Pictures of the Week August 11

 August 11

In the early 1950s, the wife of the dean of Meadville Theological Seminary, Mildred LaDue Mead was hired to document conditions during urban renewal. Her photos are fascinating, though rarely this dramatic--labeled "Tight Fit" in 1953. (UChicago Archives apf2-09074)  

It's also documenting Conservation Area 1:4:8, High Low Foods was at 1316-1318 55th Street. It had been an A&P store. Between 1909 and 1929, the building housed two theaters--the Monroe and the Harding. The block was torn down in the 1960s to create Nichols Park. 

August 12

The University of Chicago won a number of Big 10 Championships in both outdoor and indoor polo long after they weren't a football power. Future senator from Illinois Chuck Percy was the captain of a Big 10 Champion Polo Team at the U of C just before WWII. [UChicago Photo Archives apf4-00828] I discovered UChicago horse polo when researching the Washington Park Armory, which was built in part to host indoor polo. The Illinois National Guard there had a championship team. https://www.hpherald.com/evening_digest/hyde-park-stories-the-armory/article_e02bab82-d0c0-11ec-9282-37c6e6fef6f4.html

Bonus photo: While I'm on the topic of UChicago Championship Polo, this is Chandra Gooneratne, captain of the 1926 team. Thought to have been born in Ceylon, lectured one summer on "The Soul of India," "India's Awakening," "Indian Poetry," "Mahatma Gandhi." UChicago archives, apf4-00826

 August 13

Jackson Park once had this graceful bridge across the east lagoon to Wooded Island, known as Middle Bridge or Lovers Bridge. It was torn down, in bad shape, after the Army filled in the waterway to the harbors. 1936 from Chicago History in Postcards https://chicagopc.info/

August 14: Kenwood Park aka Farmer's Field. in 1922. 50th and Dorchester. I love the story of how spite created a park--told by Susan O'Connor Davis in the Herald (DN-0075190 Chicago History Museum).  https://hpherald.newsbank.com/doc/news/16A85D231036E100 

August 15 A souvenir of the Columbian Exposition--one of the Tesla/Westinghouse manhole covers in Jackson Park. I know of two of them and I've heard there's at least another near the 63rd Street Beach. A detailed description of the electrical subways and service systems: Jan 1893 : Description of Underground Subway for Electrical Power - Pluto Insulators 

August 16

The American School of Correspondence building is by Pond and Pond--members of the artist colony gathered around Lorado Taft and Jane Addams. It's now landmarked and owned by the university. The school still exists in Lansing, IL.  (ad in the Art Institute digital collection) Grading exams at the American School of Correspondence was a rite of passage for English grad students before there was support. You ripped through the stacks of paper exams as possible, just as the students had done, though occasionally there was one that was a pleasure. Rehabbed, the building is a lovely example of Arts and Crafts but in the 1970s it felt very dim as though the grime on the windows and desks hadn't been disturbed since it was built in 1906. I'm thinking Pond and Pond may be worth a Hyde Park Story: http://hansjager.blogspot.com/2012/12/out-from-sidelines-autobiography-and.html More on the building: American School of Correspondence, Chicago | SAH ARCHIPEDIA (sah-archipedia.org)

August 17

Cooling off before air conditioning. 1930. Drexel Fountain, the oldest sculpture in Chicago in public parks (DN 0092530, Chicago History Museum) https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/washington-drexel-fountain

Historic Pictures of the Week August 4 to 10

I'm doing a daily posting of a Historic Hyde Park Photo, so I thought I'd compile the week here.

August 4

Here are folks rowing around the Mere in Washington Park around 1918. The tower of the White City Amusement Park is in the background. The boathouse is long gone but the spot is still there. From https://chicagopc.info I muttered about this postcard and trusting postcards in general here: https://patricia-morse.com/.../history-picture-of-the-day/

August 5

Elizabeth Haseltine working on the fawn statue that would sit atop the David Wallach Fountain. From the 20 October 1939 Tribune. More on the story of the fountain Hyde Park Historical Society — Chicago's Hyde Park Historical Society (hydeparkhistory.org)

August 6

Massive landfill to create the Point and Lake Shore Drive. The lake was once at the corner of the Sisson Hotel and just east of the Chicago Beach Hotel. An image I didn't end up using in my hotel talk, labels are mine. Chicago. 1927 Chicago Aerial Survey Photo. The Sisson is now Hampton House and the Cooper-Carleton is now the Del Prado. The Chicago Beach Hotel is now where Regents Park stands. [hotel talk is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkPBikpIv2I]

August 7

The Illinois Central South Park Station built in 1881 at 57th Street when the tracks were ground level. “South Park” once referred to the neighborhood that formed around the train station at 57th Street. Earlier, the railroad called the stop “Wood Pile” because it was where the steam engines refueled. After real estate investors complained that they couldn’t sell lots in Wood Pile, the Illinois Central renamed the stop “Woodville” and then “South Park” because it was near the newly landscaped north end of Jackson Park, which was in the South Parks System [University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-04259, taken in 1894] 

