CTA Rapid Transit System direct access to Chicago department stores.

The first and most famous such entrance led from the Madison and Wabash CTA station into Carson Pirie Scott & Co., which was the "Schlessinger and Meyer Department Store" in 1900 when the bridge was built. Some referred to it as the “crystal bridge." Architect Louis Sullivan made the bridge every bit as ornate as the store, which of course he also designed.

This is the direct entrance into the 2nd floor of the Marshall Field’s State Street store from the Wabash Avenue elevated 'L' station at Randolph Street. There was also a subway entrance to Field's into the first basement level on the State Street side.

Entrance from the North-South (Red Line) subway to the Pedway and Marshall Field's.

Other department stores and buildings in Chicago's Loop had dedicated entrances from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) elevated or subway rapid transit stations including Goldblatt’s, Woolworth's, and Sears & Roebuck.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Famous 'Life Magazine' Field's Elevator Girls. (1947)

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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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Marshall Field & Co., Chicago's biggest department store, decided that their elevator girls required a bit of finishing, so they were enrolled in a local charm school.

ELEVATOR STAFF at Marshall Field store, neatly aligned at their stations with the starter (left), shows the chic results of their "glamourizing."

The Marshall Field uniformed elevator girls grew so famous that Life Magazine ran a feature article in the September 15, 1947 issue about their eight-week charm and beauty course. The twice-a-week program included hair and makeup lessons, training on elocution, walking, sitting, and operating the elevator cars decorously (in a polite, controlled, and socially acceptable manner). Students are also taught to enunciate merchandise items like "lingerie, bric-a-brac, and millinery" clearly. The article noted that the "finished" ladies were happier and much more beautiful, even if there didn't seem to be a correlating increase in sales.

NEW HAIRDO for operator Ann Vratarichis skillfully swept up by an expert. The charm school also reshaped her eyebrows and the curve of her lips.

REDUCING EXERCISES include rolling inflated beach balls, calisthenics, and homework with a rolling pin. One girl lost 35 pounds during the course.

Indeed they are hopeful of following in the footsteps of a distinguished Marshall Field alumna, Mary Leta Lambour. After winning a New Orleans beauty contest in 1931, Lambour moved to Chicago and worked briefly as a $17-a-week Marshall Field's elevator girl. She was discovered by a movie scout in the store, starting her entertainment career as a cabaret singer and movie star. She is known as Dorothy Lamour.

Mary Leta Lambour (Dorothy Lamour)

Other Field's employees who became celebrities include first lady Nancy Davis Reagan (sales clerk), catalog sales pioneer Aaron Montgomery Ward (sales clerk and traveling salesman), and film and stage director Vincent Minnelli (window decorator).

Nancy Davis [Reagan] 1950.

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LIFE MAGAZINE PHOTO SHOOT - 1947

 

BEFORE AND AFTER charm school. June Wahl and Ann Vratarich.

 

AN ELEVATOR OPERATOR'S CORRECT STANDING POSITION (right) should be straight and modest, not too breezy, with the body bent and leg in the air (left).

 

CORRECT BENDING POSITION (right) is shown by an instructor. Knees should be bent and body lowered. Stooping from the waist (left) is undignified.

DICTION DRILLS teaches the girls to announce floors and merchandise and answer customers' questions in distinct, well-modulated tones.

MARSHALL FIELD AND COMPANY ARTICLES

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Story of the Battle of Barrington [Illinois] - John Dillinger.

Lester M. Gillis, the man who came to be known as "Baby Face Nelson," married Helen Wawrzyniak when she was 16 years old. By 20, she had two babies—and a spot on the "shoot to kill" list of Public Enemies, thanks to Lester.

Helen Wawrzyniak Gillis (1908-1987)

On July 22, 1934, in America's "Public Enemy № 1," John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI outside the Biograph Theater at Lincoln and Halsted Streets in Chicago at 10:40 PM. With the death of John Dillinger, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, known at the time as the Division of Investigation, focused on eliminating what remained of the notorious Dillinger Gang. 

Lester Gillis, whom newspapers of the era dubbed "Dillinger's aid," had managed to elude the federal dragnet. By late November 1934, the new Public Enemy Number One was hiding out in the isolated piney woods of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Bolstered by his newfound status, the diminutive Lester bragged he would rob "...a bank a day for a month."

Lester M. Gillis - "Baby Face Nelson" (1908-1934)

On the morning of November 27, Lester, sporting a thin mustache on his youthful face, Helen Gillis, and John Paul Chase, Lester's right-hand man, departed Lake Geneva and traveled south toward Chicago on U.S. Route 12 (Rt.14 today). They were making plans to start a new gang. Lester planned to meet two underworld figures in Chicago and reasoned that daylight was the safer time to travel as agents would expect an evening departure.

