Wednesday, May 15, 2019

The Story of the "Spirit of Progress" Statue atop the Montgomery Ward Catalog House.

Caduceus
Many Chicagoans had noticed the bronze statue on top of the old Montgomery Ward warehouse and administrative building at 600 West Chicago Avenue over the years.

It was Ward’s time-honored symbol, "The Spirit of Progress," a female figure poised on her left foot, holding a torch high in her right hand and a caduceus, a winged staff with two snakes wrapped around it, an ancient symbol of commerce, in the other, while she leans forward into the wind as though about to flight.

Actually, Spirit is the third of three similar statues which have graced a number of prominent Chicago buildings. The first, a gilded weather vane of Diana, goddess of the hunt, stood on the Agriculture Building at Chicago's 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The second, Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce, also a gilded weather vane, was made for Montgomery Ward’s Michigan Avenue Tower Building in 1900. The third and final reincarnation was created for the Montgomery Ward Administration Building on Chicago Avenue in 1928 and christened The Spirit of Progress.
Diana I and II by Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the W. H. Mullins shop in Salem, Ohio.
Diana, Goddess of the Hunt
In 1891, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt was commissioned by New York’s Madison Square Garden’s architect, Stanford White to design a weather vane for the famous hall. He asked his friend, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to design it. The tower at MSG was modeled after La Giralda, the Bell Tower in Granada, Spain which also sported a weather vane called Faith.

Diana was fabricated at the W. H. Mullins shop in Salem, Ohio, she was 18 feet tall and weighed 1,800 pounds, yet she was perfectly balanced and could move gracefully with a light wind. She was made of many individually formed sections of 22-ounce sheet copper which were first machine-hammered over dies and then riveted together. Inside, the thin-skinned copper figure rested on a wrought-iron skeleton, the same method that was used to construct the Statue of Liberty in 1883. Diana was covered with gold leaf.

Unfortunately, Diana did not rotate as planned because of its immense weight. Furthermore, both White and Saint-Gaudens realized that the gilded figure was somewhat awkward looking and was disproportionately large for the Madison Square Garden building. So the figure was removed about a year after its debut and a smaller, 13 foot Diana was installed. Madison Square Garden was demolished in 1925 and Diana II was placed in storage, awaiting the completion of a new tower promised by New York University. But NYU could not raise the money to build.

In 1932, the Art Museum’s dynamic young director, Fiske Kimball, persuaded the New York Life Insurance Co., Diana’s owner, to give the sculpture to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia.

She was installed in 1932 at the top of the stairwell.
Diana I (left) and Diana II (right) on top of Madison Square Garden.
Charles McKim, the architect for the Agriculture Building at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, who was about to begin construction, thought that Diana I would be a perfect piece to top the dome. The exposition officials agreed, and in early 1892 the statue was purchased for $2,500 and sent to Mullins for refurbishing. Once in place, Diana I soon won the admiration of many fairgoers because of her beauty and her prominent position overlooking the Court of Honor in the heart of the exposition.
Diana I on top of the Agriculture Building during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago.
At first, it seemed that Diana I was destroyed by a fire that swept the fairgrounds on January 9, 1894, as most of the structure was left in ruins. Fortunately, the Chicago Tribune reported the following day:
The statue of Diana was not damaged as she had been removed about six weeks ago to the Columbian Museum of Chicago.
This was not the whole story. Executives from Montgomery Ward toured the Agriculture Building and bought the statue and had it stored in the Columbian Museum (Fine Arts Building, now the Museum of Science & Industry) until their Tower Headquarters was built in 1899. It is uncertain whether Diana was sent back to Mullins and was refurbished or if a new statue was made from a new design.
The Statue, "Diana, Goddess of the Hunt," erected in front of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1909.

Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce
Architects for the new Ward Tower, Richard E. Schmidt, and Hugh Garden envisioned a statue-weather vane on top of their new structure. Schmidt hired John Massey Rhind a Scottish sculptor to design the final statue. For some reason, however, the statue of Progress is not mentioned in articles of his work, nor does it appear in the lengthy obituary published in a London newspaper on October 22, 1956. The reason for this might well be that Rhind only designed alterations to transform Diana, therefore he would not have been the sole creator of Progress.

