The most famous Hinsdalean you’ve never heard of

BY MATT STOCKMAL

Loie Fuller is the most famous person from Hinsdale that you have never heard of. In the dead of winter in 1862, Loie was born in the community preceding the official organization of Hinsdale: Fullersburg. Loie was born at the Castle Inn, the only building in town with a cast iron stove hot enough to hold the -40 degree temperature outside at bay. The Castle Inn was located at the current intersection of York and Ogden, specifically around the Ogden entrance to the Shell gas station. She recounted her birth in her memoirs stating the proto-Hinsdaleans had “transformed the bar into a sleeping room, and there it was that I first saw light. On that day, the frost was thick on the window panes, and the water froze in dishes two yards from the famous stove.”

Loie spent her first two years of life in Fullersburg as her father Rueben and the rest of the Fuller family worked to make the area an inviting to travelers along the Old Plank Road from Naperville into Chicago, now known as Ogden Avenue. However, upon the decision of Burlington railroad executives to lay their new railroad one mile south of Fullersburg, Loie’s father, Rueben, was devastated and decided to pick up and move his family into the city. Though she was only two at the time, Loie remembered “the time that the rail- road put the station a mile away from us. Father was terribly hurt about it and disappointed. He had worked to put that little place [Fullersburg] on the map.”

After her departure in 1864, it would be over sixty years until her return to Hinsdale in 1925 for just a 24-hour layover on her way to the San Fransisco Centennial. But within that time, Loie had traveled the world multiple times and, more importantly, changed dance, modern art, and technology forever.

Throughout her life, Loie had always been a performer. Progressing from reciting “Mary had a Little Lamb” on the stage of a Chicago Progressive Lyceum as a toddler to giving lectures on temperance as a teen, and finally onto the stage professionally as both an actress and dancer. She spent her twenties traveling the country performing in various plays and variety shows such as Buffalo Bill’s Prairie Waif, or as Little Jack Shepard in Nat C. Goodwin’s 1886 burlesque by the same name. However, Loie struggled to find a niche for herself in traditional theater. She did not have the stunning looks, grace, and athleticism to be a spectacular dancer. Nor did she have a breathtaking operatic voice. She was simply a short, plump, bright, perfectly average midwestern girl who had a fire within her to perform whenever and however the opportunity arose and curiosity in a revolutionary technology taking over major cities around the world: electricity.

Experimenting with cutting-edge stage lights she colored herself, and large flowing Chinese silk, Loie had created a genre-bending hybrid of burlesque skirt dancing, abstract art, and up-lit Parisian fountains, which became known as “The Serpentine.” Loie would stand on stage wrapped with hundreds of yards of white silk; the stage lights would dim, and the spotlights of ever-changing color would shine upon her alone. She would then begin to flow the fabric into various ethereal patterns representative of the shapes of nature. On stage, she would transform into a serpent, a flame, a lily, and even the moon. With the serpentine, Loie had finally created her niche. And this niche would go on to become a worldwide phenomenon in Belle Époque Paris.

From her debut at the Folies Berège music hall in 1893 through the Exposition Universelle of 1900, Loie Fuller was the sensation of Paris and the art world as a whole. Critics raved about her sold-out performances night after night and the art community was inspired by her ability to bring the abstract ideals of nature’s ever-changing beauty, flowing lines, and effervescence to life. Jules Chéret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made prints of her. She inspired and became lifelong friends with sculptor Auguste Rodin. She was also embedded within Paris’s scientific community, becoming friends with Marie and Pierre Curie due to her fascination with radium as a potential artistic medium. For over 20 years, “La Loïe” was the epicenter of Parisian culture, and her innovative combination of new technology still inspires today.

“I love how you can carve a dancer’s body from the stage with light and support the choreography’s artistry. And Loie was the first lighting designer,” said Megan Slayter, a lighting designer and dance historian at Western Michigan University. Slayter and her team worked to recreate many of Loie’s dances in the modern era. “She used movement, lights, and costumes equally to create a single vision in the eye of the audience. It wasn’t just lighting layered on top of choreography. You couldn’t take any one of these elements away and still have Loie’s art” Even outside of her dance, Loie’s courage and personality can inspire modern artists and Hinsdaleans alike. “She was an absolutely phenomenal woman. She had guts. She was brave. She was brash. She was not afraid to advocate for herself. And in that way, you can’t help, but you can’t help but admire her,” said Slayter. ■

Editors Note. Loie Fuller's descendents are today's Fuller family in Hinsdale. This article honors Loie Fuller in this March issue because it is Women's History Month.