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Cochrane House

Cochrane Saloon,
Life Span: 1856-1859
Location: 228 S. Canal
Architect: Van Osdel & Bauman

D. B. Cooke & Co.’s City Directory for the Year 1859-60

Cochrane John

Chicago Daily Tribune, January 4, 1856

A six story brick boarding house on Clinton street, for J. W. Cochrane, 25 by 32 feet. Cost
$5,500. Van Osdel & Bauman, architects.

The Press and Tribune, September 16, 1859

One of the most disastrous conflagrations that has ever visited our city, occurred last night on the West Side, which, while we write, at 12 M. is still burning fiercely and extending its ravages north and west.

Up to the present time an immense amount of property has been destroyed. which cannot fall below the figure named, and may exceed that sum from present appearances, unless the Fire Department succeed in checking the flames.

The fire broke out about 3.30 P. M., in a frame stable on Canal street, near the corner of Lake street, owned and occupied by T. Mehring & Co., Ice dealers. A high wind was blowing at the time from the south-east, and the flames were swept into the heart of the block which was occupied by high piled stacks of lamber, timber, &c., and also by very closely ranged wooden buildings, sheds, outhouses’ workshops, &c. By such material fed before tbe Fire Department had got well at work an immense volume of heat and flame was being driven north and west, which swept every thing in its course along the Lake street street and Canal street fronts. The latter were mostly small buildings of little value, the former were chiefly one and two story structures, and occupied by saloons, small stores, &c., &c., until midway of the block began the large Milwaukee brick structure, the Cleveland House. This with the Clinton House on the corner was destroyed.

Crossing Clinton street, the devouring element laid in rains the Cochrane House, a six story marble front building, owned by J. W. Cochrane, Esq. Also the Hydraulic Mills, a four story stone structure, owned by Mr. Monroe, and occupied by Mr. Mitchell, and E. W. Blachford’s extensive Lead Works. The fire, then spread to the adjoining block destroying the Reformed Presbyterian Church, of which Rev. Robert Patterson is pastor, and a row of good dwelling houses adjoining. How far the fire will extend, we cannot definitely, state at the time of going to press; but there is little doubt that the entire four blocks which are described. will be in ruins.

The Cochrane House was an elegant six-story structure of the first class in hotel architecture, and finished and erected some three years since, by J, W. Cochrane, Esq. It was six stories in height, and fronted on Lake street, just west of Clinton street. It was of Athens marble front, and thoroughly appointed and finished for hotel business of tbe first order. In fact, it was too good and too much in advance of that immediate section of the city, to have proved a profitable investment of the outlay, nearly $50,000 we believe, and it had for some time stood unoccupied. It was finished below for stores on its Lake-street front. The fire commenced its work upon this fine structure at the roof, and thence, far above the reach of the firemen, it ate its way down into the heart of the building, totally destroying it.

An ell from the Cochrane House, of equal height with the main edifice, extended east with the main building, to Canal street, thus forming an angle on tbe corner of the streets, occupied by a three-story brick building, eighty feet on either street. This, occupied by various tenants, was also destroyed.

Next west of the ell of the Cochrane House, was the stone structure occupied as the Hydraulic mills. This was completely gutted.

The Chicago Lead Works, of E. W. Blatchford, were erected in 1856, at a cost of about forty thousand dollars. It was the largest establishment of the kind in the West, if not in the United States, and in a manufacturing point of view, was one of the chief ornaments of the city. Besides the buildings, there were destroyed 500 barrels of linseed oil, machinery, lead, lead pipe, sheet lead, &c., to the value of upwards of $60,000. The business carried on was immense, for besides manufacturing upwards of 100,000 pigs lead annually into lead pipe, sheet lead, with &c., they were extensive dealers in shot of all kinds. The engine is spoken of as being one of the finest in the West, and their machinery was of the most perfect character in every particular.

The building itself was very fine—having been constructed without regard to expense, and in a most durable manner, as all who witnessed the scorching it received before it fell can testily.

One thing with regard to it, however, had been overlooked. There were no iron shutters on it—a strange mistake, when its position to the lumber yards opposite, is taken into consideration. It is not too much to state, that had the windows been securely closed by iron frames and shutters, the Chicago Lead Works might have been saved, and the limits of the fire lessened.

Details of the Fire.
The fire commenced in the livery and sale stables of F. Mehring, 47 and 49 North Canal street, consuming all its contents including fonr valuable horses, one a stallion valued at $1,OOO, owned by Thomas Wilson, of Palatine in this county. From thence it spread to another stable in the rear, belonging also to Mr. Mehring. There were but six horses in this stable, all of which, were rescued. The fire then communicated to the blacksmith shop on the North side (No. 45) of Redmond Hunt & Co., which was speedily consumed, spreading thence in different directions, destroying the entire block, bounded by West Lake, Clinton, Falton and North Canal. In this block, on Lake Street, were the Cleveland house, kept by Wm. Sander, and.owned by S. L. Baker, valued at $37,000 and insured for $15,000; the Clinton House adjoining on the West; the lumber yard of Wm. Avery & Co., on the corner of Canal and Fulton, containing 3,000,000 feet of lumber, valued at a $30,000—insured for 15,000, and a large number of small buildings.

From the block above named the fire communicated to the building attached to E. W. Blatchford’s Lead Works, and from thence to the Lead Works, which were consumed. From the Lead Works it communicated to the Hydraulic Mills, and these, with the entire block by West Lake, North Jefferson, Fulton and Clinton Sts., were entirely consumed. In this block, on West Lake street, were Cochran House, owned by J. W. Cochran, valued at $65,000; (there was an insurance, for a considerable amount, but how large we could not learn,) the West Washington House, a fire-engine house, and various residences.

On the north, from the northwest corner of North Canal and Fulton, the fire communicated to the extensive lamber yard of Ryerson, Miller & Co., destroying 2,500,000 feet of lumber, valued at $25,000 and insured for $12,000 to $14,000; thence to the hard wood lamber yard of Sutherland, entirely destroying his stock, valued at $IO,OOO, and insured for $3,400; Walter Lull’s lumber yard, adjoining on the North, he having about 2,000,000 feet of lumber, valued at $20,000, with some insurance, but how much we cannot learn. The machine shop of Mason & Co., next to the corner of Carroll and North Canal street; the Blue Bonnet House on the corner, with a large number of tenements.

From Ryerson’s lumber yard it communicated to the Vulcan boiler works, of Warrington and Mc Arthur; thence to the Vulcan boiler works, destroying the block bounded by Fulton, North Jefferson, Carroll and Clinton streets. On this block was the Reformed Scotch Presbyterian Church, and a number of goad dwellings; on Jefferson street the packing house of Philips & Co; the planing min belonging to E. A. Rucker, together a, number of other buildings belonging to the same gentleman, whose entire loss is $7,500 and no insurance. There were a number of other valuable buildings on this but we could cot learn who their occupants were.

At the time of going to press it seemed as if the fire might be confined within the limits of the four blocks described. It may spread farther end prove still more destructive, but we trust not.

It is impossible to determine, at this hour, anything; take tho actual amount of property destroyed, but we think we are not greatly out of the way in placing it at half a million of dollars. It may prove, more than this—we hope it may prove less, of coarse, anything like the amount of insurance on the property cannot be known in time for our present issue.

In the block in which the fire originated, besides the more prominent buildings mentioned above, the following buildings were destroyed:

The Want of More Fire-Engines.
Since the inauguration of steam fire-engines, we have not had fires extensive enough to show our citizens how much they were needed. Last night, while the flames spread rapidly from block to block, it was painfully apparent to all that we ought to have at least two engines in each division of the city. We trust the matter will be token into immediate consideration.

Accidents.
While a saloon on Canal street was being burned, a member of the Fire Brigade, named L. Pearce, a constable of the Third Ward, and another man, whose name we did not learn, rushed into the house, and after saving some property, were compelled to jump from the upper story windows, and were severely injured. Mr. Pearce had to be taken home in a carriage. We did not learn the fall extent of his injuries.

Later.
2 A. M.—The fire is at length subdued. After having crossed Carroll street to the block bounded by Carroll, No. Jefferson, the Galena R. R. track and Clinton st., it consumed the entire block, making five blocks in all destroyed.

Full Account of the Great Fire.
Extra copies of this morning’s Press and Tribune containing full particulars of the great fire in tbe West Division, as well as a complete report of the National Fair, can be obtained at the counting-room, No. 51 Clark street.

Mecca Hotel

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Mecca Hotel
Life Span: 1892-1951
Location: 3360 S. State Street
Architect: Edbrooke & Burnham

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1899

Mecca Flats

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904
Mecca Flats 3338 to 3360 State

Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1891

Work will be commenced this morning on the largest apartment house ever planned in Chicago. This immense structure will be known as the “Mecca” and will occupy the south end of the block bounded by Thirty-third, Thirty-fourth, State, and Dearborn streets.

The building will have a frontage of 266 feet on Thirty-fourth street and 234 feet on both State and Dearborn streets. It will be four stories in height and will cost, finished and equipped, $600,000. The structure will contain ninety-eight flats and twelve stores. Its outside appearance will be quite striking. The facing of the building will be of Roman pressed brick with stone and terra cotta trimmings. The bays will be of brick and terra cotta trimmings. The bays will be of brick and terra cotta, and no galvanized iron or similar material will be used in the construction. The arrangement for the building to provide for the number of flats given above is unique. The building will in fact be almost a double structure.

It is in the form of two wings, separated by a central court sixty-six feet wide and 152 feet deep. This court will open out to Thirty-fourth street through a handsome arched carriage entrance. A driveway around this court will inclose a miniature park. The State street wing will include twelve stores, opening on the street, as well as four and seven room suites fronting on the street and the interior court. In the center of each of the wings will be a covered light court, 33×170 feet, surrounded by balconies at each story, connected by four main stairways. The arrangement will resemble that of the Chamber of Commerce rotunda. From these rotundas will be entrances to every apartment in the block. There will be five entrances, two on Dearborn, two on State, and one on Thirty-fourth street. The servants’ entrances will be from the alley and from the street entrances.

map

An elegant interior arrangement has been planned by the projectors of the building. The basement will contain heating, lighting, power, and artificial cooling plants. The parlor of each flat will have a bay window, and hardwood sideboards will be placed in every dining-room. The kitchens will be furnished with gas ranges and refrigerators.

Some idea of size of the building can be obtained from the following figures:
Each floor of the entire building will contain one a half acres of floor space. The four floors will represent six acres of space. Ninety-eight flats, with five occupants to each flat, would represent a population of nearly 500. This would be sufficient for a fair-sized village. Ninety-eight cottages would cover each lot in two five-acre blocks, and with twelve stores would outrank many a rising suburb.

The history of the chain of transactions which led up to the present enterprise is interesting. The land was transferred by George W. Henry to H. C. Hullinger. Dennis Netling & Co. sold the fee if this property to J. P. Song and Frank Ray for $200,000; H. C. Hullinger took back a 99-year lease at a 6 per cent rental based on the above valuation. George F. Montgomery organized the “Mecca” company and purchased this leasehold. Plans for the building were drawn by Edbrooke & Burnham and the contracts for the erection of the block have been let to Shields & Cook.

Chicago Tribune, October 19, 1892

Busy Times at the Hotels.
The big Mecca Hotel, with 700 rooms, will be open tonight for the reception of guests. Nearly everything has been engaged there and it is doubtful if any hotel ever had such an opoening in the matter of rush and crush as the Mecca will have tonight.

map

The Inter Ocean February 19, 1893

Plans have been drawn for an addition of one-story to be made to the Mecca Hitel at the corner of State and Thirty-fourth streets. It will be chiefly of glass and cost about $40,000. The addition to the Dearborn street wing will be used as a dining-room and kitchen, while the addition to the State street wing will be used as a roof garden. The National Editorial Association will establish headquarters at the Mecca next May. The Mecca management has contracted with a band of seventy-five musicians from Guadeloupe, who will furnish music in the grand court of the hotel every afternoon.¹

The Inter Ocean, May 17, 1893

The hundreds of newspaper men from all over the country who are quartered at the Mecca Hotel, at State and Thirty-fourth streets, devoted the earlier hours of yesterday to enjoyment and sight-seeing, with a view of unlimbering themselves after the fatigues of travel. They are a jolly sociable crowd and took readily and with zest to the many programmes of entertainment designed to make their stay in Chicago pleasant.

All through yesterday the rotunda of the hotel did duty as a big reception parlor and Secretary Joseph M. Page and his associates of the executive committee had a busy time making the visitors acquainted with one another and dividing them up into the little excursion parties which had been arranged for the purpose of affording the editors and their friends opportunities for visiting the World’s Fair.

