An Informal History of Hyde Park
or
"Life As I Knew It As A Resident Of Woodlawn"
by Thomas Crane
©2003, Thomas Crane, All rights reserved
An Informal History of Hyde Park
or
"Life As I Knew It As A Resident Of Woodlawn"
by Thomas Crane
©2003, Thomas Crane, All rights reserved
Make sure and read Tom's book "Green Is The Valley, Blue Are
The Hills" about his family history. It's online at http://fethard.com/crane and
is also available in hard copy from the Higginson Book Company.
He regrets that he is unable to do family research for others.
THE SURROUNDING AREA.... Haskell Oriental Museum, University of Chicago, c. 1909
Cobb Hall, University of Chicago c. 1913
White City Amusement Park, c. 1910
Woodlawn was "Blue collar" while Hyde Park housed the intellectuals who were the movers and shakers of
our society, but little did we know. As I added a few years, I became accustomed to the chimes from the carillon
in Rockefeller Chapel that reverberated throughout the neighborhood. To some it meant the end of playtime and a
return home. To others it brought a tranquil feel to the neighborhood in which we lived. Looking north across the
"Midway" I could see the walls of the "Castle" that adjoined the area in which I lived. They
were a part of my life. The "Midway" provided a place to spend summer evenings stretched out on a blanket
and accompanied by a jug of lemonade to escape the oppressive summer heat that flowed through every house and apartment
at that time. While our parents sat and talked with other parents, we played or ran with other kids up and down
the hill or through the moist and aromatic grass. Yes, summer evenings were spent sleeping out on the Midway or
watching the Old Folks sitting on the benches, where there was hardly a vacant spot, or watching them set up card
tables and playing cards under the street lamps far into the summer night.
My first serious introduction into the "Castle" came when my father carried me in with a broken arm,
which, thanks to the good doctors, was saved from amputation and where I was destined to spend a week's time. I
can still smell the aroma of the alcohol and the ether as they went about the business of saving my arm. Little
did I know that I was being tended to by one of the most famous orthopedic surgeons of the time, Dr. Hatcher and his assistant, Dr. Watson. From that day on, the "Castle"
took on a new meaning; it was a place for the sick and the infirm.
THE MIDWAY....
Winters were spend either watching the multitude of ice-scatters who occupied the Midway and the gentle slopes
where we slid down on our sleds. It was customary for the Chicago Park District to erect warming houses that contained
coal burning stoves and to flood sections of the Midway to create ice. At one end of the Midway, stood a statue
and a fountain that Laredo Taft
had called the "March of Time" [or some such name] as it depicted mankind's march through the ages. He
had constructed this with a stone aggregate that was supposed to last for all time. Unfortunately, it started to
crumble and work has begun to preserve it. At the opposite end of the Midway near 59th and Stony Island, were the
beginnings of the foundation that was to become a huge monument of a knight on a horse. I eventually found out
this was Thomas Mosaryk,
The First President of Czeckoslovakia. Little did the good President know, but he came close to causing my death
by drowning, for it was on a cold winter day that my cousins were chasing me across the frozen ground and the ice
suddenly gave way. There were no barricades and I was up to my neck in water before my cousins were able to pull
me out. I still remember walking along and having my clothes slowly freeze to the point that when we finally reached
the warming house, they were frozen stiff. Once having reached the warming house, I had to strip naked while they
placed my clothes next to the coal burning stove. Thankfully, my mother never knew what happened or she would have
fainted or else had a fit.
BRANCHING OUT....
After having added a few years to my still young life, my friends and I began to make forays into that Never, Never
Land which was surrounded by those castle walls.
Time moved on and I began to grow into my environment; that is, the everyday drudgery of the working class people
among whom I lived. Being the son of one of its members, my friends and I would often walk along 57th Street and
marvel at some of the sights we saw. There were books in bookstores that had titles that had no meaning whatsoever
for me. Not only that, but some of the students who carried those books seemed strange in not only their dress,
but their talk. Whereas they carried books, some of my neighbors carried bottles of beer. Such was the clash of
cultures in which I lived. As a side note, I should mention that although my father was a roofer by trade during
my early years, he was by no means an uneducated man. Although he did not have a formal education, he made sure
that he took me to places of educational value and he was self-taught and well-read. Still in all, whenever I ventured
into the university culture, I felt as though I was in an alien land.
