Chicago History | Winter 1985–86 by Chicago History Museum

CHICAGO HISTORY

GARRICK THEATRE CHICAGO.

1913, BY CLVOE W RILEY 1'0V, SYSTEM

The Ganick ThÂ£atre at 58 v\4-st Randolph Street featured live fmfonna,ues until the 1930s, when it became a movie home. 771.i5 program cover is.from a 1915 musical farce titled The Only Girl. CHS Library. ICHi-19858.

CHICAGO HISTORY _ _ _T_h_e_M_agazine of the Chicago Historical Sociery_ __ EDITOR R t..:SSFI.L L r.WIS

Winter 1985-86 Vo lume XIV, Number 4

ASSISTANT EDITOR M EG W A I TER EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Ai.ET/\ Z A K

CONTENTS

DESIGNER L ISA GI NZ Ei.

PHOTOGRAPHY 'WII .I.I AM T.j EN M:S:GS J AN E REC:/\N

''Ain't We Got Fun?" LEWIS A. ERENBERG

LaSalle Street PETER

Co pyright 1986 b) 1he Chi cago H istnri ca l Socie ty Clark S1ree1 a l o nh Ave nue Chi cago, Illino is 606 1.J

1ss:-.: 0212-85-IO

Ani cles a ppea rin g in thi s jo urna l are abstracted a nd ind exed in 1/istorical Abslmrls a nd A merica: H i.story and J,,fe Foo tn o ted manuscripts of th e a rticle, appearing in this iss ue are a\'a ilab le in th e Chi cago Histo ri ca l Soc ie t) ·s Pulilica ti o m Offi ce. Cmer: "Our C.ang" al U11rago\ l 'won Sta/ion. 1928. 711P "Our (,,mg .. t11111l'diP1, 1hort 1lapst1rk j,/111.1 }int prod11rl'(/ b; flal Hoar/, in thP mul19201, hel/1ed to estahlilh a 1ww era of thr r/11 /d ar/or. U IS. /).\' 8·1.16 5. G1Jt of h eld r.111,~pn.11•1.

B. HALES AND ROBERT BRUEGMANN

Shaping Chicago's Shoreline JOH

STAMPER

Chicago Chronicles PERRY

R. Duis

DEPARTME TTS

Review Essay ARTHUR ZILVERSMIT

Chicago Historical Society OFFICERS SLewart S. Dixon, Chairman Philip W. Hummer, Vice-Chairman Philip D. Block III, Vice-Chairman

Bryan S. Reid,Jr., Treasurer Mrs. Newton N. Minow, Secretary Theodore Tieken, Immediate Past Chairman

Ellsworth H. Brown, President and Director

TRUSTEES Philip D. Block III John T McCutcheon,Jr. Mrs. Pastora San Juan Cafferty William J. McDonough Mrs. Frank D. Mayer Cyrus Co lter Stewart S. Dixon Mrs. ewton N. Minow William M. Drake Richard H. Needham Edward Hines Potter Palmer Philip W. Hummer Mrs. Edward S. PeLersen Edgar D.Jannolta Bryan S. Reid, Jr. Philip E. Kelley Edward Byron Smith,Jr. Mrs. Brooks McCormick Dempsey J. Travis Mrs. Abra Prentice Wilkin

LIFE TRUSTEES Andrew McNally III Mrs. C. Phillip Miller Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken

HO ORARY TRUSTEE Harold Washington, Mayor, City of Chicago

The Chicago Historical Society is a privately endowed institution devoted to collecting, preserving, and inLerpreting Lhe history of the city of Chicago, the stale of Illinois, and selected areas of American history. IL must look to iLs members and friends for continuing financial support. Contributions to the Society are tax-deductible, and appropriate recognition is accorded major gifts. Membership Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's goals and activ ities. Classes of annual membership and dues are as follows: Individual, 25; Family. $30. Members receive the Society's quarterly magazine, Chicago History; a quarterly Calendar of Events listing Society programs; invitations to special events; free admission to the building at all times; reserved seats at films and concerts in our auditorium; and a JO percent discount on books and ~ther merchandise purchased in the Museum Store. Hours Exhibition galleries are open daily from 9:30 A.M . LO 4:30 P.M .; Sunday from 12:00 NOON LO 5:00 P.M. Research collections are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 A .M. to 4:30 P.M . The Prints and Photographs Collection is open from 9:30 ,u1. to 4:30 1~~1. by appoinuncnt. The Society is closed on Christmas, New Year's, and Thanksgiving days. Education and Public Programs Guided tours, slide lectures, galle1-y talks, craft demonstrations, and a variety of special programs for all ages, from pre-school through senior citizen, are offered. Admission Fees for Non-members /\dults, 1.50; Child1Âˇen (6-17), 50!t; Senior Citizens, 50t. Admission is free on 1ondays.

Chicago Historical Society

Clark Street at North Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60614

(312) 642-4600

'Â˝.in't We Got Fun?" By Lewis A. Erenberg

Begi,nning in the late nineteenth century, Chicagoans sought release from conservative Victorian values. They replaced them with a new urban culture of novel and exciting entertainments such as amusement parks, motion pictures, vaudeville, dance halls, and nightclubs. 1893 is regarded as one of Chicago's greatest artistic achievements, the fair was also important to the development of the city's enteltainmentand amusement industry and to twentieth-century urban life. The organization of the fair demonstrated two very different attitudes about leisure and amusement. lo reflect the official goals of the expositionthe pursuit of culture, gentility, and refined leisure-the planners laid out chaste white BeauxArts buildings, graceful walkways, and romantic lagoons throughout the Jackson Park fairgrounds. These aesthetic wonders were created to satisfy the middle class's longing for a vision of harmony and unity, as well as to inspire, uplift, and educate the masses. The vision of the While City as an orderly and disciplined community trumpeted technology, culture, and women as the foundation of a ne\\' American urban society. But the fair organizers also realized that less elegant amusements were necessa11Âˇ to attract crowds to the fairgrounds to see the official vision. The Midway, a mile-long amusement zone separate from the fairgrounds (but officially part of the expo ition), offered the public the thrilling :F enis Wheel, exotic oriental belly dancers, and many more elaborate and titillating attractions and amusements. The Mid\\'ay gave people what they really \,Âˇantedamusements without relation to culture, body without refinement. The Columbian Exposition juxtaposed these two conflicting views of leisure. It reaffirmed the dominant Victorian ideal of culture, a feminine perspective that stressed activities of the mind over base p leasures of the body. Advocates of this view embraced values of work and industry, restraint .\l]' I-IOL 'Gl-1 THE WORLffS COI.L' ~llll..\N EXPOS! rION Of

Lewis A. Erenberg is associate professor of history al Loyola University of Chicago. 4

and order, home and family. The fair also legitimized the amusements of tJ1e Midway. These maleoriented entertainments promoted sensuality and frivolity, thrills and danger, anarchy and impulse. The appearance of these two worlds side by side at the fair portended an important change in the development of Chicago's urban culture. For the next thirty years, these "lower" amusements steadily gained popular support and began to play an important role in urban life . At the ame time, Chicago's elites would pursue genteel leisure, struggling to mainta.in family standards of entertainment. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, Chicagoans experienced a double standard that permitted men of all classes many public freedoms denied to women. This was especially true of amusements, a world largely of men who lived outside official familial values. Ilere, Chicago's anarchic life of gambling, rough-and-tumble politics, and aggressive business thrived. The saloon, a lower-class male preserve offering liquor, sports, politics, and informal entertainments such as singing and dancing, was the center of this world. Providing a loose atmosphere that allowed men to indulge as they pleased, tJ1e aloon functioned as a male sanctuary from the growing world of domesticity. Chicago had many kinds of saloons. As histo1ian Perry Duis shows, exclusively ethnic saloons were found in Poli h and Italian neighborhoods, while more cosmopolitan institutions were run by the Ge1-mans and the Irish throughout the city. The latter were especially popular downtown. Some hotel saloons, such as the Tremont House's Men's Cafe, were considered "nice" affairs. But typical rowdy male saloon behavior-informal mixing, drinking, and camaraderie-was hardly genteel. Saloons were off limits to proper women; consequently, women who frequented tJiem were considered prostitutes. The

GOPYl~IGt\T

Written especially for the Worul sColumbian Exposition of 1893, the "Cairo Street Waltz" symboliud the exotic, sensualflavor ofMidway amusements. 5

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

A NORTI"\ <LARI< ~TREET

. OIVf

German beer garden was an exception to this rule. Drinking beer in a garden-like setting was part of the German continental Sunday. Women and children were welcome to join the beer garden festivities (there was sometimes a band), but they were only allowed to participate en Jamille. No unescorted women were admitted into the beer garden, thus eliminating the possibilities of infom1al mixing with women out ide familial control. Disturbed at fir t by the beer drinking, native-born Americans soon came to accept the beer garden as a respectable place to spend leisure time. Variety was another male entertainment linked to alcoholic intimacy, and thus it too was considered disreputable by genteel Victorians. Performed in saloon music halls, variety shows attracted lowerclass men with drink, dancing, singing, and comedy sketches. Often located in a red-light district, the rowdy variety hall featured performer-audience interaction: patrons hissed,jeered , stamped, and shouted at low comedians. Variety catered to a largely male audience until the late 1880s when it, 6

along with dime museums, was transformed into vaudeville to attract a family trade. The public dance hall was considered an equally dangerous threat to Victorian values of work, orde1~ and restraint The upper and middle classes danced in the privacy of their own homes, where they cou ld insure that women would not mix witJ1 men of questionable backgrounds. Until the 1890s, lower- and working-class dances were also largely private affairs. Ethnic and voluntary benefit societies, religious groups, and ocial clubs rented space in halls acijacent to or above saloons. They sold tickets to the public, but these groups still tried to conuÂˇol the gatherings, especially their yo uthful attendees. A new influx of poor immigrants in the 1890s, however, opened public dance halls to anyone with the price of admission. The most notorious dance halls crowded the red-light districts. The Levee roared, as did its predecessors, largely because Chicago was a wideopen town, and the traditions of democratic anarchy " Âˇere strong. The dance halls, saloons, gambling

't\in't We Got Fun?"

Pro/1rrr wo11wn did 1101 ji-equent saloons in lht' ni111•/t'Pnlh rn1tmy; those who did risl,ed bring comidn-ed Jn-oslilutes. The- Chica~o Ti-ibune, in which thi.< graphic (left) appeared in /898, lammted lhe cmn1/1ting influence of saloons on Chicago :S young ladies. 7/J men, lwzVf'V('r, saloons ojfn-Pd informal mtn·/ammt' lll .111rh msingingand da11ci11g, tlS well as bquor, sports, pohlics, and gambling. \1iriety s!UJW lhPaters, considered mwdy and di,;nfrillable lry l'irloria ns, eoolved i11lo more respectable hmLSes of mtn·tainment mitabiP forfamiliPs lry 1900. This combined theater and dime 1111.Lwum (below) ll}{ll localed on State St rrel betwern \Ian 8ure11 and C:1111.gre'!S strePls.

dens, sporting houses, and brothels of the Le\'ee pro\'ided the most intimate fom1s of public amusement and thus were prime attractions for \'isiting businessmen, sailors, transport workers, and men living in the city. A relief from domesticity, the Levee supported male mingling, rough equality, and anarchic beha,·ior longer than any other part of the city. Although the Levee was never officially condoned, middle-class citizens tended to look the other way, allowing the district to flourish, because the Le\'ee centralized ,·ice into one clear!)· marked space separate from respectable wards and respectable women. Even after the Le\'ee closed in the 1910s, Chicago's city father continued to protect prostitution, a testament 10 the durability or ,trong- male underworld traditions and resistance 10 formal civili1a1ion. For those unable to uphold the official standards of Victorian culture, red-light districts thus offered a "safe" outlet for anarrh ic male beha, ior. ot all traditionally male amusements remained closed to women. By the late nineteenth century, 7

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

71ie.Jmwsmul.Jrme1vaudeuillef;la:;,7S W('re /1mt of the minstrel show tradition tlwt fi'atured white men in blackft,ce acti11goul tlwirinlR>tJretalum ofblacks. J\fr,lodmmatir /1/ay.1 li/1e The Littlest Rebel , which /Jlay{'(/ at the Culoriial Thmlreon l?a11dolph Street, reflected Victoria11 values. In tlw1e fJIO)~. ,1ro11g malr 1,,,,rn /m)l){'d tlwir rouragr by saving rhtL5le hrroinesfmm rui/ vii/aim.

'i'\.in'l We Col Fun?"

circuses, melodrama, and minstrelsy, in particular, began to pre enl family entertainment. Theater owners created a less infonnal and more hospitable theater aunosphere to attract a different clientele. As part of this campaign, prostitutes and drinking, eating, and yelling by patrons were prohibited. Women and children soon became the backbone of the matinee theater audience. Blackface minstrelsy was frequently featured in Chicago theaters. Dating from the 1840s, it was popular with l11e transient male society of mining communities and industrial cities. Cavorting as l11e characters "Tambo" and "Bones," white men in blackened faces acted out their interpretation of the black race. Minstrelsy portrayed northern bla~ks, or ':Jim Dandies," as self-indulgent, uppity folks, incapable of self-control. Their bodily impulses, not their minds, dictated their actions. Plantation blacks were depicted as relatively happy because the plantation owners imposed control over their lives. Indulgent in body, with gross lips, eyes, and legs that eemed to dance out of control, black men were seen in minstrelsy as the opposite of whites, whose sturdy producer values workingclass audiences identified as their own. Yet in

wearing the black mask, whites could step outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior and act out the dangerous impulses they denied themselves as they struggled to maintain self-control and genteel standards. By the 1870 , women were admitted to minstrel shows. Circuses portrayed the rural roots of American life. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, circuses barred prostitutes from their premises and cleaned up their "gyp joint" atmosphere to attract the family trade . The themes of the acts became more suitable for middle-class audiences. Featuring dramatic encounters between beasts and courageous animal trainers and the derring-do of equestrian artists, the drama of the circus highlighted the triumph of morally and physically courageous men over nature. Circus performers demonstrated self-control as a key value, for one slip could send an artist to a certain death. The introduction of three rings to the big top in the 1880s not only symbolized the taming and subduing of nature, but it also structured the audience's experience; it defused the anarchic impulse of the crowd and made it more orderly and decorous. Melodrama, which broadcast the official values 9

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86 of the age within a sentimental mold, also promoted proper self-control as a standard of Victorian culture and civilization. Attracting both men and women, melodrama featured male heroes who won social success by saving chaste heroines from evil villains. The will power and rationalism expressed in the deeds of heroes in late nineteenthcentury plays like Rip \-izn Winkle, Davy Crockett, East Lynne, and Sherlock Holmes set the hero a pan from the villains who were either rich and selfindulgent or poor and vicious. By drawing on his "natural" internal morality to depose harsh external authority symbolized by the villain, the hero

served a just society better. The key to winning the woman was the hero's commitment to gentility. Even rough-hewn Davy Crockett married and contributed to a stable home life. [n keeping witJ1 the value placed on sexual restraint, heroes and heroines never enjoyed the debilitating fruits of victo1-y. Beginning in the 1890s Chicago amusements began to change dramatically. The demand for different forms of entertainment came from the two poles of society, the upper and working classes, who questioned the restrictions of Victorian standards. The growing identification of success with money, consumption, and pleasure gave the

':4-in't We Got Fun?" rich and the poor, not th e middle class, the power to shape institutions of amusement. In th e ir search for new values and id e ntities, this generation of urbanites turned to mass e nte rtainm e nt. Finding themse lves in increasingl y mechanized jobs, children of recent immigrants from southern a nd eastern Europe sought alternative ways to express th eir creativity. Caught between European culture and th e culture of the United States, they found in amusements some d efin ition of their ide ntity as Americans. Similarly, as more young women of varied backgrounds began working in factories, offices, and department stores, they felt a similar need, and now they had money to develop their personal lives. On the other end of the spectrum, some wealthy turn-of-the-century Chicagoans found formal etiquette, expensive lifestyles, and European culture unfulfilling. The sons and daughters of Chicago's elite depended on the captains of industry for their existence. Following the social and economic ravages of the 1890s, wealthy you ng men seeking leadership roles in society emerged from their private lives to spend more time in public. Many young women explored their personalities through new kinds of leisure without having to break from th eir class and their parents' expectations. Elegant hotels in th e Loop catered to upper-class men and women seeking a more public (and publicized) leisure life. By the 1890s many working-class people h ad begun Lo find the circus, minstrelsy, and melodrama too confining and genteel. New forms of amusement emphasizing fewer formal rules of behavior and more audience involvement began to develop . Offering an unusual array of enterta inm ent, along with food , drink, and dance casinos, the amusement park emerged in the twentieth century as a place where ordinary folk learned to spend their money, incl ulge the ir impulses, and just enjoy themselves. Steeplechase Park, which opened in 1896 on New York's Cerney Island , was followed in 1903 by Ch icago's Riverview Park, built by the wealthy George Schmidt. Modeled after European parks such as Denmark's Tivoli Gardens, Riverview covered seventy-two acres of the city's North Side at Belmont a nd Western avenues. Intended solely as amusement for the masses-not (i.>r educating them to higher culture, contemplating nature , or creating harmony between labor and capitalRi\·e rvicw departed from the upliftipg vision or the 1893 fair and earlier city park plans. In the

place of aesthetic marvels and scenic landscapi ng, Riverview Park offered thrills, excitement, and new experiences in an urban setting. Made easily accessible to all parts of the city by the e levated and stree t railways, Riverview was soon join ed by White City and Midway a muse men t parks on Chicago's South Side. Set apart from everyday life, the amusement park gave visitors the chance to test themselves against the machines that dominated urban life. Mastery of technology, not the natural world, was th e key to securing human enjoyment in the modern American city. The Scenic Railway at Riverview,

FROGRA:M::M:E MIC~IGAN AVENUE ANO

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Eugmt Sandow, billed as lhe pnfect physical speci me-11 of manhood, pnformfd amm.ing weigh/lifting feats for audiences in vaudroille lhRtlie,-; dwing llll' l.t,le nine/Ren/Ji a,ui early /J.IX711:ielh centuries. \inuleville becanli' much more re5pected during llw 1890s whm 11u,,u,gers upgradRd their /healers lo plush, luxurious agencies like the Chicago Opm, H ouse (left).

