Before ¡Sweetness" and /Ju, "Fridge'¡ became household names, thrre was Bronko, rhown hereflying over the line. Bronlw Nagurski, who ;/;en/ his entire career in Chicago, played on several charnJ;ionship teams, including the /934 Bears, thefirst zmd.Rjeated and untied team in National Football uague hist01y. Gift of Field Enterprises.
Cover: Audilorium, Lower Balcony,
Chicago Thealre, 1985. Photograph by Don A. DuBro_ffand Russell B. Phillips.
Fall 1985 Volume XIV, Number 3
CHICAGO HISTORY The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society
EDITOR
CONTENTS
R USSELL LEWIS ASSISTANT EDITOR
4 To Build the Catholic City EDWARD R. KANTOWICZ
MEG WALTER DESIGNER
28
Moving Picture Palaces: Color Photographs of Theater Interiors by Don DuBroff and Russell Phillips LARRY A. VISKOC HIL
46
Remembering Lucy Flower Tech: Black Students in an All-Girl School
LISA GINZEL PHOTOGRAPHY WALTER W. KR UTZ PA UL
W. PETRAITI S
ANCY GREEN
58
Making the City Work: Machine Politics and Mayoral Reform PA UL
M.
GR EEN
Copyr igh t 1986 by the Chi cago Histori ca l Society C lark Street at orth Avenue Chicago, Illino is 60614 I SSN 0272-8540 Articles appearing in th is journa l are abstracted and indexed in Histon·cal Abstracts and Amen'ca: H istory and Life
Cover, co urtesy of Don A. DuBroff and Russell B. Phillips; inside front covet; CHS, Chicago Daily News photograph, SD 1-69,573; in ide back cover, C HS, Chicago Daily /\'ews photograph.
FROM THE EDITOR
This issue of Chicago History marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the Chicago Historical Society's quarterly history magazine. When Paul M. Angle became director of the Society in July 1945, he sensed the need for a periodical to interpret the Society to its members. So, in addition to his administrative responsibilities, he took on editorial duties, putting together the first issue in fall of 1945. Although modest in size (4½ by 7Ÿ inches and twenty-four pages long), volume 1, number 1 of Chicago History won the undivided attention of its readers. "Citizens of Chicago, Look at This!!," read the big, bold , black headline emblazoned across the cover. That headline-part of an 1836 broadside admonishing Chicagoans to take an interest in harbor improvements-was cleverly chosen by Editor Angle to introduce the new Society publication to the city. In this inaugural issue, Angle described the magazine's purpose. "We hope that citizens of Chicago, and, for that matter, men and women interested in history, wherever they may reside, will find this publication worth reading. 'Chicago History' will be devoted principally to the Chicago Historical Society and its activities. In its library and museum the Society has resources so rich and varied that neither visitors nor members can be aware of their extent. This publication will serve as a medium for describing them , and thus enhance their usefulness." In addition to Society news and discussions of recent acquisitions, "Fifty Years Ago," a chronological listing of notable Chicago events gleaned from the Society's newspaper holdings, made its first appearance in this issue. After increasing the standard length of the publication to thirty-two pages, Angle made few design changes and deviated little from his stated purpose over the next twenty-four years. In the fall of 1969, Chicago History took its present form and today its appearance differs only in its expanded length and more contemporary design. It is the magazine's purpose that has evolved significantly over the last sixteen years. o longer dedicated solely to reporting news of the Society's collections and activities, Chicago History strives to present the broadest perspective on the city's past to the largest possible audience. That its pages have been filled with interesting and well-written history over the years without sacrificing serious and sensitive treatment of complex ideas, events, and people is a measure of both its uniqueness and success. As it enters its fifth decade, Chicago History continues to beckon: "Citizens of Chicago, Look at This!!" One final note. A number of you have expressed concern about receiving the summer 1985 issue late. I can assure you that putting Chicago History back on schedule is my first priority upon assuming the position of editor and director of publications, and we are working diligently to do so by summer. This will be accomplished with the help of two new members of the magazine staff: Meg Walter, assistant editor, who joined the Society last November, and Aleta Zak, editorial assistant, who arrived recently and is already hard at work on tl1e next issue.
RL
CHICAGO HISTORY, The Magazine of the Chicago Hi,storical Society Chicago Historical Society OFFICERS Stewart S. Dixon, Chairman Bryan S. Reid,Jr., Treasurer Philip W Hummer, Vice-Chairman Edward Hines, Secretary Philip D. Block III, Vice-Chairman Theodore Tieken, Immediate Past Chairman Ellsworth H. Brown, President and Director
TRUSTEES Mrs. Abra Prentice Anderson Philip D. Block III Mrs. Pastora San Juan Cafferty Cyrus Colter Stewart S. Dixon William M. Drake Edward Hines Philip W Hummer Philip E. Kelley Mrs. Brooks McCormick
John T. McCutcheon,Jr. William J . McDonough Mrs. Frank D. Mayer Mrs. ewton N. Minow Richard H. Needham Potter Palmer Mrs. Edward S. Petersen Bryan S. Reid,Jr. Edward Byron Smith,Jr. Dempsey J. Travis
LIFE TRUSTEES Andrew McNally III Mrs. C. Phillip Miller Gardner H. Stern Theodore Tieken
HONORARY TRUSTEES Harold Washington, Mayor, City of Chicago John E. McHugh, President, Chicago Park District
The Chicago Historical Society is a privately endowed institution devoted to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and se lected areas of American history. It must look to its members and friends for continuing financial support Contributions to the Society are tax-deductible, and appropriate recognition is accorded major gifts. Membership Membership is open to anyone interested in the Society's goals and activities. Classes of annual membership and dues are as follows: individual, $25; Family, $30. Members receive the Society's quarterly magazine, Chicago History; a quarterly Calendar of Events listing Society programs; invitations to special events; free admission to the building at all times; rese1-ved seats at films and concerts in our auditorium; and a 10 percent discount on books and other merchandise purchased in the Museum Store. Hours Exhibition galleries are open daily from 9:30 to 4:30; Sunday from 12:00 to 5:00. Research collections are open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 to 4:30. The Prints and Photographs Collection is open by appointment on ly. The Society is closed on ew Year's, Thanksgiving, and Chrisunas days. Education and Public Programs Guided tours, assemblies, slide lectures, gallery talks, craft demonstrations, and a variety of special programs for all ages, from pre-school through senior citizen, are offered. Admission Fees for Non-members Adults, 1.50; Children (6-17), 50¢; Senior citizens, 50¢. Admission is free on Mondays.
Chicago Historical Society
Clark Street at North Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60614
312-642-4600
To Build the Catholic City By Edward R. Kantowicz
Bet:ween 1891 and 1945, Catholic church architecture flourished in Chicago as immigrant Catholics proclaimed their allegiance and identity through their sacred structures. destroyed the city of London. In its wake, Sir Christopher Wren, surveyor to the Crown, rebuilt fifty-two London churches, topping them with graceful Renaissance spires which dominated the London skylin~ for centuries until German bombs leveled some and modern skyscrapers surmounted them all. Chicago's own great fire in 1871 provided wide-open opportunities for many American architects, builders, and contractors. No Wren-like figure stepped forward to dominate the building of churches in post-fire Chicago, but two decades later a handful of Catholic architects did emerge and in time left an indelible imprint on Chicago's urban fabric. Chicago Catholics at the time of the fire were still relatively few in number and weak in influence. Just two-and-a-half Catholic churches survived the fire (old St Patrick's, west of the Loop; Holy Family, next to St. Ignatius College Prep; and the outer shell of St. Michael's German church in Old Town), so Chicago Catholics brought in outside architects from more establi hed Catholic centers to begin the job of reconstruction. Patrick C. Keely, a Brooklyn Irishman, came west to rebuild Holy Name Cathedral, and German architects arrived from Milwaukee and St. Louis to work on the German churches. Not until the 1890s, however, when Catholic numbers burgeoned, did conditions combine to produce a golden age of ecclesiastical architecture. By this time, Catholic immigrants from a bewildering variety of European countries were pouring into the city. Irish-born Patrick Feehan, Chicago's first archbishop, served from 1880 to 1902 and established 140 pa1ishes to accommodate the newcomers, a record never equaled by any other Chicago bishop. Many different immigrant IN 1666 A GREAT FIRE
Edward R. Kantowicz is a historian and author of books on both Chicago Catholicism and city politics.
4
groups crowded into the same industrial neighborhoods, each demanding its own church and a priest to minister in a familiar tongue. As a result, neighborhoods bristled with steeples and belfries as each group jostled for position. By the turn of the century, Chicago Catholicism comprised three major "leagues" of parishes (Irish, German, Polish) and a half-dozen or so minor ones. In the South Side neighborhood of Bridgeport, for example, roughly two miles long by a mile-and-a-half wide, four territorial parishes staked out the corners of the area to serve English-speaking (mainly Irish) Catholics. But the neighborhood also contained two Polish, two German, one Lithuanian, one [talian, one Bohemian, and one Croatian pa1ish. Each nationality's churches seemed to proclaim to God and man , "Here we are!" Fueling the church-building trend was the artistic eclecticism of the period. A rich variety of historical styles was available to local builders and popular among the immigrant Catholics. Most early Chicago churches,just before and after the fire, had been built in the Gothic style, testifying to the dominance of English Victorian ideals. But Henry Hobson Richardson's Trinity Church in Boston (1877) had stemmed the Gothic tide and inspired a host of Romanesque imitations in Chicago and across the country. The World 's Columbian Exposition of 1893 further revived interest in Renaissance and classical designs of all kinds. Thus, when local Catholic architects began working in the 1890s, they had a large vocabulary of popular forms from which to draw. The different ethnic groups had various stylistic tastes. (See Table 1.) German Catholics chose Gothic almost two-thirds of the time as their native style, hearkening back to the days before Luther when German Christianity was still united. (An unsystematic look around the Chicago area suggests that German Protestants did the same.)
+
The Great Chicago Fire destroyed scores of the city's churches. Although rebuilding them required enormous energy and money, it gave architects r,p-portunities to e,cjmirnent with different styles and reshape Chicago's ecclesiastical skyline.
5
Chicago History, Fall 1985
6
Catholic City
Left: Old St. Patrick s was one of two-anda-half Catholic churches to survive the fire. The first Mass was said there in 1856; the steeples were added in 1885 and together symbolize the universal Church. The Gothic spire (left) represent5 the Westem church; the Byzantine, the Eastern. Right: Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan (1829-/902) did more than anyone else
to nu:ourage the proliferation of Ca//wlic churches in Chicago. In the years spanning his office (1880-1902), 140 parishes were e~/ablished in the city. Below: Stanislaw Slominskis ecclesiastical good5 sh<>fJ at 1025 N Milwaukee Avenue around 1872. Such businesses were among the earliest owned by Poles in Chicago, a reflection of the important role Catholicism played in their lives.
7
1i-inity Church in Boston ( 1877) was a turning point in both the career of architect Henry Hobson Richardson and the course of modRm architecture. This plan detail captures the Romanesque style of the tower and proposed porch that was lo influence so mmzy church architects in the decades to come.
