Newsletters 1991
April, 1991 Volume 13 Number 1
Shaking the Family Tree
by Carol Bradford
It all started, as these things often do, at a funeral, with people wondering why the family only gets together when someone dies.
For our family, it was at the funeral of my father-in-law, Jesse Bradford, Sr., in July, 1988. And so the first Bradford reunion was held in Springfield, Illinois, in July, 1989.
Being only an in-law and expecting to meet many relatives who were previously unknown to me, I brought along notebook and pen for recording the family genealogy. It started with the "eldest child of the eldest child," who gave me all the names and dates she could remem ber. As the afternoon progressed everyone got into the spirit of the thing and children were corning to me asking if their names were in the notebook. One 12 year-old boy showed himself to be the record keeper for the next generation, for he knew the full name and birth date of every one in his family.
It wasn't until the second reunion, in July, 1990, that I began to think about searching back for prior generations. Present at that gathering were two of the three surviving offspring of George and Amelia (King) Bradford, the parents of my father-in-law. This aunt and uncle were able to give the names of some of their parents' siblings and additional birth dates. Armed with this information, I began my search at the local office of the National Archives. I found that searching the census records takes mostly time and patience, and sometimes a little luck comes in to enable you to find more than you had expected.
The Chicago Regional Office of the National Archives is located near Ford City Shopping Center at 7358 South Pulaski. Be sure to call ahead (phone 581-7816) to reserve a space at a microfilm machine, as viewing is by appointment only. It is helpful to take a few 1ninutes on arrival at the viewing room to familiarize yourself with its organization and the operation of the equipment. I found the staff very willing to assist me in getting started and to answer questions.
The viewing room is lined with cabinets containing the thousands of rolls of ce,nsus information in microfilm. In the center of the room are several rows of microfilm machines, about 30 in all. There are also machines to copy onto print the microfilm records. The most recent indexed census is 1910. But it is only complete for about half the states. The 1900 census is indexed for all states and contains the most complete information, including month and year of birth for each person listed, and relationship to head of household. The 1890 census was almost completely destroyed by fue, The index system for 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910 is called "Soundex" and is organized on a numerical code based on the sound of consonants in the name. One must know only the state of residence and name of head of the household. The Soundex listing then tells in which county, Enumeration District, sheet, and line on which the household is listed in the actual census records. Notebooks give the number of the roll of microfilm for each county.
There are books of printed indexes for some
of the states and censuses not on the Soundex system. There are also several volumes of indexes of names on immigration records, indicating sources such as passenger lists and other records dating to the earliest years of colonial settlement.
With the use of Soundex, I quickly found the George Bradford household listing for both 1910 and 1900. It was on the latter list that I got a bit of luck to help me along. Next to the George Bradford listing on the county censµs, was the name of Anderson King, and his wife, America. We had no names for any siblings of Amelia King Bradford, but since these two were adjacent on a geographical list, I guessed that Andserson might be Amelia's brother.
From there, I went to the Soundex for 1880.
With the names of George•s siblings that I already knew, including one sister with an unusual name, it took just time and patience to search the list of all the Bradfords in Missis sippi to find the household of Stephen and Hannah Bradford. It included enough of the children we already knew to give positive assurance that these were indeed the ancestors I was seeking.
Then I went to the Soundex for the name King and very quickly found the family of Anderson King, Sr., with his wife, Ellen , and children Fannie, Anderson, Amelia, and Amanda. The dates for Amelia's birth coincided with those we already knew and provided a cross-check to assure that this was the right family.
So now, I had traced this African-Americanfamily back to the generation born before emancipation. first time in the 1870 census, the first in which all persons were listed equitably as "free inhabitants." Prior to that census, there was a supplemental listing of slaves, by state and name of owner. No names were given for slaves, only age and sex.
A word of advice to anyone undertaking a search in the census: these old records are written by hand, some more legibly than others. There is great variance in spelling of names, so one must be alert to s,earch for closely related names. For example, Amelia King was listed variously as "Melia" and "Cornelia".
Your search will be easier if it involves ancestors in rural or sparsely populated areas. It was not so time-consuming for me to go through a geographical list for a rural county when it was not indexed. Anyone searching in Cook County, Illinois, however, might be deterred without an index. Once again, luck was with me.And a word of caution: genealogy is un ending. The more you know, the more you want to know, so you may get hooked! Maybe I'll see you at the archives some day!
1991 Cornell Award Winners
by Mary C. Lewis
A multifaceted range of commendations - embracing the arts, recreation, business development, and architecture - was featured when the Hyde Park Historical Society announced its latest winners of the Paul Cornell Award at the society's annual meeting in February. Five awards were presented for outstanding individual achievement related to restoration in Hytle Park.
The recipients• varied accomplishments reflect the neighborhood's continuing vitality. Thanks to Nancy Campbell Hays' efforts, Hyde Parkers can enjoy the benefits of her many photographs and her tireless voice on behalf of open parkland. Another favorite pastime of many, eating out, was the focus of two other winners, Walter Arnold and Hans Morsbach. Their design and use of sculptured stone reliefs which now grace the entrance facade of the relocated Medici Restaurant on 57th Street makes this location a whimsical combination of the past and present.
Since business development has skyrocketed, the issue of how to preserve Hyde Park's unique historical flavor has deserved our attention. Balancing business development while projecting an image of graceful, scrupulous restoration requires leadership of a special sort and award winner Timothy Goodsell, president of Hyde Park Bank was duly recognized for tackling the challenge. His efforts resulted in the removal of projected signage and careful restoration of the street level facade at 53rd and Lake Park Avenue.
Hyde Park's bounty of fascinating residences was also represented. The award winning couple, Kitty and Jim Mann, and the restoration of their 1800's shingle style house on Harper Avenue provides a model approach: lovingly preserved exteriors, a well-blended expansion, and distinctive interior designs. All in all, the awards committee spotlighted the best of Hyde Park!
The HPHS Annual Meeting
by Margo Criscuola
The Annual Meeting, held February 9, at the Quadrangle Club, was, as John McDermott, Master of Ceremonies, stated, a "celebration of what we love about a special community, rich in history, rich in people, rich in problems," and even having "its own foreign policy." More than 120 members gathered to greet old and new friends, and discuss the past and recent events over a wine bar and a festive dinner - no small part of the mission of the Historical Society.
Then for the business of the evening. Zeus Preckwinkle, outgoing president, recounted with some pride the full schedule of exhibits and talks which enriched the past year, and thanked the members who made possible our increased contribution to the community. He especially thanked Anne Stevens for her taste, skill, and hard work in organizing the meeting.
Zeus also announced the winners of our contest to identify some of Nancy Campbell Hays' photos of changing Hyde Park: Alta Blakely and Norah and Bill Erickson. Norah explained her accomplishment modestly -
"it's just living here all those years." Perhaps a lively interest in the community played a part, too.
Bert Benade, chair of the nominating committee, then led us through an exercise in "guided democracy" that resulted in the election of a slate of officers and board members for next year, with Carol Bradford as president, and new members Julius Williams and Kevin Shalla.
Our past reviewed and our future secured, it was time to make the annual Paul Cornell awards. The Awards Committee, composed of Ed Campbell, chair, with Alta Blakely and Devereux Bowly, named the following recipients:
Nancy Campbell Hays, perennial photographer of the Hyde Park scene and zealous advocate for the preservation of community parks.
Tim Goodsell, President of Hyde Park Bank, for the scrupulous restoration of the street level facade of the Bank building, 1525 East 53rd Street.
Kitty and Jim Mann, whose restoration of
their 1880's residence on Harper Avenue faithfully preserves the original Shingle Style in a subtle expansion, while creating interiors of eclectic distinction.
