Chicago
H I STORY THE MAGAZINE OF THE CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM
Summer 2017 VOLUME XLI, NUMBER 2
4 22 3 50
Contents Saving Sabella Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi
A Wheel with a View Russell L. Lewis
Departments From the Editor Rosemary K. Adams
Making History Timothy J. Gilfoyle
C H I C AG O H I S T O RY Editor in Chief Rosemary K. Adams Senior Editor Emily H. Nordstrom Assistant Editor Esther D. Wang On the cover: Broadside of a painting of the Ferris wheel on the Midway Plaisance at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Created by Charles Graham. Chicago History Museum, ICHi-06179
Designer Bill Van Nimwegen
Copyright 2017 by the Chicago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago, IL 60614-6038 312.642.4600 chicagohistory.org ISSN 0272-8540 Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.
Photography Joseph Aaron Campbell Jordyn R. Cox
C H I C AG O H I S T O R I C A L S O C I E T Y OFFICERS
David D. Hiller Chair James L. Alexander Chairman Emeritus Walter C. Carlson First Vice Chair Daniel S. Jaffee Second Vice Chair Tobin E. Hopkins Treasurer Falona Joy Secretary Gary T. Johnson President Russell L. Lewis Executive Vice President and Chief Historian HONORARY T R U S T E E
The Honorable Rahm Emanuel Mayor, City of Chicago
TRUSTEES
James L. Alexander Gregory J. Besio Matthew J. Blakely Denise R. Cade Walter C. Carlson Paul Carlyle Warren K. Chapman Keith L. Crandell Patrick F. Daly Patrick W. Dolan James P. Duff Paul H. Dykstra T. Bondurant French Gregory L. Goldner Timothy J. Gilfoyle Mary Lou Gorno Brad Henderson David D. Hiller Tobin E. Hopkins Cheryl L. Hyman Daniel S. Jaffee Gary T. Johnson Falona Joy Ronald G. Kaminski Randye A. Kogan Judith H. Konen Michael J. Kupetis Robert C. Lee Douglas Levy Russell L. Lewis Ralph G. Moore Michael A. Nemeroff Kelly Noll
M. Bridget Reidy Elizabeth Richter Larry C. Selander Joseph Seliga Jeff Semenchuk Kristin Noelle Smith Samuel J. Tinaglia, Jr. Mark D. Trembacki Ali Velshi Gail D. Ward Jeffrey W. Yingling The Honorable Richard M. Daley
Barbara Levy Kipper W. Paul Krauss Fred A. Krehbiel Joseph H. Levy, Jr. Josephine Louis R. Eden Martin Robert Meers Josephine Baskin Minow Timothy P. Moen Robert J. Moore Potter Palmer John W. Rowe Jesse H. Ruiz Gordon I. Segal Paul L. Snyder
LIFE TRUSTEES
TRUSTEES EMERITUS
Lerone Bennett, Jr. David P. Bolger Laurence O. Booth Stanley J. Calderon John W. Croghan Alison Campbell de Frise Michael H. Ebner Sallie L. Gaines Sharon Gist Gilliam Barbara A. Hamel M. Hill Hammock Susan S. Higinbotham Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M. Henry W. Howell, Jr. Philip W. Hummer Richard M. Jaffee Edgar D. Jannotta, Sr.
Bradford L. Ballast Paul J. Carbone, Jr. Jonathan Fanton Thomas M. Goldstein Cynthia Greenleaf David A. Gupta Jean Haider Nena Ivon Erica C. Meyer Eboo Patel Nancy K. Robinson April T. Schink Margaret Snorf Noren Ungaretti Joan Werhane
HONORARY LIFE TRUSTEE
The Chicago History Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Chicago Park District on behalf of the people of Chicago.
FROM THE EDITORI
Rosemary K. Adams
I
n our winter 2017 issue, we featured photographs of snowy Chicago, showcasing not only seasonal images but one of Chicagoans’ greatest sources of civic pride: our ability to withstand cold and wintery weather for months at a time. As it turns out, for the first time since people began recording the city’s weather, there was no measureable snowfall during the months of both January and February in 2017. In this issue, we highlight a symbol of summer amusements, the Ferris wheel, and hope it does not deprive us of warm weather. Russell L. Lewis’s article explores the Ferris wheel, created for Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The most popular attraction at the fair, the Ferris wheel continued a tradition of urban observation towers, symbolized most famously by the Eiffel Tower, while heeding fair organizer Daniel H. Burnham’s call for something innovative that demonstrated American technological superiority. In 1920s Chicago, newspapers published a steady stream of sensational articles about Cook County Jail’s Murderesses Row, but one defendant’s story revealed the unfairness of a system that penalized immigrants, women, and people deemed unattractive. Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi’s “Saving Sabella” tells the sometimes heart-wrenching story of Sabella Nitti, an Italian immigrant who was charged with murdering her husband. Finally, Timothy Gilfoyle’s Making History column focuses on two of Chicago’s most innovative educators: Paul Adams III, who transformed Providence St. Mel School into what one writer called the “model for urban education,” and Walter Massey, a physicist who has been a national leader in promoting science and technological innovation and an advocate of increasing access to technology.
From the Editor | 3
Saving Sabella E M I L I E L E B E AU LU C C H E S I
Editor’s Note: In 1926, Maurine Watkins wrote the play Chicago, which later become a successful stage and movie musical. The story focused on several glamorous women accused of murdering their husbands or lovers, and she based it loosely on real cases she had covered for the Chicago Tribune. Watkins, however, gave little attention to one defendant: Sabella Nitti. In contrast to the women with whom she shared a cellblock, Sabella was a middle-aged, plain, hardworking Italian immigrant who spoke little to no English. Fortunately, her case gained the attention of Helen Cirese, the daughter of Italian immigrants, who was determined that Sabella would receive a fair trial. In this excerpt from her recently published book Ugly Prey, Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi reveals how Cirese and her colleagues transformed Sabella.
I
n the early afternoon of July 9, 1923, the jury filed back into the courtroom with a verdict. The twelve men kept their eyes low, diverted from the defendants’ table. They knew they were sending this middleaged woman, Sabella Nitti, and her young husband, Peter Crudele, to the gallows.1 . . . Peter and Sabella had been married only two months when they were arrested, along with Sabella’s youngest son, Charley, for the murder of her former husband, Francesco Nitti. Prosecutors claimed the mismatched couple had killed Francesco Nitti the previous July so they could be together. Judge Joseph David peered down at the packed courtroom and looked at the jury. At times during the trial, he tried to warn Sabella’s attorney against making poor choices during questioning. But Judge David was primarily irritated during the trial, particularly with the difficulties in finding a proper translator. He frequently snapped at the Italians watching the trial from the gallery, and gave the impression he wasn’t fond of these people. “Has the jury reached a verdict?” he asked. The foreman, Thomas Murtaugh, stood. “We have, Your Honor.”2 4 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
Sabella and her daughter, Mary. The prison allowed occasional visits with family members.
Above: Peter Crudele first worked as a farmhand on the Nitti farm; after Francesco’s death, he married Sabella in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Right: Sabella was only fifteen when she married Francesco Nitti. After immigrating to the United States, he waited several years before he brought Sabella to live with him.
Judge Joseph David presided over Sabella and Peter’s trial. He attempted to help Sabella’s attorney, Eugene Moran, whose incompetence hurt his client’s chance of acquittal. 6 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
Murtaugh passed two sheets of paper to Matthew Vogel, clerk of the court. Vogel unfolded the papers, and the crackling sound rolled around the quiet courtroom. The room was perfectly still. No one breathed loud or shuffled their feet. After a pause, Vogel spoke and his voice vibrated clearly around the courtroom. “We, the jury,” Vogel read, “find the defendant Peter Crudele guilty of murder, in manner and form as charged in the indictment, and we fix his punishment at death.”3 Vogel moved the papers around.4 He brought the page with Sabella’s verdict to the top and read: “We, the jury, find the defendant Isabella Nitti, otherwise called Sabella Nitti, guilty of murder, in manner and form as charged in the indictment, and we fix her punishment at death.”5 The stunned courtroom sat in silence. Sabella patted her hair and looked hopefully around the room. . . . No one seemed to remember in the moments after the verdict was read that Sabella did not speak English. Or at least no one bothered to translate the verdict so she would understand it. And there was nothing in anyone’s behavior that might have suggested to her that something was different about the day. The jury filed out of the courtroom, as they did at the end of each day. The women who sat in the back rows like they were patrons at a free opera had walked out without looking in her direction. That was typical, too. Her lawyer left abruptly, but he couldn’t communicate with her anyway. What clues did she have? Sabella saw her oldest son, James, push his way through the crowd of spectators and burst out the courtroom doors.6 Her middle son, Michael, was notably absent. Her youngest son, Charley, calmly wandered into the hallway and bought an orange from the peddler. The defendants were separated. Peter was led away to his cell in the men’s jail, and Sabella was led back to the women’s section on the fourth floor, just as she had been each day for the previous week. Until someone translated the verdict, Sabella would not know she was scheduled to hang in just ninety-five days. _________ Reporters lingered in the hallway, walking past Sabella’s barred cell as if she were on display at Lincoln Park Zoo. They carried small notepads in their hands, jotted down information, and sprinted back to the newsroom when they were ready to write. Some of the more Court officials interviewed Sabella’s children. Top: Her oldest son, James (pictured at center), watches as attorney W. W. Witty talks with his sister Filomena. Middle: Charley Nitti (right) with Deputy Sheriffs Paul Dasso (standing) and Harry C. W. Laubenheimer. Bottom: Charley holding the supposed murder weapon. He was originally arrested for his father’s murder, but the charges were later dropped. Saving Sabella | 7
opportunistic reporters probably wouldn’t have hesitated to tell Sabella the verdict if only they knew how to speak to her. Instead, they looked at her face for signs. Genevieve Forbes of the Chicago Daily Tribune was one of many sensationalists who wanted to see Sabella’s reaction. Forbes might have pretended otherwise, but she wanted to see this woman suffer. It was a great story. A woman in Chicago had never swung. And the fact that the condemned woman didn’t even know her fate was headline news. Forbes held a lot of power. She didn’t tell people what to think, but she told them what to think about. And at Forbes’s direction, readers thought about Sabella’s greasy hair and stubby fingernails. They thought of the evidence Forbes described, along with the reporter’s assurance that Sabella Nitti was a violent woman. Forbes and the other reporters left the jail that night disappointed. Neither the courthouse nor jail officials had arranged for a translator to come to Sabella’s cell and tell her the verdict. Cook County Jail Warden Wesley Westbrook didn’t know what to do.7 It was not his responsibility to tell Sabella Nitti the jury had found her guilty and sentenced her and her new husband to death. Still, he felt uncomfortable. He knew someone should tell her—perhaps her lawyer or someone from the courthouse? But not Westbrook; his job was to make sure that Sabella was safe and unharmed until her execution date. . . . Sabella kept busy. She asked for work and was assigned tasks such as laundry or cleaning. She volunteered each day to wash the floors in the women’s cellblock, and she did so without any regard for her appearance. When Sabella cleaned, her focus was on scrubbing the dirt and the stains off the cement floor. If the dirt migrated from the floor onto her hands or her face, so be it. Then everyone knew she was working as she should. She wore her prickly gray uniform without complaint. She took her shower each week. And she reduced herself to a small shadow that moved about the jailhouse quietly, asking for nothing and interfering with no one. Sabella was used to being in the background. Not being able to read, write, or speak English meant she had nothing to say to the other inmates or the reporters and was unable to pass her time with a book or newspaper.8 Before her trial, she had no expectation that anyone should ever pay attention to her—especially a crowd of people. And so she did not seem to realize she was being watched that morning. . . . She worked and remained productive. She was in the midst of her chores, unwashed and sweaty, when someone motioned for her to get off her hands and knees and leave the bucket behind; she had a visitor.9 Sabella found her lawyer, Eugene A. Moran, waiting for her in the designated cell for attorney-inmate meetings.10 . . . Sabella’s face brightened when she saw Moran.11 8 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
The Cook County Courthouse and Jail where Sabella was housed and tried for the murder of Francesco Nitti.
