Chicago History | Summer 1979 by Chicago History Museum

Chicago History SUMMER 1979

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A detail from a photograph of the Maxwell Street area, ca. 1905, now on display in the new Chicago History galleries. A review of a recent book on this neighborhood appears on page 123. CHS.

Chicago History The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society

SUMMER 1979 VOLUME VIII, NUMBER 2

Fannia Weingartner Editor

CONTEN T S

Gail Farr Casterline Assistant Editor

" RENT REASONABLE TO RIGHT PARTIES ": GOLD COAST APARTMENT BUILDINGS 1906-1929/66 by Celia Hilliard

Marcia Beales Editorial Assistant Karen Kohn D esigner Walter W. Krutz Pau l W. Petraitis Photography

AN APOLOGY TO EDWARD MENDEL: THE ORIGINAL OF LINCOLN 'S LETTER FOUND IN CHICAGO/78 JAMES T. FARRELL AND WASHINGTON PARK: THE NOVEL AS SOCIAL HISTORY /80 by Charles Fanni ng and Ellen Skerrett CARSON PIRIE SCOTT : 125 YEARS IN BUSINESS/92 by John Vinci THE CREATION OF CHICAGO 'S SANITARY DISTRICT AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE SANITARY AND SHIP CANAL/98 by Louis P. Cain PREMIERE AT THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY/111 by Marcia Beales LOOKING BACKWARD: Commodo re Barry Country Club in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin/112 by Andrew ?II. Greeley

Cove r : Tail drum emblem from the Santa Fe Railroad's " name" train , the Chief. Th e emblem can be seen in the new Chicago History galleries. CHS.

BURT BARNES EXHIBIT/ 120 THE SOCIETY/121 BOOK REVIEWS/122 NOTES / 127

Copyright 1979 by the Ch icago Historical Society Clark Street at North Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60614 Art ic les appearing in this journal are abstracted and ind exed in Histori cal Abstracts and Ameri ca : History and Lite

"Rent Reasonable to Right Parties": Gold Coast Apartment Buildings 1906-1929 BY CELIA HILLIARD

In the beginning Father didn't much like it; he felt that, in spite ef twelve rooms and five baths, it was a step down in the world to share a roef and front door with seven other families." a

Arthur Meeker, Jr., in Chicago, With Love

the first tenants moved into the new Marshall Apartments at the northwest corner of Cedar Street and Lake Shore Drive. The nine-story building, in a simple colonial style of vitrified brick, contained eight elaborately fitted apartments of about 4,000 square feet each. Rent for each unit was an unprecedented $4,200 per year, but even before the land on which the building would stand had been purchased, every apartment was spoken for by families listed in the Chicago Blue Book. Since 1882, when Potter Palmer built his baronial mansion on the newly created Lake Shore Drive, the Gold Coast had become an increasingly popular site for the homes of wealthy Chicagoans. This area is bounded by Oak Street on the south, Lake Shore Drive on the east, North Avenue on the north, and Dearborn Street on the west. As contractors filled in the swamp east of Michigan Avenue, East Lake Shore Drive acquired the same elite aura. By the time the Marshall Apartments building was ready for its first occupants in 1906, the Gold Coast was firmly established as Chicago's finest residential district. The Marshall was not the first example of multiple housing on the Gold Coast. The IN OCTOBER OF 1906

Celia Hilliard is a freelance writer with a special interest in Chicago history. 66

Ch icago History

Maison du Nord, a large rooming house in what is now the 1200 block of Astor Street, rented to fifteen boarders as early as 1896, and the Ormonde, down the block, advertised large flats "high grade in every way" with "rent reasonable to right parties." Nor was the Marshall the first to feature large rooms or expensive appointments. The Raymond, at Walton Street and Michigan Avenue, contained fourteen-room apartments and a top floor ballroom thirty-six by forty feet , and the McConnell Apartments on Astor Street offered four varieties of wood paneling and one unit with four fireplaces. All of these establishmentsand many hotel and apartments in other parts of the city-housed families of high social standing. evertheless, the Marshall Apartments set an important precedent in Chicago's residential history. Its layout, elegantly labeled in French and geared to grand-scale entertaining, set the pre-Depression standard for luxury apartments in Chicago and established its architect, Benjamin Marshall, as the city's foremost designer of apartments. Indeed, the very fact that the Marshall was built at all signaled not only the end of the Potter Palmer family's tight control of that prime strip of real estate, but reflected a fundamental change in the status of apartment houses. Formerly considered no more than a dwelling place for transients, the apartment as a luxury home for the wealthy would come into its own during the next two decades.

Gold Coa st Apartments

Fine woodwork frames a dramatic vista in William Wrigley's twenty-t wo-room duplex apartment at 1500 North Lake Shore Drive , ca 1927. Although weallhy Chicagoans stopped building castl es on Prairie Ave nu e and Washington Boulevard, they maintained their foothold In the city by moving Into luxury apartmen ts such as this on the Gold Coast . CHS.

' J hC' .\l a1,ha ll Apattme tm, al 23 (later rcn um b<:t<:cl 1100) La ke Shore Dt iH·, wa~ clc\n ih ·cl i11 th e C/11rngo I ~vnimJ!, I'o.st a, a n "u lt ra h igh cl,"' a pa1tmenl bu ildi ng" d ·,eloped " largely for entertaining purposes like the qu arters of many wealth y residents of New York." The land cost . 45, 000; the stru cture cost between 250,000 and 300,000 to build. The fl oors were of oak, and the wall were finished in Engli sh oak, m ahoga ny, and enamel. The floor plan for each apartment was a soonto-be- typi cal H -shape a nd included a twelve by twenty-five foot reception hall, a large salon,

a n o< tago na l d ining rno m , a n "cna nge1ie" (.Lft<:e11hom ·), a , c1sa 1ilc Ii brat y / l>illi atd \ / rnorn in,lf t <><>lll , tht · · la rge I, ·d rno1m, th H·c nrn id ,' H><>lll \ (a bu tler\ rc><im co uld be 1cnt ecl on the

first fl oor for a n additional twenty dollars a month), a kitchen, a pantry, a servants' parlor, a completely equipped laundry, a silver vault, cedar closets, fruit and wine closets, a cooling room, a trunk room, and five baths. One visitor, the novelist E. M. Delafield, found just the array of taps in her bathroom so bewildering that a splash of tap water turned into a "quite involuntary shower." The "ascenseur" (elevator) was Chicago History

FINISH AND APPOINTMENTS:

Thn.

apartmcnta,

which an: aboolutely fin:.

proof, are notable for the unuaual apaciouaneu

of all rooms and corridon, the abundance of clo,eta and wardrobes, and the convenience and completcneu of the aervice quartcn. Attentioo i1 drawn to the ait.c and luxurious equipment of the family bathrooms, of which

there is one for each chamber. Thc fint family chamber it IO arranged that it may be u~ aa a library, morning room or billiardroom: or, if desired by the tcn&nt, it may be arranged for Ute u a chamber only. Each apartment covers the whole Aoor, and the public au.in are entirely ,hut off from the

elevator vcatibulc of each apartment. The

room, arc finished va.riously in Engli,h oak. of

mahogany or enamel, a.nd the flooring i, oak, aelcctcd for grain.

SERVICE QUARTERS : An inspection of the plan will indicate some of the many carefully through-out device, for perfecting the convenience of apartment living. ,uch u the large capacity refrigerator, cooling room, fruit and wine dottla, ,ilvcr vault. cedar dotct&, houtcmaid't pantry, trunk room,, etc.. A completely equipped

laundry is provided on each floor. The attractivcncsa and convenience of the tcrvicc quarters a.nd the proximity of the building to surface car transportation reduce the servant problem to the minimum. The management of the building is under the direct 1upuvi1ion of the owncn and it

of the highcat clus.

A livt:ricd doorman is

in attcnd&nee all day, and the elevator attendant, arc on duty twenty-four houn a day. The elevator lobby i11 attractive and. digni6cd &nd together with the public hall, and stain, i, maintained with the utmoet a.re

Rental.,, $5,000 Ila' annum.

PLAN or:s E,TAGE.S

Benjamin Marshall 's floor plan for 1100 North Lake Shore Drive. From A lbert Pard ridge's Directory to Apartments of the Better Class along the North Side of Chicago, 1917. CHS.

decorated with French grillwork, painted panels, and beveled glass, and was operated by liveried attendants on duty twenty-four hours a day. A "completely unobtrusive freight elevator" was used as the service entrance. The first tenants included the families of Frank Frazier (a wealthy broker), Warren M. Salisbury (the president of a leather goods and rubber belting company), W. G . Beale (Robert Todd Lincoln's law partner), Cobb Coleman (heir to a prospecting fortune), Benjamin Lafon Winchell (president of the Rock Island 68

Ch icago History

Lines), Samuel Insull (president of Commonwealth Edison), Joy Monon (founder of Morton Salt), and W. J. Chalmers (a m ajor owner of the largest mining machinery works in the world). A few years later Marshall Field's sister moved in. While most of these tenants also had large suburban homes, farms, or summer "cottages" on Lake Geneva or the ew England seacoast, apartment living nevertheless altered relationships between family members, servants, and neighbors. In his memoir Chicago, With Love,

writer Arthur Meeker summarizes the sort of changes that took place after his family moved into the Marshall: For the first time in our history we found ourselves in a fiat, all on one floor, in close proximity to one another. In the beginning Father didn't much like it; he felt that, in spite of twelve rooms and five baths, it was a step down in the world to share a roof and front door with seven other families; what finally reconciled him, I believe, was that the Samuel Jnsulls, then at the peak of their prosperity, our neighbors again, were one of the families. Mother liked it very much; she said it was like living in an hotel; enjoyed exploring her kitchen, a room she'd never seen before, and took to coming in a negligee Lo the breakfast table. What was pleasanter than that tryst over coffee and bacon and eggs, with l\fichigan's waves dancing in the sun outside our east windows, and the first post on the letter-trayimagine it now!-punctually at half past eight? The result was that, from then on, we were a great deal more often together.

The success of the Marshall Apartments inspired Benjamin l\Iarshall to complete several similar projects, each on the same themespacious layouts with ever bigger rooms, more baths, more fireplaces, more elaborate kitchen equipment, and more space for servants. Exteriors also became more elaborate, with a surplus of pillars, balustrades, twisted columns, pediments, crests, and fancy stonework topped by an awkward assortment of smokestacks, elevator penthouses, pipes, and water tanks. Though never formally trained as an architect, Marshall seemed to have an instinctive sense of line, proportion, and detail. After leaving school at the age of seventeen and a hort stint as a fabric cutter and garment designer, he joined the architectural office of H. R. '\'ilson . By the time he ,vas twenty-one, he had a half imerest in the firm. ln the course of his career he designed more than haH the apartment buildings erected on Lake Shore Drive before the Depression, as well as the Blackstone, Drake, and Edgewater Beach hotels and many of the famous clubs and reslaurams within their walls. Marshall's flamboyant style enhanced the

Perhaps because he had been born wealthy hi mself, Benjamin Marshall "had a sense of how wealthy people wanted to live." Here Marshall is shown greeting another bon vivant, the Prince of Wales . Chicago Tribune.

dramatic appeal of his buildings. Colleagues recalled that he liked to drive up to a construction site in his white Packard convertible, sporting a white suit, white shoes, and Panama hat, and with two or three beautiful women on each arm. The pink stucco mansion he built in ,vilmette was equipped with many "unusual contrivances," including a satin-covered mattress floor and a goldfish pond installed in a ceiling. Another talented Chicago architect remembered, "I used to sit out in front of the Drake Hotel and watch him with his girls and his wealthy clients and wonder, 'What does he ha Ye that I don't have?'" In the years before World War I, Marshall designed 999 E. Lake Shore Drive, a ten-story building which faced the lake in two directions. Simulating the Second Empire style, the structure had reel brick spandrels, white limestone, rounded oriels, and intimate balconies. He drew the plans for the Stewart Apartments at 1200 Lake Shore Drive, which featured eighteen-room apartments of about 8,000 square feet each (including a wine cellar ten by nineteen feet) . His magnificent building at 1550 N. State Parkway provided the best view in Chicago-the lake to the east and the park Chicago History

Elaborate plasterwork crowns Willi am Wrigley's dining room at 1500 North Lake Shore Drive, ca. 1927. CHS.

to the north, and its salons and dining rooms opened into each other to create an entertainment area JOO feet wide. 'iVhile in 1899 Potter Palmer had reportedly tried to block construction of the Raymond Apartments at l\lichigan and ,valton, after his death in 1902 there was Ii ttle further opposition to multiple housing on the Gold Coast. Other prominent architects were engaged to design apartment houses too, and they created memorable spaces for both their tenants and themselves. Howard Van Doren Shaw, the Lake Forest "estate architect," completed the Elm Street Apartments at 1130 Lake Shore Drive in 1910. The apartment he designed for himself in the building featured marble floors, elaborate ironwork, Gothic and Renaissance tapestries, and a library with a sixteen-foot vaulted cei ling which was entirely lit by candles. Describing one of Shaw's interiors, Frank Lloyd Wright once remarked, "I utterly failed to imagine entering it other than in costume." " ' illiam Ernest V1Ta lker designed two buildings at 936 and 942 Lake Shore Drive (they have since been torn clown) which featured two- and 70

Chicago History

three-story units. Atop the structure at 936 he built a 40,000 rooftop "bungalow," a twelveroom hou e of white cement (probably the first penthouse in Chicago) for himself and his family. There was a vine-shaded pergola with a fireplace underneath it, and an attic beneath the sloping roof which was completely outfitted as a gymnasium. A woman guest remembered, "It was all very cool and fresh up there. You felt you were on vacation. There were no flies or piles of dirt like we have now. I went up to the attic and looked out at th e stars through oval oriel windows. It was just like Paris." Although there were at least a do1en and a half apartment buildings constructed on the Gold Coast before " 'oriel , Var I , the character of the neighborhood remained the same. Lake Shore Drive was still a two-lane avenue with gas street lamps and leafy elm trees on either side. Except in Streeterville-the section of lakeshorc east of Michigan Avenue at Oak Street-buildings were at least a block apart, heights did not rise beyond ten or twelve stories, and apartment units were, for the most part, one or two to a floor. Nevertheless, a feeling still

A traffic jam on Lake Shore Drive, 1929. To the right is the U. S. Court of Appeals building. CHS.

persisted among the older generation that even an eighteen-room apartment was somehow second best. But after the completion of the Michigan Avenue Bridge in 1920 doubled and tripled Nonh Side land values; after postwar inflation and income taxes raised the price for bricklayers, carpenters, and cooks to the point that pinched the pockets even of the rich; after promoters discovered a whole generation of widows with orth Side mansions for salethen Gold Coast apartment building became a boomtime business. One cynic ventured to guess that the area was called the Gold Coast because of the presence of so many prospectors. Once the trend accelerated, selling fever spread over the whole neighborhood. Properties changed hands by the year, by the month, by the week. James Deering died at sea in 1925, and within two years a twenty-three- tory building stood on the site of his Lake Shore Drive home. The old Chapin house at the southwest corner of Goethe and Astor streets was sold for 150,000 one April and resold for 200,000 in May. Strings of townhouses lining the neighborhood's side streets were purchased

and torn clown. A house on Cedar Street was sold for S42,500. Five months later the adjoining house was sold for $50,000. The following year the next house brought 65,000 and the one next to that $75,000. In spite of the shortage of materials which nearly doubled building costs in the 1920s, developers had located a potential gold m ine on the Drive. In the entire city 80 percent of the construction permits issued during the 1920s were issued for apartment units, but on the Gold Coast this percentage was nearly 100. By January of I 928 there were over 700 apartment units on Lake Shore Drive, representing an investment of well over $25 million. Gold Coast "prospecting" hit an all-time high when a syndicate which owned the land on Lake Shore Drive between Banks and Goethe streets announced plans to build a $15 mi llion apartment complex there pending favorable court action on some necessary property adjustments . Vlhether the judge or the economy in tervened first is not known, but the plan was never carried out. Never host to assembly-line housing, the Gold Coast featured an extreme version of every Chicago History

Gold Coast Apartments

current apartment-building trend. Apartments ranged from one to twenty-two rooms. Some, like the units at 900 N. Michigan, had big high-ceilinged rooms, though not too many of them. Sometimes lobbies were reduced to tiny reception rooms; sometimes expanded, they assumed new magnitude. The lobby at 900 N. Michigan was inspired by a dining room in a Versailles palace. The lobby at 1400 Lake Shore Drive was like the first floor of a hotel, complete with barbershop, commissary, florist, newsstand, beauty shop, restaurant, cigar store, valet service, drugstore, and gift shop (as well as a small golf course with its own full-time instructor). Uncertain about the future popularity of apartment living, the developers of the Park Dearborn at Goethe and Dearborn accepted a hotel-like design of 400 rooms with 400 baths which offered one, two, and three-room apartments. One real estate writer assured the public, "Tenants will be able to spend most of their time in the bathtubs ... for even the two-room suite has two bathrooms and we pre ume the three-room apartment has a trio of bathing boudoirs for the fresh water fans." With Gold Coast real estate at a premium, buildings were erected closer together, and the ideal of a four-sided structure which could be viewed from every angle gave way to a cheaper reality. New structures displayed "the Queen Anne front and the Betty Ann back"-while expensive stone trimmed the far;ade, the sides and back were of common red or yellow brick. An apartment hotel at 1220 N. State, for example, featured Bedford stone on the first few floors, plain stone a little farther up, and finally, as the far;ade rose beyond pedestrian vision, simple brick. Architects experimented with color. At State and Elm streets B. Leo Steif designed an eyecatching exterior. The first floor was faced with dark French blue terra cotta; the second, third, and fourth with terra cotta of a light blue green (almost robin's egg) color; from there on up 72

Chicago History

the building was constructed of delicately shaded salmon-colored brick. Eventually, buildings on upper Michigan Avenue were designed to combine shops, doctors' offices, artists' studios, dressmakers' rooms, business headquarters, and apartments, until it seemed that there wasn't a structure standing without a chic little suite hidden away in it somewhere. Everybody wanted one, and the universal popularity of apartments was made manifest in advertisements for suburban houses. "This lovely home," one advertiser boasted, "features all the comforts of a flat." In publicity brochures, the latest apartment house was often pictured rising through a mist, the photograph captioned with quotations from some great thinker. "Simple was the noble architecture," Voltaire is anachronistically quoted on the virtues of 1320 N. State. "The House reveals the Man," says Emerson of the same building. Some lesser thinkers got into the act too: "Beautiful originality rise above the mobs-not with the freak who strive for attractive shams, but with the personality of refined genuineness." All the money and ingenuity that prosperous Chicagoans had concentrated on estates with large grounds a few decades earlier was now lavished on their Gold Coast apartments. The popularity of cooperative ownership, a system whereby tenants bought their apartments (more exactly, relative shares in the building corporation), encouraged tenants to spend money expressing their personal preferences and tastes in their apartments. In a few instances groups of friends banded together to create their own apartment building. In many buildings, layouts and appointments varied from floor to floor, and sometimes different architects were brought in to design special apartments. The exterior of 1301 Astor Street is the work of Philip B. Maher, but several of its first tenants hired David Adler to design individual interiors. A woman whose family rented an apartment there during the

To the left, the dramatic entry hall of the Charles B. Goodspeed apartment, 2430 Lakeview Avenue , ca. 1927, gives a sense of the elegance of many luxurious Chicago apartments. Below, a more florid taste is evidenced in this bedroom from the Charles H. Chadwick apartment at 209 East Lake Shore Drive, ca. 1927. CHS.

