On Chicago: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Yes, Chicago. First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation. I give Chicago no quarter and Chicago asks for none.
"Good," they cheer, when you find fault; "give us the gaff. We deserve it and it does us good." They do deserve it. Lying low beside a great lake of pure, cold water, the city has neither enough nor good enough water. With the ingenuity and will to turn their sewer, the Chicago River, and make it run backwards and upwards out of the Lake, the city cannot solve the smoke nuisance. With resources for a magnificent system of public parking, it is too poor to pave and clean the streets. They can balance high buildings on rafts floating in mud, but they can't quench the stench of the stockyards. The enterprise which carried through a World's Fair to a world's triumph is satisfied with two thousand five hundred policemen for two million inhabitants and one hundred and ninety-six square miles of territory, a force so insufficient (and inefficient) that it cannot protect itself, to say
nothing of handling mobs, riotous strikers, and the rest of that lawlessness which disgraces Chicago.

Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936)
The Shame of the Cities, 1904
"Chicago: Half Free and Fighting On"

Recommended reading:

The Shame of the Cities: Steffens on Urban Blight

Plunkitt’s Plain Talk: Satirizing Steffens


Photo Credit: Wikipedia (Lincoln Steffens)

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Fire and Ice: The Cold Storage Palace Disaster

The Cold Storage Building at the Columbian Exposition was constructed by the Hercules Iron Works of Chicago and was built to showcase the very latest in ice-making machinery (often called, "the greatest refrigerator on earth.") It was located at 64th Street and Stoney Island, five stories high and featured a 100 feet high tower at each corner plus a central tower covering the smoke-stack that soared 220 feet in the air. There was even an in-door ice skating rink. It was just one of the marvels of the Fair. It was also the site of the Columbian Expositions greatest tragedy.

"On the tenth of July [1893], while the Fair was in progress, the Cold Storage warehouse was destroyed by fire. This building was designed to manufacture ice by artificial means, and was intended as an exhibit of ice-making machinery, as well as a place to store perishable materials. Notwithstanding its prosaic purposes it was a beautiful building and attracted much attention, especially the tall, square tower which rose to twice the height of the main structure. Unfortunately the tower had been utilized as a smoke stack, which ran through its center, and in this originated the fire which proved so disastrous to human life. After the arrival of the Fire Department, twenty men, members of the first company on the scene, headed by Captain James Fitzpatrick, ascended the tower to reach the blazing portion, when suddenly it was discovered that the fire had broken out far below them, and had cut off their retreat by the stairway. There was no escape except by leaping from the tower to the main roof. This they did, one at a time, before the eyes of a horrified throng of thousands of spectators. Several of the firemen broke through the roof by the force of their falls, and were plunged into the seething mass of flames within the building, which had become a roaring maelstrom of fire. Others were too much injured by their fall to move and could not escape. Captain [James]Fitzpatrick, in a dying condition, was lowered to the ground by some of the firemen on the roof, who themselves had scarcely descended before the entire roof fell in. Seventeen men were killed, and nineteen injured in this disaster, the only serious one occurring during the Fair period. Except in this case no fire or other catastrophe took place upon the Exposition grounds.

"A subscription was at once started among the spectators for the relief of the families of the unfortunate victims. The gate receipts of the Fair for one day were applied towards the fund, which soon reached a total of $104,000. A portion of this fund was used to relieve immediate distress, and the remainder was invested and the income devoted to the support of the widows and the education of their children.

"Doubtless the thorough preparations made in the Fire Department and by the Columbian Guards saved the Exposition from other serious disasters. "Incipient fires were frequent," says the History, "and often more than once in a day the scene would be enlivened by the spirited dash of an engine across the Court of Honor, and the Columbian Guards coming on the 'double quick' in fine order from all directions to the point of danger."

Richard Watson Gilder, the poet, wrote a couple of verses on the Cold Storage disaster, which he entitled, "The Tower of Flame:"

"Here for the world to see men brought their fairest;
Whatever of beauty is in all the earth:
The priceless flower of art, the loveliest, rarest,
Here by our inland ocean came to glorious birth.

"Yet on this day of doom a strange new splendor
Shed its celestial light on all men's eyes;
Flower of hero-soul,—consummate, tender,—
That from the tower of flame sprang to the eternal skies."