She had been wondering when the trial would end and she might return home to her two little girls. She hoped Moran might have good news. Moran stood with another man, a translator named Charlie Molinelli, as well as Warden Westbrook. . . . Although the translator was a native of Genoa, Italy, he could communicate only minimally with Sabella.12 Despite the fact that Sabella would barely understand him, Molinelli was still not looking forward to his task. He kept looking for a reprieve, even as they stood before Sabella, ready to deliver the news. “I’ll tell her if I have to,” Molinelli said as he swallowed hard.13 “The court should tell her,” Westbrook reminded. But they were here now, and there was no sense in making the woman wait any longer. And so Moran began. He spoke in English, and Molinelli repeated his words in a dialect of Italian Sabella did not fully understand. The trial ended yesterday. The jury reached a decision. They found you guilty in the death of Francesco Nitti. The punishment is death by hanging. The hanging won’t happen right way. There is time to appeal. We’re working on an appeal. We will try to get you a new trial. Sabella’s face transformed as she sensed the news was bad. She was not going home. Those men from the court were going to kill her. Sabella was quiet as she absorbed
When the verdicts came in, Sabella, who spoke little English, did not understand them. Warden Wesley H. Westbrook, shown here in 1914 training two police officers, was reluctant to relay the verdict to her. Saving Sabella | 9
Chicago Daily Tribune reporter Genevieve Forbes lacked sympathy for Sabella, describing her as a “cruel, dirty, repulsive woman” and the “Senora with Wrinkles.” 10 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
A group of reporters, including Forbes, followed Sabella back to the jail to witness her reaction to the verdict and punishment. They reported that she reacted with such sobbing and despair that even some of the more stalwart jail matrons were moved.
the verdict. Then she took a step backward from Moran and Molinelli, as if the distance protected her from the news. She slinked back to the corner of the room and tried to make herself smaller. The weeping began. Slowly, softly at first and then building in a crescendo. Forbes stood in the hallway and watched Sabella crouch in the corner, weeping with her back against the wall. 14 Perhaps it was the cell bars that made the reporter feel as though she was in a zoo. She saw Sabella as an animal. She’s cornered, Forbes wrote in her notepad. Tortured by a new kind of trap. The sounds of her weeping were animalistic. Frenzied pleading of a cruel animal.
Sabella could not breathe through her own tears.15 Her fear caused her to hyperventilate. As she took quick, fast breaths, she began to feel lightheaded. Then Sabella stopped and there was a moment of quiet before she dropped to the ground. A pause and then a plummet—she fainted. For the assembled reporters, it was a great reaction. Representing the city’s biggest dailies—the Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago Daily News, Chicago American, Chicago Courier, Chicago Evening Post, Chicago Herald-Examiner, Chicago Journal, and Chicago Post—they were competing with each other but also with every reporter in their own newsroom who wanted the top stories and best assignments. They really couldn’t have asked for more. Saving Sabella | 11
But each reporter still needed an edge. An exclusive with Molinelli or Moran. Perhaps a private talk with Warden Westbrook. The reporters dispersed to pursue their own angles. Some migrated to the hallway outside Sabella’s cell, where she had been moved, to watch her wake up. When she did she cried into her pillow, speaking in Barese and whimpering. She prays in Sicilian, wrote one reporter, who wrongly thought Sicilian and Barese were one and the same.16 For Forbes, Sabella’s reaction was an indicator of guilt. She wrote in her front-page story how hearing the verdict changed the “cruel, dirty, repulsive woman.”17 Forbes thought Sabella showed no mercy the night of the killing, and she expected readers to feel no mercy for a murderer: “She was not the calm human who, the state charged, held her husband’s head in her gnarled hands while her lover, 23 years her junior, pounded the sleeping farmer over the head with a six pound hammer.” _________ In the seven years that Forbes had been at the Chicago Daily Tribune, she wasn’t afraid to create stories for herself in order to be taken seriously. Just two years earlier, the Tribune had run her series in which she went under-
cover as an “immigrant girl” from Ireland to report the conditions newcomers faced when coming to Ellis Island. She sailed first to County Cork, Ireland, and then returned on an immigrant ship, posing as a young woman hoping for a new life in the States. In her stories, Forbes revealed how vulnerable immigrants were being harassed and broken by the Ellis Island overseers. . . . Forbes’s series was a success, and federal officials investigated abuse and corruption at Ellis Island following a heated public response. . . . But her immigration series also proved to the men in the newsroom that she didn’t have to write about fashion or luncheons in order to handle women’s issues. Stories about women were a profitable part of serious journalism. That was Forbes’s new role—serious stories about women. She began working her way into the political arena by interviewing—or at least trying to interview— candidates’ wives in order to offer a woman’s political perspective.18 Most of the wives were uneager to talk to the press. So whenever possible, Forbes covered women who ran for office or had political involvement. But such women tended to be harder to come by, and more often her editors assigned her to cover murder trials, especially the sensational trials of women accused of murder.
Sabella’s time in jail overlapped with that of several more glamorous defendants. Newspapers at the time depicted her as gnarled and unattractive in contrast to the other women. 12 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
In 1927, four years after Sabella’s release, Genevieve Forbes wrote an article on how women won the sympathies of juries and prosecutors and suggested that Sabella had attended “jail school” for a makeover that would get her acquitted, too. Saving Sabella | 13
A few days after the verdict was announced, Sabella attempted suicide. Newspapers announced the story, claiming that “her case continues to excite comment everywhere.”
There was no shortage of these assignments. The previous year, two dozen Chicago men were killed by women. Only two of these women went to the penitentiary. Most had their cases dismissed by the coroner, grand jury, or a sympathetic judge. When a woman did stand trial, it seemed the whole city was watching. Forbes typically wrote about these women as if they deserved an assumption of guilt, and this was particularly true of her work covering the Nitti-Crudele trial. These stories read like a campaign against Sabella. Readers weren’t blind to Forbes’s bias. Her version of Sabella was a caricature whose grotesque features communicated evil, even though Forbes knew full well that evil was rarely obvious. She had sat through trial after trial in which a guilty but beautiful woman somehow convinced a jury to acquit her. It was almost as if she wasn’t taking chances with Sabella. Forbes labeled her gnarled and dirty and described her language as a series of grunts and moans—as if she were a demon. At times, the photos that accompanied the stories advanced Forbes’s argument. Sabella appeared hunched over with her head hung low. Forbes clearly wove fictional elements into her stories about Sabella, although readers focused on the excitement of the trial likely did not notice. _________ Doubt shadowed Sabella’s sentence from the start. The newspapers continued in the following week to report Sabella’s growing fear, and it struck many readers as sad.19 Others in the jail also seemed shaken by the verdict, particularly the jailhouse matrons. These seasoned guards were jarred by Sabella’s despair, and such an atypical reaction on the part of the matrons was interesting to the reporters. They wrote how two of the matrons were tasked with carrying Sabella back to her cell after she heard the verdict and passed out. Her fear 14 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
and her vulnerability were so upsetting that even the matrons began to cry. Jailhouse matrons rarely displayed emotion; that was a key part of the job. They knew that being manipulative was a natural reaction to being incarcerated. The inmates were desperate and some of them were very conniving. They wanted more of everything. More food, more letters, more newspapers, more bedding, more visits with family, and more information about their trials. Some clamored for more attention from the reporters in the hope that newspaper stories might help their case. Sabella had shown none of this desperation. She was nothing but a quiet shadow in the jailhouse who did her chores, avoided conflict, and stoically lived her days without her children. Now, in Sabella’s mind, death was certain. She knew nothing of the appeals process. . . . But if execution was foreign to Sabella, violence and physical pain were normal. She had been beaten her entire married life, and knew the hanging would be her worst punishment yet. She accepted that she was to die, but she refused to suffer the way the county intended. And she couldn’t wait weeks or months, anticipating the impending agony. Sabella stood and bowed her chin so the top of her head faced forward.20 She pushed forward, as if she were running, and slammed her head against the wall. Crumpled on the ground, she waited for a darkness to confirm she was dead. But the only thing she saw through the streams of blood were the jailhouse matrons, carrying her to the hospital unit. _________ Sabella’s execution was set for ninety-five days after the verdict was handed down. The defense had a mere three months to motion for a new trial and, if that failed, petition the Illinois Supreme Court for a writ of error. Despite the efforts, albeit unfocused, of Sabella’s defense attorney and a public awareness campaign launched by various Chicago-area women’s clubs, her fate seemed sealed.21 The only one who could save Sabella at this point was a new attorney. Someone who was clever, motivated, and willing to take the case for free. Someone like Helen Cirese. . . . At twenty-three, Cirese was a young and capable lawyer who was struggling to prove herself. Women did not serve on juries at the time, and the typical spot for a woman in a courtroom seemed to be in the gallery or on the witness stand. Cirese had been one of five women in her 1920 graduating class at DePaul University Law School and had delivered a compelling commencement address in which she urged her classmates to fight for peace.22 Cirese had certainly found her first few years in the law profession to be peaceful—in all the wrong ways. After graduation she’d had to wait ten months, until her twenty-first birthday, to gain admission to the
Illinois bar.23 The newspapers printed her picture and marveled at the “girl lawyer” who had almost a year until she reached the bar’s minimum age requirement. The quiet continued once she passed the bar exam and found Chicago law firms unwelcoming to a young, female attorney. . . . Cirese was smart, beautiful, from a good family, and fearless. She was first-generation American, born in Indiana to parents from Sicily. 24 Her family was from Termini, from the northern coast of Sicily. Her parents began their life together in Indiana in the 1880s and then moved to the Chicago area. They settled in north Oak Park with their nine children in an attractive foursquare.25 Oak Park was evolving into an urban neighborhood, which was foreseeable because it was the first suburb to the west of the city. The wooded land had given way to a
Helen Cirese graduated from DePaul University’s law school in 1920, one of only five women in her class. Photograph by Moffett Photography Studio Saving Sabella | 15
mixture of modern apartment buildings, modest bungalows, and lavish mansions. For Cirese’s high school classmate author Ernest Hemingway the village was an extension of his oppressive mother.26 He craved adventure and experiences far from the village’s organized, repetitive city blocks. He left after graduation, eager to never return. But for a young woman like Cirese, Oak Park was freedom. The village was less than five square miles and entirely walkable. It also connected to Chicago through the “L” train and streetcar systems. Cirese’s home was about half a mile from the Lake Street “L” line, which zipped into the city faster than any horse and buggy. She stayed local after graduation and made her family’s house on Cuyler Avenue her lifelong home. Maybe it was the autonomy she enjoyed in Oak Park that made the young attorney fearless. Or perhaps it was her character to see possibilities, not obstructions. Whether it was nature or nurture, Helen Cirese sensed what she could do and plowed ahead, regardless of the limitations other people set. Cirese also surrounded herself with ambitious people. In late 1921, several dozen Italian lawyers in the city joined forces and formed the Justinian Society of Lawyers.27 If they bonded together, and helped each other, they could penetrate the highest layers of civic and political life in Chicago. Cirese was a founding member. She shared an office with several other attorneys, Left: Cirese graduated at the top of her class, but had to wait until she was twenty-one to practice law. Below: A 1928 gathering of the Justinian Society, an organization for Italian American lawyers, which Cirese (pictured right of center) helped to found.
