Chicago's First Newspaper was printed in 1833.

Chicago had just been incorporated as a town on August 12, 1833. There were already 300 people living here. On November 26, 1833, Chicago got its first newspaper.

Our 21st Century's media likes to portray themselves as unbiased and non-partisan. But in 1833, newspapers let you know their agenda right upfront. The first local paper was named the "Chicago Weekly Democrat." The man behind it was John Calhoun (not John Caldwell Calhoun, 7th Vice President of the United States. 1825-1832). He'd run several unsuccessful papers in New York State, most recently in Watertown. After hearing travelers' tales about the boomtown on Lake Michigan, the young editor headed west.

Calhoun set up shop in a building on Clark Street. Like anyone who owned a printing press in 1833, he depended on job-lot printing orders to make his living. The newspaper was more of a sideline for Calhoun, a vehicle to publicize his personal views.

Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, was president. The opposition party was called the Whigs. But the feature story in the first issue of the Chicago Weekly Democrat was not a political manifesto. Instead, it was an account of a powwow between two Indian tribes, the Sioux and the Sac-and-Fox.

And that tells you something about the newspaper business in those times. Calhoun had copied the whole powwow story from a St. Louis paper. Was this plagiarism? There weren't any wire services yet, so editors got their out-of-town news by lifting it from other papers. 

The one-piece of original work was the editorial. There Calhoun came out boldly in favor of building a canal or railroad to link Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. Oddly enough, that was the type of editorial you'd expect to find in a Whig paper, not in a paper calling itself the Democrat.

Calhoun continued to publish, with some interruptions. 

Publishing a newspaper on the frontier was very challenging. In May of 1835, Calhoun issued a second prospectus that apologized for the paper's virtual disappearance over the previous four months and promised a new editor would upgrade the quality of news when the Chicago Weekly Democrat re-appeared. He cited a lack of available paper on which to print during the winter of 1834-1835. He did not cite, but presumably was responding to, the appearance of his first competition, the Chicago's American Newspaper (sponsored by a rival political party, the Whigs).

The monopoly of the Chicago Weekly Democrat ended in 1835 when T.O. Davis established The American, a Whig paper. To fight this competitor, Calhoun hired James Curtiss as the new editor of the paper. Daniel Brainard was also associated with editing the paper at some point in these early years. By May 1836 Calhoun had lost interest in the paper and attempted to sell it to a group of local Democrats, but the sale fell through. 

The paper was enlarged in August 1836. The last issue was published on November 16, 1836, and afterward, the paper was sold to Isaac Hill, who sold it to Long John Wentworth. 

Wentworth had become a member of the new Republican Party (founded in 1854) by the end of the 1850s  — a turnabout that can be said, with some oversimplification, to have resulted from the politics of the years before the Civil War (1861-1865) when feelings about slavery caused shifting alliances and political turmoil throughout the country.

In 1861, just before the Civil War started it the end of April, Wentworth closed the Chicago Weekly Democrat. He said he was tired from his recent term as Chicago mayor and unable to continue after the death of his assistant, David Bradley. Others speculated he did not care to invest the money it would take to modernize the newspaper and adequately cover the war many expected at any moment. 

A more pressing cause was a $250,000 libel lawsuit by another of Chicago's Old Settlers, J. Young Scammon. Scammon was angry because Wentworth had published a cartoon depicting him as a "wildcat" banker (the fat cat in his cartoon wore a pair of Scammon's distinctive spectacles). Wentworth gave his subscription list to the Chicago Tribune, whose publishers induced Scammon to drop the suit in return.

Wentworth's political career went on but his paper was gone; although his own complete run of all the Chicago Weekly Democrat newspapers was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

The east/west alley between Madison and Washington Streets and from
State Street to Wacker Drive was known as "Newspaper Alley."

John Calhoun died in Chicago on February 20, 1859, at 51 years old. Chicago's first newspaper editor is memorialized in Calhoun Place (20 North - 1 to 400 West), a four-block alley between Madison and Washington Streets in the Loop, from State Street on the east to Wacker Drive on the west.

It was lastly nicknamed "Newspaper Alley" before being renamed for the last time to Calhoun Place. Other nicknames before Newspaper Alley included, from newest to oldest, were; Newsboy's Alley, Gamblers Alley, and Whitechapel Alley.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of Spiegel Incorporated, Chicago, Illinois.

Joseph Spiegel emigrated with his family from Germany to the United States in 1848, when he was eight years old. In 1865, Spiegel started a home furnishings store in Chicago. A 1903 merger with another furniture company created Spiegel, May, Stern & Co. In 1905, Joseph and his son Arthur Spiegel started a large-scale mail-order business. In 1906 the mail-order sales reached $1 million ($30 Million today).

By 1910, the company employed about 300 people at its offices at 1061 West 35th Street. In 1912, the company began to sell women's clothing. Thanks to its mail-order operations, Spiegel grew rapidly during the 1920s, as annual sales rose from $4 million to $24 million ($374 million today). 