Chicago's Irish churches, whose congregations represented mainstream Chicago Catholicism, utilized the greatest variety of styles, reflecting the changing fashions in church architecture throughout the United States over the decades. Gothic, however, emerged as the single most popular style among the Irish, reflecting their Victorian British background (however much they might deny it). ot surprisingly, Italians chose Romanesque or Renaissance fonns. The Poles, too, favored the Renaissance. Poland's days of glory as an independent state had come in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its major churches and palaces reflected high Renaissance and baroque ideals of order and energy. The Romanesque, however, was the most consistently utilized style, a sort of lowest common denominator which cut across ethnic lines. All ethnic groups built at least some Romanesque churches, manifesting a common allegiance to the Eternal City. Chicago 8
Catholic Romanesque was a modest, utilitarian style chosen most frequently by the least wealthy parishes unable to afford something more grandiose. To serve the ethnic leagues and manipulate the historical styles so popular at the time, there emerged in the 1890s a vanguard of local Catholic architects. In all, forty individuals or firms built 165 full-scale churches in Lake and Cook counties between 1891 and 1945. (This greatly understates sacred architectural activity, for besides churches there were numerous schools, convents, rectories, and other Catholic institutions to erect.) Only two Catholic churches were designed by famous, mainstream architects. Solon S. Beman built Holy Rosary Church in Roseland to harmonize witl1 George Pullman's model town nearby, which he had also designed, and the firm of Burnham and Root erected St. Gabriel's Church near the stock yards . And Chicago Catholics still called in outsiders from time to time. George Barnett, for example, builder of the massive cathedral in St. Louis, Missouri, erected St. Clement's German church in a similar style, best described as "Babbitt Byzantine." But most of the forty were local Catholics, born after the Civil War, apprenticed with one of the important architectural partnerships, and making tl1eir livings largely on Catholic church work. Seven architects (or partnerships), in particular, built the lion's share (79 of 165) of Catholic churches during this period. These seven built a monumental legacy for the ethnic leagues of Chicago Catholicism. (See Table 2.) Jamesj. Egan (1839-1914) was, in some ways, a transitional figure from the earlier age of outside architects. He was older than the other architects of this period, was foreign born (in Cork, Ireland), and had begun his work well before 1890. He did not confine his efforts to Chicago, yet Chicago provided him his greatest opportunities, and he made it his home for the last forty years of his life. After an apprenticeship in New York, where he worked with a number of prominent architects (including Richard Upjohn, the builder of Trinity Episcopal church at the foot of Wall Street), the young Irishman came west in 1871, finding ample work in the aftermath of the Chicago fire. He received at least two government commissions (for the jail and county courthouse), but apparently he found the political intrigue involved in government work too difficult and turned primarily to church building.
Catholic City Ethnic League
Architectural Style
Total
Gothic
Romanesque
Renaissance
Other
Unknown
Irish
31 (38%)
19 (23%)
18 (22%)
13 (16%)
0 (0%)
81 (100%)
German
17 (59%)
7 (24%)
1 (3%)
3 (10%)
1 (3%)
29 (100%)
Polish
3 (12%)
7 (27%)
13 (50%)
3 (12%)
0 (0%)
26 (100%)
Other
5 (17%)
14 (48%)
8 (28%)
1 (3%)
1 (3%)
29 (100%)
TOTAL
56 (34%)
47 (28%)
40 (24%)
20 (12%)
2 (1 %)
165 (100%)
Table I : Full-scale Catholic churches co11Strncted in Lake and Cook counties between 1891 and 1945.
Architect
Architectural Style
Ethnic League
Total
Gothic
Romanesque
Renaissance
Other
Egan & Prindeville
Irish Other
1 0
6 1
2 0
0 0
9 1
Gaul
German
4
2
0
0
6
Worthmann & Steinbach
Irish Polish Other
0 0 0
0 0 1
1 5 1
0 0 0
1 5 2
Molitor
Irish Polish Other
0 0 0
1 1 1
1 0 2
0 0 0
2 1 3
Brinkman
Irish German Polish Other
0 2 1 0
3 1 1 1
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
3 3 2 1
Irish German Polish
1 3
0
0 2 0
3 1 2
0 0 0
4 6 2
Irish German Polish Other
7 1 0 1
3 1 0 0
5 0 0
0
8 1 1 0
23 3 1 1
25
23
10
79
Schlacks
McCarthy
TOTAL
21
Tab le 2: Ful/-s('al,, Catholic churches by seven selected architects, 1891- 1945.
9
Chicago History, Fall 1985
i .\., ,.
Interior embellishment was as important as exterior design in the creation of a sacred atmosphere for worship. This advertisement appeared in a church furnishing and decorating guide published in 1876.
10
Working alone until 1897 and then with Charles H. Prindeville (1868-1947), a descendant of early Chicago settlers, Egan designed a dozen Chicago churches, cathedrals in three other cities, several hotels, and a number of school and hospital buildings. At first, he built in the Victorian Gothic style dominant after the Civil War (St. John's and St. Jarlath's in Chicago, both demolished, for example, and old St. Mary's in San Francisco, recently renovated), but after Richardson revived Romanesque, Egan adopted it as his own style and stuck with it for the rest of his life. Seven of the ten churches he worked on after 1890 were Romanesque. The three exceptions, completed late in his life or after his death, are primarily the work of his partner, Charles Prindeville. Egan was employed almost exclusively by Irish parishes, which were coming of age around the turn of the century and were ready to build new, more prominent church edifices. Technically of course,there were no Irish parishes. The Catholic archdiocese was divided geographically into territorial parishes (each about one mile square) open to all English-speaking Catholics within their boundaries, with separate national parishes nearby for immigrant Catholics who spoke no English. But well into t11e twentieth century, most Englishspeak.ing Catholics were Irish, so they simply appropriated t11e tenitorial parishes as their own, often giving them distinctive Gaelic saint' names. St.
Architect Solon Beman and associates (above) at work in their Pullman studio, c. 1890. One of the Jew mainstream architects commissioned to buiki a Catholic church, Beman <ksigned Holy Rosary Church in Roseland. Charles Prindeuille's St. Jarlath's Church (below), now demolished, stood at the comer ofJackson and Hermitage avenues. It was completed in 1886 for a total cost of $90,000.
11
Chicago History, Fall 1985 Bridget's, for example, had been founded in 1850 in Bridgeport to serve the Irish laborers imported to dig the Illinois and Michigan Canal. A small brick church built in 1855 had long since outlived its usefulness, so the parish commissioned Egan and Prindeville in 1905 to design a new one. The Romanesque church they built for St. Bridget's, constructed of a light yellow common brick tl1roughoul, is large and handsome, but still basically modest and relatively inexpensive. The style recalls the Romanesque used by Irish monks when they migrated to the Continent in the early Middle Ages. St. Vincent de Paul's Church , built on the ortl1 Side by Egan alone shortly before he commenced his partnership witl1 Prindeville, is far grander than St. Bridget's and represents Egan's finest work. The Vincentian religious order of priests had founded St. Vincent's in 1875 as an Irish haven in the largely German Lincoln Park area. By the late 1890s they were ready to build a larger church and to expand into higher education. Egan built St. Vincent's Church from 1895 to 1897; a year later the fatl1ers opened St. Vincent's College (a Catholic prep school) in the old church building, and ten years later DePaul University opened its doors. The parish has long since dwindled but the university flourished, eventually lending its name to the neighborhood. The Romanesque style of St. Vincent's Church is lighter and more graceful than either the early medieval originals or the Richardsonian revivals, botl1 of which are characterized by a heavy, massive look. The rounded windows and doorways on the facade and rounded arcades on the towers establish it as undoubtedly Romanesque, but the large window area and soaring quality of the construction are reminiscent of French Gothic. Creamcolored Bedford stone throughout accentuates the predominantly light atmosphere. St. Vincent's, together with the other Irish churches he built, attests that James J. Egan was Chicago's master of the Romanesque. Just as Egan worked mainly for the Irish, Herman J. Gaul (1869-1949) built exclusively for the Germans. The German league comprised the oldest and most extensive network of national parishes for non-English-speaking Catholics in Chicago. At its height just before World War I, it consisted of thirty-five parishes in the city and twenty-eight country parishes scattered around the Chicago 12
metropolitan area. Overall, the German league enjoyed a solid financial and administrative footing, with a larger-than-average ratio of priests to people and the highest per capita rate of financial support of any national group in the archdiocese. The North Side was the German stronghold: its largest and most prosperous Gennan parishes stretched northwest along Lincoln Avenue from the German mother church of St. Michael's in Old Town, and north from Rosehill Cemetery along Ridge Avenue into the suburbs. Herman Gaul was born in Chicago just after tl1e Civil War, apprenticed with Louis Sullivan in tl1e 1890s, and joined the Illinois Society of Architects in 1898. He built six full-scale German Catholic churches, four in Gothic and two in Romanesque, and also did a good deal of utilitarian construction of schools, hospital wings, and orphanage buildings, all for German institutions. His architecture is simple but solid, constructed for a stable etJrnic community. SL Nicholas's Church on Ridge Avenue in Evanston, Gaul's first major commission in 1906, is typical of the German Gothic style. Located on an elevated site, St. 1icholas's, witJ1 it spire and gargoyles, has a romantic ambiance but is not particularly unusual or elegant. Its construction of brick rather than stone reflects the limited resources of what was at the time a country pa1¡ish. St. Benedict's Church, which Gaul completed in 1918 in the NortJ1 Center area on Irving Park Road, is more grandiose. A middle-class parish founded in 1906, St. Benedict's stood on the main migration route for Gem,an families moving out from Old Town, and it grew rapidly in its first decade. The church's Romanesque facade echoes that of St. Michael' , but the bell tower and tJ1e gable are handled differently. And, although similar, it is more ornate than the neighboring St. Matthias's Church, which Gaul had built a few years earlier. The entire composition of St. Benedict's is heavy and elaborate, but its large scale and profuse ornamentation indicate that Gaul may have considered it his masterpiece. Herman J. Gaul's work was decidedly minor architecture, but it illustrates well the familial
This page from an archdiocesan publicatio11 of 1920 shows Herman Gaul's church of St. Nicho/as, completed in 1906. The congregation was founded in 1887, and Gaul's building, still standing today, is the third and most substantial to serve it.
o ·
Rev. O.Gro e neba u m
Rev. PL 81erma/Jt1
Re v. M. J G'2nu.. / f
l?e v J.11 . !J1edreJch
ST.
NICOLAS'
CHuncH,
EVANSTON,
ILL .
1887 13
Chicago History, Fall 1985 character of the business in this period. Not only did Gaul work exclusively within his ethnic family, the German league of parishes, but he passed his practice on within his biological family. Following World War II, his nephew,John C. Voosen,joined him as a partner. After the founder's death in 1949, the firm of Gaul and Voosen continued to build churches and schools. The Polish league of parishes was nearly as extensive as the Geiman, comprising thirty-four city parishes and fourteen in the suburbs and countryside, but Polish immigrants arrived later and were not nearly as prosperous as their German counterparts. Stylistically, their sacred architecture is neatly divided between grandiose and humble extremes. Fully half the Polish parishes, too small or poor to build full-scale churches before 1945, had to be content with combination church and school buildings or even more economical quarters. (By contrast, two-thirds of the Irish and German parishes built full-scale churches.) But the larger Polish parishes erected unusually massive, ornate, and elaborate churches, the socalled "Polish cathedrals" which now line the Kennedy Expressway or are tucked away in many otl1er old neighborhoods. To finance these extravagant structures, the parishioners of these large Polish communities made enormous economic sacrifices, and their pastors dared to operate witl1 much larger-than-average indebtedness. Recalling the glory clays of the Polish Commonwealth, Polish pastors overwhelmingly chose Renaissance or baroque motifs for their massive edifices. Only three Polish churches in Chicago were built in the Gothic style, the fewest in t11is style of any major Cat11olic group. Some of the churches defy neat stylistic identification; Romanesque doorways, Renaissance pediments, and baroque towers might well embellish a ingle structure. Whetl1er this was done consciously or naively, it does recall many churches in tl1e old country that were built and rebuilt over centuries and thus reflected changing architectural tastes tl1rough tl1e ages. But whatever their blend of styles, the Polish churches are usually suffused witl1 a baroque air. Counter-Reformation Catholicism triumphed completely in Poland, and t11e Polish peasants clung fiercely to tl1eir faitl1 later during t11e years of t11eir country's decline and partition. The choice of baroque ecclesiastical forms, then, which one art historian describes as "the creation of a militant 14
IS THAT ALTAR WHICH, BY I T S ~ ~ AND TRUE
RELIGIOUS •
SIGNIFICANCE PROVES • CONCWSIVELY THAT IT IS •W-61 OF ITS EXALTED PLACE IN THE CHURCH:•
ThP mam,facturers of Daprato Altars defined the '"ideal altar" in a company catalogue of 1925. The altar (detail, right) in Joseph Molitor's church of SS. Cyril and Metlwdius certainly seems worthy of its exalted place.
