Hotel Lafayette, 4606 N. Racine (at Wilson)

Wilson El a Hundred Years Ago

View of North Western terminal (elevated train station) at West Wilson Avenue in the Uptown community area of Chicago, Illinois, 1907.

DN-0051864, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society, Library of Congress, American Memory Collection.

View of St. Paul tracks at Wilson Avenue looking south towards Wilson Ave. This is the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad. The tracks are located in the Uptown community area of Chicago, Illinois, 1907.

DN-0063226, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society, Library of Congress American Memory Collection.

Wilson Avenue, 1983

Hey fellow Uptowners--this 1983 image of the Wilson Station is currently available on eBay. Strange to see the bank building without the giant "B".

Mayflower Restaurant, 1046-48 Wilson Ave.

A matchbook from the Mayflower Restaurant, 1046-48 Wilson Avenue.

Espana Cafe, 4600 Lake Shore Drive, Wilson and Clarendon

Image courtesy John Chuckman.

Play Commemorates 1995 Tragedy

I had just moved back to Chicago in the fall of 1994, and remember this summer well. From the Chicago Tribune:

Playwright Steven Simoncic recalls feeling haunted as rehearsals began for his play "Heat Wave," the drama detailing Chicago's 1995 summer meltdown that killed more than 700 people.

"You could feel the ghosts of the victims early on," he says, "especially on those evenings in January when it was pretty cold and pretty quiet. You could feel the energy of what was going on — a palpable feeling."

"Heat Wave" carries the added punch of being staged in an area that was brutalized by the tragedy. Walk a handful of steps in any direction from Pegasus Players' front door on Wilson Avenue in Uptown, and you'll find apartment houses or single-room occupancy hotels (or SROs, where rents are paid by the day, week or month) where five people perished. It happened within a one-block radius — and the toll jumps if you expand the circle to a five-minute walk from Pegasus' auditorium at Truman College...

For complete article, go to: Neighbor Ghosts Haunt Drama on Deadly Summer

Montrose Avenue, 1989

Photo by Genial23. From the caption: "This old viaduct was part of a freight line that once ran all the way to Milwaukee. It was torn down some time around the turn of the decade. Note the old CTA Wilson Avenue Shops (destroyed by a mysterious fire in 1997) at right."

Wilson Yard, 1961

My guess is that this picture was taken from a top floor in the Uptown Bank Building, looking south toward Wilson Yard. You can spot the Broadway Building in the foreground, the distinctive tower of St. Mary's Church at the top of the photo, and the McJunkin Building just below that. It is one of the many fabulous photos that appear in The Chicago "L" by Greg Borzo.

Caption reads: "In 1908, the 'L' extended service to Howard and beyond to Evanston at ground level. In 1914-1922, it elevated the track from Wilson to Howard on an embankment rather than a steel structure. This was done to support the weight of freight cars that the 'L' handled from 1920 to 1973 between Church Street in Evanston and Irving Park Road in Chicago. A huge yard was built at Wilson in 1900. Much later, a massive four-track repair and maintennce building, seen in the center background of the view south in 1961, was added. A continuous four-track main line had just been completed here, replacing a two-track bottleneck."

Greg Borzo is a co-author of The Windies' City: Chicago's Historical Hidden Treasures.

My birthday is coming up on Thursday (hint-hint), and this would make a terrific addition to my book collection. :-)

Wilson Avenue Theatre

This is probably my favorite image in my collection. It is of the Wilson Avenue Theatre, now a TCF Bank, on Wilson near the northeast corner of Broadway. (You can see a bit of the Uptown/Wilson El Stop in the lower left corner).

The image below, captured from Google maps, shows the same stretch of Wilson. The theatre/bank is the only building left.

I have heard rumours--unconfirmed--that an entertainment company wants to buy the bank and renovate it as a small theatre space. Can anyone confirm this?

Dover Street District Receives Landmark Status

Beacon Street North of Wilson

Excerpt from today's Chicago Sun-Times. Complete article can be found online.

The avalanche of landmarks approved by the Committee on Historical Landmark Preservation also included the Dover Street District, a "visually distinctive collection of suburban-style single-family homes and multi-family buildings" constructed between 1893 and 1927 in the Uptown community. The district "exemplifies the growth and development of the North Side neighborhood in the years following its annexation" by Chicago in 1889 - a growth made possible by mass transit to the Loop.

The district is predominantly located in the 4500, 4600 and 4700 blocks of North Dover and includes four properties on the 4700 block of North Beacon.

Of 88 property owners, 55 have agreed to the landmark designation. Several testified today and broke into applause after the vote.

"What has galvanized support is the threat of teardowns. We were mobilized into action because of that," said Joanne Gannett, who lives at 4723 N. Dover. "We're under a great deal of pressure now from developers. We need your help," said resident Barbara Litwin.

Landmark status affords certain protections to buildings. Those wanting to rip down or renovate a landmark structure, for instance, first must get approval from the city's Commission on Historical Landmarks.

