Chicago Fire Stories Part I: Second Presbyterian Church

Second Presbyterian Church, Jevne & Almini, 1866

The stately Gothic Revival structure completed for Second Presbyterian Church at the northeast corner of Wabash and Washington in 1851 was among the most prominent and celebrated buildings in pre-Fire Chicago. The survival of its walls and 164-foot bell tower made it a frequently photographed site in the months after the Fire. In this article, we will examine many aspects of the building – an important work of architect James Renwick Jr.; a theory as to why the exterior walls survived largely intact; and what became of the site in the months and years following the great conflagration that leveled much of Chicago.

Second Presbyterian Church was organized in 1842 with 26 charter members, including Benjamin Raymond, at the time serving his second of two terms as mayor of Chicago. The congregation’s first building was a modest one-story frame structure located at the southeast corner of Randolph and Clark (now part of the site of the Richard J. Daley Center). Within five years, the growth of the congregation and the encroachment of business in this part of downtown resulted in the trustees purchasing a new lot for $5,000 at the northeast corner of Wabash and Washington, in what was then a quiet residential neighborhood. The property backed up to Dearborn Place (now Garland Court) and Dearborn Park, which extended east to Michigan Avenue (and is now the site of the Chicago Cultural Center).

A $100 premium was offered for the best building plan, but only a few were submitted, and none of those proved satisfactory. A church trustee traveling to New York was introduced to architect James Renwick Jr., who was then completing the Church of the Pilgrims on Union Square. Renwick was quickly gaining a reputation for his buildings in the Gothic Revival style, including Grace Church in New York City, and his recently accepted plan for the Smithsonian Institution “Castle” in Washington, D.C. (His best-known work, St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, would follow later, and was constructed between 1858 and 1879).

Renwick accepted the Second Presbyterian commission and the approved budget of $25,000. Soon after, he submitted his sketch for the building, which was to be constructed of “tar rock,” a local limestone quarried about four miles northwest of downtown, noted for its bituminous tar deposits which gave it a spotted appearance (shown below). The stone was quarried, brought to the building lot, and then cut during the fall and winter of 1848. Work on the foundations began in the spring of 1849. This early work was superintended by George Washington Snow, a church trustee and Chicago-based architect remembered today as the inventor of the balloon frame method of constructing wooden buildings.

During the summer of 1849, architect and builder Asher Carter of Morristown, New Jersey, was engaged to oversee the completion of the building. He was the second professional architect to practice in Chicago, and later formed a partnership with Augustus Bauer, designing such well-known buildings as Old St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.

Earliest known photograph of the church. Note the elegant residence at 21 Washington Street shown at far left.

The cornerstone of the church was laid in August 1849 and work was substantially completed by the end of 1850. A service of dedication took place on the evening of Friday, January 24, 1851. The building came in just over the original budget, although the addition of a bell and clock in the bell tower brought the cost to about $35,000. A 50^th anniversary history of the church, published in 1892, noted the following about the bell and clock:

“The bell and clock were popular features in the equipment of the church. The bell, key of E flat, large, heavy and rich in tone, was a very important factor in securing the prompt attendance of the congregation at the regular services.

“The clock gave its warning strike when it was time for the pastor to say, ‘In conclusion.’ Occasionally a stranger in the pulpit would prolong his discourse until he saw unmistakable evidence that some of the congregation wanted him to conclude, after the clock had finished striking twelve.”

A newspaper article published in December 1850 noted that “it is perhaps the most magnificent Church edifice in the West.” It is believed to have been one of the first structures in Chicago constructed of stone, predating other buildings erected during the 1850s with “Athens marble,” a limestone quarried in the region of Joliet and Lemont. More importantly, it appears to have been the first building west of New York to have been built in the Gothic Revival style, setting a trend in Chicago (and elsewhere) that continued through the time of the fire.

Photo looking east from the cupola of the Court House taken in 1858 by Alexander Hesler. Second Presbyterian Church can be seen in the upper right hand corner of the top photo; the detail shot below shows the church and, to the left, the Dearborn Seminary for Young Ladies.

The distinctive limestone with its “antique appearance” quickly earned the building the name of the “Spotted Church.” Other more lighthearted sources referred to it as the “Church of the Holy Zebra.” (For an interesting discussion of the stone and its later uses in Chicago, click here.)