From: Chicago: Its History and Its Builders, a Century of Marvelous Growth
by Josiah Seymour Currey (1912)


Photo Credit: MagazineArt.org

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On Chicago: The Chicagoan

"The Chicagoan is alive. He is not cowed: he is not refined away: there is a part of him still which the Machine has not sucked nor the black air blighted. The Chicagoan walks with swift step through the harshness of his city. But his feet are somehow planted on the prairie. His feet have not forgotten the feel of the rich loam: nor the greenness which comes forth from it.

"Do not talk to the Chicagoan! He will talk business. He will talk size. He will talk ugly. He will boast of the steel-strait jacket which has not yet quite girthed him…

"...if Chicago is the city of Hope, the reason is that there, Despair has simply not yet altogether won. Chicago is still fluent, still chaotic. In the black industrial cloak are still interstices of light."

Waldo David Frank (1889-1967)
From: Our America (1919) See the chapter devoted to Chicago.

According to Time Magazine in 1935, "Waldo Frank, 47, is an inverted Theodore Dreiser, a modern transcendentalist, a mystical Marxist. He is also, at times and in spots, a forceful novelist. Combining passion and penetration with plodding Joycean prose and purblind bookishness, he is a perfect layer cake of the admirable and the irritating." A very interesting man and writer who is not often remembered today. He is still read in Latin America.

Photo credit: Miguel Covarrubias

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A Luther Bradley Cartoon Editorial

Over at the CHOLibrary today, I'm spotlighting a 1917 book on the life and work of Luther Bradley (1853-1917), the famous cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News. The editorial content, a remembrance of Bradley after his death, was provided by none other than his boss, Henry Justin Smith.

Some Background on Luther Bradley from Cartoons Magazine edited by Henry Havens Windsor (1915):

"Luther D. Bradley has been doing newspaper cartoon work continuously for near upon twenty-five years, and doing it well," says the Scoop. "But while he was recognized as a man of ideas and a master draughtsman in his own way, his public was local until Europe exploded in war. That stupendous outbreak gave him a new key, and he sprang into national prominence at a single stroke. He was moved not so much to indignation as to sorrow, to profound sympathy for whole peoples desolated and left helpless; and to a sense of failure in a civilization so laboriously built up, so suddenly disrupted.

"He was able to see the core of things, and show it to others. The war was not a month old when his first great cartoon, 'Education for the Heathen,' startled the country to attention. The certainty that sweeping sacrifice of virile men will leave to future generations a fatherhood of weaklings, brought out another one showing Europe sending out her strong men to kill each other, and assuring them that those left behind would take their places in continuing the race. It was a thing of sharp significance—its contrast of perfect manhood on the way to death, with the shriveled old and shrimpish young who were to stay at home.

"Bradley is a man, long experienced but newly famed, a genius who responded when occasion called, and who has come into his own. He is an agreeable personality, mature in thought and feeling, full of human kindness. It was this last that roused him when the guns began to roar.

"Bradley has had a curious career. After a few years of business in Chicago he found himself in Melbourne, Australia, in the course of a trip around the world, in the early eighties. He intended to stay a few days there waiting for the steamer to San Francisco, but he staid eleven years. Let him tell the rest in his own words:

" 'The delay,' he says, 'was caused by an impulse to send a cartoon to a little local paper. I never had drawn a cartoon or thought of doing so. The editor wrote me that the paper had just died from other causes—so my skirts were clear. But he said he was going to start another, and would use my efforts. Thus I became entangled with Life, a weekly publication. Later I edited the paper, and after a few years went to Melbourne Punch, where during five years I worked at cartooning and editing. Returning to Chicago in 1893 I drew cartoons for the Journal and afterward for the Inter-Ocean, and then, beginning in 1899, for The Daily News; and am still at it.'

"At a moderate estimate, he has in his time drawn at least six thousand cartoons. The fact is its own comment upon his fecund originality and his gift of industry."

While admiring Bradley's cartoons (there are dozens in the book), I came across the one below:



The caption below the cartoon states that it was inspired by the death of Marshall Field in January, 1906. Are "Chicago" and "Young America" mourning Field's death or is this a sarcastic comment on the manner in which Field earned his fortune?

