Chicago History | Spring 1971

Chicago History SPRING 1971

The interior of the Detroit Pu I Iman Shops, photographed before 1880, where artists put final decoration on George M. Pullman's "elegant palace cars." Florence Lowden Miller's article in this issue, based on Pullman family letters and diaries, describes the luxuries of the Pullman cars, in particular the private car of George M. Pu I Iman, her grandfather, who reputedly spent $50,000 on its construction.

Chicago History

THE MAGAZINE OF THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

"Did I ever bore you about Edith Wyatt, Chicagoenne, who wrote Every One His Own Way, and True Love, beautifully simple and true fables, as slyly told as J. Austen's." So wrote William Dean Howells, foremost literary critic at the tum of the century, to a friend in December, 1 go5. His enthusiasm for the obscure Chicago novelist is the subject of "Edith Wyatt: the Jane Austen of Chicago?", which appears in this issue.

Joseph "King" Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago in 1924. Oliver was one of the first great New Orleans musicians to migrate to Chicago during World War I, as George Bushnell points out in "When Jazz Came to Chicago." A jazz immortal himself, Oliver's band included severa I other jazz "greats." Lou is Armstrong is playing the cornet in the first row; his wife, Lillian Hardin, is at the piano, and Edward "Kid" Ory is the trombonist. Johnny and Warren "Baby" Dodds, also well-known stars of the day, are on the clarinet and drums, respectively. The bassist is Bill Johnson, and Oliver himself is standing, third from the left, with his cornet.

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Chicago History

Chicago History The Afaga::;ine of the Chicago H istorical Socief_)• SPRING 1971 Volume 1, Number 3

CONTENTS Cover: A sa tirica l ca rt oon fr o m the h um o r m agaz in e Life, N ove m be r 16, 19 11 , i llu stratin g Chicago's r eputation in th e Ea st. The cart oon a nd th e m agaz ine in which it a pp ea red a r e in th e li b rary of t he Ch icago H istor ica l Society courtesy Henry T. Rcckwell

David L asswell , Editor E li sabeth Ki mbell ,

WHEN JAZZ CAME TO CHICAGO b]' George D. Bushnell, Jr .

132

THE PULLMANS OF PRAIRIE AVEN UE : A DOMESTIC PORTRAIT FROM LETTERS AND DIARIES / 142

by Florence Lowden !11 iller NORTH AVENUE VIGNETTES: THE BLUE DANUBE / 156

bJ' Paul M. Angle

Assistant Editor CHICAGO THROUGH A CAMERA LENS: AN ESSAY ON PHOTOGRAPHY AS HISTORY , 158

by Glen E . H olt

Editorial Advisory Committee

Paul M. Angle, Chairman Emmett D edmon J ames R . Getz O li ver J ensen R obert \ V. J o hannsen H erman K ogan \ Vil! Leonard Cleme n t M . Sil vestro R obe r t M. Su tton

THE OLD NEW LEFT: EMMA GOLDMAN IN CHICAGO / 170

by D avid L asswell EDITH WYATT: THE JANE AUSTEN OF CHICAGO? , 172

by Clara M. and R udolf Kirk FIFTY YEARS AGO / 179 BOOK REVIEWS / 186 ~Y the Editors AN AFTERNOON AT THE FAIR / 190

Printe d by R. R. Donn el ley and Sons Company, Chicago, Ill i nois Desig n ed by Do ug Lang Copy r ight, 1971 by the Chicago Hi st o r ical Society North Avenu e a nd Cla r k St r eet Chicago, Illin ois 606 14

When Jazz Came to Chicago

BY GEORGE D. BUSHNELL, JR.

Between £917 and 1929 jazz was a Chicago monopoly, and from Chicago,jazzmen and their phonograph records spread the new jazz craze around the world. is popularly supposed to have had its origins in New Orleans, and indeed it did. In the Crescent City it evolved from a composite of ragtime, blues, spirituals, band marches and field hollers into a distinct music style which echoed down the city's streets, throbbed in funeral marches, and provided background music for aristocratic shenanigans in elegant bordellos.

But it was from Chicago, a thousand miles to the north, that jazz first blossomed into an international craze during the twelve rich years between I 91 7 and 1929, the period now called Chicago's golden age of jazz.

In New Orleans jazz was confined. It was Negro music and, while many New Orleans whites favored it, a stigma was attached to the style which prevented its spread beyond the redlight district and the black communities. In boisterous, bawdy Chicago, on the other hand, no such deep-seated taboos dictated popular tastes. Anything that tickled the Windy City's fancy-and made money, as jazz did-was certain to win wide acceptance and acclaim.

Jazz did tickle Chicago's fancy, and so it was here that the great New Orleans jazzmen came when World \Var I spelled doom for rowdy entertainment in the Crescent City. Chicago was the city where "respectable white folks" first grasped the entertainment value of the new music, and the hearty welcome they extended to

JAZZ

George D. Bushnell, Jr., a resident of Evanston, is Public Information Director at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Special thanks go to John Steiner of Chicago, an eminently qualified jazz historian himself, who provided many of the rare photographs that illustrate this article.

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the jazzmen was to establish a jazz mecca to \,·hich young white musicians, eager to study the masters, would flock in the 1920s.

It was in Chicago, too, that the term "jazz" was first widely used to describe the new style.

Some semanticists even claim that the name originated in Chicago, although others trace it either to Africa or to France and the French influence in New Orleans.

The distinguishing feature of jazz as a music form is a basic freedom between the beats. Jazz respects and depends upon its rhythm, but, unlike the swing of the 1930s, rock and roll, boogie \\'Oogie, and other related forms, it tolerates liberties which often seem to ignore the beat. And the jazz of Chicago's golden age, which concerns us here, is further distinguished by an enthusiasm for improvisation, a determined disdain for discipline and restriction. Though born in the streets of the Crescent City, it is not ew Orleans jazz but a style unto itself.

Jazz might never have come to Chicago had not two related even ts at the start of United States participation in World War I struck a death blow to New Orleans' Storeyville district, the city's center for entertainment and prostitution. The United States avy established a base near the redlight district, and ordered the thirty-eight block area closed. Shortly thereafter the city resolved to outlaw the operation of brothels within its limits. On November 12, 191 7, bands played farewells as tearful Storey\'ille madams abandoned their bordellos for more accommodating towns along the Gulf Coast.

It was a colorful spectacle. "There were fire\\·orks and parades and last goodbyes like we'd never seen before," jazz drummer Arthur James "Zutty" Singleton recalled later. "You might

The young Louis Armstrong with his cornet. Satchmo is one of relatively few Chicago jazzmen who were not eclipsed by the "sweet music" of the big bands and is still popular today.

Chicago Histori ca l Society

have thought the Germans had arrived. Men and women walked out of the district carrying everything they owned ... why, it was an allnight procession."

With Storeyville closed, scores of jazzmen found themselves out of work-but not for long.

Chicago beckoned to the displaced New Orleans musicians as the promised land for their exodus.

It was a city with plenty of money, where lusty life demanded entertainment in kind. In short, the "all-night proces ion" was soon to find its way to Chicago, where it would give birth to the Windy City's golden age of jazz. Singleton himself did not leave New Orleans for Chicago until eight years later, in , 925, to play with Louis Armstrong and to record with Jelly Roll Morton.

Backwater Blues on "The Stroll" From the beginning, the city's jazz entertainment center was in the "Black Belt" area, along South State Street from Twenty-sixth to Sixtythird Streets and from Dearborn Street to Cottage Grove Avenue. Only a few Negro bands were booked in Loop night spots during and before the War. White audiences, however, flocked to South Side jazz hangouts to enjoy the new music. Some of the best known Negro jazz spots were the Elite Cafe at 3445 South State, the Dreamland Cafe across the street, the Deluxe Cafe down State at Thirty-fifth, the gangsterridden Pekin Cafe at Twenty-eighth and State, and the Royal Gardens (rechristened Lincoln Gardens in r 920) at Thirty-first and Cottage Grove.

Patrons called the section from Thirty-first to Thirty-fifth streets along State "The Stroll," where on a Saturday night the ladies traded their working clothes and worries for their finest clothes and furbelo\\¡s, parading past the men's admiring eyes. This was the place to step out to the exciting strains of jazz by such masters as Louis Armstrong, Joe "King" Oliver, pianist Tony Jackson, and singer Bessie Smith. When Bessie played the Avenue Theater at Thirty-first 133

Chicago Jazz

Street and Indiana Avenue in 1fay, 1924, black patrons jammed in to hear her recreate the music of their deep-south chi ldhoods: Backwater blues done cause me Lo pack up my things an' go Cause my house fell down and I caint li ve there no mo'.

Something in the simple, rustic directness of the blues words caught them up, in spite of their "up north" sophistication.

There must have been an inborn thirst in Chicago for the "hot li ck," because even before the exodus from Storeyville a few adventurous New Orleans jazz pioneers had blazed a trail north to the Windy City and had made it big. :'.\cgro trumpeter Freddie Keppard and his Original Creole Band arri,·ed early in February, 1915. to play first at the Grand Theater, 3110 South State Street, with its ornate, pseudoRoman facade and then at the more elegant North American R estaurant at State and Monroe for a record sixteen-week period.

Trombonist Tom Brown and his Band from Dixieland follo\\·ed the Original Creole Band

north in 191.5 when they were imported from N'ew Orleans by vaudeville promoter Joe Frisco to play at Lamb's Cafe on Randolph Street near Clark. Brown's band in its ragtime-comedy tradition introduced a novelty number call ed " Livery Stable Blues" in which the instruments imitated barnyard animal noises, an ideal jazz theme. The band was the first white jazz musicians' group to leave New Orleans and come north.

Brown and a union dispute are often credited with the origin of the term "jazz" as the name for the new style of music. Brown, so the story goes, played in Chicago without union clearance . The orchestra leader playing opposite Brown's band complained, threatening to quit.

To his dismay, the cafc management accepted with alacrity his offer to leave, as Bro\\·n packed the house for CYery performance. In reprisal, the union launched a smear campaign a~ainst the new music, spreading the word among its members that Brown's music was "jass," an obscene term of southern origin. (Semanticists also have traced the word back to the \Vest African coast

A souvenir from the notorious Pekin Cafe, said to be the favorite hangout of Chicago's gangsters. courtesv John Ste iner

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where· it meant "hurry up," then to New Orleans music, meaning there to "speed up" the tempo. Still another possible origin is the French verb "jaser," meaning to chatter or prattle in speech.)

Brown made the most of the publicity as more customers came to listen and dance. He was soon advertising himself as "Brown's Dixieland Jass Band, Direct from New Orleans, Best Dance Music in Chicago." Whether or not the story of the union's revenge is true, the word "jazz" as applied to music was probably first widely used in Chicago. In January of 1917, Variery noted, "The most popular attractions in Chicago cabarets are now the Jaz [sic] Bands and every cabaret has its own orchestra."

At first, Dixieland jazz in the Loop was dominated by white musicians like Brown. Not until two years after his arrival in 1915 did Negro jazz bands come into their own. The only black jazzmen popular before that time were Freddie Keppard, whose band was playing all over the South Side, and a New Orleans cigar-makerturned-trombonist by the name of George Filhc (later changed to Fields so his fans could pronounce his name), who entertained at the Fountain Inn, Sixty-third and Halsted streets, and at the Arsonia Cafe on North Michigan Avenue.

When Storeyville closed the picture changed rapidly; by 1918, jazz was black if it was beautiful.

One of the black pioneers in Chicago was a woman, Lillian Hardin, who in 1924 became Louis Armstrong's second wife. A young Fisk University coed from Memphis, Lillian took a job early in 1917 playing piano at Jones Music Store on South State Street to promote sheet music sales. \\Then "Sugar Johnny" and his band advertised for a pianist, Lil applied. ··\\·hen I sat down to play," she recalled later, "I asked for the music and were they surprised! They politely told me that they didn't have any music and never used any. I then asked what key the first number would be in. I must have been speaking a different language because the leader

Chicago Hi storica l Soci ety

The Pekin Cafe, 28th and State Streets, photographed in the early 1920s. The Avenue Theater at 31st Street and Indiana Avenue, which is advertised on the side wall of the Pekin, was another popular jazz spot.

said, ·When you hear two knocks, just start playing', and I did." Lil was hired on the spot, and never returned to student life at Fisk or to the music store.

From 191 7 on Chicago welcomed jazz with open arms. Musicians were coming up from the South via the Illinois Central, and other jazzmen worked their way north playing gigs on the excursion steamers, perfecting their styles under such veterans as pianist Fate Marable and comers like drummer vVarren "Baby" Dodds, banjoist-guitarist Johnny St. Cyr, and a teenage cornetist named Louis Armstrong.

The Coming of the king Leading the migration to Chicago was Joseph ·'King" Oliver, who arrived in 1917. In just se\·en years his Creole Jazz Band, the embodiment of jazz until 1924, became the hallmark of classic black jazz.

Born in 1885 on :--;ew Orleans' Dryadcs Street, Oliver joined a children's brass band at age thirteen, and worked as a butler while he learned the cornet. He also played with the city's fine Eagle Band and, later, with the Onward Brass Band at Rice's Hall in Storeyville under the leadership of hot cornetist Emanuel Perez.

Before Storeyville \\°aS closed, Oliver was playing with his O\rn band at Pete Lala's Cafe, and he jumped at the chance, offered by the growing popularity of jazz, co go north to the new jazz mecca. He arrived in Chicago with two steady jobs, playing for the next t\,·o years at the Royal Gardens near Cottage Grove Avenue and Thirty-first Street with the remaining members 135

Chicago Jazz

of the Original Creole Band and at the Dreamland Cafe on State Street south of Thirty-fourth Street with clarinetist Lawrence Duhe. He accepted a steady and exclusive job at the Dreamland in r920, and organized King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, which played there until one A.M. and then followed with an early morning ession at the notorious Pekin Cafe.

Sineteen-twenty ushered in the decade which novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald labelled the "Jazz Age." When Chicago's Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson, presiding over the November, r920, election celebration at City Hall, bellowed out, "Let the jazz band play," it was clear that the word "jazz" was familiar and the music accepted-at least at City H a ll. That year several white jazzmen banded together to form the Rhythm Kings and were booked to play at the Friar's Inn in Chicago. \Vithin a year the Rhythm Kings had recorded such jazz classics as "Oriental," "Farewell Blues," "Bugle Call Blues," " Milneburg, " "Joys," "That's A Plenty," "Panama," "Tiger Rag," and "Eccentric."

The Rhythm Kings, for a white group, rated well with King Oliver's band. So inspired and original were they that other musicians packed into the Friar's Inn to listen. Rhythm Kings tunes immediately became popular, and se,¡eral sold as many as two hundred thousand records.

In these early years of jazz recording, cutting discs was often a haphazard operation. The few record companies assembled the best musicians as recording units. R ehearsa ls were often spontaneously short; early Rhythm Kings discs were made, as trumpeter Jimmy McPartland recalled, after "we'd put the record on, played a few bars, and then got all our notes ... " The elaborate techniques of modern recording were unknown -and, judging from the discs, unnecessary.

Most of the Chicago jazzmen recorded for Gennett Records, a company in Xew Richmond, Indiana, where recording sessions were typically informal. The work was done in a warehouse near a railroad freight line, and when a train rolled past, all recording stopped.

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King Oliver took his band to California for a six-month tour in 192 r. Returning to Chicago, he opened at the Royal Garden, which had been redecorated and renamed the Lincoln Gardens Cafe. To build a stronger band, Oliver decided to add a second cornet and sent for young Louis Armstrong, who was then playing at Lala's back in New Orleans.

The Boy from James Alley Daniel Louis Armstrong, born in 1900, grew up in the streets of::--;ew Orleans. Arrested at the age of thirteen when he exuberantly shot off a pistol on New Year's Eve, the boy was sent to the Colored \,Vaifs Home, which was to change his life. During his eighteen-month stay, he was given his first cornet by the music director, and earned the nickname "Satchelmouth," later shortened to" atchmo." Before he was released Peter Davis, the director, made him leader of the band. ''E\'erybody was playing cornet then, but King Oliver, 'Papa Joe' to me, was way out in front of them a ll as the very best," Louis reca ll ed years later. "He was so powerful he used to blow a cornet out of tune C\'cry two or three months. I was constantly hanging around him ... he was my inspiration."

In their admiration for King Oli,¡cr, Louis and his drummer pal Joe Lindsay formed a sixpiece kids' jazz combo, copying the Kid Ory-Joe Oliver band in every note. Opportunity knocked quickly: when Oliver left for Chicago in 1917, Ory gave the King's chair to young. \rmstrong.

The next four years were eventful ones for the boy from James Alley. He married Daisy Parker (a mistake from the start), took a job with Fate Marable's orchestra for a seven-month gig aboard the New Orleans excursion steamer Dixie Belle, perfected his ability to read from sheet music, lefL l\1arable and went home to divorce Daisy.

On a humid July day in 1922, Louis was handed a telegram after playing a funeral. It was from "Papa Joe" Oliver. ,vould Louis join him

photo courtesy John Stein e r

1n Chicago as second cornctist at the Lincoln Gardens? Taking "about eight seconds" to consider the offer, Louis packed up his cornet and a few belongings and headed north. Louis arrived in Chicago late at night and caught a cab to the Gardens. As the taxi pulled up to the club, the band's music drifted out. "My Gawd," younis Satchmo thought, "I wonder if I'm really good enough to play for that band." But from that first night he earned his place, and, as Oli,¡er had been his inspiration, so did he inspire a sixteen-year-old youngster named Francis Spanier who sat outside and listened, too young to be admitted inside. Spanier, whom Armstrong affectionately dubbed "Muggsy," became a star jazz cornctist in the late 1920s, cutting his first record with the Bucktown Five in February, 1924, for Gennett.

It was during that year, 1922, that Oli,¡er began to record for Paramount, Gennett, Okeh, and Columbia, cutting thirty-five or thirty-seven sides in all (one Gennett disc has not been located). They were the first real body of recorded Negro jazz, and were to influence a widening circle of young white Chicago musicians. Amonothc recordings were "Mabel's Dream," in which the instruments depicted parts of Negro church singing; "Canal trect Blues," a fast number with clarinetist Johnny Dodds, and "Mandy Lee Blues," also featuring Dodds' clarinet.

