Chicago History | Spring 1998

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THE MAGAZINE OF THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

VOLUME XXVII , NUMBER 1

contents

4

Time is Money Arnold Lewis

22

Chicago's Front Yard

45

Women of Chinatown

Dennis H. Cremin

Peggy Spitzer Christoff

oeoartments

3 From the Editor 56 Making History


CHICAGO HISTORY

Editor-in-Chief Rosemary K. Adams

Copyright 1998 by the_ Chicago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago IL 60614-6099

Associate Editor Lesley A. Martin

312-642-4600

Designer Bi.11 Van Nimwegen

ISSN 0272-8540

Photography John Alderson Jay Crawford

Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in llisto1ical Abstracts and America: History a11d Life.

www.chicagohisrory.org

Footnoted manuscripts of the articles appcaiing in this issue arc available from the Chicago Historical Society's Publications Office .

. Courtesy of Chicago Park Cover: Buckingham Fountain. District Special Collections.

CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY OFFICERS

R. Eden Marun Chair Potter Palmer Vice Chair Charles T Brumback

Vice Chair Sharon Gist Gilliam Treasurer Joseph Levy Jr. Secreta1y Philip W Hummer Imm ediate Past Chair Douglas Greenberg President and Director

TRUSTEES

Laura Barnett Lerone BennettJr. Philip D. Block El David P Bolger Laurence Booth Charles T Brumback Mrs . Ann Middleton Buckley Michelle L. Collins John W Croghan Stewart 5. Dixon Michael H. Ebner Sharon Gist Gilliam M. Hill Hammock Harry W Howell Philip W Hummer Richard M. Jaffee

Edgar D. Jannotta Barbara Levy Kipper w Paul Krauss Fred A. Krehbiel Joseph Levy Jr. Mrs.John]. LouisJr. Wayne A. McCoy R. Eden Martin Robert Meers Potter Palmer Margarita Perez Donald H. Rumsfeld Gordon I. Segal Edward Byron Smith Jr. Matthew H. Stearns James R. Thompson Daniel H. Wheeler

LI FE TRUSTEES

Bowen Blair John T McCutcheon Andrew McNally Ill Mrs. Frank D. Mayer Mrs. Newton N. Mi now Bryan 5. Reid Jr. Dempsey J . 1ravis HONORARY TRUSTEES

Richard M. Daley Mayor; City of Chicago John W Rogers Jr. President, Chicago Park District

The Chicago Historical Society gratefully acknowled es the Chicago Park District's generous support g ... of all of the Historical Society's acm1oes.

~

•••• •••• ••••


FROM THE EDITOR

"Citizens

of Chicago, Look at This!" So editor Paul Angle boldly introduced Chicago Histo1y in the fall of 1945. The publication was "devoted in the main to the Society's museum, library, and activities." The articles in that first issue were varied: a description of CHS's prints of Commodore Perry's 1853 landing in Japan ; a short profile on Jack Lambert, reportedly the nation's only newspaper cartoonist who worked from clay models; a "Fifty Years Ago" feature listing significant events from 1895; a brief history of William Corkran's attempts to organize CHS 's library beginning in 1868 (he had to start all over again when much of the collection was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871); and, on the occasion of end of World War 11, the publication of Abraham Lincoln's concise "Let the thing be pressed" telegram to General Ulysses S. Grant, which ended an earlier war. The editor expressed the hope that "men and women interested in history, wherever they may reside , \vill find this publication worth reading. " We share Paul Angle 's hope today. ln the fifty-three years since Mr. Angle so proudly launched this publication , it has evolved from a pamphlet dedicated to the CHS 's collection and activities to one of the nation's most respected history journals. Today we p1.1blish the most recent and most provocative historical scholarship on the city's history. Our audience includes professors and students, but also general readers with an interest in history. We therefore work closely with authors to make their ideas flow in an engaging, dramatic, narrative style. While we are always searching for new scholarship on the expected topics, such as the Great Chicago Fire, Al Capone and organized crime, the two world 's fairs, and other favorites, we also strive to publish articles on perhaps more obscure, but equally fascinating, subjects. ln recent years , for example, we published a piece on Chicago 's Christmas tree ship (December 1992) and a photographic essay on Jun Fujita, a little-known Japanese American photographer who recorded some of the most

dramatic events in Chicago 's hi.story, including the Eastland disaster and the 1919 race riots (Summer 1996). We like to respond to current events when feasible; in 1992, in the wake of the Loop 's great flood, we published a history of the subterranean freight tunnels. Sometimes we even precipitate popular topics: in 1989, we ran Susan M. Cahn's exploration of the All American Girl's Baseball League, " o Freaks, No Amazons , No Boyish Bobs," three years before the popular movie A League of Their Own premiered. Equally important, we illustrate each article using CHS's vast collection of more than 20 million images, documents, and other artifacts. Because we can only display less than 1 percent of our materials in the museum at any one time, Chicago History is an important vehicle for sharing our collection-and the stories it tells-with the public. Our range of articles has enabled us to compile a onevolume history of the city, A Wild Kind of Boldness: A Chicago History Reader (in partnership with William B. Eerdmann's Publishing Company). This unique compilation of thirty-five Chicago History articles covers Chicago from its earliest years to the tumultuous 1960s. The book will be available for purchase in the CHS's Museum Store, as well as bookstores around the city and country, beginning in May. One final reminder: we want to hear from you . Your comments and observations are welcome because they help us to produce an even better magazine. You can write to me at the Historical Society or e-mail me at adams@ ch icago history. org. With the publication of A Wild Kind of Boldness and the continued publication of Chicago History magazine, we look forward proudly to continuing the tradition of excellence established by Paul Angle more than fifty years ago and to remaining one of the country's leading history journals.

Rosemary K. Adams 3


Time is Money ARNOLD LEW I S

European visitors were fascinated, and sometimes horrified, by the hectic pace of life in 1890s Chicago.

Editor's Note: This excerpt from Arnold Lewis's boo/1 An Early Encounter with Tomorrow describes Chicagoans ' revolutionmy use of time as seen through European eyes.Lewis examined hundreds of accounts written by Europeans who.for business or pleasure, had reason to visit Chicago in the late nineteenth centwy. Whether favorably impressed or appalled by what they saw, these visitors paid close attention to new developments in Chicago, seeing in its emerging shape the future of their own cities. From An Early Encounter with Tomorrow: Europeans, Chicago's Loop , and the World 's Columbian Exposition by Arnold Lewis. Copyright© 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Tllinois Press. Used with pem1ission of the University of Illinois Press.

ne of the principal ways the city expressed its concept of time was through the importance it attached to speed and efficiency in its daily operation . Foreign observers noted throughout the United States a quicker pace than they were accustomed to in their own countries. This was to be expected for a population viewed as young, adventurous, and confident. However, around 1890 Europeans increasingly attributed Yankee hurry primarily to the desire of citizens to take immediate advantage of the country's riches and opportunities to improve their lives and those of their families. Paul de Rousiers, author of the most systematic foreign analysis of the economic growth of the Midwest and West in the early 1890s, contended the American "works hard and ever tries his fortune; so that American life, in a measure, is all consecrated to business. Business!

I

4

I Chicago History I Spring 1998


A busy corner near Marshall Field's, c. 1890. Europeans were astounde,l by the rapid movement of pedestrians on Chicago's streets.


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Chicago was a frequent stop fo rfore ign visitors to the United States, especially dwing the World's Colw11bia11 Exposition. These travel accounts from Gemiany, France, and Scotland were publis/1ed in the 1890s.

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6

I Chicago H1sto1y I 5p,ing 1998


that is the word which the lips of the Yankee or the colonist pronounce the oftenest, and one reads such preoccupation on their faces . ln meeting one another, the greeting is 'How's business?' It is the first subject they think of speaking about." Unlike many cultivated individuals in Britain and on the Continent, Americans made no bones about their enthusiasm for business and its importance in their lives. Foreign observers often worried about its apparent centrality, particularly in Chicago, wondering if their relentless pursuit of wealth would not exhaust citizens, leaving them little time or inclinatiQn for enjoyment or self-improvement. The French architect Jacques Hermant, a delegate to the Columbian Exposition, was derisive on this point, categorizing the city as a place "where the respect of art is completely unknown , where the people (who are prevented by a narrow religious upbringing from showing their delight and openly enjoying their pleasures) think that laughing and getting angry is a waste of precious time, where everyone's sole goal in life is to earn a lot of money, and when they have earned a lot to use it to earn still more." Regardless of their views about the acquisition of wealth, visitors by the early 1890s realized the close connection between

\\ IIFIH. 1~1>1(~1-:srio~ IS MA~l "FAC-Tl "RED.

The "quicfa lunch" was an abo111ination to Europeans accustomed to a leisurely midday breafa. Here, a cartoon fro111 A Frenchman in America shows a lunch counter "where indigestion is 111anufactured."

Typical businessmen of the time, th e owners of the Mandel Brothers department store, Emanuel, Leon, and Simon Mandel, pause for a photograph

making money and saving time . ln developing better means to increase the volume of production per hour or per day, time was becoming commodified. By 1890 "time is money" was a phrase foreign writers sometimes used to account for the rapid movement, as if in cadence to an invisible metronome, of thousands on the streets of the Loop. Some Europeans studied the actions of Chicagoans during the business day. They noticed behavior in public they were less likely to observe in London, Paris, or Berlin, for example, the conduct of business people at the noon meal. To visitors accustomed to a protracted period of midday dining and conversation in favorite European cafes, the hasty lunch in the Loop seemed nerve-racking and uncivilized. Notes on office doors reading, ''Away for lunch; back in five minutes," meant profits took precedence over taste buds at this time of day. Since lunch breaks were too short and distances too great to permit a proper noon meal at home , clerks and bosses frequented restaurants promising fast service. Signs like "Quick Lunch " and "Chops in a Minute" attracted larger numbers than did advertisements promising a fine cuisine in a slow-paced setting. One visitor reported, "ln the Opera Restaurant at Chicago-a place much frequented by merchants-I had the curiosity to time five or six gentlemen at their dinners, and found the average number of minutes taken by each to be three and threequarcers. All of them had two courses-one of them had Time 1s /11011ey I 7



three. There were no seats; the customers swarmed in front of a long metal counter like a public-house bar." Observers were also intrigued by the impact of "saving time" on business rituals. On the Continent and in Britain the pursuit of a contract was an art fmm, requiring time, patience, good manners, and nurtured trust. Before signing on the dotted line, the parries might meet over wine several times in order to become better acquainted. The noon hour, treated as a necessary but short interruption by most business people in Chicago, provided their counterparts abroad with opportunities for unhurried but purposeful conversation. The American deal usually lacked this kind of deliberate cultivation. Knowing the personality of the individual with whom one was dealing was less important in Chicago than securing the contract without further delay. ln Europe , however, more so in France and Britain than in Germany, there was still hope that good manners not only could survive in the world of modem transactions but also could influence it positively in the process. ln their addresses to the Societe centrale des architectes franfais on 10 May 1894, Adolphe Bocage, a Parisian architect who represented the society at the Columbian Exposition , and Jacques Hermant commented on the nature of the Chicago-style contract. Bocage described a typical encounter: "Now a visitor arrives; the boss greets him by pushing his hat back, and quickly, before the visitor has thought to take off his coat and sit down, a business deal is concluded. A handshake , 'All right,' are all that is needed for the contract. o trifling rules of politeness, nothing which is not strictly business." One businessman , according to Bocage, hung a sign behind his chair that said, "l have read all the newspapers this morning; 1 have a barometer and thermometer at home; let 's talk business, and not waste time. " Hermant observed, ''A yes is a yes, a no is a no, a word is a word, and often in three minutes , without any signature, a business deal is concluded, one which we would discuss for months." Though both men may have exaggerated the rituals they had observed, no visitor ever claimed the Loop 's business people were more patient or formal than those on the other side of the Atlantic. French and English observers admired the trust and confidence implied by the handshake, which temporarily supplanted a signed document, but most of them still considered this substitution too tentative and informal for their tastes. Businessmen in the modern world , they believed, were still better off executing contracts without depreciating the importance of the individuals involved or forgetting the long-term advantages of proper negotiation. The phrase "a hive of activity," might have been invented to describe this photograph of the general office of Swift and Company in the early part of the centwy. Tim e is Mont.y I 9