The arrangements made for the comfort of the visitors could not have been better. The entire hotel is at the disposal of the Editorial Association. Every new arrival was met at the door with a cordial hand shake and invited to make himself at home, which, with the instinct of a true newspaper man, he proceeded to do instanter and without superfluous pressing.

Delegations Make Calls.
The several suites of the hotel were apportioned on geographical lines between the delegations of the different States. Large placards, displayed in the hall, proclaimed the whereabouts of the State headquarters. Ths arrangement greatly facilitated the offices of good fellowship. Formal calls could be made collectively or individually—Ohio knew where to find Florida without any unnecessary trouble, Rhode Island had non difficulty when she wanted to look in on Kansas or one of the Dakotas, and so on., As the formula, “Not at home,” had no place in the social canons of the editors, the result was as happy as could be desired, and the rooms of the different delegations were the scenes of uninterrupted merry-making.

There was always a particularly happy crowd to be found in the temporary home of hospitable California. The men from the Bear State had brought with them a generous cargo of the products of the favored Pacific slope. Scipio Craig, of the Redlands Citograph; J. A. Filcher, of the Auburn Herald, and other genial Westerners dispensed the hospitalities, and there were oranges, pears, figs, dates, and the choicest of native wines and cigars galore for all comers.

The shrewd Californians utilized the occasion for publishing to all whom it may concern what their beautiful State can produce. Their room was artistically decorated in pampas grass, wild oats, and barley and beautiful polished panels of native woods. They exhibited phenomenal limes, peaches, and potatoes, some of the latter being seven and eight pounds in weight and as large as the average baby in size.

All Praise Chicago.
As the evening advanced the rotunda of the hotel wore an animated appearance. The groups returning from the exposition were telling one another and those who remained at home of the wonderful things to be seen at Jackson park. All spoke in terms of unstinted praise of Chicago and The Fair. By degrees the groups of delighted conversationalists became smaller and in a short time the talking was left to the ladies. The gentlemen had retired to their temporary sanctums, and by 6 o’clock 1,000 editorial pencils were writing 1,000 editorial letters to as many papers scattered north, south, east, and west throughout the United States, all booming the big show in the great White City by Lake Michigan.

The day was a pleasant one for the visitors, but it was only an earnest of the many days of enjoyment awaiting them. Today at 2 o’clock the delegates and their friends will visit the Turkish village and enjoy the drama as it is interpreted in Moslem theatres. Buffalo Bill has sent a cordial invitation extending the hospitality of the Wild West show and of his Indian tepee. The Specatorium company has asked the editors to view the model of their big show. Thus evening the editors will be tendered a reception at the Auditorium by the Illinois Women’s Press Association. To-morrow, as the guests of the citizens’ committee, the editorial association will be taken over the South Side “L” road to Jackson park, and thence in a whaleback boat on a lake excursion to Lincoln park. The boat en route will be anchored for a short time near where the Yattaw hostelry used to float, when the editors will be afforded the opportunity of enjoying a good view of Chicago and a capital luncheon simultaneously. To-morrow night “America,” at the Auditorium, will be shown to visitors. On Friday night there will be another boat excursion, when the delegates will see the World’s Fair illuminated.

These are only some of the attractions designed to delight the editors. Arrangements have been made by many friends to make the two weeks’ stay of the delegates a pleasant one. The editors themselves have prepared an elaborate programmed for their convention, from which it may be opined that their stay will also be one of profit.

Mecca Hotel Promotional Brochure, 1893

There was a time when an inn was all a traveler required, if it provided a cot to lie upon and enough provender, be it ever so plain, for horseback and foot travel sharpened the appetite and made the meagre fare appear as nectar for the gods.

Very different are the public demands now. Beds are desired, true; but they must be of the finest springs and mattresses, eider down quilts and spotless sheets. The frame must be artistic, of fine woods or metal. The surroundings must accord. Axminster, Wilton velvet, or Moquette carpets, elegant hangings, chairs so comfortable that they woo the soul to sleep, pictures adorning the walls and expensive window hangings, screening the couch from the searching rays of the morning sun. Adjoining must be the bath, perhaps not “of milk,” or perfumed air, but arranged with every sanitary care, hot and cold, complete, luxurious, enticing.

No fire must heat in winter, but steam or hot water must be conveyed in pipes, to provide an even temperature; then if a semblance of fire is desired to please the eye, a blazing gas log occupies the grate.

None of the delicious abandon of the long table, with the steaming roast or “potage” in the center, with the host in white apron and the guests surrounding him is now seen, but the viands must come from the kitchen prepared in the latest French style, and be served by sable waiters in spotless costume.

We can no longer climb to our rooms, but must be transported thither by luxurious elevators; every convenience for the toilet must be at hand in general washrooms, the office is now a dream of architectural elegance, the writing and reading rooms richer and more luxurious than former Ducal palaces.

It is needless to tell of the numberless hotels in Chicago. It is superfluous to state that their accommodations will be taxed to the utmost during the six months Festival for all the Earth, that will be opened to the public in Chicago the first of May, 1893. What we have to do with in this article is not the general accommodations furnished by the city hostelries, but of one that comes within the requirements of any modern traveler, combining all and more than the accessories of comfort and luxury enumerated above.

THE MECCA.

Mecca is the chief town of the Hijaz, in Arabia, and the great holy city of Islam. located about forty-five miles (or two camel marches) east from Jedda, on the Red Sea. The population is variously estimated at from 50,000 to 75,000 in the seasons of pilgrimage, which follow so closely upon each other that one is scarcely ended ere another begins. To this day the inhabitants of Mecca live by the “hajj,” or letting rooms and providing for the comfort of pilgrims.

Thus the elegant hostelry which is to provide for the comfort of “Pilgrims to the World’s Fair,” is most appropriately named, and by those who stop there will be fully and pleasantly remembered, as would the ancient prototype to the earnest devotee.

The Hotel Mecca is located upon the block running from State Street to Dearborn Street, taking in a full block on Thirty-fourth Street.

Architecturally this beautiful hotel differs from any other in the United States. It is but four stories high, covering a considerable portion of Mother Earth and rendering the danger from fire, which is a matter to be considered in overcrowded sky-scrapers, almost unworthy of thought.

As one enters one of the main entrances on the State Street side, he is within the “gates of Mecca.” Long vistas of beautiful architectural effect, heightened by beautiful decoration, make one pause and admire. The interior courts running the full length of the mammoth building, two in number, are inclosed, surrounded with corridors, and with roof affording light to every part by day and brilliantly illuminated by electric lights, both arc and incandescent, at night. These rotundas are well adapted for the purposes for which they will be employed.

The one on the State Street side, where we pause first, is the office, writing rooms, general lounging quarters for gentlemen, and a magnificent promenade. The office is elegantly fitted up with every convenience and luxury known to the hotel world. The in-closed portion is of marble, with ample room for registering guests, while the facilities afforded the clerks, cashiers and office employees are in keeping with the magnitude of the house.

The same sized court extends north and south on the Dearborn Street side of the hotel, and this one is beautifully embellished with growing plants and tropical flowers. A magnificent Moquette rug extends from end to end of the waxen floor and to the very edges of the mosaic tiling which surrounds the area. This rug can be readily removed and one of the finest dancing halls in America is disclosed with its polished surface, where in the delights of the dance the fatigues of the day can be quickly forgotten.

A beautiful park, flower garden and handsome fountain belonging to and being a part of the Mecca, is an attraction that is afforded by no other hotel in the city.

Now what of the rooms? They are so built as to be furnished to guests either en suite or singly, every room having good light and pure air, and a bath with hot and cold water at all times. The finish throughout is of quarter-sawed oak, tiling and marble. The bell service is of the very best, with return call and automatic fire alarm. Each room in this vast house, numbering over seven hundred, is provided amply with incandescent lights and gas.

Interior Atrium in the Mecca which served as the Ladies’ Parlor during the Columbian Exposition.

The furnishing of the whole hotel is of the very best. None of the rooms have been slighted, and no cheap articles have been introduced to fill up. Everything is modern and of the best quality and everything in the house is new, never having been in use prior to its introduction to the public in the Mecca’s delightful apartments.

Steam heat is furnished in every room in the house whenever required.

It was intended at the outset to run the hotel strictly upon the European plan, but the numerous requests of coming guests have caused the owners to prepare one of the most complete dining rooms and culinary departments of any hotel in the city and fully in keeping with the character of the house. The cuisine is of the very best, and the chef is a man well known in hotel circles as a man of ability in that line and gives sufficient guarantee of the perfection of the edibles and their preparation to tempt the palates of the thousands of visitors which this hotel will entertain during the coming season.

The Mecca has beyond question the finest office accommodations for telegraph, long-distance telephone, messenger service and Union rate ticket office in the West.

Notwithstanding the unusual attractions offered at this hotel the prices have been determined upon, and are so moderate that they will not create a distressing vacuum in any guest’s purse. The Hotel Gazette, New York, October 22, 1892.

Chicago Chronicle, July 5, 1895

Three determined but unsuccessful attempts were made to burn the Mecca apartment building, Thirty-fourth, State and Dearborn streets, last night.

The work was so clearly that of an incendiary that Fire Marshal Mahoney called on Lieutenant Bonfield of the Stanton avenue police station for a detail of police to guard the building, and a dozen officers were sent to the scene with instructions to remain on guard until relieved by other officers.

The greatest excitement prevailed among the members of the eighty families occupying the apartments in the building, and during the earlier part of the evening thousands of people gathered on the State and Thirty-fourth street sides of the building, momentarily expecting to see flames break from some of the many windows of the big building.

First Seen in the Basement.
It was just 7:38 o’clock when a watchman saw smoke issuing from a basement window on the Dearborn street side of the building. Through the window a small blaze could be seen, burning briskly, and a fire alarm was at once turned in. Marshal Mahoney and engine company No. 16, in charge of Captain Foley, were the first to arrive on the scene. The flames had not yet gained much headway, and a stream from the engine sufficed to put an end to all damage.

Marshal Mahoney and Captain Foley then made a careful examination of that portion of the basement where the fire had been discovered. They found that an unused closet had been selected as the place for kindling the fire. A box two feet square had been placed in the little room and filled with excelsior. On top of this had been piled a lot of old newspapers and a quantity of fine kindling. The flames had nearly destroyed the box, and had ignited the wood wainscoting when extinguished.

It was clearly the work of an incendiary, but no one had been seen leaving the base-ment. and Marshal Mahoney concluded that the fire bug must be in hiding in the base-ment. A search was made through the place, but no track of the guilty party could be found, and the fire companies were ordered back to their stations.

The clanging of the fire gongs and the cries of fire had thoroughly aroused the neighborhood. The 500 persons who call the big building home rushed from their rooms pell mell through the hallways and down the stairwavs to the street. Many picked up smaller articles which they regarded the most, and throwing them together in bundles lugged them with them to places of safety, leaving the more bulky articles to be destroyed by the fire, which they thought would consume the building.

Second Blaze Discovered.
It was exactly an hour later and the fire. men had only fairly returned from the first fire and the excitement among the tenants of the building had only partly subsided, when another blaze was discovered in the basement on the Thirty-fourth street side of the building. Another alarm was turned in and the arrival of the fire department the second time threw the occupants of the building into a state of panic. Men, women and children ran through the halls and into the street terror-stricken, now believing that the building was surely to be consumed. A few minutes’ work, however, sufficed to check the blaze.

On the Thirty-fourth street side of the building is a deep court, which forms the immense structure into the shape of three wings. The second fire had been started in the basement, under the wing farthest removed from Thirty-fourth street. An examination disclosed the fact that a pile of inflammable material, similar to that used on the Dearborn street side of the building, had been made and ignited. It was close to the boilers and steam plants and against a board partition, which was charred and blackened by the flames.

Police Were On Guard.
This second attempt was made while the police were on guard, and was so bold and determined that Marshal Mahoney and the frightened occupants of the building were thoroughly aroused.
Another search was made through the big, dark basement for the fiend responsible for the fires, but, as be-fore, no trace of him was found. Marshal Mahoney finally gave up the hunt, and, cautioning the police officers to be more vigi-lant, returned to his quarters at Thirty-first and Dearborn streets.

Many of the tenants refused to be reas-sured, and would not return to their apart-ments. They stood about the street in knots talking of the events of the night. Some of the braver ones ventured into the big building and patrolled the corridors, suspiciously eyeing any stranger who ventured near geeking for information.