Until about the middle 1920s, bands recorded accoustically. Strong musicians like Louis Armstrong were backed away from the large horns

The Elite Cafe, 3445 South State Street, Teenan Jones, proprietor. Jelly Roll Morton is second from the right in the group standing in front of the famous jazz hangout.

to avoid overpowering the band's music. But the limitations were often offset by the recording engineer, whose adept groupings produced some remarkable results. The records became a sound scrapbook of the jazz immortals and of individual musicians such as guitarist Ruddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter; blues singer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey; trombonist Edward "Kid" Ory, and rent party pianist Montana Taylor.

"It's All Jelly Roll Style" During the same year that King Oliver made his first recordings, Ferdinand Joseph "Jelly Roll Morton" LaMenthe arrived in Chicago. Jelly Roll, Creole jazz pianist and composer, was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1885, the same year that Oliver was born in Kew Orleans. Gambler, musician, braggart, ill-tempered loose-liver, he was the composer of scores of melodies and a great orchestral arranger and band leader. At seven, Morton played the mandolin, and three years later he drew admiring New Orleans crowds with his ragtime piano.

"Mr. Jelly Lord," as Morton liked to be called, left r ew Orleans in 1907 to wander about the country shooting pool, gambling, doing vaudeville comedy, and running night clubs. He claimed to have compo~cd his famous "Jelly Roll Blues" in 1905, published in Chicago a decade later. A year before his death in 1941, Jelly Roll 137

Chicago Jazz

dispelled all contrO\-ersy about jazz ,,·ith the confident proclamation: " ;'\cw Orleans style, Kansas City style, );ew York style-it's all Jelly Roll style."

Morton settled in Chicago in 1922 and recorded "Jelly Roll Blues" and ":\Tew Orleans Blues" a year later. In 1926 he was at the peak of his fame as king of Chicago's _jazz pianists, recording for Victor with a band composed of :'.'\ew Orleansjazzmen recruited from the South Side. The Red Hot Peppers group for the \'ictor recordings included the top musicians in the city, among them Kid Ory, clarinetist Omer Simeon, cornetist George Mitchell, bassist John Lindsay, banjoist Johnny St. Cyr, drummer Andrew Hilaire, and Jelly Roll himself on piano and vocals.

But Jelly Roll was just a part of the big record boom in jazz. Victor's stable of musicians also included the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the Original Creole Band, and Johnny Dodds' Washboard Band . Among the Gennett bands were the Wolverines who cut thirteen records, Friar's Society Orchestra, and King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. King Oliver also recorded for Paramount, as did blues singer "Ma" Rainey.

Okeh and Vocalian also featured prominently among jazz recording companies.

Record. sales were booming in Chicago, as elsewhere, and singer Bessie Smith, though not Chicago-based, was one of the most popular recording artists. For some years blues and jazz records were available almost exclusively in the :\Tegro neighborhoods, where they were kno,,·n as " race records." Pianist Clarence \Villiams, who operated a record store on the South Side, remembered that in 1 924 "colored people would form a line twice around the block when the latest record of Bessie Smith came in ... nobody ever asked for Paul Whiteman; I doubt if they even knew about him." And when radio brought an eighty-five per cent drop in record sales, it was rumored that Bessie Smith's records alone saved the Columbia Record Company from bankruptcy.

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Jazz ,,·as the black man's kingdom during much of the Chicago era, but while Oliver and Armstrong and Jelly Roll were achieving vvide acclaim with their records and live performances, a young white musician started playing in the Windy City, in 1923, and went on to become a national hit. Bix Beiderbecke was a musician's musician, and his every solo break was original and different. As writer George Johnson wrote in Down Beat in 1938, "His playing was so narcotic in its effect on susceptible listeners that I have seen some that were truly doped by its effect so they had the manner of an opium addict ... " Bix, born Leon Bismarck Beiderbecke in 1 903, came by his musical talent honestly. His mother played both pipe organ and piano, and carefully nursed her son's interest in music. There was always a piano in the Davenport, Iowa home, and at the age of threc, when Bix was just able to reach the keyboard, he could pick out the tune of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody. But it was the alluring riverboat jazz which drifted from the excursion boats on the nearby Mississippi that provided the determining influence on the young prodigy.

Bix began to learn cornet at fifteen, listening to :\1ick LaRocca and the early records of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. After less than three years at Davenport High School, he was sent to Lake Forest Military Academy, where he was soon the featured cornetist in the school's dance band. It was a short trip south to Chicago's jazz spots, and Bix would sl ip away on weekends to play in a band that later furnished several members of the Wolverines group. Bix and the Wolverines played at the Stockton Club, a roadhouse near Hamilton, Ohio, late in 1923, at the Cascades Ballroom back in Chicago at heridan Road and Argyle, and at the \'alentino Inn at 22 East Adams Street.

In the spring of 1924 an Indiana University student by the name of Hoagy Carmichael imported the group from Chicago for a fraternity dance. The \,Volverines drove up in a battered

pholo courtesy John S!( iner

car, played, and were so popular that they were invited back for ten weekends in a row.

The Dreamland Cafe, 26th and State Streets, featuring pianist Glover Compton and the Drummer's Band.

Joe "King" Oliver played the Dreamland for two years when he first arrived in Chicago.

Chicago Style: Jazzmen' s Revolt By the mid-19'.20s,jazz in Chicago had reached its peak, and young while musicians in their teens and early twenties had started to develop a distinctive Chicago style. Eddie Condon had arrived in 1922 from Goodland, Indiana to play at the Campbell Gardens, and Art Hodes was learning piano from records. The Mound City Blowers, led by comb-tooter \Villiam "Red" McKenzie, arrived in July, 1924. While studying for the priesthood at St. Joseph's College young Gene Krupa was learning to play the drums, and clarinetist Joe Marsala was paying for his lessons by driving a truck.

The new Chicago style contrasted with the original Southern music by giving more time to solos; the beat was faster, more feyerishly excited, and the ::\'cw Orleans-style organization was deliberately upset by cascading runs and flourishes. Chicago jazz was ornate, inventive, and exhilarating, with a brashness and style very much its own. Bix Beiderbecke was an important innovator of the Chicago style, and Francis "Muggsy" Spanier's Buckto\,·n Five and Stomp Six groups were particularly successful in bringing the qualities of ' egro jazz into their own improvisations. They drew from Oliver's Creole Jazz Band style and the music of the ::--;cw Orleans Rhythm Kings, thereby achieving an effective mixture of black and white styles.

Other Chicago jazzmen who developed the Windy City style were clari!1etist Frank Teschernacher, guitarist Eddie Condon, and

saxophonist Bud Freeman. The stab le and sweet New Orleans trombone was often missing or used in a muted way, and the saxophone was added and given a basic part in the band. The jazz style was less structured, and won an increasingly large audience after the pioneer jazz years.

Those late years of the r 920s were an era of rc,·olt for the musicians. Chicago style meant, essentially, improvising, with a nonchalant disregard for sheet music arrangements. More than a revolt against Kew Orleans jazz itself, the Chicago music was a protest by some of the white jazzmen against their own middle-class backgrounds. In the \,·ords of Wolverine saxophonist George Johnson, '·Those were merry days, with no end of gin to drink, horses to ride and a grand lake to swim in."

Jazz and the gangster-ridden speakeasy era flourished together, and band members often found nightclub life uncomfortably exciting. Jim Lanigan, for instance, was dismayed one night \d1en a drunken gangland bodyguard shot his bass fiddle full of bullet holes at the Friar's Inn. Lanigan's spirits were restored when club 0\,·ner Mike Fritze! coolly relieved the hoodlum of a fistful of bills, giving Lanigan $850 to cover the cost of replacing the $225 fiddle. Nevertheless, ,Yhen the Capones or Dion O'Banion and his followers paraded in for some nightlife during the mid-twenties, musicians often skipped a beat or two.

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If not dangerous, some of the jazz joints were dirty dives in the literal sense. Clarinetist Johnny Dodds recalled his impression of a North Side club called Kelly's Stables, where he played in r 924: "We thought it was a bad job, with long hours, and the place itself was dirty. Everything inside it was painted black, and the stalls were still there from maybe twenty or thirty years before. It even smelled horsey."

The Beginning of the End Even in 1925, when jazz seemed to be just reaching its peak, there were signs pointing to the end of the Chicago jazz era. Bix Beiderbecke's Wolverines, organized only two years before, disbanded that year, when Bix left to join Charlie Straight's band. That fall he went to St. Louis to play with Frank Trumbauer at the Arcadia Ballroom for a then substantial wage of $100 a week. After a stint with Jean Goldkette's orchestra, Bixjoined the prestigious Paul Whiteman orchestra. But for Bix, the Whiteman group meant highly regimented playing and music reading beyond his ability. Bix, ill and drinking

"Mr. Jelly Lord" at the piano during his Chicago career.

Jelly Roll's success began at age ten, when New Orleanians gathered in droves to listen to his ragtime piano.

heavily, left Whiteman in New York to take what jobs he could find. His health impaired, Beiderbecke caught pneumonia after driving with a severe cold to play a Princeton date, and died August 7, 1931, only 28 years old.

Also in 1925, the Rhythm Kings ended its career in Indianapolis. The erratic clarinetist Leon Rapollo was committed to an asylum, where he died in 1943. Trombonist George Brunies (who later simplified his name to Brunis, supposedly on the advice of an astrologer) joined Ted Lewis, whose clarinet style and catchy question, "Is everybody happy?", won millions of fans after the decline of jazz. Brunis today continues his long career in jazz with occasional appearances in Chicago.

But jazz, despite Beiderbecke's departure and the demise of the Rhythm Kings, still had three more good years in the Windy City. On September 15, 1926, Jelly Roll and the Peppers cut three records, "The Chant," "Black Bottom Stomp," and the "Smoke House Blues," in Victor's Chicago studio. Six days later, with an enlarged group which included cornetist Lee Collins and clarinetists Darnell Howard and Barney Bigard, the Peppers recorded "Steamboat Stomp" (with steamboat whistle effects), '¡Sidewalk Blues," and "Dead Man Blues," featuring Jelly Roll's piano, some bantering dialogue and Ory's tailgate trombone. They recorded four more sides in Chicago in December, including "Cannon Ball Blues," "Grandpa's Spells," "Original Jelly Roll Blues," and "Doctor Jazz," made famous by King Oliver, featuring Jelly Roll's vocal.

The records were selling well, the Peppers were billed as Victor's "No. 1 Hot Band," and in June, 1927, the band, with some new members including "Baby" Dodds on drums, recorded 'Jungle Blues," "The Pearls," and "Beale Street Blues." And then Jelly Roll himself moved to ~ew York, in 1928.

His business card proclaimed him the "Originator of JAZZ-STOMP-SW! G-World's Greatest Hot Tune Writer," but his decline in

Bix Beiderbecke (far right) and the Wolverines appea rin g in Chicago, probably in 1924 or 1925.

popularity began wiLh Lhat move from Chicago.

Eclipsed by the swing he claimed to have crealed, Jelly Roll Morton died July ro, 1941, in Los Angeles, of heart disease and asthma.

The popularity of jazz in Chicago declined sharply after about r 928 . By 1925, the nation had built more than 560 radio stations, and dance bands were filling the air waves with a new, quick way to hit the big time. By the time Rudolph Valentino died in 1926, movies on the South Side were being billed above Lhe jazz bands. By the time Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer" opened in 1927 as the first "talkie," people had lost the postwar taste for uninhibited entertainment and hot music, and preferred the quiet, soothing tunes of "sweet" bands like Lhosc of Jan Garber, Guy Lombardo, Ted Lewis, Paul Whiteman, Hal Kemp, Jean Goldkctte, Isham Jones and 1Vaync King.

True, many Chicagoans still liked to toddle to the jumpy jazz rhythm, and the Charleston \\'as in vogue. To cater to them, tl1c bands hired hot soloists like Muggsy Spanier, George Brunis and Bix Beiderbecke and paid them generously.

But the jazzmen played perhaps two solos in ten numbers, and then sat back while less inspired

performers smothered their jazz with the other eight tunes. :,,cw York's Harlem was becoming the new national center for jazz. Duke Ellington, Elmer Snowden, Chick Webb, and Fletcher H enderson packed in audiences at the Savoy Ballroom, C lub Alabam, and Cotton Club. As the decade of the 1920s closed and the Depression fell, even Kansas City gave work to unemployed Chicago jazzmen under the wide-open rule of Boss Tom Pcndcrgast's machine.

But the Windy City had been the friendly home for jazz for a dozen glorious years. Richly linked with life, vital in its moods of joy or sadness, jazz had found immortality in the Mid\\"cst's heart ... Chicago.

To know jazz, one must listen to it, and the best recordings of the original Chicago jazzmen are available today through archives series put out by the major recording companies. Milestone Records has issued the finest of the music of Freddie Keppard, Ma Rainey and King Oliver. Columbia has the best collection of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, Victor of Muggsy Spanier, and Epic of Johnny Dodds. The Decca and Victor archives series cover the entire Chicago period. Ed. 141

THE PULLMANS OF PRAIRIE AVENUE A Domestic Portrait from Letters and Diaries

BY FLORENCE LOWDEN MILLER

1867, George Mortimer Pullman and Harriet Amelia Sanger were married. Family legend has it that the ceremony took place at the bedside of the bride's father, who died two weeks later.

At the time of my grandfather's marriage he was thirty-six years old. Born in upstate New York, he had a limited forrnal education, but learned carpentry and practical engineering in the shop of his father, a house builder and house mover. After his father's death the son, then twenty-two, went to Rochester to work with a family friend in raising buildings along the route of the Erie Canal and moving them back where the waterway was being widened for basins. This proved very useful as a means of livelihood and laid the foundation for his career in Chicago. He came here in 1850 and found a city of twenty-nine thousand, growing rapidly, but not a very pleasant place to live when it rained. The streets had been raised ouc of the prairie mud but the spaces between were morasses in wet weather, so anyone who knew how to raise buildings enough for foundations to be added did not lack for work. One of his great feats was the raising of an entire block of stores facing south on Lake Street between La Salle and Clark. The whole block rose at one time as six thousand jack screws were turned simultaneously. Business continued without interruption, and not a pane of glass was broken or a yard of plastering destroyed. There were so many sightseers that they had to be excluded except on certain appointed clays.

As early as 1853 Grandfather had become convinced that it would be possible to make sleeping on a train more comfortable than it was on the shelves provided for travelers in those

IN JUNE,

Florence Lowden Miller of Chicago is the grand daughter of George M. Pullman and the daughter of Governor Frank 0. Lowden of Illinois. Her many civic and cultural commitments include trusteeship of the Chicago Historical Society.

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days. He got together enough capital to experiment by rebuilding several old cars, and by 1860 he had a fleet of twelve of his first-style sleeping cars. Before this, however, he had gone to Colorado seeking a fortune in the gold fields.

When he returned in r 863, only partly successful, he decided to build an entire car instead of remodeling one. In one year he invested the unheard-of sum of $,w,ooo. That was when the folding berth came into existence. It was grandfather's idea, and when an engineer said: "All very well, Mr. Pullman, but there isn't space to fit your idea," he replied emphatically: "Then make space to fit my idea." It was an heroic effort but the result was worth it. Instead of the old moving railway shanty, here was a traveling palace, a home on wheels. He named her the Pioneer, and the Pioneer she remained. Others called her Pullman's Folly, for her greater size would not permit passage under the common railroad bridges or crossings, or clearance of existing rail platforms and other way structures.

Mr. Pullman was well aware of this, but he felt the demand for his car would cause the railroads to alter their structures to accommodate the Pioneer. That is what the railroads did in time, but it took a national calamity to brin~ it to pass. The first journey of the Pioneer was a tragic one. The car was used to transport President Lincoln's body from Chicago to Springfield in the spring of 1865. Gradually more and more railroads made it possible to run Pullman cars on their rails, and in ti me they traveled the whole country.

In 1867 Grandfather organized Pullman's Palace Car Company. Shortly thereafter building cars for individual railroads was stopped and all the cars built were put under control of the company. The idea of a central control or pool system came into being with headquarters in Chicago. The operation of club cars and dining cars (or hotel cars) followed, and it was at a party celebrating the completion of the first Pullman hotel car that Mr. Pullman met Miss Sanger.

The Pullman family in 1897 at Castle Rest, the Pullman resort in the St. Lawrence River. The picture was probably taken on August 14, when the baby, Pullman's grandson, was christened. Seated are Mrs. Pullman, Mr. Pullman, and the Reverend James Minton Pullman, a brother of the industrialist. Florence Pullman Lowden and her husband, Frank 0. Lowden, are standing on the left with their infant son, George M. Pullman Lowden

(brother of the author). To their left is another of the Pullman brothers, the Reverend Royal Henry Pullman. The man on the far right has not been identified. The portrait in the background, by Eastman Johnson, is of Mrs. Emily Caroline Pullman, Pullman's mother. It is now among the holdings of the Chicago Historical Society.

Pullmans of Prairie Avenue

Mrs. George M. Pullman, photographed at the Pullman resort in the Thousand Islands in 1871 or 1872.

Pullman wrote frequent letters to his wife, which are pub I ished here for the first time. The portrait they reveal of a warm-hearted family man is rarely described by historians.

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Nly grandmolhcr, at Lhe time of her marriage, was twenty-five . Although born in Chicago she had lived much of her life in California where, in 1857 or '58, her falher, James Sanger, built the firsl railroad in that stale, covering th e few miles bcLwcen Sacramento and Marys,¡illc. M y grand mother loved California all her life and visiLcd the San Francisco region often after her marriage. During the Civil \Var she worked wilh Mrs. John A. Logan, wife of the general, disLributing delicacies to the sick and wounded during Lhe occupation of Memphis, ridin g with mounted escort from hospital to hospilal-an activily I am sure she loved. Mrs. Logan wrote Lhat when they were ordered Lo Chicago, " Miss Sanger took with her the admiration and heart of more than one gallant officer and the gratitude of many soldiers." Philip Johnson, later killed in the war, was one of her admirers, and it was his brother, Eastman Johnson, who painted so many of the family portraits which we now own.

After their marriage my grandparents lived on Wabash Avenue between Sixtccnlh and Eighteenth Streets until 1870, when they moved to the Sherman House for a short time. The next year found them settled on Michigan Avenue at the corner of Sixteenth Stree t. From this house they watched the fire in 187 r. On Sunday, October 8, my grandmother wrote in her diary: " A lovely, quiet Sunday George and I had, and at midnight were awakened by the 'Great Fire.'

George went to the office at half past one o'clock and remained until morn ing."

For October g Lhe diary reads: "George's office went about eight o'clock. Nearly everyLhing of value saved and brought to our house.