Assembly-line efficiency extended to tlie Union Stoc/1 Yards , which were, astonishingly, a "must see" fo,-Joreign towists. TI1ese illustmtion s, made in 1886, show the pmcesses involved.

hicagoans, who moved smartly on the street, in the workplace, and even at lunch , extended the art of saving time beyond personal acts to innovative methods of production and faster technology. Their most celebrated demonstration of saving time occurred not in office buildings, but at the Union Stock Yards. By 1890 the systematization and mechanization of the packing industry in Chicago was well known in Europe and ranked at the top of the "must see" lists of foreign visitors to the city. The majority of those who mustered the courage to take the tour expressed two basic reactions. The first was unmitigated revulsion at the sights, sounds, and smells; the second, a cloud-parting realization that they had witnessed principles central to the extrao rdinary increase of American production. During 1892 the number of hogs slaughtered at the yards was 4,778,290, an average of more than 15,000 per day, assuming a sixday week. To process such quantities , the result of a "stupendousness " of conception, in the words of [French journalist] Paul Bourget, the speed of the operation was crucial. According to Paul de Rousiers , the process depended on several conscious decisions. Productivity subsumed art and previous practices. In order to handle the

C

10 I Chicago Hisw,y I Spnng 1998

demand , the authorities at the yards had not worried about decorum. The scenes in the various slaughterhouse departments were aesthetically offensive bur the process was quite efficient. Chicagoans were not ashamed of this systematic killing of animals; to the contrary, they bragged about the numbers of hogs dispatched , and the managers on the site were proud to show the stages of the process to visitors. Because this division of labor required repetition , each worker ele-


vated his simple, quick act to the level of high art. These workers did not know much about a hog and could not dress it as would a European apprentice, but they also did not have to train long to perform a job that many of them would hold only until a better one was available. Their narrow skills were necessary in order to keep up with men at other stations who had already fulfilled their responsibilities and sent the hog on its way. The speed of the whole operation determined the minimum speed of each worker. Chicago's builders depended on many of these same principles in erecting houses based on the balloon frame system, which in the United States had superseded heavy beam mortise-and-tenon joint construction. The new system relied on lighter joists and studs held together by nails. Historians believe it was introduced in Chicago in the first half of the 1830s. The frame house, quickly and easily assembled, caught the attention of several European

cnncs during the late 1880s and early 1890s. Julius Lessing, the director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin, observed, "There is hardly anything more remarkable for us than to sec an American house being built." Some carts loaded with boards and sacks of nail arrive, and work is ready to commence, he explained. The boards are sorted at the site, and the required pieces are cut to length without much concern for waste. With astounding skill and a supply of nails held in aprons or in their mouths, carpenters erect the basic frame of a house in a few hours. Boards of rwo, three, or four thicknesses nailed together serve as beams or as door and window jambs. After the inside and the outside of the frame have been covered with boards, the house is finished , he reported. Balloon frame construction (seen clearly at far right) e,iabled builders to erect houses with great speed. These houses were going up 011 Fairview Street, c. 1900.


Critics who, like lessing, were attracted by the process of erecting a frame house, usually mentioned the lightness of the materials used and the flexibility of turning them into stronger supports. However, these features were not as significant to them as the quickness with which the framework could be completed. lessing even exaggerated the speed of construction in order to impress upon German readers the importance Americans assigned to the time required for building. Though impressive as models of rapid construction, these houses did not fulfill European expectations about tradition, craftsmanship, and durability. A few visitors predicted the Americans would set aside their expedient ways when the nation was more settled; others realized how entrenched the new system of framing had become. Karl Hinckeldeyn, who was probably the most respected German authority on American architecture during the 1880s, explained that builders who emigrated from Europe had little impact. They had tried to introduce properly joined roof trusses but native contractors rejected such troublesome innovations because they exceeded commercially required joint strengths and took too much time. Architectural professionals abroad acknowledged that American methods of framing expressed priorities most of them did not share. Instead of thoroughness , complexity, artisanship, and protracted effort, balloon framing, like the approach of the meat packers, was an adequate, simple system that could be executed quickly by abundant, cheap, unskilled labor. At the stockyard and in balloon framing, Chicagoans valued speed and developed the technical , material, and methodological means to increase production. Though dissimilar operations, hog packing and wood framing produced greater volume in shorter periods of time.

A

bout 1890 European technical and architectural journals noted the speed with which the multistory office buildings of the loop could be erected or improved. Before this date , foreign observers had regarded height as the distinctive innovation of this new architecture, but increasingly they underscored the importance of rapid construction. ln the last half of the 1880s, there was not enough office space in the loop to handle the rising speculative demand . Unwilling to expand a commercial district roughly five-eighths of a square mile , the business community and the city council accepted the logic of increasing the number of floors per building. The value of central property soared. According to one estimate, each of the 155 acres of land within the Loop in 1893 was worth $2,600,000 even before the value of its architecture was calculated; or, to demonstrate the increase another way, the same land was 1,200 percent more valuable than it had been at the time of the 1871 fire. During May of 1892 seven major 12 I Chicago Histo,y I Spring 1998

-1

Tiie speed of constrnction of office buildings was a matter of p1ide to Chicagoans. The Chicago Tribune published these illustrations of the Ashland block going up to show the progress made in just thirteen days of buildi11g.


offi ce buildings o pened in th e Loop-the Wo man's rc mpl c, Maso ni Te mpl e, Unity, As hl and , Titl e and Trust, Veneti an, and th e Monadn oc k Block, in addition to th e fourtee n-sto ry Grear No rth ern Hotel. Chi cago's co ntinued boo m cc mccl a sured. In his offi cial re port fo r 1892, j. Hayes adl cr, British con ul in the city, icl cntifi ccl the United tares and hi cago a the mo t prosperous co untry and city in th wo rld . The contemporary kyscrapcr framed by a skeleton of steel becam e the mo t visibl e and popular proo f abroad for rhosc who beli eved th at in Chi cago tim e had indeed beco me money. Th e misco nce ption in Europe th at th ese huge buildin gs wo uld require many years to co mpl ete faded during the early J890s when foreign criti c discovered the crucial role of the skeleton system in this architec ture and al o th e reaso ns why entrepreneurs enco uraged its use . lntcrn ati onal pu bli city about th e reco rd time for fini hing the exterior walls of fo ur fl oors of th e As hland Bl oc k was a maj or facto r in in fo rming architects abroad about th e temporal advantages or this kind of co nstruction . O n January 17, l892, the Chirngo Tri/Jun e published two illustra tions of work in progress on the Ashland Bl ock, one from a ph otograph taken on 5 December 1891 and th e oth er fro m a ph otogra ph taken on 18 December 1891. During this thirtee n-clay period , th e outer wall of four fl oo rs were attac hed to th e ree l

Jl'B.T ARRIVED IS CRICAGO-TRYISG TO SEE THE TOPS OF BlilLDISGS.

Th ej11/y 12, 1892, Chicago Tribune i11clucled this impression of an out-of-towner 111cu-vrli11g at Chirngo's skyscrapers.

frame by bricklaye rs and rcrra-cotta setter'> . Dady, pedestri ans lin ed th e sid ewalks bel ow to watch th e -,tca mdrivc n crane hois tin g th e '> tee l gird ers and droppin g th em ge ntly into pl ace or workmen installing tcrra-cotta labs with the case of childre n playing with bl oc ks. Th e British co n ul in ,hi cago, j. Haye Sadl er, ma) have bee n one of th ese c; id cwalk ~pcc tato rs, fo r he includ ed th e in fo rm ati on fro m the frihun c in one or his reporLc; to Lond on in 1892 . I le ex plain ed that fo ur exterior level of the building, measuring l 40 feet by 80 k ct at base, had bee n co mpl eted at a rate of one ll oo r eve ry 3 1/+ days. This news reac hed architec tural circles in Euro pe through va ri ous chann els. By th e encl of 1892 th e phrase" hi cago co nstru cti o n" was not unkn own abroad. ln th e yea r prior to the ex pos ition, fo reign critics began to emphas ize th e "unbeli evable rapidi ty" ol this new process and the "incredibly short time" in whi ch a stee l-framed building's exterior could be rinishcd . During th e ex pos itio n, May through Octo ber of 1893, visiting profess ionals and lay peo pl e co uld warch a number or projec ts in progress, th e bes t-tim ed probabl y th e New York Life lnsurance Building, on which excavati on began on Jul y l4 , the found ati ons started Augus t 3, and th e tee! frame completed cptembcr 29. Alth ough the skeleton y rem was co nsid ered the primary rca o n why th e co ntractors and architec t co uld co mplete structures of twelve to sixtee n stories within a two-yea r period, a frac tion of th e tim e that would have been required for buildin gs of s imil ar cubic footage in Euro pe, it was not th e only tim e-saving step Euro pea n visitors di covered. In his influential report, Sadl er al o tressed th e size of the work force on the Ashland Block, which consisted during th e clay of approximately s ixty iron and stee l workers, on e hundred bri ck maso ns, and thirty- fi ve rerra-co tta se tters . Th e Tri/Jun e had reported that the maso ns, supported by an arm y of hod carrier , worked so near to eac h oth er it was necessary for all of them to stand . In o rd er to co mpl ete th e buildings as soon as possible, co ntractors on th e Ashland Block also hired approximately fift y men to work during the night. To induce nonskilled laborers to work odd shift and on holid ays, they increased the normal pay of 22 cents an hour to 33 cents at night and 44 cents on holid ay . The mailer night crew, covering the hollow-til e flooring with co ncrete, bricking in the steel and wrought-iron fram e, or setting the rerra-cotra slabs, worked with the aid of electric lights and gasoline lamps scattered through the skeleton. In winter, laborers were protected from Chicago's cutting winds by means of a heavy canvas stretched from the base o[ the floor being walled to the skeleton girders of the floor above, and by salamander stoves that also helped to dry the salted mortar.' The authors of Industrial Chicago reported in 1891 that there was "now little difference between summer and winter, or day and night, work. " Time 1s Monfy I 13


Time was also saved by not waiting for one process to stop before starting another. "They do not wait, as we do , for the mortar to set in the lower walls in order to continue building them," reported Adolphe Bocage. Furthermore , new commercial buildings continued to sink into Chicago's soft subsoil for months after their opening. There were hundreds of time-saving steps, some major, some not, some that seemed penny wise and pound foolish yet were ostensibly efficient and within the limits of safety. When builders and designers in Chicago decided to get on with their big buildings, there was li.ttle they thought a European professional could teach them. Despite angry charges that haste cheapened architecture, there were professionals in Britain, France, and Germany who commended the architects of Chicago for their procedures , not because they wanted to emulate these steps but because they considered them creative responses to conditions over which firms in the city had little, if any, control. However, this did not mean that European architects suddenly advocated quicker building procedures at home. Most professionals in Britain, at least, did not call for faster methods in the early 1890s, and many remained skeptical of them for the remainder of the decade . Speeding up a job was not a new concept to British architects. However, they were less ,villing to sacrifice or threaten priorities that seemed more important, priorities rooted in their definition of architecture. They were more inclined to view themselves as artists, rather than as processors of somebody else's common agenda. Viewed in isolation, Chicago's acts of quickness were impressive, often astounding, some even useful and worthy of extended European reflection, but they came with a price in the early 1890s that many visitors, lay tourists as well as architects , thought was too high to pay.