Chicago History

William Wrigley at Cubs Park with Mrs. Fred Upham and Albert Lasker. CHS.

1930s recalled that "the variety was great, but too many hands on the blueprints caused problems too. You could never get cold water in the bathroom because that pipe was right next to somebody else's hot water pipe." Furnishings and materials veered toward the exotic-parquet floors inlaid with pewter, marble foyers, alabaster urns, ivory walls, oak timbers, floor to ceiling fireplaces. Architect Jarvis Hunt had a living room with rough granite walls, a twenty-foot ceiling, and a fireplace "big enough for a small oak tree as a back log." Fifteen feet above the floor hung the head of a white rhinoceros. "Shot this rhino myself," Hunt would explain, "with my pocketbook, in a taxidermist's shop." One apartment featured jungle murals and tiger skins on the floor. A woman in another had a photograph of the Taj Mahal enlarged twenty-five times and fitted into a six-foot-wide alcove. The artist Frederic C. Bartlett painted his apartment throughout with trompe l'oeil murals, including striped chairs, balconies, and 74

Chi cago Hist ory

staircases. He painted his dining room walls with a whole row of ancient busts on a Roman landscape. "I remember the first time I had dinner in that room," a guest recalled: I was staring at one of the Roman heads, and suddenly I realized the eyes were moving. That's kind o[ a shock right in the middle of soup. Then I realized it was another crick of his. There were holes bored in the walls, and that was the maid seeing whether she should pick up the plates. It didn't bother me so much because when I came in I took one o[ those painted chairs for real and dumped my coat on the floor.

Mrs. Cyrus McCormick had workmen create faces from Bible scenes on her bathroom tiles. Kate Buckingham installed an entire room from a fine old Gothic castle in her parlor. An apartment at 209 E. Lake Shore Drive contained all-over murals of centurions overlooking a Moorish city, pashas, priests, shepherds, lavishly clothed women, and a deep pool with a jewel-like bottom. Elsewhere in the same building was a master bedroom with arched windows

Gold Coast Apartments

of thick stained glass portraying Faith, Hope, Prudence, and Chastity. Twin beds were placed on an oak dias surrounded by heavy coppercolored velvet drapes, hanging candelabra, and Romanesque columns. If there was one building that seemed to epitomize the 1920s luxury apartment house, it was 1500 . Lake Shore Drive. Built on the site of the Victor Lawson* mansion at a record-high cost of $5 .5 million (not counting interiors), it included one twenty-two-room apartment, duplex units with winding staircases, two ground floor "maisonettes" with their own entrances, and a penthouse with a bell tower and a tea garden. Buyers included the William Wrigleys, the J. Russell Forgans, the George Woodruffs, and leading executives of such firms as Standard Oil, U. S. Gypsum, Peoples Gas, and the Chicago Trust Company. Observers concluded that the building "had an air of superiority baked into every brick." In an interview the building's architect, J. Edwin Quinn, recalled the start of the project: We 'flatters'-that's what they called us in those days-had plenty of competition for the good buildings. I heard about the Victor Lawson property being torn up, and I knew it would come up for sale. I talked to a guy at the bank, and he said, "There will be plenty of people after that spot. The bidding will start low, but you come up with a million dollars and it's yours." I didn't have any million dollars, but I got my friend Pete Reynolds the builder to come up on the bus and talk about it. He was leery of the deal because of the price, but I arranged ahead for the motorman to find something wrong with the bus when we got to the corner of Lake Shore and Burton, and in that extra time I gave him a big pep talk on the site.

Reynolds bought the land and resold it to a syndicate of developers (of which he was the head) to create the biggest, most ambitious apartment project on the Gold Coast. A New York con truction company was hired to build â&#x20AC;˘v ictor Fremont Lawson published the Chicago Daily News from 1876, and was its editor from 1888 until his death in 1925.

it, a New York real estate firm was hired to advise on selling and managing the apartments, and a New York architect was called in to advise on the design. "That was the thinking at the time," Quinn remembered, "anybody from New York is better than somebody in Chicago. So they paid New Yorkers money to get involved, and then we home-grown fellows showed them how to turn that whole design around and make more money on it." From the start of the project the participants tried to make money and ended up spending it instead. The wreckers intended to clear their part of the fortune by selling the brickwork of the Lawson house for 20Â˘ a brick. But when they started to demolish the walls, they found the bricks were set in imperishable cement, and the potentially profitable structure had to be blown up with dynamite. The architects didn't make any money either. "The fee was just based on putting up the building," explained Quinn. It did not include the custom arrangements and designs expected by owners who purchased co-ops before construction started. Quinn continued: They say we're all just glorified draftsmen, the real architect is the client's wife. Boy, if you don't think you don't get sour on women. I had to allow for them to change their minds sixteen times before I let a painter or a plasterer touch the place. They'd want a vent pipe here, an outlet there, next day it was something different. There is almost nothing worse than a babe who is married to a guy with a lot of money. And the men weren't that great either. A banker was taking an apartment in that building and wanted a choice o[ layouts. I worked hard on some sketches and brought them over before the weekend. He went on a boat trip with some of his high class friends, and when he got back he told me the sketches blew out to sea and could I do another set. I said no, I could not.

The neighbors were sometimes as troublesome as the clients. The townhouses of Colonel Robert l\IcCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and of a neighbor, Bertha Baur, were directly behind the rising apartment structure. A multi-storied garage with two spaces per apartment was going up at the rear of the building, Chicago History

Before the era of Gold Coast apartment building was in full swing, much of the area appeared like this section of Lake Shore Drive in 1919 looking north from Elm Street. CHS.

looming right over the alley. Quinn reminisced: I was already seven stories up on the building when Colonel McCosmic-that's what I called himdecides the garage is spoiling the atmosphere in his garden. Bertha Baur joined up with him, and they tried to get the thing torn down. Garages were considered so low class then. Nobody wanted the noise and the gasoline pumps near their living room .... I finally called Bill Wrigley and said, "Say, your friend the Colonel doesn't want you to have space in the building for your cars." "The hell he doesn't," Wrigley said and the problem got solved.

Despite the setbacks, 1500 N. Lake Shore Drive emerged as a premier Chicago apartment house. "It's still the most beautiful apartment building in Chicago," says Quinn. "It's the most beautifully made. When you work with people, you ask them what work they like to do. Because then it's fun, it's not work. The moldings, the woodwork, everything is first class. I found a couple of Italians who just lived to make pictures in plaster. The leaded copper downspouts, the ironwork, that bronze lantern at the door-they were all made by people who loved their work and they're 76

Chicago History

more beautiful now than they were fifty years ago." The interiors matched the fine exterior. Tenants imported a wealth of decorative materials including Italian murals, Gothic organ lofts, and paneling from Continental castles. William Âˇwrigley's twenty-two-room duplex in the building was one of the most glamorous apartments ever designed in Chicago, a masterpiece of craftsmanship with moldings, cornices, carved arches, built-in glass cases, and parquet floors. The dining room was designed to seat the twenty-two-member Cubs team. Even the master bathroom had an elaborately plastered ceiling, a glittering chandelier, and carved woodwork around the medicine cabinet. A second-floor sauna kept Wrigley tanned all year round. "He paid 13,000 to some interior decorator for an old pot-bellied stove too," Quinn recalled. "He was a very romantic guy, and when he did something he went all out." But with the stock market crash of 1929 the era of "going all out" came to a famous and rapid close. Buildings under construction on the Gold Coast were completed, but projects

Lake Shore Drive appeared much as it does today in this 1928 photograph looki ng north fro m Oak Street. CHS.

still in the planning stages were scrapped. Mortgages were foreclosed, and co-ops reverted to rentals. Some apartments were broken up into smaller units. Benjamin Marshall was forced to sell 1100 N. Lake Shore Drive to his tenants for Âˇ 10 and their agreement to assume two years of back taxes and a mortgage of S.225,000. But though the Depression years and World 'iVar II put an encl to Gold Coast "flatting," almost a:ll of the early apartment houses have survived. The building at 1100 N. Lake Shore Drive is a regrettable exception . But much more than the oversized, overstuffed mansions which preceded them, the Gold Coast apartment building of this era have retained, through significant social and economic changes, their aesthetic value and their enduring romantic appeal.

Sel ected Sources Various documents in the Cook County, Illinois Recorder's office. Interview with J. Edwin Quinn, architect. NlWSPArERS: the real estate columns of the Chicago Tribune between the years 1900 and I 930. Archileclllral Forum. September, 1930 (a special number on apartment houses). The Chicagoan . A series entitled "Home Suite Home" beginning in the November 23, 1929 issue.

The Chicago Blue Book of Selected Names of Chicago and Suburban Towns . The years 1906 through 1916. Chicago: The Chicago Directory Company, 1905-1915 . Higgins, Henry . "The Apartment of J\lr. Howard Van Doren Shaw." House Beautiful, January 1916. Leonard, John W., ed. Who's Who in Chicago: The Book of Chicagoans . Chicago: A. N. ;\larquis & Co ., 1905. ~leekcr, Arthur. Chicago, With Love: A Polite and Personal History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955 . ~loulton, Robert H. "A 40,000 Bungalow on the R oof of a Chicago Apartment House." Architectural Record, August 1917. Pardridgc, Albert J. Directory to Apartments of the Better Class Along the North Side of Chicago. Chicago : A. J. Pardridgc and H. Bradlc)', 1917. A Portfolio of Fi11e Apartment Homes. Chicago: Baird & \l'arner, Inc., 1928. Randall. Frank A. History of the Deuelopment of Building <:o nslruction in Chicago . Urbana: UnivcrsiLy of Illinois Press,

1949.

Chicago History

An Apology to Edward Mendel: The Original of Lincoln's Letter Found in Chicago "The Imagemakers: Portraits of Lincoln in the 1860 Campaign'' by Harold Holzer,published in Chicago History (Winter 1978-1979), brought prooffrom members of the Mendel family that Abraham Lincoln did indeed write Edward Mendel on June 8, 1860. Holzer wrote that " the original letter has never been found," and suggested that "Mendel may have improvised the endorsement from Lincoln" to justify the price for his lithographs of the presidential candidate. In response to a letter from l\Iendel's grandson, l\Ir. Claire Mendel, the editor, accompanied by Lincoln expert Ralph Newman, paid a visit to the Chicago office of l\Ir. Henry F . Vallely, a great-grandson o( [endel, where she was shown the original of Lincoln's letter to the distinguished lithographer. The date of her visit was June 8, 1979-119 years to the day since Lincoln wrote to thank l\Iendel for his "truthful Lithograph Portrait of myself." Harold Holzer has expressed his delight at hearing of this, to him, new piece o( evidence. Claire Mendel supplied us with the following biographical sketch of his grandfather. A Chicagoan by birth, Mr. Claire l\Iendel is an attorney who has lived and worked in diverse places, including Chicago, Paris, and New York. He has been a resident of Florida since l 929. IN THE ARTICLE,

Edward Men del: Artist and Citiz en BY CLA IRE MENDEL

pioneer, lithographer and inventor, was born in Berlin, Prussia, June 24, 1827. Âˇw hile receiving his classical education he became interested in lithography, then still in the early stages of its development, and his next few years were devoted to learning the principles and acquiring the skills of that art. In 1847 Germany was on the verge of a revolution and the outlook for a young man about to embark on a new career was rather dim. Since boyhood Mendel had been fascinated by tales of the abundance and wealth of the United States and of the unlimited opportunities awaiting immigrants to that country. So at the age of twenty he made the monumental decision to seek his fortune there. EDWARD MENDEL,

Ch icago History

At first l\Ienclel settled in Cincinnati, but, believing that the Great Lakes region had a beuer potential, he moved to Chicago and by 1853 was firmly established at 179 Lake Street as a lithographer, engraver, and map maker. On September 23, 1861 he married Sarah Ann Joy and through the years he became an indi spensable helpmate. They had two sons, Edward, my father, and Albert. As Chicago grew, Mendel's business flourished and by 1869 he was occupying the upper floors o( the First National Bank Building at the southwest corner of State and \Vashington street . He wa at this location when the building was wholly consumed in the great fire of 1871. There was no insurance, as the building suppo eclly was fireproof, so his loss was complete, an adversity suffered in common with hundreds of others. His son, Albert, once described to the writer how his father came home in a carriage bearing the firm's books which he had managed to rescue from the flames. l\Iendel set up temporary headquarters at 22nd and State streets, and with hard work and a modicum of good fortune soon recovered his previous po ition, moving to more spacious quarters in the Times Building at \Vashington Street and Fifth Avenue. It was during this period that he invented an improved ink for printing protective tints on commercial blanks (U.S. Patent Office 1878-pa tent o. 216,625). Iendel's Protective Tint Paper, as it was called, provided an unrivaled means o( detecting alterations of checks, drafts and other commercial instruments and thus offered an invaluable safeguard against fraud. His stature as a lithographer secured Mendel access to some o( Europe's leading museums and earned him permission to execute lithographic reproductions of the most important masterpieces in their collections. His reproductions of priceless art found their way into the homes of people of modest means and helped foster their

Lincoln's letter to Edward Mendel was badly damaged during the Chicago Fire. Claire Mendel.

appreciation of the aesthetic. But Mendel was more than an artist and successful businessman. A man of broad interests, he devoted considerable attention to the issues of his day. He was widely respected for his candor and his views were sought by influential contemporaries, including his fellow countryman, Carl Schurz, who also had left Germany during the Revolution of 1848, and whom he met for the first time in 1857 when the latter was the Republican candidate for lieutenant-governor of Wisconsin. Both later became friends of Abraham Lincoln, and both received offers of a foreign mission from the president. Schurz accepted the post of Minister to Spain, but Edward Mendel was forced to decline because of the demands of his varied business interests. During the Civil War Mendel helped raise funds for the construction and maintenance of a permanent Home for Sick and Disabled Soldiers of the Union Army, contributing facsimiles of the Emancipation Proclamation which were sold for two dollars a piece. He showed a keen interest in civic affairs and supported a number of charities, including the Chicago Exchange for \Vomen's Work on whose board his wife served. In 1883 Mendel contracted Bright's disease and on April 4, 1884, he died. The following day an article on the front page of the Chicago Times paid tribute to the qualities of this man

A bust of Edward Mendel by Leonard W. Volk. Claire Mendel.

who early in life had perceived that success lies in untiring diligence tempered by calm judgment and controlled by principles of uncompromising integrity. As the article noted: The deceased was a man of unquestioned integrity and noted for his straightforward and honorable business methods. He was thoroughly devoted to his business, and oscillated between his home and his office with the regularity of a pendulum.

The building at State and Washington where Mendel had his offices until 1871. Claire Mendel.

Chicago History

James T. Farrell and Washington Park: The Novel as Social History BY CH ARLES FANNING AND ELLEN SKERRETT

James T. Farrell celebrates his seventy-fifth birthday this year. Perhaps the most fitting epigraph for his lifelong work-the recreation in fiction of the (( common life)) of Chicago)s South Side Irish-is Danny OJNeiWs comment in My Days of Anger (7943)) al didnJt invent Chicago. Fm only trying to describe Chicago as I know it.JJ

are specialthey have lived twice: once in their own guise, in the streets and apartments of their community, and again in the thousands of pages of fiction that James Thomas Farrell has created in the course of the past fifty years. Washington Park and its environs have been the source and setting for a major portion of this writer's remarkable body of work, which constitutes one of the most sustained productions in twentieth century America of fiction in the realistic tradition. James T. Farrell was born on the South Side on February 27, 1904. He left Chicago in 1931, firmly committed to the "lifework" that he himself has defined as "a panoramic story of our days and years, a story which would continue through as many books as I would be able to write." Since then, although he has lived mostly in Paris and New York, Chicago has continued periodically to fire his imagination. Like James Joyce, who boasted from his self-imposed exile in Europe that a tourist could negotiate Dublin THE PEOPLE OF WASHINGTON PARK

Charles Fanning, who teaches English at Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts, is the author of Finley Peter Dunne and Mr. Dooley: The Chicago Years, which won the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize awarded by the Organization of American Historians in 1979. Ellen Skerrett has researched the history of Irish parishes in Chicago under a Youthgrant from the National Endowment for the Humanities . 80

Ch icago History

with a copy of Ulysses as guide, Farrell has made good use of the perspective on his native city to be gained by distance. As a result, within his large and varied oeuvre (which fills, to date, ome fifty-two volumes) there is no fuller, more accurately detailed, or more compassionate creation than Chicago's South Side. Âˇw ashington Park emerges in Farrell's fiction as a realized world, as whole and coherent as Joyce's Dublin or William Faulkner's northern Mississippi. Running like mountain ranges through Farrell's twenty-two novels and 250 short stories are four major fictional cycles: the Studs Lanigan trilogy, the O 'Neill-O'Flaherty pentalogy, the Bernard trilogy, and, in progress since I 958, the Universe of Time series, of which eight volumes of a heroic projection of thirty have been published so far. Our focus here will be the first two cycles, which make up what we call the "Washington Park novels": Young Lanigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lanigan (1934), and Judgment Day (1935); A World I Never Made (1936), No Star is Lost (1938), Fath er ancl Son (1940), My Days of Anger (1943), and The Face of Time (1953). By focusing on these eight novels, we h0pe to suggest an added dimension to the accomplishment of this son and grandson of Irish Catholic teamsters. Farrell is, of course, first and foremost an American realist-fiercely and scrupulously honest, immune to sentimentality, and pioneering in his commitment to the serious literary consideration of the "common life" of urban working- and middle-class communities. At the

A lazy game of croquet whiles away the day in Washington Park around the turn of the century. Photo gift of Rand McNally & Co., CHS.