Third Effort Was Made.
At last the fear began to wear off and some of the tenants returned to their flats, but they were not long to remain there. As if timing his work to the minute, the incendiary started a third blaze at just 9:37 o’clock. This time it was in the basement, but on the State street side, near the north end of the building. An unused closet was again used as a receptacle for the inflammable material. Two boxes, such as are used for shipping canned goods, as be-fore, were filled with excelsior and old pa-pers. The miscreant evidently intended to make a success of it this time, for a large quantity of pine boards had been broken in small pieces and piled on top of the excelsior and paper and against the wooden partition.

The work, however, was not well done, for only the material in one of the boxes had burned when the flames were discovered, and a third alarm of fire sent in. The crowd had put out the fire before the arrival of the department and before further damage than the charring of the board partition.

Searching for the Fiend.
It was now a certainty that the originator of the three fires was concealed somewhere in the basement, and before the police were given time to act a dozen of the male tenants of the building, headed by John O. Seys, a newspaper man, had rushed into the basement, determined to find the intended destroyer of their homes and property and make short work of him if found. They searched in the vicinity of the third fire, but were at a disadvantage, as the basement was very dark, the only light being furnished by a lantern carried by one of the parties. The immense basement contains numerous out-of-the-way corners and narrow passage-ways, and the man-hunters were necessarily handicapped in their hunt.

Suddenly, while the searchers were in the north end of the basement, the noise of footsteps was heard on the hard, cement floor some distance to the south of the searching party. A rush was made in that direction and the hunted man was heard to break into a run and was then heard ascending a stairway. There all trace of him was lost. The entire basement and building was thoroughly searched by the police, firemen and citizens, but no one upon whom suspicion could be fastened was found.

Big Police Guard Placed.
The search was finally abandoned, and Marshal Mahoney again returned to his station, taking with him the charred boxes and other evidences of the incendiarism. Before leaving the scene, however, the marshal again called upon Lieutenant Bon-field for additional police guard, and more officers were sent to the scene. All during the night a large body of police patrolled the big building on all three sides, and closely questioned everyone who sought to enter.

Notwithstanding the presence of so many policemen numbers of the tenants were so thoroughly alarmed by the incendiary fires that they refused to return to their flats. Especially was this true of those occupying apartments on the upper floors of the build-ing. Long after midnight many of these were gathered in small parties in the corridors on the first floor or were on the street assisting the policemen in the work of guarding the structure.

After the third attempt at arson Marshal Mahoney was seen at the engine-house at Thirty-first and Dearborn streets.

Marshal Mahoney Talks.
“It was the boldest attempt at incen-diarism that has ever come under my no-tice.” said the marshal.
“Whoever started those fires was evidently well acquainted with the construction of the building and knew what he was about. From the fact that the three fires were discovered on the three different street sides of the building it is evident that it was the intention of the incendiary to start all three at or about the same time and have the entire basement a mass of flames before the fire department could reach the scene The scheme failed to work and thus the building was saved from damage. Had the original plan been carried out there is no doubt the fire would have been a bad one and would have resulted in heavy loss of property and possibly loss of life.”

The building is owned by P. J. Sorg, the big tobacco dealer of Middletown, O., and J. W. Sturtevant is the agent of the building and Mr. Sorg’s personal representative. Mr. Sturtevant was at the building last night, and to a reporter for THE CHRONICLE said that the building and the ground on which it stands are the sole property of Mr. Sorg.

“The building is valued at $500,000,” he said, “and is insured for $150,000 or $175,000.
The three fires were undoubtedly of incendiary origin, but who could have started them I am at a loss to say. There are ninety-one flats in the building, and eighty of them are occupied. The tenants are all highly respectable people and above suspicion

“The property was in litigation for a long time, but the ownership was fully determined some time since by the courts and I do not believe that feature enters in any way into the attempts at arson. We shall endeavor to find the guilty party and a close watch will be kept in the future to guard against simllar occurrences.”

Queer Connecting Incident.
One little incident which was called to mind by the fires last night was revealed by occupants of the building. H. G. Moore, proprietor of the Rialto laundry at 3342 State street, occupies a flat on the Dearborn street side of the Mecca building. Ten days ago an attempt was made to burn Mr. Moore’s barn, in the rear of his laundry. The fire was put out, but a few days later the torch was again applied and the barn and a horse were burned. Two nights ago a barn on Thirty-fourth street, belonging to a Mr. Goldstein, was also burned by an incendiary. The first blaze last night was started directly under Mr. Moore’s flat and the police thought there might be a connection between the fires and that they were kindled by an enemy of Moore.

The Mecca building was constructed in 1892, was built for a hotel, and used as such during the world’s fair. It is a five-story brick, fronting 200 feet on State and Dearborn streets, and extending the length of the block east and west. The first floor on the State street side is occupied by stores, the remainder of the building being fitted for flats. The ground was owned by Mr. Sorg and the lessees found the building a losing venture and a long litigation followed its opening as a hotel. It was finally secured by Mr. Sorg on the foreclosure of a mortgage, and was refitted for an apartment house.

map

Inter Ocean, February 2, 1912

The Mecca, said to be the largest apartment building in the West and one of the largest in the country, occupying 234 feet frontage on State street at the northwest corner of Thirty-Fourth, extending through to Dearborn street, has been acquired by Franklin T. Pember of Granville, N. Y., from Benjamin H. Wallace at a consideration said to be around $400,000. 8. A. French & Co. represented the purchaser.

The building is a four story and basement structure containing fourteen stores and 191 flats, yielding a gross rental of about $43,000 a year, and is taken subject to $170,000 incumbrance. In part payment for the equity the grantee gives the Bedford, a five story apartment building containing forty flats, at 810-818 Oakwood boulevard, and the Monterey, a five story and basement store and apartment building containing four stores and fifty-six flats, at 813 to 821 East Thirty-Ninth street. The two buildings were valued at $265,00 and were conveyed subject to $35,000 incumbrance.

The Day Book, February 2, 1914

100 negro families forced to flee when fire attacked Mecca Apartments, S. State and 34th sts. Little damage.

Mecca Flat Blues

James Blythe and Alexander Robinson

In August 1924, Mecca Flat Blues was recorded in Chicago, on the Paramount record label, with Priscilla Stewart as vocals and Jimmy Blythe on piano.

Mecca flat woman must be a jazzin’ houn’
Mecca flat woman must be a jazzin’ houn’
Keep foolin’ with me and I’ll cut your jazzer down

Mecca flat woman stings like a stingaree
Mecca flat woman stings like a stingaree
Mecca flat woman take your teeth out of me

I’m going to find my Mecca flat man today
I’m going to find my Mecca flat man today
Got the Mecca flat blues and somebody’s goin’ to pay

Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1950

map
Mecca Flats—once a model of the finest apartment living, but now a prime example of the worst slum tenements—was doomed yesterday to becoming just another page in the history of Chicago’s famous old buildings.

The death sentence was pronounced by the present owner, the Illinois Institute of Technology, which began proceedings preparatory to razing the structure in the school’s expansion program for its south side campus.

1,500 to Be Evicted.
Dr. Henry T. Heald, Illinois Tech president, announced that the Chicago area rent office has been asked to certify the eviction of the building’s 1,500 Negro occupants. The tenants, he added, will be informed today that eviction notices would be served about July 1.

“Both the building and fire department have agreed that the building should come down even tho there is a serious housing shortage,” explained Dr. Heald. “It’s a case of where the school can no longer be responsible for leaving people in a place where their lives are constantly in danger.”

Besides a fire trap, the structure was described by the school head as a health menace and a meeting place of gangs of juvenile hoodlums. Nightly shootings in hallways have become commonplace, one person having been killed six months ago.

Halted from Razing It.
Mecca Flats is a large brick building of four stories which stretches along the north side of 34th st. from State st. to Dearborn st. Illinois Tech became the reluctant landlord nine years ago when it acquired the building, but was deterred from tearing it down.

The principal reason was the housing shortage. Wartime conditions, civic organizations, the courts and the office of price control (then the rent control agency) at first collaborated to bar its demolition. In 1943 six Negro members of the legislature pushed thru a state law against its destruction, but this was vetoed by the government as unconstitutional.

Squatters Move In.
As normal vacancies occurred, Illinois Tech adopted a policy of not rerenting, but squatters moved in. There now are quarters rented by the school for only 175 families, but the overcrowded conditions are accounted for by the subleasing at rent four times more than the school’s charge of $22.50 per month.

Illinois Tech, Dr. Heald said, will do its utmost in helping find new quarters for the Mecca Flat tenants.

Mecca Flats was constructed during the two years preceding the Columbian Exposition, Chicago’s first world fair in 1893. The city’s largest apartment building at the time, the four story structure, was awe inspiring with two covered courtyards ringed by balconies of fancy wrought iron. It was one of the first, apartment structures to be equipped with a central “steam heating system.

Its deterioration started about the time of the first world war. In the early ’20s when nearby 35th and State sts. was the center of south side Negro jazz, a downbeat artist created a number called “Mecca Flat Blues,” a folksong celebrating the “trials, tribulations, and tragedies” of the tenement’s dwellers.

LIFE Magazine, November 19, 1951
map
For 10 years the Mecca, Chicago’s most celebrated slum building, has been gasping out its last breaths—but refusing ti give up. Its end will now come at last when the huge apartment house is torn down for the expanding campus of its neighbor, the Illinois Institute of Technology. Built on the South Side in 1891, the Mecca boasted four-story inside courts, tile-paneled halls, hardwood floors throughout. It was a mecca for Chicago’s rising rich until the South Side became less stylish. By 1912 the first Negro tenants had moved in. The building’s noisy jazz activities gave a name to the Mecca Flat Blues and the apartment steadily trumpeted its way downhill. I.I.T. bought it in 1941 but could not wreck it until 700 occupants could find homes in Chicago’s crowded Negro area. Since September I.I.T. has collected no rent from the 51 remaining tenants and hopes to have them all moved out be year’s end.

map

Balconies of The Mecca, 1951.

map

LEFT:

RIGHT:

map

NOTES:

¹ This addition was never built.

1859—West Division Fire

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Notorious Chicago

The Press and Tribune, September 16, 1859

Crossing Clinton street, the devouring element laid in rains the Cochrane House, a six story marble front building, owned by J. W. Cochrane, Esq. Also the Hydraulic Mills, a four story stone structure, owned by Mr. Monroe, and occupied by Mr. Mitchell, and E. W. Blachford’s extensive Lead Works. The fire, then spread to the adjoining block destroying the Reformed Presbyterian Church, of which Rev. Robert Patterson is pastor, and a row of good dwelling houses adjoining. How far the fire will extend, we cannot definitely, state at the time of going to press; but there is little doubt that the entire four blocks which are described. will be in ruins.

The Cochrane House was an elegant six-story structure of the first class in hotel architecture, and finished and erected some three years since, by J, W. Cochrane, Esq. It was six stories in height, and fronted on Lake street, just west of Clinton street. It was of Athens marble front, and thoroughly appointed and finished for hotel business of tbe first order. In fact, it was too good and too much in advance of that immediate section of the city, to have proved a profitable investment of the outlay, nearly $50,000 we believe, and it had for some time stood unoccupied. It was finished below for stores on its Lake-street front. The fire commenced its work upon this fine structure at the roof, and thence, far above the reach of the firemen, it ate its way down into the heart of the building, totally destroying it.

An ell from the Cochrane House, of equal height with the main edifice, extended east with the main building, to Canal street, thus forming an angle on tbe corner of the streets, occupied by a three-story brick building, eighty feet on either street. This, occupied by various tenants, was also destroyed.

Next west of the ell of the Cochrane House, was the stone structure occupied as the Hydraulic mills. This was completely gutted.

The building itself was very fine—having been constructed without regard to expense, and in a most durable manner, as all who witnessed the scorching it received before it fell can testily.

Further Particulars.
When, as one of the crowning attractions of the Great United States Fair in this city, was proposed a grand trial of Steam Fire Engines, it was most lamentably opportune that the con flagration took place. Never before did we see so much force displayed with so little confusion, and noise. At the time the fire broke out, the Hope Fire Engine Company, of Philadelphia, were at supper at the Orient House, when they instantly started for the scene with their steam engine, and rent to work most vigorously, rendering our own Fire Department much assistance. The city fire engines also did noble work, but the high wind proved too much for them all combined. And now, if not before, it must seem unfortunate that the number of our steam fire engines has been for any reason whatever allowed to await a reinforcement. Under ordinary circumstances it could have been subdued without difficulty.

