Herman and Rick Kogan discuss their book "Yesterday's Chicago"

Studs Terkel My guests this morning, a father and son, and it was inevitable there'd be this collaboration between Herman Kogan and his son Rick. Herman, you know, has with so many years, has been one of the really fine journalists of our city of the Midwest. He has been for so many years Book Editor of "Sun-Times" and drama critic and investigative reporter and through the years, too, he in collaboration to some extent had a number of books with Lloyd Wendt, have written these chronicles of Chicago, "Lords of the Levee," and and the one about the, oh, "Bet a Million Gates," and a [variety?]. And now, something that Claudia Cassidy calls an album, you might say a city album, rather than a family album, called "Yesterday's Chicago" that he and his son Rick have put together, Seemann are the publishers. And there are all sorts of photographs, some of which you may have seen, some which you haven't. But it isn't that, it's sort of a, almost a recollection of a time before us, and yet, part of us who live here most of our lives and so, very endearing album is what it really is. And so Herman and Rick Kogan, my guests, after this message, and the name of the book is "Yesterday's Chicago," part of a series involving yesterday and yet it's about Chicago today, too, and how it came to be, might be subtitled as "Roots."

Rick Kogan Wish I'd thought of that.

Studs Terkel The program in a moment after this message.

[content removed, see

Studs Terkel Oh, that's Win singing, Herman, that's probably one of the first chamber of commerce song about Chicago way back. And so this in a way is what your book is about, it goes way back to the beginnings, doesn't it?

Herman Kogan That goes even before the city was a city, before it was a village. Obviously nobody's around except me, except I, to know what it was like in the late 17th century, but that's what it is. It's -- A small percentage of the book is devoted to the very early days, very early years. What we try to do because the idea of the book is such that to have enough yesterdays so that people still alive, as you said earlier, can remember, reflect or at least if they weren't there, what their parents may have told them about.

Studs Terkel Some of the early prints, so the early prints are here in it, too, involving de La Salle, he spoke that this will be a seat of commerce, just as the song says, "A typical man who will grow up here must be an enterprising man. Each day as he rise, exclaim, 'I act, I move, I push.'" Rick, how did you and Herman come to do it, yourself, from 'way back, of course, thanks to your parents and the knowledge of the city and interest. You've had this curiosity,

Rick Kogan Oh, sure, I grew up, of course, in the 43rd Ward and would sit at Paddy Bauler's knee and would hear stories from Paddy Bauler which were stories of a sort of more raucous nature than I heard at home. But, you know, I'd hear my father say, "When you get older, you'll have to read this book, about "Bet a Million Gates," and you'll have to read this book that Lloyd Wendt and I wrote about Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John."

Studs Terkel Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John, of

Rick Kogan Other kids hearing Mother Goose stories, I'm hearing Bathhouse John stories, and finally I was old enough to read the book and sort of continued. I was fascinated with the history of Chicago even when I was a kid.

Studs Terkel And so the gathering of the photographs and of course, the writings, the photographs are of all varieties beginning early prints, aren't they. What do you think of this theory, because the book deals with that, the beginnings, there's an Englishman named Eric Hobsbawm, an English historian, Chicago was the city of technology, that is, the city came out of steel, was Chicago.

Herman Kogan True, very true.

Studs Terkel It does explain, of course, the architecture too, that came -- Let's sort of do this in a in a very improvisational way. I'm just choosing photographs and pages. It was the boomtown and Kinzie came along. It was a guy named Kinzie.

Herman Kogan Well, John Kinzie has always been by a certain segment of the population by some historians has been called the first settler in Chicago. We would say he was not, of course, it was du Sable, who was a Haitian, who was here long before Kinzie. He left in a hurry. Why, we don't know, somebody ought to do some research into that, and Kinzie became the first perm-- I suppose, first permanent white settler. A very interesting, very interesting man, committed a murder at one point, a very harsh man, a tough guy, kind of a quintessential Chicagoan, Studs, in many ways.

Studs Terkel I think where we are right now, we're at 500 North Michigan, now when du Sable settled, it was just a block away from here, wasn't it?

Herman Kogan Just a block away, just south of here.

Studs Terkel And where it's at, on, near the bridge on Wacker and Michigan.

Herman Kogan Right.

Studs Terkel So we're a block away, as we're talking now.

Herman Kogan Well, you know you and I walked down Michigan Avenue a lot and have seen, get, gotten that sense of history. You always do around that area because that's where it all, that's really where it all started. A lot has been done, as you know, to the river over the years. But but that's really where it started.

Rick Kogan It gives you a sense of time and place, I think, this in the book learning about the early settlers and the Indians and the Kinzies and the Beaubiens and I think it's easier to identify with place. You can see Chicago, and you can see people, and you can see buildings, but telling telling of the Indians here it gives you, it gives you more than a sense of time, a sense of place and a sense of being.

Studs Terkel I think about 'boom,' the word 'boom,' you know, the phrase used by de La Salle, "I act. I do, I push." So basically he says

Herman Kogan -- Pushers. Chicago's always had -- There are different kind of pushers, of course; boomers and boosters, they used to call them over the years in the '30s, 1830s, and you know that that Chicago spirit that the City Hall press agents are always talking about is a very, very true one.

Studs Terkel But this is entrepreneurial.

Herman Kogan Well, you remember, you know, Nelson in "City on the Make," he had it, the subtitle was right and that can be both complimentary and a derogatory term.

Studs Terkel The fact is these guys were up and they did take the Indians, the Pottawattamies.

Herman Kogan Oh, God, yes.

Studs Terkel It's funny, the streets -- Rick, you got Kinzie, you got Ogden, streets are named Kinzie, Ogden, we don't have any streets named after artists, do we?

Rick Kogan No, of course not. There's going to be a Terkel Boulevard if I have anything to say

Studs Terkel So we come to, we come to the early and the roughness of the town, visitors. In your book throughout you have various -- It goes in a sort of chronological order, doesn't it? In general, chronological, from beginnings all the way to today, but the visitors who came were always stunned. Yes and no, weren't they?

Rick Kogan Yes and no. Some of them went away, you know, Sarah Bernhardt thought this was, you know, a jewel of a place, and there were some others that had others opinion, other opinions. Fredrika Bremer, who was from Sweden, had some terrible things to say about about Chicago when she was

Herman Kogan here And

Rick Kogan Oh, of course, Oscar Wilde, yeah.

