Walt Whitman in South Chicago?

On October 25th, 1941, The Daily Calumet in its 60th anniversary edition printed an editorial making the claim that famous American poet Walt Whitman was the publisher of one of South Chicago’s earliest papers.  The South Chicago Times, first published on June 26th, 1875.  This date comes into conflict with historical records of Walt Whitman’s life.

The well-known author, Walt Whitman, was one of the foremost pre-civil war American intellectuals. He believed in an individualist ideology, developed from the philosophies of transcendentalism. Like many of his contemporaries, Whitman’s ideals were changed greatly by seeing the horrors of the war. Whitman pre-war believed that America had outgrown many of its governmental systems to be replaced by a more democratic society. But the war proved the need for a more defined, systematic stewardship of people.

After the war, Whitman was appointed to different federal government positions including the Indian Bureau of the Department of Interior, and the attorney general’s office.  He lived in Washington DC until January of 1873. He left DC for Camden, New Jersey to care for his aging mother. Around the time of her death in 1873, Whitman himself suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and in the years that followed he suffered several more strokes. Whitman would end up living in Camden for the rest of his life.

This brings up the question who is the Walt Whitman identified by The Daily Calumet.  Pauline Miller, with the Walt Whitman House, a museum in Camden, confirmed that the famous author spent the remainder of his life in New Jersey and could not have been in South Chicago at the time that The South Chicago Times was published. The Walt Whitman referenced in The Daily Calumet’s article is, most likely, of no relation.

The main source for the Daily Calumet article could have been the History of Cook County Illinois written by A.T. Andreas.  In his book published in 1889, Andreas comprehensively covers early development of Cook County including a history of the press.  Most of what Andreas wrote was copied almost word for word by the author of the 1932 Daily Calumet article.

The history of the press cover by Andreas begins in the Spring of 1873, with The South Chicago Enterprise led by H.L. Goodall.  A few years after, The South Chicago Times was published on June 26, 1875 by a Walt Whitman. By the Fall of the same year, H.L. Goodall bought Whitman’s Times and renamed his paper The Enterprise and Times.  A third company, Messrs, Mudge & Mead started publishing The Bulletin in Spring of 1875. H.L. Goodall eventually bought The Bulletin in November of 1876 then renaming the paper The Dollar Weekly Sun.  H.L Goodall shortly after sold The Dollar Weekly Sun to a regional publisher for the village of Hyde Park, South Chicago Post and Printing Company, that printed daily.  A more localized paper, The South Chicago Independent began publishing September 21, 1882 this paper would eventually become The Daily Calumet.

When Andreas references individuals in his history, he gives background to only a select few of individuals identified and mostly in his sections entitled “biographical sketches”.  The Walt Whitman referenced in Andreas press section is given no background or reference to being the famous American poet. Walt Whitman, the great American poet, due to family issues and issues of his own health was not traveling at the time The South Chicago Times was published.  Walt Whitman was most likely not the publisher mentioned in A.T. Andreas, History of Cook County Illinois.

Sources:

Andreas, A.T. History of Cook County from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. vol 1. 1884.

The Daily Calumet: 60th Anniversary Edition, 1941, October, 25.

Fredrickson, George M. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union. 1965.

Miller, Pauline. “Whitman in Chicago”. 9 Mar. 2018. E-mail.

Miller, James E. Walt Whitman. 1990.

Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman. 2005.

Burley Avenue

 

Today around 50 percent of the lots on South Burley Avenue in the Bush community stand vacant, but at its peak Burley Avenue was a thriving commercial corridor.  Burley Avenue served the Bush community which was located at the gate of United States Steel South Works Site, the major employer for the South Chicago community area.  When the steel mills were open the community was able to support this small commercial district. With the base of local industry this small community developed quickly during the end of nineteenth century.

