Eastland Disaster Relief, American Red Cross, 1915-1918

Title: Eastland Disaster Relief, American Red Cross, 1915-1918: after the capsizing of the steamer “Eastland” in the Chicago river, July 24, 1915 to completion of relief work. Final report, Eastland disaster relief committee, Chicago chapter, American Red Cross.

Location: Google Books     Date: 1918

The American Red Cross sprang into action when the Eastland disaster occurred and spent three years assisting its victims. Be sure to read the “Case Reports” for a personal view of the tragedy.

Removing the dead from the Eastland.

The capsizing of the lake passenger steamship Eastland, which caused the death of 812 persons, occurred in the Chicago river at the Clark Street bridge, in the very heart of the City of Chicago, about 7:20 o ‘clock on the morning of Saturday, July 24, 1915.

The boat was one of four which the employees of the “Western Electric Company had chartered to carry 7,000 men, women and children on an annual outing to Michigan City, Ind. The Eastland was to have left the dock at 7:30 o ‘clock, and was to have been followed at halfhour intervals by the other steamers.

The excursionists began to arrive at the dock as early as 6 o’clock in the morning, wishing to sail on the first boat and make the day as long as possible. As soon as the gates were thrown open a solid line of people, two abreast, moved upon the boat, and by 7:10 o’clock there were approximately 2,500 persons aboard.

The Indiana Transportation Company, which furnished the boats for the excursionists, had announced that if the boat were loaded before the hour set for sailing, she would not wait until 7:30. When the boat was filled, preparations were made to sail at once. One line had been cast off and the boat was beginning to swing into the stream.

The 2,500 or more passengers, largely women and children, were in high spirits. The little ones were romping as well as they could on decks so crowded that one could scarcely walk, and the older ones were waving and shouting to their friends who were boarding the other boats.

About 7:10 o’clock the boat listed slowly over away from the dock, swayed back almost to an even keel, then began to list again, and slowly turned over and lay flat on her port side in some 18 feet of water, with the keel only a few feet from the dock.

At first the people thought there was nothing unusual about the movement of the boat. It was not until the second listing had progressed so far as to overturn a refrigerator that the crowd became alarmed.

Then the cheers and wavings and shouts of glee gave way to cries of terror, and a mad panic ensued. A number who were on the starboard side of the boat, next the dock, scrambled ashore or dropped into the water and were pulled out by rescuers, for the boat turned over very slowly.

Several hundred, gathered on the upper or hurricane deck, were spilled overboard into the river, and swam ashore, or were saved by the rescuers.

But many of the hundreds between decks were penned in and drowned or crushed to death. Some of the imprisoned held on until holes were cut in the side of the boat which remained above water, and were taken out alive, but terribly shattered by the horror. Hundreds were dead when finally the rescuers reached them.

News of the tragedy spread rapidly. The fire and police departments were called out; the river boats of both departments and other craft came to the rescue; scores of volunteer rescuers plunged into the work, and the task of taking the passengers from the boat and from the water where they had leaped or had been thrown, went on for hours. Some 1,700 reached shore alive, while the dead were already being laid in windrows along the bank.

The tally of dead finally reached 812, with a considerable list of injured, some of whom died later.

The people of Chicago sprang at once to the relief of those who had been bereaved. Entire families had been wiped out. Parents had gone to their death leaving a number of children. Sons and daughters had been drowned, leaving the parents childless. All the bread winners of other families had perished, leaving a number of dependents. And everywhere were funeral expenses and doctor bills to be met, while the survivors were almost or quite crazed.

Such was the situation when the American Red Cross was called upon to take charge of the relief work, prevent suffering for want of necessities of life among the survivors, see that the dead were given suitable burial, and adjust living conditions for the hundreds of women and children left without their natural protectors.

The accident was less than an hour old when the American Red Cross, represented by John J. O’Connor, Director of its Central Division, was at work at the scene.

Cartoons by McCutcheon by John T. McCutcheon

Title: Cartoons by McCutcheon : A Selection of one Hundred Drawings By John T. McCutcheon by John Tinney McCutcheon

Location: Google Books      Date: 1903

John T. McCutcheon worked for the Chicago Record-Herald before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1903. The cartoons in this volume originally appeared in the Chicago Record-Herald and includes McCutcheon’s “Boy in Springtime” series and many of his “Pictoral Sermonettes.”

CONCERNING
MR. McCUTCHEON’S CARTOONS

T HOSE  who have studied and admired Mr. McCutcheon’s cartoons in the daily press doubtless have been favorably impressed by the two eminent characteristics of his intent. First, he cartoons public men ‘without grossly insulting them. Second, he recognizes the very large and important fact that political events do not fill the entire horizon of the American people. It has not been very many years since the newspaper cartoon was a savage caricature of some public man who had been guilty of entertaining tariff opinions that did not agree with the tariff opinions of the man who controlled the newspaper. It was supposed to supplement the efforts of the editorial in which the leaders of the opposition were termed ” reptiles.”

The first-class, modern newspaper seems to have awakened to the fact that our mundane existence is not entirely wrapped up in politics. Also, that a man may disagree with us and still have some of the attributes of humanity.

In Mr. McCutcheon’s cartoons we admire the clever execution, and the gentle humor which diffuses all of his work, but I dare say that more than all we admire him for his considerate treatment of public men and his blessed wisdom in getting away from the hackneyed political subjects and giving us a few pictures of that every-day life which is our real interest.

George Ade

Chicago, March 1, 1903

John Wellborn Root by Harriet Monroe

Title: John Wellborn Root: A Study of His Life and Work by Harriet Monroe

Location: Internet Archive     Date: 1896

Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) is best known as the founder and editor of Poetry Magazine in 1912. Monroe was also literary and arts critic, a member of Lorado Taft’s art colony Eagle’s Nest and The Little Room literary group located in the Fine Arts Building. She was also the sister-in-law of the Columbian Exposition’s original architect, John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham’s partner who died in 1891 , two years before the Fair formally opened. Her biography of Root is her only non-poetry publication.