Fire raged all day long."

The Pullman office at that time was at Randolph and the lake, so it was possible to throw records and valuable papers from the windows into railroad cars pulled up underneath. They were then taken over the Illinois Central tracks to Eighteenlh Street where the stable had been sufficiently finished so that it was possible to set

up offices in that building, and therefore the affairs of the Pullman company were carried on without interruption.

Of course, as with everybody else in Chicago who had been fortunate enough not to be burned out, their time for the next few weeks was filled with helping to feed, clothe, and house the multitudes who had lost everything, and I find several notes in grandmother's diary of spending the day at the sewing room. Grandfather was one of the trustees of the Relief and Aid Society which handled the miJiions of dollars that poured in from all over the world.

In 1874 their address is given in the Chicago directory as the northeast corner of Prairie Avenue and Eighteenth Street, but according to my grandmother's diary they were then living at the Grand Pacific Hotel where they seem to have spent about a year waiting for the Prairie Avenue house to be finished. At the hotel, on June 25, 1875, my grandmother's twin sons "¡ere born: George Jr. and Sanger.

My grandmother seems to have been ill a good bit of the time for she often went away without her husband, leaving her children in the competent hands of her mother, and wrote home of her terrific headaches, colds, and grippe. He too had to be away from home a great deal. His business took him frequently to New York and to the West Coast as Pullman's Palace Car Company increased in importance. In 1878 he was in London on business. During that time my grandmother, with my mother, aged ten, was in Paris.

They were a decidedly cosmopolitan family.

I ha\¡e recently been reading letters \\Titten by my grandparents to each other, letters dated from 1877 until the time of my grandfather's death in 1897. They give a picture which is

A Michigan Central train, with offices of the Pullman Palace Car Company in the background, photographed about 1868. When George Pullman realized early on October 9, 1871, that the company buildings would not escape the Great Fire, he ordered a train onto a siding under his office window, placed al l of his important papers in a freightcar, and removed them to the safety of the South Side.

quite different from the usual conception of George M. Pullman as a cold, impersonal, ruthless businessman, for they show a side of his character which I am sure the general public never saw. His family and home seem to have meant a great deal to him. Time after time he spoke of that fact in very moving, sentimental terms.

However, the first glimpses of the family life of the Pullmans come from my grandmother's diary.

On January 1, 1876, she recorded: "Alice & Kate Foster and Mrs. Eastman, mother, and myself had over go calls in my rooms at Pacific Hotel. Had the babies in short clothes for the first time today." 1 The entry for January 13, 1876, records an important event: "Moved into the new house today. Mr. Green, Col. Gourand, and Mr. Bond took dinner with us in servants dining room!

House not nearly settled."

On March 3, 1876, grandmother noted: "George's birthday! I gave him a surprise party this evening of about 40 friends and we had a splendid time."

One of the important aspects of social life for the Pullmans was the dancing class made up of a group of their neighbors and close friends. For the young, dancing lessons began early. On 'A reference to the fact that at this time, and for many years afterward, babies were swathed in dresses extending- about two feet beyond their toes.

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Pullmans of Prairie Avenue

NO\¡ember 4, 1876, my grandmother noted: "Took the children to Bourniques this morning for a second lesson in the private class." Mother was then eight, her sister Harriett seven.

The earliest of my grandfather's letters I have found was written early in April, 1879, to my grandmother in Denver. It reads in part: The house seems awful lonesome with you and the children out of it and 6 weeks seems a pretty long time, but if I continue to get good news from you and your trip proves successful in every way I shall be satisfied, especially as I expect to go away in three or four days. Dinners, a whist party, etc.

On April 14 Pullman wrote again to his wife: The fact is I have missed you more than I ever did before. This is partly due to the fact that I have remained at home and the house does seem so lonely without the presence of its mistress. I believe I am getting tired of the novelty of having my own way and shall be quite willing to surrender the reins of household authority.

I have been more than usually busy at the office for the past week and it hardly seem possible to get away.

Ye terday Sunday was a lovely day and I had a pleasant breakfast party as I telegraphed you. After breakfast we retired to your sitting room upstairs to smoke our cigars and sat with the window open. The Lake looked beautiful and the grass on the lawn is springing up green and fresh as possible. Jackson and Keith went off to Grace Church, Monroe went to his hotel and I went alone to hear Dr. Gibson. The church was handsomely decorated with flowers and the contribution for the Easter offering was over $1400 .

Mr. Pullman's pride in his family comes out in a letter written to Mrs. Pullman in May, 1879: I am very proud of the nice letter I received from Florence. I read it yeste rd ay at my directors' meeting to Mr. Hall, Col. Hammond and John Crerar, all of whom thought it remarkable for a ten year old girl to write such a good hand and to compose so good a letter.

In March, 1880, my grandmother was away again. One day that month my grandfather reported: I suppose you will be shocked when I tell you that I am at the office instead of in church, but you can see a 146

Chicago History

man i apt to become demoralized especially with regard to a proper observance of the Sabbath in the absence of a wife to remind him of his duties. I am here getting ready to go East tonight and I dread it for I have so much to do when I get to New York and then I must go alone like any ordinary passenger instead of in the style I have been accustomed to of late!

The reference is to George M. Pullman's private car, built in 1877 at a reputed cost of $50,000. It was known as the P. P. C. during his lifetime, sometimes translated as President's Private Car, sometimes Pullman's Palace Car, but after his death his widow named it A1onitor, her husband's telegraphic code name. It was constructed of the finest wood in the best ornamental style of the period, and contained within its length of sixty-seven feet, exclusive of platforms, an observation room with chairs and a large double sofa, a private suite with an extension sofa bed and an adjoining dressing room with wardrobe and lockers, a dining room and lounge with a sofa, an eight-foot table with chairs, a desk and an organ, two open sections, a dressing room and bath with a tub, storage space for luggage, servants' quarters, and finally a pantry and kitchen. It saw service for fortyfour years before it was broken up, and I remember it well, for as a twelve-year-old I travelled on it with my grandmother in California, and I'm quite sure her stateroom had a brass bed in it. The Monitor was presided over with great style by Arthur Wells, the Negro porter who had been in charge of it since its early days. He was a very impressive individual and had a penchant for using high-sounding words even if they didn't always mean exactly what he had intended. \Ve children were all very fond of him.

In 1880 rat, seem to have been a household problem. In March of that year Mrs. Sanger \\'rote to my grandmother: The only excitement we have is rats. They seem to think they are running the house. We set traps but do not catch any. I do not see a better way than to get some cats.

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In July Mr. Pullman was able to report improvement in the rat situation: Anna is making quite successful war on the rats. She has 4 cats and 2 dogs. The result is that I have not been disturbed by the usual noises in the walls. The bird came in from your dressing room the other night and kept me awake an hour or two but Anna has provided against a recurrence of the visit so that now everything is running very smoothly. She gives me a very good breakfast at about 8 o'clock and I do not usually trouble her again till the next morning.

Beman is preparing the plan for the improvement of the house and I have directed him to order the brownstone immediately for the foundations.

Solomon S. Beman, whom my grandfather mentioned, was a twenty-six-year-old architect chosen to help develop the town of Pullman.

Mr. Pullman was intimately connected with many of the important business ventures of the day in Chicago and ~ew York, but I have the feeling that nothing gave him the pleasure and satisfaction that this project did. Pullman was built about 1880 and was the first planned t0\n1 for industrial use to be built in this country. In :\'athan Barrett, a landscape architect, and in Bema11, Mr. Pullman found the ideal combination to carry his ideas into effect. They caught fire from his enthusiasm. All went to work at once so that by 1881, fourteen hundred dwellings and the necessary faci liti es had been completed. Land, some thirty-fiye hundred acres, had been purchased along the shores of Lake

The Pullmans ' house at 1729 Prai rie Avenue, built about 1875. Mrs. Pullman wrote in her diary that the family moved into the dwelling on January 13, 1876.

Note the statue commemorating the Dearborn Massacre of 1812 (far right). Commissioned by George M. Pullman in 1893 and executed by sculptor Carl Rohl Smith, it is now on permanent display at the Chicago H istorica I Society.

Calumet in the belief, which has only recently been proven correct, that Lake Calumet would become a great inland harbor. Bricks were made from the clay which underlay the whole area.

Lumber was purchased in vast quantities and fabricated in shops on the site. Areas were designated for public parks and gardens, even an artificial lake. Mr. Beman developed a characteristic style of architecture which Irving K. Pond, writing in the lvfonthly Bulletin qf the Illinois Society ef Architects for J unc, 1934, described as a definite, distinguishable and individual style, even though it may not reach those eyes which have permitted or persuaded themselves to be hypnotized by the glint and gleam of stringy lines of highly polished metals or by the glare of highly glazed or broadly glassed surfaces ....

I am writing [Pond continued] just one-half century since the Town of Pullman was completed; nearly fifty-four years since those buildings were planned, and during those years down to yesterday I have kept in close touch with what has been done and is being clone in community planning and in the design and construction of workers' dwellings the world over and I am constrained co say that there has been but slight advance over that which materialized in the Town of 147

Pullmans of Prairie Avenue

Pullman in the years 1880 to 1884 and no advance whatever on the idealism which inspired the project.

The center of the town was used for the shops of the company, t he north for residences, and the south for both residences and community facilities. Most of the houses stood in long rows, but there were some apartments and duplexes, and some detached single-family dwellings. The Hotel Florence, crowned with a multitude of chimneys, gables, and dormers, faced the little park. The Arcade, the outstanding public structure, contained a theater, library, public offices, meeting rooms, and a bank, and was so convenien tly placed and arranged that it may be considered the direct ancestor of twentieth century shopping centers. The Market Square, as finally developed, proved to be one of Mr. Beman's most successful architectural concepts.

It set a new standard for the urban square as conceived in America. Barrett had worked out a perfect system of drainage and sewerage, and great stress was laid upon the fact that the houses had sanitary facilities within them.

Pullman was so well known throughout this country and in Europe that almost every important visitor who came to Chicago insisted upon going to see the model town. Mr. Pullman took many distinguished persons to the Hotel Florence to dine, going to and fro in a private car.

He, of course, was there a great deal and continued to give much attention to the town. In July, 1880, he wrote to my grandmother: "I have been in the office all morning with Beman, Barrett and Colonel Brown, discussing and agreeing upon plans for drainage, water supply etc." In August, 1881, he wrote again as follows: Your mother came in and went with me to Pullman at ten o'clock and we returned at two. The place ha improved wonderfully since June and I am sure you would be quite delighted to see it. Florence Avenue and all the little parks are now quite complete. There are great quantities of flowers which, with the trees, shrubbery and fresh green lawns make a beautiful picture. If the hotel was ready for occupancy, I think I would prefer to stay there instead of Chicago.

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I shall not here go into the decline of Pullman.

Suffice it to say that it was not many years until, in Mr. Pond's words: George M. Pullman instead of seeing himself reflected as the benevolent and kindly patriarch he had envisioned himself at the inception of the idea, the idea of a beautiful, healthy, convenient and comfortable district populated by happy, contented workers, discovered himself to be a tyrant with his name attached to one of the ugliest industrial strikes in contemporary history.

Let not the chesty writer on advanced sociology or mechanical functionalism regard the Town of Pullman as a Stoke Poges. 1 Ideals may be buried there but the men who beheld the vision and made it real were not just "village Hampdens" nor " little tyrants" of his fields, nor "mute inglorious Mil tons"; they were big farseeing men who achieved grandly.

The fall of 1881 found my grandmother at Long Branch, 'ew Jersey, a resort area of which she was \"cry fond. She loved the summers at nearby Elberon though she regretted that my 1

Stoke Pogcs is a village and parish in Buckinghamshire, Enr,;land. The churchyard is generally considered to be the scene of Gray's "Elegy." One stanza of that poem reads: Some vi ll age H ampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields" ithstoocl; Some mute inglorious .1-filton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

The public library in the Arcade Building, Pullman, Illinois. The librarian (standing, center) is identified as Belle Ludlam . Convinced that contented workers make better employees, Pullman hoped to elevate the social condition of his laborers by establishing a selfcontained town, complete with cultural and educational facilities.

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grandfather could not be there more of the time.

There are entries about going to Pleasure Bay for lobster and crabs, things which we did forty years later in my childhood. The sea bathing was good, they played billiards, they drove a great deal. They even made peaches into sweet pickles and one day grandmothe r and Mrs. Stone put up grape preserves. It is difficult for me to picture my grandmother in this domestic light for when I knew her she was always so dressed up I would not have believed she ever set foot in the kitchen.

In the early days of their marriage my grandparents were often on Pullman Island in the Thousand Islands where there was a sort of family camp, made much more elaborate in the late 1880s when my grandfather built Castle Rest for his mother and gave it to her on her eightieth birthday.

In September, 1881, my grandmother received a letter from my grandfather in Chicago: The journey out proved quite pleasant for everyone but I had so much to think of and attend to that I did not enjoy myself very much. The party were perfectly delighted with the Electric light display at the Falls and I was very sorry you could not have enjoyed the sight of it with us.

In February, Mrs. Pullman was in Tew York; her husband remained in Chicago. From there he wrote on the 15th: I have been feeling quite badly in the head, so very tired it was almost impossible for m e to accomplish anything, but I am feelin g much better today, having sle pt very soundly last night. I am obliged to attribute the improvement to the ·' popular game" for last night I fell so lonesome and discouraged after supper that

The Florence Hotel , Pullman, named after George M. Pullman's daughter. This photograph was taken about

1882.

I told Katie to ring up the gentlemen for a little game and in about half an hour we were playing a very lively game with Doane, Corwith, Grannis and Balcom. The result is that while I am a little out of pocket, I had a sound sleep and am feeling better today than I have in more than a week. Have not been to Pullman since my return but am going now in five minutes on the one o' clock train. I am just overwhelmed with work but expect to get through so as to return to N. Y. within two weeks. Mrs. Dexter entertained Modjeska Tuesday night at dinner. I did not attend the dinner but went with them to the theater to see her play in the evening and was well entertained.

Four days later, on a Sunday, Mr. Pullman wrote again: I miss you so much today. It is three o'clock and I have not been out of the house. The air is still and the sun is shining brightly, but I am not tempted to go out because I appreciate the absolute quiet of this great house wherein no one seems to be stirring except Alexandre [the Pullman's French butler] and the " Pug." I have been overwhelmed with work both here and at Pullman. A legislative committee from Springfield are here to investigate us. I was busy with them yesterday and have got to commence with them again at ten o'clock tomorrow when I hope to finish up and secure a favorable report. I have been quite mi e1·able all week but am much better today and think now with this favorable change in the weather I will come out all right.

Jone had a card party of ten persons last evening in honor of his 60th birthday. We had a very enjoyable evening, excellent supper and I was successful as I always am at his house.

Mar hall Field came about 12 o'clock to invite me to dine with them informally at ½ past five, and having nothing better to do I have accepted. In the meantime I will call on General Stewart and if I have time I will look in and see Mrs. Stone.

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Pullmans of Prairie Avenue

To letters appear to have survived for the next

several years, although I am sure that many were written. The next I find in my file was written by my grandfather to my grandmother in April, r887. It reads in part: I am writing while the crowd is passing through and admiring this superb train [the Pennsylvania Limited]. It is by far the most complete succe s of any of the various enterprises with which I have been connected. I know that you will be made happy by the good report I am now able to give after thoroughly testing the practical working of the train about which I have had so much anxiety. The papers which I will send you from here with those you will have previously received will give you some idea of the high appreciation manifested by the public.

The entire train including the workmanship, harmony and beauty of design and coloring is better than I anticipated and I am sure that it will delight you when you see it. I wish you were with me now. It would add much to my happiness to be able to share it with you.

On M ay 3, r888, Harriett Sanger Pullman reported to her husband in ~ew York: I will send you a few lines this morning, but I have nothing of special interest to tell you excepting that I love you very very much and miss you most dreadfully. The weather has been gloomy and most trying ever since you left, and so I have been unable to accomplish the visiting I had counted upon doing this week. I feel disappointed enough because I would like to get about a hundred calls off my list at once.

I had a note from Mrs. Potter Palmer this morning asking for my interest in Mrs. herwood and her readings here soon. It seem they wanted our house for one, but did not like to ask me so now they will be first at Mrs. Palmers, then at Mrs. Glessners, Porters, Lyman Gages and Mrs. C. M. 1-Ienclersons. The tickets for the course are to be $1 o and I pre ume everybod y will attend. Anne and Katherine Deere are with us for a few days, and last night Mr. Pearsons took us all down to see Dockstaters Minstrels. \!Ve had a very pleasant evening indeed but it was a rainy disagreeable night. We have just had a very desirable saddle horse brought up to try and Florence is perfectly delighted with it. Mr. Wilson, our old horse man, has it and recommends it in every respect. I was to have tried him yesterday and again this morning but the rain prevents, and now Mr. \'\Tilson has just been up to say that a gentleman we know, who saw 150

Chicago History

Florence out on the horse Saturday, was o pleased with him that he wants to buy it, and will be at the stable at 12 o'clock today. I told Wilson he must not sell him however until I have seen what he is, for we should a ll be so delighted to have an easy saddle horse. The price a keel is $400 but I fear we could never get a good one any cheaper. The horse is handsome but has a little white on his face which however gives him rather an attractive look and is perfectly sound and gentle. I have written you all this so that if I should telegraph you, you will understand all about it. I am sure you would make both the girls and me very happy by giving us a good horse.

March, 1889, found Mrs. Pullman at Hot Springs, Arkansas, one of the resorts she frequented in her constant pursuit of better health.

On the 12th she wrote to her husband, then in New York: I will send you a few words this morning, more to tell you that I am loving you very much than for any news I can give you, as one day here is quite like another. I am feeling a little better this morning, as last night was the first time I have had much sleep and for two days past I have not been able to take baths or go out as my cold has settled on my lungs and the Dr. said I was in danger of pneumonia. The ladies in the hou e, therefore, all came to my room in the afternoon to sit with me (ten in all) and we had a cup of tea and Mrs. Tucker read and recited to us. It was really quite delightful, as we all had our fancy work and presented a really home-like and sociable picture!

On March 22 Mr. Pullman replied from New York. Mrs. Pullman was still in Hot Springs.

The pressure upon me is so heavy that I feel quite discouraged and unequal to the daily work that crowds upon me. I expected to have gone directly to Chicago from Washington but was obliged to return here on account of important matters with the Northern Pacific Co. which I am trying to get through with so as to get away Sunday morning. I have secured beautiful rooms in the new steamer City of Paris, April 16th and am making every effort to be ready to sail on that day for I must rest, otherwise I fear I may break down.

