THE CHICAGO HISTORY JOURNAL

The Railroad Tycoon who Built Chicago: New Biography of William Butler Ogden

2009-10-28T03:05:00.001-05:00

In a letter from Paris, dated 22 August 1877, Mary Todd Lincoln, the president’s widow, wrote, “This morning, in a New York paper of Aug. 8, I read the announcement of Mr. Wm. B. Ogden’s death. In former times, he was a very prominent citizen of Illinois.” Mr. Lincoln, of course, was that prairie lawyer from Illinois who was both a congressman for the people and counsel for railroads, who poured out his life to save the Union. Mr. Ogden was a businessman from a small town in Western New York who through great vision, the force of a powerful personality and amazing determination in the face of staggering setbacks, helped extend and build that Union. As Jack Harpster, author of a new--and given the scope of his accomplishments,almost inconceivably, FIRST--biography of Ogden, epitomizes William Butler Ogden was a builder. At sixteen, as his father lay paralyzed in bed, he built the family lumber and woolen business into an ever increasing size; he later built his brother-in-law’s land investments in Chicago into a greatly profitable real-estate concern; he helped build Chicago from a muck-mired frontier garrison and trading post into “nature’s metropolis”. He was a backer and guiding light of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad as well as the Chicago & North Western. He was first president of the Union Pacific. He had his hands in northern lumber, Pennsylvanian iron, and there was scarcely a public project, a civic organization a plan for development in Chicago that Ogden was not a president, a trustee, a supporter, a silent partner. Even in retirement he was working to help develop public transportation into the upper reaches of New York City.

While there are streets in Illinois, Nebraska, Wisconsin and New York, a medical center in Elmira, a library western New York, a stained glass window in an Omaha Cathedral, and an elementary school in Chicago all carrying Mr. Ogden’s name, it has been Mr. Harpster’s destiny to write what must be the definitive telling of his story. With a skilled hand and very cogent analysis, Harpster as biographer weaves the growth of 19th Century America in size, technology and outlook, with the struggles and achievements of William B. Ogden’s life so straightforwardly that it belies the immense amount of research and study he has undertaken. Time and again Ogden built a great financial empire to have it washed away by the periodic collapses of national economy or the devastating destruction of natural disaster. Time and again Ogden yield not to depression or despair but turned even stronger efforts to rebuilt and expand. The power of Ogden’s vision or his ability to sway both a New York legislature or group of Wisconsin farmers out to lynch him, reminds us of the vision of those who have preceded us and what is possible in our land now and in the future. This remarkable story is recommended reading for not only those of us concerned with history, urban development, railroading, and business, but for all concerned with the human spirit. Five stars.

--Raymond F. Kearney

The Railroad Tycoon Who Built Chicago:
A Biography of William B. Ogden
By Jack Harpster
Southern Illinois University Press, 2009

NOTE: My sincere thanks to Journal guest blogger Ray Kearney for allowing me to publish his review.

Eyewitness to the Great Fire: A Pack on my Back

2009-10-08T18:33:00.004-05:00

It was the great fire of 1871 that made me a country peddler. Oh, yes! I remember the fire very well. It was in October. We used to go to bed early, because the two roomers had to go to work very early. We were getting ready to go to bed, when we heard the fire bells ringing. I asked the two men if they wanted to see where the fire was.

"Why should I care where the fire is," one of the men said. "As long as our house is not on fire, I don't care what house is burning. There is a fire every Monday and Thursday in Chicago."

But I wanted to see the fire. So I went out into the street. I saw the flames across the river. But I thought that since the river was between the fire and our house, there was nothing to worry about. I went into the house and went to bed.

The next thing I knew my two bed-fellows were shaking me. "Get up," they cried. "The whole city is on fire! Save your things! We are going to Lincoln Park."

I jumped out of bed and pulled on my pants. Everybody in the house was trying to save as much as possible. I tied my clothes in a sheet. With my clothes under my arm and my pack on my back, I left the house with the rest of the family. Everybody was running north. People were carrying all kinds of crazy things. A woman was carrying a pot of soup, which was spilling all over her dress. People were carrying cats, dogs and goats. In the great excitement people saved worthless things and left behind good things. I saw a woman carrying a big frame in which was framed her wedding veil and wreath. She said it would have been bad luck to leave it behind.

When we came to Lake Street I saw all the wagons of Marshall Field and Company lined up in front of their place of business. (The firm was then called Field, [Ieiter?] and Company) Man and boys were carrying the goods out of the building and loading everything into the wagons. The merchandise was taken to the street-car barns on State near Twentieth Street. I am sure that Marshall Field must have been one of the owners of the street-car company. Otherwise why would the street-car people have allowed him to bring his goods there. A couple of weeks later[,?] Marshall Field started doing business in the car-barns. I remember buying some goods there.

No one slept that night. People gathered on the streets and all kinds of reasons were given for the fire. I stood near a minister. He was talking to a group of men. He said the fire was sent by God as a warning that the people were wicked. He said there were too many saloons in Chicago. There were too many houses of prostitution. A woman who heard this said that since the fire started in a barn it was a direct warning from God. She said Jesus was also born in a barn. I talked to a man who lived next door to Mrs. O'Leary, and he told me that the fire started in Mrs. O'Leary's barn. She went out to milk the cow when it was beginning to get dark. She took a lamp with her and the cow kicked the lamp over and that's how the fire started. There were all kinds of songs made up about the fire. Years after the fire, people were still singing songs about it.

From: American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940

National Fire Prevention Week; Thank Chicago!