16 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
including Rocco DeStefano and Nuncio Bonelli. DeStefano was a respected attorney in his late forties. Bonelli was in his mid-thirties and notably industrious. In his short career, he had worked his way up from courtroom bailiff to counselor.28 Bonelli was a short man with light brown hair and blue eyes.29 Compassionate and ambitious, he had plans— which he would one day achieve—to become a judge in Chicago. He would serve on the bench for eighteen years, primarily in the criminal courts, staring into the eyes of angry murderers, unrepentant molesters, and dangerous bootleggers.30 Bonelli wasn’t afraid of any of them. Bonelli and Cirese talked about the Nitti case. They saw possibilities in overturning the verdict. There were risks, however, to taking on such a case. If all their efforts failed and Sabella swung, their names would be attached to the failure. It was a fear that prevented other attorneys in Chicago from offering their services. But what did Cirese have to lose? The men of the Chicago legal community didn’t accept her anyway. Cirese and Bonelli dissected the discrimination they read about in Sabella’s trial. Was Sabella being sent to the gallows because she was guilty? Or because she was Italian? Or because Americans perceived her as ugly? The attorneys wanted to know. There were others who wanted answers too. Frank Allegretti, the handsome attorney who served as the second failed translator, joined their growing appeals team. Albert N. Gualano, the first Italian American judge, was ready to enlist.31 Frank Mirabella said he would donate his time as well. And DeStefano told everyone to put his name on the line. He would stand up as the lead attorney in the appeal. Weeks after the verdict, a new defense team was in place: six lawyers, all founding members of the Justinian Society.32 DeStefano was at the head, but Cirese was the foundation. The team conferred and decided it was best for Cirese to reach out to Sabella. Cirese needed to gain Sabella’s trust, and then offer the team’s services in taking the case on appeal. It was crucial the first meeting went well. The pages were flying off the calendar, and the team didn’t have spare time to devote to proving their credibility to the defendants. Sabella and Peter needed to trust blindly in the team, and Cirese was the best representative of their good intentions. . . . In the weeks following the trial, Sabella knew she was doomed. She was panicked and desperately tried to communicate with the other inmates, the reporters, and anyone who passed by her cell. She picked up basic words in English, and she was beginning to string together sentences that allowed her to express her fear to others. Several of the reporters mocked Sabella’s efforts. They quoted her in the newspapers, adding on vowels to the end of her words. When Sabella asked in the courtroom if she would choke, the reporters wrote, “They choka
me? They choka me?” to portray her clumsy efforts.33 Forbes also enjoyed mimicking Sabella’s English to the Chicago Daily Tribune readers.34 In the story about the letter sent from the jail inmates, Forbes wrote how Sabella knew Anna McGinnis and the other guilty ladies were perceived differently by juries. Sabella supposedly summed up the situation by complaining the women had “nice face, swell clothes, shoot man, go home.” When Cirese stood outside Sabella’s cell in late July, Sabella saw a tall and slender woman smiling through the bars.35 Cirese was a contrast to her surroundings, and the reporters took note. Her photograph was published in the paper the next day and showed a comely young woman wearing a clean white blouse and a stylish cloche hat. Unlike some of the reporters who slinked around the jail and hunted for a story that might deliver recognition, Cirese wasn’t at the jail to be noticed. She had come with a specific purpose—to convince Sabella to allow the team of six to take over her appeal. She also wanted to assure the scared woman and communicate that people were indeed on her side. The two women likely started with a careful mixture of Italian, Sicilian, and Barese that was supplemented by hand motions, facial expressions, and long pauses to see if the intended message was correctly understood. Even if Sabella understood little of what Cirese said, the young attorney’s presence was reassuring. It was the most time anyone had spent with her since she was incarcerated. After their first meeting, Cirese made it a point to visit Sabella every week. She sat with her client and allowed her to try new words in English. At times, Cirese brought along Margaret Bonelli, the wife of attorney and defense team member Nuncio Bonelli.36 Sabella seemed to find Margaret comforting. Margaret was in her early thirties and the mother of a fifteen-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy. She knew loss from the death of her first husband, and as a mother, she could likely imagine the pain Sabella felt in her separation from her two young daughters.37 Margaret kept up with the fashions and bobbed her dark hair just below her ear. She typically wore a cloche hat and a modern skirt cut below her knees. She was curvy and soft, which made her seem approachable. She reached out to Sabella with a compassion the condemned woman had rarely experienced in her life. One time, a Chicago Daily Tribune reporter photographed Helen and Margaret visiting Sabella.38 Cirese stood slightly back from the chair where Sabella sat. She focused her gaze on her client below and kept her expression neutral. Sabella looked away from her attorney and at the comforting face of Margaret. Sabella seemed nervous and she searched Margaret’s face for assurance. Margaret smiled down at Sabella and wrapped one hand around Sabella’s back and placed another hand on her shoulder. Saving Sabella | 17
_________ On September 25, 1923, the team of six waited anxiously in their office on Clark Street. The team had filed a writ of error with the Illinois Supreme Court, and they were awaiting a decision. If granted, the execution would be stayed until the higher court had an opportunity to review the case. If denied, the execution would proceed in just seventeen days. The writ identified eighteen errors in the original trial. It began by addressing the unconstitutionality of the first trial. The second item argued the defendants “have been deprived” of their lives without due process of the law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The next two items were against Judge David. Item three accused the trial judge of not appointing competent counsel to assist the defense. Item four argued that Judge David erred in allowing incompetent evidence to be introduced. Items five and six addressed the flimsy evidence. The additional items identified jury prejudice and error in the jury instructions and found fault with the judgments. Justice Orrin N. Carter of the Illinois Supreme Court wrote the writ allowing supersedeas: the execution for both defendants was suspended until the supreme court gave further order. . . . The supreme court still had the option to side with Judge David and allow the executions to proceed. But that possibility was pushed into the future, and the team was given what they needed—time.39 Cirese strode out of the elevators and onto Clark Street. She was headed to Cook County Jail to deliver the good news to her clients. . . . Sabella, who was still developing her understanding of English, misunderstood the good news. When Cirese told her she received a stay of execution, she thought they had lost the fight. She began to sob, and her attorney had to interrupt her weeping to explain she was safe.40 Sabella and Peter were under the state supreme court’s protection. That was the good news. The bad news was the Illinois Supreme Court had a lengthy list of other appeals to consider. The high court did not plan on reviewing the Nitti-Crudele case until February. For Peter, the wait was excruciating. He had been in jail since May and the experience was akin to an animal living in a crate. For the winter months, he would be confined to his cell, wondering if the supreme court would save him or send him to the gallows. For Sabella, jail was more bearable. She had limited comfort but was allowed to move throughout the women’s block, keep busy with work, and interact with the other women. Nonetheless, it was still time spent separated from her young daughters. For Cirese, the wait was perfect. With the help of Margaret Bonelli, she planned to transform Sabella Nitti from a disheveled and foreign woman into a comely 18 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
In September 1924, after fourteen months in jail, Sabella was released on bond, and the court eventually dismissed the charges against her and Peter Crudele due to lack of evidence. In addition, the prosecutor’s office had turned all of its attention to a new case: the trial of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold.
American mother. . . . Cirese evaluated her client. Sabella’s arms were muscular from years of hard labor, and her skin was damaged and toughened from exposure to the sun and wind. Her dark hair was streaked with gray and appeared dirty, and she was painfully thin. To Americans, Sabella lay outside the standards of beauty. But Cirese saw Sabella’s potential. Cirese brought a hairdresser to the jail and shared her vision for how to make Sabella beautiful.41 The hairdresser fussed with Sabella’s hair and then applied color to turn her graying strands into a deep, rich brown. . . . The stylist cut Sabella’s hair into a bob styled with soft waves. Around Sabella’s hairline, the weak and broken hairs were turned into bangs.42 . . . Cirese made efforts to apply cosmetics to Sabella and clean her hardened hands. It was a transformation that Sabella readily
While in jail, Sabella learned to speak, read, and write in English. Here, freshly made over, she displays an example of her new skills. Saving Sabella | 19
accepted. She was aware of how juries reacted to attractive women, and she knew American men did not find her good-looking. Cirese likely made assurances along the way and told Sabella she was beautiful. It may have been decades since Sabella heard such a compliment, if she had ever heard it at all. The newspapers took note of Sabella’s makeover, and Cirese never hid her attempt to make her client more beautiful.43 Admitting her efforts was a smart move. It avoided any appearance that the defense was trying to be underhanded or manipulative. And it allowed critics to chastise the Cook County legal system for acquitting beautiful women while a homely but innocent woman was subjected to a trial so faulty that the Illinois Supreme Court had to intervene. While the case waited among the backlog for the high court’s review, Cirese polished her client. Although the makeover efforts were never concealed, Cirese was far more discreet about her efforts to feed and fatten her client. Cirese never admitted as much, but she was Sabella’s most consistent visitor and advocate. It was likely that it was Cirese, and perhaps Margaret Bonelli, who supplied Sabella with additional food items to supplement her sparse prison meals. Before the team of six intervened, Sabella’s jailhouse meals had been limited to a bread roll and the occasional cup of soup. Because she was industrious and insisted on working throughout the day, Sabella burned more calories than she consumed. She was emaciated when she came to the jail in May 1923. Her cheeks were hollow and stretched thin, which made her large eyes seem bulged. She seemed to grow smaller, thinner, and older looking during the summer and early autumn. But in the coming months, Sabella’s hard angles would soften as her weight steadily increased. The makeover was one part of the plan. Cirese had other goals for helping Sabella appear more refined. Sabella’s English progressed during the winter and she was learning American mannerisms. Grunting, for example, was not becoming of a woman. Sabella was learning to keep in the sounds that made Americans cringe but felt so natural to her. She was also advised to refrain from the rocking she had a tendency to do when she was nervous. Sabella’s polishing meant learning how to contain her physical presence. American women tucked into themselves. At times, they made themselves smaller. Sabella had been in the habit of hunching and sitting with her legs open. With Cirese’s help, she was learning to squeeze her body together. Legs needed to be kept close, arms folded into the lap, and the back held straight and stiff. The papers made mention of the “jail school,” and the Chicago Daily Tribune’s Genevieve Forbes commented on 20 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
how “jail can do a lot for a woman.”44 The comment was directed toward not only Sabella but also the other women who were beginning to doll up before court and ask for access to the cosmetics cabinet. The makeup cabinet was about to see plenty of use. A new cohort of lady killers were headed to Cook County Jail, each one determined to woo the all-male juries with their femininity. The pressure was on the state’s attorney’s office to hold these women similarly accountable for murdering men. Prosecutors Milton Smith and Michael Romano didn’t want to let Sabella’s case slip, especially when beautiful women were hard to convict. Someone in Cook County needed to pay for their crimes, and Sabella was ugly prey the attorneys could target. They weren’t giving up. Reprinted from Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago by Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi with permission from Chicago Review Press. Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved. I L L U S T R AT I O N S | Illustrations are from the Chicago History Museum, unless otherwise noted. 4, courtesy of the author. 5, courtesy of Rosemary K. Adams; inset: courtesy of the author. 6, DN-0072995. 7, top: courtesy of the author; middle: DN-0075052; bottom: DN-0075051. 8, ICHi-37826. 9, DN-0062319. 10, Chicago Daily Tribune, April 10, 1927. 11, Chicago Daily News, July 10, 1923. 12, courtesy of the author. 13, Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3, 1927. 14, top: Chicago Daily News, July 14, 1923; bottom: Chicago Daily News, July 11, 1923. 15, courtesy of the University of Illinois at Chicago Library, Special Collections. Helen Cirese Papers, 1915–1974, HCP_0002_0012_001 (cropped). 16, top: Chicago Daily Tribune, June 17, 1920; bottom: ICHi-168902. 18, Chicago Daily News, June 16, 1924. 19, courtesy of the author. F U RT H E R R E A D I N G | Explore Sabella’s entire saga in the author’s Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago (Chicago Review Press, 2017). You can read Maurine Watkins’s original play in Chicago: With the Chicago Tribune Articles that Inspired It (Southern Illinois University Press, 1997). Douglas Perry’s The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago (Penguin Books, 2010) tells the true stories of the more glamorous residents of “Murderesses Row.” Perry also published a short biography of one of the few women in this era who was convicted of murder, The Wolf Woman: The Short, Violent Life of Kitty Malm, Chicago’s “Bandit Queen” (Amazon Digital Services, 2013).
ENDNOTES 1. Genevieve Forbes, “Death for Two Women Slayers,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 10, 1923 2. Ibid. 3. People of the State of Illinois v. Peter Crudelle, Isabella Nitti, and Charles Nitti, Supreme Court of Illinois Case Files, 1820–1970, case no. 15749 (1924). Hereafter cited as People v. Nitti. 4. Forbes, “Death for Two Women Slayers.” 5. People v. Nitti. 6. Forbes, “Death for Two Women Slayers.” 7. Ibid. 8. United States Census 1920, roll T625_363, page 10B, enumeration district 209, image 326. 9. “Woman Ignorant of Death Award,” Ada Weekly News (Ada, OK), July 12, 1923. 10. Forbes, “Death for Two Women Slayers.” 11. “Murderess Swoons When Informed She Must Die for Slaying Ex-husband,” Joplin Globe (Joplin, MO), July 11, 1923. 12. “Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916–1947,” index, FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, UT, 2010. 13. Forbes, “Death for Two Women Slayers.” 14. Ibid. 15. “Mrs. Crudelle Collapses When Told of Fate,” Freeport Journal Standard (Freeport, IL), July 10, 1923. 16. “Wife First to Hear Verdict in Illinois That She Must Hand,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 1923. 17. Forbes, “Death for Two Women Slayers.” 18. Linda Steiner and Susan Grey, “Genevieve Forbes Herrick: A Chicago Tribune Reporter Covering Women in Politics,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Gainesville, Florida, August 1984.
21. “In Jail, Asks for Children,” Ogden Standard-Examiner (Ogden, UT), July 31, 1923. “Claims Illinois Cannot Execute Woman Slayer,” Fort Wayne Sentinel (Fort Wayne, IN), July 28, 1923. “5 Lawyers Make New Attempt to Save Mrs. Nitti,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 5, 1923. 22. DePaul University commencement speech, June 18, 1920, Helen Cirese papers, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). 23. “Girl Wins Degree at Law but Must Wait a Year to Practice,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 17, 1920. 24. United States Census 1920, Oak Park, IL, roll T625_361, page 11B enumeration district 143, image 768. 25. Description of home from author site visit. United States Census 1920, Oak Park, IL, roll T625_361, page 11A, enumeration district 143, image 767 330330. 26. Hemingway and Cirese as classmates from Tabula (yearbook of Oak Park and River Forest High School, Oak Park, IL), 1917. Hemingway’s hatred for his mother from Ernest Hemingway to Charles Scribner, August 27, 1949, in Ernest Hemingway and Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway, selected letters, 1917–1961 (New York: Macmillan, 1989).
34. Genevieve Forbes, “Mrs. Nitti’s Tragedy Melts Hearts of Women in Jail,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 12, 1923. 35. Helen Cirese Papers, Special Collections, UIC Library. 36. Cook County, Illinois Marriage Indexes, 1912–1942, record no. 0693564. 37. United States Census 1910, Washington, DC, roll T624_151, page 21A, enumeration district 0089, FHL microfilm 1374164. 38. “Slayer Gets Stay of Execution” (standalone photograph), Chicago Daily Tribune, September 25, 1923. 39. People v. Nitti. 40. “Stay of Execution Is Granted to Crudelles,” Fort Wayne Daily News (Fort Wayne, IN), September 25, 1923. 41. Ione Quinby, “Husband Killers Find Rouge Is Great Lawyer,” Decatur Herald (Decatur, IL), March 20, 1931. 42. Descriptions of Sabella from analysis of photographs of her from May 1923 and June 1924. 43. Ione Quinby, “Nitti-Crudeli [sic] Benefitted by Prison Period,” Davenport Democrat and Leader (Davenport, IA), March 24, 1924. 44. Genevieve Forbes Herrick, “Jail Can Really Do a Lot for a Woman,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 3, 1927.
27. Anthony Scariano, “A Brief History of the Justinian Society,” Justinian Society of Lawyers official website, accessed October 20, 2015, https://justinians.org/ history/. 28. Bailiff from WWI draft card, Cook County, IL, roll 1613517, draft board 42. Judge from United States Census 1940, Cook County, IL, roll T627_972, page 7A, enumeration district 103-1611. 29. Bonelli description from WWI draft card. 30. Based on analysis of Chicago Daily Tribune articles about cases that appeared before the judge. 31. “Albert Gualano for Judge,” True Republican, April 5, 1930.
19. “Woman to Hang with ‘Star Boarder,’ Wed After Killing,” Hutchinson News (Hutchinson, KS), July 13, 1923.
32. Team of six list from People v. Nitti.
20. “Woman Under Death Sentence Tries Suicide,” Manitowoc Herald-Times (Manitowoc, WI), July 11, 1923.
33. “October 12 Is Set as Date to Hang Woman Slayer,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 15 1923.
Saving Sabella | 21
A WHEEL with a VIEW RUSSELL L. LEWIS
C
! The first Ferris wheel, built for the
entertainment district of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-18759
Russell L. Lewis is executive vice president and chief historian of the Chicago History Museum.
elebrated as a technological marvel that rivaled the Eiffel Tower, Chicago’s Ferris wheel has stood as an enduring symbol of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Over the past 125 years, the Ferris wheel has inspired imitations, large and small, around the globe: the 443-foot London Eye and the 541-foot Singapore Flyer are two of the tallest contemporary wheels in operation. Designed and promoted as an observation wheel, the Ferris wheel is part of a lineage of urban observation towers built for expositions that began with New York City’s Latting Observatory in 1853. But the story of the Ferris wheel’s rise skyward begins with the dynamics that shaped Chicago during the 1850s—a transformative decade for the city. In 1848, the completion of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, the construction of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, and the founding of the Board of Trade ushered in an economic boom. By 1860, Chicago’s population had grown almost fourfold, and the physical footprint of the city expanded as commercial and industrial development pushed residential areas further north, south, and west. Ten trunk lines converged in the city, linking Chicago by rail to farming communities and commercial centers nationwide. Most Chicagoans took enormous pride in this urban expansion, extolling the virtues of their city as an ideal place for commerce and industry and bragging about its importance to the nation. Urban panoramas, or bird’s-eye views, became valuable tools for those seeking to attract new investors, industries, and businesses, and Chicagoans eagerly embraced them. The lithographic aerial views of Chicago, typically looking west from an angled position high above Lake Michigan, depicted the city in a three-dimensional manner, focusing on transportation features and industrial capacity and sometimes exaggerating the commercial claims of its boosters. Wheel with a View | 23
Bird’s-eye views also decreased anxiety by giving Chicagoans a frame of reference for a city that had grown out of their reach. The massive changes in Chicago’s urban landscape and population influx of the 1850s resulted in a space that was physically too large and too complex to comprehend. Although idealized depictions of the city, the views nevertheless helped citizens imagine Chicago as a whole and visualize their place in it. Urban observation towers, developed in the 1850s as features of expositions, provided compelling, real-life bird’s-eye views. The Latting Observatory, a 315-foot, octagonal-based, iron-braced wooden tower, was built in 1853 to adjoin the New York Crystal Palace, which hosted the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations (an endeavor directly inspired by London’s Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851). Conceived by Warring Latting and designed by architect William Naugle, the tower accommodated 1,500 visitors at a time and provided expansive views of Manhattan, Queens, and New Jersey from three observation levels. It was the tallest structure in New York until a fire destroyed it in 1856. Undoubtedly, the most spectacular example of a nineteenth-century urban tower is Gustave Eiffel’s iron structure, built on Paris’s Champ de Mars as the entrance to the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Inspired by the Latting Observatory, Eiffel created a 984-foot-tall lattice tower (1,063 feet today including its television tower), the tallest manmade structure at that time, with three observation levels accessible by elevator. Although originally denounced as an engineering monstrosity—numerous French artists and architects objected to it as a gross aberration among Paris’s cherished structures—it earned widespread popular acclaim as an engineering marvel and a unique symbol of Paris and its world’s fair. As early as 1890, when Chicago was awarded the honor of hosting the World’s Columbian Exposition, proposals for a grand monument to mark the occasion filled newspapers. Among the published ideas were observation towers that would exceed the height of the Eiffel Tower; many defied practicality, even taxed the power of imagination, and only a few were financially feasible. Two designs that were seriously considered included a 1,120-foot tower proposed by civil engineer George S. Morison and his American Tower 24 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
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Map of Chicago after drawing by James T. Palmatary, 1857 Christian Inger, lithograph by Herline and Hensel Chicago History Museum, ICHi-05654
This bird’s-eye view portrays Chicago as a vibrant, bustling commercial center, showing a harbor filled with ships, a steamboat heading south in the lake, warehouses and grain elevators packed cheek by jowl along the mouth of the river, and a train arriving along the tracks skirting the lakefront.
The Latting Observatory, c. 1853
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Art & Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
New York City’s Latting Observatory was located on the north side of Forty-Second Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues (across from the site of present-day Bryant Park). It stood from 1853 to 1856 and inspired Gustave Eiffel to propose a design for an observation tower in Paris in 1884.
