Lawrence Avenue

You’re receiving this test because you’ve subscribed to the blog about my old neighborhood, Hollywood Park, and the surrounding neighborhoods from Albany Park to Peterson Park.

Last week I sent out a test to see if the new service for blog subscriptions was working. It wasn’t, so I’m trying this again. In the past I used feedburner to allow readers to receive the blogposts by email.  Google is no longer providing support for feedback, so I’ve switched over to Mail Chimp to provide email subscriptions of my blogposts.

As before, you can opt out of subscribing at any time.  And hopefully this will be the final test.

River Park fieldhouse, 2011.

I wish I had a story to post this week, but haven’t had a chance to revisit the past for a while. Modern technology, however, is requiring me to send this test post out because I’ve switched to a different program to distribute the Me & My Shadow blogposts to subscribers. (If  you are getting this email, it’s because you signed up for it.)

I’m now using Mail Chimp for all subscriptions so you may notice something different when you receive the next posts.

I’m not going to let a good opportunity go to waste, though;  thank you for continuing to read the blog and share your stories.

Best,

Frances

The Purity Deli sign is visible behind the telephone pole on the right. Photograph via http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/4495

The title of this blogpost includes the words Albany Park because, apparently, there were, in the 1940s, two Purity Restaurants in Chicago. There was the one on Lawrence Avenue, pictured above and, you may not have known, there was a second restaurant with the same name at Van Buren and Halsted streets.

I don’t know of any connection between the two, but the families behind both remained in the restaurant business into the 21st century and, in the case of the family that opened the Purity deli on Van Buren, to this day.

Let’s first look at the non-Albany Park Purity Deli. According to an article on Wikipedia, Jack and Charlie Raskin opened a Purity deli at Van Buren and Halsted streets in 1942. Later Jack went on to open his own place a few blocks away on Roosevelt Road. He called it Manny’s and I don’t have to tell you the rest. Manny’s has moved several times but currently is located at 1141 S. Jefferson and is run by Jack Raskin’s grandson and great-grandsons.

Not so many people know, however, that the Purity Delicatessen of Albany Park was co-founded in 1936 by the father of well-known Chicago restauranteur, Mel Markon. In the years following WWII, Mel told me Purity was so popular they were selling 4,000 pounds of corned beef a week.

It was, Mel says, too much of a good thing. One night at closing time, his father, Raymond, was cleaning up and complained to a customer that the place was killing him. The customer made an offer of $20,000, and the deal was sealed that night. Mel attended Von Steuben High School for one year before his family moved from the area.

In 1948, Mel’s father reunited with his former Purity partner, Harry Eppel, to open the Shoreline Deli on 71st Street. In the early 1960s, he opened the Seaway on 87th Street near Stoney Island with his brothers-in-law Herb Smith and Irv Safron. In the mid-1960s, Mel’s father teamed up with his son, Mel, to open Markon’s Restaurant at 91st and Jeffery.

In the 1970s through 2011, Mel opened some iconic Chicago restaurants of his own, including Mel Markon’s on Lincoln Park West, Zanadu, Dixie Que, and Bia for Mia. People still talk about the legendary Markon sweet and sour cabbage soup and the recipe has been reprinted on many websites.

Historic images on sale at ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1976-Press-Photo-Mel-Markons-New-Zanadu-Restaurant-/261031228045

From a post on the Hello Cutie blog, I learned that Lou Bernstein owned the Purity Delicatessen sometime during the 40s, though I don’t know if he was the customer who bought the place late that night from Raymond Markon. In a comment on that blogpost, Jerry Pritikin recalls that Lou Bernstein’s son, Wayne, went to Hibbard School and was related to comedian Morrie Amsterdam.

Share in the comments what you remember about the Purity — North Side or South Side.

Lou and Sidney Bernstein, owners of Purity Delicatessen, from the blog, Hello There Cutie.

Related: The Albany Park Purity is also remembered in an earlier blogpost, an interview with storyteller and Roosevelt alum Syd Lieberman.

Sources: Phone interview with Mel Markon. South Shore News Spot, by Caryn Lazar Amster. November 2006: http://www.trans-micro.com/bradwell/SouthShoreNewsSpot/NewsSpots/2006/November%202006.html

This post is for an individual who wrote on his bucket list:  ”I would love a corned beef or tongue sandwich from the Purity in Chicago.”  – The best we can do is remember it for you.

