As the City of Chicago prepares to observe the 150th anniversary of its incorporation on March 4, Tempo offers a taste of ”Hands On Chicago,” an encyclopedic history of the city by Kenan Heise, a Tribune reporter, and Mark Frazel, a writer and literary agent. The book catalogues great and infamous moments and people in Chicago`s history. Here are some of the lesser-known ones.
`ABATTOIR BY THE LAKE`
”Abattoir by the Lake” was a name for Chicago coined by writer H. L. Mencken, employing the French word for slaughterhouse. Far from intending to be derogatory, Mencken saluted the city that he also called ”the literary capital of America.” The acknowledged genius of the American language described the city in a 1917 baiduhai Magazine article: ”In Chicago, there is the mysterious something that makes for individuality, personality and charm. In Chicago, a spirit broods upon the face of the waters. Find a writer who is indubitably an American in every pulse-beat, who has something new and peculiarly American to say and who says it in an unmistakably American way and nine times out of ten you will find that he has some sort of connection with the gargantuan and inordinate abattoir by Lake Michigan–that he was bred there or passed through there in the days when he was young and tender . . . I give you Chicago. It is not London-and-Harvard. It is not Paris-and-buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib, and it is alive from snout to tail.”
ARCHER AVENUE
This street was called Archey Road by Finley Peter Dunne`s character Mr. Dooley. Archer Avenue is an artery across the heart of Chicago. It cuts southwest through the city and suburbs, parallel to the old Illinois and Michigan Canal where the Stevenson Expressway now runs. Among other things, it served as a personal highway to the farm of William B. Archer, a canal commissioner in the 1830s.
BALLOON FRAME
In the first half of the 19th Century, urban growth in America was generally a slow affair. Chicago, however, grew more quickly than any other city. . . . The city`s phenomenal physical growth may partially be attributed to a unique invention credited to Chicago builder George Washington Snow: the balloon frame. The simple log cabin was the most frequently constructed type of building in the ”West,” as Chicago was called. Although not difficult to erect, log cabins could not easily be adapted for many uses. Buildings, whether for commercial or residential use, often took months and years to construct. In 1833, builder Augustine Taylor erected St. Mary Catholic Church at Lake and State streets with a revolutionary form of construction–the balloon frame. This style became known as Chicago construction. Siegfried Giedion defined it as a replacement ”of thin plates and studs–running the entire height of the building and held together only by nails–for the ancient and expensive method of construction with mortised and tenoned joints.” With enough lumber and nails, which Chicago had in abundance, a balloon frame building could go up in a week.
BUBBLY CREEK
Before World War I, when the stockyards were at their busiest, the herculean task of carrying away slaughterhouse sewage was borne by a small branch of the Chicago River. Known as Bubbly Creek, this waterway percolated, fermented and stank. When a Tribune reporter tried to row across in 1915, a six-foot bubble arose, enveloping the boat. Later, ”Duchess of Bubbly Creek” Mary MacDowell succeeded in rowing across. She proved it navigable and, therefore, eligible for federal cleanup funds. Meat packer Gustavus Swift often visited Bubbly Creek to make sure no usable slaughterhouse by-products were being wasted. ”The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes Bubbly Creek: ”The grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its depth. Bubbles of carbonic acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava.” Today the creek is truncated, hard to find and has lost its stink, but is still known as Bubbly Creek. It is now a mile and a half long, running into the South Branch of the Chicago River, just east of Ashland Avenue.
CERES
The 6-ton, 31-foot 6-inch aluminum statue of Ceres, Roman goddess of grain, stands proudly at the top of the Board of Trade Building at 141 W. Jackson Blvd. at the south end of LaSalle Street. Sculptor John H. Stoors designed Ceres. The statue was erected in 1930. Ceres originally looked down on the Loop, but in 1930, it began to be surrounded by buildings that tower over it.
CLOUT
Clout, perhaps the most unusual term that Chicago has contributed to modern political discourse, describes a curious concept. Under Mayor Daley
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(1955 to 1976), and under many mayors before and a couple after him, political authority in Chicago–the power to get things done–was distributed in the way a corporation`s shares are. Some say that one share meant a vote, a block of shares meant power and a majority of shares meant control. In political terms, this power–no matter what the amount–was transferable. A precinct captain had one share. He could obtain garbage cans for his neighbors, get a building inspected, streetlight repaired, or gain entree to his ward committeeman to get a traffic ticket ”taken care of.” A ward committeeman or alderman had control of a certain number of patronage jobs to be doled out to allies (five laborer jobs equaled a judgeship), preferential treatment in getting potholes filled or curbs fixed, and a voice to support his side in community disputes. An alderman such as Thomas Keane (the city council floor leader later convicted of bribery), could help decide who received lucrative city contracts and who was appointed assistant department head. The mayor oversaw the distribution of this power and had the final word on its use. These shares of power–small or large–were informally but everywhere known in Chicago as clout. By investing in or supporting the Democratic organization–through position, contributions or in certain outside roles such religious leaders, newspaper editors or ethnic leaders–one accumulated this invisible but very real clout. In Chicago, clout meant the ability to get things taken care of, often the little things. It was a well-run, albeit feudal, political system.