Hans Morsbach and Walter Arnold, for the relocation of the Medici Restaurant on 57th Street behind a "delightful entrance facade of whimsical historicism," which "juxtaposes the Medieval and the Modem with comeliness and wit." Morsbach and Arnold recognized the contractor Bruce Johnstone for his role in the success of the project; and Arnold recounted what a pleasure it was to "give a few gargoyles back to Hyde Park," thanking the Eriksons for the prize he won years ago as an art student in the neighborhood.
Ed Campbell accompanied the awards with slides showing the awardees' accomplish ments.
The grand finale of the evening was "Milestones and Monuments," a photo essay on Hyde Park history, by Ed Campbell. This slide presentation was originally designed as an introduction to Hyde Park, but so thorough was it in exploring all the aspects of the neighbor hood, social, historical, and architectural, that even dedicated long-term society members found they learned something new, as well as enjoying memorable views of fatniliar sights.
And now, Happy New Year, Historical Society!
Hyde Park: A History in Sculpture An Excerpt From the Prize Winning History Fair Project
by Margaret Gruen, March 1990 St. Thomas the Apostle School
FamousMen
Famous people are one of the most common subjects for sculpture. Hyde Park contains relatively few, and the ones that it has are all figures of men (no women) in history. The sculptures of famous men in Hyde Park tend to be placed away from the center of Hyde Park. Two are on the Midway and the other two are even further. Two of the four men in the sculptures are known for their intellectual accomplishments.
Several of the sculptures in Hyde Park commemorate famous people in history or in the neighborhood's development. The fountain in Drexel Square in the oldest of Hyde Park's sculptures. It was erected in 1882 by Henry Manger in honor of Francis Martin Drexel, who, although he never set foot in Chicago, owned all of the land between 47th and 51st Streets. He gave some of his land to the city to be used as a road, on the condition that the boulevard bear his name. After his death, his two sons wrote to the city and commissioned a statue to be built in remembrance of their father. Drexel stands proudly above the fountain, looking at all the land that he once owned.
The 40-foot tall Thomas Garrigue Masaryk Memorial stands at the far east end of the Midway directly opposite Lorado Taft's "Fountain of Time." Designed by Albin Polasek, this sculpture was cast in 1949 and dedicated on May 29, 1955. The sculpture is of Saint Wenceslaus who, as the legend goes, led a band of knights who slept under Blanik mountains in the center of Bohemia waiting for the opportunity to deliver their people from oppression. Thomas Garriguc Masaryk (1850.. 1937) was Czechoslovakia's first president, and the sculpture is there to symbolize his ideas of freedom, democracy, and humanity. The location of this sculpture so close to the University is fitting as Garrigue worked on the faculty there in 1902.
A secluded statue of Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing stands in Washington Park. It is a full sized bronze portrait of the German playwright, critic, and philosopher who is considered to be the father of modem German literature. The statue, by Albin Polsek, was completed in 1930 and faces the west so that it can receive most of a day's sunlight. The statue was funded by Henry L. Frank, who received a large inherit ance from his uncle Michael Reese and erected a hospital bearing his name.
A large statue of Carl von Linnaeus or Carl von Linne stands on the Midway directly in front of Harper Library. Carolus Linne was a Swedish botanist who devised the system for the scientific classification of plants and animals. The statue had originally stood in Fullerton Place but was reerected on the Midway and dedicated on April 19, 1976. For the Swedish-Americans in the city, the day was a holiday. The Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf came to rededicate and unveil the statue by Johan Dyfverrnan.
Correspondence
To The Hyde Park Historical Society:
I read.frequently about the Robie House, Frank Lloyd Wright's classic prairie house, in various publications, and I am always reminded of the Wilbers who used to live there. We lived at 5748 Kimbark, next door to the Miehe/sons (he was the first, I believe, American winner of the Nobel Prize in physics). Behind our houses was an alley and the other side of the alley was the brick wall surrounding the back yard of the Robie House at 58th and Woodlawn. When I was given a tennis racket at the age of eight I started practicing by hitting balls in the alley against the wall as a backboard. At the time Mr. and Mrs. Wilber were living there. The Stevens boys (whose father later built Stevens Hotel) who lived around the corner on 58th street were my companions at the time, and we would often go into the Wilber 's yard and climb on the walls and porches. Mrs. Wilber was kind enough to invite us in occasionally and give us cookies in the kitchen. A very charming, generous lady. To us children, Mr. Wilber was aforbidding,fierce-looking man we seldom saw and to whom we never spoke.
About ten years later, early in the depression, I heard that they had moved out of the Robie House and I did not see or hear of them until the summer of 1934. I was a student at the University and a park ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park that summer and several summers thereafter. Mr. and Mrs.
Wilber drove into the Aspenglen Campground at the park where I lived alone in a little cabin and took care of the campground. I was 19.
They were pulling a house trailer behind their car, and they settled into one of the campsites and stayed all summer. As was true of many at that time, their financial circumstances had changed. They were both very proud people and never once complained about it. When they recognized me and we had several visits, I got to know them well. Mr. Wilber was ill with asthma and very weak. Mrs. Wilber was as active as ever. He was resentful of his illness as something which detracted from his dignity. I helped them a lot because in those days the campgrounds had no electricity and only a few faucet outlets for running water. This being a depression year, there were many who came to the campground in June and stayed until Labor Day. The Wilbers left in September and said they were going to Arizona. They left me with many pleasant memories of our conversations and of earlier days in Chicago. I never saw them again. Seeing Robie House when I visit Hyde Park brings all this back to me, and I am glad that it is now in the good hands of the University Alumni Association. -Sam Hair 1522 Stanford Pl. Charlotte North Carolina
Ed.Note We thank Mr. Hair for writing. How his boyhood memories bring to life the bricks and morter of Robie House! We are always delighted to hear from you, dear readers. Please write and share your memories with us.
Correction: In the September 1990 article "Hyde Park Park Art" we named Charles ("Carl") Dornbusch as "architect and also planner of Harper Court." A caller informed us that John Black was the architect for Harper Court. A plaque on a kiosk in Harper Court confirms that fact.
Fifteen Schools Mark GOINGS - ON:
HPHS Fifteenth :Anniversary
To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of its
founding, the Society sent to the fifteen schools
in the Hyde Park community copies of two books
dear to the heart of Hyde Park citizens:
Leon Despres 5th Ward Alderman, 1955 to 1975
Sunday, April 14, 1991, 2-4 p.m. *
McGiffertHall, 5751 South Woodlawn
Hyde Park Houses, that wonderful collection of photos and information about the present community as well as a concise and quite
thorough history of the past, by the late Jean Block, historian and founding member of the Society
with Zeus Preckwinkle & Julius Williams
Hyde Park's Harvard Connection: Harvard School - 125 Years of Excellence
Sunday,April21,1991,2-4p.m.
Harvard School, 4731 South Ellis
The Chicago World's Fair of 1893, A Photographic Record, a collection of photos and descriptions of that great event. We hope these books will encourage our local
young scholars to continue their study of our community history.
A Tour of Hyde Park Sculpture with Margaret Gruen, History Fair Prize Winner in early summer - see page 4
Volume 13 Number 2 and 3, July 1991
Eighty Years Around Hyde Park - What's Past Is Prologue
Excerpts from a talk by Leon M. Despres
before the Hyde Park Historical Society on April 14, 1991 Part One:
... Well, you asked me to talk about Hyde Park in the last eighty years, and it happens that this month, April, is exactly the 80th anniversary of my arrival in Hyde Park, of my first visit to Hyde Park. My family lived at 4127 Michigan Avenue, and they rented the first apartment at 5488 Everett Avenue. I remember coming one Sunday in April to see it and I was very depressed because the work hadn't been finished in the apartment. They took me to the room that they said would be the room I would occupy, and there were sawhorses in there and lumber. I did not see how I could play or sleep in such disarray. That was my first visit to Hyde Park. It was April 1911 and this is April 1991 so I can truthfully talk about my eighty years in Hyde Park.
Hyde Park started as a residential area in 1856 and is now 135 years old. I've
lived here 80 years. I have lived through
59% of the total life of Hyde Park.
Hyde Park has been a wonderful community to live in. I feel privileged and fortunate that my family decided to rent the apartment at 5488 Everett. Hyde Park is a community with exceptional vitality, exceptional creativity, independence, a strong sense of identity, and a remarkable agglomeration of shared values. It's a community that has been able to respond to crises over the years, and could do so again. At the moment there isn't a visible
crisis in Hyde Park but there will be and Hyde Park will respond to the crisis again. I think there are two stable continuing factors in Hyde Park that you have to think about. There's the enormous value of Hyde Park's geography and the presence of the University of Chicago.
The University's presence provides a continuing group of people who are attracted here because of the University. They work there, they teach there, they study there, or they just come to the community because the University is there and it provides a leavening and interest and support that's extremely valuable to the community. Those two factors have continued during all eighty years.
There have been a lot of changes. Some of them are changes that have occurred in other communities as well. They're not peculiar to Hyde Park, but they have influenced Hyde Park, while some changes are peculiar to Hyde Park.
Let's talk about the geography. When I moved here at the age of three, Everett Avenue was the easternmost street, and there was nothing, no structure except a small shanty, between the apartments on the west side of Everett Avenue and Lake Michigan. In the morning when I looked out through the sun porch windows, I could see the sun rising over the lake. I remember and I see it still overlooking the lake, but now on Stony Island Avenue from the tenth floor of Vista Homes. There were lots of empty lots in Hyde Park then, and across the street from 5488 Everett in the empty lot was a small shanty occupied by an old fisherman, Captain Petersen. He and his family lived there. He fished. There was still commer cial whitefish-fishing in Lake Michigan, and in the winter he would have his commercial fisherman friends pull their boats up and park them in that empty lot.
There were houses and apartments in Hyde Park, but until the 1920's I can't remember any high rise apartments (except the late famous Beatrice and Harcourt apartments at 57th and Dorchester). The first one that I remember is 5490 South Shore Drive which was built about 1920. It was very exciting to see this luxury, high rise apartment building being built. At about the same time, two hotels were built, the Cooper Carlton and the Sisson, now called the Del Prado and the Hampshire House. As the years went on, the topography of Hyde Park changed because many high rises were built. I think they have affected the community in a number of ways. To some extent they have crowded the community, but to some extent they also provide congenial and pleasant places to live. And to the extent that they're cooperatives and condominiums, they have created a stable ownership too.
The empty lots used to be good places to play, but they are all gone. In a small way they were replaced during urban renewal by the creation of valuable open spaces. And there was always Jackson Park. The Park is a continuing asset, but it has been greatly diminished since my childhood. It's been diminished by the construction of motorized highways through the Park, along the lake front. In my childhood, occasionally you would be taken for a drive along the lake front just to have a spin along the lake. I can't imagine people driving now just for the fun of the drive along the lake, but it happened then. There was horseback riding which is gone, there were row boats you could use, outstanding ice-skating, and the Midway too. There was a refec tory in the German Building, a castle on the Rhine left over from the World's Fair. That's gone. There was a stunning rose garden south of the three Japanese temple buildings. They are gone. There were replicas of Columbus's boats in the lagoon. And of course there was lots more green space and lots less parking. Hyde Park has responded by creating the Jackson Park Council, by defending the parks, and by supporting Friends of the Parks. But it is a continuing problem. I think back with regret and nostalgia about the diminution of Jackson Park over the years.
In my childhood, horses were very important. A great change that has come over Hyde Park has been caused by the automobile. In the 1912-1913 school year, I attended kindergarten in the Chicago Beach Hotel, a three story, gracious building on Hyde Park Boulevard between Hyde Park (then East End Avenue) and Cornell. Every morning Mr. Brown drove his carriage to pick me up. He picked up five or six other children and drove us to the Chicago Beach Hotel. For many years, at least until I was 17 or 18, when people got off the J.C. at 53rd street in the evenings there was a coachman who solicited rides to drive people home.
That's the last carriage I remember in Hyde Park. The delivery wagons were nearly all drawn by horses. In the alleys there would always be grocery wagons. Every small grocery had a modest delivery wagon pulled by a horse. Coal was pulled by horses and delivered in the alleys.
There were at least five dairies, whose wagons came through the alleys daily. Ice was delivered by horse and wagon. The icemen came through the alleys with horses pulling the ice wagons and people would have signs out to show whether they wanted 25 or 50 or 75 or 100 pounds. And the iceman would chip the ice from the blocks, swing it over the pad on his left shoulder, and carry it upstairs. Then sometimes we would get on the wagon's back step and take a small piece of ice to suck on. The horse has disappeared, the personal street cleaners have disappeared, and the sparrow population has diminished.
Those are changes which I suppose are common to all communities, but they've radically changed the appearance and the face of Hyde Park. The alleys were lively places. We used to play in the alleys. They were filled with people coming through them all the time. Except for the coldest winter weather, peddlers of all sorts came through, men selling fruits and vegetables. They would buy fruits and vegetables at the wholesale market, put them in a basket, carry the basket on their shoulders and go from house to house. They must have produced fresh quality fruits and vegetables, because I know my mother bought from them and she wouldn't have bought from them unless they were good. Knife sharpeners came through ringing their bells. Old clothes buyers came through all the time shouting, "Old clothes to sell, Rags, old iron," and then there were street musicians of all kinds. Organ grinders with monkeys, hurdy-gurdy grinders who would just come and play in the back yards until they got a few coins. There were German bands, bands with two or three brass instruments who would come through. Singers would come through. The alleys were places of liveliness, all of which has disappeared. It disappeared with the horse and disappeared also with the cheapness of labor.
There really must have been a lot of cheap labor at that time. Many of the street musicians were Italian, recent Italians, recent Germans. The peddlers were recent Italians and Jewish immigrants. There just was plentiful labor working for very low returns. That's why if you bought at a small grocery store there was no problem about delivery because the grocer could easily hire a delivery boy or delivery man for not much money. We had three mail deliveries a day, that's hard to imagine.
The Hyde Park Post Office was at 55th and.Kimbark and the mail men would come out with their bags over their shoulders and take the street car free, as they can now, and you had three deliveries a day. Mail was delivered from downtown by white, enclosed postal street cars.
For general transportation, there were automobiles in my childhood, but the horse was still very important. We relied very heavily on street cars and especially on the Illinois Central. The Illinois Central was the great link between Hyde Park and downtown. It's hard to imagine that there were trains every ten minutes. A ten ride ticket when I began buying it regularly was a dollar ten and the IC was our prized means of transportation. We were thrilled in the 1920's when it was electrified. Until then, Hyde Park's air was filled with cinders from coal furnaces and especially from the stacks of the J.C. locomotives. I haven't had a coal cinder in my eye for 30 years. Going downtown by car was a problem. During the day it took at least forty-five minutes. In my childhood, there was no Outer Drive and a car had to wander along the boulevards. And so our community was more self-contained than now, more solidly oriented toward only the Loop, and very dependent on public transportation. Today, we still have excellent public transportation in the bus
On the occasion of the 125th Anniversary of The Harvard School, we are delighted to reprint these reflections on its earliest days by John J. Schobinger, Headmaster for many years. First printed in the school's yearbook, The Review, in 1925, this document will delight Chicago and Hyde Park history enthusiasts.