Studs Terkel Wilde said something, didn't he, about the, about the the Water Tower.

Rick Kogan Water Tower. A tesselated monstrosity.

Studs Terkel Tesselated monstrosity. And then of course, the fear of Chicago, and the wildness and sin, William Stead, "If Christ Came to Chicago."

Herman Kogan Oh, William Stead was a marvelous man in Chicago. That book, "If Christ Came to Chicago," I read it from cover to cover several times and what has always impressed me about "If Christ Came to Chicago" was its, it was written right after the World's Columbian Exposition, was its contemporary quality. You know, Stead in his book published a list of famous blacklist, in the back of the book, and he showed that a lot of the people who were inveighing, as they said, the editorial writers used to say, against sin and crime and corruption and the levee, which was the center of all that, were people who owned a great deal of the property there. And that hasn't changed a hell of a lot.

Studs Terkel So when two of your heroes, "Lords of the Levee," Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink, had First Ward balls, it was attended by the respectable society,

Herman Kogan Oh, sure.

Rick Kogan As well as, as well as the disrespectables of society. It was just prostitutes and and all sorts of panderers mixed with with, you know, the cream of society.

Studs Terkel Now, Rick, as I'm thinking, Herman, the line of demarcation was always a very thin one here, wasn't

Rick Kogan It always has been. It's part of its problem, part of its charm.

Studs Terkel But always been that, a line between the resp-- And [line of fusion?] we come -- Of course, you can't talk about early Chicago, and Herman, you've written about this, too, in your book "Give the Lady What She Wants." Chicago and one of the key -- in the building new department stores.

Herman Kogan Oh, yeah, and of course, Marshall Field -- For Potter Palmer was one of the first innovators, an innovator in the whole field of merchandising 'way back in the '50s. He is the man who started the store that later became Marshall Field and Company. In 1852 he started that on Lake Street. Marshall Field and Levi Leiter worked for him as clerks and eventually he went on to other things like owning practically all of State Street, most of Lake Shore Drive.

Studs Terkel Since we're talking about buildings, on page 28 of the book of Herman and Rick Kogan's book, "Yesterday's Chicago," is the first, is "The Wigwam." You know, we're now, this program is taking place during the presidential campaign of 1976, but it was somewhat different in 1860. And it was in Chicago, wasn't it, "The Wigwam"? Why don't you sort of set the scene for this, Herman or Rick, together?

Herman Kogan Well, this was where the, you know, Chicago's first national political convention was held in "The Wigwam," which was a building that was put up very hastily in 1860 to house the Republican convention in which a fellow named Abraham Lincoln was nominated.

Studs Terkel But why did they -- I suppose it's natural that Chicago was a new party, a new kind of person. But why was Chicago chosen? By this time, was pretty well

Herman Kogan Well, 1860 was a very, it was, you know, it was rapidly becoming, as they say, a metropolis. There was a poet at the time, Will Carleton, who called it, you know, "The Queen of the North and the West," "The rich and voluptuous city, the beauty-thronged mansion-decked." How about that? If Jack Riley ever saw that, he'd steal it and use it again.

Studs Terkel "Gem of the" -- Wasn't there a phrase used, "gem of the prairie"?

Herman Kogan Well, "Gem of the Prairie," of course, was the name of a newspaper that used to narrate the doings and the events on the levee. The actual name of the newspaper.

Studs Terkel Oh, the levee was the, where

Herman Kogan -- The vice districts.

Studs Terkel The sporting houses were. And that was the gem of the prairie.

Herman Kogan The reason for the, I guess the reason, by 1860 Chicago's, you know, location has always been one of its obviously obvious prime assets. It simply was an easy place to come to for all the people to come, and there were still, there were also the boomers and boosters who kept urging people to come here.

Studs Terkel Booster

Herman Kogan Yeah, Deacon Bross.

Studs Terkel Deacon Bross. So we come to a certain song very popular then at the convention.