same time, and in addition to their undisputed value as literature, we suggest that the \,Vashington Park novels can be read as social history, corroborating and clarifying more traditional sources of information about Chicago neighborhood life in the early twentieth century. Through his careful, detailed presentation, Farrell demonstrates that Washington Park is a world in itself, with four clear reference points like the markings on a compass: the Street, the Park, the Church, the Home. i\Iuch more than simply a locale for unsupervi eel leisure time, the Street and the Park emerge in Farrell's fiction a muLUally exclusive choices for the city child. Each represents a possible way of growing up, and each has its

ideal models to engage a child's imagination. In the course of the Washington Park novels, Farrell depicts this powerful opposition in the contrasting development of the two young protagonists, Studs Lanigan and Danny O'Neill. The Street is a destructive element, characterized by gang life with its brutalization of the finer instincts and its pressures to conform: to fight, to drink, and to dissipate time and energy in order to be "strong, and tough, and the real stuff." The center of street life in \Vashington Park is Charley Bathcellar's poolroom on 58th Street near the "L" station: its heroes are the gamblers, drinkers, and loafers who congregate there. The Park, on the other hand, is a creative Chicago History

... The tracks of the Cottage Grove Avenue streetcar line and the Jackson Park elevated station at 63rd and Cottage Grove are visible in this view of one of the major business streets serving Washington Park, 1930. CHS.

and liberating element, offering release from the disorder of street life and the confinement of the home. The center of the park is the athletic field, which to the city child is a kind of paradise-a lined-out grassy place where rules are clear and enforced, and success and failure are unambiguous. Its heroes are sports figures, from park league stars to the Chicago White Sox, the pride of the South Side. Danny O'Neill, after watching a no-hitter pitched by the White Sox's Ed Walsh, chooses the Park as his milieu, resolving to become a professional baseball player. He practices by the hour-mostly alone-and devises elaborate games with penny baseball cards. Baseball is at once the most beautiful sport to watch and one of the least team-oriented of team sports. Thus it is not surprising that it so fascinates the young boy who is something of a lonely dreamer, and in whom the detachment of a budding artist is evolving. It is no more surprising that Studs Lonigan chooses the Street. A normally inquisitive boy, 82

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he shows signs of intelligence, even imagination, in the early scenes of Young Lanigan. And yet he is weak-willed and easily led, and he assumes the facile and corrupting ''tough guy" values of the street-corner society to which he is drawn after graduation from eighth grade. He joins the 58th Street Gang and takes as his models the hustlers of the poolroom and the gangsters of the silver screen. But, significantly, the recurring dream of Studs's short, unhappy adulthood is of his one afternoon in the park with Lucy Scanlan during their eighth-grade summer. So the opposition of Street and Park is central to Farrell's delineation of the complex mixture of character and environment that brings Danny to his vocation as an artist and Studs to his grave at the age of twenty-nine. For Farrell's Irish Catholic characters, the familiar world is an even smaller unit than the neighborhood of Washington Park-it is the parish. Farrell's presentation of the Catholic Church and parish is crucial to his full evocation of what life was like for the South Side

Irish. Moreover, his depiction of urban Catholic culture was among the first such efforts in American literature. The parish provided continuity with Ireland on the one hand and help in adjusting to America on the other. And it provided spiritu al guidance and solace for its members. Catholicism remained the tacitly accepted center of life for immigrants such as Mary and Tom O 'Flaherty (Danny O 'Ne ill's grandparents) and in varying degrees for their American-born descendants. Studs Lonigan and Danny O'Neill go different ways in their attitude toward the religion in which they were raised and educated. For all his flirtations with street life, Studs remains a conventional Catholic, never questioning the teachings and prohibitions of the Church, and reacting typically right up to his death. Indeed, when Studs tries to pull his sinking life together he does so by joining parish organizatiom; his fevered deathbed dreams reveal him as a believer in heaven and hell and the Catholic way of deciding who goes where. With his intelligence and artistic bent, Danny O'Neill's reactions to the Church are more complex. As a sensitive, highly imaginative child, he is terrorized by the fear of hell instilled in him by his family and the nuns of Crucifixion School. Later, he tries to force himself into a vocation in the priesthood in order to please his grandmother and the nuns. Yet there are positive aspects to Danny's exposure to Catholic culture. His seventh-grade nun is the first person to push him toward an intellectual life, and some of his priest-teachers at St. Stanislaus High School encourage him further toward learning and writing. Catholicism provides Danny with models of educated and dedicated men and women; in addition, it gives what is unavailable to him el ewhere-a sense of order, of historical continuity, and of mystery. Thus, the Church remains a powerful presence throughout these novels, from Studs's graduation from St. Patrick grammar school in Young Lanigan to the funeral mass for Jim O'Neill at the end of Father and Son.

The novelist's parents, James Francis Farrell and Mary Daly, photographed around the time of thei r marriage in 1897 or 1898. Helen Farrell Dillon.

Chicago History

KEY 1. O'Flaherty apartment, 4700 block of Indiana Ave. 2. O'Flaherty apartment, 50th St. and Calumet Ave. 3. O'Flaherty apartment, 5137Â˝ Prairie Ave. 4. O'Flaherty apartment, 57th St. and Indiana Ave. 5. O'Flaherty apartment, 5816 Â˝ South Park Ave. 6. O'Neill apartment, 59th St. and Calumet Ave. 7. Patrick Lonigan 's first building, 58th St. and Wabash Ave. 8. Patrick Lonigan's second building, 58th St. and Michigan Ave. 9. "St. Patrick's Church" [St. Anselm 's) , 61st St. and Michigan Ave. 10. "Crucifixion Church" [Corpus Christi], 49th St. and South Park Ave. 11. The University of Chicago area .

The South Side neighborhood ca lled Washington Park encompasses the streets and parkland from 51 st Street south to 63rd Street, and from Cottage Grove Avenue west to what is now the Dan Ryan Expressway at Wentworth Avenue . First settled by railroad and stockyards wo rkers around 1865, the area went through several bu ilding booms before World War I. The first boom followed the announcement in 1869 that the South Park Commission had bought land in the area and planned to lay out the necklace of greenery that was to make it so attractive-Garfield Boulevard , Washington Park , the Midway Plaisance, and Jackson Park. In 1893, in anticipation of the World 's Columbian Exposition , the elevated railroad line was extended from 84

Chicago History

Garfield Boulevard (55th Street) south to 63rd Street and east to Jackson Park. This linked the whole area with downtown Chicago, making Washington Park convenient to commuters and thereby spurring a second building boom . As late as 1893 there was still much open space and a country flavor to the area : south of Garfield Boulevard, Indiana Avenue was a pretty country road through a scrub oak grove, where farmers in town for the fair could set up camp and graze the ir horses . The th ird building boom came in 1906 when the Washington Park Race Track south of 61 st Street was closed , dismantled, and the land carved into lots for apartment buildings. By 1915 Washing ton Park was a completely built up neighborhood with its own food

stores, shops, theaters, restaurants, and saloons on four separate business streets : Garfield Boulevard (55th Street) , and 58th , 61 st, and 63rd streets. The area's first res idents had been mostly Protestants of Engl ish or German descent, with a few Irish famil ies along the western border. They were followed in the 1880s and 1890s by Jewish and more Irish families ; for both of these Wash ington Park represented a step up from the working-class neighborhoods near the Chicago River where many of them had first settled. It was in Washington Park that James T. Farrell attended St. Anselm 's grammar school , and it was this neighborhood which formed the setting for many of his novels.

Farrell and Washington Park

After the Street, the Park, and the Church, the fourth cardinal point in the world of ·washington Park is the Home, which for most residents of the neighborhood meant, and still means, apartment life. Through the three main families of his Washington Park novels, Farrell describes a range of South Side styles of living, from the struggling O'Neills to the comfortably middle-class Lonigans, with the O'Flahertys fluctuating somewhere in between. Their homes and home lives are depicted in meticulous clay-by-day detail, recording for posterity how ordinary people lived in Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s. The O'Flaherty family's move from an immigrant neighborhood near Blue Island Avenue to a "big apartment" in the 4700 block of S. Indiana Avenue was typical of the route taken by thousands of upwardly mobile Chicago Irish. In telling the story of the O 'Flahertys, Farrell documents the means by which the majority of marginally middle-class families got ahead-pooling resources. Young people li ved at home, contributing their earnings to the family until they married. By the time old Tom O'Flaherty retires from his job as a teamster his children-Al, Ned, Margaret, and Louise-are earning enough to maintain a decent standard of living. The O'Flaherty apartment on Indiana Avenue is situated in "a good neighborhood," Grand Boulevard, located just north of \\Tashington Park. In such a place the O'Flahertys qualified as "steam heat Irish," a description compounded of jealousy mingled with derision. It is to this apartment on Indiana Avenue that five-year-old Danny O'Neill comes to live with his grandparents in 1909 because his father doesn't earn enough money to support the growing O' eill family. In 1911 the O'Flahertys move three blocks south, to an apartment at 50th Street and Calumet Avenue near "Crucifixion Church and School" (Farrell's name for the Corpus Christi parish complex at 49th Street and Grand Boulevard [later South Parkway], where Danny

O'Neill begins his education).* The family moves again in 1912, to 5137 ½ S. Prairie Avenue, one block south in the same parish. The O'Flahertys live on Prairie Avenue until the conclusion of No Star Is Lost in the spring or summer of 1915, when they move once more-to 57th Street and Indiana Avenue in "St. Patrick parish" in Washington Park. On moving day, walking along 58th Street for the first time, eleven-year-old Danny O 'Neill is challenged by two older boys who are checking him out as a newcomer to their territory. Their names are Johnny O'Brien and Studs Lonigan. In 1918, Jim and Lizz O'Neill, Danny's parents, move their family from a frame cottage at 45th and Wells streets to an apartment building at 58th and Calumet Avenue. In the opening page of Father and Son Jim surveys his new apartment, which, unlike the cottage, has "a bathroom inside, running hot and cold water, steam heat, gas and electricity." The O 'Ne ill fami ly finally seems to be out of the woods, and Jim is proud to have caught up with his wife's family: Lizz's parents, the O'Flahertys, live only a block away . By 1918 the O'Flahertys have made their last move south-to 5816½ South Park Avenue (now Dr. l\Iartin Luther King, Jr. Drive). The view over " 'ashington Park makes this their most attractive apartment. Here-as reflected in the major action of Father and Son and My Days of Anger-Danny O'Neill becomes an adult. He attends "St. Stanislaus" High School, graduating in 1923, and takes pre-legal courses at "St. Vincent's" night school. Finally he enrolls at the University of Chicago, just across \Vashington Park, but an intellectual world away from South Park Avenue. (These steps parallel Farrell's own education at St. Cyril College, the night school at DePaul University, and the University of Chicago.) And most important for his growth, Danny experiences the

"Farrell himself attended the Corpus Christi school from 1911 to 1915. Chicago History

Farrell and Washington Park

deaths of his father in 1923 and his grandmother Mary O'Flaherty in 1927. Eventually he decides to leave Chicago for New York and a writing career. Farrell's beautifully structured five-volume narrative of Danny O'Neill's coming of age is a moving "portrait of the artist as a young man" and one of the first American portraits of a young artist emerging from a Catholic workingclass environment. In this respect, then, the O 'Neill-O'Flaherty series is a pioneering accomplishment of the first order. In the O'Neill-O'Flaherty novels, Farrell chronicles the migratory patterns of a segment of Chicago's Irish community. In Studs Lanigan, he documents the response of some Irish families to the "Great Migration" of blacks to the South Side. Farrell's treatment of this important event provides a more specifi<: example of his particular method of blending history and fiction. The South Side began to change during World War I when thousands of black people moved north to Chicago from the South, both in search of jobs and to escape Jim Crow laws. At first these migrants settled in the clearly defined "Black Belt" that stretched south along both sides of State Street from the old black ghetto around 16th Street. In 1910, when blacks constituted two percent of the city's population, the center of black Chicago had been 31st and State streets. As their numbers grew, blacks moved east and south from the increasingly congested Black Belt into adjoining neighborhoods which had been, up to then, entirely white. The terrible race riots of July 1919 were the first overt and unignorable sign of the tensions created by this movement. New neighborhood groups were formed and old ones redirected for the purpose of keeping blacks out of white neighborhoods. Blacks had lived in Âˇw ashington Park as early as the 1880s, but until the twentieth century they had been confined to the area west of State Street, and eventually State came to be considered a "natural" boundary line between 86

Chicago History

A shock of curly black hair and a serious expression distinguish the young Farrell in this family snapshot taken around 1945. With him are his mother, brother, brother-in-law, and nephews. Helen Farrell Dillon .

Farrell and Washington Park

the races. But by 1915 blacks had begun to settle in apartments south of Garfield Boulevard and east of State Street. Neither vigilantism, riots, nor local neighborhood action could divert the course of the expanding Black Belt. The whites of Grand Boulevard and Washington Park, confused and frightened by what they saw as a threat to their established way of life, elected to flee wholesale. Many moved east to Hyde Park, hoping (not without cause) that the University of Chicago would help shelter them from integrated living. Others went south and east to the newer and somewhat fancier area known as South Shore, which boasted a country club and proximity to Lake Michigan. In the wake of this mass exodus, black people moved into the old neighborhoods. The census figures are dramatic: in 1920 the Washington Park area had 38,076 residents, 15 percent of them black; in 1930, 92 percent of the area's population of 44,016 was black. Equally dramatic are the figures for the smaller square of territory bounded by Garfield Boulevard (55th Street), 59th Street, State Street, and South Park Avenue, within which the fictitious O'Neills, O'Flahertys, and Lonigans lived in 1920. At that time, this area housed 11,825 whites and 848 blacks; by 1930 there were 426 whites and 14,475 blacks. In a 19-18 article, "Testimony on Censorship," Farrell replied to the critics of his explicit rendering, in the Studs Lanigan trilogy, of the fears and prejudices of Washington Park residents: a number of people who had lived in this neighborhood, say, as far back as 1916, when Studs Lanigan began, felt that they had become setlled for life, and they did not realize that under their feet the growth of Chicago, the change of Chicago, was going on, and this whole neighborhood wa going to change, and all that they felt secure was going to crumble . .. . I attempted to register that change more directly in terms of the reactions of the characters to it. Those reactions were not exactly correct in terms of any clear analysis of why the change was, but it was their ideas. For instance, the most common Yiew in white neighborhoods is that Jewish people and colored people caused the change,

so that it exacerbated prejudice . So that is put down plainly and directly in the book.

As the trilogy opens, Studs's father, Patrick Lonigan, sits on the back porch of his home in the 5700 block of South '\Vabash Avenue on a June evening in 1916. Looking around, he finds that life is good. His business as a painting contractor is booming; soon he'll be worth "a cool hundred thousand berries." He owns his own building in this respectable middleclass neighborhood, and has been here since before his son's birth. His pleasant associations with the area go back even further; among his most cherished memories is one of a Sunday afternoon while he was courting his wife, when he had rented a buggy at no small expense and "they had driven way out south," to find that "Fifty-eighth Street was nothing but a wilderness," and "it was nearly all trees and woods out here." He looks back with self-satisfaction on his childhood as the son of "pauperized greenhorns" from Ireland; like Tom and Mary O'Flaherty, Patrick Lonigan had grown up near what Finley Peter Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" called "Archey Road," located in the heart of Bridgeport. The only one of his brothers and sisters to become successful-an outcome he attributes to persistence-Patrick also recalls his days as "a young buck in Canaryville" (the neighborhood around St. Gabriel Church at 45th Street and Lowe Avenue) . Like the O'Neills and O'Flahertys, he had made a series of moves south before ending up in Washington Park as a prosperous homeowner. This evening's occasion, Studs's graduation from St. Patrick grammar school, completes Lonigan's happiness and our picture of his situation: he is a Catholic family man and supporter of his parish institutions, a typical middle-class Chicagoan whose success a!'ld identity are embodied in his position and property in St. Patrick parish, Washington Park. But Patrick Lonigan is far from secure. Even on this happy evening, his complacent reverie Ch icago History

Farrell and Washington Park

A crowd armed with bricks during the 1919 race riot. Minutes after this photo was taken a black man was stone d to death by the mob. Photo by Jun Fujita. Gift of Mrs. Jun Fujita, CHS.

is interrupted by the thought that the family would have to be moving soon. When he'd bought this building Wabash Avenue had been a nice, decent, respectable street for a self-respecting man to live with his family. But now, well, the niggers and kikes were getting in, and they were dirty, ... And when they got into a neighborhood property Yalues went blooey. He'd sell and get out ... and when he did, he was going to get a pretty penny on the sale.

As the no\'el continues, signs of unrest grow as the ethnic and racial makeup of Washington Park changes. Old man O'Brien predicts as early as 1916 that "one of these days, we're gonna have a race riot." When the riots come in July 1919, Studs and his 58th Street Gang roam the border streets between their turf and the newest black areas near Garfield Boulevard. In search of blacks to avenge the death of a white 88

Ch icago History

boy from 61st Street, they find only a single ten year old, whom they strip and terrorize. Another sign of the times is the repeated bombing of the home of Abraham Clarkson, "the leading colored banker of Chicago" (modeled a(ter Jesse Binga, the first black in the 5900 block of South Park Avenue) and an earnest, contributing member of St. Patrick parish. Partly because he has worked so hard to get there, Patrick Lonigan is unwilling to leave ,vashington Park, despite the steady movement of blacks into the area from the north and west, and the equally steady exodus of his friends. In 1922 the family moves one block east to a new building on Michigan Avenue, and Patrick Lonigan digs in his heels-this is his last move, he contends, and rejects a $90,000 offer for his building, even though his daughter declares

Farrell and Washington Park

that "the best people ... are moving over to Hyde Park or out in South Shore. Soon," she says, ''I'll be ashamed to admit I live around here." What follows now in the lives of the Lonigan family is based in large measure on what in fact happened in the parish of St. Anselm, where Farrell spent his childhood. Bounded by 57th Street, 63rd Street, State Street, and St. Lawrence Avenue, St. Anselm had been organized in 1909 by R ev. Michael S. Gilmartin in the new residential district adjoining Washington Park. Within a year, the Irish-born priest had financed the construction of a combination church-school-parish hall, rectory, and convent. As his parish grew, Father Gilmartin began to save for a new church, but by l 924, when ground was finally broken, many of his parishioners had already moved farther south. Between I 925 and I 930 enrollment in the parish school dropped from 400 to I 00. In 1932 Father Gilmartin was transferred to another parish while the order of the Divine vVord Fathers assumed the care of St. Anselm's, which soon became a thriving black parish. In its reincarnation in the Studs Lonigan series this course of events is used to depict the feelings of a man like Patrick Lonigan, who once believed that Washington Park would be his last home in Chicago, and in his fictional rendering of this complex and sensitive historical situation Farrell contributes much to our understanding of the roots of interracial tension in Chicago following World War I. In the book, Father Gilhooley has decided to build St. Patrick's Church on the corner of 61st and M.ichigan. The pastor has assured his parishioners that Michigan Avenue will become "a boulevard straight through, " and Lonigan believes tha t the new church will keep the neighborhood white and double the value of his building a t the same time. Two years later, Stud attends a fund-raising meeting for the new church, which is still being seen as the potential salvation of the neighborhood. ow

that the present buildings are free of debt, the parishioners of St. Patrick parish are urged to contribute to a church that will be "one of the most beautiful . . . in this city," and "the fondest dream of your pastor." Around this time, Studs and some of his friends hear a lecture at the Bug Club (Washington Park's answer to London's Hyde Park Speakers' Corner) on the inevitability of black migration to the South Side of Chicago as an "outgrowth of social and economic forces ... a pressure stronger than individual wills." But it makes little sense to them and merely leaves them puzzled at "an Irishman being a niggerlover." (The speaker is John Connolly, a wellknown local radical.) In a few months it becomes clear to all that the new church has not stopped or even slowed the influx of blacks to the area, and many disillusioned parishioners, including the Lonigans, begin blaming Father Gilhooley. A stronger pastor, they contend, would not have "built a beautifu l new church, and then let his parish go to the clogs .... He'd have organized things like vigilance committees to prevent it." Eventually Patrick Lonigan also gives up on his neighborhood. Reluctantly selling his building to a black man, he moves his family to South Shore (around 71st Street and Jeffery Boulevard) in I 928. What happens at the old house on moving day reveals the emotional cost of such moves and enables us to understand the overall design of the Studs Lanigan trilogy. Patrick Lonigan knows that he has lost his last real home; he is simply too old to make another. "You know, Bill," he confides to Studs in the empty parlor on Michigan Avenue, "your mother and I are gettin' old now, and, well, we sort of got used to this neighborhood . . .. they were all nearby, and they all sort of knew us, and we knew them, and you see, well, this neighborhood was kind of like home. We sort of felt about it the same way I feel about Ireland, where I was born." The thought of moving to South Shore brings no comfort, for Chicago History

The 5400 block of South Michigan Avenue was a quiet residential street in 1913 when this photograph was take n. Photo by C. E. Barker. CHS, gift of Arthur Levy.

