The Failure of the Spectatorium Building, 56th Street and Lake Michigan, just North of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition grounds.

The largest auditorium in the world was to be built in Chicago, conceived by actor and impresario Steele MacKaye.

The Spectatorium

Mr. MacKaye was known for his famous stage technology improvements to New York's Madison Square Garden (1879), which included the "double stage," an elevator the size of the entire stage that was raised and lowered by counter-weights and reduced scene changes to one or two minutes from five or more.

This "super theater" was called the Spectatorium. Unfortunately, the Panic of 1893 deprived the project of necessary funds. The project was left incomplete. It was located behind the Iowa State Building exhibit. After dismantling the Chicago Fire cyclorama, the rotunda building became MacKay's home. A smaller building named the Scenitorium opened on February 5, 1894. MacKaye passed away a few weeks later.

From an article published in San Francisco Call, February 27, 1894
"The MacKaye Scenitorium has failed and will go into the hands of a receiver. It has not paid expenses, and with the death of its originator, it passes out of existence. George M. Pullman, who is said to have lost $50,000 in the Spectatorium, MacKaye's big World's Columbian Exposition scheme, was one of the backers of the Scenltorium.

The first production was to have been The World Finder, for which Antonin Dvorák eventually composed his New World Symphony. . Instead, the symphony was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and premiered on December 16, 1893, at Carnegie Hall.

Description from the Chicago Herald, on September 25, 1892
"After months of preliminary work, the initiatory steps for constructing the biggest auditorium in the world were taken yesterday. A building permit was issued to the Columbus Celebration Company to erect a "Spectatorium" at numbers 1 to 27 on Fifty-sixth street. The structure is to be six stories in height, 480 by 240 feet in dimensions and of frame and staff construction. This latter point has been a contention between the scheme's promoters and the city authorities .on account of the requisite conformity with the fire ordinances. William LeBaron Jenney & W. B. Mundie are the architects of the enormous building, the cost of which, in the permit, is $200,000. This, however, la for the mere shell, the total cost of construction, aside from furnishings and decorations, being about $350,000. The preliminaries were not definitely settled until yesterday at noon, and the accompanying illustration will be to the general public the first intimation of the appearance of the exterior of the enormous structure. The data concerning the real estate deal involved in this transaction are familiar. Aside from Steele Mackaye, such men as George M. Pullman are among the promoters. Lyman J. Gage, Murry Nelson, Benjamin Butterworth. Andrew McNally, Franklin H. Head, Ferdinand W. Peck and other well-known citizens. Mr. Steele MacKaye says the undertaking is the realization of full twenty years of fond dreams and many studies in the spectacular realm.

The building will be in the Spanish Renaissance style of architecture. It will exhibit a more gorgeous effect and, at the same time, cover more ground than any other building heretofore planned or erected in connection with the Columbian Exposition outside of the fairgrounds. The front will extend over 480 feet, and the depth will average 311 feet. The height will be about 100 feet. A statue of Fame will surmount the large dome in the center. The auditorium's seating capacity will be 9,200, and the entrances and exits will be ample for twice that number to empty the house about half the time required to leave an ordinary theater. The stage will have a proscenium opening of 150 feet, with proportionate depth. The big stage is so arranged that it can furnish real water to a depth of four feet over its entire surface. The scenery will be run on wheels on railroad Iron under the water and will be controlled, each piece separately, by electric motors from the prompter's desk. Thus the prompter will only have to push a button, and the engine will do the work of 250 men, absolutely preventing any mistakes in scene-shifting. As has been said, the building will cost upward of $350,000 when ready for the machinery. The furniture, scenes and machinery will probably cost as much more.

The gentlemen constituting the spectatorium company will furnish ample means and are determined to make this enterprise one of the most enjoyable features of the fair. They claim it will be a more pleasing talk-of-novelty than the Eiffel Tower. The character of the performances to be given are promised to equal Wagner's most extraordinary dreams of all that a tremendous dramatic-musical performance should be. The greatest orchestral music will be presented, primarily written by the best composers, and solos and choruses by eminent artists, all Illustrated by brilliant, spectacular, and realistic pantomimes. The story of the piece to be given will be the life of Columbus and the discovery of America. Ships of the actual size and appearance used by Columbus will be fully manned by sailors in exact reproduction of the characters of those times. The capture of Granada, the procession of Columbus and Isabella to the Alhambra, and the surrender of Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings, will be especially grand and on an immense scale. The scenery, costumes and music will be elaborate and picturesque, and the promoters claim Fortius lavish production that it will be the greatest of the kind ever attempted."

The Unfinished Spectatorium. Visible behind the Iowa State Building.

The Spectatorium - Iowa State Building in Foreground.

