The History of the Lakeside Club at 3138-3140 South Indiana Avenue, Chicago.

THE LAKESIDE CLUB
The Lakeside Club was organized in 1884 as a Jewish social club for young men living south of Twenty-Second Street. The club initially occupied a pair of houses at the corner of Wabash Avenue and Thirtieth Street, but as membership grew, the necessity of a larger facility became apparent.

Architect L. B. Dixon was commissioned to design a $40,000 building, and a double lot was secured on the 3100 block of South Indiana Avenue.

The club officially opened on December 31, 1887, with an elaborate New Year's Eve banquet and ball. The Chicago Tribune covered the festivities:

“The Lakeside Club opened its new club-building last night with much pomp and festivity. There was a grand banquet, a little speech-making, a full dress ball, a splendid orchestra, an abundance of pretty girls, plenty of wine, plenty of flowers, and everything else that man or woman could desire for a New-Year’s Eve jollification.”

The journalist covering the event apparently felt compelled to explain why a Jewish club would choose to hold its opening activities on a Saturday. He went on to note:

“A Hebrew club that has a ball and banquet Saturday evening may be presumed to not be particularly observant of the Jewish Sabbath. The fact is, 99 percent of the members of the Hebrew clubs do not belong to the orthodox Jewish synagogues. The great bulk of them belong to independent Hebrew congregations – congregations that worship Sunday and observe Sunday in a general way as the Sabbath, and that have thrown aside all the old trammels of Jewish ceremonialism and identified themselves with methods and forms in keeping with modern times and customs.”

The building was constructed of pressed brick with brownstone and terra cotta trim, set above a basement faced in rusticated stone. The Tribune article described the interior:

“The finish, furnishings, and decorations are exceedingly pretentious. The interior work is mostly in antique oak. The large front room to the left is the ladies’ parlor, furnished with modern French art furniture and a grand piano. The front room on the right is the library and reading-room. Between these rooms and the dancing-hall in the rear are the reception and cloak rooms. The portiere at the end opens into the assembly-hall, with a dancing floor 47’ x 94’. The hall has a series of high arched trestles of antique oak pattern.

The general design is Gothic; and, with the clusters of gasoliers and hundreds of lights, the place is strikingly brilliant. The basement comprises the billiard-room, with three tables, a bowling alley, a small dining-room, barroom, kitchen, carving room, and the main dining-room. The second floor has half a dozen or so card and recreation rooms. The third floor is used for storerooms and servants’ quarters.”

The clubhouse was the scene of many prominent social events in the Jewish community, including the 50th anniversary of the Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv (KAM) congregation in 1897. Their iconic synagogue building, designed by Adler and Sullivan, stood just 1½ blocks to the south.

UNITY HALL

The building is best known for its second owner/occupant, the Peoples Movement Club, founded in 1917 by Oscar Stanton De Priest.

De Priest was the first African-American elected to the Chicago City Council, serving as alderman of the 2nd Ward from 1915 to 1917. The Peoples Movement Club was organized to give voice to the African-American community politically, and it became one of the best-organized political groups in Chicago's Black Metropolis neighborhood.

In 1928, when Republican congressman Martin B. Madden died, Mayor Thompson chose De Priest to replace him on the ballot, and he went on to serve three consecutive terms in the U.S. Congress, representing the 1st Congressional District covering the Loop and part of the South Side. De Priest was the first African-American elected to Congress from a northern state and the first in the 20th century.

After the Peoples Movement Club left the building, it became the political headquarters for William L. Dawson. Like De Priest, Dawson served as alderman of the 2nd Ward and then served in the U.S. House for 27 years until his death in 1970. From the mid-1950s onward, the building was occupied by various churches, and it slowly deteriorated from deferred maintenance.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and designated a Chicago landmark on September 9, 1998. It is one of nine buildings included in the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville Historic District.

RECENT HISTORY
By 2012, the building was sitting vacant and for sale, the upper windows boarded up, and scaffolding erected across the façade.