South Chicago was annexed into the City of Chicago in 1889. As a result around the late 1800s a discussion began about the potential for renaming some of the local streets.  At the time, Burley Avenue was known as Superior Avenue. Now that the community was a part of the city some names of streets needed to be changed and residents wanted to have a say on what the names would be.  A community meeting was held and the name Brazil was voted as a replacement for Superior. Community support for Brazil is unclear but the vote had little influence at the city level. However, in the 1910s, the city renamed the street Burley Avenue.  August Harris Burley was an early Chicago resident that organized the city’s first fire company. He would go on to hold positions in the city government including comptroller and a member of the Board of Public Works.

By the late 1800’s, as a thriving corridor, Burley Avenue served as a neighborhood retail/commercial corridor, as opposed to 92nd Street and Commercial Avenue that was more of a regional retail/commercial corridor. Commercial Avenue contained banks, department stores, and hotels, while Burley Avenue had drug stores, small hardware stores, and convenience stores.

Burley’s commercial corridor stretched South from 83rd Street to 86th Street.  The core of the corridor was at Burley and 84th Street. In 1913, the corridor consisted of 44 storefronts, 13 bars, 92 residential flats and other dwellings.  Some of the businesses along the street included two theaters, a bakery, a drug store, a hardware store, a pool hall, and professional offices.

By 1940 the population of the Bush community had peaked, and the businesses along Burley continued to thrive. By 1948, the corridor had grown to 72 store fronts, 16 bars, and 89 flats and other dwellings.  The corridor had multiple funeral homes, a gas station, a bakery, a drug store, a hardware store, a furniture store, and professional offices.

Bars, more than any other businesses thrived in the neighborhood. By the 1950s 19 buildings along Burley alone were bars.  Like many industrial communities, bars in South Chicago catered to workers. Some bars served specifically for different ethnic groups, different groups of steelworkers, different union divisions, and different political groups. Some bars served multiple niche markets, catering to everybody while also drawing people in from outside the neighborhood.

In April of 1958, the Calumet Skyway opened. This would have an effect on the businesses and bars on Burley Avenue due to people using the Skyway to bypass the neighborhood instead of U.S. 41, which ran through the neighborhood.  Regardless, many businesses were still supported by people from outside the community, people who worked at South Works but commuted from elsewhere, or travelers on U.S. 41, which intersects at the southern edge of the commercial corridor.  Along with a decline in outside business, corporate strife at the steel mills, and political upheaval in the 1970s led to economic instability and neighborhood decline.

 

Chicago and the Movie Theater

The history of film in Chicago is as old as the movie industry; the city was an early home to silent era studios and filming locations.  Naturally the city also had a role in development of the movie theater. The film industry was one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment in the early twentieth century.  Movie theaters in these early years and throughout most of the twentieth century played a significant cultural role in Chicago. It will be possible to define the history of theaters on the Southeast Side by the first understanding the history of theaters in Chicago.

The movie going experience has gone through many changes as a result of the Great Depression, wars, and advances in technology.  To adapt to these changes, theaters over the years served many purposes including social gathering places, entertainment and vaudeville halls, concert venues, and the hosting of performance art productions. Theaters would often host multiple types of entertainment to survive lean economic times. Often live performances of different types would be followed by a featured film. Now gone, many early theaters are now used for different purposes or have been lost to fire or redevelopment.

To capture public needs for entertainment, small theaters developed in communities all over Chicago.  Theaters built around the turn of the twentieth century were often smaller in size and in many cases, retrofitted storefronts. These makeshift early theaters were prone to destruction by fire due to film’s volatility. Film is a medium made of celluloid, a flammable material. As a result of fires, theater designs improved over time. As technology advanced projectors got bigger projection rooms became more sophisticated and fireproof.  By the 1930’s, those smaller theaters not destroyed by fire were either upgraded for sound or converted back to storefronts.

During the 1920s and 1930s, many larger theaters were built to accommodate larger crowds and featured new advancements in film technologies like sound, better screens and projectors.  The largest of these theaters were nicknamed “movie palaces” due to their size and ornate designs. Many newer theaters were able to thrive despite the economic downturn due to the Great Depression, but many of the smaller neighborhood theaters struggled to attract audiences.