1857 Braunhold & Sonne map showing the back (east) facade of the church, which faced into Dearborn Park. Note that the church is completely surrounded by residences.

By the mid-1860s, the church found itself facing the same predicament it had encountered twenty years earlier – namely the encroachment of business into a residential neighborhood. The two maps shown below, dated 1862 and 1869, show this rapid transformation. In the 1862 map, produced by E. Whitefield for Rufus Blanchard, all the lots surrounding the church were occupied by dwellings, except for the Dearborn Seminary - a private school for girls on the west side of Wabash, and an Episcopal church – the Church of the Holy Communion – a few doors north of Second Presbyterian. (That church, visible at far left in the top image of this article, was built in 1859, and abandoned just nine years later when the congregation relocated three miles south).

1862 Blanchard map

As seen in the 1869 Sanborn Fire Insurance map, the entire block north of the church had been rebuilt with large commercial blocks. One of the largest was the five-story building for the wholesale druggists Lord & Smith immediately north of the church, which would have blocked all light through the north facing stained glass windows. J. V. Farwell & Co. offered the church $192,000 for its prime corner location – a lot which had cost just $5,000 twenty years earlier.

1869 Sanborn map, the church is shown in blue at center.

Church members were divided on what to do. William Bross, then serving as Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, recommended razing the church building and erecting a large business block with stores and offices on the first two floors, and a large auditorium for church purposes on the top floor. (The Methodists did adopt this type of plan and remain to this day in the Chicago Temple on the site of their original church building at Washington and Clark).

The chief objection to remaining at the downtown location was the fact that many of the church members were moving out of the area and relocating to an area two to three miles to the south. It was feared that these members would opt to build a new church convenient to their homes, thus abandoning the old Second Church downtown.

The church as it appeared about 1870. Note the large Lord & Smith building immediately to the north.

Finally, during the summer of 1871, the congregation voted to sell the downtown property for $161,000 to Timothy Wright while retaining ownership of the building itself. A new site was purchased at the corner of Wabash and Twentieth, later exchanged for the present lot at the northwest corner of Michigan and Twentieth (now Cullerton). At the same time, the congregation formally merged with the Olivet Presbyterian Church, at the time located at Wabash and 14^th Street, the combined congregation to take possession of the new building upon its completion.

The final service was held at the old church building at Wabash and Washington on Sunday, October 1, 1871. The next day, the Chicago Tribune reported:

“The rapidity of the growth of this city would seem to be an exhausted theme did not some new occurrence almost daily impress it upon us. The disappearance of one building of note after another, in the more central part of the city, to make room for the raising of one more suitable to commercial needs, is one of the indications . . . Now the obituary of the Second Presbyterian Church, situated on the corner of Washington street and Wabash avenue, must be written. The last gasp was taken by the old church yesterday morning; the old building is dead; decomposition will soon set in.”

A reunion of current and former church members took place on the evening of Tuesday, October 3, after which the building was closed. In the meantime, the trustees continued their efforts to sell the building to someone who would dismantle it and reuse the stone for a new structure.

On Sunday, October 8, 1871, exactly one week after the last service was held in the building, the Great Chicago Fire ignited in the barn behind Mrs. O’Leary’s home at 137 De Koven Street. On Monday, the fire consumed the entire downtown district, including the church building. When the smoke cleared the next day, almost all of the downtown buildings were totally destroyed. It was quickly noted, however, that the walls and bell tower of Second Presbyterian Church had survived virtually intact, a fact made even more remarkable when noted that the Lord & Smith building immediately to the north was partially blown up as part of an unsuccessful attempt to create a firebreak.

The church looking west from Michigan Avenue

Use of the bituminous limestone may have been a factor in the survival of the building. An article from the October 26 edition of the Chicago Tribune, however, noted that confusion over the use of the stone and its ability to withstand fire was widespread:

“A writer in the American edition of Chambers Edinburgh Journal, published before the fire, stated that in the neighborhood of Chicago are enormous deposits of ‘oil-bearing limestone,’ of which many houses are built. Inspired by this suggestion, numerous papers are discussing in the East whether the uncontrollable fury of the fire, and the rapid demolition of all our stone structures, were not owing to the use of this bituminous stone. Various buildings are cited, and their speedy destruction looked upon as proof that the intense heat under which they yielded, was due to the presence of the oil in the stone.

