138 Years of Murder in Chicago

Unlike other posts on this site, this one focuses not on a single crime scene or an historical account of one or two individuals, but instead summarizes the facts on over a century of murder in Chicago. One of the main purposes of this blog is to understand Chicago's historic and modern reputation for crime, and comparisons over time can be illuminating.

The figure above shows the city's murder rate, expressed as murders per 100,000 residents, between 1870 and 2008. This gives a long-run summary view of homicide in Chicago over the last 138 years. I focus here on murder because, unlike rape, larceny, and other crimes, the likelihood of unreported victims is less severe with murder. The cops will eventually notice every corpse lying in the street, although it is true that some "accidental" deaths may actually have been murders, and some bodies are never found.

Data from 1931 to the present is drawn from the FBI's annual Crime in the United States, and is based on reports from local police agencies. Figures from 1870 - 1930 are based on Chicago police department data processed by Homicide in Chicago, a project hosted at Northwestern University School of Law. All figures include both murders and non-negligent manslaughter.

Between 1870 and 1920, Chicago's crime rate grew at an essentially steady pace, reaching a peak of 10 per 100,000 in 1919. During this period, Chicago was growing in population and density. High population density is typically associated with greater crime rates for several reasons. First, in small towns, every face is familiar, but in large cities, criminals are less likely to be recognized by witnesses. Realizing a lower likelihood of being caught, criminals commit more crimes. Second, crime pays better in cities, because there are more people to rob -- there's no point in becoming a robber in the first place if you can't hit lots of targets. Finally, and especially relevant to Chicago during this period, big cities attract large communities of poor immigrants with few prospects for legal employment. Criminal, on the other hand, is a profession open to all.

With the onset of national Prohibition in 1919, many of these immigrants gained lucrative employment in the bootlegging field, and for the first few years of the 1920s, at least, murder rates fell by nearly 50%. But as the various parts of Johnny Torrio's syndicate began falling apart in 1924, culminating in the murder of Torrio's north side associate Dion O'Banion, likely at the hand of his south side associates, the Genna brothers, Chicago's "Beer Wars" began, and the murder rate skyrocketed by 250% between 1923 and 1928. Also around the same time, the notoriously-violent Al Capone took over full control of Torrio's organization in 1925.

Even as Prohibition ended in 1931, murder rates remained high throughout the early 1930s, the worst years of the Great Depression, before falling below 5 per 100,000 in 1943. No doubt the massive mobilization of American men out of Chicago and into military companies in army barracks and overseas locations played no small role in the low murder rates of the early 1940s -- men have traditionally constituted the vast majority of both murderers and murder victims.

After WWII, Chicago's murder rate again began to climb as the city continued growing in size until around 1950. The city's demographics also changed during this period, as increasing automobile ownership and better highways allowed families seeking larger homes to commute from the suburbs, while younger cohorts without children remained in the city (most murderers are drawn from the ranks of 17-24 year olds).

Between 1943 and 1965, Chicago's murder rate rose at a roughly constant rate, increasing by 1 per 100,000 about every three years. However, between 1965 and 1970, the murder rate rose much more dramatically, increasing from 11 per 100,000 in 1965 to 24 per 100,000 in 1970.

Why did the murder rate rise so quickly in the late 1960s? Some point to stricter standards for policing and stronger rights for accused criminals during this period, symbolized by the Miranda case in 1966, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the police must inform arrested persons of their rights before interrogating them. Criminals facing a lower probability of punishment rationally commit more crimes.

There is also some evidence that the generation born after World War II had substantially poorer family formation rates, with an increasing share of children growing up in single-parent households. As I've written elsewhere, as these children reached their late teens and early adulthood -- when offense rates are highest -- in the late 1960s, the quantity of violent crime rose proportionately.

Another potential factor in the growth of crime during this era was the changing consumption patterns and legal status of drugs. The use of heroin and psychodelic drugs increased during the 1960s as production and transportation costs fell, and these drugs also become especially popular among enlisted men and counterculture communities. The pharmacological effects of increased drug consumption -- at least among the class of drugs popular during this period -- on violence are debatable. However, increased usage also led to substantially greater levels of enforcement. Federal prohibition on heroin stretches back to the 1910s, but LSD only became illegal in 1966. Arrests for drug crimes, which were exceptionally rare before 1965, skyrocketed afterwards. With prohibition comes incentives for violence between customers, dealers, and suppliers, who can no longer depend on the courts and police to enforce contracts and mitigate violence.

The war on drugs continued through the 1970s and 1980s. Especially prominent as a source of crime is the arrival of crack cocaine in the mid-1980s. Crack was an immediately and immensely popular drug, and its arrival in Chicago kicked off massive and bloody turf wars among rival drug-selling organizations (primarily street gangs) for control of retailing markets in the city.

While crack consumption has not waned much since the 1980s, boundaries between rival sellers have largely been settled. Thus, the end of the "crack epidemic" coincided with big declines in Chicago's murder rate. In the mid-1990s, the murder rate in Chicago (and nationwide) fell dramatically, declining below 50% of its 1992 peak by 2004. Besides the end of the crack epidemic, there are potentially several causes for this remarkable turnaround.