John Paul Chase (1901-1973)

Near Fox River Grove, Illinois, Lester observed a vehicle driving in the opposite direction. Inside the car were federal agents Thomas McDade and William Ryan. McDade and Ryan were traveling to Lake Geneva to support a fellow agent who had relayed an encounter with Lester. The agents and the gangster recognized each other simultaneously, and after several U-turns by both cars, Lester wound up in pursuit of the federal agents.

Lester and Chase opened fire on the agents as Lester's powerful Ford V-8, driven by Helen Gillis, caught up to the slower federal sedan. Neither McDade nor Ryan was injured. The agents returned fire, sped ahead, but ran off the highway. Taking defensive positions, McDade and Ryan awaited Nelson and Chase. The agents, however, were unaware a round fired by Ryan had punctured the water pump and/or the radiator of Lester's Ford. With his vehicle losing power, Lester was next pursued by a Hudson automobile driven by two more agents, Herman Hollis and Samuel P. Cowley.

A photo diagram shows a re-creation of the scene of the gunbattle between two federal agents and gangster Lester Gillis "Baby Face Nelson" and his associates on November 27, 1934, near the entrance to Barrington's North Side Park. The labels show the positions occupied by federal Agents Samuel Cowley and Herman Hollis and Lester and his associates during the battle.

With his new pursuers attempting to pull alongside, Lester instructed Gillis to steer into the entrance of Barrington's Northside Park, just across the line from Fox River Grove, and stop. Hollis and Cowley overshot Nelson's Ford by over 100 feet. With their car stopped at an angle, Hollis and Cowley exited, took defensive positions behind the vehicle and, as Helen fled toward a drainage ditch, opened fire on Lester and Chase.

An early graphic illustration shows the pursuit, gunbattle and flight of the killers.

Within seconds, a round from Cowley's Thompson submachine gun struck Nelson above his belt line. The .45 caliber bullet tore through Lester's liver and pancreas and exited from his lower back. Lester grasped his side and leaned on the Ford's running board. Chase, in the meantime, continued to fire from behind the car. When Lester regained himself, he suddenly stepped into the line of fire and advanced toward Cowley and Hollis. After retreating to a nearby ditch, Cowley was hit by a burst from Lester's machine gun. Pellets from Hollis' shotgun struck Lester in his legs and momentarily downed him. Hollis, possibly already wounded, retreated behind a utility pole. With his shotgun empty, Hollis drew his service revolver only to be struck by a bullet to the head from Lester's gun. Hollis slid against the pole and fell face down. Lester stood over Hollis for a moment, then limped toward the agents' bullet-riddled car. Lester backed the agents' car over to the Ford and, with Chase's help, loaded the agents' vehicle with guns and ammo from the disabled Ford. After the weapon's transfer, Lester, too severely wounded to drive, collapsed into the Hudson. Chase got behind the wheel and fled the scene along with Helen and the mortally wounded Nelson.

Lester had been shot nine times; a single (and ultimately fatal) machine gun slug had struck his abdomen, and eight of Hollis's shotgun pellets had hit his legs. After telling his wife, "I'm done for," Lester gave directions as Chase drove them to a safe house on Walnut Street in Wilmette. Lester died in a bed, with his wife at his side, at 7:35 that evening. With massive head wounds, Hollis was declared dead soon after arriving at the hospital. At a different hospital, Cowley hung on long enough to confer briefly with Melvin Purvis, telling him, "Nothing would bring [Lester] down." He underwent unsuccessful surgery before succumbing to a stomach wound similar to Lester's.

Following an anonymous telephone tip, Lester's naked corpse was discovered wrapped in an Indian-patterned blanket in front of St. Paul's Lutheran Cemetery in Skokie. Helen Gillis later stated that she had placed the blanket over Lester's body because "He always hated being cold."

Newspapers reported, based on the questionable wording of an order from J. Edgar Hoover ("... find the woman and give her no quarter."), that the Bureau of Investigation had issued a "death order" for Lester's widow. She wandered the streets of Chicago as a fugitive for several days, described in print as America's first female "public enemy."

After surrendering on Thanksgiving Day, Helen paroled after capture at Little Bohemia Lodge, served a year and a day at the Woman's Federal Reformatory in Milan, Michigan, for harboring her late husband. Chase was apprehended later and served a term at Alcatraz. 

Lester M. Gillis died in 1934; John Paul Chase died from cancer in 1973; and Helen Gillis died in 1987, and all three are buried at Saint Joseph Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois.

The plaque commemorated the Battle of Barrington
at Barrington Park District in Barrington, Illinois.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.