Chicago History
SPRING 1972
John Drew and Mrs. Leslie Carter open Chicago's new Selwyn Theater in 1922 with W. Somerset Maugham's drawing-room comedy The Circle. In this issue Claudia Cassidy gives an accounting of Chicago's true golden age of music and theater in her article "Years of Splendor."
Chicago Historical Society
Chicago History
THE MAGAZINE 0 F THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
"I had always kn()UJ1t that Impressionism was accepted by both the public and the establishment in Chicago before it was accepted in France. A reading of the reviews published by Chi~ critics and French critics of both the 18go and 1893 exhibitions makes this a certainty.... With them Chicago assumed a pioneer p>sition in the art world." In this issuejoseph W. Faulkner uncovers the basis f~ that proud old saying that, "In Chiaago we don't buy Renoirs. We inherit thaa from our grandmothers.,, This issue of Chicago History investigates the origins of some of the unique aspects of Chicago culture: our music, our painting, and even our cuisine.
Those eyes, that presence, that voice! - the rea I Cleopatra could not have vamped it better. She was queen of the opera and Chicagoans called her "Our Mary." Richard D. Fletcher, her biographer, presents in this issue the story of Mary Garden's Chicago career. Chicago Hlstorical Society
Chicago History The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society SPRING 1972 Volume II , Number 1
CONTENTS Cover: "Zdenka Cerny the Greatest Bohe m ian Violonce llist" i s the title of t he A lphonse M ucha poster on the aove r , bu t sixteen-yea r-o ld Zdenka was rea lly a Chicago g irl. Today as Mucha posters su r pass the t ho u sand do ll ar level in t he art m ar ket the story of how t he fo r em ost des igner of h is time, the ori g ina t or of the art nouveau sty le, came t o d o th is Ch icago post er is a 11 the m or e in terest ing. Kath r in e Wagne r Sei n eke t ell s th e sto ry in t h is issue.
THE YEARS OF SPLENDOR / 4 by Claudia Cassidy PAINTERS AT TH E HALL OF EXPOSITI ONS : 1890 / 14 by Joseph TV. Faulkner A HALF CENTURY OF T HE CULINARY ARTS IN CHICAGO / 18 by Morris on Wood
Poster in th e Chicag o Hi stori cal Soci ety
MUCHA 'S CHICAGO POSTER / 2 6 by Kathrine Wagner Seineke
David Lasswell, Editor Elisabeth Kimbell, Assistant Editor
THE PORTRAIT ART ON A CALLING CARD / 31 by Paul Petraitis " OUR OWN" MARY GARDEN / 34 by Richard D. Fletcher
Editorial Advisory Committee
MR . DOOLEY 'S BRIDGEPORT CHRONICLE / 47 by Charles F. Fanning, Jr.
Paul M. Angle, Chairman Emmett Dedmon
NORTH AVENUE VIGNETTES : THE BOOKSELLER / 58 by Paul M. Angle
J ames R . Getz O liver Jensen Robert Vv. Johannsen Herman Kogan Will Leonard C lement M . Silvestro Robert M. Sutton
Printed by R. R. Donnel ley and Sons Company Chicago, Il linois Designed by Doug Lang Copyright, 1972 by t he Ch icago Historical Soc iety Nort h Aven u e and Clark Street Ch icago, Il l inois 60614
Fl FTY YEARS AGO / 60 BOOKS : CHICAGO CRIM E LITERATURE / 63 by Ray Brennan
The Years of Splendor: Chicago's Music and Theater BY CLAUDIA CASSIDY
Chicago can now congratulate itself on having-by common agreement from Europe-(( the world's best symphony orchestra.'' Such esteem should turn no heads, considering Chicago's musical past. of the sometimes lively arts Bruno Walter was fond of quoting Hugo von Hofmannsthal's concise credo: "The roots must be more splendid than the foliage." For one thing, it happens to be true; for another, it consoles you a little when the foliage defoliates. Yet as roots are generally invisible, they are easily forgotten . Each new outburst of life is apt to be greeted as a m iraculous first. This was true of Lyric Opera-then Lyric Theater-which was a kind of miracle when in 1954 it shot up like a rocket with a Maria Callas booster. I t was true in a sense earlier this season when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Georg Solti and Carlo Maria Giulini made its first, h ighly successful, European tour. There was even a parade of sorts for the returning heroes, and some mild ly hysterical reports claimed that our city had been, at long last, resc ued from the shadow of Al Capone. D id anyone remember that in the radiant opera nights at Ravinia of the little pavilion that same Al Capone, who had unique resources in prohibition days, sent a case of champagne to the bew itching Lucrezia Bari? Bari not only had a party to share it, she slipped it into the glasses in the t ipsy act of Puccini's La Rondine, which she sang with Edward J ohnson, F lorence Macbeth and Armand Tokatyan, plus the bibulous chorus. I t was an uncommonly festive performance . IN THE MERCURIAL WORLD
Claudia Cassidy's close professional observation of the musical and theatrical arts in Chicago, and throughout the world, has earned her the reputat ion of one of th e most perceptive critics in the nation. 4
Chicago History
But then Chicago had a festive tradition. After all, it was at old Dclmonico's in New York that Theodore Thomas and ~orman Fay planted the conversational root that in r 89 r set off what is now the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Thomas was the big man in music, and Chicago was not one for small plans. True, asked if he would come here to start an orchestra, Thomas said, "I would go to hell if they gave me an orchestra." No one took it personally. When the orchestra celebrated its eightieth anniversary I was asked to choose what turned out to be a dozen programs I wish I had heard or could hear again. So I went back through all those volumes of bound programs: and the wealth of those Theodore Thomas years was incalculable. At the Auditorium and briefly in Orchestra Hall, for he died in r 905, shortly after the new hall was opened, Thomas skimmed the cream of a rich crop. His programs were renowned for these early days. Among his soloists were Busoni, Ysayc, Paderewski, Hofmann, SaintSaens, Dohnanyi, de Pachmann, Rosenthal, Godowsky, Kreisler, Elman, Bauer, Gabrilowitsch, Thibaud, Planc;:on, Nordica-choose any big name of the period. Thomas brought Richard Strauss to conduct his music when it was new music, and Strauss brought his tempestuous wife, Pauline Strauss de Ahna, to sing his songs. When Frederick Stock took over, the adventurous mood marched on. It was tock who gave Josef Hofmann a laurel wreath to mark his golden jubilee. Having started young, Hofmann was sixty-one. He played a matchless Chopin F Minor, and his Chromaticon, which he had fobbed off on the gull ible as being by Michel Dvorsky. I t was Stock who recognized Rose Pauly's af-
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra on tour in the 1890s, not in Europe, but Colorado. Director Theodore Thomas is seated in front, third from the right. The balancing rock is one of the sights at the Garden of the Gods near Manitou Springs.
Years of Splendor
Ch icago Histori cal Society
Theodore Thomas, the first and one of the greatest conductors of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. When asked if he would come to Chicago to start an orchestra in 1891 he said, "I would go to hell if they gave me an orchestra . " No one in Chicago took offense.
6
Chicago History
finity for Strauss' Salome and Elektra in indelible concert versions. Artur Rodzinski later did a magnificent Salome with Pauly at the C ivic Opera House. When Lotte Lehmann came to sing with the Chicago Opera she did not sing Fidelio, so Stock arranged a concert version to let the to,,¡n hear her Leonore. He also arranged a concert Tristan and I solde, which Lehmann never sang in opera -she said it would kill her. That Liebestod remains with me as the youngest, the most passionate, the most utterly bereft I have known. After Stock's death I was shown his scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. I had not known that the New York Philharmonic had wooed him, and that Chicago had given a banquet to persuade him to stay. I did know that a lot of people took this remarkable man for granted. Perhaps the orchestra's golden jubilee season of r 940-4 r will give newcomers some idea of what we then took for granted. There was commissioned music by Stravinsky (the Symphony in C), Milhaud, Kodaly, Miaskowsky, Casella, Carpenter, Harris. Guest conductors were Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Enesco, Casella, Kodaly, Milhaud, Harris. Heifetz was ill and had to cancel. Soloists who made it included Kreisler, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Hofmann, Milstein, Feuermann, Piatigorsky, Lcvitzki, Francescatti. Stock and the orchestra made a jubilee tour of eastern cities, and while they were in New York John Barbirolli and the Philharmonic came here . Toscanini conducted a pension fund concert-it was a jubilee gift. Oh, yes. Stock opened that season with his tongue-in-cheek Festival Fanfare, with schellenbaum. That is the bell tree once beloved of European military bands. It is a Chicago treasure as seld om seen as the tooth of the Buddha. Rather like a Christmas tree of bells to be severely shaken. Camille Saint-Saens gave it to Theodore Thomas in Paris, and I have always wondered if he walked on shipboard, jingling. We used to hear the schcllcnbaum in music from Feramors, Anton Rubinstein's opera based
on Moore's Lalla Rookh. Lalla Rookh, you remember, falls in love with the minstrel sent to fetch her to marry the king's son. In the joyous finale she discovers that Feramors, like Nanki-Poo, is no musician, but the son of . . . I don't see how they can resist that enticing piece of absurdity. Music shou ld sm ile more. It certainly smiled on the orchestra that day of the North Shore Festival when Mr. Stock had two performances and two soloists-Kirsten Flagstad and Marian Anderson. Miss Anderson got sick and canceled. Flagstad said of course she would sing both performances, and she did. It was easier to smile then, at least in the business office. A deficit can scarcely be respectable nowadays for less than $2,000,000. Just before the j ubilce season supporters of the orchestra ,,¡ere asked to pay off accumulated deficits of
Frederick Stock conducting a rehearsal of the Symphony in the late 30s. Stock carried on Theodore Thomas's tradition of adventurous programming, giving Chicago some of the best concerts and performers in its history. Chicago Historical Society
Future deficits, they figured, would be at least $50,000 a year. Lyric Opera ended its seventeenth season with a deficit of $ r ,600,000 in the face of spectacular boxoffice. It was a generally good, sometimes a brilliant, season of eight operas. Mary Garden's 1921 - 22 season as directa (her word) of the Chicago Opera Association had a then sensational deficit of$ 1,100,000. Miss Garden had twenty-nine operas, thirteen each in Italian and French, three in German. Giorgio Polacco was principal conductor. Among the resident singers were Lina Cavalieri, Claire Dux, Amelita Gall i-Curci, Mary Garden, Maria I vogun, Edith Mason, Rosa Raisa, Marguerite d'Alvarez, Cyrena Van Gordon, Edward Johnson, Charles Marshall, Lucien Muratore, Tino Pattiera, Tito Schipa, Georges Baklanoff, Vicente Ballester, Hector Dufranne, Giacomo Rimini, Joseph Schwarz, Virgilio Lazzari, Vittorio Trevisan. Those were opulent days cushioned in the habit of splendor. Miss Garden made her Chicago debut in that first 1910- 11 season of Chicago Grand Opera at the Auditorium. She sang $127,000.
8
Chicago History
spectacular succession Pelleas et Melisande, Louise, and Salome-which called out the police, whose chief spoke feelingly of "a cat wallowing in a bed of catnip." Cleofonte Campanini was the director, and besides Garden the roster held Farrar, Caruso, Melba, Gadski, McCormick (John), Dalmores, Daddi, Dufranne, Renaud, Sammarco. When Campanini died in December, 1919, they held his funeral on the Auditorium stage. The transformation scene from Parsifal, tall candles burning, his conductor's stand with baton and open score. Orchestra, chorus and a parade of conductors. Alessandro Bonci sang the Ingemisco from the Verdi R equiem. With Gino Marinuzzi conducting, Raisa of the flame streaked voice sang the Injlammatus from Rossini's Stabat Mater. Campanini had been Raisa's mentor, almost her father. A year earlier he had conducted the Stabat Mater at an opera concert. When Raisa sang the Injlammatus he stepped off the stand, kissed her on both cheeks, and signaled an encore. Those were Auditorium days when the handwriting was beginning to show on the accounting 111
Years of Splendor
wall. Samuel Insull decided that a huge office building wrapped around two opera houses would keep opera more securely in the style to which it had been accustomed. Like so many before, and since, he was right at the wrong time. Adelina Patti had set off the Auditorium opera era with Romeo and Juliet December Io, I 889. A tactful woman who reportedly could not get her second shoe on until she had been fully paid, Patti, well paid, purred, "Chicago seems to get everything now. Really, I wonder what is to become of New York." On January 29, 1929, a farewell Romeo and Juliet was sung in that soaring old house of fabled acoustics-Gounod plus H ome Sweet H ome and Auld Lang Syne. Edith Mason and Charles Hackett sang, Polacco conducted. Garden glowed from a box. Wistfully, but with hope, the caravan moved across town. That November 4 Jules Guerin's mosaic curtain rose in the big pink and gold house. Aida with Raisa, Van Gordon, Marshall, Lazzari, Baromeo. The sumptuous Claudia Muzio sang Trovatore a few nights later. The
problem was not operatic. Just that the world was staggering from the blows of October 1929. I nsull crashed and with him the dream of rental subsidy. Had it worked as planned, Chicago would have had the richest opera. Instead, Chicago opera inherited a quickly spent pittance and the use of scenery, costumes, music and props. But Chicago clung to the opulent ghost. In that Civic Opera House season of 1929-30 there were thirty-three operas, including Garden's L' Amore dei Tre Re, Louise, Tha'is, Pelleas, Le Jongleur. Vanni-Marcoux sang the Dons, Giovanni and Quichotte. A German wing hard to match had Egon Pollak conducting Tristan and Isolde, Die Walkure, L ohengrin, Tannhiiuser, Fidelio, and Der Rosenkavalier. Singing were Frida Leider, Maria O1szewska, Rene Maison, Eva Turner, Alexander Kipnis. The next season added Lotte Lehmann, Hans Hermann issen, Paul Althouse, Rudolf Bockelmann, Edouard Habich. Lehmann sang the Marschallin, Sieglinde, Elisabeth, Elsa, even Eva in Die Meistersinger for Chicago before New York's Metropolitan captured her.
A familiar scene for Chicago opera lovers on July and August evenings during the 1920s. Every night for the ten weeks preceding Labor Day topflight opera was performed at Ravinia, with best seats costing $3 .50.
Yea rs of Splendor
That second night in the big new house Edith Mason sang Mascagni's Iris. What other Japanese opera could a great Butterfly sing? It was a special favorite of Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McConnick, whose emeralds had been more brilliantly on display at the Auditorium than in the new theater whose boxes were higher up and miles away. Giacomo Rimini sang his famous Falstaff. As a very young man he had been chosen for the role by Arturo Toscanini. Friends had told Raisa that she must meet the handsome young baritone. The first time she saw him he was padded and stuffed beyond recognition for a Fat J ack he made as touch ing as comic. They were married just the same. Does anyone today even suspect the splendor of those old Chicago Opera days-and the tours? From th':lt 19ro- 11 season through 1927-28 Chicago Opera in full regalia-which sometimes included Feodor Chaliapin in Boris Godunojfplayed 1,225 performances on tour. NP.w York got 216 of them, Boston 143. Would it interest you that on Apr il 8, 191 3, Mary Garden sang Thais in Butte, Montana? As for that same Miss Garden, how did she really sound? She could make you believe any-
Am el it a Ga lli-C urc i, on e of t he host of gr eat stars under contract to th e Chicago Opera Associa t ion in the 1920s.
thing, from the innocent of Jongleur to the magical Melisande, the rapture of Louise's first love. James Gibbons Huneker came closest. He called her voice "a sonorous mirage." Back in those days of topflight opera, Chicago had two astonishing seasons. The one downtown and the one at Ravinia. There never was anything like Louis Eckstein's Ravinia Opera, and there will not be again. The little wooden pavilion in the flowering park. About fourteen thousand scats. The little stage with the blue velvet curtains, stars of the Chicago, Metropolitan and Paris operas, fifty players of the Chicago Symphony in the pit. Often Gennaro Papi as chief conductor, his spidery shadow on the ceiling as much Ravinia as the petunia bed. When Chicago Opera was giving 33 operas in 1929-30, that summer of 1930 Ravinia was giving thirty-five. Only twelve were duplications. Ravinia's intimacy and its possession of such charmers as Bori and Yvonne Gall invited such operas as Manon, Marouj, La Vida Breve, The Secret of Suzanne. Giovanni Martinelli was its combustible tenor and when they did the twins they sang Pagliacci first. Mr. Eckstein said that if they waited Martinelli wou ld explode. Ravinia Opera ran ten weeks, every night in the week. It closed with a gala on Labor Day. One gala had Bori and Schipa in the second act of Manon, Raisa and Martinelli in the first act of Butterfly, Bori and Martinelli in the third act of Manon Lescaut. Another held the sixth sold out performance in its season of Deems Taylor's Peter I bbetson with Bori and Johnson. Then it cost $1.25 to get in the gate, unless you saved with coupon books. The best seat at a gala cost $4.50, otherwise it was $3 .50. Ravinia Opera cost about $65,000 a week for the musicno charge was ever made for administration or upkeep of the park. The depression ended all that and set off the now booming Ravinia Festival when Frederick Stock made an appeal for more work for the orchestra, which otherwise cou ld not be held together.