In other cities, such as New York, declines in crime have been attributed to substantial increases in the number of police on the street and to creative policing strategies. Chicago, however, saw little change in the size of its police force, and "broken windows" and other techniques were slow in gaining acceptance at the CPD, although greater efforts towards community engagement, such as the CAPS program, did begin in the early 1990s.

Imprisonment rates also increased during this period, with Illinois holding 27,516 prisoners in 1990 and 45,281 in 2000. With more criminals behind bars, there are fewer on the street committing crime. In addition, an increased likelihood of a lengthy prison sentence likely deters some would-be criminals.

Finally, and most controversially, some researchers have recently pointed to the role of legalized abortion in the evident decline in crime during the 1990s. While some states legalized abortion procedures before 1973, Illinois and most other states saw legalization after the Supreme Court's famous Roe v. Wade decision that year. A large share of women seeking abortions do so because they feel unprepared to raise a child -- and no doubt many of them in fact are poorly prepared for motherhood. After the legalization of abortion, this theory argues, many children, who would have been raised in high-risk environments, were never born. This "missing cohort" would have reached their late teens and early 20s during the early 1990s; thus, the decline in murder rates in the 1990s may be partially due to the fact that many would-be murderers were never born.

The statistical evidence regarding this theory is controversial and, in many places, contradictory. Nevertheless, it is difficult to doubt that at least some of the decline in Chicago's murder rate during the 1990s is due to legalized abortion.

By 2008, Chicago's murder rate was 18.03 per 100,000, roughly the same as it was in 1967. Nevertheless, the city's rate is substantially higher than some other large cities, including New York City (6.3 per 100,000) and Los Angeles (10.0 per 100,000). On the other hand, Chicago is relatively safe compared with Philadelphia (23.0 per 100,000), Detroit (33.8 per 100,000), and Gary, Indiana (73.2 per 100,000).

Rev. Jeremiah Porter, Chicago's First Moral Crusader

Because Chicago has always the country's first city in crime, it has also witnessed countless righteous uprisings against the underworld. The city's first battle between religion and vice was centered here, on the Southwest corner of Clark and Lake, at the First Presbyterian Church.

In 1833, Chicago's population numbered around 300, the majority of whom were soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn, French trappers, and "civilized" Potowotomie Indians. As in most frontier towns, the male-to-female ratio was far from one, and men with extra time on their hands and no female companionship will seek excitement in countless ways. Prostitution was an early growth industry on Wells Street, booze flowed freely, and horseracing was a perennial sport. Cards and dice games were also popular, and the city's proximity to the Mississippi River brought a wide range of card sharks and confidence men through on a regular basis.

To make those games of chance more interesting, gambling became a common occupation of frontier Chicagoans, especially during the long, cold winters. It was after one such winter in May, 1833 that the Revered Jeremiah Porter arrived in town. Religion was not a particularly important part of the city's life up to that time, although one tireless believer, Philo Carpenter, had begun a Methodist Sunday School with 15 pupils earlier that year.

Rev. Porter was born in Massachusetts in 1804, and had graduated Williams College in that state at age 21 before matriculating at Andover Theological Seminary. By 1831, he was stationed at Ft. Brady in Sault Ste. Marie, ministering to the soldiers on the wild frontier. After the Black Hawk War of 1832 in Chicago, in which 72 soldiers were killed, a regiment from Ft. Brady was transferred to Fort Dearborn in May, 1833, to replace those lost and to relieve others. Rev. Porter took the opportunity to travel with the regiment.

Porter was apparently an exceptional minister, and had converted all of the Ft. Brady soldiers save one lone couple, who somehow managed to resist. When he arrived in Chicago, he was utterly dismayed at the unchristian standards of the city. He wrote in his journal that his first sight upon alighting in Illinois was a group of Indians playing cards in front of a primitive saloon, with a group of soldiers looking on.

Rev. Porter held his first services almost immediately upon arrival, ministering to 26 members in the carpenter shop at Fort Dearborn. As the Reverend described it later, "I gathered the first church ever formed in Chicago since 'the morning stars first sang together.'"

Again, the Reverend's talents grew the little group to 67 members within a year, and demand began to be made for a formal church edifice. A site was selected on the Southwest corner of Clark and Lake Streets, which at the time was nothing but prairie bog, quite a distance from the first sprouts of the city huddled around the Fort. Members complained that the church was remote and inaccessible, but the foresighted minister made plans to build a wooden frame structure on the lot, at a cost of $316. First, however, a group of squatters who had erected shanties had to be cleared, which they were in the dead of night, pulled down by a team of horses driven by church members, which dragged the squatters' residences several blocks west on Lake Street.

By winter, the church was built, and the group of believers, thinking that Yankee Congregationalism would be unsuited to the new territory of Illinois, founded their congregation as the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. The dedication took place on January 4, 1834, when the temperature was 24 below zero. In his diary, Rev. Porter wrote of that day:

Many witnessed the solemn scene, but a majority were females, as two vessels were unloading in the harbor, causing a wanton abuse of the holy day by many who sin against clear light, and abuse divine compassion and love.

One of the soldiers' children who attended church at First Presbyterian was the future Mrs. Henry Durant, founder of Wellesley College.

All the time, Reverend Porter's assault on gambling and other vice continued. Records of the church include the following:

12/30/33: William Cole, having used intoxicating drink several times during the past year, so as to be sensibly affected to the wounding of his own peace and the cause of Christ, was called before the session this evening and made full confession, promising to reform.

9/5/34: Brothers William Cole and John Guy, having been laboured with by the pastor and one of the elders for drinking ardent spirits, acknowledge their sin and express a determination to reform.

12/13/34: The church committee visited Mrs. Boyer and her daughter and learned that both of them attended a party where dancing had been introduced. Both confessed their error.

Reverend Porter led city committees to eradicate gambling, and focused his attention on the problem in the summer of 1835, which he called a "season of prayer," with many rousing sermons. Responding to increased public pressure, several gambling sports were imprisoned, though none for very long.

Growing a church was not the Reverend's only activity in Chicago at the time. About the same time Porter arrived in Chicago, a young teacher, Eliza Chappell, came to the city and opened the first school for girls, space for which she rented from the Presbyterians for the sum of $9 per month (given the lack of suitable buildings in the city, the church was able to price discriminate heavily -- they rented the building for county court at the much higher rate of $30 per month).

Close quarters between the young teacher and the man of the cloth blossomed into romance, and in 1835, Chappell and Porter were married. Even with a godly wife at his side, Chicagoans' taste for vice was too much for Reverend Porter, and in late 1835, he accepted a position at a church in Peoria, leaving the church he started and the crusades he founded.

Chicago's wickedness grew over the years, and so the city became fertile ground for religious revivalists. Billy Graham, Billy Sunday, and William Moody all got their starts in Chicago. Gipsy Smith and Mother Cabrini thrived there, as have Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson.

As for the Reverend Jeremiah Porter, his career after Peoria took him to Green Bay, Wis. for eighteen years, followed by a return to Chicago, where he ministered to a Congregationalist church on the west side for many years before retiring to California. During the Civil War, Rev. Porter traveled with the Illinois First Artillery Regiment as company chaplain (one of the Reverend's nine children was a member of the regiment).

However, Chicago was always his home; when Eliza Porter passed in 1888, her remains were brought by train across the country back to Chicago for burial. The old crusader himself remained active, giving lectures to large crowds up until just before his own passing in 1893.

The First Presbyterian congregation held together through the years, though they quickly outgrew the old wooden shack at Clark and Lake. The issue of slavery tore the congregation into three parts: in 1842, a pro-slavery contingent splintered to found Second Presbyterian, and in 1851, another group left to found a radical abolishonist Congregationalist church.

The church slowly shifted its focus to the city's Southside, eventually settling on 64th and Kimbark in the Woodlawn neighborhood in the 1920s. During the 1960s, the church was investigated by federal authorities for links with Jeff Fort and the Blackstone Rangers. Despite its troubles, the congregation of First Presbyterian still holds services today, attracting Chicagoans away from the lures of easy pleasure and vice, 176 years after Reverend Porter first began the crusade.

Mickey Finn Coins a Phrase

After Al Capone, Mickey Finn is probably the most famous criminal name in Chicago history. Between 1896 and 1903, he ran a saloon here at 527 S. State St. (with the 1911 renumbering, this is now 1101 S. State).

Finn was a diminutive Irishman who first came to Chicago to work graft during the influx of visitors drawn to the World's Fair in 1893. An expert pickpocket and a fence for stolen goods, he plied his trade on travelers arriving at Dearborn Station and throughout the Custom House Place levee district. Soon, he found work tending bar at a tough saloon in Little Cheyenne, where he began training others in his techniques, particularly the streetwalkers who frequented the bar and helped gentlemen select drinks.

But Mickey Finn is best known for his own bar, the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden, which he opened in 1896. For seven years, it held the reputation as the toughest joint in the city -- and it certainly served the strongest drinks. The Lone Star was populated by resident "house girls," who made it their job to encourage visitors to drink as much as possible, and to offer any other services that might be requested of them for a price.

In 1898, Mickey Finn met a mysterious voodoo priest named Dr. Hall, who made his living selling love potions and trinkets to the superstitious and uneducated folk of the red light district, and also supplying them with heroin and cocaine. From Dr. Hall, Finn purchased brown bottles filled with liquid and a white, powdery chemical detritus, which no one ever precisely identified, but which made Mickey Finn famous.

Back at his bar, Finn mixed Dr. Hall's concoction with snuff-tinged water and liquor to make "Mickey Finn Specials" -- which the house girls promoted unceasingly. Pity the poor fellow who was cajoled into proving his manhood by ordering this stiff drink though. Isabel Fyffe and "Gold Tooth" Mary, two of the Lone Star's house girls, later testified before an aldermanic committee about the effects of the drink:

When the victims drink this dopey stuff, they get talkative, walk around in a restless manner, and then fall into a deep sleep, and you can't arouse them until the effect of the drug wears off.

After falling prey to the knockout drink, the house girls and the bartender would drag the victim into one of the Lone Star's back rooms, which Mickey Finn referred to as the "operating room." There, he was stripped naked, and anything of any value was removed from his person, including his clothes if they were of sufficient quality. Later, his body would be dumped into the alleyway behind the saloon. When he awoke the next day, the victim usually had little memory of what had happened and how he ended up in a dirty levee alley.

Not all of Finn's victims suffered only robbery. Gold Tooth Mary testified:

I saw Finn take a gold watch and thirty-five dollars from Billy Miller, a trainman. Finn gave him dope and he lay in a stupor in the saloon for twelve hours. When he recovered he demanded his money, but Finn had gone...Miller was afterward found along the railroad tracks with his head cut off.

Like all saloon-keepers in the First Ward, Mickey Finn paid his protection money to the Aldermen/Vice lords Michael Kenna and John Coughlin, and he was convinced he would never be caught. But in 1903, the jig was up. Persistent reports of dopings at the Lone Star led the police to investigate the saloon more closely, and Gold Tooth Mary and some of the other house girls began to fear that one day, Finn would take their hard-earned savings. She told the city graft committee,

I was afraid I would be murdered for the two hundred dollars I had saved up, and I did not want to be a witness to any more of the horrible things I saw done there. I was afraid I would be arrested some time when some victims who had been fed on knockout drops would die. When I saw his wife put the drugged liquor to the lips of men I could not stand it, as bad as I am. Oh, it was just awful to see the way men were drugged and stripped of their clothing by Finn or his wife. Finn had an idea that most men wore belts about their waists to hide their money. He had robbed a man once who hid his money that way, and he never deglected searching the 'dead ones' to the skin.

Finn claimed that Mary was framing him, saying "I'd lose money in feeding 'dope' along with the big 'tubs' and the clams I dish out to the 'guys' that blow in here. I wouldn't get enough money out of their clothes in a year to pay for the 'dope'."

But on December 16, 1903, Mayor Carter Harrison ordered the closure of the Lone Star Saloon, and Mickey Finn wisely left town shortly thereafter. But not before he sold the formula for his famous drink to a number of other Southside saloons, who marketed it as a "Mickey Finn," or even just a "Mickey". The name eventually came into use as a generic term for any knockout drink, and to "slip a mickey" into someone's drink now means to secretly drug an unsuspecting victim.

Mickey Finn's saloon is long gone, replaced by a modern condominium building and a pet store fills the space where the Lone Star once beckoned to unsuspecting victims.

Maj. Funkhouser and Inspector Dannenberg Put the Lid on the Levee

The Victorian concept of vice accepted that men were imperfect creatures and that gambling, prostitution, and liquor could never fully be eliminated from society. Therefore, it was best that these "social evils" be segregated into a restricted area of the city, where they could operate outside and apart from decent society.

This doctrine was implemented in Chicago throughout the 19th and early 20th century. Although prostitution and gambling were de jure illegal under city and Cook county ordinances, their practice in segregated vice districts was de facto tolerated. Major attacks on vice districts only occurred when city boundaries or neighborhoods changed, as was the case with the Custom House Place vice district when streetcars began bringing residents into downtown along Clark Street in 1903.

The Third Great Awakening upended the Victorian view of vice, and ended forever Chicago's toleration of its open practice. This upswing in religious fervor started after the Civil War, and included a strong paternalistic impulse, in which the poor and downtrodden were thought to be uplifted by driving saloons and pimps out of their neighborhoods by force of law.

By 1910, social and religious pressure had mounted to a degree that even Chicago's relatively lax politicians felt impelled to eliminate the open vice districts. Attention naturally focused on the 22nd street Levee, the wildest and most open segregated vice district the world had ever seen. The federal Mann Act was passed in 1910, based on a purported case of white slavery in the Levee. Even the Levee's lords and protectors, the first ward aldermen, Michael Kenna and John Coughlin, played along, feigning outrage at police indifference to unlawful saloons and brothels, and promising to act. At the same time, they convinced former Mayor and "wet", Carter Harrison Jr., to return from California to again seek the city's mayorship, which he did.

But even Mayor Harrison was eventually forced to accept the will of the city's moral majority. He forced the closure of the Everleigh Club in 1911, and in 1913, formed the city's first specialty police vice squad, led by Major Metellium Funkhouser and Inspector William Dannenberg.

These two incorruptible crusaders for the public weal aggressively pursued vice in the Levee throughout 1913 and 1914, forcing the final end of open vice districts in Chicago. First, old-time saloon keeper Andy Craig and his gang of pickpockets were rounded up. Then, in January, 1914, raids on a wide variety of Levee bars and hotels began, including one on Jan. 8 at the Rhinegold Saloon and Cafe, a bar and house of ill repute at 1939 S. Dearborn (pictured above) owned by vice king "Big Jim" Colosimo, was raided by Funkhouser and Dannenberg's morals unit. Twelve women were arrested for vagrancy, plus the saloon's keeper, Johnny "the Fox" Torrio (or "John Turio", as the newspapers called him) -- who was later to take over the gang from Colosimo and lead it into the bootlegging era of Prohibition.

Colosimo and other vice entrepreneurs attempted to bribe Funkhouser and Dannenberg, they tried to obstruct their work, they even brought a lawsuit against them -- all to no avail. By the end of 1914, all major vice operations either moved into the suburbs or underground, where they remain to this day. The closure of the Levee eliminated advertisement of liquor, drugs and prostitution, but of course, did not eliminate these evils. Outside the realm of the courts, vice entrepreneurs turned to violence to settle disputes and enforce contracts -- thus, the murderous 1920s under the leadership of Torrio and Al Capone.

Most of the Levee is gone today, with even the streets vacated. The South Loop School's Early Childhood Center, a Chicago Public School, sits on the spot where the Rhinegold once stood.

The Workingmen's Exchange

After finding success running his original saloon, Hinky Dink's Place, in 1897, Alderman/vice lord Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna opened an even bigger saloon here at 427 S. Clark, in the midst of the old Cheyenne district. The "Workingmen's Exchange," as he called it, became perhaps the most famous bar in Chicago history.

Hinky Dink was one of the famous "Lords of the Levee," the inveterately corrupt Aldermen of the First Ward, who ran an enormous protection and collection racket that kept every disorderly saloon, brothel, and gambling outfit open for decades, despite city and county laws to the contrary.

Almost every major Chicago criminal figure from the first half of the 20th century got their start working under Alderman Kenna. Ike Bloom, the owner of Frieberg's Dance Hall, was the official collector of protection money, until he was replaced by a promising newcomer, "Big Jim" Colosimo, the founder of the Chicago Outfit. Johnny Torrio and Al Capone were close friends of "The Hink", and used his political influence, which continued unabated until his death in 1946, to keep their operations running smoothly.

Andy Craig, bail bondsman and old-time saloon keeper, was a precinct captain, as was Max Guzik, father of Jake and Harry Guzik, two top Capone lieutenants and major underworld figures in their own right. The Everleigh Sisters, madams of the world's most famous brothel, were his special protectorate.

Legitimate businesses, too, supplied Hinky Dink with plenty of opportunities for graft. Did you own a hotel, restaurant, or department store anywhere between the Chicago River and 31st St.? Then when you needed a business license, zoning ordinance, street-level sign clearance, or parking permit, you paid Alderman Kenna.

Hinky Dink was crucial in the election of Democratic mayors for over 40 years. He could easily deliver -- or not, if he so chose -- thousands of votes from his First Ward Democratic Club, of which every First Ward resident was automatically enrolled, and who each received a personalized membership card. It was Kenna who brought Carter Harrison, Jr. back from retirement in California to run for mayor in 1911, and it was Kenna to brought Harrison down in the 1915 election after he bowed to public pressure in closing the Levee.

The Workingmen's Exchange was more than a name -- it was what actually took place there. If you were a street peddler and needed a license to sell pencils, bread, socks, or any other goods, you found your way to 426 S. Clark and exchanged your money for a license.

The saloon was one of the most spacious in the city, featuring a 30 foot walnut bar, and free lunches to any of the poor unfortunates (and potential voters) of the district who wandered in. It was not uncommon for 10,000 drinks to be served in a week. No doubt this had a lot to do with the low prices: for a nickel, you could have a "goldfish bowl" full of beer, known as a "tub", pictured here with an inset of Alderman Kenna himself:


No wonder then that the Workingmen's Exchange was Carrie Nation's first stop when she arrived in Chicago in 1901. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself to run such a hellhole as this. You are sending scores of persons to hell every day," she scowled to the besotted customers.

"O' shut up and get out of here," yelled the bartender as a crowd of drunks pushed the hatcheteer out the door.

The Workingmen's Exchange was closed at the start of national Prohibition in 1919, at which point Hinky Dink moved his political headquarters to a back room in a cigar shop a block north on Clark. As a tongue-in-cheek gift, he sent one of the famous "tubs" to the president of the Evanston Womens' Christian Temperance Union for use as a flowerpot. For the occasion, his fellow Alderman and Lord of the Levee, John Coughlin, wrote one of his (in)famous poems:

Dear gentle, gracious, efficient president of the WTCU,
This souvenier of pre-Volsteadean days I beg to present to you.
My compliments go with it, and as you gaze upon it filled with flowers sweet,
I prithee remember that it oft contained Manhattan "suds" on Clark Street.

A newspaper account of the event followed with "There are more of the verses, just as sad."

The Alaska House, a 30 cents per day lodging-house for hobos and other itinerants operated above the Workingmen's Exchange, providing the bar with a constant supply of nearby customers. In the 1950s, the name was changed to the Ewing Annex Hotel. Over the years, a variety of colorful characters lived at the hotel, including one Swan Carlson, who, upon his death, left a room full of stale bread, cheese, a box of cigarette butts he had hoarded over a period of years -- and $40,000. No one knew where the money came from. Another resident, David Steele, had to be rescued in 1965 by firemen after he climbed the 8th St. fountain in Grant Park to win a bet. A bevy of other small time crooks and robbers came and went from the tiny hovel rooms over the years.

The building that held the Workingmen's Exchange and the Ewing Annex still stands, in the middle of one rather seedy block in an otherwise gentrified downtown business area. The saloon has been divided into a pawn shop and a restaurant serving "deep fried lobster". The Ewing Annex hotel is still in business, and over 100 years later, it still offers cheap lodging to transient men.