The following selection from Monroe’s book gives us a glimpse of what The White City might have looked like if Root had lived. The architecture may have been more varied and, more significantly, The White City may just have not been white at all… 

Harriet Monroe

JOHN ROOT’S conception of the Fair differed much from the White City of memory. If he had lived and his ideas had prevailed, the Columbian Exposition would have been a City of Color ; a queen arrayed in robes not saintly, as for a bridal, but gorgeous, for a festival. These two ideals are both worthy of honor. One was embodied in delicate beauty, to win the praises of the world; the other vanished when a great man died.

For the first I do not need to speak : its noble stateliness made its own appeal. We lived for half a year in the awe and wonder of it, and it lingers in memory, under the sunshine of that gracious summer, as a glimpse into realms unearthly, the chosen abode of perfect souls. For the second I must say my feeble word, remembering the enthusiasm and strength of purpose which this unrealized dream concentrated. That word will be unconvincing, perhaps; because no architectural scheme can be fairly judged until it is completed before men’s eyes, and because any disturbance of our memories of the White City will seem a desecration. But the beauty of the lily is no reason why the rose should not also be beautiful. And all the flowers of memory cannot make it impossible that one unrecorded should be as lovely as these. The difficulty lies in the proving. What eye can behold the perished flower, however marvelous? What hand can delineate the Columbian City as its first architect saw it? Mine is powerless to offer more than a few hints showing the rough outline of his conception.

The fundamental point in Root’s creed as an architect was sincerity : a building should frankly express its purpose

John Wellborn Root

 and its material. Thus it would have been impossible for him to design, as the chief buildings of the Fair, imitations
in staff of marble palaces : these could not express their material ; or to adopt a classic motive : this could not express the purpose of a modern American exposition. He wished to admit frankly in the architectural scheme the temporary character of the Fair : it should be a great, joyous, luxuriant midsummer efflorescence, born to bloom for an hour and perish a splendid buoyant thing, flaunting its gay colors between the shifting blues of sky and lake exultantly, prodigally. Edifices built in pursuance of this idea should not give the illusion of weight and permanence : they should be lighter, gayer, more decorative than the solid structures along our streets. To his mind the dominant note in our civilization was its youth, its newness, crudeness : manifestly things were beginning here, beginning with a swift rush and turmoil of creative energies. He wished to show its affluence, its sumptuous conquering enthusiasm. He wished to offer to the older nations a proof of new forces, new ideals, not yet developed and completed, but full of power and prophetic of charm. He wished to express our militant democracy as he felt it,pausing after victory for a song of triumph before taking up its onward march.

Manifestly these turbulent awakening energies could not be presented through any formal and crystallized type of
architecture. The classic type, Root was inclined to feel, had attained its ultimate perfection in Greece, and its motives had been restudied and developed through succeeding centuries until they were scarcely capable of a new vitalization which should express the modern purposes. It was a style for the open-air life and the fair blue skies of Athens, not for wind-swept and storm-beaten Chicago.

 
Moreover, it was a monumental style, not suitable for holiday structures built of temporary materials. Among all
the tentative sketches of the Fair, or portions of it, which Root threw off from day to day during these busy weeks,
there is scarcely a trace of a classic motive. On the contrary, there is much that is unconventional or even bizarre,
conceived in a lyric mood with delightful freshness and spontaneity. He was much pleased one day when an English artist, trained in the schools, but hospitable to new suggestions, recognized what he was striving for in one of these drawings : ” You ‘ve got an exuberant barbaric effect there a kind of an American Kremlin,” he said ; “lots of color and noise and life.”

A vigorous and masterful panorama of ephemeral magnificence such was the ideal these sketches present. Kremlin and Nishni-Novgorod give suggestions of the turn his mind was taking with regard to form and splendor. This idea of a World’s Fair would not have given the nations a Celestial City it would not have been divine, but it would have been sympathetically and broadly human. Its appeal to the popular imagination would have been, perhaps, the more intimate, potent, and enduring. Root’s sketches adopted usually the Romanesque type of arch and column as a form more pliable than the Greek, a form which admitted the use of American species of flower and leaf in ornamentation. The Fisheries Building, which was designed by Mr. Henry Ives Cobb, was the best example on the grounds of Root’s ideas of Fair architecture. Its frankly playful use of staff, as a medium whose easy plasticity invited an endless variety of gay detail, would have struck him as honest and poetic ; and the delicate, even humorous adaptation of sea-forms of animal and plant life would have appealed to his sense of fitness. Such happy imaginings, however, he would have vivified with color instead of freezing them in white. Color was, to his feeling, a necessity in any architectural expression of a great festival. In this opinion he was at one with the Greeks themselves, who added to the creamy translucency of their marble brilliant accents of color. He was outborne also by the instinct of the people, who loved the Court of Honor best, not when the noon sunshine glared on its facades of opaque white, but when the twilight made them luminous with pink and gold and purple, or the Night, flashing her million lamps, clothed them in mysteries of shimmer and shade.

I am convinced that the people would have responded with joy to an intelligent use of color in the treatment of buildings at the great festival, that it would have added a strong element of beauty and gaiety, and emphasized the
grandeur of noble facades. The Transportation Building, with its beautiful Golden Door, was an interesting experi-
ment in this direction, although Mr. Sullivan’s sumptuous orientalism was scarcely given a fair setting as the only
strong note of color among many classic fagades of changeless white. Problems of out-door decoration have been
studied but little by our decorators, for the best of reasons.

