Category Archives: US History

The Newberry Library Map Mural

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I’ve read that the first floor of the Newberry Library on the Near North Side of Chicago is newly renovated, and it did have a newly polished look when Ann and I were there on Saturday. But it’s been a while since I’ve been inside the library, so I don’t really remember what it used to look like.

I’m sure that I’d never seen this intriguing mural before, which is above the landing between the first and second floors near a back entrance to the building.
A map mural. Even better, an historic map mural, along with a train at a station under the map and what looks like a telephone and telegraph office in a balloon off to the side.

The mural looks new, so either it is, or maybe an older image was expertly refurbished. I didn’t see any signs or plaques nearby to tell me which, or who the artist is, and the library web site doesn’t seem to say, so for now I’ll let the matter rest. It’s always good to find a map mural.

My guess is that the map depicts the nation ca. 1900 — united by rail, telegraph and the still fairly new telephone, with a new century of progress to look forward to. Or possibly 1887, when the Newberry was founded, or 1893, when the current building opened.

Though not cartographically precise (West Virginia looks especially mashed), the map’s close enough to evoke the United States of the period. One detail I noticed was that South Dakota’s towns were Deadwood and Yankton, even though the territorial capital moved to Bismarck in 1883 (presumably Al Swearengen would then refer to those “c—suckers from Bismarck” rather than Yankton).

Also, note the pre-land boom, pre-drain the Everglades, pre-Disney, pre-Florida Man Florida.
A little fuzzy, but it’s clear that there’s no Miami and no Orlando.

Also, the states depicted were not quite all states at the beginning of the 20th century. Arizona, New Mexico and what became Oklahoma were still territories.

That would be my only quibble: before it became a state, Oklahoma was actually two territories, the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory. The Indians of the Indian Territory wanted to be admitted as the state of Sequoyah, but Congress wasn’t having it, and so the two territories were joined to form the modern state in 1907.

How do I know that the map doesn’t depict borders sometime after 1907? Because of the depiction of Canada.
The wonderfully named Assiniboia was a district of the NW Territories, as were Saskatchewan and Athabasca, all before 1905 (Keewatin was a separate territory before 1905, then became a district of the NWT). A major reorg of prairie Canada was done in ’05, making it look mostly like it does now.

So the map depicts pre-1905 Canada, but post-1907 Oklahoma. Ah, well. It’s small quibble about such a fine example of a mural.

The Pritzker Military Museum

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One of the things I wanted to do between Christmas and New Year was visit one of Chicago’s lesser-known museums, ideally one I hadn’t gotten around to. So I went to the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, which is on second and third floors of 104 S. Michigan Ave., overlooking Millennium Park.
Pritzker, as in the Chicago family of billionaires, the architecture prize, and the incoming governor of Illinois. In particular, the museum is a project of retired Col. Jennifer (formerly James) Pritzker of the Illinois Army National Guard, who was also in the U.S. Army for a good many years.

All of the display space — a few rooms on the two floors — is currently given over to the Great War. Fittingly. On display are photos, posters and items carried by WWI soldiers.
There are also a few less conventional items to see.

Nothing says Great War like a papier-mâché Kaiser head. According to the sign, “A mask like this one… might have been worn on a float or during a play as a way to mock the German monarch.”

No doubt. What I wonder is how the thing survived 100 years. When the initial fun of Kaiser-mocking died down, did its creator tuck it away in some attic, only to be forgotten for decades? I can imagine some grandson or granddaughter cleaning out that attic in, say, the 1970s, and saying, “What is this? Let’s get rid of it.” But that didn’t happen. Somehow the Kaiser head made its way to the Pritzker, founded only in 2003.

What could be more important to Great War soldiers and sailors than their cigs?

I was especially taken with the collection of posters. Some as conventional as can be.
Some more whimsical.

One appealing to ethnic pride and righteous outrage at the same time.
This was for an organization essentially lost to time, though in fact the American Red Star Animal Relief Program is still around, now called Animal Emergency Services.
“[In WWI] the U.S. armed services used 243,135 horses and mules during the war to transport supply wagons, ambulances, traveling kitchens, water carts, food, engineer equipment, light artillery, and tons of shells. Horses were used in direct combat as well,” American Humane says.

“American Humane sent medical supplies, bandages, and ambulances to the front lines to care for the injured horses — an estimated 68,000 per month.

“Since that time, American Humane has helped the animal victims of natural and manmade disasters, such as floods, chemical spills, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and victims of animal cruelty throughout the country.”

