Aerial View of Uptown and Edgewater Chicago, 1955

Wowza! Although not in color, here is another terrific view of Uptown from the sky, with perhaps even more detail than the previous image we showed from 1928. You can clearly see the Edgewater Beach Hotel and Apartments, now cut off from the lake by the Lake Shore Drive extension. Other landmarks to look for are the Aragon Ballroom, the Uptown Theatre, and way to the north the Granada. (I can even catch a glimpse of the house that once stood near Argyle and Winthrop, where my condo is now.) Click on image, and then right-click "View Image" to get the full-size photo.

Source: CHM ICHi-37277

Vintage Ad for Concerts at Riviera and Aragon, 1975

My upstair's neighbor is the coolest mom. She and her eleven-year-old son go to concerts on the weekend, hang out at jazz, rock, and reggae clubs when they allow all ages in, and peruse record stores--yes, record stores--looking for that perfect album.

I was never that lucky as a kid. I never went to concerts. In fact, it wasn't until I was 16 that I saw my first performer on stage--Corey Hart. (He had only a couple of hits that I can remember, "Sunglasses at Night" and "Never Surrender," but he sure was cute.) I had to beg and beg my parents to let me go with my friends; we were suburbanites, and I was pretty sheltered and oblivious to the "dangers" of the city. I snuck into town more often than I was allowed to go.

I wonder what my musical education would have been like if I grew up near such fabulous concert venues as the Riviera, Aragon, and Uptown. I'm sure I would have been scraping my allowance together and standing in line at the Ticketron to see shows more often.

Construction at Leland and Broadway, 1920s

Construction on Leland looking toward Broadway; you can see the rooftop marquee of the Uptown Hotel. The Uptown Hotel, aka the Plymouth, was torn down as part of the redevelopment of the Goldblatt's-to-Borders project. To view a bit of the terracotta that once graced it, you can peek into the lobby of the current condo building on the site.

Edgewater Beach Hotel, Sheridan Looking North from Foster, 1948

Today, a Dominick's grocery store stands on this corner—while practical, it's far less glamorous than the Edgewater Beach Hotel that once graced this stretch of Sheridan Road. It was the go-to place for the rich and famous, and among its guests were Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, Nat King Cole, and U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. There was even a seaplane service that could take you downtown, in case you didn't want to mix with the peasants and drive the few miles.

The hotel closed in 1967, just a couple of years before I was born, but I always feel an intense wave of nostalgia when I look at photos of it. How pretty it must have looked, painted a soft butter yellow to represent dawn, just as the accompanying Edgewater Beach Apartments, which still exist at Sheridan at Bryn Mawr, were painted a pale pink to represent sunset.

Leland at Broadway

I'm not sure of the exact date of this photo, but it appears to be 1920s. You can see the very top of the Uptown Hotel's marquee at the top. This is looking toward the stretch of Broadway between the Wilson El stop and Lawrence, where the tracks go across the road.

The Outdoor Dance Floor, Edgewater Beach Hotel

I recently received a letter from a reader who was a dancer at the Edgewater Beach Hotel; she took part in some of the elaborate floor shows performed under the summer stars along the lakefront. She plans on sending in some photos, so I'll post them as soon as they arrive!

For now, you might enjoy this image of the outdoor marble dance floor itself. Many manufacturers of quality building materials at the time would use images of the finished product in their advertising. (I guess that's really no different from today, is it?)

This advertisement for Phenix Marble appeared in Through the Ages, January 1926, p. 50.) It claims that the Edgewater Beach Hotel had the only outdoor marble dance floor in the entire country. The dance floor was directly on the beach, just a few feet from the water — how disappointing it must have been when Lake Shore Drive was extended and the hotel's access to the lake was cut off.

Eddie Waitkus...The Natural

Bill Matteson
Uptown Chicago History Correspondent

Eddie Waitkus was a born baseball player. He was so good that when he played minor league with a small town in Maine, they called him a Natural. He was born of immigrant Lithuanian parents on Sept. 4th 1919.

He  signed with the Chicago Cubs in about the1939/1940 time bracket, playing full time in 1941. Then the war broke out and most able-bodied ball players signed on to serve their country.

Eddie went with the Army and fought many a bloody battle in the Philippines, winning 4 bronze stars.
He returned to the Cubs in 1946 playing 1st base, replacing  Phil Caveretta, who moved to left field.

Eddie was a highly educated sportsman and everyone liked him. He could speak five languages and was the poster boy of sportsmanship for the media. Yes, everyone loved him; maybe a little too much.

In 1948 he was traded to the Philles for three players, including Dutch Leonard, a great knuckleballer.
Now the Phillies had been scheduled to play 11 games over the 1949 season.

Arriving in Chicago June 14th, 1949, he registered at one of Uptown's finest hotels, the Edgewater Beach. A lot of out of town sports figures stayed there, while most of Chicago's players stayed at the Sheridan Plaza.

Unbeknownst to Eddie, he was being stalked. He had an admirer.

Ruth Ann Steinhagen was uncontrollably infatuated with Eddie. She registered at the hotel under the name of an old classmate of Eddie's and sent him an urgent message to meet her in her room.

When he walked in, she shot him in the chest with a 22 cal. rifle; she then called the desk and explained what happened. When help arrived, she was cradling  Eddie's head in her lap. Eddie almost died several times, but they were successful in removing the bullet, which narrowly missed his heart.

On Aug.19., 1949, just 2 months after being shot, Eddie suited up and played at Shibes Park for Eddie Waitkus Night.

Today, our highly paid athletes get a hang nail or a sprained finger, they sit out the season.

Ruth Ann Steinhagen never went to trial. She spent a long time in a mental institution and died of natural causes last December 2012.

Sometime in 1952, a book was published, written by Bernard Malamud, inspired by these events. Malamud took parts of the Eddie Waitkus story and then borrowed from the life of Shoeless Joe Jackson, a few more baseball role models, including Christy Mathewson, the greatest pitcher of his day and the inventor of the fade-a-away, the present day screwball, a reverse curve, so to speak.

Christy was a role model for all young boys, not ever drinking or smoking and going to church. Christy even became the role model for the Frank Merriwell adventure series with over 800 books, movies, and radio programs

(I like to mention this part about Christy because his family changed their name from Matteson to Mathewson while living in Pennsylvania.)

Bernard Malamud wrote The Natural. Roy Hobbs was molded after all players mentioned.

A lot of good things come out of Uptown, or at least Uptown played a major part in them.

Editor's note: Bill Matteson grew up in Uptown in the forties and fifties. You can read more of his recollections by clicking the link "Bill Matteson" below.

The Annual Alewife Die-Off, Montrose Pier, Uptown Chicago, 1970

I came across a reference to the Lake Michigan Alewife recently, and how they used to be a huge nuisance to the neighborhoods along the lake.

An alewife—not to be confused with the medieval profession of beer brewing—is a type of fish. They are common in the waters off New England, but around the 1930s they invaded the Great Lakes, using the Welland Canal and bypassing Niagra Falls. They were feasted upon by lake trout, and so were not much of a nuisance, until overfishing and the invasion of the sea lamprey wiped out much of the trout population.

Alewife numbers grew and grew, and their population began to peak in the sixties. They are an edible fish, so this doesn't sound like a bad thing, does it?

The problem with them was their annual die-off. Hundreds of millions of fish would turn belly up in the water each year (there is even a report of a forty-mile-long flotilla of dead fish stretching across the lake). Hundreds of thousands would suddenly wash up on Chicago's beaches. And from what I've heard, they stank. Just imagine what thousands of rotting fish would smell like! There were so many that the city needed bulldozers to clean up the mess.

So, how did the city fight back? Salmon were added to the lake to eat the alewifes, and voila! No more problem.

Or is there? At present, the lake's salmon populations are being threatened by another fish species...the Asian carp.

Editor's note: I found this note on Wikipedia about declining Alewife populations.