Studs Terkel

Rick Kogan My guests this morning, a father and son, and it was inevitable there'd be this collaboration between Herman Kogan and his son Rick. Herman, you know, has with so many years, has been one of the really fine journalists of our city of the Midwest. He has been for so many years Book Editor of "Sun-Times" and drama critic and investigative reporter and through the years, too, he in collaboration to some extent had a number of books with Lloyd Wendt, have written these chronicles of Chicago, "Lords of the Levee," and and the one about the, oh, "Bet a Million Gates," and a [variety?]. And now, something that Claudia Cassidy calls an album, you might say a city album, rather than a family album, called "Yesterday's Chicago" that he and his son Rick have put together, Seemann are the publishers. And there are all sorts of photographs, some of which you may have seen, some which you haven't. But it isn't that, it's sort of a, almost a recollection of a time before us, and yet, part of us who live here most of our lives and so, very endearing album is what it really is. And so Herman and Rick Kogan, my guests, after this message, and the name of the book is "Yesterday's Chicago," part of a series involving yesterday and yet it's about Chicago today, too, and how it came to be, might be subtitled as "Roots." Wish I'd thought of that. The program in a moment after this message. [content removed, see catalog Oh, that's Win singing, Herman, that's probably one of the first chamber of commerce song about Chicago way back. And so this in a way is what your book is about, it goes way back to the beginnings, doesn't it? That goes even before the city was a city, before it was a village. Obviously nobody's around except me, except I, to know what it was like in the late 17th century, but that's what it is. It's -- A small percentage of the book is devoted to the very early days, very early years. What we try to do because the idea of the book is such that to have enough yesterdays so that people still alive, as you said earlier, can remember, reflect or at least if they weren't there, what their parents may have told them about. Some of the early prints, so the early prints are here in it, too, involving de La Salle, he spoke that this will be a seat of commerce, just as the song says, "A typical man who will grow up here must be an enterprising man. Each day as he rise, exclaim, 'I act, I move, I push.'" Rick, how did you and Herman come to do it, yourself, from 'way back, of course, thanks to your parents and the knowledge of the city and interest. You've had this curiosity, I Oh, sure, I grew up, of course, in the 43rd Ward and would sit at Paddy Bauler's knee and would hear stories from Paddy Bauler which were stories of a sort of more raucous nature than I heard at home. But, you know, I'd hear my father say, "When you get older, you'll have to read this book, about "Bet a Million Gates," and you'll have to read this book that Lloyd Wendt and I wrote about Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John." Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John, of course. Other kids hearing Mother Goose stories, I'm hearing Bathhouse John stories, and finally I was old enough to read the book and sort of continued. I was fascinated with the history of Chicago even when I was a kid. And so the gathering of the photographs and of course, the writings, the photographs are of all varieties beginning early prints, aren't they. What do you think of this theory, because the book deals with that, the beginnings, there's an Englishman named Eric Hobsbawm, an English historian, Chicago was the city of technology, that is, the city came out of steel, was Chicago. True, very true. It does explain, of course, the architecture too, that came -- Let's sort of do this in a in a very improvisational way. I'm just choosing photographs and pages. It was the boomtown and Kinzie came along. It was a guy named Kinzie. Well, John Kinzie has always been by a certain segment of the population by some historians has been called the first settler in Chicago. We would say he was not, of course, it was du Sable, who was a Haitian, who was here long before Kinzie. He left in a hurry. Why, we don't know, somebody ought to do some research into that, and Kinzie became the first perm-- I suppose, first permanent white settler. A very interesting, very interesting man, committed a murder at one point, a very harsh man, a tough guy, kind of a quintessential Chicagoan, Studs, in many ways. I think where we are right now, we're at 500 North Michigan, now when du Sable settled, it was just a block away from here, wasn't it? Just a block away, just south of here. And where it's at, on, near the bridge on Wacker and Michigan. Right. So we're a block away, as we're talking now. Well, you know you and I walked down Michigan Avenue a lot and have seen, get, gotten that sense of history. You always do around that area because that's where it all, that's really where it all started. A lot has been done, as you know, to the river over the years. But but that's really where it started. It gives you a sense of time and place, I think, this in the book learning about the early settlers and the Indians and the Kinzies and the Beaubiens and I think it's easier to identify with place. You can see Chicago, and you can see people, and you can see buildings, but telling telling of the Indians here it gives you, it gives you more than a sense of time, a sense of place and a sense of being. I think about 'boom,' the word 'boom,' you know, the phrase used by de La Salle, "I act. I do, I push." So basically he says -- Pushers. Chicago's always had -- There are different kind of pushers, of course; boomers and boosters, they used to call them over the years in the '30s, 1830s, and you know that that Chicago spirit that the City Hall press agents are always talking about is a very, very true one. But this is entrepreneurial. Well, you remember, you know, Nelson in "City on the Make," he had it, the subtitle was right and that can be both complimentary and a derogatory term. The fact is these guys were up and they did take the Indians, the Pottawattamies. Oh, God, yes. It's funny, the streets -- Rick, you got Kinzie, you got Ogden, streets are named Kinzie, Ogden, we don't have any streets named after artists, do we? No, of course not. There's going to be a Terkel Boulevard if I have anything to say about So we come to, we come to the early and the roughness of the town, visitors. In your book throughout you have various -- It goes in a sort of chronological order, doesn't it? In general, chronological, from beginnings all the way to today, but the visitors who came were always stunned. Yes and no, weren't they? Yes and no. Some of them went away, you know, Sarah Bernhardt thought this was, you know, a jewel of a place, and there were some others that had others opinion, other opinions. Fredrika Bremer, who was from Sweden, had some terrible things to say about about Chicago when she was here And Oh, of course, Oscar Wilde, yeah. Wilde said something, didn't he, about the, about the the Water Tower. Water Tower. A tesselated monstrosity. Tesselated monstrosity. And then of course, the fear of Chicago, and the wildness and sin, William Stead, "If Christ Came to Chicago." Oh, William Stead was a marvelous man in Chicago. That book, "If Christ Came to Chicago," I read it from cover to cover several times and what has always impressed me about "If Christ Came to Chicago" was its, it was written right after the World's Columbian Exposition, was its contemporary quality. You know, Stead in his book published a list of famous blacklist, in the back of the book, and he showed that a lot of the people who were inveighing, as they said, the editorial writers used to say, against sin and crime and corruption and the levee, which was the center of all that, were people who owned a great deal of the property there. And that hasn't changed a hell of a lot. So when two of your heroes, "Lords of the Levee," Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink, had First Ward balls, it was attended by the respectable society, wasn't Oh, sure. As well as, as well as the disrespectables of society. It was just prostitutes and and all sorts of panderers mixed with with, you know, the cream of society. Now, Rick, as I'm thinking, Herman, the line of demarcation was always a very thin one here, wasn't it? It always has been. It's part of its problem, part of its charm. But always been that, a line between the resp-- And [line of fusion?] we come -- Of course, you can't talk about early Chicago, and Herman, you've written about this, too, in your book "Give the Lady What She Wants." Chicago and one of the key -- in the building new department stores. Oh, yeah, and of course, Marshall Field -- For Potter Palmer was one of the first innovators, an innovator in the whole field of merchandising 'way back in the '50s. He is the man who started the store that later became Marshall Field and Company. In 1852 he started that on Lake Street. Marshall Field and Levi Leiter worked for him as clerks and eventually he went on to other things like owning practically all of State Street, most of Lake Shore Drive. Since we're talking about buildings, on page 28 of the book of Herman and Rick Kogan's book, "Yesterday's Chicago," is the first, is "The Wigwam." You know, we're now, this program is taking place during the presidential campaign of 1976, but it was somewhat different in 1860. And it was in Chicago, wasn't it, "The Wigwam"? Why don't you sort of set the scene for this, Herman or Rick, together? Well, this was where the, you know, Chicago's first national political convention was held in "The Wigwam," which was a building that was put up very hastily in 1860 to house the Republican convention in which a fellow named Abraham Lincoln was nominated. But why did they -- I suppose it's natural that Chicago was a new party, a new kind of person. But why was Chicago chosen? By this time, was pretty well -- Well, 1860 was a very, it was, you know, it was rapidly becoming, as they say, a metropolis. There was a poet at the time, Will Carleton, who called it, you know, "The Queen of the North and the West," "The rich and voluptuous city, the beauty-thronged mansion-decked." How about that? If Jack Riley ever saw that, he'd steal it and use it again. "Gem of the" -- Wasn't there a phrase used, "gem of the prairie"? Well, "Gem of the Prairie," of course, was the name of a newspaper that used to narrate the doings and the events on the levee. The actual name of the newspaper. Oh, the levee was the, where -- The vice districts. The sporting houses were. And that was the gem of the prairie. The reason for the, I guess the reason, by 1860 Chicago's, you know, location has always been one of its obviously obvious prime assets. It simply was an easy place to come to for all the people to come, and there were still, there were also the boomers and boosters who kept urging people to come here. Booster Yeah, Deacon Bross. Deacon Bross. So we come to a certain song very popular then at the convention. Here's [content It's It [content That Sounds Your Yes, We Some I Revolution, They Oh They They And [content

Herman Kogan As a matter of fact, one of the people involved in the famous Camp Douglas plot was a former mayor of Chicago, a man named Buckner Morris. And you see, what Chicago was in the, even during the Civil War there were a lot of copperheads and a lot of Confederate sympathizers in this town. And the plot would make a great book some time,

Studs Terkel

My guests this morning, a father and son, and it was inevitable there'd be this collaboration between Herman Kogan and his son Rick. Herman, you know, has with so many years, has been one of the really fine journalists of our city of the Midwest. He has been for so many years Book Editor of "Sun-Times" and drama critic and investigative reporter and through the years, too, he in collaboration to some extent had a number of books with Lloyd Wendt, have written these chronicles of Chicago, "Lords of the Levee," and and the one about the, oh, "Bet a Million Gates," and a [variety?]. And now, something that Claudia Cassidy calls an album, you might say a city album, rather than a family album, called "Yesterday's Chicago" that he and his son Rick have put together, Seemann are the publishers. And there are all sorts of photographs, some of which you may have seen, some which you haven't. But it isn't that, it's sort of a, almost a recollection of a time before us, and yet, part of us who live here most of our lives and so, very endearing album is what it really is. And so Herman and Rick Kogan, my guests, after this message, and the name of the book is "Yesterday's Chicago," part of a series involving yesterday and yet it's about Chicago today, too, and how it came to be, might be subtitled as "Roots." Wish I'd thought of that. The program in a moment after this message. [content removed, see catalog Oh, that's Win singing, Herman, that's probably one of the first chamber of commerce song about Chicago way back. And so this in a way is what your book is about, it goes way back to the beginnings, doesn't it? That goes even before the city was a city, before it was a village. Obviously nobody's around except me, except I, to know what it was like in the late 17th century, but that's what it is. It's -- A small percentage of the book is devoted to the very early days, very early years. What we try to do because the idea of the book is such that to have enough yesterdays so that people still alive, as you said earlier, can remember, reflect or at least if they weren't there, what their parents may have told them about. Some of the early prints, so the early prints are here in it, too, involving de La Salle, he spoke that this will be a seat of commerce, just as the song says, "A typical man who will grow up here must be an enterprising man. Each day as he rise, exclaim, 'I act, I move, I push.'" Rick, how did you and Herman come to do it, yourself, from 'way back, of course, thanks to your parents and the knowledge of the city and interest. You've had this curiosity, I Oh, sure, I grew up, of course, in the 43rd Ward and would sit at Paddy Bauler's knee and would hear stories from Paddy Bauler which were stories of a sort of more raucous nature than I heard at home. But, you know, I'd hear my father say, "When you get older, you'll have to read this book, about "Bet a Million Gates," and you'll have to read this book that Lloyd Wendt and I wrote about Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John." Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John, of course. Other kids hearing Mother Goose stories, I'm hearing Bathhouse John stories, and finally I was old enough to read the book and sort of continued. I was fascinated with the history of Chicago even when I was a kid. And so the gathering of the photographs and of course, the writings, the photographs are of all varieties beginning early prints, aren't they. What do you think of this theory, because the book deals with that, the beginnings, there's an Englishman named Eric Hobsbawm, an English historian, Chicago was the city of technology, that is, the city came out of steel, was Chicago. True, very true. It does explain, of course, the architecture too, that came -- Let's sort of do this in a in a very improvisational way. I'm just choosing photographs and pages. It was the boomtown and Kinzie came along. It was a guy named Kinzie. Well, John Kinzie has always been by a certain segment of the population by some historians has been called the first settler in Chicago. We would say he was not, of course, it was du Sable, who was a Haitian, who was here long before Kinzie. He left in a hurry. Why, we don't know, somebody ought to do some research into that, and Kinzie became the first perm-- I suppose, first permanent white settler. A very interesting, very interesting man, committed a murder at one point, a very harsh man, a tough guy, kind of a quintessential Chicagoan, Studs, in many ways. I think where we are right now, we're at 500 North Michigan, now when du Sable settled, it was just a block away from here, wasn't it? Just a block away, just south of here. And where it's at, on, near the bridge on Wacker and Michigan. Right. So we're a block away, as we're talking now. Well, you know you and I walked down Michigan Avenue a lot and have seen, get, gotten that sense of history. You always do around that area because that's where it all, that's really where it all started. A lot has been done, as you know, to the river over the years. But but that's really where it started. It gives you a sense of time and place, I think, this in the book learning about the early settlers and the Indians and the Kinzies and the Beaubiens and I think it's easier to identify with place. You can see Chicago, and you can see people, and you can see buildings, but telling telling of the Indians here it gives you, it gives you more than a sense of time, a sense of place and a sense of being. I think about 'boom,' the word 'boom,' you know, the phrase used by de La Salle, "I act. I do, I push." So basically he says -- Pushers. Chicago's always had -- There are different kind of pushers, of course; boomers and boosters, they used to call them over the years in the '30s, 1830s, and you know that that Chicago spirit that the City Hall press agents are always talking about is a very, very true one. But this is entrepreneurial. Well, you remember, you know, Nelson in "City on the Make," he had it, the subtitle was right and that can be both complimentary and a derogatory term. The fact is these guys were up and they did take the Indians, the Pottawattamies. Oh, God, yes. It's funny, the streets -- Rick, you got Kinzie, you got Ogden, streets are named Kinzie, Ogden, we don't have any streets named after artists, do we? No, of course not. There's going to be a Terkel Boulevard if I have anything to say about So we come to, we come to the early and the roughness of the town, visitors. In your book throughout you have various -- It goes in a sort of chronological order, doesn't it? In general, chronological, from beginnings all the way to today, but the visitors who came were always stunned. Yes and no, weren't they? Yes and no. Some of them went away, you know, Sarah Bernhardt thought this was, you know, a jewel of a place, and there were some others that had others opinion, other opinions. Fredrika Bremer, who was from Sweden, had some terrible things to say about about Chicago when she was here And Oh, of course, Oscar Wilde, yeah. Wilde said something, didn't he, about the, about the the Water Tower. Water Tower. A tesselated monstrosity. Tesselated monstrosity. And then of course, the fear of Chicago, and the wildness and sin, William Stead, "If Christ Came to Chicago." Oh, William Stead was a marvelous man in Chicago. That book, "If Christ Came to Chicago," I read it from cover to cover several times and what has always impressed me about "If Christ Came to Chicago" was its, it was written right after the World's Columbian Exposition, was its contemporary quality. You know, Stead in his book published a list of famous blacklist, in the back of the book, and he showed that a lot of the people who were inveighing, as they said, the editorial writers used to say, against sin and crime and corruption and the levee, which was the center of all that, were people who owned a great deal of the property there. And that hasn't changed a hell of a lot. So when two of your heroes, "Lords of the Levee," Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink, had First Ward balls, it was attended by the respectable society, wasn't Oh, sure. As well as, as well as the disrespectables of society. It was just prostitutes and and all sorts of panderers mixed with with, you know, the cream of society. Now, Rick, as I'm thinking, Herman, the line of demarcation was always a very thin one here, wasn't it? It always has been. It's part of its problem, part of its charm. But always been that, a line between the resp-- And [line of fusion?] we come -- Of course, you can't talk about early Chicago, and Herman, you've written about this, too, in your book "Give the Lady What She Wants." Chicago and one of the key -- in the building new department stores. Oh, yeah, and of course, Marshall Field -- For Potter Palmer was one of the first innovators, an innovator in the whole field of merchandising 'way back in the '50s. He is the man who started the store that later became Marshall Field and Company. In 1852 he started that on Lake Street. Marshall Field and Levi Leiter worked for him as clerks and eventually he went on to other things like owning practically all of State Street, most of Lake Shore Drive. Since we're talking about buildings, on page 28 of the book of Herman and Rick Kogan's book, "Yesterday's Chicago," is the first, is "The Wigwam." You know, we're now, this program is taking place during the presidential campaign of 1976, but it was somewhat different in 1860. And it was in Chicago, wasn't it, "The Wigwam"? Why don't you sort of set the scene for this, Herman or Rick, together? Well, this was where the, you know, Chicago's first national political convention was held in "The Wigwam," which was a building that was put up very hastily in 1860 to house the Republican convention in which a fellow named Abraham Lincoln was nominated. But why did they -- I suppose it's natural that Chicago was a new party, a new kind of person. But why was Chicago chosen? By this time, was pretty well -- Well, 1860 was a very, it was, you know, it was rapidly becoming, as they say, a metropolis. There was a poet at the time, Will Carleton, who called it, you know, "The Queen of the North and the West," "The rich and voluptuous city, the beauty-thronged mansion-decked." How about that? If Jack Riley ever saw that, he'd steal it and use it again. "Gem of the" -- Wasn't there a phrase used, "gem of the prairie"? Well, "Gem of the Prairie," of course, was the name of a newspaper that used to narrate the doings and the events on the levee. The actual name of the newspaper. Oh, the levee was the, where -- The vice districts. The sporting houses were. And that was the gem of the prairie. The reason for the, I guess the reason, by 1860 Chicago's, you know, location has always been one of its obviously obvious prime assets. It simply was an easy place to come to for all the people to come, and there were still, there were also the boomers and boosters who kept urging people to come here. Booster Yeah, Deacon Bross. Deacon Bross. So we come to a certain song very popular then at the convention. Here's [content It's It As a matter of fact, one of the people involved in the famous Camp Douglas plot was a former mayor of Chicago, a man named Buckner Morris. And you see, what Chicago was in the, even during the Civil War there were a lot of copperheads and a lot of Confederate sympathizers in this town. And the plot would make a great book some time, one I [content That Sounds Your Yes, We Some I Revolution, They Oh They They And [content