One thing is certain - it is an editorial statement appropriate for today's newspapers. I think I've said it before...Funny thing about history; it is so contemporary.

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Engaging in the American Experience

I'm often asked why I became interested in Chicago history. To be honest, it was a fascination that evolved. In the early 1990's, I screamed and pounded the walls of the old Stadium during dozens of Bulls games as they beat all comers. But, it all really started in 2001 when I briefly worked in the Loop. I visited the museums, had high tea at The Drake, feasted on Easter dinner at Rhapsody, attended the symphony, threw back numerous vodka shots at Russian Tea Time and became an avid theater goer. I didn't really "get" what Chicago was all about, though. Ya gotta know the territory, its been said, and I didn't have a clue. That all began to change when WTTW, Chicago's local PBS station, aired Chicago: City of the Century in 2003, produced for the American Experience history series and based on Donald L. Miller's best-selling book.

The thing I remember most about watching that series was thinking to myself, "girl, you don't know a damn thing about Chicago" and deciding that I was going to hit the books. When television is done right, it can have a powerful affect.

And, so can the Internet. The Center for History and New Media has been working since 1994 to use "use digital media and computer technology to democratize history—to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past." And, that is what the American Experience series and the companion websites, are all about, too; engaging the public to facilitate a better understanding of history. (I guess that's why I'm here, also.)

Yesterday, I received an email from PBS. After I got over the initial shock that someone at the iconic institution (and my favorite televison program; right up there with the West Wing) knew my blog existed (the janitor, maybe)I carefully read the communique:

I am writing to let you know that PBS Engage is featuring American Experience’s Executive Producer, Mark Samels, as part of the ongoing PBS Engage series called “Five Good Questions.”

The blog series features a PBS celebrity or insider and asks visitors to send in questions to be answered the following week. The blog series has been very successful and we are thrilled to have Mr. Samels as our feature this week. [He was a Senior Producer on City of the Century, by the way.]

This is a chance for you to ask any questions you may have about producing for American Experience, documentary filmmaking, American History, or whatever else is on your mind. We’ll pick five questions for Mark to answer and post his responses next week on the Engage blog.

Please visit the link and post your comments and questions here.

What a wonderful opportunity! It's not quite as good as an email saying Ken Burns would like to have lunch with me, but as far as getting up close and personal with those who give history a good name it couldn't get much better. Teachers in particular might present this event to their students as a way of engaging them. Tell a kid it's on the Internet and they are usually there.

History as pop culture; will I see the day?

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Chicago History Caught in the Web

Have you been following the Manley Stacey Letters? Marty Hackl is doing an excellent job of transcribing these touching epistles. Of particular interest to CHJ readers will be the Camp Douglas letters that run from September 23rd to November 25th of 1862. Marty is also running "A Civil War Soldier's Stay at Camp Douglas, Part 1 and Part 2, on Marty's Blog, his personal site. This is a remarkable opportunity to get a first-hand feel for what it was like to be a common soldier during the Civil War.


Continuing the St. Patrick's Day celebration (which began over the weekend and continues through Tuesday)Chicago's public television station, WTTW, (Channel 11) will be re-airing their documentary, Irish Chicago, tonight at 8 PM. The contribution of Irish-Americans to the building and success of Chicago cannot be overstated. If you don't live in the area, the DVD is for sale on the WTTW website. Unfortunately, it's a wee bit pricey at $60.



Max Grinnell, author of the Hyde Park book in the Images of America series, has released a new offering on Chicago. Right now Chicago: History & Mystery Walks is only available through AA Publishing in Britain, but Max says that it will soon be available from Frommers, which mean it will no doubt turn up on Amazon. One to watch for.


The Uptown: Cradle of Entertainment website is entertaining unto itself. Each half-hour segment is filled with historical tidbits about the importance and influence of the Uptown area, home of the Essanay Studios, the Green Mill Jazz Club and Graceland Cemetary. Uptown supporters are passionate - as well they should be. The area was sorely neglected for awhile, but is making a fantastic comeback. There was a lot of passion and dedication that went into the making of the website, too. But, it might be a bit overproduced with all the music and animation, which I found distracting but others may enjoy. Nevertheless, take some time to explore the Uptown history links. (I'll be adding an Uptown link set to CHJ.) Well worth the visit.


