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Hyde Park Historical Society5529 S. Lake Park AvenueChicago, IL 60637

Non-Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDChicago, IL

Permit No. 85

this newsletter is published by

the hyde Park historical society, a

not-for-profit organization founded

in 1975 to record, preserve, and

promote public interest in the history

of hyde Park. its headquarters,

located in an 1893 restored cable car

station at 5529 s. Lake Park avenue,

houses local exhibits. it is open to

the public on saturdays and sundays

from 2 until 4pm.

Web site: hydeparkhistory.org

telephone: HY3-1893

President: Ruth Knack

editor: Frances S. Vandervoort

Membership Coordinator:

Claude Weil

designer: Nickie Sage

VoL. 35 n0. 2 sPring 2013Published by the Hyde Park Historical Society

Hyde Park History

Hyde Park Historical SocietyCoLLeCting and PreserVing hyde ParK’s history

Time for you to join up or renew?Fill out the form below and return it to:

The Hyde Park Historical Society5529 s. Lake Park avenue • Chicago, iL 60637

Enclosed is my new renewal membershipin the Hyde Park Historical Society.

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address

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student $15 sponsor $50 Member $35 benefactor $100

✁SPRING 2013

OOn Saturday, January 19, nearly 40 architecture aficionados and people interested in Hyde Park’s religious history converged on St. Thomas the

Apostle Roman Catholic Church to hear experts Tom Staszak, Dr. Sarah Bond, and Karen Feeney describe how the church came to be such an iconic part of the community. Sitting in the nave, people listened

carefully to Dr. Sarah Bond detail the design of window design—Greek spiritual leaders in windows to the west, Roman leaders to the east. As a nod to the American theme of the church, intellectuals Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin wore Greek robes in two of the windows on the west. Other figures represented by the windows’ toga-clad figures are Calvin Coolidge, president when the church was dedicated in 1924, Cardinal Mundelein, and Monsignor Thomas Shannon, the pastor. The small panels at the base of each window represent the life of Christ. The windows, designed by Valentine d’Ogries, were constructed in the United States from fine European glass.

A handsome statue of St. Thomas, by sculptor Georgio Guileilmo, stands immediately outside the church’s east door. Visitors were mildly amused to see the words “Calvino Coolidge,” the Latinized version of the president’s name, carved into the concrete block supporting the statue.

Saint Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church is the third Catholic church of this name to occupy the 55th Street and Kimbark Avenue site. The first, constructed of wood in 1869, faced Kimbark Avenue just north of the present church’s east entrance. It was

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a truly american Church for Chicago’s Catholics

Pieta designed by Italian sculptor Alfeo Faggi

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Rita McCarthy and Sam Guard discuss St. Thomas’s architecture

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Despres ($25-$49)

• Paul G. Bruce• Mary Duplain• Ramona & Edward

Foulke• Audrey & Ronald

Gryzywinksi• Nina Helstein• Ruth P. Horwich• Dianne C. & Philip R.

Luhmann• Lisa Rademacher• Patricia M. Rosenthal• Martin Wallace• Mr. & Mrs. Clyde

Watkins• Linda Grant Williams

Olmsted ($50-$99)

• John Allen• Cordelia Benedict• Lesley & Spencer Bloch• Devereaux Bowly• Carol & Jesse Bradford• Nancy Bubula• John Evans Cornell• Rose B. Dyrud• Marguerite & Richard

Kadlec• Joseph Marlin• Janice & Richardson

Spofford• Nikki W. & Fredric

Stein• Anna Mary Wallace

Burnham ($100-$249)

• Rita Allen• Helen & Roland Bailey• Gustavo Bamberger &

Martha Van Haitsman

• Elizabeth Brackett• Marilyn Coopersmith• Hon. Barbara Flynn

Currie• Marcia & Kenneth Dam• Juergen Droegemueller• Madelon & Roger Fross• Betty Goldiamond• Nancy M. Harlan• Kathy & Roger Huff• Nicole & Paul Janas• Eugene Krell• Rita McCarthy &

Steven Fox• Museum of Science &

Industry• Vreni Naess• Jennette S. Rader• Heldegund & James M.