Chicago Tribune, October 7, 1893
"The Spectatorium, the large pile of steel and wood at the north end of the World's Fair grounds, which was to have housed the grandest theatrical representations in the world, is being torn down to be sold as scrap iron. The Spectatorium, as yet incomplete, cost $550,000. It was sold for $2,250. The project was that of Steele Mackaye. He broached it first last year to leading capitalists of Chicago, and it met with favor. The plan was to build a structure sufficiently large to represent the discovery of America on a scale larger than was ever attempted. Mackayc invented new lighting methods, which promised to revolutionize the methods of stage illumination. The life of the production was to have been a great chorus arranged on the principle of the old Greek chorus. The organization of the company proceeded well. Work was begun, hundreds of men employed, and actors and actresses contracted with and put on rehearsal. The Spectatorium failed and went into the hands of a receiver on June 1. Some of the Chicagoans who held $1,000 each were: George Pullman, fifty shares, Murry Nelson. E. L. Browster, Edson Keith, John Cudahy, L. J. Gago, C. J. and F. W. Peck, H. E. Bucklene ten shares each. Others interested in two to five shares each were F. H. Head. C. H. Deare, Arthur Dixon, J. J. Mitchell, E. H. Phelps, F. G. Logan, N. B. Ream David Henderson, A. C. McClurg, Andrew McNally; Ben Butterworth, and F. E. Studebaker.

Steele Mackaye blamed the failure on bad weather, labor troubles, a tight money market, and an article declaring the project a failure, which prevented the disposition of the company's bonds. William Mavor, the contractor, on June 13 in the Circuit Court charged fraud against the incorporators—Steele Mackaye, Ben Butterworth, Powell Crosley, Sidney C. White Jr., and Howard O. Edmunds. The Building Commissioner Toolen declared on July 18 the Spectatoriumu must be torn down because it was dangerous. The last act in its troubled history was that the Chicago Title and Trust company, receivers for the company, made a report on September 21 to the Circuit Court showing liabilities of $400,000. And as assets, $54,000 in unpaid subscriptions to bonds and tho unfinished building. The company's capitalization is given at $2,000,000, said to be fully paid up by the sale of rights to use patents issued to Steele Mackaye. First mortgage bonds to the extent of $800,000 were issued, $553,000 of them being subscribed for. Contracts were made to $309,275, on which $59,000 was paid. The First National Bank holds a note for $15,000 against the company. The receiver reports he was unable to place $100,000 insurance on the building as provided by order of the court, that the companies that formerly had written policies on the building had canceled them, that contracts with 334 chorus girls had not been settled and that with the Seidl Orchestra only partly squared up; that the building is in danger from fire; and the receiver asks the court for leave to sell the building and dispose of the option oil on the real estate. So the building was ordered sold and removed. Two hundred men are at work, and they will clear it all in thirty days. There are in the structure 1,200 tons of iron. It will cost $15,000 to tear down the building and remove it. The lumber will be used for sidewalks and small cottages for working people."

Bird's-Eye View From The Spectatorium
Looking southward from the roof of the Spectatorium—that great unfinished structure that represented the defeated ambition of Steele Mackay and which stood just outside the World's Columbian Exposition grounds on the north—a splendid bird's-eye view of the White City was obtained.

Bird's-Eye View from the Roof of the Spectatorium.

The view took in not only the majority of the buildings but a considerable portion of the lake shore, with its long stretch of white beach, steamboat piers and harbor. You looked down upon the tracks of the Intramural Elevated Railroad, which circled the grounds, and beyond, over the tops of a natural grove of trees, to a panoramic scene of broad avenues, towers and domes, white colonnades that gleamed like marble in the sunlight, and a variety of architectural decorations that almost took the breath away with their startling suggestion on ancient Rome or Athens. Many of the prettiest state and foreign buildings appeared in the foreground. Having them all grouped under the eye at once, it was easy to compare their relative merits and decide which was the most credible from an artistic standpoint. A section of the Art Gallery stood out in plain view at the end of one of the avenues; the tower of the Illinois Building loomed up on the right, while in the center was the dome of the Government Building, with the great roof of the Manufactures Building beyond, in the distance you saw the domes of the Administration and Horticulture Buildings. Overall, the picture presented from the roof of the Spectatorium was grand and exceedingly interesting.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of Chicago Historical Society and Buildings.

The Chicago Historical Society (now named the Chicago History Museum) was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. Much of the early collection of the Chicago Historical Society was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, but like the city, the society rose from the ashes. Among the many documents that were lost in the fire was Abraham Lincoln's final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

After the fire, the Society began collecting new materials, which were stored in a building owned by J. Young Scammon, a prominent lawyer and member of the society. However, the building and new collection were again destroyed by the Chicago fire of 1874.

The Chicago Historical Society built a fireproof building on the site of its pre-1871 building at 632 North Dearborn Street (700N, 100W) at the NW corner of Ontario Street built-in 1892 by Henry Ives Cobb. 

The replacement building opened in 1896 and housed the Society for thirty-six years. The building was later added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Old Chicago Historical Society Building.

The Third Chicago Historical Society Building.

Charles F. Gunther, a prominent Chicago collector, donated some items to the Society. In 1920, the Society purchased the remainder of the large history collection from his estate, with the intention of changing its focus from only a research institution into a public museum. Many of the items in Gunther's collection, in addition to Chicago, were related to Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. These include Lincoln's deathbed, several other pieces of furniture from the room where he died in the Petersen House, and clothing that he and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln allegedly wore the evening of his assassination. The collection also contains the table on which General Robert E. Lee signed his 1865 surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant, an official act which ended the American Civil War, at the McLean House in Appomattox, Virginia.

