With the primary over, now the real campaigns begin.  This week's quiz is on politics, Chicago-style.

1. Not counting Daley #1 and Daley #2, who served longest as mayor of Chicago?

     (A) Carter Harrison Jr.

     (B) Edward J. Kelly

     (C) John Wentworth

     (D) John Western

2. Alderman "Bathhouse John" Coughlin got his nickname because _______________.

     (A) he always took at least three baths every day

     (B) he had worked as a masseur in a bathhouse

     (C) he had the contract to build Chicago's public bathhouses

     (D) he owned a vacation house in Bath, England

3. Chicago's first national political convention was held in the year _______.

     (A) 1860

     (B) 1896

     (C) 1932

     (D) 1968 

4. Which of these Chicago politicians did NOT spend time in prison?

     (A) Otto Kerner

     (B) Thomas P. Keane

     (C) Dan Rostenkowski

     (D) George Dunne

5. Before Barack Obama, who was the only president who had once lived in Chicago?

     (A) Abraham Lincoln

     (B) Benjamin Harrison

     (C) Ronald Reagan

     (D) Bill Clinton

ANSWERS POSTED AT 5 P.M. 

The dream ended today.  They began tearing down Old Chicago.

Was it an amusement park?  Was it a shopping mall?  No one could decide which it was.  Now it would be neither.

There had been such high hopes in 1973.  The concept was daring--build an amusement park, surround it with stores, and put the whole thing indoors.  That way it could operate the year 'round.  The investors tripped over each other racing forward with money.

The location for the project was a plot of farmland in Bolingbrook, just off I-55 at Route 53.  In a salute to Chicago history, the 11-acre building was to be topped off with a dome in the style of the 1893 Columbian Exposition.  Planning and construction took over two years.  As the dome started to rise above the corn fields, a steady stream of curiosity seekers drove by the site.

A new business opened at 2131 S. Dearborn Street on this day.  Within a few years it would become famous the world over.  It was the Everleigh Club--a brothel.

Ada and Minna Everleigh were sisters, whose real family name was Simms.  In 1895 they entered the management side of the prostitution business in Omaha.  Five years later, they moved to Chicago to seek their fortune.

The city's vice district, known as the Levee, centered around 22nd and State.  The brothels catered to every taste and every wallet.  Ada and Minna determined to go for the high end trade--the very high end.

The interior of the Everleigh Club had the look and feel on a private club, complete with leather chairs, mahogany tables, silk curtains, and a gold-leaf piano.  Three string ensembles joined the piano player in providing music.  Gourmet meals were served, along with the finest wines and champagnes.

Narcotics were banned from the premises.  The prostitutes themselves were known for their beauty.  They were fashionably attired, and expected to act like refined society ladies--at least in the first floor public rooms.

All this luxury came at a price.  The average skilled worker earned about $25 a month.  At the Everleigh Club, dinner was $50, champagne $12 a bottle.  Private time with one of the ladies cost a minimum of $50.  If the patron did not spend at least $200 for the evening, he was told not to return.

From opening day, the club was enormously successful.  Soon Ada and Minna were able to demand references from prospective customers.  Stories of the elegant bordello spread.  When Prince Henry of Germany visited America in 1905, he said the one place he wanted to see was the Everleigh Club.  He was accommodated.

Other brothel operators grew jealous as the sisters thrived.  Once there was an attempt to plant a dead body on the Everleigh premises.  Reformers also attacked the club on moral grounds.  Political clout and payoffs kept Ada and Minna in business.

The end came in 1911, when the sisters published a tastefully-illustrated advertising brochure.  That was too much, even for easy-going Mayor Harrison.  He ordered the club shut down.

Ada and Minna departed into genteel retirement.  They had no excuses, no regrets.  They had performed a public service.  "If it weren't for married men, we couldn't have carried on at all," Minna said.

Then she added: "And if it weren't for cheating married women, we could have made another million."

UNKNOWN CHICAGO SOURCE:  Abbott, Sin in the Second City (2007).    

4646 N. Hermitage Ave.

There was a time when every child in a Chicago school learned those words.  They are the opening lines of Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago."  This house is where he wrote them.

Sandburg was born in Galesburg in 1878, the son of Swedish immigrants.  As a young man, he drifted through a series of jobs--milkman, bricklayer, fireman, soldier, hobo, political organizer for the Social Democratic Party. Then he got married.

Time for stability.  Sandburg moved to Chicago and became a reporter.  He landed a job with the Daily News.  He'd been writing poetry for years, with little success.  That began to change.

His collection Chicago Poems appeared in 1916.  Another anthology followed, then a series of children's books.  Sandburg was gaining a reputation.  His publisher suggested he write a Lincoln biography for young people.

Sandburg did the research, and more research.  In 1926 he emerged with Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years.  The children's book had morphed into an adult book in two volumes.

The Lincoln book was a best-seller and ended Sandburg's financial worries.  It also made him a literary lion.  For the rest of his long life, he was as famous for being Carl Sandburg as for anything he wrote.

