URBAN SUBURB: HOW THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT INFLUENCES CLASS IDENTITY

April Braden

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 2020

Committee:

Timothy Messer-Kruse, Advisor

Carolyn Tompsett Graduate Faculty Representative

Benjamin Greene

Rebecca Kinney

© 2020

April Braden

All Rights Reserved iii

ABSTRACT

Timothy Messer-Kruse, Advisor

Roughly 62% of Americans identify as middle-class but do not meet the middle- class characteristics long depicted in the national imagination: homeownership, savings, disposable income, and a comfortable retirement. Forty percent say they cannot cover an unexpected bill of $400. Because relying on objective characteristics like median family income, profession, and homeownership often ignore the nuances of class consciousness, this project hypothesizes a correlation existing between class and the physical environment, specifically that of post-industrial and residential landscapes. This project seeks to answer, “how does the built environment influence class identity?”

Using the neighborhood of Canaryville, Chicago as a case study, this project uses an interdisciplinary methodology, historical and visual analysis, ethnography, and landscape theory, to examine the landscape's influence on class identity. It determines that a new identifiable landscape, defined as an urban suburb, can exist. An urban suburb is a densely populated urban area that alters its landscape to masquerade as suburban for class and racial identity affirmation.

Urban Suburb demonstrates the performativity of landscapes. By looking at stereotypical attributes of suburban landscapes, Urban Suburb argues the transposition of those stereotypes is not confined by geographical location. Furthermore, performing the stereotypical suburban landscape is a subtle way to demonstrate both class and racial identity.

Identification of the urban suburb adds to the growing body of research of understanding how race is reflected in the built environment, the performative nature of suburban landscapes, and the influence the built environment has on class identity. iv

Dedicated to my family, who never let me quit. v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to begin by thanking my Advisor, Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse, and my committee,

Drs. Benjamin Greene and Rebecca Kinney for their invaluable insight and support as my project developed and changed. I would also like to thank the School of Cultural and Critical Studies for providing me with financial support through the Dissertation Research Fellowship, Stoddard &

O’Neill SCCS Fund, and the Alma Payne Scholarship. These awards provided me the time for my extensive fieldwork and the training in oral history practices and techniques through the Oral

History Summer School. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Dallas College, North

Lake. Not only did they make my writing less lonely, they also honored my research with the recognition as the 2018-2019 President’s Scholar.

This dissertation was written across three states, the birth of my two children, and countless other obstacles. The people in my life, however, have remained steadfast. My mother supported my lofty educational choices, always took me to museums, and never ignores my historical ramblings. While my husband will never admit it, it was his idea for me to apply to a doctoral program. As a result, he gave up seven years of weekends and vacations. He found himself living in Dallas to support my career and has never complained. To my children, my father, my grandparents, and numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, thank you for bearing with me on this journey. vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

What is the Middle-Class? ...... 9

Why Canaryville ...... 12

Methodology ...... 15

CHAPTER 1. DESCRIPTION OF SITE, CANARYVILLE ...... 20

History of the Stockyards...... 21

Naming Canaryville ...... 24

Early Community Life ...... 26

Living Next to the Stockyards ...... 32

Importance of the Irish to the Canaryville Community ...... 35

Census Data and Demographics ...... 42

Income...... 43

Race ...... 44

Employment ...... 45

Conclusion ...... 45

CHAPTER 2. CONTESTED LANDSCAPE OF CANARYVILLE ...... 47

Industrial Landscape ...... 54

Company Towns ...... 54

Labor ...... 62

Movement of Industrial Buildings Out of the Neighborhood ...... 67

Industrial Landscapes and Deindustrialization ...... 69 vii

Stockyard Buildings in Canaryville ...... 72

Meaning and Industrial Buildings ...... 78

Zoning ...... 79

Commercial Landscape ...... 83

Commercial Streets in Detail ...... 85

Meaning and Commercial Districts ...... 92

Residential Landscape ...... 93

Housing ...... 97

Homes and Fieldwork ...... 101

Conclusion ...... 103

CHAPTER 3. PERFORMING THE URBAN SUBURB ...... 104

What Suburbs Look Like ...... 104

Urban Crisis and White Flight ...... 119

Performing the Urban Suburb ...... 126

Importance of the Home and Homeownership ...... 132

Importance of Home Architectural Style ...... 135

Historic Preservation ...... 145

Yards and Privacy ...... 150

Vacant Space ...... 154

Green Space, Parks, and Public Space ...... 157

Conclusion ...... 162

CHAPTER 4. ORAL HISTORY AND CONSIDERATION OF LANDSCAPE, CLASS, AND

RACE ...... 163 viii

The Connection Between Race and Class ...... 167

Redlining ...... 173

Race and Boundaries...... 181

Race and Space ...... 189

Performing Race and Class ...... 192

Oral History Methods and Demographics ...... 194

Language Around Class ...... 199

Language and Race ...... 206

Staying and Leaving ...... 213

Renting ...... 215

Exclusion, Outsiders, and Reputation ...... 219

Conclusion ...... 227

CONCLUSION ...... 229

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 233

APPENDIX A. FIGURES ...... 248

APPENDIX B. TABLES ...... 316

APPENDIX C. HSRB CONSENT ...... 326

APPENDIX D. COPYRIGHT APPROVAL ...... 3 29 1

INTRODUCTION At least once a year, a presumptuous news magazine attempts to answer the question

“What is the American Middle-Class?” Reporters usually cite a combination of tradition, economics, and misconceptions about the “American Dream,” yet fail to provide answers that truly quantify the middle-class. It is increasingly apparent that these journalists seem to understand the concept of middle-class, but struggle to define it. They are not alone. Roughly

62% of Americans identify as middle-class, but do not meet the middle-class characteristics long depicted in the national imagination: homeownership, savings, disposable income, and a comfortable retirement. Forty percent say they cannot cover unexpected bill of $400.1 How can that be? How did we become a universally “middle-class” society while events like stagflation, deindustrialization, economic downturns, and more shook the foundations of the middle-class in the late twentieth century?

This project is part of an effort to understand why so many Americans claim middle-class identity while struggling economically and believing America is a classless society. Traditional markers of “middle-class” that rely on objective characteristics like median family income, profession, and homeownership often ignore the nuances of class consciousness. Urban Suburb posits a different indicator of class identity; namely, one’s neighborhood. I argue that an overlooked influencer of class identity is the built environment. I want to shed light on how the built environment we interact with daily informs how we see ourselves and our role in society.

Where you live has tremendous influence on how you see your class identity. If you are surrounded by what you view to be a “working-class” neighborhood, you are more likely to

1 Anna Bahney, “40% of Americans can’t cover a $400 emergency expense.” CNNMoney, May 22, 2018, https://news.gallup.com/poll/212660/middle-class-identification-pre-recession-levels.aspx (accessed April 5, 2019) and Frank Newport, “Middle-Class Identification in U.S. at Pre-Recession Levels,” Gallop, June 21, 2017, https://news.gallup.com/poll/212660/middle-class-identification-pre-recession-levels.aspx (accessed April 5, 2019) 2 identify as such. The same goes for “middle-class.” And the middle-class landscape seems to be winning.

By examining one neighborhood in Chicago, I am able to explore the role the built environment plays in creating a middle-class facade. I chose Canaryville based on its demographics and history. Here was a post-industrial, predominately white neighborhood with professions and incomes that floated around middle-class metrics but loosely enough to create some identity confusion. I expected to find a population embracing its industrial and working- class past and a landscape which reflected that background. Instead, I found a replicated suburban landscape in the middle of a major urban area. This led to the new question, “why does a post-industrialized town look like a suburb and what does that say about identifying as middle- class?” As my research shows, the duplication of a suburban landscape was not accidental.

Instead, this landscape, which I have termed an “Urban Suburb,” was specifically chosen to signal middle-class attributes. As I define it, an urban suburb is a densely populated urban area that alters its landscape to masquerade as suburban for class and racial identity affirmation.

America’s obsession with the suburban is unsurprising. Since the postwar era, our suburban landscapes have sprawled unchecked.2 As a result, suburban imagery became an important attribute of American culture. Dolores Hayden argues that “Suburbia is the site of promises, dreams, and fantasies. It is a landscape of the imagination where Americans situate ambitions for upward mobility and economic security, ideals about freedom and private property, and longings for social harmony and spiritual uplift.”3 Hayden succinctly isolates why she thinks American culture values the suburban landscape. In this one, simulated landscape, we

2 Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, (New York: North Point Press, 2001) 3 Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth 1820-2000, (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 3 3 place the entirety of American values. The imagery associated with the suburban landscape moves beyond suburban geography. Hayden provides a fundamental understanding of the imagery associated with suburban bliss. She posits the motivating factor for many Americans to move to the suburbs is the concept of the “triple dream,” or home, yard, and community. As she examines, Americans closely associate the triple dream with a suburban lifestyle and are willing to sacrifice other conveniences to obtain it. It comes as no surprise then to see the triple dream reproduced in different geographies.

Urban Suburb flips the traditional relationship between urban and suburban scholarship.

Urban scholars typically see the suburbs negatively, which encouraged white people to flee and drained the urban tax base causing other problems. Suburban scholars view the suburbs as an enigma, a physical manifestation of the elusive American Dream with a dark underbelly of racism, sexism, homophobia, and conformity. Rarely does each group evaluate how the two influenced one another. I hope to contribute to both in examining how we identify the suburban landscape, why we view it as “middle-class,” and how the suburban landscape can be transposed and repurposed in urban geographies.

Urban studies that discuss the influence of the suburbs on urban areas focus on the process of white flight and urban decline and the strong racial motivations for both.4 For example Kevin Kruse’s White Flight looks at how both the city and suburbs worked in tandem to create a new acceptable form of segregation.5 It also looks at how white people of Atlanta viewed the suburbs as a safe space from federally mandated integration. A few sources examine

4 Arnold R. Hirsch, Making The Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, (Princeton University Press, 1996); David M.P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 5 Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 4 white flight and the urban crisis from the neighborhood perspective, most notably Amanda

Seligman and Rachael Woldoff. Their research evaluates the thoughts and opinions of the residents of the affected neighborhood.6 A valued inclusion to the study of urban history, but again it only tells one perspective.

Scholarship on the urban crisis and white flight is just beginning to look at how white neighborhoods adapted, closed ranks, and survived. What is yet to be examined is the influence of suburban areas on cities when urban residents incorporate suburban design within the established urban landscape. The specification of “established landscape” is critical to note because many urban areas that boomed post-1950, such as Los Angeles, Houston, or Phoenix, adopted and developed their cities to reflect suburban city planning tropes. These more modern urban areas deserve academic examination, but this scholarship is interested in how and why an established walking city, like Chicago, adopted suburban attributes within urban constraints.

The foundation of suburban scholarship is based on the idea that suburbs are geographies designed for the middle-class.7 Suburban scholarship has evolved in the last 40 years, but suburban scholars rarely examine the relationship suburbanites have to urban areas, outside of the fact that many suburbanites regularly commuted to the city for work, shopping, and entertainment. Many see the suburbs as a geography that transformed the working-class into

6 Amanda I. Seligman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Rachael A. Woldoff, White Flight/Black Flight: The Dynamics of Racial Change in an American Neighborhood, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). 7 Mary Corbin Sies, “Toward a Performance Theory of the Suburban Ideal, 1877-1917,” Perspectives on Vernacular Architecture, IV. Thomas Carter and Bernard L. Herman, Eds (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991); Kenneth Jackson Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia, (New York: Basic Books, 1985). 5 middle-class.8 Some, like Elaine Lewinnek, Becky Nicholides, and Bernadette Hanlon, examine the diversity of suburbs in class and race and try to debunk the middle-class stereotype.9

The lynchpin to understanding the urban suburb landscape is understanding the connection between homeownership, whiteness, and middle-class identity many scholars point to the connection beginning in nineteenth century. Joseph Bigott discusses the role of homeownership and the working-class in the 19th and early 20th centuries.10 He concludes that homeownership was originally a working-class attribute. Elaine Lewinnek agrees through her examination of the suburban development near the Union Stockyards, Canaryville, and Back of the Yards neighborhoods, where the working-class sacrificed tremendously to become homeowners and live in the suburbs.11 Margaret Garb and Gwendolyn Wright both examine the role the structure of the home and homeownership plays in American identity.12 Examining postwar America, Dianne Harris, Becky Nicolaides, Tom Martinson, and Lizbeth Cohen comment on how homeownership became a vehicle to the middle-class and integral part of

American identity.