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

Amusement parks like Chirngo 's Ui vennew allowed visitors lo pit

them.,elves against the machi111â&#x20AC;˘1 that dom.i11ated everyday life and a/fempt to mm/er tltem (left). Gift of held EntPrJmses. 71te mmy-go-ro1111d al White City (right) ,ms a popular amusemnu park

ride. Chicagoam seeking n,joyment and rel,,meJromforrrwl niles of public behavior patroniud these nl'W enln-

tainmenl cenlm in thR late nhuâ&#x20AC;˘temth and early hVl'1itielh cmturies. />/1.otograph by /-/arr,, A. Atwell.

for example, a roller coaster installed in 1907, was never intended to be scenic. It was a parody of Chicago's elevated railroads that gave riders a chance to take a risk under relatively safe conditions and to enjoy a minor catharsis of the noise and confusion of the ind usnial world. By surviving the ride, one mastered the machine. Amusement parks also provided chances for sexual encounters. The frightening, heart-pounding experience of rides often threw men and women into each other's arms, and in the tunnel of love or in the fun house a young couple could elude parents to pet and kiss. Release rather than restraint was the order of the day. At the amusement park, the formal rules of public behavior and the exclusive patterns of one's social and ethnic group could be 12

temporarily suspended. As it developed in the 1890s, vaudeville replaced the rural roots of minstrelsy, melodrama, and the circus with new urban myths. The new vaudeville circuits, Keith-Albee and Orpheum, aimed to uplift their theaters and pre ent ethnic entertainers to mixed audiences-working-class families, lower middle-class clerks, white collar employees, and even the elite in the top-dollar houses. These new entertainment entrepreneurs gilded their theaters and made them into plush agencies of luxut)'; evet)' patron thus had access to the trappings of wealth. Ushers treated every woman as a lady as part of a special effort to attract women and make them comfortable. The great variety of acts presented on the vaudeville stage reflected the

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tremendous diversity and abundance of city life: circus acts played out rural roots , minstrel acts portrayed racial stereotypes, and dialect comedians, fancy dancers, monologists, and singers of snappy songs atisfied every taste. To appeal to immigrant groups, many vaudeville acts manipulated ~he language to portray the audience's difficulty in adjusting to a new country. Like the city, vaudeville was also highly specialiled. Vaudeville bills, according to historian Albert F. McLean, were organ i1ed with extreme care so that no act would be duplicated . Starting with a dance or animal act, the first half of the bill climaxed with the sub-headliner, usuall) a comedian . In the second half, the bill might include a magiciansuch as Harry Houdini-a singer, a dancer, or

perhaps a playlet. Strategically located at the end of the show was the headliner, distinguished in the public's mind by his or her salary. Vaudeville interpreted the material world of technology, money, and enjoyment for urban audiences, redefining success to mean consumption of wealth rather than its pursuit through work. Performers like Houdini escaped from handcuffs.jails, water tanks, and boilers through human strength and technical knowledge rather than by reliance on the spirit world. Their escapes demonstrated that technology need not be a u-ap . Vaudeville's animal acts, unlike the ferocious beasts of the circus, showed that nature could be domesticated: trick horse counted, dogs "spoke," and monkeys roller kated. Finally, Eva Tanguay (the "I 13

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

Eager movi&-goers of the 1910sflocked to Chicago t/u>aters !mch as the Pastime on Madison Street (above). Motion pictures were hailed as democratic entertainment, ajfordabl.e and available to a brood audience. Gift of Field Enterp,i1es. Essmwy Film Studios.founded in Chicago in 1907, employed notable stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mi.x, Gloria Swanson, and Max Linder; who is shown here during the filming of an intmor scene(right).

Don't Care Girl"), Sophie Tucker, and other women performers offered new and daring perspectives on female sexuality. Chicago's vaudeville theaters were the second major stop on the national circuits, and by the second decade of the twentieth century the city sported two theaters-the Majestic and the Palace-featuring headliners only. By the 1910s movies competed with live vaudeville for middle-class audiences. Introduced according to legend at the Columbian Exposition as an educational device, movies were soon put to other uses. Cheap and accessible storefront nickelodeons opened in working-class areas, increasing in number and spreading rapidly. Between 1907 and 1908 the number of licensed theaters jumped from 116 to 320; the new amusement reached its zenith in 1913 with 606 nickelodeons in operation. Poor audiences who could little afford transportation costs found them conveniently strung along major thoroughfares like South State Street, Milwaukee Avenue, North Avenue, and South Halsted Street Abraham Balaban started his movie empire in 1908 on Kedzie Avenue and 12tl1 Street, 14

the heart of the Jewish district, and in the 1910s he opened his first palaces, the Central Pa rk (1917) and the Riviera (1918). Before the rise of Holl ywood, Chicago played an important role in film making. Among its most notable studios were Essanay and Selig Pol yscope. William Selig, a magician interested in projections, built the world's first movie studio. Opening in 1897, it produced Tramp mid Dog in Rogers Park. Jn 1907 Selig's studio at Irving Park Road and Western Avenue was the large t in the country. Founded the same year, Essanay studios grew out of George K. Spoor's interest in Edison's Kinetoscope, which he had seen at the Columbian Exposition, and out of his pannership with cowboy star Broncho Billy Anderson. Bccau e of the large number of theater personnel in Chicago, both companies initially prospered , employing stars such as Tom Mix , Broncho Billy Anderson, Gloria Swanson, Francis X. Bushman, Wallace Beery, and, for a time , Charlie Chaplin. But two factors eventually destroyed Chicago's moving picture industry. California's weatl1er was better for year-

'J'\.in't We Got Fun?"

round production, and the Motion Picture Patents Com pan)', of which both studios were members, had its exclusive right to motion picture patents ruled unconstitutional by the courts. New independent companies entered the market, and the dominion of the old studios waned by World War I. Hailed as democratic drama available to a broad audience at egalitarian prices, the movies capitali7ed on the principle of simultaneity. Anyone could be watching the same movie anpvhere in the land at the same time. With this nationwide reach , movies were a powerful threat to traditional Victorian assu111ptions about sex and class. Women out shopping could drop into a movie theater unchaperoried; couples might seek the dark for petting. The movie~ had a strong AmericaniLing influence on immigrants. The transformation of nickelodeons into full- cale palatial theaters by the late 19 IOs and 1920s brought the luxuries of the rich to them, and because the films were silent. immigrant children could learn about American life. Like I loudini escaping from confinement, movie audiences were freed from the constraints of' their

neighborhood and ethnicity to experience a richer life through the power of technology. Whether im111igrant or native born, the ordinary 111oviegoer retreated to the vo luptuous surroundings of the theater to transcend the barriers of time, space, and class. Many urban refom1ers and moralists questioned how American cu lture was portrayed in films. The immorality, sexual high jinks, and crimedra111as that characterized 111any movie plots discouraged middle-class pau-onage and prompted the reform and censorship activities of Jane Addams, the juvenile Protective Association, City Club, Chicago Wo111en's Club, Hull-House, Chicago Commons, the Northwestern University Settle111ent, the Vice Co111mission, and the Committee of Fifteen, an anti-vice organization comprised of leading citizens. Largely members of old Chicago and midwestern Protestant families, reformers worried that movies would promote vice. A typical pattern, according to Addams, consisted of rural and immigrant children coming to the city, finding jobs in factories, and losing the creative 15

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

To upgrade lilR reputation of pre-1910 movies, mtre/Jrenl'1lrs built l1L~wious motion picture palaces hke the Chicago Theatre in thl' Loop.

appreciation of work. Instead they found excitement and meaning on the city streets and in low amusements. Many reformers believed that the inhospitable indusnial environment destroyed the character of young boys and girls, that the family was being undermined, and that greedy amusement men took advantage of a primitive de ire for adventure, amusement, and companionship. In 1907 Addams tried to prevent outright censorship by using Hull-House as a theater to show films with a moral message. According to Kathleen McCarthy, the poor response to her effort forced her to abandon her plans to use technology for positive reform and moved her closer to her colleagues' censorship position. The reformers demanded police permits for films shown in Chicago and prohibition of all "immoral and obscene" films. They won an eleven-person censorship commission in 1909 to aid the police board, and by 1914 had established a salaried 16

civilian commission, comprised of five men and five women, with sole authority over movie censorship. Under the guidance of reformers, films containing immoral and anti-authority themes and overt sexuality were banned. Because Chicago was a major market , studios submitted films in advance for the board's approval. The success of movie censorship in Chicago established a model followed by other cities. The drive to reform movies was part of a larger concern with the degeneration of public life in the Progressive period. Fearing the spread of decadence from the rich and vice from the poor, the anxious middle class wotTied about the future of proper leisure. Seeking to uplift the movie "expe1-ience," movie men sought more "respectable" patrons. They cleaned up their theaters, met ventilation laws to make their buildings more comfortable, installed paramilitary ushers to protect women and insure order, and removed objectionable films. Elaborate movie palaces, such as the Uptown on the North Side, and the Chicago and Oriental theaters in the Loop, connected movies to ideals of success rather than to lower-class values. The quality of films improved as they evolved from the peephole drama. of 1907 to longer playlets, serious historical dramas, and, ultimately, fullfledged star vehicles in the 1910s. D.W. Griffith's classic productions, Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, were attempts to make an art of film drama. Griffith's films spoke to the anxieties of the clay. In Birth of a Nation, a three-hour extravagant.a, a southern family is saved from impassioned and unruly blacks by the Ku Klux Klan. Although banned in Chicago through the efforts of the NAACP, Griffith 's masterpiece played on fears that the restrained family, responsible democracy, and success were being destroyed by the ravages of passionate newcomers. The artistic treatment of these themes in this and other films helped draw middle-class patrons to the theaLCrs and legitimize the movies. By the middle 1910s, other films played on the anxieties of urban life felt by lhe middle class. Theda Bara introduced the vamp, a woman who expres eel her sexuality in a dangerous guise. In other films, historian Lary May asserts in Screening Out the PcL~t, posilive heroes and heroines like Douglas Fairbanks and Mal)' Pickford showed the middle class lhat the pitfalls of urban life-class, industrialization, and the corporation-need not

'Â˝in't We Got Fun?"

Before lhe rise of Hollywood, Chicago UKJS an imporlantfilmmaking cenler in lhe early twentieth century. This scene features Max Linder at the piano in Essanay Studios' Max Crosses Over.

entrap men and women. Usually playing the son of a rich tycoon, Fairbanks typically seeks to escape entrapment in his father's corporation, which is rife with the temptations of luxury and degeneration. Through his athletic prowess and the love of a new kind of woman, Fairbanks reaffirmed a traditional ideal of success and a moral basis for leisure. "Our Mary," meanwhile, played an orphan or an exotic character such as a gypsy, a Hindu, or an Indian, who is eventually saved by an appropriate he_ro who marries her. Thus, upward social mobility was till assured, and the experiences of women in the modern city could be utili7ed to enliven modern marriage. It is not surprising that these two stars married at the end of the decade and were the first to play out the cinematic values of personality, vivaciousne s, and popularity off the screen. The modem star system was established. By the 1920s, \\'ith movies legitimized, the offand on-screen lives of stars became guides to

personal and private behavior. They represented life lived to the fullest, vitality, and the ability to safely live off the corporate system without being destroyed by it. As model consumers on screen, they demonstrated new clothes, cosmetics, new ways to dance, and courtship and marriage behavior. Fan magazines primed their advice on love, discussed their marriages and divorces, and published photographs of them spending money. Clara Bow, the "IT" girl, possessed an indefinable quality that attracted men, while Rudolph Valentino portrayed a Latin sensuality that women might have de ired in ordinary men. Joan Crawford's films captured a growing youth culture which, by the 1920s, faced the dilemma of how far good girls could go in sexual matters and still maintain their reputations. This moral balancing act suggests how important movies and their stars had become in establishing a new set of values for Americans. Ironically, this infatuation with the star also tended 17

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86 to standardize taste because movies were a form of mass entertainment. The evolution of the dance hall into a respectable amusement followed a course similar to the movies. Because of their close association with saloons and prostitution, dance halls were slow to gain public acceptance. To increase liquor sales, saloonkeepers opened annexes for dancing. By the tum of the century, the number of dance halls had increased with the growing working-class popu lation. According to Jane Addams, young workingclass people patronized dance halls for the same reason they patronized movies: for re lease from the dullness of their factory lives. Throughout the 1910s, drinking at dance halls was a problem. Refonn groups made numerous attempts to eliminate alcohol consumption, regulate the types of dances allowed (especially troublesome were rag dances that featured close holds and animal movements), and open municipal halls as alternative spaces for dances. Settlement houses held closely chaperoned dances to safeguard women, but there were too few settlements and too many young women who considered dancing their favorite recreation to make such reform measures effective. These attempts at regulation alerted private entrepreneurs to the dance hall's commercial potential. By refusing to serve liquor and decorating their dance halls in elegant fashion, they hoped to blunt moral opposition and attract huge numbers of respectable people. In 1922 the Karzas Brothers opened the Trianon at 63rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, conveniently located near elevated lines and major bus routes. It opened with a major society gala and continued a "no jazz" policy through the 1920s. Like its North Side sister, the Aragon, which opened in 1926 on Lawrence Avenue off Broadway, the Trianon attracted lower middle-class clientele as well as working-class folks. Free from the lower-class and disreputable associations that had won the notice of reformers, both the Trianon and the Aragon employed floor spotters to prohibit "disreputable" behavior and patronage. Often designed to evoke the splendor of Louis XIV's palace at Versailles, these dance halls prided themselves on their"high-class" aura. The new ballrooms thus permitted ordinary people to indulge in fantasies formerly limited to the wealthy. Like movie palace patrons they could live out the themes of consumption in their own private dreams filled with romance and aristocratic luxury. In the pala18

tial Trianon, moreover, the sumptuous aristocraticlike SUITOtmdings uplifted the sexual atmosphere of the lowly dance hall to new heights of romance. The Aragon's starlit sky and sultry Spanish decor paralleled the better-known movie theaters. It still stands today, a testament to the human desire for release from the everyday world. Movie palaces and dance halls became fim1ly established in the 1920s as popular amusements, but the cabaret, or nightclub, became the leading symbol ofthejaa Age. Rooted in the music halls of the 1880s and the dance halls that boomed after 1900, most early cabarets of the 1910s were part of saloons. Forced to compete with new forms of amusement, saloon keepers cleared away tables, created dance floors, and hired novelty variety entertainment. Hundreds of saloons soon added small stages and platforms. Two features gave the cabaret its unique character. One, it offered infom1al and intimate entertainment in a public setting. Doing turns on the "floor" and among the tables, entertainers broke clown the barriers between performer and audience. Successful entertainer relied on personal appeal as much as their acts to attract the attention of patrons amid all the clatter and distraction of the saloon. Two, the cabaret also provided a place where the public could dance, eat, and drink under one roof. The anonymity of the cabaret crowd gave Chicagoans a chance to experience and display public intimacy through the dance. The dances were active, based on the shuffle walk-step of black music, and intimate, emphasizing close holds and tight embraces as in the bunny hug or turkey trot. That dancing patrons shared the floor with entertainers suggests that members of the audience were exploring their own "performing selves:â&#x20AC;˘ Chicago's cabarets had a much rougher image than tho e in ew York. This was partiall y a can)'over of the city' Âˇ strong anarchic tradition and the continuing influence of the underworld and reellight districts. Many of the early cabaret were located in the Levee, attracting lone males out for a good time, the more cosmopolitan movie and theater crowds, and prostitutes. When the Levee closed, the cabarets grew in popularity as places of assignation. Like other anrnsements, the cabaret developed as a place where men and women could explore new sensations and desirable experiences. Beginning in the 1910s more reputable spots began presenting public dancing. The

World's Most Beautiful Ballroom

TRIANON

'.:4in't We Got Fun?"

Cottage Gro,·c Ave. at 62nd Street

H as been c h osen by the

Atlantic City

Batbiaa Beauty CONTEST COMMITT£E t o s elect

MISS

"CHICAGO" To represent the City of Ch icago in t h e

NA.flONA.L

Beauty Tournament a nd BA.THING BEA.UTT

Pageant a t Atl anti c City

Sept.