Apparently Mrs. Pullman had to sail alone, for on April 20 she \\Tote to her husband in New York. Her letter was headed "At Sea." Our rooms are clelightfull y comfortable, and I can

hardly divest myself of the feeling that I am in a Pullman Private Car, so convenient is everything.

The Duke and Duchess are my neighbors but beyond most persistent stares from them both, I have had nothing to do with them nor they me! I find they are not in especially "good odor" with the people who live in England and I shall certainly not make any advances you may be sure! Last night the Duchess appeared in a white silk dress with crimson velvet jacket and looked most gorgeous while the rest of us were simply attired in a traveling costume suitable to the occasion. 1

In the summer of 1894 Mrs. Pullman was again on shipboard, this time on the Normandie.

On August 6 she wrote to her husband in New York. The letter introduces my father, Frank 0.

Lowden.

You have been constantly in my thoughts since leaving you, and could I only know the results of your meeting in Phila. and know that all goes well with you, I should be most happy. I hope you had a pleasant Sunday and that in the near future only pleasure is to come to you. Our trip so far has been without incident, but we are comfortable and enjoy our large room with its comforts exceedingly. Every one is most kind and we have found on board Mr. Walter Herrick a near neighbor on Prairie Ave., also his friend a young lawyer, Mr. Lowden, who was for many years in Mr. Dexter's office, but who is now practicing himself. He is a most cultivated and interesting talker and a man of about 33 years old. He and Herrick have quite taken to George and have asked him to occupy a berth in their stateroom which he did last night, as in his own there i a hard looking customer who does not speak a word of English! Today, Florence is dressed and on deck, feeling quite well for her. She took luncheon in the dining room for the first time, and I hope may not be confined to her room any more. I have not, so far, been at all seasick and I hope I shall not be on this trip.

Most of the remaining letters which I shall quote are colored by the ominous financial situation. The Panic of 1893, one of the most severe in the nation's history, had ushered in a depression which would last for four long years. The 1 In

spite of diligent research, the Duke and Duchess whom }vfrs.

PulJman snubbed have not been identified. There are some beguiling candidates, but for the lack of positi,e evidence their names are withheld. Ed.

Pullman's daughter, Florence, with her husband, Frank 0. Lowden, later governor of Illinois. They were photographed at Castle Rest, the Pullman resort in the Thousand Islands, in August, 1897.

worst manifestation of the depression, and the one which touched my family the most intimately, was the Pullman Strike. In the spring of 1 894, because of poor business, the Pullman Company reduced wages twenty-five per cent without making a comparable reduction in rents. On May 11, 2,500 employees struck. The strike spread when members of the American Railway Union refused to handle Pullman cars.

Violence broke out and President Cleveland sent Federal troops to Chicago. The strike was broken in July.

At this point I insert a passage from a recent book by Stanley Bruder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 18801930. The author has this comment to make on the refusal of the Pullman Company to reduce rents: Most families who left the town owed considerable rent. Arrears rose from $70,000 at the strike's inception to well over $100,000 by mid-August. The company made little effort to collect or evict, and consequently few residents had paid anything. In effect, it was the strikers' major financial support. Fifty thou sand dollars had been contributed to Strikers' Relief, which, while considered generous by the press, does not compare with George Pullman's handsome donation of housing.

Owning its workers' homes provided the company with a novel means of turning the screw, but a lenient policy was forced by circumstances. On three occasions, officers had told reporters that wholesale evictions were being considered. Reaction to these feelers wa critical and nothing was done. If indifferent to public opinion on the issue of arbitration, the Pull man Palace Car Company did not want the stigma of throwing penniless people on the streets. For similar

15 1

Pullmans of Prairie Avenue

The drawing room in the Pullman house, scene of Florence Pullman's wedding in 1896. Decorated in p ale blue brocade with white and gold trim , the room displayed many treasures, among them "Happy Moments" (center) by Adolphe Bouguere au.

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Chicago History

reasons, -it made no effort to impede movement from the town though this meant writing off debts a losses. Whatever his reasons, George Pullman did not trumpet his "genero ity" and received little credit for what, properly exploited, might have placed him in a more favorable light.

Labor unrest continued, and colored the letter which Mrs . Pullman wrote from Chicago to her husband in New York on December 21, 1895= I am not writing because I have anything of interest to tell you, but you are constantly in my mind and I feel so worried about you at this particular time, that I must let you know how deeply I am sympathizing with you in these troubled times. I could not sleep last night for thinking of the added anxiety you must be suffering. The reports we had last evening were most alarming, and visions of all sorts of dire disasters were upon me. I wonder will the time never come when you can have peace and freedom from these horrible business cares! Really they seem to multiply rather than diminish, and there seem nothing bright to anticipate in the future. It will be a sad Christmas for me if you have to spend it with any one else and away from me.

I am so strongly impressed with the feeling that I may never have another one myself, that I did want to have a pleasant one if possible. If you can only get here in the evening, it will be something to anticipate, and I know, of course, that you will be here if it is a possible thing. It will be a gloomy clay for you, Darling, if the financial situation does not improve, and I too am pretty miserable when I think of \\'hat may happen.

A subsequent letter, written from Hot Springs, Arkansas, by my grandmother on March 10, 1896, is concerned mainly with the approaching marriage of her daughter Florence. On that fateful trip on the Normandie Frank 0. Lowden had fallen in love with Miss Pullman. Their courtship was clouded and prolon~ed by the opposition of my grandfather, but finally, late in 1895, he gave his consent, and the engagement was announced in January of the following year.

Mrs. Pullman wrote: I suppo e it will take fully a month to get Florence ready and she cannot very well do much about her trousseau until I am there to advise her about it. The linen for hou e and table seems to trouble me more than anything for I want it to be nice and properly

embroidered and those sort of things more than any other, speak the taste and refinement of the lady of the house and should be the very best. Then the list too, is a great work, and the cards should be out three weeks in advance at least. It would be nice if the young couple decide to wait until the last Thur clay or Saturday of the month. My birthday will bring it so very soon. Do you know Darling, I don't know what I am going to do for I can hardly have anyone peak of the wedding now, without tears flowing readily, and the night of the wedding I fear I shall disgrace myself! It is a terrible ordeal for both of us!

However, I'll try and not cross the bridge until I come to it....

If you only would run away for a few days, you would make me so happy. I am always so proud to have you with me. I see no other husband in my travels who can begin to compare with you in elegance, dignity and good looks and I wish I could show you off here to the women who think they have good looking husbands!

The wedding took place on April 29, , 896. I quote a contemporary newspaper account at some length, not so much because of its story of the wedding, called "the most imposing and brilliant in all its appointments and details that has ever taken place in the city of Chicago," as because it furnishes an excellent description of the house on Prairie Avenue.

The Pullman mansion was thrown completely open last evening, every apartment being beautified with a great wealth of plants, palms, vines, and flowers, although the last named were but little used comparatively speaking. All these decorations came from the conservatory adjoining and forming a part of the Pullman mansion, which with its large halls, commodious rooms and high ceilings lends itself most admirably to the happy purpose to which it was devoted last evening.

The guests arrived by the terrace on Eighteenth Street, over a part of which a wide awning had been hung, and all brilliantly lighted. Within, every room \\'as touched with green foliage, for this wa a green and white wedding. Every mantel was laden with its fair burden of ferns in plenty, in every nook and corner there were plants of many kind , while here and there in all good ta te were clusters of orchids, or vases of American Beauties, or bunches of bright lilacs or prays of mignonette and lilies of the valley.

The greatest beauty prevailed, however, in the Louis XVI drawing-room, occupying the northwest 153

Pullmans of Prairie Avenue

The supper was served by Biggs in several of the large rooms, although the principal table was set on the stage of the beautiful theater on the third floor. In the auditorium every other row of seals had been taken out to make the hall more comfortable. The stage presented an exquisitely lovely and entrancing scene. The three walls and the ceiling were completely hung in pink muslin, against which drooped sprays of asparagus ferns. The bases and ides of the stage were almost hidden with hydrangeas and Bougainvillea vines. From the ceiling hung a number of incandescent lights draped in pale green. The table was adorned with pink ribbons and in the center stood the tapering bride cake, inclosing a gold thimble and ring.

Surrounding the cake were vases of rare orchids. Here on the stage the bridal party was served.

Photo court esy Flo re nce Lowden Mill er

Mrs. George M. Pullman in her later years. This picture was taken about 1917 in the Pullman house at 1729 Prairie Avenue.

corner of the house. This artistic apartment, done in white enamel and gold, wa depleted of all its furnishings and adornments save Bouguereau's great painting "Happy Moments" which appropriately rested on an easel. This room has two large wide alcoves at the north side. The we tern one was used for the marriage ceremony. It was completely bordered at the base and sides with a great variety of palms, plants, fancy-leaved ferns and vines gracefully allied into a harmony of soft green. The upper arch of this arbor was hung with immense clu ters of clerodendron vines, the whole effect being decisive in its usefulness and as graceful as it was charming.

On the floor rested six three-legged posts of white enamel and gold, each four feel high made in the Louis XVI style to match the room. These posts outlined the aisle through which the bridal party passed.

On top of each post was suspended a wreath of lilies of the valley and mignonette, to correspond with the bouquets of the bridesmaids. These wreaths were tied to the posts with white ribbons and carried on to the next pair of posts, tying the wreaths there and then again continuing to the third pair of posts, tying the wreaths there and forming the boundary of the bridal aisle.

The ceremony was performed before two hundred guests. Afterward, more than one thousand attended the reception. Our newspaper account continues: 154 Chicago History

My grandfather lived less than eighteen months after my mother's marriage, dying on October 19, 1897. His last years had been made unhappy by what one editorial writer called the "misconstruction, detraction and contumely that failure heaps upon success." The editorial continued: Music, art and the children of Chicago have lost an ardent and beneficent friend in the death of Mr. Pullman. He was a loyal supporter of the Thomas Orchestra through the clays of its discouraging struggle for higher musical culture in Chicago. His name appears high up on the roll of donors to almost every public institution in the city. Anything in the way of a hospital appealed to him with irresistible effect. And the la tact of his life was connected with the endowment of a bed in St. Luke' s Hospital in the name of his little grandson, George M. Pullman Lowden. The bed itself will be in a ward endowed by Mr. Pullman and named Florence after the grandson's mother.

No mention was made of one of Mr. Pullman's most enduring philanthropies because the will had not yet been made public. This was the Pullman Free School of Manual Training, founded "for the benefit of the children of persons living or employed at Pullman." Land was bought at the corner of 11 Ith Street and South Park Avenue and endowment allowed to accumulate until 191 3, when the cornerstone was laid. The school became very well and favorably known in the world of vocational education. About fifteen years ago we trustees became convinced

Ch ic ago Historica l Society

George M. Pullman with his grandson, George M. Pullman Lowden, photographed in 1897 at Castle Rest.

that we could no longer maintain the school and obtained permission to transform ourselves into the George M. Pullman Educational Fund. At the present time we are helping 625 young men and women obtain a college education.

After a prolonged period of mourning following my grandfather' s death, the Prairie Avenue house became once more a center of hospitality, for my grandmother loved people and parties, and was very generous in entertaining for debutante nieces, cousins and granddaughters, giving a wedding or two, and even, in Billy Sunday's hey-day, putting on a revival meeting in the gold and white drawing-room. She traveled a

great deal, too, going frequently to Europe to motor in her own car, something of an undertaking in the days when punctures were a frequent occurrence and demountable rims had not been invented. I have snapshots of her and her companions sitting by the roadside doing eyelet embroidery while the chauffeur changed tires.

After 19 r 4 when European travel became impossible, Mrs. Pullman spent summers in her house at Elberon, New Jersey and winters in the Raymond Hotel, Pasadena, where she died in March, r 921. Her funeral was the last function e\¡er held in the old house, for within the next year or two it was torn down.

155

NORTH AVENUE v1GNETTEs

The Blue Danube

BY PAUL M. ANGLE

Another in a series of short articles on the changing neighborhood of which the Chicago Historical Society is a part.

I AM A LITTLE HAZY about my first acquaintance with the Blue Danube, but since at least twentyfive years have passed since that happy event I hope I will be forgiven. I think my initiation took place shortly before 1945, when I came to Chicago with my family. As I recall it, someone had recommended the Blue Danube as an unpretentious night club where one could spend a couple pleasant hours for a modest amount of money. On this first evening I appealed to a taxi driver, who happened to be knowledgeable and took me to a simple one-story building on the corner of North and Hudson avenues. There I found enchantment.

This was my first experience with Hungarian gypsy music. I ha.cl never seen nor heard a cymbalon, that marvellous instrument which, sounded by hammers, combines the twang of the harpsichord with the lower strings of the guitar.

But the cymbalon player, expert as he was, paled before the violinist. Never before and rarely since have I heard music such as Bela Babai could evoke from a fiddle. A second violinist added only volume to the music. Certainly he contributed nothing to its verve.

The dancing, too, was new to me. The patrons were nearly all Hungarians or of Hungarian descent, and they knew the old country dances.

Pairing off, men and women put their hands on each others' shoulders and moved slowly through the mournful opening bars of the gypsy songs. Suddenly the little orchestra swung into the fast tempo of the csardas, and the dancers swung each other around and stamped their heels in a pandemonium of exuberance.

After a year and a half in Chicago we found a house, only four blocks, easy walking distance, from the Blue Danube. After that we were regular patrons. Neither the management nor the waitresses were concerned that my two children

156

Chicago History

were under the legal drinking age-no question was ever raised when the four of us consumed two bottles of wine. With four pork chop sandwiches, and a couple thimbles of that marvellous Hungarian apricot brandy, Barack Palinka, the check might run to $12.00.

Far too soon the Blue Danube had to yield to progress. A building and loan association bought the corner, and the night club went out of business. For a few months Bela and his little orchestra played at Caruso's on Rush Street, but there they were misfits. One night we went there for dinner expressly to hear them. For half an hour I listened to as dull music as I had ever heard-I found it incredible that Bela's talent had declined so far. In a few minutes two good-looking, well dressed young women came in and took scats in the front row of the little concert room.

Bela's brown eyes sparkled and immediately his violin sang as it always had.

From Chicago, Bela Babai went to play at a Hungarian restaurant called the Csardash in New York City. Every time I have been in New York and had the opportunity I have spent an hour or two there. He always recognized me as being from Chicago. On my last visit, about two years ago, I visited the Csardash, accompanied by my wife, my daughter, and her husband. No, Bela would not be there that night: he was not well, and played only twice a week. But tomorrow would be one of his nights. Would we come back? We would-and did. Bela greeted us at once. "Chicago," he said, "and you lived around North Park and Menomonee." (He hit the location on the nose.) And then he played as I had rarely heard him play before. I knew the reason.

My daughter is as pretty as she was as a college girl, and he was playing only for her, just as he had played only for the two dolls at Caruso's fifteen years earlier.

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photo courtesy se'1a Bela Babai, t he gypsy v io l inist, playi ng in Ch ica go.

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Babai

A long time ago, on our first trip to Mexico City, my wife and I had dinner at a Hungarian restaurant. The simple entertainment featured a gypsy fiddler and a good one, Senor Golwoertz.

Before we left I went up to buy one of his records.

On an impulse I asked: "Have you ever heard of Be la Babai?" "Bela Babai?" he answered.

"Chicago? The greatest of all gypsy fiddlers!"

I only hope that Bela still p lays at the Csardash and delights the patrons with the plaintive and wild songs of the Hungarian p lains.

157

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CHICAGO THROUGH A CAMERA LENS: An Essay on Photography as History

BY GLEN E. HOLT

Glen E. Holt of Washington University, St. Louis, one of the joint authors of Chicago: Growth of a Me-tropolis, explains here how the evolution of photographic processes, the popular tastes of the times, and the particular preferences of the individual artists affected the usefulness of pictures as source material for the historian. It is the story of the building of Chicago's photographic legacy, its limitations, and its inestimable value.

The Actionless City 1839, Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, wrote to an American magazine from France that he had seen the ultimate in photographic reproduction. The new image was called a daguerreotype by its inventor, Louis Daguerre. In his letter Morse extolled the Frenchman's method which duplicated details from nature in an "exquisite minuteness of ... delineation which no painting or engraving ever approached." In September, 1839, the scientific details of Daguerre's process were published in the United States. Within months, hundreds of mechanics, blacksmiths, and selftaught scientists mastered the necessary techniques and opened studios. The age of commercial image makers had begun.

Daguerreotypists were primarily portrait makers and almost all of the estimated fifteen to twenty million images they produced by 1857 were portraits of people. Chicago had its contributors to this number. The first daguerreotypists came to the city in 1845. In the city directory of 185 7-58, thirteen daguerreotype studios are listed.

After r 854, at least n-vo of these Chicago studios added another platemaking technique.

This form, called the ambrotype, differed from the daguerreotype principally in being an image on glass rather than on metal. Throughout America in late 1855 and in 1856 the ambrotype surpassed the daguerreotype in popularity.

The paper print method of recording images on light sensitive paper was introduced into America in 1839, the same year as the daguerIN APRIL,

158

Chicago History

reotype. Initially, however, paper print photographs took longer to record than either ambrotypes or daguerreotypes. Consequently, the paper print was not a competitive imageproducing technique until about 1856. By the next year, two Chicago studios were advertising portraits in daguerreotype, ambrotypc, and by paper print. The last proved its superiority before 1860. Once its recording speed was hastened, it had two advantages over the other two techniques: it offered a wider range of grayblack tones, although without the daguerreotype's sharpness, and, more important, it was cheaper.

While portrait making was the livelihood of early professional cameramen, they did record images of cities. In the late 1840s, dagucrreotypists in a few large urban centers captured street scenes and full scale panoramic views of mid-century skylines. If Chicago had such early portraits, they have not survived. The remaining daguerreotypes and ambrotypes of this city show only a few individual houses, a well-kept residential street, a hotel, the remains of a burned-out home, and the Sturges and Buckingham grain elevators at the mouth of the Chicago River.

However, a body of work by one early Chicago photographer, Alexander Hesler, docs remain, although his pictorial legacy begins a decade later than visual records in some other cities. At the Crystal Palace Exposition of 1853, Alexander Hesler won the title of "the leading daguerreotypist in the country," when he took first place in the viewmakers' competition. Hesler moved his studio from Galena to Chicago in

the early 1850s, and began making portraits of the renowned and obscure of the lakeside city.