In addition to understanding the connection between middle-class identity and homeownership, I evaluate how landscapes mimic another. Laura Barraclough’s identifying the

San Fernando Valley landscape as “rural urbanism” helps my analysis of how landscapes borrow

8 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, (New York: Knopf, 2003); Hayden, Building Suburbia. 9 Becky N. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Bernadette Hanlon and Thomas J. Vicino, “The Fate of Inner Suburbs: Evidence From Metropolitan Baltimore,” Urban Geography, vol. 28. 3 (2007), 249-275; Elaine Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward: Chicago’s Early Suburbs and the Roots of American Sprawl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 10 Joseph C Bigott, From Cottage to Bungalow Houses and the Working-class in Metropolitan Chicago 1869-1929, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 11 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward. 12 Margaret Garb, City of American Dreams: A History of Homeownership and Housing Reform in Chicago, 1871- 1919, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983). 6 imagery and meaning from others for financial gain and identity affirmation.13 John Archer’s

Making Suburbia discusses how suburbs can be performed relying less on geography and more on ideology. Understanding the performative nature of landscapes aids in recognizing how people use landscapes as a form of identity.

Lastly, this work affirms the growing acceptance of the connection between whiteness and middle-class identity. Dianne Harris demonstrates that homes can influence and reflect class identity. For her, the prototypical suburban home design happened through a process of claiming whiteness. Along the same lines, Monica McDermott’s Working-Class Whites notes that a neighborhood’s location can challenge the racial identity of its inhabitants. Thus, taking extra measures to alter a neighborhood’s landscape can affirm racial and class identity. Many scholars, such as Matthew Frye Jacobson, David Roediger, and Noel Ignatiev focus on the many ways the concept of “whiteness” changed in the last two centuries. Collectively they define whiteness as a source of property, something that can result in tangible and monetary gains. As something beneficial, whiteness became closely defined and protected from non-whites. These protections have evolved beyond cultural racism throughout history. They became a set of codified laws and programs, such as government assistance for home buying and tax credits for homeowners, that work with cultural racism to uplift whites over others. The result is a connection between race and property, where the home, property ownership, geography, and class identity can be euphemisms for whiteness.

Theoretically, my study is focused on understanding the different ways that identity is created through constructions of space and community. Particularly, I rely on theories of contested landscapes, performative space, and constructions of class and racial identity through

13 Laura R. Barraclough, Making the San Fernando Valley: Rural Landscapes, Urban Development, and White Privilege (University of Georgia Press, 2011). 7 the built environment. J.B. Jackson acknowledges that landscapes and humans influence one another. He also posits that there may be multiple identities in a single landscape, something he terms a contested landscape.14 Denis Cosgrove elaborates on Jackson’s theories by adding that landscapes do not appear out of a vacuum and do not exist until recognized.15 His seminal work,

Social Formations, is not about specific landscapes, but rather the ideas of surrounding landscapes. Cosgrove stressed that landscapes do not exist in isolation; therefore, they should not be evaluated as such. We understand landscapes in relation to its neighbors. Concerning the

Urban Suburb, it is vital to understand the proto-suburban landscape in juxtaposition to the urban landscape. That juxtaposition makes a louder statement than viewing the landscapes in isolation.

I use Jackson’s theory of contested landscapes and Cosgrove’s understanding of the ideas of landscapes to examine how the urban suburb is a byproduct of contested landscapes. It is created by combining physical landscapes, negotiating their meaning, and altering them to reflect identity.

The second theoretical underpinning aids in evaluating the performativity of landscapes.

Many scholars, as will be discussed in Chapter 3, examine the performative nature of space.16

Henry Lefebvre’s classic analysis, The Production of Space, looks at how institutions, or identities, need physical space in order to be fully manifested.17 Doreen Massey’s argument that

14 J.B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); Paul Groth and Chris Wilson, “Polyphony of Cultural Landscape Study: An Introduction,” in Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies After J.B. Jackson, ed. Chris Wilson and Paul Groth, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003). 15 Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984). 16 Dell Upton, "The City as Material Culture," in The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology, ed. Mary Beaudry and Anne E. Yentsch, (Boca Raton and Ann Arbor: CRC Press, 1992); Gabriele Esperdy, Modernizing Main Street: Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, (New York: Verso, 1990); John M. Findlay, Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 17 Henry Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991). 8 space is socially constructed and no longer bound by geography alone is also supportive of the concept of the urban suburb.18 Lastly, Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra and the hyperreal are vital to understanding the urban suburb. Baudrillard’s theories aid in dissecting how suburban visual cues can cross static barriers like geography. Baudrillard argues that industrialization, mass production, and the increase of copied images have resulted a hyperreal, where simulated codes and models create what we now consider to be real.19 His analysis of media culture’s influence precipitating our unnecessary consumption of items is particularly useful when evaluating the motivation behind the housing styles replicated in Canaryville. How else can we explain the identification of Canaryville’s landscape as replicating a suburb without a sense that the idea of a suburb is a simulated construct?20

The last piece of the puzzle is evaluating how a community forms to create an identity.

Here, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities is useful. He notes that there are many ways a group of people can form a community identity without ever meeting. Other scholars, such as

Michael Hough, Benjamin Looker, and Robert Sampson, evaluate how self-association with neighborhood or region creates community and identity even if the residents rarely interact.

Along with the theories of racial and ethnic identity, evaluating the community effect of

Canaryville aids in understanding why constructing an urban suburb also relies on the affirmation of the people who live there. As Cosgrove would point out, the community informs the landscape's identity as much as the landscape informs the identity of the community.

18 Doreen Massey, “Geographies of Responsibility,” Geografiska Annaler Series B, Human Geography, 2004, vol. 86, no. 1 Special Issue: The Political Challenge of Relational Space, 5-18. 19 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). 20 Ibid. 9

What is the Middle-Class? The second important factor in understanding the urban suburb is to understand what positive attributes the residents receive from it. In the case of Canaryville, the urban suburb landscape affirms the desired middle-class identity. It is important to examine the socially constructed characteristics of being middle-class, particularly as it relates to the influence the built environment has over that class identity formation.21 In short, can occupying a “middle- class landscape” make one middle-class? Much of my argument that landscapes can mimic and constitute class identity relies on the notion that Americans struggle to define the middle-class and, instead, rely on visual cues, personal achievements, and a heavy hand in picking and choosing which characteristics best fit their personal situation. There is a very close connection between our understanding of the middle-class living in the suburbs and seeing the suburbs as middle-class. Suburbs are often stereotyped as a geography belonging to the white middle-class.

Our understanding of what it means to be middle-class is complicated. The definitions of middle-class characteristics are broad and flexible enough for Americans to pick and choose whether they qualify.

21 Some sources on middle-class and social status: Daniel J. Walkowitz, Working With Class: Social Workers and the Politics of Middle-Class Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Stanley Aronowitz, How Class Works: Power and Social Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Mary R. Jackman, and Robert W. Jackman, Class Awareness in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); Michael Hout, “How Class Works: Objective and Subjective Aspects of Class Since the 1970s,” in Social Class: How Does It Work? Eds. Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008); 25-64. On middle-class and political identity: Carolyn Howe, Political Ideology and Class Formation: A Study of the Middle-class (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1992); Joseph Gerteis, “Political Alignment and the American Middle- class, 1974-1994,” Sociological Forum, 13, no. 4 (December 1998) 639-666, Benjamin Sousnaud, David Brady, and Steven M. Frenk, “Class in Name Only: Subjective Class Identity, Objective Class Position, and Vote Choice in American Presidential Elections.” Social Problems,60 (February 2013); 81-99, On Economic Viability: Frederick R. Strobel, Upward Dreams, Downward Mobility: The Economic Decline of the American Middle-class (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993); Richard Parker, The Myth of the Middle-class (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Nan Mooney, (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle-class (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008) Diana Kendall, Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005) 10

To many sociologists and economists, class identification is reliant on economy, social status, and power. Sociologists dealing with class identity regard Marx and Weber as the founding theorists of class structure. The Marxist theory traditionally argues that class and class conflict emerge out of the labor process. The Weberian model suggests that class results from objective attributes, such as property, education, occupation, and so forth.

Sociologists also rely heavily on empirical analysis, which needs a stronger cultural lean.

Many authors recognize that the subjective nature of class identification requires different modes of analysis. Beginning with Jackman and Jackman in Class Awareness in the United States, sociologists began to call for a recognition of the personal nature of class identity in the 1980s.

Historians and cultural scholars, however, are less concerned with determining how

Americans define class and more interested in tracing the assumptions about definitions.

Historians Lawrence Samuel, Daniel Walkowitz, Burton Bledstein and Robert Johnston, and to some extent Richard Parker, support this notion of class being a subjective identifier. Historians approach class identity in a different manner than sociologists. Instead of focusing on statistical data gathered from surveying, they attempt to read various primary sources, media accounts, and even material culture to determine how Americans come to embrace a middle-class identity.

Like Walkwitz and Bledstein and Johnston, some are interested in the changing classifications of

“blue-collar” and “white-collar” jobs. Both Walkowitz, Parker, and Samuel express their frustration with the American propensity to use “middle-class” as a universal identifier instead of defining it more specifically.

Lawrence Samuel argues that the changing definition of “middle-class” is a result of the subconscious belief that the status of the middle-class (was it growing, shrinking, under attack, 11 and so forth) determined whether or not the country’s fortunes were seen as rising or falling. 22

The definition is even harder to ascertain considering how uncomfortable America is with the idea of class, even though its nebulous definition is central to national identity. Americans do not want to describe themselves as a class member, yet they overwhelmingly want to be in the middle. Samuel discovered that the American Dream's mythology, easy consumerism, homeownership, and white-collar jobs also contribute to this confusion of the middle-class. This leads to the idea of two Americas, the extremely wealthy and the rest of us. Samuel differs in his discussion of Middle-class America with his inclusion of middle-class African Americans and his comparing how class operates differently for African Americans than white Americans.

Yet, even though middle-class African Americans exist, racial barriers make it difficult for them to operate in American culture the same as white Americans. One of the primary reasons for this is the long-standing history of viewing race as equivalent to class. American society views it nearly impossible for an African American even to be a member of the middle- class. Instead, people of color are regulated to a permanent status of an underclass. The racial aspects of class are discussed further in Chapter 4.

For historian Lizabeth Cohen, the combination of government financial support and

American Ideology created the middle-class. A Consumers’ Republic argues that after World

War II, American society saw the expansion of private mass consumerism as a democratic value.23 Bolstered by government policy seeking to reconstruct the nation’s economy, America transformed ideologically, politically, and physically to cater to the new American directive to buy and consume. Important to this discussion is her exploration of how the new citizen’s right

22 Lawrence Samuel, The American Middle-class: A Cultural History. (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014). 23 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, (New York: Knopf, 2003). 12 to consume altered the built environment with the growth of suburban starter homes, the advent of shopping malls, and changes to actual cities with new expressways and roads.

