writing, was fitted with "a serious, heavy gown, very complicated, decorated with highly polished bits, and carefully, painstakingly put together." The author sar-

donically proposes that the influence or ,uch a gown might sway the traditional nm cl isl toward futurist literature, and that "'.\Ir,. Wharton will soon be following the footsteps of Gertrude Stein." The idea of the influence of cubism on fashion was not as absurd as it might first appear. As early as February, ll'hen the .\rmo1 1 Show opened in New York and reports about the exhibition appeared in Chicago newspapers , Chicago socialites Mr. and Mrs. Ro)' McWilliams held a h.1turist coslllm e part y. On e society-page headline read: "Li\'ing pictures of the Futurist School of Art; Cube Goll'ns worn at Freak Party ." After the exhibition arri\'ecl at the Art Institute, the Chicago Society of Artists held a cubist dinner party to which , according to the newspapers, guests were required to ll'Car cubist costumes. In contrast to these satirical costumes were the serious cubist-inspired fash ions. Actress Gertrude Hoffmann , star of' Broadway to Paris, was reportedly the first woman in Chicago to wear an "original cubist gown. " Capitalizing on the exhibition's notoriety, Mandel Brothers Department Store advertised their "contemporaneous display of the first ·cubistic fashions'" reflecting the "influence of cubist art on the new gowns, ll'raps , hats , si Iks, etc. " In an article headlined "Forgives Chicago for Cubist Mirth ," the Inter-Oceanquoted Frederick.James Gregg, one of the exhibition organizers, as saying , " It is too bad . Chicago has failed to appreciate. It has laughed. " Published on March 22 , two days before the exhibition opened in Chicago , this headline and quotation reflect the prevalence of cartoons and parodies conceived and published in anticipation of the exhibition. Apparently inspired by reports from New York, many Chicago journalists , cartoonists, and reviewers criticized and satirized the exhibition before they or their readers had experienced it. Conversely , earlier exhibitions of modern art in Chicago escaped \\'ith relati\'ely little negati\'e publicity. Paintings by Chicago modernists Jerorne Blum and B. J. 0 . Norclleldt and New Yorker Arthur Do\'e \\'er e shO\rn rl detail from the ro111ir .1/rip ·',\Jamo's , Inge/ Child," which pokedfi1n al t/11 , methods used by modem orti.1/s to creole t/11 ,ir u ork.1. 1

71


ChicagoHistmy, Fall 1994

f~, (,:U"oltQo,..,. •IMl ff\t i>ru1 ol lJiockJ-)\rt~•, i'ltt4'1•11

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1BOTW

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Lefi: This Tribune articlesuggestedthe i11jl11e11re lhl' rnbism might have 011fashion. Right: A 19J 3 advl'l'tisementfor Mandel Brothen for rnbi5t-inspiredclothing.

in separate ex hibiti ons at W. Scott Thurber's gallery in 19 I l and 19 l 2. Exhibitions o[ contemporary German graphic art and Scandinavian an, held in J anuary and February respectively, imm ed iate ly preceded the Armory Show at the A.rt In stitute. The following summer saw the opening o[ Frank Lloyd Wright's Midway Gardens, which was decorated on the out ide with figurative cubist sculptur es by Alfonso Ianne lli and on the inside by Wright's own geometric abstract murals. While most of these ex hibiti ons included art just as progressive as th at in the Armory Show, on ly a few were cr iticized in the Ch icago press and none was lampooned as relentless ly as the Annory Show. The Armory Show was unique in Chicago for the extent o[ journalistic sarcasm it spawned . ot concerned with th e European int ellectua l theory underlying the artistic styles presented in the show, the Chicago press instead focused their efforts on poking fun. 72

II lustrat ions 59, from Chicago Record Herald (Mar c h 23, 1913 ), CHS Library; 60, from C hic ago Tribune (March 25, 1913), CHS L ilxary; 61 left, J Iaags Gemeemcmuseum; 61 right, Phil a d e lphia Museum or Art: Lo uise and Wa lter A,-ensbcrg Co llection; 62, Philadelphia Museum of An: Louise and \\'alter .\rcnsberg Col lcnion; 63, Chimgo Tribune (March 3 1, 1913), CHS Libr a ,-y; 64, Meti-opo litan Museum of Art; 65, The Art In stitute of'Chicago; 66, Chzrago Tribune (April 6, 19 13), C H S Librar y; 67 top, The Art Institute of' Chicago; 67 bottom, Chicago Tribune (Ma 1·cl1 25, 19 I 3 ), C II S Library; 68 left , ChicagoTribune (March 20, 1913), CHS Librar y; 68 1·ight, ChicagoTribune (April 3, 1913), CHS Library; 69, Chicago Tribune (April 19, 1913), CHS Librar y; 70, ChicagoTribune (Ma ,-ch 23, I 9 l 3), CHS Lib1·a 1-y; 71, Chicago Tribunl' (Mar ch 16, 1913), CHS Lib,·ary; 72 left, ChicagoTribune (April 6, 19 l 3), CH S Library ; 72 right, ChicagoTribzmf (March 25, 19 I 3), CHS Librar y.




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