Uptown in the Jazz Age

My last post was on Essanay Studios, the building next door to the apartment building where I live. I originally began to research Essanay because I wondered if my building may have originally been constructed as housing for people working there. Partly, I wondered about this because my building management company has capitalized on the Essanay location to give its holdings a unique old-timey flair (I live in the "Louella Parons studio," named after a onetime Essanay script writer who went on to become the nation's very first gossip columnist), and partly because of the architecture of the building itself, which is, to put it nicely, "theatrical," comprised of a disparate assortment of byzantine spires, medieval ornamentation, and false Roman ruin-esque walls.

I am not able to find out much about my building, but I do know that it had nothing to do with Essanay studios, as Essanay closed its Chicago location in 1917 and my building was not built until 1932. Based on a 1928 map of the Uptown area (http://chicago.urban-history.org/dist/uptown/uptown01.pdf), it appears that my building may actually have been constructed on Essanay land (I think it must be in that little empty area next to the building labeled "laboratory," based on its location in relation to the cemetery, which definitely extends all the way behind my building). So it seems unlikely that Charlie Chaplin or Gloria Swanson ever partied in the halls of my humble little apartment. Rather, I have come to the conclusion that my apartment building may have been one of several "apartment hotels" that were built in the area then known as Uptown (now I believe we are technically "So Fo," the not-quite-Andersonville area south of Foster) during the Jazz Age.

At this time (roughly 1900s - 1940s), Uptown was one of the city's hottest neighborhoods. Elevated train service had been extended to the area in 1901, and it became a popular place for young newcomers to the city to live on the cheap. Where there were young people, there had to be shopping and entertainment, and so department stores, theaters, and dance halls sprung up everywhere. For a while, people began to wonder whether the excitement of Uptown would eventually eclipse and replace the excitement of the Loop.

Needless to say, this did not happen. Now, the stretch along Broadway from Wilson to Argyle that used to be the main drag of Chicago's hottest neighborhood is mostly host to homeless / crazy people after dark. I tend to spend more of my time in Andersonville along Clark, but when I do go somewhere along Broadway on foot, I am always struck by how broad, empty, and dirty everything seems. The blocks seem so long. The sidewalks seem so wide. The points of interest seem so few and far between. At the time when my apartment building was constructed, though, Clark was just a dumpy stretch of Swedish farmers' shops. Broadway was where it was at. Those broad sidewalks would have been packed with people, and every inch of it would have promised some new excitement or opportunity.

The former Cook's department store. I'm pretty sure this is my current Borders, based on that crazy awning.
  

 Even though it is empty and kind of falling apart, you can still see signs of the grandeur of the Jazz Age, mostly in the enormous theaters and dance halls that dominate the area. Some of them, like the Riveria (a former theater) and the Aragon Ballroom (a former dance hall), are still open and are popular venues for concerts and that kind of thing. I've been to shows in both of them and they are awesome venues--something about being in a dark, somewhat dilapidated 1930's ballroom really sets the mood.

The dance floor of the Aragon Ballroom, back in the day.

The area around Lawrence and Broadway really seems to be flooded with these big theaters, so I was surprised to learn that there were actually lots more that are no longer there. There were the Lakeside (4730 N. Sheridan, the building is still there but is totally covered with a new tile mural as part of its transformation into the "Alternatives" youth center), DeLuxe (1147 W. Wilson, I think this must have been replaced by Truman College), and Pantheon (4642 N. Sheridan, torn down and turned into a parking lot) theaters. There was also the Arcadia Ballroom (4432 - 4456 N. Broadway, burned down in the 1950s) and the Rainbo Room (Clark and Lawrence, now this is those big stupid condos that look like spaceships across the street from the cemetery).

View down Sheridan in 1910, the building in the back on the left is the Pantheon.