and missionary Catholicism," seems peculiarly appropriate for Chicago's Polish immigrants. The Polish league of Chicago produced no architects of its own and had to rely mainly on Germans, or, in a few cases, on Poles from the East Coast. The partnership of Henry W. Worthmann (1857-1946) and John J. Steinbach (1878-?) produced some of t11e most noteworthy of tl1e Polish catl1edrals. Worthmann, tl1e senior partner, was born in Germany, emigrated in 1882, and began working in Chicago in 1886~The younger Steinbach, born in Austria but brought to America as a child, produced a remarkable Renaissance church in 1907 for t11e Flemish Cat11olics of St. John Berchman's parish in his home neighborhood of Logan Square. For the next twenty years, Worthmann and Steinbach worked in partnership, developing an enormous practice, witl1 one office on t11e North Side and anotl1er one in tl1e
Catholic City
rapidly growing Englewood district on the South Side. Together, they built five massive Renaissance churches for the Polish Catholics, as well as churches for other Catholic groups and for several Lutheran congregations. Worthmann himself may have been a Lutheran, for he lectured extensively on art and architecture at Lutheran schools. St. Hyacinth's Church, completed in 1921, typifies the work.that Worthmann and Steinbach did for the Polish league. The massive church seats 2,000 and towers over the congested bungalows and two-flats of the orthwest Side Avondale neighborhood. Classical ornamentation su1mounts every doorway, window, and niche; many statues crowd the interior; three baroque towers rise above the edifice. St. Hyacinth's is typical of the Polish cathedrals, but St. Mary of the Angels, clearly visible from the
Kennedy Expressway at Cortland and Hermitage avenues, carries the grandiose Renaissance style to the extTeme. Though Worthmann and Steinbach built the church, Father Francis Gordon, C. R., the pastor, provided the main inspiration. Fatl1er Gordon, a leading member of the Resurrectionist order, which ran many Polish parishes, planned St. Mary's quite literally as a cathedral, or bishop's church, for he hoped to be named auxiliary bishop for the Poles of Chicago. The episcopal call never came, but his church testifies to his daring ambition and the unbounded generosity of his parishioners. Built over an eight-and-a-ha lf-year period around World War I and costing over $400,000, St. Mary of the Angels echoes St. Peter's in Rome and has rightly been called "one of the finest specimens of Roman Renaissance architecture in the United States." Its classical facade, twin towers, and massive dome dominate the surrounding residential-industrial area. It may not be the most beautiful church in Chicago, but it is undoubtedly the most audacious. No single architect emerged to champion the cause of most of the minor ethnic leagues. Many Lithuanian and all the Slovak parishes were too small to build full-scale churches. Almough me Italians and Bohemians did build complete parish plants, no single builder or firm dominated, and several contractors or builders erected one or two churches each for mese groups. One architect.Joseph Molitor, did earn a reputation among me smaller immigrant nationalities, not for number of churches built, but for me variety of groups mat employed him and especially for me concentration of his best work in one neighborhood. Biographical information aboutJoseph Molitor is scanty, but me census reveals mat he was born in Bohemia in 1875 and came to America in 1884. He may have been related to the priest(also named Joseph Molitor) who founded Chicago's earliest Bohemian parish. Architect Molitor built six fullscale churches, mree Romanesque and mree Renaissance, for four different emnic groups. He designed five of mem in one creative burst from 1912 to 1915, three of which cluster in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Whether by design or co in cidence, Joseph Molitor received a unique opportunity to shape the landscape of a working-class, multi-emnic neighborhood. Back of the Yards was, and still is, an area of modest houses kept up meticulously by 15
+ <>
0
P.ev T.J. Kach nowsk/
WI
I 16
ST JosEPH·s CHuncH, CH1cAao. ILL. 158 7
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Catholic City a number of different ethnic groups. Along Hermitage Avenue, three blocks west of Ashland Avenue between 46th and 50th streets,Joseph Molitor built churches for the Lithuanians, the Poles, and his own Bohemians. Holy Cross Church (Lithuanian) at 46th Street and Hermitage Avenue resembles rather closely St. Hyacinth's and some of the other Polish churches. This is not surprising since Lithuania and Poland were united politicall y during the Polish Commonwealth's heyday, and the two nationalities, though not always friendly, shared many memories. Holy Cross was one of the few Lithuanian parishes that could afford a full-scale church at this time , and it is the largest and most ornate. (In recent years, the parish has become largely Mexican in nationality, which is architecturally fitting since Holy Cross's Renaissance splendor resembles many churches of Mexico and the Spanish Empire.) Two blocks south, at 48th Street and Hermitage Avenue, Molitor built St Joseph 's, one of the three Polish parishes in the stock yard district St Joseph's style is difficult to categorize. The Romanesque facade, with its rounded windows and doorways and intricate corbel tracery, recalls St. Benedict's and the best German Romanesque in the city. But the twin towers culminate in classical cupolas that convey the usual baroque feel of Chicago's Polish churches. The result is one of the more interesting and eclectic designs from this rich era of sacred ethnic architecture. Molitor erected the more modest, severely classical SS. Cyril and Methodius's Church for fellow Bohemians at 50th Street and Hermitage Avenue. Much smaller than either St. Joseph 's or Holy Cross, SS. Cyril and Methodius's is a simple rectangular audito,ium of light-colored brick. Corinthian columns surmounted by a pediment embellish the facade; a handsome Italian campanile flanks the side. The classical lines of this church may suggest the Greek origins of the brother saints who brought Christianity to much of Eastern Europe, but they also symbolize Hellenic logic and rationality. Many Bohemians in America had abandoned Catl1olicism for a free-thinking, agno ti c rationalism tliat was well organized and militanL. The church of SS. Cyril and Methodius may Nn11ulrd 111 1887, the pansh of St. Joseph did not erect this imposing Romanesque-style stmcture until 1914. It is Olli' of Joseph ,\lolitors most interestrng and eciRctic dRsigns.
well have been built partly to appeal to tliese rationalistic tendencies. After producing five churches between 1912 and 1915, Joseph Molitor never built another in Chicago. Whether he died suddenly at tliis time or had a falling out with the new authoritarian archbishop, George Mundelein, who arrived in Chicago in 1916, is unknown. In any case, tlie stock yards are now gone and some of the turn-ofthe-century immigrant groups have moved on, but Joseph Molitor's trio of ethnic churches remains as a monument to this obscure but talented architect. William J. Brinkman (1870-1911) is nearly as unsung as Joseph Molitor, but his is the tantalizing story of an artist who died young, and under mysterious circumstances, just as his work began to show great promise. Born in Chicago of German parents, Brinkman apprenticed in the office of Daniel Burnham and assisted with drawings for tlie 1893 world's fair buildings. After some travel in Europe, he completed his first Chicago church in 1901. Altogether he designed nine full-scale churches as well as many schools, rectories, and other parish buildings before his death at age forty. Brinkman worked for several different etlinic groups, mainly on the far South Side, but as far afield as Buffalo Grove. Most of the parishes that employed him were decidedly limited in resources, but it seems that tliis young and inexperienced architect took jobs wherever he could get them. He completed his modest, early commissions in Romanesque or Gothic styles, with results that were plain but serviceable. At the end of his short life, however, Brinkman received commissions from three larger and more prosperous parishes, St. Leo's (his home parish) and Holy Cross Irish churches, and St. Michael's Polish church in South Chicago. He executed the first two in his usual, undistinguished Romanesque manner, but he built St. Michael's in a magnificent Gothic style. The largestand mostsplendid church in the multi-ethnic, working-class neighborhood of South Chicago, St. Michael's steeples soar aloft along witli the factory smokestacks of this steel mill district. Like St. Mary of tJ1e Angels on tl1e North Side, St. Michael's was designed as tlie seat of a Poli h bishop, but in this case tl1e bishop was actually consecrated. In 1908 Archbishop Quigley responded to the Polish priests' long and heated campaign for ethnic recognition by naming the 17
Catholic building, particularly ofschools, flourished under Archbishop James E. Quigley (left) who served from 1902 until his death in 19 I5. Quigley popularized the combination church and school under one roof Stained glass windows (right) were ordered from distant Munich, Germany, to adom Hem)•Schlacks's Fblish Rf!lwissance church of St. Ad£dbe1t.
pastor of St. Michael's, Paul Rhode, as his auxiliary bishop, the first bishop of Polish origin in Ame1·ica. Rhode had already commissioned Brinkman to design a new church for his large and growing immigrant parish, and the 1,500-seat brick edifice was completed in 1909, one of only three Gothic churches in the Polish league. This soaring, romantic church, with its uneven spires, slender fleche, and delicate tracery, is clearly Brinkman's finest work. Whether it portended greater things to come, or whether its inspiration owed more to Bishop Rhode or some anonymous parishioner, will remain forever unknown. For on the night of February 24, 1911, Brinkman left the home he had recently built for himself, his wife, and his four young children in the Auburn neighborhood on the South Side, and never returned. Police found his decapitated and badly mangled body on the Rock Island railroad tracks at the 73rd Street viaduct. They immediately suspected either foul play or suicide, for the tracks were elevated at this spot and surrounded by a high fence, and the body was a full two blocks from the nearest station. Brinkman had been ill and despondent for two years, so suicide was indeed a plausible explanation. An inquest, however, never settled the mystery and merely established that the victim had been struck by a train. Brinkman's 18
o·agic end cut short an interesting and promising architectural career. But it is the work of Henry J. Schlacks and Joseph W. McCarthy that surpasses other architects in this period both in numbers and in quality. Schlacks was the master of Catholic church architecture in Chicago; McCarthy was its most productive practitioner, designing more Chicagoarea churches than any other architect (forty-one in all, including his work in other cities). Schlacks's reputation rests on true architectural talent and on the beauty of his works; McCarthy's career in addition owed its productivity to clout and influence with tl1e archbishop. Henry J. Schlacks (1868-1938) was born in Chicago of German parents. He apprenticed with Adler and Sullivan, studied at MIT, and traveled extensively, immersing himself in European church architecture. He practiced for a short time with another German-American student of Adler and Sullivan, Henry Ottenheimer, but then worked on his own beginning in the 1890s. He launched his career in ecclesiastical architecture in collaboration with Louis A. Becker of Mainz, Germany. Becker drew up the plans for St. Martin of Tours, the German national church in Englewood, in 1894, and Sch lacks executed them as the Chicago architect of record. It is impossible to determine
1¡ The cornerstone of St. Paul '.s Church was laid in 1897 and for years thereafter financial hardship beset the parish. Architect Schlacks saw the project through, however, acting as contractor himself and designing many of the interior embellishments as well. Photograph, c. 1900, by The Barnes-Crosby Company.
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Catholic City how much each architect contributed to this marvelously medieval church, so it is best to consider St. Martin's part of Schlacks's apprenticeship. He received his first independent commission in 1895, a modest brick Gothic church for the country parish of St. Peter's, located in Niles Center (now Skokie). Over the next twenty years he built five churches for the German league of parishes, either in Gothic or Romanesque. In effect, he and Herman Gaul divided between them the building of Chicago's German churches during these prewar years. Though each of Schlacks's early works is handsome and well proportioned, St. Paul's, a striking red brick Gothic masterpiece on the West Side, is of particular interest. St. Paul's parish encompassed a relatively small, working-class German community surrounded entirely by enclaves of Poles, Italians, and Bohemians. The architect himself served as contractor, and many of the parishioners, skilled craftsmen from the Rhine and Moselle valleys, contributed their labor. evertheless, this massive project overburdened the slender resources of the parish. In 1903 amid financial chaos, Archbishop Quigley removed St. Paul 's pastor, and shortly thereafter he entrusted the parish to the Benedictine religious order. Ten years after the church's co mpletion, the parish was still $100,000 in debt on its meager income of less than $20,000 per year. Over the next thirty years Sch lacks continued to work on St. Paul's as a labor of love, fabricating various adornments for the inte1-ior. Had the Catholic church been as powerful and financially astute as it is often assumed to be, the towers of St. Paul's would never have risen over the West Side. But the church was not so much a product of wealth or of rational planning as it was of a uniquely medieval collaboration between builder and faithful. Despite the financial problems at St. Paul 's, the quality ofSchlacks's designs earned him the opportunity to_ expand his professional boundaries beyond the Gern1an league. Though he had made his early reputation in GotJ1ic, Schlacks actually preferred the Renais ance forms he had observed in Rome during his European sojourn. Thus when three afOuent Iri h parishes and two large Polish parishes hired him to build for them in the years surrounding World War I, Schlacks erected five magnificent Renaissance edifices, each of them different. At least two of them are masterpieces of
church architecture. St. Mary of the Lake was a wealthy pa1ish founded at the turn of the century in Uptown, then a fashionable neighborhood of mansion and exclusive apartment hotels, similar to the North Shore of today. Sch lacks began work on an Italian Renaissance church in 1913, modeling it after several of the major Roman basilicas. The freestanding campanile, or bell tower, imitated precisely the tower of St. Pudentiana which Schlacks had faithfully sketched in Rome. St. Mary of the Lake was completed in 1917.