Ratcliffe

Cornell ($250+)

• Elizabeth Block & Bruce Kuklik

• Debbie & John Cornell• Robert Dalby• Gary Ossewaarde• Polk Bros. Foundation• George A. Ranney, Jr.• Robert A. Sideman• Michal & Mazin Safar• Frances & Peter

Vandervoort

Other

• Bert Benade• Robert L. Despres• Janina Golab• Barbara Hall• Lala Rodgers• Nathan Schlessinger

Saturday, March 16, 2013. 2-4 PM Seminary Coop Project. Two represent-atives from the University of Chicago will describe the unique history of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Jack Spicer will preside.

April, date to be determined Curator Jane Neet of the Art Institute of Chicago will describe the role of the Harding Museum in Hyde Park.

Saturday, May 18, 2013. 2-4 PM Transportation historian Greg Borzo will detail the history of Hyde Park’s cable cars.

June, Metro History Fair winners Date to be announced

UPCOMING EVENTS

also a small school—two classrooms occupied space in the basement. The second church was built on the northwest corner of 55th Street and Kimbark Avenue and opened in 1890. Upon completion of the second church, the original church became the school and a third classroom was added on the main floor. The school was operated by Sisters of the Dominican order from 1890 until 1916.

In 1916, Father Shannon commis-sioned architect Francis Barry Byrne to design the church that we know today. Barry Byrne had apprenticed with famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright from 1902 until 1908 until a rift between the devout Byrne and freewheeling Wright influenced Byrne to start out on his own. Byrne’s interest in ecclesiastical and educational design resulted in numerous commissions throughout his lifetime. While working on St. Thomas’s, he also designed Immaculata High School on Irving Park Road in Chicago. One of his best-known ventures abroad is the Church of Christ the King in Turner’s Cross, County Cork, Ireland.

Appropriately, St. Thomas is considered the patron saint of architecture. He left the Middle East in the middle of the first century, arriving in Mylapore (Meliapore) on the southeast coast of India around 52 A.D., where he built a church. He aroused the hostility of local religious leaders by making many converts to Christianity, and was persecuted and martyred. Today, Santhome Church stands of the site of the original church in Mylapore.

St. Thomas the Apostle Church and Convent was granted National Historic Landmark Status in 1979.

In building the church, Byrne soon was joined by Alfonso Ianelli, recently arrived from Italy and rapidly gaining recognition in the Chicago area as a visionary

sculptor. The men collaborated, Byrne producing the distinctive macrostructure of the church while Ianelli worked on the terra cotta detailing of roof line finials and two panels of the church’s decoration: the relief of Noah’s ark and the relief of the Mayflower.

They determined that this would be a truly American church, organically related to the nature of the site, available materials, and anticipated use. The building would be in earth tones and reflect both prairie style and art deco architectural styles. Although the church

conspicuously lacked a steeple, the eye is continually drawn upward by vertical lines and lanceolate windows.

St. Thomas’s Church is believed to be the first Catholic church to use steel in its construction, which made interior pillars and supporting arches unnecessary. The church’s ceiling was believed to be the largest interior ceiling in the world. It’s nave is essentially square, a far cry from the long, narrow naves of traditional churches in both Old and New Worlds.

After Barry Byrne moved on, designer Robert Kane took over the design of the interior. Kane, in fact, designed the church’s baptistry. St. Thomas’s church is graced with a magnificent Pieta and twelve stations of the cross sculpted by the distinguished artist Alfeo Faggi. The Faggi works were commissioned in 1925, by Frances Crane Lillie, wife of distinguished zoologist Frank Rattray Lillie and member of the wealthy plumbing equipment family. Mr. Staszak and Ms. Feeney pointed out other details, including stylized fish embedded in a border around much of the church’s interior, paintings by William Emile Schumacher*, and small chapels in various corners of the interior.

Why was it so important that the church diverge from standard design? We were reminded by our hosts that for much of our young nation’s history, Catholics were regarded as outsiders. They tended to concentrate in big cities, hold menial jobs if they could find work at all, and, it was said, lacked education. Many did not speak English. Much of this was untrue, of course. None-the-less, in many instances it has been challenging for Catholics to break into the mainstream of American life. A Catholic church, such as St. Thomas’s, that melded the beauty and tradition of the church, New World history, and the free architectural spirit of America truly enriches the culture of Hyde Park and Chicago. FSV

*Schumacher’s two paintings are of Mary at the crucifixion and Joseph on the flight to Egypt.

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Docent Tom Staszak talks with a guest

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Base of statue of St. Thomas. Note Latinized spelling of Calvino Coolidge.

