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PERFORMING COMMUNITY
Chicago, 1900 Chicago at the turn of the last century was the magical city of Oz. Chicagoan L. Frank Baum’s 1900 tale — and subsequent American film classic — about innocent Midwestern farm folk being drawn to a “wonder city” of danger and delight was inspired by his hometown, a city overflowing with wonderful wizards, scared men of straw and wicked neighbors. Chicago’s remarkable growth over less than a century from a wild onion field to North America’s “second city” was extraordinary by any standard. The period
framed by the signing away under duress of the last aboriginal claims of Native Americans in 1833 to the city’s emergence as the continent’s great transportation linchpin required but a human lifetime. Chicago’s dynamism and diversity overwhelmed the city’s infrastructure and governance structures alike. Successful politicians in this hurly-burly world were forced to serve as brokers among highly fractured and decentralized social, business and political institutions. The city’s most successful bosses of the era did not rule by fiat so much as they
Photochrom print of Randolph Street, Chicago, Illinois. Photo: Detroit Publishing Co. 1900. US Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