Bob Mott and the Pekin Theater

Robert T. "Bob" Mott was born in 1861 and arrived in Chicago in the 1890s, when he began operating a gambling house in the Custom House Place levee district on S. Clark St. He gained political power and used his success as a gambler to open a saloon in 1903 at 2700 S. State St., in the heart of the "Black belt," the segregated strip of city blocks running along S. State below 22nd St.

Gambling continued in the back rooms of the saloon, where it was well-known that police officers could have any drink they wanted on the house, in return for turning a blind eye. Mott's continued success and political influence allowed him to open the famous Pekin Theater at this location in 1906.

The Pekin became Chicago's leading African-American institution in the first decade of the 1900s, and its performances were widely renowned, as it was at the time the world's only Black-managed and operated playhouse. Luminaries including the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and Mrs. Potter Palmer enjoyed the performances of the Pekin players. Below is an advertisement for the Pekin from its peak years:


The Pekin's success (plus the death of "Mushmouth" Johnson, a rival underworld leader, in 1907) made Mott the city's leading Black power broker. When Chicago native Jack Johnson won the title of heavyweight champion of the world in 1910 (before celebrating at the Everleigh Club), it was Mott who led the celebratory welcoming parade and held a banquet in Johnson's honor at the Pekin.

After Mott's death in 1911, the Pekin was sold to Dan Jackson, and its reputation sank. Jackson turned the Pekin into a burlesque, and opened a scandalous "black-and-tan" cafe, the Beaux Arts, on the second floor, where racially-mixed customers danced to Jazz music. Hundreds attended on weekend nights. A 1917 police report states:

Lieut. Loftus...visited the "club" on the night of April 8 and found the dancing "very disgusting." There were 300 white and colored couples on the floor, the majority of whom were doing an underworld dance.

One can only imagine what an "underworld" dance would look like, but we get more details from a February, 1920 report published in the Tribune. The letter was clearly intended to raise an uproar, and uses every racially-insensitive term in existence, yet one can't help thinking the Beaux Arts sounds like a pretty fun place:

Lawless liquor - sensuous "shimmy" - solicitous sirens - wrangling waiters - all the tints of the racial rainbow - black and tan and white - dancing, drinking, singing - early Sunday morning at the Pekin cafe, 2700 South State street.

Those pleasure bent figures carousing about the gaudy second floor were not the ghosts of the long gone days of Chicago's roaring levee. They were real - the society man, the chorus girl, the gangster, the lawyer, the jazzbo - all heading the call of the bright lights.

It was a bit after midnight when the adventurers stopped under the soft red lamp that marks the Pekin. Half way up the stairs was a door with a peep hole, which framed a chocolate eye. At the top of the stairs the big brown man asked to see the card of admittance....

In came a mighty black man with two white girls. A scarred white man entered with three girls, two young and painted, the other merely painted. Two well dressed youths hopped up the stairs with two timid girls. Seven young men - they looked like the back o' the yards - came with two women, one heavy footed, the other laughing hysterically. Two fur coated "high yaller" girls romped up with a slender white man....

Meanwhile a syncopating colored man had been vamping cotton field blues on the piano. A brown girl sang.

"I'd take mos' any kind of chance," she screamed. Then she shimmied. A dollar turned the "shimmy" into a muscle dance that put the old time "hootch" to shame. Two black boys moaned and screamed on saxophone and clarinet....

Dancing "across the table" was in vogue. A painted girl would "give the eye" to a man across the hall and then they hurried to the dance floor. Once there, they picked a spot and wiggled. One girl returning from the floor found her chiffon waist disarranged and her hennaed hair was falling about her shoulders.

The fun ended in August, 1920, when two Irish police officers, who were being paid off by Jackson to allow the Beaux Arts to remain "wet" and in business, became involved in a physical alteration late one evening at the club, and ended up being shot and killed. In the ensuing political scandal, the Beaux Arts was closed, and the building was sold to the congregation of the Zionist Baptist Church (Rev. A. M. Martin, pastor), who held services there for several years.

In 1925, the old Pekin Theater became home to a district police station, which remained there until the building was demolished in the late 1940s to make way for a public housing project, Dearborn Homes, which still stands at the location of the Pekin today.

Lager Beer Riots

Until 1855, Chicago's streets were policed by a few county constables. That was the year the Chicago Police Department was founded. It was also the year of Chicago's first riot, in which CPD played a large role.

Chicago was always a town of newcomers, and that was certainly true in the 1850s, when over 60% of the population was foreign-born. The flow of primarily Roman Catholic German and Irish immigrants raised the degree of xenophobia in the native population, embodied politically in the Know-Nothing Party, which briefly held substantial legislative power in Chicago as elsewhere. At the same time, early Prohibitionists were active in the Illinois legislature, and had passed a state prohibition ordinance, which was to be voted on in 1855.

Chicago's German population, concentrated on the North Side, enjoyed their neighborhood beer gardens, and abhorred prohibition. The newly-elected Mayor, Levi Boone (a distant relative of Daniel Boone), lobbed a bomb into this incendiary atmosphere by ordering the police to enforce the city's Sunday closing laws, which had been mostly forgotten by that time. The police, composed almost entirely of native-born Americans, forced the North side bars to obey the ordinance, but allowed American bars on the South side to stay open.