Of the scholars listed above, Cohen’s timeline of forming the consumer’s republic has greatly influenced my understanding of the middle-class. As I define it, the “middle-class” is an economic, ideological, and physical classification. The middle-class relates to economic status, where a person or family unit falls into the middling economic bracket for their geographic location. It is also ideological as it is used as a "shorthand" to describe someone's cultural and social values and morals. Middle-class becomes a physical classification when we use it as a descriptor for material culture, race, and personal appearance.

Why Canaryville I arrived at Canaryville as my site of study after choosing Chicagoland as my geographic locus. First, I looked for a landscape that had a recent and heavy industrial past. Most of

Chicago’s neighborhoods have an industrial past, as the city’s history of annexation of former small, independent villages included industrial districts. After expansion and the further development of transportation, the city’s industries, particularly agriculturally related ones, also grew. The most prominent industrial areas in Chicago are still on the southside. Secondly, I looked for a predominately white neighborhood, as one of the key characteristics of identity I wanted to include was race. I also wanted to find an area reputed to have long-term residents.

Several areas in Chicago are home to a more transient, younger population, where people move from other areas of the country and are more likely to leave after starting a family. A “local” neighborhood is more likely to have a greater number of individuals who witnessed the neighborhood’s transition. The first few criteria led me to look at the far northwestern and southern sides of the city, where the populations were permanent and the industrial landscape more intact. This search eventually led me to Canaryville. 13

On Chicago’s Southside, Canaryville is roughly six miles south of downtown. It covers roughly a square mile and extends from 40th to 47th Street between Wentworth Avenue and

Halsted Streets.24 [Fig. 1] Officially, it is a part of the New City neighborhood that includes the smaller sub-neighborhoods of Canaryville and Back of the Yards. It is situated south of the

Bridgeport neighborhood, West of Bronzeville, and North of Englewood and directly East of the old Union Stock Yards that is now home to a modern industrial park. There is an approximate population of 5,710 (as of 2017) with a median household income of $44,353-58,315.25

Historically, the area is predominately working-class Irish. Most of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century residents worked in the stockyards due to its proximity. Even though the meatpacking industry moved on, the neighborhood holds a working-class identity, according to local reputation. Census data finds that roughly 30% of residents hold “working-class” jobs such as construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation, warehousing, and utilities.26 On paper, Canaryville appears to live up to its social class reputation.27

The area's defining feature is its proximity to the Stockyards, even taking its current name from its proximity to the packing houses. The name “Canaryville” either comes from the youths

24 James R. Barrett, “Canaryville,” Encyclopedia of Chicago, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2476.html (accessed February 2, 2016). Some also place the entry of the neighborhood at West Pershing Road. 25 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2009-2013 American Community Survey 5- Year Estimates: Selected Economic Characteristics, 2017, Prepared by American Community Survey, http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t Washington D.C., 2017. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates, Prepared by American Community Survey, http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t Washington D.C., 2014. All demographic data provided comes from the American Community Survey 2013-2017. It includes three census tracts, 6108, 8426, 8438. Census tract 8426 and 8438 is much larger than 6108 and includes some parts of Back of the Yards. I decided to include both tracts as 6108 consisted of only half of Canaryville and 8426 and 8438 contained the rest. 26 Again, the division of Canaryville over three census tracts makes an exact number difficult to ascertain. 27 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2009-2013 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates, Prepared by American Community Survey, http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t Washington D.C., 2014. 14 that ran around the neighborhood and were called “wild canaries” or the sizable bird population that found an easy food source with the grain used to feed the livestock at the Yards.28 The

Union Stock Yards opened on December 25, 1865, and closed August 1, 1971, after a long decline that began after World War II.29 The areas surrounding the stockyards developed quickly with worker housing, churches, schools, and other community necessities. The neighborhoods were often overrun with vermin, filth, and the smell of livestock and slaughter.30

Canaryville, however, remained home to the full spectrum of class in the early years of the

Yards. It was home to many of the packing companies’ owners for a short time.31

Soon, however, the original occupants of Canaryville moved on to places less offensive to their olfactory senses, and the once middle-class residents were replaced with Irish and

German immigrant workers. The Irish developed a reputation as a violent group when they formed several politically motivated gangs that used violence to “encourage” individuals to vote.

Then, as it does now, the area holds a reputation for racial insularity and racially motivated gang violence. It is often cited as the point of origin for the deadly 1919 Race Riots. For many years,

African Americans knew to stay far away from Canaryville out of fear of reprisal.

Today, Canaryville’s reputation is caricatured by the popular television show Shameless as a home to stereotypical Irish American drunks and lowlifes, relying on petty-criminal activity to get by. In reality, while still home to a large population of Irish-Americans, Canaryville is quickly becoming home to many Chinese-Americans who find themselves priced out of

Bridgeport (the location of the city’s Chinatown) and Latinos looking for more affordable

28 Barrett, “Canaryville.” 29 Barrett, “Canaryville,” Dominic A. Pacyga and Ellen Skerret, Chicago A City of Neighborhoods: Histories and Tours, (Chicago: Loyola University Chicago Press, 1986), 452. 30 Ibid., 468. 31 Ibid., 473. 15 homeownership and middle-class lifestyle. The changing demographics of residents while maintaining the urban suburb landscape make Canaryville even more interesting.

Methodology My initial methodology was geared at examining the landscape to understand an industrial neighborhood's transformation into a post-industrial neighborhood. As I continued in my research, however, I found that it continually led me to questions about suburban landscapes, urban landscapes, and race. I found myself in the classic academic conundrum. I conducted my research expecting X and concluded my research finding Y. Most of my research could be reevaluated for my new question.

My methodology is open to discovering how the environment shapes identity by acknowledging how individuals prioritize landscapes. Not everyone sees the street where they live as central to their identity, but place does play a vital part in collective meaning and identity formation. My research began with a visual analysis of the neighborhood. Included in this process was an ethnographic investigation into the meaning of urban landscapes. Traditionally, a true ethnography would require spending exclusive time in the field studying the subject.

However, ethnography no longer requires that the “field” be completely foreign to the

“fieldworker.” Globalization has broken down many of the barriers that would make us a stranger to other cultures and societies.

Furthermore, it is rarely possible for a researcher to excuse themselves from their lives for a year or more at a time.32 That being said, while I lived in Chicago for fifteen years, I had only been to Canaryville once before research. In fact, I rarely set foot in the South Side, outside of attending an occasional White Sox game. There are many simple and complex reasons why

32 Virginia Caputo, “At ‘Home’ and ‘Away:’ Reconfiguring the Field for Late Twentieth-Century Anthropology,” in Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World, ed. Vered Amit (New York: Routledge, 2000). 16 never traveling to the South Side (or reverse, if one lives in the South Side) is typically

Chicagoan, a topic alone worthy of study. But for this project, my lack of familiarity with this neighborhood provides the benefit of observing the built environment without significant bias of a Canaryville or South Side resident.

The second aspect of my ethnography was conducting oral history to fill in the historical record gaps. It is difficult to comprehend in today’s hyper-informative world, but communities such as Canaryville do not always leave a paper trail. 33 The specifics regarding my methodology for the oral history interviews are found in Chapter 4.

Outside of the relationship between the built environment and class identity formation, the oral histories contributed to my growing understanding of the public memory of Canaryville and the Stockyards, the neighborhood’s architecture, evolution of the area, along with discussions regarding Canaryville residents and their class identity. Most histories of the

Stockyards and Canaryville focus on the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. In contrast, most deindustrialization histories in the Chicago area are focused on the Calumet and

Northwest corner of Indiana.34 The most recent scholarship on the Canaryville area is

Slaughterhouse by Dominic Pacyga, whose history of the Union Stock Yards and packinghouses discusses the importance of the industry to the community. He is mostly interested in telling the

33 Daniel James, “Interviewing in the Cold: The Practice of Oral History In An Argentine Meatpacking Community,” in The Oral History Reader, ed. By Robert Perks and Alistair Thompson (New York: Routledge, 2006). In studying a working-class community in Berisso, Argentina, historian Daniel James found the information that came out of oral histories a way to fill in the blanks of some of the empirical research usually gathered by newspapers or other records. 34 Some notable works on the subject of company towns are: Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Michael Innis-Jimenez, Steel Barrio: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915-1940 (New York, New York University Press, 2013); Margaret Crawford, Building the Worker’s Paradise: Architecture of Company Towns (New York: Verso, 1996); Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983); James Michael Buckley, “The Company Town in the Redwood Lumbar Industry,” in Exploring Everyday Landscapes: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture VII, ed. By Annmarie Adams and Sally Ann McMurry (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997); Hardy Green, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy (New York, Basic Books, 2010). 17 story of the Yards and the workers at their height, 1865-1950. He briefly discusses the events that took place, leading to the industrial park that now occupies the Yards and Packingtown.35

Where there is room for development is in conducting an oral history of the area 40 years after the Yards closed in 1971. This project attempts to fill some of those gaps.

I interviewed eight residents of Canaryville and carefully applied a qualitative textual analysis to their answers. What the interviews showed was a community that rarely thinks about the Yards today. Most interviewees of the right age had a story or two to share, but those stories were more about the cultural importance of the Yards. Instead, the current members focus on the attributes of their community which best affirm their own identity.

Historical research into Canaryville also played a key role in understanding the transformation into urban suburb. I conducted archival research into Canaryville. As discussed in Chapter 1, there is very little documented history on Canaryville specifically. Most of its history was combined with the Stockyards or Back of the Yards. Therefore, I relied on Sanborn

Maps, photographs, and some older oral histories to piece together a picture. Luckily,

Canaryville’s proximity to the Stockyards resulted in it being featured in many historical photographs. You can see Canaryville in aerial shots of the International Amphitheater and the

Stockyards, for example. Looking for Canaryville in the historical record involved in looking in the periphery.

Photography also played a role in understanding and examining the homes and buildings in Canaryville as they stand today. I used photographs to classify the visual appearance and styles of buildings, categorizing them as typically “urban” and typically “suburban”. Throughout this dissertation, I reference many different photographs I took of homes and buildings.

35 Dominic A. Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stockyard and the World It Made (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 18

Together, the photographs allowed me to demonstrate the progression of homes from workers cottages to bungalows, from working-class to suburban. Photographs also illustrate how architecture, vacant space, and public space all interact to create a meaningful landscape.

To evaluate the landscape, I use the built environment as a primary source, where the interpreted buildings and space become the text. To read the built environment, I employ a visual analysis practiced by architectural historians who focus on vernacular architecture and landscapes. Vernacular Architecture is both a type of architecture and an approach to architectural studies that “emphasizes the intimate relationship between everyday objects and culture, between ordinary buildings and people.”36 Whereas some architectural historians focus on buildings of importance or those designed by architects of note, vernacular focuses on everyday buildings created by everyday people, who may not have formal training. An artistic architectural historian would not find a shed worthy of note, for example, but a vernacular architectural historian could write a book on the subject.