“To all of which it is only necessary to state that the supposed oil-bearing stone was not used in this city, except in some cases for foundations, which are all intact, and that the only structure of any size built of that material, was the Second Presbyterian Church, the walls of which are all standing and did not crumble or melt under the heat. The stone mainly used was the Athens marble, a limestone formation, handsome, easily worked, which had become a favorite with builders. Until this fire it had exhibited no special incapacity to resist heat.”

The church looking north from Madison Street across the ruins of the Drake Block.

The church looking east from State Street across the ruins of Field, Leiter & Co.

(It is interesting to note that the walls of the present Second Presbyterian Church, constructed of the same bituminous limestone, also survived a devastating fire in March 1900 that completely destroyed the sanctuary and roof).

The church building was quickly put into use. Church member Charles P. Kellogg was the owner of a large clothing manufacturing business which had been burned out in the fire. By the end of October, Kellogg advertised:

“To those of our customers who have been obliged to buy Clothing for the past three weeks in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Dubuque, St. Joseph, and other inferior markets, we desire to state that we have rented the old Second Presbyterian Church, corner Wabash-av. and Washington-st., which we are now roofing over, making of it as good a store as circumstances will permit. We shall take immediate steps to fill this store with a more desirable stock than ever before exhibited by us, and shall do our whole duty in re-establishing the reputation that this market has always sustained of being the best clothing market in the country.”

Church building showing temporary roof installed over the sanctuary by Charles Kellogg.

The side walls of the church building were 31 feet high, so Kellogg was able to divide the former sanctuary into two floors containing nearly 20,000 square feet of usable space. His company moved into its new building on Madison Street near Market by May 1872, at which time he advertised the former church space for rent.

After the fire, the church collected the insurance proceeds on the building, and the stone became the property of Timothy Wright, who had purchased the land in August 1871. He apparently entered into an agreement with the congregation, as it was noted in August 1872 that “a portion of the stone of the old is being used in the new Second Presbyterian Church, now being rapidly rebuilt, at the corner of Michigan avenue and Twentieth street.”

The building stood largely intact for nearly two years. An article from June 1873 stated that “in the way of ruins our visitors are considerably more than a year too late to see much.” Mention was made of a portion of the Court House which still stood, along with partial walls of the post office and the Grand Central Depot, but the “most picturesque of all the ruins is that of the Second Presbyterian Church.”

By September 1873, demolition of the building was finally underway and by the next month excavation began for a hotel planned by Timothy Wright. During demolition, the cornerstone of the church was located, its tin box containing water-soaked copies of various newspapers and periodicals from 1849, and a Morocco leatherbound pocket Bible.

Wright salvaged much of the stone and transported it to Winnetka, where he intended to build a church in memory of his mother, who had been one of the charter members of Second Presbyterian. The church plan never materialized, and the stone was eventually sold to J. Hall McCormick, who hauled it to Lake Forest with the intention of building a house. His plans changed, and he sold the stone to the trustees of the First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, which used it in the construction of its new building, designed by architect Henry Ives Cobb, and dedicated on June 10, 1887. The use was most appropriate as the Lake Forest church had close ties with Second Presbyterian. The Lake Forest Association was begun in the lecture room of the old church in 1856, and three years later the church was organized in the same space.

First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest showing the spotted stone.
(Photo by Steve Sabourin)

For unknown reasons, Wright never moved forward with his plans to build a hotel on the former site of the church. In December 1876, he sold the land to John Taylor of New York for $97,500, just 60% of what he had paid for it five years earlier. Taylor quickly proceeded with the construction of a four-story business block which cost about $100,000. By October 1877, the building was leased to a large clothing firm, H. A. Kohn & Bros. (That building was replaced in 1915 by the Garland Building, a 21-story structure designed by Christian Eckstorm which still stands).

The Garland Building looking west from Michigan Avenue.

The stone was not the only part of the building which survived. After the church held its final service on October 1, 1871, two ornate Gothic Revival pulpit chairs, part of the design by James Renwick Jr., were removed and sent off for reupholstering. That location was outside the burnt district and the chairs survived. They can still be seen on display in the narthex of the current church.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the building to survive was its wondrous bell, or at least parts of it. During the fire, the bell came crashing down from its perch high up in the tower. It was rescued and found its way to the jewelry firm of I. & C. W. Speer & Co. In February 1872, the firm began advertising that a variety of souvenirs of the fire were being made from the bell. (Souvenirs were also made from the bells salvaged from the Court House and St. Mary’s Church).