:a,

:S, 4, S and et

Contest

Now On Closes August

25th

Any ,:irl. Iwhite i who has never been marri ed, be-tween t he agu of lb a nd .)5 can ente-r the contest fo r the creat honor of bdng

"Miss America" Se" other side for particulars

DAZZLING ELIMINATION REVUES , ow being held in the Wo rld's Most fka u tiful Ballroom. Come to the Tr ianon Tuesday, Wednetday or Thursday nighu or Sunday \fotinec. Bring your bathing suit wh ich will b< your ttcket of admission. Enter the co n test And win this greet honor for Chicago.

The 7i-ianon Ballroom, one of Chicago :S most palatial dance halls, al/meted a lower middle-chm and working-class clienlele. This 1924 advertisement describes one of the activities !hat took place thne.

Ed elwe iss Garde ns, fo rm e rl y th e Mi dway Garde ns (d es igned by Fra nk Ll oyd Wright), prese nted "Dining, Dancing and Entertainm ent" and advertised "th e most charming e nviron me nt, where th e cuisin e is unexcelled, and th e e ntertainme nt is unequalled." Atte mpting to e rase th e red -light co nn ecti o n, th e Ed e lwe iss presented high-cl ass d a nce acts su ch as Mr. and Mrs. Ca rl os Sebastia n. T he Co ll ege Inn , loca ted in th e She rm a n Ho te l in th e Loop, d id th e same afte r abo ut 1911 d uring th e rage fo r ragtim e da ncing. Eve n movie palace mogul A. J. Bala ban o pe ned a cabare t, th e Movie In n, a t 17 1• Wabash Ave nu e in 1915, to cash in o n th e craze fo r public da ncing. Frequ e nted by many Essa nar actors, th e Movie lnn was divided into booth s named for movie stars a nd decorated with num ero us ph otogra ph s o f stars. Within a yeai~ howe\'e r, th e ca fe ra n into tro u ble with cit) a uth orities as part of a ge nera l ca bare t crac kd own. Tc>o ma ny "gay" blad es appeared regul arl y in the afternoons with yo u ng 1m 11Tied wome n from Balaba n's own neighborh ood . Reforme rs we re co ncerned abou t cas tt al mi xing be twee n e nte rt a in e rs-espec ia ll y fe male-a nd a udience members a nd the na ture o f th e da nces; th e iss ue o f a ft e rn oo n d ancing aro used a sto rm of pro test.

As part of a general nationwide scare, the Juvenil e Pro tecti ve Association , th e Law a nd Ord e r League, a nd oth e r reform groups urg_ed th e city council to ta ke action aga in st th e cabare t. On July 30, 1913, th e associatio n ord ered e ntertain e rs to restri ct th eir pe rforman ces to th e stage, outlawed th e wearing o f ti ghts by pe rform e rs, and e nded publi c d a n cin g. Howe ve,~ th e re we re e nough respectabl e ve nu es featuring publi c dan cing to fo rce th e issu e into th e co urt s. Wh e n po li ce threate ned to arrest th e Drake's wealthy dance patrons, th e hote l chall e nged th e law. In 1916 th e Illinois Supre me Court d eclared th e city ordina nce un co nstituti o nal, ruling that beca use the hotel did not charge admission, its dance floor was more private than publi c, and therefore exempt from amuse me nt li ce nsing o f a ny kind. Th e ra pid prolife ration of cabarets and nightclubs in th e 1920s parall eled th e rise of speakeasies durin g th e Prohibiti o n e ra. Th ese "pee phol e" spo ts exuded an aura of illegality and danger, prim e features o f th e nightclub as it expand ed in th e 1920s. Gangste rs ga in ed co ntrol of th e clubs beca use o f th e ir a bility to suppl y illega l alcohol. Al Ca po ne co ntroll ed many o f th e clubs on th e So uth Side; Bugs Moran, the orth . The attractions o f risk, dange r, publi c intim acy, and a ch a nce to see a good show a nd rub e lbows with cele briti es o u t to pl ay a ppea led to e nough o f th e public to ma ke th e clubs profita bl e. Youth culture, an outgrowth o f th e expa ndin g co ll ege po pulation , includ ed new form s of co urting and dating th at coin cided with th e introduction of women into fast amu se me nts. Young me n a nd wom e n co uld find privacy in public, a nd th ey co uld also break the conve nti o nal bonds o f be havior in a fast and intima te atm osph ere wh e re money mad e the wh ee ls o f pl easure go ro und. Nightlife fl o urished all ove r town . In Uptown , one of the tre ndiest sections o f Chicago in the 1920s, movie th eater , ballrooms, and nightspots vied with eac h oth e r fo r patrons. Th e Green Mill Gard e ns, a ga ngster hango ut o n North Broadway, prese nted Sophi e Tu cke r,J oe E. Lewis, and o th e r celebrities. Rainbo Garde ns a t Clark Stree t a nd Lawre nce Ave nu e e nj oyed bri e f su cce s. Towe r Town, north of th e rive,~had dives for tl1e underworld and transie nts wh o inh abited th e furni shed rooms west of Clark as we ll as Rush Street, an e nte rtainme nt strip po pul ated by Gold Coa t reside nts. Inte rspe rsed we re "bo he mian" places banking on free love and 19

Begi1111i11g in 1917, Chicago becomP an important jazz center. 13/ack pe,fom,en like King OliVPTand Louis Annstrong JJla)V'd al the Lincoln Gardens on the South Side, while white bands swh CL5 !'au/ Zimm and His Chicagoans appea,·ed at the ,\Ion /mar/re Cafe 011 Chica.go '.5 North Side.

homosexuality to ctrall' tourists. l11 the Loop, 1rn1jor clubs inaugurated a ren1e sholl' policy. The Friars Inn , Ciro's, the 1c1Tace Room of the Hotel i\lotTison, the Blackhall'k, and numerous other nightspots made the Loop as important ror nightclubs as it had been for theaters and mm·ic palaces. Chicago ll'as_jumping. \\'omen ll'ent out as much as nwn; public dancing and drinking abounded. The Somh Side also boomed. The Stroll, the area around South State and 351]1 streets, had been famous as a nightclub ?one since the turn of the century. The Pekin and Venclome theaters presented both film and live entertainment to black audiences. Numerous dance halls and cafes also occupied the zone, including the Dreamland Ballroom, the Entertainer's Cafe, the Sunset, Plantation, and numerous other spot . Although black and tans (clubs where whites and blacks mixed) existed there, the Stroll catered to blacks, largel y because they were excluded from white amusements. Loop vaudeville and movie theaters restricted blacks to the balcony, colloquially clubbed "Nigger Heaven." Similarly, white ballrooms, hotels, and cabarets remained segregated . While immigrant whites were allowed to participate in amusements that helped Americanize them , blacks received a different message: remain in the balcony of America forever. Because the two zones remained largely segre-

gated, passing bet\\'een them heightened the white nightclub-goer's sense of clanger and risk. Jazz in particular attracted whites to the black clubs. Beginning in 1917, Chicago became an important jazz town as numerous exiles from New Orleans made the city their second home, adding to the stock of itinerant piano player and entertainers already in town. King Oli,·er and Louis Am1strong, appearing at the Lincoln Gardens in 1922 and 1923, presented Chicago with the best jau in the land. At the Lo!Taine Gardens was Freddie Keppard's Four. By 1926, the South Side was bursting with_jazz activity, and numerous bands such a~ Sam Woocling·s fonned here and then left to play in Europe. The Theater Owners' Booking Association (TOBA) circuit broke up and re-formed in the city, making Chicago an important stop on the jan circuit. King Oliver mO\·ed <ll'er to the Plantation; across th e street, the Sunset hired Carroll Dickerson's large orchestra featuring Louis Annstrong, Earl Hines, and Zutty Singleton. Vet, while all of these groups played and recorded, Chicago itself was not hospitable to jazz. The best salaries went first to the white sweet orchestras, featuring string instruments and melodic music, that dominated the best ballrooms, such as the Trianon and Aragon, and to black society orchestras (Dave Payton, Charles Elgar, Erskin Tate) second. While the hot ew Orlean players became famou enough through recordings to earn a living,

'54.in't vÂź Got Fun?" they had to play in the more conservative large black orchestras or not work at all . Yet the chance to hear unadulterated jazz brought numerous white pleasure seekers to black clubs. Cross ing the racial ba1Tiers, they enjoyed finding exotic entertainment and unb1idled sexuality. While these "slummers" sought the utmost in pleasure, white jazz players absorbed, used, and spread the music itself. King Oliver and Louis Armstrong delighted and educated young Ch icago musicians. According to Edd ie Condon, wherever Olive1~ Armstrong, Jimmy Noone, or the Dodds (Baby andjohnny)were playing, youngwhitejazz players cou ld also be found. The Austin High Gang, Dave Tough,jimmy McPartland, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Mezz Mezzrow, Benny Goodman, and numerous others adopted black musicians' emphasis on solo playing to a background of collective improvisation. Idealizing black players as natural musicians, many of Chi cago's white jazz artists gloried in their own release from the restrictions and conventions of music and from the conservatism of their midwestern families. But they had a rough time of it in Chicago. A conservative Catholic and rural-based city, Chicago glorifi ed the waltz at the Aragon in the personage of Wayne l(jng. The white jazz musicians' pursuit of spontaneous, personal freedom in their music was not welcome in the large popular music clubs. Instead, they played the all-ma le underworld clubs along North Clark Street or the second-rate ballrooms arou nd town. By 1928 most had left for New York, pursuing more lu crative jobs. By then Chicago, like other jazz towns, was a musical co lony dominated by New York's music scene. And within a decade these white and black Chicagoans became the backbone of swing music. From the 1890s through the 1920s Chicago enjoyed a renaissance of popular culture. Movies, amusement parks, vaudeville, nightclubs, dance halls, and music came to dominate both neighborhoo<:J and downtown in the 1920s, a time common ly called the Jazz Age . These new amusements redefined success to include pleasure and consumption. They became mixed-sex activities, bUL on terms vastly different from the hero-heroine model of early melodrama. Entertainment entrepreneurs won the respect of tl1e middle class for their luxurious and sophisticated establishments and for upholding familial values. These new amusements also created new ways for men and

women to court, and they establ ished ~-eater equality for women in leisure activities. Technology, long the bane of the working class, was glorified as an agency for human pleasure and consumptio n. In all of these entertainme nts, money was portrayed as the key to success and pleasure. It was considered dangerous for blacks and whites to mix. Blacks represented the underclass, and therefore were kept outside the influences of Americanization that immigrants enjoyed. Segregated from white amusements, blacks pioneered their own. Their creative revenge was jazz. No matter how unappreciative Ch icago was of the new music, the city became one of its centers, and found itse lf in the midst of a new culture emp hasizing pleasure, impulse, and release. The Great Depression of the 1930s closed many dance halls, hotels, movie houses, theaters, and nightclubs, halting the exp losion of popular amusements for a time. T hey would reopen in different forms by 1933 and 1934, but their outline and essence had already been established in Chicago in the preceding decades. For Further Reading More on late nineteenth-century values cau be found in Daniel Walker Howe, ''.i\.merican Victorianism as a Culture" (American Quarterly 27, 1975, pp. 507-32). On amusement parks, see Chuck Wlodarczyk, Riverview: Gone But Not Forgotten, A Photo-History, 1904-1967 (Evanston: Schori Press, 1977). The best discussion of tJ1emes and reform aspects of early movies is fo und in Lary L. May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture & the Motion Picture lndustly (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). Nightl ife zones are explored in Harvey Zorbaugh , Gold Coast and Slum, a Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1929). Thomas]. Hennesey's "From J azz Age to Swing: Black Musicians and T heir Music, 1917-1935" (unpublished Ph .D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1973) discusses tlie styles and meanings of Chicago's black music.John F. Kasson explores tlie professionalization of American entertainments in "Urban Audiences a nd the Organization of Entertainment in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries" (Hemy Ford Museum & Greenfield Village Herald 14, no. l, 1985, pp. 3-13).

II Iustrations 5, CHS, ICHi-19862; 6, CHS, ICHi-17409; 7 top, CHS, ICHi-01693 ; 7 bottom, CHS, ICHi-04793; 8, CHS, ICHi-19825; 9, CHS, ICHi-19829; JO, CHS, ICHi-19861; 11, CHS, ICHi-19860; 12, CHS, DN 64 ,657; 13, CHS, Atwell neg. no. 82; 14, CHS, DN 68,755; 15, CHS, ICHi17854; 16, CHS, ICHi-19819; 17, CHS, ICHi-17855; 19, CHS, ICHi-06I06; 20, CHS, ICHi-19808. 21

LaSalle Street By Peter B. Hales and Robert Bruegmann

A cross section of Chicago '.5 built environment visible along LaSalle Street can be read as a history of the city '.5 growth during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Peter B. Hales and Robert Bruegmann are associate professors of architecture and art history at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Photographs by PetPr B. Hau's.

17000 SOUTH, THORNTO , ILLI OIS, LOOKING SOUTHEAST ALO G ARMORY DRIVE On map it i clear enouo-h. At it . outhem tern1inu , La alle rreet tops ju t no rth of th e Tri - tate Toll,,·ay near a hucre qua1n. H o"·e, er, nothing o defini te a" -a ir th e pilgrim to Thornton. In the amorphou te1Tain outh of ]7{hh a·eer (Armon · D1i. ,·e). wh e re th e road i uppo ed co be. the onh- e,·idence of a . rreet i a clearino- and h igh te n io n po les running alon, idea creel- and railroad rrack . Ideally. L alle rreet wou ld haYe come to a d ead end in a corn field. creating a . pl end id , mmetn : a cour e runn ing from a corn fie ld to th e Loo p' Boa rd of Trade. wh re :\ merica·. ag,i.culniral product are bought and sold, the rreet wo uld se n ·e a a metaphor for Chicao-o' hi ton and architectural deYelopmen t. But the outhem e nd of La all e rreet i not rural. It is mereh· Yacam, a,raiting further de,·elopment: the Sears Towe r. no t th e Board pf Trade, i clearly ,·i. ible twent, mile. to the north. But perhap th is ra th er indeci iYe end in i appropriate after all. La alle i not a g,·eat European bo ul ernrd. It is an ordinary sa·eet along mos t of it length , lined by mil es of sen·icea ble houses and shops. It skips and swerves to avoid obstacles like buildings and expressways, and at one point at the northern edge of Thom ton wh e re it jogs three tim es in qui ck successio n, th e numbered streets repeat themselves. LaSalle Stree t is diverse, co mpl ex, co nfusing: it is a mi crocosm of Chicago's built environment-a perfect re prese nt ative cross sec tion of th e grea t Am e ri can city in th e late twenti eth century.

14800 SOUTH, DOLTON, ILLINOIS On the map Chicago' south suburbs appear a a zone of complete confusion. Obtrusive black crosshatches indicating railroad line run in every direction. fanning out into comblike configurations at freight classification yards and creating thick knots at crossings. Patches of color indicating municipal boundaries form crazy quilt-like patterns, and tiny towns like Phoenix nestle into the interstices of railroads, highways, and rivers. Larger places such as adjoining South Holland sprawl outwards, their ragged tentacles of color spreading in all directions across the map. The trip along LaSalle confirms that much of the landscape is occupied by railroad , waterways, highways, factories, and other industrial necessities. But there are also substantial tree-lined, middle-class ne ighborhoods like this one. The scene would make an ideal advertisement for a l950s home builder: trim ranch houses, t,vo-car garages, well-tended lawns, and children playing. Although the houses on this block are of split-level and ranch-modern design, their coach lights, colonial lampposts, foundation plantings, and flower beds suggest the resilience ofuÂˇaditional American domestic imagery.

14100 SOUTH, GLEN LANE, RIVERDALE, ILLINOIS, LOOKING WEST TO LASALLE STREET This short cul-de-sac, apparently developed in the 1930s, orients the front of the houses to a pedestrian walkway. A kind of communitarian gesture is implied here. Even the plantings and fences separating the yards stop well short of the walks. From a planning standpoint this arrangement seems perfect. The virtual ly uninterrupted lawn creates spacious grounds where residents can walk and children can play undisturbed by street traffic. Although a number of American designers in the 1920s endorsed this residential neighborhood layout as ideal, it never caught on outside a few avant-garde developments like Radburn in New J erser Perhaps the automob ile proved too important to American suburbs. Or it may be that the degree of design contro l suggested here ran counter to a deep identification of se lf with land and the n eed for individual control of one's property. evertheless, this arrangement provides a model setting for a well-maintained collection of houses in styles ranging from frame colonial to brick Tudot~ all set well back behind spreading trees.

8300 SOUTH, LOOKING EAST OVER A FENCE INTO THE BACKYARD OF THE TURNER POLK RESIDENCE, 135 W. 83RD STREET A standard city backyard customized. Beyond the patio, green-painted concrete replaces grass. Japanese lanterns of various shapes and colors are strung above the cast-iron patio furniture and improvised umbrella table. Geraniums bloom in concrete planters, one pair in the shape of classical urns; the other, swans. What appears to be a fence, now partly dismantled, has been transfom1ed into planter bases. This eclectic setting might seem chaotic, but it is a festive environment for the rich backyard life one imagines taking place here and throughout the neighborhood-a tidy, well-kept pocket of postwar houses just east of West Chatham Park.