Root had much confidence in Mr. William Pretyman’s ideas on this subject, an enthusiast whose old-world studies did
not make him reject new ideas. During these months they discussed somewhat this problem of out-door color, and
afterwards, when Mr. Pretyman was appointed Chief of Color for the Fair, he experimented in the tinting of staff with thin washes of pure transparent oil-colors, believing that opaque paint of the ordinary kind would harden and artificialize the delicate material, and that white especially would destroy its creamy translucency. In these experi-
ments beautiful results were obtained, but Mr. Pretyman resigned his post too early to carry out his ideas, the only
example of them on the grounds being the little East India House, that delicate opal set in green. Any one who saw
the Fisheries Building, for example, when it was first completed in 1892, and noted the lovely amber tones of the
staff melting graciously into the sunlight, could not fail to feel a painful shock when this seductive bloom was hidden
forever under the heavier white. Somehow the poetry of the building seemed to have gone out of it.

Root’s possible decisions in points of detail are of course a mere matter of conjecture. While he lived all projects were still chaotic, and his mind, as usual, was open to all suggestions. We know only his initial preferences, not his ultimate choice. During these months the scale was still his dominant thought. ” He was thinking of the bones no one else did,” says a gentleman familiar with him at this time. ” He had dug up his mammoth and set it up while others were wondering how big such an animal could be, and when told of its existence, were opening their eyes without being able to measure its magnitude.” Yet he did not neglect the sinews and integument of his giant. During these last weeks of his life he caused experiments with colored tiles and terra-cotta to be carried on at the terra-cotta works ; and his accurate mind a mind which, in the service of clients, hated extravagance and waste was full of speculations in regard to the availability and cost of this material and of others, such as glass, wood, staff. Staff, which had been used extensively in Paris, was not his preference for large structures, though it might have been his choice eventually for a great deal of the work. He would never have used it in imitation of marble, but he would have appreciated its delightful temptations to gaiety of modeling and coloring. Terra-cotta, in rather strong tones, he would undoubtedly have used as extensively as its price would admit. But, whatever the materials, his whole heart was centred upon his hope of an American Fair an architectural scheme which should express exuberantly our young, crude, buoyant civilization, and strike our note at last in the world’s art.

A Daughter of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland

Title: A Daughter of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland

Location: Google Books     Date: 1921

Hamlin Garland and Lorado Taft were very good friends. The excerpt I have chosen is from Hamlin’s second book in his autobiographical series and recounts how he met Taft and a little on the founding of the famous “Little Room” literary club. This book also won Garland  the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1922.  

My first formal introduction to the literary and artistic circle in which I was destined to work and war for many years, took place through the medium of an address on Impressionism in Art which I delivered in the library of Franklin Head, a banker whose home had become one of the best-known intellectual meeting places on the North Side. This lecture, considered very radical at the time, was the direct outcome of several years of study and battle in Boston in support of the open-air school of painting, a school which was astonishing the West with its defiant play of reds and yellows, and the flame of its purpie shadows. As a missionary in the interest of the New Art, I rejoiced in this opportunity to advance its inspiring heresies.

 While uttering my shocking doctrines (entrenched behind a broad, book-laden desk), my eyes were attracted to the face of a slender black-bearded young man whose shining eyes and occasional smiling nod indicated a joyous agreement with the main points of my harangue. I had never seen him before, but I at once recognized in him a fellow conspirator against “The Old Hat” forces of conservatism in painting.

At the close of my lecture he drew near and putting out his hand, said, “My name is Taft—Lorado Taft. I am a sculptor, but now and again I talk on painting. Impressionism is all very new here in the West, but like yourself I am an advocate of it, I am doing my best to popularize a knowledge of it, and I hope you will call upon me at my studio some afternoon—any afternoon and discuss these isms with me.”

Young Lorado Taft interested me, and I instantly accepted his invitation to call, and in this way (notwithstanding a wide difference in training and temperament), a friendship was established which has never been strained even in the fiercest of our esthetic controversies. Many others of the men and women I met that night became my co-workers in the building of the “greater Chicago,” which was even then coming into being—the menace of the hyphenate American had no place in our thoughts.

In less than a month I fell into a routine as regular, as peaceful, as that in which I had moved in Boston. Each morning in my quiet sunny room I wrote, with complete absorption, from seven o’clock until noon, confidently composing poems, stories, essays, and dramas. I worked like a painter with several themes in hand passing from one to the other as I felt inclined. After luncheon I walked down town seeking exercise and recreation. It soon became my habit to spend an hour or two in Taft’s studio (I fear to his serious detriment), and in this way I soon came to know most of the “Bunnies” of “the Rabbit-Warren” as Henry B. Fuller characterized this studio building —and it well deserved the name! Art was young and timid in Cook County.

Among the women of this group Bessie Potter, who did lovely statuettes of girls and children, was a notable figure. Edward Kemeys, Oliver Dennett Grover, Charles Francis Browne, and Hermon MacNeill, all young artists of high endowment, and marked personal charm became my valued associates and friends. We were all equally poor and equally confident of the future. Our doubts were few and transitory as cloud shadows, our hopes had the wings of eagles.

As Chicago possessed few clubs of any kind and had no common place of meeting for those who cultivated the fine arts, Taft’s studio became, naturally, our center of esthetic exchange. Painting and sculpture were not greatly encouraged anywhere in the West, but Lorado and his brave colleagues, hardy frontiersmen of art, laughed in the face of all discouragement.

A group of us often lunched in what Taft called “the Beanery”—a noisy, sloppy little restaurant on Van Buren Street, where our lofty discussions of Grecian sculpture were punctuated by the crash of waiter-proof crockery, or smothered with the howl of slid chairs. However, no one greatly minded these barbarities. They were all a part of the game. If any of us felt particularly flush we dined, at sixty cents each, in the basement of a big department store a few doors further west; and when now and then some good “lay brother” like Melville Stone, or Franklin Head, invited us to a “royal gorge” at Kinsley’s or to a princely luncheon in the tower room of the Union League, we went like minstrels to the baron’s hall. None of us possessed evening suits and some of us went so far as to denounce swallowtail coats as “undemocratic.” I was one of these.