Chicago Historical Society
Giovanni Martinelli, Ravinia's " combustible tenor" as Pagliacci.
Chicago History
11
Years of Splendor
Free concerts in Grant Park began for much the same reason. For years they were in charge of James C. Petrillo, head of the musicians' union. What Petrillo wanted, he got. Big names set off big crowds, and estimators flourished. I once asked Fortune Gallo of the remarkable dollar-top San Carlo Opera to guess a crowd for me. He said, "About forty thousand, but they will say seventy, so you say I said fifty." It was the same Gallo who said, after an unfortunate Rhadames, "Well, tenors come and tenors go." Back at the park, Heifetz demurred at playing because of the noisy trains. Petrillo had them stopped. Lily Pons drew a mob that stretched out to the Field Museum-they said threehundred thousand. Moriz Rosenthal played there. On a starry night Edith Mason sang Marietta' r Lied. Lawrence Tibbctt sang, and Grace Moore. It would be easier to say who did not than who did. How about theater when all this was going on in music? The first complete season I have handy is that of 1922-23, which begins William Leonard's invaluable Chicago Stagebill Yearbook. That Chicago season had ninety-eight shows, twentytwo of them musicals, playing in nineteen downtown theaters. As no one will believe nineteen theaters without documentation, here they are: Apollo, Auditorium, Blackstone, Central, Cohan's Grand, Colonial, Cort, Garrick, Great orthern, Harris, Illinois, La Salle, Olympic, Playhouse, Powers, Princess, Selwyn, Studebaker, Woods. Two of them opened that season, and both have been lost to films as the Michael Todd and the: Cinestage. The Selwyn opened September 18, 1922, with Somerset Maugham's The Circle, presented by Arch and Edgar Selwyn, starring Mrs. Leslie Carter and John Drew. The next door Harris opened October 2, 1922, with William Anthony McGuire's Six Cylinder L ove, presented by Sam H. Harris, wi!h Ernest Truex, June Walker and Donald Meek. It is true that in those days a lot of shows survived that now would be instant victims of films 12
Chicago History
and television. But not all. Some of those r 92223 musicals brought Ed Wynn in The Perfect Fool, Marilyn Miller and Leon Errol in Ziegfeld's Sally with music by J erome Kern, W. C. Fields in George \t\Thite's Scandals, music by George Gershwin. Al Jolson came in Bomba, Raymond Hitchcock in H itchy-Koo of 1923 with Busby Berkeley, Eddie Cantor in something called Make It Snappy. All the plays came, usually with their producers. O'Neill's Anna Christie with Pauline Lord, George Marion and Frank Shannon, The Hairy Ape with Louis Wolheim. Richard Bennett in H e Who Gets Slapped. Otis Skinner in Booth Tarkington's Mister Antonio, Henry Miller and Ruth Chatterton in La Tendresse. Ina Claire and Bruce McRae in The Awful Truth. The Guild sent Capek's R.U.R. Mrs. Fiske played The Dice of the Gods. Ruth Gordon and Gregory Kelly came in Tarkington's Bristol Glass. There was something called Steve with a young actor named Humphrey Bogart. Helen Hayes came in the Kaufman-Connelly To the Ladies. George Arliss in The Green Goddess, Frank Craven in The First Year. Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater came for three weeks at the Great Iorthern-the theater the Lunts affectionately called the big room for acting. They played Tsar Fyodor I vanovitch, The L ower Depths, The Cherry Orchard, The Three Sisters. Everything came in those days. Not just the Moscow Art Theater, but its musical theater and its Habimah. Stratford-upon-Avon came in Shakespeare repertory, not once but several times. When China came to woo us, not vice versa, its private citizens underwrote a visit by Mei Lan-Fang, most renowned of the tan, or female impersonators. He played at least ten magical performances at the van ished Princess, the most exquisite porcelain with a faintly derisory sense of fun. When he died the Chinese walked silently in the streets, carrying his portraits. In September, 1927, the Theater Guild tried an experiment. The acting company came to the Studebaker with four plays: Shaw's Pygmalion
• Samuel lnsull at the opera in 1929. His idea for underwriting Chicago opera with an office building over the new Civic Opera House came too soon before the crash to save the opera .
and The Doctor's Dilemma, Molnar's The Guardsman, Behrman's The Second Man. The actors included the Lunts, Dudley Digges, Earle Larimore, Margalo Gillmore, Morris Carnovsky, Ernest Cossart and Helen Westley. Out of that engagement Theater Guild subscription was born. It flourished nation wide before the decline set in . When Katharine Cornell came in ,925 wearing Michael Arlen's The Green Hat it was taken for granted that Leslie Howard, Ann Harding and Paul Guilfoyle would come along. Cornell got the habit. When she came in The Three Sisters she brought] udith Anderson and Ruth Gordon. When, for Chicago, she had to make two major cast changes in Romeo and Juliet she arranged the American debuts of two English actors. The Romeo was Maurice Evans, the Mercutio Ralph Richardson giving off points of light in a hyacinth-red wig. When Noel Coward was unhappy in our town in The Vortex, he wrote on his Selwyn dressing room wall, " oel Coward died here." In London Mrs. Pat Campbell had said to Lillian Braithwaite, who played his mother, "You have a tour de force while I am forced to tour." Coward never came back, nor did Laurence Olivier after he and Vivien Leigh had an Auditorium failure
with a r 940 Romeo and Juliet. It was an even bigger failure in ew York, but Olivier was madder at Chicago. That was long ago and far away. Opera at Ravinia died and opera downtown came close to its last gasp. The orchestra had its ups and downs with the vagaries of conductors. The world of recital all but withered. Theaters fell under the wrecking ball. Television flourished and films grew more adventurous, more brilliant. Ballet. Well, I have not even mentioned ballet. At first it all came in full repertory and full stellar array. Then it simmered down to shorter engagements, limited repertory, stars moonlighting in flimsy surroundings. Sometimes the big imported troupes do not come at all, though for years we were S. Hurok's ace in the bankroll hole . Of course, there are always new shoots springing up. The orchestra had a tragically brief rebirth with Rodzinski, a glorious new era with Fritz Reiner, now and then a dazzling first such as the American debut of Sviatoslav Richter. Lyric Theater struck sparks and was reborn as Lyric Opera when Carol Fox refused to let it die. Georg Solti and Carlo Maria Giulini came to share a Chicago Symphony Orchestra, again free to hold its own with the best the world has to offer. Resident theater is in there fighting, whatever the results may be. Restoration of the glorious Auditorium theater has enriched us all. Call it a reassuring truth-rather than a reproach-that Chicago's roots are more splendid than its foliage. Call it a sobering but not daunting challenge that the cost of cultivation has reached astronomical figures. Is it worth the cost? Only, I think, if we demand the best, which once upon a time we had. I always remember what Henry Mencken said of Huneker, who made reading a critic of the arts a pleasure. Mencken said, "Because of him, art is no longer, even by implication, a device for improving the mind. It is wholly a magnificent adventure." When that idea strikes root, who knows what adventurous foliage? Ch icago History
13
Painters at the Hall of Expositions : 1890 BY JOSEPH W. FAULKN ER
Chicago) s collections ef French Impressionist paintings still surpass those ef Paris. The reason goes back to 1890 when-in Chicago-one could have bought for less than a thousand dollars a Degas) or a Monet) or a Pissarro) or a Sisley) or a Renoir)¡ not to mention an Innes) a Ryder) or a Childe Hassam. for a major exhibition, something of local historical sign ificance, to celebrate my gallery's thirtieth anniversary when a friend showed me a worn and yellowed little catalogue which stated simply on the cover, "Catalogue of the Paintings: 1890." Inside we learned that the paintings were to be seen at the I nter-State Industrial Exposition of Chicago but no indication was given as to where or what this was. The first glimpse of the roster of artists in the catalogue was enough to excite me. \ Vho h ad had the foresight to assemble such an excellent show-in 1890, in Chicago? Cou ld such an exhibition be reconstructed, at least partially, with examples by the same painters? Works for sale, of course. If one were going to offer a circa 1890 exhibition perhaps there was a better one to emulate or at least one with a more prestigious sounding title than "Inter-State Industrial Exposition." I nitial research in the library of the Frick Collection bore out my hunch that this was, indeed, an exceptional exhibition. The sumptuous giltedged volumes on art at Chicago's World Columbian Exposition of 1893, with its eighty galleries, show hundreds of engraved and chroma-lithographed reproductions of paintings by European and American artists presented as
I WAS SEARCHING FOR AN IDEA
J oseph W. Faulkner is the owner of one of Chicago's oldest fine arts galleries. H is scholarship ranges wide, from numerous articles on French and American painting to his English translation of Flamarion's monumental L' Art Culinaire Franfaise. 14
Chicago Histo ry
the latest in "modern art." Most were sentimentalized, story-telling genre paintings and the most "modern" were of the Barbizon School. The opening of the Art Institute, when it moved from the southwest corner of Michigan and Van Buren into its present building (which was the Congress of Religions during the World's Fair) was not much better. Other exhibitions of the time showed painters, with the exception of the French Romantic and Barbizon schools, long since forgotten, so we are back to the Inter-State Industrial Exposition of 1890. I t was held in the Hall of Expositions, popularly called "The Crystal Palace" and located on the east side of Michigan Avenue at Monroe Street. Like the regional expositions of cw Orleans, Louisville and Atlanta, the Chicago annual exposition featured machinery, commercial and agricultural products and also had its art exhibition. The responsibility for the selection of these art shows was in the hands of a remarkable woman, Sara Hallowell. Sara Hallowell came from Philadelphia to Chicago, where she had brothers, "to solve the problem of self-support." In 1875 she organized her first exhibition and the newspapers called it the finest ever to be put on view in Chicago. She cultivated the collecting tastes of men like Potter Palmer and was particularly influential in persuading Chicagoans to buy I mpressionists. Miss Hallowell had a small house at Moret-surLoing (where Sisley painted) and was able to introduce Bertha Honore Palmer to Mary Cassatt and her circle of I mpressionist friends. There were 485 contemporary oils and water-
Mrs. Potter Palmer, who with her husband led in advancing Chicago's taste in modern painting. Bertha Honore Palmer was one of those "Chicago grandmothers" who helped leave the city its rich heritage of art.
Chicago History
15
Chicago's "Crystal Palace, " the Hall of Expositions, in the park at Monroe Street as it appeared in 1873.
colors in Miss Hallowcll's section of the Interstate Industrial Exposition. With a few exceptions all of the pain tings were for sale. None of the five Winslow Homer watercolors was for sale (one was lent by James H. Dole, donor of the top prize of $500) nor was the portrait of Talcott Williams, Esq. by Thomas Eakins, but for less than a thousand dollars one might have been able to make a good selection among the following: a Degas pastel, "Before the Start," six Monet can vases, four by Pissarro, two Renoir oils and a pastel, four Sisleys and a Boudin. Among the Americans, all for sale, were Theodore Robinson, George Innes, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Abbott Thayer, J. H. Twachtman, and Childe Hassam. The 1890 exhibition received so much praise in art journals and newspaper reviews, both in this country and abroad, that museum directors, critics and leaders in the art world wrote to Chicago urging that Sara Hallowell be appointed as the logical choice to head the art department of the Chicago World's Fair. After being offered the post she was informed that only a man would be acceptable and was persuaded to decline. Thus the official art at the fair was as dead as official art usually is. Seventy-seven rooms of it were cast into shadow by the brilliance of three rooms allotted to Miss Hallowell for her Impressionists. It was known as the "Loan Collection" and all the paintings came from American collections, many of which Sara H allowcll had helped form. 16
Chicago History
I have always known that Impressionism was accepted by both the public and establishment in Chicago before it was accepted in France. A reading of the reviews published by Chicago critics and French critics of both the 1890 and 1893 exhibitions makes this a certainty. The Chicago Evening Post of September 3, 1890 ( opening day of the exhibition) praises the avant garde American painters such as Theodore Robinson, as well as the French, and ends with these words: "While the Impressionists arc, in the art world, what fanatics arc in the world at large, and, as it was with Moses of old, they may never enter into the promised land of a general approved recognition, they can but be known hereafter as liberators of the art of the present day from the tendency in this photographic age to hard, dull, soulless exactness." The reviewer might have added that on September 3rd, 1890, modern art came to stay in Chicago. Just one postscript to this note on the 1890 exhibition: It almost didn't open. On September 1st, two days before the opening, Judge Murray F. Tuley issued an injunction against holding any more expositions in the hall. A group headed by Warren Leland secured the injunction, calling the Exposition Hall an "eyesore on the lake front" and was particularly critical of a private corporation doing business tax-free on city property. That nothing came of this movement will not be surprising to witnesses of recent history. Anyway, the show opened and Chicago assumed a pioneer position in the art world.
Painters
Chicago Historical Society
Chicago's annual industrial exposition had always included paintings- hung amid the machinery and agricultural products, as above in the 1878 exposition at the Inter-State Industrial Exposition.
Chicago History
17
A Half Century of the Culinary Arts in Chicago BY MORRISON WOOD
Perhaps on'/y the native born and experienced Chicagoan knows that there have always been many superb restaurants and dining halls to be found in Chicago.