8100 SOUTH, AMELIA DUNNE HOOKWAY SCHOOL The cross section of Chicago's built environment visible along LaSalle Street can be read much like the rings of a sawed log. The relative thickness of each "ring" corresponds to the level of affluence at any given period in the past, and hence the amount of construction that took place. ln the central area of Chicago, the thickest "rings" represent the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Numerous schools were built during the growth years between 1900 and 1925. Hookway School was planned in ]926 and dedicated the year the stock market crashed. Like many of the schools of its day, it is a sober brick box with very large windows. The little terra-cotta trim around the sides, top, and openings, however, gives it a certain dignity. Here the style is vaguely classical; a pair of embossed Doric columns flanks the arched entranceway, and the whole facade is surmoLJnted by an entablature and two lions holding crests. This ornamentation was apparently meant to impress young minds with the solemnity of the tasks that awaited them inside. Amelia Dunne Hookway was a noted Chicago educator and playwright. According to some of her contemporaries, her Irish-dialect plays were as good as the work of her more famous brother, Finley Peter Dunne, creator of the Mr. Dooley charactei: The Hookway School was closed in 1981, a victim, like many schools of its era, of postwar population shifts.

7900 SOUTH, IN THE BUNGALOW BELT The Hookway School was built to serve residents of houses like these. Covering hundreds of acres in the city and its near suburbs, these sturdy, serviceable su-uctures went up by the thousands in the 1920s to house the city's growing middle clas . The advent of the automobile allowed Chicagoans of relatively modest means to live further from the center of town in their own homes, frequently bungalows. Typically, tl1e bungalow is a squat brick structure with distinctive overhanging eaves and decorative details. It is clearly related to tl1e nineteenth-century workers' cottages found in large numbers along LaSalle Street closer to the Loop. The style also owes a good deal to the early twentieth-century craftsman movement and to tl1e work of Frank Lloyd Wright and his followers. The name itself seems to have come via California from India, but its stylistic transformation into tl1e Chicago bungalow is unclear. The e small houses successfully conveyed the idea of solidity and even style in a mall building. Note how a more expensive face brick with limestone trim replaces common brick in the front, despite the higher labor costs to join them in the middle of the small window on tl1e side. For many years these convenient homes have served well as residences; tl1ey are now enjoying a revival in popularity. In fact, some bungalow neighborhoods are being listed as historic districts. The houses illustrated here, built by a developer in 1925, were once undoubtedly identical. Today they demonstrate how successive owners have been able to modify them to suit changing needs and tastes.

5837 SOUTH, THE COTTAGE OF THE CARL BOOKER FAMILY OF WASHINGTON PARK This type of cottage, a two-story frame structure over a brick basement, was the nineteenthcentury equivalent of the Chicago bungalow. In this case, the upper area has been covered with b1ick-textured asphalt sheets, but the turned porch ornamentation is original. Mile upon mile of these houses went up along the streetcar lines in the boom years of the 1880s and early 1890s. Generations of Chicagoans lived in buildings like this one until they cou ld afford newer houses further out of the city.

4400 SOUTH, LOOKING NORTHEAST ACROSS A RAILROAD VIADUCT TO THE ROBERT R. TAYLOR HOMES For many vis itors and immigrants d1iving into Chicago, the long strip of high-rise buildings just east of the Dan Ryan Expressway between 54th Street and Pershing Road signals the real beginning of the city. From a speeding car on the expressway, the Robert R. Taylor Homes look like typical modern ist high -rise apartment buildings. Regular; orderly, carefully spaced, surrounded by grassy parks, serviced by an adjacent high-speed roadway, the complex bears a striking resemblance to drawings of utopian city plans devised by twentieth-century architects and designers like Le Corbusier or orman Bel Geddes. Driving more slowly down LaSalle Street, whi ch serves as a feeder road to the Dan Ryan in this part of the South Side, one begins to notice details that su ggest these are not typical apartment buildings: smoke stains above some of the wi ndows and p lywood sheets covering others, a regu lar parade of Chicago police cars cruising the rectilinear b locks, and a hypodermic needle half-buried in the weeds. This 1950s dream of th e ,f ut u re represents two more of Chicago's "world records": it is the country's largest housing proj ect and makes up its poorest zip code zone.

3400 SOUTH, LOOKING WEST TO DAN RYAN EXPRESSWAY, CTA STATION, AND COMISKEY PARK

As part of the Chicago area's massive roadway construction program following World War II, a large portion of LaSalle Street was realigned through the ear South Side as a feeder road to the Dan Ryan. It now forms the eastern edge of a huge swath cut by the road, railroad, and CTA line through the city. One of the most important features of manmade Chicago for more than a century, this corridor has served both as a means of connection and as a barrier. It provides a lifeline between Chicago, its southern suburbs, and the rest of the country. It also acts as a barrier between neighborhoods and ways of life, eparating, for example, the Federal Street slum to the east and the ethnic working-class neighborhoods to the west. Among the institutions occupying the no man's land between is Comiskey Park, the home of the Chicago White Sox, shown here almost silhouetted against the late afternoon sun. Built in 1909-10, the "Million Dollar Structure" was designed to seat 30,000 and was dubbed the "Baseball Palace of the World." It is the oldest m<!jor league ballpark still standing in the nited States. A major remodeling in 1926 transformed the original structure; its famous electric scoreboard was installed in the 1950s.

1800 SOUTH, LOOKING SOUTHEAST PAST THE CTA ELEVATED STRUCTURE WITH RAYMOND HILLIARD HOMES IN THE BACKGROUND LaSalle Street disappears almost completely in the massive rail yards thal lie between 100 south and 2700 south, making a sudden though brief reappearance for a few yards on either side of 18th Street. This fragment of street gives access to a police car pound on the north side of 18th Street; on the south, it leads nowhere in particular, but offers this extraordinary view of the viaduct that carries the Dan Ryan elevated from its path alongside the expressway to its juncture with the older Jackson Park line running into the Loop. At first glance it might appear that an aging frame structure has been superceded by a new steel one, but in fact, the frame structure was added recently when major flaws in the steel work were discovered. In the distance is the CHA's distinctive Raymond Hilliard project. Designed by Bertrand Goldberg, these housing units were built in the mid-1960s at the same time as his Marina City apartments on tl1e Near North Side, although the two serve quite different clienteles.

300 SOUTH, AN ALLEY OF FINANCE LOOKING NORTH ALONG JACKSON STREET If LaSalle Street from the Board of Trade to the river is a great canyon, then this block of LaSalle, where it swerves to the east around the Board of Trade, is a minor tributary. Still, its walls are formed by buildings housing some of the city's most influential citizens. To the left is the dignified limestone flank of the Board of Trade; directly ahead, the monumental colonnade of tl1e Continental Illinois Bank. One finds the atmosphere here almost homey. Perhaps it is the narrowness of tl1e street, or that all of tl1e fire escapes are exposed on this side, or the collection of slightly old-fashioned signs advertising shops and restaurants. Although this block ha een numerous changes (notably architect Helmutjahn's flamboyant addition to the Chicago Board of Trade building visible at the extreme left side of this photograph), the ambiance here is reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s. This has more to do with the activity on the street than the architecture. Despite advances in transportation technology over the decades, brokers and runners till dash across the street in all kinds of weather to grab a bite to eat And the high, narrow street seems the perfect place for chance encounters between old friends or new acquaintances.

209 SOUTH, THE ROOKERY BUILDING Built in the mid-1880s from the designs of Chicago architects Burnham & Root, the Rookery occupies one of the p1;me business sites in Chicago and was one of the city's first large office buildings. Although it has been eclipsed in the last few decades by taller and larger buildings, it still makes a considerable impact with its ruddy color, massive proportions, and enormously scaled ornament. It appears as if geological forces have formed the walls-huge boulders laid down in strata and weathered by wind and rain. At the center of the LaSalle Street facade, the masonry is piled high into a huge archway to form a cavelike opening in the massive granite wall. It is ornamented at eye level with interlaced patterns as though it were the portal to a sanctuary of some long-forgotten religious sect. Well above the heads of pedestrians, a fantastic outgrowth of ornament emerges from the rusticated stone. Perhaps it is meant to resemble foliage; yet it is so aggressively overscaled, it appears to be locked in mortal combat to free itself from the block of stone. If this is a temple, it is in service to a none-too-gentle deity.

50 SOUTH, THE NORTHERN TRUST COMPANY Nowhere is business more businesslike than in Chicago, and no street in Chicago appears more devoted to this aspect of human endeavor than LaSalle between Jackson and the river. South from Madison, where the pavement natTows, the great bank buildings line up to form canyon walls that converge on the Board of Trade. Of all these rocky fronts, the most weighty is the Northern Trust, the soberest of Chicago banks. Designed by Henry Ives Cobb and constructed in 1905, this building may well have had a distinguishable color atone time; over the years a patina of impenetrable sootiness has settled on every surface. On some buildings this might be disturbing, but here the dark color seems appropriate, even inevitable. It is the final finish to what had been light, smooth stone, already encrusted with volutes and swags, heavy balusters, and an eccentric frieze. 1:his dark and massive digHity creates the ideal setting for charcoal-gray pinstripe suits. What investor could doubt the solidity of an institution with brass entrance lamps flanked by well-burnished brass signs that react: THE ORTHERN TRUST COMPANY, BA KING, BONDS, SAVINGS, TRUSTS, SAFE DEPOSIT VAULTS.

50 NORTH, STATE OF ILLINOIS BUILDING "Big Boy Blue," architectural critic W. M. Newman called it. A "supermannered, go-for-baroque, if not rococo extravaganza." "New and exciting," offered a passerby asked about it on the "CBS Evening News." Architect Harry Weese thinks it's better suited as a retail mall. Is it a masterpiece or a financial and aesthetic disaster? The State of Illinois Building is often compared to a spaceship grounded in the North Loop. It was designed by Helmut Jahn of C. F. Murphy, Associates (now Murphy/Jahn), the same architectural firm that only a few decades earlier designed the austere Daley Center located diagonally across the way. People still stop to gawk at the baby pink and powder blue panels, the enigmatic eroding granite wall tenuously attached to candy-cane colored columns, and the dizzying central atrium. But many Chicagoans have already taken it in stride. As they stroll under the arcade that sweeps around the south and east sides, they barely notice the architecture. The State of Illinois Building has begun to settle into the cityscape in much the same way as did that most notorious public sensation of the last generation, the Picasso sculpture in front of the Daley Center. It is a reminder of the city's astonishing ability to assimilate even the most jolting new ideas and images.

............

300 NORTH, LASALLE STREET BRIDGE AT THE CHICAGO RIVER, LOOKING SOUTHEAST WITH THE CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE IN FAR DISTANCE The LaSalle Street Bridge is an important landmark in the development of Chicago as the "City Beautiful." Where there had been a jumble of low commercial structures along the south bank of Lhe river, architect Daniel H. Burnham and his associates imagined a great bi-level boulevard and a considerably broadened LaSalle Street connected to the north bank by a majestic bridge. The completed boulevard was called Wacker Drive. LaSalle Street was widened, and in 1928 the bridge was finished. In designing this monumental structure, city engineers and prominent Chicago architect Edward Bennett rose to Bum ham 's vision. With a double leaf trunnion bascule design, its two pony trusses were kept as low as possible to avoid jarring the classical horizontal lines. It is a full eighty-six feet wide, and for the sake of symmetry it has four bridge houses rather ~han the necessary two. The elegant cut masonry of the northwest bridge house seen here has since been embellished by a life preserver in a glass case, and during Mayor Jane Byrne's regime, by a set of fringed blinds that decorates the bridge house doors and windows.

400 NORTH, THE ANTI-CRUELTY SOCIETY The Anti-Cruelty Society previously operated out of a respectable, classically detailed, limestoneclad structure around the comer. But when they decided to remodel, the Society evidently wanted to disprove the old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. The new tricks were commissioned from Chicago post-modernist architect Stanley Tigerman who created this oversized, aluminum-sided doghouse with beagle-faced windows flanking the front door, a large, obviously false gable at the top, and show windows that allow browsers to see the animals. In case anyone missed the point, the words "kittens" and "puppies" are repeated at least a dozen times immediately above the show windows. Officials at the Society report that since the completion of their new building, business has been booming.

720 NORTH, LOOKING SOUTHWEST FROM SUPERIOR STREET TO THE LASALLE MOTOR LODGE LaSalle Motor Lodge AAA Special Value- Wkends Motel All liar IP 39.00-49.00 2P/ 1B 42.00-52.00 2P/2B 42.00-52.00 70units. 720 N LaSalle St. (60610) Good to very good rooms. A IC; C/ TV; radios, phones. No pets. Coffeeshop adjacent.

The entry in the AAA book fails to mention the architectural design. Experts claim that it is not the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, but the low horizontal lines, contrasting plate glass and rough stone, and the dynamic play of levels suggest that it, and the Ohio House Motel to the south, might be unknown Wright commissions from the 1950s. From the exterior, the building's original design features and landscaping appear to be remarkably well preserved.

1350 NORTH, SKREBNESKI HOUSE According to the Chicago telephone directory, this is the house of Victor Skrebneski. One might expect Chicago's most famous and flamboyant photographer to have vanity plates with his own initials on them. Why the number reads 1340 rather than 1350, his address, is not clear. Even more surprising is the reticence of his home, set among a collection of opulent nineteenthcentury structures and twentieth-century high-rises. The house stands well back from the street, and a doub le row of trees gives the front yard the dignified formality of the Place Furstenburgor another of the venerable small parks on Paris's Left Bank. A front house was torn down, and the remaining back house was thoroughly remodeled in the mid-1970s by Chicago designer Bruce Gregga. At first glance, the facade has a kind of spare character and deadpan symmetry reminiscent of European avant-garde architecture, but the irregular brick, the limestone window frames, and the slightly flaring cornice give it unusual warmth. It provides a perfect backdrop for the expensive European cars inevitably equipped with vanity plates that are always parked in front.

1400 NORTH, CARL SANDBURG VILLAGE What the Robert R. Taylor Homes are to the South Side, Carl Sandburg Village is to the North Side. Both were products of postwar urban renewal (urban removal to its critics); both were intended to replace substandard housing with modern structures. Both also were more notable for their planning than their architectural distinction; and both were designed by reputable Chicago architects. In fact, with the exception of the necessarily different apartment layouts and a few minor variances, the two complexes are practically interchangeable. These two complexes show that architectural design may not be as important to the creation of a viable community as are location, management, economics, and social factors. Perhaps the most bitter irony is that the Robert R. Taylor Homes, intended to provide a stepping stone to home ownership, became permanent housing, while Sandburg Village quickly became the home of the city's most transient upper middle-class residents.

1467 NORTH, ARCHWAY AMOCO STATION LaSalle Street meets Lincoln Park at one of the most important corners in Chicago. In the immediate vicinity are the monumental D. L. Moody Church and the last-gasp classicism of the Chicago Historical Society's Clark Street facade, framed here by two "Full Senre" islands of the gas station. If this were a street corner in Paris we would find a major church or public building, or at least a fountain surmounted by the statue of a venerable author of the classical age. The church is here, but it is hemmed in by two gas stations, a bank designed in a much modified and hardly improved Miesian style, and several miscellaneous buildings that somehow escaped demolition. The place of pride on tJ1e block, however, is clearly the small triangular plot at tJ1e north end on which sits Archway Amoco, designed about 1971 by architects and engineers in the Amoco Design Department under the direction of Stanley Carlson. It would be a mistake to think of it as a mere collection of gas pumps, howeve1~ for it is undoubtedly the most monumental service station in the city. With its four concrete pylons and long free span, it is perhaps as good a gateway to Chicago as a motorized civilization could hope for.

1700 NORTH, NORTH AVENUE BEACH HOUSE The northern end of LaSalle Street is as ambiguous as its southern terminus. By all rights, LaSalle should stop at Clark Street, but it continues as the superhighway that was bulldozed across the southern end of Lincoln Park in the 1970s. Now LaSalle Street ends at its intersection with Lake Shore Drive immediately in front of the North Avenue Beach House, a wonderful folly built in 1929 to resemble a ship. At close range its warped boards belie the streamlined nautical image, making it appear more like a beached shipwreck. In front of the beach house, sunbathers turn their faces away from Lake Michigan toward the relentless traffic of Lake Shore Drive.

best-known Near North Side lakefronl neighborhoods, famous for its dramatic views, its proximity to orth Michigan Avenue, and its luxurious high-rise apartment buildings. The history of its development is well known in Chicago, largely through the exploits of .the infamous Captain George Wellington Streeter. Streeter is generally given credit for the landfill in the area east of Michigan Avenue between Ohio and Oak streets, a tract of about 186 acres. Eulogized on numerous occasions, Streeter's battle witl1 nearby wealthy landowners to hold claim to this lakeshore land has become a classic case of the struggle against the oppression of privilege and power. However, an analysis of contemporary documents, such as deed records, newspaper accounts, and court records, reveals that Streeter actually played only a small role in the Streeterville landfill, and that his story is primarily a myth. According to popular history, Captain Streeter ran aground on a sandbar in Lake Michigan about 450 feel off tl1e end of Superior Street during a storm on July JO, 1886. Rather than move the boat, the story goes, he decided to stay put and let the changing lake currents bring in sand and silt to fonn an ever-expanding island. Streeter supposedly invited scavenger cart drivers to dump debris along the shoreline, so tl1al his island was soon connected to the mainland. By 1890 he claimed ownership of 186 acres of newly formed land, and for the next thirty years he engaged in numerous court battles and armed confrontations to assert control of it. Streeter became a determined champion of his rights and those of his friends against wealthy landowners like Potter Palmer, Kellogg Fairbank, and Charles Fitz-Simons. This account, reported as fact by historians, freelance writers, journalists, and attorneys, has grown to mythic proportions. Francis Busch, a historian writing of Streeterville in 1957, alluded to the story's questionable credibility: "As fiction the accounts ofStreeter's activities would astound; as truth they truly tax belief:' Streeter's principal biographer and apologist was Everett Guy Ballard, who wrote Captain Streeter; Pioneer in 1914. This lengthy book on Streeter's quest to retain sovereignty over Streeterville established the legend as we know it today. Two articles were subsequently STREETEKVILU: IS ONIÂˇ. OF CHICA(;()'$

John W StamperÂˇ is Q$Sistant professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame.