This “artistic gang” also contained several writers who kept a little apart from the journalistic circle of which Eugene Field and Opie Read were the leaders, and though I passed freely from one of these groups to the other I acknowledged myself more at ease with Henry Fuller and Taft and Browne, and a little later I united with them in organizing a society to fill our need of a common meeting place. This association we called The Little Room, a name suggested by Madelaine Yale Wynne’s story of an intermittently vanishing chamber in an old New England homestead.

For a year or two we met in Bessie Potter’s studio, and on the theory that our club, visible and hospitable on Friday afternoon, was non-existent during all the other days of the week, we called it “the Little Room.” Later still we shifted to Ralph Clarkson’s studio in the Fine Arts Building—where it still flourishes.

The fact is, I was a poor club man. I did not smoke, and never used rum except as a hair tonic—and beer and tobacco were rather distasteful to me. I do not boast of this singularity, I merely state it. No doubt I was considered a dull and profitless companion even in “the Little Room,” but in most of my sobrieties Taft and Browne upheld me, though they both possessed the redeeming virtue of being amusing, which I, most certainly, never achieved.

Taft was especially witty in his sly, sidewise comment, and often when several of us were in hot debate, his sententious or humorous retorts cut or stung in defence of some esthetic principle much more effectively than most of my harangues. Sculpture, with him, was a religious faith, and he defended it manfully and practiced it with skill and an industry which was astounding.

 Though a noble figure and universally admired, he had, like myself, two very serious defects, he was addicted to frock coats and the habit of lecturing! Although he did not go so far as to wear a plaid Windsor tie with his “Prince Albert” coat (as I have been accused of doing), he displayed something of the professor’s zeal in his platform addresses. I would demur against the plaid Windsor tie indictment if I dared to do so, but a certain snapshot portrait taken by a South-side photographer of that day (and still extant) forces me to painful confession—-I had such a tie, and I wore it with a frock coat. My social status is thus clearly defined.

Taft’s studio, which was on the top floor of the Athenaeum- Building on Van Buren Street, had a section which he called “the morgue,” for the reason that it was littered with piaster duplicates of busts, arms, and hands. This room, fitted up with shelf-like bunks, was filled nearly every night with penniless young sculptors who camped in primitive simplicity amid the grewsome discarded portraits of Cook County’s most illustrious citizens. Several of these roomers have since become artists of wide renown, and I refrain from disclosing their names. No doubt they will smile as they recall those nights amid their landlord’s cast-off handiwork.

Taft was an “easy mark” in those times, a shining hope to all the indigent models, discouraged painters and other esthetic derelicts of the Columbian Exposition. No artist suppliant ever knocked at his door without getting a dollar, and some of them got twenty. For several years Clarkson and I had him on our minds because of this gentle and yielding disposition until at last we discovered that in one way or another, in spite of a reckless prodigality, he prospered. The bread which he cheerfully cast upon these unknown waters, almost always returned (sometimes from another direction) in loaves at least as large as biscuits. His fame steadily increased with his charity. I did not understand the principle of his manner of life then, and I do not now. By all the laws of my experience he should at this moment be in the poorhouse, but he isn’t—he is rich and honored and loved.

 In sculpture he was, at this time a conservative, a worshiper of the Greek, and it would seem that I became his counter-irritant, for my demand for “A native art” kept him wholesomely stirred up. One by one as the years passed he yielded esthetic positions which at first he most stoutly held. He conceded that the Modern could not be entirely expressed by the Ancient, that America might sometime grow to the dignity of having an art of its own, and that in sculpture (as in painting and architecture) new problems might arise. Even in his own work (although he professed but one ideal, the Athenian) he came at last to include the plastic value of the red man, and to find in the expression of the Sioux or Omaha a certain sorrowful dignity which fell parallel with his own grave temperament, for, despite his smiling face, his best work remained somber, almost tragic in spirit.

Photo credit: The Hamlin Garland Collection, University of Southern California

The Little Theatre in the United States By Constance D’Arcy Mackay

Title: The Little Theatre in the United States by Constance D’Arcy Mackay

Location: Google Books     Date: 1917

The Fine Arts Building in Chicago is one of my favorite places to visit. This is just one of the reasons…

The Little Theatres of Chicago

Chicago, the largest city in the West, has three Little Theatres, each one having a strong note of individuality. Taken separately they represent three distinct types of theatres. Maurice Browne’s pioneer Little Theatre represents the repertory art theatre; the Workshop Theatre represents the localistic experimental theatre; the Hull House Theatre with the Hull House Players represents the sociological type.

Of these theatres Maurice Browne’s Little Theatre was the first to be established in 1911-1912. It is located , on the fourth floor of the Fine Arts building on Michigan Avenue. Its charming interiors white outlined in gold, and there are dark green seats. The auditorium is long and narrow. The seating capacity is ninety-one.

From the day of its founding Mr. Browne, in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties, has held to the idea for which this Little Theatre was established. It was not as easy to make a success of a Little Theatre in 1912 as it is in 1917. There was no public ready and waiting for the non-commercial fare Mr. Browne had to offer. He had to fight the early prejudice that labeled a Little Theatre “Dangerous! Beware of Highbrowism.” It is a thousand times easier to succeed with the Little Theatre today than it was when Mr. Browne first sought to establish his. People have become used to the idea of Little Theatres. They are no longer looked upon as jsljange and impractical.

Maurice Browne’s Little Theatre is thus described by its founder: ” It is a repertory and experimental art theatre producing classical and modern plays, both tragedy and comedy, at popular prices. Preference is given in its productions to poetic and imaginative plays, dealing primarily whether as tragedy or comedy with character in action. . . . It has for its object the creation of a new plastic and rlrythmic drama in America.”

The Little Theatre is supported by a membership of  some 400 people who pay an’ annual subscription of ten dollars, and by the sale of seats to the general public. The subscribers who pay ten dollars a year are admitted to all performances of the Little Theatre Company without charge, and to all other entertainments given in the Little Theatre at half price. Admission is one dollar. So admirably have the finances been managed that the Little Theatre, which began with an indebtedness of $10,500, was able to pay off fifty-five per cent, of its debt after three months’ work. And this work included the production of plays produced primarily for love of art and not for love of gain. The plays were simply and beautifully staged at surprisingly low cost. It is an eagle’s feather in the cap of Mr. Browne that eighteen performances were given—and well given—in his tiny theatre for a total of $868.62!