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Fairgoers on the Midway, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-168895
Company, and the Proctor Tower, named in honor of investor David Proctor, which was designed in 1891 for the Columbian Tower Company by Chicago architects Holabird and Roche and engineer Corydon T. Purdy. Daniel Burnham, director of works for the Columbian Exposition, however, was never keen on plans to “out-Eiffel” Eiffel and his stunning structure. Instead, he advocated for an engineering breakthrough, something completely original that would engage the public and demonstrate American technological superiority. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a bridge builder like Eiffel, responded to Burnham’s call for daring engineering and submitted a radical design for a revolving steel tension observation wheel in June 1892. Concerns about the safety of the design—Burnham initially sided with engineers who felt the structure was too fragile and would collapse into an ellipse once it began to revolve—as well as lack of financing initially resulted in rejection. The fair’s Ways and Means Committee had previously rejected a design by H. W. Fowler, a Chicago industrialist, for a 250-foot compression-based revolving wheel as well as W. H. Wachter’s proposal for a 220-foot wheel with swinging baskets to carry 224 passengers. Ferris revised and improved his plan, ensuring that the tension wheel was safe and technologically feasible, and developed a financial approach that promised to be especially lucrative. The exposition’s board of directors granted him the concession on December 16, 1892, less than six months before the fair’s opening date of May 1, 1893. Excavation for the massive foundations required to support the wheel began in January 1893, during one of Chicago’s harshest winters. The wheel’s steel components were manufactured in other cities—namely Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—and shipped to Chicago in March for assembly. The 262-foot-tall Ferris wheel, which became operational on June 21, dominated the Midway Plaisance and offered spectacular bird’s-eye views of the fairgrounds and the city. It was a resounding success, exceeding all expectations as a demonstration of American technology, a symbol of the fair, and a financial venture. After the fair closed in October 1893, Ferris began searching for a new venue to host the wheel, which remained on the grounds of the abandoned Midway through the winter and was dismantled in the spring of 1894. He considered offers to move the wheel to New York City’s Old Vienna, Brooklyn’s Coney Island, Atlantic City, and London, but eventually rejected all of them. In 1895, he reorganized his Ferris Wheel Company to develop a new amusement park on North Clark Street. Ferris Wheel Park opened in the spring of 1896; but its development had met community opposition from the beginning, and neighborhood residents had successfully organized to block the award of a liquor license. Then, Ferris unexpectedly died of typhoid fever on November 22, 1896. In the end, few Chicagoans were willing to pay fifty cents for another ride on the big wheel, and the combination of a national economic depression and the liquor ban proved disastrous for the fledgling enterprise. In 1903, Ferris Wheel Park closed, and the wheel was sold to the Chicago House Wrecking Company, which moved it to St. Louis for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Dominating the fairgrounds, the Ferris wheel regained some of its past glory and made a modest financial profit during its seven-month run. After the fair closed in December 1904, the wheel was considered once again as an attraction for Coney Island, but negotiations fell apart and it remained in St. Louis. On May 11, 1906, the Chicago House Wrecking Company dynamited the Ferris wheel and sold the steel and other components for scrap. The original Ferris wheel was no more, but its idea lived on in London, Vienna, and Paris, captivating new crowds with thrilling rides and expansive views of some of Europe’s great cities. Wheel with a View | 27
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Aerial view of the Exposition Universelle and Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889 Photograph by Alphonse Liébert Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-94571
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France set the standards for nineteenthcentury world’s fairs through its expositions universelles hosted in Paris in 1855, 1867, and 1889. The 1889 exposition was organized to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. In 1884, Eiffel’s company, Compagnie des établissements Eiffel, developed a design for an observation tower that would serve as the centerpiece of the 1889 exposition, refining it until it was approved in 1886. Construction of the tower took more than two years to complete.
The 984-foot lattice structure was made of wrought iron and employed elevators to take visitors to the three viewing platforms. The tower was mired in controversy when artists and architects publicly denounced it as blight on the cityscape, but the structure won popular acclaim and quickly became a lasting symbol of the exposition. It was illuminated at night by hundreds of gaslights, and a tricolor beacon and searchlights lit parts of the exposition grounds. Today, it is a cherished symbol of Paris and among the most visited tourist attractions in the world.
The Chicago Columbus Tower, c. 1890
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Depicted in H. G. Cutler’s The World's Fair: Its meaning and scope; its old-world friends, their countries, customs and religions; what they will exhibit Chicago History Museum, ICHi-168890
The Columbus Tower was one of many structures proposed to eclipse the Eiffel Tower and give Chicago a monumental feature for the World’s Columbian Exposition. According to a Chicago Daily Tribune article of May 12, 1890, the lattice tower was to be built of steel and stand 1,500 feet tall. Washington, DC, architects Charles Kinkel and G. R. Pohl had already spent two years on the design, which featured four major entrances, an interior space on the bottom floor capable of accommodating 30,000, and a hotel of 4,000 rooms; space for the Chicago Public Library was also being considered. More than 15,000 electric lights would illuminate the exterior balconies. As proposed, the tower would cost $2 million to be financed by private investors.
Article | 29
Letter from George W. Ferris to L. V. Rice, December 12, 1892
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Chicago History Museum, ICHi-168891
Worried about erecting the wheel in time for the fair’s May 1 opening, Ferris wrote to Luther V. Rice to offer him the position of superintendent of construction and operations even before receiving final approval for the concession. Ferris knew Rice from their work together on the Cincinnati–Newport Bridge, also known as the Central Bridge, which spanned the Ohio River, and he needed someone with Rice’s skills and experience to oversee this monumental task. “Please state what salary you would desire in this connection,” he wrote. Rice accepted the position and arrived in Chicago before the end of the year. He worked with the Ferris wheel for ten years, longer than any other person, and saw it sold and moved to St. Louis.
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George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., inventor of the Ferris wheel, undated Chicago History Museum, ICHi-10257
George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. (1859–96) was born in Galesburg, Illinois, and attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, where he earned a degree in civil engineering. His career began in the railroad industry, but he eventually focused on consulting and construction, especially bridge building. He founded G. W. G. Ferris and Co. in Pittsburgh and later opened a satellite office in Chicago. In 1892, he answered Daniel Burnham’s call for an innovative breakthrough for the World’s Columbian Exposition, committing $25,000 of his own money to develop plans and specifications for his revolving observation wheel. He then formed the Ferris Wheel Company, raising $600,000 in capital to manufacture and construct the great wheel. But first he had to overcome objections regarding its safety and financial feasibility as well as competitors’ alternative wheel designs. After further refinement of his plans, Ferris eventually won the concession to build his wheel on the Midway Plaisance. Although Ferris’s wheel was a popular and financial success, he struggled in the following years to find another lucrative venue for it and was plagued by lawsuits. Ferris eventually lost his fortune and died in 1896 from typhoid fever.
Wheel with a View | 31
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Workers around the axle of the Ferris wheel, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-25032
The construction of the Ferris wheel was a Herculean task. The first challenge was excavating the foundations for the two steel support towers, which began in January 1893. During one of the coldest Chicago winters on record, workers created four concrete footings, two for each tower. They pumped steam to thaw the ground, dig the 20 x 20 x 20–foot pits, and set concrete around the steel crossbars to which they would bolt the tower bases. Workers installed dual thousand-horsepower steam engines to turn the wheel (one was a
32 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
backup), which were connected by ten-inch pipes to boilers placed 700 feet away (located outside the Midway on Lexington Avenue between Sixtieth and Sixty-First Streets). Many of the great wheel’s components were manufactured by Detroit Bridge and Iron Works and Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh and shipped to Chicago. By March 20, one of the steel towers was complete, and its twin was soon in place. The 70-ton axle assembly— 45 feet long and 32 inches in diameter, the largest piece of steel forged to date— was made by Bethlehem Iron Company in Pennsylvania at a cost of $90,000. Workers raised the axle 140 feet and fastened it to the top of the support towers in just two hours.
Construction of Ferris wheel on the Midway, 1893
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Chicago History Museum, ICHi-02436
Once the axle was in place, construction of the double wheel structure began. Set 28½ feet apart, each wheel included a hub, inner circle, and outer rim. The outer rims were composed of 36 curved square iron beams, each measuring 25½ x 19 inches. Set 40 feet inside the rims, the inner circles were made of smaller, lighter beams, called crowns, and held together with trusswork. Each wheel had a large hub at its center 16 feet in diameter. Spoke rods, 2½ inches in diameter and arranged in pairs, connected the hub to the crowns. Construction began at the bottom and moved upward. Using wooden scaffolding, workers hoisted the final sections of the outer rims 264 feet to complete the circles and then joined the two wheels with struts and rods.
Wheel with a View | 33
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Telegram from construction supervisor L. V. Rice to George Ferris reporting on the first rotation of the Ferris wheel, June 9, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-74240
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Complimentary press pass for the Ferris wheel, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-168893
The Ferris wheel debuted on June 21, almost eight full weeks after the fair opened. The manufacture and construction of the wheel had cost $400,000. One of the wheel’s cars, wrapped in patriotic bunting, hosted the Iowa State Band, playing to a crowd of two thousand gathered for the event. At 3:30 P.M., 34 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
the speeches began, and Ferris modestly stated that he hoped “the giant wheel might be thought worthy to stand as a representative of the skill and daring of American engineers.” Ferris blew a golden whistle signaling that the wheel should begin rotating. It moved deliberately, loading cars with passengers, and began its two rotations, a schedule it would repeat again and again during the next four-and-a-half months.
June 9, 1893, was a critical day for George Ferris and Luther Rice. Their wheel was complete, waiting for its thirty-six cars to be attached. Although Ferris was out of town on business, he instructed Rice to “turn the wheel or tear it off the towers.” Steam was admitted into the engines and power transmitted by a triple set of gears, which ran a sprocket chain to turn the wheel. With men monitoring every aspect of its workings, the wheel began to turn, and twenty minutes later it had completed a full rotation. It worked perfectly. Two days later, with six cars attached, the wheel made another rotation carrying its first passengers, including Ferris’s wife, Margaret.
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The Ferris wheel, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-25054
Resembling a bicycle wheel with spokes (spoke rods) holding the rim in tension around the axle, the Ferris wheel was a striking example of technical prowess and bold engineering. In this view, the outer rims and inner crowns are clearly visible as are the pyramidal-shaped towers that hold the axle. Each tower was 140 feet tall, measuring 40 x 50 feet at its base and tapering to six square feet at its apex. The two legs of each tower were bolted to concrete footings. The Barry Ice Railway concession is seen in the foreground of the wheel.
Wheel with a View | 35
View of the Midway Plaisance featuring the captive balloon and the Ferris wheel, 1893
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Photograph by C. D. Arnold Chicago History Museum, ICHi-02446
The giant wheel dominated the Midway Plaisance in sheer scale and drama. The milelong Midway, which jutted west from the fairgrounds, was devoted to amusements and anthropological displays of Africans, Samoans, and other people of color. The Ferris wheel occupied a prime location at the center of the Midway, but for such a major structure, it had a relatively small footprint. Nestled between the Streets of Cairo, the Moorish Place, and the Algerian and Tunis display (and located directly across from the model of the Eiffel Tower), the big wheel was the undisputed centerpiece of the Midway. Admission to the fairgrounds was fifty cents, but attractions on the Midway cost extra. A ride on the Ferris wheel cost another fifty cents for two revolutions, making it one of the most expensive concessions at the fair.
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Stereographic view of the Ferris wheel carriages, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-02444
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The wheel held thirty-six cars, or carriages, each with a capacity of sixty passengers. Measuring thirty-seven feet long, thirteen feet wide, and nine feet tall, the cars were constructed of an iron frame covered with wood. Each featured a door for loading passengers, five broad plate glass windows, and forty revolving chairs made of wire and screwed to the floor. Numerous safety measures were put in place, including Westinghouse air brakes to stop the cars in the event of an emergency. Conductors loaded each car, locking the doors after all passengers were inside; and the wheel would not move until the conductors had activated their annunciators. When a gale force storm hit the fairgrounds on July 9, Ferris and others rode the wheel in its midst. The structure weathered 115-mile-an-hour winds with barely a shiver and sustained no damage.