“The oldest bells from the great fire are made into charms by the oldest manufacturers, I. & C. W. Speer & Co., established 1843. They are now making twenty-five different kinds of charms, including the beautiful paper weight, the cow kicking over the lamp; beautiful Bibles, with date of fire on the cover; bells, book-marks, tea-bells, and all other charms from the famous old Second Presbyterian Church bell, which was the first that rang the fire alarms, by authority of the city of Chicago.”

The story of the second building occupied by Second Presbyterian Church is significant. The “Spotted Church” was an important early design of architect James Renwick Jr. which introduced Gothic Revival to the West and ushered in the age of stone buildings in Chicago. The reuse of the stone from the walls that miraculously survived the fire, along with the existence of the pulpit chairs and souvenirs from the church bell are all tangible links to the Great Chicago Fire that forever changed the destiny of Chicago.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES SHOWING THE BUILDING AFTER THE FIRE

The First National Bank, seen through the front entrance of the church, was one of the few buildings in downtown Chicago to survive largely intact.

John La Farge's Sleep returns to Glessner House

John La Farge

Sleep, 1884-1885

Watercolor on paper

8 in. x 6 1/2 in. (2032. cm x 16.51 cm)

The Lunder Collection

Accession Number: 011.2011

Colby College Museum of Art

The Glessners were avid collectors of steel engravings but did acquire a small number of paintings and drawings to decorate their home.  John Glessner, in his The Story of a House written in 1923, noted that they possessed a painting by John La Farge, but little was known about it, as it is not currently in the Glessner House collection.

John La Farge (1835-1910) was an American painter and stained-glass designer who enjoyed a considerable reputation throughout the last decades of the 19^th century.  Although largely remembered for his stained-glass work and rivalry with Louis Comfort Tiffany, he produced a significant number of easel paintings and murals during his career.  His extensive decoration of Trinity Church in Boston, designed by H. H. Richardson, gave him a national reputation, and the Glessners saw his murals and stained-glass windows while visiting the church with Richardson in 1885.  La Farge was also among the first American artists to be directly influenced by Japanese prints.  The Glessners had two books by La Farge in their library, Considerations on Painting: Lectures Given in the Year 1893 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1896), and An Artist’s Letters from Japan (1897).

Frances Glessner provided clues about the painting and its acquisition in her journal.  On June 26, 1887, she noted:

“Today we have enjoyed looking at twelve of La Farge’s water colors sent to us by Wunderlich.”

H. Wunderlich & Co. was a New York gallery founded by Hermann Wunderlich in 1874.  It dealt mostly in prints as well as the works of selected contemporary artists including James McNeil Whistler.  Frances Glessner first noted visiting Wunderlich in October 1883 when she went to see a collection of fifty etchings by Whistler.  In March 1885, Wunderlich sent several engravings to the Glessners for review.  They purchased three, including two “Dutch Admirals” they had been anxious to acquire for quite some time.  During a trip to New York in February 1886, they visited the gallery again, so clearly had developed a relationship with the owner.

The most significant clue to the identity of the painting is revealed in a journal entry from May 4, 1892, which recounts a visit by John La Farge to the Glessner home:

“Mr. Norman Williams brought the great John La Farge to call on me and see the house.  He was much astonished to find his painting of the sleeping woman here – he didn’t know it was even in Chicago.  He was delightful and I greatly enjoyed the call.  Mr. Williams told me in confidence that Mr. La Farge is to make a stained-glass window to the memory of John Crerar to put in the Second (Presbyterian) Church.”  (The large rose window was installed in 1893 but was lost in a March 1900 fire that destroyed the sanctuary).

La Farge's watercolor study for the Ascension window at Second Presbyterian Church

Taking Frances Glessner’s description of the work as depicting a sleeping woman, an internet search uncovered a La Farge painting entitled Sleep, now in the collection of the Colby College Museum of Art.  With an image in hand, it was possible to locate the historic location of the painting in the house.  It was revealed that the painting hung over the south music cabinet in the parlor, and appears in the earliest photos taken in 1888, and later photos taken in 1923 for The Story of a House. 