On April 21, 1855, a mob of five hundred Germans massed outside the city courthouse at Clark and Randolph (pictured above), where one of their own was to be tried for liquor law violations that day. Mayor Boone ordered the newly-formed police squad to disperse the crowd, which they did at the business end of their clubs.

A few hours later, a squadron of over a thousand Germans marched back to the courthouse to continue the battle. The Mayor ordered the ends of the Clark street bridge (pictured below) opened, trapping about half of the rioters on the south side of the river, and a few hundred more on the bridge. The mob attacked the police, who had lined up in formation to defend the courthouse, and a firefight with pistols and shotguns, as well as clubs and chains, raged for over an hour. Some of the protesters stuck on the bridge claimed the police specifically targeted them.

In the end, however, while there were many injuries, there was only one recorded death, although rumors spread quickly that a score or so of the rioters were killed, leading to additional tension between the immigrant population and the police.

The police arrested sixty during the Beer Riots, but one two were convicted, and none were ever actually imprisoned. Later that year, the prohibition law was voted down, and open taps were the law in Chicago for another 65 years.

Lincoln's Coffeehouse

No, not that Lincoln. In the summer of 1835, Solomon Lincoln, who had up until then made his living principally as a tailor in Chicago, opened the city's first saloon at this location on the corner of Lake and LaSalle Streets, known as Lincoln's Coffeehouse. The coffeehouse quickly became the most popular drinking establishment in the city, which wasn't saying much since Chicago's population was under 4,000 people at the time.

Unlike the tattooed and pierced barista at your nearby Starbucks, Lincoln was a noted hunter of wolves, which at that time were a persistent nuisance in Chicago. In fact, the area around the confluence of the Chicago River, just three blocks west of the Coffeehouse, was known in the 19th century as "Wolf Point," for the ubiquitous animals. In Gem of the Prairie, Herbert Asbury quotes an "old-time Chicagoan" as saying: "Many a time, I have seen Mr. Lincoln mount his horse when a wolf was in sight on the prairie toward Bridgeport, and within an hour's time come in with the wolf, having run him down with his horse and taken his life with a hatchet or other weapon."

No wolf sightings at this Bank of America, which currently occupies the site.

The Cotton Club

In league with his younger brother, Ralph Capone ran a number of bars and speakeasies, the most famous of which was the Cotton Club, at this location, 5342 W. 22nd St., Cicero.

The mayor of Chicago, "Big Bill" Thompson, was especially fond of the nightlife here, where prohibition, despite being the official law of the land, seemed not to exist. The Chicago Crime Commission described the Cotton Club as "a 'whoopee' spot where liquor flowed freely."

The Capones were notable for their color-blind policy with respect to entertainment, and the Cotton Club played host to most of the top Black acts of the 1920s (for an all-white audience, of course), and many of the performers grew to appreciate and respect Al and Ralph. Milton Mezzrow, Judge Hinton, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellingon, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong were among the luminaries who played here, making Al Capone one of the most important figures in the development of Chicago jazz. Comedians, including Milton Berle, were also a common act.

There could hardly be less remaining of the Cotton Club or any of its famous entertainers at this location today.

Pacific Garden Saloon

During the 1870s, a tough saloon operated at this location just west of State St., which would then have been 67 E. Van Buren. The bar is better known for its subsequent occupant, a religious group which changed the name of the building slightly to "Pacific Garden Mission," and preached the gospel to the poor and hungry who found themselves on the tough streets of the near South side for the next 130 years. The great baseball player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday was converted to Christ at this location.

Operating since 1880, the shelter moved from this location to 646 S. State in 1923, where it became civic fixture with a prominently displayed neon sign reminding everyone that "Jesus Saves." That location is currently being demolished to make way for an extension to the high school next door, while Pacific Garden Mission has relocated a new building a few blocks South and West. The photo below shows the demolition site on S. State:

Whisky Row

Whisky Row was the name given to the string of cheap and dangerous saloons that lined the west side of State St., south of Van Buren., in the 1880s and 1890s. John V. "Mushmouth" Johnson, Tom McGinnis, Al Connolly, Johnny Rafferty, Sime Tuckhorn, Andy Craig, and Bob Duncan all ran joints in this skid row where thieves and robbers drank and caroused at all hours.

By far the most famous resident of Whisky Row, however, was Mickey Finn, who tended bar at the Lone Star Saloon near State and Harrison. His famous knock-out drinks, promoted by the ladies who worked the barroom, allowed him to rob and do violence to unsuspecting men while they lay unconscious in the back room. The next day they would find themselves missing their clothes, their money, and usually their memories of the previous night. To this day, the practice of drugging a victim with a poisoned drink is known as slipping a "mickey".