By 1856, Hesler had the technical skill to make paper print photographs. In the next half-decade he left his studio many times to turn his camera on Chicago, in the process portraying his consciousness of the dynamic changes of the period. Old Fort Dearborn, Chicago's decaying relic from a previous era, was due for demolition in 1857, and Hesler captured a view of its palisaded interior, mirroring it against the Lake House, a gleaming new four-story hotel, a symbol of the city's surging growth. He contrasted the white-marble facade of the Marine Building with neighboring balloon-frame business structures. And in a grand culmination in 1858, he set his camera atop the Court House and took an eleven-shot panorama which provides the most complete visual record of the city at that time.

The urge of photographers like Hesler to record difficult city views appears to have been tied up with their conception of themselves as artists. \Vhile they were unbound by any broad artistic theory, the best of the daguerreotypists and other early photographers took great pride in their work. They derided their unskilled competitors who made only cheap portraits as "bluebosom boys," an epithet publicizing their tendency to gray out white shirtfronts in their images. This sense of artistic purpose was heightened, too, by a movement within Ameri-

Early paper photograph. Downtown lakefront, looking northeast, 1858. Alexander Hesler melded two photographs to capture this view. Beyond the unkempt lakefront is the Illinois Central and Michigan Central Depot and the Illinois Central Yards.

can painting. The art world had long advocated "reality" as one characteristic of good painting, and the daguerreotypist and early photographer could portray the detailed image of reality better than any painter or lithographer. These early photographic artists, to prove their ability, turned their cameras on the most complex subjects they could find. And the cities where they maintained their studios often provided the most accessible and intricate subjects for their visual experiments.

Hesler's photographs and the surviving ones by his contemporaries in other cities are a precious heritage. But like most historical artifacts, they lend themselves to many misconceptions.

Certainly the images provide the viewer with a heightened sense of reality of the physical appearance of the city, especially when they are compared with the frequently romanticized lithographs and paintings of the same subjects. But one should be aware of what the early photographs do not show. Photography at the time could not catch motion, so most photographers worked in the early morning before the city was awake, placing their cameras on high points or in wide public streets. to make the best use of natural light and, if people were to be included, 159

III Carte-de-visite photograph. Customs House , northwest corner of South Dearborn and West Monroe. View copyrighted in 1864. Carte-de-visite and stereograph maker John Carbutt took this image . The Customs House was erected in 1857. This "fireproof" building was gutted by the Fire of 1871, and its walls were used as part of a theater in the following decade.

posing them in place. In Chicago the physical character of a city moving from clapboard storefronts to marbled business facades is recorded. But the bustle of street life, the routine of the factory, the manifestations of poYcrty-these images do not exist. These inherent biases cannot be overcome except through the im aginative reading of contemporaneous verbal descriptions. \Vithout this non-visual corrective, early photography provides an unrealistic portrayal of the city.

Mass Production of Urban Views

In 1859, studio photographers began to utilize another French innovation , the carte-de-visite camera, a four lensed affair which could record quadruple images simultaneousl y or in rapid succession. When the single negative plate was printed and backed, it resulted in four 2½ inch 160

Chicago History

by 4 inch photographs mounted on stirf card board. The cost for a dozen or so of these clear little images was no more than the price of a single good daguerreotype. A British writer explained the new process. "The price," he wrote, ·'enables all the better middle class to haYe their portraits; and by the system of exchange, forty of their friends . . . for two guineas [about $12.00] !" \\"hile the lower pnce encouraged the exchange of cartes-de-visite, the accumulation of more than a few of them created a storage problem: there was always a danger that a loose photograph would slip behind a drawer or become mixed with a pile of papers slated for disposal. Enterprising photographers had an answer for this problem. They sold albums specially designed to hold and display the little photographs.

Carte-de-visite photographers were quick to see another possibility as well. If clients had extra spaces in their portrait albums devoted to friends and relatives, they rnigh t also collect vie,\·s of familiar streets or buildings which had

Photography

meaning in their lives. Moreover, in an age " ·ithout photographs in daily newspapers, there ,ms a demand for cheap images of both significant men and important and unusual events. In Chicago, photographers respond ed with cartcsde-visite of celebrities like Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. They also carried their cameras into the streets and parks of the city, making images of the Chamber of Commerce, Court House, Camp Douglas, the various railroad depots, and other well-known public buildings. Views of churches abound. In addition, businessmen contracted to have pictorial advertising cards made up for their potential customers. A dealer in baseball goods, for example, had a view of the Chicago team of 1871 printed with his company advertisement on the back, and an auctioneer and commission merchant pictured his new place of business just after the fire of 1871. Businessmen handed such cards to customers or distributed them free in public places. The photographers sold cartes-de-visite of celebrities, disasters, and city views at their studios, capturing the impulse buyer who came for a sitting, and (ifwe can believe an occasional label ) marketed them at city news agencies, probably on a consignment basis. Placed in family albums, these views were preserved into the twentieth century.

Concomitant with rhe increased popu larity of the cartes-de-visi te, a new kind of photograph, one concentrating entirely on places and things, was being taken. Since men had begun painting pictures they had attempted to make things appear three dimensional. As early as 1838, artists endeavored to draw two identical pictures which could be viewed simultaneously through a binocular lens arrangement to create the illusion of depth . But so accurate a representationsetting the perspective of two drawings an a,·eragc of '2½ inches apart-was nearly impossible.

However, a binocular camera could achie,-c the feat with no difficulty. In the late 1850s, American photographers began taking thousands of double-viewed "s tercographs." In 1859, produc-

tion of an inexpensive stereoscopic viewer was announced, and the stereographic revolution was underway.

At about the same time that the binocular vision stereoscope was developed, negatives became sufficiently sensitive so that many moving forms were "perfectly rendered, although the exposure was but the imperceptible fraction of a second." \\'ith this new capacity, stcrcograph makers found the city an ideal subject, and for seventy years they set their binocu lar lenses on innumerable urban scenes.

Chicago stereograph makers catered to potential customers with views of busy downtO\•v n

Stereograph. Shepard Block, southeast corner of South Dearborn and West Monroe, between 1869 and 1871.

Chicago stereograph maker P. B. Greene included this photograph in a series labeled "Views in Chicago & Vicinity Before and After the Fire." On the reverse side of the mount appeared the jagged walls and rubble of the same building taken from an identical position after the fire. The five-story Shepard Block was built in 1869 using the design of architects F. and E. Baumann.

It was considered an outstanding building at the time, fronted with " Athens Marble" and featuring a "Modern French Style ."

Photography

streets. To these were added pictures of the city's distinctive structures and scenic attractions: the Water Tower, the Palmer House, Field, Leiter and Company, the homes of the wealthy, and formal plantings in the city's major parks. Scenes made at special events-expositions, fairs, and parades-also were put on sale soon after they occurred. Finally, the disasters which beset the city were duly recorded and marketed. A month after the great fire of 1871, for example, Anthony's Photographic Bulletin advised its readers that "the latest novelty in American stereographic views is a series from Chicago, which avidly portrays the nature and extent of the recent disaster and its effects on the different buildings." Several such fire series were made, often with views on both sides of the mount; on the one side was a "before" photo from the late 186o's, on the reverse an "after" view taken from an identical perspective.

Street scenes filled with variety and detail, symbols of an ambitious city, important celebrations and calamities-and occasionally an advertising view-these are the categories into which all but a few existent Chicago-oriented cartes-de-visite and stereographs fit. The similarity in subject matter is no coincidence. Quite often the two types of photographs were made by the same company which marketed identical views on both the viewing formats.

For Chicago at least, more stereographs are extant than are cartes-de-visite. Two factors explain this phenomenon: first, more stereographs were produced over a longer time. Cartes-devisite of Chicago begin about 1861 and end about 1871 or 1872. Stereographs of the city begin about 1866, with new views produced until the early l 930s. Second, the popularity of stereographs increased their possibility for survival. City view companies like Chicago-based John Carbutt took stereographic views, sold them locally, and advertised them nationally, either to sell under the Car butt label or to be marketed by companies in other cities under their names. By 1875, a stereoscope owner could 162

Chicago History

purchase views of Chicago by mail, or in local book stores, news agencies and department stores. In the end, so many millions of the views were produced and so many thousands of people collected them that their chance for survival to our own time was increased, a result of their cheapness and mass availability.

As in the case of daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and early photographs, mid-twentieth century viewers must realize that extant cartes-de-visite and stereographs have limitations. Card and view makers were interested in selling to a mass audience, and most buyers appear to have been "respectable" families who could afford a parlor nicety. Therefore, while views were often "exotic," they were never offensive. A set of city views might include an ethnic shopping district, but the slum homes of the city's poorest residents were not included. Fashionable residences, especially those of well-known people, were marketed; the interior of a sweat shop employing children was not considered appropriate. The daguerreotypist and early photographer took city views to prove themselves as artists; the cartes-de-visite and stereograph makers provided a visual traveler's guide to the public city, marketing views which were of wide public interest.

The Gifted Amateur Photography has always had its amateur practitioners, those who experimented with the techniques of image making or who made pictorial records for their own amusement rather than as a source of income. However, high costs and the necessity for advanced technical knowledge kept the number of amateurs small until the 186os. After the introduction of the stereoscope, technical evolution of cameras and developing techniques was rapid. Portability was the initial attraction. By the mid- 188os, several different kinds of "detective cameras," which could be held and in some cases concealed in the hand, were already being marketed.

In 1888, George Eastman, an amateur him-

Photograph by a talented amateur and a stereograph compared . Park Row (East Eleventh Street) from Michigan Avenue presents a striking contrast over a forty-year period.

In the late 1860s, viewmaker John Carbutt took the first photograph showing Park Row as a collection of prestigious apartments and large single family homes.

Charles R. Clark in 1910 took the second view, after Park Row buildings had been transformed into stores which took advantage of their location near the Illinois Central Railroad's Central Station.

Photography

self, introduced his simplified box camera which provided potential users with reliability and freedom from technical concern. ("You press the button, we do the rest," was the advertising slogan he used to popularize the Kodak.) Eastman loaded the box camera at the factory with a roll of flexible "American film" which he had invented. The user then could record one hundred 2½ inch square photographs. \\'hen the roll was completed, the purchaser sent the earnera back to Eastman who developed the film and reloaded the camera, all for a single modest fee. By 1889, Eastman had perfected a developing technique by which steady-handed amateurs could process their own film. The age of the "snapshot" had arrived.

Most amateur snapshots, unfortunately, do little to illuminate city history. The stereographic viewmaker photographed urban subjects in the belief they would interest others; the amateur aimed his camera at more narrowly personal subjects-his house, family, friends and garden-or subjects of immediate rather than intrinsic interest-a scenic view which fitted his momentary mood, a peculiarity of nature, or a disaster he witnessed. Moreover, if an amateur took a historically important photograph, its chances for survival were small. Both the thin inexpensive film and the cheap "drugstore finish" of these photographs tended to fade rapidly, curl and crack, eventually deteriorating into brittle scraps.

Not all amateurs were casual dilettantes, however. A few of them, for one reason or another, took time to learn correct field and darkroom techniques, used professional equipment, and broke out of the usual narrow subject limits.

Some of these gifted amateurs aimed their cameras at the city with both a sense of history and an attempt at artful portrayal.

One such Chicago amateur was Charles R. Clark. By profession he was a commission merchant, by avocation a pictorial historian of the city and a camera enthusiast. Clark began taking photographs of the city about 1898. But his 164

Chica go History

pictorial interest in Chicago extended to an earlier time. To portray this period, he copied older photographs and engravings. The final result was a collection of over r ,ooo pictures, a three-album visual overview of the city between 1873 and r916, with Clark's own photographs covering the last nineteen years.

Throughout his photographing and collecting, Clark demonstrated an acute awareness of Chicago's dynamic development and his own sense of being part of the city's historically significant events. He aimed his camera at streets and parks, took closeups of leaders and important visitors to the city, climbed atop buildings to capture panoramic views, and set up his camera in available downtown open space to catch the shape of the city's skyline. Clark is the most important early gifted amateur of Chicago city photography. And while his photographs end before America's entrance into \Vorld \Var I, his tradition does not. It continues into the r 970s in the Chicagoland-in-Picturcs project with the Chicago Historical Society, which has elicited from gifted amateurs some nineteen thousand photographs of Chicago and urbanrelated subjects since r 947.

Comme rcia l Photogra phy A few years before George Eastman first marketed his Kodak, a new generation of commercial photographers began to take pictures of the American city. Utilizing the latest technological innovations, these professional cameramen recorded the rapid building of new steel-beamed skyscrapers, the expansion of the city's high class residential sections, and the erection of the mass production industrial plants throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth and the initial decades of the twentieth century. They contracted with architectural firms to portray their latest and highest buildings, real estate men who were promoting new suburbs, civic groups detailing particular features of the city for advertising promotions and tour guides. And, in the process, they built up a stock of city photo-

graphs which they made into view-books and, later, picture postcards which were sold in bookstores, at newsstands and special events, and in some cases, by door-to-door peddlers.

John Vv. Taylor was the most prolific of such photographers with headquarters in Chicago.

Taylor began photographing the city in 1886; his last extant view appears to have been made in 1916. An indication of the scope of Taylor's operations can be found in his advertisements.

In February, 1887, he informed readers of the Inland Architect that he had for sale views of Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Paul, the price being eighteen dollars for fifty 8 inch by 10 inch unmounted photographs. The next month he announced that purchasers might select from a thousand architectural photographs from all parts of the United States. By 1892, Taylor was

Commercial photograph. Goodrich Company Docks, south side of the River, view west from the foot of River Street, 1888. J . W. Taylor provided a full view of the Goodrich Company's riverside operations in this photograph. The Galena grain elevator is in the background. The objects in the right foreground are chairs wrapped for shipment.

165

Aerial View. The suburb of Chicago Heights in 1908.

Chicago Heights had only 14,000 residents when George Lawrence took th is photograph. Land use patterns and densities are well revealed by this perspective.

boasting a collection of photographs titled the "American Architectural Photographic Series, a constantly growing collection of photographs representing the progressive architecture of American cities." Included in the series were some six thousand views of buildings, architectural detail, interiors, park landscaping and general street scenes from fifty cities. Twelve 8 inch by Io inch views could be purchased for six dollars.

One of Taylor's contemporaries was also of special significance in Chicago's photographic history. George R . Lawrence opened his first stud io on Chicago's Sixty-third Street in 1896.

He moved to a Loop studio five years later. I n 1893, Lawrence began experiments to find a practical method of taking interior pictures with a photographic flash. By 1 895 he had perfected the technique sufficiently to have earned the title of "the father of flash light photography" from one of his biographers. This innovation had a strong impact on city photography. Practical flashlighting and hand-held cameras created the potential for portrayal of the interior dimension of urban life in home, office and factory, which before had been difficult if not impossible to obtain.

By the turn of the century Lawrence had proven his ability as a photographic innovator, including among his creations the world's largest camera, which weighed 1400 pounds, and under the operation of 1 5 men produced a negative 8 feet by 4 feet. At this point in his career he began 166

Chicago History

to explore the possibilities of making aerial views. In this quest he joined countless nineteenth century lithographers who popularized the aerial perspective with their "bird's eye view," photographers who sought out high buildings or points at the city's edge from which to record panoramic views, and the adventuresome Boston photographer who in 1860 loaded his camera and himself into a wicker basket under a captive balloon, and then, hovering in the sky, recorded the first aerial photograph of a city. Lawrence's search took him through a series of experiments with captive balloons, extension ladders, and a guy-wired telescoping tower. Eventually he achieved the capacity to make aerial photographs from as high as two thousand feet with a kite arrangement by which the cameraman never left the ground. Lawrence utilized his aerial equipment for many panoramic photographs in the Chicago metropolitan area. Subjects include the Stock Yards, 1901; the American Derby in Washington Park, 1 902; the University of Chicago, 1907; International Harvester Company's McCormick \Norks, r 907; and United States Steel's Gary \-\1orks, 1908.

The camera work of commercial photographers like J. W. Taylor adds later but not significantly different views of the city from those of the stereograph makers of previous decades.

While the overall quality is generally better, the commercial view still features the public city, its variety and unique symbols and architecture, as well as its celebrations and calamities. If the shape of the subject matter is still the same, so too are the omissions. The poor, blacks, lowpriced housing and slums, the "other side" of the city is seldom seen.

Photography

Lawrence's work represents the practical beginnings of a more youthful heritage. While aerial photography was not widely utilized until World War I, Lawrence's panoramas illustrated earlier the potentials of the view from above the metropolis. Once this giant's eye view of the city was achieved, it had immediate users, especially among urban planners. Transportation engineers employed it to establish bus routings; urban geographers found it invaluable for delimiting the functional boundaries of the metropolis; and urban ecologists utilized it to mark out the limits of the city's "natural areas." The danger, of course, was that planners would utilize only this over-simplified statement of the complex interrelationships taking place on the earth below and then make their city plans from this larger perspective. The necessity still existed to plan the city from the street photographer's view up rather than from an aerial abstraction looking down.

developments received pictorial attention as an indication of the city's growth, and major changes in the city's architecture were often recorded from ground breaking to dedication.

Feature story assignments brought photographs of ethnic neighborhoods, portrayals of park usage in each season, illustrations of the newest highway and street construction and examples of automobile congestion and inadequate parking taken as part of campaigns for new safety measures and stricter regulation.

Reform photographers also began examining the city in the 1890s. Amateurs and professionals alike realized the power of the visual image as a weapon of expose and a tool for stirring sympathy and action. Settlement workers, investigative newspapermen and environmental reformers all turned their cameras on the city. Their photographs showed life in slum neighborhoods and immigrant ghettoes, in many cases for the first

News and Reform Photography In the late r 88os, after years of experiments, an inexpensive method of reprinting photographs in books, magazines, and newspapers was developed. This reprinting capacity plus the availability of fast film, portable cameras, and later, flashlighting, made modern news photography possible. Cameramen who practiced this art went into the homes and streets of the city to record "newsworthy" events. By their nature, such photographs illustrated important urban developments, exposed dramatic occurrences, or pictured the odd and bizarre.

Chicago's visual history is far richer because of the work of the news photographer, especially in the early decades of the twentieth century. In r 960, the Chicago Historical Society acquired the Chicago Daily News glass negative collection, numbering over roo,ooo items and covering the years between r 902 and 1934. To attempt to classify all the photographs in this collection would be impossible, but it does contain an irreplaceable visual history of the city. Real estate

News photograph. Stephen A. Dou glas cottage in 1907.