Glessner parlor, 1888 (Sleep at left, centered over music cabinet)

Detail of Glessner parlor, 1923, Sleep at upper center

Another photo provided a valuable clue.  A descendant of the Glessners’ son George donated a photograph of George and Alice Glessner’s home, The Ledge, at The Rocks in Bethlehem, New Hampshire.  Taken about 1940, by which time Alice was a widow, the La Farge painting can clearly be seen on the wall behind her over a table lamp, confirming that the painting went to her when the Prairie Avenue house was broken up following John Glessner’s death in January 1936. 

The Ledge, home of George and Alice Glessner, The Rocks, Bethlehem, New Hampshire
Sleep shown at left above table lamp

In March 2011, the painting was placed for auction with Christie’s in New York.  It was acquired by collectors Peter and Paula Crane Lunder, who gifted it to Colby College, along with seven other La Farge watercolors and two oils, part of a huge donation of more than 500 works of art given to the Art Museum.  In July 2019, the Museum graciously provided Glessner House with a high-resolution scan of the artwork, so that it could be framed and hung in the same location in the parlor where the original hung for nearly fifty years.

The watercolor on paper, executed in 1884 or 1885, measures just 6.5” x 8” and is based on an oil painting (now destroyed) John La Farge completed in 1869 depicting his wife.  Exhibition records indicate the watercolor was exhibited at least three times in 1886 and 1887, prior to the Glessners’ acquisition of the piece.  As noted on the Colby College Museum of Art website:

“Intimate in scale and private in mood, the watercolor Sleep combines realistic representation with decorative arrangement.  The artist’s wife, Margaret Mason Perry, is shown reclining in a shallow, interior space, her limp arms and gracefully turned head suggesting complete repose.  Repeated patterns and soft washes of color connect the figure with the surrounding space.”

John La Farge

Sleep, 1884-1885

Watercolor on paper

8 in. x 6 1/2 in. (2032. cm x 16.51 cm)

The Lunder Collection

Accession Number: 011.2011

Colby College Museum of Art

This full image shows the artist's brush wipe marks and signature

that are concealed by the mat when framed.

We are delighted to have Sleep return to the Glessner House parlor, so that visitors can enjoy La Farge’s work of art, just as guests of the Glessners did for half a century.  Special thanks to the staff at the Colby College Museum of Art for their assistance in making this project possible.

The reproduction of John LaFarge's Sleep as reinstalled in the
Glessner House parlor on August 2, 2019.

Happy 150th birthday Howard Van Doren Shaw!

May 7, 2019 marks the 150^th anniversary of the birth of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw.  One of the best-known architects in his day, Shaw’s distinctive blending of traditional elements with his own personal style, led to his reputation in the architectural community as the most radical of the conservatives, and the most conservative of the radicals. 

Glessner House, in partnership with Friends of Historic Second Church, will honor Shaw by hosting a half-day symposium on May 11, 2019, with five scholars exploring various aspects of Shaw’s career.  The symposium will take place in the sanctuary of Second Presbyterian Church, Shaw’s masterpiece of the Arts and Crafts movement, and the only one of his designs to be designated a National Historic Landmark.  For more information on the symposium, or to purchase tickets, click here.  In this article, we look back at Shaw’s life and several commissions he received in the South Loop which exhibit the breadth of his abilities.

Howard Van Doren Shaw was born on May 7, 1869 to Theodore and Sarah (Van Doren) Shaw.  Theodore was a successful dry goods merchant and a descendant of an early Quaker settler who came to America with William Penn.  Sarah was a talented painter and a descendant of a prominent Dutch family that included the first mayor of Brooklyn, New York.  Shortly after Shaw’s death, fellow architect Alfred Granger noted that Shaw had inherited his father’s “strength of character and quiet firmness” while receiving “his artistic taste, his love for color and fantasy” from his mother.  

Shaw’s parents married in 1865 and established their home at 66 Calumet Avenue (later 2124 S. Calumet).  By the time Howard was a young boy, the house sat in the midst of the most exclusive residential district in the city.  He received a privileged upbringing, attended the exclusive Harvard School for Boys at 2101 S. Indiana Ave., and became a member of Second Presbyterian Church, which his parents had attended since the time of their marriage.  Shaw earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale in 1890 and that fall, entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he completed the rigorous two-year architecture program in just one year. 

