Newsletters 2002
Volume 23, Number 4, Published by the Hyde Park Historical Society, WINTER 2001-2002
MY SCHOOL DAYS IN HYDE PARK
HPHS President Alice Schlessinger, formerly editor of LAB NOTES, U-High'sJournal, has suggested that Society members might be interested in the recollections of Pan/ H. Nitze, class of 1923, recollections he wrote for that journal in 1985.
In 1910 my father was asked by President Harper to join the faculty of the University of Chicago as head of the Department of Romance Languages and
Literature. We moved from Berkeley, California, to the Del Prado Hotel on 59th Street, on the lakeshore side of the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, in the fall of that year. I remember it as being a glorious place with high ceilings, sunny rooms, an enormous veranda with rocking chairs.
I was three; I had a friend who was four and much more grown up. I admired him immensely. Emily Kimborough, in her book about growing up in Chicago, has an amusing description of us staying at the Del Prado Hotel—the Nitze family, their charming daughter Pussy, and their spoiled, objectionable brat of a son. I am sure she reports accurately. Pussy was in second grade in the elementary school while I was being a pest around the hotel. The next year we moved to a house on what was then Blackstone Avenue between 57 th and 58 th Streets.
That summer our mother took us to Fish Creek,
Wisconsin, to escape the heat of the Chicago summer. We drove up with the Guenzels, friends of my parents, in a glorious red Stanley Steamer. The roads north along Sturgeon Bay were merely two ruts with grass growing between them. Every ten miles or so the boiler would over-heat and blow the safety valve. Mr. Guenzel would have to climb under the car and insert a new one.
Father stayed behind in the Blackstone Avenue house with a fellow member of his department, Clarence Parmenter, both of them having opted to teach for the summer quarter. Father could become so intent on what he was talking about that he could be absent-minded. Parmenter wrote Mother a letter describing Father pouring maple syrup on his head while he scratched the breakfast pancakes.
The year 1912 we spent in Europe, where Father was doing research on the Grail Romances. When we came back to Chicago, we moved to 1220 56 th Street, between Kimbark and Woodlawn.
In 1914 Father again took us all to Europe.
We were mountain climbing in Austria when the Arch-Duke was murdered in Sarayevo. Father became worried when Austria mobilized against Russia and decided to take us to a safe country,—Germany. We arrived in Munich on the morning Germany declared war on Russia and World War I began. We finally got back to the United States by a Holland-American liner during the battle of the Marne.
It was not until 1915 that I became a regular student at the Elementary School. My life there did not start off easily. My mother was ahead of her generation in many things. She smoked, loved to dance, entertained with gusto, had an enormous circle of friends, but she was also a romantic. She insisted on dressing me in short pants and jacket and a shirt with a Buster Brown collar and a flowing black tie tied in a bow.
At school, at ten o'clock every morning, we had a break for roughhousing and letting off steam. Every day one of my classmates, Percy Boynton, would say insulting things about my get-up. I felt obliged to hit him, whereupon he would beat me up. This went on for a time until I found a way to solve the problem: one night I took all my collars, tore them into pieces, -and threw them out my bedroom window into the alley. The next day I went down to breakfast without a collar. My mother asked me, "why no collar?" When I explained, her only comment was, "I had no idea you felt so strongly about them."
But my problem was not restricted to my classmates. In order to get to the Elementary School, I had to pass Ray School , the public school between 56th and 5 7 t One afternoon, walking home from school, I stopped to watch some Ray School boys playing marbles. One of them stood up and asked me what I was looking at. When my answer was not to his satisfaction, he pushed me back over one of his friends who was kneeling behind me. Then they beat me up.
I found out that my tormentors were members of the Musik brothers gang. They were the sons of a tailor down on 55 th and considered themselves bosses of the entire area bounded by Woodlawn and
Kimbark, 55 t and 56 th Streets. The neighboring block on the other side of Kimbark was dominated by the Scotti brothers gang. The eldest Scotti offered to defend me against the Musiks. I became an enthusiastic member of his gang. He was thin, almost emaciated, slightly red-haired; he was my first experience of charismatic leadership. He had a technique of binding the loyalty of members of his gang by getting them to become his partners in some outrageous act. One day he suggested that the workmen who were building some houses on the other side of 56th Street usually left their toolbox on the site overnight. He told me we could use those tools. That night, without a second thought, I lifted the tools and handed them over to him.
There was a third gang on the block between 57 th and 58 th run by the Colissimo brothers. On weekends we would sometimes have football games between the gangs on the Midway. One team or other would grossly cheat and the game would break up into a freefor-all fight. Years later, after I had gone east to school and college, but had come back to Chicago for a vacation, I asked about the Musiks, the Scotties and the Colissimos. They had been caught up in the more serious gang life of those days in Chicago and had been either killed of jailed. None of them were known to have survived as useful citizens.
The South Side of Chicago contained many different worlds. One was the University world inspired by President Harper, one of the great men of his day. In physics the stars were Michaelson, who lived on 58 th
Street. Professor Milliken lived across the street from us on 56th Glen Milliken was in the class ahead of me, but undertook to lead me into the world of science, its theory, its experiments and practice. West of us lived Professor Dixon, a Nobel Prize winning
mathematician. One block to the East lived James Weber Lynn, one of the stars of the English department. James Breasted, the famous historian of Egypt and the ancient world, lived on Woodlawn. Others that I remember were Thorstein Veblen, the economist, Gordon Laing, the classicist, and Thomas, the sociologist. The University Medical School attracted a distinguished group of doctors, including Dr. Sippy who lived on Woodlawn. The Sippys were the only people we knew who had an autbmobile. In fact, they had two. Everyone else, to get downtown, would walk the eight blocks to the Illinois Central Station and take the train.
There was also a distinguished Jewish business community that lived around 47 th Street or even closer to town. They included the Rosenwalds, the Mandels, the Blocks, the Gidwitzes and the Feuchtwangers. One of the Feuchtwangers ended up as the distinguished moving picture director, Walter Wanger. There were newspaper people, artists and lawyers. Finally there were a number of not so distinguished people, but people who seemed to represent the real world, the Chicago of those days.
That real world was physically represented by the soot from the South Chicago steel mills and the odor of the stockyards which would blow at us whenever the wind
was from the west. The Ray School and Western High with its 4000 students, twenty-five percent of whom were black, seemed to me to be the real world of Chicago in those days. James Farrell's Studs Lonigan presents an accurate picture of that world.
Athletics was, of course, very much a part of our lives. I played soccer, basketball and baseball, with vigor but no brilliance. The school organized a variety of activities to widen our experience. On various weekends we were taken to visit one of the steel mills, then one of the meat packing plants in the stockyards, then the Standard Oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana, then a paint factory and the factory where they assembled the Essex automobile, a brand long since abandoned.
We were members of a Boy Scout group doing our daily good deeds. We sold War Bonds in 1917. We acted out current events. We acted in plays, learned to cook, to set type, to use wood and metal lathes and other machine tools, and to knit. It was an advanced and experimental form of education. I guess it did most of us no harm and for many it opened up larger horizons. There were, however, gaps. I learned no American history and I never learned to spell, but that was undoubtedly my fault, not the school's. I just wasn't interested in spelling. For some, however, the school did not provide the proper discipline.
In my second year at U High, I found myself sitting at an adjoining desk to Dicky Loeb in a French course. Dicky was older and in the class ahead of us. He seemed to me to be charming but soft. During the final examination I noticed that he was cribbing from what I was writing.
Nevertheless I was shocked when it came out that he had joined Leopold in the infamous murder of the Frank boy.
I have left out one important aspect of those years, the impact of World War I upon our emotions and our thoughts. The Nitze family is entirely of German ancestry. Until the war, I had spent about half of my life abroad, much of it in Germany. The people I had known in those pre-war years in Germany, and also in Italy and Austria, were warm, loving, and much more emotional and outgoing than my contemporaries in Chicago, particularly those who were not part of the University enclave. My family was firmly on the side of "Keep America out of the War. In 1917, when the United States entered the war, we switched our views, but doubts remained. My classmates and I were asked to call at houses in our neighborhood and try to sell Liberty bonds. I was utterly surprised when a number of those I called on agreed to buy them. I sold $ 5000 worth of bonds which seemed to me to be an enormous amount.
But even at the age of ten and eleven the unutterable tragedy of the battle of the Somme, of the continuous struggle for Verdun and the mysterious battles on the Eastern front left a lasting impression.
When President Wilson announced his Fourteen Points it seemed that a gleam of hope had appeared in a destructive and irrational world. When the armistice was announced our parents took us to a friend's office high up above Michigan Avenue from which we could watch the parade. But later when the surrender terms and the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were announced, I felt bitterly disillusioned. In our current events class we acted out the signing of the Versailles Treaty. I was given the role of Walter Rathenau, who signed for the Germans. Later, Keynes' "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" confirmed my worst suspicions of that treaty.
By 19239 1 had accumulated enough credits to have a chance at being accepted at the University that fall. Father wisely decided that this was a bad idea; I was not only too young, but a University professor's son. He correctly judged that I would not be accepted as an equal so he sent me off to Hotchkiss for two years of growing up. There I didn't learn that much that I hadn't already been exposed to at U-High, but I did have a chance to catch up in maturity—whatever that means—with my peers.
Paul Nitze went on to serve in various roles in the U.S. government—among them: as Vice Chairman of the US Strategic Bombing Survey (1944-46), for the State
Department (1950-53), as Secretary of the Navy (196367), as Assistant Secretary of Defense (1973-76), and was named special advisor to the President on Arms Control in 1984. For over forty years, he was one of the chief architects of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union.
On January 19, 2001, just one week before his 94th birthday, the USS Nitze was named for him "to sail around the world and to remind us of the contribution you have made to our country"—so said William Cohen, Secretary of Defense.
To the Point:
From the HPHS Newsletter, February, 1982
Muriel Beadle reports on a talk by Ezra Sensibar
It was in 1913 that Marshall Field gave $4 million to erect a natural history museum on the lakefront, on land to be created for that purpose. (Bear in mind that at the time the IC tracks ran on a trestle in the lake all the way from the Promontory to 18th Street, and that there was water 40 ft deep where the Field Museum, now stands.
The initial plan was to fill the site with clay, then cover it with sand. That combination, however, turned out in actuality to be mush", and it was decided to combine clay and rubbish (collected from
Loop offices, stores and streets) and top that with sand.
Once the fill was complete, wooden piles were driven down through it to the former lake bottom, and concrete piers were superimposed on the piles. These piers, which support the basement floor of the museum, rise to a height of 42 feet above the level of the lake and in effect place the museum on a manmade hill.
Tracks were laid to give railroad dump cars access to the site, and sand was hauled in. When dumped, though, its weight and force pushed some of the piers out of line and made them unusable as foundations.
What to do? "The marble was piling up," Mr.
Sensibar said. "The architects were tearing their hair.
Nobody seemed to know how to solve the problem."
And then a 24 year old Gary, Indiana resident, Jacob Sensibar (Ezra's older brother) had a bright idea. He was no engineer—in fact he was fresh off the farm— but he had eyes and a brain. "Why not lay down the sand the same way a beach is built up—that is mixed with water and deposited gently on the site?" he asked.
The architects decided to try it. Marshall Field loaned young Sensibar $40,000; Jacob bought a boat and equipment and began to pump in sand and water; and his system worked. So it is especially appropriate that the firm he founded has been identified with so many of Chicago's subsequent lakefront construction projects—including Promontory Point.
A Page from Cap and Gown the University of Chicago Yearbook—1903
The Woman's Union
Among all the student organizations at the University none as ever been so far reaching in its benefits, so practical in its advantages and so democratic in spirit as the Woman's Union, organized in January, 1902, "to unite the women of the University for the promotion of their common interests." Starting with a mere handful of faithful and enthusiastic workers, including both students and women of the Faculty, the membership has grown to almost four hundred... But the success of the Union is not measured by the length of its registration alone, for the benefits derived from membership are varied and along several lines.
Formerly all women connected with the University who did not live at the halls or near the Campus brought their lunches with them, and the only accommodations for eating them, or for resting were in the cloak rooms and recitation rooms. Now all that is changed. In the Union rooms, which are at Lexington Hall, the new woman's building, lunch is served every day from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m., and for a moderate sum, soup, chocolate, sandwiches, fruit cake and pickles may be obtained.