The reincarnated weather vane was installed on the top of Montgomery Ward’s new Michigan Avenue tower headquarters on October 21, 1900. It was dubbed Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce by the Inter-Ocean.
Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce on top of the Montgomery Ward Tower on Michigan Avenue. The photo on the left was taken during the dismantling in 1947.
The Chicago Tribune had acclaimed the new statue as “rivaling in beauty New York’s famous ‘Diana.'” And small wonder; with her torch held high some 390 feet above the street. the gleaming figure of Progress was visible over most of the city and far out into Lake Michigan. Lit by four electric beacons with 1,000 candlepower each, Progress actually did serve as a beacon in at least one instance. On September 18, 1918, Captain Ben Lipsner used these lights to guide his plane into Grant Park after making the first airmail flight between New York City and Chicago, in 9 hours and 13 minutes of stormy weather.

In 1908 Ward’s sold the Tower Building and moved to a more spacious headquarters on West Chicago Avenue. Although the Michigan Avenue building still stands, its 125-foot tower portion was removed in 1947 after being judged structurally unsafe. As for Progress, she also had to come down. On Saturday, April 26, 1947, workmen of the Speedway Wrecking Company erected a scaffold around the statue and began to dismantle her. On July 20, 1947, the Chicago Tribune, calling the figure “Diana,” reported that:
"The statue was cut into about 30 pieces before it was lowered. Most of the statue is at the company’s office, but some parts have been claimed by Chicagoans. Diana’s arm with outstretched spear came off at the shoulder, the head came off in one piece, and one leg below the knee. The requests for pieces of the metal for souvenirs was amazing. Some old-timers want the metal to make into ash trays, and others just want pieces of it as souvenirs. One of Chicago’s prominent citizens has, for some reason he kept to himself, requested the bust."
Progress’ head was auctioned off on November 4, 2014
at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.
The Spirit of Progress
In 1922, the year of Ward’s fiftieth anniversary, Theodore F. Merseles, President of Ward’s, presented the widows of A. Montgomery Ward and George R. Thorne with 15-inch bronze replicas of the Progress statue. The disposition of Mrs. Ward’s figurine is not known, but Mrs. Thorne’s statue was passed on to her great-grandson, Charles H. Thorne II.

In 1928, when construction had started on a new Administration Building on Chicago Avenue, Mersele’s successor, George B. Everitt, felt that the building should have a statue. He commissioned an artist to design one, and in September 1929 The Spirit of Progress was placed atop the white stuccoed Art Deco tower.

Once completed, Spirit became the new corporate symbol, and the company commissioned copies to place on other Montgomery Ward buildings across the country. But President Everitt’s successor, Sewell Avery, was not quite taken to her. After he became president in 1952 Avery sought to have her removed. However, he dropped the plan when he found that it would cost $6,000 to dismantle her.
LEFT: Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce       RIGHT: Spirit of Progress
For years the identity of the artist was unknown, making the story of Spirit’s origin as much as a mystery as that of Progress. However, it is probable that Spirit was the work of sculpture-architect Joseph Conradi. In a letter to his grand-daughter, Grace Conradi Anderson of Addison, Illinois, Conradi’s second wife Anna wrote:

"Your grandfather Conradi was architect and sculptor at St. Alphonsus Church at Lincoln, Southport and Wellington Avenues, Chicago. Also, the tallest statuary, 'Progress' is his work (I think it’s on Montgomery Ward building) can be seen from Lake Forest and afar."

Although there is no other documentary evidence to corroborate Mrs. Conradi’s conviction, the sculptor’s oldest son Leo also attributed the statue to his father. Just before his death in 1979 Leo told Mrs. Anderson that he remembered the day his father’s statue of The Spirit of Progress was placed on Ward’s building.

STATUE WILL TOP WARD'S NEW BUILDING
Chicago Tribune. January 27, 1929

Foundations are now being Installed for the corporation for Montgomery Ward & Co. at the southwest corner of Chicago Avenue and Larrabee Street. This structure will occupy a site that was purchased by the late A. Montgomery Ward at the time bought the land for Ward’s present huge building, just across the street.

Designed by the construction department of the mail-order firm, the underlying direction of W. H. McCaully, chief engineer, the new building will be of modernistic architecture. At one corner there will be a tower surmounted by a figure reminiscent of the statue atop the Tower building at Michigan and Madison, Ward’s home.
Spirit of Progress on top of Ward’s Administration Building on Chicago Avenue. Sheet music for Spirit of Progress March, composed in 1928, was published before the final design of the statue was approved.
The new building will contain the executive, Administrative, and general offices and the clerical departments. The first floor will be for retail store purposes, replacing the establishment In the building on the street. Clerical departments will take up the second and third floors.