M

ost European observers of the Loop realized business could be conducted efficiently within its circumscribed space because transportation to the suburbs or to other cities was located a brief walk from most office buildings, and that numerous railroad stations, which surrounded this district, enabled business people from out of town to contact clients shortly after their arrival. According to Paul de Rousiers , the ideal office could never be located close enough to the center of this bustling arena in which attitudes and technology had simplified and quickened transactions. To illustrate this point, he quoted a businessman who claimed the number of firms within a building and the The compactness of the Loop, with its many tall buildings in close proximity, contributed to the quick business tempo of the city. This photograph shows a tum-of the-century view of South Dearborn Street, looking north from the Fisher Building. 14 I C/11cago H1st01y I Sp,ing 1998


Time is Money I 15



concentration of many commercial buildings in a small area enabled him to attend to numerous deals per hour, and , if a lawyer were needed , to get legal help without going outside. The whole system , argued Rousiers, depended on these "blessed business buildings." The logical extension of this reasoning was the creation of an enormous complex, housing all of the companies scrambling for an address in central Chicago . The Loop came close to this futuristic concept. Though ingeniously planned to facilitate transactions , almost every foreign critic judged the Loop to be a flawed city center. Despite its efficiency, most visitors shook their heads, convinced by experience that contemporary city centers should be more than zones catering to money changers. Great cities, they believed , should also memorialize the past, provide for recreation, leisure, and even residence , speak to the eye through art, and nourish the mind and spirit through institutions of culture. Their experience in the Loop provoked many, the French in particular, to express appreciation for their own cities. With the exception of the Gare Saint-Lazare, explained Rousiers, the major railroad terminals of Paris had been built away from the center. "We will not permit a sacrifice of elegance to quicken communication, because Paris, above all, is an elegant city. Chicago has no such pretensions. " It didn't matter to Chicagoans if huge stations spoiled the beauty of their city, he continued, because "the risk of losing a little time in it" was the more important issue. ln any case, he added , the quality of Chicago's center meant little to the powerful who , at the end of the day, could escape to their residential sanctuaries in the suburbs. Europeans concluded that the demands for faster procedures and services had made the Loop a more dangerous area. They cited a number of reasons for this intolerable development. First, they believed capitalism's pressure for newer, bigger buildings would increase injuries in the Loop. Though they had difficulty finding published statistics about accidents in the building industry, they assumed a close connection between haste and construction deaths. They reasoned that accidents were inevitable when laborers worked twenty-four hours a day in summer and winter to complete in two years structures much higher than the tallest office buildings in Berlin or Paris. Furthermore, the sight of workers balancing on a thin skeleton of steel reinforced this conclusion. The foreign press abroad often played up news of construction disasters in the city, in part to justify its opposition to high buildings. Visitors also cited the danger of loose ends, Chicago's failures to finish projects Chicago 's compact business center also led to tremendous congestion , dramatically demonstrated in this photograph of the intersection of Dearborn and Randolph Streets in 1909. Tim e is Money I 17


run as if ordered to attack. He ran, knowing he might be trampled if he didn' t. When he heard a shrill noise, he finally realized a ship was approaching, and the swing bridge would be turning shortly. Everyone was running. Then the pavement under his feet broke in two. He saw the surface of the dirty water below at the same time an iron grating behind him cut him off from the rest of the crowd. His immediate neighbors jumped, one falling into the water shortly to be rescued by a nearby boat. He jumped, clinging to the end of the bridge as it swung into the middle of the stream. Most of the daytime population of the business district rode grip- or horse cars whose lines passed tl1rough the heart of the city. Cable cars were faster than horse-drawn vehicles, attaining speeds of live to six miles an hour in congested areas and up to twelve in the suburbs. Human error and mechanical failure were the principal causes of their collisions. Accidents often occurred when one or both vehicles were turning a comer or when a delivery man attempted to cross the tracks before the grip car passed. Drivers could not always count on the ability of their teams to pull loads Accidents to horse- and cable cars, such as this one illustrated in the Graphic of March 18, quickly enough on surfaces torn 1893, were frequent occurences. up by excavation or made slippery from rain or snow. Another type of before beginning new ones. Reporting on the Columbian crash was caused by the malfunction of the clamping or Exposition for the Zeitschrift des oesterreicl1ische11 Ingebraking mechanism. When the brakes failed on a car nieur- und Architekten-Vereines, Otto H. Mueller claimed going through the la Salle Street Tunnel on 1 May 1888, he faced "life-threatening or terrifying situations almost it smashed into a laundry wagon sandwiched bet\veen it every day," for example, when he took shelter from the and a stationary cable car ahead. Reformers cited these rain in an unmarked opening, not realizing he was frequent accidents and breakdowns as further evidence standing at the base of an elevator shaft. of the abuse of franchises by business people more concerned about profits than reliable , safe service. PrefigSecondly, they pointed to the pace and size of sidewalk crowds caused by so many large public buildings, office uring twentieth-century street congestion, the loop was blocks, retail stores, and wholesale companies in a conprobably the world's most dangerous urban zone in the stricted space. Battalions of pedestrians served and visearly 1890s. ited these cheek-by-jowl buildings. Impatient office Chicagoans discovered early one of the disadvantages workers, delivery men, clerks, secretaries, and shoppers of modern technological systems: breakdowns could lead at crossings increased the possibilities of mishaps. Ernst to traffic tie-ups of unmitigated proportions. Hypothetivon Hesse-Wartegg described one experience he had cally, if three coal wagons spilled their contents on the while walking on a crowded sidewalk within a block of tracks at three crucial intersections (la Salle opposite the the Chicago River. Suddenly people around him began to mouth of the tunnel , State and Madison , and Wabash 18 I Chicago H1sco1y I Sp1111g 1998


The steel frame of the final portion of the Boston Store rises on the corner of State and Madison Streets in 1915. Time ts /\1011cy I 19


Avoid This Dangerous Sport,. Many children have been crippled for life while catching on or hopping freights. The railroad right-ofway, with it's traffic, is NOT A SAFE place for boys to p,ay.

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and Madison) , service on almost all the cable and horse lines in the central district would be disrupted. lf a private cab lost a wheel , however, it could be removed from the street, or if a horse-car was disabled , it too could be withdrawn from the tracks. But one grip car unable to disengage from its system could cause extensive damage by plowing ahead until the weight it was pushing broke the clamp. In October 1893 this occurred at the comer of Wells and Washington , the malfunctioning car collecting nine other trains, twenty-seven cars in all, before it stopped. Chicago's transportation system was quick, but it also confirmed the vulnerability of centralized operations co discrete breakdowns or malfunctions. The most shocking accident statistics involved locomotives at unguarded crossings at grade. Though these injuries and deaths occurred outside of the loop , they were nevertheless tolerated by companies within it. By 1893 there were 1,375 miles of track crossing streets at 2,000 points within the city limits, the vast majority still unprotected. This was a longstanding problem caused by the railroads ' disregard of a city ordinance prohibiting speeds in excess of ten miles an hour within city limits, and also the failure of the city council and the companies to cooperate in erecting gates or stationing flagmen to guard the crossings. Madame Leon Grandin , a Parisian who lived in Chicago from July 1892 until May 1893, explained: "From time to time the train crossed streets where carriages, promenaders, circling children, all scattered and without fear of the train, nothing protecting them but their own prudence; the train tracks as open as those of the tramways , no barrier, no guard , only a bell on the front of the locomotive warned pedestrians to take care. " Railroad companies not only disregarded this speed limit, they announced their guilt ahead of time by publishing schedules requiring faster speeds. ln 1887 an investigative reporter pointed out that most lines forced their engineers to travel at least twice as fast as the ordinance permitted in order to maintain schedules. Certain trains on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne , and Chicago line were scheduled to average thirty-five miles an hour between stops within the city. Because railroad officials believed their companies were the key to Chicago 's remarkable development, they disregarded public criticism despite the bloodshed. When sued by individuals, they paid witnesses to testify falsely or appealed cases from court to court until plaintiffs could no longer afford the coses. William T Stead wrote the bluntest condemnation of railroad arrogance: "For years past the city has protested , but protested in vain . The railroads ride roughshod over the convenience, the rights and the lives Opposite: The railroads ' level crossings were unguarded, leaving drivers and pedestlians to look out for th emselves. These postcards, c. 1910, urged caution .

of the citizens. Sisera with his 900 chariots never tyrannized more ruthlessly over the Hebrews than the railroads with their fire chariots of steel have lorded it over the city of Chicago. " The yearly number of injuries caused by the railroads exceeded one thousand as early as the mid-1880s. According to Stead, there were 1,699 people killed by trains within city limits between 1889 and 1893 ; 257 (1889), 294 (1890) , 323 (1891) , 394 (1892) and 431 (1893) Appalled , numerous Europeans called for an immediate end to this slaughter. When nothing was done about it in the years leading up to the exposition , they tended to agree with A. G. Stephens: "it is cheaper to kill people than to elevate the railways , and human life in Chicago is nothing compared with money." That higher profits might be worth the sacrifice of lives was the ultimate horror of Chicago's modernity, yet perceptive crirics, knowing chat "speed of execution is a necessary prerequisite in America," realized one of the realities of the prophetic metropolis was che tightening connection between good returns on investments and the devaluation of life. Others had noticed the collective indifference of Chicagoans to accidents and injuries. If a wagon lost a wheel or a horse was run over, hardly anyone paid attention, reported Hesse-Wartegg in 1893. Citizens hit by cable cars were moved to the side of the tracks to enable the traffic to continue. The intricate cogs of the city must cum; let the user beware. Regardless of how we identify the causes-progress, economic expansion, or the "goahead" mentality-they speeded up Chicago's daily life, which , in tum , increased the likelihood of accidents and deaths on the job and in the streets. In this respect Chicago was again che Western world 's most dramatic clarifier of unintended consequences of progress. Because Europeans came from industrializing nations that were also experiencing a quickening of life chat affected public safety, they studied the city, not to repeat its mistakes but to avoid them, confident their own leaders could control modernization without the human sacrifices Chicago tolerated.

IL LUSTRATION CREDITS : I 4-5 , CHS, ICHi-20239;

6, CHS ; 7 top , CHS, ICHi-18986 , 7 bottom, from A Frenchman in America , 1891 , CHS ; 8-9 , CHS , ICHi21029 ; 10 top and bottom, from Six Mais aux Etats-Unis (1886) , CHS; 11 , CHS, ICHi-00076; CHS, 12 top and bottom, from Chicago Tribune, Jan 17, 1892, CHS; 13, from Chicago Tribun~ , July 12, 1892, CHS; 14-15, CHS, ICHi-19257; 16-17, CHS , ICHi-04191; 18, from The Graphic, March 18, 1893 , CHS; 19, CHS, ICHi-19928; 20, postcards, CHS Tim e is Money I 21


hicagoans and visitors to the city have long thought of Grant Park as the city's front yard . Because of its high visibility, this "yard" has drawn much attention-and controversy. With its lakefront and midcity location , Grant Park is perennially coveted as a site for recreational, commercial, government, and cultural enterprises. City leaders have introduced many plans that have changed the park's appearance significantly. These alterations reveal a great deal about how Chicago itself has changedfrom a city on the nation's frontier, to an industrial center, to the sprawling metropolis of the present day. This photographic essay illustrates how Grant Park has changed over time. 22



As shown in this map from 1836, the area that the Illinois & Michigan Ca nal Co mmissioners set aside as ''fo rever open, clear and free " was a narrow strip of land south of the Chicago River. Most of what is now Grant Park was added to the lakefront through a series of landfill projects.

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,..,,,..~_,.,_ , .,,,· In 1836, the Illinois & Michigan Canal Commissioners, charged by the state legislature with selling choice state land to pay for the canal , set aside the shoreline where Grant Park is today as public ground. They designated the area to be " forever open , clear and free" of all buildings and other structures. Chicagoans were already drawn to the location because it provided lake views , and the land adjacent to what was then called "Lake Park " became a fash ionable residential neighborhood . During the 1840s, two piers built at the mouth of the Chicago River caused a sand beach to accumulate north of the river but severely eroded the shoreline to the south. The Illinois Central Railroad Company (IC) agreed to build a breakwater that protected the shoreline in exchange for being allowed to lay tracks just offshore. Long, narrow, and with a view of railroad tracks , Lake Park drew little attention until 1864, when the park served as the location for a temporary " Wigwam " that housed the Democratic nominating convention. In the late 1860s, during an era of park expansion throughout Chicago, a plan emerged that would have extended Lake Park out to the IC tracks by depositing landfill in the lake. Before this plan could 24 I Chicago H1st01y I Sp1ing 1998

be carried out, however, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 made it unnecessary. Builders dumped tons of debris from the fire between the shoreline and the tracks.

On t his enlarged area, stockholders had th e Inter-State Industrial Exposition Buildin g built in 1873. This structure, reminiscent of London 's Crystal Palace, stood until 1890.


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In addition to its annual exposition , the building hosted a variety of events ranging from political conventions to grand opera. Increasingly, Lake Park, and the area around it, was emerging as

an area of display adjacent to the city center. After the United States Congress awarded Chicago the Worid's Columbian Exposition of 1893, the fair's directors favored

Lake Park as the location for the event. Ultimately, however, given bL,Jdgetary and time constraints, they selected Jackson Park. Lake Park served as an auxiliary site used for the World's Columbian Chicago's Front Yard I 25


Exposition Congresses, which featured scholarly papers . The Art Institute of Chicago later modified the Congress Building for its permanent home. After the world's fair, a number of leading citizens advanced proposals to make Lake Park the civic and cultural center of the city. Most of their plans used the exposition's Court of Honor as a model. Chicago merchant Aaron Montgomery Ward challenged these plans, citing the land's original "open, clear and free" designation. In the decade of litigation that followed, the courts repeatedly supported Ward and prohibited virtually all construction on Lake Park. The South Park District took over control of Lake Park from the city's Board of Public Works in 1896. The district began a major landfill project that eventually extended the park beyond the IC tracks to the harbor line. It also

26 I Chicago H1sto1y I Spnng 1998

renamed the area Grant Park to commemorate Illinois's Civil War hero, Ulysses S. Grant. In 1909, Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett published their expansive Plan of Chicago, choosing Grant Park to be a major focus of both the city and the lakefront. Only some of their plan was ever implemented. After Burnham's death in 1912, much of the work of completing their grand design fell to Edward Bennett. Bennett's most successful work for the park was Buckingham Fountain. In the years to come, the automobile significantly altered the city. The South Park District constructed a number of roads through Grant Park, including the Outer Drive (now Lake Shore Drive) . From the 1890s through the 1920s, the park continued to be expanded both to the west and to the south and, by the early 1930s, took on its present form .

Since the 1830s, the park has evolved from a mere narrow strip of land on the lakefront to the city's cultural center. Its current appearance is the result of compromises, with many plans having been proposed for the site but no one blueprint accounting for how the park appears today. The area remains a vibrant space and its use reflects the diversity of opinions that have shaped the city of Chicago itself.

Below: Th is 1868 woodcut of the northern part of the park shows the lagoon between the shoreline and the IC tracks. West of Lake Park, residents had created a stylish neighborhood with tree-lined boulevards and wide sidewalhs for promenading. Although the neighborhood is not part of this illustration , its social status can be seen in the well-dressed couple wali?ing along the laliefront. Fro111 The South Park Commissioners Annual Report, 1908.


Above: This 1880s view shows a portion of the Inter-State lndust1ial Exposition Building at the left. Lake Park had been expanded out to the IC traclv; with rubble from the Great Chicago Fire, and it now featured winding pat/is a11d benches. ICHi-05682. Left: The architects of the Art Institute of Chicago building (originally the World's Congress Building) designed a long horizontal structure in the neoclassical style. The structure, a monument to the city's cultural achievements, stands in marhed con'trast to the modern skyscrapers and business activities of Chicago's Loop. ICHi-19219. Ch icago ·s Fro111 'rare/ I 27



In the wake of the World's Columbian Exposition, many Chicagoans cal/eel for expansion of the park out into Lake Michigan beyond the TC tracks. Some considered the ]air's Court of Honor, with its harmonious grouping of neoclassical buildings, as a model for the site. lCHi-23142.


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"The next great work of the people and for the people must go on, and it is already here. Our self-respect before our neighbors and a11 nations and the world must be maintained and to this end we must proceed without delay to clean up and make inviting our front door yard."

NO FINER ON EARTH. :

-Daniel Burnham , 1896

',

Lake- F.ront Park to Be the : Grandest in· tµe World.

SOLID MEN TAKE HOLD,

••et, Discuss the .Project and , Cost, and Take Action.

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Gty Asked to Begin Work at Once on : the Lake- Front.

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TO CHICAGO,

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S~y transformauoo of the Lake-Fron~ Soto a be11utilul park, wltb aplendld buUdInes, large play grounda, noble 1tatun1, irraveled walk., macadamized dr!Yet, and I.be .MacMonnies fountain b a11ured. At a conference of leadmQ' cltlzen, and the 1ubcomwlltee of I.ho Council Committee on Wbnrve. and Public Ground • hold in Lbe Couorll rb11ruber yesterday afternoon atepa " ro,,.. .. ,.,, ~ - lon!l•lalked-

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Daniel Burnham and Charles Atwood put forth this plan in 1895 to suggest the development of Lake Park. Their plan, reproduced in the Chicago Tribune on June 4, 1895, was influenced by the fair 's White City. It featured a landscape punctuated by monumental buildings, including a libra1y, an am10ry, and an exposition hall. 30 I Chicago H1sto1y I Sp1111g 1998


Much of Burnham and Bennett's plan, such as the uniform architecture and wide boulevards shown in these paintings from 1909 by Jules Guerin, never came to fruition. Some elements of their vision of Grant Park, however, were realized. Overleaf Jules Guerin, Proposed Plaza on Michigan Avenue, west of the Field Museum of Natural Hi.story in Grant Parh, looking east from the corner of]ackson Boulevard. CHS.