August 8

Saarinen and Associates 1955 Master Plan of the University showing the South Crosstown Expressway to Midway Airport and the cloverleaf exchanges in Jackson Park. From Building the Ivory Tower: Universities and Metropolitan Development in the Twentieth Century By LaDale C. Winling 

August 9

Lorado Taft working on the model for the Fountain of Creation, which would have stood on the east end of the Midway facing the Fountain of Time. It was based on the myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha reconstructing the human race by throwing rocks behind them. The figures on the base are "awakening consciousness" and "coming into being" Two sons of Deucalion and two daughters of Pyrrha were carved in limestone for the 1933 Century of Progress and are now at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Photo 1910 (Chicago History Museum DN0055835) #HydePark #Chicago #midwayplaisance

August 10

What the Fair left behind--63rd Street transit. Streetcar tracks going under the IC railroad trestle with the El tracks going over the top. A draft horse studies the photographer, Walter E. Augier. Legacy of the Fair, August 1894. (Chicago History Museum ICHi173625) #HydeParkChicago #JacksonPark #Woodlawn

Jack Spratt and an early sit-in

 #HistoricPic Jack Spratt Lunch Counter 1941

"Exterior view of Jack Spratt Coffee House, located at 47th Street and Kimbark Avenue in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, March 28, 1941. Site of a sit-in conducted by members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in May 1943. HB-06326-A, Chicago History Museum, Hedrich-Blessing Collection"

Now that there are some great collections of images online, I find I’m learning a lot more about Chicago history by bumping into a mysterious image that I then try to find out more about. This is an image of a seminal and forgotten moment of the Civil Rights movement. It also shows something I stumbled into in researching my book—the degree to which African-Americans were using the rhetoric of the defense of freedom during World War II to protest the lack of freedom at home.

It also reminded me of a theme in my book--that it takes someone to fight to have history remembered. It's remembered because it was James Farmer himself who repeatedly pointed to this incident as seminal to his thinking. The building is gone. If it was there, it should have had a plaque.

James Farmer had a degree in Divinity from Howard University and qualified as a conscientious objector. He was heavily influenced by Gandhi’s theories and had gotten funding by 1942 to found the Congress of Racial Equality. He came to Chicago to organize a chapter, which decided to use Jack Spratt Coffee House as a test case. Jack Spratt would serve black patrons but they would charge a dollar for a donut that cost white patrons a nickel and they would conspicuously serve them after everyone else. Jack Sprat had room for 30 to 35 people. So Farmer organized 28 people in mixed race parties to go in and take every available seat. The manager tried to serve just the white patrons but they handed their plates to their black neighbor. She then said she’d serve the black customers in the basement. No one moved. Then she offered the back of the coffee house. No one moved. She told them to leave. No one moved. New customers were coming in, looking around, and leaving. So she called the police, who had been notified by CORE that a protest would be happening. The police told her they wouldn’t take any action. Finally everyone was served. The action changed Jack Spratt’s policy going forward and proved to Farmer that nonviolence could effect change.

a great JSTOR article: All of Africa Will Be Free Before We Can Get a Lousy Cup of Coffee: The Impact of the 1943 Lunch Counter Sit-Ins on the Civil Rights Movement on JSTOR

JACK SPRATT COFFEE SHOP SIT-IN | WTTW Chicago

The Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™: The Jack Spratt Coffee House Civil Rights Sit-In on May 15, 1943, Chicago. (drloihjournal.blogspot.com)

James Farmer: A Chicago Lunch Counter Sit-In (chicagohistory.org)

A documentary: https://humstatic.uchicago.edu/mahimahi/media/ckp/CKP-1942.mp4

Chicago's Forgotten Role in the Lunch Counter Sit-In Movement (grubstreet.com)

The "Dal"

Digging through the newspapers for information, I come across weird things, that don't fit a larger story. One of them is the yacht "Dal," which once was in Harold Washington Park (then East End or Burnham Park) by the model yacht basin and then by the Museum of Science and Industry until about 1967. When it was in the park, it was visible to motorists on the Drive and was a constant mystery.

Every couple of years, the paper would explain what the heck the yacht in the park was. The Dal was large for the park but small for the ocean. It had sailed through a hurricane from Poland to the Century of Progress. Proud Polish Chicagoans bought it and asked for it to be displayed "permanently." The account of the voyage was a best seller in Polish. And of course Chicago forgot what the heck it was.

Poland is a bit grumpy that Chicago didn't take care of it. A Polish website describes its display in the park and at MSI as the "destruction of the symbol." The Polish website (in English): https://en.nmm.pl/news/new-life-of-the-yacht-dal

Some maps and photos: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/sailing-adventure-polish-hero-autobiography-translation-history-1.5449662

Here's a screen grab from the Suburban Economist 1941. It's a photo of it next to the model yacht basin inside its chain link fence. I can see why it puzzled motorists.