Ultimate Capone Fan or Grandson?









There's much being written about the Sears Tower name change. Sears is an important name in Chicago history and I feel just about how I do about Macey's replacing Marshall Field's. That aside, one of the best evaluations of the Sears Tower change comes from the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin in his architecture column, The Skyline. He quotes Nelson Algren from Chicago: City on the Make:

"They hustled the land, they hustled the Indian, they hustled by night and they hustled by day. They hustled guns and furs and peltries, grog and the blood-red whiskey-dye; they hustled with dice or a deck or a derringer.....

"They’d do anything under the sun except work for a living, and we remember them reverently, with Balaban and Katz, under such subtitles as 'Founding Fathers,' 'Dauntless Pioneers,' or 'Far-Visioned Conquerers.'

"Meaning merely they were out to make a fast buck off whoever was standing nearest."

Read Kamin's entire post, "What's In a Name."


Speaking of the Chicago Tribune...The "Chicago History Journal" has been included in their list of Chicago's Best Blogs. (You can find me under "Arts and Culture." The rating stars that you now see after each post are for the Tribune feed.) I'm kind of proud of this because sometimes blogging seems like the Internet equivalent of a public access cable program. Ya, like the "Saturday Night Live" sketch, Wayne's World, which was set in Aurora, Illinois, by the way. So, my sincere thanks to the Tribune. I'm not worthy!!


A Little Blogkeeping: At the bottom of the page, you may notice that I have replaced the Google search box with that of Dogpile. There are two reasons for that. The first is that I have cancelled my Adsense account and the search box was included. I didn't make any money from it - probably because I didn't really try - so why bother. The second reason is that by using Dogpile I am, in a very small way, helping to support animals in need. As an animal lover, I like this alot. The Dogpile site states:
Search & Rescue: You search the Web, together we'll rescue pets.
We're on a mission to help pets and we can't do it without you. Search the Web using Dogpile and a portion of the revenue generated will be donated to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA®)*. Help us raise one million dollars for pets in need by the end of 2009!

I have a question for my readers: Would you object to a moderate amount of advertising on CHJ? I have been toying with the idea for awhile, but don't want to clutter up the pages. This is supposed to be an entertaining resource blog. I would, however, like to support other bloggers - particularly ones that write on history. Also, perhaps, book publishers and Chicago museums. Maybe posters. It's something I'm considering. Thoughts? See the poll, top left.

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On Chicago: Bad City - Good People

"Chicago is one of the most miserable and ugly cities which I have yet seen in America, and is very little deserving of its name," Queen of the Lake"; for, sitting there on the shore of the lake in wretched dishabille, she resembles rather a huckstress than a queen. Certainly, the city seems for the most part to consist of shops. One sees scarcely any pretty country houses, with their gardens, either within or without the city—which is so generally the case in American towns—and in the streets the houses are principally of wood, the streets formed with wood, or, if without, broad and sandy. And it seems as if, on all hands, people came here merely to trade, to make money, and not to live. Nevertheless, I have, here in Chicago, become acquainted with some of the most agreeable and delightful people that I ever met with anywhere; good people, handsome and intellectual; people to live with, people to talk with, people to like and grow fond of, both men and women; people who do not ask the stranger a hundred questions, but who give him an opportunity of seeing and learning in the most agreeable manner which he can desire; rare people! And besides that, people who are not horribly pleased with themselves and their world, and their city, and their country, as is so often the case in small towns, but who see deficiencies and can speak of them properly, and can bear to hear others speak of them also."

Milo Milton Quaife
The Development of Chicago, 1674-1914 (1916)

Milo M. Quaife was an Iowan who received his PhD from the University of Chicago. He was a prolific writer and historian. From 1914, when he was 33 years old, to 1919, he was the director of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

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Treasures in The Field Museum Library

When you think of The Field Museum, what immediately comes to mind? I'm going to wager it is Sue, the Tyrannosaurus rex or the man-eating lions of Tsavo, made famous in the 1996 film, The Ghost and the Darkness. It is one of the greatest natural history museums in the world, but the history of The Field Museum is deeply rooted in the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and its libraries contain cultural treasures that reflect that heritage.