Other special accommodations are a rest room and reading room, in which may be found the daily paper and all the late magazines. Here, every day, from fifty to a hundred girls meet to eat, and chat, and rest. It is one of the unwritten laws of the Union that no stranger be allowed to eat luncheon alone, so that the Union, while offering material advantages, is also doing a great work along another much needed line. It is fostering and developing a spirit of equality and democracy which gives promise of a bright future... The girls enjoy not only the advantage of becoming acquainted with each other, but also the privilege of meeting wives of the faculty and other women.
Along business lines the Union has not only been self-supporting, but has to its credit in the bank a sum amounting to $67.73.
PLEASE JOI N US FOR
THE HYDE PARK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2002 THE QUADRANGLE CLUB
SPEAKER Peter Ascoli
TOPIC My Grandfather, Julius Rosenwald
GATHERING 6PM • DINNER 7PM
ELECTION OF OFFICERS
CORNELL AWARDS
MAR K YOUR CALENDAR FOR
SUNDAY, MARCH 3, 2002
2-4PM
AT OUR HEADQUARTERS
Claude Weil
former resident and staff member
WI LL SPEAK O N
International House,
Its History and Vision
1932 to the Present
AND ENJOY OUR EXHIBIT ON INTERNATIONAL
HOUSE COMPILED BY STEVE TREFFMAN,
BERT BENADE, CLAUDE WEIL, DENISE JORGENS, MARTA NICHOLAS
AND PATRICIA JOBE
SPECIAL MESSAGE
Mary Ellen Ziegler and I are creating a website on the
Outdoor Public Art (Sculpture and Murals) on the South Side. We would welcome anyone with knowledge of the subject to contact us at (773) 288-1242 or at jamulberry@aol.com. Thank you! —Jay Mulberry
LOOKING BACK
Some excerpts from PROGRESS, (Newsletterfor A Century of Progress) March 29, 1933
Bridge To Be Important Feature
Of Entertainment At Exposition
Wing of Hall of Science Designated as Bridge Hall;
United States Bridge Association To Direct Activities
Bridge, the pastime of millions, is to be an important feature of entertainment at A Century of Progress. An entire wing of the Hall of Science at the Fair has been designated as Bridge Hall, and the
United States Bridge Association has been selected by A Century of Progress as the organization to plan and operate the various Bridge activities at Bridge Hall.
George Reith, Executive Vice president of the Association, announces that there will be an interesting historical exhibit in the tournament hall showing the evolution of bridge and he expects several museum exhibits in this feature.
In addition to daily afternoon and evening play for suitable trophies, there will be featured weekly best score play for valuable prizes such as automobiles, bridge furniture, etc. It is also expected that many sectional tournaments, the winners of which will qualify for the national championships, will be held at the Fair...
The daily sessions will be preceded by half-hour lectures by well-known teachers, and numerous exhibition matches will be held by internationally famous players such as Ely Culbertson, Milton C.
Work, Willard Karn, Oswald Jacoby, Theo A. Lightner, Josephine Culbertson, Commander Winfield A. Liggett, Robert M. Halpin, Louis Haddad and Mr.
Reith.
An unusual feature in connection with the lectures and exhibition matches will be the use of an electrical board which will show to a large audience the bidding and play, bib by bid, and play by play, in a dramatically realistic manner.
Chicago and Its History
As Chicago approaches its centenary, more and more interest is being evidenced in the history of the city. Many little known facts about Chicago mentioned in the new Century of Progress book, "Chicago's Great Century," by Henry Justin Smith, are of interest not only to Chicagoans but to all. Herewith we list some of the "little known facts" of Chicago history from Mr. Smith's book, which, incidentally, is having a wide sale:
The men who organized the town in 1833 were mostly 30 years of age or even younger.
New York had 200,000 population when Chicago had only a few hundred.
At the breaking of ground for the first ship canal, a judge was doused with water for predicting a city of 100,000.
Early citizens protested against theaters as "nurseries of crime. "
When the first railroad from Chicago was being financed, a city banker refused it a loan of $20,000.
Cholera killed 931 persons in one month in 1849.
Chicago's White Stockings baseball club had as president in 1869 Potter Palmer. The team defeated Memphis by a score of 157 to 1.
From A Hyde Park Childhood by Dorothy Michelson Livingston University of Chicago Alumnae Magazine, Winter, 1979
"We children attended the Laboratory School... I entered there for the first grade in 1912. We were taught the nursery rhymes in Latin, and in sixty-eight years I have not forgotten Domina Maria, tota contraria/ Quibiti crescit in horto?
Volume 24, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2002
Because the Philippine Islands became an American possession after the Spanish American War, Filipino Emigres-labeled "nationals"- could not acquire full U.S. citizenship until the Philippines gained independence in 1946. From 1900 until 1934 they usually came to America as a source of cheap labor, in jobs earlier reserved for the Chinese (who had been excluded by the "Chinese Exclusion Law").
Those who came to Hyde Park however, often came for educational opportunities; many went back to the Islands to become professionals and government leaders.
Others, like Florentino Ravelo, stayed here to make a better life. His daughter, Estrella Ravelo Alamar, and her co-author Willi Buhay, have just published their book Images of America, Filipinos in Chicago, a book of photographs and the basis of a new exhibit at HPHS Headquarters which Estrella and Willi have prepared. Our headquarters is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 2 until 4pm. Be sure to stop by!
Last fall we published reminiscences of her life in Hyde Park during World War Il by Ya/fa Claire Dre1znin. In this issue we are delighted to be able to present another such remembrance.
LIVI NG IN HYDE PARK DURING WORLD WAR II
by Mary Powell Hammersmith
In the fall of 1944, when my husband's army unit was about to embark for Europe, I returned to Chicago tO live until the end of the war. My parents lived in Hyde Park, as had my father's parent from about 1990, and I had been born there. Ac the time of my return to the city, my brother, Chester B. Powell, a physician then in a neurosurgical residency, and his wife were living with my parents. That meant I would have to find an apartment of my own-no easy accomplishment with war-time shortages.
This was achieved with the help of my sister-in-law who worked in the Loop. She would get the Chicago Tribune as soon as it came off the press, read any for rent ads and call me to give me a number to call. That made me one of-the-first to inquire about an apartment and it worked! The agent, a man with the unlikely name of Leon Sex, told me to come to his
Loop office. I did, and shortly thereafter the apartment on the third floor at 5419 University was mine. Only about six blocks from my parents, ideal for our
sixteen-month-old son and me, close to my brother's home and, as his time was claimed by his medical residency, his wife and I were able to spend much time together.
Because we both liked ice-skating, she borrowed ID cards from two friends who worked at the University. We thought these would get us into the rink under the north stands of Stagg Field. Fortunately for us, the ID cards had no pictures. Even so, it was not easy to get past the gatekeeper. We wondered why such a big deal was made of the simple matter of admitting a couple of women to an ice rink. Noc until after the war did we learn that secret nuclear research was being carried out under the west stands-only those directly involved had any idea of what was caking place there.
Across the hall from my apartment lived a nice young couple with their little boy about the age of my son. His mother and I, our children in strollers, often walked together to the grocery score on 55th Street. I knew her last name but it meant nothing ocher than it
was just that-her name. Then, a few years after the war had ended, our copy of Time magazine arrived on its front cover the picture of our former neighbor. He had been appointed the first head of the Atomic Energy Commission. His name? Glenn Seaborg.
Today, if you enter "Seaborg" as the key word co search che web, you can read about what chis remarkable man achieved in his lifetime. In 1951, at age 39, he shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry with Edwin M. McMillan. Seaborgium is named for him. He helped develop the atomic bomb, was a discoverer of elements 94 through 98 and 101 of che periodic cable. Called the Renaissance Man of the Twentieth Century, no less than 1160 sires on the Google Search Engine list Seaborg. He devoted his lacer years to a program encouraging young people to enter the field of science.
In 1999, shortly after I had read of Seaborg's death, I learned chat our California grandson had won a chemistry contest in high school and the prize had been presented to him by Seaborg. Our grandson was amazed co learn chat Seaborg had lived across the hall from his grandparents during the war,
Another neighbor who worked on the Manhattan Project, as the work at Stagg Field came to be known, was Walter Zinn who lived with his wife and son and his mother on the north side of 58th Street, just east of Kenwood. At 5741 Kenwood, in the first floor apartment of a three-story gray-stone built at the time of the Columbian Exposition, lived my parents. Their backyard at 5741 was long and narrow and the Zinn apartment's back porch overlooked it. Grandma Zinn and my mother would have occasional neighborly
chats and little Johnny Zinn, her grandson, ofren came over to play with our son when we were visiting my parents.
A sandbox which my father had built pr,ovided hours of entertainment for the two little boys. In ordering the sand, however, we discovered that suppliers would deliver it in a minimum of one cubic yard and, after filling the sandbox, we had a huge surplus. Until you have tried to dispose of that much sand in the city, you cannot comprehend the extent of such a problem. Worst of all, the city notified us that
the sand had to be cleared from the walk before nightfall! I cannot remember how we accomplished it without a car-but we did.
On the floor above my parents lived a woman named Rowena Morse Mann. She said she was a granddaughter of Samuel F. B. Morse-we had no reason to doubt it. Above her lived a group of people including Charlotte Towle, a professor of Psychiatric Social Work at the University. She wrote a book that is a classic in the field, Basic Human Needs. A soft spoken, warm person, she was devoted to her dog and fond of playing poker. With her lived her sister,
Mildred who kept house, their brother, and Mary Rall, who held a high level position with Chicago Catholic Charities. She, too, liked to play poker and often came down with che others for poker sessions with my parents and the rest of us.
Shortages were a big problem for everyone. All sorts of things were rationed-canned goods, shoes, gasoline (unimportant to us because we didn't have a car), even railway travel. Generally only persons in the armed forces, or others connected with war-related work were allowed to travel on trains ocher than local ones. Larger families had ration books for each family member and, as a result, could purchase things more easily-provided the stores had what they wanted.
Canned fruit was scarce. Meat was too. And sugar was a real problem. With only my ration book and our little boy's, I often had to wear old shoes because his feet were growing rapidly and I would have to use my shoe quota for him. I still have one of those rations books.
So many things were rationed on the home front because chose were the very things being sent to the men in the armed forces. When they returned home, they couldn't stand the sight of Spam, canned fruit cocktail, chipped beef, and ocher things we at home had not seen for years! Another scarce commodity, during-and after-the war were nylon stockings. They had just come on the market before the war • broke out and, as nylon was needed for parachutes, they became almost non-existent on the home front. Bue a produce was soon marketed which enabled women co color their legs so as co look as if they had on stockings!
le is hard to describe the total upheaval the war brought to our lives. My husband, a reserve officer, had been called to active duty when he had only eleven hours to go to gee is B. S. in Civil Engineering.
I was in my last semester too, but when he got his first leave, I notified my parents that we wanted to get married. They had only a few days to arrange for our wedding in the Thorndike Hilton Chapel, on 58th, across from the Oriental Institute. Still, friends and family who could get there did making the event all a wedding ought to be. My husband had a few days leave before returning to Ft. Belvoir, south of Alexandria, Virginia, where he was an instructor in the Officers Candidate School (Army Engineers). I did not go with him then because I had promised my parents that I would go back to the University of Illinois to finish my own work. I was able to petition out of the graduation ceremony and joined my husband right after my course work was finished. Our first child was born fifteen months later at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D. C. at about the time casualties from the North Africa Invasion were being brought to the hospital. Civilian patients, even those having first babies, got minimal care.
An event I recall from my days in Hyde Park happened when I was walking along 57th Street toward the IC station. Suddenly a woman who was a total stranger stepped from the door of an apartment building and, in a voice filled with alarm, said, "Roosevelt has died!" My reaction was similar to hers, though nor as strong. I had never been a Roosevelt fan, but he had been president for twelve years and many young people had never known any other president. Some had come to believe that there just was no one else who could take Roosevelt's place.
When the little-known Harry Truman succeeded Roosevelt, people in general feared the worst including me. When he decided to use the atomic bomb on Japan, many were aghast, but not the men who already had served for four years and certainly not the troops being prepared to invade Japan. We wanted our children to grow up with live fathers. We had not provoked the Pearl Harbor attack! We had given a lot but not as much as the families whose sons and husbands would not be returning, like my husband's brother, still listed as missing in action at war's end.
Years later, when captured German war records had
been translated, we learned of his fate. His parents never knew-by that time they were dead.
My view of Harry Truman was totally changed when I saw that he had made a hard decision, one that would save American lives, though at terrible cost to the Japanese. Over the years there was considerable criticism of Truman's use of atomic bombs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but that criticism has not come from children whose fathers were spared being among those scheduled for an invasion of the Japanese mainland.
In many ways, Hyde Park seems not to have changed over the years. Some things are no more, like my uncle's large frame house that stood on the west side of Kenwood a few doors north of 57th Street. My first recollection of it was when I was about four and was assigned the job of bringing in, on a velvet pillow, the engagement ring of my uncle's step-daughter during her engagement party. After completing my assignment, I retreated to safety under the dining room table.
Today a small neighborhood park has replaced that
house. Next door to the south, in what was the last row house there, my great grandmother (grandmother to my father), Isadore Clark Scott Badollet had died in January, 1914. She had been born in 1828 in Vincennes, Indiana, daughter of John Crockwell Clark, a colorful inn-keeper originally from Winchester, Virginia. Her mother was Susannah McCutcheon, whose brother was an ancestor to John
T. McCutcheon, famous cartoonist with the Chicago Tribune. A few years ago, John T. McCutcheon, Jr. and I arranged ro meet at the Newberry Library ro compare notes on our mutual ancestors.
Among my treasured memories is a cheer which my uncle, Chauncey Powell, attributed to students at Hyde Park High School-a cheer in Latin, possibly corrupted-it's been quite a few years since I learned Latin.
Certior factus. Quamo Brem Exploritoribus, Hastes spem.
Down in a coal mine shoveling smoke Hyde Park High School... Hie, haec hoc!
My Uncle Chauncey's phonetic rendition went something like this:
Ker-tee-or fahk-tus, Kwah-mo brem Explor-itor-i-bus Hose-tase spem, Down in a coal mine shoveling smoke
Hyde Park High School. .. Hick, Hike, Hoke!
Now that is one tidbit of Hyde Park Trivia that has always seemed to me to be important enough to preserve
THE POINT IS...
The Point is Promontory Point , an important feature of Daniel Burnharn's 1909 Plan for Chicago, created by landfill in the 1920s, and in 1937, landscaped by Alfred Caldwell. For all the years since, the Point has been an oasis for the community-a place to stroll and swim and play and meditate.
In January, 2001, the Chicago Park District held a public meeting at which they unveiled a plan to replace the Point's lirnesrone seawall with a massive concrete and steel revetment-part of a large, federally funded project already in progress for several years. At the meeting, attended by over 200 people, community members expressed overwhelming opposition to the plan which was seen as both a violation of the Park's aesthetic beauty and a compromise of its recreational uses. An ad hoc group called the Community Task Force for Promontory Point was formed with the aim of seeking alternatives to the Park District's design.
In the seventy-five years since its construction, wave action bas indeed damaged sections of the seawall and the Task Force recognizes that repairs are necessary.
And, although the city has offered some modifications, the plan still appears to community members to be a greater threat to the Point than the ravages of time and nature. The proposed redesign is not only ugly and inimical to traditional uses-it also appears to be significantly over-engineered. It should not be necessary to destroy the Point in order to save it.
The Task Force has made it clear to Park District officials that their plan is unacceptable to the community and the city has postponed construction until April, 2003. Now the challenge is co present the city with positive and unambiguous guidelines for any new design-guidelines which include an engineering survey as well as consideration of the historic character of the Point and the public's access to it.
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation has recognized the importance of this effort with a $20,000 grant to the Historical Society on behalf of the Community Task Force for Promontory Point. In addition to the direct grant, the Foundation will match every dollar the community raises up co $5000. That could mean another $10,000 toward the considerable expenses involved in an engineering study of the Point.
MATCHING GRANT UPDATE: Thanks to HPHS members and to the whole community, we have reached our
$5000 matching grant goal. Bravo Hyde Parkers! Special thanks to the Driehaus Foundation!
TRY THIS ON YOUR INTERNET:
hydeparkhistory.org
Have you looked at the Society's webpage yet? It's easy to do: just type "hydeparkhistory.org" (don't use the quotation marks) and you'll find a source of information about our activities. There are interesting items, many taken from the newsletter, and a few others as well. People all over the country have been discovering us on the internet and getting in touch with us.
Our purpose is to provide educational material for students-check "Kids' Corner" to see some stories rewritten in language appropriate for elementary school children. We welcome your suggestions and your contributions of material to make our site even more usefuI. If you would like more information about this project using an older form of communication, call Alice Schlessinger at 773-493-1994
MEMO
DATE: March 20, 2002
TO: Editor Hyde Park History FROM: Samuel C. Hair
Charlotte, North Carolina
Enclosed is excerpted from a book I am writing. As editor, you can use it in Hyde Park History if you wish to do so.
I lived at 58th and Kimbark, the Stevens boys lived around the corner on 58th between Kimbark and Kenwood. Jim Stevens died last September. Bill Stevens lives in Naples, Florida. John Paul Stevens is on the U.S. Supreme Court.
I'm always interested in what's happening in Hyde Park. Keep up the good work.
With kind regards, Sam
MEMO
DATE: March 28, 2002
TO: to Sam Hair
FROM: Editor, Hyde Park History
We are delighted to me the excerpt from your new book in our newsletter. We hope you will let us know when the book comes out. We love to read your reminiscences and are very grateful that you share them with us. Thank you!
BACKYARD BASEBALL
Like most of thepre-teenboys growing up inChicago,baseballwassomethingweallplayed,beginning inthe spring before going awaytoMichiganforthesummer.We playedin JackmanFieldbehindour elementaryschool during acompulsorygymperiodeveryafternoon.
Bue the real adjustment of baseball's rules to accommodate special conditions came when we played in the backyard of the Stevens' boys home on 58th street near the school. There are many forms of baseball from the big league version to the pick-up sandlot modifications. The ability of baseball t0 adapt itself was tested by four boys and a dog in 1927. The rules were set out by three brothers and me, so chat our game would be clarified and disciplined.
Baseball adjusted to our self-made regulations because baseball is different from other games in chat it is not limited by time; it is outside of time. Theoretically, a game can go on
forever. We found chat we had to make our own rules, and in the case of a disagreement about the outcome of
a play, in the absence of an umpire we would toss a coin to come co the final decision.