2009-10-04T07:15:00.010-05:00

Today marks the beginning of National Fire Prevention Week. The event commemorates the anniversary of two of the most devastating fires in United States history, the Great Chicago Fire and the Peshtigo Fire, and creates awareness of fire safety. Both fires began around 9:00 p.m. on October 8, 1871 and continued through the next day. President Calvin Coolidge signed the proclomation establishing the national observance (beginning on the first Sunday in October and ending the following Saturday) in 1925.

Recommended reading:

The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871
National Fire Protection Association

On Chicago: The First City Loan

2009-10-02T04:13:00.006-05:00

Simpler times...

"It was on August 10th, 1833, that Chicago became organized as a town under the general laws of the state, and at the election held that day only twenty-eight votes were cast A board of trustees was elected, consisting of P. J. V. Owen, George W. Dale, Mark Beaubien, John Miller and E. S. Kimberly. One of the first measures of public utility was the construction of a log house to answer the purpose of a jail, in the public square where the City Hall and Court House now stand. Another public building was shortly afterward added. It was an estray pen, or pound, and the total cost of the same was twelve dollars. Under the preceding Board of Trustees one of the greatest public improvements demanded was the building of ditches on either side of Clark Street, then the leading street of the town, so as to make the thoroughfare passable. The treasury was empty and the president of the Board was driven to the necessity of negotiating a loan for sixty dollars in order to carry out the work. This amount was expended faithfully and the debt was paid on maturity. It is mentioned here because it was perhaps the first financial transaction ever entered into by Chicago as an organized community."

From: The Chicago Police:From the Settlement of the Community to the Present Time by John J. Flinn, 1887

Photo Credit: PROCEEDINGS OF THE TOWN’S INCORPORATION,(ca.) August 3, 1833

Author! Author!

2009-09-30T07:31:00.010-05:00

Chicago historian Richard C. Lindberg will be at the Niles Public Library tonight (September 30th) at 7 PM discussing his latest work, The Gambler King of Clark Street: Michael C. McDonald and the Rise of Chicago's Democratic Machine. The book is described as "a tale of a larger-than-life figure who fused Chicago's criminal underworld with the city's political and commercial spheres to create an urban machine as Chicago entered the 20th century."

Michael Corcoran, the brain behind Chicago's Brainsnack Tours and a certified Chicago tour guide, has some good news for movie fans. He has been working with author Arnie Bernstein on an updated edition of the popular Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies and published by Lake Claremont Press. Read all about it here. Do check out Michael's website; there is lots of information and trivia. One day soon I'm going to have to avail Mr. Corcoran of his services. There is soooo much I don't know! Consider yourself warned, Michael!

And while I'm talking about Lake Claremont Press, Coming Soon! - but not soon enough for me - is Oldest Chicago by David Witter. The publication date is not yet set in stone, but you can get a tiny preview at "Meet David Witter, Author of Oldest Chicago."

I'm not familiar with Witter, so I did a little looking around for a website, etc. I found a great piece titled, The Chicago Archives of Alcohol: A Self-guided Tour by David Witter. Same gentleman? Don't know, but I'm guessing it is. If so, we are in for a treat. Not the same writer? Doesn't matter. You'll like the piece. It begins, "The best way to understand the history of Chicago is to go to a saloon." Who says history isn't fun?

Who Was That Lady?: Rue Winterbotham Carpenter

2009-09-28T06:54:00.005-05:00

Ever heard of Rue Winterbotham Carpenter? I hadn't either until I ran across Emily Evans Eerdman's blog, EEE. With the help of Bart Swindall, historian of Chicago's Auditorium Theater, she has brought to light an important figure in Chicago's artistic history. Eerdman was inspired by a passage in Arthur Meeker's 1955 book Chicago with Love:

"[Rue Winterbotham Carpenter]...was the most brilliant woman I have ever known. How is it possible, in mere written words, to give those who never met her some idea of her achievements and her charm? Nevertheless, I am going to try...Many others enjoyed a longer and more intimate acquaintance and have better right to speak of her than I: but alas! none of them's a writer. She has been dead now for nearly a quarter of a century, during which time nobody has come forward to give her her due, to explain what she meant to Chicago and the Chicagoans of her time: Let me say what I can."

I'm not going to spoil this discovery for you; just read Magnaverde Unveils Rue Winterbotham Carpenter, Part I, and A Day on the Town with Magnaverde and Rue, Part II. You'll thank me.

For more on the life of Rue, see the book on her husband, John Alden Carpenter: A Chicago Composer by Howard Pollack and For Members Only: A History and Guide to Chicago's Oldest Private Clubs by Lisa Holton.

Century of Progress Homes Open For Tour

2009-09-24T06:07:00.015-05:00

"Over 70 years of wind, sand and surf have battered the five World's Fair houses located along Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores, but their uniqueness has weathered the elements. With the theme of a Century of Progress, the houses were built for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair to demonstrate modern architectural design, experimental materials, and new technologies such as central air conditioning and dishwashers.

"The houses were brought to the dunes by barge in 1935 by real estate developer Robert Bartlett. Bartlett hoped that the high profile houses would entice buyers to his new resort community of Beverly Shores. Today the houses are listed on the National Register of Historic Places." (Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore)

Century of Progress Home Tour will take place on Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11 in Beverly Shores, Indiana. And, I've got to tell you that of all the seasons autumn is the time when Indiana - particularly the Dunes - is in its glory.