Flapper Girls at Wilson and Sheridan, Nirvana by Ben Hecht

Flapper girls had their origins in the 1920s with the popular contempt for prohibition. The term referred to the “new breed” of young women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was considered decent behavior. The flappers were seen as brash in their time for wearing makeup, drinking hard liqour, and smoking. This gorgeous painting of a flapper girl graced the cover of the February 2, 1922 edition of Life Magazine.

Novelist and prolific screenwriter Ben Hecht (1893–1964) grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. As a young man he moved to Chicago, where he became a reporter for the Chicago Journal and the Chicago Daily News and contributed to Margaret Anderson’s literary journal The Little Review. At the Daily News he wrote the sensational column “1001 Afternoons in Chicago,” where this short story about Uptown was first published (text courtesy Project Gutenberg). He later went on to write 35 books and more than seventy films.

***

The newspaper man felt a bit pensive. He sat in his bedroom frowning at his typewriter. About eight years ago he had decided to write a novel. Not that he had anything particular in his mind to write about. But the city was such a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies; such a crazy monotone of streets and windows that it filled the newspaper man’s thought from day to day with an irritating blur.

And for eight years or so the newspaper man had been fumbling around trying to get it down on paper. But no novel had grown out of the blur in his head.

* * * * *

The newspaper man put on his last year’s straw hat and went into the street, taking his pensiveness with him. Warm. Rows of arc lights. A shifting crowd. There are some streets that draw aimless feet. The blazing store fronts, clothes shops, candy shops, drug-stores, Victrola shops, movie theatres invite with the promise of a saturnalia in suspense.

At Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road the newspaper man paused. Here the loneliness he had felt in his bedroom seemed to grow more acute. Not only his own aimlessness, but the aimlessness of the staring, smiling crowd afflicted him.

Then out of the babble of faces he heard his name called. A rouged young flapper, high heeled, short skirted and a jaunty green hat. One of the impudent little swaggering boulevard promenaders who talk like simpletons and dance like Salomes, who laugh like parrots and ogle like Pierettes. The birdlike strut of her silkened legs, the brazen lure of her stenciled child face, the lithe grimace of her adolescent body under the stiff coloring of her clothes were a part of the blur in the newspaper man’s mind.

She was one of the things he fumbled for on the typewriter—one of the city products born of the tinpan bacchanal of the cabarets. A sort of frontispiece for an Irving Berlin ballad. The caricature of savagery that danced to the caricature of music from the jazz bands. The newspaper man smiled. Looking at her he understood her. But she would not fit into the typewritten phrases.

“Wilson Avenue,” he thought, as he walked beside her chatter. “The wise, brazen little virgins who shimmy and toddle, but never pay the fiddler. She’s it. Selling her ankles for a glass of pop and her eyes for a fox trot. Unhuman little piece. A cross between a macaw and a marionette.”

* * * * *

Thus, the newspaper man thinking and the flapper flapping, they came together to a cabaret in the neighborhood. The orchestra filled the place with confetti of sound. Laughter, shouts, a leap of voices, blazing lights, perspiring waiters, faces and hats thrusting vivid stencils through the uncoiling tinsel of tobacco smoke.

On the dance floor bodies hugging, toddling, shimmying; faces fastened together; eyes glassy with incongruous ecstasies.

The newspaper man ordered two drinks of moonshine and let the scene blur before him like a colored picture puzzle out of focus. Above the music he heard the childishly strident voice of the flapper:

“Where you been hiding yourself? I thought you and I were cookies. Well, that’s the way with you Johns. But there’s enough to go around, you can bet. Say boy! I met the classiest John the other evening in front of the Hopper. Did he have class, boy! You know there are some of these fancy Johns who look like they were the class. But are they? Ask me. Nix. And don’t I give them the berries, quick? Say, I don’t let any John get moldy on me. Soon as I see they’re heading for a dumb time I say ’razzberry.’ And off your little sugar toddles.”

“How old are you?” inquired the newspaper man abstractedly.

“Eighteen, nosey. Why the insult? I got a new job yesterday with the telephone company. That makes my sixth job this year. Tell me that ain’t going good? One of the Johns I met in front of the Edgewater steered me to it. He turned out kind of moldy, and say! he was dumb. But I played along and got the job.

“Say, I bet you never noticed my swell kicks.” The flapper thrust forth her legs and twirled her feet. “Classy, eh? They go with the lid pretty nice. Say, you’re kind of dumb yourself. You’ve got moldy since I saw you last.”

“How’d you remember my name?” inquired the newspaper man.

“Oh, there are some Johns who tip over the oil can right from the start. And you never forget them. Nobody could forget you, handsome. Never no more, never. What do you say to another shot of hootch? The stuff’s getting rottener and rottener, don’t you think? Come on, swallow. Here’s how. Oh, ain’t we got fun!”

* * * * *

The orchestra paused. It resumed. The crowd thickened. Shouts, laughter, swaying bodies. A tinkle of glassware, snort of trombones, whang of banjos. The newspaper man looked on and listened through a film.

