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.