"Get an insider’s look at some of the twentieth century’s most visionary residential designs at the Century of Progress Home Tour in Beverly Shores. The tour features five forward-looking homes showcased at the 1933-1934 World’s Fair in Chicago and relocated to Indiana’s Lake Michigan shoreline at the fair’s end. The Cypress Log House takes center stage in this year’s tour as the first of the five to be fully restored. The house and its adjacent guest quarters will be open for tours. Visitors will also be able to see restorations-in-progress at the Armco Ferro, Florida Tropical, and House of Tomorrow, and Rostone houses. Tours are available 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Central Time. Docents will provide overviews and narrative at each location." (Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana)

Tickets for the Century of Progress Home Tours are $15 per person and reservations are recommended. To make your reservations contact Jennifer Gregar at 574-232-4534 or north@historiclandmarks.org. Complete information can be found here.

Recommended reading:

1933 Chicago World's Fair: A Century of Progress Homes of Tomorrow Exhibition (great website!)

Century of Progress (extensive site with an interactive map)

Century of Progress (1933) A list of links on Chicago History Online)

Beverly Shores World’s Fair Homes (Dunes Blog)

A Century of Progress - The World's Fair Homes

Photo credit: House of Tomorrow, front elevation, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

Note: Many thanks to the reader who alerted me to the tour via a comment! Hat tip to you!)

On Chicago: They Will Say

2009-09-06T05:18:00.004-05:00

Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the
great sky,

And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.

Carl Sandburg
Chicago Poems (1916)

Satchmo at the Savoy

2009-09-03T04:07:00.010-05:00

The Federal Writers' Project, part of President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal," was established during the Great Depression as a means to provide work for unemployed writers, teachers, librarians, lawyers or just about anyone who might qualify as a writer. These first person stories, recorded by "project workers" such as Sam Ross, Betty Burke, and Nelson Algren, provide a glimpse of life in Chicago during those dark days. Times were tough, but as the following selection illustrates, there was always the Savoy Ballroom to help you forget your troubles...

"The Savoy ballroom was jammed. The ball was large but there didn't seem to be any room for any one. The ceiling was high but it seemed to turn into a huge piston that kept pounding the air down hotly. From the rear you could hardly hear the orchestra. There were gangs of noise, couples and solos. There was as much noise as long sheets of rattling tin being unfurled. But it was not a metallic noise. It was husky and vibrant.

"There were white tooth and black faces shining with sweat. Loud laughter gurgled through the thick air. The dancing was tense, barely movable in spots. Bodies groveled agonizingly against each other. They were insinuating bodies, come to them, with take me faces. The music was slow and physical, and the dancing was slow and physical.

"Suddenly a break in the jam occurred. A pair of legs kicked out, and kicked forward. Space had to be cleared. There was no stopping that gang of legs and arms and jerking bodies. There was no stopping that gang of music. Oh, beat it, boy. Hit it, boy. Heat it, boy. There had never been any dancing like that since St. Vitus. You got a lift out of watching the abandonment. It stirred through your spine, and that feeling got all around. Nobody was alone.

"Some of the people got the idea that they would get a better lift if they could take a ride on Louis Armstrong's trumpet, if they could get closer to the band. They started to move up. There was a stream coming and going, both flowing against each other. You had to wrangle tangle, squash and lurch through buttock yielding and muscle unyielding bodies.

"A girl had fainted. She was being carried out by a couple of men. The closeness had gotten her. Part of her rich brown thighs gleamed above strong carrying arms. Some of the women were frightened. But there was that terrific ride Louis Armstrong was going to give them on his trumpet. They ducked in behind their men into the stream full of boulders. Vapors seemed to rise from their impact. Man, man, nobody knew where all the people had come from. Man, man, nobody know how come there was so much sweat in a body.

"There were many people deep away from the band stand. They just listened and flicked white handkerchiefs into the air, only to become wet against necks and foreheads. Some of the boys worked right with the orchestra. They listened the hard way, the "jitterbug" way: thumping the floor with their feet and leading the orchestra with pecking heads and jiggling shoulders. They felt no pain. There was no pain in rhythm, only in nostalgia.

"Armstrong took up a trumpet solo, rising clear and solid above the ensemble. It seemed like there was a terrible weight upon him and he was lifting it higher and higher until he was clear of it and out in open fields. Man, man, how that boy hits it. Heads shook reverently. Listen to that boy beat it out.

"He was playing a familiar tune: 'Stardust.' A girl had her eyes half closed. She was sixteen and in love, alone in the vast audience, alone among people. Her face was a tortured inland lake in a strong wind. The song came out of her throat in a hum from deep within her bosom. There were no words: her voice, and other vibrating voices, was just a part of the inflecting band that gave Armstrong the base to improvise. He carefully punched the notes out of his trumpet. His cheeks were balled and his eyes were closed. His trumpet flashed upward to high C, flashed downward as he slurred through the scale, tried to break the scale down. He squeezed his guts into the instrument. There was no stopping that man. He was out of the world. There was only his imagination and his instrument, Man, man!

"He improvised about eight choruses, each one varied with a new value. Then the saxophones took the lead with a pathetic and rich vibrato. Nobody was alone. Each spine passed on its stirred feeling to another. When Armstrong sang his voice seemed to pounce out of his belly. It was husky and enveloping like a fog. His head swayed from his deeply felt body. You couldn't get the words, but you got the idea. The words were sappy anyhow. He gave them meaning and structure. His inarticulate deepness gave the song body.

"On full orchestration, with Armstrong inspiring his musicians, you could feel the sound and rhythm vibrating from the floor.

"The audience received the effects and they sent the power back. The orchestra renewed their efforts with more strength, more abandonment, more passion. There was a perfect integration which made for great playing and great feeling. Doggone, how that boy do it! Doggone that Satchmo! God dog it! Nobody had heard a body blow a horn like that Satchmo since Gabriel! Doggone that Gate Mouth. What he do to a body!"