One of the places we visited was the Oriental
Institute located at 58th and University. It was there I saw my first mummy
(he did not look too good!). He was wrapped in all sorts of bandages and his hands were crossed over his chest
and there appeared to be something stuck up his nose. When we finally saw Lon Chaney in the movie, "The Mummy's
Curse," I began to wonder if that fellow had made his escape from the Oriental Institute. At any rate, I knew
in advance what a real mummy looked like and knew what to expect. Along with the mummy, we saw a miniature re-creation
of King Solomon's Castle and I wondered how a man could get so rich.
THE UNIVERSITY....
It was my father who took me under the stands of Stagg Field where we watched the men launch the orange helium balloons which they said were checking
something in the upper atmosphere. Little did we know that no more than a few feet from where we stood Enrico Fermi and his crew of scientists
were constructing the first nuclear reactor which would be the dawning of the Nuclear Age. While we stood at Stagg
Field, my father told me that he had "snuck" into one of the Maroons championship games.
At the time, the nickname had no bearing or meaning where any professional football team was concerned. Today,
of course, the term has come to be synonomous with the Chicago Bears football team.
It was during that time that the University
of Chicago Football Team was a member of the Big Ten and they played all
of the power houses of college football. The first Heisman Trophy winner was Jay Berwanger, who was a member of
the Maroons Football Team. Eventually, the Maroons dropped out of collegiate football, as they could no longer
compete against the state-sponsored football teams. The University of Chicago is a private institution and as such
has always prided itself on being a place of higher learning. Never-the-less, they left their mark in the way of
a name and that is, "The Monsters of the Midway." The "Midway" referred to the Midway Plaisance which borders the University.
THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.... the good
It was the Columbian Exposition of 1893 which caused Hyde Park to finally establish a connection to Chicago via
a regularly scheduled train. That, and the establishment of the University of Chicago in 1892, helped to create
a shining jewel that came to be known as Hyde Park. Prior to the train, many of its residents commuted back and
forth by horse and buggy. The train was constructed to run on elevated tracks which are still in operation today.
Its purpose in 1893 was to bring people from Chicago to the Exposition. Originally, the train was coal fired and
the cars were open to the air, which meant that by the end of the ride, the passengers were covered with soot.
Today this would be an environmentalist's nightmare. Of course, today the trains are electrified and run off of
a third rail, so there are few environmental problems, [except for the noise of the train on the tracks], to provide
any cause for concern.
Gondola in the North Lagoon, viewing the Art Palace & State Buildings
at the Columbian Exposition
The Midway had actually been a part of the canals which ran through much of the buildings
and grounds of the Columbian Exposition in 1893. Gondolas floated up and down these canals which formed many of
the lagoons in Washington and Jackson Parks. In effect, the Midway had at one time been filled with water and formed
the basis of the reflecting pool where the statue of Columbia stood at its headwaters. Columbia still stands today
in Jackson Park and faces part of the drive that connects to Lake Shore Drive and is close to the LaRabida Institute. According to my
father, (although not yet born at the time, he had gained considerable knowledge of it after he arrived in Chicago)
after the Exposition had been closed, money had been appropriated to fill in the Midway, but the person who had
been placed in charge of the funds had taken the money and skipped town.
THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.... the not-so-good
The Columbian Exposition ushered in a new era and provided civilization with many new innovations. But, as with
any large scale development, there are those who will use the resources to meet their own ends. And so it was with
one individual by the name of H.H. Holmes (aka Herman Webster Mudget), widely recognized as the country's first serial killer. He was
suspected of killing over 200 individuals, though he officially confessed to only 27 killings.
After the crimes and the workings of the building were exposed, Hollywood produced many movies based upon the manner
in which Dr. Holmes killed his prey. Today, the building no longer stands, having burned to the ground during a
fire, but the infamous legacy of Dr. H.H. Holmes lives on. For further reading on his life of crime, visit this
website
"The Castle"
"Dr." Holmes had a huge building constructed that many referred to as a castle,
but which actually was a house of horrors. The building was custom-built, with no builder working longer than a
week at a time on it. This was to ensure that the hidden chambers, trap doors, secret passages and death pits that
Holmes instructed to be built remained unknown to all but himself. The building was located at 63rd Street and
Wallace, which was West of Hyde Park in an area that was (and is still) known as Englewood.
Holmes lured many victims, usually young females, to his house of horrors by placing advertisements in the paper
for rooms to let where these girls could stay while they found work at the Colombian Exposition.
LIFE DURING THE DEPRESSION YEARS....
