The Not-So-Jazzy Age: The Union Stockyards

Now that I've devoted some time to delving into my apartment building and some aspects of my neighborhood at home, I think it's high time that I turn to the neighborhood where I work: the Stockyards Industrial Complex, former home of the Union Stockyards. Nowadays, this is just a big office complex, mostly home to heavy industry (and one publishing company, which is where I work). It's a lot of big warehouse-type buildings with truck docks. 100 years ago, though, this was the meat processing capital of the world. Farmers and ranchers from all over the Midwest would drive their cattle to the stockyards to sell them to slaughterhouses, where they would be processed and sent out to consumers. The stockyards were opened during the Civil War and continued to operate until the 1970s.

I've grown up in Chicago, been to all of the museums a billion times, and feel like I've got a pretty good handle on Chicago history, but until I started working in Bridgeport, I was really unaware of Chicago's role in the Civil War. There will be more on this later (I often go to meetings in a building that was part of Camp Douglas--I'll have to learn more about that at some point), but for now, let's focus on how Chicago's economy was actually boosted by the war. Prior to the war, the Missippi River really controlled the north-south trade route. When the river was blockaded during the war, the westward expansion of railroads really took off. Chicago, being in the center of everything, began to grow as the "hog butcher of the world," while cities like St. Louis fell into decline without the economic benefit of their major waterway.

The stockyards are called the "Union stockyards" because they were founded by a union of several railroads. Before the union bought the swampy area that became the stockyards, there were a bunch of different smaller stockyards located randomly along the various train routes. It was better for everyone if things were consolidated, and so they established the Union Stockyards. They were processing 2 million animals a year by 1870, and 8 million by 1890. By the turn of the century, the stockyards provided for nearly 82% of all meat consumption. So long as trains went faster than cars and refridgeration was still a growing technology, available in railroad cars but not in more portable forms, the stockyards were a neccessity. But as interstate trucking became more efficient and refridgeration became available in more forms, nobody needed the middle man anymore. It was cheaper and faster for ranchers and farmers to butcher the animals where they were raised and then sell straight to distributors, without needing the stockyards. And so, in 1971, the stockyards closed.

The influence of the stockyards, of course, extended far beyond meat. Anecdotally, I can tell you that every person over 50 who was raised in Chicago has a vivid memory of coming to see the cattle at the stockyards, because whenever I tell anyone where I work, they get a faraway look in their eyes and tell me a long, drawn-out description of what it was like when the cows were here. And, certainly, it did serve as inspiration, most notably for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. In it, he wrote, "It was the incarnation of blind and insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher--it was the spirit of Capitalism made flesh." So there you have it.

Today, the stockyards industrial complex is kind of empty and rundown, but it has a certain mystery about it. Most of the buildings in the area are newer, charmless warehouse type spaces, but every so often, you'll turn a corner and see a stately civic building crumbling to ruin, or an abandoned turn of the century factory yard. You get glimpses of the optimism, idealism, and sheer strength of industry that must have characterized this area 100 years ago.

The Stockyards National Bank, 1924

 "To the west of the yards ran Ashland Avenue, and here was an unbroken line of saloons--"Whiskey Row," they called it; to the north was Forty- seventh Street, where there were half a dozen to the block, and at the angle of the two was "Whiskey Point," a space of fifteen or twenty acres, and containing one glue factory and about two hundred saloons. One might walk among these and take his choice: "Hot pea-soup and boiled cabbage today." "Sauerkraut and hot frankfurters. Walk in." "Bean soup and stewed lamb. Welcome." All of these things were printed in many languages, as were also the names of the resorts, which were infinite in their variety and appeal. There was the "Home Circle" and the "Cosey Corner"; there were "Firesides" and "Hearthstones" and "Pleasure Palaces" and "Wonderlands" and "Dream Castles" and "Love's Delights." Whatever else they were called, they were sure to be called "Union Headquarters," and to hold out a welcome to workingmen; and there was always a warm stove, and a chair near it, and some friends to laugh and talk with. There was only one condition attached,--you must drink." - Sinclar Lewis, The Jungle

Chicago stockyards workers taking a break at "whiskey row."

The American Ever-Ready building on south Ashland, 1916. They manufactured batteries, but their main business was Christmas lights until they were bought by the National Carbon Company.