The John B. Murphy Memorial Auditorium

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Between the holidays one day, when it was cold but not too cold, I found myself on Chicago’s Near North Side, just west of Michigan Ave. At the corner of N. Wabash Ave. and E. Erie St. is the Driehaus Museum, otherwise known as the Nickerson House at 40 E. Erie St., the Gilded Age palace we visited a year and a half ago.

I didn’t stop for that this time, but headed east from there and immediately saw this structure, which is the Driehaus Museum’s next door neighbor.

I stood thinking for a while. Who was John B. Murphy and why did he rate such an imposing memorial? Why can’t I ever remember seeing this building before? I must have. I must have seen it, but maybe I didn’t see it. A strange lapse.

This is the age of computers in our pockets, so I stood on the sidewalk across the street and looked up John B. Murphy.

Dr. Murphy he was, a prominent Chicago surgeon of the late 19th/early 20th centuries (1857-1916). Among other things, he “was a pioneer in recognizing the symptoms for appendicitis, and he strongly urged immediate removal of the appendix when this symptomatic pattern appeared,” Britannica.com tells me.

Someone had to think of that. Dr. Murphy also clearly had friends with means. The web site of the Murphy Chicago — as the space is now known — says that “ground was broken on the John B. Murphy Memorial Auditorium in 1923, and construction was completed in 1926.

“The Auditorium was built to serve as a tangible memorial to the great Dr. John B. Murphy. Shortly following Dr. Murphy’s death, his friends sought to honor him by forming the John B. Murphy Memorial Association.

“The architects for this gorgeous building were Marshall and Fox. The architectural design of the Auditorium is in the French Renaissance style and is reminiscent of the Chapelle de Notre-Dame de Consolation – the Commemorative Monument to the Bazar de la Charite Fire, located in Paris.”

The American College of Surgeons owned the property from day one and still does. The organization formerly hosted ACS meetings there and used it for surgery education, but in the 21st century, it’s a rentable event space. Weddings are a specialty, apparently.

RIP, George Bush

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Somewhere, I have a souvenir photo I obtained at a breakfast event held by a prominent real estate brokerage in March 2001. If I knew where that item was, I’d scan it for posting, but no such luck (the event is mentioned in passing here).

That brokerage was later absorbed by another company and is now only a memory. The featured speaker at the event that morning is likewise only a memory now: George H.W. Bush. RIP, Mr. President.

Saw a fair number of flags at half staff in his honor today.

I checked to be sure, and it’s so: the late President Bush was, and remains, the only U.S. president to have four names. Until the mid-19th century, most of them didn’t even have three. Naming fashions change.

Been a while since there was a presidential death. Now there are only four living former presidents. With the elder Bush’s death, the fourth period of five living former presidents ended (Jan. 20, 2017-Nov. 30, 2018). That has only happened three other times: March 4, 1861-Jan 18, 1862; Jan. 20, 1993-April 22, 1994; and Jan. 20, 2001-June 5, 2004.

That three of the four periods are in living memory illustrates the longer lifespans of our time. Speaking of longevity, Jimmy Carter now has to make it to early March 2019 to become the oldest person to have served as U.S. president, taking that distinction from the elder Bush.

Hull-House

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Besides trees and a little public art and some brutalist buildings, here’s something else I saw at the University of Illinois at Chicago on Sunday, the likes of which I’d never seen before.
It’s a knife-sharpening cart, complete with cobble stones, on display on the second floor of Hull-House, with a sign that says: “Julio Fabrizio, an immigrant from Castelvino, Italy, to Chicago in 1919, built this knife-sharpening cart in the 1930s for his peddling services. Pushing it through the streets of his Near West Side neighborhood, Fabrizio used it to repair umbrellas and sharpen scissors, saws, and knives.”

Since I was already at UIC on Sunday afternoon, I decided to drop by for a look at Hull-House, which is more formally called the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. All the years I’ve been in Chicago area, I’d never gotten around to it.

The current structure is a fragment of the 13-building complex in its heyday 100 years ago, but at least it’s a restored version of the original building, which dates back to 1856. By the time it became a settlement house in 1889, the house was fully part of the surrounding immigrant slum and so exactly where Addams and Hull-House cofounder Ellen Gates Starr wanted to be. The organization’s physical structure grew from there. The later buildings, just like much of the neighborhood, were destroyed in the 1960s to make way for the UIC campus.

“In the 1890s, Hull-House was located in the midst of a densely populated urban neighborhood peopled by Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Bohemian, and Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants,” the museum says.

“Jane Addams and the Hull-House residents provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; and theater, music and art classes. As the complex expanded to include thirteen buildings, Hull-House supported more clubs and activities such as a Labor Museum, the Jane Club for single working girls, meeting places for trade union groups, and a wide array of cultural events.”

The museum is small but well designed to convey how the organization furthered the goals of the Progressive movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, besides providing numerous social services in the immediate neighborhood.

“Among the projects that they helped launch were the Immigrants’ Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the nation, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic (later called the Institute for Juvenile Research),” the museum notes.

“Through their efforts, the Illinois Legislature enacted protective legislation for women and children in 1893. With the creation of the Federal Children’s Bureau in 1912 and the passage of a federal child labor law in 1916, the Hull-House reformers saw their efforts expanded to the national level.”

Addams’ bedroom is part of the exhibit.
Fairly spare, though there’s a portrait of Tolstoy on the wall (no artist named that I could see, but it looks like a part copy of a 1901 portrait by Ilya Repin).
Apparently the Russian was an inspiration to Addams, though when they met in 1896 the event was less than comfortable for the American reformer.

The museum isn’t all about Addams or even the other settlement workers. Other people associated with the organization are given their due. One in particular caught my eye: Morris Topchevsky (1899-1947), immigrant from Poland when it was still part of the Russian Empire, painter, etcher, lecturer, writer and red.

Some of his works are on display.

Topchevsky took classes at Hull-House and later taught there. Seems that he also spent time in Mexico in the 1920s, becoming friends with Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, though too early to have hung out with Trotsky.

The Dedication of the Armistice Centenary Memorial at UIC

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On Sunday morning I went downtown to the University of Illinois at Chicago campus and attended a short ceremony to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armistice, held by the university’s Honors College as the end of a series of events marking the occasion.

My old friend Neal mentioned it last summer and as it happened, Michele, his wife, organized the November 11 event. She did a good job.

The event included the posting and retrieval of the colors, some short remarks, poetry from the period, and of course at 11:00 a moment of silence, followed by the playing of Taps.

Michele read the two poems. This is her preparing to read.
One was “Grass” by Carl Sandburg, dating from 1918.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

Also, verse by Dame Mary Gilmore, lesser known in this country, but renowned in Australia. Also 1918.

They are not dead; not even broken;
Only their dust has gone back home to the earth:
For they — the essential they — shall have rebirth
Whenever a word of them is spoken.

About 30 people attended the event, which was held at the campus’ Memorial Grove, a renovated green space. A small tent had been erected in case of rain, but Armistice Day this year in Chicago was sunny, though fairly cold, just above freezing. So I parked myself just outside the tent, where I could sit in the sun.

Guillaume Lacroix, Consul General of France in Chicago, said a few words, echoing those of President Marcon during Armistice Day ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe only a few hours earlier. Words about the dangers of nationalism, which doubled as a pointed rebuke against you-know-who, a subtext that was lost on no one.

Also speaking were a representative of the Italian consulate and the dean of the Honors College, Ralph Keen.

A Peking lilac (Syringa pekinensis) tree had been planted near the sidewalk a few days earlier, next to the new memorial. During the event, the memorial was covered with black cloth topped by poppies.

The Morton Arboretum says that “The Peking lilac is a dependable urban tree and a great choice even for parking lot, boulevard, and parkway plantings. Native to Asia, it is both hardy and beautiful, with attractive, amber-colored, peeling bark. In early summer, when many shrubs and trees are done blooming, it has large, creamy-white, honey-scented flower clusters.”

Toward the end of the event, the French Consul General, the dean of the college, and the Italian representative lifted the black cloth from the memorial.

A granite block with a burnished aluminum plaque.
According to Neal, the block had once been part of the former skywalk system around campus. When the skywalk was dismantled in the early 1990s, the removed materials were stored. They are still being recycled for newer structures, such as the memorial stone but also some nearby benches installed when the Memorial Grove was renovated a few years ago.

Turner Hall, Milwaukee

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From the Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions, part of an article on the German Turnverein: “Founded amid the nationalist enthusiasms of the War of Liberation, the German gymnastic movement, or Turnverein, had fundamentally changed by the time of the 1848 revolutions in the German lands.”

Ah, a branch of the physical culture movement. Maybe the main branch; I’m no expert. But I do blame the physical culture movement for the indignities of PE in 20th-century America.

To continue from the encyclopedia: “Although Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the gymnasium instructor who had originated the idea of nationalist gymnastics in Berlin in 1811, was still venerated in the organization, his anti-Semitism, hatred of the French, and loyalty to the Hohenzollern dynasty left him out of step with an organization committed to national unification and political liberalism…

“These gymnastic clubs were often closely aligned with workers’ organizations and democratic clubs with whom they shared a desire for reform and a rejection of traditional hierarchies…

“In contrast to the organization Jahn had founded, almost one-half of the membership in the 1840s were non-gymnasts, the so-called ‘Friends of Turnen,’ and because of this, the new clubs engaged in more non-gymnastic activities, such as funding libraries and reading rooms, and sponsoring lectures, often of a politically liberal nature.