My parents having divorced when I was 3, and with few resources at hand since we were in the midst of the Great
Depression, my mother had to go to work as my sister and myself were both placed directly in her care. Upon her
entry into the workforce, my mother took a job working for Sam (last name excluded for matters of privacy) who
owned and operated a carnival sideshow at the White City Amusement
Park which was located at 63rd and South Park Avenue (now known as Rev. Martin
Luther King Drive). Sam was a Yiddish Jew from Europe and he acted as a benefactor to my mother's family, providing
jobs to a number of them when jobs were difficult to find during the Great Depression. I emphasize Sam's ancestry
because, although my mother's people had been in America since before the Revolutionary War and they were generally
known as Pennsylvania Dutch, they were, in reality, of German origin. In contrast to the propaganda that Adolph
Hitler had used during his rise to power, Sam stood as testimony against the hypocrisy that the Nazis had forced
upon the world. Sam was a good and noble man.
at the sideshow that showed the development of the human form within the womb according to the various gestation
periods, I have been told through family legend that they are on display at the Museum of Science and Industry and have drawn a long
and sustained interest from around the world.
The White City Amusement Park rivaled any other amusement park at that time for its
roller coaster rides, broadwalk, sideshows or any other activity connected with an amusement park. My mother worked
for Sam as a cashier. The sideshow consisted of people who others might have looked upon as having developed certain
idiosyncrasies or characteristics that nature had placed upon them that which one might say differentiated them
from normal human beings. In a time when science did not provide for the correction of such defects and before
society became conscious of their specialized needs, Sam at least offered them the opportunity for gainful employment
when others had denied them. As for the series of fetuses that Sam had displayed
MRS. TORRENCE'S HISTORY LESSONS....
Once my mother found an apartment for us to live in, she then had to find a way to supplement her income in order
to pay the rent, as the financial burden was too much for her. Subletting a room within an apartment to someone
else was not an uncommon event at the time. As I often went among the apartment buildings in our neighborhood,
I could detect the signs that there were a multitude of roomers living within. In the cool or cold weather, you
could see the basic necessities of life such as butter, milk, apples, oranges, and etc. lined up outside the windows
on the ledges signifying that the roomer could stay in their room and still draw items from the window ledge without
going through the apartment and using the original lessor's refrigerator. Basically, most of these roomers were
elderly widows, [although there were a few men], who had out-lived their husbands and had very little income -
and that was mostly in the form of governmental support. A whole cadre of young girls served these elderly people
by running errands to the local store to shop for necessities. These girls, who were mostly students, might have
a number of elderly people on their route and the work provided them, as well as their families, an extra income
or allowance, no matter how small it might have been.
My mother worked nights, as she wanted to be home with my sister and myself during the day, leaving us in the care
of one of these elderly ladies - a neighbor by the name of Mrs. Torrence. This grand old lady had been born in
1860 and she related many stories to me as she sat and mended clothes and talked about the days of the horse and
buggy and the gas light era. She had witnessed many changes in her life as far as the advancement of the industrial
age had been concerned; from the automobile to the airplane and to the growth of Chicago. She remembered the time
when the Chicago city limits ended at 39th Street and when Hyde Park was a suburb south of Chicago. Mrs. Torrence
told me how the area between Hyde Park and Chicago had consisted of swampland, so that fill had to be transported
to build up the ground so that homes could be constructed.
THE 1930's....
It was during the early 1930's when White City caught fire and some of the most attractive parts of the amusement
park burned to the ground. What little was left besides the dance hall and the roller rink either became trash
or was salvaged to be used for other purposes, one of which was the construction of a cabin on the Kankakee River
by my father. The Kankakee River and its environment served as an escape from the Big City for my family whenever
the time allowed. There were no modern conveniences such as electricity or running water or even telephones; just
a pump that we primed to draw water from the ground and kerosene lamps and kerosene fired stoves. My father had
constructed the wooden frame for the cabin and used slate shingles for the outside and on the inside he stretched
canvas - the very same canvas that had covered the walls that were rescued from the side shows at White City. He
spread the canvas across the wood frame and varnished it to make the inside walls. I remember going to sleep during
many of the nights that I spent at the cabin with the light of the dim kerosene lamp reflecting off of the canvas
walls from the adjoining room whereupon I was accompanied with images of the bearded lady, the crocodile man, Twiddle
Dee and Twiddle Dumb among others. Our glass-enclosed porch, which was often used for dining purposes and that
looked out upon the river, rivaled the glass windows that might be found in any Frank Lloyd Wright home. It consisted
of leaded glass panels whose edges consisted of various colored pieces of glass that reflected all the colors of
the rainbow. That cabin was in effect a Roofer's Mansion because at that time, roofing was my father's profession.
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