After 36 years on Dearborn Street, the Society moved to the current structure in Lincoln Park. The current home of the museum was designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and constructed in 1932 by the WPA, with the aim of creating an expanded public museum.

The Forth Chicago Historical Society Building.

The 1932 Federal-style structure has been expanded twice. The first addition clad in limestone opened in 1972 and was designed by Alfred Shaw and Associates. The second addition was designed by Holabird and Root, which was built in 1988 and included refacing the earlier expansion in red brick to give a unified look to all three portions of the building. Both expansions occurred on the west side of the 1932 structure, leaving intact its original porticoed entrance facing Lincoln Park.

The Current Look of the Third Chicago Historical Society Building.

The main entrance and reception hall, however, was moved to the new western addition facing Clark street. The 1988 extension, in addition to expanded exhibition galleries, also contains the museum's store and a public cafe.

The Chicago Historical Society changed its name to the Chicago History Museum in 2006.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Original Art Institute building, at Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street. The Chicago Club.

The Chicago Club, 404 South Michigan Avenue at Van Buren Street. This Burnham and Root building was built in 1886/87. The original tenant was the Art Institute.

Art Institute of Chicago, 1890

In 1893, the Chicago Club decided it needed larger quarters, and it purchased from the Art Institute of Chicago it's former building on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street. 

The Chicago Club was organized in 1869 as an outgrowth of the old Dearborn Club located on Michigan Avenue near Jackson Street. The first clubhouse of the Chicago Club was situated at the corner of Wabash Avenue and Eldridge Court. It was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. The present building was erected shortly afterward. 

Chicago Club, 1906

The structure is not as magnificent as some of the club buildings erected more recently, but the interior is beautifully and tastefully arranged. There is more real elegance about it than, perhaps, may be found in any of the others, although it is of an unostentatious character. The dining rooms and kitchens are on the top floor of the building. The Club is composed generally of the merchants and leading professional men of the city and was very exclusive.

Chicago Club stairway around 1892.

Comfort and congeniality more than crowds and confusion are desired. The admission fee was $300 ($5,600 today), the annual dues were $80 ($1,500 today), payable semi-annually. Membership is limited to 450 residents and 150 non-residents.

This building remained the clubhouse until 1929, when it collapsed during remodeling.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

South Water Street, Chicago, beginning in the 1830s.

This is a rare view looking west on South Water Street, possibly in the early 1830s. Hogan's store was at South Water and Market Streets, while Wolf Point Tavern can be seen in the distance. (from a painting owned by the Chicago History Museum.)

The very first street Chicago ever had was a muddy, narrow trail running east and west along the south bank of the Chicago River, and its name described it as South Water Street. Along this street, the first markets and general stores were built, eventually becoming a gigantic produce market, only to be replaced by what is known today as West and East Wacker Drive. 

In 1833, when Chicago received its charter as a village, Lake Street was the town's main street; this same year, the first Tremont House was erected at the northwest corner of Dearborn and Lake streets. The first store building on Lake Street, a two-story frame structure, was built by Thomas Church. The first Court House followed in 1835, and the City Hotel, later the Sherman House, in 1837. From 1837 to 1842, the first City Hall was located in the Saloon building.

The "Saloon Building" was a three-story brick building erected in 1836 by Capt. J.B.F. Russell and George W. Doan at the Southeast corner of Clark and Lake streets. It was named after the French word salon, meaning a small reception or meeting hall, not a drinking establishment.

One of the country roads that came into the old Fort Dearborn settlement from the northwest was an Indian trail that was planked by the early settlers of the area to hold their wagons up from the bottomless mud. It was called the Northwest Plank Road. The original Indian trail name was the Milwaukee Trace, now known as Milwaukee Avenue.

The first road, crossing the "Dismal Nine-Mile Swamp," went west on Madison Street to Whiskey Point (Western Avenue), then southwesterly on the Barry Point Trail to Laughton's Tavern, where it forded the DesPlaines River and went southwest to Walker's Grove, now Plainfield. Portions of it still exist as Fifth Avenue in Chicago, Riverside Drive and Longcommon Road in Berwyn and Riverside, Barry Point Road in Lyons, and Plainfield Road from Ogden Avenue to Plainfield.

There is a dispute about the route taken from Chicago to Widow Brown's house in the woods on the north branch of Hickory Creek (east of Mokena). One historian asserts that it went southwest (on Archer Avenue to Justice Park), thence southerly through the Palos forests and across the Sag valley to about 151st Street , and thence southwest on what later became the Bloomington State Road. Others assert that it went southward on State Street and Vincennes Avenue on the road to Blue Island and thence southwesterly on what is now the Southwest Highway. These and other dirt roads were superseded or improved by the makeshift construction of plank roads which, although temporary, contributed much toward the growth of infant Chicago.