"out there there'll only be about ten buildings in our block, the rest's all prairie," and "we're not what we used to be, and it'll be lonesome there some times." From this point on, both Patrick Lonigan and his son are permanently displaced persons. Taken out of his familiar neighborhood, Studs becomes even more of an aimless drifter. No more at home in South Shore than is his father, Studs complains that there is "no place to hang out" there. Five months after moving away he returns to v\Tashington Park and finds his gang's "old corner" at 58th and Prairie Avenue looking "like Thirty-fifth and State" (the center of the Black Belt) . The playground, school, and church are strange to him already, and even "\,Vashington Park itself seems like alien territory: "It had used to be his park. He almost felt as if his memories were in it, walking about like ghosts." Later that night, a drunken Studs goes back to the park looking for the tree he had sat in with Lucy Scanlan twelve years before. He can't find it and gets lost trying. Later, on the New Year's Eve that ends The 90

Chicago History

Young Manhood of Studs Lanigan, the 58th Street Gang throws a wild reunion partynot in one of the neighborhoods in which they now live, but "at a disreputable hotel on Grand Boulevard [now Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive] in the black belt." Their night of debauched drinking results in the permanent ruin of Stucls's health, and he ends up, in "the dirty gray dawn" of January 1, 1929, passed out beside a fireplug back at 58th and Prairie Avenue. It looks as though, in his semi-conscious sLUpor, he h as been trying to go home again. On the day of his son's death in the Depression year of l 931, Patrick Lonigan embarks on his own sad odyssey, literally retracing the steps of his life. He drives from South Shore to Washington Park, stopping to take a look at his old building and to say a prayer in St. Patrick Church, then on to Bridgeport "to look at places where he had lived and played as a shaver." Far from finding solace in the familiar streets of Bridgeport, Lonigan is reminded instead of the poverty of his youth and his current financial problems.

Farrell and Washington Park

Patrick Lonigan's disillusionment is complete. All that he had believed Lo be stable has crumbled; he has lost his son, his home, and much of his hard-won financial security. By the encl of Judgment Day, in a pathetic search for meaning, he has come under the influence of the ami-Semitic radio priest "Father Moylan," based, it seems, on Father Charles Coughlin. Finding no other way to explain what has happened to him, Lonigan blames his troubles on "Jew real estate men" and a "conspiracy" of "Jew international bankers." As with James Joyce's departure from Dublin, Farrell's from Chicago was a leavetaking in body but not in spirit. As we have seen, Chicago became the inspiration for the first, amazingly prolific phase of his career. In the eleven years ending with the appearance of Nly Days of Anger in 1943, Farrell published the Studs Lanigan trilogy and four of the O'Neill-O'Flaherty novels, two other Chicagobased novels (Gas-House McGinty and Ellen Rogers) and over fifty Chicago short stories. In his later fiction he has made frequent return to the South Side, especially in several volumes of his monumental work-in-progress, the Universe of Tim e. Using the character of Eddie Ryan, a Chicago writer (born, like his creator and Danny O'Neill, in 1904), Farrell reexamines the experience of the artist in the modern world. In Farrell's latest novel, Th e Death of Nora R yan, it is 1946 and Eddie has returned to Chicago because his mother is dying. As he keeps vigil he knows that in time he will turn the experience into art: \'\That was happening now, this present, would be the past and would be in his memory. The experience would have crystallized in his unconscious mind .... One morning h e would wake up, sit at his desk, a nd tart writing about it."

H e wonders about the "si mple purposes" of his mother's life, but concludes "Yes, it mattered. 1ora R ya n ' life was a world. For Nora Ryan. These thoughts brought back his most

familiar and important ideas. He must one day dignify his mother's suffering in the consciousness." The importance of 1ora's life and of her son's depiction of lives like hers is brought home when Nora's night nurse reads one of Eddie's novels and responds with surprised pleasure, thinking: The book was so much like life. She knew the people in this book . . . . She had known these people ail of her fifty-three yea rs. They were her own kind. She had never expected to read a book like this . She had never thought that books like this were written.

Because books like this are indeed written, have been written for fifty years, and continue to be written, at least three generations of American readers owe a debt of profound gratitude to their author, James T. Farrell. Chicagoans, of course, owe him even more, and the South Side Irish owe him the most of all. He has dignified their lives in the consciousness.

Selected Sourc es Branch, Edgar M . James T. Farrell. University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American \\'riLers, no. 29. l\linncapolis: University of ~linnesota Press, 1963. - - . James T. Farrell. Twa)ne's United States Authors Series, no. 183. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971. Chicago Hislorica l Sociely. History of . . Communilies, Chica• go. Prepared fo r the Chicago Historica l Society and the Local Communily Rcscnrc h Committee, University of Chicago, 1925-30. Typescript. Vo l. V , Grand Boulevard and Washington Park interviews. Fanning, Charles. Finley Peler Dunne and /\fr. Dooley: The Chicago Y ears. Lexingto n: University Press of Kentucky, 1978. Farrell , Jam es T. It is a great shame that more of Farrell's fiction is not in print. Of the books which follow, only those marked by asterisks are still in print. Gas-House l\fcGinly (1933): •Studs Lanigan: A Trilogy (1933); A World I Never Made (1936); The Shorl tories of Jam es T. Farrell (19~7); No Star is Lost (1938); • Father and Son (I 940); Ellen Rogers ( 19·11); 1,000 a IVeek and Oth er Stories (1942); My Days of Anger ( 1943); The Face of Time (1953); •Refleclio ns al Fifty and Olher Es<ays ( 19';4); The D11nne Family (1976) ; • The Death of Nora Ryan (1978). Gregory , H orace. "James T. Farrell: Beyond the Provinces of Art.'' In New JVorld JVriting: Fifth A!enlor Selection. New York : New American Library, 1934 . Philpott, Thomas L. Th e Slum and lhe Ghelto: Neighborhood Deteriorolion and M iddle-Class Reform, Chicago, 1880- 19)0. New York: Oxford niversity Press, 1978. Salzman, Jack and Flynn, eds. Twentieth Century Literalure 22: I (Feb. 1976). J ames T. Farrell iss ue. W ald, Alan M. J ames T . Farrell: The Revol11tionary Socialist Years. New York: New York University Press, 1978.

Ch icago History

Carson Pirie Scott: 125 Years in Business BY JOHN VINCI

IN SEPTEMBER 1854 two Scotsmen, John T. Pirie and Samuel Carson, landed in New York and set out for Illinois to enter into the dry goods business. After three months in La Salle, they opened a store in a remodeled saloon in Amboy, where they were joined in 1856 by two brothers, George and Robert Scott, whom they had known in Scotland. It was a family business in more ways than one: Carson married Pirie's sister Elisabeth and Pirie married Carson's sister Sarah. Soon the firm expanded to form a chain that included a store in Galena as well as branches in the farm towns of Mendota, Polo, and Sterling located along railroad arteries leading into Chicago. In order to supply these stores more efficiently, Carson and Pirie opened a wholesale business in Chicago on Lake Street near Wabash in 1864. The company did so well that in 1867 it opened a retail stor'= at I 36 Lake Street which was managed by Andrew MacLeish, a Chicago neighbor of Samuel Carson as well as a fellow Scotsman. To concentrate their resources the partners sold the stores outside Chicago and became a city concern. But it would be some time before the firm had a permanent home. A fire destroyed the original quarters at Lake Street in 1868, resulting in a move to 118-120 South State. When this building was consumed by the Great Conflagration of 1871, the store reopened on West Lake, then moved to 22nd Street before settling briefly at Madison and Peoria where it advertised "It pays to trade on the West Side." A second store opened in 1875 on Clark and Erie where it remained until 1883. Carson, Pirie & Co. very much wanted a site on State Street and leased space in the Singer Building at State and Washington in 1879. This arrangement also proved to be shortlived: the firm's prestigious competitor, Field, Leiter and

John Vinci is a practicing architect and lectures on the history of nineteenth and twentieth century architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. 92

Chicago History

Samuel Carson (1818-1869) . Carson Pirie Scott & Co.

John T. Pirie (1827-1913). CHS.

Company, bought the building and paid Carson's $100,000 to break its lease. That bonus helped Carson's buy the Charles Gossage & Co. dry goods business on the west side of Stale between Washington and Madison, which it merged with space rented in the Reliance Building in 1891 to form a much enlarged Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store. In 1904, after nearly a dozen moves, the company settled at the southeast corner of State and Madison in the building designed by Louis Sullivan for the Schlesinger & Mayer store. The building had been acquired several months earlier by Harry G. Selfridge, a former partner of Marshall Field & Company, who opened his own department store only to be forced to sell it because of financial difficulties. John Pirie's son, Samuel, responded to Selfridge's bid, resulting in Carson's purchase of the Sullivan structure (without the site) at a bargain price for doing business at the city's busiest downtown intersection and for the honor of owning one of Chicago's great works of architecture. Carson's has remained there ever since and apparently plans to do so in the future: within the past year it has finally acquired the property on which the building stands.

Between 1891 and 1904 Carson's occupied the lower floors of the Reliance Building, only to lose its lease to Hillman's dry goods store. CHS, gift of Barnes-Crosby Company.

From 1888 to 1891 Carson's leased the A.H . Revell Building at the northeast corner of Adams and Wabash . An early example of the work of Adler and Sullivan (1881-82), It was demolished in 1968. CHS.

Chicago History

Carson Pirie Scott

At the time of its purchase by Carson Pirie Scott & Co ., the Schlesinger & Mayer store consisted of the original section designed in 1899 by Louis Sullivan (the section with three bays at the far left) and a much larger addition designed by Sullivan in 1902-03 which extended west to the corner and south along State Street. Soon after this picture was taken, D. H. Burnham & Company was commissioned to build another addition on State which was constructed in 1906 to correspond with Sullivan's design . Originally the top floor was entirely enclosed by a wall of glass set beh ind a terracotta colonnade which supported a three-foot overhanging cornice. These features were removed in 1948. Chicago Architectural Photographing Co.

Chicago History

Carson Pirie Scott

Generations of downtown shoppers have passed through Carson's grand entranceway. At one time its ornamental ironwork had perforations which allowed daylight to penetrate the somber mahogany-paneled lobby. Beyond the storm doors, a cloister-like space opened into a brightly lit interior with high ceilings. According to the original plan , a huge bronze-plated electrolier was to hang from the ceiling of the central lobby, but no record of its execution exists. Many of the building's original features have been restored in honor of the firm's 125th anniversary. From The Inland Architect, June 1903.

Chicago History

Carson Pirie Scott

Initia lly the show windows on the ground floor were to be framed in bronze executed by the Winslow Brothers, but expense dictated that cast iron be used instead. According to William Grey Purcell, one of Sullivan's draftsmen, the cast iron was "first painted a venetian red and then a dark olive. At the right time the green was swiped with newspapers so that the red grinned through." Analysis done in 1978 proved that Purcell's description was correct. The ornament has recently been restored to its original coloration. From The Architectural Record, July 1904.

Chicago History

Carson Pirie Scott

(

The Chicago Journal of October 12, 1903 described the 8th floor restaurant as "the most beautiful room of its kind in Chicago. Brilliant without being loud. Mosaic floors, pillars in African onyx [tinted scagliolal, and old gold tints. Brilliant lighting effects and service of the very best." From The Architectural Record, July 1904.

The ground floor was originally furnished with mahogany and marble counters complemented by white ceilings and wainscoting of Mexican mahogany. Daylight was admitted through Luxfer prisms (small square panes of prismatic glass which were meant to diffuse light) located above the show windows and through skylights over the open elevator cages. Carson Pirie Scott & Co.

Chicago History

The Creation of Chicago's Sanitary District and Construction of the Sanitary and Ship Canal BY LOUIS P. CAIN

In an editorial hailing the opening of the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which had taken eight years to construct, the Chicago Tribune wrote: '' though accomplished without any flourish of trumpets, it was one of the most important events in the history of Chicago.'' Chicago Tribune, January 18, 7900

1879 heavy rains caused the sewage-befouled Chicago River to discharge into Lake Michigan for thirty consecutive days, polluting the city's water supply. The problem was not a new one. Cities situated on freshwater lakes generally used them both as sources of drinking water and as outlets for their waste, and this cau ed a high incidence of waterborne disease. In the early 1850s outbreaks of dysentery and cholera had led the Jllinois legislature to create the Chicago Board of Sewerage Commissioners which engaged Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough, city engineer of Boston, to take the same post in Chicago. In 1855 Chesbrough submitted a comprehensive report outlining several alternatives for a sewage system which would "improve and preserve" the health of Chicago's residents. Before 1871 the flow of the Chicago River was reversed as part of the attempt to prevent waste from polluting the drinking supply. It was discovered that when the Illinois and Michigan Canal's Bridgeport pumps were in full operation, not only was polluted Chicago River water pumped into the canal but Lake Michigan water was pulled into the river, thereby reversing its flow and conserving the city's water supply. Under normal conditions this method IN THE SUMMER OF

Louis P. Cain is a member of the Economics Department of Loyola University and the author of the recently published Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront M etropolis: The Case of Chicago (1978). 98

Chicago History

proved effective. But the rains of 1879 were not normal. As a result, the Citizens' Association of Chicago sponsored the formation of a committee " to devise a plan to dispose of the sewage of the city without contaminating the city water supply." The committee recommended a new, larger canal with dimensions comparable to those of the Chicago River. Like the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which had been built bet ween 1822 and 1848, this new canal would carry the city's sewage and drainage away from Lake Michigan and over the low divide which separated the Great Lakes and Mississippi River drainage areas a few miles west of the city. The committee further recommended that all the city's sewage be emptied into the Chicago River and its branches. The river, especially the South Branch, would then be cleansed, because its current would be attracted by the strong current created by this "new river's" outflow. A succession of dry seasons removed the impetus for further action. Then, in August 1885, the city was deluged by an unprecedented storm-"And a Flood Came," read a Chicago Tribun e headline after more than 5Â˝ inches of rain had fallen on the city in 19 hours. ot only did the sewers prove totally inadequate but the Des Plaines River overflowed into the canal, the canal overflowed into the Chicago River, and vast amounts of filth were carried into Lake Michigan and the city's water supply. The Chicago Daily News reported, "The rainfall ... is _ .. carrying out filth unspeakable and polluting the water far beyond the crib. This is what the majority of the people of Chicago will have to drink for days to come."

)\' 111':HE

T HE

(; H EAT

!; .\XIT.AHY

C.-\);AL

WA~

1n:ot":~-l.

" Shovel Day," September 3, 1892, brought out a festive crowd to mark the start of construction on the Sanitary and Ship Canal (also known as the Main Channel, or the "Big Ditch"). From Chicago Times, September 4, 1892, CHS.