At the time of his installation in 1916, George W Mundelein was the ynmgest archbishap in the country. Considered a "co'l1Solidating bisiwp, " Mundelein centralized the architectural decision making of the archdiocese, reserving for himself the final approval of all building plans.
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Th£ Chicago studios of Arthur Hera specialized in "artistic church decoration." Throughout the 19 !0s and 1920s Hera received commissions for interior design from all over th£ country and worked with various architects, including Joseph McCarthy and Worthmann and Steinbach. His waterco/,or renderings are detailed and elaborate; this one was eX£cuted for Sch lacks 's St. Mary of th£ Lake in Uptown. Gift of Arthur Hera and Greta Hale.
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Catholic City After World War I, Schlacks executed another Renaissance design for St. John of God Polish parish, a large, growing, working-class community of more than six thousand members in the Back of the Yards district. The pastor, Father Louis Grudzinski, though not an auxiliary bishop like Paul Rhode, had succeeded Rhode as the most influential Polish pastor, the "Polish boss" of the archdiocese. Archbishop Mundelein had named Grudzinski, an outspoken Polish nationalist, to his influential Board of Consultors in 1916. Grudzinski, with a burgeoning parish and an important post in the archdiocese, wanted an appropri ately magnificent church. As it happened, he owned a suitable site for such a church, overlooking Garfield Boulevard and a half-mile of greenery in Sherman Park. Henry Sch lacks produced a church worthy of the sponsorship and the site. St.John of God is somewhat similar to St. Mary of the Lake and to another Polish Renaissance church, St. Adalbert's, thatSchlacks had designed earlier. But its facade is simpler than either, and its bell towers more reminiscent of the typical Chicago Polish baroque style.Just as St.John of God neared completion in 1920, Father Grudzinski fell from favor with Archbishop Mundelein. Grudzinski's fierce Polish nationalism clashed with the Americanization plans of Mundelein, and the archbishop removed him from the Board of Consultors in 1921. He continued to serve as pastor of St.John of God, however; presiding in the magnificent church Henry Sch lacks had built for him, until his death in 1948. Sch lacks returned to the Gothic style in St. Ita's, his final full-scale church, completed in 1927. However, rather than reproduce the heavy German Gothic of his earlier career, he executed a delicate French Gothic design for this middleclass Irish parish just north of St. Mary of the Lake. Schlacks never repeated his designs; but in this case, his choice of a new style may have had little to do with his own preference. Mundelein had limited tl1e choice of architects and designs for churches by centralizing decision making in his office, and he had also made known his love of French Gothic. Sch lacks complied, and even had the initial "M" carved repeatedly around the parapet for good measure. In all, Henry J. Schlacks built twelve full-scale churches in the Chicago area. He worked for all three major ethnic leagues and built in all of the
dominant styles-Gothic, Romanesque, and Renaissance. At least five of his churches-St. Paul's, St. Adalbert's, St. Mary of the Lake, St. John of God, and St. Ita's-qualify as masterpieces. Even his utilitarian work was out of the ordinary. When Archbishop Mundelein decreed in 1928 that St. Henry's large, impressive church (which Sch lacks had built in 1906) should be handed over to Angel Guardian Orphanage and a smaller combination church and school building erected for the parish, Schlacks constructed a handsome two-story bui lding clad entirely in Bedford stone, which far exceeded the average school building in style and appearance. The school he designed for St. Edmund's parish in Oak Park, a copy of the Palais de Justice in Rouen, France, is such an elegant example of French Gothic that it is often mistaken for a church. Schlacks's architecture did not come cheap, and the near-bankruptcy of St. Paul's was not repeated only because Schlacks thereafter built mainly for larger, more affluent parishes. Pastors incurred an average debt of more than $100,000 when commissioning a Schlacks creation. Yet few doubted he was worth it. The beauties of St. Ita's and St.John of God could not readily be measured in money. Built in very different styles, both possess an airy elegance and sense of proportion that confirm Schlacks as the master of Chicago Catholic builders. If Sch lacks was the most accomplished Catholic architect, Joseph William McCarthy (1884-1965) was the best connected. McCarthy became Cardinal Mundelein's personal architect after completing the massive job of planning St. Mary of the Lake Seminary for him. An authoritarian, "consolidating bishop," Mundelein (archbishop from 1916 to 1939; after 1924 a cardinal), centralized and reorganized many Catholic activities, including brick-and-mortar decisions. He wished to eliminate the disparity between the parishes whose pastors memorialized themselves with extravagant piles of masonry and those other congregations who struggled along in unsuitable quarters. Toward that end he evolved a nine-step bureaucratic process that every pastor had to follow when planning to build, and he reserved for himself final approval of the architect and his plans. Though the spate of church construction in the Mundelein era generated more work than any single architect could take on, McCarthy, the cardinal's favorite, appeared to have first choice of projects to pursue. He
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Chicago History, Fall 1985
For Archbishop i\lwuielein, St. Ma,)' of the Lake Seminm)', located northwest of Chicago, was a triumph of both Catholic education and Catholic architecture.
completed twenty-eight full-scale churches in Lake and Cook counties between 1916 and J945, about one a year. During the latter years of Mundelein's life, McCarthy took the cardinal's nephew, Arthur Eppig, into partnership with him, further solidifying his archdiocesan connection. The McCarthy dominance of church building was so complete that another talented Irish Catholic architect, Francis Ban-y Byrne, who had designed a number of Catholic high schools as well as the innovative St. Thomas the Apostle Church in the 1920s, had to leave the city in orde1- to make a living when building activity slowed during the depression. McCarthy and his associates continued to build through the depression and after Mundelein's death in 1939 as well. Joseph McCarthy was born in Jersey City in 1884, but his parents moved to Chicago after he completed grammar school. He attended the parish high school of St. Gabriel's on the South Side, then apprenticed for eight years in the firm of Daniel Burnham, beginning his own practice in 1911. McCarthy received his first major commission shortly before Mundelein arrived in the city, when the pastor of Corpus Christi, then a thriving
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Irish parish on Grand Boulevard (now King Drive) hired him Lo build a church and connecting rectory in the Renaissance style. Corpus Christi was one of the first churches the new archbishop dedicated in Chicago, on June 25, 1916, and he must have been impressed for he soon presented McCarthy with the opportunity of a lifetime: Lo plan and build an entire higher education complex. Throughout 1917 and 1918, Mundelein gradually bought up 1,000 acres of land surrounding a swampy lake some forty miles northwest of Chicago, as the site of the archdiocese's major seminary, St. Mary of the Lake. McCarthy's site plan imposed the lines of a Latin cross on the western end of the grounds. Along the arms of the cross, he arranged the major residential and classroom buildings of the seminary; and on the upright of the cross, he placed the refectory, the main chapel, and an elaborate dock and boathouse extending into the lake. The seminary took nearly ten years to build and eventually comprised fourteen buildings at a cost of more than $10 million. At Mundelein's instruction, McCarthy designed the entire seminary complex in an English colonial style more reminiscent of Puritan New England
Catholic City
The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception is the centerpiece of St. Mary of the Lake Seminary. Mundelein insisted on the colonial style, so the chapel's Ii nes contrast sharply with the baroque, Renaissance, and Gothic styles popular at the time.
than Catholic Chicago. Mundelein introduced this style into the archdiocese in order to symbolize the Americanization of the Catholic church. McCarthy had first tried out the colonial style in a modest combination church and school building erected for St Thomas of Canterbury, one of the first new parishes Mundelein founded in Chicago. At the dedication of that church, the archbishop had remarked to the congregation, "It is almost symbolical of the twin devotions of your heart, love of God and love of country." McCarthy patterned the main chapel of St. Mary of the Lake after the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Connecticut, which Mundelein had visited as a boy. Its classical forms, Corinthian portico, and multi-layered steeple are characteristic of many New England churches and trace their origins to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, designed by English architect Sir James Gibbs in London in 1726. The St. Martin-in-the-Fields model is one of the most widely imitated in the English-speaking world, but it had rarely been used by Catholics before Mundelein and McCarthy. Once the cardinal's seminary was completed, McCarthy, and other Catholic architects, produced at least a half-dozen
copies of the main chapel around the archdiocese. Besides building in "Mundelein Colonial" style to please his patron, McCarthy enjoyed a virtually free hand to design in any fashion he chose, and he made the most of his opportunity. He built in all the traditional styles, often subtly modernizing and simplifying motifs to fit newer building techniques and more utilitarian tastes. His St. Basil's Church, on Garfield Boulevard, is one of the few Catholic examples of Byzantine architecture in Chicago, and tl1e only one not blown out of proportion into the grotesquely large dimensions of "Babbitt Byzantine." As the "official," mainstream architect, McCarthy worked almost exclusively for the Americanized Irish tenitorial pa1ishes, largely avoiding the otl1er ethnic leagues; and increasingly he concentrated his attention on the suburbs and the middle-class areas on the city's outskirts, then the leading edge of the archdiocese. His work is quite evenly divided between massive edifices for the wealthiest suburban parishes-such as St. Francis Xavier's, LaGrange; St. Luke's , River Forest; and St. Athanasius's, Evanston-and somewhat homely utilitarian buildings for city parishes. This dualism accurately
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Catholic City reflected two contradicto1-y aspects of Cardinal Mundelein's aspirations-a desire to build magnificently in order to "put the church on the map," and a businesslike practicality which demanded full value for every dollar. In order to please the hardheaded business side of Mundelein, McCarthy devised yet another new church style by simplifying a Spanish mission design. St. Margaret Ma1-y's parish complex in Rogers Park best exemplifies this pragmatic style. McCarthy first built a simple brick combination church and school for this new parish in 1924, a plain design with only the cloister suggesting Spanish influence. When the parish outgrew this facility, he built a full-scale church in 1937. Though said to be modeled after Santa Barbara Mission in California, St. Margaret Ma1-y's Church is an original creation and bears no close resemblance to any actual Franciscan mission. The red tile roof, raised espad.ana (belfry-gable), and circular window on the facade recall the Spanish mission in an evocative rather than literal fashion. The simple brick rectangle that forms the main church building is actually a practical, cost-conscious design, easy and inexpensive to build and maintain. The mission motif lends symbolic connotations which are unmistakably Catholic and, at the same time, very Ame1-ican. An inexpensive, utilitarian stn.1cture handsomely built and imbued with Catholic and American symbolism, St. Margaret Mary's represents a nearly perfect reflection of Cardinal Mundelein's practical side. In contrast, however, when McCarthy transfeJTed this design to wealthy, suburban locales, he incorporated Mundelein's and the wealthier Chicago Catholic preference for the grandiose. McCarthy's plans for St. Giles's in Oak Park (]938) and St. Bernardine's in Forest Park (1940) combined the mission motif with Italian Renaissance touches and enlarged the churches beyond the dreams of any Franciscan friar. Thus, in addition to perfecting "Mundelein Colonial," McCarthy also invented a style best called "Mammoth Mission ;' Joseph W. McCarthy, Cardinal Mundelein's peronal architect and Chicago's most prolific church builder, is the closest comparison to Christopher Wren that Chicago Catholicism produced. He left a dual legacy: a string of magnificent churches in The cover of a promotional brochure for Arthur Hercz Studios, Inc., c. 1924, embodies ilU' essence of ecclesiastical architecture. Gift of Arthur Hercz and Greta Hale.
the inner suburbs, and examples of utilitarian, economical building in the city. But this double legacy, as well as McCarthy's move tOward simplification of historical styles, was the signal that the heyday of Chicago Catholic church building was nearly over. The ethnic leagues had finished building churches in the city; Catholics were Americanizing and moving to the suburbs; and the popularity of historical styles had nearly run its course. After World War II, the utilitarian side of McCarthy's and Mundelein's legacy seemed a natural partner of the suburban boom and a more modest, modern church architecture spread throughout the far-flung reaches of the metropolitan area. Though neo-Gothic, American colonial, and other simplified historical styles never lost all their appeal, they were clearly replaced by modern utilitarianism after 1945. The standing churches of the halcyon days, however, remain as monuments to the faith, ethnic diversity, and collective memory of Chicago Catholics.
