Eleanor Clubs

Breckinridge Hall and the Eleanor Clubs

Or why naming things is important. I decided early on to create a tour for myself of the Midway. I was going to find out the history of the buildings and their names and find out what had been where during the Columbian Exposition. I looked up Sophonisba Breckinridge way back when because her name was on a dorm—and it was in researching her that I found out about the Eleanor Clubs.

This building, now empty and neglected and I assume threatened, was built as Eleanor Club One. It’s mistakenly identified in some places as the first. Rather it was the flagship club because it was custom built after much experimentation with existing buildings.

The Eleanor Clubs were the brainstorm of Ina Law Robertson, who arrived at the University of Chicago Divinity School from Oregon in 1895. She quickly realized the problem of being alone in a big chaotic city and finding housing that was both safe and pleasant. Young women alone in the city were also seen as a social problem—think Sister Carrie by Dreiser. When she inherited some money with the stipulation that she do good with it, she set about creating the kind of housing she wished she’d had.

She saw the Eleanor Clubs as transitional housing for single women arriving in the big city, especially from rural towns. Unlike organizations like the YWCA, the clubs were self-organized. Rules were created by the residents themselves. No religious services were required. Room and board were set at the lowest level to keep the clubs self-sustaining. They provided private single rooms and large pleasant public areas, with two hot cooked meals a day and a cleaning service. It meant that women could launch whatever plans they had—professional, educational, artistic—and not worry about their safety, their rent, or time-consuming household chores. And on top of that, women newly arrived could encounter kindred spirits to start up a social network as they got their bearings in the big city. After two years, they were expected to move out to their own accommodations.

This building, Eleanor Club One, was put on the Midway, next to the Del Prado Hotel, because it gave women access to the University, the parks, and the lake—with easy train access to downtown. It originally had a roof garden to catch the cooling lake breezes.The entrance is set back to indicate that it was private (not a hotel). Everyone had to pass a reception desk. Men were not allowed past the public areas on the ground floor. There was a choral room for classes and dances.

The Eleanor project expanded for a while into many projects but gradually contracted until it closed down in 2002. Even in the 1970s, women valued the clubs as places where they met women with all kinds of interests from all over the world.

This building was sold to the university in 1968, which used it as a dorm. It’s part of the planned development, which means the university can do whatever it wants without public feedback, so I’m assuming, given the neglect, that its days are numbered.

 

https://news.wttw.com/2016/12/09/room-grow-chicago-s-eleanor-clubs

Lawrence, Jeanne Catherine. "Chicago's Eleanor Clubs: Housing Working Women in the Early Twentieth Century." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 8 (2000): 219-47. Accessed March 4, 2021. doi:10.2307/3514415.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3514415

Giants of Social Work and Football

University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf1-07792], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

I love photos where worlds collide. History books are usually polished narratives that by necessity trim away all the wandering side branches of messy life. This photo is about the early days of the University of Chicago and messy life. Left to right it’s Sophonisba Breckinridge, Marion Talbot, Stella Stagg, and Amos Alonzo Stagg. They are sailing off to attend the 1908 Olympics in London. It’s hard to picture Stagg and Breckinridge and Talbot hanging out together and sharing an interest in athletics, but here they are. 

Marion Talbot was Dean of Women, tirelessly promoting the role of women at the University of Chicago. Sophonisba Breckinridge had just graduated as the first women with a law degree, had her PhD in political science and economics, had just joined Hull House to research and work for social change, and was a brand new assistant professor in Talbot's department. She had not yet started her efforts to found the School of Social Work.

Stagg is of course renowned as the coach who invented so many fundamentals of football and who turned the University of Chicago into a football powerhouse for thirty years, winning 9 Big Ten championships. He had championship teams in the seasons before and after this photo was taken. He was also Director of Athletics, so he was probably traveling over to see the University of Chicago students who were competing, one of whom was Ned Merriam, who competed in the 400 meters and went on to coach track on the university. The university had done really well in the 1906 Olympics. University of Chicago track star James Lightbody (PhB 1912) won the gold in the 1500 meters and the silver in the 800 meters, and H. M. Friend (PhB 1906, JD 1908) brought home a bronze medal in the broad jump. They may have been competing again. I couldn't find a list of names. Thirty-seven women competed in the 1908 Olympics, but I haven’t discovered whether any of them were from the University of Chicago. The main  sports were tennis, golf, and archery. Talbot and Breckinridge were renowned for liking to travel, so perhaps they just liked the excuse to go to London for the festivities.

As all photos, it freezes a moment in time. Breckinridge and Talbot had been inseparable, but Edith Abbott, who shared her passion for reform, had already entered Breckinridge’s life. A complicated romantic and work triangle was forming. Here, however, four people look happy to be sailing across the Atlantic. 

https://gendersexuality.uchicago.edu/projects/closeted/pdf/20150219UChicagoLaw.pdf

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/projects/centcat/quad/quadch6_05.html

Sophonisba Breckinridge

Her biographer, Anya Jabour, has said this: “In a way, her career was a sort of checklist of women’s activism in twentieth‐century America. For Breckinridge, all her activities worked toward the same end: creating a just and equal society for all.”

