In the late 1800s, part of what became Lake Bluff was a rural hot spot for lectures, cultural activities and artists. The Lake Bluff History Museum will explore that history by leading a walking tour on Sunday, Oct. 4 entitled Camp Meetings, Chautauquas, Artists and Anarchists.
Area Methodists formed the Lake Bluff Camp Association in 1875 and bought 100 acres in what later became east Lake Bluff, said Pam Russell, who volunteers on the board of directors at the Lake Bluff History Museum. The first camp meeting was held in 1876.
“In the late 1800s, there was a middle class forming and people who had leisure time,” Russell said. “There would be a program on a particular topic, lectures and cultural activities.” The ‘Chautauqua’ adult education assembly movement’s name was coined after the Iroquois name for a lake in New York state where the movement began.
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She adds, “Lake Bluff was ideal. The Chicago Northwestern train line came through.”
“By 1877 it was full blown,” said Kathy O’Hara, founder and historian of the museum. “We had 30-something hotels including the Hotel Irving which was a grand hotel with tennis courts and a ballroom. You could stay for a week or the summer. We had thousands who came up during the summer, maybe 5,000.”
Attendees could engage in religious, recreational, educational and physical activities, O’Hara said.
“Those attending the Camp Meeting attended lectures, seminars, concerts, and other presentations held in the Tabernacle,” she said.” They took classes in subjects including German, French, Latin, Greek, microscopy, photography, hygiene, and oratory. Lectures, lantern shows on manners and customs in heathen lands, ‘sociables’ that promise[d] music, hand-shaking and acquaintance making,” Russell e-mailed.
Lake Bluff also turned into a rallying point for the Temperance Movement.
“There were all these small societies who thought if you got rid of booze, you got rid of sin,” O’Hara said. “In the summers of 1881 and 1882, all these various leaders met in Lake Bluff and formed the National Prohibition Party, which led to the 18th amendment.”
Among them was “Lemonade Lucy” Hayes, wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes.
“She was called Lemonade Lucy because that’s all she would serve at the White House,” O’Hara said. “Her husband would stay in Lake Forest because he could drink and smoke cigars.”
Others notables who attended were Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross and architect Louis Sullivan, who built a small hotel for working women from Chicago to visit, O’Hara said.
There was also the anarchist Emma Goldman who visited in the early 1900s. Goldman championed women’s equality, free love, workers rights, free universal education regardless of gender or race and anarchism according to the website PBS.org.
“There were many independent thinkers and avant garde people visiting,” Russell said. “Lake Bluff just attracted a diverse mix of people.”
In 1895 Lake Bluff incorporated and took over municipal duties such as street maintenance from the Camp Association.
“You have a reversion back to a small town setting,” O’Hara said. The Chautauqua movement shrunk in the early 1900s and eventually died out in Lake Bluff.
The walking tours leave every 15 minutes from 1 to 1:45 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 4. The tours start at Union Church, 525 E. Prospect Ave. Tickets are $10 and can be bought online at www.lakebluffhistory.org or in the museum. For more information, e-mail [email protected] or call (847) 482-1571
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