Although protected from demolition as a city landmark, there was widespread concern that the deferred maintenance and exposure to the elements could cause its demolition by neglect.

The small congregation that owned the building had moved out due to building code violations and could not afford the necessary repairs. That year, Preservation Chicago listed the building as one of its "7 Most Threatened Buildings" in the city.

An extensive restoration has returned the building's exterior to its original 1880s appearance. The interior has been dramatically transformed into modern student housing, a successful example of historic preservation and adaptive reuse.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Kalo Shop was the "leading maker" of the Arts and Crafts silver movement in Chicago.

In many respects the Kalo Shop was the single most important American handwrought silversmith. The Kalo Shop produced the widest range of classic handmade holloware, jewelry, and flatware for nearly 70 years, and was a critical influence in the Arts & Crafts movement.

The Kalo shop and affiliated Kalo Arts and Crafts Community House, a training school and workshop noted for silver and jewelery in nearby Park Ridge, Illinois, were founded in 1900 by a group of six young women who had trained at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Thirty-two year old Clara Pauline Barck (1868-1965) was the group's leader and most notable member. The other founders were: Bertha Hall, Rose Dolese, Grace Gerow, Ruth Raymond, and Bessie McNeal.

The Kalo company name was taken from a Greek word meaning "to make beautiful."

In addition to pyrography (the art or technique of decorating wood or leather by burning a design on the surface) and leatherwork, Barck initially sold textiles, copper items, baskets, and jewelry. In 1905, Barck married George Welles, a coal merchant and amateur silversmith.

In 1907 she bought a house to serve as the workshop for the Kalo Arts Crafts Community in Park Ridge.

The Kalo Shop metalsmiths, jewelers, designers and crafts workers seated in front of the Kalo Arts Crafts at 255 North NW Highway in Park Ridge, Illinois. circa 1910

When Clara and George divorced in 1914 and the Shop moved to Chicago at 222 South Michigan Avenue, George convinced her to focus exclusively on the handwrought copper and silver items for which it is best known. In 1912 Kalo opened a branch store in New York that lasted only until 1916 because of war constraints.

Kalo Shop, 152 East Ontario Street, Chicago. circa 1924

In 1959, Barck transferred the shop to four of the craftsmen; Robert Bower, Daniel Pederson, Arne Myhre, and Yngve Olsson. Barck hired women designers almost exclusively, although the immigrant Scandinavian craftsmen were male. At its peak, Kalo employed 25 silversmiths.

After Barck retired, the Shop continued making copies of the early pieces, adding a few modernist items and some in the Danish taste.  Many of its forms are classics, and very collectible, reflecting Welles' motto:  "Beautiful, Useful, Enduring." Kalo closed in 1970 due to the difficulty of finding young people willing to apprentice as silversmiths.

In the summer 1992 issue of American Silversmith, Bower, the last, surviving Kalo silversmith, explained to an interviewer that, "We ran out of silversmiths. In the last year we lost our three top silversmiths; men who could not be replaced. It was difficult trying to find men willing to learn silversmithing and it took years to train them."

Today, Kalo pieces bring high prices at auction and belong to the collections of major museums.

Large early Kalo coffee urn from the shop's Park Ridge studio.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Frederick W. Job, Attorney and Secretary of the Chicago Employer's Association.

The Frederick W. Job (rhymes with 'robe') residence at 4575 South Oakenwald Avenue, Chicago, was built in 1897 by Pond & Pond Architects. Mr. Job was an Attorney and Secretary of the Chicago Employer's Association and the Chairman of Arbitration for the State of Illinois. His office was in the Marquette Building at 56 West Adams Street, Chicago.

Frederick W. Job residence at 4575 South Oakenwald Avenue, Chicago 

From the July-December 1902 book, "The World To-Day" a monthly record of human progress.