Sam Ross
June 14, 1939
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940

Recommended reading:
Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong (1901-1971)
Savoy Ballroom (Jazz Age Chicago)
Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five

Photo credits: Savoy Ballroom (BigBandLibrary.com)
Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five (redhotjazz.com)

Ideals, Morals, and The Daily Newspaper: A Guest Editorial

2009-08-27T05:07:00.018-05:00

FOR two centuries now if not longer the newspapers, rather than the preachers and reformers generally who preceded and still parallel them, have been elevating themselves to the roles of soothsayer, prophet, and guardians of all phases of virtue, honesty and the like, to say nothing of those shibboleths of the would-be intellectually dominant, "justice" and "truth." And the particular views of these papers have come to have an undue weight with those so moderately equipped intellectually as to look upon them as moral leaders. Experiments in government and phases of moral self-control, public and private, are there constantly advocated for the good of the other man, yet nearly always in accordance with the current bias or the direction of the interests of the paper. Yet back of these papers, and in spite of a public following which is supposed to regulate or control or suggest their policy and viewpoint, is always, or nearly so, an individual or group of individuals, possibly a self-interested organization (commercial, religious or otherwise) with perhaps no more intellectual grip on the social and spiritual complexities of the world than any other individual of average capacity and judgment, possibly not so much. Yet with the tremendous leverage of circulation, plus a serviceable and profitable and aggressive counting-room to help out, their moral and social pronunciamentos ridiculously enough become all but sacrosanct, irrefutable, colossal! Yet after all is said and done, here is nothing more than an individual, all too human perhaps, or if not that, a group represented by one individual possibly, seeking via this same lever (circulation) the special, particular things which he or it or they crave. And as a rule he or his group is truckling and hand-rubbing to that which he or it or they imagine the time requires, but seeking always circulation first, as though that were the be-all and end-all of all value, wisdom and duty.

And yet, in America at least, where will you find a citizen who does not to a marked extent reverence the opinions of his paper? The slavish manner in which in certain regions to this day the voters follow a paper and the manner in which the American press has successfully clouded issue after issue since America began the currency issue for one, the slavery issue for another, the tariff issue for a third, the trust issue for a fourth, the profiteering and European war issues at the present moment. And where will you find a newspaper not advertising passing panaceas that it knows cannot heal (I am not talking about patent medicines), or admitting that a satisfactory social solution for the woes of the millions cannot be found, or admitting frankly that human law is the wide spread net that it is, through which great and small alike skip briskly, chance and accident restraining some and releasing others? Only when the big skip through the lesion is greater. Or where will you find a newspaper that will freely admit that the Ten Commandments are not after all God-given law (do not think for a moment that they privately believe they are), or that they constitute anything more than a form of social agreement based for their validity on the will of the majority and not holding where men do not believe them to be true and not followed by any spiritually destructive consequences where men do not accept them to be spiritually true? Life pours through the reportorial, editorial and counting-rooms of the average newspaper pell-mell quite as it does elsewhere, only a little more so. Those at the head note well the secrecy, the self-interest, the "policy" running through all things, the struggles of all individuals and organizations to grow, usually at the expense of everything else; yet editorially, and at the very best, a balance or dependent equation between rival clashing interests rival, hungry, self-seeking hordes is all that is ever struck here, although this is all but invariably announced as the Sinaitic command of an all-wise, omnipotent, omnipresent intelligence, the newspaper editor or owner posing as its especial mouthpiece and forwarder! Is it not too ridiculous that so human and fallible or greedy and venal a thing as the average newspaper should set itself up to be a moral and at times even a religious arbiter of a community?

Yet where would be the circulation of the average paper if it did not so do? And where would it be if it attempted to practice what it preached, literally and for itself, as it so freely advises others to do? As all those well know who have anything to do with the organization or control of anything in life, newspapers included, the Beatitudes, as Christ laid them down in the Sermon on the Mount, are not workable and never have been practically. Yet where will you find a newspaper honestly so stating, or even whispering a serious doubt? On the contrary, is it not the absolute workability of these that has, hitherto at least, been most violently insisted upon, and by organizations which well know the pagan complexities of life and are in no way representative of even the faintest approach toward a beatific conception of anything? "Do not as I do but as I say." That only quiescence and decay could follow the enforcement of any such program as the Beatitudes or the fixed rules of justice, truth, etc., advocated by the average daily paper or any one else, is not only scientifically demonstrable by chemistry and physics but is a truism to the average, and even less than average, constructive and even newspaper mind. Nearly every one with any claim to intelligence or experience understands this, yet where will you find a newspaper or any other public medium of expression venturing on this simple truth? The average man is still in leading strings to various silly theories, religious or otherwise, fostered by self-interested groups, or to his hope of temporary human prosperity, and these are the things which still keep him in the wake of various sophisticated journals which cunningly play upon his illusions. Indeed he flees exact fact as though it were the plague. Blessed words or the sweet milk of romance and prevarication are the things which entertain and soothe him most. In other words think of this ridiculous and paradoxical fact! a creature invents a bugaboo and then kneels down and worships it. It forges chains for its so-called intellect, and then groans or rests content under their binding weight.

But (to continue this slight diatribe) imagine the staff of any newspaper even attempting to follow any rules save those which govern the survival of the fit, or failing to cast the Beatitudes out of doors when it comes to their special interests or the prosperity of the several functions which they perform! Editorially the Beatitudes prove profitable as texts for moral preachment and mass consumption, but in the counting-office or the gathering of news how different! And as for going two miles with a traveler when he had compelled you to go one, or turning the other cheek when the first had been smitten! These things do not fall within the realm of the practical and are therefore not in the purview of any newspaper organization except in the editorial or pulpiteering department, and that intended to catch the pennies of the religionists.