Details of the Fire.
The fire commenced in the livery and sale stables of F. Mehring, 47 and 49 North Canal street, consuming all its contents including fonr valuable horses, one a stallion valued at $1,OOO, owned by Thomas Wilson, of Palatine in this county. From thence it spread to another stable in the rear, belonging also to Mr. Mehring. There were but six horses in this stable, all of which, were rescued. The fire then communicated to the blacksmith shop on the North side (No. 45) of Redmond Hunt & Co., which was speedily consumed, spreading thence in different directions, destroying the entire block, bounded by West Lake, Clinton, Fulton and North Canal. In this block, on Lake Street, were the Cleveland house, kept by Wm. Sander, and.owned by S. L. Baker, valued at $37,000 and insured for $15,000; the Clinton House adjoining on the West; the lumber yard of Wm. Avery & Co., on the corner of Canal and Fulton, containing 3,000,000 feet of lumber, valued at a $30,000—insured for 15,000, and a large number of small buildings.

At the time of going to press it seemed as if the fire might be confined within the limits of the four blocks described. It may spread farther end prove still more destructive, but we trust not.

In the block in which the fire originated, besides the more prominent buildings mentioned above, the following buildings were destroyed:

The Fire District:

Block ⑫

Block ⑬

Block ㉓

Block ㉔

On West Lake street twenty-one houses were destroyed; on Fulton street, ten houses; on Jefferson street, nine houses and a number of shanties; on Canal street, fourteen houses and several lumber yards; on Clinton street, twelve houses and manufacturing premises; and on Carroll street seven houses were destroyed.

The Press and Tribune, September 17, 1859

We were enabled to give a good general idea of the great conflagration in the Western District in our issue of yesterday morning, without going much into the particulars. During yesterday our reporters gave their most indefatigable attention. to the gathering of such facts as nay be worth knowing, the result of which will be found below.

The actual amount of loss we of course cannot positively ascertain, but we think it cannot vary much from the figures given yesterday, although some intelligent and judicious men think our estimate to high.

It is a heavy misfortune to our city, and with all the energy of our citizens in the Western District, it will be a long time before they will entirely recover from the ruin it has wrought.

In the confusion and haste of our report yesterday morning, we were made to state that the entire square, bounded by West Lake, North Jefferson, Fulton and Clinton Streets, was consumed. This is a mistake. From the Engine house formerly occupied by No. 6, on Lake St., to the corner of North Jefferson St. on worth Jefferson to Fulton and on Fulton to the Lead Works, the buildings were all, or nearly all, saved. This district includes Phillips’ packing house and some other prominent buildings.— With this exception, the outline of the fire, as given by us, was correct.

We should do injustice to our gallant firemen, did we neglect to say that their efforts to stay the progress of the fames were well and judiciously directed, and they, labored with a vigor and enthusiasm which produced the best posi-bie pesults. Their well directed, heroic and successful efforts to save the Oconto Lumber Company’s property and the grain warehouse of Munn & Scott were worthy of all praise.

Below we give the full particulars, as gathered by our reporter:

WEST LAKE STREET.
No. 36— Two story frame, owned by Widow Clark, and occupied by Thomas Thompson, Tailor, loss $50; and John Eden, fruit dealer, loss $200, uninsured.
No. 38—One story frame, owned by Widow Clark, and occupied as a pop factory by John Lummux, who owned a small building in the rear occupied as a dwelling; loss $1,000 uninsured.
No. 40—One story frame, owned by Widow Clark, and occupied by Klattenberg Bro’s, painters, loss $200, on house $200, uninsured.
No. 42—One story, frame, occupied by Tho’s Quigley as a dwelling, loss slight, building owned by Mrs. Clark, loss $200, uninsured.
No. 11—One story frame, owned by Widow Brown, and occupied by Mrs. Mary Kent as dwelling, loss $200, uninsured.
Next came the Cleveland House, of Milwaukee brick, owned by S. L. Baker and leased by Wm. Sander, whose loss was $3,000, uninsured. The House was valued at $37,000 and insured for $28,000 in the Artic, of New York, Howard, of New York; Indemnity, of New York, Manhattan, of New York, and Lamar, of New York. In the first story of the Hotel was:
No. 46—Occupied by Patrick Pryer us a shirt manufactory, loss $200, no insurance.
No. 45—Dining room of the Hotel; and No. 50, a Billiard Saloon connected with the house, the tables of which were saved.
No. 52—Occupied by J. P. D. Griffin as a tin shop, loss $150, no insurance. and D. Leonard, tailor, loss $300, no insurance.
No. 54—B. Bernaur, Liquor Dealer. Loss $6,000; insured for $3,000 in the AEtna. Part of his stock was saved.
No. 56—Tyfel’s watch store. Loss $600, fully insured.
No. 58– Reuben Taylor, land office; slight loss.
No. 60 was occupied on the first floor as a grocery store by. W. & C. Matther. Loss $500; uninsured: Above the store, was occupied as a boarding house, called the Clinton House, and, kept by Christopher Cross. A part of the furniture was saved. The building was owned by S. L. Baker, and included in the loss of the Cleveland House.
On the north-west corner of Lake and Clinton streets was a three story brick building, occupied above as a boarding house, called the West Washington House, and kept by Kessel & Zimmer. Loss $500; no insurance; the first floor has stores.
No. 69 was a lager beer saloon. Loss slight.
No. 64—Shoe store by L. G. Osborne, loss $150; no insurance:
Nos. 68 and 70-The six story marble front hotel owned by J. W. Cochrane, and unoccupied. It was valued at $60,000 and we do not learn that there was any insurance. Mr. Cochrane had an office in No. 68. Next west of this was a one story wood building fitted up as a billard saloon but not rented. The tables were removed.
No. 74 was occupied and No. 76, by Mr. Kaufield, a music teacher, were damaged by the falling walls. Mr. Kauffold had several pianos
damaged by removal.

FULTON STREET.
Nos. 44, 46, 48, 50, two-story frame dwellings owned by Moses Shirra, loss $4,000; insured for $500 each.. Nos. 44 and 46, in the AEtna and 48, and 50 in Norwich, Conn.
The next west, was the Reformed Presbyterian. Church, Rev. Robert Patterson. Valued at $2,500; insured for $1,200 in the Phoenix of Hartford, Conn.
No. 54—Two story dwelling occupied by Mc Donnel; owned by V. C. Turner; lose about $500.
No. 56—Two story frame house occupied by Mr. Broderick; total loss $500.
No. 58—Two story frame, occupied by Mr. S. Brown; total loss $1,250.
Nos. 60 and 62—A double two story frame house, the former occupied by Mr. Tunnicliff and owned by A. S. Kedzie; loss $24,000; insured for $1,600 in City, Fire Insurance Co., New Haven, Conn. On the the corner off Jefferson and Fulton Michael Rooch owned a small; house; loss about $200.

CARROLL STREET.
Two cooper shops wore burned just west of Clinton on the south side of Carroll street, both occupied by Joseph Kieffer—one owned by him and the other by Isaac Cook; Keefer’s loss was $1,200, uninsured.
Nos. 51, 53, 55—Frame dwellings belonging to Robert Moore; loss $1,400.
No. 57—One story frame house owned by G. Brady, unoccupied, loss $150 uninsured.
No. 59—Two story frame dwelling awned by Wm. Webb, occupied by Edward Ragan; loss of $250; no insurance.
Nos. 60 and 62—Two story dwellings; owned by E. A. Rucker; 62 was occupied by Rucker, and 60 by Hathaway; loss $1,800, no insurance.

CANAL STREET.
No. 39—corner Lake, two story building, unoccupied, owned by Widow Clark; loss $500; uninsured.
No. 41—Saloon kept and owned by M. Finucan; loss $800; uninsured.
Clark; loss $800 uninsured.
No. 43—Lager beer saloon by John Jacobs; owned by Mrs. Clark; loss $500 uninsured.
No. 45—Small one story house owned by Mrs. Clark; loss, $500 uninsured.
No. 47 and 49—Stables belonging to the Lake Street House, owned by W. B. Ogden.
No. 51—kept by Jas. Peterkin, who saved, his furniture, owned by John Warwick; and stables in rear on alley; total loss, $1,400; uninsured.
No. 53—Two story, building, unoccupied; owned by Geo. Lumax & Co. loss, $800 uninsured.
Nos.55 and 57, Stable owned by John Mehring, ice dealer, and occupied for the ice horses and boarding stable. Here the fire originated, and nine horses were consumed. In the rear was an ice, insured for $1,200 in Philadelphia Fire and Life Insurance Co.
No. 59 Blacksmith Shop, owned by Redmond & Hunt. Loss $500, uninsured. No. 61. Saloon belonging to some children, Mr. Sulzer, Administrator, insured for $600 in
Illinois Mutual.
No.66. Blind and Sash Factory by F. J. Roelle, who owned the building, Loss $6,000, insured for $900 in Illinois Mutual.
Next was the lumber yard of T. M. Avery & Co. Loss $40,000, insured $20,000 in several companies..
On the Northwest corner of Canal and Clinton streets was the lumber yards of Ryerson, Miller & Co., which was entirely consumed with the exception of the office, and a few piles of limber. Loss $25,000, insured for $12,000, about equally in the Etna, London and Liverpool, Home and Resolute.
Adjacent to this was the hard-wood lumber yard of Sutherland & Co.; loss, $15,000; insured for $13,500 in the Etna. John Granger had 2,000 staves stored in this yard, which was insured for $900 in the Etna.

Then came the yard of Walter Lull, which was entirely consumed; loss $14,000; partly insured. There was lumber stored in this yard belonging to Pearson & Batchbeller, the loss on which was $1,750; insured for $1,500 in the Chicago FIreman’s Ins. Co.

Next north of this was the Excelsior Iron works, beLonging to C. Mason. The machinery saved; loss $10,000; insured for $3,500 in the Chicago Fireman’s Insurance Co. Co. At the corner of Carrol street was the Blue Bonnet Saloon; loss on furniture $200; house $400.

CLINTON STREET.
North of the West Washingion. House, corner of Lake and Clintou streets was a five story building; an L of the Cochrane House, belonging to J. W. Cochrane; adjacent to this, north, was the Hydraulic, Mills, run by R. M. Mitchell, whose loss was $5,000. No insurance: There was a large quantity of wheat, besides flour in the mill, of which but few barrels were got out. The building was owned by H.S. Munroe, and valued at $15,000 and was uninsured, the owner being about to make arrangements to insure.

Next came the wooden storehouse of the Lead Works. On the corner of Fulton was the five-story brick, lead works ofF. W. Blatchford, which was insured for $57,500, as follows: On the building, $5,000 each in the Phoenix of Brooklyn, Hartford of Connecticut, Humboldt of New York and City of New York, $2,000 in the Hamden of Springfield, Mass., and $1,500 in the Conway, of Conway, Mass. On the machinery, 2,500 each in Charter, Oak, Connecticut, Phoenix, Hartford, Springfield Fire and Marine, Mass., and $2,000 in Atlantic of Providence, the Merchants of Hartford, Etna of Hartford, and Relief of N. Y., $4,000 in Hamden of Springfield, and $3,000 in the Montank of Brooklyn.

The Cleveland Masonic Lodge occupied rooms in this building. Loss $7,000, uninsured.

W. B. Young had a Sewing Machine manufactory in the third story, he got out a few machines but all tools and stock lost, uninsured.

Farther north was the Vulcan boiler works of John McArthur. Loss 1,000, uninsured, building belonged to Henry Worthington, who also owned the Vulcan Foundry a brick building adjoining. Loss, $30,000 on two buildings and stock, insured $10,000 equally, in North American, of Hartford, Etna of Hartford and Norwich of Norwich. North of this was three or four frame dwellings uninsured, loss about $400 each.

JEFFERSON STREET.
On Jefferson, between Fulton and Carroll streets there, were, several small buildings and the plaining mill of E. A. Rucker. Loss $6,000, uninsured.

D. B. Cooke & Co.’s City Directory for the Year 1859-60

ENGINE COMPANIES.
Fire Engine Company No. 1.
Located on Dearborn street, between Washington and Randolph streets. Fred. A. Bragg, Foreman. Engine first class, Philadelphia style, 10 inch cylinder, 9 inch stroke; built in 1855, by John Agnew, Philadelphia. Present number of men 77, entitled to 80.

Metamora Engine Company No. 2
Located corner of Washington and Franklin streets. Foreman, J. L. Wagonberger. Engine first class, piano style; 10 inch cylinder, 9 inch stroke; built in 1858, by James Smith of N. Y. Present number of men, 44, entitled to 80.