THE REALM OF culinary arts Chicago, unfortunately and unjustly, has been given scant recognition by chroniclers and writers of fiction who detailed gracious living and dining from the turn of the century on . Countless people have been fami li ar with the luxurious hotels and lavish restaurants in New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, and even Saratoga and Denver. But Chicago was rarely mentioned. When it was, it was damned \\ ith faint praise. Typical of the attitude of eastern gastronomes is this extract from an article some months ago in a national magazine by a well-known food writer. "Dining out in Chicago twenty or thirty years ago," he wrote, "was far from an exc iting or rewarding experience. Invariably, in those days, I ordered what the city could supplyfresh lake fish, superb beef, a baked potato, and pie or ice cream. Solid, often too solid food . But that was it, and there was little else worthy of a civilized palate." Since the advent of the transcontinental railroads Chicago has been the crossroads city of America. And to knowledgeable gourmets it has been an epicurean center. Probably because of the international character of its population, it has been as much of a focal point of fine Amer ican and European cuisines as any other great world city. I
Morrison Wood, an old Chicagoan now living in California, remains the dean of American food writers. His For A1en Only! column in the Tribune is a Chicago fixture, and his Jug of Wine series of cookbooks is a national institution. 18
Chicago History
During the earlier years of the Twentieth Century there were many effete snobs who considered any hotel (with three or four exceptions) west of the Hudson River to be little more than a ramshackle lodging house, devoid of any amenities of civ ilized living. But, as a matter of record, Chicago had more than half a dozen outstanding hotels that were luxurious hostelries, and noted for the elegance of their cuisines, and for their specialties that were produced by skilled chefs, many of whom were European trained. Preeminent were the Auditorium Hotel, dedicated by President Harrison in 1888; The Auditorium Annex, that was located across the street and housed the famous Peacock Alley and the Pornpe iian Room; the Palmer House (which the late Lucius Beebe called "eye popping" ), founded in 1871 by Potter Palmer, known as the "Father of State treet" but perhaps better known as the husband of the undisputed social queen of Chicago during her lifetime; the La Salle Hotel, that had the only roof garden in Chicago; the Bismarck Hotel, the bulwark of German culinary art, dating back to the Nineties; the Blackstone Hotel, the most exclusive and renowned hotel in downtown Chicago, built by Tracy and John B. Drake II in 1910; the Drake Hotel, equally exclusive and renowned, opened on November 25th, 1920; and the Stratford Hotel, on the corner of Jackson and Michigan Avenue, almost next door to the famous Illinois Theatre. I think I first became a gourmet when, in my late teens, my father and mother took me to the old Auditorium Hotel for dinner. I was very impressed with the main dining room, with its oak paneling, leaded glass windows, beauti-
fully set tables with lovely crystal and china, and deft, courteous waiters. The entree I had was chicken breasts under glass, garnished with mushroom caps, fresh garden peas, asparagus tips, and thin slices of cooked carrots, covered with a light cream sauce flavored with sherry. For me it was love at first sight, and taste. The wine I well remember was a Cruse Fils et Freres Sau tcrncs, a favorite of my father's. Another well-remembered experience I had at the Auditorium Hotel was eating on the open air balcony. My mother took me there for luncheon one summer day, and I was vastly intrigued while gazing down on the promenaders on the sidewalk below, and the view across the sweeping Lake Front plaza. The food was from the same kitchen that served the main dining room, and was delicious. It was on this occasion I had my first omelette aux fines-herbes, a fluffy delight that I have never tired of. Equally renowned was the Auditorium Annex, opened in 1893, and which was later to become the Congress Hotel. The Annex was directly across Congress Street from the Auditorium, and was connected with it by an underground passage, so that opera goers, dining in the elegant Louis XVI dining room of the Annex, would not have to go out of doors to get to the Auditorium Theater. The Annex was definitely for sophisticates. Peacock Alley, the thoroughfare of fashion and gaiety, was an interior promenade that ran al-
A party of newspaper men in 1933 enjoying the food at Schlogl's, which the author rates with the Red Star Inn as having been the best German restaurant in town . Peter Schneider, "a prince among waiters and hosts," stands smiling at the left.
most the entire length of the hotel. My earliest recollection of Peacock Alley was during the R epublican National Convention in June of 1912. Theodore Roosevelt was trying to make a comeback, and during the afternoons and evenings a colored quartet strolled up and down Peacock Alley singing in harmony-"He's comin' ... \!\Tho's comin'? ... Teddy's com in' back!" Opening off Peacock Alley was the fabulous Pompeiian Grill Room. It was very luxurious, and elegant, and Roman. In the center of the room was a squat green fountain, made of Favrile glass, and tinkling with the sound of water. This was sometimes a hazard, particularly on New Year's Eve, when someone who had imbibed too freely might fall into the fountain. In fact, New Year's Eve was not complete if no one got a dunking. The Pompeiian Room was probably the most popular place in Chicago for luncheon, late afternoon cocktails ( orange blossoms, Bronx cocktails, and pink ladies were favored by women), and for dinner and late suppers. The food served was typical American dishes, superbly prepared by the room's famous chef. As a hotel the LaSalle was never noteworthy, but there were three things about it that made it very popular with many Chicagoans-the Chicago History
19
The main dining room at the Auditorium Hotel. It was here in his teens that Morrison Wood for the first time had his eyes-and mouth-ope ned to go urmet cookery. It was chicken breasts under g lass , with a fine sauternes.
Blue Fo~mtain Roon,, the Roof Garden, and its amazing bar. The Blue Fountain Room (so named because of the fountain of blue \\¡atcr in the center of the room) was gay, colorful and elegant. The specialty of the room was the chafing dish preparations. I remember two that delighted my palate-veal chops saute with bacon and fresh mushrooms, and breast of capon with Virginia ham and rice. During the dinner hours the room was alive with seductive but not boisterous music from excellent orchestras, and couples danced fox trots between courses under the colored lights and around the fountain. The LaSalle had the only roof garden in the Loop, located on the top floor of the hotel. It was open only during the summer months, and was always crowded, especially during hot even ings. One could dine and dance from 6 P.M. until r A.M., and the food ¡was on a par with that served in the Blue Fountain Room. The third outstanding feature of the LaSalle was the bar on the LaSalle Street side of the hotel. Here was ,erved one of the most elaborate "free lunches" in town. I\cxt to the long bar with its brass footrail was a long counter on which rested roasts of beef, roast hams, roast turkeys and chickens, a variety of cheeses, salads, 20
Chicago History
pickles, breads, pickled pigs' feet, sauerkraut, sausages, hard boiled eggs and marinated herring. These were all free with a glass of beer, or whatever drink you wanted. I used to drop in occasionally, for the bar served draft Locwcnbrau beer from Munich, my favorite thirst quencher. This was quite expensive in those days, twenty cents for a large tapered glass! The two most luxurious and exclusive hotels were (and at this writing still arc) the Blackstone Hotel on Michigan Avenue at 7th Street, and the Drake Hotel at Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue. Since their inception these two renowned hotels have offered a cuisine equal to that of the Savoy in London, the Ritz in Paris, the Ritz in New York, and the \Valdorf Astoria, both in excellence of preparation, and in variety of dishes. One found on the menus of these Chicago hotels all of the principal and famous dishes of Continental cookery, prepared with all of the skill and flair of master chefs. I have eaten in all four of the above famous hotels, abroad and in Xcw York, and not one of them has surpassed, in epicurean quality and gastronomic lavishness, the food served in the Blackstone and Drake hotels. And at both of these Chicago hotels the service has been of the highest quality. Each of these hotels had three or four dining rooms, but the main dining rooms were striking. The one at the Blackstone was done in Louis XVI style, and commanded an impressive view
The old produce m arket on South Water Street at the turn of the century. The be st Chicago chefs were known to come down and do their own buying. Th e above looks like a good day for some early southern peaches.
over Michigan A venue and the L ake Front. I t was a high-ceilinged room, old ivory in tone, and modeled after the Petit Trianon at Versailles. On the north side of the room was an orchestra platform. Every afternoon the dansants were the vogue. After prohibition one really drank tea, unless you carried a hip pocket flask! The main dining room at the Drake was huge, decorated in I tali an Renaissance sty le, with a number of veined marble colu mns and breathtaking chandeliers. No other dining room in Chicago offered a more beautifu l view, where long stretches of Lake Shore Drive and the Lake Michigan beach could be seen through the large windows along the north wall. The Stratford Hotel, on the corner of J ackson Boulevard and Michigan A venue, was a quiet, luxury hotel, but never, as I recall, noted for any culinary masterpieces. But the bar, in the northeast corner of the hotel, \\·as noteworthy for its "free lu nch," and \\·as a rendezvous for celebrated actors (it was just a few steps away from the Illi nois Theatre). I ·was an avid theatre-goer, and the Illinois had most of the finest shows that came to Ch icago. I was a devotee of the Zcigfcld Follies, and ne\'er missed one. I'd attend the matinees, and usually 'Nill Davis, manager
of the theater and related to my uncle, would take me over to the Stratford Bar after the performance. Of course, through him, I met many of the stars. Two such meetings will always stand out in my memory. The first was Bert v\Tilliams, the great colored comedian. He was a gentle soul, rat her shy . and quiet, but a most interesting conversationalist and wit. The other was my hero, Harry Lauder, for I loved anything and anybody Scotch. As Will Davis and I were standing at the bar late one Wednesday afternoon, Harry Lauder came in. H e helped himself liberally to the "free lunch," and came over to the bar w ith a heaping plate. \Viii Da\·is introduced us, and Lauder invited us to have a drink. As the bartender was fixing our drinks an old friend of m ine came up to the bar. I introduced him to L auder, and asked him to join us in a drink. A moment later Harry Lauder bent his head to my car and whispered, "Mr. Wood, I am glad to meet yo ur friend, but I didn't invite him to have a drink. You, or he, will have to pay for it!" Two other hotels in Ch icago, quite undistinguished as hostelries, but notable from a gastronom ic standpoint, were the Atlantic and the Brcvoort. The Atlantic was built on the site of the old K aiscrhof Hotel on South Clark Street. When the Kaiserhof was torn ·down, the small picturesque dining room called the Bauernstube, and the old bar room, were preserved and rnCh icago History
21
Culinary Arts
corpora ted in the new Atlantic. It was patterned after the old Heidelberger Schloss, an outstanding example of German castle architecture, above the university town of Heidelberg, Germany. Everything in the dining room of the Atlantic smacked of Medieval Germany. The food consisted of German, French, English, and American dishes, all of which were excellent. But the outstanding specialties were pastries, baked in the restaurant's ovens. I have never tasted such stollen, and the almond-filled strudel. Frequently, when I wasn't very hungry at luncheon time, I'd go into the dining room and order either a stollen, or a strudel, and a cup of superlative coffee with a float of whipped cream. The Brevoort, on West Madison Street, had a sign over the main entrance, "Famous For Food." The main dining room was located in the basement, and had a rather Victorian air about it. The cuisine was excellent, and offered a tantalizing array of specialties. I can still savor their noted dish, breast of guinea hen under glass-the delectable white flesh with just a flavor of game, the corn fritters, fresh mushrooms, and the succulent bit of ham that went with it. I also remember two other intriguing dishes, imported Limerick bacon and fried apples, and squab casserole a la Parisienne. I don't believe that hotel restaurants are necessarily a criteria by which to judge the gastronomic excellence of a city's eating places. They are, perforce, more elaborate and often more luxurious, with large kitchens, and a large staff of cooks presided over by a highly skilled chef who has probably been European-trained. In a city like Chicago, whose population is made up of many different nationalities, it is natural that the cuisines embrace the best recipes of a dozen or more nations, brought to this central metropolis by immigrants during the early days. As they prospered, small restaurants began to spring up, patronized at first by the recently arrived nationals, then "discovered" by people who were attracted by unusual dishes and the flavors of the foreign food. By the early 20th 22
Chicago History
century there were a growing number of restaurants, run by the Papas and Mamas, specializing in European fare, lovingly prepared by wonderful cooks, and unsurpassed by restaurants in their native lands. At least sixty years ago Chicago had an imposing number of eating places specializing in German, Italian, French, English, Russian, Bohemian and Austrian food of unqualified excellence. My love of good food had been fostered by the culinary skill of my grandmother, who lived with us, and by my n10ther, who had inherited her mother's expertise. I soon became an anxious, restless soul, intent upon discovering new taste experiences. So it was only natural that I began to seek out foreign restaurants that had a reputation for ex cell en t native dishes. Early in my career of restaurant hopping I discovered what was a culinary landmark in Chicago, La Louisiane. It was in an old house on Michigan Avenue, about a block south of the Illinois Central depot. It was French, or perhaps I should say French-Creole, for it was almost a duplicate of the New Orleans restaurant of the same name, owned by Ferdinand Alciat0re. The Chicago restaurant was run by Ferdinand's son, Gaston, and the food and service were on a par with the renowned ew Orleans restaurant. It was in the Chicago restaurant that I first tasted oysters Rockefeller, with its incomparable sauce that has remained a secret of the Alciatore family for generations; Creole gumbo, made in the authentic Creole manner; pompano papillote; souffie potatoes; and crepes Suzette. Many years later I had the almost identical menu in Antoine's in ew Orleans, owned and run by Roy Alciatore, and as far as memory goes the viands did not surpass those served in the Chicago restaurant. Probably the most famous French restaurant in Chicago was de Jonghe's. The original hotel and restaurant was opened during the Columbian Exposition, at Randolph and State streets, by a Belgian family consisting of three brothers,
three sisters, and the mother. Soon afterward it moved to a building on East Monroe Street, across from the Palmer House . It was an elegant restaurant, with beautiful china and crystal, gleaming white napery, and a lustrous crimson velvet carpet. The food was superb, in the French manner, but its most renowned dish, shrimps de Jonghc, was devised by Henri, known to his intimates as "Papa de Jonghe." Unfortunately, prohibition closed this epicurean dining place. "Papa" said he could not continue to prepare his delectable dishes without wine and spirits. Shortly before the restaurant closed I inveigled Papa de Jonghe into giving me the recipe for his greatest specialty, and I have made the dish many, many times since. It is really quite simple: a mixture of crushed garlic, butter, salt, tarragon, parsley, shallots, nutmeg and thyme, fine breadcrumbs, and sherry arc blended together. In a casserole alternate layers of cooked shrimp and the breadcrumb mixture are placed, and the whole baked in a hot oven for about twenty minutes. To me, this is the most intriguing shrimp dish I have ever tasted. It was always a question in my mind as to which Italian restaurant in Chicago served the most enticing spaghetti and sauce-Madame Calli's or Colosimo's. Enrico Caruso is reputed to have said to Madame Galli," I would give the whole world if I could cook spaghetti like you." But then, Caruso had never eaten in Colosimo's ! The two restaurants were as different as night and day. Madame Calli's, at 18 East Illinois Street, first opened in 1893, was Chicago's first really popular Italian restaurant. It was devoid of frills, and the patrons ate at long tables in boarding-house fashion. There were no menus, the customer was merely asked his choice of cntrees-chieken, squab, filct mignon, or lamb chops. Included were appetizers, soup, spaghetti, salad, spumoni ice cream and / or fruit and cheese, with plenty of good, robust red wine. Everything was cooked to perfection, but I got so
The green Favrile glass fountain in the center of the room gave distinction to the sophisticated Pompeiian Grill in the Auditorium Annex (now the Congress) Hote l. The pool was a constant hazard for the bibulous, and no New Year's Eve was complete without a dunking.