The Early Days of The Harvard School and My Connection With It
by John J. Schobinger
The history of cities, like that of states, has its epochs, outstanding dates which stand as landmarks from which events are dated. Our country reckons before and since the War of the Revolution; the world at large will for generations count before and since the Great War; Chicago's critical event was the Great Fire in 1871. Before the fire was the old Chicago which we of today can hardly imagine, when Michigan Avenue, as far north as Van Buren, was purely a resident street; when Congress Street was in the midst of a resident section; when Wabash Avenue was the fashionable street where the merchant princes lived. Even when I saw it, after '73, I admired the large, fine trees that shaded it to Twelfth Street, as far south as I walked. There is not one of them left.
The beginnings of the Harvard School reach back into the prehistoric time "before the fire." As far as I have been able to find, it was born in 1865. Its founder was Edward Stanley Waters, of Salem, Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard University, who named it in honor of his Alma Mater. He was a brother of Henry Waters, the foremost genealogist of America, who has done more than any other to establish the English connections of the early settlers and of "The Father of Our Country."
The first location of the school was at Congress Street, between Wabash and Michigan Avenues. It was scarcely established when the great fire came and wiped it out, scattering in every direction the families that had supported it. Mr.
Waters moved it west, to Sheldon Street, where it lived precariously for a year or two, and then to Sixteenth Street on the south side, where I knew it first. There was a row of narrow three-story brick buildings, three of them occupying a 50- foot lot. Mr. Waters had rented two of them, one being used for the school, the other for his living quarters. Three young bachelor business men shared his housekeeping expenses with him. I happened at the time to be foot-loose, as my engagement as tutor in a family had come to an end. Robert Collyer, a prominent Unitarian clergyman, with whom I had become acquainted, gave me an introduction to Mr. Waters, and it was my good fortune to become engaged by him for a few hours' science teaching for the remaining ten weeks of the school. By the end of that time, we had become well acquainted, and Mr. Waters proposed to me an engagement as a regular teacher for the following year.
Mr. Waters was a scholarly gentleman-I would underline both words-with extensive cultural interests, many more than he could make use of in his school. And the school was very small. There were just 19 boys when I joined it. Only two blocks away, on Eighteenth Street, was Mr. Babcock's School, and about that time Professor Allen, who had up to then been principal of Lake Forest Academy, opened on Twenty-second Street a school which soon became quite
large. I did not realize what this meant, but I think Mr. Waters did. He, no doubt, found it hard to make both ends meet. In addition to his school work, he gave lectures on Art to a club of ladies on Prairie and Calumet Avenues, whose, husbands were at the time the leading men in the Chicago business world. I need mention but the names of Marshall Field,
P. D. Armour, George Armour, Edson Keith, George Pullman, Sam Allerton, Charles H. Hamill, Wirt Dexter, W. B. Walker, J.M. Walker, John G. Shortall, Albert Sturges, W. G. Hibbard, Fernando Jones and others who are all well known to the older generation of Chicagoans. But the school did not grow. By the end of the year Mr. Waters got weary of the ceaseless struggle and, promising himself better returns from his real love as a dealer in objects of Art, agreed to sell me the school. This was in June, 1876.
I had been principal of a small high school in Switzerland for five years before coming here, and I had learned a good deal about keeping school. Had I known more about American business conditions, I might not have undertaken the venture with the alacrity I did. However, all the boys came back, and in two years, by new additions, the number grew to 35. Not that progress was easy. I gave up one of the two houses, lived on the first floor of the school, gave private lessons, worked night and day, cooked my own breakfast and lunch, and went out for supper. I bought 21 tickets for $5.C)O at a little restaurant that a man by the name of Philip Henrici had opened on State Street, south of Van Buren. His small beginnings prospered as mine have, and Henrici's of today, on Randolph Street, resembles his beginnings on South State Street about as the Harvard School of today resembles the school of 1876. The net income of that first year was just $360.00, so I was, like some illustrious followers in the great war, a dollar-a-day man.
The monotony of my daily fare was agreeably broken by the weekly invitation to Sunday breakfast by a kind neighbor, Mrs. Murry Nelson, whose New England codfish balls still stand in grateful remembrance.
In 1878, in anticipation of further increase, I gave up my Sixteenth Street quarters and rented, at a considerably higher rental, the house at 977 Indiana Avenue, later numbered 2101 Indiana Avenue. I found it very much out of repairs, in places that did not show at first sight, and the bills nearly broke me; but when once arranged, it proved very serviceable. The school was housed there until 1897, when the shift of population induced us to find new quarters. In the school year '79-'80, the number of boys reached 62.
In 1880, I formed a partnership with Mr. John C. Grant, a Yale man, who had been the principal assistant of Mr. Allen, of the Allen Academy, at Twenty-second Street. Mr. Grant was a fine, straight forward man, a good scholar, a strong disciplinarian, though with no apparent effort. He was somewhat stem, especially in his earlier years, but perfectly just and hence universally respected, and so absolutely straight and honorable that you might, with perfect safety, have left your interests in his keeping, even if there were a possibility of conflict with his own.
This perfect partnership lasted for 34 years between two men differing in origin, traditions, education and temperament, until Mr. Grant's death in 1914 dissolved it.
Meanwhile the school was growing. In 1881 we bought the building, in 1883 we enlarged it, added a third story and rearranged it internally, which made it very convenient for our purpose.
In 1890, we erected another building on the rear of the lot, which contained a gymnasium with shower baths below, and a kindergarten and primary department above.
But by the middle of the nineties, we felt that our neighborhood was rapidly changing. Business was encroaching, people were moving away. In 1897, we regretfully abandoned Indiana Avenue and rented a fine building at Forty-seventh Street and Lake Avenue that had been standing vacant for some time. After extensive (and expensive!) alterations, we moved into that beautiful building, and we should have been quite content to stay there, but realized, of course, that it was too expensive to purchase and that it must ultimately go into the market. While there, we absorbed first the Princeton-Yale School, and a little later the Cambridge School, then on Fiftieth and Lake Avenue. The Princeton-Yale School was then owned by Mr. Payson S. Wild, who became a member of our faculty for the next few years. He will address the graduating class at our commencement exercises in June.
But in 1906, the inevitable happened the building occupied by the Harvard School was sold, and we had to move.
There were not many choices open. After much search, we finally secured a lease again, unfortunately, a lease on precarious terms-of the building at 4651 Drexel Boulevard, where the late Forty-seventh Street Hospital now stands. It was limited in size, inadequate in construction, and seemed especially unsafe in case of fire, as it was, like other buildings we had previously occupied, entirely of good construction inside. But public understanding of the needs of better methods of building had grown, so that this building seemed worse than the others.
For that reason, and also because it was plain that in a neighborhood so rapidly building up, such a prominent comer called for a high-grade improvement, we had to come to the conclusion that the only way to secure the future of the school was to house it in a permanent home. In its fifty years of life, it had demonstrated its vitality; many of its fonner students were among the prominent citizens of Chicago, and there seemed to exist no reason why its services to the community should not continue indefinitely.
So, in 1915, after the first fright at the outbreak of the war had somewhat abated, I started the campaign for the organization of a building corporation that would put up a permanent home for the Harvard School. I first addressed myself to the former students of the Harvard School, many of whom are now prominent men of affairs. The response was surprising, the more so because none of these men had any present interest in the school. A special debt of gratitude is due them.