The brazen patter of his young friend rippled on. A growing gamin coarseness in her talk with a nervous, restless twitter underneath. Her dark child eyes, perverse under their touch of black paint, swung eagerly through the crowd. Her talk of Johns, of dumb times and moldy times, of classy times and classy memories varied only slightly. She liked dancing and amusement parks. Automobile riding not so good. And besides you had to be careful. There were some Johns who thought it cute to play caveman. Yes, she’d had a lot of close times, but they wouldn’t get her. Never, no, never no more. Anyway, not while there was music and dancing and a whoop-de-da-da in the amusement parks.

The newspaper man, listening, thought, “An infant gone mad with her dolls. Or no, vice has lost its humanness. She’s the symbol of new sin—the unhuman, passionless whirligig of baby girls and baby boys through the cabarets.”

* * * * *

They came back from a dance and continued to sit. The din was still mounting. Entertainers fighting against the racket. Music fighting against the racket. Bored men and women finally achieving a bedlam and forgetting themselves in the artifice of confusion.

The newspaper man looking at his young friend saw her taking it in. There was something he had been trying to fathom about her during her breathless chattering. She talked, danced, whirled, laughed, let loose giggling cries. And yet her eyes, the part that the rouge pot or the bead stick couldn’t reach, seemed to grow deader and deader.

The jazz band let out the crash of a new melody. The voices of the crowd rose in an “ah-ah-ah.” Waiters were shoving fresh tables into the place, squeezing fresh arrivals around them.

The flapper had paused in her breathless rigmarole of Johns and memories. Leaning forward suddenly she cried into the newspaper man’s ear above the racket:

“Say this is a dumb place.”

The newspaper man smiled.

“Ain’t it, though?” she went on. There was a pause and then the breathless voice sighed. She spoke.

“Gee!”—with a laugh that still seemed breathless—“gee, but it’s lonely here!”

Wilson Avenue Station

Matchbook, Planet Mars, 1117 Wilson Ave

Matchbook, Planet Mars, date unknown.
Dine and Dance Entertainment
Never a cover or minimum charge.
Choice Wines and Liquors
Beer on Tap
Longbeach 5536

Planet Mars was a popular jazz venue. According to several sources, it was where jazz legend Anita O'Day, who died in November 2006, had her first "legitimate" gig.

Wilson's Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge, 1118-20-22 Wilson, circa 1930s

Matchbook from Wilson's Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge, 1118-20-22 Wilson, circa 1930s. What a swanky looking joint! The below image, captured from Google, shows the address today. It is just to the west of the Wilson Broadway Mall.

It's time for another 1930s cocktail. If you don't have absinthe handy, you can replace with anisette. (Although no longer available in the U.S., you can order absinthe online.)

NICK'S OWN COCKTAIL

1 dash Angostura Bitters

1 dash Absinthe

1/2 part Italian Vermouth

1/2 part Brandy

Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass. Add cherry and squeeze lemon peel on top.

Recipe from The Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930

Skooglund's Cafeteria on Wilson, near Clifton and Racine

Skooglund's Cafeteria "The Place Where Things Taste So Good" was located on Wilson, between Clifton and Racine. The back of this image, circa 1932, reads: "During your visit to Chicago DINE and STOP at Skooglund's Cafeteria and Hotel Lafayette. 1138 Wilson Ave. Near Routes W. S. #12 and #14 at 4600 North. At the above address over 25 years."

The below image of the building was captured from Google maps using their new street view feature. Today the building houses Nick's on Wilson and a bunch of empty storefronts. It's one building I wish I could afford to buy!

Malden and Wilson

Malden North of Wilson.

Image courtesy John Chuckman.

Club Waikiki

Club Waikiki, 804 Wilson Ave., Chicago. LOngbeach 1-3446. Hawaiian Food and Cocktails Served in Authentic Atmosphere.

Magnolia Apartments

Corner of Magnolia and Wilson Avenue.

Image courtesy John Chuckman.

View of the McJunkin Building

The McJunkin Building was designed by Arthur Gerber, who also designed the Wilson El Station across the street. It was built on the former site of the Lower Wilson station.

Update: I originally thought this photo was from the 80s, based on the date listed for it, but Irish Pirate pointed out that the cars are older, so perhaps it's from the early 70s.
Image courtesy HAARGIS.

Wilson Avenue Beach, North Shore of Lake Michigan

I think my favorite postcards of Uptown are those with people. They're not too common. Most show buildings, or crowds at a distance. There are very few where you can actually make out individual faces.

Wilson Avenue Beach was located at 4600 North, and was a privately owned beach. In 1915, the City of Chicago opened Clarendon Beach (now Montrose Avenue Beach) immediately to the south, at 4400 North, to serve as a public beach.

Click on the thumbnail photo below to see a larger version of the black and white image of Wilson Avenue Beach, housed at the Library of Congress.