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

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This is a map oflhP 1\ 'ear Nm1h Side in 1886, wizen Streeter ran agmund al lhefool of Superior Slm•l. By 1892 Streeter ux,.;fim1ly n1/renched on la11dflll Kellogg foirbank claimed lo own. From lhe vantage of this "car/IP. ·· Streeter waged ux,r against the lakes/tore property owners and their agmLr.

published in the journal of the Illinois State Historical Society: the first was a short eulogy at the time of his death in 1921; the second, an article in 1940 by Kenneth Broomell and Harlow Church entitled "The Streeterville Saga," based on Ballard's research. An article published in Chicago History in 1976 by K. C. Tessendorf firmly states that Streeter "was literally the man who made this choice slice of lake front." An analysis of contemporary newspaper accounts and court records, however, reveals another scenario. According to Cook County deed records, for instance, Streeter never legally owned any of the lakefront property in question. The documented story, perhaps not as romantic as the legend, was first outlined in 1902 by attorney Edward 0. Brown, who maintains that the infilling of Streeterville was actually initiated, planned, and supervised by the Lincoln Park Board of Commissioners. In the early nineteenth century, Chicago's lakeshore did not curve around Oak Street as it does today. Instead, the water's edge angled gradually westward from the moutl, of the Chicago River to the Water Tower at the intersection of Chicago and Michigan avenues. Michigan Ave-

nue was then called Pine Su·eet. North of this location, Pine Street continued along the lake front as far as Oak Street. It is important to realize that there had been natural infilling along this portion of the lakefront before Streeter and the Lincoln Park Board project. Shortly after the mouth of the Chicago River was straightened in 1834, a pier extending from its northern bank 1,500 feet into the lake was constructed by the federal government. This caused acuetions to form north of the river,jutting into the lake about half a mile. Sand Street, the north-soutl, street immediately west of the lakefront, had been swept into the lake at various times; however, a the sediment accumulated, the beach moved further away, and Sand Street was secured. The opposite action, erosion of the shoreline, took place for a short time north of Chicago Avenue, where Tobias Allmendinger, a German immigrant, dredged and sold sand from the lakefront in the early 1870s. Allmendinger was one of the first to buy a large amount of land at this location, having purchased in 1868 tl,e property on the east side of Pine Street between Walton and Oak streets, the present site of the Drake Hotel. In 1882 he purchased from the city of

Chicago all of the lakefronl property on the east side of Pine from Walton to Pearson streets, including the present sites of the Playboy and Hancock buildings and Water Tower Place. The Allmenclingers occupied a brick house on the southwest comer of Pine and Walton streets, and the family operated a successful business selling sand they scooped up from the beach. By 1886, however, Allmendinger was convinced that he could make more money by creating new land along the lakefront. He sold an interest in his lake front property, most of it undenvater, to contractor Charles Fitz-Simons. Together they began infilling by driving piles in the lake bed opposite Bellevue Place and Pearson Street and dumping sand and dirt into the enclosure to bring the submerged land up to the grade of Pine Street. The land they attempted to reclaim amounted to about 23 acres, extending 550 feet into the lake and 960 feet north from the waterworks. Other prominent residents of the area, including John V Farwell, Kellogg Fairbank, and the executors of the Waller ewbe1-ry estate, also built breakwaters al Chicago Avenue and Su petior and Erie streets, al lowing the dumping of garbage into the pace between. Not all residents of the neighborhood were

happy with these changes. Nearby property owners, complaining of odor, disease, and pollution, filed a lawsuit in 1886 and another three years later. They were also concerned that the new houses to be built on the reclaimed land would obstruct their lake view. Injunctions were granted based upon the legal claim that no individual had the right to fill in the lake at any point along its shore and convert that land to private use. But such rulings were constantly being challenged by lakefront property owners who favored landfilling. These landowners and developers continued to fill in the lake, creating new properties for their private use and economic gain. When Streeter's boat ran aground in 1886, infilling had already gradually begun to move the lakeshore eastward. Edward Brown writes that contrary to the accounts of Ballard and others, Streeter's boat did not land 450 feet offshore, but rather at the foot of Superior Street. City authorities were about Lo destroy it when Streeter obtained permission from Kellogg Fairbank to haul the boat onto Fairbank's landfill until he could repair it Streeter left his boat tl1ere for several years, and when Fairbank finally asked him to leave, he refused and instead took measures to make the

rtirk commi.moners in 1887 envisioned a boulevard to proville access to the south end of Lincoln Park (left). Lake Shore /)rive between North Avenue and Oak Street had bem laid out in water in 1875 and remained swampy for many years. The section between Oak and Pearson streets, kn.own as Lincoln Park Boulevard, would be widened on landgrcmted to th.I' park board by /he adjoining property ownm. The "Ohio Street Extemion" of Lake Shore /)rive was planned lo extend southerut from Oak Street into the lake to connect the North Side with downtown. The contract to build the drive and create the inli'rvening land was let to Charll!S Fit:z-Simons, whose brea/avaler is visible in tlw lower right comer of the map.

71,e viRw ,wrth of Rellroue Place aumg Lake Shore Drive (right) was still ;omewlwl desowte in t/11! 1890s. Built in water, the drive was swwunded by swo.mps and pondf. For years park commissionnl and landownm struggled to fill in wnd around it. Lake Michigan's powuling swf hinde,Âˇed the /n-ocess, however, even after the sea ,val/ was comtnuted. Also known cis Pine Street [)rive, this stretch of Lake Shore !)rive served the homes of the Wl'althy that lined its western edge. The turrets of Fbtter Palmer's mansion are visible in the distance.

site more permanenl. Between 1891 and 1893 StTeeter sold, bought back, resold, and repurchased about twenty-five lots around his boat on the landfill between Chicago Avenue and Erie StreeL Streeter and Fairbank both claimed these lots. A suit for forcible entry and detainer was begun by Fairbank against Streeter, and he was eventually removed in 1893 by the police. But the North Side millionaires had not heard the last of the enigmatic Streeter. In the meantime, as Fitz-Simons, Allmendinger, Farwell, Fairbank, and others continued to infill the land, they began to see the value of connecting the North Side with the downtown area by a lakefront drive. They believed the factory and warehouse district along the 1iverwas likely to spread the entire length of the northern lakefronl. Trustees of the Ogden estate had filled in land at Illinois Street which was paying a handsome return, and they were planning more filling for industrial purposes. In 1889 state legislative action was secured, allowing the commissioners of the Lincoln Park Board to adopt a plan for a new drive extending over the bed of Lake Michigan from Ohio Street to Oak Street. The submerged land between the new drive and

Chicago s Shoreline

Lhe original shoreline Lhus became the property of the Lincoln Park Board, which could sell it to defray Lhe costs of the parkway. Two citizens' groups helped to secure state permission for the plan. One group consisted of publicspirited North Side residents such as Franklin MacVeagh and judge Lambert Tree, who were interested in saving the waterfront for public use and insuring that city improvements were aesthetically pleasing. They were most concerned about the interests of the Ogden estate in developing the lakefront for industrial purposes. The second group, consisting of Allmendinger, Farwell, Fairbank, and other owners of shore property, wanted to reclaim Lake Michigan's shallows for their personal economic gain. With the passage of the 1889 state legislation, the Lincoln Park Board and the lakeshore property owners agreed that Lhe latter would pay for building the drive if they could claim the land that would be created between the drive and Pine Street. Although the property owners deeded their riparian rights to the Lincoln Park com mi sioners to comply with tJ1e law, the commissioners prepared deeds to reconvey the land back Lo the

shore owners when the project was finished. The existing shoreline between Oak Street and Grand Avenue would be extended nearly a quarter of a mile into the lake. Along the wate1front, a sea wall would be built to protect the planned 202-foot-wide boulevard. In addition, a four-acre park would be developed at Oak Street, and Pine Street from Oak to Pearson streets would be widened from 66 feet to 116 feet on land granted to the park board by tJ1e adjoining property owners. The contract to carry out the project was let to Charles Fitz-Simons, one of those earliest involved in tJ1e lakefront extension. Fitz-Simons estimated the cost of building the breakwater and bou levard and filling in the intervening land at about $1 million. Each property owner was required to pay $100 per front foot of his property on tJ1e boulevard to defray the cost of the work. Minna Allmendinger, who ably managed her deceased husband's property, stood to benefit most by the project, and paid nearly one-fifth of the cost. In addition, she deeded a fifty-foot right-of-way valued at $100,000 to the Lincoln Park Board for the widening of Pine Street. The work was scheduled for completion by 1894. The North Side Land Association and the Pine Street Land Association were formed to reclaim, improve, and market the new land as it was created north of the waterworks. Henry N. Cooper and Fitz-Simons headed the orth Side Land Association, which had $3 million in capital and owned the south frontage on the Pearson Street extension and both sides of the Chestnut Street extension. About half of this frontage, submerged in 1892, was rapidly filled in. The North Side Land Association controlled about 5,000 feet of street frontage between Pine Street and the new lakefront. Henry N. Cooper also headed the Pine Street Land Association, which owned 1,100 feet of the new shoreline. The average price for the property controlled by these two associations was $600 per front foot on Pearson and Chestnut streets, $700 on Pine Street, and $1,000 on the new Lake Shore Drive. The Chicago Title and Trust Company held title to the property of both organizations. The men controlling these groups intended the triangular tract of land to be developed as an upper-class residential area. Their plan prohibited the construction of flats, apartments, and businesses throughout the tract, allowing-only

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

private residences valued al $15,000 or more to be built. The cost of such residences would ideally range from $20,000 to 40,000, much le expensive than residences in the fashionable Prairie Avenue district, but costly enough to make this an exclusi\'e, prestigious neighborhood that would return a handsome profit on their im路estment. The project appeared to progress smoothl), heading toward completion in 1894. The owners hoped to begin reaping the benefits of their shrewd bargain ll'itJ1 the Lincoln Park Board. But they met with a series of stumbling blocks within a >"ear after the start of the \\'Ork, encountering problems that delayed the project until the next decade. The first of these ll'as an unexpected 189'.1 state senate investigation imo the propriety of the Lincoln Park Board agreement and a subsequent lawsuit filed by the state' attorney general. The first action ll'as initiated by a group of public-spirited citizens working for a better use of the shoreline. While planning for a public park along the lake frontage controlled by the Lincoln Park Board, they alerted Attorney General Maurice ~loloney to probable legal ,路iolations in the board's contract with Fitz-Simons and the Near ;\;011.h Side property owners. A state enate

committee visited Chicago to examine the park hoard and its lakefront prc~ject, concluding that i1Tegularities seemed apparent in the contract. The committee condemned e\'eryonc involved in the affair. The attorney general filed suit in 1895 chaq..,ring that the legislature's act authorizing the reclaiming of the submerged lands ,,as unconstitutional. Moloney claimed that the legislature had no right lo 1ransfer the lakefronl property 10 pri,路atc parties, and he sought to enjoin the propeny O\\'ncrs from the construction of 1he drive and from funher infilling. In his suit, Moloney questioned ll'hcther the dri,路e ll'a~ being built too far out into the lake and whether the propeny owner i1l\'oh'ed would benefit more than the public. He accmed Fiu-Simons of building the houle\'ard further cast than was originally proposed, thereby intedering with navigation, and of attempting to create for his own gain more property than allowed. The estimated cost of the project allegedly stood at $1.5 million, while the land to be reclaimed would sell for more than $10 million, an amount far higher than \\'as equitable. He charged:

Chicago '.s Shoreline ven ing land. Alth ough the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court assured the legali ty of the Lincoln Park Board contract and validated the land transfers between the board and the property owners, more prob lems wo ul d fo ll ow. The next sign ifica n t cha ll e nge to the property owners in the m id- l890s came with the reappearance of George Streeter. Shortly after Ke ll ogg Fa irbank had successfu lly ev icted Streeter from the la kefront in 1893, the tenacio us squatter surveyed the area from the river to Oak Street and east of St. C la ir Street. He tried to register th is p lot with the county recorder, b u t he was rejected because m uch ofit was sti ll undenvater. H is attem pt

Here is whe re large property-ho lders, men of wealth, means, and position, are sti ll about to become more wea lthy, powerfu l, and important. Aggregated wealth is aggregated selfis h ness in many instances, and it looks as if th is was one of them.

Fortu nate ly for the Near North Side property owners, the attorney general's case was dism issed in 1895. Fitz-Simons was exonerated from any intention of deviati ng from the p lanned line of the drive and from making an u nfair profit. An appeal to the state supreme court affinned the lower court decision. The fo ll owing year the Lincoln Park Board voted to contin ue the contract with Fitz-Simons to finish the shore drive project and fi ll in the interTh.is gallery of luxurious South Side residences (lift) was published in The Landowner in 1874 during the h,Jri.ey of th,, Prai>u Avenue neighbm hood. By the tum of the century, many of Chicago's elite had moved to the Gold Coast. 0

In /899 Streeter and his cronies declared the District of Lal/1! Michigan, 186 acres of newly created shoreline between Oak and Water streeLs, a sovereign slate outside offederal and stale jurisdiction. The District's constitution, however, called for participation in presidential elections; in 1900 District Clerk George W Stmtn" ran againstjustice ofthe Peace William H. Niles for a congressional seal.

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Chicago History, Winter 1985-86 to secede from the state of' Illinois and to declare the property the DistTict of' Lake Michigan was ridiculed by the Pinc Street Land Association. At one point, Streeter e\·en produced a claim to the property bearing the forged signature of' President Grover Cleveland. Although he had no legal title, he continued to sell lots to his duped friends, mostly poor and ignorant people. He was a1Tes1ed in 1895 for this activity, but he had made enough money to live comfortably in the Tremont I louse and other posh hotels. Streeter even maintained an office in the Chicago Title and Trust Company building. 77,e presence of the Pa/111erfamily on Lake Shore Drive mcouraged other wealthy Chirngnan5 to gambfi, 011 the North Side. Palmer selaborate mansion at llank.1 Street and the drive (left) was built in 1882.

n,ese photographs from an a,wual report of the Lincoln Park Board of Cammiwioner,; (be/aw) ill1L5hrlle till' desh11c/ivf, /iower of l..akr ,\/,chigrm. The "Ohio Street Fxlension improvnnenl "(pictured at bollom) was the o.fficial name for the landfill known today as StreeterviUe.