Chapter 1 provides a history of Canaryville. It focuses on the neighborhood's formation and how the founding of the Union Stockyards in 1865 changed community life. Chapter 2 examines Canaryville’s physical landscape. It evaluates how the three major physical aspects of

Canaryville’s landscape, industrial, commercial, and residential, influenced the contested landscapes of class, race, and ethnicity in Canaryville. Chapter 3 evaluates Canaryville as an urban suburb. It looks at the performative nature of the urban suburb landscape and examines the meaning behind the structures and vacancies in the neighborhood. This chapter firmly establishes that suburbs are associated with the middle-class in American culture, regardless of reality. Lastly, Chapter 4 looks at the implications of race and ethnicity in the landscape of

36 Thomas Carter and Elizabeth Collins Cromley, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes, (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 7. 19

Canaryville. It includes the voices of the Canaryville community in this performance as the residents describe their neighborhood and what it means. It also looks at how neighborhood theory, community formation, and racial identity all play a role in supporting Canaryville as an urban suburb. 20

CHAPTER 1. DESCRIPTION OF SITE, CANARYVILLE This chapter aims to provide a picture of Canaryville. It looks at the formation and early history of Canaryville and its primary employer, the Union Stockyards. It describes the environment and geography of Canaryville and the detriment of living next to thousands of animals at any given time. It also provides statistical information about Canaryville, examining the census data of the residents.

Since its annexation to Chicago, Canaryville has had a myriad of boundaries. Primarily,

Canaryville runs from West 40th Place on the north to West 48th Street on the south, South

Normal Avenue on the East, and South Halsted Street on the West. In total, Canaryville covers roughly 1 square mile, relatively small for a distinct Chicago neighborhood, which partly explains its inclusion in New City, one of Chicago’s official 77 communities. [Fig. 2]

Like many of Chicago’s 77 communities, Canaryville first existed as a small agricultural suburb known as the Town of Lake. The St. Gabriel Church Parish’s book notes that the first home in the area was built in 1857, and the first water main was installed in 1874, first sewers in

1878.1 Before annexation in 1889, residents of the Town of Lake lived in a swampy landscape.

Giant puddles were a constant companion during the summer months, as the township existed just a few feet above water level. The fields of the Town of Lake, what little could be cultivated, were cabbage patches. Most of the land was unfarmed because it flooded regularly enough to

“row a boat from State Street to Wentworth” in late summer.2 Sewer lines and paved roads came

1 St. Gabriel Church 1888-1988: One Hundred Years of Faith, Hope and Charity, 7. This history was written and published by the parishioners of St. Gabriel’s Church for their jubilee. Likely authors would be the St. Gabriel Church Centennial Book Committee Members: Rosemarie McIrnerney, Barry Swain, Edmund J. Swain, Loretta Babuskow, Donald Bilotta, John Bracken, William Burnett, John Burns, Sharon Burns, Leo Clarke, Carol driver, Ann Feldman, Rev. James F. Flanigan, Edward Gerhart, Elaine Herman, Earlene Herzog, Margaret Mahoney, June McBride, Rev. John McNalis, Rev. Carl McNerney, John McNerney, Thomas Munley, Sue O’Dea, Thomas Pierce, Celene McIerney Siedlecki, Sister Marie Frances, Sister Mary Jo, Mary Kay Sopron, Paul Sopron, Rev. John Sullivan, Christopher Wass. 2 Anonymous resident, interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 9, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL., 1. 21 after annexation, and residents constructed their sidewalks above the muck. However, because there were no uniform standards, pedestrians could expect to climb any number of stairs to get level with the next sidewalk stretch. Travelers also had to carry their lanterns at night because the town had no one to light the kerosene lampposts.3 The swampy, rural life in the Town of

Lake ended abruptly when John Sherman and Samuel Allerton eyed the location for the Union

Stockyards. Quickly, the Town of Lake became the center of white, working-class homes both defying suburbs' stereotype and becoming the model of Chicago suburbs.4

History of the Stockyards

While this dissertation is not about the Stockyards, they are important to understanding the canvas of the cultural landscape of Canaryville, as the defining feature of the area is its proximity to the Stockyards, even taking its current name from its proximity to the packing houses. Without their presence, the Northeast corner of the historic town of Lake might have remained a middle-class bastion on the Southside of Chicago well into the Twentieth century, like other Southside neighborhoods such as Hyde Park, South Shore, and Englewood.

The Union Stock Yards opened on December 25, 1865, and closed August 1, 1971, after a long decline that began after World War II.5 Before the Union Stockyards' centralization, there were several smaller yards and packinghouses across the city, predominately in the modern-day

West Loop neighborhood. The independent yards were within reasonable proximity to one another. However, they often involved driving livestock from the train car down city streets to the actual pens, with disastrous side effects. In 1863, a driver ignored the warning bell and herded his cattle across the Rush Street Bridge as it was about to open. The frightened cattle

3Thomas J. Jablonsky, Pride in the Jungle: Community and Everyday Life in Back of the Yards Chicago (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 30-31. 4 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward, 75. 5 Barrett, “Canaryville,” and Pacyga, Chicago A City of Neighborhoods, 452. 22 stampeded to one end, blocking pedestrians' only escape route and caused the bridge to twist and break. The result was fifty cattle and a dozen people in the Chicago River and a $10,000 bill to the city for repairs.6 Residents complained about the congestion. The businesses and citizens who could afford it, moved out of the area.

Not having a centralized location for the livestock market began to wreak havoc on the city. Buyers often needed to travel to multiple stockyards to purchase livestock, taking their purchases with them to each stop. Chicagoans were tired of sharing their roads with livestock and paying for the damaged infrastructure they caused.7 The density surrounding the existing stockyards also prevented any further expansion, which the owners and railroads badly wanted.8

The group became more motivated when the city passed laws forbidding animal debris dumping into the Chicago River in 1864. The packing companies moved to the outskirts where there were fewer restrictions.9

When John Sherman and Samuel Allerton proposed forming a consolidated stockyard outside of the city in 1864, many larger packers signed on, even though some of the smaller business owners feared the end result would be a monopoly would put them out of business.

Regardless, on June 28, 1864, the Chicago Pork Packers’ Association unanimously voted to consolidate into a joint-stock company. Located near, but outside, the city in a centralized location, they named their venture the Union Stock Yard and Transit Company.10 Despite

6 Louise Carroll Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 47. 7 Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stock Yard and the World it Made, 33. 8 Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century, 47. 9 St. Gabriel Parish 1880-1980 (South Hackensack, NJ: Custombook, Inc., 1980), 2-3. This history was written and published by the parishioners of St. Gabriel’s Church for their jubilee. Likely authors would be the Book Committee Members: Bill Ballay, Janeen Ballay, Debbie Frost, Father John McNalis, Marge O’Connell, Dorothy Ormond, Bill Patterson, Pauline Saliga, Mary Kay Sopron. 10 Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century, 48.; Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stock Yard and the World it Made, 34. 23 concerns of monopolies swindling independent farmers out of a fair price, most businessmen, railroad companies, farmers, and politicians favored Governor Oglesby signing legislation to form a unified stockyard in February 1865.11

Construction of the 345 acre stockyard began on June 1, 1865, on a parcel purchased in the Town of Lake, and the venture quickly grew.12 The newly dubbed “Packingtown,” the location of the butchering and packing of the Stock Yard’s livestock, started growing immediately West of the Yards, as entrepreneurs took advantage of the consolidated location.13

In 1868 Benjamin Peters Hutchinson moved his operations to the real estate parcels named

“Packers’ Addition,” and by 1870, Hutchinson handled nearly 200,000 hogs annually.14 Soon after, the biggest meatpacking companies began moving to the area, first Morris in 1865, Armour and Company in 1868, Swift Brothers and Company in 1877, and Darling in 1882. 15 By the mid-

1880s, there were twenty-nine major packinghouses and smaller firms near the Yards, frequently using the overhead livestock viaduct built in 1879 to transport their cargo with little disruption for city residents and injury from using city streets.16 Initially, 500 pens were built covering 60 acres.17 By WWI, the Packinghouses and Stockyards employed almost 50,000 workers across nearly 400 acres.18

11 Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stock Yard and the World it Made, 34-36. 12 Ibid., 36. The Town of Lake was later annexed into Chicago in 1889. 13 Ibid., 44-45. Packingtown is a confusing term as in the early years it encompassed both residential and industrial areas surrounding the Yards. In later years it related to the area west of the Yards where meat packer companies set up shop. Ibid., 44-45. 14 Ibid., 45. 15 Ibid., 46-48. 16 Ibid., 45. 17 Ibid., 38. 18 Dominic A. Pacyga, “Chicago’s Union Stock Yard: A Square Mile of Spectacle and Innovation,” in Out of the Loop Chicago: Vernacular Architecture Forum, ed. Virginia B. Price, David A. Spatz, and D. Bradford Hunt, (Chicago: Midway Books, 2015), 75-78, 76. 24

Naming Canaryville

Establishing an origin of the name of Canaryville is more complicated than isolating its geography. In Canaryville’s early years, its borders stretched to include parts of an area known as “Between the Tracks” or Fuller Park as it is known today. Fuller Park is a small, historically

African American neighborhood east of Canaryville between the Rock Island Railroad and Dan

Ryan Expressway, as far north as 39th Street (considered Bridgeport today), and as far south as

49th Street (modern Back of the Yards).19

The origin of the moniker “Canaryville” is attributed to many different places. The most common is that the name comes from the youths that ran around the neighborhood and were called “wild canaries.” Another possible origin is the sizable bird population that found an easy food source with the grain train cars used to feed the livestock at the Yards.20 A 1930 Chicago

Historical Society report attributes the name to the sound of the slaughter of pigs. On days when pig slaughter was audible, the locals commented, “Well, I guess the canaries will sing today.”21 Another early resident attributed the name to a saying by one of his associates who claimed he lived “where the cabbage grows, and the wild canaries sing.” 22 Of course, another potential source of the name came from the fact that the area from 44th Street to Normal Avenue was commonly known as the “Cary Patch,” given that most of the Irish living there were from

County Kerry.23 Another explanation for the name “Canaryville” is that many canaries lived in the wooded areas nearby when the Town of Lake was first settled around 1850. Or that the

19 The fluidity of Canaryville in and out of Fuller Park in its early years may be attributed to the fact that the Rock Island Railroad, a logical barrier between the areas, was not completed until 1866. 20 Barrett, “Canaryville” [incomplete citation] 21 “History of the Canaryville Community,” Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL, 1927-1929. 22 Ibid. 23 I believe the difference in spelling the county’s name as Cary instead of Kerry is an error on the part of the CHM researcher. 25 residents raised canaries, or that the wives of the early stockyard workers hung canaries in trees so their husbands could hear their songs on their way home. 24

Unlike other official areas, which frequently adopt the name of the original town prior to annexation, New City received its name from becoming just that, a new city. Yet the exact name depends on whom you are talking. In 1920, University of Chicago sociologists referenced New

City. They often combined it with two distinct neighborhoods near the Stockyards, Back of the

Yards, and Canaryville.25 Sometimes it is lumped into Packingtown, which includes Bridgeport,

McKinley Park, Back of the Yards, and Canaryville. Yet Historian Louise Carroll Wade does not consider it to be a part of Packingtown at all. Even local historians, most notably Dominic

Pagyca, seem unsure regarding the designation of Canaryville, placing it in Packingtown or as a separate neighborhood in different contexts.26 Given the confusion as to whether or not

Canaryville is located or even exists, it is understandable that few sources directly cite

Canaryville.

The lack of historical documentation of Canaryville creates numerous research problems.

Most of the secondary sources regarding the area barely mention Canaryville. The Back of the

Yards neighborhood, a much more impoverished, ethnically diverse, and broader neighborhood, receives most of the academic attention. Back of the Yards also received a great deal of attention from the University of Chicago sociologists who most systematically investigated it. Most primary accounts of life and living conditions of the area also come from Mary McDowell and her cohorts at the University of Chicago Settlement House in the Back of the Yards.27 Other

24 St. Gabriel Church 1888-1988: One Hundred Years of Faith, Hope and Charity, 50. 25 Amanda Seligman, “Community Areas,” Encyclopedia of Chicago, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/319.html (accessed on February 17, 2020). 26 In Chicago, City of Neighborhoods Pacyga places Canaryville in Packingtown, but in Slaughterhouse, Canaryville is a separate neighborhood. 27 Thomas Lee Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Immigrants, Blacks, and Reformers in Chicago, 1880-1930 (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1991), 13-14. 26 scholarship examines the lives of Polish and other Eastern Europeans who occupied the Back of the Yards area, but not on the Irish who lived in Canaryville. Canaryville’s importance to the success of the stockyards and the culture of Chicago’s working-class is worthy of its own scholarship.