"Alewife populations have exhibited drastic declines throughout much of their range. Several threats have most likely contributed to their decline, including loss of habitat due to decreased access to spawning areas from the construction of dams and other impediments to migration, habitat degradation, fishing, and increased predation due to recovering striped bass populations. In response to the declining trend for alewife, the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, and North Carolina have instituted moratoriums on taking and possession. The alewife is a US National Marine Fisheries Service Species of Concern."

900 Block of Montrose, Chicago, 1973

When a water main broke in 1973, it flooded the 900 block of Montrose. I feel for those who had basement-level apartments!

  

Original image currently available on eBay: 900 Montrose

Clarendon Beach, Uptown Chicago, 1919

A very early image of Uptown residents gathering at Clarendon Beach.

Aerial of Edgewater Looking Toward Uptown

Aw, this is after the poor Edgewater Beach Hotel was no longer on the lakefront, so this image was taken sometime after 1955. My own condo (rather, the previous house on the same location) has just barely been clipped out of the picture. I have yet to find an aerial image and closeup view clearly showing the blocks around Argyle. If you have one, I'd love to see it.

Clarendon Beach, Uptown Chicago, 1921

Jumping off the Edgewater Beach Hotel, 1922

I've had this image on my hard drive for a while, but I can't remember the original source. (If you recognize it, please let me know!) It shows a person making a low jump with a parachute off the roof of the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Hard to believe there was enough clearance for that!

Uptown Theatre, Chicago, 1986

There are many new residents in Uptown who are unaware that a magnificent movie palace lurks behind the boarded up doors of the Uptown Theatre. Today, the upright marquee is gone and much of the elaborate terracotta has been removed and put in storage. This photos, submitted by a reader, shows the theatre in 1986. What a treasure!

A Disco Opens in Uptown, 1966

For a very brief time in the late sixties, there was a disco on Lawrence Avenue. The Cheetah Club, modeled after the very popular Cheetah Club in New York, opened in what had been known to generations as the Aragon Ballroom. The club in Chicago didn't do as well as the east coast venue, and the ballroom soon became the Aragon again. The image below shows the opening, covered in the November 1, 1966 issue of Jet Magazine. A copy of the magazine is currently available on eBay: Cheetah Club.

Anti-Aircraft Gun at Montrose Beach, Chicago, 1952

Montrose Beach, located in Uptown, is Chicago's largest beach. It's hard to believe this relaxing spot once was part of Chicago's civil defense missile program of the fifties and sixties, when over 600 Nike Ajax missiles (later replaced with the Nike Hercules, a nuclear-tipped missile) protected the city during the Cold War. 

WBEZ has a fascinating article on the subject, including a map of the missile locations, so be sure to check that out.

This image currently available on eBay here: Uptown in the Cold War

Saint Mary of the Lake Church History, Uptown Chicago

These don't come up for sale too often, a copy of the Saint Mary of the Lake Church History published on the 75th anniversary of the church.

At time of writing, it was available from eBay here: Saint Mary

Worshippers at Saint Mary of the Lake, 4200 Sheridan Road, Uptown

This photograph from 1985 shows worshipers linking hands in prayer during mass for Colombian volcano disaster victims at St. Mary of the Lake Church, 4200 N. Sheridan. Ted Cardenas (second from left) has family in the stricken area and Rafael Vanegas (second from right) is the Colombian consul in Chicago.

Image available for purchase at time of writing from eBay: Saint Mary of the Lake

Argyle Park Station, 1908

My particular little corner of Uptown is known as Argyle Park, although few people actually use that name anymore. Nowadays, it's called Little Saigon or New Chinatown. But this is what it looked like a hundred years ago:

I think we're looking north from Argyle, but I'm not entirely certain.