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donors to the hyde Park historical society 2012-13 annual FundThe Hyde Park Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous contributions of the following donors to the Annual Fund which supports the programs of the Society:

additional donations 2012 Oral History Fund

Rascher’s Atlas Fund

• Jane and Raymond Ciacci

• Cleveland Holden• Kathy and Roger Huff• Hyde Park Bank• Hyde Park Kenwood

Community Conference

• Rita McCarthy and Steven Fox

• Lala Rodgers• Judith and Clemens

Roothaan

• Carol and Jesse Bradford

• Gary Ossewaarde• Claude Weil

• Michal and Mazin Safar• Lorna Straus• Kathy and Roger Huff

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uopen house ChicagoA total of 3,473 individuals visited site of archi-tectural significance the weekend of October 13-14.

Blackstone Library (Saturday only) 97, DuSable Museum 155, Hyde Park Art Center 139, Hyde Park Bank (Saturday only) 140, HPHS Headquarters—listed as 169 (we feel at least 254 because of handouts), Powhattan 652, Martin Ryerson House 480, St. Thomas the Apostle 126, United Church of HP 132, UC Bartlett 165, UC Ida Noyes 133, UC Oriental Institute 200, UC, the new Logan Center 800.

➤ 5 annual dinner Celebrates Parks, restaurants, hotels, bronzeville history, and Community development

Nearly 170 people enjoyed the annual dinner of the Hyde Park Historical Society on February 23 at the Quadrangle Club. At the event, Cornell Awards were granted to volunteer groups from Jackson Park and Washington Park, and to former Board member Steve Treffman for his program, Matchbooks and Menus, that celebrates more than a century of local restaurant and hotel commerce. A Jean Block Book Award was presented to Richard A. Courage for his book, The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932-1950.

The Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, David Doig, President, received a 2013 Marian and Leon

Despres Preservation Award for the restoration of historic houses in the North Pullman neighborhood, as did the University of Chicago and the Woodlawn Home Owners Association for the creation of Planned Development 43 on the 5700 block of South Woodlawn Avenue.

Jay Mulberry, who has hosted the event since 2006, again entertained attendees with his humor and lightness of touch. FSV

By 1890, when Jackson Park became the site chosen for the World’s Fair, there were 82 acres of oak-covered ridge, 24 acres of artificial lakes, and 306 acres of open space. The South Park system had been in the process of construction for over twenty years. Sewering, road making, grading, planting, and building a complete breakwater, along with the purchase of the lands had cost the taxpayer a little over $7,000 an acre, still below the average price of unimproved land adjacent to the park. With the infusion of money for the Fair, Olmsted was hired again to turn the land into wooded islands and Venetian canals and Jackson Park finally became the complete park that its planners had envisioned.

Postscript:

As for Charles and Elizabeth Phillips, they did not live long enough to enjoy the money they had received or to see the property they had lived on and fought so bitterly over for thirty years of their lives, turned into meadows and lakes, full of phaetons, promenading Hyde Parkers, tennis and baseball players, boaters and dancers. Elizabeth died in 1889. Her son married the family lawyer’s daughter. Charles died in 1890, leaving his small estate to the Oneida Community in New York, a utopian settlement where no one was allowed to own any private property. His will was a final tirade against all lawyers.

References:

William Kerr vs. South Park Commissioners, United States Circuit Court, Northern District of Illinois. #27908, 14931, 17198.

Susie Kerr vs. South Park Commissioners, United States Circuit Court, Northern District of Illinois ##17909, 14931, 17198.

Elizabeth Ann Phillips vs. William Kerr, South Park Commissioners et al. Cook County Circuit Court and United States Circuit Court, Northern District of Illinois.

South Park Commissioners vs. Frances Sunlevy et al. Old Superior Court Records, Cook County, Illinois #71089.

Waite, Catherine F., ed., “The Chicago Law Times,” Vol. 1, Chicago 1887.

The Federal Reporter, Vol. 13, West Publishing, St. Paul, 1882.

Reports of Cases at Law and Chancery Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Illinois. Springfield 1887.

United States Reports, Vol. 117. 1887.

South Park Commissioners’ Minutes of Meetings. Mss. Chicago Historical Society.

Annual Reports 1869-1889, South Park Commissioners, Chicago Historical Society.