So daily we have the spectacle of pages that in one column misrepresent the motives of the social or political enemies of this or that particular newspaper organization, or that play up to the subtleties of vice or crime for their news or dramatic values, or that display to the eyes of the young and old alike all the misadventures and incalculable subterfuges of a treacherous universe, while in another column, constantly reiterated, appear the words right, justice, mercy, truth, tenderness, duty, etc., as representing a definite program for conduct for the other person always, easily followed and easily achieved by him. Yes, for the other person, outside of any given newspaper office, there are always God-given and immutable rules which spell peace and happiness for him, that are invariably to be practiced, if you will believe these same papers, by the majority, especially of their readers. And indeed these rules are by them persistently represented as the will and thought of a definite, definable God He who spoke from Sinai, or who walked to Calvary (quite different Gods, by the way!) to fly in the face of whom or which leads only to destruction. Yet all that is needed, as they well know, in so far as a reasonable guide to conduct is concerned (and all that we ever get, whether via the law or the average motivating impulses of man) is the perception and the fact of the
necessity for a certain equation or balance in all things, i.e., the Golden Rule, mystic heavens or hells and the clerical representatives of the same with their collections and false notions to the contrary notwithstanding. Yet where will you find a newspaper with sufficient courage to say so? Where? Is it not here that one should pause and inquire whether the newspapers, aside from their purely reportonal functions (which latter might well be vised under stricter libel, perjury and false witness laws than those prevailing at present), should receive so much as even a moment's serious consideration?

Theodore Dreiser
From: Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub; A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life (1920)

H. L. Mencken called the 20 essays in Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub "feeble." Even so, I believe, the relevance of "Ideals" to contemporary American journalism - newspapers, television, or Internet - is quite strong. Discuss.

Recommended reading:

"Dreiser and the Wonder and Mystery and Terror of the City" by Kiyohiko Murayama
Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life (Wikipedia)
"MR. DREISER TALKS OF MANY THINGS; WE NEED THE BUSINESS" (New York Times, April 11, 1920)
A Book of Prefaces by H. L. Mencken (see essay on Dreiser)

Photo Credit: University of Virginia Gallery of Writers

McCutcheon and the Menagerie

2009-08-25T11:14:00.002-05:00

On June 30, 1934 Chicago's world famous Chicago Zoological park at Brookfield was dedicated. It was an "invitation only" affair of over 2,000 guests, but the doors would officially open to the public the following day, July 1, 1934. By September, over 1 million people had visited the park.

Presiding over the dedication of Brookfield Zoo and the zoo's governing body, the Chicago Zoological Society, was Chicago Tribune cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon, the organization's first president. McCutcheon was elected to the position in 1921. McCutcheon recalls in his autobiography that he was notified of his nomination via a letter from Art Institute president Charles L. Hutchinson. "This society," writes McCutcheon, stemmed from a typical American combination of civic devotion, philanthropy, high taxes and dull times." When it became necessary to select a president, "somebody remembered my book on Africa." (see The Chicago History Online Library)

The beginning of the park is also a story. According to Doug Deuchler, co-author of Brookfield Zoo and the Chicago Zoological Society:

One aspect of the "founding" of the zoo is that the original tract of land was an abortive suburban "subdivision" that just didn't take off during the post WWI recession. So its owner, Edith Rockefeller McCormick, gave the land to start a zoo. She actually was being magnanimous, in her way, but she also owed a bundle of back taxes and this act would clean her slate. She was the richest woman in America during the '20s. She wanted a "barless" zoo like she'd seen in Germany---moats around the animals, etc. She, alas, died in '32--two years before the zoo was completed. Most of the core buildings were completed by 1928-1929 but the Crash and subsequent hard times put the zoo at a standstill until 1934. The board never spent a penny they didn't have in hand. So that also held things up. This financial practice would continue down through the years. Moneys were never borrowed.

McCutcheon was delighted with his election and wrote, "Here seemed a chance to do something for the city which had done so much for me.”And, give back he did. "I was thrown into frequent association with Chicago’s most public-spirited citizens, and these relationships, I now realize, have been among the most prized perquisites of my position,” he wrote. It didn't hurt that he was also friends with President Theodore Roosevelt.

While McCutcheon left the daily operations of the zoo to its directors, those connections and his natural charm were able to pull the zoo through some tough times. On governing, McCutcheon wrote: "My one valuable quality as president, as I see it, was that I did not try to act like one all the time."

John McCutcheon served as president for 27 years before relinquishing the position to his brother-in-law, Clay Judson, in 1948.

Recommended reading:

Brookfield Zoo and the Chicago Zoological Society (Images of America)by Douglas Deuchler and Carla W. Owens (filled with archive photos!)

Drawn From Memory: The Autobiography of John T. McCutcheon (out of print but many reasonably priced used copies available)

The Chicago Zoological Society website

Brookfield Zoo (Wikipedia)

Jungles of Eden: The Design of American Zoos (excerpt from Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture)

Photo Credits:
Brookfield Zoo poster from trialsanderrors on Flickr: Poster by Carken for the Illinois Federal Art Project, Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1936
McCutcheon photo: Google Images
McCutcheon cartoon: Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1935

Free Speech, Free Thought: The Dill Pickle Club

2009-08-21T11:20:00.001-05:00

The Dill Pickle may be the most famous and least remembered club in Chicago's past. According to Marc Moscato, in his essay, The Tradition of Non-Tradition: The Dill Pickle Club as Catalyst for Social Change, "the history of the Dill Pickle Club is muddled in myth, exaggeration and confusion." One thing, however, is certain - ninety-three years ago this week, the haven of free thinkers, bohemians artists and anarchists, founded by John A. "Jack" Jones (a former Wobblie) and Jim Larkin and made famous by the flamboyant "clap doctor" Ben Reitman, opened its door in a former stable on Tooker Alley:

August 18, 1916
Chicago Tribune

READY FOR FROLIC
"The Dill Pickle," New Home of Bohemians, to be Christened Saturday and Some of Those Who Will Participate.

Sherwood Anderson, who often could be found at the club along with Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht and an assortment of hobos, prostitutes, and radicals, called The Pickle, "one of the brightest spots in the rather somber aspect of our town." The clubs motto, "Step High, Stoop Low, Leave Your Dignity Outside," was proudly displayed over the door and captured the spirit of all those who entered as did another located on the inside: "Elevate your mind to a lower level of Thinking."

The purpose of The Dill Pickle was to provide a place where "any idea or work would be given a respectful hearing and brought before the public..."

"On Sunday nights just before eight o'clock, one entered through the orange door of the Club into a large, comfortable main room with brightly painted chairs and benches, counters along the side where coffee and sandwiches were sold, a small stage - one act plays were occasionally presented - and a lectern for the night's speaker. Jones, a thin-faced, blue-eyed, smiling man habitually dressed in a lumberman's jacket, had a gift for showmanship, and with his invariable question to anyone, 'Are you a nut about anything?' always found someone to try out his or her ideas before an audience of 'Picklers' highly skilled at heckling." (Sherwood Anderson: a Writer in America, Volume 1 by Walter Bates Rideout)

Earlier this year the first exhibition on Chicago's "hobohemian" culture Brains, Brilliancy, Bohemia was presented and curated by Portland based filmmaker Marc Moscato. His film on Ben Reitman, "The More Things Stay the Same," can be seen in the right column. The 76-page exhibition catalog, available for purchase at Golden Age, features an essay, an unpublished piece by Dr. Ben Reitman, awesome reprints of Dill Pickle Club materials and a letterpress cover. If you are interested in Jazz Age Chicago, you will want to purchase this little treasure.

For more information on The Dill Pickle Club see The Rise & Fall of the Dil Pickle: Jazz-Age Chicago's Wildest & Most Outrageously Creative Hobohemian Nightspot.

Photo Credits:
Door to The Dill Pickle: The Dill Pickle Club
Poster Trio: Golden Age

Best New Book on Chicago?

2009-08-18T06:29:00.000-05:00

Chicago Magazine's "Best of Chicago" issue is on stands now. Among the 90 superlatives - ranging from Best Dog Groomer to Best Eyebrow Waxer - was a listing for their choice of the best new book on Chicago (And, no. I didn't make that up about the eyebrow waxer.): Chicago 1890: The Skyscraper and the Modern City by Joanna Merwood-Salisbury (University of Chicago Press).

The synopsis of the book from the UofC Press website reads as follows:

Chicago’s first skyscrapers are famous for projecting the city’s modernity around the world. But what did they mean at home, to the Chicagoans who designed and built them, worked inside their walls, and gazed up at their façades? Answering this multifaceted question, Chicago 1890 reveals that early skyscrapers offered hotly debated solutions to the city’s toughest problems and, in the process, fostered an urban culture that spread across the country.

An ambitious reinterpretation of the works of Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, and John Wellborn Root, this volume uses their towering achievements as a lens through which to view late nineteenth-century urban history. Joanna Merwood-Salisbury sheds new light on many of Chicago’s defining events—including violent building trade strikes, the Haymarket bombing, the World’s Columbian Exposition, and Burnham’s Plan of Chicago—by situating the Masonic Temple, the Monadnock Building, and the Reliance Building at the center of the city’s cultural and political crosscurrents.

While architects and property owners saw these pioneering structures as manifestations of a robust American identity, immigrant laborers and social reformers viewed them as symbols of capitalism’s inequity. Illuminated by rich material from the period’s popular press and professional journals, Merwood-Salisbury’s chronicle of this contentious history reveals that the skyscraper’s vaunted status was never as inevitable as today’s skylines suggest.

I'm sorry to say that I have not read the book yet. I'm embarrassed to say that I wasn't even aware of it before seeing it in the magazine. But, I have located a video of Merwood-Salisbury discussing the issues and ideas presented in the book on The Skyscraper Museum website. The Skyscraper Museum is in New York City, "the world's first and foremost vertical metropolis..." (Their words; not mine.)But to be absolutely clear, Chicago is the the birthplace of the skyscraper. Period.

What's your pick of the best new book on Chicago?

Recommended reading:
The Skyscraper Page (Chicago)
Photo credit: Masonic Temple (Wikipedia)

Seek and Ye Shall Find

2009-08-16T06:49:00.001-05:00

The Chicago History Journal has a lot of information on its pages. The site is approaching its two year anniversary in November, and the posts and links have piled up. Add the three satellite sites - the Online Library, CHJ YouTube and the links pages - and it really begins getting tricky and time consuming to find out if I have information on your selected topic.

The new Google "Search" box at the top of the left column should help. Type in a topic, hit search and a list of relevant posts on the Journal appears. But wait! There's more! There is a second tab that indicates where the information can be found on the satellite sites also. One click and you scour all three blogs. Love it. Hope you find the new feature useful.