For Further Reading For background on Chicago Catholicism of this period, see Edward R. Kantowicz, Corporation Sole: Cardinal Munde/,ein and Chicago Catholicism (Noo¡e Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), and Charles Shanabruch, Chicago Catholics(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). George A. Lane, Chicago Churches and Synagogues (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1981), and Han-y C. Koenig, ed., A History of the Parishes of the Archdiocese of Chicago, volumes I and 2 (Chicago: Archdiocese of Chicago, 1980), provide much raw material.
Illustrations 5, CHS, ICHi-19648; 6, CHS, ICHi-00326; 7 top, CHS, ICHi-10251; 7 bottom, CHS, ICHi-13182; 8, from Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works ( 1969), courtesy of Dover Publications, Inc.; 10, from A Guide to Church Furnishing and Decoration (1876-77), CHS, ICHi-19675; 11 top, CHS, Prints and Photographs Collection; 11 bottom, CHS, ICHi-00321; 13, from DiamondjubileeoftheArchdioceseof Chicago (1920), CHS, ICHi-19676; 14, from Daprato Altars (1925), CHS, ICHi-19677; 15, CHS, ICHi-00317; 16, from Diamond jubilee of the Archdiocese of Chicago (1920), CHS, ICHi-19678; 18, CHS, ICHi-19647; 19, from lllustrated Catalogue, Zeitler Company, CHS, ICHi-19679; 20, CHS, ICHi-19100; 21, from Illustrated Souvenir of the Archdiocese of Chicago (1916), CHS, ICHi-19680; 22, CHS, Architectural Collection; 24, from The First Cardinal of the West (1934), CHS, ICH i-19681; 25, CHS, original Bemm negative no. 319; 26, CHS, Architectural Collection. 27
•••••• •• •• • • • • • ••••• • • • • ••••• • •• ••••••• • • •• • •• • •• Moving Picture Palaces:
•• •• •• •• •• •• •• ••
Color Photographs of Theater Interiors by Russell Phillips and Don DuBroff FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, America's moving picture palaces have inspired, enchanted, and amazed theatergoers. The well-designed theater, like the medieval church, was built to provide a setting that transcended mundane daily life. George L. Rapp, one of Chicago's most prolific theater architects of the 1920s and 1930s, believed the movie house was a "shrine to democracy ... where the wealthy rub elbows with the poor.... " The 1920s was America's golden age of moving picture palaces. Eager to promote America's newest art form to the masses and to satisfy the demand for sensational experiences, theater owners commissioned architects and designers to create fantastic and exotic interiors for their movie houses. Inspiration came from the rich European architectural heritage embodied in cathedrals, palaces, and opera houses. The ever-popular atmospheric theaters set romantic recreations of scenes from ancient Egypt, the Orient, Renaissance Europe, and Mayan and Aztec cultures under a simulated star- or cloudfilled sky painted (or projected) on an auditorium ceiling. The decline of ostentatious styles in the 1930s and 1940s reflected America's
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lean depression years as well as a growing enthusiasm for streamlining. In the 1950s movie theater attendance began falling as television and other entertainments grew in popularity. Unable to compete, scores of theater were torn down or converted to other uses. Once attendance began to rise again, owners increased profits in the 1970s and 1980s by building new multi-theater complexes or by splitting older, large capacity auditoriums into two or more mini-theaters of a few hundred seats each. The photographs on the following pages are selected from the Society's current exhibition, "Moving Picture Palaces: Color Photographs of Theater Interiors by Don DuBroff and Russell Phillips." During the last four years, DuBroff and Phillips, commercial and architectural photographers by trade, have photographed more than forty Chicagoarea theater interiors. This fascinating study traces the evolution of the American movie theater, illuminating its historical, cultural, and architectural significance.
Larry A. Viskochil Curator of Prints and Photographs
Auditorium, Pickwick Theatre, 1982, Don A. DuBro.lJ
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Lobby (with seat indicator), Nortown Theatre, 1982, Don A. DuBrojf
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Lobby and Grand Staircase, Oriental Theatre (Milwaukee), 1983, Russell B. Phillips
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Auditorium viewed from Balcony, Egyptian Theatre (DeKalb), 1983, Don A. I>uBro.lJ
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Auditorium, Detail, Apollo Theatre/ United Artists Theatre, 1986, Russell B. Phillips
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Lobby, Golf Mill Theatre, 1985, Russell B. Phillips
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Lobby Concession Counter; Nortoum Theatre, 1982, Russell B. Phillips
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Organ Screen Dome, Oriental Theatre (Chicago), 1984, Don A. DuBrojf
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Balcony Landing, £.squire Theatre, 1982, Don A. DuBrojf
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Lobv1,,.,)', E._,_ =rlS 2', l984' Russell B. Phillips
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Auditorium, Hinsdale Theatre, 1985, R=ell B. Phillips
Above left: Men's Lounge, Pickwick Theatre, 1984, R=ell B. Phillips Left: Auditorium, Music Box Theatre, 1984, R=ell B. Phillips
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Lobuy and Auditorium, Art Theatre (Hobart, Indiana), 1985, Don A. DuBrojf
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Upper Lobby, Nortown Theatre, 1984, Russell B. Phillips
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Lobby, Parkwo:y Theatre, 1984, Russell B. Phillips
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Lobby Ceil!ng, Detail, Paramount Theatre, 1982, Don A. DuBrojf
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Remembering Lucy Flower Tech: Black Students in an All-Girl School By Nancy Green
For more than fifty years young black women took advantage of the unique educational opportunities at Lucy Flower Technical High School. And though their own goals were often in conflict with the curriculum, they always felt the school had something special to offer them.
the purpose of the schools: the students and their fam ilies, or official education poli cy-makers? The case of Lucy Flower Techn ical H igh School, especially the use of the school by black students to achieve their goals, is a striking illustration of the power of student decision making and of the importance of considering the goals of cl ients as we ll as po licy-makers if we wish to u nderstand the h istory of schooli ng. Flower Tech, the city's first open-enroll ment public schoo l for girls, was the brainchi ld of Ella Flagg You ng, Chicago's superintendent of schools from 1909 to 1915. Young was an innovative leader devoted to improving schools for the working people of the city, and she wanted a school that WHO SHOULD DECIDE
Nancy Green is professor of education at Northeastern Illinois University.
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would help the thousands of young women she saw flooding into the factories and "great commercial houses" of the city. Technical education for young men was already well established in Chicago at Lane and Crane technical high schools, which , though designed to serve their respective parts of the city, were otherwise open-enrollment schools. But for young women, technical education was a new idea clouded by uncertainty about just what women's work roles should be. On one hand, reformers, alarmed by the disruptive influence of the city on family life, believed that teaching homemaking to schoolgirl - might strengthen the family and perhaps even 1-educe the divorce rate. Yet in rea lity the young working-class women the reformers worried about wanted marketable skills more than training in housework, even though
Above: Progressive educator Ella Flagg >bung ( 1845-1918) provided the inspiration for Lucy Flower Technical High School. She encouraged vocational training in the public schools but also believed in the "delights of genuine scholarship." The high school was named for another education activist. Lucy Flower ( 183 7- 1921) 11XLS particularly intrrested in children's educational and legal welfare. Below: Now painted over, this WPA mural by Edward Millman once adorned the first floor foyer of Flower Tech in East Garfield Park. It commemorates the heroic deeds of famous women such as Jane Adda11LS, Susan B. Anthony, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
they fully expected to many after a few years in the work force. AL Lucy Flower, therefore, the central question into the 1950s was whether the school should prepare young women for their presumably short-term employment outside the home, or concentrate on their lifelong careers as wives and mothers. The educators largely saw it one way, the school's black clients another. The results were mixed. To further complicate matters, racial integration was rare in Chicago high schools when Lucy Flower was founded and rarer still in 1940. In the 1950s and 1960s it existed, but only as a brief, transitory phenomenon between segregated white and segregated black schools as the black community grew in numbers and extent. But white and black students attended Lucy Flower together from its opening until the last white students graduated in the late 1960s. However, although they shared classrooms and curricula, their educational goals were different for reasons inextricably linked to job discrimination. Racial tradition dictated a difference in orientation toward the future between black and white students. Most white students came from families in which women were expected to work outside the home for only a few years before marriage, if at all. Their employment was essentially a contribution to the well-being of their families of origin; to their maniages they brought homemaking skills. In the black community, economic necessity and traditional female independence increased the like lihood that women, whether middle or working class, would be employed after marriage for some
47
Chicago History, Fall 1985 time. Black students, therefore, were especially serious about preparing for long-term employment. For some, this meant taking full advantage of the school's vocational offerings and preparing for work as seamstresses, although limited opportunities still left many with only unskilled jobs. For others, beginning in the 1940s, it meant following the academic program and looking forward to careers as teachers, nurses, and social workers. Black students used Lucy Flower Tech as a means to these ends almost in spite of the school itself. Offering millinery, dressmaking, and "domestic science," as well as a standard high school curriculum, Lucy Flower Technical High School opened in 1911 in the abandoned South Division High School at 26th Street and Wabash Avenue. There were seventy-five students, all women , two of them black. Over the years, during which time the school moved twice and reached an enrollment of almost 3,000, young black women were steadily drawn to Lucy Flower. The black population of the city in 1911 was only about44,000 (approximately 2 percent of the total). As the black community grew and concentrated on the South Side during the 1920s and l930s, Wendell Phillips High School and the elementary schools that fed it came to be known as " egro schools." White students were permitted, sometimes even encouraged , to transfer to Hyde Park and Englewood schools. But black students found it difficult to transfer, and only those with political connections were able to. Population growth within the limited area of housing open to blacks meant that Phillips, and after 1935 a new all-black school, DuSable, became severely overcrowded. Flower, however, was an open-enrollment school , the only public high school young women from any part of the city were free to attend . So black parents, and sometimes their daughters, saw it not just as a place to learn useful skills and a haven from the distracting presence of boys, but as the only attractive alternative to crowded local schools. In the early years of the school, some of these parents were securely middle class-Icla B. Wells, for instance, sent her daughters to the schoolbut more fell into the category described by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton in Black Metropolis as "poor but striving." An unusually high portion of the black women who attended Flower were the only children in their families. Their
48
parents wanted a protected environment for them, and Flower shortly earned the reputation of a "poor man's Vassar." The school's second location, 61st Street a nd Wabash Avenue, was still within walking distance for many young black women , whose numbers increased to nearly equal the number of white students. Although open-enrollment remained in effect, Flower's black population dropped dramatically after the school moved in 1927 to a new, specially designed building on the West Side across the street from the Garfield Park Conservatory. Some ex-teachers and students believe the move was deliberately planned to reduce the number of black students. Although there were two separate black communities on the West Side at the time, concentrated along Lake Street and along Roosevelt Road, both were small compared to the South Side black community. The new location was more convenient for Polish and Italian immigrant families who were just beginning to send their daughters to high school, and who shared with many black parents the preference for an all-girl school. Thus, while the number of white students increased tenfold during the 1930s, the black student body
Lucy Flower Tech
In thR early twentieth century, U/Omen llJ/'re leaving the sewingfactories (lejt)jorwork in offices like this one at Pullman(above), c. 1918. By 1940 almost half of all employed whit1â&#x20AC;˘ women had clerical jobs.
grew more slowly. Most of them continued to commute from the South Side, traveling considerably longer distances than many of their while classmates. One of the key arch itecls of Flower's eel ucational program was Dora Wells, a Wellesley graduate, who was the school's principal from 1911 to 1933. Early in the school's his101)', she thought it might best train high-quality servants who would "sell their time at a stated price per hour." But that wasn't what students, black or white, wanted, as she herself ruefully acknowledged in a speech to the Chicago Women's Club , saying girls "scatter like a flock of pigeons as soon a it [domestic work] is mentioned:' She struck a more responsive note and established an enduring theme for Flower in her campaign to improve the manners and taste of her charges. Her ,-igicl standards of propriety escaped severity by virtue of her kindliness and her determination to maintain a "family" atmosphere in the school. "We try to teach our crafts so that they turn a gaudy taste into a beautiful art," she told a newspaper reporter in 1925. "You do not see the grotesque dress here that many girls affect, do you ?"