An early overview of the museum's history, written before the present museum was constructed, is found in The Historical Review of Chicago and Cook County and Selected Biography by Arba Nelson Waterman, published in 1908:

The Field Museum of Natural History was established in 1894 in the former fine arts building of the World's Columbian Exposition. It was founded upon a gift of $1,000,000 made by the late Marshall Field, and the basis of its exhibition material was laid in purchases of World's Fair exhibits. Since the original organization of the museum, many expeditions have been dispatched to all parts of North America and other countries for the purpose of obtaining material for deposit and exchange, and many donations have been received from institutions engaged in similar investigations. The museum proper embraces collections of mammals and birds reaching many thousand specimens, a taxidermy two stories in height, a section devoted to North American ethnology, a herbarium of 260,000 sheets, and fully equipped laboratories and assaying rooms. That the title of the institution is not fairly descriptive of its scope is also evident from the fact that it has a remarkably complete library of 50,000 titles, and a well equipped printing office from which issue the publications devoted to the investigations and expeditions conducted under its management. The four grand divisions of the museum are those of anthropology, botany, geology and zoology. The Field Museum is, in many ways, a development of the World's Columbian Exposition, this being especially true of its management. Harlow N. Higinbotham was president of both the Exposition and the Museum, and Frederick J. V. Skiff, still secretary and director of the Museum, was at the head of the department of mines and mining of the Exposition, as well as deputy director general. He has since been the great organizing and developing power behind the Chicago institution, and has also become the greatest exposition manager in America. The superb building for the Museum, projected as one of the features of the Lake Front park, will be erected as a result of another princely gift from the late Marshall Field, who at his death in 1906 bequeathed $8,000,000 to it. Of this sum $4,000,000 is to be expended in the erection of a building and $4,000,000 for endowment.

It is to the libraries that I want to direct your attention.The Field Museum Library and, in particular, The World Columbian Exposition Collection, are amazing repositories of information and images. If you haven't explored the online library resources, you might want to take some time to do so. For those interested in the Columbian Exposition, this will be a treat. In particular, note the Columbian Exposition Scrapbook compiled by the Robbins Family that begins on page five of the Exposition Collection. This family meticulously preserved every bit of advertising and Fair souvenirs they picked up in a wonderful scrapbook. The site also includes hundreds of pictures of the Fair and photos documenting the construction of the present Museum building.

I love digging for historical treasures online, and this time, I struck gold.

Recommended reading:
Guide to the Field Columbian Museum, with diagrams and descriptions By Field Columbian Museum, Field Museum of Natural History (1894)
The Field Museum (Wikipedia)

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Potthast's Saloon

Contributions to "Chicago History" are always welcome, and today's post comes courtesy of reader Tom Holmberg. If anyone has additional information about this notorious hole in the street, let me know, and I will forward it to Tom.


Potthast's saloon, unofficially nicknamed "The Sewer," had one entry at 2 West Van Buren, while another, known as the "hatchway" was directly under the elevated stairway on State through a hole cut (one article says "concealed by the elevated structure steps") in the sidewalk and "descends quietly and unobtrusively into the murk." The W. Van Buren entrance seemed to have been to the restaurant portion of the saloon and had been known for its "seafood cuisine" (i.e., oysters) the other was to the more disreputable bar, described as a "Plutonian dive." A 1920 Tribune article mentioned that Potthast's reportedly sold 10,000 barrels of beer a year, "the greatest of any saloon in Chicago."

In April 1911 the police "discovered" that Potthast had been operating his "subterranean resort" for six years. According to the Tribune "not more than one in a hundred bibulous explorers whose proud boast is that they have drank in every saloon in the downtown district has ever set foot in its secluded precincts or even knows that it is there." A newsboy's stand protected one side and on the curb side the supports of the elevated concealed the almost perpendicular entrance. The ceiling of the "wineroom" was low and the walls covered with photos from sporting magazines and theatrical posters. The customers were a "motley assemblage of men and women."