Chamberlin, Everett, “Chicago and its Suburbs: Chicago, 2874. Pp. 313-324. Land Records, Cook County, Illinois.

Answer to Mystery Quiz:

Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris, Paul Sills, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May.

HPHS

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At the November 28 commemoration of the life and works of former Chicago mayor, Harold Washington, Tim Black contemplates Sue Purrington’s position on Women’s issues. Other panel participants were Elizabeth Brackett, Jackie Grimshaw, and Barbara O’Connor. The event was co-sponsored by the Hyde Park Herald and the Hyde Park Historical Society.

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Steve Treffman and Bert Benade

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Alicia Murasaki and Jack Spicer

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New Program Chairman NeededIf you are interested in an important job for the

Hyde Park Historical Society, you should JUMP at the chance to chair The Program Committee. Establish new contacts, meet interesting people, and inspire new members to join the Society.

Please contact Ruth Knack: rknack@planning.org; or Fran Vandervoort: vandersand@sbcglobal.net.

Partners in Sacred SpacesThis is an organization that promotes optimal use

of underutilized space in religious facilities, contacted HPHS to determine if the Society or individual members might be interested in participating in their

training program, or contacting this organization for more information. Partners in Sacred Places can be contacted at http://www.sacredplaces.org or by telephoning Andrew at (866) 796-0297.

Mystery Quiz:

Name any three members of the original Compass Players, the improvisational comedy troup that began at the Compass Tavern, 1150 East 55th Street, in the 1950s.

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rearly history of Jackson Park

By Julia KramerReprinted (with minor modifications) from the Hyde Park Historical Society Newsletter, Vol. 10, No. 1, February, 1988

Although the 500 acres which became the East Division (Jackson Park) of the South Park were marshy, largely uninhabitable and without much intrinsic value, much occurred on or about the land to add many colorful chapters and footnotes to the early history of development of the Park and of Chicago and Hyde Park.

The Potowatomie Indians undoubtedly hunted and fished on this property south of the village of Chicago before the treaty in 1833 that ended the Black Hawk War and ceded the lands west of Lake Michigan to the United States. The lands went on public sale by the U. S. Government on June 15, 1835, and were bought for $4.25 an acre in the wild speculation of the times in all western land.

One of the few persons to actually live on the unappealing property was Charles Burton Phillips, a sometimes Baptist preacher and full time real estate speculator. He purchased 196 acres in 1849 for $500, double the original price. To this acreage, which lay between 59th Street and 63rd Street and stretched from the Michigan Road (later Stony Island Ave.) to the lake, and was bounded on the west by a high ridge of timber, he brought his new wife, Elizabeth Wright. They named their home “Egremont,” built a barn and a two-story frame house, painted it yellow, laid out a ten-acre vegetable garden with a large strawberry patch, spent much money placing fences to keep out the cattle, and hired men to dig ditches by hand to drain the land. They sold corn from their farm to neighboring Hyde Parkers, but the farm was barely self-sufficient. Due to an increasing number of creditors, including William Kerr who had a $6,400 lien against the land, a perennial lack of ready cash, the Panic of 1857, and Charles’ eccentric and roving ways, they lived unhappily until 1892 when the house burned down under mysterious circumstances and they separated. Lizzie returned to her father’s home in Cincinnati. Little did they realize that their domestic troubles and their property would become the center of a controversy that would hold up the development of Jackson Park for almost fifteen years after condemnation of the land in 1870.

In 1867, the Illinois legislature passed a bill establishing a park in South Chicago and Hyde Park, and although voted down by the people, interest in and around the proposed sites increased enormously.

By February of 1869, another park bill had been approved by the voters. With considerable pressure from real estate speculators and Hyde Park landowners for determining which lands were to be put in or out of the park (those just outside of the park being the more valuable), the legislature created the South Park Commission to oversee the development. The first South Park Commissioners, John M. Wilson, Paul Cornell, J. B. Sidway, J. T. Bowen, and George Gage, hired the famed landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, creator of Central Park in New York, as the designer.

The South Park Commissioners, with authority to set bonds for $2,000,000, and to tax and assess the contiguous property to finance the purchase of lands for the park, hoped to yield enough revenue to pay for the entire park system within the first five years. The prevailing opinion was that parks always produce enhanced valuation of nearby property. What no one had counted on, however, was the length of time it would take to condemn and purchase the lands, or the difficulty in collecting the taxes and assessments. Certainly no one could have anticipated the 1871 Chicago Fire that burned all the land records along with the Olmsted and Vaux original plans. The land cost more than $3,500,000 for the entire South Park system by the time all was settled in the mid-1880s.