The subsequent outbreak of cholera, typhoid, and other waterborne diseases was estimated to have killed 12% of Chicago's population-one person out of every eight! The problem was clear: given Chicago's existing water supply-sewage disposal strategy, a heavy storm could kill! The Citizens' Association committee now released a second report which proclaimed that the South Branch was "in an abominable condition of filth beyond the power of the pen to describe," and warned that the city was in danger whenever the Des Plaines River flooded. This second report "amplified and urged" the

committee's previous proposal for the construction. of a new canal but added a new twist by proposing a study by "a commission of experts" to put "a stop for all time to the unsanitary conditions which then existed." This report, as well as pressure from Chicago's leading citizens, forced the Chicago City Council to create a Drainage and Water Supply Commission in the spring of 1886. The commission was to report by January 1887 in a "most full and comprehensive manner" including plans and maps as well as cost estimates for the proposed system. In January 1887 the commission made a preliminary report Chicago History

Engineers introduced important innovations in the equipment used for the construction of the Main Channel. Shown here is a bridge under construction. From "Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal Photographs" album, CHS.

on the kind of legislation that would be necessary to implement any of several projects. The projects themselves were to be discussed in a final report which was never made because the City Council failed to make the necessary funds available. The commission's mandate required solutions to two interdependent problems: (1) the protection of the city's water supply and (2) the abatement of the Chicago River's objectionable condition. o question was raised about the city's ultimate water supply source and no alternative to Lake Michigan was considered. Thus the problem was to keep pollution out of the lake on the one hand and to keep it from accumulating in the Chicago River on the other. Three alternatives were considered: (1) to discharge the sewage into Lake Michigan at points as far removed from the water-supply intakes as possible; (2) to drain the sewage into artificial reservoirs to be pumped and used as fert ilizer (a system known as sewage farming); and (3) to discharge sewage into the Des Plaines R iver, from which it would pass into the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The study of these alternatives was divided into three classifications: topograph ic, hydrographic, and miscellaneous. The topographic surveys were to determine the 100

Chicago History

feasibility of the third alternative. The hydrographic survey was to determine the rate of flow of the Des Plaines River and to consider the probable effects of diverting diluted sewage into it. The commission also investigated Lake Michigan currents and levels and lake and river deposits under the existing sewage system. Among the miscellaneous studies was an inquiry into the feasibility of sewage purification through filtration, and an estimate of the growth and distribution of the population of metropolitan Chicago. The commission concluded that the first two alternatives only provided for a dry-weather sewage flow so that the only viable alternative was to divert the sewage into the Des Plaines River. Thus the commission report essentially agreed with the "new river" proposal put forth by the Citizens' Association committee. The commission measured the maximum Chicago River flood flow at 10,000 cubic feet per second, and this was the crucial factor in determining the size of the proposed canal. It should be noted that cubic feet per second is a measure of the volume that passes by a spot in a particular time interval. The commission had to assume a drainage ratio in order to estimate the size, and hence the expense, of the proposed

Chicago's Sanitary District

channel. A drainage ratio is simply the fiow rate divided by the population and in this case, 4 cubic feet per second per 1000 population was taken as the working estimate. This meant that a channel designed to handle 10,000 cubic feet per second flow would be sufficient to provide for a tributary population of 2.5 million people. The commission's estimates of the initial investment and annual costs (including interest) for each project are given in the table below. The Tribune reported that these estimates were generally believed to be high. COST ESTIMATES OF THE DRAINAGE AND WATER SUPPLY COMMISSION

Project

Lake Michigan disposal Land disposal Des Plaines River disposal

Initial Annual Investment Cost (in millions of dollars)

$2.4 3.0

23-28

1.3

S37

The recommended plan had the lowest estimated costs on both counts. Thus, there was an economic as well as a sanitary argument in favor of the "new river." The report also noted that the channel would provide a navigable waterway and a significant waterpower source, which could be of great commercial value to the body responsible for its operation. Finally, the report noted that, because it would lower the level of the Des Plaines River over some sections, the proposed channel would have the effect of raising the level of the low-lying prairies contiguous to those sections, making the prairie less susceptible Lo damaging floods. ,vhen the existing method functioned properly, the -net results of both the existing and proposed methods were identical: diluted sewage di charged into the Illinois River valley. The proposed method, therefore, was one which removed the offenses of its predecessor while affording a greater degree of protection to the Lake Iichigan water supply. In spite of the fact that a new channel would be required, this proposed continuation and improvement of

Chicago's traditional sewage disposal strategy proved Lo be the least costly because it allowed the use of existing facilities and required no change in the city's water supply strategy. In fact, stripped to its essentials, the commission's proposal called for little more than a new, larger channel. However, the commission's report failed to consider many important topics. Among these were the probable effects on the health and comfort of Des Plaines and Illinois River valley residents should the sewage be discharged into the Des Plaines River. It did not mention the possibility that this method might pollute St. Louis's water supply, as well as those of other Mississippi River towns. It said nothing about the possibility of filtering the water supply, even though slow sand filtration was an established, effective method. Nor did it discuss how and where the sewage would enter the Chicago River, or specify how to avoid sewage deposits and unsightly or malodorous conditions, other than to say that the sewage was to be diluted with lake water, and that the dilution could be regulated to help with these problems. The commission withheld from this preliminary report its opinion as to the proper degree of dilution "to provide immunity from offense" until tests could be conducted under variable weather conditions and in comparable bodies of water. It did not discuss the potentially serious consequences of the fact that industrial wastes were also being discharged into the Chicago River. Finally, the commission's report made no mention of state and federal government interests with respect to drainage via the Des Plaines River and the diversion of Lake Michigan water. This last omission became more significant in light of what became a long-running, continuous debate between the Sanitary District and the federal government when the district later began work on the Calumet-Sag Channel. That debate has continued to this day. It must be remembered, however, that the commission believed itself to be making a preliminary report only and expected to have a later Chi cago History

10 1

Chicago's Sanitary District

opportunity to address details of this kind.

II The Sanitary District Enabling Act of May 29, 1889, which went into effect July 1, 1889, was a direct result of the Drainage and Water Supply Commission's recommendations. This act was necessary for the implementation of the "new river" scheme since the proposed channel lay outside the boundaries of a single municipality. It permitted the creation of a regional governmental body that would encompass the entire area involved with maintaining "a common outlet for the drainage thereof. " Chicago and its suburbs had identical water supply and sewage disposal problems; all benefited from the proposed scheme; and none could afford it. The enabling act made it possible to create, administer, and finance the public utilities which the plan envisioned. The Illinois constitution limited a municipality's borrowing capacity to 5% of the total assessed taxable property within its corporate limits, and Chicago and its suburbs were all fully extended. The new district's financing powers consisted of property taxation and bond issues, with the same 5% maximum that applied to municipalities. Parenthetically, the Sanitary District of Chicago financed its projects primari ly by construction bonds, with the remainder coming from excess tax revenues. Operating expenses, bonded indebtedness, interest, and the like were paid from district tax revenues. In November 1889, voters in affected areas carried a referendum for the creation of the Sanitary District of Chicago by a vote of 70,958 to 242. The district's corporate authority was placed in a nine-member board of trustees, elected by the voters within the district. The act does not answer the q uestion of why trustees were to be elected and not appointed, but there are several possible reasons . For one, since the district was granted taxing power, it was hoped that elected trustees would be more responsive to voting taxpayers than appointed trustees. Further, it was 102

Ch icago History

not clear who would otherwise be responsible for appointing trustees to a regional governmental body: since the area extended beyond the city of Chicago, but did not encompass all of Cook County, neither Chicago's mayor, its City Council, nor representatives of the county government represented all of the district's constituents and no one else. The original area encompassed by the Sanitary District of Chicago was 185 square miles, but this was to increase greatly. In 1903 large additions were made in the Chicago River drainage basin to the north (the North Shore suburbs) and in the Calumet River drainage basin to the south (the Calumet region). The Illinois legislature, as part of the mea ure which authorized these annexations, provided that the annexed areas should be drained in like manner to the original area. This meant channels through which the sewage wou ld flow with dilution water at a ratio equal to that of the district's original channel. Later, land was added to the west as well. By 1914 the area encompassed by the Sanitary District of Chicago had grown to 386 square miles, more than double the original area. Today, the di trict known as the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago is legally limited to Cook County and encompasses almost all of the county. On the other hand, the Chicago metropolitan area extends over eight counties in two states.

III The enabling act provided for the construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canalalso known as the Main Channel, or the "Big Ditch"-and its necessary adjuncts to collect the sewage and discharge it, diluted by Lake Michigan water, into the Des Plaines R iver. The law specified that the channel be large enough to allow for a minimum continous flow of 3Â˝ cub ic feet per second per 1000 population, Âžths of the amount assumed by the Drainage and Water Supply Commission. The dilution ratio

-~~-;~ .:

.__ .

Construction of the Main Channel demanded considerable dynamiting and the use of powerful earth-moving equipment to c ut through millions of cubic yards of solid rock. From "Photos of the Chicago Drainage Canal" album, CHS.

enacted by the state appears to have been based on expedience rather than definite knowledge. The law also required that provision be made for a tributary population of three million. Thus, the Main Channel had to be capable of handling a flow of 10,000 cubic feet per second, the equivalent of the Chicago River's maximum measured flood flow. The building of the Main Channel, the first construction work undertaken by the Sanitary District, was delayed for two years by administrative snarls and political conflicts among the trustees. There were disputes over routes, disputes with chief engineers-three were fired trying to resolve the conflicts-and controversial deliberations about saving costs by reducing the capacity of the channel by 42 % and thus eliminating its use for navigation. But in the end, the capacity of the channel was not reduced. The Qfficial start of construction was September 3, 1892, "Shovel Day," an occasion that the Tribune compared to the driving of the golden spike. In fact construction had commenced a few weeks earlier, so that Shovel Day was largely ceremonial. Around 1200 people attended, "all in holiday attire, jubilant and enthusiastic." One thousan l dignitaries were invited to the event and a special train carried

"every one who is anybody in Chicago" to the site in the town of Lemont which was festively decorated for the occasion. First the ceremonial shovel, then an authentic blasting cap signified the beginning of the project that would take eight years to complete. Chicago's open sewer approach to sewage disposal, utilizing the oxygen in a moving body of water to purify sewage, was dependent on two variables: the length of the receiving body and the volume of the flow . The designed capacity of the 28-mile Main Channel was 10,000 cubic feet per second with a current of less than two miles per hour. The new canal and the Illinois and Michigan Canal were practically parallel from Chicago to Lockport. The Main Channel had a navigable depth in excess of 20 feet; the width varied between 110 and 201 feet; and the sides were either vertical or very slightly inclined. It was constructed in three distinct sections. An earth ection between Robey Street (now Darnen Avenue) and Summit was 7.8 miles long. An earth and rock section between Summit and Willow prings was 5.3 miles long. Finally, a rock section from Willow Springs to Lockport was 15 miles long. The excavation requ ired the removal of 28.5 million cubic yards of glacial Ch icago History

103

Chicago's Sanitary District

A small gathering celebrated the completion of the Main Channel on May 5, 1899. Downstream towns protested that the solution of Chicago's water problem would lead to the pollution of their own water su pply. From "Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal Photographs" album, CHS.

drift and 12.9 million cubic yards of solid rock. The channel's retaining walls contained 880,000 cubic yards of stone. The remaining stone, from one o[ the most extensive quarrying operations of all time, was sold off. The scale and nature of the undertaking necessitated innovations in the kind of equipment used. The soil was broken by machinery usually employed for railroad construction and a specially developed grading machine pulled by twelve to sixteen horses threw the soil into a revolvi ng apron which then discharged it into wagons driven alongside. Fifty steam shovels were used, one essentially a dredge on wheels. Its boom-23 feet wide and 50 feet long-operated a dipper with a capacity of 2Â˝ cubic yards. This machine was able to take rock from the cut and load it into trucks waiting on the top, but its advantage was reduced by the difficulty of moving it. The last two shovels placed in operation were also designed for the project and each weighed 72 tons. On several sections excavated material was conveyed to the spoils banks or dump grounds by a machine known as the "Heidenreich incline" (named for the contractor who devised it 104

Ch icago History

specifically for this project) . The frame of the incline was mounted on tracks laid perpendicular to the lengthwise section of the incline. The platform at the base of the incline held the engine, boilers, hoisting machinery, and an electrical generator. The incline extended across the channel and traveled on tracks parallel to it wilh a trestle that extended down into the channel. Two cars were used for alternate loading and dumping. The incline and its approach were joined by wire cables so that the entire apparatus could be moved simultaneously. Later, Christie and Lowe refined the incline operation to include a double track that looped on the bridge allowing side dumping of the cars. Several other major earth-moving machines were also used during construction. The Mason and Hoover conveyor spanned the channel with a cantilever arm over the spoil area. This device, also named for the contractors who created it, was carried on tracks laid parallel to the channel on each bank. The conveyor was steampowered by two ISO-horsepower boilers which were mounted on a separate car and simultaneously powered a strong, double-ended plow which preceded the conveyor. The Bates con-

Chicago's Sanitary District

veyor had a hopper in which two cylinders containing intermeshed steel knives separated clay fed in by one of the steamshovels. Dredges were designed for the excavation of wet areas: channeling machines were designed to chisel the sides o[ the channel in the rock sections. The Tribune described the mechanical work as evoking "the wonder and admiration of engineers throughout the world" and went on to say "engineers predict that these inventions will soon result in wonderful progress in the work of connecting oceans, lakes, and rivers, to the benefit o[ commerce and the advancement of civilization." This in fact turned out to be the case when the Panama Canal was constructed. The Sanitary District believed that no restriction existed upon the maximum quantity which could be diverted from Lake Michigan and consequently chose to build a 10,000 cubic feet per second channel. There were legitimate grounds for this assumption, which was predicated on the belief that, since the new channel was an updated and enlarged version o[ the Illinois and Michigan Canal, it had all the rights granted to its predecessor; it was not the district's intention that the Main Channel maintain the maximum flow at all times. Section 17 of the enabling act empowered the Sanitary District to "enter upon, use, widen, deepen and improve any navigable or other waterway, canal or lake" when it proved nece sary. It indeed proved necessary to make improvements in the Chicago River so that the Iain Channel could function properly. Although it had been dredged on numerous occasions the river was only 17 feet deep and less thanÂˇ 100 feet wide in several places and if water was to pass between Lake Michigan and the Main Channel without obsuÂˇucting navigation the river would have to be enlarged. This had been known from the outset. The fact that the district waited until after the l\fain Channel was well under construction to begin the Chicago River improvements had serious ramifications for Chicago' sanitary history.

IV In May 1895 a federal comm1ss1on was appointed to investigate the Main Channel's effect on lake and harbor levels. Chicago's harbor, which had been under federal jurisdiction since the 1830s, included the Chicago River. Federal responsibility for harbors was lodged in the War Department and the secretary of war, the chief of engineers, and Congress were all advised by the 1895 report that the proposed diversion would lower the levels of the Great Lakes by about six inches. The report also noted that without improvements to the Chicago River, a current hazardous to navigation might be introduced. The fact that the so-called "lake-levels controversy" played, and continues to play, an important role in the district's relationship with the federal government is sufficient reason to note that a diversion of 10,000 cubic feet per second would, according to today's best thinking, lower the water surface in the Michigan and Huron basins by less than three inches if all natural inflow into those basins were stopped for one year. Thus, as Jack L. Hough observed in Geology of the Great Lakes ( I 958), "it appears that the observed low-water periods were caused by climatic variations rather than by diversion of water." The Sanitary District wrote the secretary of war requesting a permit to proceed with the proposed Chicago River improvements and enclosed full information and maps. The initial diversion was to be a volume of 5,000 cubic feet per second, to be expanded to the maximum of 10,000 cubic feet per second with increased demands upon the Main Channel. By comparison, the average flow in the lower Mississippi River today is in excess of 300,000 cubic feet per second; the flow in the Illinois and Michigan Canal after all enlargements was 1,000 cubic feeÂˇt per second. The U.S. chief of engineers authorized the Chicago River improvements but raised questions about the effect of the diversion on lake levels and the current of Chi cago History

105

Chicago's Sanitary District

the Chicago River. It should be noted that his only concern was with harbor rights-federal concern with pollution lay far in the future. In July 1896, the acLing secretary of war granted the Chicago River improvement permit subject Lo several conditions, the most important being that the authority was not to be construed as approval of the plan to induce a current in the Chicago River. This would be considered later. The government's opposition apparently was to the navigational features of the channel. Two report, one by U .S. Army Engineer Capta in W. L. Marshall in 1888 and another by U.S. Army Engineer D. C. Kingman in 1894, opposed the channel and argued that the current created ÂŁor sewage would be injurious to navigation, and that the costs of the project wou ld outweigh any transportation benefits. Moreover, Kingman's report noted, it was more important to make the Mississippi River navigable for deep-water ships. The Illinois River also needed improvements and did not become completely navigable until the last of five clams was completed in 1939. In May 1899 the secretary of war, R. A. Alger, issued a permit which authorized the Sanitary District to open the Main Channel and make certain Chicago R iver improvements subject to th ree conditions. First, he intended to submit the question of the effects of the district's operations to Congress. Second, should the induced current in the Chicago River prove "obstructive to navigation or injurious to property," the secretary of war could stop or modify the diversion. Third, the district bore "all responsibility for damages to property and navigation interests" as a result of any induced current. The secretary's only evident concern was the effect the diversion m ight have on the current in the Chicago River. Alger apparently was reluctant to choose sides on the lake-levels question and hoped to pass that decision to Congress. That body took no act ion. ' "' hen the Main Channel was opened for the 5,000 cubic feet per second prelim inary flow, it 106

Chicago History

did indeed create a current in the Chicago River because the !alter was so shallow. Federal permiLs were issued for additional river improvements in July 1900, six months after the channel opened. But because of an "excessive current" in the Chicago River, the secretary of war modified the original permit in December 1901, reducing the permissible diversion through the Chicago River to 4,167 cubic feet per second.* The Sanitary District of Chicago was organized and its works planned and built with full disclosure of the district's intentions, and the federal government did not assume any real authority until shortly before the completed channel was opened, when it intervened to restrict the diversion in an unimproved section of the Chicago River so as to maintain a navigable velocity in that section. This restricted diversion remained in force after the Main Branch and the South Branch had been widened and deepened. The river improvements were instituted to make possible the operation of the Main Channel according to the requirements of the state law because, as it was, the Chicago River could not handle the maximum diversion for which the l\fain Channel was designed. The Sanitary District spent in excess of twelve million dollars improving the Chicago River, and it seemed reasonable to assume that if this were done so Lhat the necessary water volume could be diverted through the river without creating a current "unreasonably obstructive to navigation or injurious to property," the federal government would offer no objection to the divers ion required under the state law. However, requests for a 10,000 cubic feet per second flow were denied, and the secretary of war undertook legal action in 1908 and 1912 to prohibit any total

â&#x20AC;˘ In 1903 the permit was again modified to allow a maximum of 5,833 cubic feet per second during the season when the river was closed to navigation . These permits remained in effect until 1925.

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diversion greater than that specified by the federal permit. This controversy was not resolved until 1930 when the U.S. Supreme Court mandated the volume of water the district could divert for its operations. The Sanitary District never recognized the federal government's "right" to fix the Lake Michigan diversion prior to 1930. The permit only recognized a maximum diversion of 4,167 cubic feet per second through the Chicago River, but the federal government attempted to change the permit's interpretation. The district built a conduit along 39th Street and placed a pumping · station at the lake end to flush the South Branch's south fork, the infamous Bubbly Creek. The federal government always understood that the capacity of the Main Channel was the 10,000 cubic feet per second prescribed by state law. Public reports never mentioned a smaller figure. The Sanitary District diverted more water than the 4, 167 cubic feet per second allowed by the federal permit and never denied

that it was doing so. The district held that this was no violation of that permit, as no such requirement ever existed. The federal permit restricted the diversion through the Chicago River, not the total diversion from Lake Michigan. If water could be pumped into the Main Channel through the 39th Street pumping station, the district could abide by both federal permit and state law. The change in the War Department's emphasis from regulating the flow through the Chicago River to regulating the total Lake Michigan diversion was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that several Great Lakes states had brought suits before the U.S. Supreme Court to restrain Chicago from diverting Lake Michigan water. These states argued that the district's diversion "damaged their riparian rights, navigation, agricultur-e, horticulture, and climate." The inclusion of Canada in this suit made this an international controversy. The Sanitary District assumed that the Chicago River improvements Chicago History

107

Chicago's Sanitary District

would remove the necessity for federal restriction. It also assumed that the lake-levels issue would not be raised . Both assumptions seemed reasonable. The diversion limitations in the l\Iay 1899 permit were based on navigational dangers in the Chicago River, and not on the fear of lower Great Lakes levels. The federal permit contained no condition that the diversion could be further limited because of lakeleveh effects. Over time as the district grew, the secretary of war issued additional permits as warranted, but each contained provisions similar to the i\Iay 1899 permit. In 1907 the War Department issued a permit for the construction of the North Shore Channel between the Wilmette lakeshore and the North Branch and three years later it issued a permit £or the building of the Calumet-Sag Channel, between the Calumet River and the Main Channel.