“Given the radicalization of the movement in the 1840s, it is not surprising that the German gymnasts were directly involved in the 1848 revolutions…

“The aftermath of the 1848 revolutions devastated the German gymnastic movement. Clubs were disbanded, property confiscated and leaders lost to jail or exile.”

One place exiled Turners went was Milwaukee. By 1882, they had completed Turner Hall, which stands to this day on 4th Street in downtown Milwaukee. Remarkably, the Milwaukee Turners are still around, and for a paltry $35, anyone can join. No German language skills or even gymnastic aptitude seem necessary.

Our Turner principles are as follows [their web site says]:
Liberty, against all oppression;
Tolerance, against all fanaticism;
Reason, against all superstition;
Justice, against all exploitation!

The hall was open as part of Milwaukee Open Doors, so we visited.
That’s not the building’s best side, which was in the shadow when we visited. Here’s a good picture of the front.

The building’s a fine work by Henry Koch, himself a German immigrant who also did Milwaukee City Hall. Built of good-looking Creme City brick, which is now going to be the subject of another digression.

“Like the road to Oz, much of Milwaukee is made of yellow brick – Cream City brick, to be precise. But how, exactly, did it end up here? And why is it such a source of local pride?” asks Milwaukee magazine.

“Clay found along Milwaukee’s river banks was naturally high in magnesia and lime, giving the brick its unique color and durability, according to Andrew Charles Stern, author of Cream City: The Brick That Made Milwaukee Famous.

“Its popularity extended well beyond Wauwatosa. Local manufacturers shipped Cream City bricks to clients around the United States and as far away as Europe, until production ceased in the 1920s, when the clay supply was depleted and builders began to favor stone and marble…”

Talk about enjoying a local sight. A building built for Milwaukee Turners from a material created locally.

Inside, we joined a tour group and saw the restaurant space, which I believe was a beer hall once upon a time. After all, they might have been physical culture enthusiasts, but they were also Germans.

Murals dating back to the early days of the Milwaukee Turners grace the walls in that part of the building. Such as one featuring Turnvater Jahn and assorted allegories.
The aforementioned Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), that is, the father of gymnastics, and possibly a godfather of National Socialism, though that point is disputed, and in any case the NSDAP never had much traction in Milwaukee.

A detail from another Turner Hall mural whose subject is the founding of Milwaukee.

Pictured are Solomon Juneau and a Native American. Juneau founded the city in the early 1800s.

I feel another digression coming on. From the forward of Solomon Juneau, A Biography, by Isabella Fox, published in 1916:

The name of Solomon Juneau has long been honored, alike for the sterling integrity, the true nobility of the man, and for his generous benefactions in the upbuilding of the city he founded nearly a century ago, near the Milwaukee bluff on the shore of Lake Michigan. He was the ideal pioneer — heroic in size and character — generous by nature, just in all his dealings, whether as a fur trader with the red man, or in business transactions with his fellow townsmen, through the trying times when early settlers often required fraternal assistance, and the embryo city in the wilderness was ever the gainer through his benevolence, for selfishness was non-existence in him…

They don’t write ’em like that any more.

The star attraction in the Turner Hall is the ballroom.

The ballroom was damaged by fire at some point, but it’s stabilized enough — including netting covering the ceiling — for public events, such as the wedding that was going to be held there sometime after we visited last Saturday.

Eventually, the room will be restored. Bet it’ll be a marvel.

The Milwaukee Theatre

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On October 14, 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt took a bullet in the chest at the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee, but went on to deliver his presidential campaign speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium across the street soon afterward.

“Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible,” TR said. “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet — there is where the bullet went through — and it probably saved me from it going into my heart.”

In later years, especially during an early 21st-century renovation, the Milwaukee Auditorium evolved into the Milwaukee Theatre, which is officially the Miller High Life Theatre these days, because beer money bought the naming rights recently.
Never mind that. What I want to know is, where is the plaque commemorating TR’s speech?

Maybe there is one, but I didn’t see it. Or why didn’t our tour guide through the theater on Saturday mention this remarkable event? I knew the story of the attempted assassination, but didn’t connect it with the Milwaukee Theatre until today.

In any case, the theater looks like a first-rate venue, seating more than 4,000. The view from the stage.