Chicago's Front Yard I 31





In order to expand Grant Par!?, the South Par!? District encouraged a number of organi:;::ation.s to deposit landfill into the Grant Par!? basin. It also hired contractors to deposit dredged mate1ial from Lahe Michigan into the basin. This 1902 photograp/1 shows the progress that had been made since the dumping had begun in 1896.From The South Park Commissioners Annual Report., 1908.

~~~~=~~




36 I Cl11cago Histo,y I Spnng 1998


Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett identified Grant Park as a primary focus of the city and the lakefront in their 1909 Plan of Chicago. Tiiey envisioned the Field Museum , an expanded Art lnstitute, and the Crerar Libra,y in Grant Park. Tiiis lakefront center for arts and letters would be connected to the rest of the city by a boulevard systen1. From the lake, the architects drew attention to the park by placing it at the center of a symmetrical harbor. lCHi-17138.

Chicago·s Front Yard I 37


Right: Mail-order magnate Aaron Montgomery Ward, whose offices overlooked Lahe Park, opposed the building up of Chicago's lahefront as proposed by Burnham and others. He f iled a number of court cases from 1890 to 1910 seeking to prevent development on the park. Despite strong objections from opponents-one alderman declared that a downtown lakefront is "no place for a park"-the courts supported Ward, and he succeeded in keeping the park from Randolph Street to Twelfth Street (now Roosevelt Road) relatively free of pennanent structures. ICHi-12788.

Left: Kate Buckingham daughter of a Chicago businessman and banher, made a major donation to build a fountain in Grant Parh in memory of her brothe1; Clarence. Modeled c;Jter the Latona Fountain in Versailles, France, Buchingham Fountain soon became one of the most visited and beloved landmarks in Chicago. CHS Opposite: On the fountain 's 25th anniverswy in 1952, it was even feted with a cake and this birthday candle. Courtesy of Cliicago Parh District Special Collections.

38 I Chicago History I Spring 1998




This view of Grant Park in 1929 shows the prominence of Buckingham Fountain and the changes overseen by Edward Bennett in the park, such as the Jonna! entrance at Congress Parkway and the symmetrical gardens. The Illinois Central Railroad agreed to lower its tracks in 1919. ICHi-03394.


42 I Chicago H1sto,y I Spnng 1998


Opposite: The Field Columbian Museum, proposed by Burnham as the central buildingfor the lakefront cultural cenle1; came to occupy a site south of Roosevelt Road after Ward 's court victories. In anticipation of the 1933-34 A Centwy of Progress International Exposition, the Shedd {\Cfuarium and the Adler Planetarium were built 011 adjacent sites. ICHi-00940.

Chicagoans today play sports at Grant Park (above), admire its fountains and gardens, and visit its cultural institutions. They also gather al special events, such as the Bulls Championship party held in June 1993 Geft). Annual events in the park include the Chicago Jazz Festival, the Taste of Chicago, and the Fourth of]uly program of music and fireworks. Courtesy of Ch icago Park District Special Collections.

Dennis H. Cremin is director of research and public programs for the National Trust for Historic Preservation 's Gaylord Building in Lockport, Illinois. He is completing a dissertation on Grant Park at Loyola University Chicago. Cl11cago's Front Yard I 43



Women of Chinatown In the years of "exclusion laws" governing Chinese immigration, the population of Chinese American communities, such as Chicago's Chinatown, was overwhelmingly male. Women still had an impact on the community, however, as the lives of these five women illustrate. PEGGY SP ITZER CHR I STOFF Editor's note: The following article provides biographical snapshots offive women vital to the histo,y of Chicago's Chinatown. The lives of Mrs. Chin Foin, Mansie O'Young, Helen Wong Jean , Dr. Margaret Lin , and Olga Huneke span much of the twentieth centwy. By examining their evolving roles and their links of friendship, we can discover a great deal, not just about these individuals, but about the life of the Chinese American community in Chicago. There are many ways to analyze Chicago's Chinatown-as an ethnic community, as an example of U.S. immigration policies and practices, as a part of Chicago's economy. ln numerous interviews with community leaders, however, four women continually were mentioned as an integral part of Chinatown history: Mrs. Chin Foin, who raised a large and prosperous family; Mansie O'Young, who expanded business opportunities for Chinese immigrants; Helen Wong Jean , who bolstered Chinatown's image in civic affairs; and Dr. Margaret Lin, who was the quintessential success story for numerous Chinese families. These women had different interests and personalities, bu t, because Chinatown was a small and close-knit community, they were friends . They also shared some non-Chinese friends , most notably Olga Huneke, a public school teacher and fundraiser for the Chinese Christian Union Church in Chinatown. The lives of these five women describe the complex and multi-dimensional qualities of a Chinatown community that survived despite exclusion laws. A 1928 Chinese independence day parade in Chicago 's Ch inatown , centered at Twenty-second Street (now Cennah Road) and Wentworth Avenue.

45


Mrs. Chin Foin (a.k.a. Yoklund Wong), 1889-1986 n 1904, Mrs. Chin Foin traveled from San Francisco to Chicago with her husband. Born in 1889, she grew up as Yoklund Wong on Commercial Street in San Francisco. Chinese children were not allowed to attend American schools there , and Yoklund Wong was among the second generation of American-born Chinese children to attend Christian mission schools. ln school, she learned some English but had little opportunity to use it: both in Chinese culture and American society, it was considered taboo for Chinese women to leave the confines of their homes. This was due in pan to the American perception that all Chinese women were prostitutes . "Respectable" Chinese women were hidden. When Yoklund Wong was fifteen years old, her father, an immigrant from southern China who worked in San Francisco's Chinatown as a tailor, arranged her marriage to a twenty-eight-year-old immigrant from the home village, Chin f Foin. Yoklund Wong's husband, Chin Foin, had no desire to live among the masses of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco . Thus, in 1904, the couple moved to Chicago where a small community of Chinese merchants and laborers lived at the intersection of Clark and Van Buren Streets. The exclusion laws , which had been enacted in 1882 to prohibit an influx of Chinese immigrants, allowed only merchants to live in the United States without restriction. To meet this requirement, Chin Foin established an import-export business \.vith other Chinese immigrants in Chicago. Determined to move out of the Chinese community, he soon opened a Chinese restaurant on Wabash between

I

Above: Mr. a11d Mrs. Chi11 Foi11 prior lo a trip to China , Mrs. Chi11 Foi11 'sfirst visit lo that country. Left: Mrs. Chi11 Fain a11d son , c. 1924.

Jackson Street and Congress Avenue (now the site of Jimmy Wong's) . Across the street from the opera house, it soon became the first Chinese restaurant in Chicago that catered to a white, upper-class clientele. Chin Fain hired an immigrant lrish woman, Molly O'Farrell, as his business manager and learned English well enough to interact with the thriving Chicago business community. As his business grew, he, his wife, and their two children moved away from Chinatown and into a fashionable middle-class white section of the city on south Calumet Avenue. Mrs . Chin Foin wore modern Western clothing and sent her children to American schools, but maintained a distinctly Chinese household. She took care of many family members including her six children, two sisters and two brothers from California, and her husband 's daughter and brothers from China. When her husband 46 I Chicago History I Spring 1998


began to hire college students from China to work in his restaurant, Mrs. Chin Foin hosted numerous parties for the students in her home. Technically, Chinese students were not allowed to work in the United States; however, E. B. Kan , a long-time Chinese interpreter for the U .5. Immigration Service, worked with Chin Foin to ease the restrictions. Both Mrs. Chin Foin and E.B . Kan invited Chinese students to live in their homes. In addition to her conta_cts with the students , Mrs. Chin Foin continued to visit Chinatown with her children on weekends to keep up with friends and to attend Chinese operas. The Chinese students from different regions of China who frequented Mrs. Chin Foin's home told her about the lives of Western-educated professionals in China. She became interested in providing educational and career opportunities for her children in China, where they would be prized for their American education and knowledge of the West. In the United States, as a result of the exclusion laws and anti-Chinese sentiment, her children would have few opportunities to pursue professional careers. ln 1921 , Mrs. Chin Foin arranged to have her eldest son, Theodore, go to China with her two sisters, Jenny and Grace. Grace had married a student from the University of Chicago who was going to Shanghai to work in a bank. Theodore and

Jenny, who were both fourteen years old , were sent to China to obtain a Chinese education. In 1924, when Mrs. Chin Foin was thirty-five years old, tragedy struck when her husband fell down an elevator shaft in his restaurant and died of a brain concussion. Until this time , Mrs. Chin Foin had lived comfortably without knowing where her husband had invested his money or even how much disposable income the family had. After his death and during the Great Depression , much of Foin's money was lost in bank foreclosures. To ease her situation, Mrs. Chin Foin sent two more of her children to live with family in China and moved into a smaller house at 4913 South Grand Boulevard (now Martin Luther King,Jr. Drive). Then , in order to support the remaining children in Chicago, she followed her father's trade as a tailor by working in a Jewish upholstery shop on the South Side of Chicago. After Mrs. Chin Foin helped her children through college, she lived with one of her daughters and took care of her grandchildren. In 1966, Mrs. Foin moved into her own condominium apartment in Chinatmvn. She lived a busy and independent life until she died on June 27, 1986, at age 97. Mansie (Chung) O'Young, 1901-76

n 1927, three years after Chin Foin died, another entrepreneur from California, Mansie Chung, arrived in Chicago. A twenty-two-year-old graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and apparently the first Asian American woman to graduate from that university, Chung came to Chicago with her father. He had recently retired from the insurance business in Oakland, and the two planned to establish a branch office of the Sun Life Assurance Company. ln the male-dominated Chinatmvn in Chicago , she was considered an oddity. Had it not been for her father's accomplishments as a businessman and his clan membership, Chung would not have been accepted at all. From the beginning, she worked with Moy Dung Hoy, one of the earliest residents of Chicago's Chinatown who had arrived here in 1879, and E.B. Kan, a close friend of the Chin Foin family. In 1928, in the prestigious Fourth Presbyterian Church , she married Henry O'Young, a Chinese immigrant who sold supplies to Chinese laundries. Thereafter, she was known as Mansie O'Young. She and her husband became involved in a number of businesses, including an insurance agency and a noodle manufacturing company. In contrast to Mrs. Chin Foin, who visited Chinatown to relax in a familiar environment, Mansie O'Young worked in the neighborhood. Even with her father 's connections to the merchant class, O'Young was barred from

I

Mansie O'Young, 1936. This photograph was taken from afom1filed with the immigration service p1ior to a business t1ip to Canada. Clmia town I 47


Left to right: Frances Moy Chung, Mansie O'Young, and Helen Wong j ean . These three women wear th e uniform of th e Chinatown Unit of the American Women's Volunteer Service, which operated a hospitality centerfor Chinese Ameii ca n servicemen in Chicago fro111 1943 to 1945. 48 I Cl11rngo H,sro,y I 5pnng 1998


the all-male Chinese merchant associations and relied on her husband to attend the Chinatown business meetings. Twelve years younger and more cosmopolitan than Mrs. Chin Foin , O'Young was relegated to the role of "assistant" to her husband in Chinatown. She and her husband co-owned the Hong Kong Noodle Company (still operated in Chinatown by the O'Young family today) , but her husband acted as the company head , while Ma1;sie O'Young managed the payroll. In downtown Chicago , O'Young and her husband opened a branch office of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada in the 1920s. American-educated Mansie O'Young, and not her immigrant husband , became a licensed life insurance underwriter. Somewhat ironically, the main office of Sun Life in Canada considered the American-born Mrs. O'Young to be "our Chinese representative." Evidently she was responsible for the numerous life insurance policies held by merchants in Chinatown. ln addition , O'Young interacted with key figures in Chicago and used her "China card " to socialize with Chicago's politicians. Illustrating the complexity of business and politics in Chicago , the O'Youngs' Hong Kong Noodle Company was being investigated by the U.S. Immigration Service for hiring illegal immigrants at the same time that Mansie O'Young was promoting Chinatown as a tourist attraction. O'Young quickly became known as a stronger business partner than her husband and apparently thrived on the wheeling and dealing common in Chicago's business and political circles. ln this context, she became integrally involved in the Chinese Women's Club of Chicago, serving as its president. Very little is known about how the club was established and who its members were. It is known that the Chinese Women's Club of Chicago was in operation as early as 1922, which roughly corresponds to the time period when Chinese women's clubs were established in California. The main goals of the clubs were to aid destitute Chinese women and children and promote democratic reform on the Chinese mainland. As president of the Chinese Women's Club of Chicago, Mansie O'Young was a pioneer for the younger generation of women who increasingly did not fit into the staid and insular Chinatown community. ln the 1930s, O'Young began to visit Shanghai and Hong Kong to collect Chinese art, eventually owning what the Chicago Tribune reported was the largest private collection of this genre in Chicago. During the 1950s, O'Young became treasurer for the male-dominated Chinese American Civic Council. ln this way, merchants in Chinatown recognized her value to the broader Chinese community. The American-born and educated Mansie O'Young presided as matriarch over lavish Chinatown dinner parties that were attended by Chicago politicians and Chinese merchants.

Helen Wong Jean, 1903-199-+

frequent guest at the O'Young banquets was Helen Wong Jean. Unlike O 'Young, Jean did not associate with the Chinese merchant class when she first arrived in Chicago from California. ln 1922, Helen Wong came to the city to visit her sister, Lena Toy, and learn about the vaudeville music scene. Two years younger than O'Young, Jean had begun a career in California as a musician when she was sixteen years old, travelling along the coast as the only Chinese band member in the "Peerless Dance Orchestra. " Jean's father, Wong On (lacer Ah Louis) epitomized the self-made businessman in California: he came to the United States from southern China in the 1850s originally to work in gold camps. Eventually, he became a hotel cook and worked as a labor contractor for the Pacific Coast Railway. By the time Jean was born in 1903, her father had semi-retired as an owner of a general store and horse farm in San Obispo, California. Similar to Mrs. Chin Foin and Mansie O'Young, Jean had an American-born Chinese mother. During the Chinese exclusion period the shortage of Chinese women in the United States compelled many immigrant Chinese men to marry American-born women who were much younger: Jean's mother, nineteen, married Jean's father when he was fifty-two. Jean's mother died first , however, when Jean , the youngest girl of eight children, was six years old. Helen Wong grew up in a town that had very few Chinese families . She began playing piano for the local church when she was very young and became accustomed to performing in many different settings. At sixteen, she joined the Peerless Dance Orchestra. In education,Jean followed a traditional path for an American woman, graduating from California Polytechnic institute in domestic science. She then worked as a secretary for a city attorney before coming to Chicago where she was hired as a pianist to accompany singer Valerie Beck. While living in Chicago, Jean traveled to New York to perform at the Palace Theatre. Her music career, however, was short-lived. During the Depression, it became especially difficult for musicians to make a living. ln 1933, Jean sold souvenirs at Chicago 's world's fair, A Century of Progress, and later worked as a hostess at the Morrison Hotel. ln Chicago at this time , when politicians and businessmen convened in fancy hotel dining rooms , Italian maitre d's and Chinese bread girls were part of the ambiance-non-white and Mediterrean immigrants generally could find only low paying, service-oriented jobs. ln particular, Chinese exclusion laws effectively discouraged both Americanborn Chinese and Chinese immigrants from pursuing professional careers in _the United States. Within these limitations, Jean managed to befriend many politicians and businessmen, including Alderman Frank Rori,