Larger Downtown theater, today the Chicago Theater is mainly a concert venue

During the 1940s, movies were a growing industry. After the war there was a boom in new theaters.  By the late 1940s, there were three types of theaters in Chicago, broken down by location, size, and programming.  Primarily in downtown Chicago, larger theaters (the “movie palaces”) had the largest seating capacity and were the most ornate in design.  They also played the newest movies.

Larger neighborhood theater: Harper Theater, Hyde Park

After around eight weeks after their downtown release, movies would then circulate to the larger neighborhood theaters.  Many of these larger neighborhood theaters had smaller seating capacity in comparison to their downtown counterparts but they would often rival them in design.  

Smaller theaters: The Hegewisch, today (13320 South Baltimore)

Finally, there were typically older, smaller local neighborhood theaters, sometime known as “opera houses” or “nickelodeons”.  These local theaters had a smaller seating capacity and were more simple buildings. Often these theaters were converted storefronts some dated back to the turn of the nineteenth century, these theaters survived the Great Depression and the changes in technology.

With the introduction of television in the late 1940s, theater growth was replaced with a new era of struggle.  In 1948, the United States Supreme Court ruled against five major studios and three smaller ones in a Sherman Anti-Trust Act case.  The result of this ruling took theater control away from studios. With studios temporarily weakened, this ruling helped lead to the rise of television.  The growth of television, through the late 1940s and 1950s lead to many small neighborhood theaters closing their doors. The movie industry responded in the following decades, by offering more films produced in color and developing theater exclusives to add to the viewing experience, like 3D, Cinescope, and many others to follow.  

Neighborhood theaters would continue to struggle with the growing popularity of television and the development of malls and cinema multiplexes.  By the 1980s, most of the neighborhood theaters closed their doors, although some eventually reopened to serve smaller niche genres. Downtown movie palaces today serve as performance theater venues. Other small neighborhood theaters and larger theaters transitioned programming from movies to different types of performance arts as well.

Theaters in the Southeast Side

Today, the Crown theater in the Bush community (8402 South Burley)

Most of the commercial corridors on the Southeast Side have been served by a movie theater.  The movie industry was one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment in the early twentieth century.  The following local theaters opened and closed during this earliest boom of the silent movie era. By community: in South Chicago, the Bessemer at 9128 Commercial, the Bowen at 3019 92nd, the Calumet at 9204 Commercial, the Krakow at 3044 92nd Street, the Lincoln at 9103 Commercial, the South Chicago at 9223 Commercial, and the Wonderland at 9220 Commercial Avenue; in Bush, the Crown at 8402 Burley, and the Star, 8421 Burley; and in East Side, the Ewing at 10108 South Ewing.

Other Southeast Side community theaters opened during the silent era but were able to retrofit themselves for the early sound era of film.  Unfortunately they were not able to compete with large local theaters. Many ended up closing before the 1950’s or soon after which included, by community:  in South Chicago, the International at 9233 Commercial and the Joy at 9255 Commercial (also known as Pete’s and the International); in East Side, the Eastside at 10555 Ewing; and in Hegewisch, the Ontario at 13407 Brandon, while the Hegewisch theater at 13320 Baltimore stayed open until 1951 serving the Hegewisch neighborhood.

South Chicago had two of the largest theaters.  Commercial Avenue was home to both the Gayety theater (at 9150 Commercial) and the Commercial theater (at 9205 Commercial).  The Commercial theater, the larger of the two, opened in 1920 and closed in 1966. The Commercial had a seating capacity of 1,496 people.  When it was open, the Commercial played the newest movies in the community and at times also served as a performance art venue. The theater featured a large lit up Art Deco style marquee that spelled out “Commercial”.

The Gayety opened in 1908 and seated 759 people and initially closed in 1957. Later, the theater reopened as Teatro Gayety and featured largely Spanish-language international films.  The theater remained open until a 1982 fire and was not rebuilt. The theater marquee hung over the street and spelled out “Gayety” in marquee lights.

Sources:

Schiecke, Konrad. Downtown Chicago’s Historic Movie Theaters. 2012.

Schiecke, Konrad. Historic Movie Theaters in Illinois, 1883-1960. 2006.