John R. Schmidt

When Chicago went dry

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 17, 2013

Jan. 17, 2013

The year was 1920. At midnight, as the calendar clicked over onto January 17, Prohibition became the law of the land. Chicago’s reaction was a big yawn.

Okay, we all know about Chicago in the Roaring Twenties. We know that the city became the bootlegging capital of America. We’ve seen the gangster movies.

But that was all in the future on that January evening in 1920. The crowds at the taverns were no larger than on a typical Friday. When the clock struck 12, the patrons downed their drinks and left, the bartender locked up . . . and that was that.

The Prohibition law said that the manufacture, sale, or distribution of intoxicating beverages was illegal. However, people were allowed to have booze and beer in their own homes for their own use. They could keep all the beverage they wanted, as long as they bought it before January 17.

So Chicagoans began stocking up. Liquor stores had raised prices, but the public kept buying.

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Rogers Park, past and present

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 15, 2013

Jan. 15, 2013

“We’re Number One!  We’re Number One!”

Any Chicago neighborhood can shout that. But Chicago’s official Community Area #1 is Rogers Park, in the city’s northeast corner. That’s where some anonymous U of C social scientist started the numbering system in the 1920s.

The earliest residents here were the Potawatomi. Sometime before 1800 they established villages along the glacial ridge that’s now Ridge Boulevard. The land eastward toward the lake was too low and swampy for much of anything.
 
When white Americans moved in, they stuck to the high ground. In 1839 Philip Rogers built a cabin near (present-day) Ridge and Lunt, and began truck farming. Over the next several years, other farmers settled in Mr.

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Best Picture breakdowns: 'Lincoln'

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 12, 2013

Jan. 12, 2013

Abraham Lincoln is a filmmaker’s favorite. He’s been the subject of almost as many movies as Al Capone.

The reason for this is clear. Honest Abe is America’s secular saint. Everybody wants a piece of him. Republicans have used the Spielberg film to remind the public that their party ended slavery. The Democrats’ response has been, “What have you done for us lately?”

Lincoln (the movie) takes place during a few weeks in January 1865. Lincoln (the president) has just been re-elected to a second term. The rebels are on their last legs, and the Civil War will soon be over. Now is the time to end slavery, once and for all.
 
Lincoln had already issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This said that all slaves in the rebel states would become free, as soon as the Union reconquered those states.

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Finding your way in Chicago's present

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 11, 2013

Jan. 11, 2013
 

How well did you find your way around 1952 Chicago?

We are in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, on 51st Street a few blocks east of Ashland. In 2013 the ribbon commercial strip is mostly gone, with many of the lots vacant. Meanwhile, the city has spruced up the streetscape a bit by planting trees along the sidewalk parkways.

The main clue to the location is the trolley bus.  Only two trolley bus lines ever operated on the South Side--the other was 47th Street. In the distance, the steeple of the former St. Martin Lutheran Church is also visible.   

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Finding your way in Chicago's past

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 10, 2013

Jan. 10, 2013
How well could you find your way around the Chicago of the past?
 
This 1952 photo was taken on the South Side--for purpose of the quiz, that's somewhere east of Western, between Cermak and 79th. The physical surroundings have changed greatly over sixty years, though there are a couple of clues that can help identify the site.
 
If you think you know the location, send in your guess as a Comment. I'll post a contemporary photo tomorrow.
 

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Chicago's 1901 'Super Bowl'

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 8, 2013

Jan. 8, 2013

It’s 1901 and it’s winter. The football season has ended, and baseball is just a memory. Only Canadians care about hockey. You say there’s a new sport called basketball?

But there’s big sports news in Chicago this January 8. The first national bowling championships are being held here.

Americans had played various forms of bowling since colonial times. In 1895 a group of New York clubs founded the American Bowling Congress. They drew up a list of standard rules and equipment specs.

Within a few years, bowling clubs in other cities joined the ABC. Now there was talk about having a tournament to decide who the country’s best bowlers were. Chicago was given the honor of hosting the first ABC Tournament in 1901. 

The Chicagoans leased the second floor of a warehouse at Wabash and Randolph. Six bowling lanes were donated by Brunswick, an equipment manufacturer eager to promote the sport.

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Emma Goldman's Chicago Hideout

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 7, 2013

Jan. 7, 2013

Chicago has many unmarked historic sites. The building at 2126 North Sheffield Avenue is another of these. In September ’01 the hunt for America’s most wanted terrorist ended here.

No, that wasn’t 2001 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. We’re talking about 1901. The alleged terrorist was Emma Goldman. She was accused of conspiring to murder the President of the United States.
 
On September 6, in Buffalo, President William McKinley had been shot and seriously wounded. The gunman was an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. He told police that he’d been inspired to his deed by Emma Goldman. 
 
At 32, the Russian-born Goldman was already famous–or infamous–as an organizer and promoter of radical-left causes. Czolgosz had heard her speak in Chicago the previous July.

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The Stock Yards

By: John R. Schmidt | Jan. 3, 2013

Jan. 3, 2013

Carl Sandburg called Chicago the “Hog Butcher for the World.” He wrote those words in 1916, celebrating the city’s great stock yards. The yards were the place where live animals were slaughtered, so that they can be turned into packaged meat for consumption.

During the 1850s Chicago was becoming a railroad center. That made our city the final destination for the cattle the cowboys were driving to Dodge City and Abilene and Wichita and all those wild towns you used to see in the Western movies. At first there were many little stock yards around Chicago near the different railroad lines.

In 1861 the Civil War broke out. Meatpacking boomed. With the industry outgrowing those small scattered sites, a group of railroads got together to build a consolidated facility. They settled on a location near the edge of the city, at Halsted and 39th (Pershing). 

The Union Stock Yards began operations on December 25, 1865. The holiday date was not planned. Christmas Day happened to be when the first shipment of hogs arrived. 

After the yards were established, Swift and Armour and the other packers opened plants in the area.

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