-~--------·--·-

,---- - =

·,

I ..:

\.:

.• .•

Chicago '.s Shoreline The outlook for the development of new lakeshore property at the north end of Pine Street was bleak in the mid-1890s. The appreciation of prices throughout the city and Cook County had been phenomenal during the real estate booms of 1888 and 1890, but thereafter money became tighter and a slump set in. An increase in building activity during the World 's Columbian Exposition brought no relief. People began hoarding their money in safe deposit vaults and investing in government bonds. By the summer of 1893, the country was experiencing one of its most disastrous panics. These depressed conditions and various lawsuits which dragged on du1ing the mid-1890s nearly prohibited the Pine Sb·ee t property owners from selling their land or using it as collateral. Work on the drive and the infilling had completely stopped. During this time, enb·epreneur Potter Palmer began buying property along Pine Street between Chicago Avenue and Oak Street. Th is land , long coveted by Fitz-Simons, Allmendinger, and others, had become less desirable because of the prolonged legal actions and unclear titles. But the time was right for a shrewd investor to buy it on speculation. Potter Palmer had begun purchasing property on the orth Side in 1882, when he constructed what was to be one of Chicago's most extravagant houses. The mansion was built several blocks north of Oak Street on Lake Shore Drive between Schiller and Banks streets. He had purchased small portions of two blocks in the north Pine SD·eet area in the 1880s; however, he was not a party to the Lincoln Park Board agreement, nor was he a member of the Pine Street or orth Side land associations. His initial interests in the North Side were confined to the area further up the lakeshore, near Lincoln Park. During the early 1880s, Palmer worked with the Lincoln Park commissioners to improve Lake Shore Dri,·e between Oak Street and North Avenue. The drive had been laid out in water in 1875 about300 feet ea t of the shoreline, and the intervening space filled with earth dredged from Lincoln Park's south pond. After receiving permission from tJ1e Illinois State Legislature to issue bonds, raise funds, and physically secure the shoreline, the commissioners began construction ofa sea wall along the drive to the east in 1886. The work proceeded witJ1 great difficulty, and the wall had to be reinforced a numbe1· of times. Finally in 1899, frusu·ated by the

waves that cominued to wash over the boulevard, Palmer worked with the Lincoln Park commissioners to extend the lakefront another l00 feet. Potter Palmer's move to the North Side and his role in the development of Lake Shore Drive helped shift Chicago's elite from their South Side residences to the fast-growing Gold Coast. In fact, the exodus from the avenues on the South Side became a stampede after 1893, while mansions there sold for a fraction of their original cost A house at Prairie Avenue and 18th Street tJ1at had cost more than $200,000 sold for$25,000; another, one oftJ1e fine t homes in the city, had cost $150,000 in 1870 but went for $36,000 in 1909. Although Lake Shore Drive in the 1890s was still home to fewer millionaires than Prairie Avenue, it quickly became the richest street on the North Side. It had many attractions: a view of Lake Michigan , the roar of the surf, and clean air. The Palmer mansion advertised the development of upper Lake Shore Drive. It attracted so much attention that Palmer could be choosy about buyers for his lots in the blocks north and south of him. He sold only to those he considered his peers, and thus the neighborhood became the most elegant part of town. Among those who bought property on or near Lake Shore Drive were William Borden, Franklin MacVeagh, Bryan Lathrop, Robert Todd Lincoln , and Harold and Edith McCormick. A these families concentrated along Lake Shore Drive, Chicago's high society, with its wealth and elaborate rituals, had a new center of activity. But tJ1e wealthy were not the only social class to move to the North Side. In addition to the mansions, hundreds of flats, apartment buildings, and row houses were built on the streets off Lake Shore Drive. Potter Palmer did not sell just to the rich; he built many middle-class apartments as investment remal properties. By 1893 Palmer owned between 200 and 300 houses and apartments on the orth Side. The Chicago Times reported: "As fast as he buys a piece of land he builds a costly house on it. They rent for $1,500 a year on the average, each being worth about $15,000." The total value of these properties was estimated to be $4 million. Palmer's 1893-94 account book indicates that most oftJ1e properties were located on Astor, Elm, Cedar, Division. Chestnut, and State streets. After Palmer had consolidated his holdings we t of his Lake Shore Drive mansion, he turned his attention to tJ1e Streeterville area. This was 53

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86 the last remammg undeveloped tract between his mansion and downtown Chicago, and he opted to extend the Gold Coast southward by developing this area just as he had done further north. He did this in an effort to help maintain and raise the value of the neighborhood properties, and he did it at a time when prices were low. The sellers were tired of lawsuits and harassment from the state and Captain Streeter. Palme r took no risk, for if the landfill project failed, his Pine Street property would remain a prime la kefront location. After its completion, he would be th e main property owner in Chicago's newest and largest residential development. Palmer started buying property on either side of Pine Street, between Pearson a nd Oak streets, from members of the North Side and Pine Su·eet land associations. In 1894 and 1895 he purchased lots on the north side of Chestnut Street, where the John Hancock Building now stands; lots between Delaware Place and Walton Street, wh ere the Playboy Building and the Westin Hotel are located; and lots betwee n Delaware and Walton on the west side of Pine Street, th e former site of the 900 North Michigan Avenue apartn1ent building. In 1896 he purchased the northeast corner of Delaware Place and Pine Su·eet, where the Drake Hotel now stands. Betwee n 1900 a nd 1902 he purchased properties on Chestnut, Walton , and Oak streets until he owned nearl y all of th e Pin e Street frontage north of Pearson Street. Mea nwhile, work by Fitz-Simons and the Lincoln Park Board of Commissioners continued on Lake Sho re D1·ive between Ohio and Oak streets into th e earl y 1900s. Potter Palmer's real estate activities e nd ed abruptly with his death in 1902 at tl1e age of seventy-five. But his visions of the Gold Coast did not die with him. Palmer's wife and their two sons, Honore and Potter, Jr~, oversaw the management of the estate, valued at $10 million , and significantly increased it in the early twentietl1 century. Honore and Potter.Jr., both HarYard graduates, made their careers in real estate managing the family's properties. Mrs. Palmer continued to live in the mansion, helping to manage her husband's enterprises. She became noted as an art collectm~ buying ma ny European and American masterpieces. The Palmer heirs had to contend with another attempt by George Su·ee ter to claim the land east of Pine Street, much of which they now legally 54

··Caf;" Streeter apprars disheveled but calm in this portrait. c. 1906 (abovr), which may havr been taken at the police station after one of th, captains nzmry conjirmt.alicms with 1/11, a111/w1ities. Gifl of Fiel.d E11tntni:,es. Disputes over Strfl'lnvil/e continued into th1, twentieth cenlmy. According to contemporary arcow,ts, the only bidder in this shenffs sale (right) was Stre,ters own al/onuy, 11'. C. Anderson, who bought the tract for $1,000. Sine, Street,r didnt legally own the land, however; "the sale did not apply lo anything bul Streetn-'.1 mtl'l"e;I in the land, wlzalevl'I· tlutl might develop lo be.·· ,\ndn-son. to whom Streeter OW('d $f(), 000 in legal fees, m11St have hoped that such interr~l would tum out to b, mbstantial. By /915 Lake Slwre Dnvr ,xtmd,,d south thrm,gh Slreeterv,lle (below). Tiu, area remai11Rd 1111developedfor ymn, lwweve,; ill lillgatim1 and deball' over /mipert.y ownership co11li11ued.

Chicago s Shoreline

SHERIF f'S SALE o,THE

"DISTRICT OF LAKE MICHIGAN" T11N1y, OctoNr lit~, 1911 AT 10 A. M. 8WAIII~

EAST ENTRANCE NEW COUNTY Bun.DING ALL THE RIGHT, TITLE ~ND INTEREST OF

Capt. Geor1e Wellington Streeter In the above district will be sold to the hl&hest bid• der for CASH by the Sheriff of Cook County, to satisfy the $10,000.00 Jud&ment obtained aplnst CAP'f. STREETER, January 6th, 1906, by Allomey William G. Anderson, for securin.11 h.la releue from the Joliet Penitentiary In 1906. Tfie Judcment, costs • and Interest now amount to $12,42S.

111• CHIUIJTOPftU ITa.AURJt.1111 ._..._ er w. i - . i - 0ep111,7.

o.r,_

For further lnformadon call on Atty. W. G. Anderson, 81 South Oark Street, Room 26, Tel. Central 7127.

owned. In 1901 Streeter had returned to the property. Finding the blocks fenced by their owners, he camped on the street in a wagon. The city authorities hauled him away, but he soon relocated on the south side of Chestnut Street on property owned by Louis Healy. Healy sued to have him removed, and the following year Streeter was convicted of murdering a private detective and sentenced to life in prison. Serving only nine months of his term, he was pardoned by Governor Altgeld and returned to Chestnut Street. In 1915 workmen erected a fence along the north side of Pearson Street for the Chicago Title and Trust Company, and a small force of Chicago police pitched camp outside the battle line at Pearson and DeWitt (now Seneca) streets. On December 11, 1918, acting under a legal w1;t, agents of the Title and Trust Company forcibly dispossessed the old man. They seized his arsenal of guns and ammunition, threw out his household goods, and burned down the house. Streeter moved to East Chicago, Indiana, where he and his third wife, the former Elma Lockwood, lived in a houseboat on the Calumet River. After his death in 1921, his wife filed suit asking for compensation for tl1e land under development by speculators. She demanded $1 billion in compensation from 1,500 defendan ts. Her claims were rejected, and the war against the Gold Coast millionaires finally ended.

For Further Reading The easiest way to visualize Chicago's changing North Side shoreline is to examine maps of the period. Robinson's Atlas of Chicago, 1886, and the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Cook County, v. I, North and West Divisions, 1906-11, are particularly useful. To better understand the development of Lake Shore Drive and Lincoln Park and effo rts to protect the shoreline, tum to the reports of the comm issioners of Lincoln Park, which were publish ed periodically throughout the 1880s and 1890s.

II Iustrations 44-45, from The Graphic (1891), CHS, ICHi-19876; 46, from Robinson's At/.as of Chicago (1886), CHS, ICHi-19872; 47, CHS, ICHi-19835; 48 left, CHS, lCHi-19874; 48-49, C HS, ICHi-19838; 50, CHS, ICHi-06958; 51, CHS Archives and Manusc1ipts Collection; 52 top, from The Graphic (1891), CHS, ICHi-19875; 52 bottom, from A History of Lincoln Park, and the Annual Report of the Commissioners (1899), CHS, ICHi-19873; 54 top, CHS, DN 65,391; 54-55 bottom, CHS, lCHi-19834; 55 top, CHS, ICHi- 19839. 55

Chicago Chronicles By Perry R. Duis

Although an urban biography is often the only available complete story of a city, it is perhaps the most neglected part of urban history. The author examines some of Chicago s more distinctive biographies and their roles in documenting the city s history. 1T 1s ALWAYS EASY to locate the shelf in the library where the urban biographies are housed. Look for the patrons brushing their clothes to rid themselves of "red rot," the telltale residue from old deteriorating leather covers, and nearby you will find multi-volume histories of cities and states. For decades these books have been much maligned. Many were the products of amateurs whose selective and biased emphases were often guided by the generosity of purchasers or financiers. These "mug book" biographies have also been condemned as intellectually uncritical and downtownelite 01iented and for squeezing space away from narrative history sections. In most cases the criticisms are valid. But because they are the handiest compilations of facts, urban historians often use them as sources. They are frequently the only complete story of a city. In urban history, the primary importance of urban biography has been its role as midwife to a specialty. With the exception of Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., the pioneer urban historians were urban biogra phers. Bessie Louise Pierce began her monumental History of Chicago in 1937, four years after completing a book of travelers' accounts; during the next two decades she completed two more volumes, covering the period before 1893. Blake McKelvey's four volumes on Rochester, New York, appeared between 1945 and 1961, while Constance McLaughlin Green gave us single volumes on Holyoke, Massachusetts (1939), and Naugatuck, Connecticut (1948), before writing a pair of volumes on Washington, D.C., during the early 1960s. Another pionee1~ Bayrd Still, published his Milwaukee: The History of a City in 1948. Even before the careers of these pioneers were

Perry R. Duis is associate professor of history at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

completed, the field began to move in new directions. Later scholars divided city history into smaller, more specialized parts which became the basis for urban history. These historians assumed that cities were more alike than different, and they espoused the existence of a generic "city people." Yet their published works concentrated on aspects of the history of one or a few cities. Why was the older tradition of urban biography cast aside? Besides tl1e obvious difficulty of confronting original sources for a study spanning 150 years or more, American historians feared the result would appear too local or antiquarian. The history of Hoboken seemed petty next to the Second Bank of the United States or Huey Long. They also were wa1y of producing narrowly focused monographs that would fail to make any significant contribution to historical scholarship. Urban history became increasingly associated with urban studies and with sociologists, geographers, political scientists, and other social scientists interested in generating analytical models. The more widely applicable-and less narrowly based on a particular city-they appeared, the more successful they were. As a result, efforts to survey the broad sweep of a single city's history have become less popular among historians. The existing urban biographies may be grouped in three basic categories. Some, like Bayrd Still's Mirror For Gotham and a short-lived series of books edited by Stephan Thernstrom and Tamara Hareven , employed the documentary approach. Popular works such as Lyle Dorsett's Denver and H. C. McComb's Houston volumes were written with scholarly care, but their brevity has excluded them from scholarly bibliographies. A third category includes volumes organized principally around single- themes. Land use, for instance, is the unifying thread of Harold Mayer and Richard

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

Early historians ignored black trapperjenn Baptiste Point du Sable, Chicago :sfirst pemument settln: Alfred 7: ,\ndreas·s Historv of Chicago. published in 188-1, pres;,nted this idealiud Landscape which includes du Sahle:s homestead.

Wade's Chicago: Growth of a Melropoli5 and Sherry Olson's Baltimore volume. Entrepreneurial leadership is o;tical to Gary L. Browne's Baltimore and Carol Hoffecker's Wilmington studies. These volumes are excellent, if too few in number. Urban biography has become perhaps the most neglected part of urban history. Indeed, contemporal)' surveys of the field rarely include it. Is there still a need for urban biography? What of its future? An examination of Chicago's urban biographical tradition helps demonstrate the continuing uses of this type of writing and identifies some of the larger themes around which a new synthesis may be constructed. Thus, what the city thought of itself-as reflected in those decaying old volumes-becomes a critical source for a new scholarly urban biography. Chicago's historiography began in 1840, only three years after it established a city charter. The population numbered about 4,500 when a young lawyer named Joseph Balestier rose to address tJ1e local lyceum on "The Annals of Chicago:' Balestier gave a b1;ef description of French exploration in Chicago, ignoring the role of the black trapper Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the first permanent settler. The speech, reprinted as a pamphlet, 58

established two other tJ1emes that would appear in later Chicago histories: one emphasized the unpromising nature of the swampy, desolate site; the otJ1er, the brevity of the town's existence.Much of the remainder of Balestier's Annals was an attack on tJ1e speculators who had precipitated the severe depression of the late 1830s and an effort to rally the faithful behind the young city. Thus, Chicago history had a practical use: persuading people not lo move away. The return of prospe1·ity and Chicago's rapid gi·owth during the next few decades moved urban biography into the role of benchmark of progress. Thi was the age of the booste1~ duringwhich Chicago eemed overwhelmed by a secular religion of entrepreneurship. In 1846 a lawyer named Henry Brown predicted that, based on the city's past growth, it would someday reach a population of 200,000 and become a seat of "wealth, power, learning, and virtue." City histOt)' was a source of useful information about crude conditions in the past, all to be contrasted with the present and the future. Perhaps the "new urban histo1)'" of its day, Elias Colbert's Chicago: Historical and Statistical Sketch of the Carden City From the Beginning Until Now (1868) used chamber of commerce data to

John Carbult's Biographical Sketches of the Leading Men of Chicago featured portrait j;hotographs of Chicago :1 wealthy cla5S. This first Chicago mt1g book, published in 1868, helped establish a historical elite for the city. Pictt11Âˇed here is Semmel H. K1!1foot, best known for his extensive real estate dealings.

demonstrate the speed of Chicago's economic growth and its uniqueness among cities. Colbert's 120-page history reiterated tl1e unpromising beginnings of the city, omitting mention of du Sable. Ethnic groups were treated only statistically except for a short and positive section on the Fenians, Irish immigrants dedicated to overthrowing British rule in Ireland . The book focused on the downtown area, ignoring me neighborhoods except for gross building statistics and real estate values. The first Chicago mug book appeared in 1868 with the publication of photographer John Carbutt's Biographical Sketches of the Leading Men of Chicago. He profited by selling portrait photographs and books to the 110 men included in the volume, and he also helped establish an elite in the process. Reiterating the ownership of Chicago's wealth, he created a historical elite whose members wished to be remembered for their part in city building. Noting the deaths of several founding citizens, Carbutt wanted to "photograph for preservation the prominent features in the lives of that little band (of settlers) ... who are now walking over the senior arches in the bridge of life." The average age of the group was 46.9, the oldest, 79, and the youngest, 32. Disease and poor nutrition kept the life span of most American males below 50. Carbutt promoted the booster's idea of rapid historical progress, comparing Chicago's meteoric rise to the slow rate of development typical of the Western world over past centuries. According to Carbutt, Chicago's progress came about because "Very many of our best men were literal adventurers coming here with nothing of worldly wealth, setting foot in Chicago as the gold hunter prospects among the mountains, looking for the best chance, and willing to make money in any (honest) way that might offer. All honor to them!" Thus was tl1e tradition of historical writing about Chicago neatly I.inked to leadership based on new wealth and entrepreneurial prowess, rather than venerable family ties or education. The Great Fire of 1871 proved to be a major turning point in the history of Chicago as well as its historiography. Several popular "insta nt histories" followed in the wake of the disaster thar leve led one-third of the city. Titles such as James W Sheahan and George P. Upton's The Creal Conjlagratirm and Frank Luzerne's The Lost City, Drama of

the Fire-Fiend, or Chicago As It Was, and Its Glorious Future played on the public's fascination with calamity. They were subscription books, sold in advance of publication by salesmen equipped witl1 brochures and samples. Sales were aimed both at outsiders who wanted a picture of the pain and at Chicagoans anxious to own a keepsake. In other publications, the stories of those ghastly nights were sandwiched between accounts of Chicago's swift rise and predictions of a rapid reconstruction. Thus, like Balestier's 1840 Annals, the Great Fire books provided reassurance during troubled times. The fire also established the city's journalists as Chicago's leading urban biographers. They had access to the facts and the presses, and the reading public soon became familiar with names such as James W Sheahan, George P. Upton, Frank Luzerne, Elias Colbert, and Everett Chamberlin. To a great extent, this shaped historical treatment of the Great Fire by emphasizing the bizarre uniqueness of the event, rather than its parallels to other types of calamities. No city in American history, with me possible exception of Atlanta or San Francisco, had suffered so much destruction so suddenly. The press failed to compare Chicago's Great Fire with the Ooods, epidemics, depressions, and other forms of collective suffering and sudden social change that had occurred elsewhere. 59

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

The Great Fire also altered the course of Chicago historiography by destroying writings about the city held by the Chicago Historical Society and other private collectors. The Society, which had been founded in 1856, quickly tried to replace its printed material, only to lose it in a second "Great Fire" on July 14, 1874. This blaze leveled a huge area immediately south of the 1871 "Burnt District," which included the warehouse where the Society's holdings were stored. By destroying so much of the written record, these two fires left Chicago peculiarly dependent on the oral history of its past. For the next two decades, the press sought out old-timers and co llected column after column of their reminiscences. Reporters cruised annual old settlers' conventions in search of a new face and an untold story. The veracity of these accounts is hard to determine, but they reveal much about early attitudes, institutions, and everyday life. One result of these interviews was a renewed emphasis on the biographical approach to city history, particularly since the press seldom based broad generalizations on them. This helped shape the first of Chicago's monumental urban biographies, Alfred T. Andreas's three-volume History of Chicago. With 3,304 pages covering only the period from earliest exploration to 1886, it remains the most detailed work of its kind. Although it was

THE

Horrors of Chicago l'ID: 11.EW ENGLASD DWd 00., B08TO:(, lll.lA

TIIR Great Fire of 1871 spaun1ÂŁd a number of se11Salional instant histmies. OneoftlwseuxtSThe Ruined City, which appeared within weeks of lllR conflagration to supply the demand fnr accounts of tiU! tragedy.