He returned to Chicago in 1891 and quickly obtained an apprenticeship in the prominent firm of Jenney & Mundie, an outstanding training ground that had produced architects including Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan.  The office was located in the Home Insurance Building, Jenney’s most prominent building, widely regarded as the first true skyscraper.  In the summer of 1892, Shaw headed off to Europe for an extended journey studying and sketching architecture.  While in Spain, he met and traveled with James Renwick Jr., the architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and Second Presbyterian Church in Chicago.

Shaw house, 2124 S. Calumet Avenue

Returning to Chicago in early 1893, he rejoined the firm of Jenney & Mundie, and in April, married Frances Wells, the daughter of a pioneer Chicago boot merchant.  By early 1894, Shaw established his own practice, setting up his office on the top floor of his family home on Calumet Avenue.  He hired a draftsman, Robert G. Work, and quickly established a reputation for designing distinctive residences in a variety of architectural styles.

In 1897, Shaw received his first large commission through his Yale classmate Thomas E. Donnelley.  The building at 731 S. Plymouth Court housed the Lakeside Press, later R. R. Donnelley & Sons.  The vaulted fireproof structure with reinforced concrete floors showed Shaw’s ability to design a building that was both beautiful and highly functional. 

That same year, he received his first commission from Second Presbyterian Church, to design the Crerar Sunday School Chapel at 5831 S. Indiana Ave.  The building, designed and built at the same time as Shaw’s summer house, Ragdale, in Lake Forest, features a similar façade with twin gables sheathed in a smooth stucco finish.  The Chapel and Ragdale both exhibit Shaw’s early mastery of interpreting the English Arts & Crafts style. 

The first of three houses Shaw designed in the neighborhood stood at 1900 S. Calumet Ave. and was commissioned by Charles Starkweather in 1899.  Although based on classic Georgian design, interesting features such as the Palladian window cut into the pediment over the main entrance show Shaw’s interest in, and mastery of, introducing his personal touch into each commission he received. 

In March 1900, Second Presbyterian Church suffered a devastating fire which destroyed the sanctuary but left the outer walls intact.  Shaw was commissioned to rebuild the sanctuary, the design of which was inspired by his love of the English Arts & Crafts.  He and his wife traveled to England that summer for inspiration, and the completed designs were presented to, and approved by, the church board of Trustees that fall.  He engaged several talented Chicago craftsmen, including muralist Frederic Clay Bartlett, lighting designer Willy H. Lau, and the leaded glass firm of Giannini & Hilgart, to execute his vision for the space.  Shaw carefully incorporated several motifs including grapevines, pomegranates, and angels to create a unified appearance throughout the sanctuary, from the lighting fixtures and windows, to the carved wood ornament and cast plaster panels.  The result, completed in late 1901, is a gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, that was an essential tenet of the Arts & Crafts movement.

As work on the church was nearing completion, Shaw received a commission from his father-in-law, Moses D. Wells, for a commercial office and warehouse building at 1249 S. Wabash Avenue, known as the Eiger Building.  The façade of the five-story structure was almost entirely glass, with huge groupings of windows set back between thin vertical brick piers that clearly express the structural frame of the building.  The windows on the top floor, smaller in scale, are set within a long horizontal frame, giving the façade a carefully balanced composition which, combined with the simple but distinctive ornament, made the building stand apart from similar nearby structures. 

In 1902, he designed the Henneberry Press building one block to the north at 1139-1143 S. Wabash Avenue for a printing company.  The eight-story structure, again exhibiting huge amounts of glass on the façade, displays a clearly articulated base, middle, and top.  Shallow pediments at the base and cornice give a sense of verticality and lightness to the composition.

Shaw designed two additional houses in 1903.  The first was built for John B. Drake, Jr. and stood at 2106 S. Calumet Ave., just a couple of doors north of his family home.  For the Drake house, Shaw turned to the Tudor style creating a pleasing asymmetrical brick façade, anchored by a central recessed entryway and wrap-around porch. 

The second house designed that year was more controversial.  Built for his Yale classmate Ralph Martin Shaw (no relation) at 2632 S. Prairie Ave., the narrow brick rowhouse was stylistically different from its neighbors, but more importantly, addressed the need for housing an automobile.  The ground floor was centered by the entrance to the “motor room” or garage that featured a large turntable set into the floor so that the auto could be turned around when it was time to exit.  The ground level was visually cut off from the rest of the house by a projecting limestone lintel above which was set a large grouping of three windows, denoting the main living spaces on the second level.  Although praised by architects, Shaw’s handwritten note next to a photo of the house in his scrapbook read “very avant-garde and criticized.”