EASTLAND
On July 24, 1915, the passenger vessel Eastland turned over in the Chicago River at the foot of Clark Street. Its crew, by emptying ballast tanks to allow more people on board, had unbalanced the ship. When many passengers crowded one side to watch a passing ship, the Eastland capsized. Police and volunteers formed a human chain to rescue those on board, but 835–including 22 whole families–perished, most trapped below deck. Damage lawsuits dragged on for two decades until the Circuit Court of Appeals threw the last case out, contending blame could not be affixed.
EVERLEIGH CLUB
On Feb. 1, 1900, Minna and Ada Everleigh (an alias that came from their grandmother`s phrase ”everly yours”) opened the world`s most opulent brothel at 2131-33 S. Dearborn St. in Chicago`s red-light Levee District. In the words of reporter Jack Lait, ”Minna and Ada Everleigh were to pleasure what Christ was to Christianity.” The building was a 3-story, 50-room brownstone that the Everleigh sisters spent $200,000 remodeling. Annual operating expenses were $50,000 to $75,000, but profits have been estimated at $150,000 a year. The Everleigh Club had 20 gold-plated spittoons and 6 gilded pianos. The rooms, decorated in various motifs, were called Moorish, Gold, Silver, Copper, Red, Green, Oriental, Egyptian and Chinese. Two mahogany staircases were flanked by statues of Greek goddesses and potted palms. Minna told her girls, ”You have the whole night before you and one $50 client is more desirable than five $10 ones. Less wear and tear. You will thank me in later years.” After he saw an advertising brochure depicting the brothel in 30 photographs, Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. closed the Everleigh Club on Oct. 25, 1911. The Everleigh sisters took their wealth and retired to New York, spending the rest of their lives anonymously. Minna died at age 70 in 1948. Ada moved to Virginia, where she died at age 94 in 1970. The building at 2131-33 Dearborn was torn down in 1933.
FERRIS WHEEL
For the 1893 World`s Columbian Exposition, George W. Ferris constructed the world`s first Ferris Wheel in Jackson Park. Although not finished at the opening, it eventually became the greatest attraction and symbol of the fair. Each of its 36 cars held 60 people, for a total of 2,160 passengers. After the fair, it was taken down and moved to Broadway near Clark Street and Diversey AVenue. Later the wheel was rebuilt in St. Louis for the world`s fair of 1904. Afterwards, its metal was used in the construction of several bridges.
1ST WARD BALL
Around the turn of the century, the 1st Ward included the Loop and the red-light district known as the Levee to the south. It was the fiefdom of two staunch Democratic aldermen, ”Bathhouse” John Coughlin and Michael ”Hinky Dink” Kenna. They derived their political philosophy from their mentor, U.S. Rep. Martin B. Madden, who counseled them: ”Stick to the small stuff.”
Nothing symbolized their power better than the annual, raucous 1st Ward Ball they alternately sponsored at the Coliseum at Christmas. Tickets cost 50 cents. Every Levee denizen was expected to sell tickets, enriching the aldermen`s coffers annually to the tune of $50,000. The balls were noisy, costumed occasions where liquor laws were suspended and the libertine spirit held sway. Zealous reformers such as Arthur Farwell and the Rev. E. A. Bell finally convinced Mayor Fred A. Busse to close the affair down.
GRACELAND CEMETERY
At Irving Park Road and Clark Street, Graceland Cemetery offers a cornucopia of Chicago history, legend, architecture and sculpture. If–rather, when–you visit Graceland, take along a good book on Chicago or pick up a free map at the main building. Look up the graves of famous Chicagoans, including four generations of the Marshall Field family. John Peter Altgeld, called by Vachel Lindsay, ”The Eagle Forgotten,” also lies here. John Kinzie, survivor of the Fort Dearborn Massacre, and more than 40 of his descendents are buried here. Daniel Burnham, co-author of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, and his wife are beneath the island in the cemetery`s Lake Willomere. Society leaders Bertha and Potter Palmer lie under a white, Greek-columned, Victorian exedra visible from the nearby Howard ”L” line. World Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson was in an unmarked grave until performers in the play about him, ”The Great White Hope” contributed to purchase a stone marker. The monuments of Graceland as much as its illustrious roster are the source of its national fame. A stone baseball marks the grave of William A. Hulbert, founder of the National League. Architect Louis Sullivan has a simple geometric pattern on his tombstone. Lorado Taft executed a superb sculpture entitled ”Death,” an imposing, shrouded black marble figure over the burial place of the Graves family. In 1890 Sullivan designed the Getty Tomb that Frank Lloyd Wright called ”a requiem in architecture.” The impregnable grave of sleeping-car developer George Pullman gives no impression that he was buried by his fearful family under tons of cement and railroad track to prevent any disgruntled Pullman employees from stealing the body.