A

Chinatown I 49



Chinatown continued to grow. This scene from l 952, photographed by). Slierwin Murphy. looks north on Wrntwo,·th Aven11e at Cermak Road .


whose legislative district included Chinatown. Despite the origins of their friendship , she boasted that, unlike other women at the time, she never had to sit on a politician's lap in order to be his friend. At thirty-six, Helen Wong married an immigrant Chinese, Thomas Jean, a magician and waiter at a Chinese restaurant. Through her association with Thomas Jean , who had many friends in Chinatown, Helen WongJean became acquainted with the Chinese community and met Mansie O'Young. Together, Jean and O'Young developed ideas for bolstering Chinatown's faltering image, which had been reported by the media to be at the center of tong wars and opium trade. Jean worked to debunk negative stereotypes of Chinese people because, as a performer, she had experienced the ways Americans reacted to images of "exotic" Chinese women and the evil Fu Manchu. Jean became the only full-time employee of the Chinese American Civic Council and was in charge of developing Chinatown tours, coordinating the Chinese ew Year's parade, and writing the community newsletter.

Dr. Margaret Lin, 1888-1973

I

n personality, Dr. Margaret Lin was somewhere between Jean and O 'Young: a flamboyant dresser who loved social events in Chinatown , she was also serious in her commitment to serving the medical needs of the Chinese community. She had lived in Chicago two different times-first, with Mrs . Chin Foin while attending medical school from 1910 to 1917 at the University of Illinois ; and then , in 1941 , when she moved back from China to pursue a career in medicine in the United States . Lin was sympathetic to the needs and struggles of the immigrant Chinese population in Chicago. Born in China and educated at an all-male school, Fuzhou College, Lin apparently came to Chicago in 1910 disguised as a man specifically to get past American immigration officials, who were known to harass female Chinese students. When Lin completed her medical training in Chicago in 1917, she fulfilled her mother's wish that she return to China, where she eventually became president and head of surgery for Fujian General Hospital and editor of

Above: Dr: Margaret Lin and Helen Wong jean in 1970, at the induction of Helen Wong jean into Chicago's Senior Citizen's Hall of Fame. Opposite: D1: Margaret Lin. This photograph was probably taken between 1910 and 1917, when Lin attended medical school al the University of lllinois. 52 I Chicago H1 sw1y I Spnng 1998


Ch,narown I 53


This photograph, tal1en from Olga Hunche's scrapbooh, shows some of the members of ihe Chinese Children's .Rhythm Band at a ceremony welcoming Madame Chiang Kai-Sheh to Chicago in 1943.

the prestigious China Medical Journal. ln the 1940s, when Lin emigrated permanently to the United States, employment opportunities for immigrant Chinese medical doctors were still somewhat limited, and her medical experience in China was not easily translated into an American context. In order to develop a full-time career in medicine, Lin chose to practice medicine in Chinatown on weekends (the first female Chinese doctor to practice medicine there) and to work full-time as a physician's assistant for the Cook County tuberculosis center in Oak Forest. The latter position gave her an affiliation as a staff member at the University of lllinois at Chicago. Tuberculosis had reached epidemic proportions in China and was a concern in the United States as well. Lin's experience in China made it natural for her to develop a career in this area. Although some Westerntrained Chinese physicians obtained state licenses to practice medicine in Illinois, Lin did not. Apparently, this did not prevent her from attending to patients as a doctor at Louise Burg Hospital in Chinatown. After joining the Chinese Women's Club of Chicago, Lin developed friendships with Mansie O'Young and Helen Wong Jean. The club worked closely with the Red Cross in China and Lin's expertise was particularly relevant. By the 1940s, daughters and granddaughters of old Chinatown families were among the college-educated members of the women 's club. Because Lin had had a dynamic career in China and was western-educated, the "younger generation" regarded Dr. Lin as a model. And, because she demonstrated her filial piety by returning to China in 1917 at her mother's request, she was respected by the "older generation" in Chinatown. Lin linked generations of Chinese Americans. 54 I Chicago Histmy I Spnng 1998

Dr. Margaret Lin, along with Mansie O'Young and Helen Wong Jean, was one of the "big three" women in Chinatown who worked on community projects. Nominated by the Chinatown community, both Lin and Jean were inducted into Chicago's Senior Citizen's Hall of Fame, Lin in 1968 and Jean in 1970. ln addition, Lin continued to socialize in Chinatown with Mrs. Chin Foin, a friendship that began in 1910 when both women were twenty-one years old, and lasted until Dr. Lin died in 1973. Olga Huneke, 1884-1973

hile the women discussed above were continually identified as an integral part of Chinatown history, another woman who was not Chinese remains part of the "community memory." Olga Huneke, a German American kindergarten teacher began working at an elementary school when Chinatown first moved from Clark and Van Buren Streets to Twenty-second Street (now Cermak Road) and Wentworth Avenue in the early 1900s. Even after she retired from teaching in 1949, Huneke remained a major fundraiser for the Chinese Christian Union Church 's nursery school program until the early 1970s. Huneke was known outside of Chinatown because she was a subject of a children's book written by Clara lngram Judson , The Green Ginger Jar. Published in 1949, it was the first in a series They Came From dealing with children's experiences as immigrants in the United States. Olga Huneke came from a wealthy but emotionally tumultuous family. Her father, an immigrant German entrepreneur, and mother, a musician, were divorced in 1879 when Huneke was thirteen years old.

W


ln her position as kindergarten teacher, she created the Chinese Children's Rhythm Band at Haines School in Chinatown, which performed a combination of European classical, traditional Chinese, and patriotic music. ln this group activity, Chinese children performed eloquently. Their enthusiasm for the band surprised both Huneke and the children's parents. Within the span of three decades, generations of Huncke's kindergarten students performed throughout Chicago, most notably at a program in 1943 welcoming Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. Significantly, during the McCarthy era when white Americans were particularly distrustful of Chinese people, the children and Huneke served to neutralize the negative stereotypes. This was co mplemented by Huncke's fervent support of Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party (a.k.a . the Kuomindang) on the Chinese mainland and Chinatown's pro-Nationalist stance. Huneke connected to the Chinese population in Chicago in ways that Mrs. Chin Fain, Mansie O'Young, Helen Wong Jean , and Dr. Margaret Lin did not. For example, when Mrs. Chin Fain first moved to Chicago, she lived in the original Chinatown at Clark and Van Buren Streets but did not relocate to the second site at Twenty-second Street and Wentworth Avenue. In contrast, Huneke , who had just begun teaching at Haines School in the "new" neighborhood , witnessed the relocation and became aware of the financial and emotional difficulties encountered by the immigrant Chinese population. As a kindergarten teacher, she provided the children's introduction to the Protestant-based public school system and American culture. When Mansie O'Young came to Chicago in the 1920s, she was accustomed to a high standard of living and, as a result, did not identify \vith the plight of poor immigrant

Chinese laborers and their families in Chinatown until the Depression and, thus , did not witness the relocation process the way Huneke had. Finally, Dr. Margaret Lin came to know Chicago's Chinatown at the encl of rhe tumultuous Chinese exclusion period . By enlisting the support of Jean and O'Young, however, Olga Huneke provided a context for them to learn about the evolution of Chicago's Chinatown. At various times , Jean played the piano for the Chinese Children's Rhythm Band. O'Young contributed substantially to Huncke's fundraising efforts on behalf of the Chinese Christian Union Church. One Chinatown resident recalled that Huneke, Jean, and O'Young were "as thick as thieves." Though Fain and Lin did not combine community service with Chicago politics, both supported and admired Huncke's commitment to education and acculturation . Unlike laws governing other ethnic communities, exclusion laws prevented the immigration of Chinese women for over sixty years, from 1882 until 1943. The ratio of men to women in the Chinese community was one hundred to one during the earliest days of the exclusion period , and remained as uneven as ten to one during the 1940s, only equaling out after the laws were repealed . In the exclusion period, a small group of women-Mrs. Chin Fain, Mansie O'Young, Helen Wong Jean, Dr. Margaret Lin , and even Olga Huneke-made contributions to Chicago's Chinatown community out of proportion to their numbers .

I LLUSTRATION CREDITS: I 44-45,CHS,DN86,653; 46 top; Wong Yuk Yan 2005/1546; 46 bottom; Chin F Fain 440; 47, Mansi e Chung O'Young 2005/2730, 46-47, Courtesy of

National Archives: Chinese Case Files; Segregated Chinese Files; District No. 9, Chicago, IL; Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85; National Archives and Records Ad111inistrationGreat Lakes Region, Chicago; 48, Courtesy of Susan Lee Moy collection; 50-51, CHS; 52, Cow1esy of Susan Lee Moy collection; 53, courtesy of Gladys Fain and G. H. Wang; 54, from Olga Huneke scrapbook, CHS; 55, courtesy of Susan Lee Moy collection.

Peggy Spitzer Ch1"istoff is a China scholm: She reviews books for the Library Journal and has taught Chinese histo1y and foreign policy for Boston University and the University of Cincinnati. She researc!1ed the history of Chicago's Chinatown and wrote entries for the forthcoming Historical Encyclopedia of Chicago Women.

Olga f-luncl1e (far left) at a buffet in Chinatown, c. 1950. Her sister Ada stands next to her. Chinatown I 55


MAKING HISTORY

Ardis Krainik: In Memorium TIM O THY J. GILFOYLE

U

nder Ardis Krainik, the Lyric Opera of Chicago became world renowned. Many observers now consider the Lyric to be the finest opera company in the United States, surpassing even New York's Metropolitan Opera and the San Francisco Opera. At the time of her retirement in 1996, Krainik was regarded as "the most powerful woman in opera." Krainik was raised as a Christian Scientist in the small town of Manitowoc , Wisconsin. Shortly after World War 11, she came to Chicago to study speech at orthwestern University, earning her bachelor's degree in 1951. She returned to Wisconsin to teach speech and drama for two years at Horlick High School in Racine. Krainik joined the Lyric shortly after its founding in 1954. Historically, women have been at the forefront of opera in Chicago. Mary Garden directed Chicago's opera company from 1921 to 1922. Carol Fox was a founder of the Lyric Theater of Chicago, which was later renamed the Lyric Opera. Krainik made the most of this tradition, her biography personifying a female version of a Horatio Alger tale. Beginning as a typist, she moved on to secretary, chorus member (1955-59), comprimario mezzo , assistant manager (1960-75), artistic administrator (1975-80), and, finally, general director (1981-96) . . Paradoxically, Krainik nearly left Chicago before making her epic imprint. In 1981, she had accepted the directorship of the Australian Opera in Sydney when the Lyric board suddenly dismissed her mentor, Carol Fox. Krainik was named director. Having handled the Lyric 's day-to-day operations for two decades, she was well prepared. The Lyric then was on the verge of bankruptcy with a $309,000 debt and a $2.5 million endowment fund drained dry. Within t\vo years, the company was back on its feet again and playing to 98 percent capacity houses. By 1991 , the Lyric was setting new records for subscribership, attendance, seats sold, contributions, and number of donors . Krainik happily doubled the length of the Lyric season, from twelve to twentythree weeks (mid-September to February), to meet the growing demand . Ardis Krainik put a distinctively American stamp on the Lyric, while making it more innovative and dynamic. The company, for example, developed a reputation for casting its 9peras with world-renowned stars. She was the first impresario of a leading American theater to engage stage director Peter Sellars, initially for Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mihado in 1983 and then for Wagner's Tannhauser 56 I Chicago HistotJ I Spnng 1998

Author's note: Mahing History Award recipient Ardis Krainik's illness prevented her from giving an interview. She died on]anuaiy 18, 1997. Opposite: Ardis Krain iii, early in her career at the Lyric Opera.


Making History I 57


in 1987. At the same time , Krainik pushed more offbeat works with flair and imagination. She initiated "Toward the 21st Century"-the staging each season of an American work and a twentieth-century European classic. Philip Glass 's Satyagraha (1987) , Dominick Argento 's The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe (1990), Prokofiev's The Gambler (1991) , William Bolcom's McTeague (1992) , and Carlisle Floyd's Susannah (1993) were among the company's successes. "If American opera doesn' t make it now, it never will ," argued Krainik. "The last decade [of the century] is the one in which I think American opera can flower into its own individuality-not just wanned-over European operas, but very American. " Krainik took chances. In 1989, she fired tenor Luciano Pavarotti because he had canceled twenty-six of forty-one scheduled performances at the Lyric over a nine-year period. People admired "' her for defending the integrity of the Lyric. During her tenure, the Lyric purchased its home. The Civic Opera House, built by Samuel Insult in 1929, went into receivership during the Depression and then into private hands. The Lyric leased it for nearly forty years, but in 1993 acquired ownership of the theater. A $ 100 million campaign led by William Graham resulted in a completed renovation in 1996. Krainik's success at the Lyric led to numerous appointments on the boards of other organizations, including the Northern Trust Corporation, Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs , the Illinois Arts Alliance Foundation, Northwestern University, the American Scandinavian Council, the World Trade Center Chicago Association, and the Economic Club of Chicago. She served as president of OPERA America and the Commercial Club of Chicago. Her numerous awards were equally impressive : Commendatore della Repubblica ltaliana; the Order of Lincoln from the State of lllinois ; the Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria (1994) ; the YWCA Outstanding Achievement in the Arts (1981) ; the Northwestern University Alumni Merit Award (1986) ; the WBBM-Radio Woman of the Year (1987); the Boys and Girls Club Chicagoan of the Year (1987) ; Crain 's Chicago Business Executive of the Year (1990); European Union Friendship Award (1995); Anti-Defamation League Woman of Achievement Award (1995). Her seventeen honorary degrees include recognition from the University oflllinois at Chicago, DePaul, Loyola, Northern Illinois, Northwestern , and Roosevelt Universities, as well as Barat, Columbia, and St. Xavier Colleges. In 1996, she became the first woman to receive the Chicago Medal of Merit, the highest civilian award given by the city. Upon her retirement, a gala concert with the Lyric orchestra and twentyfive artists was held in her honor on October 13, 1996. The main auditorium at the Lyric was renamed in her honor. Henry Fogel, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, paid tribute to her: "This woman was one of the few people to whom the overused word 'legend' applies. " Few disagree . 58 I Chicago Histo,y I Sp,ing 1998

Ardis Krainik, at the 1996 Making History Awards ceremony with Eppie Lederer (Ann Landers). FOR FURTHER READING: j A short biography of Krainik is J ohn Von Rhein , "Th e Krainik Years" in Bravi: Th e Lyric Opera of Chicago (New York: Abbeville Press, 199 4). Her obituary is in th e Chicago Tri bune, January 19, 1997.


MAKING HISTORY

Ecum·e nicism and Philanthropy in Chicago: Interviews with William B. Graham and Kenneth B. Smith TIMOTHY J . GILFOYLE

ew Making History Award recipients are better known for their community activism than their profes ional success. William B. Graham and the Reverend Kenneth B. Smith arc such exceptions. While Graham tran formed Baxter International into a leading multinational firm over the past half century, his philanthropy has dramatically altered the cultural landscape of Chicago. Smith, a prominent Congregational mini tcr, author, and president of Chicago Theological Seminary, is be t known for his leading role in the public chool and social welfare reform movements in the late twentieth-century city. William Graham is a South Sider. Born on July 14, 1911 , at South Chicago Hospital , Graham spent his entire chi ldhood on Chicago's South Side, living on inety-third Street until about age ten , and then on Seventy-ninth Street. Both of his parents, William and Elizabeth Burden Graham, were teachers , although hi father later became a lawyer. "O ne of the factors that in0uenccd my education was geographical location," admits Graham . After attending t. Patrick's chool at incry-rifth Street and Commercial Avenue, he went to Mt. Carmel High School. By senior year, he remembers , " we're in the heart of the Dcpre sion, so the finances were a little tight. My father was doing nicely in his law practice but it still wa not such that it would have sent me to one of the lvy League school . So following Mt. Carmel, I looked at the various alternatives." The University of Chicago was o close that Gra ham could live at home while ancnding a leading college. "r\nd then in tum l stayed there nine years." Elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi (the honor society in chemistry) before graduating in 1932 , Graham began graduate work at Chicago. He vividly remembers working as a research assistant and writing examination questions for freshman chemistry courses for seventy cents an hour. Then his father suddenly died, forcing Graham to make a fundamental career decision. "I sv,ritched over into law at that time and went to law school," remaining at the University of Chicago and graduating in 1936. "l think that you have to think of my background as really being one that came out of the Depression, [which] influenced my thinking in many ways over the years," says Graham.

F

Wil/ia111 Grc1lw111 at age jive.

Mahrng /-Iisto,y I 59


60 I Chicago H1sto1y I Sp1111g 1998


While Graham spent the Depression years at the University of Chicago, Kenneth Smith was growing up in Montclair, New Jersey. Smith, the president of Chicago Theological Seminary since 1984, was born on February 19, 1931, one of ten children. His parents had migrated from Richmond , Virginia, in 1926. "I had a wonderful childhood," says Smith without hesitation. "Montclair was a wonderful place to have been born and reared, and I was there until l fmished high school and then back and forth while I was going away to school." Although African Americans comprised only 10 percent of the population of Montclair, tlie public schools were integrated, and Smith recalls few racial incidents while growing up. Simply put, "it was a great place to live." Smith attended college at Virginia Union in Richmond, intending to teach history. Then a devout Roman Catholic, Smith even contemplated entering the priesthood. He soon became active in the YMCA and Student Christian Movement, eventually becoming national chair of the latter. More significantly, Smith's participation in the Student Christian Movement led him to abandon Catholicism for Congregationalism. "I had learned about the participatory environment in a Protestant church while I was in Richmond, and that was very appealing to me," admits Smith. In contrast to Roman Catholicism with its Latin Mass and pre-Vatican [l liturgy, "you participated in the service." The Student Christian Movement further exposed Smith to the Bible and other theological writings. "It began to dawn on me that these people weren' t all going to hell, " he remembers. 'They weren't all heathens. When I was a boy and I went to mass , it was not unusual for the pastor to refer to these other people as pagans. That was the language that was used. Well, I discovered they're not all pagans. " Similarly, William Graham's early career took an unexpected shift. While practicing patent law after law school, one of his early clients was Baxter Laboratories. Then a small company of only two hundred employees, Baxter had been founded in 1931 by Dr. Ralph Falk of Idaho and Dr. Don Baxter of Glendale, California. The company experimented with parenteral therapies-the administration or infusion of fluids , nutrients, or medicines through pathways other than the digestive tract. Shortly thereafter, Baxter rented warehouse space on Navy Pier and opened a Midwest office. ln 194 7, the growing company moved to the former George Pullman estate in Morton Grove. Since 1975 , Baxter has been headquartered in Deerfield. Graham joined Ba,'Xter International as vice president and manager in 1945. Eight years later, he was named president, and eventually served as chief executive officer from 1960 to 1980. Graham "retired" in 1980, but continued as board chairman from 1980 to 1985 , as senior chairman from 1985 to 1996, and since then as chairman emeritus. When Graham arrived in 1945, Baxter's annual commercial sales were $1.6 million. "The next several years I spent learning how to run a manufacturing business and attempted to solve many of the problems that were inherent in the arrangement that we had at the time, some of them legal, some of them labor problems, and some of them manufacturing problems." Graham apparently solved many of them. When he retired as chief executive officer in 1980, Baxter's commercial sales were $1.3 billion, nearly a tenfold increase over the course of his career. Even more impressive was Ba,xter's level of growth. Under Graham's leadership from 1954 to 1981, Baxter had an unmatched record of twenty-seven consecutive years of earnings increased for a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent, triple the average rate for the Fortune 500 (which Baxter joined in 1971). Indeed, the 20 percent compound annual growth in earnings per share from 1954 to 1983 surpassed every other competitor, including BristolMyer (15.6 percent) , Johnson &: Johnson (13.6 percent), Abbott (12.6 per-

Opposite: The Reverend Kenneth Graham Smith ~1akmg H1sto1y I 61


cent) , and Pfizer (10.5 percent). Baxter's impressive success led one writer to conclude that "Baxter was Bill Graham and Bill Graham was Baxter. " Graham is quick to point out, however, that Baxter is frequently misclassified. Often lumped with leading pharmaceutical firn1s like Abbott and BristolMyers , Baxter is more accurately a manufacturer of hospital products. "We did a few little things in drugs and had one highly successful one [Synthroid, a synthetic thyroid developed in 1951] over a period of time ," contends Graham. "But in general, our business was hospital products, and that consisted of the intravenous (IV) solutions and the blood transfusion equipment. As you look on over the years , this was an area that was in contradistinction to what the major pharmaceutical firms were doing. They, in some instances, were in these hospital products businesses, but it was a secondary business to them and not a primary source of activity. " Statistics bear Graham out. As late as 1967, LV solutions and systems represented almost 70 percent of Baxter's sales. By 1973, Baxter controlled over 50 percent of the domestic IV market, Abbott only 25 percent. Graham took a "contrarian approach" in building Baxter. "We tried to be the Wee Willie Keeler of hospital and medical products," claims Graham. This baseball Hall of Famer's slogan, Graham recalls , was "hit 'em where they ain't. " Baxter never relied upon a single "heavyweight" product like a Xerox machine or IBM card tabulator. Instead, the firm invested in product applications ignored by the dominant pharmaceutical companies of the 1940s and l950s-sterile packaging, plastics , and fluid technology. In developing specialty market niches, Baxter thus avoided direct competition with larger competitors. Karl Bays, fonner chairman of American Hospital Supply, wrote in 1983 that Graham "built a small, regional producer of intravenous solutions into an international healthcare firm. " This strategy demanded that Baxter cut its manufacturing costs. Graham instigated a plan quickly imitated by other postwar Chicagoland manufacturers . In 1950, Baxter opened a manufacturing plant in Cleveland, Mississippi, thus becoming the first national company to venture into the deep Delta under Mississippi 's "Balance Agriculture with Industry" program. Successfully avoiding the high labor costs of Chicago, Baxter soon established factories in tax-shelter areas like Greenville, Kentucky (1951) , Puerto Rico (1958, 1965, 1967), Colombia (1950s) , Mountain Home, Arkansas (1963) , Kingstree, South Carolina (1963, 1966), Alliston, Ontario (1963) , Thetford , England (1965) , Hays, Kansas (1968) , and Ireland. Other Chicagoland manufacturers ranging from Abbott to Motorola followed suit. Like Graham , Smith's career followed unexpected paths. He moved to Chicago in 1954, to serve as program secretary for the Wabash Street YMCA, historically the African American branch of the Yin Chicago. "I never thought that l was going to stay in Chicago, " Smith confesses. "l thought l was going to come here and work and make some money and save some money and go back East. That was always the goal, to go back East. And for ten years my mother thought I was going to come back, because she would say, 'Aren't you ever coming home again? ' Well, after ten years she began to understand that perhaps this is going to be home, and she started coming [here to visit]. " After three years at the Wabash Street Y, Smith became associate minister at the Congregational Church of Park Manor at 7000 South Park Avenue (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive). In 1961 , he was named pastor and organizing minister of Trinity Church at 532 West inety-fifth Street, now the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ. In 1966, he became minister of urban affairs for the Community Renewal Society. Two years later, he was named senior minister at the Church of the Good Shepherd. 62 I Chicago H1sto,y I Sp1ing 1998

William Graham in the lobby of the Lyric Opera. Graham 's leading role in a fundraising d1ive provided funds that allowed the Lyric to purchase and renovate its office and peiforrnance space.


~laking H1sto1y I 63


When Smith arrived at the parsonage at 5 700 South Prairie Avenue, everyone else was leaving-literally. "It was very clear to me that you had a lot of absentee landlords," recalls Smith, "and buildings were being permitted to just deteriorate. " Just a few blocks from St. Anselm's Roman Catholic Church, immortalized in James T. Farrell's novel Studs Lanigan , the oncestable neighborhood around Good Shepherd was plagued by abandonment and arson. But Smith never despaired. "I always had this dream that this church could be a part of the rebuilding of this community." Smith quickly instituted preand after-school programs, nutritional programs for retired persons, and special teen programs, many in conjunction with the lllinois Department of Children and Family Services. The Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia strongly influenced Smith. Smith remembers a Sullivan speech to other ministers: "I think it is God's will that our churches are planted in the inner city, and we're there for a reason. And the reason is, we ought to transform the places where we are. I don' t think the War on Poverty can do that ; 1 think that's up to the church." Smith was so impressed with Sullivan's fervor that "l came back, and I shared this passion with the members of our congregation." The results were Good Shepherd Manor and Good Shepherd Tower, specially constructed housing projects for the elderly. The former opened in 1979 at 6720 South Cornell Street,just south ofJackson Park in the Parkside neighborhood. Five years later, Good Shepherd Tower opened at 55 East Garfield Boulevard . Good Shepherd thus became the first African American congregation in Chicago to build housing for the elderly and handicapped using "Section 202" funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Smith's foray into subsidized housing marked him as a new breed of religious reformer. Prior to 1950, most inner-city ministers primarily concerned themselves with their individual congregations. Social services were devoted to finding jobs, educating children, and tending to the wants of their members . ln recent decades, some inner-city ministers shifted their focus away from traditional types of ministry to an emphasis on urban housing and physical infrastructure. Ministers like Smith more closely resemble settlement-house founders such as Graham Taylor and Jane Addams a century ago. More than ever, churches have become nonprofit corporations. In Chicago and other American cities, religious congregations historically sold their properties and fled neighborhoods experiencing physical decline. Smith believes "You stay in a community, you don ' t run from the problems. You stay there so that you can help participate in the transformation." The benefits extended beyond specific or narrow congregations. When Good Shepherd Manor opened, Smith recalls that out of about 150 apartments, "only about twelve members of the church moved to it." Smith constantly reminded his flock that 64 I Chicago H,sw,y I Spnng 1998

Tiie Reverend Smith with his family at th e 1996 Malling f-Iisto,y Awards ceremony. Left to ,-ight: s011 K1isten, wife Gladys, Kenneth 5111it/i, and clallghtcr Kourtney.


"this is a part of our ministry. We are providing a safe and secure environment for residents of Chicago." If Smith's ministry marked a new brand of religious advocacy, Graham's tenure at Baxter coincided with the emergence of modem clinical medicine. Dr. Bernard Fantus opened the nation's first blood bank in 1936 at Cook County Hospital, a development that produced a massive demand for intravenous products. Meanwhile, the health care industry exploded. Hospitals increased from 4,444 nationwide in 1946 to 5,407 in 1964. In 1946, hospitals employ.ed approximately five hundred thousand; in 1970, two million. Health care finance experienced a virtual revolution: total insurance benefits rose from only $772 million in 1948 to $8.7 billion in 1964. By 1990, the $800 billion American health care system accounted for about 40 percent of world 's estimated health care expenditures and investments. Baxter's major medical breakthroughs illustrate how American health care changed so dramatically in the half-century after William Graham joined the company. Consider intravenous solutions. Before 1940, the administration of almost any IV solution took up to six hours , required continual supervision by medical personnel , and suffered from high rates of infection. Baxter changed this . In the 1940s, the Transfuso Vac system transformed modern blood banking. The perfection of the Fenwal Multiple Blood-Pack Closed System in 1959 opened the door for modem blood component therapy. Later, Baxter pioneered disposable tubing, thereby eliminating patient reactions to reused rubber tubing. Lighter "one-way " bottles and new solutions were Baxter products. The development of the Viaflex container system in 1970 allowed disposable plastic to replace glass. Thereafter, containers were easier to ship, unbreakable when used , and closed to prevent air and contamination from entering the bloodstream. "Plastics" became the object of myriad jokes after the release of The Graduate in 1967. But Graham points out they were critical to modern health care. The development of a "co mplete system of providing all of our solutions in plastic containers enabled us to do many things that could not have been done and which also permitted us to do this at a cost-efficient basis. " Plastic made blood and other transfusions cheap. "Today the cost of IV solutions is not too different from what it was when this company was first formed in 1931 , namely about seventy-five cents a liter at the hospital level ," claims Graham. "If the cost had escalated merely in line with the inflation index , it would be about nine dollars ." Kidney dialysis was another treatment pioneered by Baxter. Removing waste materials and toxins from the bloodstream when kidney fun ction was lost or impaired was impossible before 1955. When Baxter and Dr. Willem Kolff released the first completely disposable dialyzer, or artificial kidney, in 1956, it set the stage for kidney dialysis eight years later. Although most treatments now occur in specialized kidney centers, Graham points out that "the idea was developed for the hospital." The kidney dialysis machine literally saved and extended thousands of lives. For Graham, it "is the one [Baxter product] that is more important to me than any of the others." Graham reminds observers that "commercialization" was often the key Baxter contribution in medical breakthroughs. Hospitals and medical institutions were reluctant to accept new innovations like artificial organs, long-term dialysis, and bubble m,.)'genators for open heart surgery. When Baxter released the first artificial kidney in 1956, for example , they were donated to Passavant and Michael Reese hospitals. Neither used them. The products represented not only new, untried technologies, but few were trained in their application. The story was repeated in scores of ocher hospitals. Such reactions only made potential manMaking History