Shaw’s later commissions in the neighborhood reflect its rapid transformation from residential to commercial in the first decades of the 20^th century.  In 1907, he designed a printing plant for the publishers, Ginn & Co., on the 2300 block of South Prairie Avenue.  Built of reinforced concrete in the Classical Revival style, the most notable feature was a series of three-story brick columns which lent a grand effect to the façade.  The building was the center of two preservation battles at the turn of the 21^st century; the reconstructed façade survives at 2203 S. Martin Luther King Dr.

In 1911, Shaw received another commission from the Donnelley company, which had outgrown its Lakeside Press building on Plymouth Court.  That year, the company acquired all of the lots on the east side of the 2100 block of Calumet Ave., directly across the street from the house in which Shaw’s widowed mother was still living.  Considered one of the finest examples of “Industrial Gothic,” the building’s design reflects Shaw’s directive to design the structure “so that it will not be beautiful only today, but one hundred years from now.  We want to build it so people will say that it is art, intelligence and beauty rather than a flashy display of money.”  

Brick and limestone piers are clearly articulated as buttresses with recessed spandrels and large expanses of glass in between.  Ornament includes rich stone carving and terra cotta plaques depicting historic printers’ marks.  It was built in four phases, the last completed after Shaw’s death, but true to his original design. 

Shaw’s final commission in the neighborhood was for the Nyberg Automobile Works at 2435-37 S. Michigan Avenue, reflecting the growth of “Motor Row” along that street.  Completed in 1912, the building featured huge plate glass windows at ground level to showcase the automobiles, with a variety of Shaw ornament enlivening the façade above. 

Although Shaw never designed another building in the neighborhood, he remained active throughout the Chicago area and beyond, designing everything from houses to industrial buildings, and from the planned company town of Marktown in East Chicago, Indiana to the first modern shopping mall, Market Square, in Lake Forest.  Shaw died on May 6, 1926, one day before his 57^th birthday while being treated for pernicious anemia in Baltimore.  He was awarded the prestigious gold medal from the American Institute of Architects the day before his death.  Shaw was only the fifth American to receive the medal, which is awarded by the national AIA Board of Directors “in recognition of a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.”  

His wife later wrote, “It was said about William Morris, ‘You can not lose a man like that by his own death, only by your own.’  I know his family feels this to be true of Howard Shaw.”  The architectural community felt the same – he was highly regarded by his peers for his distinctive style and was still actively engaged in his architectural practice at the time of his final illness.  He was buried at Graceland Cemetery, the family plot centered by a marker of his own design, surmounted by a copper orb displaying the words of the 23^rd Psalm. 

Booker T. Washington

In honor of Black History Month, we take a moment to reflect back on the life of the great educator, author, and orator Booker T. Washington and his two visits to the Prairie Avenue neighborhood in the early 20^th century.  Born into slavery in Virginia in 1856, Washington went on to become the acknowledged leader of the African-American community for a quarter century, until his death in 1915.

In 1881, the 25-year-old Washington was asked to become principal of the newly formed Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.  Originally called the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, the school was organized as part of the movement to expand opportunities for higher education in formerly Confederate states.  Within a year, Washington purchased a 100-acre former plantation as the site for the school, and directed the students to construct the first buildings as part of a work-study program.  Washington was a firm believer in the value of higher education as the best road for African-Americans to improve their condition, and he remained at the school for 34 years.  Among the donors he attracted to the school were Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Washington achieved national prominence for a speech he presented at the Cotton States and International Exposition on September 18, 1895 in Atlanta, Georgia.  Known as the Atlanta Address, it laid out the foundation for what became known as the Atlanta Compromise, an agreement between African-American leaders and Southern white leaders.  In exchange for the rights of a basic education and due process of law, African-Americans would submit to white political rule.

Second Presbyterian Church

In late December 1901, just six weeks after dedicating their newly rebuilt sanctuary, the congregation of Second Presbyterian Church, 1936 S. Michigan Avenue, invited Booker T. Washington to speak on the importance of education in the African-American community.  The Chicago Tribune gave a detailed account of the speech on December 30, 1901:

Hundreds of people surged around the Second Presbyterian Church, Michigan avenue and Twentieth street, last night, eager to hear the address by Booker T. Washington.  For nearly an hour before the doors opened the sidewalks were packed and when the doors swung open a crush began.