Here’s the view from the stage when space aliens started kidnapping people standing there, via tractor beams (and how do those work, anyway?).

Or maybe I jiggled the camera during a relatively long exposure.

We toured other parts of the venue as well, including the elegant side halls Kilbourn and Plankinton — named for long-ago donors — with the former decorated by murals depicting Milwaukee history. We also saw the green room.

Where Miller High Life Theatre-themed cupcakes were offered for our refreshment. I have to say that’s something I’d never seen before.
You’d think a light shade of green would be the thing for the green room walls, for tradition’s sake, but no. Then again, I’ve read it isn’t clear that most green rooms ever were really green. Just another phrase origin lost to time.

Next to the theater is the UW–Milwaukee Panther Arena, which seats as many as 12,700. That too was open for the Doors Open Milwaukee event.

These days the arena is home to the Milwaukee Panthers men’s basketball team of the NCAA, as well as the Brewcity Bruisers, a roller derby league based in Milwaukee. For the record, the Bruisers are a member of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association.

The Church of St. Barbara

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The last stop for bus #4 on this year’s church tour in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago was the Church of St. Barbara on S. Throop St.
It’s an octagonal Renaissance-style church and another edifice created by a Polish congregation in the early 20th century. These days, the congregation is much more  ethnically mixed, but Polish still greets visitors at the main entrance.
St. Barbara is another Worthmann & Steinbach design, finished in 1914, the second we saw on Saturday after First Lutheran Church of the Trinity. Architects tend to be ecumenical in their clients, I figure. A commission’s a commission.

The octagonal shape makes it a little hard to comprehend the interior by looking straight ahead. You have to spend time looking around.
And looking up.
Here’s St. Barbara, looking down on the altar.
I couldn’t remember who St. Barbara was thought to be, but the sword is distinctive. So I looked her up later.

“Virgin and Martyr,” New Advent says. “There is no reference to St. Barbara contained in the authentic early historical authorities for Christian antiquity, neither does her name appear in the original recension of St. Jerome’s martyrology. Veneration of the saint was common, however, from the seventh century.

“Barbara was the daughter of a rich heathen named Dioscorus. She was carefully guarded by her father who kept her shut up in a tower in order to preserve her from the outside world… Before going on a journey her father commanded that a bath-house be erected for her use near her dwelling, and during his absence Barbara had three windows put in it, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, instead of the two originally intended.

“When her father returned she acknowledged herself to be a Christian; upon this she was ill-treated by him and dragged before the prefect of the province, Martinianus, who had her cruelly tortured and finally condemned her to death by beheading. The father himself carried out the death sentence, but in punishment for this he was struck by lightning on the way home and his body consumed.

“The legend that her father was struck by lightning caused her, probably, to be regarded by the common people as the patron saint in time of danger from thunderstorms and fire, and later by analogy, as the protector of artillerymen and miners.”

One of those very popular saints without any actual historical basis, it seems. No matter. She has a lot of places named after her besides the city in California.

After looking around the sanctuary, we went to the adjacent school for snacks. That’s where I saw something else I’d never seen before.

A bingo sign. Plugged in and everything. Pretty much as mysterious to me as the tales of St. Barbara.

First Lutheran Church of the Trinity

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Mostly Catholic immigrants have populated the Bridgeport neighborhood in Chicago over the years, but not entirely. There were many Germans there once upon a time, some of whom happened to be Lutheran.

First Lutheran Church of the Trinity rises over W. 31st St. and has since 1913. It was the only Protestant church we visited on the tour.

Worthmann & Steinbach did the Gothic design. They also did St. Mary of the Angels, while Steinbach did Covenant Presbyterian Church.

“Currently the oldest Christian congregation in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago [founded in 1865], First Trinity was originally located on the southeast corner of 25th Place and S. Canal,” the church web site notes. “After the railroad took possession of that property, the church moved to its current location… in the early 20th century.

“The church started out as a German immigrant parish named Ev. Luth. Dreieinigkeits (Evangelical Lutheran Trinity), supported an elementary school, and earned the nickname ‘Mother Church of the South Side’ by numerous branch schools that eventually developed into daughter congregations on the South Side of Chicago.”

The last service in German was sometime in the 1950s, if I remember the docent right. During a renovation at some point the line from Scripture (Luke 11:28) was changed from German to English.

Inside, as you’d expect, the adornment is toned down.

As the docent said, there isn’t much to distract you front looking straight ahead.
I thought the trefoil over the altar was an interesting detail.
I don’t think I’ve seen one quite like it. Completely fitting, considering the name of the church.