Niagara Engine Company No. 3.
Located on North Wells, south east corner of Kinzie street. Foreman, P.P. Wood. Engine first class, crane neck, piano style; 11 inch cylinder, 10 inch stroke; built in 1854, by L. Button & Co., Waterford, N. Y., Second class engine, property of the company, 9¼ inch cylinder, 7½ inch stroke; built in 1858, by L, Button & Oo., Waterford, N. Y.; both engines in good order. Also, a good hose cart, carrying 100 feet of hose; built in 1852, by Messrs. Pine & Hartshorn, N. Y. Present number of men 80.

Excelsior Engine Company No. 5.
Located on West Jackson street, between S. Jefferson and S. Clinton streets. W. Wayman, Foreman. House in good condition; engine first class, crane neck, piano style; 10 inch cylinder, 10 inch stroke; built in 1856, by L. Button & Co., Waterford, N. Y. Present number of men, 54, entitled to 80.

Garden City Engine Company No. 6.
Located on W. Lake street, between North Clinton and N. Jefferson. E. Mendser, Foreman. Engine first class, 10 inch cylinder, 7½ inch stroke; built in 1858, by L. Button & Co., Waterford, N. Y. Present number of men, 40, entitled to 80.

Eagle Engine Company No. 7.
Located on State street, between Van Buren and Harrison. J. M. Reis, Foreman. Engine first class, crane neck, piano style; 10 inch cylinder, 9 inch stroke; built in 1856, by L. Button & Co., Waterford, N. Y. Present number of men 36, entitled to 80.

Neptune Engine Company No. 11.
Located on Chicago avenue, near N. Dearborn street. N. Siemon, Foreman; engine first class, Jeffries style; 10 inch cylinder, 9 inch stroke; built in 1856, by William Jeffries, Pawtucket, R. I. Present number of men 69, entitled to 80.

Wide Awake Engine Company No. 12.
Located on Liberty street, between Clark and State streets. Peter Stephens, Foreman. Engine first class, crane neck, piano style; 10 inch cylinder, 8 inch stroke; built in 1854, by L. Button & Co., Waterford, N. Y. Present number of men 46, entitled to 80.

Torrent Engine Company No. 13.
Located on Third street, near Milwaukee avenue. Henry Ackhoff, Foreman. Engine first class, piano style; 10 inch cylinder, 10 inch stroke; built in 1856, by Jeffries & Co., Pawtucket, R. I. Present number of men 35, entitled to 60.

Northern Liberty Engine Company No. 15.
Located on North avenue, near Larrabee st. John Moehr, Foreman. Engine first class, piano, style. Wright Bros., Rochester, N. Y., builders.

Water Works I

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Water Works I,
Life Span: 1850-1868
Location: Lake shore, between Chicago Avenue and Pearson street
Architect: Unknown

D. B. Cooke & Co.’s City Directory for the Year 1859-60

Chicago Water Works

Halpin & Bailey’s City Directory for the Year 1863-64
Chicago Water Works, bet. Chicago av. and Pearson, next to the lake.

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1866
Chicago Water Works, D. C. Cregier, chief engineer. Pine ne. cor. Chicago av
Chicago Water Works Reservoir, sw. cor. Chicago av. and Sedgwick

Norris’ 1846 Chicago Directory

A hydraulic company, to supply the City with water from the Lake, has been in operation several years; the present year, aqueducts, conveying water from the rivers, throughout the most compact part of the City, and designed to furnish water in cases of fire, are being constructed.

Chicago Tribune, June 13, 1849

The water in the Hydraulic failed yesterday. The water is said to be very impure, so it was no great deprivation, after all.

Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1850

HYDRAULIC COMPANY.– With an unlimited quantity of the purest water upon the continent of America, in the closest possible proximity, our city is nevertheless but poorly supplied with facilities for an abundant and cheap supply of the article. A part of the south side and a small portion of the west side are supplied with lake water by the Hydraulic company. The whole of the north side and large districte of both the others are under the necessity of looking to other sources of supply. A portion of the people thus situated have walls upon their premises, from which they obtain the greatest abundance of water, but which has been found by chemical analysis to hold in solution a large quantity of deleterious matter. Others are supplied by the watermen, of whom there are a number in the city that devote their whole time to the business. They procure their water from the lake. A fourth class—and a very large one too—who are too poor to procure this necessary of life by either of the above means, take it from the river, the common receptacle for all the filth of the city. The consequences need rot be stated here.

The Hydraulic company during the year just closing have laid down one mile of pipe, mostly on the west side. This gives them an aggregate of 9½ miles of pipe and increases the number of hydrants to 1,000. Of this number 800 are used by families—the remainder by stores, public houses, livery stables, etc. It will thus be seen that of a population of nearly 30,000, not over a fifth are supplied with water by this company.

We are pleased to learn that among the amendments which it is hoped the ensuing Legislature will grant to our city charter, is one having reference to the establishment of Hydraulic Works by the city itself. Among the many other subjects which address them. selves to the earnest attention of all who take a laudable interest in the welfare and prosperity of our beautiful city, none are fortified by so many considerations that would be likely to move a man, as that of the cheap and abundant supply of pure water to the entire population.

Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1853

The Water Works.—In the erection and future superintendance of these important works the city is very fortunate in securing the services of Mr. McCammon, a gentleman highly esteemed in his native city, Albany, N. Y., and who has for some years had charge of the Water Works of that place. Mr. McCammon has already come to our, city, and will immediately take up his residence here.

The new works are now commencing with vigor. The foundation of the engine house is already laid, and the yards are in process of planking. The engine of 250 horse power, 42 inch cylinder, and 10 feet stroke, is now ready at the Morgan Werks, N. Y., and will be brought on as soon as the canal is opened. Another tender engine, high pressure, of 80 horse power, a resort in case the larger one meets with any accident, is being built by H. Moses & Co., of this city. The pipes are also made, and lie, 1400 tons of them, ready fur transportation, on the grounds of the factory of Chollar, Sage & Dunham, West Troy, N. Y.

The prospects are now fair for the completion of the works by October next. The most difficult part of the work will be the laying of the inlet pipe. This is of wood, two feet in diameter and 600 feet in length to convey the water from a point at this distance from the shore. A ditch or trough mast be dredged, in which to bury it, and then it must be sunk the whole length at once, which will be no small operation if the weather be most favorable. But the exposures to failure are very great. If a storm or a strong wind comes up during the dredging operation, the trough will be filled up, and must be made over. If the trough be completed and the pipe floated over it, but a wind come up before it is sunk, the pipe itself will inevitably be broken to pieces, which will prove more than a loss of time. The exposures also to the dredging machines will be great, as they might not have time to get into the harbor, in case of a storm. We are told that the risks are such that no one will contract for the job. We have no doubt, however, that the pipe will be laid, and the event will be worthy of note among our citizens. Prosperity to the Hydraulic Works.

Chicago Tribune, February 14, 1854

Water For the Million.—The residents of the different Divisions of the city will see by advertisement when and where application can be made for the introduction of water into dwellings, from the main pipes of the new Water Works.

Chicago Tribune, February 28, 1854

THE CHICAGO WATER WORKS.
In our account yesterday morning of the Fire on Saturday, we cast some strictures on the hydrants recently put up by the Board of Water Commissioners. Those complaints were the same an uttered by many persons, on the occasion of each fire last week, and an the rules adopted by the Superintendent of the Water Works, B. S. Walker, Esq., were at the time unknown to us, and many also yet be to many of our citizens, we make the following explanations for the benefit of all concerned.

The pumping at the Hydraulic Works, on the North Division, commences every morning ai 7 o’clock, (Sundays excepted) and continues until 4 in the afternoon. The water from the hydrants is allowed to run during that period, when all who are so disposed apply themselves pleasure, but not after 4 P.M., when the water from these sources is shut off. After that hour, the water in the boiler at the Works is kept sufficiently hot to generate steams and set the pumps in motion on ten minutes notice, during the entire night, on the occasion of an alarm of fire. A fireman remans on the watch all night, for that express purpose. Immediately on hearing an alarm or being notified of the existence of a fire, the engine in put, into motion, and water can then be procured in any quantity from the hydrants. No better mode can be adopted for either Division of the city, until the Reservoirs are completed, which will probably be done in a short time. This will explain why water was not procured from the hydrants by the occupants of the two dwellings that were burned last week, immediately on their discovering that their premises were in flames. The Chief Engineer and his Assistants, however, will testify that in both cases within ten minutes of the time the watchman at the Works was notified, there was an abundant supply of water from the hydrants. When under full power, the Works can supply water enough to drown all Chicago, and let no one suppose that there is to be a scarcity of water within any locality where the pipes are laid.

There have been many sneers thrown out in relation to the small stream that runs from the hydrants, many croakers saying “that is a pretty sized stream to attempt stop a fire with,” &c. For the information of all such, we will simply state that the valves are raised only to a height to allow a sufficient quantity to flow for the accommodation of the public; but if the full head was let on, the streets would be overflowed and torn up in a short time. In case of a conflagration, however, with a fall head on, the fire engines could get a supply sufficient to drown all the fires they could get a chance to play on.

We shall be glad when the Reservoirs are all completed and in full operation, but till then give the Water Commissioners and their Works all the credit they are entitled to. If any one has any further complaints to make about the Hydraulic Company, let them be suppressed till the Works are fully completed, and a chance given to test their power.

Cross-section of Chicago’s Water Supply System in 1855, featuring “Old Sally” pumping engine.

Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1858

WATER WORK’S ITEMS.—Contracts have been made for the construction of two new reservoirs this year, one to be located on the corner of Chicago avenue and Sedgwick street and the other on the corner of Morgan and Monroe streets. They will cost about $4,500 each. Messrs. Carter and Miller have the contract for the reservoir in the North Division, and Messrs. Mortimer and Loberg that in the West Division. Messrs. Reissig & Co. have the contract for the iron work of both reservoirs.

In addition to the building of the reservoirs the Commissioners will place several miles of distributing pipes, and also large number of new fire hydrants.

Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1858

The New Reservoirs.
Within the past few months we have often noticed during their progress in construction the two Reservoirs of the Chicago Water Works, now being built respectively for the North and West Divisions. They are both near completion, and as an important addition to the important public work of supplying our city with water, they deserve a little more then a passing notice.

Taking for our description that of the West Division, which we visited yesterday, it may give an idea of both, they being alike in design and finish, and indicate to our readers the importance and value of these structures. The West Reservoir stands on a block south of Monroe and east of Morgan street.

It is an edifice in exterior appearance suitable and suggestive of its purposes, being solid and compact in appearance, and giving promises of meeting the prominent requisition upon it—strength.

It is built of rock faced solid Athens stone, is octagonal in shape, with cut stone window-caps and angles. Its diameter is seventy-three feet at the base, its height forty-five feet. Near the lower entrance floor, there are windows in the sides, the doors opening from the east and west. Above these there are no breaks in the outer wall, save a single line of port-hole locking circular windows, for purposes of light and ventilation.

The supporting strength of the structure is secured by three massive walls of the most solid masonry, upon a stone foundation underlying continuously the whole edifice. These walls, at the base, are three feet thick.

The outer wall of the building within its solid stone facing is carefully laid brick work. Within this, eight feet distant rises another briek wall also three feet in thickness, and within this a wall still smaller in diameter but of equal thickness with the other two, and within this last rise the iron supply and waste pipes of the tank above. The walls are as secure as iron anchors and iron rods binding them each to the other can make them.

Thus much of the structure the only purpose of which is to sustain the tank on the roof. The roof of the building, supporting therefore the floor of the tank, is framed with radiating iron beams of the shape of the capital letter I, resting on the inner walls, serving both a supporting and a binding purpose.

The tank is of the best boiler iron, varying in thickness, that at the lower part of the tank being 5-16ths of an inch thick. The tank is seventy feet in diameter by twenty-eight feet high, and will hold half a million of gallons.

The water for this reservoir, in its course from the Water Works on the Lake Shore at the foot of Chicago Avenue, passes through a twenty-four inch main through that Avenue, extending a mile westward from the Water Works. This main is tapped at Wolcott street by a twelve inch main passing southward, crossing the river at State street and thence to Adams west of Clark street, the supply of the South Division reservoir.

At Sedgwick street the Chicago Avenue twenty-four inch main is again tapped by a fourteen inch main for the supply of the North Division reservoir there located.