In the East Division of South Park, about half of the lands condemned were purchased in 1870 at prices ranging from $1,400 per acre to $2,000 per acre, already higher than the $700 per acre the Commissioners had expected to pay. Two parcels of land, however, were in dispute. One was a seventy-eight acre piece on the east side of a 200-acre tract between 63rd Street and 67th Street, owned by forty-four persons. The other was the 196-acre tract once lived on by Charles Phillips, its ownership clouded by numerous claims and pseudo-claims, including that of William Kerr who had executed his judgment on the land in 1863.

The clearing of the title to Phillips’ tract became a “Celebrated Case,”—a tangled web of litigation, tried in the United States Courts, twice in the Supreme court of the United States and several times in the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois over a period of fifteen years. The cases provided employment to numbers of lawyers, many of who took their fees in titles to small portions of the disputed land or fees contingent on the final land value. There were 10,000 pages of testimony in what one of the judges called the most “complicated” case he had ever tried. At issue was whether William Kerr, owner of the land by virtue of the lien, had title to homestead lands that had been abandoned when Charles Phillips had deserted Elizabeth. The was finally resolved in 1885 when William Kerr was declared the owner of 111 acres, for which he received $1,450 per acre plus

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interest of 6% per year from August 27, 1870. Eighty acres was declared homestead land and therefore not subject to the lien on the rest of the property. Charles Phillips was declared the owner of 45 acres and Elizabeth Wright Phillips, the owner of 35 acres of the homestead lands. The judge, striking an early blow for women’s rights, ruled that since Charles had abandoned Elizabeth, she was “head of household” and had an independent right to the land. Charles received $800 an acre pus 6% interest per year from 1870.

As for the other tract of 78 acres, there were three different trials before the value of the land was decreed to be $1,000-$1,900 per acre. The judge threw out the first two verdicts as “excessive.”

While this litigation stretched out from 1870 to 1885, the South Park Commissioners saw the costs of procuring the land rising and they chafed under the expense and delay. In 1873 they complained in their annual report, …the East Division Commissioners have met greatest difficulty in gaining title sufficient to

warrant their proceeding in the work of improvement. The very fact that the surface of ground admits of no other way of laying out except in continuous lakes and lagoons as planned by Olmsted and Vaux in their original draft of the park, prevents them from beginning the work without possession of the whole tract.” Little work was done in the East Division before 1876, but roads and sewers were put in. Stony Island Avenue was completed, the Twin Lakes were put into operation, trees were planted and a pier was built.

While the land was in dispute, many other controversies raged and tempers flared; unauthorized individuals were selling sand and gravel from the lake. The shoreline was being eroded because the placement of piers seven miles north of Chicago had redirected storms to the south lakeshore. Cattle were roaming loose on the land and fences had to be put up to keep them off. The neighbors continued their sport of shooting wild (passenger) pigeons on the property. Elizabeth Phillips and her son brought lumber down the lake on a tug one night in August 1873, and erected a house on the old property, only to see it torn down the next day by the park police. A flock of 68 sheep was kept to keep the grass under control. The Commissioners sold ice and hay from the land each year for extra income. The Panic of 1873 added to the difficulty of collecting the assessments from the neighboring property, and in one year alone the legal fees for the land purchases were $11,000.

By the mid-1880s, as the land was finally purchased in full, Jackson Park gradually began to be developed with some of the lakes and grounds that Olmsted had envisioned. Twin Lakes was a popular skating place, drawing 44,000 patrons in 1884, while the picnics and concerts drew some 70,000 people a year earlier. Three lawn tennis courts were added in 1886, and soon proved to be far too few for the demand; twelve more

were added the next year. A stone water closet was build for the ladies, 500 feet north of 59th Street—“durable, ornamental, and much needed.” Besides 14 acres of artificial lakes and two baseball diamonds, there was a large shelter near 56th Street, big enough for 2,500 people to dance on the maple floor. It was occupied almost every evening in good weather for dancing parties of all kinds. There were even a “number of interesting matches of football played in Jackson Park where the meadow is well adapted tothe games.” ➤ 6