Early Community Life

Tracking down what life in early Canaryville (1880s-1940s) was like is problematic for two key reasons. First, the neighborhood had many different names before settling on

Canaryville with its borders in flux for many years before finally landing on between the tracks, as already discussed. Secondly, as mentioned earlier, there are very few sources dedicated solely to Canaryville. But we can piece together what life looked like from the few accounts that do exist and the descriptions of the adjacent Back of the Yards. When the Stockyards moved in with its German and Welsh immigrants, there were already people living in the Stockyards Settlement

(the area between Halsted and Stewart, Thirty-Ninth and Forty-Third, roughly the top half of modern-day Canaryville). These people became the first landlords to the Stockyard workers.

Halsted Street became the first commercial district with grocers, dry goods stores, saloons, and the Farnsworth Hotel to serve the residents.28 Canaryville soon developed a mixed reputation as the home for the wealthy Stockyard owners and managers, along with the unruly youth gangs.

After the founding of the Stockyards, unskilled workers, mostly Irish Catholic and German immigrants, not in workingman’s cottages, lived in boarding houses along Forty-Seventh

Street.29 The built environment of the neighborhood changed drastically after two key events, the

Great Chicago Fire in 1871 and the dramatic expansion of the Yards.

28 Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century, 71. 29 Again, Sanborn maps of this time confirm that there were two and three-story structures that might have been boarding houses. But without any labeling of these structures, one can only make assumptions. 27

The Fire of 1871 left the recently homeless little recourse as to where they could live.

The new building codes mandating all new buildings be constructed with fireproof materials raising the prices of constructing new buildings. The city also took advantage of the “blank slate” and redrew city parcels. The new lots were reduced down to a “shoestring” size 25 feet wide as opposed to 50 feet wide. Ideally, those who wanted space and looser building codes would move outside of Chicago’s city limits. But only the wealthy could afford to commute back. The rest of Chicago was forced into smaller, more expensive homes on smaller lots. Many low-income immigrants protested that the new fire limits did not apply to older buildings that survived the fire. The restrictions did not remove the wooden sidewalks, or sheds, or mansard roofs. The only thing the restrictions did was “remove the all-wooden houses of the poor.” The

City “used the excuse of fire safety to impose a class uniformity.”30

In 1871, Lake was not a part of Chicago and therefore not subject to these new building codes. Many who could not afford to rebuild or pay higher rents made their way south.

Canaryville was geographically ideal as it was a short walk to the Chicago border at Pershing

Road and from there, to transportation. The result was a more populous Lake and more wood- framed homes, many of which still stand today.

Like other Gilded Age cities, Chicago’s tight landscape, unregulated industries, and booming population resulted in an increase in congestion around the outer circle of downtown.

People of middle incomes down to poverty level stacked up on top of each other in a band that began at Fullerton and Halsted Streets on the north, California Avenue on the west, and swung back to 55th and State Streets, including Canaryville and Back of the Yards.31

30 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward, 52-53. 31 Thomas Lee Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto,13-14. 28

It did not take long for real estate developers to eye Packingtown as the next big moneymaker. S.E. Gross began selling plots, idealistically representing homeownership as the

“Working Man’s Reward.” By 1890s lots in Lake generally cost $300, houses could cost as little as $600, and packinghouse workers earned an average annual wage of $613, meaning the homes cost more than families to afford without modern mortgage systems. To financing the homes, many workers created over-crowded living quarters by taking in too many boarders. Women and children also worked outside the home. Settlement house workers also noted many families went without food and other necessities to ensure they paid their mortgage. Chicago’s immigrant homeowners were not middle-class, according to contemporary social workers. Instead, “they were heavily indebted tenement landlords … They used what should have been a space of leisure as a space of production.”32

Quickly the housing stock in Chicago declined, causing Progressive reformers to call for studies on the quality of Chicago housing and ways to improve it. When the 1901 City Homes

Association of Chicago conducted a study of the housing conditions in the city, it disregarded the

Stockyards district. The Association found to be too deplorable to be representative. The City

Homes Association claimed “the conditions of the Stockyards District … show most abominable outside sanitary conditions. These districts show evils which are really anachronisms … the application of sanitary principles to the urban standards of health are so extremely backward in these industrial communities.”33 The authors then go on to describe residents living in dilapidated dwellings made of wood in a neighborhood with, “no sewerage … [that is] dreary, ugly, and unhealthful.”34 The committee thought the areas surrounding the Stockyards were so

32 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward, 83-84, 107. 33 Robert Hunter, Tenement Conditions in Chicago: Report by the Investigation Committee of the City Homes Association, (Chicago: City Homes Association, 1901), 181-182. 34Ibid. 29 uninhabitable that statistical analysis of the area would depress the study to unrealistic results.

They decided it was better to ignore the worst areas in Chicago rather than portray the reality of thousands of its residents.

Sociologists Sophonisba Breckenridge and Edith Abbott took up a study of Back of the

Yards ignored by the Association. By a quick survey, they determined the worst of the conditions were on the inside of the homes, not the buildings themselves.35 They found that even though the buildings were small and took up much less of the lot than in other areas of the city or other major cities, like New York City, the small buildings were subject to “demoralizing” overcrowding.36 Particularly motivated to live within walking distance of employment, nineteenth-century homes in Chicago were often back built, where multiple homes were stacked behind each other on the same lot, or with poorly ventilated basement dwellings.37 The average block in the neighborhoods Thomas Lee Philpott studied had about 1,000 people per block, with most of the blocks having 65% or more covered by buildings. The average family lived in three and a half rooms, with two to four families sharing a toilet. Given the condition of the housing, it was shocking to find that the average rents were $5 to $12 a month.38 Through door-to-door surveys, researchers determined that 53% of residences were packed to illegal capacity, meaning that sleeping quarters did not have the required 400 square cubic feet of air per person.39

Furthermore, they found that the majority of the time, all rooms, including the kitchen, were used

35 Sophonisba P. Breckinridge and Edith Abbott, “Housing Conditions in Chicago, III: Back of the Yards,” American Journal of Sociology, 16 January 1911, 433-448., 434. 36 Ibid. 37 Hunter, Tenement Conditions in Chicago: Report by the Investigation Committee of the City Homes Association, 43. 38 Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Immigrants, Blacks, and Reformers in Chicago, 1880-1930, 29- 40. 39 Breckinridge and Abbott, “Housing Conditions in Chicago, III: Back of the Yards,”441-449. 30 as sleeping quarters. In a few cases, one individual slept in a space no bigger than 18 square feet and another 24 square feet.40

In response to reports such as these, Chicago passed a “New Tenement” ordinance in

December 1902 but grandfathered in older buildings so as not to place the owners of older buildings under undue hardship from the financial responsibility of making changes.41 Even after new building regulations, the quality of housing did not improve radically. Thomas Lee

Philpott’s study on Chicago slums notes that many men lived in “Cheap Hotels” and lodging houses were ideally for poor bachelors. The best of these types of housing had a bath and toilet facilities with a bed in a cubical for fifteen to twenty-five cents a night. In the cheapest of these houses, two-cent flophouses, a man essentially rented a space on a floor without any provided bedding.42

Philpott’s accounts are difficult to measure for Canaryville. We can presume that many of the first buildings for workers matched Phillpott’s accounts. For example, two stone, three-story buildings at the corner of W. 47th Street and S. Union Ave hold the shape of a traditional barbell style tenement, often the sites of overcrowded units with little ventilation or sanitation.

Ultimately, from Sanborn maps, we can denote the size, material, and shape of a building, but not the quality of accommodations within.

The problem many progressives had in identifying slums and convincing other

Chicagoans that housing needed to be regulated is that the city had an overwhelmingly large percentage of homeowners and almost no tenements. Tenements, like those in New York City,

Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other large industrial cities in the East, were the primary

40 Ibid., 452. 41 Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Immigrants, Blacks, and Reformers in Chicago, 1880-1930, 102. 42 Ibid., 98. 31 places identified as “slums” to progressives. Chicago’s single-family homes were not clean or an aspect of middle-class living. Many were slapped together and overcrowded with illegal boarding, creating hazardous conditions. Reformers found themselves trying to figure out different ways to isolate slums. Using the terminology of a “tenement,” sociologist Edith Abbott

“defined tenements by class and race, not architecture.” Any place that was inhabited by nonwhites and poor people was considered a tenement by Abbott and her students at the

University of Chicago. The visible problem with this is that it assumes that all whites live inadequate housing and the rest in slums. But as Lewinnek notes, “Chicago’s slums and suburbs overlapped.”43

We also know that Canaryville was more economically diverse than Back of the Yards.

From firsthand accounts, it seems that the neighborhood from 1880-1920s was split into two different socioeconomic areas; a good and a bad area if you will. Like today, most of the people who lived on Emerald, Lowe, and Winter (now known as Union) Streets were wealthier, with many of them packinghouse and stockyard owners, livestock dealers, or upper echelon employees.44 Known as the “Nabob” district, the wealthier residents lived in big frame homes.

There were also bigger stone homes built by the wealthiest of families like the Swifts, who lived on Emerald and 43rd Place. Most of these homes were built from 1878-1890, after which most of the wealthier residents moved farther south to posh Englewood.45

The area from 43rd Street to Normal Avenue, known as “Little Hell” by the rest of the community, was the roughest part of the neighborhood, with “continual arguing and fighting.”46

43 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward, 26. 44 Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century, 71. 45 Anonymous resident, interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 9, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL. 2 46 Mr. Chamberlain interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 7, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL 32

Canaryville, then as now, held the reputation of being a dangerous neighborhood. Some told stories about how Canaryville was so dangerous that in the 1860s, practically every man was armed. Fights were frequent, and the loser was tossed into the open sewers that ran into the river for the City of Chicago to foot the bill for the burial.47 Most of Canaryville’s violent reputation stems from the political gang, the Ragan Colts. Organized by the alderman Frank Ragen, the

Colt’s were used to intimidate voters into supporting the alderman and other democratic leaders.48 Their involvement in the 1919 race riots, however, separated them from other political gangs and established Canaryville as a violent racists neighborhood, a subject which will be discussed in later chapters.

Living Next to the Stockyards

By far, the most defining feature of Canaryville is its proximity to the Stockyards. Even if you avoided the gangs, living next to the Stockyards held its own perils. The noxious smells, constant ash and smoke from trash burning pits, and polluted water supply made life in the neighborhoods near the Stockyards practically fatal. The smell in the Canaryville, Bridgeport, and Back of the Yards area was always an issue. Unfortunately for Canaryville, Chicago’s winds blow from the southwest, bringing most of the foul odors from the Stockyards into their neighborhood.49

In the late nineteenth century, Progressive reformers in the Board of Health tried multiple times to regulate the Stockyards to help clean up the air of noxious fumes and gases with little success. When the occasional environmental ordinance did pass, the courts then sided with the

47William Shinnick, interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 2, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL 48 Andrew Diamond, “Gangs,” Encyclopedia of Chicago http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/497.html (accessed February 22, 2016). 49 Jablonsky, Pride in the Jungle: Community and Everyday Life in Back of the Yards Chicago,16. 33 business owners and overturned the regulations. If regulations did stand, the business owners rarely obeyed them. Even when taken to court for their infractions, the owners were able to walk out without a conviction and in one case, do so after smacking the head of the Health

Department, Dr. Oscar C. DeWolf, on the head with a hickory cane in the courtroom and defaming Dr. DeWolf as a “quack.”50

Incidents such as these led to more substantial reforms in 1877, including the implementation of licensing of all packers and renders within a mile of Chicago and fines of up to $100 per day if ever found in violation of the sanitation codes or operating without a license.51

A large portion of the Stockyards was quickly found in violation of these codes, and the resulting legal action, known as the “stink cases,” brought many before the court in 1878. Eventually, all of the offenders pled guilty and received lesser punishments of $25 in fines plus court costs.52

Even though the Health Department ‘lost’ the case, they viewed it as a larger victory as it asserted the City’s authority over the Stockyards to regulate the industries.