If you grew up Jewish in Chicago and are of a certain age, say, 50 or older, there’s a good chance the synagogue where you went to Hebrew School has moved to a new location or no longer exists. Either way, buildings were left behind in neighborhoods that no longer have a Jewish population.

In his new book of photographs, There Used to Be a Synagogue Here, Frederick J. Nachman shows us the enormous, awe-inspiring religious buildings as well as ordinary two-flats that once housed Chicago synagogues. While Nachman has uploaded more than 300 photographs of former Chicago synagogues to his flickr acccount, he selected 100 images of the better-known or architecturally interesting former synagogues for his book. In the accompanying text, he offers both a public history and a personal account of his family’s connections to several synagogues pictured in the book. (Disclosure: I received a review copy of There Used to Be a Synagogue Here courtesy of the author.)

Six degrees of separation

The histories of Chicago synagogues read like a family tree. This synagogue merged with that synagogue. They changed their name. They moved to a new location. The resulting web of related synagogues criss-crosses the city and suburbs, stretching from the mid-1800s to the present day. Example (and there are many):

• Beth Jacob Anshe Kroz, built in 1927 at W. 15th Street and S. Drake Avenue.
• Merged with Congregation Ahavas Achim of the Maxwell Street area.
• Renamed Beth Sholom Ahavas Achim, currently located at 5655 N. Jersey Avenue. In my old neighborhood, on the block where one of my classmates lived.

Modern ruins

When I first came across Nachman’s photographs in 2009, I was surprised by the number, size and grandeur of more than a few synagogues on the South and West sides. Even in their current dilapidated condition, these structures are a powerful reminder of the strength of religious communities..

They periodically appear in the media, these old buildings that once housed synagogues, churches or, more often than not, both synagogues and churches at different times. A building’s architecture may attract the attention of preservationists, as happened in the Spring of 2012 before the demolition of the former Anshe Knessess Israel Congregation/ Shepherd’s Temple Baptist Church that was located at 3411 W. Douglas Boulevard. Later that same year, we heard of the possible demise of the 137-year-old St. James Church on the South Side.

The problem is, of course, money. But, even if we could afford to save these old religious buildings, why should we try?

Frederick J. Nachman photograph by Erin Nekervis

In the case of the former First Roumanian Congregation, located at 1352 S. Union Avenue, it’s a matter of historical, not architectural, significance. For Nachman, the historical significance is public and personal: this is the last remaining former synagogue in the Maxwell Street area and it is where his father’s family worshipped. The University of Illinois-Chicago wants to demolish the building. Nachman believes, and others agree, it should be saved as a monument to both civic and religious history.

What do you remember?

Following Nachman’s lead, let’s remember the synagogues of Chicago. Where did you go and where was it located? I’ll go first.

Temple Beth-El, 3050 W. Touhy Avenue.

There Used to Be a Synagogue Here, available online at blurb. Hardcover: $50. Softcover: $42.

For multiple copies, please contact Fred Nachman directly by email at: fnachman (at) marjancommunications (dot) com.

Check out Fred Nachman’s blog, The View from Brule Lake.

More about former Chicago synagogues in my blogpost, Backward Glance.

I have no problem imagining horses in other parts of the city, but on my own block on North Central Park Avenue? Less than 20 years before we moved into our house? Really?

I’m not just curious about the horses, though I’d love to see a photograph of a horse-drawn cart on Bryn Mawr and Kimball. Who cleaned up after the horses? Were there stables in the neighborhood or did the horses come from other neighborhoods to make deliveries in Hollywood Park? What was it like when horses and cars shared the alleys and streets? Did the transition from horse-drawn wagons to delivery trucks seem gradual or overnight? When were the horses gone for good?

So, with this backstory, you can imagine how thrilled I was to read a recent comment left on one of my earlier blogposts. In sharing memories of growing up in that sliver of Peterson Park east of Kimball Avenue, Brenda Wolin Terry mentions riding stables had been located on the site that later became Lincoln Village Shopping Center:

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“I moved with my parents & older sister to Christiana & Glenlake in Peterson Park on Sept. 27, 1948. Our street ended on the north at Lincoln Avenue, and we were the third house on the block. There were pheasant hunters who would come through our backyard with their bows & arrows, and the property that [in 1951] became Lincoln Village Shopping Center was Christianson’s Riding Stable, where my sister would rent a horse & ride up the bridle path along McCormick Blvd.