From Wikipedia:

The West Argyle Street Historic District (also known as New Chinatown, Little Saigon, or Little Vietnam) is a historic district in the Uptown community area of Chicago, Illinois. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 2010. The district covers an area of about 41 acres (0.17 km2); its rough boundaries are Broadway to the west, Winona Street to the north, Sheridan Road to the east, and Ainslie Street to the south. The area covered by the historic district originally developed in the 1880s as a suburb called Argyle Park. The suburb had been named by Chicago Alderman and developer James A. Campbell for his ancestors the Dukes of Argyll in Scotland. Development was centered around a station on the new Chicago & Evanston line of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway that opened in May 1885. The village, along with the rest of the Lake View Township, was annexed into Chicago in 1889. In 1908 the Northwestern Elevated Railroad was extended north from Wilson Avenue, using the tracks of the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railroad. This linked the suburb into Chicago's 'L' network, and the area became popular with people of limited means who wanted to live on the Lake Michigan shore. The railroad tracks were elevated onto an embankment between 1914 and 1922.

Electric Carousel, Wilson Avenue Beach, Uptown Chicago, 1921

I'm sure no one was ever electrocuted here.

Source: Spaarnestad Photo

Tinted Image of Uptown, 1928

How many landmarks can you spot? (Click to enlarge.)

From the CARLI Digital Collection.

Broadway North of Montrose, 1926 — Arcadia Ballroom, McJunkin Building

Here is a fantastic scene of Broadway just north of Montrose. You can see the exquisite blue and white terracotta building, torn down a few years ago, a rare view of the Arcadia Ballroom with Wilson Yards behind, the McJunkin building at Wilson just up the way, and far off in the distance the rooftop marquee of the recently completed Uptown Theatre. Thanks to reader Mike M. for sharing this one!

Charlie Chaplin at Chicago's Essanay Studios

Charlie Chaplin, 1921.  
Chicago History Museum
DN-0073426

From the Chicago History Museum:

"Charlie Chaplin filmed only one movie in Chicago—His New Job in 1915—but it helped catapult him to mega–movie star status. In the burgeoning decades of American cinema, Chicago was the first Hollywood. Its central location made for convenient production and distribution, and travel here made for an affordable trip for budding starlets...

Read more at Chaplin in Chicago

Uptown Latin Kings Business Card -- Gang Cards of Chicago

 

Recently, I was criticized by a few readers for my choice of using gang images to promote Uptown. I know there are many who do not agree with my choice to include gang memorabilia. While I do not condone violence, I feel that these groups are a part of the history of the neighborhood as much as any group that lived and worked here. I hope that by including such images, we can all have a better understanding of the factors that went into the development of the Uptown we see around us today.

The card featured here is currently on eBay: Uptown Latin Kings There seems to be a lot of interest in collecting these, as I frequently see them for auction. The cards often have images common in the seventies, such as pot leaves and unicorns. Some are more disturbing, with Klan members or guns or devil heads.

The blog We Are Supervision, which has a gallery of these images, says "Every city has its own gang history, part of Chicago's are gang cards, most prominent in the 70's and early 80's, back in the day when a gang was more of a neighborhood crew then what it is today. Fists, bats, and bottles days, before guns became the norm in the gang.  Most of the gangs were just about the neighborhood and hanging out together."

UIC has an ongoing Chicago Gang History Project, and I love how they summarize what this history means: "The history of gangs is the history of Chicago. It is more than a story of crime, drugs, and violence. It is a story of immigrants and migrants, neighborhoods and nations, industry and deindustrialization, workers and entrepreneurs, masculinity and femininity, rebellion and resignation, nihilism and politics. It is a story of the persistence of the ghetto. In short, it is the story of Chicago, as told from its margins."

Photographer Bob Rehak's View of Uptown in the 1970s

I recently came across the website of photographer Bob Rehak, who took some wonderful images of people living in Uptown in the 1970s. He was kind enough to give us permission to share a few with our readers, so I'll be posting a couple more in the weeks to come. If you can't wait, you can go directly to his site now and see the dozens he already has up. He tells me that he has approximately FOUR THOUSAND images of Uptown from back then and plans to continue posting more, so be sure to bookmark his site: Chicago's Uptown Neighborhood in the mid-1970s

Latin Kings' Handshake © Robert Rehak

Bob's caption: "When members of the Latin Kings street gang met each other, they would extend their thumbs, index fingers and little fingers to form the points of a crown and then touch each other. This was their equivalent of a fraternity’s secret handshake."