About half the stock subscriptions came from that source. Then I saw present patrons of the school whose sons would, for a time at least, profit from the better opportunities. The success among them was equally gratifying. By September, 1916, the architect, Mr. Charles H. Prindeville, had his plans completed; the building was begun, and on May 1, 1917, was occupied.
This is the only financial help the Harvard School has ever received, and this was not in the form of a gift, but of a loan, at low interest, to be sure, which is being repaid as fast as the income of the school will allow. There is no truth in the account which a Chicago paper gave last summer that the Harvard School had been founded by some rich men who wanted a school for their boys.
It would be invidious to discriminate between the good friends who have contributed to the success of the enterprise. But I can not close this chapter without naming, with grateful recognition, three men who for years, up to now, have ceaselessly, generously and gratuitously given their time and skill to the actual carrying on of the legal and administrative business of the building company and the school, which never could have accomplished otherwise what it did. They are Charles H. Hamill, Mr. James E. Greenebaum and Mr. Joseph E. Otis. Nor would it be just to close this account without grateful acknowledgment of the faithful service of a host of teachers who have done most of the work that has placed the Harvard School where it now stands. Mrs. Johnson took our Primary department when it had 30 boys; it now has 130, and a teacher for every grade. Mr. Ford, our second teacher as to seniority, has given his whole strength to the school, ever calling for more work. The faculty has grown from three in 1876 to twenty
t o in 1925.
What has occurred since May 1, 1917, is recent history, known to all. The most important event, I should say, is the association of Mr. Pence as principal with me of the Harvard School. His energy and faithfulness are full of promise for the further prosperity of the school lines. The Illinois Central is still good, but greatly diminished, and of course there's tremendous reliance on the Outer Drive and the automobile. I know someone who lives at 5490 South Shore Drive who tells me what a wonderful thing it is that he can get in his car and be in his office in the Prudential Building in twelve minutes.
That is remarkable. But Hyde Park is now tied to many reachable parts of the city, and that's had an enormous effect on Hyde Park shopping and its stores.
In my childhood, 55th street was a linear street of stores from Hyde Park Boulevard to Cottage Grove Avenue. Just a succession of stores without interruption on both sides of the street. The establish ments were more varied and numerous than a busy shopping mall, but the units were small and the shoppers were mostly pedestrians. There were businesses for which there is no longer room - a huge greenhouse (Metz's) off 55th Street on Harper; a dairy off 55th Street at Univer sity that turned raw milk into butter, cream and milk for delivery; candy and ice cream stores that made their product on the premises; grocery stores of all kinds from convenience to gourmet; fine butcher shops; kosher butcher shops; stores with crates of live chickens in front; dry goods stores; soda fountains; aromatic bakeries; luscious delicatessens; well-stocked toy stores; and near Lake Park Avenue, saloons with swinging doors. I remember the 1918 excitement of the first chain store
- an Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company store just west of Blackstone. The A&P has disappeared, but the supermart is here to stay, and the variety of a mile-long linear pedestrian street like 55th is now just nostalgia.
Correspondence
May 26, 1991
To: Editor:
Hyde Park Historical Society Newsletter
From: Sam Hair
1522 Stanford Place
Charlotte, NC 28207
You may be interested in this letter my mother wrote to my father in 1910...
A letter written by Florence Hair to her husband, September 29, 1910, describing the take-off of Brookins airplane flight from Washington Park, Chicago, to Springfield, Illinois:
1447 E. 52nd St.
Chicago, Ill. Sep. 29 - 1910
Dear Thomas:
While my washing is "on the soak" I'm going to tell you about seeing Brookins start off for Springfield this morning to win if possible the $10,000.00 the Record Herald offers for its aviation prize for the feat. For two days this daring fellow has attracted the most enthusiastic attention from hundreds of thousands who saw his trial flights in Grant Park. It will be interesting to know what estimate the Record Herald will make of the crowds that filled Washington Park this morning in the vicinity of the big meadow there.
Thomas, Lenore & I drove over about 8:50 after taking father to 42nd Street. Every person and vehicle seemed to be headed for the Park and the very air was
vibrant with expectation and awe.
The large meadow was kept clear by policemen, mounted, and a frame of human beings packed solid, a hundred feet deep, framed the entire open space. At the southwest corner of the meadow we could the frail aircraft. We drove near the
northwest corner of the meadow and got into the large car of Mrs. Houston with an excellent view of the field. Machines were thick everywhere. Finally the huge paddles began to revolve in trial revolu tions and the crowd began to hum like a bit of the machinery itself. Then the engine was started and the dainty ship with its one occupant, strapped and wired in so that he was a very part of it, made a running, lifting motion for an incredibly short distance, then rose directly up over the trees with astonishing grace and beauty. The loud noise the engine made seemed to be apart from that magnificent sight that was the most thrilling I ever saw in all my life. Brookins flew around the meadow about 200 feet high, going directly over our heads, then, slowly mounting higher and higher he sped away in the sunshine like a glistening gold dragonfly.
I can't tell you how affecting it is to see
it, with your own eyes. It is nothing to read about. You must see it. And the tremendous crowds and bands and the glorious sunshine all added to the occa sion. My one thought was to have you see it, too. I was glad little Tom was there, tho' he was engrossed in a door key! Shall we not enter this as "Red Letter Day" in his book? My whole mind is fixed on that aeroplane, speeding over the country this sunny morning. If he isn't afraid, what a marvelous ride for that fellow! It is 185 miles there and everything seemed to be propititious as he flew away. I'm sure that hundreds of thousands were unconsciously praying for his success. I hope we will hear this afternoon.
(Remainderofletterispersonal.)(signed)FlorenceCummingsHair
Editor's note:
Our special thanks to Mr. Hair. Imagine the thrill his mother must have felt - perhaps akin to what we felt when we watched men landing on the moon! And how beautifully she tells it!
Please send us your memories or yourremarkablehistorical documentsorphotographs. These precious bits ofhistorylovetobeshared
Fifteen Years on the Hyde Park Historical Society Board
Carol Brad/ord, cu"ent HPHS president, looks back on our fifteen years:
The first Historical Society meeting I attended was sometime in the winter of 1976-77. It was held at Hitchcock Hall and the program was a lecture on the Hitchcocks and the construction of that campus building. The only person there whom I knew was Ted Anderson, a fellow member of the United Church of Hyde Park, and at the time still owner of the hardware store at Kimbark Plaza. I signed
a sheet being passed around, indicating my interest in joining the society.
A few weeks later, I received a call, perhaps from Muriel Beadle who was president at the time, inviting me to join the Board of Directors. I recall being pleasantly surprised at the invitation, as everyone was new to me. My husband and I were relative newcomers to the area, having moved to our home at 51st and Woodlawn in 1971.
My first board meeting that spring was held at Robie House. Besides Ted and Muriel, the board members I recall from that time were Leon Despres, Al and Thelma Dahlberg, Jean Block, Betty Davey, Malcolm Collier, Dev Bowley, Clyde Watkins, and Michael and Cathleen Conzen.
One of the topics of discussion at that first meeting was a plan to produce an historical map of Hyde Park. Everyone was enthusiastic, and the hope was to have the map ready for sale by the next year's art fair. Little did we know what we were in for! Over the years, many of us did research on historic sites. We developed criteria for places to be included on the map. We hired a graduate student to do further research and verify data. Michael Conzen located a cartographer and graphic artist who could do the actual map preparation. Each year we would hope to "have it ready for sale at the next year's art fair." Bus alas! it was not to be. We were not sure enough that all our information was absolutely correct (a requirement emphasized by Jean Block), production complications arose, key people were no longer available to do certain tasks. It became a running joke at board meetings. I think it was some time during the mid '80's that the idea was officially laid to rest. Perhaps in the next century it will be resurrected!