Capone's Chicago Headquarters

Johnny Torrio, the second great gang leader of Chicago, ran a tough dive called The Four Deuces, located where this empty lot now stands, at 2222 S. Wabash. After taking over leadership from "Big Jim" Colosimo, Torrio consolidated prostitution, gambling, and liquor operations throughout the city. He also hired a young Brooklyn-born gangster named Alphonse Capone, who had recently arrived in Chicago. Torrio himself was from Brooklyn, and had known Capone when the latter was a boy. Thus, he trusted "Scarface" to run some of his cribs and collect protection money. So effective and brutal was Capone's reputation on the streets of Chicago, that he was quickly elevated to the post of manager of the Four Deuces, and this remained Capone's headquarters after Torrio left Chicago.

In 1924, Capone moved his headquarters a few blocks west to the luxurious Hotel Metropole at 2300 S. Michigan, currently being developed as a condominium, where Capone's gang controlled two floors and sixty hotel rooms, patrolled at all times by heavily-armed gunmen. The basement of the Hotel held $150,000 worth of wine and liquor at the height of national Prohibition.

The site of the Metropole is currently being redeveloped as a condominium.

Colosimo's Cafe

"Big Jim" Colosimo, the first of the great Chicago gangsters, operated a cafe here on the west side of Wabash Ave., between 21st and 22nd streets. Big Jim ruled the underworld for longer than any other single man, including Al Capone, from the mid 1890s until his death in 1920. He owned two brothels and was known to operate a white slavery ring, kidnapping women and forcing them into prostitution. The ring was associated commercially with similar rings in New York, St. Louis, and Milwaukee, and is thought to have imported over 200 girls into Chicago, selling them for between $10 and $150 to Levee brothels. His cafe was the recognized social and political power center of the Levee, where aldermen, vice lords, and other powerful community members met and divvied out the spoils of the "contributions" made by First Ward business owners for protection.

It was Colosimo who invited Johnny Torrio, a gangster from Brooklyn, to come to Chicago and join his enterprise, in 1908. On May 11, 1920, Colosimo was assassinated here at his Cafe. The crime was never solved, but many believe Torrio ordered the hit in order to consolidate power over Colosimo's gang, in which he had risen to be the number two man. Frankie Yale, an associate of Torrio's from New York and head of the Unione Siciliane there, is the most likely gunman.

After Colosimo's death, his heirs sold their interest in the cafe to the restaurant manager, Michael Potson, who continued to run the restaurant successfully into the 1940s, when he was first sued by the famous comedy duo, Abbott and Costello over a gambling dispute, then indicted for gambling by the FBI. The cafe was seriously damaged in a fire during 1953, after which a Church of Divine Science congregation renovated the building and held services for several years, until 1958. In that year, the city condemned the property and destroyed it.

Today, the location of Colosimo's Cafe is occupied by "Tommy Gun's Garage," a gangster-themed restaurant and show where you can order "Big Jim's Lasagna" as an entree.

Bucket of Blood

One of the most notorious saloons in the Levee was the "Bucket of Blood" on the Southwest corner of 19th St. at Federal. One can only imagine what went on there. Today it is a mild-looking townhome complex.

Across Federal Street from the Bucket of Blood was the cheapest group of brothels in the city, affectionately known as "Bed Bug Row," which operated until 1913. A woman could be had there for $0.25, and there were also peep shows, torture chambers, and drug dens where heroin and morphine could be purchased openly (neither was illegal until the 1910s). The "King and Queen of the Cokies," as they were known, Eugene and Lottie Hustion, operate one of these dens. Lottie Hustion was a learned woman who spoke five languages and composed music when not doing business.

Much later, there was another bar on the West side also known as the Bucket of Blood, perhaps as an homage to this one.

The Bad Lands

The Bad Lands was an area adjacent to Little Cheyenne, on Clark Street north of what is now Roosevelt Rd. If anything, it was considered even more depraved and dangerous than Little Cheyenne. "Big Maud" ran an omnibus house of dissipation near Roosevelt Rd. called the Dark Secret during the 1880s, offering drink and women for $0.25. Another famous Bad Lands madam, Black Susan Winslow, ran a ramshackle house on the same block. When the police attempted to arrest her, they found that, at 449 lbs., Madam Winslow could not be removed through any of the doors or windows of her dive. Finally, the back door was removed from its hinges and the frame and wall sawed out. A heavy rope was fastened around the portly Madam's waist and she was forcibly dragged to the police station by horse.

Currently, the location is a Target.

Little Cheyenne

After the Great Fire, the South side of Chicago became known for its criminal elements. The area known as "Little Cheyenne" ran several block along S. Clark Street, south of Van Buren, and was described by one Chicago detective as "about as tough and vicious a place as there was on the face of the earth. Around the doors of these places could be seen gaudily-bedecked females, half-clad in flashy finery, dresses which never came below their knees, with many colored stockings and fancy shoes. Many of them wore bodices cut so low that they did not amount to much more than a belt."

Little Cheyenne was so called because it had all the lawlessness of the Old West and was lined with every sort of dive, saloon, gambing house, and house of ill-repute. In response, the residents of Cheyenne, Wyoming, referred to their own red light district as "Little Chicago."

This stretch of Clark Street, between Van Buren and Congress, may be all that's left of Little Cheyenne, the way it once was. A men-only SRO hotel, a pawn shop, a liquor shop, and a greasy spoon seem out of place in the shadow of the Sears Tower and Chicago financial district.