looking northwest from foster and lincoln
Flash back to about 1892 as we board the Lincoln Avenue trolley car at Dearborn and Monroe in downtown Chicago. We pay our 5 cent fare to travel eight miles north to Lincoln Ave. ( Little Fort Road at the time) and Foster Avenue (59th avenue at the time).
The one-hour trip takes us to what was once largest native Indian village in the Chicago area existing until about 1835.
If you lived in the Chicago area, I am willing to bet that you too enjoyed this place either as a child or as an adult.
It was noisy, there was a musty smell and at times you were plunged in pure darkness, a bit scary! No, you were not in a haunted house, but rather the wonderful coal mine exhibit at the Museum of science and industry on Chicago’s far south side at 5700 South Lakeshore Dr.
Continue reading “Many of us went underground for only 25 cents”
They were everywhere! As Early as 1859 In Chicago they were a welcome refuge for Chicagoans coping with a hot summer. only to become less important with the advent of home air conditioning. In the 1920s there were more than 500 festive places in the Chicago area to escape the heat, eat, dance and drink. They were largely an old-world tradition brought to Chicago by German, Polish, and Irish immigrants.
Most summer gardens with names like Edelweiss, Germania, Heidelberg, Bismarck Gardens, or Rienzi.began by German-Americans. Wherever you went on a hot summer day you would find steins of beer, wine, music, dancing and a wide variety of activities.
Summer gardens were more commercial and elaborate, patterned after the old world European beer gardens. There you might find tables and chairs, food service, electric lighting, a stage, or even parking for your horse in a covered buggy shed. Some like Riverview evolved into amusement parks. and more. An orchestra of 12 to 20 pieces were common. Many but not all were on the north side catering to the German population. Back in the day newspapers describe the summer gardens as study of mosquitoes.
Although there was a fuzzy line between a picnic grove and a summer garden. picnic groves were more often a mom and pop operation. Many were simply behind a tavern with picnic benches and an outdoor bar. Larger ones could include a beer hall, dance pavilion, a bowling alley, rides or games.. They could be found just about anywhere there was a vacant piece of land. They could be found all over the city and it’s suburbs.
All was not perfect because summer gardens had to deal with noise, anti-German sentiment, labor strikes, and of course the prohibition act of 1919.
The most popular of course was Schutzen (Sharpshooters Park) which of course became the famous Riverview amusement park at Belmont and Western . There were two large picnic groves , refreshment stands and a ballroom . The groves could hold as many as 20,000 people in one day and were popular for organizations holding huge picnics and special events.
Other picnic groves were somewhat of a cousin to cemeteries but catering the mourners who made a long trip to bury their loved ones.
After a funeral and not wasting the rest of the day, there were picnic groves in close proximity to cemeteries where people could eat and drink and dance before the long buggy ride home.
And well after a funeral, death continued to be a constant visitor for many families, so family and friends would return to cemeteries often to “talk” and break bread with the deceased. Often it was simply a pleasant Sunday afternoon picnic among the tombstones remembering the deceased..
Read more as we visit many of them and learn of some of their oddities
Continue reading “Beating Chicago’s Heat- Summer Gardens, Picnic Groves and even in cemeteries”
Her name was Laura Theodora Katharine Elfring, born August 18, 1885, in Barrington Illinois, the first born of Friedrich Johann Gerhard Carl “Fred” Elfring (1858-1930) and Mary Landwehr Elfring (1861-1952)
Thirteen-year-old Laura was killed on the morning of April 10, 1898 on the Milwaukee Road railroad tracks at Bensenville, struck by a morning milk train heading to Chicago.
Chicago and Cook County Cemeteries 