Sales dropped during the first part of the Great Depression, but Spiegel grew between 1933 and 1937 (when its name became Spiegel Inc.) by offering installment buying plans and pursuing a strategy of high-volume discount sales. Business slowed during World War II when the company experimented unsuccessfully with operating retail department stores. After shedding these stores in 1953, Spiegel reached $200 million ($2 billion today) in annual mail-order sales by the end of the 1950s.

1038 W. 35th St., Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1936 & 1941-42, the additional top four floors by A. Epstein Architect: Battey & Kipp.

In 1965, Spiegel was acquired by the Beneficial Finance Co., a sales-finance company, which moved Spiegel into the field of high-priced designer clothing. By the early 1970s, when annual sales reached about $400 million ($2½ billion today). Spiegel employed about 5,000 people in the Chicago area. In 1982, Spiegel was acquired by Otto-Versand, a German catalog company. Under the new ownership, Spiegel expanded. In 1988, when orders placed by telephone accounted for the bulk of its business. Spiegel purchased the “Eddie Bauer” clothing chain stores and brand from General Mills Inc.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Spiegel, based in suburban Downers Grove, still employed about 2,200 people at its catalog warehouse on Chicago's South Side, but this facility would soon close. During the 1990s, when Spiegel mailed as many as 340 million catalogs a year and operated about 350 Eddie Bauer stores worldwide. The annual sales rose to $3 billion ($5.4 billion today). At the turn of the new century, when the Otto family of Germany still controlled Spiegel, the company employed about 1,600 people in the Chicago area. The economic recession of the early 2000s hit the company's catalog and credit card divisions hard. Spiegel entered Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in early 2003.

In June 2009, Spiegel became a Lynn Tilton company focused on women's style and fashion products.

The 35th street building was designated a Chicago Landmark on May 4, 2011.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

A Masked Highwayman Terrorizes Chicago in 1892.

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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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In late November of 1892, wild rumors spread about a mysterious “highwayman,” a masked robber who rode a dark horse with a blazing red leather saddle and who had been terrifying Lake View on the north side of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune described him as “either a maniac or a desperado.” Lake View (annexed to Chicago in 1889) and Lincoln Park became police states as dozens of officers were put on call to catch the crook, and stories began to circulate that the costumed crook had supernatural powers.

Illustration of a Masked Highwayman.

Children on the north side spoke in whispers that the Highwayman had been heard riding through Graceland Cemetery at midnight, the hoofs clacking over the tombstones as he rode atop them. Another said that he’d been seen on horseback jumping off a bridge and riding the horse right through the filthy Chicago River.

The mysterious mounted bandit grows bolder.

And his fame wasn’t limited to Chicago. The story of the Lake View Highwayman was retold in papers all over the country, and a few questioned how such a city could be trusted to hold a Chicago World’s Fair the next year.

Seldom has there been an example of how much a little flair for the dramatic can turn a story into a sensation. In reality, the Highwayman’s deeds were pretty low-key. If he hadn’t been wearing the mask, he would have been little more than a simple robber. But dress up like the Dread Pirate Roberts in a bowler hat and get yourself a dark horse with a white star on its forehead, and you become a supervillain!

The drama began on November 23rd, 1892, when a man in Lake View was approached by a masked rider who wore a mask covering his eye. Above it was a stiff derby hat, and below it a sandy mustache. The “highwayman” ordered him to set all his money on the ground and go away. This same instance was repeated several times all over the north side over the course of the rest of the day, concluding with a daring chase in which a cop took control of a bakery cart and chased the Highwayman a mile through the north side, firing a few shots in the process. He struck at North and Clybourn, at Clark and Lawrence, and at several saloons. However, his net profits were estimated to be in the range of $5.35 ($150 today).

The next day, dozens of officers were brought in, and armed citizens patrolled the streets, interrogated pretty much anyone they saw riding a horse. Still, the robberies continued, and the rider eluded capture.

After two nights, a mustached man dropped a horse off at a stable, saying he’d be back in an hour. When he never came for his horse, the stable owner notified the cops, who confirmed that the horse was the one that Highwayman had used. But there was no trace of the Highwayman.

What was generally agreed was that this was no professional robber; the “highway robbery” techniques he used were the sort of thing you saw far more often in dime novels than in real life. The Highwayman would approach a person and “Got any money? Throw it on the ground,” threatening to shoot if they disobeyed. He’d wait until they’d run far away before picking up whatever they’d tossed.

On November 27, a masked Highwayman with a long rifle (or a pistol in each hand, depending on the witness) was seen in Winnetka and Highland Park in the north suburbs, riding south towards Evanston. Police went on his trail but didn’t think it was the same highwayman; this one had a black mustache. Apparently, the tales of derring-do (displaying heroic courage) had begun to inspire imitators; the one in the north suburbs turned out to be a troubled 14-year-old student, Fred Spahr, from Highland Park, who was only out for kicks.

One credible rumor was that the criminal was a student who’d promised to put on a mask and rob everyone he saw for four days if Benjamin Harrison lost the election to Grover Cleveland (which he did). Another masked highwayman – possibly the real Lake View Highwayman – robbed a man of $6 in west suburban Riverside the same day and then repeated the deed the next day in Berwyn, Cicero, and other southwest suburbs, putting the area on high alert.