On the fourth floor, there will be a large cafeteria for employees and for customers of the store. Executive departments of the chain store and retail store divisions will be found on the fifth story. The merchandise buying group will take up the sixth floor, while the catalog and general operating departments will be on the seventh. And, finally. the executives are to be located on the top floor where it’s presumed they’ll have walnut-trimmed rooms, fireplaces, and the other perquisites of the “big shots.”

The building is to be of reinforced concrete construction. Financing is being accomplished by a $2.000,000 bond Issue recently announced by Lawrence Stern & Co. and the First Trust and Savings bank. Winston & Co. were the real estate brokers In arranging the enterprise. The Wells Brothers Construction company has the contract.

The Catalog House was designated a Chicago Landmark on May 17, 2000. In later years, Montgomery Ward and Company added several warehouses and parking structures, followed by a 26-story office building in 1972.

After the bankruptcy of Montgomery Ward in 2001, the earliest buildings were converted into upscale condominiums. In 2004, the office tower also was converted into condominiums, now called The Montgomery.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Biography of Aaron Montgomery Ward, founder of retail catalog sales.

Aaron Montgomery Ward
Aaron Montgomery Ward was born on February 17, 1843, in Chatham, New Jersey. When he was about nine years old, his father Sylvester Ward moved the family to Niles, Michigan, where Aaron attended public schools. He was one of a large family with a modest income. When Aaron was fourteen, he was apprenticed to trade to help support the family. According to his brief memoirs, he first earned 25¢ per day ($6.80 per day today) at a cutting machine in a barrel stave factory and then stacking brick in a kiln at 30¢ a day.

Energy and ambition drove Ward to seek employment in the town of St. Joseph, Michigan, where he went to work in a shoe store. This was a market town for a farm area devoted to fruit orchards. Starting in sales eventually led him to the profession that made him famous. Being a fair salesman, within nine months he was engaged as a salesman in a general country store at $6/month plus room and board, a considerable salary at the time. He rose to become head clerk then general manager of the store, working there for three years. By the end of that time, his salary was $100/month including room and board. He left for a better job in a competing store, where he worked another two years. During this period, Ward learned retailing.

In 1865, Ward relocated to Chicago, where he worked for Case and Sobin, a lamp house. He traveled for them as a salesman and sold goods on commission for a short time. Chicago was the center of the wholesale dry-goods trade, and in the late 1860s, Ward joined the leading dry-goods house, Field Palmer & Leiter, the forerunner of Marshall Field & Co. He worked for Field for two years and then joined the wholesale dry-goods business of Wills, Greg & Co. In tedious rounds of train trips to southern communities, hiring rigs at the local stables, driving out to the crossroads stores, and listening to the complaints of the back-country proprietors and their rural customers, he conceived a new merchandising technique: direct mail sales to country people. It was a time when rural consumers longed for the comforts of the city, yet all too often were victimized by monopolists and overcharged by the costs of many middlemen required to bring manufactured products to the country. The quality of merchandise also was suspect and the hapless farmer had no recourse in a caveat emptor economy. Ward shaped a plan to buy goods at low cost for cash. By eliminating intermediaries, with their markups and commissions, he drastically cut the selling costs and could sell goods to people, however remote, at appealing prices. He invited them to send their orders by mail and he delivered the purchases to their nearest railroad station. The only thing he lacked was capital.

None of Ward's friends or business acquaintances joined in his enthusiasm for his revolutionary idea. Although his idea was generally considered to border on lunacy and his first inventory was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Ward persevered. In August 1872, with two fellow employees and total capital of $1,600 ($33,890 today) he formed Montgomery Ward & Company. He rented a small shipping room and published a general merchandise mail-order catalog with 163 products listed which were dated August 18, 1872. Ward initially wrote all catalog copies. When the business grew and department heads wrote their own merchandise descriptions, Ward proofed every line of copy to be certain that it was accurate.

The following year, both of Ward's partners left him, but he hung on. Later, George Robinson Thorne, his future brother-in-law, joined him in his business. This was the turning point for the young company, which grew and prospered. Soon the catalog, frequently reviled and even burned publicly by rural retailers became a favorite in households all across America.
Ward's catalog soon was copied by other enterprising merchants, most notably Richard Warren Sears, who mailed his first general catalog in 1896. Others entered the field, and by 1971 catalog sales of major U.S. firms exceeded more than $250 million in postal revenue.