Here are the rules, which provided for competition between two teams of players:
1. Underhand easy pitching.
2. Indian ball.
3. Pitcher's hands are out.
4. Over the fence is out.
5. If a player is on base and a hit is made, the player must go home. If home plate is rouched by an opposing player holding the ball, the player on base is out.
6. If there is any dispute, a coin
must be tossed to determine the decision.
7. If the ball hits Monday on a doubtful play, the play goes over.
8. A player on base can go as far as possible on any out, except a strike-out.
9. On June 10, provided that more than 15 five inning games have been played, and provided chat one team is more than one game ahead of the other team, the losing team must buy for the winning team all the sodas, ice cream, malted
milks, and sundaes that the winning team can eat in one hour at Kuenster's Drugstore on 57th Street.
Signed:
Bill Stevens
John Stevens
Sam Hair
Jim Stevens
It is well to explain that rule number seven refers to "Monday," a large black and tan collie dog, who would play if he could, but we told him he was not in the lineup. He was free to run and bark, and participate in that way in the excitement of the game. The deadline of June 10th was established because that was about the time when we all went away to The deadline of June 10th was established because that was about che rime when we all went away to Michigan for the summer: the Stevens boys to Lakeside and I to Castle Park, not to return until after Labor Day.
It didn't matter that there were only two on each team .And rule number four-"over the fence is out provided our adjustment to baseball's spatial frame, which projects the lines from home plate to first and third bases into infinity. Any ball within that ultimate projection is fair; outside those lines it is foul, but sometimes playable. But we had outfield limits imposed by a fence, two brick walls, and one large house surrounding the backyard playing field.
Baseball being a game of records, it is unfortunate that there are no records of the scores of these games, and the names of those on the winning team are lost forever in the mists of over three score and ten years. The players survive: Two of the brothers are retired lawyers. The third and youngest brother is also a lawyer, and at this writing is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. I am the fourth player, not a lawyer, but carrying with me the confirmation of the metaphysical nature of our national pastime, and now more than ever aware that baseball ignores time. We proved it long ago.
Volume 24, Numbers 3 & 4, Autumn/Winter 2002
New exhibit at HPHS headquarters:
THE HERALD: 120 YEARS IN HYDE PARK
Staff, this exhibit covers the Paper's growth over 120 years. An extensive series of reprints is displayed beginning with the earliest days, A sample or two:
June 27, 1930
HYDE PARK PROBLEM, NATIONAL IN SCOPE
Yes, there are speakeasies today on all our business streets in Hyde Park and Kenwood, but their operations are conducted furtively. They are outlaw activities which are destined in time to be uprooted. As to the connivance of hundreds of citizens who patronize them, that connivance is decreasing steadily. The trend is toward less and less alcoholic indulgence.
Another reason for the trend of less drinking, as we notice it, is a wider popular appreciation of the fact that alcoholic indulgence unfits one to get along in this machine age . the machines round about us and among which we must dodge our way require sober men to operate them. Air-pilots, railroad engineers, chauffeurs have a job that is difficult enough when they have full control.
HYDE PARK PREPARES FOR "OUR AMELIA"
GREAT POPULAR PARADE
ALL CITIZENS ASKED TO DECORATE
HOMES, STORES, STREETS, HOTELS,
OFFICES, WITH BLUE AND WHITE OF OLD HYDE PARK HIGH SCHOOL AND WITH
AMERICAN FLAGS
HYDE PARKERS, HIGH AND LOW,
TO THRONG GIANT CIVIC BANQUET AT SHORELAND
On Thursday and Friday of next week, July 19, 20, Hyde Park will welcome home her own daughter, Amelia Earhart, first woman to span the fearful Atlantic by air, and will play host for the first time in a generation on its own streets and plaisances to the first great all-Chicago civic celebration of rejoicing, as five years hence along its shore and in its great hotels it will entertain for Chicago the entire world at its 1933 Fair. . . . The two highlights will be first, the civic banquet at the Shoreland Hotel, cost of which is $5 a plate and reservations for which Hyde Parkers should send in immediately, while there is yet time before the flood of other reservations from the loop and other neighborhoods.
. A delegation of Campfire Girls from Hyde Park and South Shore will greet the flyer on the steps and plaisance of the Shoreland and present her with a bouquet of flowers. Overhead on the line of march will be a double deck aerial escort. . .
This exhibition THE HERALD; 120 YEARS IN HYDE PARK will run through March, 2003, and is open from 2 to 4pm Saturdays and Sundays.
In 1980, HPHS published Volume I of Hyde Park History (and Volume 2 as well) containing the article below which originally had been Printed in the Railway Review, August 14, 1926,
THE UNION OF
MISS TRANSPORTATION
AND
GEN. ELECTRIFICATION
Four veteran locomotive engineers, none of whom had served less than thirty years, and four veteran conductors, whose total years of service Were but slightly less, piloted as many trains from Matteson, Blue Island, and South Chicago to Roosevelt road, with 2,000 distinguished guests of the Illinois Central, at Chicago, Saturday August 7. The ceremony marked the official beginning of electric operation of the suburban service of the railroad at Chicago, which is expected to be complete by September 3.
All Chicago joined in the celebration sponsored by 116 civic and business organizations of the south side territory served by the railroad. Five steam trains of wooden cars pulled by locomotives that for more than forty years have hauled millions of Chicago commuters between home and work, took the invited guests from Randolph Street to Matteson, where they were transferred to two electric trains for the return journey. These trains were met at Kensington and Sixty-seventh street by similar trains from Blue Island and South Chicago. From Sixty-seventh, the four trains ran abreast to Roosevelt road.
At Roosevelt road a great assemblage of south side residents, and citizens from every section of the city, met the trains. Later everybody went to the south front of the Field Museum to review the parade which
expressed the commuters' belief that the south side communities from Randolph street to Matteson, South Chicago, and Blue Island are on the verge of a new and permanent era of prosperity.
The procession, formed at Thirty-fifth street and South Parkway, was more than two miles long, and contained flower decked floats bearing the pick of the beauties among the south side women. Individual communities had held preliminary celebrations... Candidates for the honor of being "Miss
Transportation" had been selected and from them Miss Helen Lynn, 5845 Dorchester avenue, was chosen as queen of the fete. As the float bearing her and her handmaidens reached the museum, she was escorted to the steps of the building, where the coronet was placed upon her brow by A. E. Clift, senior vice president of the Illinois Central R.R.