Studs Terkel Chicago. Everything. The fire. Now, everything was growing so fast. Now we come to the '70s, early '70s.

Herman Kogan Well, Chicago was growing too fast. That man, those quotes from Will Carleton the poet, that was written about a month or two before the fire in October 1871 hit the town. Everybody I'm sure knows about the fire. It was a devastating thing, not as devastating as other famous, as they say, famous fires all over the world.

Studs Terkel There was one at that time up in Wisconsin. Peshtigo.

Herman Kogan Peshtigo. The Peshtigo. Devastating thing. But Chicago was such a well-known city. We were asked, Bob Cromie and I did a book on the fire back in '71 and we were asked why there was so much attention paid to that fire. Well, Chicago was a very highly-publicized city at the time and of course, there was -- Nobody ever heard of the Peshtigo, and so -- Although many more people lost

Studs Terkel I mean your book with Bob, though, as I recall, you were saying though, many fires broke out before the big one. Now weren't there warnings, not -- So it wouldn't -- Weren't there many, wasn't there negligence here too, on the part of authorities?

Herman Kogan Yeah, that's also a kind of a Chicago trait.

Studs Terkel Sure, yeah.

Rick Kogan You think only of growing and you don't -- I know it happens it happens in a lot of other ways. The Iroquois Theater fire was another example of just, you know, let's let's build a marvelous theater and, you know, forget, you know, you start cutting corners and when you're when you're moving very fast, as Chicago was at the time, you not only cut corners, you forget all about the corners and just and just go straight ahead.

Herman Kogan You know, every -- Probably every single building ordinance was violated in the pre-fire months. Even there was an ordinance that you couldn't store hay in a barn in the so-called rural district where the O'Leary's lived. Even that was, and nobody, nobody did anything about it.

Studs Terkel Since you mention O'Leary and the cow and the legend, half true, half-no, something else is here. This is interesting, you point this out and I look at the photographs here. She was Irish. The anti-Irish feeling, these outsiders, these [storing coal?] in the bathtub stereotype.