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le ~,tl!"'tl<td ,•. e •l!.tsr of the r.h.1Mt9 Rher tn•o t,10 SaaitN"Y District Ca111tl t.!,h u1n11t\6, wit.11 11-:. Ml' 1•1.1bl1c c,-nt.. :v.>l' c.i' B..'1!' ki11d. 'lo eon.::lu(n,d 1 lntt• las~ nlt]t, t,<1 orun t,o CJlllMu: t.Ua lll(lm!r<t:.•

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V The fact was that the War Department was concerned with problems upstream from Lockport, not with problems created by flushing Chicago's sewage downstream. The Illinois River basin, into which the district's channel system emptied, contains about 50% of the area of Illinois, and, with Chicago, about 70% of the state's population, and it should have been predictable that Illinois River valley residents would resist having polluted water thrust upon them. Both Joliet and Peoria raised objections. In the 1870s Joliet had suffered ill effects from Chicago's initial attempts to reverse the flow of the Chicago River. At that time the state legislature had to resolve the conflict that developed between the two cities. Peoria was well aware of Joliet's experience, and both feared the potential effects of the larger channel. On several occasions legislators from these cities attempted unsuccessfully to repeal the Sanitary District Enabling Act. But the Illinois River was a commercial waterway, and was little used for drinking water or recreation. Most river towns 108

Chicago History

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Responsibility for the Chicago Harbor and River at the federal level lay with the War Department, hence this revealing letter to R. A. Alger, Secretary of War. CHS.

Chicago's Sanitary District

welcomed the diversion because the increased water volume solved the low-water navigational problems which had historically plagued the river. Initially, there was some concern about airborne health hazards, but an Illinois Board of Health investigation in the 1890s laid such fears to rest. However, though in-state residents did not complain about the Sanitary District, the city of St. Louis, Missouri, did. St. Louis believed that the Sanitary District's strategy posed a threat to its Mississippi River water supply. It had been aware of the channel's construction but procrastinated about seeking an injunction until the last possible moment. But while the Sanitary District was able to avoid an injunction, it still had to answer St. Louis's objections in court. In late 1898 the mayor of St. Louis appointed a committee to investigate the potential effect of Chicago's sewage on the St. Louis water supply. This committee reported, in April 1899, that the Channel constituted a pollution threat. Consequently, in January 1900, Missouri petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to enjoin the state of Illinois and the Sanitary District of Chicago from discharging sewage into the Main Channel. But the Sanitary District had acted with dispatch and turned water into the Main Channel on January 2, 1900, two weeks before the filing of the St. Louis petition. There was no formal ceremony. The opening was kept quiet with only a few individuals in attendance, since the district feared that any prior notice might hasten St. Louis's attempt to get a federal injunction. Although the district had a federal permit from the War Department, it did not have the permission of Illinois's governor as required by state law. The Sanitary District Enabling Act required the appointment o( a three-man commission to advise the governor when all work was completed. Once its report was received, the governor could permit the start of operations. St. Louis's threatened suit led the district to request the

commission to report in two steps: the first when all work upstream from Lockport was completed and the second when the downstream work was completed. By the end of 1899 the only major uncompleted work was river improvements near Joliet. The commission therefore refused the district's request. Nonetheless the district, to quote an unnamed trustee, "decided ... to open at once." We [the district trustees] received pretty fair intimation [from the Governor's commission] . .. that if we took the bit in our teeth and went ahead we would not mortally offend the commission. In fact, we saw clearly that it would suit the commission to a dot if we took such a course. It relieved the commission of official responsibility, and at the same time prevented a charge that the Governor was standing in the way of great improvement. When so much was decided on we feared that if an announcement was made of our intentions somebody might get out an injunction. So we lost no time. The thing is done now, and I don't think anybody is the worse for it.

The "thing" was done with great discretion early in the morning. Only the trustees, a few friends, and two newspapermen witnessed the opening. The trustees initially attempted to shovel away the earth between river and channel at a point removed from a wooden dam that had been constructed to keep river water out of the channel, but the frozen earth would not yield to their shovels. Dynamite and dredging also proved ineffective. A fire had been built to provide some relief against the cold, and when all else failed, "into the fire went the structure which for . . . days had been pointed out as evidence of good faith in not opening the canal until the ... commission had given its consent." Once the dam was ablaze, the assembled throng gathered for a picture-then the dredge took over. By noon the job was done. The following day the Tribune editorialized that these events were "irrevocable," and the opening at the Lockport end for full operations would follow in short order: "Soon there will be an end to the bulletins of the Health department, notifying Chicagoans that the drinking Chicago History

109

â&#x20AC;˘-

MRS. PARTINGTON OF ST. LOUIS VS. THE DRAINAGE CANAL

This cartoo n from the Chicago Tribune, Jan uary 4, 1900, caricat ures the reaction of St. Louis, Mi sso uri citizens to Chicago's solution of its water pollution problems. CH S.

water is in bad condition and must be boiled. The pure water era is near at hand." The paper also published the governor's statement that he had had no prior knowledge of the trustees' actions and had not granted his permission. Negotiations between trustees and commissioners continued while the channel filled. As the threat of an injunction intensified, the commissioners came to realize the importance of opening before such a suit could be filed. On Tuesday night, January 16, 1900, the trustees and two of the three commissioners boarded a special Santa Fe train and rode to Joliet to confer with the third commissioner. Word had been leaked that a formal opening of the Lockport end was planned for Saturday the 20th. During the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday the 17th, trustees and commissioners inspected the unfinished work at Joliet, then returned to a hotel to negotiate. By dawn a long distance call was placed to Governor Tanner notifying him that the commission approved the opening of the channel. Tanner gave his consent over the phone, and the Joliet contingent boarded a special train that had been standing by and rode back to Lockport. By II A .M. on January 17, 1900, a "crowd of men, weary and worn from loss of sleep and looking haggard in the foggy morning light" were assembled to witness the opening of the bear-trap dam at the Lockport controlling works. By mid-afternoon the trustees were celebrat ing at a big lunch in Chicago as word came 110

Ch icago History

that St. Louis had filed for an injunction that morning. Eventually the St. Louis suit was dismissed. A 1902 survey by a University of Illinois chemistry professor, Arthur W. Palmer, indicated that the Illinois River oxidized the sewage as it flowed toward the Mississippi so that the Illinois was clean by the time it reached Peoria and Pekin, where it was befouled once again by slaughterhouse and distillery wastes. It was these wastes, and not Chicago's, that were the principal polluters of the lower Illinois River. By the time the river reached the Mississippi, the water was clean once again- "little more than a harmless salt remained to tell of the enormous pollution 320 miles above ." The water's ph ysical appearance and the presence of a fishing industry also testified to the river's improvement. Indeed, the city of St. Louis found that the water in the Illinois River at its confluence with the Mississippi was purer than that in the latter river, and subsequently constructed purification works to remove the turbidity in the Mississippi supply. Chicago, meanwhile, quickly felt the beneficial effects of the new channel, the city's mortality rate falling dramatically once it was opened. The typhoid death rate which had averaged 67 per 100,000 in the 1890s had fallen to 14 per 100,000 by 1910. The results validated Chicago's long-standing sanitary strategy. Expectations nurtured for twenty years had been realized; the pure water era was at hand. Selected Sources This essay is based on material in the author's book, Sa nitatio n Strategy fo r a La kef ron t M etropolis : Th e Case of Chicago (De Ka lb: N orth ern Ill ino is Uni ve rsity Press, 1978) . R eaders of Chicago History will recall " Chicago's Early Fight to ' Save Our L a ke ' " b y Frank J . Pie hl in the Winter 1976-1977 issue . A second recent essay o n similar themes is James C. O'Connell , "Chicago's Quest for Pure Water ," PubJic Works Historical Society, Essay Number I (June 1976). Two earlier essays of note are Langdon J>earse, "Chicago's Quest for Potable Water," Wat er a11d Sewage Work s (May 1955 ) and R . Isham R a ndolph, "The History of Sa nitation in Chicago ," Journal of th e W estern Society of Engineers (Octobe r I 939) . In addition to the standard books by Andreas, Pi erce, and Condit , interested readers are referred to J ames Willia m Putna m , Th e Illinois and Michigan Ca11al (Chicago: Th e University of Chicago Press, 19 18) and C. Arch Willi ams , Th e Sanitary District of Chicago (Chicago: The Sa nitar y District of Chicago, 1919).

Premiere at the Chicago Historical Society To Save a Kinsman: Ida B. Wells in the Case of Steve Green Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1917. University of Chicago Library.

2 THROUGH JUNE 16 the historically based play, To Save a Kinsman: Ida B. Wells in the Case of Steve Green, was presented and performed at the Chicago Historical Society by the Chicago Council on Fine Arts' Artists in Residence: Kathleen Lombardo, playwright; Patrick O'Gara, director; Robert Gottlieb, producer; Michael Merritt, set designer; John Morris, lighting designer; and Julie Jackson, costume designer. The Society seemed a particularly appropriate place for this presentation since the play, in the words of Chicago Tribune reviewer Richard Christiansen, "depicts a Chicago subject in skillful theatrical terms, combining public and artistic interests without serious injury to either." That "Chicago subject" was the successful attempt by Ida B. Wells, a woman who fought passionately for almost forty years for justice for blacks, to prevent the extradition to Arkansas-and certain lynching-of a black tenant farmer accused of killing a white man there. Ida B. Wells's dedication to this and similar causes was rooted in a bitter personal experience more than twenty years earlier. In March of 1892 Tom Moss, a black postman in Memphis, Tennessee, was lynched by a white mob. He and several partners had established a small grocery store in the black section of town, but when a nearby white grocer began to lose business an attack was organized on the new establishment. Because the sheriff refused to protect them, Tom Moss and his partners armed themselves, and when the attack came three whites were shot and wounded. The newspapers reported that "Negro desperados" had shot white men, and thirty-one blacks were rounded up and charged with conspiracy. That night, masked men raided the prison, seized Tom Moss and his partners, and riddled them with bullets. Ida B. Wells had known Tom Moss and his family since she had first come to Memphis and was godmother to his daughler Maurine. When the rumor spread that Tom Moss's last words FROM JUNE

had been "Tell my people to go West-there is no justice for them here," Wells used the newspaper she published, the Memphis Free Speech, to urge blacks to leave the city. In the course of the next two months 6,000 blacks left Memphis, and white businesses began to feel the effect. When the prominent men of the town could not convince Wells to stop her "inflamatory" editorials, the offices of the Free Speech were ransacked and destroyed. Incoming trains were watched for the return of Ida B. Wells, who was traveling in the North. The word went out that she was to be hanged. Although she escaped death, her friend's lynching made an indelible impression on her. Years later she wrote: Like many another person who had read of lynching in the South, I had accepted the idea meant to be conveyed-that although lynching was irregular and contrary to law and order, unreasoning anger over the terrible crime of rape led to the lynching; that perhaps the brute deserved death anyhow and the mob was justified in taking his life. But Tom Moss . . . had committed no crime against white women . This is what opened my eyes to what lynching really was. An excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized and "keep the nigger down."

In 1895, after marrying Chicago activist and lawyer Ferdinand Barnett, Ida B. Wells settled here. She became the editor of the Chicago weekly The Conservator; founded the National Association of Negro Women; helped to found the NAACP; was a leader of the women's club movement; was active in the suffragist movement; started the Negro Fellowship League in Chicago; and continued the anti-lynching efforts she had first begun after Tom Moss's death . To Save a Kinsman, based on a case on which she worked, shows that the appetite for lynching had not died down by 1914. But, as Ida B. Wells later wrote, Steve Green "is one Negro who lives to tell the tale that he was not burned alive acMARCIA BEALES cording to program." Chicago History

111

Looking Backward Commodore Barry Country Club in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin BY ANDREW M. GREELEY

"One tremendous advantage [is itsJ close proximity to Chicago . ... A short two-hour ride through the fertile valleys of the Prairie and Badger states brings you to the gateway of this majestic lodge where you may enjoy life in its entirety. n Club Brochure

the crunch of gravel underneath my feet, the soft sand, and the warm water as I dash recklessly down the huge, steep hill (or so it seemed then) to jump into the lake for the first time each summer. I can see the red bus waiting for us at Genoa City after the interminably long ride on a slow train from Chicago through such romantic places as Crystal Lake, Lake Zurich, Fox Lake, and Richmond. And the "Hunter Deluxe Specials"what old, ungainly proto-ChrisCraft speedboats they must have been. And the crowds on the broad, green grass-the men in ties, many wearing knickers-on Sunday morning when the mysterious ritual of mass was acted out, marked by an occasional tinkling of a bell on the stone landing of the lakeside "pergola" (a big stone boat-house with a stone-covered porch on top of it) . I can hear the bell clanging for dinner, the jingle of the "slightly illegal" slot machines in the clubhouse, the cries of the children in the playground reserved for them, and the buzzing of flies at night. I can recall the smell of gravy in the steamy, ribbed dining hall (men still wearing ties, of 1 CAN STILL FEEL

Andrew M. Greeley is a sociologist and well-known writer on a variety 0ÂŁ subjects. He divides the academic year between teaching at the University 0ÂŁ Arizona in Tucson and serving as Senior Study Director at the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago. His most recent book is The Making of the Popes 1978 (1979). 11 2

Ch icago History

course), the lake after a storm, the toilet facilities (in separate buildings, but by my time, with running water), and the "jungle" (really only a small brush-covered hill). Memories of a time of joy, excitement, wonder, and occasional sharp sadness. There is the memory, faint but still there, of the summer companion who would be dead by Christmastime of a posttonsillectomy infection. (Can it be so recently that antibiotics were discovered?) I cannot see a movie or read a book about a summer resort without Twin Lakes images flooding back into my consciousness. What was it? The name was grandiose if not baroque: "Commodore Barry Country Club." A booklet, dug out of family archives, describes the place in language appropriate to the title: " ature created a vacation masterpiece at Twin Lakes. Human skill and ingenuity have spared no effort to make this masterpiece accessible, comfortable, convenient and attractive." The brochure goes on to say that the club "represents a huge and carefully planned investment which has been put into varied and unusual amusement features." It promises that "as you enter the grounds, all that you had anticipated is realized and the towering trees of many species, the silent sentinels of time, stretch forth majestically to greet and welcome you." Among the anticipations to be realized was a golf course, described in elaborate detail. The golf fees were a dollar a clay, two dollars on Sundays and holidays. "Something doing to amuse you from dawn until bedtime. A country club created by Nature and developed by

The Commodious Club House . Restful ond Appealing From a brochure detailing the pleasures and comforts to be savored at the Commodore Barry Country Club in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin.

man." Yet another enticement was the pergola:

Sunday and holy clay:

One of the cool and refreshing spots used to advantage by many during the summer months is the pergola, which sits at the edge of the lake overlooking the bathing beach. Here, on a warm day, many congregate to rest and relax, and partake of the cooling breezes off the lake. Here, on a moonlight night, one may look out over the silvery waters and see the vast number of cottages and homes dotting the lake, with their lights beaming forth and penetrating the darkness.

A commodious chaplain's retreat rests on the shore line of the lake, with screened porches surrounding it, affording the clergy a restful spot away from the glamorous activities of the club visitors and thus enabling them to continue their duties even while at this restful mecca.

Facilities were available for 300 guests. Weekly cost for meals was 13.00, breakfast 50Â˘ a day, dinner 1.00, supper 75Â˘ ( 1.00 on Saturdays). The weekly rate per person (two in a room) was 22.00, $4.00 per day, $6.00 for weekends and holidays. Mass was celebrated every

Candidly that sounds kind of dull, but then it was a different generation of clergy, I guess. The food was good too. As the brochure explained, "The entire personnel of this commodious structure [the dining hall], which is abutted on three sides by screen porches, is handled under the wise guidance of an experienced dietician and has brought forth unbounded praise for the service rendered and the food Chicago History

113

The hearty meals served in the dining hall ("abutted on three sides by screen porches") were prepared "under the wise guidance of an experienced dietitian ." Brochure.

produced." But who was Commodore Barry and why a summer camp named after him? Commodore Barry, for those who have forgotten what they may have learned in American history class, was an Irish naval officer during the Revolutionary V1Tar. Some of us believe that he has a far better claim to the title of "Father of the American avy" than the Scottish Protestant John Paul Jones. The Commodore, whose cast iron statue stood at the center of the "country club" grounds, lent his name lo the local Counci l of the Knights of Columbus. Who were the Knights of Columbus? A definitive study of the role of fraternal organizations in American immigration history has yet to be written. For shorthand purposes, the Kn ights of Columbus can be described as a Catholic organization which played a role in the lives of immigrant ethnics analogous to that played by the Masons and similar groups in the lives of white Protestant Americans. It was a poli tical, social, religious, athletic, and benevolent (insurance) association-a quintessen tial example of the voluntarism in American society adapted and adj usted to respond to the 114

Chicago History

needs of Catholic immigrants. Organizations such as this- and there were others-were set up by the church to protect the faith of the immigrants from the clangers that were thought to lurk in American society. (In retrospect there may not have been all that much danger, but there surely was lots of hostility.) They were enthusiastically supported by lay Catholics who wanted to associate with "their own kind" every bit as much as the church wanted them to -in part because most people feel at ease with their own kind in a new society and in part because "the others" really didn't want them anyhow. The Commodore Barry Council of the Knights of Columbus was founded in Chicago in 1907. My father, not quite a charter member, joined shortly thereafter and served as "Grand Knight" in 1919, when the Council seems to have been at an all time high of more than 1,000 members. He also managed their indoor baseball team, which won a couple of national championships-in great part, it would appear, because of the remarkable pitching and hitting abilities of one George Halas, who would go on to achieve some fame in another

Knights of Columbus clubhouses throughout the city offered recreation and companionship to many immigrants. This indoor shot of the Commodore Barry clubhouse at Washington Boulevard and Francisco shows the hall in which members played indoor baseball. Andrew M. Greeley.