A splendid success was achieved during the first week in June for the policy of conciliation by the settlement of two dangerous strikes in Chicago. Teamsters employed by the large packers to deliver meats to local markets struck for an increase in wages and other substantial benefits. Efforts on the part of the packers to supply the city with meat by sending out their wagons in long caravans furnished with a strong police guard led to terrible street riots, extending for miles through the heart of the city and resulting in the killing of a few persons and the serious injury of many. In the meantime, members of the arbitration committee of the National Civic Federation and Frederick W. Job, chairman of the Illinois Board of Arbitration, used their best endeavors to secure a peaceful settlement of the bloody war. Mr. Job, by patient endeavor, first succeeded in bringing together representatives of the department store managers of the city and of the drivers of their delivery wagons, who had struck in a body because two of their number had been discharged for refusing to haul meats from the packing houses during the teamsters' strike.

Frederick W. Job

This meeting led to an agreement between drivers and employers, arrived at by mutual concessions, and the drivers returned to work. Mr. Job then turned his attention to the greater strike of the stockyards teamsters. After a long day of rioting and bloodshed in the principal streets of the city, a night of negotiation, made possible by the tact and address of the chairman of the arbitration board, who had brought together representatives of the Packers and of the Teamsters' union, resulting in a harmonious settlement of the strike. The intense relief of the community, which for some days had been on the verge of a meat famine and which had seen the streets turned into battlefields, expressed itself in enthusiastic praise of the policy of conciliation invoked with such skill by Chairman Job. Seldom has a more impressive lesson Teamsters’ Strike in Chicago been given of the superiority of reason over sullen non-intercourse on one side and brute violence on the other.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Chicago Home for Aged Jews was established on the South Side in 1891.

The Chicago Home for Aged Jews was established on April 6, 1891 with Morris Rosenbaum as prendent, at 6140 South Drexel Avenue at 62nd Street (the northwest corner) to serve the German-Jewish community. Abraham Slimmer of Waverly, Iowa, donated $50,000 for such a home in Chicago, on condition that the Jews of Chicago raise an equal amount. The money was obtained without difficulty.

The Home for Aged Jews was dedicated and opened Sunday, April 30, 1893 and at the end of the year the number at the home was 44.

The building was demolished in 1959 for construction of a north wing addition to the 1950 expansion (by then renamed Drexel Home and which is now known as the Drexel Terrace Apartments).

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Illinois Theatre, 65 East Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois.

The Illinois Theatre opened its doors on October 15, 1900, built for theatrical producer and manager Charles Frohman.

It was designed by Benjamin Howard Marshall, who later, with partner Charles Eli Fox, would go on to design such Chicago landmarks as the Drake Hotel and the Blackstone Theatre and Blackstone Hotel.

The Illinois Theatre, which cost over a quarter million dollars to erect, was a jewel of Beaux-Arts architecture, inspired by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago almost a decade earlier, and sat 1,249 people.

The three-story facade was faced in limestone, with a row of Ionic columns above the main entrance. Above the colonade, five porthole-like windows ringed by terra-cotta wreathes each had a lion’s head, also of terra cotta, below them. The theatre’s name was inscribed just below the cornice in large letters.

For many years, both the Illinois Theatre and the Princess Theatre, both downtown, were two of Chicago’s most well-known legitimate theatres, their stages hosting some of the most celebrated names of early 20th century theatre.

However, by the early 1910s, the Illinois Theatre had become the Chicago home of the Ziegfeld Follies, and presented both live stage reviews as well as motion pictures, before turning entirely to movies in the 1920’s.

The Illinois Theatre was shuttered during the Depression, and never reopened, being demolished in 1936 for a parking lot, the same fate the Princess Theatre would face a few years later.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site in Illinois.

New Salem Illinois State Historic Site is the historically recreated townsite of Abraham Lincoln's 19th-century frontier village in Menard County (previously part of Sangamon County), Illinois.