In the case of this Daily N ews photograph, a story on a famous person elicited visual evidence of aging and neighborhood change. Th e Dou g las cottage which faced south was located near the foot of East 35th Street only a few paces away from the Dougl as Monument.

167

News photograph . Fire at Tattersalls, 1907.

A Daily News photographer recorded the efforts of Chicago firemen as they fought a blaze at Tattersalls, a large arena and hall wh ich was the scene of m any special events ranging from horse shows to lu xurious balls. Tattersalls was located at the southeast corner of Sixteenth and Dearborn.

time. Reform photographers mo\'cd into shantytowns, dark alley dwellings, and slum rooms to capture on film the visual story of how the "other half" lived . The reformers also made their photographs into stereopticon transparencies and with a magic lantern projected them before church groups and social organizations in campaigns to win good will and financial support.

Enlarged and backed with heavy pasteboard, such photographs also became the main attractions at public exhibits advocating housing reform, improved garbage collection, and other neighborhood improvements.

Chicago reform photographers have left behind a small but significant collection illustrating the life of the city's poor around the turn of the century. While reform photographs constitute a smaller number proportionately in Chicago than they do in some other cities, those 168

Chicago

History

which survive offer a powerful corrective for the work of those who become o,¡crly nostalgic about the conditions of life for the urban poor in the not too distant past.

Commercial photographers generally built the image of the city, recorded its achievement and diversity, and gave notice of its retail and industrial strength. ~ews photographers went where the dramatic and hence newsworthy was occurring, and only a small part of their total work was directed toward portraying the life of the poor. Reform photographers, hov. ever, took pictures with a different perspective. Their aim was to show the worst side of the city, its grinding poverty, its fou l living conditions, and its chamber-of-horrors effect on the people caught in the slums. Slums had been part of the city since its earliest days; reform photographers dramatized the conditions of those who lived there.

Chicago was examined through the viewfinder many times between 1845 and the early 1930s. The photographic record which remains has severe limitations: technology, which has minimized movement and curtailed the taking

Photography

of photographs in bad weather and at night; the personal interest of the photographer, which in most cases has meant concentration on the public city, rather than on residential neighborhoods; the bias of the photographer, who may have consciously aimed his camera or "cropped" his print to produce a picture that perhaps falsely conveyed more than it recorded; and finally, the "fecklessness of historical prcscn¡ation," which often, quite by accident, produces the salvaging of one photograph and the destruction of another. v\'ithin these limitations, Chicago's photographic legacy is rich. \Ve should look to it carefully for insights into our urban heritage and keys to understanding the metropolis in our own time.

Reform photograph. Conditions in the slums.

This interior photograph illustrates how improved technical facility helped portray details of urban life.

It was part of a lantern slide show presented by the United Charities of Chicago in 1920- 21, although most of the photographs in the series appear to have been made a few years earlier.

THE OLD NEW LEFT: Emma Goldman tn Chicago

BY DAVID LASSWELL

Emma Goldman's pivotal point, other than several prisons, was Chicago. Emma became the most detested woman in the United States when, on September 6, 1901, Leon Czolgosz-aftcr putting two bullets into President McKinley-declared that he had been inspired to the act by Emma Goldn1an .

As a young woman in 1889 Emma herself had been inspired by the events following Chicago's Haymarket Riot to leave a husband and a sweatshop sewing job in Rochester for New York City. She was determined to change the world through anarchism. Emma embarked on a career of inflaming speech making and writing that resulted in numerous arrests and much publicity for the cause. She learned nursing as a trade during her first term in prison; she provided the money that bought the gun that shot H. C. Frick in 1892; she horsewhipped in public a fellow (male) anarchist she disagreed with; she practiced free lo\¡e.

On a lecture trip to Chicago in May, 1901, a few months before McKinley's assassination, her reception by fellow anarchists gave her a relatively cheerful view of the city. She records in her autobiography: FOR MUCH OF HER CAREER

Chicago, city of our Black Friday [Haymarket Riot day, 1886], cause ofmy rebirth! Next to Pittsburgh it was the most ominous and depressing to me. But I no longer felt as friendless there as on previous occasions when the fury of 1887 was still active and the opposit ion .. . was blind against me. My imprisonment and succeeding activities had won me friends and turned the tide in my favour. ...

On this trip she met Eugene Debbs, who agreed with her that all socialists shou ld be anarchists, much to her delight. She also met briefly, and apparently quite innocently, L eon Czolgosz.

Four months later she was in St. Lou is selling printing jobs for one of her lovers when she heard the news about Czolgosz's deed and her implication in it. She d eter m ined to go back to C hicago, and give herself u p in favo r of n ine of 170

Chicago History

her friends \\'ho were being held until she was found.

On her arrival in Chicago Emma recounts that, "I realized that I cou ld not stay .. with any other foreign comrades. I had, however, American friends who were not known as anarchists." So she went to stay for two days with a " Mr. X ." before surrendering to the police. "Mr. N., the son of a wealthy preacher," she remembers, "lived in a fashionable neighborhood." According to Emma his words on taking her in were, " 'Imagine anyone believing I would shelter Emma Goldman.' " [Emma's biographer, Richard Drinnon, identifies "Mr. N." as one J. Norris; he has not been further identified.]

A day or two later Norris told Emma that the Chicago Tribune was offering five thousand dollars for a scoop interview with her." 'Fine! ... we shall need the money to fight my case!' " she replied. The next day was arranged for the interview.

Emma, as she recalls in her autobiography, was alone at the house, taking a bath, while "Mr. N." went to fetch a Tribune reporter.

There was a noise at the front door, and Emma just managed to snatch up her kimono when "Tweh¡e men, led by a giant, crowded into the apartment. The leader grabbed me by the arm, bellowing: 'who arc you?' 'I not speak EnglishSwedish servant-girl.' " The house was turned inside out, and it looked as if Emma's ruse might work, but she had carelessly left her personali zed fountain pen lying about to be found by one of the policemen. The Tribune reporter had not shown up and there was no purpose in continuing the farce . She identified herself.

Emma underwent the third degree at the Harrison Street police station. She den ied complicity with Czolgosz, but at the same time defended his actions, and then to baffle a ll, she volu nteered to nurse the li ngering President M cK inley.

On her removal to Cook County jail , Emma remembers, she took exception to a policeman's

"brutal" treatment of another prisoner. " 'You brute . . . ' she screamed, 'how d:irc you beat that helpless fellow?' "The next thing she knew, she was on the floor. "I le had landed his fist on my jaw, knocking out a tooth and covering my face with blood. Then he pulled me up, shoved me into my seat, and yelled: 'Another word from you, you damned anarchist, and I'll break every bone in your body!' " Surprisingly, she was released after fifteen days for lack of evidence that she had plotted with Czolgosz.

Emma was to return to Chicago several more times. In 1908 she caused a stir by corning to town to hold meetings shortly after an attempt had been made on the life of Chief of Police Shippy. The meetings were stopped: she made a well-publicized trip to the Haymarket graves at \Valdhcim cemetery: and so111c sympathetic Chicagoans formed a Free Speech League in her behalf.

Emma Goldman in a quiet mom ent, 1906. The book she holds is Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy.

In 1917 her anti-draft agitation again led her to prison for "inducing persons not to register," and in 1919 she was deported to St. Petersburg, Russia, whence she had originally emigrated.

Her last visit to Chicago was during a ninety-day lecture tour in the United States during the permissive early thirties. She spoke in Chicago in March, r 934, but with Ii ttle notice other than that old "Red Emma" was in town. She was old hat, and even despised by the communists who described her as reactionarymuch as they are now themselves dismissed by today's New Left.

In 1936 Emma managed to be in the Spanish Civil \Var with the anarchists at Barcelona. She died in Toronto in 1940, age seventy, ,vhile leading a campaign against the arrest of four Italians under the new War Measure Act. 171

EDITH WYATT: The Jane Austen of Chicago?

BY CLARA M. AND RUDOLF Kl RK

vVilliam Dean Howells ranked her above George Ade as the best of the ÂŤ Chicago School') writers) but Miss J:15-iatt never gained recognition and remains unknown among Chicagoans today. \V1LLIAM DEAN HowELLS, dean of American letters at the turn of the century, opened the Harper's Monthly literary column "Easy Chair" (October, 1901) with words of praise for the stories of an unknown young woman from the West who, he said, was henceforth to be numbered as an important member of the Chicago school of fiction writers, which included Henry B. Fuller and George Ade. The fame of Edith Franklin Wyatt was certain to grow, he wrote.

He praised her "generous kindness for the commoner facts which vulgarity ignores, her courageous novelty of observation, and her delicate security of touch." " It is especially notable that Miss Wyatt has not gone back of her own day or out of her own city to gather material for her stories and sketches," Howells, the staunch defender of realism, remarked with approval. Howells was quite aware that Miss Wyatt's stories could never have a very wide appeal because of a certain lack of breadth. However, he observed, "whoever is worthy to read her book will love it, and vvill wish to read it again and again. Then this reader will not be at ease till he has sent his

Clara M. and Rudolf Kirk, authors of some twenty books and numerous articles, have held professorships in English at Rutgers University, the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle), Vassar, Bryn Mawr, the State University of Iowa and Southwest Texas State College.

The letters written by William Dean Howells and Mildred Howells are published with the kind permission of Professor W. Vv. Howells, and may not be reprinted in full or in part without his written consent.

172 Chicago History

friend to it; but we hope he will be scrupulous in choosing his friend."

Howells' flattering reference to this obscure Chicago writer was the first public expression of a friendship-by-correspondence between the prominent critic and editor and Miss Wyatt, whose writing he had only recently discovered.

That he subsequently embarked on an untiring -and unsuccessful-crusade to promote her at every opportunity is a curious item in American literary history. William Dean Howells, whose stamp of approval was considered the passport lo fame in Ii terary circles, failed lo bring success to Miss \Vyatt, but his failure did not dampen his enthusiasm. In four letters he wrote to her, three of which are published here for the first time, he reveals the depth of that enthusiasm and of his interest in the unknown authoress.

Miss Wyatt was born in Tomah, vVisconsin, on September 14, 1873, and was brought to Chicago as a small child . There she lived the full life of a" middle-class American," as she described herself, in a comfortable home on La Salle Street. The " long rows of cream-colored stone houses," the many relatives and visitors who went to the Wyatt home, her eight years at Miss Rice's School for Girls are all described in a delightful, nostalgic essay entitled "The Poor Old Past," left among her manuscripts.

She attended Bryn Mawr College for two years ( 1892- 94), and then returned to her former school to teach elementary Greek. After three years Miss \Vyatt, the daughter of a Chicago coal dealer and comfortably situated, was able to give up teaching permanently and devote herself to writing.

Howells first wrote Miss Wyatt from Franklin Square, ~cw York, the office of the new Harper's

Clure's Magazine with so much pleasure that I am going to ask you if you have possibly a novel on much the same ground, with characters as freshly and truthfully studied, which you could let me see with a view to its publication by Messrs. Harper and Brothers in book form.

Yours very truly, W. D. Howells

Miss Wyatt did not have a novel for Howells at that time, but two years later, in 1903, she published True Love, a Comedy of the Affections, a novel which served as inspiration for Howells in his "Certain of the Chicago School of Fiction," an essay which appeared in the North American Review in May, r 903.

' In the Van of the Chicago School'

Two LaSalle Street houses in the neighborhood where Edith Franklin Wyatt spent her childhood. These two dwellings are all that remain of the "lor.g rows of cream-colored houses" which Miss Wyatt described in her essay, "The Poor Old Past."

Monthly 1\1agazine, on November 7, 1900. He was then sixty-three years old and had only that month assumed his new role as editor. Glancing through the current magazines on his desk for fresh talent among the younger writers, he picked up McClure's Magazine for September, 1 goo, and his eye fell on a series of very short stories entitled, "The Shallow Spirit of Judgment. Three Stories of Contemporary Chicago Life," by Edith Wyatt. Immediately impressed, he wrote to the unknown writer.

November 7, 1900 Dear Madam: I have been reading your " Three Stories of Contemporary Chicago Life", in a late number of Mc-

Placing Miss Wyatt at the head of the Chicago School, Howells promised his readers to limit the essay to Henry B. Fuller, George Ade, F. P. Dunne, \Viii Payne, Robert Herrick, "and, by no manner of means least, though last ... Miss Edith Wyatt." However, Howells added, "The truth is . . . that I do not think I should be writing of them just now, if it were not for the pleasure, which I feel the need of expressing, lately given me by Miss Edith Wyatt's very delightful novel, 'True Love'."

Howells' pleasure in her work was so great, he said, that it might prompt him to praise also "her Ii terary fellow-citizens," and, in fact, the second and third sections of his essay are devoted to the work of Ade and Dunne. These three Chicagoans are " in the van" of the "Chicago school-always if there is one," but "it will be some time until the world, to the world's loss meanwhile, knows Miss Wyatt's charming work as it knows the work of Mr. Ade and Mr. Dunne."

Howells waxed eloquent in his praise of True Love. The author had attempted to fill a larger canvas and had "signally succeeded," Howells concluded in his essay. 'vVhatever amu ed the sense of humor, and took the fancy, and won the heart; in the friendly wit, the subtle playfulness, of the first book, is here no less in 173

Edith Wyatt

the second. The perfect sanity, the absolute wholesomeness, the fascinating common sense, are here the ground from which a flower of entire grace again springs fresh and fragrant. The author's work, so far, is the apotheosis of the democratic spirit.

Moreover, "the author ... offers ... a thousand little humorous touches throughout the story, and sets before me the untragedied average of the tale with such magic that I seem, with my own commonness, to be a part of it." Miss \Vyatt's humor is the richer because of "that democratic kindness, that instinct of equality which is the sense of justice prevalent in everything she has done." This, Howells believes, is "the really valuable contribution of the ¡west, and of that Chicago in which the West has come to its consciousness."

In a playfully serious article written for Harper's Week(y at the same time, Howells referred in passing to the author he was watching with such interest. "It is seldom," he wrote, "that a book instantly approves itself a classic ... in the fine delicate, and difficult sort which a few of our women writers . .. have the secret of creating.

You may say that the art of it began with Jane Austin [sic]."

Both of Miss \Vyatt's books seem to have become treasured possessions of the entire Howells family. A letter to Mark Twain, written from Kittery Point, Maine, on July 22, 1903, suggests that Howells tried in vain to introduce the American Jane Austen to his old friend. "My dear Clemens;" he wrote, One of the times when I was fool enough to come out and comfort you in your last sickness, I brought a book and read some sketches out of it to you; but instead of considering the peculiar make of miscreant I was dealing with, and keeping it chained to my wrist, I actually left it with you. It was called ' Every One his own Way', and Miss Edith Wyatt wrote it. I know that I cannot appeal to any high principle in you; but is there no crevice in your brazen armor through which one can get a borrowed book out of you? Try and think, and if you find one let me know. That book is very precious to us all, especially Mrs. Howells-the only Howells you fear, becau e she isn 't a real one, perhaps.

174

Chicago History

TRUE

LOVE EDITH

WYATT

True Love, Miss Wyatt's first novel.

The Art Nouveau cover is typical of the period.

Mark Twain's reply indicates that he had no more intention of reading the stories of Edith \Vyatt than the no,¡els of Jane Austen. "O, hellfire!" he replied, "I've long ago stopped borrowing books because I suffer so while they are in the house." In any case, "All our books are packed & gone into storage for Italy. Come over there & see us & we will look." Though Howells and his family left in March, 1904, for a

year in¡England and in Italy, we hear nothing of a visit with Mark Twain nor of a search for the lost book of stories.

A Meeting with Howells and Twain Howells, Twain, and Miss Edith Wyatt met at last on the occasion of the grand seventiethbirthday dinner party given for Twain at Delmonico's Restaurant in New York. Staged by Colonel George B. Harvey on December 5, I 905, the affair was ful ly photographed and described in a supplement to Harper's Weekly issued on December 23. Howells was toastmastC:'r of the evening, and on his right sat Miss Wyatt. Colonel Harvey, president of the Harper publications, presided, and, after reading a letter of congratulations from President Roosevelt, turned the program over to Howells, who began by reciting a "double-barreled sonnet" he had composed in Twain's honor.

A few days later Howells wrote to T. S. Perry, describing the dinner. Before closing, he asked, "Did I ever bore you about Edith Wyatt, Chicagoenne, who wrote E ve1y One His Own Way, and True Love, beautifully simple and true fables, as slyly told as J. Austen's. She was the best of the literary crowd at M. T.'s dinner; a quiet creature, not nearly so funny as you would think. I'm sure you and Mrs. Perry would like her books and her."

Henry Mills Alden, editor of Harper's Monthly Maga;::ine, was also present at the banquet, seated at the table of the guest of honor. U nfortunately, Alden cou ld not be persuaded to share Howells' belief in Miss V/yatt's literary talents.

A month after the birthday party Howells ,vrote sad ly to his friend in Chicago: The Burlington 10 W. 30th St. , Jan'y 6, 1906 Dear Miss Wyatt: I found Mr. Alden the other day brooding dubiously over your larger story, having already made up his mind against the shorter. I told you of our family joy in that, and without sharing with the others my great pleasure in the first I am sorrowfully transmit-

ting them both to you. I can understand why Alden should not find them the Harper kind of story, while I need not say that if I had been an editor I should have gladly and gratefully printed them. Nothing out of Russian fiction could give one more absolutely the sense of truth in the nature of and conditioning of your people in The Pursuit of Happiness, especially that selfish brute beast of a Mrs. Ricker. "But what the deuce?" as one of your people says in True Love. \Ve must take editors as we find them, and Alden is a most faithful and noble one, I doubt if you would have your effect in Harper's. I had thought of trying your stories with the Atlantic unknown to you, but I have scarcely the right, and I could not bear another heartbreak. Why do you break with McClure? I doubt if you have a right to throw away the chance at the public you have now even for a scruple as to other peoples' veracity. (?] Consider how rare and difficult the truth is, even in private life, and be merciful to the fa! tering editors.

My wife and daughter join me in best regards.

Yours sincerely, W.D. Howells.

Howells was sufficiently confident 111 Miss \Vyatt's ability as a story-teller to number her among twelve contributors to the composite novel which Harper published in 1907. The Whole Family, a Novel by Twelve Authors, was con ceived and edited by Elizabeth Jordan. Howells wrote the first chapter ; most of the contributors were Howells' personal friends and, with the exception of Henry James, all had attended the Mark Twain dinner. Assuming the roles of mother, father, brother, lover, aunt and so on to the charming redhead Peggy, who found herself engaged to the wrong man, each contributor endeavored to move the story first into a state of confusion and then into final clarification, with Peggy engaged to the right man . Henry J ames ridiculed Miss Wyatt's chapter as a "positive small convulsion of debility," but she was not the only victim of his scorn, and late r critics praised her contribution.