South Water Street, Wholesale District

After the 1871 Chicago Fire, many offices that had once been near the river moved farther south into the expanding commercial downtown, and South Water Street (which is presently located just north of Lake Street between Wacker Drive & Stetson Drive) became home to the city's central produce market. It was fairly accessible to the rail yards and, most of all, was backed up to the docks where many incoming vessels could bring fruits and vegetables from the states located around the Great Lakes. Michigan was a great supplier during the warm months. Cherries, celery, apples, plums and other fresh commodities were put on boats from Benton Harbor, St. Joe, Ludington, Traverse City and other Michigan port cities and shipped to the South Water Market.

Note the wooden sidewalks and dirt roads. The wood planks on the left sidewalk were to cover up rain gutters and support delivery wagons.

By the turn of the century, reformers and planners, over the objections of some Chicagoans, urged that the gritty and heavily trafficked area be cleared out as an unsightly intrusion to the downtown that created unnecessary congestion in the heart of Chicago and blocked access to the river. In addition, the market had become too cramped for a city of Chicago's size.

As part of the building of bi-level Wacker Drive in the mid-1920s and the accompanying of a walkway along the riverfront, the city leveled the buildings in this area. It moved the wholesale produce business to the new South Water Market, bounded by Racine Avenue on the west, Morgan Street on the east, 14th Place on the north and the railroad on the south.

To make room for the new South Water Market, deteriorated existing houses were bulldozed in this high-crime neighborhood called The Village. In 1925, the approximate 13 acres of land and buildings cost around $17 million. It took 6 months to complete, and there were 166 stores or units. They designed the streets to be 10 feet wide and the alleys at 42 feet. It was expected that the new market would service Chicago well for at least the next 25 years. Soon it was discovered that the streets needed to be wider, and the market became severely crowded.

The time came again in 2003 for the market to move. The name changed to the Chicago International Produce Market, conveniently located off Damen and I-55. It is a state-of-the-art facility, and many merchants are the third or fourth generations in the family business.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of Moo & Oink Grocery Chain of Chicago, Illinois.

Moo & Oink was a southside Chicago-based grocery store chain and wholesaler that catered to the inner-city community and south suburbs.

Originally named the Calumet Meat Company, the company was renamed Moo & Oink in 1976. Moo & Oink had three stores in Chicago and one in Hazel Crest.

It became well known for its odd late-night television commercials that ran in the 1980s and mid-1990s, usually featuring dancing people in cow and pig costumes. The commercials often featured a jingle that started off with: "Moo and Oink! Moo Moo Moo!" and eventually ended with a famous sign-off, "Moooooooooooooo & Oink!"

MOO & OINK 1987 TV COMMERCIAL

The First Isle in Moo & Oink, 2004.

In 2005, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sang the Moo and Oink jingle on the "Weekend Update" portion of Saturday Night Live to prove to Scott Podsednik that they were native Chicago White Sox fans.

MOO & OINK JINGLE

Moo & Oink is famous for its Chicago-style hot links and hand-cleaned chitlins. 

In April 2010, they revealed a new company logo, replacing the classic cartoonish cow and pig logo with an animated but realistic-looking animal logo. 

All Moo & Oink stores closed in 2011, after the company went into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, though there was interest in buying and resurrecting the company. By the end of the year, the brand and trademark were sold to Best Chicago Meat, and the stores remained unsold. 

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Celebrating "Chicago Flag Day" on April 4th.

CHICAGO INCORPORATION DATA

James Thompson surveyed Chicago, filing the plat on August 4, 1830. This action was the official recognition of Chicago's location. 

Chicago was incorporated as a town on August 12, 1833, with a population of about 350. 

With a population of 4,170, the town of Chicago filed new Incorporation documents on March 4, 1837, becoming the City of Chicago and the world's fastest-growing city for several decades.

CHICAGO FLAG DESIGN EXPLAINED

In 1915, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., decided that the time had come for Chicago to join the dozens of other American municipalities that had adopted an official flag. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition had come and gone with only a red banner emblazoned with a white pall (Y-shape) to advertise the city's "municipal colors" (the Y-shape would also be employed in the city's less recognizable "Municipal Device").

Harrison's flag commission received more than 1,000 proposals before settling on a design submitted by Wallace Rice, a lecturer in heraldry and flag history at the Art Institute of Chicago. Rice's original design only incorporated two stars, symbolizing the 1871 Chicago Fire and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Rice chose six-pointed stars to distinguish them from the five-pointed stars commonly seen on national flags; the points formed a 30-degree internal angle to mark them as distinct from the Star of David. He aligned them to the staff (left) side rather than centering them, assuming city officials might wish to add more stars later. 

The city did that in the 1930s, adding two more stars (symbolizing the 1933/34 Century of Progress Exposition and Fort Dearborn). There have been numerous campaigns to add a fifth star to honor everything from Chicago's role in creating the atomic bomb (Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois) to Chicago's history with the Special Olympics. 

The current form has remained unchanged since 1939.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Frank Long House of Oak Park, Illinois.

Frank E. Long, a publisher from downstate Illinois, was born in 1865. By the standards of the time, he was already an elderly man when he commissioned architect Leon Stanhope to design his house in 1924. Long began his career downstate working for a manufacturer of agricultural implements and became the company's representative for publicity in Chicago, necessitating a move to the area. He eventually became vice president of operations. One of the company's publications lists Long's hobbies as motoring and fishing. He lived in several Oak Park homes before hiring Stanhope to build the 401 Linden Avenue house.