During Abe Lincoln's 20s, in the 1830s, this was the homestead of the future President. Here, Lincoln earned a living as a boatman (see note below), shopkeeper, a soldier in the Black Hawk War, general store owner, postmaster, land surveyor, rail-splitter, and was first elected to the Illinois General Assembly. 

The Berry-Lincoln Store was probably the first building in the original village and was constructed in 1829. It is remembered as the town's only frame structure, unlike the other log buildings..

Lincoln moved to Springfield, Illinois, around the time that Springfield became the state capital in 1837.

New Salem was recreated as a historic village in the 1930s, based on the original foundations. The original village was generally abandoned about 1840. The village is located 15 miles northwest of Springfield, and approximately 3 miles south of Petersburg. (The present village of New Salem in Pike County, Illinois is an unrelated community.)

The Original New Salem History.
New Salem was founded in 1828 when James Rutledge and John Camron built a gristmill on the Sangamon River. They surveyed and sold village lots for commercial businesses and homes on the ridge stretching to the west above the mill. Over the first few years of its existence, the town grew rapidly, but after the county seat was located in nearby Petersburg, the village began to shrink and by 1840, it was abandoned. The fact that the Sangamon River was not well-suited for steamboat travel was also a reason for the town's decline.

In 1831, when Abraham Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, relocated the family from Indiana to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois, 22-year-old Lincoln struck out on his own. Lincoln arrived in New Salem by way of a flatboat and he remained in the village for about six years.  As far as historians know, Abe Lincoln never owned a home in the village as most single men did not own homes at this time; however, he would often sleep in the tavern (it was common for taverns to rent a bed) or his general store and eat his meals with a local family.

He ran for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832, handily winning his New Salem precinct but losing the countywide district election. He tried again in 1834 and won. Lincoln left New Salem and moved to Springfield, also in his election district, around 1837.

NOTE: Abraham Lincoln, the only U.S. president to hold a patent. He received patent No. 6,469 for his "Device for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals" on May 22, 1849 while a Congressman in Illinois.

When Lincoln lived in New Salem, the village was home to a cooper shop, blacksmith shop, wool carding mill, four general stores, a grocery, two doctors offices, a shoemaker, a carpenter, a hat maker, a tanner, a schoolhouse/church, several residences, common pastures, and kitchen gardens. During its short existence, the village was home to anywhere from 20-25 families at a time. It is important to remember that New Salem was not a small farm village, but instead a commercial village full of young businessmen and craftsmen trying to start a new life on the frontier.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 
Photographs Copyright © Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Chicago Home for the Friendless.

Chicago Home for the Friendless, 51st Street and Vincennes Avenue.

When the population of Chicago grew dramatically, it increased the need for social services to poor and destitute women and children. The Chicago Home for the Friendless, founded on March 18, 1858, responded to that need.

Eventually, the organization served as an orphanage, a shelter for women and children, and also cared for older people in need. From August of 1897 to 1938, the home was located near East 51st Street and South Vincennes Avenue in the Washington Park community area. In 1980, the agency changed its name to Family Care Services of Metropolitan Chicago.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Home for Self Supporting Women, Chicago, Illinois.

The original Home for Self Supporting Women was located at 275-277 East Indiana Street.

The Chicago Woman's Club managed a lodging house, costing $2.50 per week, for temporarily stranded women, and, for at least a few years, the Home for Self Supporting Women ran the Provident Laundry (established in 1889) which provided temporary employment for unemployed women.

The Home for Self Supporting Women moved to this building at 12 E. Grand Avenue in Chicago in 1908 when construction was completed.

Provident Laundry - Objective:
"To provide a new channel of work for able-bodied women out of employment and desirous to become self-supporting; to maintain a training school where superior work is taught, and an Employment bureau where permanent situations are securied for those desiring them."