Each time a new house was built on our block, we would get mice in the basement! My girlfriends and I loved to go exploring in houses that were in the process of being built. We would climb up the makeshift ramps and slide down on pieces of wood. We rode our bikes to Labaugh Woods and built fires to cook our lunches.

When they built Lincoln Village, the big restaurant there that faced Lincoln Ave. was called The Village Grill. It became What’s Cooking? many years later. My sister worked at Mandel Brothers in high school, and she had to wear a black skirt, white blouse, and nylon stockings with black flats.

I transferred to Peterson School in 4th grade, and that day I met many of the girls and boys who are still a big part of my life…although we are not riding bikes to River Park to swim any more. I have recently moved to the California desert, where I have reunited with some of my classmates from Peterson & Von who preceded me to southern CA. It’s nice to know that wherever you go in this country there’s a former Von Steuben gal or guy waiting to rekindle memories.”

I realize these stables weren’t the home of the horses making the milk and coal deliveries on Central Park and Drake and the rest of Hollywood Park, but this bit of information brings me closer to being able to picture horses in Hollywood Park.

There aren’t any other references to the Peterson Park stables online, but in the Forgotten Chicago forum a contributor remembered a Christensen Riding Academy at 1508 N. Clark Street, near the corner of Clark and North, serving Gold Coast patrons who rode on the Lincoln Park bridle path. In the Tribune archives I learned the riding master of Christensen Riding Academy was a Danish immigrant, Chris Christensen. It’s tempting to imagine a connection between the two stables, especially considering the North Park area’s Scandinavian population prior to World War II, but there is no mention in the Tribune articles of a second Christensen’s location on the Far North Side.

On the topic of horses in this area, but unrelated to Christensen’s Stables, at one time pony rides were offered at Hollywood Kiddieland, adjacent to Lincoln Village Shopping Center.

Photo courtesy of Merle Citrin Monroe.

One more thing caught my attention in Brenda’s comment: there must have a been a lot of pheasant in the area, because even in the sixties when we lived on Central Park, I remember people talked about seeing pheasant on the grounds of the TB Sanitarium.

Update (12/4/12): Thanks to Jerry Pritikin for recalling the Idle Hour Stables (see comments below) and for Linda Oppman-Spreckman Jacobson for clarifying there were two stables on this stretch of Lincoln Avenue. Idle Hour was farther east, at the intersection of Lincoln and Peterson, while Christenson’s Stables was located on the site that became Lincoln Village.

Acknowledgements:  Joni Mitchell’s song, “Big Yellow Taxi” provided the inspiration for the title of this post.

Read related posts about Lincoln Village Shopping Center and Hollywood Kiddieland.

1. Don’t take a direct route when a roundabout route exists.

2. Avoid expressways and Lake Shore Drive.

3. Drive below the speed limit.

4. If you see someone you know, pull over and say hello.

5. Stop for Cuban coffee twice a day, on the way to work and on the way home.

6. Keep an eye out for “For Rent” or “For Sale” signs or any other indications of change.

7. Never hurry.

Although Neil Steinberg is a journalist and Jewish and younger than me, his terrific book, You Were Never in Chicago, reminds me of my father. Like my father was, Steinberg is a non-native Chicagoan who takes enormous joy in knowing the city well.

Reading Steinberg’s book gave me the same free-fall feeling I had when riding in my father’s car. There are reasons for Steinberg’s referencing in a single chapter the art of writing obituaries, Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, Kup, the Division Street Russian Baths, Oprah Winfrey, Leon Despres, and Steinberg’s brother, but he takes a roundabout route to his destination and he is in no hurry.

Steinberg seamlessly weaves his personal and family history, Chicago history and present-day Chicago into a colorful and at times poetic narrative of life in Chicago over the past thirty-odd years. When I saw in the first pages the names of the early explorers and founding fathers, I wondered whether I really wanted to read the old swamp tale again. But Steinberg offers fresh insights on our city history and he puts them so well:

“By the time St. Louis managed to throw a railroad span across the Mississippi–the celebrated Eads Bridge–the year was 1874 and it was too late: Chicago had passed St. Louis in population four years earlier and St. Louis’s economic fate was sealed.  A reminder that the arrival of transformative technology is nothing new, and those who cling to the past risk losing their future.” (p. 13)

Brimming with little-known facts and forgotten names, Steinberg carries us forward into modern times. Here he recalls the gloomy landscape of  the late seventies and early eighties:

“There was still a run-down Woolworth’s 5 & 10 on North Michigan Avenue. Parts of the central business district still seemed like a Reginald Marsh painting — seedy stretches of Wells Street along the elevated tracks, shabby little liquor stores. The shell of the old 666 Club standing alone in a parking lot in the South Loop near the ‘Jesus Saves’ neon cross at the Pacific Garden Mission.”  (p. 82)

Steinberg arrived in the Chicago area as a Northwestern  freshman and, except for a brief period, has never left. In this book, he answers the question, what does it take for someone who didn’t grow up in Chicago to feel like a real Chicagoan? I am not going to reveal the answer, but I will tell you my father came to exactly the same conclusion.

 Title:  You Were Never in Chicago

Author: Neil Steinberg

Publisher:  University of Chicago Press

Pub. Date: October 25, 2012

Hardcover: 256 pages

(Disclosure: the publisher provided me with a review copy of this book.)

In heartfelt celebration of the re-opening of Kaufman’s Bakery, I am reprinting Allan Zirlin’s recollection of the days when Kaufman’s was located in Albany Park:

“Shortly after WWII ended, a baker named Kaufman came to Chicago and opened a small bakery on Kedzie Avenue just north of Lawrence. Bagels have never been the same since. Mr. Kaufman created a new kind of bagel, one without the bullet-proof skin, one that you could bite into with ease yet still had that satisfying al dente feel. He created the now-famous double-bagel, one bagel made from the dough normally used for two. And it had a twist, literally, not just a flat uninteresting appearance.”

An excerpt from “Bagels,”  an article written by Allan Zirlin

Kaufman’s Bakery, now open again at 4905 Dempster in Skokie, turns out the bagels I’ve been eating since I was a child.

We had a great time yesterday on the tour of the grounds of the former Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium on the North Side of Chicago. Perfect day for walking in the footsteps of local history and discovering the beauty that was hidden behind the green fence from 1915 to 1974. Our group included some longtime blog readers, plus former residents of the area who contributed their recollections. It was a lot of fun and we’ll do it again in the spring, if you missed this one. The MTS grounds tour is a free program offered through the North Park Village Nature Center. We appreciate using their cozy meeting room to gather our group.

Some good questions came up. One participant asked how long did people stay at the sanitarium. I was told by one former patient that she stayed for two years. A doctor told me that one patient in 1960 had lived there for 30 years.

The administration building is in the background as we view the men’s dining hall from the south-facing side of the building. Today these buildings are connected by an above-ground tunnel, an addition made after the sanitarium was renovated for its current use for senior apartments.

We confirmed that patients could not leave voluntarily if they tested positive for TB. One participant mentioned that even today, local (not sure if that is Chicago or Cook County) hospitals have the legal right to retain patients who test positive for TB.

We had to take a detour and pass by one of the highlights of the tour, a remnant of the covered tunnel that connected all the buildings. This buck was chasing a doe and looked like he meant business. He’s standing right next to the paved walkway that covered the underground tunnel. You can see the decorative brick border just under the buck’s head. These tunnels connected all the main buildings of the sanitarium and were used by staff to travel  between buildings in bad weather and to transport laundry and food carts.

The Peterson Park fieldhouse was added after the sanitarium opened in 1915.  It served as the morgue. I don’t know what year this was built, but I wonder if it was built around the same time as the auditorium.  Both buildings have a white decorative border just under the roof, and no other surviving buildings have this treatment. Again, note all the windows; every structure at the sanitarium was designed to provide fresh air for the benefit of both staff and patients.

This is the south-facing side of the service building, where the receiving dock was located.

We also commented on the expert craftsmenship so clearly visible on these buildings. Although the architects’ plan was considered simple at the time, in efforts to appear that they were not wasting taxpayers’ money on a fancy design, to our eyes the buildings look beautiful and highly detailed. Decorative terra cotta tiles, seen above the door on the left, are used on many of the buildings. Some of the tiles depict the Chicago “Y” symbol, while others show animals. The rounded window on the left looks out from the former men’s dining hall.

Unless families of deceased patients made other arrangements, all burials took place at Montrose Cemetery, across from the Sanitarium’s entrance at Pulaski and Bryn Mawr. Coincidentally, the landscape designer for both the Sanitarium and Montrose Cemetery was O.C. Simonds & Company. Simonds also designed much of Graceland Cemetery and Morton Arboretum.