She achieved so much against the strong headwinds of the 19th century. She attended the future University of Kentucky at the age of 14 but could not receive a degree as a woman, so after four years, she went to Wellesley. She was the first woman admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1895 though her father ran ads in the newspaper to make it clear that she was NOT a partner in his firm. She could get few clients, so moved on to Chicago to work for Marion Talbot, the Dean of Women at the University of Chicago. She was the first woman to earn a PhD in political science and economics at Chicago in 1901. In 1904, she became the first woman to graduate from the Law School. Every male professor assumed she would not stay in academics. It must have been something of a triumph when she served a term as dean of the college in the 1920s and eventually was tenured as a full professor.

She studied how public policy and social reforms could address the appalling conditions for child laborers, working women, immigrants, and African Americans, joining Hull House and pushing the university to create the School of Social Service Administration (now Crown SSA after the big donor) to study what policies would effect real change. She pushed forward on every front she could, including influencing New Deal programs like the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

And yet, she isn’t well-known. She was unassuming and willing to work behind the scene to get things done and let others take the center stage. I knew about her because the university named a building after her and now there's a full biography.

Image: Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.07524 CALL NUMBER: LC-B2- 1379-4[P&P]  

Original Lakeshore

 

“Jackson Park January 1891” painting by J. Francis Murphy http://arcadiasystems.org/academia/cassatt8d.html

Hyde Park/Kenwood is flat now, leveled off with landfill, but once upon a time, it was marked with the remains of the receding lakeshore—petrified dune ridges of sand and pans—low-lying moist areas with water always close to the surface and richer soil. Early comments focus on the abundance of wildflowers. The University of Chicago was going to call its teams the Goldenrods in honor of the flowers on the Midway before the Fair. Here’s how an early settler remembered her first sight of her new home:

“All of the ridges were decorated with oak trees and wild fruit trees and vines, with wild roses and hazel shrubbery beneath.... All the low land had a variety of willows, and every kind of flower that loves to have its feet in water, while the grass fields that stretched between the ridges were blue with violets.” Annie McClure Hitchcock, “Reminiscences of Kenwood in 1859”

This painting illustrates the site of the future World's Fair. It might even be of Wooded Island, the last surviving sand ridge. A few Burr Oaks from this original ecosystem are still growing on the southern tip of Wooded Island. 

Francis M. Drexel Memorial Fountain

Francis M. Drexel Memorial Fountain 1910 (Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia collection)

The Fountain deserves its own post as the oldest surviving public fountain in Chicago (seahorses!) but since I just posted on Olmsted, Cleveland, and the role of Drexel Boulevard in the South Parks plan, I thought I’d ask, why Drexel when the man never set foot in Chicago? Drexel was quite a character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Martin_Drexel but the name of the boulevard has more to do with his sons.

I found the answer in Susan O’Connor Davis’s articles in the Herald. Dr. Egan, who came to Chicago from Ireland in 1833, originally owned a large tract of land he called Egandale, which he wanted to turn into an estate like those in Ireland—complete with a winding road to the north. Egan died in 1860 with the lands mortgaged to Drexel & Smith of Philadelphia. When the South Parks boundaries were being hashed out in 1865, the commission wanted to extend the parks into these open lands, but the Drexel sons, whose father had died in 1863, refused (in a well-financed stormy battle). The sons agreed to donate the existing Grove Parkway for the landscaped boulevard connecting the western park to Chicago proper because they knew the boulevard would turn the land into extremely valuable real estate. Then in 1881, the sons agreed to pay for the statue, fountain, and landscaping around it because the boulevard had been renamed for Francis. The fountain was erected at the contentious boundary where the boulevard enters Washington Park. Francis gazes out at his good investment. One of the sons used his wealth to found Drexel University.

 

Drexel Boulevard and Horace Cleveland

 

 

Olmsted and Vaux’s plan for the South Park System went up in smoke in the 1871 fire. Luckily, a landscape architect had moved to Chicago in 1869. Horace Cleveland was a friend of Olmsted’s who shared a vision of nature as a necessary relief in urban design. He designed and developed Washington Park and Drexel Boulevard in the 1870s. Cleveland thought the Chicago grid of streets was rigid and confining. His designs developed flow through a natural environment as an emotional relief. With the boulevard landscaped and traffic restricted, it quickly became an attractive location for development. Horace Cleveland - Wikipedia

Drexel Boulevard 1893

People mention that Jackson Park, the Midway Plaisance, and Washington Park were originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, but rarely mention that Drexel Boulevard was also created as part of the Olmsted plan, connecting the South Parks with the western and northern parks in a "green necklace" for the city. Drexel and Washington Park were developed early, in part because traffic came through there to get to the racetrack, and in part because Drexel attracted grand homes. Both were spruced up with elaborate plantings for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

if you want more on the background of Drexel, check out Susan O'Connor Davis in the Herald archives: http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc...