Burnett House

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Burnett House, Lloyd House, St. Charles Hotel, St. Charles Block
Life Span: ~1850-after 1903
Location:
Architect:

D. B. Cooke & Co.’s City Directory for the Year 1859

Burnet House

Halpin & Bailey’s City Directory for the Year 1863
Burnet House, 412 Clark

Bailey’s Chicago City Directory for 1867
Lloyd House, w s Clark bet Harrison and Polk
Lloyd & Hurley, (Nelson B. Lloyd and Michael A. Hurley,) proprs Lloyd House w s Clark bet Harrison and Polk.

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1867
Loyd House, 410 Clark

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1880
St. James Blk.—406 to 414 Clark

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1885
St. James Blk.—406 to 414 Clark

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1887
St. James Blk.—406 to 414 Clark

Chicago Tribune, July 31, 1857

RE-OPENING OF THE BURNETT HOUSE.—This fine hotel is soon to be re-opened under the charge of Mr. Joseph Holmes, who will hereafter officiate as “mine host of the Burnett.” The hotel has been thoroughly renovated, repaired and painted and considerably enlarged. A large quantity of new furniture has been added, and the travelling public will find one of the most pleasant and comfortable as well as one of the most elegant hotels in the city. It is conveniently located in South Clark street, near the Chicago and Rock Island, Southern Michigan, and St. Louis, Alton and Chicago Depots, and persons coming to the city by either of these roads will find it to their comfort and interest to stop at the Burnett. The house will be opened to the public in a few days, of which due notice will be given.

Chicago Tribune, January 11, 1859

The statement that the work of laying the rails for the Clark Street Railroad had been commenced before the Burnett House is a premature item. It originated from a couple of rails having been dumped near that spot.

Chicago Tribune, February 6, 1863

THE BURNETT HOUSE.—Mr. T. W. Glass, the proprietor of the Burnett House, sends us a communication, unanimously signed by his neighbors and boarders, setting forth that the reputation of his house has been unjustly and ungenerously assailed in the police record of some of our contemporaries. The communication ie too lengthy for our space. It is but just, however, that Mr. Glass have the benefit of his own statement that the whole affair is grossly injurious and unjust to him and his business interests.

Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1865

LLOYD HOUSE.—Mesers. Lloyd & Hurley have leased for a term of years the large and commodious hotel situated on Clark street, and formerly known as the Burnett House, thoroughly repaired and put it in order, and will open it under the name of the Lloyd House on the first day of May. The house has been well furnished, and it is the intention hereafter to make it a first class hotel. Persons visiting Chicago will find the Lloyd an excellent house. These landlords have made themselves, popular at their old quarters, and there is little doubt that they will be equally successful and popular in their new.

Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1871

St. James Hotel.
The opening of this, the largest hotel in Chicago, will occur on Tuesday. The new St. James is located at Nos. 406, 408, 410, and 414 South Clark street, containing 150 rooms, furnished in the finest style of any hotel fa the West,

Chicago Tribune, September 20, 1874

It has been a very common boast among citizens of Chicago that the peculiar human residence known as a “tenement house” did not flourish in their midst. In the great cities of the Atlantic seaboard the “tenement” is a recognized institution, chiefly noted for vile construction, miserable ventilation, and unspeakable filth. From it have sprung more diseases than from any other agency. It has been the nucleus of contagion, and the recruiting-sergeant of death. Who that is familiar with the great city of New York, does not remember those dreary, dirty, lofty, narrow buildings extending in long, gloomy rows along Mott and Mulberry streets, and many other localities inhabited chiefly by the poorer classes? They were, indeed. a crying evil; filled from basement to roof with disease and misery: crowded with wretches who could never hope to breathe healthy air in an atmosphere so vile; overrun with vermin, and rank with the foul odors of slops and foul ordure. For many years the tenement nuisance stunk in the nostrils of the American metropolis, until, finally,

An ordinance was passed placing the establishments under the control of the Board of Health, and granting to that body the whole force of the Municipal Government to mitigate the evil. The ordinance made it legal for the Board of Health to condemn and cause to be vacated any filthy or pest-ridden tenement after, in the first place, notifying the landlord or agent of the same that such a course was about to be pursued. Notice could be served that the premises must be vacated within forty eight hours,—if the case was particularly urgent,—and, should the landlord or tenants refuse to comply with the order, the Health Officer was privileged to call upon the Chief of Police for a squad of men to compel the vacation. Then, still under the direction of the Beard of Health, the place is thoroughly cleansed, whitewashed, and disinfected, and the tenants are allowed to return to their rooms, if they feel so disposed, after the Health Officer has pronounced that the place is ready for reoccupation.

This wise municipal law has entirely modified the aspect of affairs in most of the tenement localities of New York. There is still, of course, considerable crowding, and the ventilation is very little improved, but there is an absence of the utter filth that formerly almost universally characterized tenement-houses. While poverty exists, and while great cities exist,—both traveling hand in hand as it were,—there must be cheap lodgings for families who have no homesteads of their own and who are too poor to pay rent in good boarding-houses. In old cities the evil is recognized and inevitable; but in our comparatively new Western cities it is hardly necessary, and it is certainly not desirable, that such places should be encouraged. “But Chicago has no tenement-houses,”

The sanguine and egotistical citizen who has not studied the matter, will observe. Hold, good citizen, and do not rashly assert that which may bring you confusion. It may, perhaps, astonish nine-tenths of our respectable inhabitants to learn that we are cursed with a tenement system which, although not so general, is infinitely more offensive, than that of New York. Several thousand inhabitants of Chicago are cooped up in dens hardly fit to be inhabited by mere brutes, and, indeed, in some of them, dogs would disdain to sleep for a night. These places are not confined to one section of the city, but are scattered through its whole system, even as leprosy is dispersed through the human frame.

Some of the tenements are respectable places enough,—the new ones more especially, though cheaply constructed and badly supplied with the indispensable accommodations of advanced civilization. Another class is just bordering on vile, but does not go quite that far; but there is a lower class, the like of which cannot be imagined outside the realms of the damned,—places in which the human body festers, and in which the soul cannot fail of being corrupted, placed that to visit would destroy the appetite of delicate stomachs, and tender, timid people liable to malignant disease. They are under no control, except the ordinary guardianship of the Board of Health, which is entirely insufficient, although some good has been effected. There is no law compelling vacation, for sanitary purposes, as in New York; and, in the event of an epidemic appearing, the dens alluded to would spread death among the masses even as the sparks and cinders from saw-mills and lumber-yards spread devastation among the buildings during our memorable fires. The tenements referred to are grotesquely hideous,places that might defy emulation among the horrors of old St. Giles’ or among the rag-picking district of Paris. Indeed they are so utterly beyond ordinary comprehension—that is, American comprehension—that, as the novelists say. a special chapter of the article must be devoted to them.

A reporter of The Tribune was detailed a few days ago to make a tour of the Chicago tenement-houses, or such of them as might serve as specimens of their class, and give an account of his experience. Accompanied by a member of the Chicago Board of Health, the reporter proceeded on his mission, and went at once to The St. James Hotel. so-called, No. 410 South Clark street, which has obtained the unenviable notoriety of being the most pestilential abode of mankind known to that section of the city. The structure is a five-story building, composed of brick and wood, painted brown externally, and presenting no very bad appearance to the careless observer. Within, however, all this is changed. A narrow flight floors-the stairs conducts the visitor to the upper of ground story being chiefly occupied by Jews and Gentiles of the very lowest class, engaged in an endless number of “pursuits.” The explorers were met on the second floor by a pale, sickly-looking, but rather intelligent youth, who stated that he was the janitor of the establishment. The place, he informed the visitors, was owned and rented by a well-known citizen of Chicago. Perhaps the dreariness of human existence, among the poor, cannot be better illustrated than by exploring very peculiar “Hotel.” Any citizen not suffering from catarrh, or a bad cold, cannot fail to be overwhelmed by an intolerable stench on reaching the topmost floors of the “St. James.” It is a combination of many odors—all of them bad. The odor of cooking is there, the odor of sickness, and the abominations of ordure. This cannot well be avoided. The corridors are long, narrow, and dark. There is not sufficient light, and there is no approach whatever to ventilation. Cockroaches career in serried columns along the floors, and the walls are garrisoned with wood-lice and bedbugs. The people inhabiting the place are, for the most part, abjectly poor, although many of them still retain traces of former respectability. Children are numerous, swinging on the decayed bannisters and raising a dust in the foul-smelling halls. The rooms are extremely small, and warm enough to roast a vigorous Hottentot. All nationalities are represented in this place, —English, Irish, and Scotch, Americans, Germans, Scandinavian and negroes. would be difficult to say which is the preponderating “element,” but the tongues spoken are like those of Babel. The young generation is very generously represented, nearly every family of the thirty, or thereabout, that inhabit the place averaging five children. It may well be wondered at why death is not busy among the wretched colony.

And yet, bad as this state of things is, it is Paradise compared with what the institution was one year ago. Since that time the Board of Health has done all that lay in its power to render the den less offensive; but all its efforts, under existing municipal regulations, are are insufficient to make the women respectable. Water-closets are provided for every floor, and most of them are now in pretty fair condition: but, in some cases, the inmates of the “Hotel” entirely disregard sanitary arrangements, and deposit refuse wherever they find it most convenient to do so.

The janitor informed the visitors that he was compelled to destroy all the buckets in the house, or else a contagion would surely have been bred. It was the habit of the inmates, until recently, to leave their “night soil” in those buckets, outside their doors, and so add to the horrors of this infernal hostlery. There is hardly a redeeming feature about this St. James Hotel. A rag tent, gypsy-like, on the prairie, would be infinitely preferable to the living death imposed upon the denizens of No. 410 South Clark street. It is a wonder that any person would permit such a thing to be owned by him. It is a monument of disgrace to the owner.

The average rents paid by the tenants range from $3 to $8 per month, hardly ever over that. Of course they change very often, for very few people have stomach for the “St. James” after a month’s immurement within its stinking walls.

The place ought to be “vacated,” remodeled, or else entirely destroyed. It is a plague-spot to Chicago, and the attention of the Common Council should be given to it without delay. No tenement-house in New York can compare with the structure in thorough vileness.¹

Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1902

ST. JAMES BLOCK IS TRANSFERRED
Property at 406-414 Clark Street Brings $85,000.

An important deal of the week was the urchase of the St. James block at 406-414 Clark street by Martin M. Schultz from the restate of J. Lewis Crozer of Upland, Penn., for $85,000. The property has a frontage of 100½ feet, and a depth of 108 feet, and is improved with a four-story brick building. The 1901 valuation of the property was $94,530, and the 1899 valuation was $122.400. The purchase was made as an investment. The purchaser executed a trust deed to Peabody, Houghteling & Co., covering the property, for $35,000 for five years at 4 per cent, part purchase money.

⑨ Burnett Hotel

St. Charles Hotel

St. Charles Block

NOTES:

¹ The article continues to describe other tenements at No 543 S. Clark, No. 185 E. Monroe, No. 134 Erie, No. 132 Sangamon among others.

NOTES:

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