The Society of Midland Authors

2009-08-12T18:23:00.000-05:00

Chicago has a deep-rooted heritage of literary organizations and The Society of Midland Authors is one the most prestigious. The organization was founded by Hamlin Garland, poet Harriet Monroe, Clarence Darrow, George Ade, Edna Ferber and others on April 24, 1915 and Hobart Chatfield-Taylor was elected as its first president. The illustrious event was noted in the January 1 to June 30, 1915 issue of The Dial. At the time, neither Chicago nor the Society was taken very seriously in Eastern literary circles, but the author of the letter to the magazine was a resident and supporter of Chicago's offerings:

An Ancient Journalistic Jest
(To the Editor of The Dial.)

It has long been the fashion of the Eastern press to make the word Chicago synonymous with pork, wheat, and wind, and to refuse to admit the possibility of culture. I have sometimes wondered how far this convention is due to the Chicago daily newspapers themselves.

Recently a serious association of writers, the Society of Midland Authors, completed its organization in this city. Its founders were Messrs. Hamlin Garland, H. C. Chatfield-Taylor, William Allen White, Emerson Hough, and others equally prominent, and its roll contains the names of nearly all the well-known writers in the Middle West. The morning after the meeting one of our leading dailies gave the new society a column with the heading, "Thrill Spillers Feast and Play: Stuff Selling Well." The article began with the ancient jest reclothed in the following form: "Chicago, the city of wheat corners and meat trusts, witnessed another naughty combine when twenty-six authors wiggled their fingers at the Sherman anti-trust law and corraled all of the divine afflatus," etc.

Probably an article written in just this vein could not have appeared in a reputable newspaper of any other American city large enough to form the headquarters of such an organization. It is not an isolated case, but has been repeated in one form or another in the news columns of nearly all of the Chicago dailies when the subject of authorship is approached. I do not refer to the review columns; they are for the most part admirably managed, and are, on the whole, the equal of any in the country.

It is not to be supposed that the authors themselves take these good-natured slaps with great seriousness. They may smile rather wearily at the antiquity of the jest, and let it pass. But the newspapers that assume this attitude toward literature arc giving color to the laugh that has always been raised in the East against Chicago culture. If the Chicago dailies are to be regarded as the makers of public opinion, they should take different ground than this; if they are to be considered as the reflex of public opinion, they should have some regard for the increasingly large number of citizens who wish to see Chicago freed from its ancient stigma.

There are some who hope that the time is coming when the men and women who write books will not be regarded by our city press as a subject only for merriment.

Walter Taylor Field (1861-1939)
Chicago, April 28,1915.

Walter Taylor Field was a Chicago author himself and, no doubt, was a member of the Society. He is known for his children's readers such as The Young and Field Literary Readers: A Primer and First Reader (1916)and The Field First Reader (1921) among others.

Note: In a few weeks I will be returning to DePaul University to - finally - complete a long over due Bachelor's degree. I have enrolled in a class titled, "Chicago Authors." It is being taught by a former president of the Society. As Charlie Brown would say, "Oh good grief!"

Did I mention that Carl Sandburg and Jane Addams were members at one time?

Recommended reading:
The Society of Midland Authors

Why is Chicago Called the "Second City?"

2009-08-10T07:33:00.000-05:00

Chicago is often referred to as "the second city," but to its citizens, it is second to none.

For decades, Chicago was second to New York in city population rankings and New Yorker magazine writer Abbott J. Liebling used the term as a title for his 1950s tongue-in-cheek book titled, Chicago: The Second City. The book was not well received. Today, Chicago is actually the third largest city in the United States following New York and Los Angeles.

Liebling, however, did not originate the Chicago nickname. Chicago was often referred to as the "second city" during the battle with New York as the selection for the site of the Columbian Exposition.

But, I believe there is another way of looking at the term. Chicago burned in 1871 and it provided the residents an opportunity to build a new and better constructed city - this time, not of wood. To Chicagoans, the Great Fire meant a "do-over." Thus, Chicago today is the second city, the first being pre-fire. And, many historians separate Chicago's history into pre and post fire.

Recommended reading: The 1890 Census and "Second City" (Chicago Tribune)

On Chicago: Love Letter to a City

2009-08-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

"Second city of the United States, fifth largest on the globe, "Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation," from its earliest days as a frontier settlement, one hundred and fifty years ago, it has somehow managed to capture man's imagination as the epitome of the American idea. No other city has grown so fast or risen so inevitably, with bustling self-importance, to a leading position. Everything about it seems to be on a gigantic scale: its actual size, its factories and mail-order houses, its Stock Yards (which it would be trite to term a world in themselves); its spreading parks, literally dug up out of the lake; its very winds and blizzards, sharper and fiercer than anywhere else. Even the fire that destroyed it in 1871 was, it goes without saying, the worst ever known. And what shall we say of its spirit, boasting and brawling, rude and crude, whose magnificent vigour has carried it triumphantly through that and many another disaster?

"Geographically, its situation in the middle of the country, on a body of water that has the character and majesty of an inland sea, together with its natural domination over the huge and fertile Mississippi Valley, from the first assured its greatness. It is the undisputed capital of the Midwest, which is felt, I judge rightly, to be the most American part of America. In spite of an enormous and ever increasing foreign population, it has contrived to chew up and digest its diversified elements, making them over, in a generation or less, into something as purely indigenous as buckwheat or Indian meal pudding. Its motto is I will! and it has never said die."

Arthur Meeker (1902-1971)
Chicago, With Love (1955)

This Old Chicago House: The Palmer Mansion

2009-08-05T15:40:00.001-05:00

I was reminded the other day that Chicagoans who visit my site are not Borgs; they do not have some sort of collective memory of all things pertaining to Chicago's history. And my visitors from around the country and the world may be even less informed.