that I would skip the appetizers and soup, and ask for an extra helping of the divine spaghetti. The restaurant was a gathering place of the stars of the stage and opera, and the leading literary men of the period. It was there I first met Raymond Hitchcock, who later became a dear friend. On various occasions I remember such stars as Will Rogers, Vv. C. Fields, Elsie Janis, petite Ann Pennington of the Ziegfeld Follies, and Jane Cowl being seated at the long tables. Colosimo's, on the other hand, was a raucous night life spot, with entertainment and dancing. It was a favorite spot for society people who wanted to go "slumming" around midnight. I ts two main attractions were the marvelous spaghetti, and the young and beautiful soprano, Dale Winter, who became Mrs. Colosimo. Chicago History
23
Culinary Arts
I'll never forget the last time I ever saw Jim Colosimo. A young lady and I were returning from a party at the Edgewater Beach Hotel early on the morning of May r I th, 1920. Suddenly we both decided we wanted a big plate of spaghetti, so I parked my car on \t\labash Avenue, and we tried to enter the cafe. But the doors were locked. I pounded on the door and finally a waiter opened it, but said that the place was closed. I asked if Jim was there, and when the waiter nodded I told him to tell the boss that Mr . \,Vood and a friend were hungry for some spaghetti. In a few minutes the waiter came back and let us in. Jim and his wife, Dale, were sitting at a table having an early morning snack. He motioned for us to come over and sit with them. In a few minutes our spaghetti was served, and we sat there for perhaps an hour chatting with Jim and his wife. Then we left. Later that day I was terribly shocked when I read thatJim had been shot to death in the entry way to the cafe. I realized that I was the last patron of Colosimo's to see Jim alive. Perhaps the killer had been in the cloakroom even while we were there ! Chicago has had a number of fine German restaurants whose cuisine was unsurpassed by any other such restaurants in the United States, with the possible exception of Luchow's in Kew York, and a German restaurant in Milwaukee. As I remember there were two in Chicago that were outstanding-the R ed Star Inn on North Clark Street, and Schlogl's on Korth Wells Street. The latter was unique in that up to 1934 women were permitted only in the second floor dining room, access to which was gained through a side entrance. Prior to that time, Schlogl's was called the Evcless Eden! J oscph Schlogl opened his restaurant in 1879 as a combined restaurant and weinstube, and up to 1940 its interior had been altered but little. Early in its career Schlogl's became the meeting place of writers, and was the haunt of the scribes of Newspaper Row. The food was such that the most fastidious of epicures reveled in it. 24
Chicago History
There are three things that I vividly remember about the restaurant. First were three or four dishes that were gastronomic masterpieces: stewed chicken a la Schlogl with farina dumplings, hamburgers made from hand-chopped flank steaks and fried in butter, pork shanks with sauerkraut, and the special apple pancake that would fill a large plate. Ko one who had ever eaten at Schlogl's could forget Richard Schneider (called by his friends Ric-hard) who "'as a prince among waiters and hosts. He presided over the big round walnut table in the right hand corner of the dining room, but he dominated the whole restaurant. vVhen the occasion demanded Richard would go behind the bar and concoct libations that warmed the heart as well as the palate. He was more than a waiter-he was a clear and treasured friend to all the regulars. I shall never forget the one night that the "For Men Only" rule was violated. A small group of us went to Schlogl's one night for dinner. Among us were Bennie Howard and his wife "Mike," the famous flyers and racing pilots. The women went up to the second floor dining room, but the men gathered in the downstairs bar.Just as we were served our drinks we heard a subdued altercation, and into the bar walked Mike Howard, followed by a perturbed Richard. "But Madame," he expostulated, "women arc not allowed in here. Please return to the other ladies upstairs." " I will not," Mike replied. "I have just as much right to be in here as any of these men, and I 'm going to have a drink with my pals." She turned to big, strapping Roscoe Turner, resplendent in his flamboyant uniform. "Roscoe, lift me up on the L,ar so I can face you all." \\Tith a broad grin on his handsome face Roscoe lifted Mike up on the bar. She crossed her elegant, shapely legs and called for a gin highball, which her husband ordered for her. Poor Richard threw up his hands and left the bar, too polite to argue further with a beautiful and determined woman.
Harry Lauder in Chicago, 1929. The author intimates that the famous Scottish entertainer made pdrticular use of the excellent "free lunch" offered at the Stratford Hotel bar, next door to the Illinois Theater.
The other outstanding German restaurant in Chicago was the Red Star Inn, famous across America for wonderfully prepared, authentic German dishes, equal to those one cou ld find in first class restaurants in such cities as Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, or Cologne. Carl (Papa) Gallaucr opened Zum Roten Stern (at the Red Star) in Chicago in 1899. It was a replica of an old Bavarian tavern, and it specialized in the great dishes of German cuisine. I ate there frequently, and among the dishes I particularly remember were lentil soup with frankfurters, saucrbraten, roast duckling with apple sauce and red cabbage, hoppelpoppel (an omelet made up of eggs, frankfurter
slices, mushrooms and onions), liver dumplings so light you'd think they might fly away, and my two favorites, Konigsberger klops, and hassenpfeffcr. Each year, late in the fall, I used to call up Papa Gallauer and ask if it was time for hassenpfeffer (it was made with wild rabbits, not the domesticated bunnies). If the answer was "not yet," I'd wait a week, and call again. When the answer was "yes" I'd make a beeline for the Red Star Inn, and gorge ! A number of other restaurants of distinction contributed to the high repute of Chicago's culinary excellence from the early years of the 20th century on. Among them must be noted: St. Hubert's English Grill, a bit of England on Federal Street whose thick and juicy English mutton chops weren't excelled anywhere in America; Maisonette Russe on Sheridan Road, where Colonel Yaschenko served deice table, authentic Russian dishes unequalled in the United States; L'Aiglon, on East Ontario Street, serving the superb food and wines of France, as good as any obtainable this side of Paris; Boston Oyster House, established in 1873 and once managed by Charles Rector, where the first live lobsters and oysters on the half shell were served to Chicagoans; Gold's, famous for its highly spiced Jewish cuisine liberally flavored with garlic; Little Bohemia, on South Loomis Street in the heart of Chicago's Bohemian community, noted for its imported Pilsener beer and its authentic Bohemian cuisine; and the Tip Top Inn that was in the Pullman building, presided over until its closing in 1931 by Adolph Hieronymus. The continental atmosphere, the savoriness of the food, its magic service, and fine wines made this a favorite restaurant among Chicagoans. Through the years I have eaten in a great many of America's famous restaurants from coast to coast and border to border, and it is my considered opinion that Chicago never had to play second fiddle to any of them. Chicago had a plethora of exciting and rewarding food, quite worthy of the most civilized palate. Chicago History
25
Mucha's Chicago Poster BY KATHRINE WAGNER SEINEKE
Today's highbrow nostalgiafor the short-lived art nouveau decorative style of 1900 has revived the reputation of its Bohemian-French inventor, Alphonse Mucha. For a while he kept a studio in Chicago, and here he found some of his staunchest encouragement. IN 1905, while on a visit to America, Alphonse Mucha formed a friendship with a talented little eight-year-old Chicago girl that was to result several years later in one of his famous posters. That child, then Zdenka Cerny, a prodigy at the cello, now lives in Southern California as the vivacious Mrs. Zdenka Cerny DeLacey. The author was for several years the neighbor of Mrs. DeLacey and took down her reminiscences of an interesting interval in Chicago's cultural history. The vogue for Alphonse Mucha's sinuous, organic lines in graphic design, glass, furniture, jewelry, and architecture reached its crest at the Paris World Exposition in I goo. It was his poster for Sarah Bernhardt's 1894 production of Gismonda that first boosted the Bohemian-born artist to fame and his success was phenomenal. Soon there were more Bernhardt posters (highly prized by today's collectors), and his school in Paris, the Cours Mucha, flourished. The decade following 1894 was strongly marked by his style: from the design of the bronze Paris subway entrances to the design for the boxes of a line of scented toilet soap that was commissioned from him by Armour and Company of Chicago, which called it Savon Jvfuc/za. In r 904 he decided to go to America where his influence and fame were nearly equal to his reputation in Europe. He
Kathrine Wagner Seineke is a San Franciscan, a painter, and a historian of the French in America. During fourteen years in Illinois she edited the papers of Pierre Menard for the Illinois State Historical Society. 26
Chicago History
had also been asked by Baronne de Rothschild to do a portrait of one of her friends in New York. He made several returns to Europe, to marry and complete commissions, before settling down for a two-and-a-half year stay in the United States. On the whole his American sojourn was not very satisfying. He was feted, he traveled, he lectured, and he spent a Fourth of July at Oyster Bay with President Roosevelt; but his wife was constantly homesick, and he accepted more commissions than he could easily or profitably fulfill. And in r gr 3 he saw the famous Armory Show in New York which showed a style of painting that was the antithesis of his own. It was greeted with much the same enthusiasm that his own work had excited in the nineties. Now his art nouveau would soon be dead. It was a Chicagoan, Charles R. Crane, who gave Mucha the greatest satisfaction of his American contacts. Crane, industrialist, art patron, Slavophile, and statesman, first persuaded Mucha in 1906 to give a series of lectures at the Chicago Art Institute. And in 1909 Crane encouraged Mucha to undertake a project that had long been on the artist's mind, a grandiose series of historical paintings to be given to his homeland and called the Slav Epic. Crane eventually paid for the project which kept the artist busy for yea1¡s after he returned to Europe for good in r 92 1 . In 1906 when Mucha arrived in Chicago to lecture for the fall term at the Art Institute he and his family came to live in the home of fellow Bohemian A. V. Cerny on Lawndale Avenue rather than accept the luxurious hospitality offered by Mr. Crane, for at the Cerny house-
Mucha posed his subject, Zdenka Cerny, for this reference photograph in preparation for doing the poster drawing. It resembles quite closely the final poster reproduced on the cover of this issue. The sixteen-year-old cellist's pre-Raphaelite style of beauty seems to have jiUited Mucha's inspiration.
Mucha
hold, which he had visited the year before, he found the familiar Bohemian ways, food, and conversation that would allay some of his young wife's nostalgia for her homeland. Also, the Cerny house was a mecca for all visiting Czech intellectuals. A. V. Cerny had come to Chicago from Prague in 1888 as a young cellist, bringing with him the music of his friend Dvorak which he introduced to Chicago audiences. He married and settled in Chicago where he divided his time between teaching at his own First Bohemian Conservatory and playing in Chicago orchestras. A regular guest at the Cernys' was young Rudolph Friml, then a relatively unknown piano accompanist to violinist Jan Kubelik. (It was Papa Cerny who helped Friml sell his first piece of music, "Garden Matinee," to Lyon and Healy in Chicago.) The star pupil of the Cerny conservatory was Cerny's own eldest daughter, Milada, who, a prodigy at the piano, had already made a successful concert tour of Europe in 1903 at the age of ten. On an earlier visit Mucha had done an oil portrait of her which was later exhibited at the Art Institute when little Milada was giving concerts at the Auditorium withJan Kubelik in 1906 and 1907. That portrait is still with the family in southern California. But it was Milada's little sister, Zdenka, who would be the subject of a Mucha portrait in his best medium, the color lithograph poster. During his early stay with the Cernys young Zdenka became a favorite of Mucha. He was very much a member of the family, and often played simple piano parts in family trios on relaxed musical evenings. Today Zdenka remembers, too, the fun she and Mucha had with games played on the dining table after the cloth was cleared away: checkers, marbles, tiddlywinks, and puzzles. Mucha always brought little
Alp honse Mucha's style first caught on with the posters like this that he did for Sarah Bernhardt in the 1890s. By 1900 his art nouveau had become the internationa I decorative idiom. Chicago Historical Society
28
Chicago History
Muc~
LR 5RIDRKlTHlDE E'Ui\DGtLE En TROlS. TRSLE.J\U5t El7't'ERS nE mf c:omonn R os,Rnn mus,~E OE TI7~ GRIJR1El. t'LER nE r
C"'lll • Pl'9ett. Pltu•
Zdenka Cerny De Lacey
presents home with him: perhaps a tortoise shell band studded with a few rhinestones for Zdenka's hair; boxes of Savon Mucha in fragrances of violet, lilac, heliotrope, and sandalwood for all the ladies; and fine wines for Papa Cerny. On evenings when Papa Cerny was free of teaching or playing, he and Mucha would play a game of cards for pennies. Zdenka, scorekeeper and wine-maiden, got the winnings as her tip. After completing his duties at the Art Institute for the fall term Mucha spent the next two years executing commissions between his studio in the Fine Arts Building in Chicago and a studio on 57th Street in New York. For some of his larger decorative panels he took advantage of a spacious boat house at Crane's summer place on Cape Cod. While in Chicago he kept in constant touch with the Cernys, and when he was appointed to give the Scammon Lectures at the Art Institute for the spring term of 1908, he saw the Cernys constantly. By this time little Zdenka showed signs of growing into a statuesque young lady, so Papa Cerny switched her
"Papa" Cerny's home on Lawndale Avenue in Chicago was a mecca for visiting Bohemian artists; it provided a bit of the civility of old Prague. At this soiree Mucha is seated in the center in front of the young, beardless Rudolph Friml (then the relatively unknown accompanist to violinist Jan Kube I ik, father of the future conductor Rafael). Young Zdenka Cerny, the subject of Mucha's Chicago poster, is at the far right just behind her father.
from piano studies to his own specialty, the cello. On a visit to the Cernys in March, 1913, after a two-year absence in Europe (he had returned to report on the progress of the Slav Epic to his patron-having completed three of the proposed twenty pictures that measured twentyeight by twenty-four feet) he renewed an old promise to Zdenka to do her portrait. She was now sixteen, an accomplished cellist, and of a rare swan-like beauty. Papa Cerny had decided on a concert tour of Europe for her during the 1914-1915 season, and the portrait would serve for Zdenka's European posters. Mucha noted in his diary in March, 1913, "I promised Zdenka Cerny on my last visit three years ago, that when she became a virtuoso and a successful concert artiste, I would paint her portrait. So I Chicago History
29
Mucha
drew her. They gave it to Neubert [Prague lithographer] for reproduction and it will be used as a poster for her tour of Europe next year." Before starting his drawing Mucha requested a photograph of Zdenka with her cello for reference, even though he would draw from life. Together they went to Babka, the photographer on Twenty-sixth Street. Zdenka wore her concert gown, made by Mme. Beaudry of Chicago. Mucha told her to sit naturally and hold her cello. At his suggestion she extended her hand toward a pedestal provided by the photographer in lieu of a music stand. Mucha liked the effect and only asked her to move her head a little more toward him. The drawing was completed in several sittings and Zdenka was not required to hold the pose for long periods for Mucha drew rapidly. One slight problem amused the artist. He found a bit of difficulty with the F holes on either side of the cello above the bridge, due to the curvature of the instrument's surface. "Imagine," he said, "an old pro like me!" The finished study was a graceful and true portrait, done in line and shaded modeling with delicate washes of color. The next month, on April 6, 1913, Mr. Crane formally announced to a distinguished gathering at the Cliff Dwellers Club that he was sponsoring Mucha's project of the Slav Epic. Large photographs of the three completed panels were shown. After dinner, Zdenka played in a trio for the gathering. Shortly after, Mucha left for Europe to continue work on the Epic. It was his last visit to Chicago. Soon Zdenka was practicing from six to eight hours a day and her father's sole concern was the itinerary for her European tour. Papa and daughter Cerny sailed in June, 1914. Papa saw his tailor in London, and Zdenka's wardrobe was bought in Paris. They arrived in Prague to meet with Mucha and Neubert about the posters on the 26th of July. Two days later Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The Cernys managed to get back to 30
Chicago History
Zdenka Cerny De Lacey
A Chicago portrait of Mucha taken in 1913, the year he did his Chicago poster.
America in steerage with two newly acquired Pomeranians, one named General Kitchener, the other Marshal Joffre. Mucha had promised to oversee the printing of the posters and send them on to Chicago, and in due time a large crate arrived at Lawndale Avenue. There was great excitement to see that Mucha had added an elaboration of his famous lilies, drawn directly on the stone. A separate panel of lettering, also designed by Mucha, read, "Zdenka Cerny the Great Bohemian Violoncellist." The posters were used for Zdenka's American concert tours, but her career was short. By the end of the war she was married and had given up the concert stage. Papa Cerny took a trip to Prague later in the twenties where he learned from Neubert that Mucha still had the drawing at his Zbirah Castle in the country. Mucha told Cerny when he called at Zbirah that of all the posters he had designed, Zdenka's was his favorite . When he learned that Zdenka had asked her father to look at the drawing if it still existed, Mucha took it from the wall and removed it from its silver frame. Rolling it up he gave it to Cerny, saying, "Take it to Zdenka in Chicago with my love."
The Portrait Art on Calling Cards BY PAUL PETRAITIS
1860s thousands upon thousands of these photographs were made. (See " Chicago through a Camera Lens: An Essay on Photography as History," Spring 1971, page 160.) Called cartes-devisite because of their small size, they recorded the faces and costumes, and occasionally something more, of that generation. The eighteen portraits reproduced here in actual size were selected from the Chicago Historical Society's large collection. They are a cross section of American life in the 1860s. THROUGHOUT THE
J Who they are: Page 31, left to right: George Henry High, aged four. Actor Edward Sothern as Lord Dundreary. Brig. Gen. William F. Bartlett. George K. Schoenberger. Unidentified. Washington Sturges. Page 32: George R. DeWitt. Rev. Dr. James Pratt. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Capt. W. H. Berryman. A boy named Parsons. Lecturer Sojourner Truth. 32
Chicago History
Page 33: Lottie Goble, aged two. Char les Spring and daughter. A Sister of Charity. Soldier William S. Sevier. Willie Barrel. Mrs. J . B. White.
Chicago History
33
"Our Own" Mary Garden BY RICHARD D. FLETCHER
A drop-out from Hyde Park High School) Mary Garden soon became America) s Qy,een of Opera) and one of the two or three most controversial singers of the first half of this century.
The Early Chicago Years VERY SHORTLY after the young Mary Garden enrolled at Hyde Park High School, teachers and students alike began to observe that her mind was focused more on music than, say, on botany or geometry. Later, having become an actual drop-out, Mary guarded her secret well. Only her family and a few close friends knew when and why she had abandoned the classrooms. Finally she no longer found any important reasons to withhold the fact from a public eager "to know all about her." In 1911, during her second season with Chicago's still-new opera company, Mary admitted to Lois Willoughby of the Inter-Ocean that " ... father allowed me to leave school to give all my time to music. Maybe that didn't make my sisters mad!" But Mr. Garden's decision clearly constituted a significant milestone in the development of an artist who later jumped swiftly from the ranks of the unknown to the highest rungs of the operatic ladder. In the same interview, Mary went on to other pleasant, frank confessions: "What was my favorite diversion? Going to church Sunday evenings. We wouldn't have missed it for the
Richard D. Fletcher, a long-time Chicagoan, fell under the spell of Mary Garden in his youth, and came to know her well after her retirement. Mr. Fletcher is new completing a new biography of Mary Garden to be published by Knopf in New York and Gollancz in London. 34
Chicago History
world! And what do you suppose we went for? Not to hear the sermon ... [but] just to see who was there and what they wore .... I never felt the week's work was done unless I passed on that Sunday evening crowd." And of an early operetta appearance as Angelica in Trial by Jury on May 14, 1891 at the Rosalie Music Hall: "I had a new dress for [it]a costume I should say-and I was proud of it, I tell you. I pranced across the stage and back again, stopping to take a squint through the peephole now and then to size up the crowd." She need not have worried. The Inter-Ocean reported the following day that seven hundred people had attended and that "a large sum was raised." Such was the exuberant prelude to a stage career which, in time, took Mary to operatic triumphs in Paris, London, Brussels, Monte Carlo, Nice, Cologne, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities before she returned to Chicago in 191 o. Mary was not, of course, born in Chicago, but in Aberdeen, Scotland; her professional career did not begin in the city that came to call her "its own"; nor did she choose the city as the place to spend her retirement years. Yet the strong Chicago identification in her long life (nearly ninety-three years) and in her extended operatic career ( thirty-five years) was neither accidental nor misplaced. She received her initial vocal training in Chicago; she saw her first play in this city-a French potboiler called Article 47, a favorite vehicle for the hyper-emotional actress Clara Morris. Here, too, she heard her first operas (Faust and Romeo et Juliette, both starring Nellie M elba and the De Reszke brothers). Most
Mary Garden as general manager of the Chicago Opera Assoc iation in January, 1921. Harold F. McCormick chose her to carry out his plan for one final season of "the best opern money could buy." Chicago Historical Society
Our Mary
important of all, her longest association with any single opera company was with the Chicago organization known, at various times, as the Chicago Grand Opera Company, the Philadelphia-Chicago Opera Company, the Chicago Opera Association, and the Chicago Civic Opera Company. Throughout her life, as in her career, Mary had a way-always a very special one-of putting her own bold mark on anything she did or touched. This remarkable gift showed itself even on the day she first arrived in Chicago as a child. The ten-year-old daughter of a family living a few doors from the Gardens' first Chicago home went over immediately to make the acquaintance of her newest neighbor. Her breathless report to her mother ran something like this: "Mary Garden is here! She has her family with her, and they are all going to stay!" Mary was about to enter her teens. The Gardens, settling here in 1887, chose the Hyde Park area for two principal reasons: the community had a large Scottish settlement that assured a warm and ready welcome to the sometimes homesick family; and Hyde Park had not yet been annexed to the city of Chicago. It remained a separately incorporated village from 1861 until 1889, maintaining its own fire and police departments, and supporting a surprising number of vigorous debating, philosophical, literary, and dramatic groups, as well as numerous amateur musical societies with which young Mary made several appearances. It was after her vocal training had been started with Mrs. Sarah Robinson Duff that Mary's father allowed her to leave school. Mrs. Duff quickly discovered the unique qualities of Mary's voice and her good dramatic sense. She presented Mary in her second annual student recital in the old Central Music Hall on State Street. The date was Wednesday evening, October 28, 1891. Concerning this recital debut, Mary's memory defaulted at some later time, for she wrote in her autobiography that she had sung "Una
As Carmen, Philadelphia, 1911.
voce poco fa" from Rossini's The Barber of Seville. The aria she actually sang was the far more taxing "Bel raggio lusinghier" from that composer's Semiramide. The following day the InterOcean critic commented: "One of the most brilliant successes of the evening was Miss Garden's singing ... a very difficult and exacting aria not often attempted by so young a vocalist and rarely better executed than by Miss Garden . ... " The performance apparently made a deep impression on him, for he picked the story up again the following Sunday to add that the young singer was "but 17 years of age and has been studying vocally but one year." In the early months of 1893, Mary auditioned before the musical committee of the Carleton Club (3800 Vincennes Avenue) for a part in an operetta, The Doctor of Alcantara, by the GermanAmerican composer Julius Eichberg. Announcements of Mary's winning the leading soprano role of Isabella have been uncovered, and the performance was given on May 30, 1893, but reviews of the production have not come to light. Mrs. Duff was a firm believer in adding the experience of singing in public to the lessons taught in her studio. Mary became one of the "Duff girls" who, chaperoned by their teacher, appeared frequently in impromptu programs at the Columbia Theater, a house managed by Will J. Davis, husband of the renowned American singer Jessie Bartlett Davis. Musical America, reminiscing on these events some years later, called the repertoire of Mrs. Duff's girls "a sort of musical club sandwich," adding that between the classics they would sing a bit of ragtime. A Chicago newspaperman, Littell McClung, had heard several of these performances and he was quoted as saying: "Unconsciously almost, [Mary's] natural talent as an actress first became apparent in her rendition of these songs." As her training progressed, Mary went on to increasingly more difficult vocal assignments. For a meeting of Chicago's Salon Fran~ais on Thursday evening, February 27, 1896, Mrs. Duff
Chicago Historical Society
The Garden family in Chicago, 1895, about a year before Mary, first on the left in the back row, sailed for France.
presented some of her pupils in a program of French songs in the Auditorium recital hall. Mentioning no other performer by name, the Inter-Ocean of March I called Mary's singing one of the best features of the evening, crediting her with "superb taste, rare feeling, and m.uch finish." Among other things, she sang the waltz from Gounod's Mireille. Chicago's Twentieth Century Club, meeting in the home of the George M. Pullmans at 1 729 Prairie Avenue (see Chicago History, spring issue of 1971) devoted a whole program on May 8, 1896, to a lecture-recital on the works of Johannes Brahms. Mary sang, perhaps for the only time in her life, three Brahms songs: "l'ergebliches Standchen," "Ein Wanderer," and "T-Vie Melodien zieht es mir."
Later the same month Mary, with the financial assistance of the David L. Mayer family, took a fourteen-year leave of Chicago to continue her studies abroad. Of this departure, Mary later wrote that she would go to Paris "without any illusions about being a wonderful actress or singer and with no promises to myself or to anyone else about what, if anything, I should accomplish. [I would] just study hard and see what would happen."
Mary's Return to Chicago By the time she came back to this city in 19 r o, Garden had completed four additional years of study in Paris, had made a surprise debut in April 1900 at the Paris Opera-Comique in 38
Chicago History
Charpcntier's then-new Louise; had created the part of Melisande in Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande; had created other French roles of lesser importance; had sung at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle for Queen Alexandra and King Edward VII; had been entertained by other royalty, including King George I of Greece and Prince Albert of Monaco; and had brought several French works unknown in America to Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera House. She had also been the first successful portrayer in this country of Richard Strauss's Salome. She had toured to the cities visited by the Hammerstein forces-Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and ,vashington. Hammerstein, unfortunately, never brought his troupe to Chicago, despite references to the contrary found in Vincent Sheean. The singer who came back to Chicago was more than an international celebrity and ranking diva-she was a "star" of a new and special kind. She brought to her work all the refinements of the French stage where the rule of perfect ensemble demands that the total coordinated effect must always be greater than any of its parts or the sum of them. Garden's chief concern was the search for such balance in all productions. Her ambitions were for the performance as a whole. "A good picture," she was given to saying, "must be in a worthy frame." She realized that any flaw, however minor, and no matter how unrelated to her own responsibilities,
Our Mary
would detract from the success of all participants. She was never, as William Armstrong aptly put it, "an isolated figure acting against a disordered background of colleagues ... ." She had become an artist of absolutely unalterable integrity. She had also become a very beautiful woman. The profile was aristocratic; the eyes were a piercing blue, illuminated and directed by a keen and probing intellect. Her figure was slender; her arms were splendidly proportioned, and she used them with the restraint that characterizes the noblest styles of acting. Early in her Chicago career she wrote: " It seems to me better that one should fail on the side of too great reserve rather than on that of exaggerated expression ." Garden prepared her roles with surpassing care. She studied-even before mirrors-the effects she wanted to create. Having once established her interpretation, she never changed it, save in the case of Carmen midway in her career. The musical theater admittedly proffers the most impermanent of artistic media, yet Garden seemed to defy the inroads of time by faithfully recreating, year after year, the exact portraits she had originally conceived. In successive seasons, the operagoer could watch her Melisande or her Juggler with all the assurance that the artistic ingredients would be as unchanged as in, say, the Mona Lisa. Garden no more trusted in impulse or "intuition" on the stage than she would have in her private life. All relevant factors had to be studied. In her objective evaluations, she never allowed herself to be swayed by her personal feelings. She cloaked herself in the feelings she believed her character would have experienced . She once told a critic: "My heart is my own -and mine only-but my brain can comprehend and absorb the emotions and reactions of any of my characters." Her undisputed mastery of histrionic art may not have been an unmixed blessing. It was perhaps inevitable that a myth-"she can act but she can't sing"-would gradually be spread
around. Such a cry had broken out at her New York debut in r 907 when, after hearing her in the first American performance of Thais, and after crediting her extraordinary visual and dramatic values, W. J. Henderson wrote in the Sun: " ... whatever Miss Garden may have been in the sweet summertime long ago, she cannot now be called a singer .... There may have been a voice once, but it and that [vocal] method could not [long] dwell together." The New York public, like the critics, was soon split into two camps: those who hailed Garden as an operatic genius of unparalleled talents, and those who insisted that she was something of a fraud, substituting an exaggerated emphasis on theatrical ism for a lack of vocal endowment and the gifts of profound musicianship.
As Grisel id is, New York, 1910.
Our Mary
Garden's voice was not a large one of the kind admired by Wagnerians, nor was it the showy pulsing kind demanded by the Italians, but it had a vibrant and seductive appeal. It had been trained-and was always used-to underline the dramatic as much as the musical meaning of every role she sang. But she was clearly not destined to become the idol of the public-or the critics-who thought that high C's were the essence of music and were to be held as long as possible. On this point, and in Garden's defense, Edward Wagenknecht has, very succinctly, put the record straight: "If any pioneer ever suffered the brutal stupidities of criticism it was she, nor has the myopia of the academicians ever done them a greater disservice than when it led them to disregard the unified perfection of the various portraits that she has limned." He added that Carl Van Vechten had been absolutely right when he pointed out that she did some of her best acting with her voice.
Four Great Roles in One Month Chicago's introduction to Garden's artistry came on November 5, 1910, in the Auditorium Theater in the first local performance of Debussy's Pe/leas. In short order she introduced three other works that were also new here: Louise on November 9, Salome on November 25, and Tha"is on December 6. In these roles, and within the short span of one month and a day, Garden revealed the essence and the great range of her gifts. It may be useful to examine these essentially different roles that she stamped so indelibly into the memories of Chicago's opera public. Debussy's Pelleas is not a "singer's opera," nor does it make its mark by an insistent parade of "tunes," nor in gaudy, massed ensemble scenes. It concerns itself with the mysterious workings of the human heart and the puzzling uncertainties of the soul. Like the Maeterlinck play on which it is based, it portrays the loneliness of its characters as they confront the riddles of life with little 40
Chicago History
hope of finding answers. The role of Melisande is especially difficult to interpret, for she seems not to know who she is nor where she has come from. Only belatedly does she begin to comprehend her psychic leanings and the gradual awakening of her love for Pelleas. The relationship grows relentlessly Loward a tragic end for both. The work brought to Chicago a totally new kind of lyric-drama, its music as muted as its action. Garden's movement through the piece was likened to a shadowy figure glimpsed in a medieval tapestry. She did not "act" the part. She seemed, rather, merely to exist-passively at first, later with intermittent spells of elation, and finally as a fragile, helpless being. Her portrayal of Melisande's resigned acceptance of an inscrutable fate was theater of the subtlest, understated kind. Garden was able to summon exactly the right means for achieving a quiet, almost whispered, musical declamation. The impersonation was touching throughout; yet toward the end she achieved the ultimate in poignancy by asking, with startling simplicity: "Who is going to die? Is it I?" Louise, Garden's second role in Chicago, presented her in the part that had brought her instant fame in Paris when she went on in the mid-
As Henri Fevrier's Monna Vanna, Chicago, 1914.