Men and women, white and black, pushed and pulled in an effort to pass through the broad doors at the same time.  Only the diligence of the ushers prevented serious injury to the struggling ones.

“It’s always so in Chicago,” complained one gray-haired man.  “If there’s any one worth hearing you can’t get to him.”

By 7 o’clock there was not one of the 1,500 seats in the church unoccupied.  Then the people began to crowd forward into the aisles until they extended half way down to the pulpit.  In the gallery every inch of available space was filled, while on the stairways leading thereto hundreds of persons stood for an hour waiting for the lecture to begin and then stood another hour listening to the address of the colored orator.  After the address ushers of the church estimated the number turned away at 500.

“’It was an immense crowd,” said Mr. Washington, “and I am sorry there were so many who would not hear me.”

Pleads for Education.

The address of Mr. Washington was a plea for the education of the negro.  He told of the conditions that prevailed in the South at the conclusion of the war, when the black man went out to make his way in the world with no other capital but a pair of strong arms and a brave heart.

Then he related incidents attending the founding of the educational institution over which he presides in Tuskegee, Ala.  The struggles of himself and the first students who came to his school were recounted.  The school grew, however, and as graduate after graduate went out the work became easier.  The graduates spread the fame of the school, and soon it became known over the world.

“A few months ago,” said Mr. Washington, “I sent out 300 letters to prominent men in the South requesting their opinion on the education of the colored man, whether or not it had proven beneficial to him, and if his condition had improved.  With three exceptions every man said education was doing more for the colored man than anything else.  One of the dissenting three said the negro was not so well off as when he was a slave.  The other two were non-committal.

Makes Useful Men.

“We have learned that it is a great thing to teach a man to do some one thing better than anybody else can do it, and so we have sought to make our students skillful artisans.  Wherever we have sent our graduates we have received good reports of them.  We teach them to the good citizens and Christian gentlemen.  No higher aim can be attained by any individual than that.”

Mr. Washington spoke with some pride of the growth of the wealth of his race.  In Virginia he said they own one twenty-sixth of the land and in Georgia, according to the latest tax returns, they possess $14,000,000 worth of property.

Union League Club

Washington returned for a second speaking engagement in Chicago in the spring of 1908.  He was entertained at a luncheon at the Union League Club on April 4, 1908, hosted by Charles L. Hutchinson, long-time president of the Art Institute of Chicago.  The other guests at the luncheon were John J. Glessner, Franklin MacVeagh (who would be appointed Secretary of the Treasury the next year), J. B. Forgan, Chauncey Keep, J. C. Grant, Clarence Buckingham, A. C. Bartlett, Dr. L. D. Case, B. H. Carpenter, and Dr. Park.  That evening Washington spoke to a large audience at the First Congregational Church of Oak Park.

The next day, Washington spoke in the morning at the Abraham Lincoln Center, a settlement house at 700 E. Oakwood Boulevard; in the afternoon at the Kenwood Evangelical Church, and in the evening once again at Second Presbyterian Church. 

John J. Glessner

John Glessner recalled meeting Booker T. Washington in a paper he wrote in 1917 for presentation to the Chicago Literary Club.  For reasons that remain unclear, the paper was never read, although Glessner continued reworking it for a decade.  Regarding Washington, Glessner noted:

As for Booker T. Washington, I met him, as many of us have and as all of us might have.  He was an able man, and a good man, deeply interested about his people, and devoted to their advancement.

Dr. Washington’s hope for the development of the race seems ideal to me – to make good, self-respecting laborers first, then good mechanics, and so up to higher levels.  A good workman, a peaceable, orderly man will be respected everywhere. . . The self-respecting man, whatever his color, not too aggressive, who does well and honestly what he does, will deserve and receive respect.  The modern man of color, I am convinced, is to be a great factor in the industrial history of this country.

Glessner wrote the lengthy paper primarily as a personal reminiscence of the many African-Americans he had known through the years, beginning with his childhood in Zanesville, Ohio.  The document shows that he held rather progressive views for his day.  In closing his remarks, he sensitively thought back on the individuals he had known most intimately, whom he recalled with deep affection:

As for the particular friends of whom I have made a meager record here, they have descended into the lonesome valley – and I still hold them in kind remembrance. . . if there wasn’t a high place reserved for them in Paradise, few of us need cherish great expectations of getting there.