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Visit Historical Sites of Al Capone, John Dillinger, Roaring 20s, Panczko
Gang, Sally Rand.
They're all here in Ken Schessler's Unusual Guide to Chicago.
An Unusual Tour of Chicago
NEAR SOUTH
(Soldier Field, Chinatown) |
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INDIANS MASSACRE 52 SETTLERS - On August
15, 1812, Fort Dearborn, the army outpost located on the river near the lake,
was evacuated and a group of about 100 settlers and army men, led by Captain
William Wells and John Kinzie, started out south along the beach on their way to
Indiana. They had marched just two miles from the fort when several hundred
Indians came swarming down the dunes and attacked the group. Before the massacre
ended, 52 people were killed, including two women and 12 children. Captain Wells
killed 8 Indians before he was killed, after which the Indians ate his heart,
thinking that they might acquire some of his courage.
UPDATE - The massacre was centered just
east of what is now Prairie Avenue between 16th and 17th. A monument was erected
on the site in 1912. The site was just behind the Pullman mansion. |
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MILLIONAIRE BURIED SECRETLY AT NIGHT -
George Pullman, inventor of the Pullman railroad car, had the greatest of all
the Prairie Avenue mansions. The three-story palace built here in 1873, was
valued at $500,000 in 1880. When Pullman died in 1897, his funeral was held here
in his mansion under heavy guard, and his body was taken to Graceland Cemetery
on the North Side under the cover of darkness and buried in secrecy. He left an
estate of over 17 million dollars. 1729 S. Prairie.
UPDATE - The Pullman mansion was
demolished in 1922. |
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MARSHALL FIELD MANSION - Marshall Field
built his mansion here in 1873-1874. It was designed by the same architect that
built the Vanderbilt and Astor mansions in New York. It was the first house in
the city to have electric lights. It was common knowledge that Fields and his
wife had many loud, violent arguments here in their home. They were divorced in
the 1890s, and Mrs. Fields moved to France where she died an invalid in 1900.
Fields then married a neighbor, Delia Caton a short time after her husband,
Arthur died in 1904.The Caton's lived directly in back of Fields at 1910
Calumet, and rumors were that Fields and Mrs. Caton were lovers before the death
of her husband. There were even stories that there was a tunnel that connected
the Fields and Caton homes. When Fields died here in 1906, he was the richest
merchant in the world. 1905 S. Prairie.
UPDATE - In 1937-38, the Fields mansion
served as a center for the New Bauhaus refuges from Germany. The home was torn
down in 1955. |
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MARSHALL FIELD JR. DIES MYSTERIOUSLY -
Marshall Field Jr. 37, was found shot here in his home in November, 1905. After
he died two days later, his family said that Fields had died from a gunshot
wound in his left abdomen inflicted by his own revolver while getting ready to
go hunting. For years, many people in Chicago insisted he was shot in one of the
city's fanciest brothels, the Everleigh Club, and then smuggled out and brought
here to his room, and made it look like an accident. 1919 S. Prairie Ave.
UPDATE - Fields left three children,
Marshall Field III, 11, Henry, 9, and Gwendolyn, 2. |
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SALLY RAND AND HER FANS - The World's
Fair opened here on the lake front in 1933. The 137 exhibits lined the lake
front from the Shedd Aquarium on 12th Street to 35th Street. It was here inside
the 23rd Street entrance that Sally Rand shocked Chicago and the nation by
dancing nude with her large fans in the Streets of Paris Club. Al Capone owned
the San Carlo Italian Village, and Murray "The Hump" Humphreys owned a popcorn
stand at the Fair.
UPDATE - The McCromick Convention Center
is now on the site where Sally worked at the end of 23rd and the lake. |
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AL CAPONE WORKS AS A PIMP - In1919,
gangster Johnny Torrio brought Al Capone from New York to work here at his Four
Dueces Club (2222 Club). Capone started as a $25 a week mop-up boy. One of his
jobs was to stand out front and try to get passersby to visit the brothel on the
fourth floor. In a few months he was making $75 a week as a bouncer and
bodyguard for Torrio. Later he was promoted to manager of the club. It has been
reported that 12 rival gang members were tortured and killed here in the cellar
of the building. 2222 S. Wabash.
UPDATE - Closed in 1924, the building was
torn down in the 1950s. |
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AL CAPONE'S FIRST HEADQUARTERS - When Al
Capone and his gang moved into the Metropole Hotel in 1924, he took a fourth
floor corner suite of eight rooms for himself and six rooms on the top two
floors for his gang. Two of the seventh floor rooms were converted into a gym
where "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn kept in shape. Capone eventually enlarged his
headquarters to 50 rooms. before he moved out in 1928.
Built in 1890, at the corner of Michigan and 23rd, former Mayor "Big Bill"
Thompson lived in the hotel from 1898 to 1901.
UPDATE - The Metropole was torn down in
1987. |
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AL CAPONE'S LAST HEADQUARTERS - When Al
Capone moved into the Lexington Hotel here in 1928, he rented the entire fourth
floor and most of the third. He lived in #430, a six-room suite. Capone was
living here in 1931 when he was convicted of tax evasion. President Cleveland
once gave a speech in the hotel's ballroom. Built in 1891 as the Michigan Hotel,
and later called the New Michigan, the Lexington had 370 rooms. 2135 S.
Michigan.