The pre ence of lhe arlisl and photographer in these two images is a reminder of the historical value of visi.wl docwnmlalion. Though a new technology al the time, photography was widely used lo record the aftermath of the Great Chicago fire. Stereoscopic views were particularly popular.

probably modeled to some extent on Justin Winsor's equally exhaustive Memorial History of Boston (1880-81), Andreas relied more heavily on biographical sketches, and he interspersed more than two thousand of them throughout the work. Reproductions of autographs and portraits enhanced this biographical emphasis. While Andreas probably did not accept payment in return for the sketches, the work was a money-making vennire. By this time he was already an experienced entrepreneur who had made his reputation publishing profitable subscription atlases. Andreas's contribution to urban history is debatable. But one thing is certain. By defining and organizing a chaotic universe of knowledge, he did specifically for Chicago history what world's fairs and encyclopedias accomplished more broadly. He could also rightly claim a nascent professionalism in rechecking pioneers' stories. Yet, even conte111porary reviewers complained of the laborious length of his work and, like today's scholars, faulted it for failing to di cus the economic forces that created the city. One reviewer wrote: The m-dinary reader is more anxious to learn why it is that by an inexorable law all railroads head for Chicago, as a ll roads lead to Rome .... These are the things one cares LO know and would gladly get in exchange for the long lists of all the secret societies, and the sketches of tJ1e hotels, and tJie lives of the doctors and schoolteachers.

As a document of its times, Andreas's History also took the side of business against labor. The same reviewer complained: It contains a number of lives of Chicagoans of more or less prominence, all written in the kindliest spirit and calculated to impress the outside world that the businessmen of this city need nothing but short wings and long nightshirts to be even as the angels. Owing to this feature of the work the publishers are assured of a certain sale, and the ponderous tome will figure as tJie ornament of many centre-tables, each copy opening with suspicious case atjusl that place where the proprietor of the centre-table is described as a white-souled, clean-handed, representative business-man of this great metropolis.

Andreas provided a listing and biographical guidebook for tl1e second rank of local business and society leaders. Everyone knew of Marshall Field and Potter Palmer, but this fast-growing city with its entrepreneurial leadership in constant flux needed definition and ranking for its lesserknown elites. Simultaneously, Andreas's moderate but firm anti-labor bias reassured permanence for the business viewpoint. Finally, the work of Andreas reflected one of the most important themes in the city's intellectual life during the late nineteenth century: the rise of western regional consciousness. This idea had been developing since before the Civil War, first as a self-conscious realization of the town's 61

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

Capitalizing 011 the public's fascination with disastrr and its sense of hist01y, an mtnj1rising restauranteur built the Relic House in 1872 at North Clark Street and Lincoln Park \\~st (aboVI'). Co11st111.cted of moltm debris from the Great Fire. it auracted hosL1 of curio,ity-seekers. Specializing in Gmnan food, it was l'Vl'ntually expandrd to include a large music hall. Thr house was mud in 1929. This i/111strated account of tlw th,, (;1mt I-ire (lw/ow), writtm {LI a rhildrl'li'I w1r,e1y rh_l'me. r/1itom1:.e.111i1U'lee11th-a11/111)' /mpulariwtio11 of i111porta11l hi1toriral rveuts.

cultural isolation , accompanied later by an effort to emulate eastern urban society and its institu tions. Indeed , Andreas's institutional emphasis reflected the feeling among locals that creation of permanent organizational structures-museums, clubs, and so forth-evoked a sense of urban and social maturity. During the war, Chicagoans attempted to explain the West to eastern audiences whose interest had been aroused by Lincoln's election, while elements of brash boosterism helped publicile the idea. Between the Great Fire and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, western consciousness reached a fever pitch. Accomplishments such as the opening in 1888 of the Auditorium Building, the world's largest building, we1Âˇe hailed as distinctly western triumphs. Andreas celebrated Chicago's emergence as the regional capital, as well as pointing out that the production of his book was "ev idence of the mechanic ans in the West." Western consciousness peaked with efforts to obtain the World's Columbian Exposition for the city. Amid the rantings of business booster who earned Chicago its "Windy City" nickname, writers planned another generation of urban biographies. Some were self-serving. The Histmy of Chicago and \\ 'ith walls 50 fret high and -100 feel in mrnmferena. the (\'CIOmma (right) 1111,-mmdl'(l visitors with "foiling walL1, b1m11ng brulges, a sea of flame'" This and other po/)ll/ar ammement1 helfml lo ~hape tlzP /1ublic s pPrreptio11 of Chicago i histmy

Chicago Chronicles Souvenir of the Liquor Interests, for instance , was a thinly veiled anti-temperance work. Government agencies tried to rewrite Chicago's history to amplify their contributions, and an aged soap manufacturer named Charles Cleaver compiled his reminiscences and called them A History of Chicago. The principal urban biographer to emerge from this period was Joseph Kirkland, a lawyer and western regional novelist. In 1892 he issued the first of a two-volume set, The Story of Chicago, notable only because of its strong anti -labor bias in the wake of the 1886 Haymarket Affair. Its companion, issued in 1894, served as a souvenir of the exposition and provided an updated listing and index for the middle elite. Through several chapters on art, music, letters, and education, Kirkland miffored Chicago's efforts to tell the world that the mud hole of the 1830s and ash heap of 1871 was now the polished metropolis of the 1890s. Th e exposition left as a part of its legacy the Chicago Symphony, the Field Columbian Museum, and new buildings to house several of the city's existing cultural institutions. Kirkland's history was the first Chicago urban biography to use halftone illustration, a new process first employed on a large scale during the 1890s. It displaced actual photographs, which were expensive and rarely used, and the woodblock cuts and gravures used by Andreas. Halftones visually heightened the contrast between past and present and provided a theme for the book. But more important, such images focused largely on public spaces in the hopes that government structures, tall building facades, parks, and similar vistas would evoke a positive response among non-Chicagoans.

This attitude, which had its parallel in the rise of pictorial guidebooks and souvenir postcards, developed as Chicago was trying to rid its public spaces of obstructions, peddlers, smoke, and other unpleasantness. Here was dramatic evidence of a salient fact about nineteenth-century city life: namely, that society divided city space into public areas (including parks, public buildings, streets, sidewalks, and rivers) and private areas (homes, for instance). A third spatial category fit somewhere in-between: semi-public space that was privately owned but generally accessible. The trend in the late nineteenth century was toward the proliferation and grand decoration of this third category, as shown in the rise of the great railway terminals, department stores, hotels, restaurants, and saloons. Kirkland died in 1894 while collaborating with John T. Moses on yet another urban biography of Chicago. This work was unremarkable except perhaps for its lengthy defense of business leaders, which may have been a way of reviving reputations damaged by the deep economic depression of the 1890s. Hard times, and what appears to be post-exposition exhaustion, meant that no major publications appeared until after the turn of the century. By then, urban biography reflected new themes. During the first fifteen years or so of this century, an enormous wave of historical consciousness swept Chicago. Its motivations were many. The exposition had left a feeling of nostalgia for those grand six months when world attention focused on Chicago. The class warfare of the Pullman Strike woffied the middle class about the

CHICAGO

_,,

.Je

A Sho~c,~tory§Chicag 40 YEARS AGO CHICAGO HAD ONLY SIXTY BRICK BUILDINGS. 22 " " " WAS A WILDERNESfJ OF ASHES AND RUIN.

Today she has 1,500,000 population, the World's Fair::! "Ohicago Fire.' WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE WHAT THE CITY WAS •.IKE WHILE BURNING t

HEN SEE THE CYCLORAMA ~-= CHICAGO FIR THE TRIBUNE SAYS: ourly Leotur••·

Ne words can describe the matchlesa grandeur of the scene."

MICHICAN AVBNUE AND MADIION aTRBtET.

Open Day

• nd l!venlna.

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

disintegration of society. The city was also expanding outward rapidly, and local improvement associations and the local option (whereby residents of electoral precincts, exercising their choice in the matter of liquor prohibition, voted themselves dry) were generating a parochial mentality which displaced concern and loyalty for the city as a whole. After the exposition, ethnic groups, swelled witJ1 pride, created cultural institutions that competed with their citywide counterparts. The response to this fracturing of city spirit was complex. The Art Institute and the Symphony mounted new efforts to reach the city's poor. There were also "hard sell" attempts to foster civic unity. Public schools began teaching Chicago history, and theater and art through pageants and public sculpture paid homage to the urban heritage. A 1903 Chicago Centennial celebration, which recognized the construction of Fort Dearborn in 1803 as the founding of the city, was part of these efforts, as was the promotion of architect Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago. A serious blueprint for the city's future, the plan created unprecedented municipal patriotism. Lantern slide shows, a movie, endless neighborhood meetings, roving lecturers, heavy newspaper publicity, and a textbook read by every eighth-grader in IJ1e city all promoted the need for civic unity. In IJ1e midst of these celebrations came another trio of urban biographies. Besides updating the membership list of mid-level elites, IJ1e books consciously emphasized the need for civic unity. J. Seymour Currey's Chicago: Its History and Its Bui/,ders (1912) incorporated long passages contributed by IJ1e Chicago Plan Commission, which had been 64

Chicago Chronides

A 190 J fenlenmal crl;d,ratwn rommemoraling lhe found mg of rorl Dearborn in 1803 was part of an early twenlielh-century civic movement to ucogmu Chicago surban heritage. Ongmally produced lo prornole soap products for Swift and Company, thRse popular humorous cartoons iupicting notable f'Vl'1tL1 m the nty '1 histO,)' (left) were published to romm.emomte the cenlennial.

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86

CH IC AG 0

FAS HIONED

ii6fiitft established to promote Bumham's creation. Currey brought the radicals of the nineteenth century into the civic fold through a sympathetic chapter written by his son-in-law, novelist Floyd Dell. Instead of the usual depiction of socialists and anarchists as bloodthirsty hooligans, not unlike the Indians of the Fort Dearborn Massacre, Dell portrayed radicals as products of the city and the region, loyal during the Civil War and part of the new civic consensus. The other two urban biographies of the era, Arba Waterman's Historical Review of Chicago and Cook County (1908) and Weston Goodspeed and Daniel Healy's Histmy of Cook County, Illinois (1909) were notable only in their attempts to incorporate suburban and county data into Chicago's story-perhaps a reflection of the city's outward expansion. After World War I the nature of urban biography changed dramatically. In 1929 Paul Gilbert and Charles Lee Bryson published their massive volume Chicago and Its Makers. While once more updating the leadership list, it abbreviated and popularized the early history of the city, substituting illustrations for long chapters. It also noted two groups that had been omitted from previous urban biographies: women and blacks. Although du Sable had been recognized as Chicago's first pennanent settler by every historian since Andreas, Chicago and Its Makers devoted a section to what it labeled "a city within a city." Perhaps the 1919 Race Riot was responsible for bringing black Chicago into the historical consensus. 66

In 19 30 the Mandel Brothe1:5 department storr p11bli1/zl'(/ this collection of biographies of eleven jiimous Chicago womm. Many rity businesses />roduced these specialiud srudies which combined local hislm)' ond corporate advertising.

Gilbert and Bryson were strictly writers of popular history, representing one of three styles of Chicago urban biography wiitjng that have appeared since the 1920s. Journalists have dominated tl1e popular accounts, especially since the 1924 publication of Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith's Chicago: A History of Its Reputation. In an effort to trace the evolution of the city's unsavory reputation, the autl1ors stressed the bizarre and colorful and helped launch what might be called the "lovable scoundrel" school of historiography. By focusing on crime and on political bosses, popular authors rewrote Chicago's history. Characters such as "Bathhouse" John Coughlin and Michael "Hinky Oink" Kenna displaced the Fields, the Annours, and the Pullmans as the prime movers of the city's past. The large, old-fashioned, general purpose urban biographies also gave way to a second replacement, the specialized study. Various business interests, such as banks, real estate developers, labor unions, and retailers, among others, compiled their own histories and mug books. Similarly, A Century of Progress Exposition of 1933 evoked intense feelings of pride among Chicago's ethnic groups, and the result was several volumes of uncritical puffery that incorporated mug book biographies, institutional histories, and advertising. Finally, during the same year tl1at Chicago and Its Makers appeared (1929), Bessie Louise Pierce launched her career at the University of Chicago. Brought in initially to provide a historical dimension to work being done in sociology, political

Chicago Chronicles science, and geography, Pierce quickly charted her own path. Working witJ1 as many as a dozen assistants, she dismissed the findings of earlier urban biographers and started research from scratch. She produced a volume of travelers' accounts in 1933, As Others See Chicago, and three of five projected volumes between 1937 and 1957. A detail-oriented and sound researcher, Pierce helped establish the academic legitimacy of urban biography. Yet, like her predecessors, she wrote essentia ll y economic history, witJ1 trade and industrial developments in the forefront. She also wrote "downtown history," igno1ing neighborhood development and including only limited treatment of ethnic groups. As in most other cities, urban biography has become a rarity in Chicago in recent decades. Only Mayer and Wade's volume, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (1969), with its nan-ow focus on the physical city, and a sensational popular work, Emmett Dedmon's Fabulous Chicago (1953, 1981), have lately entered t11e field. But of what benefit could a modern urban biography be? Particularly in tl,e wake of the new social history, its uses are obvious. Urban biography provides a new emphasis on the long-tern, trends and changes in urban life, ratJ1er than specialized subjects and shon time segments. One can compare, for instance, various economic depressions, wars, fires, and other large events. Urban biography also permits an examination of the interrelationship between seemingly unrelated subjects. In Chicago, for instance, the development of bot11 crime and culture were closely tied to tl,e maturing of t11e city as the nation's rail hub; touring art exhibitions, lecturers, and musicians co-existed with safecrackers and con men. Similarly, a holistic approach to the city demonstrates the remarkable way that the leadership in politics, business, and the arts was part of an age cohort; the young leaders of the 1840s and 1850s began to fill Graceland Cemetery during _the 1890s and 1900s. Urban biography also calls for the historian to balance the evolution of both proces es and in titutions. Older urban biographies were dominated by institutional thinking, which reflected society in general. l n more recent years we have tended to stud) power rather than goven1mental stTucture, belief rather than churches, and entrepreneurship rather than busine ses. But onl) after taking a long-tenn , broadly based view of city history made

possible by urban biography is it clear that the city is an institution consisting of thousands of constituent institutions in constant flux. Urban biography can also be central to our understanding of urban uniqueness and comparative stud ies. The field of urban history is based on the notion that cities are more alike than different. But cities have profound differences; life in any one of them can be special and unlike life anywhere else. What Edward Hungerford called tl,e "personalities" of American cities is rooted in architectural styles, density, the pace of street life, and etJrnicity, among other things. But before we can understand how cities differ, we must examine in detail tJ1e long-term trends and characteristics tl,ey share. In the case of Chicago, the long tradition of urban biography provides impo1 .ant clues to larger themes: t11e booster, the business elite, the catastrophe, western consciousness, urban space (public, semi-public, private), the search for civic unity, and tJ,e lovable scoundrels. So when you notice that red rot on your hands, tseat the books with due respect. For Further Reading For m01Âˇe on urban biography, see Eric Lampard, "American Historians and the Study of Urbanization" (American. Historical Review 67, 1961, pp. 49-61), and Kathleen Neils Conzen , "Community Studies, Urban History, and American Local History," in Michael Kammen , eel., The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), pp. 270-291. An important source of early (pre-1860) history is Henry Higgins Hurlbut, ChicagoAntiquities(Chicago, 1881). Btian J. L. Berry edited a wide-ranging study of population, housing, residential patterns, and transportation titled Chicago: 1iwisformation of an Urban System (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1976). Studs Terkel employs oral history in Division Street: America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), a collection of interviews of Chicago residents.