On the 28th, the Highwayman showed a few of his true colors when a grocer/undertaker in Aurora was approached by him. The undertaker brandished a whip and told the Highwayman to “Shoot and be derring-do (Google it),” which was all it took to get him to flee.

The Lake View Highwayman apparently returned to Chicago on November 29th, striking in Avondale, but by this time, he was losing his ability to inspire fear: the story of the grocer made the news all over the midwest. On November 30th, a man scared him away from a hold-up on Elston Avenue with a toy pistol.

Then, as suddenly as he came, the Lake View Highwayman simply vanished from the news. Sightings ceased in late November of 1892, and papers forgot all about him. In the summer of 1893, there was only a small item stating that the police had arrested a horse thief named James Dustin, who was suspected of being the Highwayman; he had a bunch of masks and fake mustaches in his possession. Several of the Highwayman’s victims were brought to the station, but none were certain that Dustin was the man. He had, after all, been wearing a mask.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Chicago streetlamps; when was the last gas streetlight extinguished?

Chicago introduced gas lamps in the 1850s, but by 1898, the city had already decided to replace them with new electric streetlights. Because of the cost and complexity of building new electric lines and circuits, the update took half a century to be completed, so the lamps that were still around in the early 1950s had been installed before 1900.

The last eighteen gas streetlights in Chicago were lit on June 4, 1954, on the east side, on Escanaba Avenue between 95th and 99th, to be precise. As recently as the 1940s, there were thousands of gas street lights in Chicago. Where gas lines were unavailable, gasoline street lights with a small reservoir inside the light. What could go wrong?

Domenico Basso

The Chicago Tribune featured an August 9, 1947 article featuring Domenico Basso lighting a street lamp at 59th and Cicero. Basso was one of fewer than twenty lamplighters still working in the 1940s.

The map indicates street lighting conditions in 1947 Chicago.

Lamplighters became dinosaurs even before electricity because the gas lamps had pilot lights with timers and igniters inside. The timers were simple clocks that needed to be rewound once a week. Lamplighters were still needed for those gasoline lamps. The lamplighter would come by every night, refill the lamp with gasoline, and light it with a blowtorch. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Chicago's Lincoln Park High Bridge called "Suicide Bridge" History.

In 1894, an iron high bridge – 75 feet above the water – was erected as a sight-seeing bridge over the lagoon that runs along Lake Shore Drive.

On a clear day, you could see the Union Stockyards and Jackson Park from the bridge.

It attracted plenty of weirdos – one elderly woman was known to go there daily to get as drunk as humanly possible. Another man would often go to whistle at the moon in a strange, eerie tone that scared the heck out of the cops. But it became most famous as a place to commit suicide. By 1900, kids around Chicago were superstitious about it, telling friends to “stay away from suicide bridge.”

In 1898, police officers who patrolled Lincoln Park at night had plenty of stories about running into ghosts while making their rounds. However, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them to blame the fact that the park had been a cemetery in recent memory (and still had plenty of bodies buried below the ground). In fact, it was generally agreed that the ghosts were the unfortunate who had ended their life at Suicide Bridge.

No one knows how many people ended their lives with a leap from the bridge before it was closed, but it was probably between 50 and 100 (the number who came intending to jump but didn’t (or survived) was estimated as being in the hundreds). It was so popular a destination for suicide that even people NOT seeking to die by drowning came to the bridge – one man hanged himself from the edge, another went there to shoot himself, and many people killed themselves by taking poison on the bridge.

So renowned was the bridge that it was even named 'suicide bridge' on postcards.

In 1916, amateur movie-makers shot a chase scene on the bridge. The characters were to fall from the bridge, but a stunt man they hired refused to jump, saying the water below was too shallow. The amateur actors decided to do it themselves, and both survived.

High Bridge looking South towards Downtown Chicago.

Newspapers came up with wild headlines about it, including:

• Policeman Spoils a Suicide: Interferes When Fascinated Crowd in Lincoln Park is Waiting for Man to Kill Self.
• Doom High Suicide Bridge: Lincoln Park Commissioners to Spoil Convenience for Those Contemplating Self-Destruction (note: this was in 1909, and nothing appears to have come of it. When it was closed a decade later, it was due to poor condition).
• Jumps from Bridge To Lagoon: Says he Tried Suicide for Fun.

The Park District became greatly concerned and talked about fencing the bridge over or tearing it down. It survived until November 1, 1919, when the old iron bridge removal was started by the American House Wrecking Company. The reason the bridge was removed wasn't to avoid citizen suicides but because of the bridge's poor condition. By then, the bridge became so rusty that anyone going across it risked their lives.

The Lagoon was much larger, as you can see in the pictures above. Its natural shoreline was a water inlet from Lake Michigan. Lincoln Park and the Lagoon were redesigned as a part of the 1935 WPA[1] project, which was completed in 1941.

Today's Lincoln Park Lagoon's Pedestrian Bridge.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] The Works Progress Administration (WPA), renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration, was an American New Deal agency employing millions of job-seekers (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads.