NAMING THE BRANCHES
PEGGY SULLIVAN
OCTOBER 20, 2003
CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB
The history of the Chicago Public Library has many channels that one might follow in exploring it. Some are almost irresistible, but my focus is on the branch libraries, on their names and how they were chosen, how the names have changed over the years. Even more narrowly than that, since I find the naming of branches for individuals of far more interest than the naming of them for places, I have further narrowed the focus to those. But we need a little context to appreciate the focus.
The Chicago Public Library began as an accident. When the Great Fire of 1871 devastated the city, hearts were touched, not only in this country, but throughout the world. The people of England, led by some of their highest-ranking officials, contributed some 7,000 volumes to Chicago because they so regretted the fact that the city had lost its public library. Those volumes became the fabled “British gift,” some examples of which are still extant at the Library. But the fact was that the city had had no public library before the fire. With true Chicago spirit, of course, a library was almost immediately established, one of the most renowned librarians in the country, William Frederick Poole, was recruited as director, and the library board was in business.
The library occupied several sites in its early years as plans went forward for a large downtown central library. Those plans resulted in the 1897 building at Michigan and Randolph, now the Chicago Cultural Center. The architects were Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, and their Beaux Arts design won admirers from the beginning.
The first action that the Library board took in regard to branches was a decision not to have any. This was almost a protective action, since numerous groups which had built up small library collections for clubs or certain groups of people pounced on the prospect of the public library as a place where their collections might be welcomed and where the city might take over the responsibility of administration of the collection. It may be that these efforts caused board members to think again about branches for the future, since at one point, they acknowledged that there might be a reason to have branches. They envisioned one on the south side, two on the north side. All of this was occurring well before the end of the nineteenth century, when access to transportation was quite limited as compared to our own time. The November, 2004, issue of Chicago Public Library’s monthly newsletter lists 75 branch libraries, in addition to two regional libraries (Sulzer on the north side, Woodson on the south side) and the Harold Washington Library Center in the downtown area.
Isabella Blackstone took an initiative in 1904 that virtually shamed the city into opening its first branch library. She was the widow of Timothy Blackstone who had been president of the Chicago and Alton Railroad from 1864 to 1899 and first president of the organization assuming control of Chicago’s stockyards. Timothy Blackstone had provided his hometown of Branford, Connecticut with a public library designed by the noted architect, Solon Beman, who is best remembered in Chicago as the designer of the town of Pullman which later became part of Chicago. Mrs. Blackstone had the twin of that Branford library built in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area (4904 South Lake Park Avenue) and simply gave it to the city. It bears her husband’s name.
Timothy Blackstone was associated with railroads and stockyards, as were several other early leaders who either contributed significantly to branch libraries, or for other reasons had libraries named for them. George Mortimer Pullman, noted for having built a highly attractive “company town,” was commemorated when his widow provided land and funds for the building of a library (11001 South Indiana) in 1927 for the Pullman community, by then part of Chicago.
Chicago has major parks named for Grant and Lincoln, and Sheridan is commemorated with a major thoroughfare, so one might think that the Sherman Park branch library would honor William Tecumseh Sherman, another hero of the Civil War. Not so. The Sherman Park Branch (5440 South Racine Avenue) is named for John B. Sherman, called “the father of the stockyards.” Built in 1937, when many branch libraries were housed in Chicago Park District field houses, Sherman Park now has the distinction of being the only Library-owned building on Park District land.
George Clarke Walker was a wealthy businessman who also saw fit to provide a library for his community, the village of Morgan Park, in 1894. Having built the library at 11071 South Hoyne Avenue at a cost of $12,000, he threw in another thousand dollars for books and turned the library’s administration over to the University of Chicago. That arrangement lasted for ten years, and the village took it over until Morgan Park was annexed to the city in 1914 and the library became the third branch library in the city, named for Walker himself.
Another businessman who provided for the city’s library in his will was Hiram Kelly, but, since he provided first for his widow, it was only after her death that the Library benefited and built the Hiram Kelly Branch (6151 South Normal Boulevard), which opened in 1911, twenty-one years after Hiram Kelly’s death.