.Hore Praise for True Love \\'e have no evidence of any further communication from Howells to Miss Wyatt for the next four years. Then, in "A Conjecture of Intensive 175

Edith Wyatt

Fiction," an essay largely concerned vvith women story-tellers, Howells refers briefly to "Miss Edith Wyatt's beautiful and distinctively humane novel, True Love." In this long essay for the North American Review of Dccem bcr, 191 6, his only comment on the author is that "one cannot read that book without great hope and consolation, a harvest of faith in the rich possibilities of the democratic, the American ideal." Howells included the name of Edith Wyatt in his list of favorite women novelists, from Jane Austen to Mary Wilkins Freeman.

A draft of a letter Miss \Vyatt wrote to Howells (did she mail her letter?) lies among Miss Wyatt's manuscripts in the I'i"ewberry Library. It is undated, but from the opening sentence we are able to conclude that the letter was composed early in 1917. Miss \Vyatt writes: Dear Mr. Howells: Your beautiful mention of my novel "True Love," in "A Conjecture of Intensive Fiction", came to me as a Chri tmas present which charmed me, and made me happy, as all you have said of my work, and my effort has clone.

I suppose you know how greatly I desire to be worthy of your praise: but my pleasure in it is so satisfactory to me, that I cannot make myself think of my worthiness, but only glory and delight in your words.

Perhaps as a kind of apology, or at least an explanation, of why she had published no novel for more than a dozen years, Miss \ Vyatt wrote that her "natural inability" impeded her, and added that she was "distracted by writing constantly-or almost constantly on other formswri ting essays and special articles for which I have always had some demand from publishers."

I n addition, Miss Wyatt wrote, she was "distracted by something else-I mean really by democracy, or the failure of democracy itself" which made her unable to refuse the appeals of "various meliorative committees and organizations in Chicago." She was, she felt, thus "shut away" from "the long art of fiction," for the time at least, both by her work as a critic and her participation in various social movements.

176

Chicago History

Miss vVyatt tried to sec Howells whenever she was in New York. "I suppose you have gone south for the winter, now," she wrote in January, 1917, and don' t know where this letter will reach you and Miss Howells. I had a hope last Fall, when l was in New York, that I might find you both there, and tell you how fascinated I had been by the beauty and humor, and spiritual greatness, and funniness of " The Leatherwood God." and ask you about ever so many things: and whenever I go Ea t, I seek you out in vain through Franklin Square, & the ¡01¡th American Review office. But I am trusting that I will have better fortune in the future on my visits-From yours Devotedly, E. W. Undismayed by her various "distractions," and still claiming her for the Chicago school of fiction, Howells referred again to Miss Wyatt in his February, 1917, "Easy Chair." In praising a number of collections of short stories, he observed that none could match those of George Ade-except those of "Miss Edith \Vyatt's group of Chicago studies which she calls Everyone His Own JiVa_y." He adds, "We are always praising these, if the least chance offers."

The Last Letter Howells wrote the fourth of the letters preserved at the Newberry Library from Boston in 1919, requesting the privilege to include one of Miss \Vyatt's stories in his forthcoming anthology. "Dear Miss \ Vyatt:" he wrote on October 16 from the Hotel Bellevue, I am writing a book of "Favorite American Stories" and I want to put "A Failure" (so-called) of yours in it. As the book is out of print I understand the publishers can't refuse, and I hope the author won't. I should like to have put all your stories in, but space forbade. My daughter joins me in be t wishes.

Yours sincerely, \V.D. Howells.

The Great Afodern American Stories appeared, with Miss Wyatt's story included. In "A Reminiscent I ntroduction," Howells reflected on M iss Wyatt's stories for the last time. He had

,.

Chicago Hi stori cal Society

difficulty, he admitted, " in finding anything definitely dramatic among her studies of Chicago life .... But they were all exquisite things, most artistic and most realistic things, delicate portraits of life."

Howells' anthology came out on Jul y 3, 19¡20, the same day that Mildred Howells wrote a letter of thanks to Edith Wyatt for her letter on the death of her father. Howells' daughter wrote concerning Every One His Own Way and Tru e Love, Scarcely a day went by without a quotation from one or the other. When my father was compiling the American Stories, it was a welcome excuse for reading your short stories over again in the Autumn even ings at York [Maine]. We kept hoping and looking for more stories from you-that I still hope for, someday.

Howells grasped every opportunity to keep Edith \Vyatt's name before the fiction-reading public from his first discovery of her Chicago stories in 1900 until his death in rg,w. After he died Miss Fanny Butcher, editor of "The Literary Spotlight" of the Chicago Tribune, recalled that the first-and only-time that I ever saw William D ea n Howells, the outstanding figure in American literary life of his day, I spent a delightful afternoon

William Dean Howells (left) and Edith Franklin Wyatt (center, foreground) at their first meeting on the occasion of Mark Twain's seventieth-birthday dinner, December 5 , 1905. Howells later described her as "the best of the literary crowd" at the dinner; high praise indeed, for the guests included Willa Cather, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Richard Le Gallienne, Henry Van Dyke, Dorothy Canfield, and others. Also pictured are, from the left, Mary Stewart Cutting, Adrian Joline, Norman Duncan, Rupert Hughes, and Morgan Robertson .

talking to a man who, al though he was very sick, dying, even, had the mind of a young person with that eagerness to know about places and people that old age often loses. And the first person about whom he asked me, when he knew I was from Ch icago, was Edith Franklin Wyatt. H e said her work was the finest coming from Chicago.

In thanking Miss Wyatt for h er gift of The I nvisible Gods, h er second novel, Miss Howells wrote in M arch, 19'23, Of course there is a pa ng in thinking how my father would have delighted in reading it aloud, but I ought instead to thank you for all the joyous evenings you gave him with your other two books. He could scarcely wait until we had forgotten your short stories enou gh to decently read them over again.

Howells saw virtues in Miss Wyatt's writing that escaped the public of her day. W e print on the following page two scenes from True Love so that today's reader might take a second look.

177

Edith Wyatt This little scene of sense and sensibility occurs as the two heroines of True Love, down from Chicago for a count1y ball at "Centerz•ille," Illinois, freshen up before making I heir entrance.

Here .Hiss vVyatt, through her sensible-and sly-character of Tom, satirizes the cultural pretentions of the young Chicago stock broker, .Hr. Hubbard.

Inez, who had come on with Norman a little before the others, buttoned her gloYcwrists, standing in the middle of the floor.

With her blue eyes and shadowing hair, in her simple, light dress, she looked, among the less distinguished provincial ladies, like some beautiful trillium or starry spring beauty among bright, good-natured field-flowers.

"You aren't going to carry that great thing, are you?" she asked of Emily, as her cousin attached to her sash a large wooden fan made with a scroll-saw by Bob [Emily's little brother] at the Manual Training School.

"I'm afraid Bob would notice it if I didn't."

"Emily," said Inez, sitting down beside her cousin in the corner of the room, where Emily was unbuttoning her boots, "~orman has often said to me that he thought a woman's whole costume, her very shoe-laces, should be expressive of her personality, as much as the rose-leaf of the rose."

"Oh, mercy, yes, I know it ought," said Emily, a little lazily.

"He said he could imagine how beautiful and characteristic were all the belongings of Helen of Troy and Cleopatra." " Both those women were very well off, of course.''

"Oh, no, that would make no difference, Emily/' said her cousin, impatiently. "Any woman with a little care can have beautiful appurtenances and expressive of the personality-not like that fan. And people ought to try not to destroy any illusions by some unlovely appurtenance. I read that in a book of advice yesterday. One ought to think about all one wears and does, or you cease to seem ideal and you destroy love. The writer sayswisely, as I think-you must always be very careful. Many a woman has lost the love of a lifetime by wearing an ugly dress." " But I think I "·ould as lief have a comfortable dislike as that nervous sort of love," said Emily, reflectively, pushing down her slipper-heel.

The young man [Torn] held up a volume of \Vhitman, open at the "Dying Fireman."

"Oh, yes-yes," said Mr. Hubbard. "But is it art? It is so hideous. Does it make for progress? Do you quite like it?"

"Quite," said the young man, plainly.

"I am afraid," said Mr. Hubbard, "I am a little fastidious. I am so fond of all the great classic masters as to be impatient of anything but the best, the one grand style."

"Your culture is so broad probably, Hubbard, that it limits you to liking only one kind of expression," said Tom, looking at him earnestly.

"I wouldn't like to pretend to too much culture," said Norman, obviously flattered.

"But-well, yes. Now there is in Whitman an excess that seems quite unlike the classic restraint. I do not like excess or the abnormal.

Often I fear the man is a charlatan."

"And such a successful one," said Tom. "Year after year he positively makes people imagine that they enjoy his things. He makes 1ne."

"Ah! Don't let him," said Mr. Hubbard. ''Don't let yourself be duped in that way." '·But I can't help it," said the wretched Tom, with an air almost of anxiety at his own gullibility. ''He takes me in again and again; I th ink I am impressed as I read; I keep thinking I feel a wonderful power."

Mr. Hubbard became extremely confused by this, but finally, after thinking in bewilderment for some time, he remarked: " I like in literature only what is true and beautiful, and above mere imposture and trickery and striving for effect."

178

Chicago History

Fifty Years Ago

As recorded by newspapers in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society .

1920 Health Commissioner John Dill Robertson declares that landlords \\ ho fail to supply heat this "inter will cc indicted for murder in case of deaths.

Enrico Caruso arrives in Chicago. He and his retinue occupy ten rooms at the Congress Hotel.

OCT. 2 . With full suffrage won by passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the Chicago Political Equality League changes its name to the Chicago League of Women Voters.

Nine truckloads of liquor, $r 75,000 worth, are highjacked on the West Side by Mike "de Pike" Beitler and Robert Pearlman \1¡ith the aid of 54 city policemen .

OCT. 4. Charles A. Comiskey gives an extra $ r ,500 to each of the "square boys" on the White Sox team to make up for what they lost by not winning the , 9, 9 Series.

OCT. 6. Sophie Tucker, asked why she is filing for di\'orcc in Chicago, replies with a line from her latest hit, "Is It Anybody's Business if I Do?" OCT. 7. Raids on anarchist hideouts on the \\'est Side net two of the most wanted Russian anarchists in the country, along with tons of printed propaganda.

OCT. 8. Twenty-five thousand steel mill workers are laid off in East Chicago, Indiana Harbor, and Gary.

OCT. 1 9. Alderman Max Adamowski, of the High Cost of Living Commission, claims he has convinced Loop restaurants to cut prices by ten to forty percent.

OCT. 25. The Chicago Friends of Irish Freedom plan a mammoth parade here to protest the death of the mayor of Cork by hunger strike.

OCT. r.

A former Chicagoan, the widow of William B. Leeds of the Rock Island Line, has a chance of becoming Queen of Greece.

Her husband, Prince Christopher of Greece, might succeed the late king.

OCT. 28. President Veeck of the Cubs announces that Johnny Evers will return to manage the Cubs for r 92 r. Evers says he has changed; he will now spend more time fighting the opposition than the umpires.

A new transportation report predicts that the Loop traffic tangle will soon lead to paralysis. Outbound loop traffic has more than doubled since 1 9, 6.

OCT. 29. Canadian whiskey, disguised as soap, is flooding the city. The going price of "Canadian soap" is $105 a box.

OCT. 30. Gov. James M. Cox, running with Franklin D. Roosevelt for the vice-presidency, is received with wild enthusiasm at the Coliseum, but surveys show a G.O.P. landslide in the offing.

Theda Bara in person delights her fans in Blue Flame at the Garrick as does Ethel Barrymore in Declasse at the Powers.

OCT. 27.

Enrico Caruso at the Congress Hot e l, October 1, 1920.

Ch icag o Histori cal Soci ety , Dail y N e...vs Co ll ection

Fifty Years Ago/1920

NOV. 2. A national landslide for Harding. Every county in Illinois goes Republican. "Big Bill" Thompson at the jubilee in City Hall declares, "We ate 'em up clothes and all-let the jazz band play!" The League of Nations becomes a dead issue.

NOV. 5. Elia v\T. Peattie, in the Chicago Tribune, predicts that John Galsworthy's new novel of the Forsytes, In Chance1y, will be counted as one of his best.

Nov. 6. "Hooch-burglar" gangs, for the second season, prey on summer house liquor caches in Lake Forest and Highland Park. Breakins last season netted burglars almost $100,000 worth of illegal liquor.

NOV. 9. Chicago has less unemployment than the rest of the country, except in the building trades.

Nov. 1 r. The second anniversary of the Annistice is observed this morning with a din of horns and bells over the city, followed at eleven o'clock with a minute of silence.

NOV. 12. Federal Judge Kenesaw M. Landis of Chicago accepts chairmanship of professional baseball at the unanimous vote of the sixteen major league clubs.

Irish Chicagoans demand removal of the lions from the front of the Art Institute on grounds that they symbolize Britain's claws.

NOV. 13. Fanny Butcher's bestseller list includes: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and i\1rs. Craddock by W. Somerset Maugham.

NOV. 1 7. The social season opens with the opera.

Coiffures reveal the cars for the first time in years, skirts are even shorter, and many women have adopted the style of wearing fillet head bands.

NOV. 21. The Methodist churches of Chicago oppose Gov. Len Small's inaugural ball at Springfield since Small is a Methodist and the church is "unalterably opposed to dancing. " NOV. 21. Bestselling songs and records in Chicago include "Avalon" and "The Japanese Sandman."

180

Chicago History

r-.:ov. 29. Civil ,var veterans' groups in Chicago attack Professor William E. Dodd of the University of Chicago for comparing the vindictive peace terms imposed on the Germans with those imposed on the South after the Civil \•Var. NOV. 25. The new $8,500,000 Drake Hotel on Upper Michigan Avenue opens its doors today. "Simplicity and comfort are our aims," states Tracy C. Drake.

DEC. 1. To the anger of Chicago delegates, the Constitutional Convention at Springfield ,·otcs to limit Cook County's representation in the State Senate to one-third of a total membership of fifty-seven.

DEC. 3. Cook county delegates threaten to quit "Con Con" in face of the down-state "steamroller."

DEC. 1 r. A Waukegan boy's wireless set picks up dance music from a steamer one hundred miles out from New York.

DEC. 1 3. Fear is expressed downstate that Chicago criminals will use fast cars on the new Illinois road system to rob villages and small towns. A state police force is urged for protection.

Forty-five holdups occur within 48 hours in Chicago.

DEC. r 5. Unemployment increases. Chicago has 160 applicants for every JOO jobs. There is even a surplus of housemaids.

DEC. 19. Ministers of seven North Shore churches urge the reinstitution of the old New England blue laws for Sundays. Opponents of the Sabbatarians state that puritanical conditions already exist on most of the North Shore.

DEC. 21. The Rush Street bridge closes as the lower levei of the Michigan Avenue bridge opens.

DEC. 31. T\\·elve thousand persons are put under quarantine in East Chicago and Hammond as smallpox cases reach seventy-nine and an epidemic is declared.

Mary Garden as Chrysis in Erlanger's "Aphrodite."

See January 1.

Fifty Years Ago/1921

1921 1, 192r. Kew Year's Eve is quieter this year. "Hip liquor" in restaurants is generally winked at, but moderation is noticeable.

Crowds thin by one o'clock.

Mary Garden's admirers were left " shcllshocked" last night by the bachanale scene in "Aphrodite." ''The passion-mad dancing" was a little too realistic. There was no applause or curtain call.

JAN. 2. Fifty more cases of smallpox arc reported in East Chicago.

JAN. 10. Hiring is picking up in Chicago factories. A survey shows that the worst of the slump has passed .

JAN. 13. Mary Garden is made director of the Chicago Opera. "Our Mary" will be the first woman opera director in history.

JAN . 16. The WCTU in Ernnston celebrates the first anniversary of prohibition"' ith a declaration of war against cigarette smoking.

JAN.

Ald erman Adamowski will lead a " carry your lunch" program to make profiteering Loop restaurants keep their promises to lower prices in accord with lower food prices.

JAN. 17. Students dancing the shimmy and the toddle prompt the closing of the Community Center al Brentano School.

JAN. r g. Dr. Herman Bundcscn of the Chicago l lcalth Dcparunent says that the new measuring device for chlorine in the city water system will do a\\'ay \\'ith occasional overdoses.

JA . 24. Chicago gasoline prices drop by two cents to 27 cents a gallon.

Plans to raise the pay of city employees by six million dollars arc abandoned for lack of funds.

The Drake Hotel as it was when it opened November 25.

The view is to the northeast from the west side of Michigan Boulevard. The Palmolive Building was yet to be built.

Chic(l.go Historical Socletv, Daily News Collection

.

Cap'n George vVellington Streeter dies at age eighty-four. He had long laid claim to a hundred valuable acres of land east of Michigan Avenue from the foot of Oak Street south. The area is now commonly called Streeterville.

JAN. 30. Countess Wandaync de Tolstoy, visiting in Chicago, blames her uncle, Leo Tolstoy, for the triumph of Russian bolshevism. "His spreading the theory that prison was preferable to military service sounded the knell of the Russian nation," she says.

FEB. 1. There are rumors in Rome that Archbishop Mundelein will be made a cardinal at the next consistory in March .

FEB. 3. Former Gov. Lowden of Illinois promises to decide by February 5 whether or not he will accept the post of Secretary of the Navy in Harding's cabinet.

FEB. 5. State Street stores announce a $ 1 5,000,000 loss on their New Year's inventory, as prices return to normal.

Adlai E. Stevenson, grandson of the late vice president, has been chosen editor of the Pri11cetonian at Princeton University. He is a junior and not yet twenty-one.

FEB. 6. Miss Mary McSwincy, sister of the martyred mayor of Cork, speaks in Chicago to seven thousand persons and collects $ 175,000 to help the Irish cause. She compares the Sinn Fein revolt to the American Revolution.

FEB. 8. The Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University opens its first classes with an enrollment of over 100 students.

FEB. g. The "carry your lunch" drive in the Loop has some effect as restaurants reduce prices from ten to thirty percent.

FEB. 12. A bomb explodes at headquarters of aldermanic candidate Anthony D'Andrea.