At Union street in the West Division a sixteen inch main passes south through that street to Monroe street, a distance of nearly two miles, when, at a distance of almost three miles from the fountain head, it supplies the reservoir we have described. From thence a twelve inch main connects with the South Division reservoir, making a complete circuit of about four miles.

The cost of these new reservoirs will be $45,000 each. They will be valuable improvements in their respective localities, giving at all times a supply of water adequate to every emergency.

Our Water Works are in a condition that reflect the highest credit upon the managing Board. And their history from its outset will compare most creditably in respect to economy and efficiency with those of any city in the United States.

The new additions to the already large demands upon the power of supply, have already been anticipated and provided for in the superb engine and pump at the Works, which has never yet, save experimentally, been worked beyond one half its capacity.

Give us good locations for Steam Fire Engines to command all sections of the city, a Fire Alarm Telegraph to convey at once the intelligence of the breaking out of a fire, and where the aid is needed, and we have those adjuncts to the Water Works which as a whole will render disastrous conflagrations impossible.

While we accord merited praise to B. F. Walker, Esq., Superintendent of the Chicago Water Works, for general efficiency and judgment in his responsible position, we acknowledge our indebtedness to him for courtesies extended during our yesterday’s visit to the West Division Reservoir.

① Pumping Station

② North Reservoir

③ West Reservoir

④ South Reservoir

Chicago Illustrated, July, 1866

Second Baptist Church

Peter Schuttler, Esq.

Strangers and Tourists Guide to the City of Chicago, 1866

THE LAKE TUNNEL.
Among the grandest and most stupendous undertakings of modern times must be reckoned the Lake Tunnel of Chicago. It is not extravagant to say that when this great work was conceived, the whole civilized world was awed by the magnitude of the project.

For a long time previous to the year 1863, the impurity of the water supplied for drinking purposes was the chief objection to a residence in Chicago. The effect of the river, reeking with the discharge of seventy-five miles of sewerage, and the refuse of numerous packing houses, distilleries, and breweries, could often be detected in a sickening effluvia which rendered the drinking water supplied by the Water Works of Chicago unfit for the use of man. This water was pumped from the shore of the lake, three quarters of a mile north of the mouth of the river. And, horrible to relate, the winds drifted the concentrated filth from the river, along the shore of the lake, to the very mouth of the inlet pipe at the Water Works, where, in a diluted form, it was pumped up and returned to the city through its pipes and hydrants, for use in the kitchens and dining rooms of our citizens! The contamination of the lake water rapidly increased. The nuisance having reached a point where it could no longer be endured with either comfort or safety, the municipal authorities, impressed with the necessity of devising some plan for procuring pure water, gave their attention to the subject, and, after considering and rejecting numerous schemes, finally determined to construct a tunnel two miles in length under the bed of Lake Michigan. While the deleterious influences of the river are perceptible for a considerable distance along the lake shore either way from its mouth, the water of the lake at a distance of one mile from the shore, is always free from impurity. Its purity increases until at the distance of two miles the water is as pure and clear as the purest and clearest spring water in the world. The tunnel project was received with derision, both by numerous citizens and many eminent scientific gentlemen, whose opinions were solicited on the subject. But, with a full realization of the magnitude of the undertaking, the possibility of failure, and the condemnation which would be theirs in case of such failure, the city authorities, at the head of whom was Hon. Francis C. Sherman, then Mayor of the city, and always one of Chicago’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens, adopted the project.

Pumping Station: Replaced by new https://chicagology.com/prefire/prefire078/Pumping Station in 1868.
North Side Reservoir: Destroyed in 1871 Fire.
South Side Reservoir: City Hall V built around Tank. Became Reading Room, then replaced by the Rookery Building.
West Side Reservoir: Replaced with West Division High School in 1877.

The fifth City Hall, which was built around the reservoir on the SE corner of Adams and LaSalle streets. The first public reading room was housed in the water tank.

History of Chicago, A. T. Andreas, 1885

Water Works.—The works were commenced in the summer of 1852, and were situated near the lake, at the foot of Chicago Avenue. The pump-well was built, and a portion of the thirty-inch inlet pipe was laid towards the lake, and the foundations of the building and tower were put in, which closed the work for the season. During the spring and summer of 1853 the buildings and tower were finished, and several attempts made to put in place the thirty-inch wooden inlet pipe, which was designed to extend six hundred feet into the lake, and terminate in a crib of timber. The efforts to complete this were unsuccessful. The boisterous condition of the lake rendered it difficult to secure the crib in place, so the work was abandoned and the water received in a pipe, close to the shore. During the fall of 1853 the standpipe was put up, and the condensing and non-condens-ing engines were erected. The former was started December 16, 1853, and the supply of water for the city commenced in February, 1854 The original pump-well was rectangular, twenty by thirty feet, and twenty-five feet deep from floor of engine-house to bottom. The walls were of stone, sir to seven feet thick. Upon those walls the engines were located; the buildings were of brick, forty by fifty feet in the clear, and two wings for boiler-rooms, each thirty and one-half by forty and one half feet in the clear. The water tower was square, composed of brick fourteen feet at the base, eleven feet at the top and one hundred and thirty-six feet high. The interior was divided by a wall, one part designed for a smoke chimney, the other for the iron stand-pipe. The foundation rested upon a bed of sand, some six feet below the surface, and at one time the tower leaned fourteen inches from a vertical line. It was, however, by an ingenious method made plumb, and remained so until its demolition. The original pumping-machine consisted of a vertical beam engine, located on the north side of the building, having a steam cylinder of forty-four inches diameter and a stroke of nine feet, with two single-action pumps of thirty-four inches in diameter and five and one-half feet stroke. This engine was in use sixteen years, and continued through 1860. It was built at the Morgan Iron Works, New York, as were also the engines erected in 1857 and in 1867. The non-condensing engine, erected in 1853, was horizontal. It was located on the south side of the main building, having a steam cylinder of eighteen inches, and six feet stroke, with one double-acting pump of the same dimensions. This engine was built by H. Moses, of Chicago. It was removed in the latter part of 1856 and a larger one substituted.

During the first four months water was supplied but nine hours per day, and none on Sunday except in case of fire; after that the supply was continued regularly throughout the twenty-four hours. At this time there were but few water-takers, and having no reservoir, the water was allowed to run to waste through the fire-hydrants, in order to keep the small engine running. In the early part of 1854 the twelve-inch river pipe at State Street was broken by an anchor dragging from a vessel. This accident required the supply for the West Division to be forced through an eight-inch pipe across the river at Kinzie; and thence by a twelve-inch pipe across the river at Adams Street for the South Division. As a temporary resort a large rubber pipe, manufactured at Boston, was procured. On its arrival its strength was found inadequate to the pressure. A new wrought iron pipe, thirty inches in diameter was subsequently put down at State Street and was in use in 1869. This new main was manufactured by Charles Ressig, of Chicago, at a cost of $3,561, and was laid by S. S. Durtee, at an additional cost of $2,000. The connecting main was completed October 1, 1854. Thirty and one-half miles of pipe were laid up to December 31, 1854. The total cost of the works at that date was $393,045.32. During the first year much trouble was experienced from sand being driven from the inlet pipe into the pump-well. The mouth of the pipe being only a few inches under water, near the shore, was exposed to the heavy waves of the lake. On one occasion the water was entirely stopped by a vast number of insects accumulating on the strainer.

To protect the inlet-pipe from those obstacles, a breakwater or basin was constructed in 1855. This being dredged to a considerable depth fully answered its purpose, and was in use until the completion of the first lake tunnel. In June, 1852, the water commissioners purchased from P. F. W. Peck a piece of land upon which to erect the South Side reservoir. The lots had a frontage of 217½ feet upon Adams street, and cost the city $8,750, The reservoir was completed in November, 1854. It was filled within ten feet of the top, or twenty-eight feet deep, on November 22, and the next morning it was found that the immense weight of water had caused the masonry to settle so that fissures were discernible on every side of the building. The water was immediately drawn off, and the various methods of patching up the job, which had already cost $60,000, were canvassed. Various plans were laid before the Council and a committee was appointed to examine them. This committee could not agree upon one thing, viz.: that it was necessary to construct substantially a new building. The water commissioners, therefore, strengthened the cracked walls as best they could with rods and braces, so that the tank could be partially filled with water and thus do some service during the winter. Pending the repairs of this reservoir the engines were run day and night. A portion of the thirty-inch inlet-pipe from the lake to the well was found to be defective, and a new one, three by four feet square, made of oak plank, was put in at a greater depth. Considerable difficulty was experienced in laying this pipe, involving the removal of the east wall of the engine house. Upon completion of the lake tunnel this arrangement was also abandoned and served subsequently as a waste-pipe for the water from the air pumps of the several engines.

In June, 1855, the reservoir was strengthened after the accident of the preceding fall, until it would hold eighteen feet of water, which, with other charges for repairs and general expenses, brought up the construction account to $380,070.73. A large fracture was found in the main pipe near the standing column of the works, on December 22, 1855. Notice was immediately given that the water would be cut off at Monday noon. Care was taken to have the reservoir full, and a man was kept stationed there with orders to turn on the water instantly in case of fire. The pipe was repaired within a few days, and but little inconvenience was felt by the people.

Up to December 31, 1855, there had been expended upon the construction and extension of the water-works system $496,849.64. The whole amount of bonds issued by the water commissioners had been $650,000. Over forty-one miles of pipe had been laid, and 4,251 buildings were supplied with water.

During the early part of 1856 the quantity of water used was nearly equal to the maximum capacity of the high pressure engine. Therefore it was necessary to replace it with a much larger one. A contract was made with the Morgan Iron Works for the construction of the south engine, which was set up and put in operation July, 1857. This engine was similar in construction to the condensing engine previously refered to, with a steam cylinder of sixty inch diameter, stroke of ten feet, two single acting pumps, each forty-inch diameter, six and one-fourth feet stroke. Much difficulty was experienced in preparing a foundation for this en-gine, as a portion of the only pump-well then built, from which the city supply was pumped, as well as the site of the old high-pressure engine, was to be occupied. However, the high-pressure engine was moved to a temporary site, where it might be used until the new works were ready. The labor of setting the stone was carried on during the night only. While constructing the foundation, no water could be admitted to the well, which seriously retarded progress. The daily supply of water was uninterrupted, and the reservoir in the South Division kept full, so that in case of fire the water therefrom might be admitted to the mains. In the summer of 1857 a twenty-four inch main was laid from the pumping works to the West Division, crossing the river at Chicago Avenue, by means of a wrought-iron pipe. Soon after it was completed, the river portion was rendered useless by a pile twelve inches in diameter being accidentally driven through it, permitting the water to flow into the river. From this accident the engine narrowly escaped injury by the sudden reduction of load. The damaged pipe was taken up, repaired and placed in its original position.

Up to 1857 two engines had been built by the North Side pumping-works. The first one, that of 1853, was put in operation December 16. It had a capacity seven and one-half million gallons every twenty-four hours; steam cylinder, forty-four inches in diameter, nine feet stroke; length of working beam. thirty feet ; weight, nine tons; diameter of fly-wheel, twenty-four feet; cost of engine and boiler, $24,500. The engine of 1857 was put in operation in July; capacity, thirteen million gallons every twenty-four hours; steam cylinder, sixty inches in diameter; ten feet stroke; working-beam, thirty feet; weight, sixteen tons; diameter of fly-wheel, twenty-four feet; cost of engine and two boilers, $59,000. Some parts of the engine were made to conform to the conditions of the building.

Owing to the position of the tower, the valve-gear or customary front of the engine was placed on the side, as it was deemed imprudent to cut the corner of the tower to admit locating the front in the usual place. In December, 1853, water was first pumped into the pipes to test them, and the first hydrant was opened on North Clark Street, near the bridge. The first permits to take water from the distribution pipes were tapped February 2, 1854, to residents of the North and West divisions. Pipes were tapped February 15, and water introduced into the buildings of the city for the first time.

On May 1, 1857, the works were supplying seven thousand and fifty-three buildings with water, for $85,012 per annum. May 6, 1861, the Board of Public Works was instituted.

Dill Pickle Club—Bughouse Square

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Margaret Brundage

Dill Pickel Club, Bughouse Square
Life Span: 1912-Present
Location: 18 Tooker place, (Through the Hole in Wall at 858 N. State Street Down Tooker Alley to the Green Lite Over the Orange Door)
Architect: None

Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1915

Happenings in the Society World
That society maids do interest themselves in other things than dancing, bridge, and tea parties was proven again last week when Miss Virginia Pope, daughter of Mrs. Francis Pope of 62 East Oak street, wandered into the Radical Bookshop, that unique bit of radical space at 817 North Clark street presided over by Howard Udell, his wife, and two small daughters, and inquired into the principles of the place where gather many interesting people for interesting discussion

So interested did she become in the attitude of ideas that she found there and in the two little girls, Phyllis and Geraldine, that she suggested afternoon teas where many of her fashionable friends would be eager to come and learn of the facts and fancies of the labor world.