Sandburg with Marilyn Monroe (1962)

The ad appeared in the Tribune.  James Hollingworth was prepared to move or raise your building.  In 1857 Chicago, that was a booming business.

The city had been built on marshy ground near the lake.  As the population grew, this became a public health problem.  Cholera outbreaks were frequent.  In 1854 alone, the disease wiped out 1 in 20 Chicagoans.

City officials decided to construct a sewer system--that would take care of the deadly waste.  Drainage would be difficult, since Chicago sat only a few feet above Lake Michigan.  There were two options: (A) abandon all of downtown and start over on higher ground, or (B) jack up all the buildings where they were.

The city chose "B".

Starting in 1856, Chicago raised itself out of the mud.  Buildings were jacked up as much as fourteen feet, and new foundations put under them.  Then the sewers were constructed on top of the old street level.  When the sewers were completed, they were covered over and the land filled in to meet the new level of the buildings.  The last step was paving new streets on top of the fill.

As mentioned, many people went into the building-raising business.  One of the most successful entrepreneurs was a young cabinet maker named George Pullman.

Pullman contracted to raise an entire block on Lake Street at the same time.  He had 6,000 jackscrews put under the buildings, and hired 600 men to take charge of ten jacks each.  On the signal, each man turned the screws on his ten jacks one notch.  The building went up a fraction of an inch.

This process was repeated again and again over four days.  Meanwhile, temporary timbers were placed under the buildings and new foundations constructed.  Then the buildings were lowered into place.  All this was smoothly done, while business inside the buildings went on as usual.

Sometimes putting a new foundation under a building wasn't practical.  In that case, you hired a moving company.  They would put wooden logs under your structure and roll it to a new lot.  Chicagoans got used to the sight of buildings slowly advancing down the middle of the street.

Raising the city took nearly twenty years.  In the end, Chicago had the most modern sewer system in the world, and public health was much better.

UNKNOWN CHICAGO SOURCES: Chicago Tribune, January 29, 1857:2; Dedmon, Fabulous Chicago (1953), pp. 12-13. 

Guest Post from The Oldest Chicagoan

You youngsters think you've seen snow in Chicago.  Let me tell you about a real snowstorm.  I'm talking about the Blizzard of '67.

If you don't like the weather in Chicago, wait awhile--it will change.  January 24 was a Tuesday and the temperature got up to 65.  On Wednesday, it was more like normal.  On Thursday, at about 5 AM, it started snowing.  Morning travel was a little slow, but you expect that in January.

And it kept snowing all day.  By 2:00 it was getting so bad, some businesses started letting people out early.  At 4:00, when the evening rush hour started, things got really impossible.

On the streets, the snow just kept piling up.  The plows couldn't keep up with it--we didn't have snow routes then.  The busses got stuck.  The "L' backed up, because part of the system ran on the ground.  Some of the commuter trains were running, but with big delays.

Traffic stopped moving.  Totally.  After a few hours, many people just left their cars where they were and started walking.  The city later counted 20,000 abandoned vehicles.  Some people who were downtown just checked into a hotel for the night--or camped out in the lobby when the hotel filled up.

Chicago's most illustrious con man went through the indignity of a police lineup today.  The Yellow Kid didn't like it.

Joseph Weil was born in Chicago in 1875.  At an early age he decided that honest work was beneath him.  He started his road to fame by peddling worthless patent medicines.

He eventually worked his way up to the big time.  Weil was involved in land swindles, stock frauds, race-fixing, and other assorted ventures.  Along the way he acquired the nickname Yellow Kid, after a popular cartoon character.

Now, in 1931, he was in Chicago police custody.  Weil was charged with bilking a Michigan man out of $15,000 in a mining deal.  The cops were using the opportunity to parade the Kid through their daily lineup, to see if other victims might recognize him.

"And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have no less a distinguished personage than the Yellow Kid," the officer in charge announced.

The Kid bowed.  Nobody in the audience had any charges to make.

Then the Kid went on the offensive.  "Sure, I am a con man--the best," he said.  "But I've always taken from those who can afford the education."  He claimed that he only cheated the dishonest rich.  He wasn't one of those "smug hypocrites who rob the poor, then sit in church pews."

Besides, the Chicago police were treating him shamefully.  Yesterday they had shipped him all the way to Rockford for a lineup there.  "They exhibited me to a farmer who lost two cases of eggs," the Kid complained.  "The value was $8.50.  I have never been so humiliated."

His discourse over, they took the Kid back to his cell.  His brother Ike arrived with a change of clothes.  Ike was a former court bailiff.

The Kid beat this particular rap.  He continued his career, with occasional interruptions for prison time, until old age caught up with him.  He died in a Chicago nursing home in 1976.  Paul Newman's character in The Sting is based on Yellow Kid Weil.

Weil might have retired, but he never completely mellowed.  A Chicago reporter attended the Kid's 99th birthday party in the nursing home.  There was cake, and singing, and much senior good fellowship.

When the party was over, and he thought nobody was watching, the Kid swiped the extra box of candles.

UNKNOWN CHICAGO SOURCES:  Chicago Tribune, January 26, 1931:7;  Chicago Daily News, June 24, 1974:13.