UPDATE - John "Bathhouse" Coughlin, first
ward alderman, was living in Capone's old suite in 1938. In 1986, Geraldo
Rivera, in a national TV show, tore down walls in the basement in a futile
search for Capone' "hidden vaults." The hotel was torn down in 1997. |
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AL CAPONE'S FAVORITE NIGHT CLUB - Opened
in 1895, Frieberg's Dance Hall was operated by Ike Bloom, the "King of the
brothels." Except for the Everleigh Club, it was probably the best-known resort
in the city. It was here in Freiberg's that the term "B-Girl" was started. One
of the club's rules was that the girls were supposed to make men customers buy
them drinks. When the girl ordered a "B" ginger ale highball, she was given
colored water. The club was closed in 1914 and reopened in the 1920s as the
Midnight Frolics. It was here that comedian Joe E. Lewis began his career in
1926. Al Capone had a 25% interest in the Midnight Frolics - it was his favorite
night club.
UPDATE - The site became a junk yard
after the building was torn on in the 1940s. |
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BIG JIM COLOSIMO KILLED - Jim Colosimo,
brothel and cafe owner, was one of the most powerful crime bosses in Chicago in
1920. His Colosimo Cafe here was famous around the world, no other place could
compete with its star entertainers and the beauty of the chorus girls. Potter
Palmer, Marshall Field, Al Jolson, George M. Cohan and Al Capone were regular
customers.
On the morning of May 11, 1920, when Colosimo entered the cafe, a gunman
stepped out from the cloakroom and shot him twice behind the ear. 2126 S.
Wabash.
UPDATE - The killer was never found, but
many think that the killing was ordered by Colosimo's longtime friend and
partner, Johnny Torrio. In 1949, Colosimo's former cafe was a cafeteria for a
short time, then reopened as a burlesque bar. In 1976 it housed a sign company.
It was demolished shortly after that, and the site has been a vacant lot in
recent years.. |
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CHICAGO'S MOST VICIOUS VICE AREA - From
the 1890s to 1911, this area was the infamous "Levee." It was the largest, the
most notorious, and the most vicious of all Chicago's vice sections. It combined
the worst features of the "Badlands," and "Little Cheyenne," which had been
located in the Loop. It had saloons of unbelievable depravity. Its streets,
alleys and dives swarmed with harlots, sluggers, degenerates, dope fiends,
thieves, and hundreds of pimps for the 5,000 resident prostitutes. The Levee was
located between Clark, State, 20th and Cermak.
UPDATE - The Levee was closed for good in
1912. In the 1970s, all the buildings that were left from the Levee were
bull-dozed and the Raymond Hilliard senior public housing project was built on
the site. |
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MIRRORED BEDROOMS INVENTED - It was here
in Madam Emma Duvall's French Em brothel that the first all-mirrored bedrooms
were introduced in the early 1890s. 2120 S. Dearborn. |
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WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS BROTHEL - When
sisters Ada and Minna Lester came to Chicago in 1899, they leased a three-story,
fifty room double mansion here, refurbished it and opened the Everleigh Club on
February 1, 1900 - it was the showplace of the Levee. Ada, 21, and Minna, 24,
became famous as the Everleigh sisters.
The mansion had an art gallery, a library, and a huge ballroom with
chandeliers of cut glass and three orchestras. The bedrooms were lavishly
decorated and sound-proofed, had marble in-laid brass beds, and there were
always thirty of the most lovely girls on duty 24 hours a day.
Prince Henry of Prussia reportedly visited the club in 1902. During a
banquet in his honor, one of the girls' shoes flew off while dancing, hit a
glass of wine and spilled some of the champagne into the shoe. A man nearby
picked up the slipper and drank the wine from it. Almost on cue, the entire
group arose after taking a slipper from the girl he was with, had the waiters
pour champagne into them, toasted the Prince, then drank from them. Wine was
sipped from a slipper for the first time. 2131-133 S. Dearborn.
UPDATE - When the club was shut down in
1911, the wealthy Everleigh sisters retired to a mansion on the West Side. For
several years after the club was closed, it was used as a boarding house, but
during most of the next 20 years it remained vacant. The building was demolished
in 1933. It remained a vacant lot until the 1970s when a senior housing project
was built on the site. |
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MILLIONAIRE DIES IN WHORE HOUSE -
Nathaniel Moore, 24, the son of James H. Monroe, Rock Island Railroad and
National Biscuit Company magnate, was found dead here in the brothel of Madame
Vic Shaw (Emma Ludwig) in 1906. The coroner said he died of a heart attack as
the result of a prolonged debauch. One of the best known men in Chicago, he was
nick-named "Big Fitz." 2014 S. Dearborn.
UPDATE - After the Levee closed, Madame
Shaw opened another brothel on South Michigan in a mansion that reportedly had
belonged to the Armour family. |
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BED BUG ROW - The lowest part of the
Levee was "Bed Bug Row." It was a group of 25 cent brothels mostly occupied by
black girls. The section was at least as bad as the cribs of New Orleans or the
cow-yards of San Francisco. It had gangs of panderers and white-slavers, classes
in which young girls wee taught various methods of perversions after they were
"broken-in" by professional rapists. It also provided entertainers for stag
parties, peep shows for young boys, and drug stores where dope addicts
congregated and openly gave one another injections of cocaine and morphine. One
store even provided hyperdermic needles. Bed Bug Row was located between
Dearborn and Federal and 19th and Archer. |
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CHINATOWN - When the Levee was closed in
1912, the area around 22nd and Wentworth became a ghost town. The Chinese began
to move here when the property at the site of the original Chinatown at Clark
and Van Buren in the Loop became too expensive. The On Leong Merchants
Association is located at 2216 S. Wentworth. |
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