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View from a Ferris wheel carriage, 1893
Chicago History Museum, ICHi-65592
This photograph captures the structural elements that comprised the Ferris wheel: the axle, curved crown sections, cross members, and diagonal spoke rods connecting the wheels to their hubs. It also gives a sense of the powerful view afforded to passengers. In describing the view, A Leaflet for the Press noted: “It is impossible to obtain a more charming panorama of the White City and Chicago than from the Ferris wheel. . . . To the north, south and west the city seems to lift itself into vision, while towards the east the World’s Fair buildings rise one after the other until when the highest point is reached a complete bird’s-eye view is presented.”
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! Aerial view of the Ferris wheel on the Midway at the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893
Chicago History Museum, ICHi-52279
This view of the Midway, looking northwest, shows the scale of the Ferris wheel in the context of the nearby Chicago neighborhood. The Midway’s popular Panorama of the Bernese Alps is visible on the right. For many visitors making their way to the fairgrounds, the great wheel with its two American flags flying was their first image of the World’s Columbian Exposition.
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Promotional card for the Ferris wheel featuring the ride’s statistics and Ferris’s signature on the reverse, 1893 Photograph by Brisbois; distributed by agents at Alfred A. Ames & Co., Schiller Building Chicago History Museum, gift of Anita Black, ICHi-73008
Ferris took advantage of the admiration for his daring invention by creating likenesses of the giant wheel and of himself. He signed many of these products to certify their authenticity.
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Silver-colored match case featuring an
! engraving of the Ferris wheel, 1893 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-66809
Ferris commissioned numerous products to promote the Ferris wheel and earn additional revenue. In addition to souvenir books like The Ferris Wheel Souvenir, which featured “A Brief History of the Invention and Construction of the Ferris wheel, Together with a Short Biography of George W. G. Ferris, Esq.,” paperweights, medals, and framed photographs were offered as mementos to the public. This match case, featuring the Administration Building and the Palace of Fine Arts in relief on the front and an engraving of the Ferris wheel on the back, was one of many such souvenirs.
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“Ferris wheel, Statement of business by the week” Chicago History Museum, ICHi-168892
This week-by-week sales report reveals that 1,453,611 tickets were sold between July 1 and November 6, earning $726,805.50, with the largest number of tickets sold (151,201) the week of October 16. As part of Ferris’s concession agreement, fair organizers received $211,805. No concession came close to earning as much, making the great wheel the most lucrative operation on both the Midway and the official fairgrounds. Without the financial success of the Ferris wheel, it is doubtful that the fair corporation would have showed a profit. Wheel with a View | 43
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View of the Midway falling into disrepair after the close of the fair, c. 1894 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-79040
Although the exposition officially closed on October 1, 1893, visitors who paid fifty cents were allowed to roam the fairgrounds. Ferris believed his lease on the space, which extended to January, gave him the right to continue to operate his wheel. Daniel Burnham and other exposition officials challenged Ferris on his interpretation and sent Columbian Guards to shut down the wheel. The confrontation turned ugly, and the police arrested both exposition and Ferris wheel personnel. Overnight, fair officials erected a fence that blocked entrance to the Midway and access to the wheel. An angry George Ferris and his Ferris Wheel Company sued the exposition. Ferris considered moving the wheel to New York City to join Old Vienna, a summer beer garden and amusement park that stood on Thirty-Seventh Street and Broadway. But this opportunity and several others faded, and the great wheel stood idle during the winter of 1893–94.
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Workers stand atop the Ferris wheel axle during its dismantling, Midway Plaisance, June 21, 1894
Photograph by Stadler & Dovale Chicago History Museum, gift of Doris and Lois McWhorter, ICHi-23708
During the spring and summer of 1894, the Ferris wheel, including its engines, boilers, electric plant, and other mechanical parts, was dismantled at a cost of $14, 833 and set on a railway siding along Sixty-First Street near Woodlawn Avenue. Although ready to be shipped to a new venue, the wheel remained in storage for nearly a year.
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“Fight Ferris Wheel: Citizens of Lake View Object to a Proposed Neighbor” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 23, 1895 (detail)
The Ferris Wheel Company, unable to identify a new venue for the wheel, finally settled on a site on Clark Street near Wrightwood on the city’s North Side. The company entered into a partnership with transit magnate Charles Yerkes, whose heavily used cable car line ran close by. Their prospectus, issued to entice investors, stated that this location—2619–65 North Clark Street— was easily accessible via cable car and offered a stunning bird’s-eye view: “The view of the lake, the park and the city from this site is very beautiful and is unobscured by smoke, and the grounds are spacious and well adapted to the purpose.” Architect Jarvis Hunt had developed a plan for a roof garden, restaurant, and other attractions. But many Lakeview residents objected to the proposal, fearing that the enterprise would attract the unsavory and the cable car line would become overtaxed and inconvenient. They organized an effort to prohibit a liquor license, attempting to thwart the Ferris Wheel Company’s plans, and succeeded in winning the ban. Wheel with a View | 45
! The reconstruction of the Ferris wheel on
Clark Street near Wrightwood Avenue, 1895
Chicago History Museum, gift of Herbert C. Neubert, ICHi-00029
Despite residents’ objections, the wheel was erected in Lakeview in August 1895 and the cars attached by September; but the season was almost over, and Ferris Wheel Park did not open until spring of 1896. In the meantime, Yerkes tried to overturn the liquor license ban, but he was unsuccessful.
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Fred Woltz’s Billiard Parlor, 1279 North Clark Street, c. 1896 Chicago History Museum, gift of James E. Madden, ICHi-73618
The Ferris wheel, seen in the reflection of this storefront window, finally became operational in spring 1896, but efforts to build out Ferris Wheel Park stalled. When the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the liquor license ban on June 23, the park began its downward spiral. In the midst of a severe economic depression, few Chicagoans were willing to pay fifty cents to ride the wheel, and the company began losing money. In November 1896, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. died, and the company with debts of $400,000 was placed in receivership.
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The great Ferris wheel, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904
Stereograph by H. C. White Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-40988
On June 3, 1903, the Chicago House Wrecking Company purchased the Ferris wheel at a receiver’s auction for $1,800. During the winter of 1903–04, a workforce of ninety-five men spent seventytwo days dismantling the wheel and shipped it on 175 railcars to St. Louis to be erected in Forest Park for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Once again the centerpiece of a world’s fair, the Ferris wheel dominated the fairgrounds, carrying as many passengers as it had on the Midway.
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Destruction of Ferris wheel, St. Louis, May 11, 1906 Chicago History Museum, ICHi-17398
Using two hundred pounds of dynamite, detonated in two stages, the Chicago House Wrecking Company demolished the Ferris wheel, which had stood in Forest Park since the world’s fair closed in 1904. The grand wheel collapsed into a tangled heap of steel. The wheel’s boilers, engines, chairs, plate glass, and 2,700 tons of structural iron and steel sold as scrap for $75,950.
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La Grande Roue de Paris, c. 1900
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Photomechanical print Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-10699
Walter Bassett, an Englishman who had successfully designed and built Ferris wheels in London and Vienna, won the concession to build another wheel for the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. Known as La Grande Roue de Paris, his 300-foot wheel featured forty cars for passengers and stood on the Avenue de Suffren, a short distance from the Eiffel Tower. The two observation structures, one an inspirational stationary tower, the other a daring revolving wheel, had at last come together to offer stunning bird’s-eye views of Paris. La Grande Roue was dismantled in 1920.
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M A K I N G H I S T O RY I
Chicago’s Education Innovators: Making History Interviews with Paul Adams III and Walter Massey T I M O T H Y J . G I L F OY L E
T
he influence of educators Paul Adams and Walter Massey extends far beyond Chicago. Both men share Southern roots: they grew up in racially-segregated urban communities and migrated to Chicago in search of employment opportunity. For more than forty-five years, Adams has served as the director of guidance, principal, and president of Providence St. Mel School in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood. Adams’s avid fund raising saved the school from closing in the 1970s and attracted the interest of and personal visits by President Ronald Reagan. In the ensuing decades, Adams was instrumental in transforming the school into what one study called the “model for urban education” in the United States.1 For more than half a century, Massey has been a national leader in the promotion of science, technological innovation, and making technology accessible to wider segments of the American population. The physicist and selftaught business executive has served as president, chairman, or director of Morehouse College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Science Foundation, Argonne National Laboratory, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Society of Black Physicists, and Bank of America.2 Paul Joseph Adams III was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 14, 1940, the eldest of four children of Patsy Lois and Paul Adams Jr.3 The Adams family resided in the vicinity of the historically black Alabama State University. “I lived nearby, two, three blocks from the college,” remembers Adams. “Now the university’s taken over the area that I lived in.” 50 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
Paul J. Adams III (left) received the 2014 Robert Maynard Hutchins Making History Award for Distinction in Education. Walter E. Massey, PhD, (right) received the 2012 Enrico Fermi Making History Award for Distinction in Science, Medicine, and Technology.
Born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, Adams (left) returned to his home state in 1965 to participate in the Selma marches. Massey (below) received a bachelor of science in physics and mathematics from Morehouse College in 1958. He later served as the ninth president of the college.
He recalls a stable middle- and working-class African American neighborhood. His nearby neighbors included Harper Councill Trenholm, the longtime president of Alabama State, and civil rights leader the Reverend Ralph Abernathy. “The men went to work, and most of the ladies were housewives or they worked as domestics,” recounts Adams.4 Paul Adams Jr. worked on the “killing floor” of the nearby Armour Hormel slaughterhouse, and Patsy Adams was an elementary school teacher and principal.5 Both valued education and enrolled their children in private elementary and high schools in the Montgomery area.6 “When I grew up, getting an education was the most important thing,” explains Adams. “I always knew that I was going to go to college. Everybody in my family talked about it.”7 Walter Eugene Massey was born on April 5, 1938, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His stepfather, Almar, was employed by the Hercules Powder Company and later moved to Chicago to take a job as a steelworker, while his mother, Essie Nelson Massey, was an elementary school teacher. Massey has mixed memories about his Mississippi childhood. “I had a good family and a lot of friends, but it was not fun growing up in a segregated society,” he explains. “Everyone had to drink out of ‘colored’ water fountains, and you couldn’t go in the front doors. But in spite of all that, I have fond memories.” By Massey’s account, “We were not poor. We were not wealthy.”8 In 1954, Massey enrolled at Morehouse College on a full scholarship after taking a Ford Foundation exam, which enabled him to skip his final two years of high school.9 “It was a three-year experiment, and I was with the third year, and there were fifteen students in each class,” recounts Massey. “The enviMaking History | 51
In 1970, Massey became the first African American professor of physics at Brown University and later, dean of the college (pictured at left). Among other notable activities at Brown, he turned his attention to bringing “people from historically underrepresented groups into the sciences.”