The Montgomery Ward Tower, on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Madison Street in Chicago, reigned as a major tourist attraction in the early 1900s.
Montgomery Ward & Co. building at 6 North Michigan Avenue, on the northwest corner of East Madison street.
Montgomery Ward’s “Busy Bee Hive” in 1899. The open-air observatory at the top of the tower was the highest point in Chicago.
In civic life in Chicago, Montgomery Ward fought to keep Chicago's lakefront “open, clear and free” and protect the public trust doctrine. In 1906 he campaigned to preserve Grant Park as a public park. Grant Park has been protected since 1836 by legislation that has been affirmed by four Illinois Supreme Court rulings. Ward twice sued the city of Chicago to force it to remove buildings and structures from Grant Park and to keep it from building new ones. Ward is known by some as the "watch dog of the lake front" for his preservationist efforts. As a result, the city has what are termed the Montgomery Ward restrictions on buildings and structures in Grant Park. Daniel Burnham's famous 1909 Plan of Chicago (pdf) eventually preserved Grant Park and the entire Chicago lakefront.

However, Crown Fountain and the 139-foot Jay Pritzker Pavilion were exempt from the height restriction because they were classified as works of art and not buildings or structures. 
Crown Fountain, Grant Park, Chicago
Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Grant Park, Chicago
The Montgomery Ward warehouse and administration building, at 600 West Chicago Avenue, along the north branch of the Chicago River was completed in 1908. This eight-story and basement building was one of the first large reinforced concrete buildings in Chicago of skeleton construction.
Montgomery Ward Complex 1907 Floor Plan.
Montgomery Ward warehouse and administration building on the Chicago River.
Montgomery Ward died in 1913, at the age of 70. His wife Elizabeth bequeathed a large portion of the estate to Northwestern University and other educational institutions.
Spirit of Progress on top of Ward’s Warehouse and Administration Building was installed in 1929 on the corner of Chicago Avenue and Larrabeee Street.
Montgomery Ward Plaza, the "26-story park" corporate headquarters, named "The Montgomery," at 535 West Chicago Avenue, featured uninterrupted office space between two marble-clad cores. It occupied only one-fourth of the 2.2 acre site.
The Montgomery Ward catalog secured its place in history when the Grolier Club, a society of bibliophiles in New York, exhibited it in 1946 alongside Webster's dictionary as one of the one-hundred books with the most influence on life and culture of the American people.

A bronze bust honoring Ward and seven other industry magnates stand between the Chicago River and the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago, Illinois. A smaller version of that bust is located in Grant Park.
This 1972 bust of A. Montgomery Ward by stands in Grant Park in Chicago Illinois.
The Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners named a park in honor of A. Montgomery Ward. It is located at 630 North Kingsbury Street, a few blocks away from the old Montgomery Ward & Co. warehouse and adminstration Building at 600 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago.

Forbes magazine readers and editors ranked Aaron Montgomery Ward as the 16th-most influential businessman of all time.

Despite the collapse of its brick-and-mortar department stores in 2001, Montgomery Ward & Co. reopend as online retailer in 2004. Wards, still adheres to the once unheard philosophy of "satisfaction guaranteed."

Montgomery Ward Timeline.
1883: Company's 240-page catalog lists 10,000 items.

1928: Opens 244 stores. By 1929, it has 531 stores.

1931: Sewell Avery becomes CEO, correctly predicts the Depression but is convinced a recession will follow World War II.

1939: Advertising copywriter Robert L. May creates "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for a poem to be handed out to children.

1945-1955: Avery refuses to open new stores. Company's sales shrink 10%, Sears' sales double.

1985: The company unveils specialty store strategy and discontinues catalog operations.

1991: Resumes mail-order catalog business, sells it in 1996.

1994: Montgomery Ward opens the first Electric Avenue & More stores, acquires the New England retail chain Lechmere.

1997: Company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

1998: In an attempt to revitalize the chain, the company introduces a new store format with new "Wards" moniker.

1999: GE Capital Services purchases Montgomery Ward, brings it out of bankruptcy.

2000: Montgomery Ward announces a plan to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, shutter 250 stores in 30 states.

2001: Montgomery Ward closes.


2004: Montgomery Ward opens an online retail store.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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)


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.
 


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.


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.


Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

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.