die of a performance, without a single rehearsal, to replace the ailing star, M arthe Rioton. Louise is the "modern" young woman of Paris in about I goo, a creature sometimes willful yet always sympathetic, a girl who refuses to remain under the domination of her tradition-bound working-class parents, and who finally submits, fully and without regret, to the attractions of free love, yielding unresistingly to the call of the city of Paris and the abandon of Bohemian life. It was, for its day, a symbol of "women's lih," and the story was underpinned with the kind of music that gave freest sway to Garden's capacities for picturesque movement, for delineating the pressures of stress and temptation, but leading always toward her final and inevitable capitulation to what the heart demands. It was, however, the events of Friday even ing, November 25, that sent a skyrocket flashing across Chicago's operatic horizon , illuminating everything it passed. Garden and the Hammerstein forces had already presented Salome in New York and Philadelphia. In both cities there had been advance apprehension about the "morality" of the work, b ased on Oscar \,Vilde's startling play. Although the decapitation of John the Baptist takes place off- (or below-) stage, the severed head is carried in on a silver platter, Salome caresses it and finally kisses its lips. The clergy of the Eastern cities had raised a hue and cry about the "bestiality" and the "perversion''. of the piece, and in both places they had attempted to have the performances stopped. But Garden would yield ground on one point only: she told the New York press (Wo rld, Janu a ry 30, 1 909) that in agreeing not to kiss the head, she had been untrue to herself and she would modify nothing else. " I contend still for the verities. I am presenting a pagan pervert. The details are
As Salome in Chicago, 1910. Though tolerated in other cities, Rich ard Strauss's Salome scandalized too many Chicagoans and was performed only twice. Chicago Historical Society
Chicago History
41
Our Mary
the woman. Denude the portraiture of her impulses and you rob me of my characterization." She later told Philadelphia that, rather than change her portrayal, she would simply turn the role over to the two hundred twenty pound Mme. Tetrazzini. The Garden Salome was a vivid incarnation of youthful eroticism, but not, as she put it, for "the satisfaction of a morbid appetite, not as an invitation to untried vice," but because, in this case, the character was shaped to the naked truth of the "perversion of human nature impelled by a taint in the blood." Yet the Eastern critics had, for the most part, insisted on the ugliness of the theatrical intentions. The World said of the first N cw York performance: "The finished details of execution alone saved her impersonation from being hopelessly repellent. Her progress through the drama left, as it were, a trail of slime behind it." And the Tribune commented: "Miss Garden has realized a conception of incarnate bestiality which has so much power that it is a dreadful thing to contemplate. She has developed the stages from a willful maiden to a human hyena with wonderful skill and she has mastered all the agencies of expression." In the end, ¡neither New York nor Philadelphia forbade further performances of Salome, and it continued to bring to the box-office the largest coffers in the history of the Manhattan Opera House. But Chicago was another story. Here, as she later observed, she was up against the combined forr::es of the Press, the Pulpit, the Police, the Politicians, and the organized Purity Associations. It was the last of these that caused the greatest trouble. Someone had alerted Arthur Burrage Farwell of the Chicago Law and Order League that Salome, about to be produced at the Auditorium, was indeed a "salacious" item, and that its performance should be barred. Farwell sent the letter on to the Chicago Chief of Police, Colonel Leroy T. Steward, who decided to attend the first presentation. The chief proclaimed 42
Chicago History
it was all very disgusting and that "Miss Garden wallowed around like a cat in a bed of catn ip." Farwell, supporting Steward's claim-although he had not witnessed the proceedings-called Miss Garden "a great dcgenerator of public morals" and insisted that productions such as Salome "should be suppressed along with houses in the red-light district." The incident came, in time, to be known as "Steward's Folly," but in the meantime the Farwell-Steward views prevailed and the work was abandoned after only two performances. It soon became known, however, that the Chicago company would present the show in Milwaukee. Special trains were chartered to transport any still-curious Chicagoans. Milwaukee's Reverend David O'Hcarn, D. D., gave an outraged blast from the pulpit of Saintjohn's Cathedral, deploring the fact that the "Cream City, with its name signifying a creamlike purity" was about to open its arms to bid Salome welcome. Mary, too, took promptly to the Milwaukee press: "Milwaukee won't have the chance to make a Chicago of itself, for we present the work here only once." Again, the local police chief attended, announcing afterward that Garden's Dance of the Seven Veils had reminded him "irresistibly of a Thuringer sausage dancing on a hot gridd le." But he made no attempt to stop the performance. Thais first came to the boards in Chicago on the evening of December 6. No complaints were filed against that courtesan of ancient Alexandria, nor were any coals heaped on Mary's head, perhaps because the tale concerns a sinner who is eventually redeemed. Garden's entrance, as she swept like a panther across a palace terrace, ran down a short flight of steps, and threw an armful of roses into the air, created a moment of excitement in a not always thrilling opera. She took a magnificent stance at the end of the act, midst the beginning of a revel which starts off with some rather banal music. But in the next scene, her invocation to Venus, and the Mirror
Song (" Dis-moi que je suis belle") were supreme examples of Garden's plastic use of the body to suggest mood. The gradual conversion of the courtesan to the Christian faith, and to acceptance of life in a convent where she will die, provided a great vehicle for Garden's uncanny ability to wring the ultimate in sympathy for a sinner-become-saint. Each of these four impersonations was unique; none bore the slightest resemblance to any other. Even today, her Melisande, her Louise, her Thai:s have not been equalled. Her Salome has been outdistanced vocally, but perhaps not dramatically.
Later Chicago Roles In the years that followed, Garden added three other unforgettable figures to her gallery of portraits. First, both in time ( ew York, r 908 and Chicago, r gr r) and in artistic ingenuity, came Massenet's Le Jongleur de Notre Dame. The title role had been written for tenor and was so created. Garden was the first woman to undertake the part and she did so with the composer's consent. Hammerstein had heard the work in Paris, and he became convinced that he had
As Fanny Legrand in Massenet's Sappho, New York, 1909.
found in it a worthy piece for Garden en travesti. Her capacity for poignant delineation of the hungry, innocent and perhaps dim-witted young juggler was, like her Melisande, one of the most touching experiences in all opera. The role held a high place in Garden's affections, and she delighted in bending her vocal resources to give the young lad a truly sexless kind of voice. At the very opposite pole stood her Fiora in Montemezzi's L' Amore dei Tre Re-the Love of Three Kings. A fiery, captive princess, living in a strange land with a husband she has been forced to marry, defying a blind father-in-law who has discovered that she has a lover from her own country, the role is made of strong stuff. Garden's voice never sounded richer than in the love music of the second act. (It was the only role she ever sang in Italian.) By act's end, Fiora lies strangled after a tussle with the old blind king, and Garden had the insight and courage to display the involuntary shudders which sometimes pass through a corpse. Of this scene, Herbert Peyser, a New York critic, wrote: '' ... this marrow-freezing sight of the reflexes after death could only have been a result of Miss Garden's unsparing investigations." In Alfano's Resurrection, and at a late stage in
In the title role of Massenet's Le Jongfeur de Notre Dame, Chicago, 1911. Garden was the first woman to undertake the part, originally written for a tenor.
As Tha"is on the Goldwyn Studios set, Fort Lee, New Jersey, 1917.
Our Mary
her career, Garden achieved the incredible feat of portraying, in each of the four acts, a woman so fundamentally and tragically changed that her former selves could not be recognized. In the first act, a radiant Katiusha is sixteen and bursting with the energy of first love. In the second act, betrayed and already pregnant, she waits for her lover to return and redeem her from the degradation she faces. In the third tableau, Katiusha is in prison for having murdered her baby and has sunk to the bottom depths of depravity. In the last scene, she is on her way to Siberia, has recovered a good measure of resignation and serenity, and refuses the chance to be spared the journey. For each of these episodes, Garden contrived a voice altogether unrelated to the earlier ones. As a feat of vocal discipline, its like has not been encountered.
Garden as Opera Manager Throughout the first several years of Mary's career with the Chicago opera, she had enjoyed the unstinting admiration and support of Harold F. McCormick and his wife, the former Edith Rockefeller. During this time, the McCormicks had picked up the principal share of each annual deficit. They decided, however, that the season of 19,n/22 would be the last in which they would carry the bulk of the financial burden alone. They proposed the designation of Mary Garden as general manager in order to assure, under their sponsorship, one final blazing season of "the best opera money could buy." Garden's appointment was speedily approved by the board, and announced on January r 4, r 92 r, leaving her to fill out the last part of that season (1920/21) and all of the next. Garden did not shirk the responsibilities-or the authority-of her new role. She had not, however, taken on the task in a way best calculated to assure success. She refused any salary for her administrative duties, but she continued to sing her usual number of performances at her regular fee. Great public enthusiasm was generated be44 Chicago History
tween the seasons, and Mary did, in fact, mount a most impressive range of works. But part-time management is generally destined to failure, and Garden's experience proved no exception to the rule. Among her main achievements was the world premiere of Prokofieff's The Love for Three Oranges. She also presented the first American performances after World War I of Wagner in German (Tristan and Tannhiiuser) . She revived Puccini's Girl of the Golden West for Rosa Raisa. And she had the daring to undertake another go at Salome-starring herself-for the first time since the debacle in 1910, but again the work was withdrawn after two performances, this time at the request of Mrs. McCormick. Many enticing projects fell by the wayside. Rimsky-Korsakoff's Snow Maiden was prepared but not given until the following year. A complete Ring of the Nibelungen and the company's first Meistersinger were abandoned. A number of expensive new artists had been signed for the season but appeared only once or twice. Among the company's greatest gains was the engagement of Claire Dux, one of the most radiant lyric sc,pranos of the time. She later became Mrs. Charles H. Swift, setting down deep roots in the city and remaining a loyal Chicagoan the rest of her life. As the season progressed, difficulties broke out with some of the artists. Garden and Lucien Muratore, then her favorite tenor, quarreled a number of times although they continued to sing together. Mary had a tempestuous fight with Giorgio Polacco, whereupon he refused to conduct Louise for her on the last Saturday afternoon of the season. Garden substituted another conductor. Then, at the end of the third act, she stepped onto the apron of the stage to announce to the audience-and, of course, the press-that any artists who wished to resign were free to do so: she could replace them in five minutes! The company's annual tour appeared destined to proceed more amicably. As the special train steamed into New York City, morale
As Katiusha in Re:;urrection, Act 3.
Mary Garden wearing the ropes of pearls given her by King George I of Greece. They were valued at a million and a half dollars. Chicago Historical Society
seemed high, and several of the leading singers gathered on the rear platform where, using the tune of "Father Abraham," they chanted: "We are coming, we are coming, With a troupe ten thousand strong, With lots of class And Pelleas And twenty tons of song." But during the New York engagement, the Garden-Muratore battle broke into the press repeatedly, as it did in most of the other cities the troupe visited. Feelings ran high on both sides, and the two seemed bent on out-denouncing each other. When, at season's end, the financial books were finally balanced, the Garden administration had run up a deficit of $1,100,000, compared to a loss of $350,000 the previous year. The Chicago Opera Association quietly folded, to be succeeded by a reorganized troupe known as the Chicago Civic Opera Company. The press reported that Garden was offered the opportunity of staying on as artistic director, but she wisely decided otherwise: "My fighting spirit bids me stay, but my reason tells me to go . My place is with the artists, not over them." (Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1922.) The following day the New York Times took note of Garden's resignation as manager in a thoughtful editorial. It hailed her as "a dreadnought on the battle line," but applauded her decision to abandon the harassments of the director's office, the better to fulfill her artistic destiny. The board presently named Samuel Insull, the influential utilities magnate, as the new general manager, announcing simultaneously that Garden would remain as one of the principal artists.
Farewell to the Chicago Opera Garden continued to sing with the company until the winter of 1930/31. The following season, the Insull regime collapsed. It is not known for certain why Garden did not appear during 46
Chicago History
that final year. Her autobiography indicates that she believed she had given Chicago her best for many years, and that she was fully ready to bid farewell to the opera stage. The story is not completely convincing for she was still singing occasionally at the Paris Opera-Comique as late as the spring of 1934 in Resurrection. Her book admits that she and Insull were never very friendly. In later years, indeed, she found many caustic things to say about what he had done to opera in Chicago. An unconfirmed rumor, allegedly coming from people closely associated with Insull's office, declared that he had offered her a contract for two performances only, and that she-with as much dignity as she could muster-politely declined it.
The Memories For those who remember her galvanic performances, Mary Garden is still really with us. Whenever do we hear one of her special roles without wishing her back in it? And how can we fail to recall some of the details, major or minor, in her interpretation? After her death on January 3, 1967, a wave of obituaries swept through the press in most of the cities where her work had been known, and the appraisals were universally rhapsodic. When shall we see and hear her like again? Garden has had no successful imitators and none is in sight. The reason must lie in what the late tenor Rene Maison, one of her close associates during the latter part of her Chicago career, told me when I raised the question with him. "For a comparable art," he said, "we must await a comparable intellect. Technique may be copied, but genius must be born."
Mr. Dooley's Bridgeport Chronicle BY CHARLES F. FANNING , JR.
not well into his eighties will hardly remember the impact that Finley Peter Dunne's newspaper character Mr. Dooley had on the nation between r 898 and r 9 r 8. Mr. Dooley's caustic remarks on national figures and politics, couched in what seemed an innocuous Irish dialect, were quoted and recited across the country. President Theodore Roosevelt was an admirer, Henry Adams commented on him, and even the very high-brow Henry James took note. Dunne's weekly Chicago newspaper column featuring Mr. Dooley had been running for five years before it was syndicated nationally. It was only in r 898 that the column attracted national attention when Mr. Dooley made the outrageous suggestion that the five days' silence from Admiral Dewey after Manila probably meant that our national hero was only lying low while he established himself as King of the Philippines -even to holding a brown dancing court under the palms. This impious but funny idea struck the fancy of a public that was highly dubious about America's first venture into overseas empire, and soon Mr. Dooley's Irish saloon on Archer Avenue in Chicago became the focus for Americans who looked for the best and funniest in corrective political satire. During the five years before Mr. Dooley's observations on the Spanish-American War won him national readership, the grass-roots philosopher had been regularly presiding over discussions in his South Side saloon. In the pages of the Chicago Evening Post Mr. Dooley engaged in conversation with one or another of his patrons, usually John McKenna, a real life Chicago politician, or Malachi Hennessy, a day laborer and resident of "Archey ANYONE
Charles F. Fanning, Jr. teaches English at Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and continues his study of Finley Peter Dunne at the University of Pennsylvania. Much of his research on the experience of the immigrant Irish was done at the Chicago Historical Society.
Road." Mr. Dooley did most of the talking and the subject was daily life on Archer Avenue in Irish Bridgeport. Of these early columns, started in r 893, few were republished in the later, widelyread Dooley anthologies. But it is those early pieces, lying buried in the files of the Evening Post, that establish their author as a significant historian of Irish-American city life. Dunne's breadth of experience as a native Irish Chicagoan with ten years behind him as a political writer on various Chicago newspapers easily permitted him in 1893 to assume the mask of a Bridgeport barkeep who was the confidant of the Irish masses: the millworkers, draymen, and horsecar drivers of the teeming South Side.