The staff and players at the Little Theatre number . approximately thirty-five people. The company is semi- ‘ professional. All those who have completed two years’ consecutive service with the theatre receive a small salary averaging ten dollars weekly. During the first three and a half years of the Little Theatre’s existence no salary was in excess of sixteen dollars and fifty cents a week.

The Little Theatre produces plays by European and ‘ American authors. One-act plays and three and four- act plays have been produced in about equal numbers.

Among the greatest successes of the Little Theatre have been the remarkable production of Euripides, The Trojan Women, which antedated Granville Barker’s and other “art” productions of this time-defying drama; the beautiful and reverent Christmas mystery play done in silhouette; and from the point of view of scenic art Maurice Browne’s The King of the Jews, and Maurice Baring’s Catherine Parr. Mr. Browne is stage director as well as moving spirit of the Little Theatre and C. Raymond Johnson his art director. Mr. Johnson has designed the investiture for all of the Little Theatre’s most significant productions.

The Trojan Women was a triumph for the Little Theatre because it brought the vasty deeps of that ancient tragedy into a small playhouse onto a small stage and yet gave the illusion of bigness. There was fine breadth and sweep to the acting; the poses of the chorus were plastic and pictorial. Its stern simplicity was far more moving than Granville Barker’s more elaborate production.

 The Little Theatre produced The Trojan Women during the season of 1912-1913. It was the first production of this play in America. It was revived by the Little Theatre Company during the season of 1913-1914. In the course of both these seasons it was played in several other American cities by the same company, who revived it again during the season 1914-1915, and toured the country with it from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast.

The Trojan Women had one scene throughout: A massive stone wall lost to view beyond the line of the proscenium arch, formed the background. This stone wall, jaggedly cleft in the center, showed the sky beyond. Not only were the massive squares of stone that formed the wall played on by different lights as the play proceeded; but the sky beyond the jagged cleft changed gradually from the intense blue of full day to the softer colors of dusk, thus giving differentiation. The red of the flaming city also flared beyond this cleft, and characters entering or leaving the scene stood out in dark silhouette against the fiery background. It was a scenic triumph made possible largely through its remarkable lighting.

The Christmas Mystery Play was given totally in silhouette, with the figures of the New Testament story moving in flat shadow bas-relief against the curtain. This shadow play was lit from the back. The slightest miscalculation of distance or of lighting would have wrought havoc with it; but it was from first to last superbly done. Looking at it one felt that this was perhaps the only way in which the story of the New Testament could be told without offense. The characters were not substantial flesh and blood, but figures of strange mystery, moving as in a dream.

Mr. Johnson’s work as a colorist was seen to advantage in his costume effects for Maurice Browne’s King of the Jews. Here color became a symbol, as in the harsh red and gold of the Roman guard. The costume of Judas, a sinister muddy green combined with muddy lavender, gave his vivid red hair and beard a startling effect. Caiphas was curiously effective in purplish gray and ochre. The Little Theatre is fortunate in its decorations. The banquet hall scene, designed for Maurice Baring’s Catherine Parr, was memorable for its greenish- blue banquet table and greenish-blue high-back banquet chairs set against the background of heavy bluish-purple curtains. These curtains parted to display a flat Rein hardtesque wall of apple green. §till another strange and regal effect was attained through a Little Theatre design of purple banquet chairs and table placed against the background of dark green hangings that parted on the flat wall flooded with yellow light.

It was a dictum of August Strindberg’s that no.Little Theatre with a small stage could ever present outdoor scenes successfully. The Chicago Little Theatre has shattered this idea by a design made by its art director for a midsummer wood. This design was recently exhibited in New York. It showed a scene flooded with the bluish white of moonlight. There was a shallow stage and a back drop of faint bluish white. In the center of this back drop was a great creamy midsummer moon, round and low-lying, just coming up over the rim of the midsummer dusk. One great dark branchless tree trunk soared up beyond the proscenium arch, and was lost to view. To look at this scene was to feel that in a moment Titania and her fairy revelers would appear. It was of magic loveliness, yet simplicity itself.

Mr. Browne’s Little Theatre has been a potent influence in the art of the West and its players, many of whom are now appearing in other Little Theatres, are spreading the non-commercial gospel for which he stands.

World Digital Library Launches April 21st

UNESCO and Library of Congress sign agreement for World Digital Library.

As a strong believer in open digital libraries, free to all, I am excited about the news that the eagerly anticipated World Digital Library will open its virtual doors on April 21, 2009.

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

According to The History News Network, the project is “the brainchild of James Billington, from the US’s Library of Congress, the project has been developed by Unesco and the Library of Congress, along with 32 other partners from around the world, including national libraries from Iraq, Egypt, Russia, Brazil, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Uganda.”

To learn more about how the site was created, what will be included and how you will be able to use it, visit the World Digital Library website – and be sure to watch the video.

The World’s Fair City and her Enterprising Sons by C. Dean

Title: The World’s Fair City and her Enterprising Sons by C. Dean

Location: Internet Archive     Date published: 1892

There were many books published about The Columbian Exposition immediately following its closing; guide books of all sorts, books about the awards given out and even cookbooks. The purpose of this book was to promote the Fair and, more importantly, Chicago, to the world. Chicago had a reputation for being a bit bawdy, shall we say, so the author here endeavered to place the city in the best light possible, emphsizing its enterprising businessmen and their charitable deeds. No robber barons here! Our millionaires are kind, generous and humble! 