In a suburb made famous for Prairie design and Frank Lloyd Wright residences, the Long House stands apart in its architectural heritage. The cottage style home looks as if it should be sitting on a rolling hill in the English countryside, rather than the western suburbs of Chicago. 

Leon Stanhope, the Chicago-based architect behind the Long House's singular style, was a contemporary of Wright, but rather than embracing the new Prairie Style, he looked back in time in designing a home that combines the charm of a pastoral dwelling with the grandeur expected of a home in the estate section of Oak Park.

The wavy roof has earned the home the nickname the "hobbit house" because of its resemblance to a tiny dwelling that seems to rise from the ground, sporting a roof made of natural materials. While the home's distinctive roof appears to be made of thatching, it is, in reality, constructed of wood.

Often, these types of roofs are made up of steamed cedar shingles, which have the ability to be shaped in curved formations. A custom gutter system and a certain amount of creative underlying construction are also required to support the heavy materials.

The roof is a large part of what makes the Long House an example of the storybook style that was popular for a brief time in the 1920s. Very few homes of this style were built in the western suburbs and the Long House's large size makes it unique for what is usually considered a style represented by much smaller homes.

The house has four bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths which sits on 0.83 acres. It's 3,722 square feet sold in 2014 for $1,800,617.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Freedom Village, Illinois was America’s first Negro town founded in the early 1820s. Renamed Lovejoy, it's now called Brooklyn, Illinois.

In the early 1820s, "Mother" Priscilla Baltimore and her husband John led a group of eleven families, composed of both fugitive and free blacks, to flee slavery in St. Louis, Missouri. They crossed the Mississippi River to the free state of Illinois, establishing a freedom village in the American Bottom, naming it Freedom.

"Mother" Baltimore was said to have purchased her freedom as an adult from her master, a Methodist minister, and saw to it that religious faith would be one of the guiding pillars of her new community. She also hoped the community would be a refuge for others fleeing slavery. She also bought the freedom of members of her family. Born in Kentucky, she tracked her white father to Missouri and bought her mother's freedom from him.

1940 Aerial Photo of Brooklyn, Illinois.

Shortly after forming their new settlement, the townspeople were visited by Bishop William Paul Quinn, a missionary minister for the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. After meeting with the families in the Baltimore home, Bishop Quinn helped found the Brooklyn A.M.E. Church in 1825. In addition to its public role as the community's church, Brooklyn A.M.E, later renamed in 1839 to Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church, became part of a network of A.M.E. Churches that formed the Underground Railroad in Illinois. Tunnels still exist under the building that at one point secreted fugitive slaves.

Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church, Brooklyn, Illinois.

The location of Brooklyn on the Mississippi River across from St. Louis, Missouri, helped its residents to become financially independent, providing opportunities for brick masons, carpenters, coopers, and boatmen. Nonetheless, the economic activities of blacks in Illinois were restricted by the Illinois Black Codes, enacted when the state joined the Union in 1818. These laws restricted the occupations blacks could pursue, virtually eliminated their civil rights, and controlled the entry of new blacks into the state. Aiding runaway slaves was a felony under the law, and authorities could expel any black who could not maintain an income.  

"Mother" Priscilla Baltimore Headstones.

In 1837, five white abolitionists platted the land and created an unincorporated, nearly all-black town. Thomas Osburn was one of them, documented as having lived in the area for decades. Priscilla Baltimore built a house on his former land, which she occupied from 1851-1872. In the 1840s and 1850s, the black population of the village was about 200. The white settlers dominated the town politically since blacks in Illinois were not allowed to vote. Still, it wasn't until 1886 that black voters, as the majority of the local electorate, regained political control of the town. 

Regional capital investment largely bypassed Brooklyn in the competing East St. Louis, Illinois, which gained the all-important railroad connection. Other white-majority towns also benefited by being part of the network of investment. "Almost none of the all-Black towns obtained a railroad." The small village soon became all black.

In 1891, then-Mayor Evans dedicated the town's new post office named Lovejoy (after the abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy, who had been assassinated in Alton, Illinois, in 1837). The later high school was also named after him. Black autonomy did not automatically yield unity in the village. Tensions ran high with class and color conflicts by the early decades of the twentieth century and evidence of political corruption. In addition, with the growth in the number of young, single male workers attracted to industrial jobs, the demographics changed, and family life in the village declined.

Archeological and Historical Research
A state archeological survey was required before construction of the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge between St. Louis and Illinois, which would require realignment of part of Rte. 3 near the village. In 2002, work revealed extensive prehistoric artifacts, so many that the researchers named the site "Janey B. Goode" after the popular Chuck Berry song, "Johnny B. Goode." This site lies within Brooklyn's incorporated limits but just east of the historical residential part of town. It lies along the southern margin of the Horseshoe Lake meander just north of the East St. Louis Mound Group of earthworks. By the end of the 2007 field season, the team had excavated 7,000 prehistoric features, making this one of the largest sites ever excavated in the U.S.A. Most of these features are associated with the Late Woodland Patrick phase and early Terminal Late Woodland Lloyd phase, approximately from 600 AD to 1200 AD. They suggest a more complex and dense indigenous community than researchers had known lived in the area.

In association with its work, the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS) (formerly ITARP), a joint project of the state and the University of Illinois, conducted outreach with the village of Brooklyn, volunteering to survey some of the areas associated with its early 19th-century history. A team of archaeologists led by Dr. Joseph Galloy found evidence of early Negro occupation from 1830 to 1850, as well as material in other areas from 1850 to 1870. This discovery suggests that the remains of Mother Baltimore's Freedom Village survive beneath the surface in Upper Brooklyn. It also means that artifacts and other evidence of the town's founding may be revealed if additional excavations are conducted there. This would enhance the town's historical significance and research potential.

Since the turn of the 21st century, residents have rallied around new work related to documentation of the village's rich historical past. They have worked to collect oral histories and personal accounts of the town. In 2007, residents founded the Historical Society Of Brooklyn, Illinois. The historical society, together with the ISAS' Drs. Joseph Galloy, Thomas Emerson, Miranda Yancey, Dr. Chris Fennell of the University of Illinois, and the Illinois State Museum are working to preserve the history of Brooklyn.

ISAS also helped the historical society to review documents to locate "Mother" Priscilla Baltimore's unmarked grave at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. In September 2010, the Brooklyn Historical Society installed a gravestone in her honor at the cemetery. In addition, ISAS will assist the village in surveying the Brooklyn cemetery to detect gravesites and try to document the history.

Surveys in 2008 revealed that "the archaeological record of Brooklyn lies intact beneath the extensive open spaces of current-day residential parcels." In the summer of 2009, an archaeological field study began to excavate Mother Priscilla Baltimore's freedom village. The results of this collaborative project are expected to yield material that will aid the town in gaining designation for a historic district to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Historical Society of Brooklyn and its collaborators are seeking national designation for three particularly significant sites: the late prehistoric Janey B. Goode archaeological site, identified as 11S1232; Brooklyn's historic cemetery, identified as 11S1233; and Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church. Built in 1836, Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church was the first of that newly formed, independent black denomination to be built west of the Appalachian Mountains and the first in Illinois. The A.M.E. Church was founded as a denomination by free blacks in Philadelphia and its region in 1816. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Illinois' Negro Codes

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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"Your petitioner, though humble in position and having no political status in your State, notwithstanding I have resided in it for twenty-five years, and today am paying taxes on thirty thousand dollars, most humbly beseech you to recommend in your Message to the Legislature... the repeal of the Negro Laws of this your State." 

Thus began John Jones's letter to Illinois Governor Richard Yates on November 4,1864. By the time Jones wrote this letter, he was the best-known and wealthiest Negro in the state. Although wealthier by far than most Illinoisans, Jones still could not vote.

Born in North Carolina in 1816 or 1817, Jones had arrived in about 1841 in Madison County, Illinois, where he took up residence illegally. It was not until three years later, as he prepared to move to Chicago with his wife and infant daughter, that he filed the necessary bond and received his certificate of freedom, a document required by every Negro person in the state. Because he had been born out of state, under the law of 1829, he was required to file a bond of $1,000 to ensure that he would not become "a charge to the county" or violate any laws. Although Illinois entered the Union nominally as a free state in 1818, slavery existed for nearly one hundred years. It would continue to exist, albeit under increasing restrictions, until 1845.

But the elimination of legal slavery did not mean the removal of the Negro Codes. Indeed, it was only with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the adoption of the Illinois Constitution of 1870 that the last legal barriers ended. Like their midwestern neighbors, most early Illinois settlers believed in white supremacy and African-American inferiority. Consequently, Illinois' constitutions and laws reflected those views.

According to John Mason Peck, an early Illinois Baptist missionary and historian, the French introduced slavery into the French-controlled Illinois country, perhaps as early as 1717 or as late as 1721. The British, who took control of the Illinois Country in 1765, permitted slavery to continue, and so did the Americans after George Rogers Clark's conquest in 1778. Although the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery or involuntary servitude, territorial and later state laws and interpretations permitted the retention of French slaves. When Congress admitted Illinois in 1818, the state's constitution permitted limited slavery at the salt mines in Massac County, and it legalized the continued bondage of slaves introduced by the French. At the same time, the new constitution included a provision that would eventually free even those slaves by declaring that the children of slaves were to be released when they reached adulthood: for women, that age was eighteen, and for men, it was twenty-one. Thus, it appeared that the last slave would not be freed until 1839, or twenty-one years after the adoption of the state constitution and Illinois' admission into the Union.

Legislators in the first General Assembly passed measures to discourage Negroes from coming to Illinois. Negroes were denied suffrage, and other laws deprived them of most rights accorded to free white men. Negroes were prohibited from immigrating without a certificate of freedom. Moreover, they had to register that certificate, along with the credentials of any children, immediately upon entering the state. Among other things, the state legislature intended to discourage Illinois from becoming a haven for runaway slaves. Any runaway found in the state could be sentenced to thirty-five lashes by a justice of the peace. Negroes assembling in groups of three or more could be jailed and flogged. Additionally, they could not testify in court nor serve in the militia. Finally, state law forbade slaveholders, under penalty of a severe fine, from bringing slaves into Illinois to free them.