As the Society grew, the Board began to seek a location for a headquarters. When we agreed upon the present site, Ted Anderson proposed a $100 charter membership drive as a way to raise funds for the necessary renovation. Ted was a natural for such a drive because he was such a persuasive salesman, and he knew almost everyone in Hyde Park who might be a potential donor. With his efforts, and those of others, we raised the $40,000 needed to tum our building from the decrepit eyesore it had been into a handsome structure of which the Society and community could be proud.
The grand opening festivities in October, 1980 included a parade down 53rd Street from the staging area at the Murray Lot over to 5529 South Lake Park. There were bands, cheerleaders, clowns, community organizations, floats, board members in period costumes, and local politicians. The fanfare and hoopla have not been surpassed to this day.
From then on, we met at our own building. But I, for one, had enjoyed the chance to meet in board members' homes. Otherwise, I might never have seen the interior of the Benjamin Marshall house at 49th and Ellis, owned at the time by our treasurer, Gary Husted; or the double house on Harper, owned by Al and Thelma Dahlberg, and Betty Davey's home just up the street. Others I enjoyed were the 50th Street rowhouse of the Conzens; the home of Tom and Georgene Pavalec on Cornell, decorated so festively for Christmas; and the homes of Clyde Watkins (a former president of the Society) and John and Theresa McDermott, both near 48th and Kimbark.
We all shared stories about the trials and joys of owning an older Hyde Park house.
The publication of Jean Block's book by that title was a source of pride for all of us. Our home didn't make it into the book, but not many months later, Jean called me excitedly. She had been at our home a few times, and reported that in the course of doing some further library research, she had come across a picture of the house in a May, 1914 issue of Inland Architect. It described the owner, one Alfred Lang, an architect who had designed it for his own family. She regretted that she couldn't take the bound volume out of the Center for Research Libraries. Well, we happened to have a fellow church member, Judy Sandstrom, who was a staff member there, and she assisted us in getting our own copies of that page. Jean also encouraged me to write a history of my family's farm in Turner County, South Dakota, which had been settled as a homestead by my great-grandfather, Paul Ysbrand, in 1874.
One of the things I prize about my association with the Society has been the friendships which have developed. Early on, Thelma Dahlberg and I discovered a common bond as natives of South Dakota. Bea Boehm also has relatives there. Betty Borst is a fellow social worker, with whom I've shared common interests. The list could go on and on, of talented, dedicated people who have served the Society over the years.
When I was asked to serve as president, I was a bit daunted when I realized that the other women who have been president were Muriel Beadle and Jean Block. What shoes to fill! I only hope that I can approach the standard they set.
A Book of Special Interest to Hyde Park Readers
Reviewed by Leon Despres
RIGHTEOUS PILGRIM - THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HAROLD L. ICKES,
1874 - 1952; by T. H. Watkins (Henry Holt, 1010 pp)
is an excellent biography of FDR's great Secretary of the Interior. Of special interest are the pages about his eighteen years in Hyde Park from 1893 to 1911.
Ickes came to Chicago from Altoona, Pennsylvania, to live with an uncle in Englewood, where he graduated from Englewood High School. In 1893 he entered the new University of Chicago and lived on campus. Being very poor, he ate one fifteen-cent meal a day in a tiny restaurant near Ellis and 56th, operated by
..Mother Ingram." "Fried ham was my
customary dish," he wrote, "because with the fried ham I could get all the bread and butter I wanted so managed to get along." In 1896 he fell in love with handsome
Anna Wilmarth, the richest girl on campus. After Anna went to Europe for a year, Ickes was invited to dinner at the Quadrangle Club by James Westfall Thompson, later a distinguished UC professor of mediaeval history (from whom I took two courses). Over a game of pool, Thompson told Ickes, "You have doubtless heard it reported that I am engaged to Miss Wilmarth. Well, I am." Ickes was crushed.
Ickes, then a reporter, lived in a fraternity house on campus, while Anna built a home (still standing) at 5747
Blackstone. Ickes was invited to live with the Thompsons, and he did so for years until Anna ousted Thompson for his indiscretions and fell in love with Ickes.
In 1903 Ickes, financed by Anna's mother, entered the University of Chicago Law School which had opened in 1902, and graduated cum laude in 1907. In 1904 he required a mastoid operation, refused to go to a hospital, and underwent a disas trous operation on a kitchen table in an upstairs room at 5747 Blackstone. In 1905 Ickes met another Hyde Parker, Charles A. Merriam, political scientist, with whom he had close political relations the rest of his life. In 1909 he helped Merriam's success ful campaign for alderman. In 1911 he managed Merriam's unsuccessful cam paign for mayor. (Many Hyde Parkers worked on son Bob Merriam's unsuccess ful campaign for mayor in 1955.)
In 1909 Anna divorced Thompson and in the summer of 1911 Ickes and Anna were married. They moved to a house in Evanston that Anna had built in 1910, and lived unhappily ever after. He should never have left Hyde Park!
Volume 13 Number 4 December, 1991
Eighty Years Around Hyde Park - What's Past Is Prologue
Excerpts from a talk by Leon M. Despres
before the Hyde Park Historical Society on April 14, 1991
Part Two:
In my childhood and early adolescence there were many Hyde Park meeting places. There were at least five motion picture theaters we depended on for entertainment. When there were political campaigns, there were meetings in hotel ballrooms, in theaters, in Shotwell Hall on 55th Street, in Rosalie Hall at 57th and Harper - a big meeting place - all of which have disappeared. Those meetings have given way to high tech. The radio became a substitute and after radio came television. Now video tapes provide much of the entertainment for which we used to depend on the motion picture theaters and meeting halls. Hyde Park is now much more a community of people tied to their homes that it was in most of the eighty years I lived in it.
We had drama groups in Hyde Park that functioned very well. It would be hard to imagine the Compass today or some of the other drama groups that originated in Hyde Park, because the places aren't here anymore. We have the excellent Court Theater, but not the half-dozen other little groups that appeared, flourished, waned, and reappeared.
Another influence which has altered Hyde Park is the impairment of security. In my childhood there were policemen on the beat. They walked the beat, and one got to know the policeman on the beat. He would walk around all day long and there would be someone around at night. There were police patrol cars, but no radio
phones. Now we have far more efficient general patrolling but we also have a general urban atmosphere of violence and crime. It's not peculiar to Hyde Park, but what it has done is to reduce and greatly alter the quality of night life in Hyde Park. In my childhood and well into my adulthood there was no thought of insecurity at night. And when insecurity came, there were some of us who thought, well, we have to show that it doesn't exist. Then, in 1967, I was shot at 55th and Dorchester. That feeling of insecurity represents an enormous change.
I think I'd like to mention the change in the churches. There were far more churches in my early days in Hyde Park. When I moved to Hyde Park there were no synagogues. There was a very small Jewish population in Hyde Park and no synagogues at all. There were lots of churches but many of them have disappeared. Then, starting in the 1920's synagogues came to Hyde Park, and many of them are gone. There's still an active, lively religions federation, the Hyde Park Interfaith Council, but there are only two synagogues and one of them is planning to leave.
One important aspect of the Hyde Park community during all these years was the relationship to the communities north and south. Woodlawn was a very important area for people who worked at the University. It was a great housing area for University personnel. And there was close contact with the communities to the South and to the North, between Hyde Park and Woodlawn, between Hyde Park and Kenwood and Oakland, and also between Hyde Park and the area west of Washington Park. Today, after eighty years, Hyde Park is a circumscribed community with limited personal relations with the north, south, and west.