"When you came out, you were a lady," is the consensus of Flower alumnae of varied backgrounds, from Dora Wells's clay into the 1960s. A black woman who attended the school in the mid-1920s recalls that she could always recognize fellow graduates because they "looked like Flower." Girls were taught to be gracious hostesses as well as to plan and cook meals. The school owned a silver tea service and a set of china; in home economics classes students took turns inviting their favorite teachers to lunch, and appropriate manners of greeting and conversing with the guests were part of the assignment. Being a lady included appreciating art and music, and at the new school these departments were large and popular. In 1939 there were more art teachers than math or social studies instructors. Much of the art work was linked to the extensive home economics offe1ings of the school. Hanelloom weaving, for example, impressed visitors, and fashion design appealed to clothes-conscious young women. A number of black graduates recall their studies in music with special fondness. At least two went on to musical careers-Louise Overall Weaver (class of 1934), who for many years was
49
Chicago History, Fall 1985
50
Lucy Flower Tech CUISSPS (left and below right) at Lucy flower were small in the mid-19/0s and includni Jew blacks, who numbPred only about 2 percent of the city :S population al the time. Dora \1His (below left), the school :S first principal, c. 1925. Weliss rigid standards and kindly altitude /,eft an indelib/,e imprint on the character of the school.
accompanist to Mahalia Jackson , and Albertina Walker (class of 1947), who is still active as a gospel singer. Homemaking was, in addition to manners, another part of Miss Wells's legacy, and young women welcomed sewing classes and the opportunity to make their own clothes and hats. Even many black students of the 1940s and 1950s who aspired to college valued the school's home economics instruction , which included not only cooking and sewing but a nursery school where students could observe and care for children. The intention of the founders, however, had not been merely to make young women into ladies or to prepare them for an adult life of homemaking, but to give them a saleable skill. Although this seems to have been a priority for many black as well as white students, circumstances of the 1920s and 1930s meant only modest success for the school in this realm. Faculty favored an emphasis on homemaking during the depression when the job market for women, especially black women, was severely restricted . In spite of this domestic orientation, however, black women were drawn to Flower precisely because of its emphasis on sewing; it was attractive because it prepared them to work not just in factories but as seamstresses on their own or in family enterprises. Black students also learned millinery at Flower, but millinery shops and factories did not hire blacks, and those who aspired to work in department stores had to settle for stock work while their white classmates got better paying apprentice or sales jobs. Other employment opportunities for black women before World War II were limited almost entirely to domestic service and semiskilled work in laundries and garment factories. But when depression crippled the dress indusll)', many jobs disappeared. The 1930s saw the percentage of semiskilled black women in the work force shrink from 32 percent to 20 percent, while the percentage who were servants rose from 56 percent to 64 percent. Under these circumstance , it is remarkable that so many young blacks felt it was worthwhile to attend Chicago high schools 51
Chicago History, Fall 1985
ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY FO~ WOMEN
OF EVERY 10 TEEN·AGE WHITE GIRLS 5 ARE IN HIGH SCHOOL
OF THESE 6 CAN EXPECT WHITE ·COLLAR JOBS
OF EVERY 10 TEEN-AGE NEGRO GIRLS 5 ARE IN HIGH SCHOOL
OF THESE ONLY 1 CAN EXPECT A WHITE-COLLAR JOB Estimates based on data from the Sixteenth Census of the U. S., 1940.
This /940s lab/,e graphically depicts the job market Flower graduates faced at that time.
at all during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, yet they enrolled in almost the same proportion as did whites. The fastest growing area of employment for white women by the 1930s was clerical work Uobs virtually closed to blacks), and by 1940 almost half of all employed white women were doing such work in contrast to only 7 percent of employed black women. In the 1940s and 1950s, clerical employment, especially in government agencies, began to open up for black women, though they continued to get less than their share of clerical jobs as late as 1960. This new field and a growing militance that associated home economics with "Aunt Jemima" meant that black students were particularly enthusiastic when Lucy Flower finally introduced in 1954 the business courses that students had wanted for years. By the 1940s, a greater number of black students were seeking college preparation in their high schools. Expansion of Chicago industry during World War II virtually ended unemployment and brought a degree of prosperity to black as well as white families who had struggled through the depression. Greater economic security ena-
52
bled some black parents to fulfill their dreams of securing a middle-class future for their daughters by way of a college education. Opportunities to attend college in Chicago proliferated immediately after the war. To accommodate the £lood of veterans taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, the University of Illinois established a two-year branch at Navy Pier; and Roosevelt University, a private school with strong ties to the labor movement and the black community, opened in downtown Chicago. White women planning to attend college received, for the most part, adequate training at their local high schools; but many black parents believed that Lucy Flower provided the best college preparation available to their daughters. Thus, in the late 1940s when most white students still chose Flower because of its preparation for homemaking, many black students were choosing it for its academic program. The expectation among black students of going to college became so su·ong that one graduate of the class of 1947 saw it as a problem; so many of her school friends planned to go away to college that she felt left out because her parents could only afford to send her to a city junior college. Though percentages of young women attending college were growing, college students still represented a small minority of their age group. In 1950 less than 7 pei-centofthe black rwenty-oneyear-olcl women in the city were in college (in contrast to just less than 11 percent or white women of the same age). Clearly there was something exceptional about these young women and their families. Many white graduates of the 1930s and 1940s remember their black classmates as "high class"; yet only a few families of Flower's black students were truly amuent. As had been true throughout the chool's history, more were "poor but middle class," maintaining a determinedly respectable style of life on a modest income. In many cases both parents were working at fairly good jobs-fathers as postal cle1·ks, mechanics, or in their own small businesses; mothers as teachers or factory workers. The fact that their families were small made it possible for them to consider keeping their daughters in school. The underlying fact of the black experience at Flower was that black students felt they would get a better education there than at their local egregated high schools. But what did it mean for black students to attend an integrated high school when
WORKING FOR DEGREE OF LAUNDRESS Girls of Lucy Flower ,High School Learning to Make a Science of Clothes Cleaning.
Ot course tt doesn't sound so particularly .. dressy " to say: " Yes, my daughter ts a. laundress." But the day ts coming, according to girls and instructors in the Lucy Flower technical high school for girls, at Wabaeh avenue and Sixty-first street, when to say that will mean earning a.
blk
salary and being an " efficiency
expert."
At this school they work
miracles w'ith a flatiron and a bit of starch. The course in washl'ng and
ironing takes five hours a week for .tlve months . .. We tea.ch them everything there is to know about perfect laundry work,"
aaid Mrs. Elsie M . .Page, the Instructor. First they have to know the action ot chemicals on every sort at material. Then, one by one, they learn the ways to remove every flort ot stain-ink, medicine, rust, :!Jhoe polish, egg, !rult, grea.ee. The g irls learn how to laun4er properly. how to make starch, \,luetng and eoa.p. wHb a. ecore o! reclpel. for different soaps, according to materials. In addition, they are taught all forms of mending, from good stocking darning to the Intricate copy o! the weave In damask tablecloths." "You see, it ts an art," sa1d Miss Dora Wells, principal or th e school. " It ts primartly intended to make the girl useful tn her h ome, but lt can be turned to a trade whic h should bring In not lee:s than $6 a day. There ts one girl who comes in all the time to ask for extra. hours, and It is espeota.lly amu&ing since she t, the daughter or a wealthy man. They hav e t'our servants at home, three a utomobil es, and altogether live so luxuriously that she nev er touches a finge r to anything at home."
Newspaper clipping, c. 1920. Lucy H ower High School a.nned students of the 1920s with. skills 1.1Sej11/ in or out of the home.
53
Remembering Lucy Flower ,,
',
, I
,,
·,
,
I
,,.
'r ' ,,
.,
Much of lhir article if bawl 01, ,-ert1in1.'iC1'n~es of Flower graduates g(Llhered during i,ui'nliews. Here we present some pictorial nwmories of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s as well.
'
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Chicago History, Fall 1985 segregation was the norm? What were race relations like at the school, and what kind of social life did black students have? Conscious of the challenge of attending a school where the faculty, staff, and a majority of the students(unti l the late 1950s) were white was certainly not unfamiliar to Flower's black students. Chicago had become a highly segregated city by 1920, and elementary schools were almost completely segregated by 1930. Most black Flower students (after 1940 it is probably safe to say all of them) had attended all-black elementary schools; their families were restricted to black neighborhoods; they were born in black hospitals, attended black churches, and belonged to black clubs. Until well into the 1950s they could not eat in downtown Chicago restaurants or try on clothing in State Street department stores. Under such circumstances, enrollment at Flower was an exciting if sometimes threatening experience. A graduate from the late 1950s commented that it was "like the other side of the world" from her South Side neighborhood . Most black graduates feel that the majority of their teachers were fair, but ome recall problems which they usually solved by withdrawing from a class if they felt the teacher did not accept them. A 1930 graduate remembered some teachers who "let you know they thought you were inferior:• A 1940 alumna said she always felt she was there "conditionally." Several graduates from the 1950s recall v.rith some bitterness a counselor who encouraged black students to take up menial work and discouraged their college aspirations. Yet overall, most agreed with the graduate who remembered many helpful teachers not "hung up on race," who gave them d1e so·aightfonvard message: "You've got a brain; use it." Race relations among tudents were generally influenced by the tone, set first by principal Dora Wells, of a family aonosphere, where serious attention to studies and commitment to ladylike behavior muted racial friction. In the school's curriculum, the color line was drawn only in beauty culture, which was highly segregated in practice and open only to white students at Lucy Flower. There was no segregation in other fields of study. White students who attended Flower knew they would have black classmates (though some black women recall that the white students "hadn't even seen blacks before"), and most accepted them on 56
that basis, if not as members of the same clique. Although many have very positive memories of black classmates, racial bias was present below the surface. Black students in the 1930s and early 1940s were involved in sports and musical groups but were "not welcome" in the Dance Club, which had parties with boys from Lane Technical High School , or in the Hostess Club, which greeted visitors to the school. Word spread quickly among black students that "you don't fit in that particular set," and this being "an era when you didn't make waves," such a rumor was enough to keep them from volunteering. Small wonder that white students of the period remember their black counterparts as being shy and retiring. At the few other integrated high schools in the city in the 1930s and 1940s (Englewood , Bowen, and Tilden for example), senior proms were a natural flashpoint for racial tension , so Flower avoided school-sponsored proms entirely. Unofficial enior parties were held in some years, but until the 1950s even d1ese were all-white affairs. In the late 1940s, black students started their own club to raise money for a black prom without school sponsorship. Twenty-six black students of the class of 194 7 had their own prom and a breakfast aftenvard . The 1950s represent the most equalitarian years at Flower-a brief interlude between the white dominance of earlier years and the black dominance that characterized the school after the early 1960s. The 1950s saw the first biracial proms, the first black tudent elected "mayor," and biracial friend hips occasionally existed outside the walls of the school. The West Side's black population, very small when die school moved the1·e in 1927, gradually increa ed during the 1930s and 1940s, and the East Garfield Park community was 17 percent black by 1950. With the massive influx of southern blacks to Chicago in the 1950s and the displacement of thousands of blacks from the South Side by urban renewal, that percentage rose to sixty-two by 1960, which left the re idential area immediately surrounding Lucy Flower entirely occupied by blacks. Because of its city-wide enrollment policy-and possibly because of deliberate efforts to limit the number of black students-the school changed more slowly than the neighborhood. In an effort to maintain white enrollment, administrators stepped up the student recruiting that had sporadically
Lucy Flower Tech been part of the school's policy in the past. In spite of these efforts, white enrollment continued to slip. During the 1940s wartime prosperity had enabled many Italian and Polish families to send their daughters to all-girl Catholic schools, and the availability of business courses drew many white students Lo the general high schools. Since tJ1e school system did not keep records of enrollment by race during this period it is impossible to tell exactly what tJ1e racial proportions were at the school. The available evidence suggests that black enrollment in absolute numbers remained virtually stable from 1940 through 1955 but tJ1at a precipitous decline in the number of white students raised the percentage of black students from about 10 percent in 1940 to about40 percent in 1955. Though the school's reputation among whites declined with racial change in the neighborhood, its reputation among blacks as being "classy" both in its atmosphere and in its academic offerings continued to attract many black students who aspired to college. As in the previous decade, a higher proportion of black than of white students in the 1950s actually graduated, and many fewer black than white students dropped out to go to work. Many black graduates of the 1950s went on to college and graduate school and became teachers, social workers, and nurses. In the early 1960s the baby-boom generation reached high school age, and once again Flowerlike other Chicago high schools-was crowded. The faculty by tJ1is time included some black teachers and the majority of new students were black. For a few years, in spite of the inconvenience of having classes in every corner of the building, morale was high, activities burgeoned, and student felt there was "always something to be involved in" and tJ1at they and their school were special. According to a graduate of the class of 1968, "There was a certain snobbery about going \o Lucy Flower. There was still a gloss about it. We were young ladies and we were mart." Changes in the school system, however, weakened Lu cy Flower's ability to attract students. The coeducational Westinghouse Vocational High School opened a few blocks from Flower in 1966, offering many of the same courses. The loosening of local residency requirements for high school students in the 1960s and tJ1e opening of magnet high schools in the 1970s meant that Lucy Flower
was no longer the only open-enrollment school available to girls. It became a local high school, distinguished from others in its area only by a few extra vocational courses and its comparatively small size. Even its all-girl status, long an attraction, ended in response to legal mandates in the 1970s. During its years as a city-wide school, Lucy Flower served an important purpose as an alternative for young black women who aspired to a "different" education. This is ironic because helping blacks escape the ghetto was certainly not one of the official goals of the school. At a time when the city schools generally short-changed blacks, some students found a way to beat the system by attending the one school (other tJ1an their local ones) that was open to them, and using the education they gained there to go well beyond the expectations of the school itself. This article is based on interviews wit.h Flower graduates. School loyalty and self-pride may have conu¡ibuted to an unrealistic picture of black status at t.he school.