Herman Kogan Yeah, there was anti-Irish, anti-Catholic feeling, especially during the Civil War. You know, the Trib-- The various newspapers were always writing editorials about how the city is at the mercy of the criminal classes, well, that was a euphemism at that time for the Irish. Later on, you know, the euphemism crime in the streets was the black, what was happening

Studs Terkel There was talk of crime on the streets then, wasn't there?

Herman Kogan Oh, sure, sure. There are -- You know, you come across, when you do research into Chicago, there's nothing new. You found it, Nelson's found it, Rick and I found it, lines in editorials that could be applied 50 years later, 75 years later.

Studs Terkel Of course. Do we learn from history, that's a big question. On page 32 there's this artist's version of how the fire began, the cow and the old woman and the lantern and the hay. And then Mrs. O'Leary, here's the part, I think, told an insurance investigator the next morning write the Kogans, but subsequently changed it several times, obviously fearful that anti-Irish mobs might descend in vengeance on the neighborhood and other contemporary depictions show Mrs. O'Leary as a witch, a harridan, a drunken slattern. Again, we have history repeating itself in stereotype and hysteria. So one of the aspects Chicago is the comeback, the post-fire Chicago.

Herman Kogan Yeah, that's a trait, of course, of Chicago, you know, the disaster and recovery, incredible rapid recovery and that again is a characteristic of the city all through its, all through its history.

Rick Kogan It's a marvelous period, the period from 1871 to 1893, the city bouncing back like, well, the term 'Windy City' was was originated by newspapers in the east describing Chicago because it was so boastful, claiming that they could -- That this upstart city that was leveled 20 years ago could put on the World's Columbian Exposition, although it is maybe windy here, that's that's the reason is Chicago's boastful nature during those years. And those were the years of the great architecture, the great building, the Auditorium Theatre. It was a -- I've used this analogy before, it was like the people here and people who came here in those, in those 22 years had a had an empty canvas to work with. And anything went. It was a marvelous time, I think if any time in Chicago I'd like to have been around, it would have been those years because the chance for participation rather than just, you know, reading about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and going down to see it at the garage, you know, the blood, you could you could be a participant in those years.

Studs Terkel This is the point now, we come to the architecture, too. So William Le Baron Jenney and the new and the new

Herman Kogan Home Insurance Building. Skyscraper. Home of the first skyscraper.

Studs Terkel And of course, Louis Sullivan.

Herman Kogan Ah, Louis Sullivan. You know, there have been a number of books about Louis Sullivan and still I think the the book needs to be written, maybe not by an architect but maybe by a good novelist. I'd like to see, I'd like to see a man like Norman Mailer get into the subject of Louis Sullivan and do a fictive or nonfiction fictive biography of Louis Sullivan. He ended, as you know, very tragically. But one of the one of the Chicago geniuses, no doubt about it.

Studs Terkel Here on 52 of course, there's the Auditorium that he did with the acoustical genius Dankmar Adler. Here's the description of it, too, the devout believer Louis Sullivan and modernism and the artist's democratic traditions. By the way, Win Stracke, who sang a number of times in the old Auditorium, he was in the chorus of "The Miracle," he said he described as he saw it from the stage, he says, "It was the most, one of the most democratically-built theaters in the world." That is, it was built, Sullivan's credo was that everybody, there were no special vantage points.

Rick Kogan Right. There is, you know, even today with the rebuilt Auditorium, you notice that very easily. You know, not only the acoustics are great, but there are no barriers to the eye. No, no, nothing.

Studs Terkel And so that night as described when it opened. Opening night, December 9th, 1889, 5000 Chicagoans heard "Home Sweet Home," sung by Adelina Patti, and who was -- Benjamin Harrison. the president. Suppose we -- Well, here's the moment. You know, Andy Carr, he's got every record in the world, and this is Adelina Patti, a 1905 recording of the song she sang on December 9th, 1889 at the Auditorium Theatre