Miss Pope has interested herself in. equal suffrage for some time and is an active member of the association of that name, and no doubt will find much to be enthusiastic about in the activities that are discussed at the Radical Bookshop, should her plan materialize.

Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1919

No. 18 Tooker place, the home of the Dill Picklers, was dignified last night with the presence of Cap’n George Wellington Streeter. The cap’n was due to address the bohemians at 8:30, but it was not until an hour later that he arrived in the hovel of the intellectuals.

“I’m glad to see you all, ladies and gen’lemen. I haven’t made up my mind what I’m goin’ to talk about, but—”

The Thirty Years’ War.
Before he had finished amid the plaudits of the highbrows, the cap’n had discussed everything but girth control and the ethical code of the antediluvian dinosaurs. Riparian rights, likker, the constitution, Germany, class conflict, money hogs, George Washington, cops, judges, Ireland, lawyers, Joliet, free speech, etc., etc.—the cap’n mentioned ’em all.

He was especially eloquent, however, on the subject of his thirty years’ war with the state of Illinois. With great gusto he described his battles with the Chicago coppers especially his capture of Capt. Heidelmeyer.

The cap’n was dolled up in a plug hat and Prince Albert and a standup collar, wide enough not to interfere with the jurisdiction of his Adam’s ap-ple. The cap’n is very touchy on the subject of jurisdiction.

The Capn’s Observations.
A few of his bon mots follow:
“It’s hard for any poor man to get any redress in this here country because the judges is controlled by capitalists.”

“The courts tried to get me on ev. everything but adultery, an’ I beat ’em every time.”

“The constitution says that any president who participates in any foreign wars must be arrested, impeached an’ hung.”

“If pro’bition ain’t the dirtiest imposition ever happened upon this country, then I haven’t got nothing to say.”

“People oughtn’t to be dragged off to prison for arguin’. That’s what they done in Ireland, an’ what is the result? The Irish is just as bad as ever.”

Chicago Tribune, March 7, 1920

A mysterious woman, scion of “one of Chicago’s oldest and richest familles,” is at the bottom of an arch plot to overthrow Greenwich Village and the Latin quarter of Paris as capital of the bohemian world, and make Chicago the ultimate goal of short haired women and men that barbers know not.

Within a few years she plans to set up the Dill Pickle club, that highbrow organization at 18 Tooker place, as the style center of the globe for aesthetic ideas and untrammeled thoughts. There the newer poetry will be born and, the higher art will receive its unwaddking clothes.

The Chief Dill Talks.
Jack Jones, chief dill among the intellectual pickles, admitted the plot yesterday. He said a woman interested in the club premised to advance $250,000 for the erection of a building containing a “telescopic” theater, a ballroom, and studios where the inspired may be instructed for a nominal sum. The structure will contain four stories and look externally as plain and dilapidated as the most rabid bohemian could desire. The inside, however, is to be a beauty and a joy—all pink shaded lamps and black cats and incense and Turkish cigarets.

“The Dill Pickle club has it all over Greenwich Village,” he said. “We’re out for Art for Art’s sake”—his voice plainly showed that only capital A’s would do and we’re going to make Chicago the center of intellectual expression, the Mecca of the free minded. The building will be in this same neighborhood. I don’t want to tell you where, because then they might raise the price on the lot.”

She’s Young Enough for Him.
*But, the mystertous lads?”

“You can say she’s a millionaire and a member of one of our oldest families.”

“Is she young?”

“Weil, she’s young enough to suit me.”

As he talked, Jack, in overalls, was puttering about a miniature stage, while Anne Mitchell, a bob haired young woman in bloomers and smock, played with the ingredients of calcimine. Last night a theatrical season opened at 8 Tooker place, and on the thespian venture will depend to a great extent the outcome of the aforesaid plot.

Some Nice, Cheerful Plays.
“The idea is to put on plays that can’t appear in the loop,” explained Earle Ford, director. “We’re opening up with Theodore Dreisers’ labor play, ‘The Girl in the Coffin.’ Pendleton King’s ‘Cocaine,’ and Padrale Pearce’s ‘The Singer.’ The actors are professionals who have, come with us for the sake of Art. The dramas are often found on the ‘purgatory shelf’ of the library only.”

These plays will be shown daily. It is the idea to give first presentations only and all the yearning playwrights of the world arg invited to send in their manuscripts if acceptable they will be tried out on the Dill Pickle audience. Tooker pace is to become the dramatic testing ground of America, and Art will assume its capital A once more.

Meanwhile Mayor Thompson is expected to put up a new sign soon:

Boost Chicago! We lead the world in altitudinous brows. Let’s keep it so!

Suburbanite Economist, June 1, 1926

To the average Chicagoan Washington Square is non-existent: call it “Bughouse Park” and he remembers having heard of it; only a very fair, however, are familiar with the picturesque little plot of ground on north Clark st, where the down-and-outer and the up-and-comer meet.

To this unusual quarter of the city, a picturesque section no more than one block square, will so the Economist Walk-for-Health fans this week, not in a body, of course, but on their individual walking tours about the city. In answer to the inquiries that have been made of the Walking Club editor, this club does not make its town tours as a unit. The idea is this: The Economist suggests each week a little-known spot of picturesque interest in Chicago for its readers to visit. Now, about this Bug-house square:

A block of green in a neighborhood of dull drab houses and empty gray streets, Washington Square, at Clark st. and Delaware pl., alone upholds the leafs tradition of the nearby streets with their pleasant sylvan names, Chestnut, Oak, Cedar, Elm. Here in the mild spring days and the sultry summer evenings men burning with ideas and men eager to forget
ideas altogether gather for a moment’s rest. Occasionally a man leaps to a bench and harangues those within hearing distance on the injustice of the present social system. A few feet away one of its victims, a bum now, yawns wearily and wishes that nut would shut up so he could get some sleep.

Tired men lounge on the benches or sprand in the grass. Loafers, second rate, men beaten in the race of life, young men, artists, ambitious youths making their homes in the boarding houses which the surrounding neighborhood provides, throng io the little park. In former days it was lamed as the rendezvous of Chicago’s art colony on the near north sides.

The Square has seen all manner and numbers of people within its fence. affluence, and poverty, talent and dullness are old stories in the tall trees and the dwarf plants. There are for more sucturesque spots in the city.

The Economist health walkers will find it easily accessible. Halsted and Clark st. cars pass by the pork, and they may be reached by any cross town lines. A stroll about the square and the immediately adjacent community with its quaint buildings and its quiet streets, is as interesting a town tour as any yet proposed..

Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1930

Dill Pickle Proprietor Held to Federal Jury
Jack Jones, proprietor of the Dill Pickle club, 18 Tooker alley, was held to the federal grand jury yesterday by United States Commissioner Walker on a charge of maintaining a common nuisance. Prohibition agents said considerable drinking was done on the premises. Myron Brundage and Emil Wieselman also were held with Jones.

Chicago Tribune February 23, 1990

During Chicago’s literary renaissance of the early 20th Century new generation of bohemians congregated in the city s salons studios and flats Their hangouts were in Towertown rundown area in the vicinity of the Old Water Tower where the rents were cheap Bughouse Square across from the Newberry Library and right around the comer from the Radical Book Shop at 817 Clark St and in the Jackson Park artist colony of 57th and Stony Island They were largely fun-loving free spirits one historian observed more interested in free verse than free speech Some of the more colorful people and places of that era induded The people Margaret Anderson Founder of the avant-garde literary magazine The Little Review Charming tric and flighty Anderson was true bohemian who lived by her own preset of standards She published imagism dadaism futurism any thing that struck her fancy and introduced the early work of an up- and-coming writer named Hemingway Floyd Dell Editor of the Friday Literary Review Dell was the town s most influential critic He was also socialist who advocated free love Dell and his plain-spoken wife Margery Currey hosted parties long into the night in their tiny Jackson Park studios Ben Hecht Reporter-playwright-novelist Hecht was the force behind Chicago’s bohemia In 1923, he and fellow maverick Maxwell Bodenheim began publishing their biweekly newspaper the Chicago Literary Times which purported to follow the comings and goings of the bohemian set Like most under takings of its kind it was short-lived lasting little more than year Ben Reitman Probably the most flamboyant figure on the scene was Reitman social reformer tramp intellectual physician and founder of the peripatetic Hobo College which sponsored lectures pre- sented short courses and offered sound advice The places The Dill Pickle Organized by drifter Jack Jones and located on tiny Tooker Place the Dill Pickle opened its doors to anyone with an opinion poets hobos unionists intellectuals street comer philosophers salts of the and presented speakers plays poetry serious discussions lectures and de bates It dosed down in the early 1930s. Its successor the College of Complexes started where it left off The Whitechapel Club No torious social club that took its name from the grisly Jack-the-Ripper murders in London’s Whitechapd district It consisted of mostly young reporters and car Finlev Peter Dunne George Ade John McCutcheon were three of the best known who engaged in devilish pranks and ma cabre escapades including the cremation of suicide victim on the shores of Lake Michigan Schlogl’s Famous tavern and restaurant frequented by Chicago Daily News Staffers and other literary figures As the Roaring ’20s drew to dose the literary tempest had cooled and the last of the city s bohemians packed their bags and fled migrating east to the coffeehouses of Green wich Village and the cafes of Paris

Floyd Dell from left Maxwell Bodenheim and Ben Hecht

Chicago Tribune October 30, 1990

Obituaries
Off-beat Myron ‘Slim’ Brundage

By Kenan Heise

Myron Slim Brundage 86, retired house painter and self-described janitor of the off-beat College of Complexes for many years provided Chicago with one of its most unusual forums for free speech resident in years of El Centro Calif he died there Oct 1 8 of brain hemorrhage 1971 article in the Tribune said of him He has failed so often that failure has made him free The article added The ‘fully discredited’ college which has been kicked out of five Chicago locations since its founding in 1951, offers free-for-all open forums with speakers discoursing on topics like ‘The Farce of the So-called Paris Peace Conference’ and ‘Why Chicago Needs Political Kidnapping The college which helped make Wells Street popular attraction in the 1950s, later was located on North State Street and at 105 Grand Ave It featured speakers debates folk singing sword fights chess tournaments book reviews and piano recitals Among its speakers were Alois Knapp nudist on fashions confidence man Joseph Weil on confidence men in government and Frank Holzfeind owner of the Blue Note on Jazz Is Beautiful When It Pays Debaters included Rev Andrew Greeley and atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair as well as Clement Stone and beatnik presidential candidate William Smith American Nazi Party candidate George Lincoln Rockwell not to show up after police reportedly said they could not guarantee his safety Mr Brundage was born in mental hospital in Blackfoot Idaho where both of his parents worked He worked as mill hand piano mover organizer for the In dustrial Workers of the World and for most of his years as house painter When he arrived in Chicago he obtained work as bartender at the Dill Pickle Club an irreverent meeting place for Chicago’s literati and rebels During Prohibition he spent 30 days in jail for serving liquor there to two federal agents In the late 1930s, he was the rector of the Hobo College and th Knowledge Box The hobo deba ing team at the latter debated the University of Chicago and the Mc Cormick Theological Seminary de bate squads and lost on both occasions The author of five unpublished books he took one to New York to try to sell it to publisher He was unsuccessful but reportedly fell off an elevated platform and used the money from an insurance settlement to start the College of Complexes Mr Brundage was also an in writer of letters to the editor The final book he spent many years trying to sell was and titled The Luckiest Man Alive Survivors four grandchildren memorial service for Mr Brundage will be held at 7 Dec 1 in Mr Steer’s Steak House 3300 Lincoln Ave

Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1965

Times changed and the club died quietly in the early ’30s, but Slim didn’t forget it. He revived the idea at his College of Complexes in 1951, at 1651 N. Wells st., in what is now a night life center in Old Town. The College moved to North State street, close to the site of the original Dill Pickle, went out of business there, and now is reopened as a coffee house with the same kind of programming debates, lectures, and just plain arguments. Slim, an Old Town resident, is well acquainted with the saloon history of Wells street.-Will Leonard.