Illustrations 56, CHS Library; 58, CHS, ICHi-05622; 59, from Biographical Sketches of the Leading Men of Chicago ( 1868), CHS, ICHi-19870; 60 top, CHS, IC!--li-19887; 60 bollom, from The Ruined City (l87I), CHS, IC!--li-19868; 61, from Hist01y of Chicago (1886), CHS, lCHi-19871; 62 top, CHS, ICHi-19850; 62 bouom , from The City th.at a Cow KickÂŁd Over (1881), CHS, ICHi-19869; 63, CHS, ICHi-19867; 64, from Early ChicagoAsSeenbya Cartoonist(l947), CHS, ICHi-19866, lCHi-19865, ICHi-19864; 65, CHS, IC!--li19895; 66, CHS, from Chicago roshioned ( 1930), ICH i-19894. 67

Review Essay Lincoln reconsidered again: Arthur Zilversmit compares three very different portraits of our sixteenth president. ASPARTOFOURCONTINUINGASSESSMENTofwho we are as a nation and where we are going, we keep re-examining our position relative to the great landmarks of our historical landscape. Inva1iably, we choose as a point of reference one of our most prominent monuments-Abraham Lincoln. In the words of David Donald, each of us faces the task of "getting right with Lincoln." Naturally, as times have changed, these efforts have led to radically different portraits. We have imagined dreamy and poetic Lincolns as well as sly and crafty ones; we have painted him as an ideologue and as a pragmatist; we have depicted Lincoln as the Great Emancipator and as a racist True to the protean nature of their subject, three additions to the long shelf of Lincoln scholarship differ radically in their scope, methodology, and, of course, in their assessments of the sixteenth president Lawanda Cox, a respected historian who specializes in the Reconstruction period, offers us a careful and detailed examination of Lincoln's role in the reconstruction of Louisiana. Charles Strozie1~ trained in both history and psychoanalysis, presents a psychobiographical portrait, while Guy Anderson, a political scientist, offers nothing less than a reinterpretation of American history in which Lincoln emerges as a pivotal figure. Cox's study is directed at an important concern of recent Lincoln scholarship-Lincoln's views on blacks and slavery. During the turbulent civil rights decade, a number of historians analyzed Lincoln's racial views, and several of them concluded that he was not, after all, a friend to blacks. In Lincoln and Black Freedom, Cox challenges this view head on. In the first two essays she analyzes Lincoln's views and actions on racial matters before and during the war, and she reviews in detail Lincoln's role in Reconstruction in Louisiana. In the third essay she reflects finally on the larger meaning of Reconstruction in an auem pt to answer the perennial question: could Lincoln have handled the Arthur Zilversmit is professor of history at Lake Forest CoUege.

problems that baffled Andrew Johnson and led to his disastrous confrontation with Congress? Along with several other recent Reconstruction scholars, Cox denies that the seeds of the conflict between Congress and the president were inherited by Johnson. Cox minimizes the differences between Lincoln and the radicals on the substantive issues. She argues that even before the war Lincoln was far more liberal on racial matters than his critics have been willing to acknowledge, and that during the war he continued to move to the left on these issues. Emancipation was a major goal for Lincoln, and he worked skillfully to win public acceptance for this radical step. Accordingly, Lincoln's highest priority in the reconstruction of Louisiana was establishing a free-state government before the election of 1864. Even if he lost that crucial election, his policy of emancipation would be prntected by an important legal buttress. Such protection was crucial because Lincoln had serious doubts about the willingness of Congress to proceed with the Thirteenth Amendment. In order to speed the readmission of Louisiana as a free state, Lincoln supported General athaniel Banks's proposal to hold elections under the supe1vision of the military governmem before holding a constitutional convention. An important group of Louisiana Unionists opposed this procedure, but not , Cox argues, because of any real concern for black rights. The opponents of Banks's plan and of his candidate, Michael Hahn, were not at that time strong supporters of black suffrage. Yet they succeeded in convincing Congress to reject the BanksHahn government both because it was a product of military rule and because it failed to give blacks the vote. Ambitious politicians (including Salmon P. Chase) obscured the real issues in the struggle over the admission of Louisiana by depicting Lincoln as the enemy of black suffrage, when in fact that was not the issue. Moreover, they completely distorted the president's position. Lincoln, working behind the scenes, had labored

Abraham Lincoln, Februa ry 24, 1861. Photograph by Mathew Brady. CHS, ICHi-11409.

earnestly (but discreetly) for the radical policy of blac_k suffrage, and the constitution drafted by the Hahn forces was, Cox points out, quite liberal on racial issues. Although reconstructing the Union in a manner fair to former slaves was a task ridden witl1 pitfalls, Cox contends that Lincoln's presidential leadership could have accomplished much. While he was firm in his pursuit of the goal of protecting bl ack freedom , he was remarkably flexible about means. Lincoln was willing to use quiet persuasion,

the power of patronage, or even force. His flexibility allowed him to change rapidly without losing sight of his ultimate aims. He was able to reject the pleas of the pro-slavery Unionists of Louisiana without making them his enemies. Yet he was also willing to move decisively, as when he gave Banks complete control of the reconstruction process after Governor Shepley failed to move with dispatch. For Reconstruction to have succeeded in even a limited way, Cox argues, the friends of tl1e blacks needed to use both persuasion and force. Neither the 69

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86 conservatives with their ca1Tot, nor the radicals with their stick, by themselves could have accomplished the goal. A subtle combination of means was necessary, including efforts to win southern white support for black rights coupled with the judicious application of force to meet threats. The black sympathizers also needed an ability to work with Congress and a willingness to move beyond laissezfaire economic verities. Although Lincoln might not have succeeded in this difficult process, Cox argues that he was uniquely qualified for the effort. While Cox focuses on Lincoln's presidency, both Strozier and Anderson are interested in exploring Lincoln's pre-presidential career in an attempt to explain the psychological forces that brought him to national attention in the 1850s. As a student of psychoanalysis, Strozier sees the importance of Lincoln's early years in forming the mature statesman, but as other historians have found, there are few records of these crucial years. Moreover, this period of his life is clouded in myth. Biographers have always had to stTuggle to avoid the snares and pitfalls left by William Herndon, who was the first to write a psychohistorical portrait of his famous law part.nee Strozier is careful to distinguish fact from myth. Unwilling to discard Hemdon's Lincoln completely, he carefully extracts those kernels of the Lincoln story for which Herndon provides valuable firsthand knowledge and rejects the chaff of the legendary Lincoln. Ultimately, howeve1~Strozier is left with too little to sustain anything but co~jecture about tJ1e vital early years. Yet Strozier finds enough material to establish some important points about Lincoln's youth in New Salem. Contrary to the myth of the striving young man, Strozier emphasizes that during these years Lincoln was "undirected and unfocused" and that tJ1is was only the beginning of a "long and stumbling search for satisfying work ... part of a larger search for personal coherence and integrity ...." This continuing search for what Erik Erikson calls "identity" accounts for Lincoln's inability to commit himself to marriage , first with Mary Owens, and then on "tlle fatal first" ofJanuary 1841, when he broke off his engagement to Mary Todd . In Strozier's view, Lincoln in 1841 still "lacked an inner coherence or identity that would permit him to transcend himself and reach out to another." But if the failure to consolidate an identity caused pain and grief, the refusal to "wear me mask painted by others" was also a source 70

of Lincoln's future greatness. According to Strmier, Lincoln's "public self" can be traced to his relationship with his fathe1~ a troubled one as virtually all of his biographers have recognized. (Lincoln refused to visit his father in his final illness and did not even attend his funeral.) Both Strozier and Anderson suggest that Lincoln's idealization of the nation's founders was an attempt to find surrogate fathers. Like George B. Forgie (Pan-icide in thf House Divided), they turn to Lincoln's 1838 speech before the Young Men's Lyceum as a document crucial to explaining the young lawyer's highly ambivalent feelings toward these surrogate parents. In that speech, Lincoln paid homage to the nation's founders, but at the same time, predicted that their work might be overthrown by a dictator-"a towering genius" who "thirsts and burns for distinction." Strozier claims that while Lincoln was warning against the threat of such a figure , "the genius spoke for Lincoln's unacknowledged (or unconscious) wishes ...." Lincoln devoted most of his attention in the speech to ways of avoiding th is dreaded fate. "This defensi,Âˇe posturing served Lincoln's psychological needs for it allowed complete, if disguised , expression of his conflict: the repressed desire to be the towering genius and the elaborate structure to defend against the wish." But Anderson goes further. He reads the speech as outJininga program by which Lincoln would overthrow the work of the founders in order to achieve personal immortality. Strozier views Lincoln's deep inner division and ambivalence about his relationship to the founding fathe,-s as evidence that he was not ready to emerge on the public stage. By NmÂˇe mber 18..J.2, howeve,~ with considerable help from his only intimate friend, Joshua Speed, he reached a point in his personal growth that permitted him to make the commitment to marriage. What followed was a decade of consolidation spent establishing his relationship with l\lary, raising a family, and developing his legal practice. It was a period of introversion , and his first effort to move onto the public stage, as a member of Congress, wa , in his own eyes, a failure. "It seems he tried fleetingly to find a public self too soon. The public issues at that po)nt were only marginally his own. There was no coincidence, no merging of public and private issue in 1848 ...." His sense of failure led to depression and a studied withdrawal from politics. But it was this decade of consolidation that

Review Essay prepared Lincoln to emerge on the public stage in 1he 1850s. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act reopened the slavery question, Lincoln saw it as a threat to the Union and knew that this was to be his issue. Yet it was not until the House Divided Speech of 1858 that he found the appropriate metaphor that "blended his priva1e self to public concerns in a uniquely creative way." In an effort to explain the power of that metaphor as well as the paranoid slavery conspiracy theory that pem1eated the speech, Strozier applies the self-psychology of Chicago psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut to what he calls the emerging American "group self." In the 1850s the increasing connict over slavery threatened that fragile group self, and, Strozier argues, Americans' "exaggerated notions of absolute 1ightness"(reflected in Lincoln's speech) can be seen as attempts to "hold togethec..an endangered group self." Lincoln, Strozier believes, was particularly sensitive to the crisis of the 1850s because it miJTored his personal conflict. He sees Lincoln's frequent debilitating bouts with depression as evidence of a deep need to "maintain his self-esteem in his relations with others." The "other" in this kind of situation, however, "is not separate but included psychologically in the conception of tJ1e self." Therefore, the crisis that threatened the Union produced unique resonances for Lincoln-the house divided miJTored Lincoln's internal struggles. During the crisis Lincoln "attempted, as Erik Erikson might say, to solve for all what he could not solve for himself alone." His success in that endeavor provided him with the requisite esteem he was lacking. Despite the hrnTors of war, his melancholia diminished. ln helping the na1ion solve its crisis Lincoln had found a ne\\ and satisfying role lc>r himself. Although Anderson deals with much of the same material, he is bolder than Strozier in dealing with Lincoln's early life, and his conclusions are as radically_ different as his focus. His account, however, is based heavily on tJ1e works of Albert J Beve1idge who, in 1urn, uncritically accepted the materials gathered b) Herndon. Lincoln is an important figure in Anderson's book, but its scope is much large1~ ranging from the meaning of the American Revolution to the nature of tJ1e presidency in the contemporary world. Of the three works considered here, this is the most ambitious. It is not so much about Lincoln as it is an attempt to

establish a new explanatory framework for American history which will answer fundamental questions such as: How did we get from George Washington to Lyndon Johnson and Richard ixon? Anderson tells us that the path from Washington to ixon was opened up by Lincoln, and that we moved from the Battle of Trenton to My Lai via Gettysburg. Lincoln, who is clearly a hero for Cox and a complex but ultimately worthy Ame1ican leader for Strozier, emerges as the villain in Anderson's study. While Anderson sees Lincoln turning to the founding fathers as suJTogates for his own inadequate father, he finds their heritage unclear, confused by the fact that the "fraternal union" of 1776 was overthrown by the "paternalism of 1789." The union of 1776 was hallowed by the sacrifice of blood in the name of the cause, but the Constitution was supported only by pragmatic arguments. For Lincoln, this heritage was further complicated because he recognized that by adopting the Constitution the fathers had foreclosed the act of founding to subsequent generations. Lincoln was, therefore, prepared to assume the role of the "towering genius" who would overturn their work. Anderson agrees wit11 Strozier that Lincoln underwent important changes in the 1850s. But while Strozier views the Lincoln emerging in 1854 as a man who had struggled with questions of personal identity preparatory to assuming a public role, Anderson depicts him as undergoing a much more radical change. When he served in Congress, Lincoln still Sall' himself as a dutiful son of the founding fathers. Folloll'ing Parson Weems's depiction of Washin1-,,ton as tJ1e model of a successful leader~ a man who earns distinction through ,,irtue, Lincoln took the side of virtue in opposing the \lexican \'\'ar. He expected that his anti,l"ar speech ll'ould lead to national anention and recognition. When it failed, he fell into a deep depression from ll'hich a nell' Lincoln emerged. This nell' man, who re-assumed a public role at the time of the Kansas-Nebraska crisis, had repudiated the Washingtonian model of political action . His nell' identity was based on "revolutionary vengeance" not "filial piety"; the nell' Lincoln "u eel reason to liberate rather than suppress his malignant passions"-passions he had hitherto kepi under control, I le now linked ''his personal vengefulness against 'v\'ashington and the founders of the Comtitution, for denying that he was their equal \\'ith 1he Âˇmonstrous injustice' of Negro slavery ...." 71

Chicago History, Winter 1985-86 In sharp disagreement with Cox, Anderson gives Lincoln no credit for opposing slavery. This was not the issue for Lincoln . At best, the extension of slavery into the territories was an issue he could use. For Lincoln, "defense of 'principle' was no restraint upon ambition" because "his ambition preceded his principles in both time and importance, and in large measure determined what his principles would be." Anderson's Lincoln, then, is a man d1iven by inordinate ambition "rooted in ... an obsession about death" (based on the loss of his mother at an early age as well as his relationship with the legendary Ann Rutledge). Lincoln sought, therefore, "to triumph over death, by identifying his personal transcendence with the immortality of the Union." The slavery issue was merely "an opportunity to cul a path of glory across the infinite cycle of life and death ... and gain a distinction that could be preserved by remembrance." Anderson claims that even preserving the Union "was of secondary importance for Lincoln" because "for him the true source of American greatness was to be found in the words and deeds of 1776 rather than of 1789 ... :' Lincoln sought nothing less than to become a founding fatl1er by recreating the Union through invoking blood sacrifice and establishing a political religion that would sacrilize the Constitution. Lincoln interpreted the Civil War through "a theory of atonement by which the suffering and saoifices of the people could be linked to their salvation and redemption, a theology thatjoined death, the punishment for sinfulness, to rebirth and immortality. This would be Lincoln's distinctive contribution to the national faith, which, as set forth in his interpretation of the events at Gettysburg, would form the basis of a political religion in which he was both the founder and leading exemplary figure, both Paul and Christ in one." Lincoln's efforts to found the Union anew through sacrifice and to proclaim a civic religion to support it provided a nefarious model for subsequent presidents. Ultimately, Lincoln "did more to emancipate American foreign policy than he did for American blacks." The Civil War established "a sanctified

union with a universal mission of bringing the blessings of freedom to otl1er 'backward' races of the world." In Anderson's book we encounter a different form of history than in either of the others. Both Cox and Strozier reveal a thorough knowledge of Lincoln scholarship. While Cox stays close to the documents in her interpretations, Strozier is willing to speculate more freely, but these speculations are usually offered in a tentative manner, and his psychological theorizing is based on years of psychoanalytic training. Anderson, on the other hand , bases his sweepingjudgmenls on a broad range of sources without the same secure grounding in Lincoln scholarship. Because his study is a psychological profile of Lincoln , he has to deal with Lincoln's early years for which tlle sources are obscured by mythology; he relies much too heavily on Herndon's portrait. His judgments on other issues are so sweeping that they are difficult to refute or to confirm. What are we to make, for instance, of the bold assertion that the Constitution was a "Hobbesian" document, and tllat it overthrew tl1e ''filial order of 1776" in order to establish tl1e "paternal order of 1789"? How can we deal witll tlle suggestion tllat "in tlle major drama of nineteenth-century American history Weems was to play Rousseau to Lincoln's Robespierre"? At its best, Anderson's book is an inspired speculation about history. At its worst, in Lincoln's words, it confuses horse ch~stnuts witll chestnut horses. Anderson's Lincoln represents all tllat is evil in American history-the disappearance of community, racism, expansionism, and unbridled ambition. Cox, on the other hand, celebrates Lincoln as a practical liberal whose leadership was marked by admirable flexibility. Rejecting the dogmas of pro-slavery politicians as well as doctrinaire radicals, he tlloughtfully led tlle nation in the direction of racial justice. Finally, Strozier's Lincoln is a man who, in his search for his real self, helped Americans face tlle crucial issue of 1860 and tl1en "shaped his heroic image to fit a nation longing for uni_ty and greatness."

COLONIAL DIRECflON OF

JONES UNICK SCHAEFER

CHICAGO

from 1905 to 1924. the Colonial Theatre operated r/S a vaudroille house on West Randolph Street. This illustration graced the cover of a program for The Brat, a three-act rowdy playing in Decembn 1917. CHS Library, /C/-li-19859.