Another cause for the poor quality of life in Canaryville and surrounding areas flowed from the polluted west branch of the Chicago River, known as Bubbly Creek. [Fig. 3] Bubbly

Creek became a dumping ground for the Stockyards. Animal carcasses, offal, and other animal by-products frequently found their way to the creek. The branch earned the moniker “Bubbly

Creek” from the gaseous bubbles that formed at the surface from the decomposing organic matter below. In the summer, the surface hardened with a crust of dirt, grease, and animal parts

50 Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century, 133-135 The abuser in question, Joseph Sherwin, owned a fertilizer factory. He was issued a $5 fine for his transgressions in 1877. 51 Ibid., 135. 52 Ibid., 135-137. 34 solid enough for birds to rest on.53 Bubbly Creek was also a breeding ground for mosquitoes.54

To alleviate the smell, a sewer “large enough to permit a train to pass through” was constructed in 1924.55

In addition to Bubbly Creek, the Back of the Yards neighborhood also had four large garbage pits measuring anywhere from five to ten acres wide used to dump and burn garbage.

The Packinghouses used one of the dumpsites to burn their waste and kept the fire smoldering.56

On the other side of these pits were homes, and later, after the pits were filled, other homes were built on top.

As historian Sylvia Hood Washington notes, the ability to regulate a polluting industry did not necessarily translate into actual regulation. That did not prevent residents from trying, however. Washington finds these areas fought for clean living spaces in a variety of different ways.57 Many of the environmental reforms began at the grassroots level from women concerned about the obscenely high child mortality rate of Back of the Yards that increased from

1900 to 1930.58 The ethnically “white” Eastern European immigrant women relied on political allies, such as Mary McDowell, the founder of the University of Chicago Settlement House in

Back of the Yards, to make their voices heard. McDowell and her followers fought for proper garbage disposal, the draining and filling in of Bubbly Creek.

In addition to the University of Chicago Settlement House in the Back of the Yards,

Canaryville residents could also look for social and health services, particularly the Visiting

53 Paul Galloway, “Sizzle City: Fuming about the heat? Consider life in the 1890s – and cool it.” Chicago Tribune, 28 July 1991: G1. 54 Jablonsky, Pride in the Jungle: Community and Everyday Life in Back of the Yards Chicago, 20. 55 “Completion of Sewer to End Stockyard Stench,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 2, 1924, p. 10. 56 Jablonsky, Pride in the Jungle: Community and Everyday Life in Back of the Yards Chicago, 20. 57 Sylvia Hood Washington, Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865-1954 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005), 4. 58 Ibid., 86. 35

Nurses Association, the Chicago State Hospital Clinic, the Stockyard Dental Dispensary, the

Chicago Lying-in Dispensary, and the Municipal Tuberculosis Dispensary were located at the corner of 47th and Emerald in 1912 existing until the 1950s. They helped people with treating disease, desertion, widowhood, alcoholism, gambling, and underemployment.59

Importance of the Irish to the Canaryville Community

Arguably, one of the biggest defining factors of early Canaryville is its status as an Irish community. From 1820-1930, 4.5 million Irish immigrated to the United States, with 73,912 settling in Chicago in 1900, the peak of Irish/Chicago settlement.60 Unlike Back of the Yards, which attracted Polish, Lithuanian, and German immigrants, Canaryville quickly became “Irish

Only” for many reasons.

First, Canaryville was one of the first settlements next to the Yards. Many Irish were also the first workers at the Yards as well, especially since the later ethnic groups to be employed there did not immigrate until after the 1880s. Second, Canaryville neighbors another prominent

Irish neighborhood in Chicago, Bridgeport. When the Yards opened, many Irish started to migrate from Bridgeport south to be closer to their new employer.61 Third, after Canaryville became an established Irish community, the community members effectively kept non-Irish newcomers out. Homeowners often only sold to other family members or close friends (a continuing trend today). They also only took on boarders and renters of Irish decent, tending to trust “their own” while also believing that homogeneity created a happier, closer community. In

59 Mrs. Gudrun Rom, interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 6, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL 60 Teacher Resources Library of Congress, “Irish-Catholic Immigration, Classroom Presentation,” http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/irish2.html (Accessed on February 21, 2020). 61 Wade, Chicago Pride 60-75 and Ellen Skerrett, “Irish,” Encyclopedia of Chicago History. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/652.html (accessed March 10, 2018). 36 addition to not selling their homes to outsiders, the price of the homes and land was often on the higher end of the Stockyards area, which only the skilled workers, such as the Irish, could afford.

Canaryville’s Irish heritage is reinforced by St. Gabriel’s Parish. Founded in 1880 it is a cornerstone of the community. The parish is often at the center of the community for faith, education, and the location of many community events. Rev. Maurice J. Dorney founded the

Stockyard Parish in 1880, which covered the area from 40th Street to State Street. The parish held services in the Transit House and Walsh’s Hall until 1880 when a temporary frame church, costing $1,800, was built.62

The first services took place in the temporary church on October 16, 1881. The temporary structure held Mass on the second floor and a school on the first.63 Later, John

Wellborn Root, of Burnham and Root designed a Romanesque cathedral at the corner of Forty-

Fifth and Wallace Street in 1887. The building is a Romanesque style, composed of brick ranging from red to black. Three arches frame the formal entrance and a 160-foot tower stands to the right of the building. The church floorplan is in a Latin Cross with the entrance arches replicated in the alcoves and altars. The stone building, complete with a corbelled belfry, included shamrocks in the altar. The structure cost $100,000 to build. 64 Construction was relatively quick, and the first official service took place on Christmas Eve 1887. The cornerstone dedication on May 15, 1887, was quite an affair. Roughly 10,000 people attended ceremonies that included a parade composed of Clan Na Gael Guards, Hibernian Rifles, the A.O.H. (Ancient

Order of Hibernians), Catholic Foresters, and the Catholic Knights of America organizations

62 St. Gabriel Parish 1880-1980, 5 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., 8 37 from four different parishes.65 The structure was officially completed on May 27, 1888. 66 A school serving grades kindergarten to high school was founded in September 1881, followed by a convent in 1883 to house the nuns teaching these Canaryville children. The school had an astonishing enrollment at its opening, with almost 250 students. 67 Later, a high school opened in

1896.68

St. Gabriel’s held an important place in the lives of early Canaryville residents, particularly Father Dorney. Dorney became known as the “King of the Stockyards.” He advocated for workers, their rights and acted as an intermediary to prevent strikes. He went so far to obtain a legal degree in his 50s to aid his parishioners.

This does not mean that his beloved parishioners received a free pass for their sins.

Alcoholism seems to have been a problem in early Canaryville, and Dorney used the pulpit to encourage temperance. At the first confirmation in his new church, all confirmed students took a pledge against drinking until the boys were 21 and the girls until “a tombstone was placed over them.”69 He also openly preached against the practice of Sunday Picnics, where, presumably, enough alcohol was consumed to contribute to several fatalities. He also spoke out against the opening of taverns on residential streets in the parish.70 His stance on taverns on business corridors only was not very popular. Parish residents even began a petition against his decree. In retaliation, the priest publicly embarrassed the signers by reading their names, addresses, and some personal thoughts about the individuals at Mass instead of a homily.71

65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 10. 67 Ibid., 6. 68 Ibid., 6-7. 69 Ibid., 12. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 38

Dorney insisted on temperance at night during the week of the Men’s Mission by the bars along Halsted Street. Many parishes have annual missions, often during Lent. It is typically a three-night series of talks around a common theme. The idea with missions is that the parish gathers to rejuvenate their faith. It often involves the Eucharist, special speakers, and an evening confession to strengthen the people to be "missionaries." In the late nineteenth century, this celebration might have only been offered to men, and their sobriety while evangelizing was a priority. 72

As a testament to Dorney’s importance and power in the community, even the

“renowned” gambler, tavern owner, and possible affiliate with organized crime, Gambler Jim

O’Leary closed his tavern at his request supposedly stating that “We always do whatever Father

Dorney wants us to do down here.”73 Labor and Stockyard historians often discuss Dorney’s power in the neighborhood by recounting the stories of him bending the will of Captains of

Industry. What could be more powerful, though, than convincing the leader of the imbibers and criminals, O’Leary, to put down the pint?

St. Gabriel’s also became the origination point for other community organizations. The community programs from the 1880s-1940s heavily revolved around labor organizing, charity work, and alleviating vice in the neighborhood. After WWII we see more mentions of leisure activities for a growing youth population, such as the renovation of a building for a youth center, hosting dances, and outdoor space for sports activities. For adults, they also started new clubs and societies, all of which finds itself in lockstep with the growing focus on leisure time during the 1950s. 74

72 Special thanks to Rev. Mark Augustine, S.T.L. for his insight regarding Men’s Missions. 73 St. Gabriel Church 1888-1988: One Hundred Years of Faith, Hope and Charity. 74 St. Gabriel Parish 1880-1980, 22. 39

Eileen M. McMahon’s work on tightknit Irish communities may hint at some of the reasoning behind the community formation of Canaryville. McMahon discovered that the early formation of predominately Irish enclaves in Chicago largely surrounded the parish boundaries.

Drawing ties to Catholicism and the protection of the religious community provided from the outside world, Irish groups were more likely to turn inward. By the twentieth century, the parish system became a well-oiled machine allowing Chicago Irish to move fluidly between the working-class and middle-class neighborhoods southwards in search of ‘better housing, open spaces, and a respectable position in the larger community.”75 According to Ellen Skerrett, historically, “church building was one of the most important activities for the Irish. It did much to redeem the image of Irish in Chicago.” Building a church, with their own funds, and using it to maintain their community was intended to change the stereotype of Irishmen as drunken criminals. As communities developed, like Canaryville, became an extension of the parish. The homes and neighborhood became “sacred.”76

McMahon’s and Skerrett's sentiments regarding the importance of the Parish are reinforced in St. Gabriel’s local Parish history books which speak of Canaryville as if it is a separate town from Chicago; a city unto itself. For these communities, the idea of racial integration was not a matter of social justice. Rather they viewed the disruption of their community as an attack on the parish “which they were so spiritually and psychologically dependent … could only approach race relations within the context of a parish mentality.” The appearance of outsiders into the parish was an invasion into their faith and identity. This is not to downplay the role that racism played in the often-violent maintenance of neighborhood

75 Eileen M. McMahon, What Parish Are You From? A Chicago Irish Community and Race Relations (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1995), 25. 76 Steve Kerch, “The Spirit of the Neighborhood: Churches Continue to Mold Today’s Fluid Communities,” Chicago Tribune, May 22, 1988, O1. 40 segregation. McMahon points out, “the notion that the two races could not live together was unquestioningly accepted in many white Catholic parishes...It was a difficult idea to dispel.”77

This is one of the many explanations for Canaryville’s racist reputation. Further perpetuating this reputation is the hesitation of Canaryvillians, like most white people, to discuss incidents of race and racism. This might relate to why early in the reputation of Canaryville among other Chicagoans is one of white, Irish, exclusivity. For Canaryvillians, the discussion of race, especially historic racial incidents, is very much an uncomfortable one. They are aware of their reputation and do not necessarily avoid it, but open discussion of it is unusual, and many hesitate before discussing it.