An Illinois Certificate of Freedom.

To counteract those repressive measures, just before the General Assembly convened following the election of 1822, "Free Persons of Color" submitted a petition requesting the right of suffrage. In the memorial, they noted, "We pay taxes, work on public highways, like others..." The petition was denied, and some legislators increased their efforts to bring additional slaves into the state. When the General Assembly convened in 1822, pro-slavery advocates succeeded in passing a resolution requiring the state's citizens to vote on whether to call a constitutional convention. That decision provoked a long and bitter struggle.

The state's leading political, religious, and social leaders engaged in a brutal war of words in newspapers, pamphlets, the pulpit, and the stump. Many of the state's leading founding politicians, including its first governor, Shadrach Bond, and first lieutenant governor, Pierre Menard, held slaves and supported the introduction of a pro-slave constitution. Newly elected Governor Edwards Coles, secretary of state (British-born) Morris Birkbeck, pioneer Baptist missionary and historian John Mason Peck led the anti-slavery forces.

Illinois voters rejected (6,822 against, 4,950 for) the call for a constitutional convention. But further repressive measures were taken against the state's African-American residents. The state's newspapers were filled with advertisements from neighboring states offering rewards for the capture and return of runaway slaves. John Crain, sheriff of Washington County, advertised that he had taken two runaway slaves into custody. Unless their owners called for them, paid the charges and removed them from the state, they "will be hired out as the law directs." Slave hunters such as William Rose of Nashville, Tennessee, advertised their services as agents to find runaways in Illinois.

Not only did Illinois newspapers carry advertisements for runaways, and the state attempted to further discourage Negro immigration by raising new barriers. The 1829 law required any free Negro to register in the county seat and post a $1,000 bond to cover costs should they become indigent or violate state or local laws. Since few Negro men or women had such sums available, they usually had to find a friendly white man to act as surety for them. At the same time, Negroes had to register their certificates of freedom from the state they immigrated from.

Broadside about a Fugitive Slave.

Despite the restrictions and repression, the Illinois Negro population grew slowly. While the number of slaves declined, the indenture system remained harsh and restrictive. As late as 1843, United States Senator-elect Sidney Breese, needing money to set up housekeeping in Washington, D.C., wrote to former Lieutenant-Governor Pierre Menard, offering to "place in your hands some valuable negroes with power to sell them..." By 1845, however, the last legal remnants of slavery ended when the state supreme court, in Jarrot v. Jarrot, declared that even the slaves introduced by the French were entitled to freedom under the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Illinois Constitution.

The court's decision, however, did little to change the attitudes of white Illinoisans. B.T. Burke, sheriff of Macoupin County, advertised that he had incarcerated a slave recently run away from John Henderson in Missouri. In December 1845, an Illinois resident declared in a scathing letter to the New York Tribune:

"In Illinois, in addition to considering slavery as an evil, its concentrated wisdom, in the shape of the Legislature, considers it criminal to be a slave. If a man happens to have a dark complexion, it is prima facie evidence that he is guilty of the crime. If, through ignorance, want of friends, or other causes, he fails of producing such proof [of his freedom], he of course, is thrown into jail as a slave, to await the coming of his master, in the mean time, minutely described in a public advertisement."

Still, pressure continued to mount to do more to maintain Illinois as a "white man's state." One way to do that believed some, was to promote the colonization of Negroes in the Caribbean or Liberia. The state had an active colonization society that included luminaries such as Stephen A. Douglas, John Mason Peck, and others. The reasoning of many is illustrated in a communication by a Belleville colonizationist who wrote:

By referring to the census of this State, from 1845, it will be seen that there has been a large increase of the free Negro population of St. Clair county, in the past few years... One cause, and one that is likely to increase the evil to a much greater extent still, is found in the fact, that the slave states are adopting measures to expel from their midst, their entire free colored population. Some of the largest of the free states have passed laws, prohibiting the settlement of these expelled Negroes upon their territory. So they become a vagrant, floating population, to which St. Louis is a common rendezvous. But, they cannot stay there, so they are thrown into Illinois; and especially into St. Clair county. So much for the causes of the increase of our colored population.

Many Illinoisans, both for and against slavery, supported colonization. However, most Negro and white abolitionists rejected the repatriation of the nation's African descendants and denounced gradual emancipation and second-class status for these residents. Abolitionists generally supported immediate freedom and granting full citizenship with equal rights for all the nation's Negro residents. Although William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown were the nation's best-known abolitionists, Illinoisans John Jones, Joseph H. Barquet, and Elijah Lovejoy shared those views.

The Burning of Elijah Lovejoy's Newspaper in Alton, Illinois.
November 7, 1837.

Illinois' proposed new constitution in 1847 included a requirement that the General Assembly pass laws to prohibit the emigration of free Negroes into the state and to bar slaveholders from bringing slaves into the state to free them. As the constitution was being debated by the state's citizens, John Jones of Chicago took the lead on behalf of Illinois' Negroes to defeat the offending section. His attack on slavery called forth the image of the nation's founders by appealing to the same natural rights claimed by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and others in 1776. He urged the state's enlightened inhabitants to reject the barbaric slave relics from the eighteenth century:

Now, sirs, we maintain that our claims to the rights of citizenship are founded on an original agreement of the contracting parties, and there is nothing to show that color is a bar in the agreement. It is well known, that when this country belonged to Great Britain, the colored people were slaves, according to the interpretation of the then existing laws. But the darkness of the 18th century has gone by, and we live in the 19th, and in a Republic, too, wherin [sic] men understand the principles of government, and a man is regarded as a man whether his face be Negro or white.

Others shared Jones's views on both races. The Pike County Free Press and the Watchman of the Prairies carried scathing articles against adopting the offending article in the constitution.

The exclusion provision, which was submitted separately to the voters of Illinois, won overwhelming support. Following the adoption of the Constitution, including the exclusion section, Jones again took up his pen and highlighted the Constitution's inconsistencies. He noted that while the constitution declared "That All Men are born equally free and independent and have certain inherent and indefeasible rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and Liberty, and of acquiring, possessing and protecting property and reputation, and of pursuing their own happiness," its framers had gone on to restrict suffrage to white males. He noted that among those "called white, and whose legitimate ancestors, as far back as we can trace them, have never been held in slavery, there are many shades of difference in their complexions. Then how will you discriminate? At what point will you limit the distinction?"

Later that year, the "Colored People of Chicago" met to draft resolutions opposing the new constitution and the "unjust and partial laws existing in the State of Illinois, which excludes the Free Man of Color from all access to Law by Oath, and thereby renders him dumb, so that he cannot be a party in law against a white man...." The meeting then adopted a series of resolutions expressing those views and agreed to petition the "Legislature to repeal unjust and partial laws."

Despite the injunction to do so, the Illinois General Assembly failed to adopt the new measures in 1849 and 1851. But in 1853, under the leadership of southern Illinois Democrat John A. Logan, the General Assembly adopted the draconian "Negro Law" of 1853. For the most part, the law simply brought several existing laws together in one place several existing laws. Under this law, no Negro from another state could remain within the Illinois borders for more than ten days. Beyond ten days, he or she was subject to arrest, confinement in jail, a $50 fine, and removal from the state. If unable to pay the fine, the law directed the sheriff to auction the offending African-American to the bidder willing to pay the costs and time and work for the "guilty" party in the fewest days. If the convicted man or woman did not leave within ten days after completing the required service, the process resumed, but the fine was increased by $50 for each additional infraction. Although most newspapers opposed the measure, there is little doubt that it reflected the views of much of the state's population.

For the next twelve years, Illinois Negroes labored under one of the harshest laws in the nation. But, it did not go uncontested. One of the most interesting challenges came from the pen of Joseph H. Barquet, a young Negro Chicagoan born in North Carolina and recently arrived from Tennessee. He began his objection to the harsh law by illustrating its absurdity when carried to its logical conclusion. He asserted that Negro men would be forced to marry white women, an abhorrent thought to whites. Barquet reasoned:

The recent law of inhibition against the negro, passed by our legislature, (if we can say ours, for we did not help to elect them,) bears hard, very hard against Sambo, and to lay the case before the public is my desire. Well, sir, I wish to annex myself to a wife, but the commodity in colors is scarce in our market! What shall we do? If we go from home to import one, the dear creature will be sold to some heartless Logan. What then shall we do? The laws of Illinois do not recognize the marriage tie between a white and negro, and if Mr. Logan shuts out the Negro girls, why we must take the white ones, that's all.

He then chided the state's leaders for their injustice to its Negro citizens. He warned that this act of despotism would lead to further restrictions. He concluded that "Europe smiles and taunts American liberty. Her despots smile when Illinois plucks from the eagle, emblem of our country, her lost plumage quill dipped in blood to sign slavery for freemen."

Illinois Negroes resisted, as best they could throughout the period, the ubiquitous effects of the Negro Laws. In addition to meetings and petitions objecting to the laws over the years, they formed several self-help organizations. Perhaps most important was the creation in 1839 of the Wood River Colored Baptist Association in St. Clair County. It soon developed several critical early leaders in the state, including John Jones, the son-in-law of H. H. Richardson, one of the association's founders. The association opposed Illinois' repressive race legislation and encouraged education, even when it had to be separate. Its leaders took the lead in organizing schools and promoting the state to force local school districts to allocate tax money for "colored" schools in proportion to taxes paid by its colored residents. Many of the protest meetings over the years were held in church structures.

The Illinois Negro Laws continued in force until the end of the Civil War. Indeed, amid the Civil War, Illinois held a constitutional convention and a new constitution was submitted to the state's people for ratification. One of the most remarkable features of that document was three provisions that wrote the Negro Laws into the proposed constitution. Although Illinois voters rejected the constitution, they overwhelmingly approved the anti-Negro provisions. Eventually, however, with prodding from John Jones and the logic propelled by the results of the Civil War, the Illinois General Assembly repealed the Negro Laws in early 1865. The repeal, however, did not confer suffrage or civil rights on the state's Negro; they had to await the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois Civil Rights Act of 1885.

By Roger D. Bridges
Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.