All the libraries mentioned thus far are on the south side, and all are still in use. The philanthropists and civic leaders tended to live on the south side in the Library’s early history. Even today, well more than half (forty-six of the seventy seven) branch libraries are located south of Madison Street, the literal dividing line between north and south in the city. In actual space, of course, far more of the city lies on the south side.
Many of the branch libraries across the city derive their names from parks, primarily because they were initially located in parks. This administrative arrangement between two city units had begun in 1905 and continued until 1953. At that time, the Park District informed the Library board that it would start charging rent for the spaces occupied. Reading the minutes of Library board meetings for that summer of 1953, one gets a clear sense of panic and pain. Gertrude E. Gscheidle, then the Library’s chief administrator, reported that she would proceed as necessary, but expressed “regret and concern over the termination of a cooperative enterprise which has existed for over fifty years and which has been repeatedly cited by social scientists and public administrators as a striking example of effective co-operation between municipal agencies.”
Locations in field houses had not always been the best, and some of the libraries had moved out of them as population shifts, traffic patterns, or safety concerns called for new sites. However, as Gscheidle accurately noted, a distinction of Chicago’s library development was lost when the numerous moves occurred. Only one branch (501 East 90th Place) remains today in a park field house. The park and the branch are named for Judge Murray F. Tuley who was active in the framing of the city charter in 1871. When I wondered why this should be, the answer I got was that there was nowhere else to locate a library to serve the community. A look at a map, where the neighborhood is virtually a triangle marked off with railroad tracks, suggests that this is a reasonable response.
Chicago Public Library branches may also be distinguished from some other major cities’ branches in that three of them have been named for chief library administrators. These are the Legler Branch Library (115 South Pulaski Road), built as a regional library for the west side in 1924 and aptly named for Henry E. Legler, who had directed the Library from 1909 to 1917 and who introduced the city to the idea of planned branch library development. Like Poole, the Library’s first administrator, Legler came to Chicago with a national reputation for library management. He succeeded Frederick H. Hild, who directed the Library from 1887 to 1909, and who apparently had numerous shortcomings noted by the board throughout his tenure. Nevertheless, when the regional library for the north side was built, it was named for Hild. As the Library outgrew that building at 4544 North Lincoln Avenue (now the Old Town School of Folk Music) and it was determined that a new building would be necessary, it was referred to as the “new Hild.” But the name ended with the move from the old building. The newer building at 4455 North Lincoln Avenue is named for Conrad Sulzer, a Swiss immigrant who arrived in the Chicago area in 1826, held public office as township collector and assessor, and created a livestock farm and horticultural garden as a pioneer resident of the Ravenswood community.
Carl Bismarck Roden’s name lives on in the branch library (6083 Northwest Highway) in Norwood Park, the community where he lived his whole life. He worked for the Chicago Public Library for sixty-four years, perhaps a record of longevity, and he spent half of those years as the Library’s chief administrator. To put that record in perspective, I will just note that in the past thirty-two years, eight different people have been in that position, including three who had acting or interim appointments.
One might suspect that nineteenth and early twentieth century philanthropists and businessmen, even library directors, would come from the ranks more closely associated with the establishment. No surprises there, although it is worth noting that Legler was a native of Italy in library leadership at a time when few of his peers were immigrants, and even fewer came from southern Europe.
Not following any clear or simple chronology, I would like next to focus on some social activists who have been honored with branch library names during the past fifty years.
As neighborhoods changed, there was a natural reaction from new residents who wanted to see schools, parks, libraries, streets, etc., named for people from their own cultures even if it meant changing existing names. One of the more interesting examples of this occurred in the branch library serving North Lawndale. Built in 1929, the library (at 3353 West 13th Street) was named for Stephen A. Douglas, as was the park nearby. African-Americans moved into the area and sought more recognition for their own heroes. In 1970, the Library board approved adding an s to the name, and dedicating the Frederick A. Douglass Branch in a ceremony at which Lerone Bennett spoke. When I visited the library recently, it was not easy to find a record of the earlier name, but I remembered that on the west wall there was a dedicatory panel, and Stephen A. Douglas’s name is still carved there in stone.
I was Assistant Commissioner for Extension Services of the Chicago Public Library from 1977 to 1981, so I participated in several ways in another of the renamings. There was a small storefront branch library in the Pilsen community near 18th Street and Blue Island Avenue. Like many others, it was slated for replacement, but there were no funds available. A new high school just a few blocks south had been named for Benito Juarez, and the Mexican and Mexican-American community was virtually clamoring for at least a new name for the Pilsen branch. Why should they have to be reminded by the name that the Pilsen community had once been so heavily Czech when so few Czechs remained there? Pilsen residents came in a group to at least one Library board meeting, and several of us, representing the administration, met with them at the branch library, but the board continued to stress that no branch library could be named for a living person, and that the person for whom a branch library was named had to have some association with Chicago. Numerous suggestions from the community were found unacceptable.
Conversations and meetings did not provide appropriate names, and time passed. At that time, there were two other library facilities quite close to the Pilsen branch, one a reading and study center at El Centro de la Causa, another the smallest branch in the city – about 800 square feet, as I recall – Gads Hill, in a neighborhood center. Two years after I had left the Library, Rudy Lozano was murdered – assassinated, as many who mourned him defined it. He was a 32-year-old community activist and union organizer who appeared to have a bright future in the leadership of the Chicago Mexican-American community and beyond. Six years later, when the new branch library (1805 South Loomis Street) was built, it was named for him. Its location and size made it possible for it to replace all three of the smaller library facilities. Incorporation of Olmec design into the building has made it especially satisfying to that community which had waited so long for an adequate library – and for one commemorating one of its own heroes.
Another west side activist whose name adorns a branch library is Mabel Manning
(6 South Hoyne Avenue). This branch, built in 1994 and designed by Ross Barney & Jankowski, has the distinction of having been adopted by the Chicago Bulls whose home court is just blocks away. People called Mabel Manning “the mayor of the Near West Side,” knew her as the flower lady who grew lots of flowers and loved to give them away. But she was an activist who once said that, if she should fall in any cause, people should just step over her and keep on going. Those words must have haunted her friends and fans when her body was found in a few inches of water at a building site in her community, but the bright, intriguingly decorated branch library that commemorates her may do something to satisfy any ghost there might be.
There are more stories, some of them about names that never got used for branch libraries. Why, for example, is John Peter Altgeld the only Illinois governor honored with a branch library’s name? How did Carter G. Woodson escape having his name given to a branch library (which was eventually named for Whitney M. Young, Jr.), as originally proposed, and get the greater recognition of having the regional library at 95th and Halsted named for him? Is there some irony in the fact that Richard J. Daley, Chicago’s mayor for twenty-one years, is remembered with a branch library serving his neighborhood community, while Harold Washington, who, like Daley, died in office, but after just a few years, is commemorated with one of the largest municipal buildings in the world? Or might Daley, the man who knew and loved Chicago’s neighborhoods, but especially his own, have liked it that way? And what of those whose names have been used and discarded – Carter Harrison, Chicago’s first mayor; Clarence Darrow, Lorraine Hansberry, to name a few? There are probably still more questions than answers to be discovered about branch libraries, but since libraries are places where questions almost inevitably lead to more questions, as well as to answers, that seems most appropriate.
To: Members of the Committee on Publications, Chicago Literary Club
From: Peggy Sullivan
Subject: NAMING THE BRANCHES
Date: November 22, 2004
This comes with my great apologies for its lateness. Thank you for still considering it for publication. As I read the YEAR BOOK, I realized for the first time that there was a procedure for subscribing for copies. I have not participated in that before, although I have been a member since 2001. I would like to purchase 200 copies of this paper if it is published. The price given in the YEAR BOOK is 50 cents per copy, but I would guess that is a minimum estimate, and that the price would be higher. I have presented an early version of this paper to personnel from the Chicago Public Library, and would like to provide copies for all of the libraries in that system, as well as for administrators, board members, etc. If the paper is not selected for publication, I assume that I still retain the right to make that number of copies for distribution. Please let me know if that is not the case.
Thank you!