Lotta Love © Robert Rehak

Bob's caption: It it weren’t for the fact that this young girl was wrapped around her father’s shoulders, I would have sworn that she had him wrapped around her little finger.
 

Uptown, 1965

A number of photographer Danny Lyon's Uptown photos from the 1960s are in the MoMA collection. Check them out here: MoMA

A Troubled Time in Uptown

Uptown in the 1980s... Thank you to Linda B. for sending in this one.

Aeriel View of Uptown, Looking Toward Edgewater Beach Hotel

The main road at the left in this picture is Sheridan Road, looking north toward the former Edgewater Beach Hotel located near Sheridan and Foster Ave. The Trib had this identified as 1934, but a reader pointed out that can't be right because of the 4+1's and the Tides Motel visible. Anybody have a better date?

Devine Foot Soap Company, 4903 N. Ravenswood, Chicago

Devine, Inc. was located at 4903 N. Ravenswood in Chicago. They manufactured Devine's Foot Soap, presumably among other items. If you know more about this company, please let us know in the comments.

Item currently available on eBay: http://bit.ly/1b0WtIS

The Bone Witch by Jason Asala

Okay, I know this is a history blog and this book has absolutely nothing to do with Uptown, but my cousin Jason wrote it, and I read it, and because I enjoyed it I wanted to share it with others. You can get it on Amazon: http://bit.ly/12Wjaoa

Here's the summary: Twelve-year-old Wren Davies thinks life couldn't get any worse since her brother moved away to college, leaving her only with the companionship of the two dogs she diligently watches. Little does she know that a sinister force is coming for her, rising from the ashes of a burnt-out home nestled in the nearby woods. As the November chill settles in, Wren must fight for her life against a force as harsh as winter itself, in a tale that stretches across the globe and through many generations of people unlucky enough to cross paths with the being known as the Bone Witch.

Brown Bowler / Derby Hat from Edgewater Beach Hotel

This has to be one of the niftier collectables we've found from the Edgewater/Uptown area—a brown derby hat (like the one worn by Charlie Chaplin) designed by Knox of New York and sold at Plum's of the Edgewater Beach Hotel. It actually says Edgewater Beach Hotel in the band in the lining! I wasn't able to find out much about Plum's, other than it was a shop in the EBH. Does anyone have more information?

You can put your bid in on eBay here: http://bit.ly/12nBiHF

Here's the history of the derby hat (as found on Wikipedia): 

The bowler once defined British civil servants and bankers, and later American workingmen. It was devised in 1849 by the London hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler to fulfil an order placed by the firm of hatters Lock &  Co. of St James's. Lock & Co. had been commissioned by a customer to design a close-fitting, low-crowned hat to protect Coke's gamekeepers' heads from low-hanging branches while on horseback. The keepers had previously worn top hats, which were easily knocked off and damaged. Lock & Co. then commissioned the Bowler brothers to solve the problem. Especially in Great Britain, most accounts agreed that the customer (and designer of the hat) was William Coke. However, later, a nephew of the 1st Earl of Leicester, provided research that has cast some doubt on this origin story. It is now believed that it was Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester, who invented the hat design.

When Coke arrived in London on 17 December 1849 to collect his hat he reportedly placed it on the floor and stamped hard on it twice to test its strength; the hat withstood this test and Coke paid 12 shillings for it. In accordance with Lock & Company's usual practice, the hat was called the "Coke" hat (pronounced "cook") after the customer who had ordered it. This is most likely why the hat became known as the "Billy Coke" or "Billycock" hat in Norfolk.

In the Americas the bowler, not the cowboy hat or sombrero, was the most popular hat in the American West, prompting Lucius Beebe to call it "the hat that won the West". Both cowboys and railroad workers preferred the hat because it would not blow off easily in strong wind, or when sticking one's head out the window of a speeding train. It was worn by both lawmen and outlaws, including Bat Masterson, Butch Cassidy, Black Bart, and Billy the Kid. It is in America the hat came to be commonly known as the "Derby", and Wild West outlaw Marion Hedgepeth was commonly referred to as "the Derby Kid".