No event of greater importance has taken place in the history of the South side in the more than seventy years since that first train ran to Hyde Park It was fitting, therefore, that the program should include a pageant of the progress of transportation. This was written and directed by Bertha M. Iles, and presented on Soldier Field at 3:()()pm, immediately following the parade.
After the prologue, "The Torchbearers of Progress," came in order scenes representing the early emigration from the Atlantic seaboard to the great prairies in the hinterland beyond the Alleghenies. As the scene depicting the Trail of the Wilderness came on, Mrs. P. D. Bowler sang Cadman's "In the Land of the Sky Blue Water," and a group of red men passed in review with the travois, the method they used in transporting their affects from one campground to another. Then followed the covered wagon... the pony express and stagecoach. Other scenes were "Down to the Sea in Ships." "Manifold Means of Transportation," in which 1,200 children from the public school playgrounds participated, "In the Land of the Magic Carpet," showing oriental methods of transportation and, incidentally, a hayrack of two or more decades ago. "In the Days When Dobbin Was King" and "The Coming of the Motor Car" brought history down to the present, which was given under the title, "The Spirit of Electricity" and that was shown as the union of Miss Transportation and General Electrification.
In the evening there was a dinner in the grand banquet hall of the Palmer House, at which the Jackson Park Hotel Association acted as host. Fifteen hundred invitations were issued out, and if one may judge by appearances, no one sent regrets. Colonel George T. Buckingham, the toastmaster, gave a review of the history of the early efforts of Illinois to improve its transportation facilities.
Senior Vice President A. E. Clift told how the history of the South Side of Chicago has been joined with that of the Illinois Central R.R. He said that, large as has been the expenditure required for electrification, and impossible as it is to realize full monetary return upon so great a sum, the railroad will feel repaid amply if it results in establishing a permanent feeling of good will toward the railroad among the people of the city ... "The expressions of friendship we have received today," said he, "have touched us greatly, and have gone deep into our hearts. We have striven hard to secure the good will of our patrons, but never before have we had such a demonstration that we have succeeded. We appreciate deeply the friendship which has been displayed, and will make the utmost effort in the future to merit its continuance.
In a footnote we are told that Miss Lynn had worked as a stenographer in the wholesale department at Marshall Field & Co. ... "Being queen of the fete may have enhanced her prospects—beauty queens should not be wasted on wholesale offices. The 1928 city directory listed her as a SALESWOMAN in the main department store of Marshall Field & Co. downtown."
"Hyde Park talent was also represented by the author of the "Pageant of Progress," Bertha Iles, directed the Academy of Dramatic Education during the 1920s, and lived at 5416 Cornell Avenue."
Excerpts from The Hyde Park of Yesterday from Hyde Park Now and Then, published to commemorate the Opening of the Hyde Park-Kenwood National Bank Building, April 20, 1929
Seventy-one years ago (1858) an Illinois Central train rolled southward from Chicago on one of its three daily runs to Hyde Park. It came to a stop at 56th Street and Cornell, the end of the line, and out stepped a lone passenger. She was Mrs. Eliza Dennison Jameson, and she stood with her boxes around her on the grass (there was no station) and surveyed what was to be her future home.
In three directions she saw prairie, sand hills, trees and flowers, with perhaps the glimpse of a single house; and in the fourth direction, the lake. The lake has not changed so much, but a good deal has taken place in the other three directions!
Mrs. Jameson walked three blocks north to the house at 53rd and Cornell built by her husband, Judge Jameson. From its porch one could look straight north to the l.c. station at Lake Street in Chicago. There were just seven other houses in the section, and they were widely scattered. They were occupied by the families of Warren S. Bogue, Chauncey Stickney, Paul Cornell, Dr. A.B. Newkirk, Charles Spring, Sr., Charles Spring, Jr., and Dr. J. A. Kennicott, who named his estate "Kenwood" after the home of his ancestors in Scotland.
From the very first, the corner of 53rd street and Hyde Park Avenue was the center of activity for the community. Besides the depot there was the first general store, on Hyde Park Avenue just south of 53rd. It was about 10 feet square and was kept by Hassan A. Hopkins, who had come to Hyde Park in 1856 as a bookkeeper to Paul Cornell. Here, too, was the first post office, established in 1860 with George W. Waite commissioned postmaster. And on the northeast corner of this intersection was the first bank, founded by Daniel A. Pierce and operated by him alone for some years. At this same corner, in 1858, Paul Cornell built the first church, used by all the residents. It was sold in 1876 to the village and used as a town hall and police station, with the addition of a basement which served as a jail after the old wooden lockup on the lake shore between 5 1st and 52nd streets had been washed away.
Crime in the present day sense was unknown in that Arcadia, according to Nicholas Hunt, who at 81 remembers well his forty years of service with the police department. He tells of the days when his duties consisted mainly of keeping an eye on hunters and picnickers, with occasional excitement as when a band of "rustlers" rounded up the high-bred cows kept by early residents and drove them into the Dunes in Indiana. Mr. Hunt tracked the thieves down and restored the village's milk supply.
Hyde Park had a school almost as soon as it had an existence. In 1856 Charles B. Waite bought the land at the northwest corner of 53rd Street and Lake Park Avenue for a seminary which opened in 1859 with Mrs. Waite as principal and her sisters as assistants. It was a four-story building where most of the first settlers' children studied until it was discontinued in 1870. The first public school was built in 1863 at
Lake Avenue and 50th and later became the first Hyde
Park High School. This school was noted for its Agassiz Association, whose members had ample opportunity to pursue their researches into natural history in Hyde Park as it was then.
LOOKING BACK A BIT
From the Newsletter of the Hyde Park Historical Society November, 1981
HYDE PARK HERALD
CELEBRATES 100 YEARS
The Herald covered an area that was in the 1880s the largest village in the world, stretching from 39th to 115th St. It listed its population, its real estate, its financial worth and even its street car timetables. But most of its social news originated in the present Hyde Park, Kenwood and Woodlawn areas.
The paper had a history as varied and as a dramatic in many ways as the community. It began life as the South Side Herald, published by Clarence P. Dresser.
