A Centennial View of the
University of Chicago
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Thomas Wood Stevens and Alden Charles Noble, The Morning Road: A Book of Verses (Chicago: Blue Sky Press, 1902). title page. Produced in Kenwood and Hyde Park from 1899 to 1907, the beautifully designed books of the Blue Sky Press were a faithful expression of Arts and Crafts ideals. |
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"A Selection of Works by Twentieth Century Artists," Renaissance Society, exhibition catalogue, 1934. Foundedin 1915 by members of the University of Chicago faculty, the Renaissance Society in its early decades became the principal venue for the introduction of twentiethcentury art to Chicago. |
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Sunday Matinee Dance ticket, Midway Gardens, 1927. One of Frank Lloyd Wright's most inventive designs, Midway Gardens combined striking modern architecture with the relaxed ambience of a traditional German beer garden. While Prohibition brought an end to public drinking, Midway Gardens continued to offer ballroom dancing into the late 1920s. |
The University Neighborhood
A
Creative Center
Clarence Darrow, America's
most celebrated defense attorney, lived in the Midway Apartment Hotel
on 60th Street near Stony Island Avenue from his early days of practice
as a corporate lawyer until his death in 1938. Among his notable
cases was the 1924 defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb,
two Kenwood youths who were convicted of the premeditated murder of
Bobby Franks, a neighborhood schoolboy. For Darrow, the University and
the Hyde Park community provided an ideal intellectual environment in
which to learn and test unconventional ideas. His home was a gathering
place for University scholars and others who constituted an informal
"biology club" that met to discuss current developments in biology,
psychology, anthropology, geology, astronomy, and biblical interpretation.
Hyde
Park Remembered
Based perhaps on their
spirited encounters in the biology club, Darrow and George Burman Foster
met in 1919 for a series of public debates on religion at
the Garrick Theater in Chicago's Loop. Later, in the 1930s,
Darrow debated one of the University's most popular lecturers, his long-time
friend, anthropologist Frederick Starr, on the topic, "Has the Human
Race Justified Its Existence?" The biology club also served as a source
of support for Darrow in 1925 during the famous "Monkey Trial" in Dayton,
Tennessee. Backing barrow's successful defense of John Scopes and evolutionary
theory were expert witness statements prepared by three friends on the
University faculty: zoologist Horatio H. Newman, educator Charles H.
Judd, and anthropologist Fay-Cooper Cole.
From 1920 through the era of urban renewal in the 1950s, Hyde Park began to experience the changes that were affecting all large cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Shifting patterns of economic growth, the burgeoning of far-distant suburbs, the great migration of African-Americans from the rural South, and the incipient flight of middle- and upper-class whites from the city all started to have their cumulative effect. Throughout these decades, Hyde Park maintained its reputation as a lively neighborhood that offered gracious living, a diversity of services, and the opportunity for spirited encounters with the latest in the arts and entertainment.
In 1986, Thomas Park, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University, offered his reminiscences of the neighborhood where he had lived since 1920:
I have a recollection of Hyde Park as a place that's been very green .. . From the beautiful array of elm trees on the Midway throughout the whole of Hyde Park . .. and Kenwood and all of Jackson Park, there's a very strong recollection in my mind of wonderful leafing and flowering.Another impression I had of Hyde Park was its tidy quality ... there was very little litter. Graffiti was an unknown event. We did have one source of filth ... coal dust, because most of Hyde Park was fired for many years with coal furnaces ... you could feel the coal dust everywhere, on your face and on your person and in your books and in your possessions. It was a great blessing when Hyde Park converted from coal to oil. I think the thing I remember most pleasantly about Hyde Park both as a boy and as a young man and as an older man was the quality and diversity of the shops. In (the 1930s and 1940s] one could start at the corner of Lake Park Avenue and 35th Street and walk to Cottage Grove ... and one could find two movie houses, the Jefferson and the Frolic. In somewhat later years, a marvelous pub and jazz emporium called the Beehive, where Miff Mole played. A saloon on the corner known as The Wharf had a very questionable reputation because it was inhabited by many women who blonded their hair ... A few doors down was a very famous old Hyde Park saloon known as Hanley's ... which remained open during Prohibition ... [It was particularly popular with streetcar motormen and conductors, with truck drivers, and with University professors. It was just filled with University professors during Prohibition.