For Further Reading To explore further the history of black education in Chicago, turn to Michael T. Home!, Down from Equality: Bl.ack Chicagoans and the Public Schools, 1920-1941 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984). Studies of urban black life have been done by Otis and Beverly Duncan, The Negro Population of Chicago: A Study of Residential Succession (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957) and Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967). The History of Education Quarterly is a good resource. Int.he summer 1980 issue, Philip T. K. Daniel writes on "A History of Discrimination Against Black Students in Chicago Secondary Schools." Geraldine Clifford has done a study of women's education entitled " 'Marry, Stitch, Die, or Do Worse': Educating Women for Work," in Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationali m in American Education (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), edited by Har.â&#x20AC;˘ey Kantor and David B. Tyack.
Illustrations 46-47 bottom , courtesy of Lucy Flower High School; 47 top, CHS, ICHi-13l09; 48, CHS, ICHi-14489; 49, CHS, ICHi-24246; 50 bottom, courtesy of Mary S. Dickey; 50-51 top, courtesy of Gladys King Howard; 51 bottom, courtesy of Gladys King Howard; 52, from Black Metropolis, copyright 1945 by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton; renewed 1973 by St. Clair Drake and Susan C. Woodson. Reprinted by pennission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; 53, CHS, Archives and Manuscripts Collection; 54-55, courtesy of Lucy Flower High School. 57
Making the City Work: Machine Politics and Mayoral Reform By Paul M. Green
Three of Chicago's most notable mayors-Cermak, Daley, and Washingtonpromoted reform to strengthen their office and further their political careers. How each mayor's definition of reform changed city government and politics is examined in the following article.
HOW TOUCH AIU: POLITICS IN CHICAGO' For decades, journalists and politicians alike have tried to capture the inner dynamics of Chicago-style democracy. At the turn of the century Martin J. Dooley, Finley Peter Dunne's fictional philosopher saloonkeeper, suggested that Chicago politics "wasn't bean bag." A half-century late r, fabled political rogue Mathias "Paddy" Bauler uttered, "Chicago ain't ready fo r reform." And most recently, noted Chicago Tribune column ist Mike Royko commented that the official city motto should be changed from "I will" to "Where's mine?" These views an d coun tl ess others remind Chicagoans that though "the meek may inherit the earth," tl1ey won't even get into the will in Chi cago politics. Consider the young street punk who, when asked by a judge whether he had any goals in life besides crime, responded, "Yo ur honor, my dream has always been to be a pimp or an alderman.'· Indeed, Chicago is a tough town with politics to match. Every Chicago mayor has wrestled witl1 the prob·1em of administering city government amidst the rough-and-tumble tenain of city politics. While most issues have come and gone, one has remained constant: reform . Reform has influenced the philosoph ical and practical outlooks of every twentiethcentury Chicago mayor; so much so, in fact, that each has ca ll ed himself or herself a reformer. But what is the political function of reform in a city like Ch icago whose politicians pride themselves on no-holds-barred politics? The roles of tough politician and urban reformer are actual ly not as
Paul M. Green is director of the Institute for Public Policy and Administration at Governors State University.
58
J
1
-fH~ AI-O~Rl\,V\N S :Dt:(lAfV'ITtON
OF
INDtcP'i:NJ>tN C.£
\
incongruous as they might first appear to be and, in fact, are equally important for mayoral success in Chicago. Learning how they have reinforced each other is crucial to understanding the dynamics of the city's political and governmental process. All mayors want to consolidate power. In the real world of big city politics, government works best when a majority of the city council, the city's legislature, is of a like mind with the mayor, its executive. No mayor wants a legislature or a bureaucracy blocking or curtailing his programs. No council can govern without the mayoc Every Chicago mayor has courted this system, and has done so, genuinely or otherwise, in the name of reform. The following histo1icaJ overview compares
b1iefly the careers of Antonj. Cermak, mayor from 1931 to 1933, Richard J. Daley, who served from 1955 to 1976, and Harold Washington , mayor since 1983. The salient similarity among these three mayors is how each in his own way pushed reform to gain contrnl over the city's governmental machinery; the crucial difference is what reform meant Lo them. Cermak, Daley, and Washington share several traits besides their reform stance that set them apart from Chicago's other chief executives and which contributed to their style and success. Each J ohn T McCutcheon's satirical cartoon of 1910 faithfully captured the public's image of city politicos as con-upt opportunists. in later years, Chicago mayors such as Cermak, Daley, and Washington turned to reform, rather than graft, to consolidate their power:
f)
l-----:1,, !'
'~ ~CHI\RLEY YEKKE~
r
THE REAL FATHE~ OF
Hl~J'l[KY
.
(
1/(¡ (1
59
Chicago History, Fall 1985 man was the first mayor to be elected from his respective ethnic or racial background: non-Anglo Saxon / non-Celtic Cermak; Daley, an Irish Catholic ward committeeman; and Washington , a black. Their breakthrough elections renected the coming of age of their constituencies. Cermak was the ultimate ethnic mayor-the master ethnic coalition builder. When he was elected in 1931, 20 percent of the city's population was foreign born. Daley's key strength was his 1-eligion, and his ability to unify that vote made him the pre-eminent Catholic mayor. At the lime of his election, Chicago was the mostCatholiccity in America, the night of Catholics to the suburbs still to come. In the long run, Daley's religion, even more than his ethnicity, gave him a political edge. And it was Washington's
II
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60
"Politics, "'slated ,\/art inf. Dooley (leji), the quintessential Chicagoan created by joumalist Finley Peter Dzmne, "ain't berm bag. Tis a man'.5 game; an'womm, childer, an¡pro-hybitioni5ts 'd do well to keep out iv it." T/1e thr,e arnz,d party workn-s (below) guarding Cicero'.5 Democratic Party headquarters, 192¡/, nu,st lo Chicago's rough-and-tumble politics. Mayor A 111011 J. Cermak, at 1/u, microphone (right), /Jromoted hi1n<l'/f during the 1931 mayoral contest rL< "a master public ,,xerutive ..,
Making the City Work
ability to mobilize the black vole (40 percent of the city's population) that propelled him into city hall. Loyalty to and identification with a specific geographic community or neighborhood was crucia l in the political careers of Cermak and Daley. Cem1ak's allegiance was to the West Side of Chicago. Afler he was assassinated in Miami, his body was brought back to Chicago to lie in state not at city hall but in his Millard Avenue neighborhood. Daley's love affair with Bridgeport, the near Southwest Side bungalow community, was complete and unabashed. Washington's tcnitorial allegiance is less a factoc Race, not geography, dominates his mayoralty, and one is hard pressed to tic him to any neighborhood. But ofall their similarities reform is most impor1ant. All lhree men came up through the Democratic organization and were elected mayor promising m,~jor reforms. They wanted power, re pect, and adulation befitting their great election victo-
ries and used reform means to achieve these ends. Each came from the "wrong side of the tracks" and spent much of his political career attempting to gain acceptance on the other side without losing touch with home. Anton Cermak ran on a reform p latform in 1931, advocating administrative efficiency and cost cutting. In his campaign speeches he stressed fiscal restraint and economy and criticized incumbent William "Big Bill" Thompson for a conupt administration supported by an evil politica l machine. He built his city hall power base using several tools; reform was one that required only slight modification to fit his needs. It must be remembered that while Cermak was promoting himself as the "master executive" (as his campaign literature touted him) in governmental mailers, he was also very busy building the mighty Chicago Democratic political machine. He found both efforts totally compatible with his notion and promulgation of reform. 61
Chicago History, Fall 1985
62
Making the City Work Mayor Cennak with Eleanor and Franklin Roosevell and son.James, 011 the eve of the 1932 presidential election (left). Three months later, Cermak was mortally wounded in Miami during an assassination allempt against the president-elect. Whether answering charges of police brutality (below) or supporting American-made goods (right), Cemwk administered his office in a professional a,u/ efficient manne,:
One of his key issues was a plan to consolidate Chicago's park system. Cermak told his audiences that the park district was a hodgepodge: it comprised three park boards, a separate forest preserve system, and small independent parks scattered throughout the city. He argued that it made more sense to combine all of them under one unified Chicago Park District. Such a reform Cermak believed would lead to more efficient government. Charles Merriam , the eminent University of Chicago political scientist and unsuccessful "reform" mayoral candidate in ]91l and 1919, concurred imm ediately with Cermak's position . Cermak died before park district consolidation
was realized , but when it eventually came under his successor Edward Kelly, the event was hai led as a victory for modern professional government and effective management. Fifty years later some Chicagoans want once again to reform the park district, but this time by decentralizing its operation . So the reform wheel turns full circle. Cennak's notion of refonn went far beyond streamlining the park district, and he was keen to adopt other ideas common enough to reformers over the years, especially when they enhanced the power of the mayor's office. He argued that the elected posts of city clerk and city treasurer shou ld become mayoral appointments, claiming that these offices were like cabinet positions and that "effective teamwork at the top city level would be enhanced by giving the mayor appointive authority over them." 63
Chicago History, Fall 1985 Richard]. Daley's idea of reform was similar to Cermak's; he too wanted to reform the governmental process in order to professionalize the political process. Like Cermak, he accepted and welcomed reforms (and sometimes the reformers too) into his camp and used them for his own purposes. Prior to his 1955 mayoral victory, Daley had a reputation among conservative Illinois Democrats as a reform-minded liberal, part of the Adlai Stevenson II and Paul Douglas branch of the party; he had worked as Governor Stevenson's budget director, and he had openly supported Paul Douglas's Senate candidacy. Daley proudly called himself a liberal New Deal Democrat. In the mid-1950s, municipal reform centered around the city's demand to the state legislature for home rule (a long-sought goal to gain conlrol of its taxing power from Springfield), the creation of a deputy mayor, and the establishment of an executive budget. Traditionally, the city council finance committee created the budget; the mayor was technically not even part of the process. On taking over city hall, the newly elected Mayor Richard J. Daley became the outspoken champion of adminislrative reform. He argued that it would make more sense to have the mayor, not the finance committee, make the executive budget; the budgetary process would become more efficient and the mayor more responsible. But few would argue that Daley turned the city's budgetary process into a reform bastion, even though early in his mayoral career he did improve significantly the methodology, professionalism, and caliber of Chicago's budget making. Like Cermak, Daley used reform to strengthen his position in city government and in the party. Crucial to Daley's mayoral success were his counci l allies. (This was true for Cermak also, but to a lesser degree.) Aldermen Parky Cullerton and Tom Keane ramrodded his policies through the council. Cullerton was the finance committee chairman, while Keane headed the u¡ansportation committee and, in reality,just about everything else as well. None of his city council peers and few men in Chicago's history have grasped the intricacies of government and urban rule as clearly and as thoroughly as Tom Keane. His governmental genius perfectly matched Daley's political genius, and togetl1er tJ1ey were unbeatable allies facing any council, media, or political challenge. Daley was a realist, howeve1~ who always kept
64
Daley '.5 if/Ra of good govemmenl, shown abow in a caricature of the may01; succinctly describes his businesslikR and professional approach lo urban mle. His dual role as the city schief executive and chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party enabled him to fulfill many of his 195 5 campaign promises (above right). Daley sefforts to professionaliu government included aptJointing proven civic leaders lo public office. William L. McFetridge, a ,ww park district commissioner in 1967, is honored by Daley (right) in typical ritualistic fashion.