athletic endeavor. The Knights o[ Columbus clubhouses scattered throughout the city were an important part of the social life of many immigrants and their offspring in the years before World War I. There was neither television nor radio, and the automobile was a rarity. But the Commodore Barry clubhouse was easily reached by streetcar and became a place where young men out of school or as yet unmarried could find congenial company every night of the week. One alumnus of those clays recalled that it was a rare night at the Barry clubhouse when there were not at least a hundred young men around, playing pool or billiards, basketball, or simply talking to one another. The K.C. dances on Sunday afternoons were arenas for the dating-mating game in the years before the automobile made "elating" as we know the term possible. There were also, of course, religious functions-retreats, communion breakfasts-as well as the apparently thrilling secret rituals which enabled CaLholics to be assured that while the l\Iasons had their secrets, we had ours too. I suspect that the Knights of Columbus in the early decades of this century was mostly a middle-class organization-if one includes policemen and firemen as members of the middle class. Most of its members, like my father, were

white-collar workers; some were doctors and lawyers and members of other professions. The imitation of the Masonic ritual, for example, suggests a concern about having something that was "your own" comparable to that which other middle-class Americans had. Interestingly enough, it was exactly in 1907, the year Commodore Barry was founded, that college attendance by Irish Catholics crossed and exceeded the national average. The Knights of Columbus came to be known as a very conservative organization (although their image is changing), but my father was a liberal Democrat-an antimachine Democrat to boot; and while Commodore Barry was not quite as important in his life as his family, it was a close second. My mother used to joke that she didn't want to be around if he ever had to make a choice. The Commodore Barry clubhouse (located at ,1/ashington Boulevard and Francisco and now a Baptist community center) had a membership that was mostly Irish and Czech, reflecting the population of the neighborhoods from which it drew most of its members. The Czechs came from a mile and a half south-the Pilsen district, core of Chicago's Czech settlement, whi ch along with its Old World name still bears architectural traces of that time within the now Chicago History

115

Looking Backward

colorfully painted barrio. The Irish came from the immediate vicinity-Our Lady of Sorrows to the west on Jackson Boulevard, St. Malachi's to the east on Âˇw ashington Boulevard, and just to the north, St. Columkille, the original entry port for the ""\!\Test Side Irish" (as opposed to the "Sou th Side Irish"). By the early l 920s members of the Commodore Barry Club were sufficiently prosperous to consider taking summer holidays. They wanted a p lace that was easily accessible by railroad where they could spend their vacation with their own kind of people. Spending time with one's own kind was as natural as breathing for the ethnic families of this period. Though the church was in sympathy with any tendency that would protect its members from the Protestantization which seemed to loom as a threat in the larger society, it did not itself engineer the founding of the Commodore Barry Country Club-the laity did that on its own. The Council proceeded to acquire the summer estate of a Milwaukee brewer, a nearby golf course, and a substantial amount of land in the vicinity. The land was subdivided into lots which were sold to members of the K.C . Council so that they could build their own summer homes. The country club itself was set up as a corporation. It was an ambitious enterprisea summer camp, a golf course, and a subdivision. Despite the nativism and the Americanization of the 1920s, these were heady days for people like my parents, and a horizon which included a summer country club seemed perfectly sensible then. By the end of the 1930s, it would seem too ambitious; by the end of the 1940s, however, it would seem not nearly ambitious enough. Until the Great Depression brought an end to its golden era, the Barry Country Club was "the place to go" for the "\Vest Side Irish. To my childish imagination there seemed to be thousands of people there of a summer weekend, but if one is to judge from available pictures, the numbers were more likely in the hundreds. It was a place for what was then the 116

Ch icago History

upper crust of the Irish middle class (still not all that "upper" but moving fast). Scores, probably hundreds of marriages, including my parents', began as summer romances on the beach, the pier, and the grounds of "the Barry"; and hundreds of children remember the playground, and the slide that clumped you screaming with excitement into the warm waters of the lake. Some summers we rented cottages, other summers we stayed in one o( the "hotels" on the country club grounds, "the Commodore" being our favorite (as opposed to "the Blackstone" and "the Drake"). We h ad land for a cottage but somehow it never got built-much to my frustra tion . "\'\Then the Great Depression came it swept away all dreams of a summer home and a lot of other dreams as well. My memories of Barry in the summertime date from these Depression years when the place was already suffering acute financial problems but somehow making do. The days of expansion were over, no one was building summer homes, and no new buildings were being constructed on the country club grounds; but still women and children spent the weeks from July 4th to Labor Day on the grounds and the adjoining cottages, the men coming up on the weekends. Young people also appeared on weekends, some in auLOmobiles. Priests would spend their vacations in "the priest's house" in secluded privacy at one end of the grounds, and seminarians and college students would wait on table in the dining hall. The bell would wake us for breakfast, remind us of lunch, warn us that supper was finally ready. My recollection is that the food was excellent, which may be historical gloss. The kids would play in the playground or the lake, the men would assault the golf course (which from later inspection I can testify was quite presentable). I'm not sure what the womenfolk did except sit and talk and watch their children. Summer resort America in the middle of the Great Depression. There was, of course, a wealth of planned fun-indoor softball played outdoors, trips to

"Hundreds of children remember the playground, and the slide that dumped you screaming with excitement into the warm waters of the lake." Andrew M. Greeley.

nearby lakes, pilgrimages to religious sites in Wisconsin (including a spot with the improbable name of Holy Hill), dances, parties, card games, contests. Nothing much intellectual, to tell you the truth-in this respect very different from its Jewish counterpart summer resorts. I can't even remember a lecture on anything other than a religious subject (which meant piety not philosophy), and if people were reading anything other than newspapers, it certainly escaped my attention. Toward the encl of the 1930s my family withdrew in fact, if not in theory, from the Barry Country Club scene. We had bought a modest bungalow in Chicago, and that required considerable amounts of both resources and attention. More important, there arose a philosophical difference between my parents and the people who were managing the club. In order to make ends meet during the Depression years, an old barn on the golf course grounds, which served as a kind of clubhouse for golfers, was slowly converted into what my mother contemptuously called "a saloon." Few Irish, my parents included, were Prohibitionists; though neither of them drank, they did not object to other people drinking, but they had an absolute

abhorrence of taverns, saloons, and nightclubs. The existence of "the Reel Barn" (as it came to be called) on the grounds of a Catholic family resort was intolerable to them. "It will ruin the place," my mother insisted. Whether it did or not I cannot say, but it certainly ruined it for them and thus for us children too. Barry carried on through the war years, although at a substantially reduced level of operation. Curiously enough we went back for a summer or two in the mid-1940s. For me the club had shrunk in size, as things are wont to do between one's tenth and seventeenth birthdays. I can remember seeing the headline announcing the first atomic bomb while on the beach at Barry and talking to a young man, scarcely a year or two older than I, whose chest was badly scarred by shrapnel from guns in the Hertgen Forests where he had served as a "replacement" with the First Infantry Division. He was a very tense and frightened young man. It was 1944, when the time between being drafted and being shot at was often very brief and preparation for the transition minimal. The Barry Country Club survived depression and war, but it could not survive prosperity. In the late 1940s or early 1950s (I can't find the Chicago History

117

The club attracted vacationers of all ages to take advantage of accommodations (two in a room) for $22.00 per week plus $13.00 for meals and "something doing to amuse you from dawn until bedtime." Brochure.

e:<act date and there don't seem to be any records) the land wa5 sold and subdivided for summer home construction. The Irish had outgrown the Barry, they could now join "real" country clubs closer to Chicago and play golf on the same fairways and swim in the same pools as well-to-do Protestants. The latter had no choice but to take the Irish in to maintain the clubs during the postwar inflation (just as the Irish would have to take Poles and Italians, and, in the case of Beverly Country Club, even Jews). The Irish and the other ethnics now had automobiles. It is hard to realize that at the end of Âˇworld vVar II there were only three million passenger automobiles in America; by 1950, however, it was a rare family in our neighborhood that didn't have one. We were no longer limited to the "in-close" summer resorts near the rail lines. There was also money for many to buy homes of their own with inside plumbing and sometimes even air conditioning. The homes built on the Barry site were infinitely more comfortable and much larger than those of the early 1920s subdivision just across the road. If the prosperity of the 1920s had expanded the horizon of that generation and made Twin Lakes possible, the prosperity of 118

Chicago History

the late 1940s and early 1950s led to a further expansion of horizons and made Commodore Barry Country Club unnecessary. We moved on to Lake Geneva, Long Beach, Minocqua, Door County, and sometimes even Ireland for our vacations. I did not go back to Twin Lakes for a long time. There were so many other things to do, and maybe I was afraid of seeing even the physical traces of a happy childhood environment eradicated . But early one morning about fifteen years ago, driving from Lake Geneva to Chicago, I turned off the road near Twin Lakes and drove down to the beach where Commodore Barry had been. The curve of the lake looked the same, so did some of the houses on the other side. I had expected a sad, bittersweet memory, but curiously enough the new summer homes did not seem the desecration I had thought they would. I turned back on the highway to Chicago with a curious sense of peace and joy, as though happy memories had seeped up from the dirt of the ground and the water of the lake. More recently-last year-I went back to Twin Lakes again. It was not the best time of year-a cold, early October afternoon. The roads were there still and most of the stores; the

The morning after a carnival. Chicagoans were happy to leave the city "to congregate to rest and relax, and partake of the cooling breezes off the lake." Andrew M. Greeley.

parish church (which had replaced the "mass on the lawn" in front of the pergola) had become a funeral home and there was a new church with a school. There had been an enormous expansion of home construction around the old village. The dance hall where we used to see movies at night (I remember one especially in which there was a song about the music going "round and round") had become a library. Twin Lakes was now a market center and the beginning of a dormitory suburb with lots of year-round residents whose homes crowded together with those of the summer residents along the shore of the lake--now a very small lake, but with the same clearly remembered curve of the vast sea of my childhood. It was not merely the experience of discovering in adulthood that everything was smaller than it had been, which is a common enough experience, bur it was even more eerie to see that virtually everything of this important childhood place was gone. There was a buried drive in the subdivision along which stood some of the early 1920 cottages bravely remodeled, and a birdhouse on the hore which corresponded to a very distinct memory. And the old caretaker's cottage was there, now a real estate office. But though the shape of the land was the same,

everything else was gone. Barry Country Club survives-to the extent it survives at all-in the memories of those of us for whom it was important. It did its work; its time is past. Grand Beach, Michigan, is much nicer. Childhood summer fun is gone, as well as the place where the fun was had; but there are still lakes and boats, deliciously hot weather, and fun with friends on the weekends-all enriched by the halo of memories from the past. The "ethnics" are someplace else now (though there are, of course, still some ethnics at Twin Lakes, but their lifestyle is different from what it was in the Barry clays), and that is all to the good-so long as we don't forget that we stand on the shoulders of those for whom a place like the Commodore Barry Country Club was a wild, adventurous dream.

There is nowhere a land so fair As in Twin Lakes. So full of joy, so free of care, As in Twin Lakes. And I believe that Happy Land The Lord prepared for mortal man ls built exactly on the plan Of old Twin Lakes. Club Brochure Chi cago Hist ory

119

Burt Barnes Exhibit

Rainy Day, a watercolor by Burt Barnes (18721947), was part of an exhibit of views of Chicago and the Midwest by this artist shown at the Society from May IO through July 31. Barnes, an artist and illustrator who came to Chicago from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and studied, painted, and worked here for a number of years in the 1890s and again between 191 I and 1915, has left a vivid and moving record of the city during those periods. His urban scenes are painted in the naturalist vein, but reflect the 120

Ch icago History

influence of impressionism and of Japanese art in their rendering of light and use of decorative values. For many years after Barnes's death in 1947 his work was largely unknown. Recently, through the efforts of his daughters, Marjorie Barnes Thompson and Mildred Barnes Kruhm, they have been exhibited and added to several public collections. Because of his daughters' generosity, Barnes's Chicago scenes will eventually become part of the Society's collections.

The Society Finders and Keepers

recently hosted an exhibition of the work of Burt Barnes, an American artist who chose the city of Chicago as the subject of some of his most interesting paintings (see facing page). \Vhile Barnes's work is both historically revealing and artistically compelling, one important aspect of the recent exhibit is not readily apparent to the casual viewer. After Barnes's death, his work was neglectedmany of his paintings being lost or dispersed across the country-and a part of America's historical and aesthetic record came dangerously close to being lost. As a result of his daughters' efforts, however, many of Barnes's most important paintings have been saved, and his Ch icago scenes have been promised to the collections of the Historical Society. This exempl ifies the ways in which institutions such as ours benefit from the labors of the many collectors and ama teur historians who share with us the task of collecting and preserving artifacts from the past. Those of us who consider ourselves "professionals" sometimes forget to acknowledge, or are unwilling to admit, the degree to which the building of our collections depends upon the passion, enthusiasm, and interest of the collector or amateur historian. Unrestricted by professional canons, bureaucracy, or other institutional restraints, the collector of such diverse objects as advertising cards, furniture, barbed wire, beer cans, rare books, toys, posters, or other similar materials is often scoffed at by professional historians or curators as "possessed," if not totally unbalanced. Yet it is just this boundless passion for historical artifacts that results in the creation of important collections. The Charles Gunther collection, a foundation of the Society's American history collections, is an example. Gunther, a wealthy and somewhat eccentric Chicago ca ndy manufacturer, was one of the first great collector of Americana at the end of the nineteenth century, a time when this area of collecting was still somewhat unfashionable. But Gunther was a vora-

THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY

cious accumulator, and, perhaps as a result, his collecting was often naive and undiscriminating. Some of his pieces seem somewhat bizarre: a piece of the skin from the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve, a pair of socks knitted by the light of the Chicago Fire, and wool from Mary's little lamb. At the same time he acquired such priceless pieces as the first patent ever issued in the United States, the furniture from the house where Lincoln died, and the desk from Appomattox Court House where the surrender terms which ended the Civil War were signed. While it is easy to criticize Gunther for his lack of historical perspective and discrimination, it is impossible to deny the greatness of his collection. It has often been argued that the strength of English history, especially on the local level, is the result of the work of amateur collectors, archaeologists, and history buffs who work with a tireless enthusiasm that often outdistances the staying power of the professional. The same is true of American and Chicago history. But we must not be too quick to separate the role of the professional from that of the amateur-both are essential. An important role of the museum, historical society, or research library is to guide, assist, and nurture the private collector; but once a collection is turned over to us for longterm trusteeship, our roles must change. Curators must sift through personal treasures and select according to a different set of criteria, complementing the eccentricity, enthusiasm, and passion of the private collector with the balance and perspective of the professional historian. But our most important responsibility is to maintain this mutually reinforcing process; by doing so the task of preserving our past will be a shared one, carried forward on the one hand by the vision and passion of amateurs, and balanced on the other by the historical perspective of the professional.

\~=--R-

<.._ ~ ~ - o

&-~~ DIRECTOR

Ch icago History

121

Reviews

The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle-Class Reform, Chicago, 1880-1930

by Thomas Lee Philpott New York: Oxford University Press, J 978. $17.95. TIIIS BOOK SHOULD be read by everyone who lives in Chicago. It is the story of the city's immigrant and black slum dwellers and the reformers who tried to help them, of the development and deteâ&#x20AC;˘ rioration of housing in the city, of the growth and decline of neighborhoods, and of the hardening of the color line. Although the book ends in I 930, it explains a great deal about the Chicago of the I 970s. J\Iuch that Philpott describes has been written about before-the Pullman strike of 1894; the race riot of 1919; the reform efforts of Jane Addams, Graham Taylor, J\Iary J\IcDowell, and the other settlement workers; the long struggle for housing reform; and even the growth of the black belt. But Pi1ilpott acids new and fascinating details to these fa. miliar stories, as well as including much information which is not so well known. He has an intimate and detailed knowledge of the city, a fine command of its social history, and, just as important, a good sense of what to leave out. All this is related with a nice sense of irony and a sparkling writing style. Unlike many of the new social historians, he writes readable history, and he writes with a point of view. A brief summary cannot do justice to the wealth of the book's detail and the subtlety of its argument, but essentially The Slum and the Ghello is about the fai lure of reformers, progressive businessmen, politicians, and philanthropists to solve the probâ&#x20AC;˘ !ems of the poor in Chicago. "The reformers," Philpott writes, "were socially concerned but for the most part economically conservative, looking to private enterprise to solve the housing problem and never advocating legal measures that would violate the business creed. Their ultimate goal was the assimilation into the American social system of the slumborn youngster, scrubbed clean of his foreignness, indistinguishable from all other Americans, or rather, all other white Americans." The author describes how one noble experiment after another turned to failure or achieved only limited success. l\Iodel tenements became the worst kind of slum dwellings; George l\1. Pullman's attractive model town became just one more way of oppressing the workingman; Julius Rosenwald's Garden Homes Project, designed to provide good housing for workers in the stockyards and steel mills, was too expensive for most of them-it became

122

Chi cago History

instead an all-white enclave for upwardly mobile ethnics moving from Englewood and Woodlawn "where rents were getting too high and Negroes were getting too close." But the reformers did have some success, Philpott admits, at least with those immigrants whom they helped along the road to assimilation. English classes, settlement houses, and the parks and playgrounds established in working-class neighborhoods contributed to the reformers' efforts to help these newcomers adopt American ways and American middle-class values. Perhaps, Philpott suggests, it was only these "transfigured few" (to borrow a phrase from Jane Addams), who appreciated and profited from the efforts of the reformers. Philpott is most persuasive when he demonstrates the systematic way in which blacks were segregated. Other groups were assimilated into American society-other groups, in fact, never really lived in ghettos-but blacks were almost universally excluded from the American dream. Ghettoization was promoted not only by "white realtors and resident groups who contained the Blacks by using violence and devices such as restrictive covenants" but also by the reformers who set up settlements and services for "colored" and acquiesced in schemes to keep blacks confined within the black belt. "Neighborhood workers," the author writes, "whether they were anti-Negro like Rev. Norman Barr or pro-Negro like Jane Addams, were deeply implicated in making and maintaining the Black ghetto in Chicago." Now I doubt whether Jane Addams, or any other reformers, had the power to break down ghetto walls and promote race equality, even if they had wanted to. And a few did want to. But it is to Philpott's credit that he makes careful distinctions between those like Jane Addams who (though influenced by the racial stereotypes of the clay and sometimes equivocating and compromising) did try to promote opportunities for blacks, and those like Graham Taylor who opposed the idea of black equality. There is something pathetic and almost comical about the settlement workers Philpott describesdesperately trying to replace the corner saloon with a coffee shop, running educational films to counâ&#x20AC;˘ teract the violence- and sex-filled movies at the local theaters, policing settlement-house dances to prevent couples from dancing too close together. But while the efforts of these reformers to teach middleclass, Victorian values may now seem amusing and their solutions to the problems they saw naive, I wonder whether there could have been a "perfect" solution.

Reviews

It is a depressing tale that Philpott tells. But how is one to assess these reformers, philanthropists, and progressives? Some, of course, are easier Lo judge than others, but I sense that Philpott believes that a solution to the problems of poor housing, racial tension, and urban violence could have been found, if only Chicagoans had been asLUte and persistent enough to pursue it strongly. But what course could have created a Chicago without racial tension and violence, without a black belt? Many of these reformers wrestled with difficult problems, problems which our own generation has not yet solved, and it is dangerous to judge these people from the vantage point of our day. Should we condemn them for being products of their time and their class? This is an impressive book at the same time that it is a depressing one. I would have liked to see Philpott attempt to make more comparisons with other cities, as Kenneth L. Kusmer does in A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 1976), for Chicago is not the world, and in some other cities the opportunities for blacks were greater and the ghetto less restrictive than in Chicago. I would also have liked a little more attention to the alternatives which faced the reformers of 1880-1930, and perhaps a little more effort to judge them in terms of the world they lived in, rather than from the perspective of the world of the I 970s. Nevertheless, The Slum ancl the Ghetto: Neighborhood D eterioration and MiddleClass Reform, Chicago, 1880-1930 is an impressive first book, and one that should be pondered by all who live in Chicago. ALLEN F. DA VIS

Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar

by Ira Berkow Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. 14.50. COLUMNIST and Chicago native Ira Berkow's Maxw ell Street: Survival in a Bazaar is an effort to recreate the community centered around the city's celebrated open air market. Between the 1880s and the beginning of the Great

SYNDICATED

Depression, the area bounded by Taylor Street on the north, I 6th Street on the south, Canal Street on the easL, and l\J organ Street on the west, was a microcosm of urban America, attracting upwards of 70,000 persons weekly. The neighborhood was a place to come from and, al times, to return to. Berkow's book comisLs of a series of Studs Terkelstyle interviews with some of the community's alumni, including former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg; William Paley, the founder and chairman of the board of th e Columbia Broadcasting System; crime syndicate genius Jake Guz ik; musician Benny Goodman; Admiral Hyman Rickover ; political wizard .Jacob Arvey; boxing champions Barney Ross and Jackie Fields; theater mogul Barney Balaban; as well as many others whose lives would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Until 1871 the Maxwell Street area was sparsely populated prairie. After that elate it came to be a popular residential area not only for the many German and Irish Americans who lost their home in the Chicago Fire, but for the thousands of Eastern European Jews who began to settle in Chicago. Because of its proximity to the railroad stations, cheap rents, tolerant landlords, and the presence of "landsleite"-kindred folk from the same town or area in Europe-the neighborhood grew. By 1900 some 25,000 Jewish residents helped create one of the most densely populated and congested settlement in Chicago, centered at Halsted and Maxwell streets. Halsted was lined with a variety of imposing emporia featuring many oneprice items; the latter was a great outdoor market as colorful as a medie\'al fair and notable for the absence of a set price for any item. Abominable living conditions, poor sanitation, insufficient light, air, and heat, and inadequate recreational facilities prevailed. Residences, warehouses, and basements were converted, divided, and subdivided. A 190 l survey declared forty-five percent of the dwellings "dangerous." Crowded conditions inside sent many residents out to spend time in the streets for relief. Taking in boarders was routine: at night a tailor slept in the same bed that comforted a baker during the daytime. Iany residents obtained jobs in nearby clothing factories , some of which were described by contemporaries as "pools of sweat and blood" where " human lives are sacrificed on the altar of profit." Nevertheless, the clothing trades had a future because shops were small and could be run with a minimum of capital. But peddling was the quickest avenue to entrepreneurship. Some peddlers rang doorbells, others had a regular clientele, some Ch icago History

123

Reviews

owned a horse and a wagon, others manipulated pushcarts to a fixed location, while still others plied their wares up and down the streets. Crates, wheelbarrows, and wagons became makeshift counters and mobile department stores. A multitude of organizations assisted in the acculturation of Maxwell Street residents. These included the Chicago Hebrew Institute, the Maxwell Street Settlement, Hull House, the Jewish Manual Training School, the United Jewish Charities, and the United Hebrew Trades. Yiddish theaters were the dramatic centers of the community. Grade schools and night classes dispensed lessons in "American ." Synagogues-some in apartments, others in storefronts or in large permanent edifices-abounded. Yiddish newspapers and periodicals enabled the residents to follow local, national, and international affairs in a familiar language while presenting newcomers with an elementary education in Americanization. By the 1920s l\Iaxwell Street housed mainly first generation Jews, blacks, and Mexicans. Older residents moved to Lawndale, Albany Park, Rogers Park, and South Shore; those who came earliest were now farthest removed from the original ghetto. Maxwell Street today is but a shadow of its former self. Once the community extended a full city mile, teeming and bustling with a self-generating vitality; today, all that remains of the former character of the place is in the one block from Union to Halsted streets. The ravages of time, mobility, urban renewal, and suburban outmigration have inflicted their toll, and the total loss is incalculable. As nostalgia, Ira Berkow's interviews provide a smorgasbord of the area's residents and lifestyles. But as history, the volume is noticeably deficient. A major problem is the lack of structure and direction: the reader knows many interesting stories for his trouble, but is left searching for the focus of the book. At times it is impossible to separate facts from romantic images (bluITed with the passage of time) of the "good old days"-many of which were not so good. The author's failure to portray the community's educational, religious, philanthropic, and municipal institutions is most unfortunate. Had Berkow presented an overview that probed the historical significance of the community, he could also have avoided a pitfall common to many oral histories-permitting the interviews to serve as ends in themselves . Instead, they should be viewed as but one of a variety of tools that serve as a means to the historian's end. The omission of an index is to be lamented. Finally, the manuscript is marred by such errors 124

Ch icago History

as referring to J aco b Arvey's parents as Russian rather than Lithuanian Jews, crediting Balaba n and Katz rather than the three Marks brothers (Mitchell, Ieyer, and Moe) with building the Granada Theater, and misspellings as in the name of Capone gunsel Louis Alterie. But in spite of these shortcomings, Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar remains a useful addition to the literature on Chicago's ethnic groups and communities. EDWARD HERBERT MAZUR

Something Wonderful Right Away: An Oral History of the Second City & the Compass Players

edited by Jeffrey Sweet New York: Arnn Books, 1978. 2.95 paper. TIIE THEATRICAL J\IOVEMENT that had its roots at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s, and later became the Playwrights Theatre Club, later still the Compass improYisational cabaret group, and finally Second City, has unquestionably been the most important influence on comedy and comic theater in America during the past two decades. The improl'isational style, the contemporary satiric mode, the method of developing character and situation that we see everywhere today-from l\Iary Tyler J\Ioore to Saturday Night Lil'e to Woody Allen-are clear outgrowths of this mol'ement. And many of the comedians and comic actors we sec in such productions are alumni of these first Chicago groups. A partial list of these alumni practically tells the whole story: Severin Darden , J\Iike Nichols, Elaine J\Iay, Shelley Berman, Avery Schreiber, Alan Arkin , Joan Ril'ers, Barbara Harris, John Belushi, Valerie Harper, Dick Schaal, Alan Alda, Paul Sand. Enough? Lesser known in some respects, but of even greater significance to the movement are producers Bernard Sahlins and David Shepherd, and director Paul Sills, Theodore Flicker (who also directed the cult film Th e President's Analyst), and Del Close. Perhaps least known but surely a germinal figure is Viola Spolin, Sills's mother and coach / theoretician.

Reviews

Something Wonderfu l Right Away consists of a brief preface, a short history, and a ser ies of thirty sometimes rambling interviews with most of the major figures (except ing Elaine May and Viola Spolin) of the movement. It is the first effort to tell one of the most important stories in modern American theater. Each of the interviews is rich in history and concept although, as Sweet notes, they turn out to be (as in the famous movie Rashomon) widely different versions of a single story. And that isn't quite what I would prefer to find in a first effort. I feel somewhat caddish taking this earnest and highly useful historical endeavor and criticizing it for what it isn't. Yet it seems to me that a first book on this movement ought to have provided a longer and more cohesive narrative history and to have offered a more thorough analysis of its achievements. This context can only be surmised or inferred from Something Wonderful's oral history technique. In sum, this strikes me as a book which ought to be a companion volume to another one yet to be written. I hope it is written soon, and by someone who was there for at least a major part of the original germination period. DON ROSE

The World of Earl Hines

by Stanley Dance New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977. 7.95 papc~.

14.95 cloth,

Oh, Didn't He Ramble: The Life Story of Lee Collins as Told to Mary Collins edited by Frank]. Gillis and John W. Miner Urbana: Uni\'crsity o[ Illinois Press, 1974. 10.00. IN THEIR BEGINNINGS, jan and popular music (music made primarily to entertain rather than to meet some artistic standard) were closely connected. Jazz was more concentrated, and the musicians enjoyed

playing it more, but the same people ordinarily played both since no one had the luxury of playing jazz full time and never having to worry about pleasing an audience. "Jazz" and "commercial" described two ways or contexts of playing, but not two kinds of musician. The audience for jazz has finally grown large enough that playing it can be an exclusive occupation, but whether that has improved the music is an open question. Jazz is now more esoteric, and sometimes it seems more like something to be studied rather than enjoyed. Trumpeter Lee Collins and pianist Earl Hines lived through this period of transformation. Both began their careers in the 1910s (Collins in New Orleans and Hines in Pittsburgh) and both spent important parts of their playing lives in Chicago. These two lengthy autobiographical accou ntsHines's supplemented by background information and interviews with other musicians-provide raw material for the analysis of the world of Chicago music and entertainment during some crucial years in the history of jazz. Hines was much more successful than Collins. He led the band at the gangster-run Grand Terrace at Oakwood and South Parkway during the late 1920s and 1930s. It was not the kind of place jazz is heard in today. On the contrary, it was more like a big Las Vegas show room: twenty-four dancers, innumerable acts, special arrangements written for each show, elaborate costumes, and all the other paraphernalia of big-time entertainment. Earl Hines presided over this extravaganza and remains as proud of his ability to produce and conduct such a show as of the piano playing the rest of us think more important. In later years Hines became an international jazz star, playing for an ever-growing audience of fans. Lee Collins had much the same experience. While Hines was playing for the "cafe society" of his day, Collins was entertaining a sleazier audience on North Clark Street, in the kind of clubs (judging from my own experience playing the same sorts of places) where entertainment was subordinate to ripping off conventioneers, servicemen, and sailors from the Great Lakes boats. He got to play jazz because no one really cared what was being played as long as the suckers could be taken. Toward the end of his life, New Orleans-style music developed a cult following and a devoted crowd began to hang around the Victory Club to hear this relic of the good old days. Collins also made a European jazz tour, but he died poor and sick. Hines, however, is still active today. Chicago History

125

Reviews

What is surpnsmg to a contemporary reader is the way both men, especially Hines, saw their lives a nd achievements as intima tely tied into the world of entertainment rather than that of musical art. Today's musicians and fans will find that hard to understand, though the loss of its connection with popular entertainment probably explains why jazz has lost its mass popular appeal to rock music. HOWARDS. BECKER

The Federal Writers ' Project: A Study in Government Patronage of the Arts

by Monty Penkower Urbana: Uni,Âˇcrsity of Illinois Press, 1977. 11.95. and well-documented study of a unique social experiment-the WPA Federal Writers' Project. Begun originally as a doctoral dissertation in history at Columbia University, the book was later rewritten, expanded, and molded into its present form. The Federal Writers' Project was born out of a crisis in the economic life of this country during the Great Depression. Writers swelled the unemployment rolls just as did members of every other occupational group . Monty Penkower traces the conditions and circumstances which led to the formation of the project: it was designed not only to provide relief for unemployed writers but also to create an opportunity for revitalizing the arts in America. To furnish meaningful work for literary craftsmen as well as for white-collar workers with some writing ability, the project undertook to produce a series of guidebooks on each of the nation's states and [at that time] territories. The volumes in the American Guide Series followed a consistent format. First came a collection of essays on such topics as the history, geography, agriculture, labor and industry, literature, art and architecture, theater, music, and education of each state. Then came a detailed listing of sightseeing tours indicating the highways to be followed and

THIS 1s A THOROUGH

126

Chicago History

the points of interest to be observed. The necessary research, collection of data , and writing of the initial drafts were carried out in each of the stales, but then the completed manuscripts were subm itted to the central office in Washington for final editing and rewriting. This was a gigantic undertaking, but the stale guidebooks were only a fraction of the total output of the project. There was a host of auxiliary publications in the form of city and other local guidebooks, as well as works concerning blacks, the American Indian, and American folklore . Finally, there were many books describing the various ethnic groups and their contributions to America. In all the project completed some 300 volumes-an achievement of no small proportion. The author, through his painstaking documentation , reveals the inner workings of this nationwide enterprise, which involved some 5,000 individuals. He also describes in great detail the many administrative and professional problems which arose during the operation of the project. One of the major difficulties was the requirement that ninety percent of the staff had to be persons who were certified for unemployment relief. The result was that the bulk of those who were assigned to the project were not professional writers as such, but rather men and women recruited from the ranks of the unemployed in white-collar occupations. The latter required a great deal of training and close supervision. Another serious problem that plagued the project was how to deal with controversial materials, particularly in the field of industry and labor, without resorting Lo censorship. This was an extremely sensitive matter since the government was involved in funding the project. The governor of l\Iassachusetts, for example, objected to the manner in which the state guidebook. handled the Sacco and Vanzetti case as well as other controversial matters and sought to have these passages deleted. A former governor of the slate declared that the book ought to be burned. Despite these problems, the American Guide Series received warm praise from reviewers throughout the land. Even some of the severest critics of the WPA program were compelled to admit that the production of so many excellent guidebooks was a worthy activity. Revised editions of most of the state guides appeared regularly; by 1959 the Alaska guide had reached its thirteenth printing. Van \Vyck Brooks, distinguished literary critic, asserted that the guidebooks provided this country with " its first candid portrait." The author of this study

Notes

concludes: "The guides, in particular, were distinctly an American product, transcending Baedeker to become the ultimate road map for the indigenous cultural discovery of the United States." ALEX LADENSON

The Reviewers -Howard Becker teaches sociology al Northwestern University. He is well known for his work in the sociology of arts and cullure, and is himself a jazz musician. -Allen F. Davis teaches history at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is the author of American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams (1973). -Alex Ladenson is the former chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library, and the former director (1938-1943) of the WPA Library Omnibus Project in Chicago. -Edward H. Mazur teaches urban studies at Chicago CityWide College. He wrote his dissertation on Chicago's Jewish community from 1850 lo 1940. -Don Rose is a writer and political consultant who had an early association with the Compass Players.

Annotated Bibliography of Chicago History by Frank J ewe!!. A broad range of topics is covered in over 2,850 entries. The books, scholarly articles, private and governmental reports, and unpublished theses and dissertations indexed here provide access to Chicago's history for both novice and scholar. SI0.00 cloth. Chicago 1980, An Illustrated Appointment Calendar compiled by Walter and Teresa Krutz. In fiftyfour photographs (see inside back cover of this issue) and hundreds of notations, this book celebrates the big and little people who have made an impression on Chicago's past. $6.00 paper.

Wanted The Chicago Historical Society is preparing a major exhibition of architectural terra cotta, art pottery, handpainted china, cut glass, and stained glass made in Chicago between 1872 and 1933. We are particularly interested in locating examples of china painted by Art Institute students and members of the Atlan Ceramic Club; Teco, Faenza, Crossware, Albery, and Pauline pottery; cut glass by Pitkin & Brooks; and light fixtures or windows made by Chicago artisans or designed by Chicago architects. If you have items you are willing to lend for the exhibition, please call Sharon Darling, curator of decorative arts, at 642-4600, ext. 47.

Notes Programs on Chicago Writers

New Publications Several publications from the Chicago Historical Society are now available in the Museum Store: Chicago: A Historical Guide to the Neighborhoods by Glen E. Holt and Dominic A. Pacyga. This heavily illustrated volume traces the history of the Loop and fifteen South Side neighborhoods from their origins to the present. The authors consider changing populations, economic functions, and architecture for each neighborhood, and suggest the range of factors responsible for neighborhood change over time. 134 illustrations, 16 maps. 7.95 paper.

A series of programs, three in the fall of 1979 and three in the following spring, entitled "The Writer in the City: Chicago" will be presented at the Chicago Historical Society beginning this October. For each program two prominent Chicago writers-authors such as David Mamet, Studs Terkel, Norman Mark, and William Brashier-will read and discuss selections from their own work. Professor Edward Rosenheim of the University of Chicago will moderate each program, providing a continuity in which to examine the experience of living in the city and how that is reflected in works of art. Open discussion with the audience will complete the program. The programs, co-sponsored by the Illinois Humanities Council, will take place at the Chicago Historical Society during the early evening. Watch the next Calendar of Events for more details. Chicago History

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

OFFICERS

Theodore Tieken, President Stewart S. Dixon, 1st Vice-President Philip W. Hummer, 2nd Vice-President Gardner H. Stern, Treasurer Bryan S. Reid, Jr., Secretary DIRECTOR

Harold K. Skramstad, Jr. TRUSTEES

Bowen Blair Philip D. Block III Cyrus Colter Emmett Dedmon Stewart S. Dixon James R. Getz Philip W. Hummer l\[rs. Frank D. Mayer

John T. l\IcCutcheon, Jr. Andrew McNally III Arthur E. Osborne, Jr. Bryan S. Reid, Jr. Harold Byron Smith, Jr. Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken Mrs. Edgar J. Uihlein

LIFE TRUSTEES

Willard L. King Mrs. C. Phillip Miller Hermon Dunlap Smith HONORARY TRUSTEES

Jane Byrne, Mayor, City of Chicago Patrick L. O'Malley, President, Chicago Park District

The Chicago Historical Society is a privately endowed institution devoted to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and selected areas of American history. It must look to its members and friends for continuing financial support. Contributions to the Society are tax-deductible and appropriate recognition is accorded major gifts. The Society encourages potential contributors to phone or write the director's office to discuss the Society's needs. MEMBERSHIP Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's activities and objectives. Classes of membership and dues are as follows: Annual, S20 a year and Governing Annual, $100 a year. Members receive the Society's quarterly magazine, Chicago History; a quarterly Calendar of Events listing Society programs; invitations to special programs; free admission to the building at all times; reserved seats at movies and concerts in our auditorium; and a 10% discount on books and other merchandise purchased in the Museum Store. HOURS

Exhibition galleries are open daily from 9:30 to 4: 30; Sunday from 12:00 to 5:00. Library and museum research collections are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 to 4:30 except for July and August when they are open Monday through Friday. The Society is closed on Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving. EDUCATION AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS offers guided tours, assemblies, slide talks, gallery talks, craft demonstrations, and a variety of special programs for all ages, from pre-school through senior citizen. ADMISSION FEES FOR NON-MEMBERS

Adults I; Children (6-17), 50Â˘; Senior Citizens, 25Â˘. Admission is free on Mondays. Single copies of Chicago History, published quarterly, are 2.50 by mail; S2 at newsstands, bookshops, and the Museum Store.

Beating the heat, ca. 1927, from Chicago 1980, An Illustrated Appointment Calendar, compiled by Walter and Teresa Krutz of the Chicago Historical Society's staff. Daily entries noting events both epic and incidental in the city's past are highlighted by fifty-four photographs from the Society's Chicago Daily News collection. The soft-cover, spiral-bound calendar is now available for $6.00 from the Museum Store.