ALL THE WISE BOYS round and about the rat race on Wells street are prognosticating an early puncture of the business bubble. Some of these cats are former tavern owners whom the high rents have driven out. Some are real estate sharks who were too smart to buy real estate in such a crummy neighborhood. Some are old residents who can t find a place to park. And, of course, the inevitable wise guy at the next table who knows everything.

As the jerk who is supposed to have started it all, I asked these cats for the evidence. They answered, “It’s a flash in the pan” . . . “How long can it last? . . . “What’s it got going for it?”

They claim it s as phony as a Hollywood husband. How long are the suckers going to go for the “do-it-yourself pseudo art”? How long before they turn the merchandise upside down and read the “Made in Japan” label? How many easy marks are there for $2 steaks at $6.50? Fifty-cent hamburgers for a buck and a quarter, nuts! Books are marked up 50 per cent from what they are downtown, phooey! An- tique bars designed by 200-bucks-a-day decorators where the drinks are double price-how dizzy can you get?

What is there on Wells street you can t buy for less on any street in any town in America?

So, I say to them: It’s true you can buy most of the guck in Marshall Field’s basement for half. It’s true the street is a tourist trap for the kooks from Kenilworth. It’s true they come to sneer at the beats so they can feel a little superior. It’s true they do more looking than buying. And the beats hide around the corner and sneer at them for being tourists.

But it isn’t true the street is strictly for squares. It isn’t true it s a carnival that ll move to Armitage avenue next year. And it isn’t true I started the whole kooky mess.

Old Town was full of swinging cats when I moved in a dozen years ago. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have opened the College of Complexes there. At that time the area was inhabited by graduates from Nelson Algren’s “Forest of Furnished Rooms” around Chicago avenue. Such pseudo-intellectuals as George

Murray, Will Leonard, and Win Strache had started to buy homes round and about. Artists like the Albright Brothers, Dave Landis, and Francis Chapin owned theirs already.

I thought I’d get a little bar business from these characters. But I was a little late. If I’d caught them on their way up, they d have had to find a bar to drink in. By the time they d got to Old Town they had moola enough to build a bar in their basement. Why mix with the lower classes when you can mix your own martini right at home?

Nor did I bring in the drifters, junkies, nymphos, homos, and rejectees from Kankakee. They had long before made the scene. I won t name any of them. They’ve got troubles of their own. And so have I. Maybe I did start the commercialism on Wells street. I’m not at all sure of it. Maybe Frank Ryan ought to get the rap for that. He moved his “Con- temporary Furnishings” in next to the College, at 1653 N. Wells st. Jane and Hildegard followed one door north of him with a ceramics oven. Dick Barnes opened his historical book store across the street next year. The Kjellands had a bird store over on Sedgwick and Eugenie.

Both Ryan and Barnes are still there. Esther Kjelland and her daughter run Madge’s dress shop at Wells and North. Erling Kjelland stil has a bird

It took 20 years for Randolph Street to fall apart.”

store somewhere on Sedgwick. Ryan is threatening to move on account of the tourists clutter up the joint all the time without buying anything. Esther says, “What’ll you bet he moves?” Barnes owns his own building and can do business anywhere. So he just closes the door before the kooks from Kenilworth get there in the evening.

Incidentally, the same pattern was prominent in the “French Village” area on North State street. The same run-down brawling bars were my neigh- bors. The same off-beat characters were my customers. And the same thing happened. Within five years all the joints on either side of the block had become character spots. And the landlord tripled the rent.

Last week I met John Moody. He’s the cat who really made Wells street swing, when he opened Moody’s Pub in November, 1960, at 1529 N. Wells. When they tripled his rent, he moved to 1800 Lara- bee and is still swinging there.

Anyway, he came up with the usual question: “What has Wells street got going for it?” That made me think about it. What does a street really have to have? Why, COLOR! And this is the street that s got more of that stuff than any other street in America.

I watched the nite life streets bloom and bust for 40 years in Chicago. It took 20 years for Ran- dolph street to fall apart. Rush street finally got all its business. After 30 years some of the rents are coming down a little on Rush street. The only exception to this 20 or 30-year pattern I know of was State street, where I had the. second College of Complexes. But that was a forced promotion by some operators out to make an easy buck.

There are a couple of syndicates trying to pro- mote property adjacent to Wells street. One of them has invested millions. So far they haven’t realized anything on it. In my opinion this is a thing that can- not be forced. But then, I’m usually wrong.

My favorite spot for the College of Complexes was always by the old Dill Pickle Club, and I’m back there again-without booze.

But we are talking about Wells street Take McDougal street in New York. Or Grant street in San Francisco. Their phenomenal rise in business is comparable to Wells. What have they got? The same thing. But not so much of it. They’ve got the same off-beat saloons, the same artsy-craftsy shops, the same far-out art, and book stores.

Maybe the main difference is the real beats. They are not so much in evidence here. Chicago beats are more insolent than anywhere else in the world. They refuse to put on a show for the kooks from Kenilworth.

There is no evidence any of it is going to fold up any time soon. I offer this as an expert opinion. in buying taverns in all three cities I carefully cased the streets that were going to swing. McDougal started 10 years ago and Grant about five.

When my rent was tripled on State street my cus- tomers urged me to move back to Old Town. But I was too smart. Wish now I had taken their advice and bought a building there.

The store I first rented for 125 bucks a month is now going for over 600.

Chicago writers Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg mingled with radicals, unemployed workers, prostitutes, gangsters, and slumming Gold Coast socialites at the Dill Pickle Club on the Near North Side. The enterprising radical Jack Jones was the brains behind the basement cabaret, speakeasy, and theatre located at 18 Tooker Place. His irreverent spirit is captured by the motto emblazoned on the club’s door: “Step High, Stoop Low, Leave Your Dignity Outside.”

Chicago Tribune November 23, 1958

Meet Bill Smith. His book store is a rallying place for Chicago beatniks.
Chicago’s New Left Bank’

Today’s Beatniks Howl in Precincts Once Famed as Sites of the Dill Pickle Club and Bughouse Square

SECOND OF SERIES
By William Leonard

IF YOU CAN T find members of the beat generation in Chicago, it may be because our beatniks don’t think of themselves as beat.

But they are beat in the truest sense of the term, altho they won t admit it.” So declares Bill Smith, the loquaciously outspoken co-proprietor of Maury’s look store, a crowded and crazy, stuffy, and stimulating gathering place of left wingers and right wingers, atheists, and an- , orthodox and beatniks, Henry George fans and Jack Muller fans, students and stooges.

Maury’s, since it opened last August, has become the town s greatest rallying place for scholars and screwballs, thoroughly intermixed, since the halcyon days of the Dill Pickle club, where the literati and the lunatics met in the era after World War I. It is the only 24-hour-a-day book store in Chicago (“The only one in America!” Smith asserts with the knowledge that records of such merit are not readily at hand to facilitate a check-up on his claim.)

Its shelves and tables are crowded with the works of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Rexroth and the other writers and quasi-writers of the San Francisco school that made “the beat generation ” a catchword. Nowhere else in Chicago can be found such a library of the beatniks’ pamphlets and books. Nowhere else in Chicago can be found, at any hour of the day or night, such an assemblage of brilliant or eccentric citizens who might qualify for inclusion among the beat.

“We practically never sell a book,” says Bill Smith, “but I think the beat generation is a genuine thing. It shouldn’t be called the ‘beat’ genera- tion, tho; it should be called the ‘alien- ated’ generation. These are the young men and women who feel that their grandparents went for faith and religion and wholesomeness before World War I and were duped; their parents went for cynicism and irreligion and licentious- ness after World War I and until the time of World War II and were duped. So what does that leave them?

They have nothing to which they can attach themselves, They’re what is known as ‘beat.’ And they have a point!

“No-they won t admit they re beatniks; they despise the phony posing of the San Francisco beat mob. But I can show you, within a few blocks of this store, dozens of fairly young people who have quit cold in disgust, given up pretense of trying to live in this goofy world, ceased trying to make a square living, gone off to vegetate with one another in a world all their own.

“If they’re what s known as ‘beat,’ can you really blame them? ”

Right or wrong, if they feel that way they re in the right territory for demonstrating their boredom with the orthodox way of American life. For this is historic ground, in a town that had its own version of the beatnik long before the San Francisco group and the readers of Jack Kerouac ever dreamed of the term.

Maury’s book store is at the corner of North State street and Tooker place. Two doors north is an off-beat saloon called the College of Complexes. Smack between them, running off to the west from their rear walls, is a drab two story structure, long dark and locked, that once was the site of the Dill Pickle club at 10 W. Tooker pl.

Here, from 1917 until the early ’30s, gathered and spoke such literary figures as Theodore Dreiser, Ben Hecht, and Sherwood Anderson, along with less de- characters who ofttimes brought the gendarmes down on the place.

The Dill Pickle the forum in town in the ’20s. At the Hotel Essex on the south side were the Seven Arts club, ‘which sometimes seemed more interested in the birds and bees than in more artistic outlets, and the Slow club, so named because its mem- bership was on record as resenting the speed of life in the jazz age.

The Art Colony club a 1few blocks away from the Dill Pickle club, hard by the Bughouse square sec- tor of Washington square, and the Coal Scuttle met not far distant, at Oak and Rush streets.

Jack Sheridan, a habitue of those clubs, and a familiar figure in Chicago’s Bohemian circles for nearly 40 years declared:

We were talking thru bathtub gin, but we had ideas of doing something. Today’s beat generation attempts literary derision of its elders. We were protesting all the shams and shows of life, deriding our elders on all fronts. Our literary weapon was ridicule, our social weapon was the organization of unions.

No colony of left wing thinkers or ora1tors was complete, in the early ’20s, without a complement of ‘Wobblies,’ as the members of the Industrial Workers of the World styled themselves. The I. W. W. still has offices in Chicago, at 2422 N. Halsted st., but it is admittedly no more than a very slight shadow of its old self.

There are only 33 members of the I. W. W. in Chicago these days, and the national membership is only an approximate 2,500, compared with a peak of 65,000 in 1923, according to W. H. Westman, general secretary-treasurer.

The soapbox orators in Bughouse square speak of the I. W. W. largely in the past tense. And veteran observers of that open air forum have taken to speaking of Bughouse square itself in much the same way. For the once colorful meeting place isn’t what it used to be, either. The gatherings aren’t as large, the speeches aren’t as dramatic, the whole atmosphere is milder.

M any think the decline set in when M. F. M. (Cholly) Wendorf, “dean” of Bughouse square, left town in 1954. Cholly is a one armed spellbinder with a keen wit and an encyclopedic knowledge of the Constitution of the United States, which he can quote verbatim under any kind of challenge. He succeeded to the deanship of the square upon the death of Dr. Ben L. Reitman, “king of the hobos,” in 1942, and ruled it wisely and well, assigning speakers their turns on the principal rostrum under the street light near the Newberry library.

Now, newly returned from a four year stay in Clarksdale, Miss., with his wife, Cholly thinks Bughouse square has something in common with Hollywood. He admits interest in its product is falling off, and he blames the deterioration largely on movieland’s nemesis—television.

Many Bughouse square old-timers think the Moody Bible institute spoiled the Bohemian atmosphere by sending its young evangelists over to try out their preaching technique. Others believe the installation of parking meters along the street marked the turning point for the worse and hint darkly that Stanley Pargellis of the Newberry library

across the way was the instigator because he doesn’t crave the oratorial up- roar penetrating his halls of learning. Mr. Pargellis denies this and avers with a twinkle that he thinks Bughouse square is a splendid institution.

Cholly and his colleagues have other rostrums in the unlikely eventuality that Bughouse square ever should go completely out of fashion. Rainbow hall and other chambers at 333 W. North av., for nearly 20 years the location of Ald. Mathias (Paddy) Bauler’s celebrated saloon, the De Luxe Gardens, long have rung with the outcries not only of worthy Democrats and Republicans but of angry young men who foreshadowed today s beatniks.

Here, too, pre the headquarters of the Old Town School of Folk Music, where embryo guitarists sing traditional American woes to their own uncertain obligato, and of the Proletarian party, an organization so obscure one finds it well nigh impossible to locate a representative. Here, of a Saturday night, gathers the Social Science forum.

the Social Science forum, any student of Chicagoana will realize, is a direct descendant of the Social Science institute-and the Social Science institute was another name for the storied “Hobo college,” which met at 708 N. Clark st. until it, like many a more ambitious enterprise, ran out of funds in the thin ’30s.

Of a recent Saturday evening, with an audience of 30 on hand, speakers cas- the President and the press, union leaders and military leaders, the American Federation of Labor, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

In an early issue: Today’s rebels, beat and unbeat.

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