I 65


ufacturers wary of investing in medical technologies , which in turn prevented the development from reaching and benefiting patients. By commercializing these breakthroughs, Baxter hastened the adoption of the newest medical innovations. Graham remembers "that in the case of kidney dialysis , there were people who had done kidney dialysis on an experimental basis, and one of them was Dr. Kolff, but it was not a commercial device. lt took us about a year to convert it before we put it on the market. " Baxter's work in commercializing artificial kidneys and kidney dialysis created a whole new health care segment: kidney dialysis centers , now numbering about two thousand in U.S. By 1980, more than one hundred thousand people worldwide were kept alive with hemodialysis treatments developed at Baxter. Just as genetic engineering in the next two decades will probably change the future of medicine, Graham argues that the changes in medicine since 1940 were "probably as great or maybe greater than almost any field that you can think of. " By some measures, Graham's and Smith's most inlluential work occurred in areas outside their specific professions. For example, Smith was instrumental in public school reform. After serving on the Chicago Board of Education during the very contentious time between 1979 and 1982 , Smith co-chaired the Educational Summit, Mayor Harold Washington's effort in the 1980s to reform the Chicago public schools. Smith describes Washington as one of the most committed public officials in regard to education, reminding critics that the late mayor participated in "every deliberation [of the Educational Summit] until he died." More telling was Washington's personal library. "l went to his house only on two occasions, right over here in Hyde Park, and he read everything," reminiscences Smith. "I saw on his table books by [theologian] Paul Tillich, and I said, 'What is this doing here?' He said, 'Well, I'm sort of into that. ' I'd never known any mayor that read books. People had told me not to send or give Mrs. Uane] Byrne anything more than two or three paragraphs. But this man was at home with ideas. " The summit eventually generated a report that served as the basis of Chicago's recent public school reform. Legislation passed in Springfield in 1988 decentralized governance of the public school system, creating community-elected governing boards in approximately five hundred schools. These boards were even empowered to hire and fire principals. ln retrospect, Smith has mixed feelings about the impact of school reform. ''A friend of mine said to me that we imposed on the city of Chicago a suburban system. You put into the hands of parents and gave power when in many instances people are not up to that speed. They're thinking about it. They want to participate, and they want to have something meaningful in which to participate. But whether or not they wanted all that responsibility ... , " Smith's voice trails off in a question. 'Tm not worried about the Hyde Parks of the world. The schools that l worry about are the same schools that l always worried about , and that's where you have dysfunctional communities. " A firm believer in integration, Smith's vision of the future rests on what he considers far-sighted decisions like the Supreme Court's Brown v. the Board of Education (1954). He worries that school reform only fanned some !lames of racial division. "The hardest thing for me was when I was on the school board and l was out trying to interpret the consent decree in which we had entered," remembers Smith. "I had young, black parents telling me, 'Oh, that's not our decision, and that's not our court; we want our own schools. ' I fear that. Local control of schools can also lead to that." Smith insists that the Educational Summit never wanted to give total control of schools to a local council. "Some people thought that's what we'd 66 I Chicago Hi.story I Spnng 1998


William Graf1C1n1 at Ba.xtc,· labs in Canada in 1972.

done, but we were very clear on that," Smith maintains. He believes that the current board headed by Paul Vallas "is on the right track . I think you can have participation and meaningful participation where it counts without having also the burden of having to be responsible for all the finances and so forth." Smith's involvement in educational reform also exposed him to some of Chicago's most vitriolic racism. "When I was president of the school board, the president's chair and desk was sort of elevated a little bit like a pulpit. I have no other explanation for the rage that [some white Chicagoans] would display down there, except that I was sitting in that chair. I would have to say things like, 'We don't use that kind of language in the boardroom,' 'Please, your three minutes are up,' and they would scream and yell. It was amazing." Remarkably, Smith holds little bitterness over those experiences. "Part of what was going on was that they saw me as a symbol of the transference of power. Shucks, I was only the president for one year, but part of it was that, part of it was race. And I felt very badly because I certainly tried to project an image of reaching out to everybody and going to every school all over the city. I went places that I would never have gone otherwise." Smith acknowledges that his school board experience had some benefits. "I lost weight, which was probably good. And l learned to drink martinis. " In retrospect, Smith's personal e.'Xperiences in education and reform politics convince him that Chicago's political culture has undergone a considerable transformation in recent decades. Current mayor Richard M. Daley, for instance, simply "doesn't run this city like his father did. [He] can't do it anymore." Smith believes that "people are far more aware. You don' t have the patronage system that you once had, which was all protected. It's very different. " Smith even credits Daley with "doing as good a job as anybody can possibly do ,vith one of these big cities." Federal cutbacks and deindustrialization have made governing cities ever more daunting. "It's incredible to try to piece together the revenues to keep things going. But this is not only true of Chicago, this is true of a lot of major cities. And his father was mayor when there were lots of federal dollars Oowing." Mcil1ing H1sto,y I 67


Like Smith, Graham maintained an active public life. Although he "retired" in 1980, Graham never stopped working. "In today 's business climate, people don 't really retire at the age which you have thought of as being a normal retirement age," remarks Graham. "I think I'm an excellent example of that, because when I retired at age sixty-eight I had lots of other things in mind that l wanted to do. l continued as chairman of the board here, so l was very much involved but not the driving force that l had been. l even quit working Saturdays." During the 1980s, Graham was a director or trustee of Bell and Howell, Borg Warner,John Deere, Field Enterprises, First National Bank of Chicago, orthwest Industries, the Chicago Horticultural Society, the Community Fund of Chicago, the Crusade of Mercy, the University of Chicago, Evanston Hospital, and the Orchestral Association of Chicago. He served on the federal commission chaired by Peter Grace that recommended ways to cut federal government spending. As president of the Chicago Club in 1980, he actively lobbied for the admission of women. As vice chair of the National Park Foundation, he helped organize the highly popular ''.Arts in the Parks" program. His generosity extended from a recent gift of $8 million to the University of Chicago's School of General Studies (as well as funding professorships in the university's law and medical schools) to the founding of the Graham Computer Center at Mt. Carmel High School and the Edna Kanaley Graduate School of Management at St. Xavier College in Evergreen Park, named after his late wife. "In today's civilization, people do things after a nominal retirement that may or may not be second careers," muses Graham. "That's the place where I think that l fit in. ln none of these things did l want to make a career. l participated, but to a limited extent, and l think that this might be a pattern that many executives might continue." Most noteworthy was Graham's leading role in a fundraising drive while serving as president of the Lyric Opera. The campaign enabled the Lyric to not only renovate but purchase its performing space. In conjunction with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), claims Graham, "we set a target of $200 million , of which $100 million would come from indusny. " The Lyric and CSO in turn , successfully raised $50 million apiece. "So today Lyric Opera owns its own theater," proclaims a proud Graham. "It owns its office space ,vi thin the [Civic Opera] building." Graham believes that New York and Chicago are the only American cities ,vith business communities willing to and capable of raising $100 million for the arts . He credits the unique qualities of Chicago. "Chicago has a more cohesive business community than any city of its size, which I attribute to the fact that the leaders of the major companies all get to know each other pretty well, partly because a lot of them live on the orth Shore so that they're neighbors and see each other often. In addition to this, you have such things as the Commercial Club which provides a continuity." Smith's community activism has long followed an ecumenical approach. At Church of the Good Shepherd, he organized an interchurch group called the Washington Park Council of Churches, through which he met the pastor of St. Anselm's Roman Catholic Church. One winter, he remembers, "the furnace gave out in that huge building, so they moved over into the school. " Normally, St. Anselm's would have requested assistance from the archdiocese, but Smith suggested an unusual solution: "We decided that we would all go to our congregations to help raise money to have their furnace repaired. That was my first little foray into that level of ecumenicity." lt was not his last. In the 1980s, while on the executive committee of the Chicago Community Trust (CCT), Smith actively supported giving $2 million to the Archdiocese of Chicago for the support of inner-city parochial school 68 I Chicago Hisw,y I Sp,ing 1998


development projects. "I'd always argued that for philanthropy to dismiss religious institutions, because they're fearful of sectarianism, was absolutely wrong. Churches do more than just serve their own members. They're involved in a variety of things. This was a case in poinr-the church sponsored schools for people in community. l never let go of that. The next time around we funded early childhood education in Catholic schools. Since that time, we have funded the Lutheran School Association. Those were breakthroughs and were very important." From 1983 to 1996, Smith also served on the executive committee of CCT Founded in 1915, the group is the second oldest community foundation in the United States ; its $402 million endowment makes it the nation's fourth largest. CCT is one of nearly four hundred community foundations that annually distribute grants totaling $650 million, embodying a nationwide "community foundation movement. " Since the 1960s, such foundations have not only funded important studies, but served as catalysts for urban change by challenging numerous institutions to be more responsive to various urban problems. One recent report concluded that CCT is one of only three foundations in the United States willing to create, finance, and develop such a wide array of special initiatives. Smith's involvement in CCT originated when he helped establish Leadership Greater Chicago. Smith and others believed that the volunteer structure for many community groups was aging. ''What we needed to do is to identify the emerging young leaders and tap them and train them-not how to be board members-but on the issues that affect metropolitan Chicago." Smith became a founding board member and its first chair.

The 1996 Mal1ing History Award winners with CTIS president and director Douglas Greenberg and then-board chair Philip Hum111e1'. Seated: Ardis Krainik. Standing, left to light: William Baxte,; Philip Hummer, Ernie Banl1s, Kenneth Smith , and Douglas Greenberg.

~/a/wig H1sto1y I 69


Smith dismisses charges that the leadership and children's initiatives were "elitist" in the groups they identified and targeted. Leadership Greater Chicago, argues Smith, encompassed a wide array of occupations. "Some of these people are professionals, some of them work for government, some work in community organizations. I do not think that that's an elitist approach. The net was spread widely." The same was true for the Children, Youth and Families Initiative started in 1983 to reform children's service delivery systems. "I argued that the Trust was ultimately responsible for how its funds are expended in the community, so it had to have a measure of involvement. The goal o( the project was to see i( we could, through collaborative efforts, improve leadership, to see if we could improve the way services were delivered to children, youth, and families in the neighborhood." Smith admonishes those who charge elitism for ignoring the numerous and ongoing community forums organized by the CCT "Perhaps they [critics] didn't see that as a way in which the community fed the thinking of the Trust. Whenever we've had committees around initiatives, we've peopled those committees with more than just members o( the Trust. People had access to me very easily. I mean, l was a pastor for years, and people knew where to find me. I wasn't a corporate leader. I answer my own phone." Graham and Smith recognize that more than just personal fortune or professional success has graced their lives. Their philanthropy and ecumenicism have enabled each to influence institutions and movements beyond the narrow confines of career. "I'm particularly pleased and delighted that I was able to do something where I could make the contributions financially to the company, to my career, and for myself," admits a grateful Graham, "and at the same time be doing something that benefited the health of literally thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people." Yet, Smith woni.es that too few share his ecumenical outlook, a willingness to not only accept but openly work with groups and individuals that others might not tolerate. "I think that's the greatest challenge that we're going to have as a nation in the next century," predicts Smith. "We celebrate our pluralism, but that's not enough. We are one nation and one people, and I'm still committed to that."

I LLUSTRATION CREDIT S: I 57 and 58, CHS; 59, courtesy of William B. Graham; 60, courtesy of the Chicago Community Trust; 63, courtesy of William B. Graham; 64, CHS; 67, courtesy of William B. Graham; 69 , CHS

FOR FURT H ER RE AD ING : I The commissioned corporate biography of

Baxter is Thomas G. Cody, Innovatingfor Health: The Sto,y of Baxter International (Deerfield, Ill. Baxter International, 1994). Cody's Strategy of a Mega merger (Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1990) describes and analyzes Baxter's merger with the American Hospital Supply Corporation in 1985. Patrick McBride's Genesis of the Artificial Kidney (Deerfield, Ill.: Baxter, 1987) describes Baxter's role in the development of this medical technology. Kenneth B. Smith 's theological views can be found in his books The Lenten Book of Meditation (Eden Publishing, 1976) and The United Church of C111ist: Issues in its Quest for Denominational Identity (Chicago: h-ploration Press, 1985), the latter co-edited with Dorothy C. Bass. A recent work on the Chicago Community Trust is National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, The Chicago Community Trust and the Disenfranchised: Caring, Controlling and Cautious (Washington, D.C., 1995). 70 I Chicago Histo,y I Spnng 1998

Timothy). Gilfoyle is an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, a scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library, and the author of City of Eros: ew York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 (New Yorli: WW Norton, 1992).



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