clear tJ1e distinction between the governmental process and the political process. He could accept and indeed seek radical changes in government, but only if they did not undermine his political operation. Yet even here Daley was a reformer for he restructured and reshaped the local Democratic Party as he did city government itself. He made botJ1 more effective, efficient, and businesslike, and in many ways more honest. What has irritated many of his latter-day critics is that Daley openly viewed reform as a means and not an end; while more radical proponents of change might choose tl1e role of plaintiff or defendant on an issue, Daley always held back and played the judge. Daley's governmental and political skills gave him the freedom to overtly sponsor urban reform, and though it has not been stressed in many articles
Making the City Work
A PROGRAM for ALL THE PEOPLE: Expand Hou•ing e:-' .,,//,:_ More Police Protection -'> 1.,--1Add 2.000 policemen to the Neighborhoods Appoint top - qualified,technic.11 police co-nmi ~s;oner Build "' ''influence -proof" force and smash crimo Improve morale and efficiency of polic•
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Making the City Work
Re-elected mayor.five limes after his first tenn, Daley's campaigns (left) promoted his accomplishmR'IUS as an urban refom1Rr: Daley frequently made himself available lo his constituency; he even handled citizens' comfJlainls (below left). Although Daley prided himself on his programs to help blacks (right), many of his critics claim they were ineffective.
or books about him, he u-uly believed in a businesslike, professional approach to governing Chicago. It was not mere rhetoric when he chanted "good government is good politics." Daley was helped in his reform measures by good timing. In the social, economic, and ethnic climate of the city in the mid-1950s, Richard]. Daley appealed to a majo:ity of Chicagoans who easily identified with him and his family. It made little difference what political tack he took given tl1at he represented the u-iumph of ethnic Catholic Chicago. Harold Washington ran on a reform platform that on tl1e urface was little different from his predeces ors'; he claimed he would step upon patronage's grave, open up the system, and bring in the "left out." But unlike Cermak and Daley, his reform agenda was more political than govern-
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mental; Washington ran as a reformer not only by personal choice, but by political necessity. Given the racial polarization of the city at the time of his two mayoral campaigns (the primary and the general election), reform was one of the few political banners ava il able to Washington that cou ld help attract a significant number of non-black voters. This is crucial to understanding Washington's concept of reforn1. The city's first black mayor redefined reform even as he guarded its traditional value to incumbent Chicago mayors-increased power and control. Historians and political scientists have generally argued that since the turn of the century, urban reform in America has been based on a so-called "middle-class ethos." Simply interpreted, this theory suggests that municipal reform movements 67
Chicago History, Fall 1985
----
Throughoul his twenty-one-year span as mayor, Daley inilialed numerous public works projects lo improve /he city sinfraslructure-bridges, highways, sewers.
68
Making the qty Work
During the Daley years, Chicago earned a national reputation c,s the city that worked. Following his death in 1976, Chicagoans became disenchanted with the city's entrenched politics, electing non-machine mayors Jane Byrne in 1979 and Harold Washington in 1983.
originated as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) response to the ethnically based machine politics of newly arrived urban immigrants. The notion of exchanging political favors for votes was allegedly repugnant to WASP middle-class values of efficiency, honesty, and representative democracy. But as conceived by Washington and dictated by his constituency, reform now has a radically changed meaning. Rather than clean and cheap city government in the WASP sense or efficient delivery of abundant machine "services" in the tradition of Cermak and Daley, Washington's notion of reform centers on the docaines of fairness, the correction of past racial inequities, and more even distribution of resources. Washington's difficulty in using reform as an end of government rather than as a means of administration is reflected in his bitterly contested election campaign and the ensuing deadlock with Tenth Ward Alderman Edward Vrdolyak. In sharp contrast to Daley's day,
the most powerful alderman in the city council is now the mayor's chief antagonist. For Cermak and Daley reform meant battling Republicans, but for Washington reform has come to mean battling fellow Democrats on a two-front war-governmental and political. And where Cermak and Daley used the party apparatus to push reform and mayoral agendas and th us consolidate control over both the political and governmental machinery, Washington has been ineffectual. Under Cermak and Daley reform was used to fine tune problem areas, bring innovative good government programs to the city, and create a positive image of the mayor. Under Washington reform has become a political battlecry for pushing out the ins and bringing in the outs. What has gone almost unnoticed in the midst of the heated political and governmental confrontations in city hall is the success Mayor Washington has had in convincing his vast black constituency
69
Chicago History, Fall 1985
Promising fair government, conection of />ast racial inequalities, and more equitable distribution of resources (right), a charismatic Harol.d Washington (above) mobiliz.ed Chicago's black vote (40 percent of the city's population) lo propel him into city hall.
thal reform is in ils inlerest. Casling Vrdolyak as a "pseudo-religious devil figure," Washington has conjured up images of the harm a "fast Eddie" takeover might do Chicago blacks. Thus, the city's poorest residents, who reside in the worst housing, attend the lowest raled schools, and suffer the highest crime rates, are now reformers. Reform has become a catchall term in modern Chicago because so many people interpret it differently. One thing, however, is certain-the most vocal refonners in the city are no longer white or Anglo-Saxon. They do not belong to fashionable clubs or civic organizations, and they are hardly devotees of the "cheese and chablis" liberal social circuit. Their presence as reformers points up once again how the race issue can flip-flop traditional political roles. For confronting the new black reformers are the educated, middle-class, white ethnics who, though not Anglo-Saxon, best satisfy the requirements for membership in past Chicago refom1 movements. And these middleclass city dwellers now live in wards where the once mighty Democratic machine has retained its strongest appeal. Comparing Cennak's, Daley's, and Washington's mayorships, one is struck by an overwhelming and obvious political difference. Cermak and Daley sought to build their political influence by using
70
governmenlal reform to strcngLhen a solid power base nol only in city hall, but more importantly in the Cook County Democratic Party. Washington, with inadequate party support to push either himself or his programs, has been forced to use refonn as a political goal to solidify a newly emerging power base-Chicago's blacks. Much of Lhe council wa1-fare, verbal sniping, and political confusion thal has occu1Ted in the last two years can be attributed to this shifl in the mayoral power base. Th is suggesls that it is far easier for a mayor to add allies to his political base when his primary power comes from general party strength rather than from a single voter constituency. Although Cennak emphasized his ethnicity and Daley stressed his religion for political purposes, non-ethnics and non-Calholics were more willing to accept their leadership because it was transmitled through party structure. It musl be remembered that Cermak and Daley especially used refonn issues and rhetoric to extend their geographic power base by winning over areas of past political foes. The Democratic organization's outward push from its inner city base to the middle-class wards on Chicago's periphery was led by party operatives who were better educated and more experienced in managing city government than their early twentieth-century machine
You Will Have A FAIR and OPEN Chicago
With Harold Washington - ---· "UTON ._ FOR ,~,
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Harold Washington says that the patronage system must go. People will be hired on the basis of merit, required to do no more than a fair days work for a fair day's pay, and granted the right of collective bargaining. Harold Washington says that Police Superintendent Brzeczek must go. He will establish a professional. not a political, police force, fighting crime, not forging public relations. Harold Washington says "cut the umbilical cord between the Board of Education and City Hall" with an elected school board. Harold Washington believes in equal pay for women and he believes more women should be in policy level positions. He will build a strong affirmative action program.
Chicago History, Fall 1985 predecessors. The movement of upwardly mobile Catholics and ethnics into these peripheral wards certainly aided and accelerated the switch in party preference from Republican to Democratic, however, it would not have happened as quickly or as easily had not these new party leaders convinced their neighbors of their faith and commitment to reform. To most of these middle-class residents on the city's Northwest and Southwest sides, refonTI meant efficient city services, safe city streets, relatively low taxes, and no racial integration. The Chicago Democratic machine generally provided all of this . Contrast this "reform-minded" machine to the stereotypical political machines, which offered poor and haphazard city services, wide-open towns, and an unstable tax base, and were unable to prevent neighborhood integration. It is easy to see why all the other machines withered much sooner and died. By keeping the race issue under control, CenTiak and Daley convinced citizens in areas historically opposed to centralized political authority or machine rule that not only was support of the organization in their best interest, but that the machine's accomplishments really were reform. Moreover, they argued that the lakefront and Hyde Park liberals who habitually opposed the machine were not reformers at all but mere dissidents who offered no practical alternatives. As Mayor Daley derisively said of them, "What trees do they plant?" Harold Washington certainly wants to be mayor of the entire city. Like Cermak and Daley before him, he is anxious to extend his power base out to the wards on the city's periphery. Yet his efforts are hindered by his lack of city-wide control over the political organization that previous mayors have made into effective tools of their administrations. His chief weapons of race and reform (as he and his supporters redefine them) hold little appeal for middle-class white ethnic voters. It is tempting but far too easy to dismiss the resulting standoff as pure racism. The city's white ethnics have seen too many of their old neighborhoods literally destroyed by racial change. For them, integration has meant deterioration in the quality of neighborhood and urban life in almost every measurable category. (It is ironic that many of those who chastise these white ethnics as racists live in communities that are geographically, socially, or economically far removed from the problems of the changing neighborhoods.) 72
If he is to succeed, Washington must emulate Cermak and Daley and find those reform issues that will win his opponents over. Like Cermak and Daley, Washington must keep the race issue under control while demonstrating a willingness and ability to solve neighborhood problems throughout the city. Recently, the mayor has made significant progress in this direction, aided in great part by some new personnel in his inner governmental circle. Yet if Washington is to extend his rule over all of Chicago (presuming something less than total white flight from the city), he will have to use the Democratic Party as effectively as Cermak and Daley did. Even as the mayor must redefine reform to ensure his political power, he must not forget the past. Through party politics, with its give and take, its alliances, and its balanced tickets, is Washington most likely to achieve his mayoral goals.
For Further Reading The following books provide information on the lives and politics of the mayors discussed in this article. For more on Cermak, turn Lo john M. Allswang, A Housefor All People: Ethnic Politics in Chicago (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1971); Alex Goufried, Boss Cermak of Chicago: A Study of Political Leadmhip (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962); and Melvin G. Holli and Peter d'A.Jones, Ethnic Chicago (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1981). Works about Mayor Daley include Illinois: Its History and Legacy (SL Louis: River City Publishers, 1984), by Roger Bridges and Rodney Oavid; Him.self! The Life and Times of Mayor Richard). Daley (New York: Viking Press, 1978), by Eugene Kennedy; Len O'Connor, Clout: Mayor Daley and His City (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1975); and Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971) by Mike Royko. Two by Milton Rakove are published by the Indiana University Press in Bloomington: Don't Make No v\,vves- Don~ Back No Losers ( 1975) and We Don1 Want Nobody-Nobody Sent ( 1979). Holli and Green collaborated on The Making of the Mayor: Chicago 1983 (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1984), and Paul KJeppner has written Chicago Divided: The Making of a Black Mayor (DeKalb: onhern Illinois University Press, 1985). Both are about Haro ld Washington.
Illustrations 58-59, CHS, ICHi-14902; 60 Lop, CHS, ICHi-19649; 60 bottom, CHS, ICHi-13908; 61, CHS, ICHi-9764; 62 top, CHS, Chicago Daily News photograph, DN-101 , 759; 62-63 bottom, CHS, ICHi-09766; 63, CHS, ICHi-19650; 64, CHS, ICHi-19667; 65 top, CHS, ICHi-19668; 65 bottom, CHS, ICHi-19652; 66 Lop, CHS, ICHi-19651; 66 bottom, CHS, ICHi-19655; 67, CHS, ICHi-19654; 68, CHS, ICHi-19653; 69, CHS, ICHi-19666; 70, courtesy of Chicago Sun-Times, 71 , CHS, Archives and Manuscripts Collection .
Georgp I Jal{,1 (left), ownrr and head coach of the Chicago Bears, with Sid Luckman, /947. Luckman, Chicago sstar qiwrterback from 1939 to /950, and la/Pr mt amstant coach, wa, a key figure ut i11troduci11g to professional football the modernized T-fonnation devised by George Halas and Clark ShaughnelSJ Gift of Field Enterpnse.s.