There was also the Uptown Theatre, right on Broadway, which is still there, although it has been closed for a while. I walk by it often on my way to Cook's department store (aka, Borders), and it is all boarded up and does not appear to be well cared for. This is too bad, because it is a neat historical landmark--some of the stars who performed there back in the day include Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and a young Frances Ethel Gumm (later to be known as Judy Garland). It seems that some community groups are organizing to advocate the renovation and continued use of this beautiful, historic space. You can sign a petition to save the historic Uptown theater here: http://www.petitiononline.com/uptown04/

A modern shot of the interior of the Uptown Theatre--could be worse, right?

There was also, way back in the day, the Green Mill, which was a favorite night spot among young people of the Jazz Age and, I am proud to announce, continues to be a favorite night spot with this young person today. It began in 1880 as a truly unfashionable roadhouse, back when the whole area was still farmland. Then, when the neighborhood began to change, it was purchased in 1910 and turned into the Green Mill, named to mimic the Moulin Rouge (literally, "red windmill") in Paris. The person who had purchased it, Tom Chamales, went on to construct the Riviera Theater down the block, and wound up leasing the Green Mill to Henry Van Horne, then taking it over himself again, and then, during the prohibition era, leasing it to Al Capone's south side mob. Capone himself, supposedly, often enjoyed hanging out in the Green Mill. In the 1920s, Capone had a man named Jack McGurn managing the Green Mill. McGurn was part of Capone's inner circle, and was identified as one of the men involved in the St. Valentine's Day massacre, although he was never convicted. The proof, however, might be in his murder, which occurred on February 13, 1936, the day before Valentine's Day, in a bowling alley called the Avenue Recreation Parlor at 805 N. Milwaukee. He was shot to death, and a valentine was placed in his hand, reading: "You've lost your job, / You've lost your dough, / Your jewels and handsome houses. / But things could be worse, you know. / You haven't lost your trousers." He was gunned down by the Moran gang, the same group gunned down by Capone's gang in the St. Valentine's Day massacre, and a group that had actually already tried to kill him by shooting at him while he was in a phone booth. (The phone booth from this incident is, apparently and most bizzarely, in the Reubel Hotel in Grafton, Illinois.)

if you think this is bad, now imagine how bad it would be if he had no pants

Green Mill Gardens, ca. 1915

So anyway. What do all of these theaters and mob hits and creepy valentines have to do with my apartment building? It was, I am surmising, a crazy building for a crazy time. In order to accomodate all of the people moving to the area, "apartment hotels" began opening right and left. There were the Sheridan and Somerset Hotels, two of the biggest buildings. There was the Chatelaine Ladies Hotel at 4911 Winthrop. There was the Viceroy Hotel at Broadway and Kenmore, which I'm pretty sure is still there. There was the Chelsea Hotel on Wilson, and the Daniels Apartment Hotel on Winthrop, and the Melborne Hotel on Racine.

Chatelaine Ladies Hotel

Viceroy Hotel, Broadway and Kenmore



Daniels Apartment Hotel

Hotel Melborne

 These look kind of like my building, right? And the time period is right. So I'm going to go ahead and decide that I live in a Jazz Age apartment hotel.

P.S. I was going to make this its own post, but then thought, "Good God, who cares about this?" So if you do not care at all about the red line setup on the north side, no need to read this. If you have, however, as I often have, wondered why on earth there are red line stops at Wilson, Lawrence, Argyle, and Berwyn, when they are all like a block away from one another, I may have a partial answer.

My L stop is the Argyle red line stop. I'm glad it's there since it's about three blocks from my front door, but it does seem to be the stepchild of Uptown/Andersonville L stops. Often, the red line breezes right through it. Then, I have to get off at Berwyn and walk five blocks instead of three! Naturally I would prefer that the red line drop me off on my corner, but it does make sense that the Argyle stop gets skipped since it's really close to both Lawrence and Berwyn. I had always wondered whether the Argyle stop was put in because the "New Chinatown" contingent campaigned to get their own pagoda-style stop, akin to the one at 18th in the real Chinatown. But, while researching this post, I found out that the first train stops in the area were at Argyle and Wilson. So, it does make sense that a station would go in at a later date at Lawrence since it's a much more-traveled street, and can accomodate things like bus traffic since it doesn't zig zag and then disappear altogether. I still can't explain the Berwyn stop, though.