Little is known about him except that he was the Washington correspondent as well as the publisher of the Herald which he began in January, 1882 with Fred F. Bennett. Both Dresser and Bennett were classmates in Hyde Park, along with John D. Sherman, who joined them and also wrote articles and editorials.
Personal journalism was rampant in the early days and no holds were barred in reporting or in expressing editorial opinions. The Herald was no exception. One of the most vivid examples is in the January 24, 1884 issue where it is reported: "A brute named Cavill, who has richly deserved to be drummed out of town, was fined $15 and costs for beating his wife, a nice, quiet, little woman whom the Union Charitable Society have (sic) established in a small store near the school-house. He is a good workman, but lazy, and has not even the excuse of drunkenness for his brutality to his wife."
The Herald inveighed against the annexation of Hyde Park into Chicago in 1889, warning readers that only the saloon keepers would benefit from such a vote because Hyde Park was "dry" and Chicago was "wet.'
HYDE PARK IN POETRY...
A Song of the Midway Tars
'Twas in ninety-two, in an autumn light,
When Doctor Harper hove in sight And shoved out his anchor with keen delight,
Go it, Chicago, yo ho!
He had a small but gallant crew;
They'd manned the ropes when the winds blew, blew, And they were a brave and favored few, Go it, Chicago, yo ho!
The ship's grown bigger and so has her crew,
For she has a world of work to do, To cruise round the earth for me and you, Go it, Chicago, yo ho!
The Captain has a right good eye;
He steers by the stars in the changeless sky, And he flies the maroon away up high, Go it, Chicago, yo ho!
From young Chicago she sets sail;
She feels old Michigan's favoring gale, And she greets the future, "Hail, all hail!" Go it, Chicago, yo ho!
The Varsity ship sails every sea;
She touches at the port of each countree, And she's bound for truth and eternity, Go it, Chicago, yo ho!
From a City Roof (Hyde Park)
On the deck of my big night steamer, aloft in my low sea-chair,
Wrapped round with a southern softness and breathing a sweet sea air,
I sail of a summer evening beneath a starry sky,
And wonder long at the beauty that never passes by.
For I see on the far-off Temple a crown of softened light
That rests like a golden glory on the city in its might; And off at the harbor's entrance, where the piers push long and dark,
The red and yellow beacon flashes out its shining mark.
And down past the lone Rabida, below the reddened cloud, Flame up the leaping torches where the ranks of labor crowd;
Till my eye goes wondering lakeward where the
constellations move
Of the hidden ships that pass and their pilot's eye approve.
The Midway's glittering pageant, reaching down from park to park,
Shoots a thousand auto signals through the scintillating dark;
And the studious windows shining in the Varsity's looming walls
Mark off in mellow outline the gray old Gothic halls.
And all below me gleam the lights of a myriad city homes
That are dearer to the city man than a myriad glittering domes;
For the faces there are glowing with a love that keeps him strong
And comes to his wearied heart and brain like the sweetness of a song.
So, when the night comes down above the city streets,
And silent-shining star his silent brother greets,
On the deck of my lofty roofl love to take my sail, And watch the passing lights and the stars that never fail.
The Old Fine Arts Building at Night (Jackson Park)
Enmarbled by the moon's pale magic light
That pours her whitning rays on roof and wall And by her touch celestial changes all, It stands a classic temple in the night.
Here rest those lustrous wings in beauty bright
The sleepless lions that no fears appall;
The caryatids in their beauty tall,
And strong-limbed centaurs eager for the fight.
Athena's lifted temple, to the eyes
Of gazing citizens, no fairer gleamed
Beneath the sun of those transparent skies
Than here amid the land by Greeks undreamed, Where hurrying millions rush in mad empries, Those shadowy columns in the moonlight rise. From Poems on Chicago and Illinois by Horace Spencer Fiske published by The Stratford Company, Boston, Mass. 1927
What's Been Happening at H PHS?
A Report by Program Chairman Jay Mulberry
2002 has been the most active year for the Society that anyone can remember, and 2003 seems likely to continue the trend. In the last 9 months we have sponsored ten presentations and three exhibits. If you don't believe it, count them:
EXHIBITS:
November, 2001 to April, 2002 — The History of
International House, mounted by Bert Benade, Vy
Uretz, Steve Treffman and others
April, 2002 to November, 20()2—The Filipino
American Community in Hyde Park, mounted by Estrella Alamar and Willi Buhay
November, 2002 to the present—120 Years of the Herald, mounted by Caitlin Devitt and some of her friends
PRESENTATIONS:
March—The History of International House by Claude
Wei/
April—The Filipino American Community in Hyde Park by Estrella Alamar and Willi Buhay
June—Mary Herrick: Hyde Park's Educator/Activist by
Tim Black and James Wagner
July—History of Promontory Point by Jack Spicer August—History of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club by
Linda Swift
September—Earl B. Dickerson: Forgotten Giant of
African American History by Tim Black
September—Remembering 9/11 moderated by Quentin
Young
September—The Michigan Avenue Garden Apartments by Peter Ascoli
October The Future of Promontory Point by Jack Spicer
November—120 Years of the Herald by Bruce Sagan
December 15—Holiday Celebration with Abner Mikva
And on top of all that, in April we began a monthly series of articles on Hyde Park history for the Herald. These have already mounted up to quite a number:
Filipino Americans in Hyde Park by Jay Mulberry
57th Street Art Fair by Alice Schlessinger Mary Herrick by May Lord
William H. Ray by Carol Bradford
The Hyde Park Neighborhood Club by Linda Swift
Earl B. Dickerson by Alta Blakley
The Michigan Avenue Garden Apartments by Devereux
Bowly
Hyde Park's African American History by Sidney Williams, Jr.
12() Yean of the Herald by Caitlin Devitt
Herman Cohn, Hyde Park Pioneer by Jay Mulberry
Beside the quantity and quality of the activities we have sponsored, you will notice the diversity of their organizers. Lots of people work with us; we depend on that. And you can be one of those people. If you would like to work on an article or a presentation or an exhibit or a tour, call our program director, Jay Mulberry at 77 3/288-1242 or email him at jamulberry@aol.com. He doesn't just want you to work, he wants to work with you!
And, if you are not a member, do sign up today!