In the background is the H-shaped infirmary buildings. The building on the right side was the hospital, which provided all types of medical and surgical treatments to TB patients, and included a maternity ward and nursery. On the left is the men’s wing, where patients who were confined to bedrest were housed. The above-ground tunnel was added after the sanitarium was closed.

It’s amazing that this corner of Chicago has so many connections with major events and people in Chicago history.

Frances Archer and Jim Cash on the tour of the former Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium grounds.

Photography credits: Thank you to Jim Cash, pictured here with me, for documenting the tour and giving me permission to share his photographs. All photographs except the first one are courtesy of Jim.

Acknowledgements: I greatly appreciate all of you who attended the tour and those of you who take time to participate in this blog. It is a group effort. By sharing our individual memories, we all learn more about the place where we came from.

]]> http://francesarcher.com/2012/11/tour-highlights/feed/ 13 http://francesarcher.com/2012/11/tour-highlights/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/francesarcher/~3/CREwobpNnJM/ http://francesarcher.com/2012/11/talk-and-walk-at-the-former-municipal-tuberculosis-sanitarium/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:44:58 +0000 Frances Archer http://francesarcher.com/?p=10238

This photograph was taken around the time the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium opened in 1915, and the building looks almost exactly the same today. I’ll be identifying the original functions of other remaining Sanitarium buildings, searching for remnants of demolished buildings and talking about the history of the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium at a free tour this coming  Sunday.

We’ll meet at 2:00 pm inside the North Park Village Nature Center.  Plan on walking around the grounds for about 45 minutes to an hour, so dress appropriately. (We will not enter any of the North Park Village buildings, other than the Nature Center.)

• Date: Sunday, November 4, 2012
• Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
• Free
• Location: North Park Village Nature Center, 5801 N. Pulaski
• Make a reservation: call North Park Village Nature Center: 312-744-5472.

If you grew up in the area surrounding the TB Sanitarium but have never been inside the green fence, don’t miss this chance to learn about the hidden city within the city.

Hope to see you there.

Photograph Credits:  The Municipal Control of Tuberculosis in Chicago: City of Chicago Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, Thedore Bernard Sachs, et al., 1915

“Turn it up so we can all hear,” he said. (Yes, it was a Reform synagogue.)

We didn’t, of course, listen to the game for the entire 90 minutes of class. Just 10 minutes or so, long enough to give the teacher a smooth segue into a lecture on Sandy Koufax’s refusal to pitch the first game of the series because it fell on Yom Kippur. ”You should all be such good Jews,” he said. It was a solemn moment, twenty or so 9-year-olds wondering if they would live up to such an ideal.

I now know of many more Jewish jocks, not all so exemplary as Sandy Koufax, thanks to  Jewish Jocks: an unorthodox hall of fame, edited by Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy with illustrations by Mark Ulriksen. This is a terrific collection, for the writing of the essays as much as for the interesting lives and times of the subjects. You might find yourself very surprised to learn some famous names are or were Jews–my sports encyclopedia of a husband was.

In Jane Leavy’s contribution, “The Best Bar Mitzvah Guest Ever,”  we revisit that proud moment in Jewish-American history:

“Koufax became the New American Patriarch: Abraham, Issac, Jacob and Sandee,  a pitcher defined as much by what he refused to do as by what he could do with a baseball in his left hand.”

A transistor radio makes an appearance in her essay, too.  And who could ever get enough of Hank Greenberg?  Ira Berkow thoroughly investigates the question of whether American League pitchers conspired against Greenberg to prevent him from breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record.

Speaking of Ruth–no, he wasn’t Jewish, but Robert Weintraub’s piece on Mose Solomon is titled, “The Hunt for the Hebrew Ruth.” John McGraw, then manager of the New York Giants, was desperate to sign a Jewish player, thinking he’d be a huge draw with the city’s Jewish population. When Solomon signed, a newspaper headline announced, “McGraw Pays 50K for only Jewish Ballplayer in Captivity.”

Besides baseball, boxing, basketball, football, tennis, soccer, weightlifting–all sports are represented and Jewish jocks are loosely defined to include anyone associated with sports–owners, trainers, sportswriters, announcers. Fifty essays in all, all great.

 Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox hall of fame

edited by Franklin Foer and Marc Tracy with illustrations by Mark Ulriksen

Hardcover, 304 pages

 Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.