The bowler, called a bombín in Spanish, has been worn by Quechua and Aymara women since the 1920s, when it was introduced to Bolivia by British railway workers. For many years, a factory in Italy manufactured the hats for the Bolivian market, but they are now made locally. Another region that appreciates the bowler hat is the Niger Delta area of Nigeria. The men of this region use this hat as a fashion accessory, along with a walking stick. These fashion accessories, which have become a staple part of the regional costume, were introduced by British colonials in the 1900s.

Hotel Sheridan Plaza, Wilson and Sheridan, Uptown Chicago

Text reads:

Uptown Chicago's Most Favored Hotel!

Why not this coming summer spend a few days or weeks on the famous North Shore—Chicago's vacation land? Come to the beautiful Sheridan Plaza. Bathing, boating, motoring, theater-going. Short ride to golf grounds and parks. Music and dancing every evening. Moderate rates in the restaurant and Narcissus Grill cafeteria. Eighteen minutes from downtown: elevated express and surface lines; motor busses to and from downtown through Lincoln Park stop at the door. European plan. Excellent rates with private bath. $3 a day and up. Reservations are advisable. Exceptional garage accommodation.

Image currently on eBay: http://bit.ly/183KQNy

Sheridan and Montrose, Uptown Chicago, 1910

Sheridan and Montrose, 1910. The original 100-year-old postcard is currently available on eBay: http://bit.ly/1d3zxVQ

Erlich's Restaurant — 5236 Sheridan Road Chicago

Matchbooks are fun collectibles, and a great way to discover what businesses were once along a particular stretch of the neighborhood.

Wilson Ave Bathing Beach, 1910

A very early image of Wilson Avenue Bathing Beach. Note that few people are actually wearing bathing costumes. Image currently available on eBay: http://bit.ly/12avXYH

Aragon Ballroom Chicago Concert Ticket — Blues Guitar Player Freddie King

A rare Aragon Ballroom collectible currently available on eBay: http://bit.ly/12auO3l

According to Wikipedia: Freddie King (September 3, 1934 – December 28, 1976), thought to have been born as Frederick Christian, originally recording as Freddy King, and nicknamed "The Texas Cannonball", was an influential American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of "the Four Kings" of electric blues guitar, along with Earl King, Albert King and B.B. King, as well as the youngest of the four.

Broadway Near Wilson, 1972

Two Chicago police officers and their 1972 Chevy Biscayne on Broadway near Wilson.

Wilson and Broadway, Uptown, 1970s

You can just make out the name "Goldblatts" on the water tower at right.

Pantheon Theatre on Sheridan Road at Eastwood, Chicago

According to Cinema Treasures: The Pantheon opened its doors in 1918 for the Lubliner & Trinz chain, located in the Uptown neighborhood on Sheridan Road at Eastwood Avenue. At the time it opened, it was said to have 3000 seats. It was the largest movie theater in the area until seven years later, when the nearby Uptown Theatre opened.

Wilson and Broadway, Uptown Chicago, 1959

A photo from when the terra cotta still looked good, although the clock was already gone. Image available on eBay: http://bit.ly/1d3xOA3

Muggsie McGraw Wonder Bar, Wilson Avenue, Uptown Chicago

Seems 935 Wilson housed a number of entertainment venues over the years; it was also once known as the Backstage Nightclub.

Lawrence and Kenmore, Uptown Chicago, 1941

At left is the New Lawrence Hotel, so the perspective is towards the east. A popular swimming pool was housed in the basement of the New Lawrence.

Senn High School Class of 1963

My mother, Donna Dawson Asala, is going to her 50th high school reunion this year. She graduated from Senn High School in 1963. I was wondering if any readers of this blog are from her graduating class or went to high school with her?

The image is from a vintage postcard of Nicholas Senn High currently available on eBay: http://bit.ly/12zYre9

Uptown Mountain People Transfer to a Problem City

I'm not sure exactly what message the photographer from the Sun-Times was trying to make with this image, but somehow a rusty car and a dead cat symbolize the troubles faced by Southerners moving to Uptown in 1964. Original image available on eBay: http://bit.ly/12zEtA5