The following excerpt is on Nathaniel K. Fairbank (1829-1903), the millionaire mogul who made a fortune as a lard processor and soap maker (N. K. Fairbank & Co.) , by-products of Chicago’s meatpacking industry. His Fairy Soap was extremely popular. Fairbank was also the owner of the land now known as “Streeterville” in Chicago, a founder and president of the elite Chicago Club, a founder of the Commercial Club of Chicago, an original trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, president of The University of Chicago, a major trader on the Chicago Board of Trade, a member of The Chicago Literary Club, and a benefactor of St. Luke’s Hospital. As far as Chicago’s early millionares go, he was honestly considered one of the good guys.

Following is a description of Mr. Fairbank from Chapter VIII. 

 

NATHANIEL K. FAIRBANK

 

Nathaniel Kellogg Fairbank

At this age in which so many seekers after wealth are devoting their lives, before and after maturity, to the hoarding of riches, it is restful and comforting to find a man who is satisfied that he has in his possession enough of this world’s goods.

 Nathaniel K. Fairbank is one of Chicago’s most wealthy men, but he has retired from business pursuits, and is enjoying life as a man who has done his duty, and has learned what follows in the consistent order of such events. To say the least, it is refreshing to note such men for they are like the angel visits scarce. But he should not be eulogized simply because he is a sane man, but should be counted in as one of the select who see further than the common millionaires, who are not strong enough to discontinue accumulating, and are not willing to take a rest and let some one else have a chance.

 

Mr. Fairbank was born in 1829, in the town of Sodus, Wayne County, New York, consequently he has now reached the age when he can look back upon a long life of work, successful results, perhaps some mistakes and not a few of good deeds rendered to the human family.

His personal appearance is strikingly pleasing. An intelligent brow, with eyes direct in expression, denoting a tendency to generalization rather than to special observation, a nose somewhat Roman in outline, but modified enough to escape the accusation of carrying pet ideas to extremes, yet prominent enough to make him appear at times a trifle stubborn, a mouth bespeaking tenderness and refinement, all of which are set in a framework of snow-white hair and whiskers, make him a conspicuous personage among Chicago’s enterprising sons.

  Mr. Fairbank has been a resident of Chicago since 1855. He amassed his large fortune in the lard and oil refining business, but he made his first start in industrial life as a bricklayer, when only fifteen years of age. This fact was probably due to his environments at that time, for, according to the record of his life, he soon changed his employment to that of bookkeeper in a flouring mill, in Rochester, New York, where he afterward became apartner in the firm.

His course was ever onward, and his aim was for the attainment of success. The success that would make him comfortable, and place him in a position to lift up humanity. At the age of twenty-six he came to Chicago as western representative of a grain commission house of New York. In this position he remained over ten years. It is inferred that he accumulated money in the business for he is next recorded as a member of the newly organized firm of Smeadley, Peck & Company, and as furnishing capital for the building which was erected for the great enterprise lard and oil refining. For four years business was carried on successfully, when fire destroyed the plant, causing a loss of $50,000. But the next year, 1870, a new building, which is now standing at the corner of Eighteenth and Blackwell streets, was constructed at a cost of $80,000, and the business grew more prosperous, becoming one of Chicago’s most substantial enterprises.

 

Although Mr. Fairbank says that he is naturally inclined to be somewhat indolent, it is very plain that he had a very nice conception of the manner in which it should be indulged; for he seems not to have let this little weakness exist without ample provision. ‘ ‘ Life is a search after power. ” And, if it is a fact, that wherever the mind aims suitable environments follow, this man has drawn, the elements of a power for certain ends, by the means of intellectual guidance. ‘ ‘ When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse. ” Goethe said, ‘ ‘ What we wish for in youth comes in heaps on us in our old age. ” Here is a proof of this statement. Mr. Fairbank courted ease of the princely style; consequently he never borrowed trouble, kept to the even path, and was served by his instincts. He may call himself a man of luck, but, as ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, hunters to the forest, soldiers to the frontier, Mr. Fairbank has proven the same law of  cause and effect, and the force of intellect over environment.

 

Having gained wealth, he commenced at once to show his interest in public matters relating to the building up of the city, and has proved a powerful factor in that capacity. He was one of the prime movers in carrying out the late George B. Carpenter’s conception of  building Central Music Hall, a structure located on the corner of State and Randolph streets. This building, which has a number of office rooms, is occupied by the Chicago Conservatory of Music, Professor Cohn’s School of Languages, and by a great number of physicians. In 1879 Mr. Fairbank presented the plans for Central Music Hall before the public; and, by the influence of his endorsement, capitalists quickly invested in stock. There is probably no better paying building in the city; stockholders realizing about two per cent, a month net profits.

 

The Newsboys’ Home was at one time under the cloud of a heavy mortgage, but Mr. Fairbank took it in hand and soon raised the money to release it. Always giving liberally himself, he inspired others to do the same. In this way he performed double acts of charity; for there are wealthy men who are never inclined to bestow favors unless prompted by the example of  other rich men, or by the desire for public applause. ‘ ‘ Human nature grows by what it feeds upon, and if the material side be over-fed it will expand at the expense of the spiritual.” In this way the habit of accumulating money grows stronger and stronger with those who have neither the inclination nor desire to relieve the wants of the afflicted.  

The Theatre; Its Early Days in Chicago By James Hubert McVicker

Title: The Theatre; Its Early Days in Chicago: A Paper Read Before the Chicago Historical Society, February 19, 1884 By James Hubert McVicker

Location: Google Books     Date Published: 1884

James McVicker (1822-1896) was one of Chicago’s foremost theatrical managers. At the time of his death, the McVicker’s Theater was the oldest in the city, although it had burned to the ground twice. The first McVicker’s Theater (located on Madison near Dearborn) was built in 1857 and burned in the Great Fire of 1871. The former actor was undeterred and rebuilt his theater on a grander scale.

In this excerpt, McVicker relates the story of theater in Chicago’s earliest days. 

James Hubert McVicker

Doubtless there are now living in Chicago those who were present at the first theatrical performance given in the city, but dates are seldom in ” our memory locked,” and hence I have found it impossible to fix the exact time, yet for all purposes of history it will be sufficiently marked.