The laundry was conducted in the read of the home at 275-277 East Indiana Street, overtaxing its accommodations. An average of 20 women find employment daily. A large number of these women become proficient enough to take permanent position in families.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Ryerson Building, 16-20 E. Randolph Street, Chicago

Adler and Sullivan's "Ryerson Building," at 16-20 East Randolph Street, Chicago was built in 1884-85. The building was a 68'x169', six-story masonry and cast-iron loft that cost $152,127 ($4,212,238 today).

Orginally occupied by Gray, Kingman & Collins Store, a wholesale grocery business, then by the Charles H. Slack wholesale and retail grocer & winery. The building was demolished in 1939.

The Hotel Grace at Jackson and Clark Streets, Chicago.

The Hotel Grace, 1889-abt 1990, a European hotel at 75 West Jackson Street, on the southwest corner of Clark Street.

It had 8 stories, 4 stores, 140 rooms, 1 elevator; 120 feet on Jackson, and 50 on Clark, 100 feet high; hotel office upstairs. It was erected in 1887, and cost $200,000 ($5,537,800 today). The hotel, opened in 1889, was known for exquisite meals and a very handsome banquet hall. The records of John M. Van Osdel, the architect, show that a story was added in 1890. 

The 28-story Ralph H. Metcalfe Federal Building, built in 1991 occupies the site today.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of Marine Hospital of Chicago.

The First Marine Hospital of Chicago. (1852-1871)
The first Marine Hospital of Chicago was built upon the old parade ground of the Fort Dearborn reservation, the ground being set apart for this purpose about the year 1848, the building and enclosure being completed March 15, 1852, and first occupied in May of that year.

The boundaries of the old hospital lot were Michigan Avenue on the west, the Illinois Central Railroad on the east, a part of the Government reservation on the south, and the river and dockway on the north. Work on the building was delayed in the summer of 1849, owing to the prevalence of the cholera, but the basement was finished in the fall of that year. 

Up to the fiscal year ending June 30, 1861, the total amount paid on account of the hospital was $57,712, and during war-time, the rule was that none but sailors should be received there, was impinged, for patriotic purposes, by the admission and treatment of soldiers.

J. D. Webster, the harbor engineer, was the disbursing agent, and John H. Kinzie acted as banker for the Government.

The old hospital building, at the site of the Old Fort Dearborn, was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. 

The Second Marine Hospital of Chicago. (1872-1969)
Work on a new hospital, at 4141 North Clarendon, began in 1869 and was completed in 1872 at a cost of $452,000. 

The building, four-stories plus a basement, occupied a 12-acre tranquil site near Buena Park and Lake Michigan in Lake View Township (in 1889 Lake View Township was annexed into Chicago), now the Uptown Community on the North Side of Chicago. The entire building was built of Joliet-Lemont limestone sporting handsome stone porches which graced the various fronts. The main building, which measured 350×60 feet containing the offices, executive departments, dispensary, and administrative department. The wings each contain three wards, accomodating twenty patients to each thirty-foot ward. The building was refitted in 1879 under the supervision of Dr. Truman W. Willer.”

The hosptial served beneficiary seamen including those who were navigating rivers and inland waters. During the life of the hospital, over seven thousand patients were treated.

The hospital fund, from which the expenses of the various marine hospitals were paid, is derived from a tax of forty cents per month levied upon all seamen employed ”on board registered steamers and other vessels belonging to the United States, engaged in foreign trade; and all steamers, and other vessels, including boats, rafts and flats, licensed to carry on the coasting trade, except canal-boats without masts or steam power.”

An issue of American Architect from December 1900 reported the later addition of a boiler house, isolation ward, and laundry, all designed by James K. Taylor.

The Marine Hospital, the 1965 HABS report concluded, was in “good condition” but adjacent to a “slowly deteriorating neighborhood.” Several state and city agencies competed for the site. Plans for the reuse of the building included a junior college and a comprehensive outpatient clinic. In 1969, the public building commission approved to acquire the site of the Marine Hospital for a magnet elementary school, the first magnet school in Chicago. It was demolished in 1969

Today, the Disney Magnet School occupies the site where the Marine Hospital once stood.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.