Fred Potthast reported, "I had that stairway cut down there six years ago. It has attracted little attention. A person can enter the stairway without attracting attention and can leave it the same way. I got a permit from the city for the construction and I also pay the city $800 a year for the use of the space beneath the sidewalk." (The City Council Proceedings for 1906 indicates that First Ward Alderman Bathhouse John "Coughlin presented an ordinance in favor of Fred Potthast for a coal hole opening in sidewalk," presumably the underground entrance to the saloon?) A later story revealed why a private entrance was desirable. A raid on Potthast's "basement place" in May 1915 resulted in the arrests of 12 women for "disorderly conduct" and the waiter for soliciting. According to the story, "A bomb explosion would not have caused greater excitement at these open resorts than the three words, 'Potthast is pinched.'"

In June 1911 the police arrested 13 gamblers shooting craps in the "subterranean saloon." A craps table was hidden beneath the waterpipes and between the supports for the buildings above. The tramp of pedestrians on State St. could be heard by the gamblers beneath the sidewalk.

In Feb. 1922 William Potthast, Fred Potthast's brother, was shot to death by his 19-year-old stepson, Arthur Kelchauser, after William severely beat up his wife while in a drunken rage. Mrs. Potthast reported to the police, "Moonshine whiskey was the cause of it all. My husband had been drinking ever since he entered the saloon business six years ago, but he became worse when prohibition began and he had to drink bad whiskey." Kelchauser was exonerated by a coroner's inquest two days later by reason of justifiable homicide.

When the bar legally reopened after the end of Prohibition Fred Potthast's son, also named Fred, was running the bar. According to a 1965 Tribune article the State St entrance to the tavern was still in use and a restaurant still occupied the Van Buren address.

Note: Tom also turned up a picture of Potthast's Restaurant from the 1940s in a post titled, "Under the El: 1940" on a great blog called, Shorpy.

I also found a little tid-bit. Potthast's saloon is mentioned in The Jack-Roller at Seventy: A Fifty Year Follow-up By Jack-Roller and Jon Snodgrass (1982). It is the follow-up to the famous 1930 book on juvenile delinquency, The Jack-Roller: A Delinquent Boy's Own Story by Clifford R. Shaw. I could only get a piece of the information (the complete book has not been digitized), but here is the fragment:

In 1912 when I was five years old, I experienced the first of my father's trips to Fred Potthast's saloon on Van Buren Street in the Loop. I sat on a stool and enjoyed the choice of an endless array of meet and cheeses and other viands. My father paid five cents for the lot, including his glass of beer. Truly a wonder bar! The dollar indeed went a long way in those days.

Photo Credit: Entrance to a saloon in the sidewalk at South State Street and Van Buren Street. DN-0058068, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society (1911)

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On Chicago: The River

I know nothing about the author, but I like this poem very much. I like its perspective and its strength. While the city boasts, "I Will," the river says, "I serve." Hope you enjoy it.

THE CHICAGO RIVER

They have bound me with bridges,
With tunnels burrowed under me!

Incessant, unresting,
All day and all night
Traffic roars over me,
And my uplook to the blessed sky
Is barred with girders, cables, stacks.
My banks, with docks close hedged,
Inexorably
Hem me in.
Vacantly,

Through smoke and floating smudge,
The Sun looks down upon me
Like the bleared eye of an old, old man.
No outcast of the gutters
Slinks by more soiled than I,
Polluted within and without!

But on my shackled breast I bear
Corn and iron, lumber and coal.
The little children of India eat of my wheat;
My lumber shelters the stricken of Messina;
Ten million wheels are set a-whirl with my coal;
The iron that burdens me forms a ready tool,
Pit for the hand of man.

What singer can sing of me one low-keyed song?
The Hudson, the Rhine, the Danube, the Nile,
All these, all have their poets,
As beautiful women their lovers.
Fringed with vineyards and stately gardens,
Castles and temples are their jewels,
And song is theirs by right!

But I?

Soiled am I and brackish

As sweat on the brow of a workman!

But the broad ships that weight my breast

Are like iron medals with these words wrought:

"FOR SERVICE."

Therein alone is my glory:

I serve; I serve.

--Charlton Lawrence Edholm
FROM: The Chicago Anthology: A Collection of Verse from the Work of Chicago Poets
By Charles Granger Blanden, Minna Mathison (1916)

Photo Credit: A 1906 Chicago Post Card showing the river mouth

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The Blackstone Hotel

Chicago unquestionably knows that it is great, and that its greatness is of the spirit. But the Chicagoan, debating in favor of his city, is unable to "get that over," and is therefore obliged to fall back upon two last, invariable defenses: the department store of Marshall Field.& Co. and the Blackstone Hotel.

The Blackstone he will tell you, with an eye lit by fanatical belief, is positively the finest hotel in the whole United States. Mention the Ritz, the Plaza, the St. Regis, the Biltmore, or any other hotel to him, and it makes no difference; the Blackstone is the best. As to Marshall Field's, he is no less positive: It is not merely the largest but also the very finest store in the whole world.

I have never stopped at any of those hotels with which the New Yorker would attempt to defeat the Blackstone. But I have stopped at the Blackstone, and it is undeniably a very good hotel. One of the most agreeable things about it is the air of willing service which one senses in its staff. It is an excellent manager who can instill into his servants that spirit which causes them to seem to be eternally on tiptoe—not for a tip but for a chance to serve. Further, the Blackstone occupies a position, with regard to the fashionable life of Chicago, which is not paralleled by any single hotel in New York. Socially it is preeminently the place.

From: Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street; with Pictorial Sidelights By Julian Street (1914)

Ah, The Blackstone. So much Chicago history in its hallowed halls. Reader Dagmara Mach contacted me recently about doing a piece on The Blackstone and even provided some nice background information. The Blackstone has been remodelled, and Chicago saw its grand re-opening in 2008 so it is kind of timely.(Actually, Dagmara works for the marketing firm that promotes the Marriott hotels, such as The Blackstone, but let's not be picky. I takes it where I can gets it when I'm rushed.

So, here is a bit of info on The Blackstone a la Ms. Mach:

The Blackstone Hotel opened in 1910 with a gala supper party honoring opera star Enrico Caruso.

"Considered the city's best example of a turn-of-the-century luxury hotel, The Blackstone also represents--both its exterior and interior--an excellent and rare example of the Modern French style of Beaux-Arts, (Classical Revival) architecture. Built by prominent hoteliers Tracy and John Drake, the Blackstone became known as the "Hotel of Presidents," serving as host to a dozen U.S. Presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. The Blackstone was the location of the famous "smoke-filled rooms" where Warren G. Harding was chosen as the compromise Republican nominee for President in June 1920. (The term, which has since become a political cliche, was coined by a reporter covering the convention.) The hotel was named for Timothy B. Blackstone, a prominent railroad executive and the founding president of the Union Stock Yards, whose mansion had stood on the site." [This material came from the Chicago Landmarks website.]

A tearful Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks stopped in after attending Rudolph Valentino's funeral in 1926, while Ethel Barrymore spent three days in seclusion at the Blackstone on her way to divorce proceedings in New York.

The Blackstone Hotel was the temporary home of the rich and famous, the politically connected and kings and princes. It was, and is again, renowned the world over. In the early years of the twentieth century there were few hotels that could compare. And, dear readers, I have recently discovered exactly why The Blackstone became the "seat of power" that it was in those early gilded years...



Recommended reading:

"Rooms with Memories," Chicago Magazine, April 2008

Blackstone Hotel (Wikipedia)

Renaissance Hotels-BLACKSTONE Grand Re-Opening in Chicago (2008), YouTube

The Blackstone Hotel

Photo Credits:
Blackstone Hotel postcard, Chicago History in Postcards (There are many more postcards of The Blackstone, including those showing the interior.)
Never-Split ad, The Architectural Record, 1910

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The Winter of the Deep Snow

The East Coast has begun to dig its way out of the massive snow storm that hit on Monday. Unfortunately, more snow is expected in some areas and freezing temperatures and life-threatening wind-chill is making life miserable. It's a really nasty way to end the winter - at least we hope it's the end.

Chicago knows a little something about winter snow storms. No, I'm not referring to the snow storm of 1967 when 23 inches of the white stuff dropped in a day and a half. That's small stuff. I'm talking about the Winter of the Deep Snow, the stuff of legends.

WINTER OF THE DEEP SNOW

The winter of 1830-31 was known as the "Winter of the Deep Snow." In a package of sheets containing memoranda of weather observations, now in possession of the Chicago Historical Society, this winter is thus described, with an added note which says that the snow was four feet deep on the level, and for three weeks the thermometer stood at fifteen degrees below zero. It is stated in Snyder's "Illinois History" that the winter was the severest that had then been experienced by the settlers of Illinois, and that it is memorable in the annals of the state, as the "winter of the deep snow."