The original of this first application for a theatrical license, together with others covering a period of nine years from 1837, were found in the only vault belonging to the city, which withstood the flames of October 9, 1871, and are the only authentic records bearing on the subject of the early amusements of the city which I have been able to avail myself of. Among these applications is one asking for a permit to erect a ” show of flying horses,” and that the application should be in keeping with  the show, it is addressed to the M-A-R-E of Chicago. No response from his Honor is on record.

The first public entertainment, of any kind, to which an admission fee was charged, and of which any record can be found, took place on Monday, February 24, 1834, but a few months after the Pottawatomies had consented to give up their land to the white man. On the 18th day of that month the Democrat contained this advertisement: ” Ladies and gentlemen are most respectfully informed that Mr. Barnes, professor de tours amusants, has arrived in town and will give an exhibition at the house of Mr. D. Graves, on Monday evening next.” This entertainment was given in two parts : the first being feats of the Fire King; the second a display of ventriloquism and legerdemain, which Mr. Barnes said were original and ” too numerous to mention.” The performance commenced at early candle light and the admission to it was fifty cents. While the classic tragedian would not admit that this entertainment was in any way connected with his art, and might claim that it should not be blended with a history of the drama, it must nevertheless be accepted as a starting point, even if his professional pride receives a snub. The second recorded performance was given June 11, 1834, when another ventriloquist, Mr. Kenworthy, according to the Democrat, delighted the inhabitants. On the 1gth of June of the same year a concert was given by Mr. C. Blisse. Entertainments, shows and circuses preceded dramatic performance, of which the first mention bears date May 29, 1837, when Messrs. Dean and McKinney applied to the Council for a license to “open a theatre in some suitable building for the term of one or more months as the business may answer.” The authorities were asked to make the license payable weekly, but the request was denied and the Council named $100 as the amount, which sum must have dismayed the applicants, for they abandoned Chicago, and no dramatic performance took place under their management.

 

 

In this vault was found the following application, which is undoubtedly the first in reply to which a license was issued :

“Chicago, October 17, 1837. The subscribers respectfully petition the Honorable the Mayor and Council of the city of Chicago for a license to perform plays in said city. They respectfully represent that this establishment is intended to afford instruction as well as amusement; that they are encouraged and patronized by the leading portion of the inhabitants of the city, who are interested in their success; that they propose to remain here during the winter and that they make no calculation to receive more money in the city than what they shall expend during their stay and therefore they trust that in offering a rate for license these facts may be taken into consideration. Isherwood & McKinzie, the petitioners, request this license for six months, if agreeable to the Board.” The Council fixed the rate at $125.00 for the year, which amount the petitioners paid, while protesting that it was unjust to ask so much.

The first home of the overtaxed drama was the historic Sauganash Hotel located on the southeast corner of Lake and Market. During September, 1837, its proprietor, John Murphy, had vacated it, to move into his new house on the west side of the river and Isherwood & McKinzie converted the dining room of the Sauganash into a temple where Thalia, Melpomene and Terpsichore found their first Chicago home. The room was provided with rough seats for about two hundred persons. The floor was level, and a few common chairs were placed in front for ladies and their escorts. Mr. Isherwood, one of the managers, is still living; and, until within the past five or six years, occupied the position of scenic artist of Wallack’s Theatre, New York. He painted the first scenery known to Chicago. I wrote him with the hope of reaching some exact dates, but as he has only memory to rely upon, I learned nothing but what I had obtained from others ; though he replied in a very interesting letter, ending thus :

“In concluding this rambling, epistle, I could almost say with King Lear ‘ you do me wrong to take me from the grave.’ I am eighty years of age, and, with best wishes, remain yours truly, H. Isherwood.”

Photo Credit: New York Public Library Digital Gallery, Digital ID 99215; Photographer, Fred D. Foss

Cartoons By Bradley, Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News

Book Title: Cartoons By Bradley, Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News

Location: Internet Archive     Date published: 1917

In July of 1899, Luther Bradley (1853-1917) joined the staff of the Chicago Daily News and he became one the newspaper’s most famous and beloved political cartoonists. This book was published after his death. It includes a biography and remembrance written by Daily News editor, Henry Justin Smith and a generous selection of his beautifully drawn cartoons reflecting the issues of the period. 

Bradley

 

Luther Daniels Bradley, whose cartoons commanded admiration

everywhere, was never personally conspicuous. He did not make speeches, or sit on platforms, or seek office. His very portrait was almost unknown. In an age when publicity comes easily to less eminent men, when, indeed, popular persons are so much written about that their work is less known than their way of working, Luther Bradley managed to live unobtrusively. Yet he had friends, thousands of friends who never saw him, but who felt that in his cartoons he spoke directly to them. They wrote to him, not as “Dear sir,” but as “Dear Mr. Bradley.” In the scrapbooks wherein he methodically pasted every cartoon he had published for the last seventeen years, he laid away scores of these letters, some from people of note, the majority from that vast body of “plain citizens” he loved to serve. They said in these letters he had “helped”‘ them. They asked his advice. Mothers poured out to him their thoughts. Little boys sent drawings painfully copying his style. He laid all these tenderly away where he could see them again. They were his banquets.

 

THIS picture, drawn by John T. McCutcheon, the noted cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune, was published in that newspaper January 11, 1917, the day of Luther D. Bradley's funeral. The tribute was characteristic of Mr. McCutcheon's sincerity in his friendships. Equally sincere was his spoken corrunent at the time of Mr. Bradley's death: "He was great all the time… not just now and then."

Walks About Chicago, 1871-1881 By Franc Bangs Wilkie

Full Title: “Walks about Chicago,” 1871-1881: And Army and Miscellaneous Sketchesby Franc Bangs Wilkie

Location: Google Books     Date Published: 1882

The satiric stories and essays written by Franc Wilkie (1832-1892) and contained in this book provide an interesting view of post-Civil War America. Wilkie had been a war correspondent for the New York Timesand during the Civil War he accompanied General Ulysses S. Grant from the taking of Fort Henry to the Battle of Vicksburg. In 1863, Wilkie joined the staff of the Chicago Times and remained with the newspaper until 1882. Wilkie was extremely versatile as a writer, and his satire was some of the best.