For example, in the local history of St. Gabriel, discussion about race relations in the St.

Gabriel’s Jubilee publication appears with no introduction. The paragraph reads:

Hatred for blacks in the stockyard area grew out of their use as strikebreakers in the

early years of the labor union movement. In 1919 when William H. Thompson was

mayor, Chicago was faced with a race riot that was sparked by an isolated incident, but

grew to tremendous violence on the south side of the city for four days. On July 27, 1919,

a Sunday afternoon, at the 29th Street beach, an eighteen-year-old black youth was stoned

and drowned. Police refused to arrest the stone thrower, and also prevented the rescue

of the victim. The Chicago Tribune reported that the Stockyard district saw some of the

worst violence of the riots. During the four-day period 36 people were killed and 536

were injured. The Ragan Colts, a white gang, was responsible for much of the trouble.78

77 McMahon, What Parish Are You From? A Chicago Irish Community and Race Relations, 4. 78 St. Gabriel Parish 1880-1980, 20. 41

The paragraph is odd in many ways. First, it is out of topical order. The previous paragraph discusses the Boys’ Choir in the 1920-1930s. Second, the paragraph is out of order chronologically. The paragraphs before and after deal with the late 1920s and the inclusion of this paragraph about race relations seems a forced afterthought. It is almost as if someone in the room said, “We should probably discuss our reputation,” and that comment resulted in the above account.

From a historical perspective, this account is surprisingly unbiased. It correctly isolates significant points, like the death of Eugene Williams as the incident which started the riots, the inactivity of the police, the duration, casualties, and the role of The Ragan Colts. Local lore often holds that The Ragan Colts magnified the violence and tragedy of the riots in order to reflect poorly on Thompson’s mayorship. Republican Thompson was not popular among many Irish, so the fact that residents of Canaryville are still mentioning the Riots happened under his leadership in 1988 is slightly droll. While the paragraph admits the responsibility of The Ragan Colts, it fails to note that the Colts were known to be a gang primarily located in Canaryville.

The larger issue, however, is the simple explanation that their “hatred of blacks” resulted from African American strikebreakers. Explaining racism in such a matter-of-fact way is reductive. Strikebreaking certainly contributed to the hatred, but the long history of racism in the

United States did not begin in the 1920s. Nevertheless, the writers should be applauded for bringing up the topic in the first place. Certainly, one can argue that a parish history filled with pages of the chronology of priests and their church community life is no place to discuss complicated things like race.

Nevertheless, the issue of race and Canaryville keeps finding a way back into their daily and religious lives. For example, upon listing some of the St. Gabriel’s theatre guilds’ past 42 productions, the committee noted some popular shows, such as The Man Who Came To Dinner and “St. Gabriel’s Minstrel Show of 1929.”79 Embarrassment over minstrel performances and blackface, in general, is a more recent event in America’s racial history. Yet, the fact that it seems something to record for further prosperity gives the event tacit approval. The racial past of

Canaryville is interwoven throughout the history of the neighborhood, just as it is throughout

American history. Religious and ethnic identity, geography, environment, and employment were pivotal factors in shaping early life in Canaryville. As shown in Chapter 2, these factors all shaped the built environment of the neighborhood.

Census Data and Demographics

The last factor to describing Canaryville are the people. Given the traditional, the categories of middle-class identity stem from statistical markers, census data examining income, race, employment, and homeownership are essential to include as a part of the initial picture of

Canaryville. Census data before the 1950s is sporadic in its categories. The information collected in one year is not the same as the next. What classifies as “white” and “non-white” or

“white-collar” or “blue-collar” labor changes or sometimes is not even counted. There are also years where very detailed information was published regarding race, housing, economies, etc., but the next year only provided total populations and total dwelling units. For these reasons, I decided to only look at Census data after 1950 for continuity.

Outside of geography, the middle-class landscape is influenced by the most universally accepted characteristic of class identity, income. Census data reveals slightly unsurprising statistics regarding the income demographics of Canaryville from 1950. Among the category of income, Canaryville is close to Chicago and national averages, while even slightly higher than

79 Ibid., 48. 43 the city and nation in a few instances. What the stability in the census numbers indicates is not that the neighborhood always identified as middle-class, but rather that some other external factor is responsible for the change in identity. We know the neighborhood identified as working-class before the close of the Stockyards in 1971. We do not know when residents began to identify as middle-class or what precipitated this change. However, it is likely a combination of a changing built environment combined with national cultural trends.

Income Table 1 shows the median household income for Canaryville, Chicago, and the Nation.

At first glance, the numbers indicate that Canaryville and Chicago are on par with the middle- class nationwide. The numbers may seem slightly skewed, given that they are a median income.

A median income levels economic disparity by taking the average of all salaries. Furthermore, the census defines a “household” as “an occupied housing unit.” For a majority of the country, this means that the average household contains one family unit, or a group of people related by marriage or birth. For some populated regions, such as Canaryville, a household can include more than one family unit and other individuals. We also know that many Canaryville residents live with multiple family units in one household. The census data taking the median income of a household, includes all working members, not just a family unit. Because of this, median income numbers are sometimes skewed.

Furthermore, the cost of living is higher than most realize. Take housing, for example.

Canaryville’s average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,124 a month.80 The average home sale in Canaryville is $318,500. Accounting for the average down payment nationwide is 5.37%, and the interest rate is 4.54% means that anyone purchasing a home in Canaryville would have a

80 “Chicago, IL Rental Market Trends,” RentCafe. December 2019, https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market- trends/us/il/chicago/ (accessed February 1, 2020) 44 monthly mortgage and property tax payment of about $2,000.81 Considering housing costs alone, that $38,143-66,500 average income will not produce a middle-class lifestyle.

Race Critical to understanding the landscape of Canaryville is its racial demographics. As mentioned earlier, traditionally, Canaryville was viewed as a “Whites Only” neighborhood.

Later we will discuss the cultural and physical manifestations of this racial landscape, but first, we should establish the statistical picture of Canaryville’s racial demographics. From roughly

1930-1950, the neighborhood was more than 99% white. In 1970, the first census after the white flight of the 1960s, the white population fell to 93.5%. In comparison, the rest of Chicago’s white population fell to 65.5% from 76.4% in 1960 and 85.9% in 1950. [Table 2] As a whole,

Canaryville’s white population faired better than Chicago throughout the postwar years.

Canaryville lost almost half of its white residents (4,858 white people, roughly 51.97% of the white population) compared to Chicago’s loss of 1,897,687, or 61% of the population.

These numbers indicate Canaryville’s insulation from the drain of White Flight and the

Urban Crisis of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, a topic explored at length in Chapter 3. Some unique circumstances might be responsible for population stability in Canaryville. The city employs many residents. Chicago requires its city workers to live within city limits. For many of these workers, they move to the farthest outskirts of the city to raise their families in the most suburban-like neighborhoods.

81 Average purchase price calculated using MLS listings from all home sales in the neighborhood from the last three years available on redfin.com. The average down payment and interest rates for 30 year loans are based off 2018 figures found FreddieMac, “Mortgage Rates,” and Dan Van Der Meulen, “The average down payment is much smaller than you think,” Housing Wire. 45

Employment

Figures regarding type of employment, unemployment numbers, and educational levels provide metrics to understand the opportunities available to residents in comparison to the rest of

Chicago. They demonstrate a longstanding tradition of engaging in blue-collar employment until

2000. [Table 3] Work type after 2000 became more equitable, with white collar professions slightly edging out blue collar in 2010. This is unsurprising given the higher educational levels, along with national trends in declining manufacturing. Furthermore, lower-level white collar work has become the new blue collar in many ways. While we may label an executive assistant or payroll processer as “white collar” because they work in an office, the professions require very little outside training or education. The pay typically reflects the unskilled labor, and many blue-collar workers earn more than non-professional white collar work.

The children of Canaryville also continued to improve in educational attainment in the last sixty years. The numbers below show educational attainment from high school and above, but many of the residents began to take college classes and many graduated with degrees. This demonstrates two things. First, from 1950-2010, high school graduation became more common across all classes and races nationwide. Second, with the rise of educational levels, many employers will not interview a job candidate without a degree. In today’s economy, if you want to work, you need education or additional training.

Conclusion

As Canaryville moved into the twentieth century, its landscape improved. Sewers, paved roads, and better city services made Canaryville a more tolerable living environment. The history of Canaryville can be viewed in two distinct eras. The first, lasting from 1865 to 1950 was characterized by the presence of the Stockyards. With the formation of the Stockyards in 1865, the life in the Town of Lake moved from rural middle-class life to one of an unofficial company 46 town. Plagued with the negatives of living near the Yards, nineteenth century and early twentieth century Canaryville residents adapted to a living situation with poor housing, high environmental pollution, and little social services. Even with the strong Irish community centered on St. Gabriel’s parish, violence was common and the neighborhood, quickly earned itself a bad reputation.

After the successful labor strikes in the 1930s, the residents of Canaryville saw a dramatic improvement in their quality of life and employment. The improvements in wages, job seniority, and workplace safety, coupled with other regulations by the local and federal governments to improve the health of the areas surrounding the Yards, improved Canaryville significantly. By the time Canaryville transitioned into the second half of its history, it was well on its way to shed its rough past. 47

CHAPTER 2. CONTESTED LANDSCAPES OF CANARYVILLE Canaryville is such a space where the landscape is like palimpsests over which are written the experiences of generations of residents through a dynamic century of economic change. There are several layers of physical and cultural landscapes. This chapter looks for any correlations between the physical landscape and a consciousness of class. There are three landscapes I focus on: industrial, commercial, and residential. Together, these three landscapes show the physical aspects of Canaryville’s contested landscapes or a “place where ethnicity, race, class, age, or gender are spatially defined, reinforced, and counteracted.”1 Providing a detailed and quantitative analysis of the physical landscape is vital to understanding the production of the urban suburb. At the nexus of the physical landscape and the contested landscape is where we find the urban suburb. The urban suburb manifests physically as it tries to negotiate these contested landscapes.

In Canaryville’s early history, the industrial landscape dominated. Stockyards owners and white-collar workers lived in Canaryville, placing their stamp on the landscape. The upper- classes left when pollution of the Stockyards became unbearable and more workers took their place. The neighborhood then physically deteriorated with increasingly poor, over-crowded housing. Given reprieve from dilapidation with the FHA-mandated demolition in 1957 and rezoning, Canaryville reclaimed these formerly industrial sites for residential development.

Like the industrial landscape, the commercial landscape also hit a noticeable decline after the 1970s. The bustling commercial corridors of Halsted Street, 43rd Street, and 47th Street are all but vacant today, further adding to the appearance of a suburban neighborhood. The

1 Paul Groth and Chris Wilson, “Polyphony of Cultural Landscape Study: An Introduction,” in Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies After J.B. Jackson, ed. Chris Wilson and Paul Groth (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003), 17. 48 commercial landscape is important to a community as it is the location for interaction with neighbors, outsiders, and the place where residents consume class and ethnic identities. When those locations are removed, what remains is an isolated community able to create an identifying narrative to suit its needs. Lastly, this chapter looks closely at the changes in Canaryville’s residential landscape. The residential landscape contains the most noticeable aspects of the urban suburb. The decline in buildings and population density throughout Canaryville’s history set the stage for a transition to an urban suburb. Combined with the popularization of single- family suburban home types and designs, the physical residential landscape affirms suburban identity.