Politics in Bridgeport Politics was the special passion of Bridgeport in the nineties and Dunne was well qualified to describe it. Some of his earliest experiments in writing Irish dialect were in his news reports of city council meetings that he occasionally enlivened with verbatim transcriptions of comical aldermanic rhetoric, and many of the early Dooley pieces deal with political behavior in the old Bridgeport sixth ward - now the eleventh and home of Chicago's most important I rishAmerican political figure, Mayor Richard J. Daley. In these pieces Dunne's Mr. Dooley gives us all manner of otherwise unavailable information on the old politics, from capsule biographies of Irish politicians and descriptions of that yearly tribal rite, the aldermanic election, to glimpses of the inner workings of the mayor's office and the city council. Dooley's description of rough-and-tumble ward politics in the nineties was vivid. In a column that ran in r 894 he relates to "J awn" McKenna how the I rish won against the Germans in Bridgeport: \Vhin Andy Duggan r-run f'r aldherman against Schwartzmeister, th' big Dutchman, - I was precinct captain then, Jawn, -there was an iliction f'r ye. Twas on our precinct they relied to ilict Duggan; f'r th' Dutch was sthrong down be th' thrack, an' Schwartzmeister had a band out p layin' "Th' Watch Chicago History 47
Bridgeport
on th' Rhine." Well, sir, we opened th' polls at six o'clock, an' there was tin Schwartzmeister men there to protect his intherests. At sivin o'clock there was only three, an' wan iv thim was goin' up th' sthreet with Hinnissy kickin' at him. At eight o'clock, be clad, there was on'y wan; an' he was sittin' on th' roof iv Gavin's blacksmith shop, an' th' la-ads was thryin' to borrow a lacldher fr'm th' injine-house f'r to get at him .... \Ve cast twinty-wan hunclhred votes 'r Duggan, an' they was on'y five hundhrecl votes in th' precinct. We'd cast more, but th' tickets give out. ... And on the dangers of uninformed allegiance: I mind whin Eddie O'Reilly an' Schultze was runnin'. Torchlight procission iv'ry night. O'Reilly'd 'vc won if they hadn't let th' Dutchman's lads vote fr'm th' 'ospital. But annyhow, I had up a picture iv O'Reilly in th' window, whin in come little Slatthcry. D 'ye mind him? He was a nervous little la-ad fr'm th' County Kerry .... 'What have ye th' face iv that man frightenin' away custom f'r?' he says. 'vVho?' says I. 'O'Reilly,' says he. '\\1hat's th' matther with O'Reilly?' says I. 'He's no good,' says he. 'He throws down all his frincls,' says he. 'But th' other man's Dutch,' says I. 'Naw he ain't,' says he. 'He's marricl wan iv Doherty's daughters,' he says. 'An' if Prince Bismark was to marry an Irish girl,' says he, 'he'd be th' head cinter iv th' fanians [the Fenians, then fighting British rule of Ireland] within wan month.' 'I guess ye'er right,' says I. So I took clown O'Reilly an' put up Schultze. I'd no more thin turned me back whin bang! come a brick through th' window. I wint out an' there was th' prisiclent, secrity, an' thre-a urcr iv th' Eddie O'Reilly Lith'ry Club thryin' to pry up th' sthreet f'r ammunition. The qualifications for public oflicc in the sixth ward were a lso fittingly stringent, as Mr. Dooley explained them to John McKenna: Th' people up here likes spirit. How did Billy O'Brien hol' his own all these years but because he done dumb-bell exercise with a beer kag in wan hand an a German polisman in th' other? How come Eddie Burke-may he rest in peace-to have th' ward f'r so long but because, bit iv a man that he was, with on'y th' leg iv a cuk stove in his hand, he wint through a roomful iv his innimies, back an' forward twict? Sure, politics ain't bean-bag. 'Tis a man's game, an' women, childer, cripples an' prohybitionists 'cl do well to keep out iv it. 48
Chicago History
Any lingering confusion between who should play at politics or at "bean-bag" is dispelled by Dooley's sketch of William J. O'Brien, a real Bridgeport alderman between r 889 and I goo. The son of poor immigrant parents, "his father was a man fr'm th' wist of Ireland, a har-rd wur-rukin', quiet, stoop-shouldhcrcd man, that slept tin hours a night an' wurrukcd twelve a day an' put in th' other two catin' food that didn't a lways agree with him." Young \Villiam "played in th' sthrccts night an' day an' was dhraggcd to school be th' ear iv'ry month or so." He progressed to "running with th' big boys," was sent to reform school for petty theft, "where he added pickin' pockets to his other accomplishments," and graduated to a career that encompassed "annything fr'm dhrunk an' disorderly to poundin' in a man's head with a brick." It was this reputation that got him into politics, for "long befurc he was a voter ... he was con-sidered handy at th' primaries." After performing various SC'rvices for the ward leaders, O'Brien made his strongest political move: " He had a change iv hear-rt and he seen a gr-rcat light an' he opened a saloon an' gamblin'house." Soon he had his own built-in following and, in due time, the aldcrmanic nomination: Ye know his record since. He's got rich an' powerful. He on'y comes in th' ward th' week bcfure iliction. He gives liberal to th' poor, he keeps his horses, he wear a diamond as big as an inkstand an' almost anny day ye'cr liblc to see him an' th' prisiclint iv th' sthrcct ca-ar comp'ny ar-rm-in-ar-nn. These were strong words in the days when buccaneering traction magnate Yerkes ran the city council. Dunne later explained how he dared print such material about Alderman O'Brien: It occurred to me that while it might be dangerous to call an alderman a thief in English no one could sue if a comic Irishman denounced the statesman as a thief. ... If I had written the same thing in English I would inevitably have been pistolled or slugged, as other critics were. But my victims did not dare to complain. They felt bound to smile and treat these highly libellous articles as mere humorous skits.
This Irish liquor store and bar in old Bridgeport could well have been Mr. Dooley's tavern .
James Jesse's place was at 3801 South Halsted.
Bridgeport
Yet, along with his cnt1c1sm of people like O'Brien, there is in these early pieces an understanding of the hard realities of life in Bridgeport that explains, and may even justify, a career like O'Brien's, as in the sympathetic description above of O'Brien's father and of the "lessons" learned at reform school by the young O'Brien. Similarly, in outlining the life of another notorious alderman, John Powers, Dunne takes pains to present him as the product of a difficult environment: I don't believe they was anny reason in Jawnny Powers' eddication f'r to think that he'd throw away money because iv his conscience throublin' hin. Th' place he lived in was th' toughest on earth. They was hardly a house around that didn't shelter a man that was able to go out anny night with half a brick or th' end iv a bullyard cue an' arn his daily bread. Acrost fr'm where he sold groceries was Law avnoo, a sthreet that no polisman iver enthered an' come out with a whole skin. Back iv him was Sebor sthreet, where th' Cashin twins used f'r to burn th' path-rol boxes, an' a few blocks west 'twas a sthrange night whin ye cudden't hear Chick McMillan's big revolever roarin' like a batthry iv artillry.
Dunne also points out that men such as Powers and O ' Brien found no shining exemplars of municipal virtue once they had arrived in the council. Of Powers Dooley says that he "didn't meet so manny men that'd steal a ham an' thin shoot a polisman over it. But he met a lot tht'd steal the whole West Side iv Chicago an' thin fix a gr-rand jury to get away with it." Placing the blame for municipal corruption was no easy matter. Chicago was growing at a phenomenal rate-the population was more than doubling every ten years-and the problems of the new metropolis had long been taxing the capabilities of government. Though he was as suspicious of the political establishment as of those who sought to reform it, Dunne saw very well that there was no easy way to sort through the delicately balanced mass of political interests. Mr. Dooley expressed this difficulty to Hennessy on the eve of the city council election of 18 97: 50
Chicago History
I butt up again a man on th' sthreet an' he falls again another man an' that man reels again you, Hinnissy, walkin' along th' curb, ca'm an' peaceful, an' out ye go into th' mud. I don't like Schwartzmeister-an' I don't-an' I heave a rock through his window, an' lo an' behold, I hit me cousin Mike standin' at the ba-ar takin' his quiet dhrink .... Th' crow is up in th' three, no doubt, black an' ugly, stealin' me potatoes an' makin' me life miserable with his noise, but whin I throw a club at him he's out iv th' way an' it smashes into a nest full iv eggs that some frind iv mine has been hatchin' out.
The Social Side Politics was only the most insistent preoccupation of the Bridgeport Irish. Mr. Dooley also ranged over the world of fairs and raffles, of school plays, graduations, and games, of births and deaths and marriages. \\'e see life on Archey Road in the nineties as rich, full, and closekni t. The Catholi c Church was the social center of Bridgeport and Mr. Dooley was a close observer of its colorful round of events. Here the parish fair: "Twas a g-grand fair. They had Roddy's Hibernyun band playin' on th' corner an' th' basemint iv th' church was packed. In th' baa-ack they had a shootin' gall'ry where ye got five shots f'r tin cints. Hogan, th' milkman, was shootin' whin I wint in an' iverybody was out iv th' gall'ry. He missed eight shots an' thin he thrun two lumps iv coal at th' ta-arget an' made two bull's-eyes. He is a Tipp'rary man an' th' raison he's over here is he hit a polisman with a rock at twinty ya-ards-without sights. I 'd no more thin inthered th' fair thin who should come up but Malachi Dorsey's little girl, Dalia. "Good avnin' " she says. "Won't ye take a chanst?" she says .... whin I come away I stood to win a doll, a rockin' chair, a picture iv th' pope done by Mary Ann O'Donoghue, a deck iv ca-ards an' a tidy (bear]. Th' booths was something iligant. Mrs. Dorsey had th' first wan where she sold mottoes an' babies' clothes. Next to hers was the ice crame lay-out, with th' Widow Lonergan in cha-arge .... Acrost th' hall was th' table f'r church articles, where ye cud get "Keys iv Hevin" an' "St. Thomas a Kempises" an' ros'ries. It done a poor business, they
Chicago draymen in the early 1880s. Mr. Dooley remembered that when he came to Chicago from Ireland the jobs that were open to newcomers were limited: "They was mud to be shovelled, an' dhrays to be dhruv, an' bea'ts to be walked. I chose the dhray . . . " Chi cago Historica l Society
•
Chicago History
51
Bridgeport
tell me, an' Miss Dolan was that sore at th' eyesther shtew thrade done be Mrs. Cassidy next dure that she come near soakin' her with th' "Life iv St. Rose iv Lima." 'Twas tur-r-rible. At another fair one Burke, of a neighboring parish, has an amazing run of luck at the games and chances, and only quick thinking by committee member Flaherty averts financial disaster: "Well," says Flaherty, "I'm appinted be th' parish to cut th' ca-ards with ye," he says, "whether ye're to give back what ye won or take what's left." "'Tis fair," says Burke; "an', whoiver wins, 'tis f'r a good cause." An he puts th' watches an' th' money on th' table. "High man," says Flaherty. "High man," says Burke. Flaherty cut th' king iv spades. Burke, th' robber, cut th' ace iv hearts. He was reachin' out f'r th' money, whin Flaherty put his hands over it, "\Nud ye take it?" says he. "I wucl," says Burke. "Wud ye rob th' church?" says Flaherty. "I wud," says Burke. "Thin," says Flaherty, scoopin' it in, "ye're a heretic; an' they'se nawthin' comin' co ye." Another popular Bridgeport institution was the church play, staged by the young people of the parish and eagerly attended by their elders. Mr. Dooley's reports of these plays rely for their humor on the refusal of the spectators to distinguish art from life, as with the exchange prompted by the stage plight of a disinherited French marquis, ne Dinny Hogan: Well, sir, Dinny was all broke up . "What," he says, "shall I do?" he says. "What shall I do?" he says. "What shall I do?" "Go to wur-ruk," says wan iv th' Dorgan twins in th' back iv th' hall. " I want ye to undherstand he has a good job promised to him on the ca-ars," said Mrs. Hogan, tur-rnin' round on the Dorgan twin. "'Tis ye'er own fam'ly'll be scratchin' a beggar's back whin I'm ridin' up.an' down to Mrs. Potther Pammer's without payin' no more thin how'd 'do to me own son," she says. So they thrun out th' Dorgan twin_ an' th' play wint on. When Hennessy's youngest boy graduates from parochial school, Dooley goes along to the ceremonies, which he catalogs as several musical 52 Chicago History
acts, including "Kathleen Mavourneen" on the flute and the "St. Ignatius Quartet" singing "Row, Brothers, Row" that they' d practiced "undher me window Sundah nights till I cud near sing it mesilf"; a contest between good and bad angels for the sou l of Tommy Casey, who shocks all attending by departing from the script to choose the bad; and a "thrajeedy" in which the slain prince refuses to play dead until Father Kelly threatens to excommunicate both the actor and his father, cheering wildly in the front row. The pace of life in Bridgeport quickened on holidays. Several Dooley pieces describe Christmas celebrations and Thanksgiving football games, the Memorial Day parade and the house calls of ew Year's Eve; but the most important date of the year was March seventeenth. Mr. Dooley, veteran of many Saint Patrick's Day parades in Chicago, describes the one of 1896: Displaines street ... south to Harr'son, wist to Bloo ! 'land avnoo, south-wist to Twilfth, where th' procission'll counthermarch befure th' Jesuit Church an' be reviewed be his grace th' archbishop, be th' clargy an' th' mayor an' th' board iv aldhermin. Attintion ! Carry ar-rms. Where's th' band? Officer Mulcahy, go over to Dochney's an' chop that band away fr'm th' bar. Ho!' on there, Casey don't back that big saw horse again me. Ma, look at da-da in Gavin's hack. Ar-re ye ready? Play up th' wearin' iv th' green, ye baloon-headed Dutchmin. Hannigan, go an' get th' polis to intherfere-th' Sons iv Saint Patrick an' th' Ancient Order's come together. Glory be, me saddle's slippin'. Ar-re ye ready? For-wa-ard march!
Courtship and Marriage Dunne's satire takes on a gentler tone when he turns to courtship along Archey Road. As a keen observer of the habits of his fellow Bridgeporters, Mr. Dooley knows all the signs of incipient matrimony, "as sure as I know 'tis gain' to r -rain whin me leg pains me." He offers the example of the Casey boy, lately engaged:
.
"'
Chicago Historical Society
Though not the most admired career in old Bridgeport the life of a policeman did attract many Irishmen. Here the men of the Deering Street Station present a formidable appearance for their photograph in 1872.
Chicago History
53
Bridgeport
He use to talk iv her whin he had his r-rollers [turtlenecks] on. Thin he begun to wear a white nectie an' wash his hands an' face befure supper. That's wan thing, Jawn, love does f'r a man. It makes him clane, an' marridge, conthrarywise, makes him dirty. Thin he let th' polisman on th' bate pass him without peggin' a brick-which was onusu'l. Afther a while he wint to dances, an' wan day I see him pass th' plate at early mass. Thin I knowed ....
Dunne pokes gentle fun also at the traditional Irish bashfulness and penchant for late marriages in the story of Dolan's daughter, "who was coorted be Hannigan th' fireman f'r fifteen years, an' would be coorted now if she hadn't shamed him be sindin' him a wig f'r his bald head las' Christmas." Another relationship is brought to its logical conclusion only when Father Kelly steps in and actually proposes for the tongue-tied Danny Duggan, who comes out of the ordeal "lookin' as if he was goin' to kill a Chineyman." Then there is Dacey, the plumber, "who'd niver'v marrid if he hadn't got into th' wrong buildin' whin he wint to take out a license f'r his dog, an' got a marridge license instid." Sympathetic understanding of human nature lay behind Dunne's exposure of the bumbling ways of Bridgeport lovers, and wonder at the eternal fate of the poor prompted Mr. Dooley's general pronouncement on marriage among the Irish of Bridgeport: People that can't afford it always have marrid an' always will. 'Tis on'y th' rich that don't. They niver did. That's wan reason why they're rich, too. But whin a young man is so poor that he can't afford to keep a dog an' has no more prospects thin a soundmoney dimmycratic newspaper [supporting William Jennings Bryan], he finds a girl who's got less an' proposes to her an' they're marrid at th' expinse iv th' grocers iv the neighborhood an' they live unhappy iver after, bringin' up a large fam'ly to go an' do likewise.
The True Heroes The politicians of Bridgeport were to be reckoned with, if not always respected; the police were tolerated, and only occasionally praised; 54
Chicago History
but the firemen were the undisputed heroes of Archey Road. Always Irish, firemen represented an unselfish heroism that all of Chicago admired. Their widely-publicized deeds of glory did much to counter the anti-Irish prejudice engendered in the city by a few unsavory political figures. After a fire in 1895 in which four firemen were killed, Mr. Dooley expresses the pride and regret of all Chicago: "O'Donnell, Sherrick, Downs, Prendergast," Mr. Dooley repeated slowly. "Poor la-ads. Poor la-ads. Plaze Gowd, they wint to th' long home like thrue min. 'Tis good to read th' names, Jawn. Thanks be, we're not all in th' council. ... They'se an Irishman 'r hvo on th' fire departmint an' in th' army, too, Jawn, though ye'd think be hearin' some talk they was all runnin' prim'ries an' thryin' to be cinthral comitymen . So ye wud . Ye niver hear iv thim on'y whin they die; an' thin, murther, what funerals they have!
Dooley tells several stories of heroic firemen and their legendary exploits in a predominantly wooden Chicago, where buildings were "consthructed f'r poor people out iv nice varnished pine an' cotton waste." The "black Connemara man," Shay, rescues a baby against all odds, then administers a beating to its father, who had disparaged the profession of fireman. After a career of superhuman feats Clancy, the pride of Bridgeport, runs out of luck and dies under "wan iv thim big, fine-lookin' buildings that pious men built out iv celluloid an' plasther iv Paris." Fire Chief Denis Swenie is received as visiting royalty when he returns to Archer Avenue to fight a fire in person, prompting Mr. Dooley to exclaim, "If I had a child iv me own ... I'd give him th' finest schoolin' th' land'd affoord an' thin I'd put him on th' fire departmin t."
The Dark Side Life was harsh for many in the working class immigrant community of Bridgeport. Dunne's Mr. Dooley was at his most compassionate in chronicling that hardship, and at his angriest in denouncing its cause. Dunne knew just how typ-
Both Chicago Historical Society
Denis Joseph Swenie, Chicago Fire M arsh a l from 1858 to 1903, was probably the most admired Chicago Irishman of his day- not only in Bridgeport, but throughout a city that Mr. Dooley described as constructed mostly of "nice varnished pine an' cotton waste." On the left the earnest young Swenie in the early 1850s, and then apotheosized at the hei ght of his career in 1899. ¡
Chicago History
55
Bridgeport
ical was the situation of "little Tim Clancy," an infrequent patron of Dooley's: He wur-ruks out in th' mills, tin hou1¡s a day, runnin' a wheelbarrow loaded with cindhers. He lives down beyant. Wan side iv his house is up again a brewery, an' th' other touches elbows with TwintyPercint Murphy's flats. A few years back they found out that he didn't own on'y the front half iv th' lot, an' he can set on his back stoop an' put his feet over th' fince now. He can, faith. 'vVhin he's indures, he breathes up th' chimbly; an' he has a wife an' eight kids. He dhraws wan twinty-five a day-whin he wurruks.'
Dunne was deeply moved by the seemingly irremediable destitution of the most unfortunate Bridgeporters, and he presents Mr. Dooley at his most pessimistic when on the subject of poverty: What can annywan do, I'd have ye tell me. If ye'd cut up all th' money in th' sixth war-rd in akel parts ye cudden't buy a toy dhrum apiece f' r th' vam'lies iv Bridgeport. It isn't this year or last. 'Tisn't wan day or another. 'Tis th' same ivry year an' ivry day. It's been so iver since I come here an' 'twill be so afther I'm put away an' me frinds have stopped at th' r-road house on th' way back to count up what I owed thim.
Dooley is disturbed by the inexplicable waywardness of the children of upright parents. Young Petey Scanlan "growed up fr'm bein' a curly-haired angel f'r to be th' toughest villyun in th' r-road." Even the solid, conscientious Hennessy worries about his son, as he confides to Dooley: " It ain't so much what he's doin'," Mr. Hennessy explained, "as what he ain't doin'. He ain't stayin' home iv nights, an' he ain't wurrukin'; but he does be out on th' corner with th' Cromleys an' th' rest, dancin' jig steps an' whistlin' th' 'Rogue's March' whin a polisman goes by. Sure, I can do nawthin' with him, f'r he's that kind an' good at home that he'd melt th' heart iv a man iv stone. But it's gray me life is, thinkin' iv what's to become iv him whin he gets to be a man grown."
In the end Dooley can only point to the city itself: 56
Chicago History
Sometimes I think they'se poison in th' life iv a big city. Th' flowers won't grow here no more thin they wud in a tannery, an' th' bur-rds have no song an' th' childer iv dacint men an' women come up hard in th' mouth an ' with their hands raised up again their kind.
Finley Peter Dunne used the whole of the Chicago Irish experience in his Dooley pieces for the Evening Post. He reached back on several occasions to the experience of his parents and their fellow immigrants. There are bitter memories of Ireland in the famine years, of the harrowing trip to America, and of the first hard years in the New World. Dooley remembers wryly his own dream of the United States as a land "where all ye had to do was to hold ye'er hat an' th' goold guineas'd dhrop into it"; a dream soon dissipated by the grim reality of the jobs that Chicago had to offer the newly arrived. "They wai; mud to be shovelled an' dhrays to be dhruv an' beats to be walked. I chose th' dhray; f'r I was niver cut out f'r a copper, an' I'd had me fill iv excavatin." In one of the last of the Bridgeport pieces, Mr. Dooley rang in the new year of 1898 with a wonderful analogy to life based on the construction of the great Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a project that used much Bridgeport labor in the nineties: ... 'Tis sthrange how we saw our throubles into reg'lar lenths. We're all like me frind O'Brien that had a conthract on th' dhrainage canal. He thought he was biddin' on soft mud, but he sthruck nawthin' but th' dhrift. But he kept pluggin' away. " 'Twill soften later," he says. Th' ingineers to!' him he was a fool. Twas dhrift all th' way through. He rayfused to listen. He knew he'd come to th' mud th' nex' day or th' nex' so he wint on an' fin'lly he got through an' made a good, clane job iv it. He looked back on his wurruk an' says he: "I knowed it was dhrift all th' time, but if I 'd let mesilf think that what was ahead was as har-rd as what was behind I'd thrun up th' job an' broke me conthract," he says. "I niver borry throuble," he says, "but I've had to borry money to pay me men." So it is with us. We've all taken a conthract to dig through th' glacial dhrift. We know its glacial dhrift.
We know its glacial dhrift to th' ind, but we make oursilves think 'twill come aisy wan iv these days. So we go on, with pick an' shovel, till th' wurruk is done an' we lay it down gladly.
This seemingly effortless generalizing of the Chicago Irish experience causes us to regret that Dunne did not follow his intended career in fiction, a career he repudiated after his rise to national fame as a political satirist in 1898. Perhaps, had the Spanish-American War not been fought, the slouching Hennessy boy might well have been the Studs Lanigan of his generation; and knowing Martin Dooley, we can imagine that his story would have been told, not with Farrell's bitter and brooding naturalism, but with subtlety and compassion.
A poster by WIiiiam Nicholson advertising a collection of Mr. Dooley pieces that Dunne published in 1900. The artist's monumental conception matched Mr. Dooley's enormous popularity at the time. Chi- Hl8'Drlcal Society
Chicago History
57
NORTH AVENUE v1GNETTEs
The Bookseller BY PAUL M. ANGLE
Another in a series ef short articles on the changing neighborhood ef which the Chicago Historical Society is a part.
Artie Byrne to believe that he was real, and even then you sometimes doubted it. Artie was the proprietor of the Active Book Stores, one at 102 West North Avenue, the other at 1561 North Wells Street, where it occupied an entire three-story building. The North Avenue store made an appeal of a sort for off-thestreet customers. At least the stock was classified, and a clerk or two would be on duty. At the Wells Street store off-the-street trade was discouraged, and only friends and people Artie liked were permitted on the second and third floors. To do justice to the Wells Street establishment is impossible. It must have contained at least 100,000 bound volumes, and nobody ever knew how many pamphlets, catalogs, old telephone books, advertising cards, copies of sheet music, photographs, old comic books, and comic supplements. Artie was never really interested in selling books, or so he contended. His sales pitch bore him out. Any individual book was always "terrible"; collectively his stock was "trash," which he pronounced "thrash." But buying books was a different matter. When he read of the death of a person likely to have had some books he would be on the spot within a seemly time and often as not make a deal for the lot. He had no car, but if the lot was too big for a taxi he could count on a couple of friends who had trucks. Artie always dealt in cash. He paid cash for his rent, paid his clerks in cash, and with rare exceptions, sold only for cash. At the Historical Society we could always tell when Artie was hard up. He would appear with a carton of old catalogs or other ephemera of the kind he knew YOU HAD TO KNOW
58
Chicago History
we were interested in. The lot always contained certain items we wanted, and Artie's financial distress would be ended, at least for the time being. Artie would have no telephones in his stores, and he avoided the stores themselves except for brief visits at odd hours. (He always alleged that he was evading his landlord.) If you really wanted to find Artie you had two choices: you could send him a postcard at 102 West North Avenue, or make a systematic search of the saloons and cheap restaurants of the neighborhood-the saloons in case the bookseller happened to be in the mood for beer, the restaurants in the more likely event that his thirst called for coffee, of which he drank incredible quantities. "This business," Artie told an interviewer who was doing a New Yorker Profile, "is one of the few refuges of the independent man. Bookselling is a dignified form of beggary. You can insult anybody. A man comes in and asks for a book. I may have six of them in a back room, but if I'm in a bad mood, I just look at him and tell him I haven't seen a copy in years, and I stand in the doorway to the back room, so he can't get in there and find them. When he walks out, I feel triumphant. I think to myself, 'I have outsmarted the bastard.' " Of a piece with this tale is the one that concerns the loan Artie made to a book scout. On this occasion the scout found Artie in one of his stores and selected a handful of books amounting to ten dollars. He confessed that he had no money: would Artie send him a bill? Knowing the man and liking him, Artie agreed, and also
Artie Byrne, the bookseller, in his shop about 1947. Chicago Historical Society
lent the scout forty dollars. In due time he sent a bill for fifty dollars, with a courtesy discount of twenty per cent on the entire amount. Artie always contended that he never paid his clerks more than a dollar a day, and that he hired illiterates when possible. To prove his point he would tell the story of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. It went like this, in a rich Irish brogue: "One day I went into the North Avenue store and there, under Cook Books, was The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. I told the clerk to put it under Essays, where it belonged." "\,\'ho the hell are you?" the clerk asked . "I'm only the guy that owns the joint." A week later Artie showed up again. There was The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table under Cook Books. Artie said to the clerk: "I thought I told you to put that book under Essays." "Look, mister," the clerk replied, leading the proprietor to the Essay section. "There's the copy you told me to put here, and it's still here. But since you were in I've sold six under Cook Books." "Sec?" Artie would conclude. "If that guy had been able to read I'd have lost six sales!" Artie was of medium height, thick around the middle but with a long thin face and an aquiline
nose inconsistent with his weight. His suits were always rumpled but his shirts were always clean. A bachelor, he lived in one room in a neighborhood hotel. His only diversion, aside from omnivorous reading and endless talk, was a Saturday night poker game. Rather late in life-he must have been fiftyfive at the time-Artie found a companion. Arlene-that wasn't her name but it's close-was a Eurasian girl, not beautiful, but endowed with the delicate grace that marks the mingling of Asian and European blood. They spent a couple years together, happily as far as appearances went. Suddenly Arlene left Artie for a younger man, a musician. One morning both were found dead from an overdose of drugs, whether by design or accident no one ever knew. But Artie claimed the body of the girl, who had no relatives, and saw that she was decently buried. A few years later-in 1957 to be specificArtie died, aged fifty-nine. A few friends, knowing his careless habits as far as money was concerned, began to raise a fund to cover his few debts and funeral expenses. But it was soon apparent that the fund would not be needed-the "thrash" would meet all costs and then some. Artie Byrne was an eccen.t ric all right, but he was also a gentleman. To have been his friend was my privilege. Chicago History
59
Fifty Years Ago
As recorded by newspapers in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society
1921 Dec. 2. The new Chicago telephone directory appears with the first three letters of exchange names capitalized in preparation for the" machine switching" dial system to be installed in the coming year . Subscribers arc requested to continue giving the operator the full exchange name. Dec. 3. Popular Mechanics magazine will start construction immediately of a $400,000 plant on the northeast corner of Ontario and Saint Clair streets. The site cost $100,000. D ec. 4. More than 10,000 attend a meeting of the German-American League at the Coliseum . For the first time in years German folk songs are sung in public. D ec. 15. State Street merchants report Christmas sales are twenty to thirty per cent above last year's, but lower prices leave the cash take lower. Dec. 25. Chicago's "Yuletide crime wave" crests with two murders and sixteen holdups on Christmas Eve. Tribune food editor Jane Eddington regrets in her column that there is no substitute for "that indescribable something" that brandy gives to Christmas pound cakes. Dec. 28. Alderman Anton J. Cermak leads the City Council in a 52 to 6 vote demanding that "wholesome beers and light wines" be authorized by Congress. D ec. 29. J ulius R osenwald, president of Sears, R oebuck & Co., pledges twenty million dolla rs of his private fortune to see the company thro ugh the present business depression. 60
Chicago History
1922 Jan. 1. Furtive under the eyes of numerous federal "dry" agents, Chicago kept an orderly New Year's Eve last night. Jan. 2. In a secret overnight move the Continental and Commercial banks absorb the sixty million dollar Fort Dearborn ational Bank to prevent its failure. Jan. 3. During 1921 stone-throwing boys cost the city $60,000 in street lamp globes. Jan. 4. The Jones and Laughlin Steel Co. of Pittsburgh purchases a two million dollar plant site near Gary. Jan. 12. Dry agents raid the Wind Blew Inn, well known bohemian "tea room" on East Ohio St. Four orthwestern students are among the forty patrons arrested. Jan. 13. \V. E. "Pussyfoot" Johnson, champion dry agent, leaves Chicago after an unsuccessful drive on "black and tan" resorts. He was recognized everywhere by the patch on his missing eye. JAN. 14. Mayor Thompson orders construction begun immediately on Charles H. Wacker's plan for double decking South Water Street. An afternoon tea at the Casino Club is raided by federal agents, who claim they found a truckload of "empties" on the premises. JAN. 16. The cost of living in Chicago is down to the level of 1918, twenty per cent lower than in 1920. JAN. 22. "The Sheik of Araby" heads the bestselling song list in Chicago. JAN. 23. Radio station KYW broadcasts Chicago's first regular news resume. It is an hour long and comes on at nine in the evening, following the regular eight o'clock musical program. JAN. 28. The twenty-second national auto show opens in Chicago with eighty-one different makes exhibited. The Chevrolet is the lowest priced car in the show at $525. FEB. 14. The William Wrigley, Jr. Co. announces a stock dividend of $4,700,000, creating 48,771 new shares for distribution. FEB. 24. Tribune critic Edward Moore predicts that Ruth Draper, now appearing with her monologues at the Playhouse, shows promise of stardom. FEB . 25. The Northshore Motor Club proposes vigilante action against careless drivers because of the 561 auto deaths in Chicago in 192 I.
Chicago Historical Society, Dally NOW8 Collectlon
Dec. 9, 1921. The stockyards district is in turmoil as strike riots at the yards leave two dead and more than 200 injured.
Feb. 29, 1922. "With a smile and a tear" Judie K.M. Landis leaves the federal bench after seventeen years of service. Landis will devote full tlma to his job as baseball commissioner. Ch'- Hlalorlcal Society, Dally N- Collecllon
March 15, 1922. Arson Is suspected In the •laht mitllon dollar fire that destroys an entire city block b9tween Canal and Clinton streets. The fourteen-story Burllne&on Railway Building bums from top to bottom In the early hours of the morning. Chlcogo Historical Society, Delly ,.._ Colleollon
THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY North Avenue and Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois 60614 Telephone: M lchigan 2-4600
r
OFFICERS
Andrew McNally m, President Theodore Tieken, 7st Vice-President James R. Getz, 2nd Vice-President Gardner H . Stern, Treasurer Clement M. Silvestro, Secretary and Director TRUSTEES
Bowen Blair Emmett Dedmon Stewart S. Dixon James R. Getz Philip W. Hummer Willard L . King Andrew McNally III Mrs. C. Phillip Miller
Bryan S. R eid, Jr. Nathan A. Scott, Jr. Gilbert H. Scribner, Jr. Harold Byron Smith, Jr. Hermon Dunlap Smith Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken Mrs. Philip K. Wrigley
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 are as follows: Annual, $15 a year; Life, $250 (one payment); Governing Life, $500 (one payment); Governing Annual, $100 (one payment) and $25 a year; and Patron, $1000 (one payment). Members 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 Chicago History $2.25 a copy by mail. Library subscriptions are $15 a year.
I
And the art of conversation in Chicago? Tea time at Marshall Field's, 1909. The blurring of the big hats as heads turn teils the tale.
Chicago Historical Society