The following excerpt gives Wilkie’s view of a strange land, known by locals as the “Nord Seite” of Chicago. I think you’ll enjoy it.

NORD SEITE

THE geography, customs, productions, people, and so forth, of a new country, are always full of interest.

Once, when I was traveling about, I reached a place known among its inhabitants as ” Nord Seite.” I spent some time there. I found much to interest a traveler. Nord Seite is situated in about the same latitude as Chicago, and is about 10 degrees of longitude west of Washington. Its population is about 60,000.

To reach it from Chicago, one can take rail to New York; thence go by steamer to Alaska, via Cape Horn; from Alaska south to about the 42nd parallel; thence east by stage and rail, 2,000 miles, to Nord Seite.

Nord Seite has an immense body of water en one side, and a river whose main stream and one branch inclose two of the remaining sides. Nord Seite is, therefore, a sort of peninsula.

The river referred to is deep and sluggish. It can not be forded. It can not be crossed in small boats on account of its exhalations. These are a combination of sulphuretted hydrogen, the odor of decaying rodents, and the stench of rotting brassica. In crossing this river a sort of contrivance is resorted to, which is termed by the natives, Briicke.

This Briicke is not always reliable. Sometimes one can get over the river by its means, oftener he can’t. The Briicke is built of wood and iron, painted red, and at a distance looks not unlike a stumpy sort of rainbow.

The inhabitants of Nord Seite consist of men, women, children, dogs, billy-goats, pigs, cats, and fleas. In estimating the proportion of each of these classes, it is found that the fleas vastly outnumber all the others. They are not only numerous, but full-grown and vicious.

In the warm season a Nord-Seiter has a lively time in flea-hunting. In hunting this game the Nord Seiter shuts himself or herself in a tight room and strips to the skin. Then the flea is pursued and captured.

Most all the Nord Seite dogs are good flea hunters. They commence hunting fleas when young, without any instruction. Pretty much all their lives are spent in pursuit of this pastime.

The human population of Nord Seite is industrious. In the flea and fly time especially.

 

 

 

The business of the inhabitants of Nord Seite consists of a great variety of pursuits and occupations. These pursuits and occupations divide themselves naturally into two large classes. The first includes every other male resident of Nord Seite. These are engaged in selling a liquid which tastes something like a mixture of hops and rosin. It is the color of amber, and is surmounted with a white, yeasty, flaky coronal. The other class includes every man, woman and child in Nord Seite. This class is engaged in drinking what the other class is engaged in selling.

From the large admixture of hops in this universal beverage, it results that the residents of North Seite are very fond of dancing.

The ladies of North Seite are usually feminine in dress, and oftentimes so in fact and appearance. They mostly wear their hair braided in small plaits, which are again braided in larger plaits, which are braided into still larger ones; and these are once more braided into a large braid, which is twisted, and coiled, and wound and intertwined in, and around, and through, and about, and over, and under itself, till it resembles a riddle tied in a Gordian knot, and the whole enveloped in a rebus which nobody ever can guess.

When a Nord-Seite lady once gets her hair done up in this complex and elaborate style, she never takes it down. She couldn’t if she would. The only method of removing this style of coiffure is to shave the head.

Intercommunication in Nord-Seite is carried on in various ways. Many of the inhabitants go on foot. Others have a small two-wheeled vehicle, to which are harnessed a dog and a small boy, or a little girl.

They also have tracks upon which run vehicles which they term Vagens. The Vagen is drawn by two horses.

The Vagen is used principally for the conveyance of passengers carrying goods. It will answer to what would be an express-car in this country, in which each man should ride carrying whatever article he wished expressed to any point.

I have been in a Vagen in which a woman, on one side of me, carried on her lap a clothes-basket; in which were four heads of cabbage ; six links of imported sausage ; one bottle of goose-grease ; two loaves of a brown, farinaceous product termed Brodt; a calf’s liver; some strips of what is known as Schweinfleisch; a half peck of onions ; a string of garlic ; and a large piece of a fragrant compound known as Limburger Kdse.

On the other side of me was a woman with a baby in her arms ; a small child on each knee ; two other children, a trifle larger, on their knees, on each side of her, looking out of the windows of the Vagen ; and five other children, of various sizes, picturesquely grouped about her knees and on the floor. The same sort of thing was seen all through the Vagen. Each woman either had from four to nine children, or a basket that filled half the vehicle. Sometimes a woman would have the basket and the children both.

A very common patroness of the Vagen was a woman with two buckets of swill, carried by a yoke from the neck. The woman with the swill buckets was very common. She usually made her appearance at every third square. She didn’t generally look very attractive. If possible, she smelt a trifle worse than she looked.

The’ Nord-Seiter is economical. No matted if he earn nothing per diem, he always has enough to buy a mug of the amber fluid, and have five cents over, which he puts away in the bottom of an old stocking.

There is no newspaper published in Nord Seite. But there is a brewery there. So is there a distillery. There is likewise a place where they sell a beverage known as Lager Bier.

When two or three Nord-Seiters are conversing confidentially on a subject which they wish nobody else to hear, their whisper is about as loud as the tone in which a Chicago man would say, “Oh, Bill!” to an acquaintance two blocks away.

When two or three Nord-Seiters converse in an ordinary tone of voice, the result is a tremendous roar. A stranger would think them engaged in a hot, terrific altercation.

A Nord-Seite Vagen is an epitome of one hundred and eight distinct odors, of which onions constitute the dominant.

Some of the Nord-Seiters speak a little broken English.

 

 

 

There are many other curious things about Nord Seite and its population. Any body who has time and money should visit the place. The people are hospitable. Any one can visit them; reside with them as long as necessary; study their customs, and enjoy himself very thoroughly.