| Recreation in preurban Chicago reflected
frontier life. The
Fort Dearborn community was made up of soldiers,
French Canadians, and
Native Americans who enjoyed rural sports,
gambling, and drinking. They hunted wolves and wild fowl and
honed their skills with marksmanship contests. At the time the
town was founded in 1833, denizens sleighed, skated, danced,
went to
horse races, and attended monthly concerts of popular music.
Mark Beaubien's Sauganash
Hotel was the most important recreation center in the early
1830s, with dancing, drinking, card playing, roulette, and
storytelling.
Chicagoans in the newly established walking city worked six days
a week, leaving just Sunday and holidays for rest, most notably
New Year's Day, May Day, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and
Christmas. The city charter empowered the municipality to
license, regulate, or prohibit entertainment to encourage
wholesome recreation, promote safety and morality, and raise
revenue. The government originally banned billiards,
shuffleboard, baiting sports, card playing, and
prostitution to discourage
gambling and restrain the flourishing male bachelor
subculture that frequented
saloons, poolrooms, and brothels, although the revised 1851
charter licensed
bowling alleys and billiard parlors, while other vile
amusements went on illegally. Prostitution flourished. By 1856,
1,000 women worked in 110 brothels. Lotteries were legal,
gambling games were commonplace, and betting at the racetracks
was popular. A temperance crusade against Irish and
German drinkers resulted in stiffer licensing and
Sunday closing laws that culminated in the
Lager Beer Riot.
Chicago & North
Western Ad., 1887
 |
American middle-class reformers in the 1840s initiated
the rational recreation movement that sought to substitute moral
amusements for the evil pleasures of the male bachelor
subculture in order to uplift people, reduce crime, and improve
public health. In 1858 evangelist Dwight L. Moody set up a
YMCA branch in Chicago to develop muscular Christians. New
sports were introduced, particularly
baseball, a simple team sport that would supposedly build
morality, character, and health. One year after the
Civil War, there were 32 teams sponsored by fraternal
organizations, occupational groups, the companies, and
neighborhood clubs. Businessmen like Marshall Field, who had
earlier opposed baseball as deleterious to hard work, began to
see it as a means to promote teamwork, discipline, sobriety, and
self-sacrifice, and sponsored company nines. By 1870 civic
boosters raised $15,000 for a professional baseball team, the
White Stockings (Cubs), to enhance the city's image nationally.
Touring professional singers first appeared in Chicago in
1839, the Christy Minstrel shows were popular in the mid-1850s,
and the first
opera season occurred in 1853. In 1837, Chicago's first
theatrical performances, starring the renowned Joseph Jefferson,
were widely opposed as demoralizing and out of fear that the
Sauganash Hotel where they were held might burn down. A weak
economy further discouraged
theater troupes. In 1847 the $11,000 brick Rice Theater was
constructed, with patrons segregated by price and race, but it
was surpassed by the $85,000 McVickers (1857) and by Crosby's
Opera House (1865), with its 3,000-seat auditorium; all three
were located in the heart of the city. Popular plays included
the works of Shakespeare and Richard Sheridan and productions
based on local topics and anti-southern themes.
Elm Tree Grove,
1908
 |
Other occasional entertainment was provided by touring
monologuists and illusionists, exhibitors of panoramas of events
like the burning of Moscow, and circuses like Barnum's “Grand
Colossal Museum and Menagerie,” which charged adults thirty
cents admission. There were also dime museums, whose exhibitions
of freaks, wax reproductions of infamous crimes, and objects of
historical curiosity were popular with the lower classes.
Ethnic groups had a significant impact on entertainment.
German,
Irish, and Scandinavian immigrants brought their own
amusements, which promoted a sense of peoplehood, especially in
terms of language and culture. Germans brought to America an
intense love of
classical music. In 1850, Julius Dyhrenfurth conducted
Chicago's first symphonic concert, and in 1852 the
Männergesangverein, the city's first male chorus, was founded.
An important German theater was established at midcentury that
staged German classics that reminded audiences of the Old World.
New plays were written that taught how to cope with the New
World. The Svea Society (1857) sponsored a Scandinavian theater
where performances were often followed by dances. Tickets cost
fifty cents.
Lake View Cycling
Club, 1890s
 |
The Germans and the Irish brought athletic traditions.
The Irish emphasized
boxing, which was part of their own male bachelor subculture
and enabled them to fit in with the prevailing bachelor
subculture. However, the Germans made a more distinctive
contribution with the mainly working-class
turnverein, which emphasized calisthenics and gymnastics and
supported workingmen's interests. Turnhalles were
community centers, often the largest building in the
neighborhood, with a large gym and auditorium. By the 1890s
there were 5,000 turners in 34 units, the most of any American
city. They provided a model for the establishment of similar
organizations by Bohemians,
Poles, and
Ukrainians.
