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| Doing the River Tour (JWB, 2011) |
A few days ago I asked the crowd on my River
Cruise to raise their hands if they were from Chicago. About a dozen folks out of the 120 or so
people on the boat raised their hands.
That made me think.
Sometimes, after I finish leading an
architectural tour, I question myself.
Obviously, the tours I lead for the Chicago Architecture Foundation
focus on Chicago architecture, some of the best in the world. (There I go again.) But I am enthralled with the short history
of this amazing city, and I wonder sometimes if I’m too much of a booster.
I know, I know . . . the unexamined life is not worth
living and all that. And I guess I’ll just
keep on yapping about the glories of the Windy City.
Although . . .
The boosting that I do can’t come close to what
was being done years ago as the city’s papers crowed about this amazing place
on the lake, a place where printing presses cranked out the news of the glory
and the horror of a city that displayed the dazzle the Art Institute and
Symphony Hall a mile-and-a-half away from the Union Stockyards where 400
million head of livestock were butchered every year.
I found one such article by William Hinshaw in The Chicago Tribune, running on February
16, 1908. Two days after Valentine’s
Day, this was a love letter to the city, and it contained some fascinating
facts.
The article began talking about size . . . in
1908 the city had a population greater than the combined populations of Boston,
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Denver and Des Moines. Folks made their way along 4,200 miles of
streets, lined with 1,500 miles of sewers.
In the neighborhoods there were eight large parks and 45 smaller ones.
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| Berry's Candy Factory (Chicago Daily News Photo) |
In the 1908 city there were 22,000
manufacturing plants with $700,000,000 of invested capital, paying $240,000,000
in wages and turning out products valued at $1,100,000,000 annually. The stockyards and meat packing plants
occupied 600 acres of land and shipped 12,000,000,000 pounds of processed meat.
But the paper wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. Grain?
You want grain? Chicago had the
largest grain market in the world with 90 grain elevators, holding 75,000,000
bushels of grain. The paper proclaimed,
“Chicago’s commerce by water surpasses that of New York, Boston, Philadelphia,
and Baltimore combined.”
The city must have been constantly in motion, as the paper observed, "By actual count the number of drays, delivery
wagons, and street cars that cross the corner at Fifth Avenue (now Wells
Street) and Lake Street during business hours is 31 per minute.”
Stand at Wells and Lake today, and I’m guessing
you will NOT see that amount of traffic in a minute’s time.
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| Milk Delivery in a Snowstorm (Chicago Daily News Photo) |
There were 40 milk companies distributing milk
to the people of Chicago in 1908. One of
those companies ran 1,100 wagons along its routes.
That largest office building in the world was
the Monadnock, 17 stories tall, with 1,264 offices and 28 stores. The largest department store in the city,
Marshall Field’s emporium (although the name of the store is not mentioned in
the article), employed 8,000 people and had a daily postage bill of $6,000. In one room of the great department store 300
women were employed, and their sole job was to open and sort letters.
There were 32 railroad and 28 steamboat lines
in Chicago in 1908. 1,260 trains came to
Chicago every day, 980 of them suburban trains.
That meant 280 through trains moved in and out of the city every working
day. Twenty-four surface trains and
seven elevated lines ran into the city, carrying a half million people daily
into the half-mile business district.
In 1908 Chicago had the largest railroad car
factory in the world, the largest manufacturer of telephones, a harbor traffic
greater than any city in the world, the largest railroad center n the world,
the largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment, and “the grandest park and
boulevard system in the world.”
The spoken word in Chicago was used in more
languages than “any other city on earth,” and there were more newspapers than
any other place on the planet. Chicago
in 1908 had 35 newspapers, a dozen of which were published daily, 36 scientific
journals, and 33 literary magazines. All
told, 600 publications were published in Chicago.
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| Washington Square Park with Newberry Library in Background (Chicago Daily News Photo) |
Within the city limits there were 308 public
school buildings, educating 300,000 pupils, in front of which 7,000 teachers
held forth. There were 65 professional
schools in the city. Four great
libraries graced the city. The main
library loaned 1,414,292 volumes in 1908.
The University of Chicago library held 400,000 volumes. The John Crear Library, just across the
street from the main library, held 150,000 technical volumes. And the Newberry Library up on Clark Street
held 280,000 volumes, free to the public.
The Tribune also mentioned the
spirit of generosity in the city. The
Chicago Y.M.C.A., as one example, cared for 1,200 men and women each night in
six hotels that provided rooms, free of charge. The same organization provided 200,000
articles of clothing and furniture to the poor in 1907. It also provided coal for 25,000 people,
along with 8,000 Christmas baskets of food.
Within the city limits there were 1,500 churches.
The Tribune concluded its
jingoistic shout with these lines, “Chicago has the reputation of being a
wicked place . . . But it must be admitted that if circumstances are favorable
to the prevalence of evil there is a corresponding influence being exerted by
the good, law abiding citizens of Chicago which keeps its moral and religious
standard up to that of the average large city . . . Considering the resources
of the great west, the geographical position of Chicago with regard to
commanding these resources, her progress in the past, her close proximity to
raw materials of all kinds, and that she is on the great thoroughfare between
the east and the west, it is not unreasonable to predict that, so far as facts
and figures can forecast the future, there are persons now living who will see
this already great city become the metropolis of the world.”
I liked reading this article. After I finished,
I didn’t feel so bad about how much time I spend boosting the city on the boat. We may not be the metropolis of the world, but we still have a whole lot to boast about.
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3 comments:
Once Again, YOU have "Connected the Windy City"
I am still awed at Chicago every time I come down.
The article is a great find. Thanks.
Jim,
Great find in the 1908 Trib. You are
of significant value to our City with
your guided tour knowledge and enthusiasm. I am envious of your
new career.
Dr. Fitz
Such great blogging tips!
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