Hyde Park was almost lily white. Fortunately a few African American families lived in a few locations, including the 5500-5600 Lake Park, and the 5300 Maryland blocks. Hyde Park had its poor, many of them living in the buildings over the stores on 55th Street, but they were white. The real estate interests kept the community white by inducing property owners to sign legally enforceable racial restrictive covenants. Fortunately, however, there were African American pupils in my classes in the Ray School and Hyde Park High School. Without them, I would not have had good childhood racial peer group experiences.
There were no computers in the Ray School, but there was a shower room and a bath attendant, to give the blessings of salubrity to bath-less Ray School children. For me, it was an adventure one afternoon a week to be excused from class at the Ray Branch (56-Stony Island) to go to the main building for a shower. My Ray School showers were the first showers in my life. 5488 Everett had splendid bathtubs, but shower equipment was not then standard.
One of the great things that happened during those eighty years was urban renewal - a remarkable occurrence. If you look at it in context over a period of eighty years, you have to say it's really astonishing. Neither before nor since has there been such an amazing surge of community feeling, and it lasted about a dozen years. We owe a great deal to the people who pushed it and put it into effect. It's an amazing example of community leadership. You can say that safely now, although for a long time all we could do was criticize urban renewal and talk about its shortcomings and the poor quality of some of the planning and the economic discrimination, but in reality it was a remarkable achievement.
You know, for three years from 1949 to 1952, urban renewal was not exactly urban renewal. It was the grass roots activity of the community responding to the Supreme Court decision outlawing racial restrictive covenants against African Americans. The Hyde Park Kenwood Community Conference took as its standard that this community should be a "racially
integrated community of high standards." The racial bars should be dropped and the community should strive for new standards. It took three years for the University of Chicago administration to join, but when it did, it joined wholeheartedly. However I think the greatest credit goes to the remarkable people who took the initiative at the beginning.
Hyde Park's organizations have always been exciting- this Historical Society, the Hyde Park Cooperative Society, the 57th Street Art Fair, the Conference, the South East Commission, the Service League, the Hyde Park newspapers, the religious organizations, the political organizations - all of them have made Hyde Park's life and my life richer.
In racial relations, the beginnings of full fraternity and opposition to racial discrimination really began with strength in the forties. It's hard to remember that the Lab School excluded black students. I went to the Lab School for three years
from 1916 to 1919 and am very grateful to it. It still had a lot of the benefits of Dewey's having founded and made it a progressive school. But there were no African American students in the Lab School. In 1943 our children were in the Lab School, and my wife and Fruma Gottschalk and others decided that the time had come to try to get the bars lowered. You can't imagine how difficult it was. You'd think it would be something you'd simply present to the University, present it to Robert Hutchins, and he would say, "Yes, you're right, we shouldn't have done this all these years and we'11 lower the bars." But it took about a year of hard work and finally the bars were lowered.
A couple of years before that it had been very difficult to get the bars lowered at the Quadrangle Club which excluded African Americans from membership. One faculty member, Allison Davis, was a very distinguished educator, whose faculty position had been funded by the Rosenwald Fund. The Fund extracted a commitment that he wouldn't try to join the Quadrangle Club; they thought it important that he be fully accepted as a faculty member without creating a storm.
Well, thanks to Milton Mayer and others (I joined in), we did break down the bars at the club.
In 1917 Chicago had had a very big immigration of African Americans. They came here for all kinds of jobs - in steel, in packing, and in all the service jobs. And so the area of black residency began expanding slowly. And that caused a lot of white people who lived at 23rd Street and 27th Street and 31st and 39th and 41st and so on to think of moving elsewhere. Lots of white people, including Jewish people, moved to Hyde Park. My family, my aunt and grandmother all moved to Hyde Park. Before there were synagogues here there was a Jewish population. I went to Sunday School at Sinai congregation and I had to take three street cars to get to 47th and King Drive (then Grand Boulevard) on Sunday mornings. You know it was in 1917 that the Real Estate Board committee passed a resolution that there should be no renting to blacks in any block until the previous block was filled. That became the policy of the real estate industry for a long time, even after the Supreme Court decision on restrictive covenants. The exciting change came in 1949 when Hyde Park really began to be an interracial
community of high standards, and when
finally the University of Chicago joined in and created the Southeast Chicago Commission.
It's always easy to reminisce about the past, but I think the important thing is to think about the present and the future.
What is most important is to consider how we can preserve and continue the vitality and creativity of Hyde Park. I think we do so by the organizations and centers that we continue to support. With technology and urban crime keeping people in their homes, organization activity becomes increasingly important as a way of bringing people together. The leadership of the University of Chicago or its absence of leadership have been very important in continuing the identity of Hyde Park. I was deeply impressed and thrilled by the community interest of the Beadles, particularly Muriel Beadle, when they were here. Especially important was Muriel Beadle's initiating, sponsoring, and pushing through Harper Court, a valuable Hyde Park resource and symbol. Just now the University leadership is active but not as active as it was. When the need arises,
I'm sure we'll have vigorous leadership again from the University.
We should profit also by our experience with decay. I told you about all those stores and the buildings on 55th Street. Well, I saw many of them decay. We're fortunate that urban renewal took many of them, perhaps a few too many. I remember the 27 saloons near 55th and Lake Park. I'm pleased to remember that once my father had to get some liquor to take home and he took me to a saloon to the free lunch counter. I'm pleased to remember that there was once free lunch in saloons. Then came the speakeasies in the same locations. It was exciting to go into a speakeasy and realize that the whole enterprise was a federal offense. It was great to have urban renewal remove buildings that had deteriorated terribly.
One of our big jobs now is to pinpoint future decay. And I think some of the problems of future decay will be even more difficult than the ones that we solved in urban renewal. It's more difficult to solve the decay of a huge high rise than the decay of a low-rise store or apartment building.
The IC was a very important part of my life, up to recently. It isn't nearly as important now although it's certainly a genuine asset of the community. The tracks were originally on the ground and, in my childhood, the LC. put in new viaduct supports. They were huge beams, trunks of trees, and it was very, very nice because as these trunks of trees stood there they would begin to sprout branches and leaves, so we had a kind of a forest under the viaducts.
The Illinois Central, in my childhood, was run by coal, and coal was a curse in Hyde Park. There were three pollution curses we were aware of -we didn't know anything about PCB then, or any of those things - but the cinders and the coal pollution were awful. Nearly all the buildings were heated by coal. The Illinois Central was constantly spewing cinders: you•d see the train go by and you•d see burning cinders flying over the train. It was a great day when the Illinois Central was electrified about 1926.
The second pollution came from the steel mills. We used to see those red clouds above the steel mills and think how pretty they were. (I didn't know then about my wife's allergies.) The third, the one that I still can't understand our tolerating, was the stench from the stock yards. The fumes from rendering, depending upon wind, covered the area with a stench. And we tolerated this!
Fortunately we didn't know how injurious these pollutants were.
Of course the political contribution of Hyde Park is enormous. I had an intense interest in government but I had no idea of running for any office of any kind. I had
been counsel for the Illinois ACLU for seven years during the McCarthy period and, because of my great interest in government and politics, I was chairman of the Independent Voters of Illinois.
When Bob Merriam decided to run for
Mayor, he kept his decision quiet because he wanted to announce it suddenly to create excitement. He quietly called in five or six of us, including Louis Silverman, Bob Picken and Dick Meyer - I don't remember who else - and told us that he was going to run for Mayor and he would like to have a strong aldermanic candidate. He was a little embarrassed because his assistant wanted to run for alderman, and he believed that his assistant could not wage the kind of campaign Bob Merriam felt he needed to support his campaign for Mayor.
So we started to work. We said, sure, we•d find a candidate. And we went to excellent people, some of whom are in the community today. We went to Calvin Sawyier, we went to Alex Elson, but they wouldn't run. I can't remember everyone we went to; I just mention those because they were first rate candidates and would have been excellent aldermen if they had accepted. But they had commitments and weren't able to. We became desperate, it was Thanksgiving week, and we hadn't found anyone willing to run for alderman.
Then the committee met without me
and decided I should run for alderman. It was a great surprise to me because I had not planned on that, so I asked for three days to decide. I consulted a number of people, particularly a previous alderman, James Cusack, who was a personal friend. I then decided that there was a fighting
chance: we would have Merriam's support; we would have the M; and we would have the small Republican party in the ward which had agreed to support our choice. So with those three there was a chance; at least it would not be a disgraceful run. That's how the campaign started and that's how I ran. It was a tough fight and I had to go into a runoff.
At my first regular City Council meeting, a city employee asked me if I wanted to take part in the municipal pension program; did I want to authorize deductions from my salary. I was astounded that I was elected. I did not expect ever to be reelected, but I thought I ought to so that I could understand the pension system. Then I was in the City Council for twenty years! I got my pension. The only thing is, my top annual salary at the end of my aldermanic tenn was eight thousand dollars, so my pension is based on eight thousand dollars, and I get three hundred dollars a month. But I think it's wonderful to get three hundred dollars a month. Today aldermen get fifty five thousand dollars and if they stay in the Council for twenty years their pension is seven times as much.
Well I've given you a rapid overview of Hyde Park in eighty years. but I want to tell you I wasn't born in Hyde Park, I was born in St. Luke's Hospital, which was at 14th and Michigan Avenue, down the street from 4127 where I lived my first three years. Sometimes I take the No. 1 bus and ride past my birthplace. It sports a big plaque now, and the plaque says, "For Sale". Everything changes. What's past is prologue.
Editors Note:
We know you will be delighted to read
Jim Stronk'sfollow-up on Sam Hair's mother's letter regarding Brookin's flight
Readers - please share your memories with us!
27 Sep 1991
Editor:
I was gratified to receive your letter of Sept. 17 with Jim Stronks' research about Brookins' flight in 1910 from Washington Park. I have had my mother's letter about it for some years and am happy that the Hyde Park Historical Society Newsletter gave me a way to share it with others.
I often wondered what happened to Brookins on this flight and now I know, thanks to Jim Stronks, who went to the trouble to find out. The whole episode
now becomes more fascinating than ever. I was a pilot in the Navy (1941-46) so I have had an interest in aviation for a long time.
My mother kept a diary with entries every day for more than 60 years, and also wrote reminiscences of her girlhood in Clifton, IL, where her father, Mr.
Cummings, owned the grain elevator and the bank. They were living in Hyde Park at 5135 Dorchester after leaving Clifton in 1898. I will send you her reminiscences about the Iroquois Theater fire in 1903 when her sister Irene was among several hundred fatalities on that tragic day.
Am sending Jim Stronks a copy of this letter with my thanks to him for providing the happy ending to the Brookins story.
It is always a pleasure to hear from you and to read the Newsletter. I may be able to find more fragments about old Hyde Park among our family papers. If I think they are worth passing on, I will do so.
With kind regards, Samuel C. Hair Charlotte, NC
Correspondence
Hyde Park Historical Society:
On behalf of LILAC, I want to express many great pleasure and our sincere appreciation for the Hyde Park Historical Society's efforts to provide a source of water for the landscaping project on the embankment around the Society headquarters. The water supply is crucial for the success of the project, and it is encouraging to see these preliminary steps in place before the major planting scheduled for Saturday, May 23, 1992.
In addition to the Historical Society's
work on installing a water spigot, the first few large trees and shrubs were planted as well as 1000 scilla and 750 daffodil bulbs. Most recently a very successful Christmas tree shredding created badly needed mulch for the plants now on the embankment.
Over 100 people brought their Christmas trees to the site which were shredded and blown onto the embankment by the Resource Center's mechanical shredder.
The community response to this project has been gratifying. Many people in the community have contributed both time and money to the project. We have raised approximately $1800, so far, toward this project, in addition to the $5000 grant from the Chicago Community Trust/ Mayor Daley's Urbs in Horto Tree Fund. This does not include the expenses the society has incurred in installing the water supply.
We look forward to the completion of this initial phase of the project and our continued cooperation in this venture.
Sincerely, Richard C. Pardo Chairman, LILAC
September 9, 1991 To: The Editor
Hyde Park Historical Society Newsletter
In the July number you published Florence Cummings Hair's marvelous 1910 letter about an airplane talcing off from Washington Park in an attempt to win a newspaper's $10,000 prize by flying all the way to Springfield, Illinois. May I add a follow-up?
When the flying machine took off from the meadow that morning, Florence Hair went back to her home at 1447 East 52nd Street and wrote her husband Tom an excited letter. The "dainty ship," she said, rose "with astonishing grace and beauty," and "sped away in the sunshine like a glistening gold dragonfly." She is doing a washing, she tells Tom, but "My whole mind is fixed on that aeroplane, speeding over the country this sunny morning. H he isn't afraid, what a marvelous ride for that fellow!"
Florence Hair's vivid and lovely letter made me want to know more about the drama which drew most of Hyde Park to Washington Park that day. I turned to the Tribune for September 30, 1910, and there it was on page 1:
DARING YOUNG AVIATOR WINS
$10,000 AND AMAZES THOUSANDS EN ROUTE BY CONTROL OF MACHINE.
The flyer was Walter Brookins, age 22, a pupil of none other than Orville and Wilbur Wright, and now a salaried demonstration pilot for their airplane factory.
Florence Hair's "dainty dragonfly" was one of the Wrights' latest models, a biplane pushed by two propellers (which
Florence calls "the huge paddles"). Wilbur Wright himself, then 43, was one of the 30,000 in Washington Park that morning; the event would be priceless advertising for Wright airplanes, if it succeeded.
It had been announced that the flight would follow the Illinois Central tracks to Springfield, so the ICRR laid on a special train to chase the plane. After the take-off, when Florence Hair went home to finish her washing, Wilbur Wright rushed to the 63rd Street Station, boarded the train, and thus caught up with the airplane about 75 miles from Hyde Park, at Gilman, Illinois, where Brookins had landed in a pasture to take on more gasoline. Wright checked over his machine there, and again at Mount Pulaski, Brookins' second stop, and throughout the day kept the low-flying plane in sight from his car on the train. All along the ICRR route hopeful Illinoisans looking aloft were rewarded with what was for most of them their thrilling first sight of an airplane.
Today we hop from Meigs Field to Springfield in 45 minutes. But in 1910, only seven years after Kitty Hawk, Brookins' air time for the 192 miles (he was not flying a beeline) was 5 hours, 49 minutes, for an average speed of 33 miles per hour. People drive faster than that down Hyde Park Boulevard today.
Brookins was slowed by a 10 mph headwind all the way, but his flight broke several U.S. records for distance.
When he landed at the State Fair Grounds, a huge throng cheered him as a hero of the new air age. Wilbur Wright, however, did not get carried away. Said
the Irih: "A dry smile and a short 'Pretty
Good' were his quota of praise."
Florence Hair's daring young man in the flying machine was tired from fighting the controls for a bumpy six hours of headwind, sitting without a cockpit to shelter him but strapped to the front of the machine in the open air, his whole body exposed to the buffeting, with the engine roaring only inches behind him. Once safely down, Brookins was proud of his success, but he quietly admitted that, "It was an awful trip."
Jim Stronks Chicago, Illinois