Studs Terkel

Herman Kogan

Studs Terkel

Herman Kogan

Studs Terkel

Herman Kogan

Studs Terkel

Herman Kogan

Studs Terkel

Herman Kogan My guests this morning, a father and son, and it was inevitable there'd be this collaboration between Herman Kogan and his son Rick. Herman, you know, has with so many years, has been one of the really fine journalists of our city of the Midwest. He has been for so many years Book Editor of "Sun-Times" and drama critic and investigative reporter and through the years, too, he in collaboration to some extent had a number of books with Lloyd Wendt, have written these chronicles of Chicago, "Lords of the Levee," and and the one about the, oh, "Bet a Million Gates," and a [variety?]. And now, something that Claudia Cassidy calls an album, you might say a city album, rather than a family album, called "Yesterday's Chicago" that he and his son Rick have put together, Seemann are the publishers. And there are all sorts of photographs, some of which you may have seen, some which you haven't. But it isn't that, it's sort of a, almost a recollection of a time before us, and yet, part of us who live here most of our lives and so, very endearing album is what it really is. And so Herman and Rick Kogan, my guests, after this message, and the name of the book is "Yesterday's Chicago," part of a series involving yesterday and yet it's about Chicago today, too, and how it came to be, might be subtitled as "Roots." Wish I'd thought of that. The program in a moment after this message. [content removed, see catalog Oh, that's Win singing, Herman, that's probably one of the first chamber of commerce song about Chicago way back. And so this in a way is what your book is about, it goes way back to the beginnings, doesn't it? That goes even before the city was a city, before it was a village. Obviously nobody's around except me, except I, to know what it was like in the late 17th century, but that's what it is. It's -- A small percentage of the book is devoted to the very early days, very early years. What we try to do because the idea of the book is such that to have enough yesterdays so that people still alive, as you said earlier, can remember, reflect or at least if they weren't there, what their parents may have told them about. Some of the early prints, so the early prints are here in it, too, involving de La Salle, he spoke that this will be a seat of commerce, just as the song says, "A typical man who will grow up here must be an enterprising man. Each day as he rise, exclaim, 'I act, I move, I push.'" Rick, how did you and Herman come to do it, yourself, from 'way back, of course, thanks to your parents and the knowledge of the city and interest. You've had this curiosity, I Oh, sure, I grew up, of course, in the 43rd Ward and would sit at Paddy Bauler's knee and would hear stories from Paddy Bauler which were stories of a sort of more raucous nature than I heard at home. But, you know, I'd hear my father say, "When you get older, you'll have to read this book, about "Bet a Million Gates," and you'll have to read this book that Lloyd Wendt and I wrote about Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John." Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John, of course. Other kids hearing Mother Goose stories, I'm hearing Bathhouse John stories, and finally I was old enough to read the book and sort of continued. I was fascinated with the history of Chicago even when I was a kid. And so the gathering of the photographs and of course, the writings, the photographs are of all varieties beginning early prints, aren't they. What do you think of this theory, because the book deals with that, the beginnings, there's an Englishman named Eric Hobsbawm, an English historian, Chicago was the city of technology, that is, the city came out of steel, was Chicago. True, very true. It does explain, of course, the architecture too, that came -- Let's sort of do this in a in a very improvisational way. I'm just choosing photographs and pages. It was the boomtown and Kinzie came along. It was a guy named Kinzie. Well, John Kinzie has always been by a certain segment of the population by some historians has been called the first settler in Chicago. We would say he was not, of course, it was du Sable, who was a Haitian, who was here long before Kinzie. He left in a hurry. Why, we don't know, somebody ought to do some research into that, and Kinzie became the first perm-- I suppose, first permanent white settler. A very interesting, very interesting man, committed a murder at one point, a very harsh man, a tough guy, kind of a quintessential Chicagoan, Studs, in many ways. I think where we are right now, we're at 500 North Michigan, now when du Sable settled, it was just a block away from here, wasn't it? Just a block away, just south of here. And where it's at, on, near the bridge on Wacker and Michigan. Right. So we're a block away, as we're talking now. Well, you know you and I walked down Michigan Avenue a lot and have seen, get, gotten that sense of history. You always do around that area because that's where it all, that's really where it all started. A lot has been done, as you know, to the river over the years. But but that's really where it started. It gives you a sense of time and place, I think, this in the book learning about the early settlers and the Indians and the Kinzies and the Beaubiens and I think it's easier to identify with place. You can see Chicago, and you can see people, and you can see buildings, but telling telling of the Indians here it gives you, it gives you more than a sense of time, a sense of place and a sense of being. I think about 'boom,' the word 'boom,' you know, the phrase used by de La Salle, "I act. I do, I push." So basically he says -- Pushers. Chicago's always had -- There are different kind of pushers, of course; boomers and boosters, they used to call them over the years in the '30s, 1830s, and you know that that Chicago spirit that the City Hall press agents are always talking about is a very, very true one. But this is entrepreneurial. Well, you remember, you know, Nelson in "City on the Make," he had it, the subtitle was right and that can be both complimentary and a derogatory term. The fact is these guys were up and they did take the Indians, the Pottawattamies. Oh, God, yes. It's funny, the streets -- Rick, you got Kinzie, you got Ogden, streets are named Kinzie, Ogden, we don't have any streets named after artists, do we? No, of course not. There's going to be a Terkel Boulevard if I have anything to say about So we come to, we come to the early and the roughness of the town, visitors. In your book throughout you have various -- It goes in a sort of chronological order, doesn't it? In general, chronological, from beginnings all the way to today, but the visitors who came were always stunned. Yes and no, weren't they? Yes and no. Some of them went away, you know, Sarah Bernhardt thought this was, you know, a jewel of a place, and there were some others that had others opinion, other opinions. Fredrika Bremer, who was from Sweden, had some terrible things to say about about Chicago when she was here And Oh, of course, Oscar Wilde, yeah. Wilde said something, didn't he, about the, about the the Water Tower. Water Tower. A tesselated monstrosity. Tesselated monstrosity. And then of course, the fear of Chicago, and the wildness and sin, William Stead, "If Christ Came to Chicago." Oh, William Stead was a marvelous man in Chicago. That book, "If Christ Came to Chicago," I read it from cover to cover several times and what has always impressed me about "If Christ Came to Chicago" was its, it was written right after the World's Columbian Exposition, was its contemporary quality. You know, Stead in his book published a list of famous blacklist, in the back of the book, and he showed that a lot of the people who were inveighing, as they said, the editorial writers used to say, against sin and crime and corruption and the levee, which was the center of all that, were people who owned a great deal of the property there. And that hasn't changed a hell of a lot. So when two of your heroes, "Lords of the Levee," Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink, had First Ward balls, it was attended by the respectable society, wasn't Oh, sure. As well as, as well as the disrespectables of society. It was just prostitutes and and all sorts of panderers mixed with with, you know, the cream of society. Now, Rick, as I'm thinking, Herman, the line of demarcation was always a very thin one here, wasn't it? It always has been. It's part of its problem, part of its charm. But always been that, a line between the resp-- And [line of fusion?] we come -- Of course, you can't talk about early Chicago, and Herman, you've written about this, too, in your book "Give the Lady What She Wants." Chicago and one of the key -- in the building new department stores. Oh, yeah, and of course, Marshall Field -- For Potter Palmer was one of the first innovators, an innovator in the whole field of merchandising 'way back in the '50s. He is the man who started the store that later became Marshall