Thirty are injured and two precinct captains nearly lose a leg each.

FEB. 16. Armour & Co. spends $600,000 to end smoke pollution and be rid of the title of '·worst violator of the anti-smoke ordinance."

Professor Henry G. Ga le, Dean of the Col-

Louis B. Anderson, Alderman of the Second Ward.

See February 20.

lcge of Science at the University of Chicago, slates that "the jazz-hounds, greased hair boys, and the all-night toddling co-ed" are in a very small minority at the university.

FEB. 17. Twelve Chicago foreign language newspapers are warned by Federal agents that they will be prosecuted if they continue advertising illicit stills.

From Pasadena, California, former Governor Frank 0. Lowden confirms that he will not accept Harding's offer to appoint him Secretary of the Navy. Some sec Lowden's refusal as a move to remain available for the Republican presidential nomination four years hence.

FEB. 20. A mass meeting on the South Side results in the appointment of a delegation to the ivfayor to represent twenty thousand unemployed Negroes. Leader of the delegation, R. E. Parker, says that Mayor Thompson has not kept his campaign pledges to the Negroes of Chicago.

Louis B. Anderson, alderman of the Second \Varel, defends Mayor Thompson against Parker's charges that Thompson neglects :\'egro Chicagoans and that the Second Ward is '·rotten with graft." Anderson claims that Parker's follO\•ving is ' made up of recent arrivals from the South.

183

Fifty Years Ago/1921

At the First Presbyterian Church of Evanston Sinclair Lewis, the no\'clist, states that Davis Street was what he had in mind when he wrote his best-selling Main Street. Further, he doubts that any of his audience has ever read Sherwood Anderson, "one of the greatest American novelists."

FEB. 21. Psychologists, moralists, and dancing instructors at a meeting of the Chicago Ju\'enile Protective Association agree that "fast and risque'' dancing is used as a compensation for the liquor that is banned by Prohibition.

FEB. 24. Sixteen-year-old \ \lilliam Dalton, a bank clerk, commits Chicago's greatest bank robbery by walking out of the Northern Trust Bank with $772,000 on his lunch hour.

FEB. 26. Bank robber\ \'illiam Dal ton is captured near Bloomington, Illinois and confesses all.

He had hoped to make it to Sou th America.

FEB. 28. Last night forty-three persons were killed shortly before 6:30 when the :\"ew York Ccntral's Chicago-bound Interstate Limited plowed into the Canadian Ccntral's Canadian Flyer at a rail junction at Porter, Indiana .

Heroes of the disaster were an army captain

and an ex-army nurse who directed removal of the injured. ~!ARCH 3. Scars-Roebuck announces that it will reduce tbc wages of its employees to the level of spring, 1920. A fall off in business and lowered cost of living are given as the reason.

Charles W. Leggett, Evanston's police chief, reports that drunkenness has doubled in E"anston since Prohibition. ~tARCJI 4. There are persistent rumors in New York music circles of a tlempts to lure conductor Frederick Stock of the Chicago Symphony to the New York Philharmonic. Stock denies i L. The Chicago Real Estate Board's schedule of "fair rents" states $140 a month to be fair rent for a modern seven room flat in an average neighborhood.

J.IARCII 6. Chicago's first cathedral, the Episcopal SS. Peter and Paul, at Peoria Street and \\lashington Boulevard, burns, leaving only the granite walls that were laid in 1852.

MARCIi 8. Mike "de Pike" Heitler and five other bootleggers are convicted by a federal jury of smuggling a two-hundred-thousand-dollar carload of Old Granddad whiskey into Chicago, selling it to saloon keepers, and then rcconfiscating it with the cooperation of uniformed policemen. },!ARCH 12. The state unemployment office asserts that there are 3 18 men for c\¡ery JOO jobs in Chicago.

MARCH 1 7. Dr. Frank \V. Gunsaulus, noted Chicago educator, clergyman, lecturer, and bibliophile, dies at age 66 at his home at 2919 Prairie Avenue, of heart disease.

Sinclai r l ewis. He to ld Evanston ians t hat Davis Street was his Main Street. Fe b ruary 20.

Ch icago Historical Soc iety, Daily Ne-us Collection

Chicago Historical Society , Daily News Coll ection

18. Alderman Michael Kenna is forced to give up his saloon at 307 South Clark Street. The lease was not renewed. "Hinky Dink" says that "Since Prohibition went into effect. . . . I have been losing money every day." He may open a little cigar store where "the boys can get together."

MARCH I g. A tremendous explosion at the Armour grain elevator at One Hundred Twenty-second Street and Torrence Avenue kills four and injures twelve. The loss is estimated at ten million dollars.

MARCH 24. A special train bearing the bodies of forty American soldiers from France arrives in Chicago today. All are from the Chicago area.

MARCH 28. Mrs. George M. Pullman dies in Pasadena, California, at the age of eightytwo. She is remembered particularly for her support of Chicago charities and education.

She will be buried in Graceland Cemetery beside the body of her husband.

APRIL 1. The retail price of ice in Chicago jumps from fifty to sixty cents per hundred pounds. The reason is the mild winter and almost total failure of the natural ice crop.

APRIL 5. Property owners along orth Michigan Avenue bring suit against the shops in the new Drake Hotel on grounds that the district is to be maintained as residential.

APRIL 13. The Chicago Cubs open the 192 1 season in town with a victory of 5 to 2 0\'er the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Dctroi t Tigers beat the "renovated" White Sox in their opener at Detroit.

MARCH

The "mug shot" of Mike "de Pike" Heitler who was convicted March 8 in the biggest bootleg case since Prohibition started.

16. The worst spring blizzard in Chicago's history strikes with sixty-mile-an-hour winds and a twenty-eight degree drop in temperature . Downed trees and power lines, as well as snowbound trains, disrupt the city. Many families are caught with empty coal bins.

APRIL r 7. Thirty thousand Chicago Irish parade on Michigan Avenue to urge United States recognition of the Irish Republic.

APRIL 23. "Chicago's newest and most magnificent photo-play palace," the Roosevelt, has its grand opening. The first film shown is Lessons in Love with Constance Talmadge.

APRIL 27. Mrs. Lucy L. Flower dies at Coronado, California. During her long residence in Chicago she headed many activities to aid in the education of poor and orphaned children.

APRIL 28. Chief of Police Charles C. Fitzmorris, in issuing a May Day parade permit to the Socialist Parry of Cook County, warns that no red flag can be carried in the parade.

"Somebody might get hurt," he explains.

In order to combat "the bandits who go out of Chicago in fast autos to despoil the banks and post offices of the county," the men of DeKalb County announce that they have formed armed vigilante groups.

APRIL 30. Federal authorities in a series of raids on the South and \Vest sides last night took five tons of communist literature advocating active and armed re,1 olution in Chicago on May 1.

APRIL

185

Book Reviews

UPTOWN is a political book.* The dust jacket describes it as an account of"the victimization of Southern whites and their struggle to organize and resist ... " told, "in their own words and those of two New Left writers." The book will probably miss its mark as reform literature since it is too long and diffuse for a convincing statement. However, it has remarkable value for Chicago history-it records directly the life of several members of an extensive colony of upland southerners, living in Chicago during the late 1960s.

Most Chicagoans arc familiar with the neighborhood known as "Uptown." It lies roughly between Montrose and Foster Avenues, and between the lake and North Clark Street. The area is mainly slum, and about half the population is southern white. The authors of Uptown lived in the neighborhood from 1965 to 1967, as community organizers for the Students for a Democratic Society (the character of the SDS was quite different then), and the book is a record of their activitie and of the people they worked with.

Interviews, in carefully transcribed dialect, with some ten persons are the substanct> of the book.

Despite the weakness of the interview technique (a fast talking interviewer can extract what opinions he pleases from the uneducated, and editing does the rest), the Uptowners intervie\1·ed here do, in the long run, speak for themselves-and very vividly indeed.

One man in particular, Ras Bryant (no real names are used), gives an extraordinary account of hi hard life, which is just the sort of life one would expect a ixty-two-year-old southern white on welfare in Chicago to have lived. Ras started work in the \ Vest Virginia mines as a twelve-year-old boy; he lost an arm soon after while hunting rabbits; he eked out his un steady income with a still in the mountains. He has had two wives a nd some offspring, and is now reduced to drinking and being thrown out of rented rooms.

Ras sums up his Chicago experience in his account of a conversation with a friend during his last visit to \Vest Virginia: I went back to \\·est Virginia and was talkin with a guy.

*Uptown, Poor IVhitts £n Chica.Ito, Todd Gitlin and :\'ancy Hollander, 1larpcr and Row, 1970, S 10.00.

186

Chicago History

IIc said, "Well, Ras," said, "how you gettin along out there?"

I said, "Oh, getting along good," I said, "you only have one problem."

He said, "What's that?"

I said, "To find somebody to talk to."

IIe said, "Why is that?"

I said, "Everybody talks to theirself out there."

I said, "They go along the street talkin to theirself."

You notice cm doing that lots of times, you know.

The ·c original ones from here, you know. I told im, ·'Now if you find somebody from West Virginia, or the South somewhere, clown in Alabama or someplace like that, they're ready to talk to you." But the original ones that live here, you can ask em anything. Maybe they'll say something or they'll turn their head and look the other way. I had em do me that way lots a times ...

But I like it fine, Chicoggcr. I like 't real good .

Cause I can get somethin a eat, something a live on, here. In \ Vest Virginia I cain't. Unless you working all clay for your board, and you don't like to do that you know.

Nah, I don't want to go back home. Too hard a times back there. No, I'd never want a go back there, to home.

Although the authors deplore the current fad for romanticising the Appalachians there is throughout the book a patronizing view that these people are quaint and exotic. The authors first tip their hands in this respect in their "word about dialect and syntax" when they warn the reader that he must remember that these people are "foreigners," who speak "smudges [sic) of Elizabethan English." When the authors speak their own words one regrets that they are not as articulate in English as the ••hillbillies" whose words they record.

The interviews are selected to fit the political purpose of the book, as they should be in this kind of work.

However, the degraded lives described in interview after interview raise the question of how the authors thought they could organize these people to any purpose whatever. The reader gets the impression that all Appalachians who come to Chicago are depraved on arrival, and go from bad to worse. This is false of course, since many newcomers to Ch icago do succeed in their original purpose of improving their lot.

One pathetic boy of eighteen, given the name Bobby Joe Wright, is second generation-he grew

An Uptown illustration showing a boy during one of the SOS sponsored demonstrations.

187

Book Reviews

up on \,Vilson Avenue, earning his money on the street since the age of twelve. But even he has a brother living in Riverside who has made his way out through a job at Kemper Insurance Company.

Bobby Joe has spent nineteen months in the St. Charles reformatory and went to various special schools after his release, but he is convinced that steady work has no meaning; he smokes marijuana, and has an apocalyptic view of Chicago : "I look at Chicago as a big machine and the wheels are rollin all the time, and they're rollin faster and faster, you know what I mean? Now eventually on every machine the wheels get hot and bust. Now that's what's gonna happen here. Things are gonna get going so fast its just gonna stop, man, they're not gonna care. They'll have their own little world of their own to go to."

Uptown with its poetic photographs and subject seems to have taken some inspiration from Now Let Us Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans.

That was a literary study of white cotton farm tenants in the mid-South in 1936 that was published in 1939, and has since become a classic. Uptown succeeds in somewhat the same way a the \,VaJker and Evans book: despite its political purpose it records a part of American life in a way that has not been done as well by anyone else.

DAVID LASSWELL

.,

I

In An Illinois Reader,* initiated by the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission, Editor Clyde C. Walton has distilled from the periodical publications of the Illinois State Historical Society twenty-five articles which succeed, as a collection, in covering most significant historical events and conditions in Illinois, while at the same time emphasizing the key role which the state played in the history of the nation.

Cho en for their appeal to the general reader as well as for their historical importance, the articles cover Illinois history from the clays of the Revolution, when George Rogers Clark led daring attacks to expel the British from the Northwest Territory, to modern times, delightfully capped with Walter Trohan's reminiscences about his friendship with Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. \,VaJton clearly exercised great care in his selection and particular mention of a few articles in this review is not meant to derogate the remainder. However, some pieces in the Reader de erve special mention, among them "Remembrances of Two Springfield Weddings of the Olden Time" by Mrs.John M. Palmer, and "Old-Time Campaigning and the Story of a Lincoln Campaign Song" by William H. Smith , •~orthern IJlinois University Press, 1970. S7.50.

188 Chicago History

two per~onal, first-hand accounts of events during the Lincoln years. Similarly, Richard L. Beyer's "Hell and High VVater," another eye-witness account, artfully communicates the excited fear of Egypt residents during January and February of 1937, when the Ohio River swelled into a disastrous flood , and is also valuable for Beyer's description of the outpouring of aid and sympathy after the catastrophe.

"The French and British at Play in the Old l\orthwest" is enlightening for its revelations of the amenities of the frontier, where life, according to author Nelson Vance Russell, was not nearly as grim as we have been taught. David Donald's " The Folklore Lincoln" and George R. Gayler's "The Mormons and Politics in Illinois: 1839- 1844" are perhaps the the most readable pieces in the collection; especially colorful are Prophet Joseph Smith's denunciations of prominent public figures, such as the one he addressed to Henry Clay, whose "whole life, character and conduct," the Mormon leader proclaimed, "have been spotted with deeds that cause a blush upon the face of a virtuous patriot; so you must be contented in your lot, while crime, cowardice, cupidity or low cunning have handed you down from the high tower of a statesman, to the black hole of a gambler. ... " "Not Without Thy VVondrous Story, Illinois, " by Allan Nevins, serves as a brilliant introduction to the book and is exceedingly readable, although he occasionally succumbs to politicizing. The great merit of An Illinois Reader, however, lies not iu the individual articles but in the fact of their collection into one volume, where the general reader may find state history presented from a variety of viewpoints.

ELISABETH KIMBELL The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, * also sponsored by the Sesquicentennial Commission , compiled and written by John Clayton, is a remarkable combination of minute statistical detail and historical synopses. The compilation of data is staggering. and includes information ranging from toll revenues from the early canals, to lead ing jockeys and trainers on Illinois race tracks, to state results of all Presidential elections since 1820, to campgrounds supplying sanitary hook-ups for mobile homes and campers. The Fact Book will be useful to teachers, touri ts, sports • ou lhern Illinoi~ Univcrsily Pre~s, I 970. SI 2.50.

buffs. political scientists, soc iologists-useful , in fact, to anyone who seeks easily accc.sible, if occasionally su perficial , information about the state of Illinois.

The Fact Book breaks down into eighteen chapters, each dealing with a separate body of tatistical and historical information. County government, farm and manufacturing, libraries and museums, state parks, sports, transportation , hi tory of the state government and a description of the present governmental structure are some of the topics covered. Liberal use of charts and tables expedites re search in the book.

Among the particular merit of this compilation is an exhaustive section de ·cribing the state government, a section which not only is useful to residents of Illinois who happen to be interested in the workings of state offices but also serves admirably as a ~uide to anyone who wishes to addrc s questions or complaints lo state authorities. Nor is the Fact Book, despite its statistical detail, altogether ponderous and uninteresting. Clayton has a disarming way of studding dry text with quaint observations, such as his description of William P. Foster, one of the four fir t associate justices of the Illinois Supreme Court, who was, according to Clayton, "completely unqualified as lawyer or jurist, never held court or sat on the Supreme bench, collected his salary of $1,000 and disappeared, where, no one knew or cared."

The Fact Book might have included some information which did not find its way into the compilation.

One would assume, for in tance. that any collection of statistical information about Illinois would include a complete list of state holidays, and certainly a listing and description of the state seal, flag, flower and other symbols; or that tables of towns and cities would show, in addition to dates of incorporation and populations, municipal areas in square miles. A short section of famous Illinois firsts, such as the first telephone installation , first radio broadcast, and the like. would be helpful. The map section, too, is weak: the book has only eight, all of which illustrate specific information and are therefore limited in their usefulness for general reference.

But any volume which sets out to include all information about its subject is bound to prove lacking in ome 1·e peels, and its occasional weaknesses certai nly should not exclude the Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac from the growing rank of useful Illinois handbooks.

ELISABETH KIMBELL 189

In "The Pullmans of Prairie Avenue" in this issue, Florence Lowden Miller does not mention her grandfather's Pullman exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. _However, a look into the manuscript coHect,on of the Ch icago H istorica l Society turned up th is detailed acco unting of an afternoon's entertain m ent at the Fair that M r . Pu llm an offe red to four guests, who were escorted to the amusements of the Midway by the manager of the Pullman exhibit. The "4 Pints Veuve yellow label" were probably Veuve Clicquot, a widely appreciated champagne of the period. A nd was that " Dance de Ventre" perhaps performed by the elusive Little Egypt?

An Afternoon at the Fa ir

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190

Chicago H i story

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THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY North Avenue and Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois 60614 Telephone: Michigan 2-4600

OFFICERS Andrew McNally III , President Theodore Tieken, 1st Vice-President James R. Getz, 2nd Vice-President Gardner H. Stern , Treasurer Clement M. Silvestro, Secretar;, and Director

TRUSTEES Bowen Blair

Bryan S. Reid. Jr.

John Jay Borland Emmett Dedmon

Gilbert H. Scribner, Jr.

James R. Getz Philip \V. Hummer \ Villard L. King Andrew McNally

111

Harold Byron Smith, Jr. Hermon Dunlap Smith Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken Mrs. Philip K. Wrigley

:Mrs. C. Phillip Miller

MEMBERSHIP The Society is supported almost entirely by income from its endowment, by contributions, and by memberships . Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's activities and objectives. Classes of membership and dues arc as follows: Annual, $ 15 a year; Life $250 (one payment); Governing Life, $500 (one payment) ; Governing Annual, $ 100 (one pa yment) and $25 a year ; and Patron, $1000 (one payment ) . i\lcmbers receive the Society's magazine, Chicago History, invitations to all special functions held by the Society, and periodic notice of new exhibitions.

Single issues of Chicaf!,O Hi,tmy¡ $2.25 a copy by mail.

Library subscriptions S15 a year.

191

Photograoher: Otho B. Tarbyfill, Chicago H istori ca l Soc i ety

Elevator and lake steamer at Ninety-eighth Street and the Calumet River, 1943

THE FARM AND THE CITY

A barn on one of the midwestern farms that have long fed Chicago's mammoth grain elevators .

Chicago Hi:,101 ,cat Society

Life magazine , 1911

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