ronment was challenging, Massey now admits. Some students had attended elite New England boarding schools and knew calculus and foreign languages. Massey, by contrast, had never taken advanced algebra, trigonometry, or chemistry. “My first week there, I called my mother and told her I wanted to come home. It was very, very scary.”10 His mother told him to stay put. Morehouse’s entrance exam, however, boosted his confidence. “At that time, all of the freshmen had to take a placement exam, and the results were posted right on the front hall of the dorms,” Massey explains, adding that “they put your name and where you ranked from one to a 112.” He approached the public list with trepidation but then saw that he was ranked number five. “I was dumbfounded,” Massey declares. “I thought it was a mistake because I was so afraid I couldn’t succeed.” The experience was revelatory: “That was really one of the first times in my life that I thought, ‘Maybe I can do these things.’”11 For Adams, 1955 was the instrumental year of his life. “In 1955, I met Dr. [Martin Luther] King. Emmett Till was pulled out of the Tallahatchie River near Money, Mississippi, and Rosa Parks sat down on the bus.” Till’s death was particularly disturbing because he was the same age as Adams. “I can remember just walking home and feeling the sweat running down my hand, thinking that could have been me fished out of that river.” Those events shaped his daily life and “set me on my road to whatever I was going to do,” admits Adams. “There’s not a day that I wake up that I don’t think about Dr. King, that I don’t think about Emmett, that I don’t think about Rosa Parks.”12 Adams’s social activism began as a teenager in his childhood hometown. As a high-school student, he participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56. After a brief enrollment in Los Angeles Community College, he returned to Montgomery to attend Alabama State and major in history. In 1961, he was arrested for participating in a peaceful protest against segregated lunch counters in downtown Montgomery. The protest was costly for Adams: Alabama State officials suspended him for a quarter term, and he was then blacklisted from any teaching position in Alabama upon graduation.13 Alabama’s loss was Chicago’s gain. The bleak employment prospects in Alabama convinced Adams to move to Chicago. “I had never been to 52 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
Chicago, never knew anybody in Chicago,” he remembers. Like many twentieth-century African American migrants to the city, he initially resided at the Wabash YMCA near Thirty-Seventh Street in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Adams discovered, however, that the Chicago Board of Education was not hiring new teachers, so he briefly worked at a carwash and then the Lunax Chemical Company at Thirty-Ninth Street and Wabash Avenue. In a short time, he landed a position at the Gatlin School at Chicago State Hospital, commonly known as the Dunning Asylum. Adams worked at Gatlin for several years, eventually becoming its principal, while simultaneously operating a Jack in the Box fast-food franchise at Eighty-Third Street and Cottage Grove Avenue and working on his master’s degree in psychology from Northeastern Illinois University.14 Massey followed a different path in college. He initially expected to major in music, but under the tutelage of Professor Sabinus H. Christensen, Massey fell in love with physics and became the only person in his class to major in the subject. Upon receiving his bachelor of science in physics and mathematics in 1958, Massey taught physics for a year at Morehouse and then briefly studied at Columbia University in New York and Howard University in Washington, DC, before transferring to Washington University in St. Louis. There he earned his PhD in theoretical physics in 1966.15 Massey then moved to Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, while serving as a postdoctoral fellow for two years at Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Lemont. “My thesis was looking at some of the properties of liquid helium, in particular how it behaves at very low temperatures. It becomes something called a superfluid,” explains Massey. A group of physicists at Argonne was experimenting with strongly interacting fluids and materials at low temperature, remembers Massey. “They wanted to add a theoretician to the group to try to help come up with theories to explain the phenomenon that they were finding and find mathematical theorems to interpret and explain it.”16 In 1968, Massey accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was anxious not only to get back into the classroom but to become more active in the civil rights movement. “I had begun to feel that I was not in the mainstream of the social issues of the time,” Massey admits in retrospect. “Just doing physics research itself removes you from mainstream social issues.” That changed very quickly: “If I was concerned about being left out of the mainstream with social issues, that did not last long.” Within days of his arrival, the president of the Black Students Association called, asked for his help on behalf of the 264 African American students who had just been arrested for a peaceful demonstration in the student union. By the end of the year, Massey was not only the faculty advisor of the student association but founder and first president of the Black Faculty and Staff Association.17
Shirley Anne and Walter Massey attend an Argonne holiday party in the early 1980s. The couple married in 1969, and they have two sons, Keith and Eric. Born and raised in Chicago, Mrs. Massey has “committed much of her life to causes for youth and culture.”
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Providence St. Mel (left) holds a prominent place in Chicago’s East Garfield Park. The original building dates to the late 1920s, when it was an all-girls Catholic high school. In 1978, following the announcement that his school would close, Adams initiated a campaign that garnered national attention and transformed Providence St. Mel into an independent college preparatory school.
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In 1971, Adams was hired as a one-year replacement to serve as the director of guidance at Providence St. Mel School, a private Roman Catholic high school on the city’s West Side.18 The school was going through a difficult transition, and at the end of the year, Adams was asked to become principal. In 1969, the all-male St. Mel High School had merged with the all-female Providence High School. 19 The former was operated by the LaSalle Christian Brothers and the latter by the Sisters of Providence. The Sisters of Providence retained ownership of the property and continued to briefly run the school with the support of the Archdiocese of Chicago.20 Student enrollment was dropping, however, and the school’s finances were hemorrhaging. In 1974, only the intervention of Mayor Richard J. Daley prevented Cardinal John Patrick Cody from closing the school. Adams was then thrust into another new position: “Now I’ve become a fundraiser, so I start bingo games and all kinds of little fundraisers.”21 But Archdiocesan officials remained unconvinced about the long-term viability of Providence St. Mel’s. In 1978, they paid Adams a visit. “They just walked in and said, ‘We’re going to close the school,’” he remembers vividly. “I’ll never forget that as long as I live. I can almost repeat verbatim what was said in the meeting, and the rest is history.”22 That well-known history is that Adams immediately initiated a national fundraising campaign that attracted both local and national media attention. The campaign proved so successful that Adams restructured and terminated Providence St. Mel’s relationship with the Archdiocese, turning it into a not-for-profit independent school.23 A key ingredient to the success of the campaign, Adams affirms, was Sister Loretta Schafer of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-theWoods. She encouraged Adams to fundraise and predicted that the religious order would sell the property to the school if they raised enough money. “It was a big risk for the order. They could have sold it to the public schools,” Adams recalls. “It would have been a source of income for them. . . . But their statement was that Catholic education on the West Side should remain here.”24 While Adams was saving Providence St. Mel’s, Massey had moved to Brown University in Rhode Island. There he completed his most significant research: studying the changes in sound waves in superfluid helium.25 His leadership talents, previously honed at the University of Illinois, did not go unnoticed. From 1975 to 1979, he served as dean of the college at Brown.26 While there, however, Massey witnessed discouraging social and racial conditions similar to those he had encountered at Illinois. Concerned about how ill-prepared minority students were for the college classroom, Massey founded and directed the Inner City Teachers of Science, an innovative program to prepare science teachers for work in urban schools.27 “We constructed certain kinds of science courses,” explains Massey. “As part of
Providence St. Mel’s success story attracted the attention of President Ronald Reagan, prompting him to visit twice in the early 1980s and proclaim the school “a model for the nation to follow.”
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those courses, you had to spend time in the schools, tutoring students who were working with prospective teachers from their freshman year at Brown.”28 In 1979, Massey was invited to return to the Midwest as professor of physics at the University of Chicago and director of Argonne National Laboratory, overseeing a workforce of more than four thousand and a budget exceeding $250 million.29 In 1984, the university expanded his role, naming Massey vice president for research, while continuing to oversee Argonne.30 Massey’s supervision of Argonne was particularly focused on developing relationships between private enterprise and university scientists. He tackled the absence of university-business connections in the Chicago region by launching the Argonne National Laboratory–University of Chicago Development Corporation (ARCH), an organization designed to encourage and facilitate the transfer of technologies created in the laboratory to private industry.31 Massey was among the first to recognize the need to promote and develop the Chicago economy as a high-tech center. “There were the universities who were not doing things together, and the labs were not working with universities,” Massey remembers. In general, he summarizes, “We didn’t have an infrastructure in place to support scientists and engineers who wanted to go out [on their own]. And then we didn’t have the venture capital. We didn’t In 1982, during his tenure as director of Argonne, Massey (left) saw the installation of the inaugural piece of art on the laboratory’s grounds: the first outdoor site-specific pavilion/sculpture by Dan Graham (center).
Making History | 57
have space for start-ups.” Today, those issues “are being addressed,” Massey believes. Although the technological demands have changed and the state of Illinois is no longer competing for a supercollider as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, he adds that “there’s a lot of venture capital now in the area. We have spaces for start-ups and a lot of companies are booming.”32 Massey’s position at the intersection of science and business made him a pivotal figure in Chicago and the nation at large. In 1982, he chaired the Chicago Mayoral Task Force on HighTechnology Development and the Chicago High-Tech Association. At the invitation of Governor James Thompson, he served on the Illinois Governor’s Commission on Science and Technology. Massey was also deeply engaged in organizing the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a public, tuition-free, residential high school in Aurora for talented students. He simultaneously served as a trustee for the Academy for Mathematics and Science Teachers.33 Nationally, Massey was a member of the National Science Board, the policy-making body of the National Science Foundation, from 1978 to 1984. In 1989, he became president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an organization including more than 140,000 members and 285 scientific societies.34 A year later, President George H. W. Bush named Massey to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.35 All of these positions enabled Massey to advertise and promote science education. In his presidential address to the AAAS, he warned the membership: “If we look at the comparative performance of American students relative to that of their peers in other countries, we see that a great deal needs to be done.”36 Adams was equally versatile in his responsibilities, albeit in a much different way. He was totally devoted to Providence St. Mel’s. “I was the principal, head janitor, director of guidance. You name it, I was doing it,” he remembers, adding “I even cut the grass.” Adams’s dedication was inspirational to students and parents alike. Equally important, Adams’s ability to build and maintain a model academic program in a low-income, inner-city neighborhood attracted the interest and ultimately financial support of leading Chicago business figures, including W. Clement Stone of Consolidated Insurance, John E. Swearingen of Standard Oil, Patrick G. Ryan of Aon, and Robert W. Galvin of Motorola.37 58 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
Above: Massey (center) aboard a ship in Lake Michigan with employees of Argonne and the US Department of Energy, early 1980s. Below: As director of the National Science Foundation, Massey (right) visited Antarctica in 1992.
The investment paid off. For forty years, Providence St. Mel School has been a national beacon for inner-city and minority education in the United States. The curriculum remains rooted in the traditional liberal arts. Since 1978, 100 percent of Providence St. Mel’s seniors have been accepted to college, and in 2015, the entire senior class was accepted by Ivy League colleges and other top tier universities.38 Adams makes no apologies for the academic rigor found in the Providence St. Mel curriculum. “Our school has to be globally competitive, wherever you come from, you know where you’re going,” he emphasizes. “I’ve always adhered to very strict regimentation, and the teachers are the highest quality,” he insists. “The reason Providence St. Mel is successful is because we have great teachers, bar none. That’s the secret.”39
Adams’s commitment to education at Providence St. Mel is absolute. The school has expanded five times—adding grades 7 and 8 (1980), grades 5 and 6 (1987), grades 1 to 4 (1993), kindergarten (2000), and a pre-K program (2008).
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President Massey celebrates with Morehouse graduates shortly before his retirement from the college, c. 2006.