A couple days ago I mentioned the "castles" that were built on the Gold Coast at the turn of the century by the city's elite, but failed to provide an example. My bad... So, to clarify, let's take a look at Queen Bertha's abode.

The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer (shown above) was located at 1350 Lake Shore Drive.

The Palmer Mansion...
--was built between 1882 and 1885
--was designed by by Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost
--cost $1,000,000 to construct
--was, at one time, the largest private residence in Chicago and had an elevator
--had no locks and doors could only be opened from the inside
--required a staff of 26
--had 42 rooms
--was "de-constructed" (demolished) in 1950

There are three pages of photos of the interior of the mansion available for viewing in the Art Institute of Chicago Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection

Potter Palmer, the "Father of State Street," obviously believed that a man's home was his castle - literally.

And Now a Word From the Ladies, Mr. Burnham

2009-08-04T07:12:00.013-05:00

Every major city has its problems. But, Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century had more than its share - poverty, hunger, an exploding population of immigrants from abroad and newcomers from the East and South, industry gone mad and crime. When Daniel Burnham, Edward Bennett and the Commercial Club of Chicago designed the Plan of Chicago in 1909, their approach was that of the City Beautiful Movement - design an aesthetically pleasing and well-organized city and the ills would be cured. They weren't. (Consider this - Gary, Indiana was also a planned community.)

At the same time that Burnham et al were laying out parks and tree-lined boulevards, Jane Addams and other civic minded women were devising a city building plan that addressed the social, cultural and economic issues plaguing Chicago.

What Would Jane Say? City-Building Women and a Tale of Two Chicagos by Janice Metzger is a new book from Lake Claremont Press that addresses both these approaches by detailing what was created in Chicago and what wasn't and could have been.

After author Janice Metzger sets a detailed stage of Chicago at the turn of twentieth century the players and the movements, the problems and the reform efforts, the conflicts and the possibilities she takes readers into wonderful speculative chapters in the areas of transportation, law, housing, neighborhood development, immigration, labor, health, and education. What would Jane Addams and her peers say if they had been involved in the Plan of Chicago? Using painstaking research, historical detail, and a pinch of imagination, Metzger thinks she has a pretty good idea...

The book is due out later this month.

Bertha Palmer's Chicago: The Jewel of the Gold Coast

2009-07-30T05:43:00.000-05:00

Bertha Honore Palmer was - and probably always will be - the First Lady of Chicago. Born to wealth and the acknowledged queen of Chicago society at the turn of the twentieth century, she tirelessly worked to improve the lives of working women and to elevate the perception of women in general and recognize their accomplishments. Today, however, many people in Chicago have forgotten her. There is no statue honoring Bertha Palmer in the city. A new book by Sally Sexton Kalmbach may help to rectify this unfortunate "oversite."

The Jewel of the Gold Coast: Mrs. Potter Palmer's Chicago takes us back to the time when there was no Gold Coast on Lake Shore Drive. "What are today eight to ten lanes of noisy traffic, "writes Kalmbach, "was once a quiet dirt road along the lake. In the late 1870s when Potter Palmer started buying land along the lake just south of Lincoln Park, Chicago residents laughed. This swamp land, or Frog Pond as it was called, was filled with sand, willows, and mud." Potter Palmer had already exhibited his keen real estate vision by developing State Street, but this new project was considered a joke and many referred to it as "Frog's Folly." But, castles would replace that mud and by the 1890s Chicago's elite would construct a neighborhood of millionaires.

Sally Kalmbach, who conducts tours of the Gold Coast today, is a fourth generation Chicagoan. She teaches Chicago history at the Newberry Library and is co-founder of the Chicago History Women's Club, board member of the Chicago Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians and volunteers as a docent at the Charnley-Persky House Museum. She loves Chicago and she knows her stuff.

In September, Chicago history buffs will have the opportunity to meet Sally Kalmbach, hear more about the development of the Gold Coast, and support a worthy historical cause. (Pleasse click on image for a larger view.) Hope to see you there!

Final note: In late July, 1870 Potter Palmer (44) married Miss Bertha Honore (21) at the home of her parents at 157 Michigan Avenue (across the street from the Art Institute today).

Happy Anniversary, you crazy kids!

On Chicago

2009-07-24T05:44:00.000-05:00

...Chicago—a city where they are always rubbing the lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty, for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.

Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi (1883)

The Music of the Maestro

2009-07-09T14:42:00.003-05:00

Tell me...is it possible to fall in love with a man who died in 1924?

Credit: PENARD54

Louis Sullivan Film in Post Production

2009-07-08T07:17:00.003-05:00

Director Mark Richard Smith has posted an update on the eagerly awaited film dedicated to the life and work of Chicago's most beloved architect, Louis Sullivan. The film is slated for release at the end of 2009. Follow the production's progress on the film's official website - Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture. Best news is that DVD release is already being planned.

On Chicago: Politics

2009-05-29T06:56:00.003-05:00

Chicago is always on the point of hanging some one and quartering him and boiling him in hot pitch, and assuring him that he has lost the respect of all honorable men.--Finley Peter Dunne

I don't think there is really anything else to be said about this quote...

Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
From: "Hanging Aldermen," Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His Countrymen (1899)

John T. McCutcheon on the Economy

2009-05-27T12:26:00.005-05:00

McCutcheon won The Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for this Cartoon. The more things change...

Credit: The Common Room, "AIG to Taxpayers: See you in Court" Please link to and credit The Common Room blog.

Recommended for teachers:
Cartoons for the Classroom