During the preceding fall the weather had been unusually mild until Christmas Eve of the year 1830, when snow began falling and continued to fall at intervals for nine weeks, attaining a uniform depth of three feet and four inches. It was drifted in many places to a much greater depth, burying beneath it log cabins and the buildings of the settlers. Deer, wild turkeys, and flocks of prairie chickens invaded the corn fields, and other game like quails and rabbits perished in large numbers from cold and starvation. The deep snow and protracted cold caused much suffering and privation among many of the settlers, who were poorly prepared for such severe weather.

SUFFERINGS IN THE WINTER SEASON

The scantiness of shelter in the early times made very keen the suffering among the inhabitants whenever an unusually cold season occurred. Days and weeks of extreme cold may be experienced in these later days with but passing comment, and with comparatively little inconvenience; but there was scarcely a winter'in the early days, that a great number of settlers arriving during the preceding months had been able to provide themselves with adequate protection against the inclemencies of the weather.

When in 1818, the father of Abraham Lincoln removed from Kentucky to Indiana, he built a "half-faced camp" of unhewn logs, enclosed on three sides, the open front protected only by skins. Such a rude shelter was sometimes called a "pole-shed," described by Dennis Hanks, a cousin of Lincoln, as "just a shack of poles, roofed over, but left open on one side, no floor, no fireplace, not much better than a tree." In his recollections of Lincoln, old Dennis Hanks said, in recalling the events of his boyhood, "We wasn't much better off than Injuns, except that we took an interest in religion and politics." It may well be imagined what hardships were endured in the winter season under such conditions.

Death by freezing was a common occurrence, and a tragedy of this kind is recorded in the Chicago Democrat, in its issue dated January 28, 1834. The news item is as follows: "Mrs. Smith, wife of a Mr. Smith residing at Blue Island, who left this place on the second of January, which was the coldest day we have experienced this winter, for her home, when within a mile and a half of her dwelling, sank benumbed and exhausted, to rise no more. When found, she was dreadfully mangled and torn to pieces by wolves. She has left a husband and five children to mourn her untimely end." A few days later a party in pursuit of wolves encountered a couple of officers from the fort, who were just returning from a mission of charity in visiting the half-starved orphans of this poor woman who had been frozen to death on the prairie. "One by one," writes Hoffman, in his book, "A Winter in the West," "our whole party collected around to make inquiries about the poor children."

One of the chief causes of freezing to death was the prevalence of whisky drinking, which was the reigning vice of the time. Whisky was on sale at the cabins and houses of many of the early settlers, and often very little or nothing else in the way of provisions or supplies could be obtained at these so called "groceries." Thus in the winter season many men of drinking habits would walk long distances to visit such places scattered along the country roads near Chicago. The result was that many persons came to their deaths by exposure to the cold while in an intoxicated condition. It was related by Mr. Benjamin F. Hill, an early settler of Gross Point, a dozen miles north of Chicago, that he recalled twenty-seven deaths from freezing during the early years of his residence there in the "thirties" and "forties." These mostly occurred among the transient residents,—discharged soldiers, lake sailors out of employment between seasons, and hired men. "Freezing to death," said Mr. Hill, "was more common than any other form of fatality."

From:
Chicago: Its History and Its Builders By Josiah Seymour Currey (1918)

Recommended reading:

The Deep Snow: Winter of 1830-31 has legends that Chicago's records fail to shake

Publication By Illinois State Historical Society, "The Winter of the Deep Snow," page 47. (There is a really great account of the storm. Worth reading.)

Photo Credit:
Keith Sheridan, Inc., "Work Relief (Chicago Snowstorm)" - 1934, Woodcut by Charles Turzak (1899-1986)

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The Cost of Living in 1900

The Pen and Spindle has a terrific post today and I just had to share. Actually, they have terrific posts everyday, but if I listed them I wouldn't be writing anything of my own, and you would just read their blog and not Chicago History, and I would cease to exist. Can't have that; no, no, no. But, I digress. Check out "What You Could Buy for $50 in 1900." You'll laugh...and then maybe cry. (I think I need to do this for Chicago. Suggestions of a year?)

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