Field and Company. In 1852 he started that on Lake Street. Marshall Field and Levi Leiter worked for him as clerks and eventually he went on to other things like owning practically all of State Street, most of Lake Shore Drive. Since we're talking about buildings, on page 28 of the book of Herman and Rick Kogan's book, "Yesterday's Chicago," is the first, is "The Wigwam." You know, we're now, this program is taking place during the presidential campaign of 1976, but it was somewhat different in 1860. And it was in Chicago, wasn't it, "The Wigwam"? Why don't you sort of set the scene for this, Herman or Rick, together? Well, this was where the, you know, Chicago's first national political convention was held in "The Wigwam," which was a building that was put up very hastily in 1860 to house the Republican convention in which a fellow named Abraham Lincoln was nominated. But why did they -- I suppose it's natural that Chicago was a new party, a new kind of person. But why was Chicago chosen? By this time, was pretty well -- Well, 1860 was a very, it was, you know, it was rapidly becoming, as they say, a metropolis. There was a poet at the time, Will Carleton, who called it, you know, "The Queen of the North and the West," "The rich and voluptuous city, the beauty-thronged mansion-decked." How about that? If Jack Riley ever saw that, he'd steal it and use it again. "Gem of the" -- Wasn't there a phrase used, "gem of the prairie"? Well, "Gem of the Prairie," of course, was the name of a newspaper that used to narrate the doings and the events on the levee. The actual name of the newspaper. Oh, the levee was the, where -- The vice districts. The sporting houses were. And that was the gem of the prairie. The reason for the, I guess the reason, by 1860 Chicago's, you know, location has always been one of its obviously obvious prime assets. It simply was an easy place to come to for all the people to come, and there were still, there were also the boomers and boosters who kept urging people to come here. Booster Yeah, Deacon Bross. Deacon Bross. So we come to a certain song very popular then at the convention. Here's [content It's It As a matter of fact, one of the people involved in the famous Camp Douglas plot was a former mayor of Chicago, a man named Buckner Morris. And you see, what Chicago was in the, even during the Civil War there were a lot of copperheads and a lot of Confederate sympathizers in this town. And the plot would make a great book some time, one I [content Chicago. Everything. The fire. Now, everything was growing so fast. Now we come to the '70s, early '70s. Well, Chicago was growing too fast. That man, those quotes from Will Carleton the poet, that was written about a month or two before the fire in October 1871 hit the town. Everybody I'm sure knows about the fire. It was a devastating thing, not as devastating as other famous, as they say, famous fires all over the world. There was one at that time up in Wisconsin. Peshtigo. The Peshtigo. Devastating thing. But Chicago was such a well-known city. We were asked, Bob Cromie and I did a book on the fire back in '71 and we were asked why there was so much attention paid to that fire. Well, Chicago was a very highly-publicized city at the time and of course, there was -- Nobody ever heard of the Peshtigo, and so -- Although many more people lost their I mean your book with Bob, though, as I recall, you were saying though, many fires broke out before the big one. Now weren't there warnings, not -- So it wouldn't -- Weren't there many, wasn't there negligence here too, on the part of authorities? Yeah, that's also a kind of a Chicago trait. Sure, yeah. You think only of growing and you don't -- I know it happens it happens in a lot of other ways. The Iroquois Theater fire was another example of just, you know, let's let's build a marvelous theater and, you know, forget, you know, you start cutting corners and when you're when you're moving very fast, as Chicago was at the time, you not only cut corners, you forget all about the corners and just and just go straight ahead. You know, every -- Probably every single building ordinance was violated in the pre-fire months. Even there was an ordinance that you couldn't store hay in a barn in the so-called rural district where the O'Leary's lived. Even that was, and nobody, nobody did anything about it. Since you mention O'Leary and the cow and the legend, half true, half-no, something else is here. This is interesting, you point this out and I look at the photographs here. She was Irish. The anti-Irish feeling, these outsiders, these [storing coal?] in the bathtub stereotype. Yeah, there was anti-Irish, anti-Catholic feeling, especially during the Civil War. You know, the Trib-- The various newspapers were always writing editorials about how the city is at the mercy of the criminal classes, well, that was a euphemism at that time for the Irish. Later on, you know, the euphemism crime in the streets was the black, what was happening -- There was talk of crime on the streets then, wasn't there? Oh, sure, sure. There are -- You know, you come across, when you do research into Chicago, there's nothing new. You found it, Nelson's found it, Rick and I found it, lines in editorials that could be applied 50 years later, 75 years later. Of course. Do we learn from history, that's a big question. On page 32 there's this artist's version of how the fire began, the cow and the old woman and the lantern and the hay. And then Mrs. O'Leary, here's the part, I think, told an insurance investigator the next morning write the Kogans, but subsequently changed it several times, obviously fearful that anti-Irish mobs might descend in vengeance on the neighborhood and other contemporary depictions show Mrs. O'Leary as a witch, a harridan, a drunken slattern. Again, we have history repeating itself in stereotype and hysteria. So one of the aspects Chicago is the comeback, the post-fire Chicago. Yeah, that's a trait, of course, of Chicago, you know, the disaster and recovery, incredible rapid recovery and that again is a characteristic of the city all through its, all through its history. It's a marvelous period, the period from 1871 to 1893, the city bouncing back like, well, the term 'Windy City' was was originated by newspapers in the east describing Chicago because it was so boastful, claiming that they could -- That this upstart city that was leveled 20 years ago could put on the World's Columbian Exposition, although it is maybe windy here, that's that's the reason is Chicago's boastful nature during those years. And those were the years of the great architecture, the great building, the Auditorium Theatre. It was a -- I've used this analogy before, it was like the people here and people who came here in those, in those 22 years had a had an empty canvas to work with. And anything went. It was a marvelous time, I think if any time in Chicago I'd like to have been around, it would have been those years because the chance for participation rather than just, you know, reading about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and going down to see it at the garage, you know, the blood, you could you could be a participant in those years. This is the point now, we come to the architecture, too. So William Le Baron Jenney and the new and the new -- Home Insurance Building. Skyscraper. Home of the first skyscraper. And of course, Louis Sullivan. Ah, Louis Sullivan. You know, there have been a number of books about Louis Sullivan and still I think the the book needs to be written, maybe not by an architect but maybe by a good novelist. I'd like to see, I'd like to see a man like Norman Mailer get into the subject of Louis Sullivan and do a fictive or nonfiction fictive biography of Louis Sullivan. He ended, as you know, very tragically. But one of the one of the Chicago geniuses, no doubt about it. Here on 52 of course, there's the Auditorium that he did with the acoustical genius Dankmar Adler. Here's the description of it, too, the devout believer Louis Sullivan and modernism and the artist's democratic traditions. By the way, Win Stracke, who sang a number of times in the old Auditorium, he was in the chorus of "The Miracle," he said he described as he saw it from the stage, he says, "It was the most, one of the most democratically-built theaters in the world." That is, it was built, Sullivan's credo was that everybody, there were no special vantage points. Right. There is, you know, even today with the rebuilt Auditorium, you notice that very easily. You know, not only the acoustics are great, but there are no barriers to the eye. No, no, nothing. And so that night as described when it opened. Opening night, December 9th, 1889, 5000 Chicagoans heard "Home Sweet Home," sung by Adelina Patti, and who was -- Benjamin Harrison. the president. Suppose we -- Well, here's the moment. You know, Andy Carr, he's got every record in the world, and this is Adelina Patti, a 1905 recording of the song she sang on December 9th, 1889 at the Auditorium Theatre opening. [content That Sounds Your Yes, We Some I Revolution, They Oh They They And [content