In 1993, Massey’s career entered a new phase. He was named provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of California, becoming second in command of the nation’s largest public university system. Massey was the heir apparent of the University of California when he was asked to be president of his alma mater Morehouse College.40 He initially resisted the invitation. “First of all, I didn’t want to go back south. I spent my whole life trying to get out of the South, and I’m finally in California at the most admired and greatest public research university in the world,” he recalls. “What more can you ask for?”41 But duty called, and Massey became the ninth president of Morehouse. From 1995 to 2007, Massey transformed the institution, first by choosing to live on campus with his wife, Shirley Anne, and then spearheading a successful $120 million fundraising campaign.42 Massey also created an academic village within Morehouse, organized around a series of new structures: the 70,000-square-foot Leadership Center with an executive conference center (renamed the Walter E. Massey Leadership Center and the Shirley A. Massey Conference Center in 2012), the John H. Hopps Jr. Technology Tower, the 375-bed Otis Moss Jr. Residential Suites, and the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center.43 Massey, working with other Atlanta institutions, including Spelman College, the Morehouse School of Medicine, and the Atlanta Public Housing Authority, also addressed the physical and economic decline of the neighborhood.44 “We started working together to redevelop that area around the schools physically through building, but also through community outreach programs involving our students and faculty,” Massey remembers. “That worked. If you go back now, it’s just a beautiful area. It’s really changed.”45 60 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
At a Morehouse alumni event in 1992, Massey (right) met up with Louis Wade Sullivan (center), then secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, and George W. B. Haley (left), who later served as the US ambassador to the Republic of the Gambia (1998–2001).
Just as Massey recognized that his responsibilities at Morehouse extended beyond the classroom, Adams acknowledged early on that his leadership of Providence St. Mel was not just about academics. “We try to teach our children that they have a responsibility for others, that today you need to, number one, get a great education, and that’s what we’re going to push always,” Adams states.46 But, at the same time, he encourages his students to be a “community of one.” “I think everybody looks for somebody else to do something, when you should be doing it yourself. And as a result, nobody does it. People say that’s a community problem.” He retorts, “You are the community. What are you talking about it’s a community problem? You live in the community. What have you done?” He challenges his students: “There’s too much garbage? Well, pick up the garbage. You’re not going to vote? Politicians know that you’re not going to vote, so they don’t pay attention to you.”47 Massey retired from Morehouse in 2007. So he thought. After returning to Chicago to live in Hyde Park, Massey was approached to serve a brief term as interim president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Massey recounts how he was asked to simply “organize and assist the new provost and the new dean, do administrative things, work with the board, get them involved.”48 Six years later, Massey was still president. Only in 2016 did he step down, agreeing to serve as president emeritus and chancellor.49 The accomplishments of Massey and Adams have not gone unnoticed. Both have been honored with multiple national awards. Adams is the recipient of the McDonald’s Education Achievement Award and the AfricanAmerican Male Image Award. He has been named an American Hero in Education by Reader’s Digest, Man of the Year by the Chicago Urban League, and one of Chicago’s Heroes by the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago.50 Massey is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Citation of the American Association of Physics Teachers, a special commendation from the Georgia
Attendees of the 2014 Making History Awards were treated to a performance by the Providence St. Mel Choir. Above: Adams and choir members on stage at the event, Four Seasons Hotel Chicago. Photograph by Dan Rest
Making History | 61
State Senate, and the Illinois Humanities’ Public Humanities Award.51 Between the two of them, Massey and Adams have received more than forty honorary degrees.52 In their own distinctive ways, both men have left indelible imprints on Chicago’s educational landscape. After personally visiting the school in 1982 and 1983, Ronald Reagan labeled Providence St. Mel’s “a shining light.”53 The same can be said of Paul Adams and Walter Massey. Timothy J. Gilfoyle is professor of history at Loyola University Chicago and former president of the Urban History Association. I L LU S T R AT I O N S | 50–60, courtesy of the awardees. 61–62, Chicago History Museum event photography. FURTHER READING | Paul Adams and Walter Massey await their biographers. Good overviews of Walter Massey’s career before 2010 are Tom and Sara Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E. 1938–,” Encyclopedia.com, 2005, available at http://www.encyclopedia.com /people/social-sciences-and-law/education-biographies/walter-e-massey; Tim Beardsley, “Scientist, Administrator, Role Model,” Scientific American, June 1992, 40–41; Norman Bradburn and David Rosen, “Walter E. Massey: President-elect of AAAS,” Science 238, no. 4834 (December 18, 1987), 1667–68. For Massey’s views on science education, see Walter E. Massey, “Science Education in the United States: What the Scientific Community Can Do,” Science 245, no. 4921 (September 1, 1989), 915–921. On Massey’s impact in Atlanta’s redevelopment, see David Perry, Scott Levitan, Andre Bertrand, Carl Patton, Dwan Packnett, and Lawrence Kelley, “360 Degrees of 62 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
Left: Michael D. O’Halleran (left) presented Adams with his Making History Award on June 4, 2014. Right: John H. Bryan (right) presented Massey with his Making History Award on June 6, 2012. Photographs by Dan Rest
Development: Universities as Real Estate Developers in Atlanta,” working paper (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2008), available at: https://www.lincolninst.edu/ sites/default/files/pubfiles/1564_789_perry_final.pdf. An insightful introduction to Paul Adams and Providence St. Mel is Dawn Turner Rice, “Chicago School Recognizes Martin Luther King Holiday by Keeping Students in Class,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 17, 2011, at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-17/news/ct-mettrice-providence-0117-20110117_1_students-private-school-grade. Information on the school can be found at the Providence St. Mel website, http://www.psmnow.com/. “Chicago St. Mel ‘Knights,’” Illinois History Glory Days (undated), http://www.illinoishsglorydays.com/id710.html, provides a detailed history of the school’s athletic accomplishments.
ENDNOTES 1 Michael Pressley, Lisa Raphael, J. David Gallagher, and Jeanette DiBella, “Providence–St. Mel School: How a School That Works for African American Students Works,” Journal of Educational Psychology 96, no. 2 (2004), 216–35. 2 “Walter Eugene Massey,” Prabook, 2017, accessed February 20, 2017, http:// prabook.com/web/person-view.html? profileId=468448; “Walter E. Massey,” Wikipedia, last updated January 19, 2017, accessed February 20, 2017, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_ E._Massey. 3 “Paul Adams III,” The HistoryMakers, updated 2017, accessed February 17, 2017, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/paul-adams-iii. 4 Paul J. Adams, oral history interview by Timothy J. Gilfoyle, April 29, 2014, deposited in the collection of the Chicago History Museum (hereafter Adams, interview). 5 Adams, interview. 6 “Paul Adams III,” The HistoryMakers. 7 Adams, interview. 8 Walter E. Massey, oral history interview by Timothy J. Gilfoyle, May 16, 2011, deposited in the collection of the Chicago History Museum (hereafter Massey, interview); “Walter Eugene Massey,” Prabook. 9 Norman Bradburn and David Rosen, “Walter E. Massey: President-elect of
AAAS,” Science 238, no. 4834 (December 18, 1987), 1677–78; “Walter E. Massey,” The HistoryMakers, updated 2017, accessed February 20, 2017, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/ biography/walter-e-massey-39. 10 Massey, interview; Tom and Sara Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E. 1938–,” Encyclopedia.com, 2005, accessed February 20, 2017, http://wwwthe. encyclopedia.com/people/socialsciences-and-law/educationbiographies/walter-e-massey (no algebra, trigonometry, chemistry). 11 Massey, interview. 12 Adams, interview. 13 Adams, interview; Dawn Turner Rice, “Chicago School Recognizes Martin Luther King Holiday by Keeping Students in Class,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 17, 2011, http://articles. chicagotribune.com/ 2011-0117/news/ct-met-trice-providence0117-20110117_1_students-privateschool-grade; “President & Founder Paul J. Adams III,” The Providence Effect, 2009, accessed February 17, 2017, http://www.theprovidenceeffect.com/ ccmembers/ccmember_adams.html. 14 Adams, interview. The history of Chicago State Hospital is summarized at “Chicago State Hospital,” Asylum Projects, updated May 10, 2015, accessed February 18, 2017, http:// www.asylumprojects.org/index.php?title =Chicago_State_Hospital. 15 Massey, interview; “Walter E. Massey,”
Making History | 63
The HistoryMakers; “Walter E. Massey,” Wikipedia (math and physics).
38 “History: Providence–St. Mel School” (website).
16 Massey, interview.
39 Adams, interview.
17 Massey, interview; Pendergast and
40 Pendergast and Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E.”
Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E.” 18 Adams, interview; “Paul Adams III,” The HistoryMakers; Rice, “Chicago School.” 19 “History: Providence–St. Mel School,” accessed May 8, 2017, http://www. psmnow.com/why-psm/history/. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Adams, interview. 23 “Paul Adams III,” The HistoryMakers. 24 Adams, interview. 25 Pendergast and Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E.” 26 Bradburn and Rosen, “Walter E. Massey: President-elect of AAAS.” 27 Ibid. 28 Massey, interview. 29 “Office of the President,” School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2012, accessed April 2, 2012, http://www.saic.edu/
41 Massey, interview. 42 “Walter E. Massey,” Wikipedia. 43 Vickie G. Hampton, “The Massey Legacy: A Living Legacy - Period,” Morehouse College, undated, accessed April 7, 2012, http:// www.morehouse.edu/about/massey_ legacy.html; “Morehouse Legacy,” Morehouse College, undated, accessed February 21, 2017, http://www. morehouse.edu/about/legacy.html. 44 On Morehouse College and Massey’s impact in Atlanta’s redevelopment, see David Perry, Scott Levitan, Andre Bertrand, Carl Patton, Dwan Packnett, and Lawrence Kelley, “360 Degrees of Development: Universities as Real Estate Developers in Atlanta,” working paper (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2008), 18–26, accessed February 21, 2017, https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default /files/pubfiles/1564_789_perry_final.pdf. 45 Massey, interview.
about/mission/index.html#president;
46 Adams, interview.
Bradburn and Rosen, “Walter E. Massey:
47 Ibid.
President-elect of AAAS” (budget and staff). 30 Massey, interview. 31 Pendergast and Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E.” 32 Massey, interview. 33 Pendergast and Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E.”; Bradburn and Rosen, “Walter E. Massey: President-elect of AAAS.” 34 Pendergast and Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E.” 35 Massey, interview; “Walter Eugene Massey,” Prabook. 36 Pendergast and Pendergast, “Massey, Walter E.” 37 Adams, interview. 64 | Chicago History | Summer 2017
48 Massey, interview. 49 Shia Kapos, “That really big thing Massey did before the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,” Crain’s Chicago Business, February 26, 2016, http://www.chicagobusiness.com/ article/20160226/ISSUE09/160229927/ that-really-big-thing-massey-did-beforethe-school-of-the-art-institute-of-chicago. 50 “Paul Adams,” Providence St. Mel’s, 2014, accessed March 23, 2014, http://www.psmnow.com/aboutpsm/leadership/paul-j-adams-iii/. 51 “Walter E. Massey,” Wikipedia. 52 Adams has received at least five honorary degrees and Massey, thirtynine. See “Paul Adams,” Providence St.
Mel’s; “Office of the President,” School of the Art Institute of Chicago; “Dr. Walter E. Massey to Receive 2016 Public Humanities Award,” press release, January 12, 2016, Illinois Humanities, accessed February 21, 2017, https:// www.ilhumanities.org/news/2016/01/ dr-walter-e-massey-to-receive-2016public-humanities-award/. 53 Eileen Ogintz, “Providence–St. Mel: A happy family,” Chicago Tribune, May 16, 1982, http://archives.chicagotribune.com/ 1982/05/16/page/5/article/providencest-mel-a-happy-family/index.html.