Leisure in the Industrial Radial City,
1870–1920
Chicago's leisure patterns in the industrial radial era were
influenced by industrial capitalism and its social structure, a
heterogeneous population divided into ethnic communities,
gender, changing spatial relationships, and a liberal
enforcement of Sunday blue laws. The upper class had the
greatest wealth and control of time. They used leisure
activities for fun and social prestige by participating in and
financing expensive high-status pastimes. Parties,
clubs, and sports dominated their social calendar. Charity
balls introduced debutantes and honored individuals. Parties
were ostentatious multicourse meals at elegant hotels or
luxurious mansions. Institutions of high culture like the
Art Institute, founded in 1879, were established to promote
civilization, boost Chicago's reputation, and enhance personal
recognition.
Chicago's elites gathered in the Chicago Club (1869), where
men socialized and did business, and the Fortnightly (1873),
where women considered social issues and pursued educational
topics. Sports clubs, like the Chicago Yacht Club, the Chicago
Athletic Club, and the Chicago Women's Athletic Club were less
prestigious but enabled its new rich members to gain status and
participate in expensive sports. Fascination with English
country life and the new sport of
golf, which was enormously popular in Chicago, resulted in
the establishment of suburban country clubs, beginning with the
Chicago Golf Club (1893). These organizations were particularly
attractive to elite women who enjoyed golf,
tennis, and parties at the clubs. The elite was very
involved in equestrian sports, and a few owned thoroughbreds and
belonged to the prestigious jockey club that operated the
elegant
Washington Park Race Track, founded in 1884.
Riverview
Postcard, c.1909
 |
The middle class, which made up 31 percent of the
workforce in 1900, generally believed in hard work, domesticity,
sobriety, and piety, and wanted to employ free time for
self-improvement and self-renewal. Middle-class men worked a
five-and-a-half-day week and had sufficient income to pursue
leisure activities. The new middle class of professionals and
bureaucrats turned to their pastimes to demonstrate their
creativity, self-worth, and manliness at a time when WASP
birthrates were declining and culture seemed to be feminized by
influential mothers and schoolteachers. Men formed organizations
that sponsored hobbies like the Chicago Philatelic Society
(1886), the Chicago Camera Club (1904), and the Chicago Coin
Club (1905). They became active sportsmen, joining groups like
the Chicago
Bicycle Club (1879), and became ardent ball fans. They had
the time and money to attend White Stocking games played in
midafternoon. The team did not have Sunday games until 1893,
originally because of league rules and then because owner Albert
G. Spalding incorrectly assumed that middle-class fans opposed
public amusements on the Sabbath.
Sans Souci
Amusement Park, 1908
 |
Middle-class women also had substantial leisure time, as
they seldom worked outside the home and many had servants to
perform household chores. They read
fiction, belonged to clubs, and shopped in downtown stores.
Specialty shops and
department stores like Marshall Field's made
shopping an enjoyable experience with tearooms, fine
restaurants, and free delivery. Increasingly, younger women
also participated in sports, encouraged by physicians and female
physical educators who recommended exercise to improve health
and beauty. Such “feminine” sports as golf, tennis, horseback
riding, cycling, and ice
skating proliferated. Even certain active sports like
basketball became women's sports, modified by special rules
designed to conform to current notions of women's physical
abilities.
Low wages and long working hours limited turn-of-the-century
working-class leisure opportunities. Less-skilled workers
regularly worked 60 hours per week, while more-skilled workers
typically worked 54 hours. Yet the limited remaining free time
was important, providing opportunities for self-expression,
status, and even
politics, with the
Eight-Hour Day Movement.
American Bowling
Tournament, 1929
 |
Reflecting the immigrant character of Chicago (80 percent
of Chicago's population in 1890 was of foreign origin),
blue-collar recreation was ethnic, neighborhood, and
family-based and tied to religious customs.
Roman Catholic immigrants observed a Continental Sunday
Sabbath, with afternoons free for moderate pleasures that
contested local blue laws, while
Jews observed the Sabbath on Saturdays and considered Sunday
a working day. Traditional holidays were still observed, like
the
Italian festivals that honored patron saints in a
carnivalesque atmosphere, providing continuity with the Old
World. Houses of worship also provided space for weddings,
sports, and clubs, most notably the
Catholic Youth Organization, founded in 1930.
|
One of the few streets along the city's north shore that was
developed for--and has largely retained--large residences on
large lots. After a shoreline drive began to be constructed in
the 1890s, the McConnell brothers created large lots to attract
buyers who wanted proximity to downtown but with larger yards
than typically found in the city. Both brothers built their own
homes on the street and set the tone for subsequent development,
which includes works by such architects as Burnham & Root and
Pond & Pond. The openness of the district makes it an oasis
between the density of the Broadway retail district and the high
rises along Lake Shore Drive.