The theoretical underpinnings for the analysis of the relationship between landscape and identity began with the work by John Brinkerhoff Jackson. His scholarship focuses on the vernacular landscape, but his core tenets revolve around the relationship between landscape and culture. Jackson asserts that groups do not set out to “create a landscape … [but] create a community, and the landscape as its visible manifestation is simply the by-product of people working and living.”2 He emphasizes the importance of the relationship between agency and structure, where “individual experience and action become the basis for shared social and cultural ideas.”3 In other words, he ponders the passivity of landscape, subject to human desire and manipulation, or the ability of landscape to shape humans. Through examining each landscape closely, I am looking for the multiple identities each landscape holds and attempt to determine whether or not human action shaped the landscape's identity or if the landscape shaped the identity of the human occupants.

2 J.B. Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 12. 3 Groth & Wilson, “Polyphony of Cultural Landscape Study: An Introduction,” 15. 49

Another giant in landscape theory is Denis Cosgrove. Cosgrove understood the landscape in the same respect as art, as something that both reflected society and culture. Landscapes were not created from a vacuum and represented “a way of seeing … represent[ing] themselves and to others the world about them and their relationships with it, and through which they have commented on social relations.”4 He also determined that landscapes have “a complex poetics and politics” in that landscapes have a physical presence, but only “come into being” when observed.5 Cosgrove’s observations are useful in the analysis of Canaryville, given that the landscape of the neighborhood both reflects the changes the residents desired while also influencing those desires. It conveyed a message to outsiders that hold both political and cultural importance. As we will discuss, the landscape of Canaryville enforces racial boundaries, ownership, and racial and class identity.

Several authors have written about these contested landscapes, most notably Dolores

Hayden in The Power of Place, who uses Los Angeles as a case study to explore urban landscapes as “storehouses” for social memory for different ethnic and racial groups.6 By telling the story of Los Angeles through the eyes of the marginalized, she unveils a new facet of local history, and significance is brought to ignored geographies. She argues that public space is closely tied to identity, “personal memories… and the collective or social memories interconnected with the histories of our families, neighbors, fellow workers, and ethnic communities.”7

4 Denis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 2. 5 Denis Cosgrove, “Modernity, Community and the Landscape Idea,” Journal of Material Culture, Vol 11 (1/2): 2006, 49-66, 50. 6 Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997), 9. 7 Ibid. 50

Setha Low also emphasizes the importance of public space to the identity and memory of the community in On the Plaza: The Politics of Space and Culture. Low’s study shows public space as a contested landscape between citizen and the State, citizen and public life, and the individual and daily life. She notes that individuals have an “emotional attachment with place.”8

Without public space to visualize social and cultural conflicts, citizens cannot “directly participate in their own resolution.”9

Most scholarship focusing on the ways the built environment reflects and influences identity formation focuses on the home. Leading scholars focus on eighteenth to early twentieth century residential homes as these homes show the primary sources of one person or family. The authors all successfully argue that the built environment can reflect and inform racial, gender, and class identity.10

Many assert that the built environment can inform and reflect the actions of the community. Dell Upton argues for the city as “material culture” because the city “is a pattern reflecting collective action.” However, to view the city as material culture, one must acknowledge several forces at work in its creation.11 Gabriele Esperdy’s study on Main Streets demonstrates how many aspects coalesce to change the built environment and the power that a

8 Setha Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 239. 9 Ibid., 240. 10 Some notable sources on race, gender, and class in the built environment from a vernacular architecture perspective: Catherine Bishir, “Landmarks of Power: Building a Southern Past, 1885-1915,” Southern Cultures 1, no 1. (1993): 5- 46; Edward Chappell and Julie Richter, “Wealth and Houses in Post-Revolutionary Virginia,” in Exploring Everyday Landscapes: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, VII, eds. Annmarie Adams and Sally McMurry, 3-22, (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1997); Lizabeth Cohen, “Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes, 1885-1915,” in Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, eds. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach, 261-81, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986); Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997); John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993). 11 Dell Upton, "The City as Material Culture," in The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology, ed. Mary Beaudry and Anne E. Yentsch. (Boca Raton and Ann Arbor: CRC Press, 1992). 51 new environment has on a community, such as inspiring economic confidence through “modern” facades during the Great Depression.12

Location of the home or building is a crucial attribute to examine when considering its influence. Of particular note is Gwendolyn Wright’s work on the home as a physical representation of social issues experienced by the occupants. She argues that homes reflect contemporary social issues and serve as a means of escape from those issues.13 This alone is complicated, but when combined with the illusion that Americans have the freedom to live anywhere, it is easy to see why design and occupation of homes may be more deceptive than initially thought. Becky Nicolaides argues that the location of ones’ home is central to people’s identity and that the construction of a neighborhood can reflect the occupant’s worldview.14 For

Setha Low, the gated community, where the occupant can erect a visible barrier and literally keep out any “anxieties and conflicting social values” of the modern world from their living space is the new middle-class American Dream.15

Vernacular architecture and culture geography scholars rely heavily on visual analysis to observe patterns and irregularities in the built environment. One way to do this is to use the suggested methodology of J.B. Jackson. He encourages the observer to start at the essential element, in this case, land, and then move forward to visualize how and why a society or culture altered the space.16 In this sense, the researcher looks at any geographic location and tries to

12 Gabriele Esperdy, Modernizing Main Street: Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 13 Wright, Building the Dream, xix. 14 Becky N. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920- 1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 15 Setha Low, Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (New York: Routledge, 2003), 11-12. 16 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, “By Way of Conclusion, How to Study the Landscape,” in Landscape in Sight Looking at America, ed. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 309. 52 determine what alterations, logical and illogical, took place and then dives deeper to determine why and what affect these alterations have on the society and culture that created them.

Society and culture play an important role in determining the look and use of a building.

When discussing buildings, Thomas Gieryn reminds us that buildings and society do not have a

“cause-and-effect” relationship. One does not have agency over the other but rather “individuals shaped by structure simultaneously shape those circumstances.”17 Buildings are revealing and concealing structures capable of revealing the social and material factors that led to their creation. They have the power to conceal “the many possibilities that did not get built, as they bury the interests, politics, and power that shaped the one design that did.”18

My analysis began by noticing the type of buildings in a given area (residential, industrial, commercial, institutional) and the design elements (Cape Cod, Neo-Classical, Greek

Revival, Federal, Victorian, Queen Anne, Art Deco, Craftsman, Gothic, and so forth). These two items indicated the perceived purpose of the neighborhood and what type of occupants lived there.

I then note the alterations to any original structures (did the owners add a new porch? change the shingles? remove a fireplace or outhouse as the home became more modern?).

Acknowledging alterations can date the neighborhood or indicate if the purpose of the area changed over time. For example, a warehouse district may originally be built for commercial purposes. However, as evident by the people walking their dogs, families carrying groceries into the buildings, and the presence of mailboxes and doorbells, I can conclude that these warehouses are repurposed into residential spaces.

17 Thomas F. Gieryn, “What Buildings Do,” Theory and Society 31, no. 1 (Feb., 2002), 35-74, 36-37. 18 Ibid., 39 53

Also, important to note is the placement of the buildings in the landscape. Are they close to the street? Are they close to one another? Set back? Far apart? How they function within that space is key to unlocking the secrets of the buildings that rarely leave records of the archives.

Treated in this respect, it is the building (or lack thereof) that becomes the primary source.

After observing the physical environment, the next step was to seek answers for abnormalities or unique variations. For example, if I noticed a vacant lot in a densely populated area, I would seek to find why that spot is vacant. My first inclination might be to locate the area on historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, to determine if there used to be a structure there, and if so, what type of structure it was (residential, commercial, industrial? Brick, limestone, wood?) and roughly how long they have it documented. If I know the neighborhood is newer, say a suburb build after World War II, I might turn to the County Tax Assessor and Recorder of Deeds to find the parcel number for the plot, and then any deeds and tax bills associated with the property. Usually, these places will produce the name of the most recent owner, which I can then use to narrow down my historical search for the property through archives, historical city directories, and census rolls, to name a few.

This methodology is important for three reasons. First, it allows the researcher to enter a space empirically. Instead of looking for a particular object or answer, this methodology encourages the researcher to think holistically about how the area should look logically, and then find what is unusual. It prevents the researcher from missing other important context clues.

Secondly, this methodology emphasizes change, allowing the researcher to think about the longevity of an area and the case for its current appearance. Third, it values every day over the extraordinary. Vernacular architecture is the study of the exceptional the everyday, focusing on how even the smallest structure plays a crucial role in shaping a society. Except in special 54 circumstances, ordinary people cannot change an extraordinary building. They are more likely to have power over their residence and neighborhoods. If we want to study the relationship between the built environment, culture, and society, a vernacular methodology is an excellent starting point.

Industrial Landscape While not the oldest landscape in Canaryville (residences and farms hold that title), the industrial landscape made Canaryville famous. The industrial landscape demonstrates the influence and motivation of both the employers and employees upon the neighborhood. These modifications reflect both parties' ideas around class, racial, and ethnic identities. Evaluating the industrial landscape of Canaryville is complicated, as most of the landscape no longer exists.

However, the memory lives on like a scar. Some buildings survive after being modified. Others stand unoccupied. More commonly, we see vacant lots with remnants of building foundations.

Regardless of its history and importance, the industrial landscape has slowly been erased from the physical space and public memory. Arguably, this erasure happened because it conflicts with the image of the urban suburb. Even though these landscapes are less present, we still need to examine the historic landscapes to understand the urban suburb as it appears today.

Company Towns

To begin reconstructing the industrial landscape, we should evaluate the prototypical environments which illuminate the influence of employer and employee on the landscape, namely company towns. Analysis of company towns can help identify the signals of this interaction in Canaryville. Company towns are residential communities designed and built for the workers of a single larger employer. There are two models of company towns, ones who view towns as a means to make the entire enterprise more efficient and profitable by having 55 workers live close to the job site, and those who view the town as an uplifting, utopian endeavor.19 Most company towns shared characteristics of both.

Often, they include idealized housing structures and community buildings designed to groom the workers into particular behaviors, such as schools, libraries, community buildings, or religious institutions. While employers built these towns as an incentive for their employees, they also took advantage of social control. Many company towns developed strict rules regarding the consumption of alcohol, the maintenance of the home, or the separation of employees and management (an effort to keep unionization at bay). Regardless of the employer’s intent or employee’s use, a company town represents the idealized social relationship of the working-class from the perspective of elites. As such, it can be a good place to examine the perception of a working-class built environment and whether those perceptions are mimicked or refuted by their residents.

Noted as the quintessential scholarship on company towns, Stanley Buder’s Pullman examines the most famous company town, Pullman, Illinois. Written in 1967, Buder’s scholarship examines the railroad tycoon’s attempts to use the built environment to control and influence his employees. Pullman, like many other white, wealthy Americans of his day, believed that the physical space surrounding “uncivilized,” ethnic white workers would force them to reform. Buder argues that Pullman’s founded his town to demonstrate that industrialization did not need to end in social disintegration.20

The Pullman Strike of 1894 make it one of the most infamous company towns. Many view the strike as a response to Pullman’s attempts to control his employee’s behavior outside

19 Hardy Green, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic mills that Shaped the American Economy (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 5. 20 Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning 1880-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), xi. 56 the factory. Buder argues that the development of the town and the rising worker animosity towards the company caused the eventual strikes. For example, workers participated with forms of resistance from drinking in secret at home, visiting bars and taverns on the outskirts of town, or taking in boarders, even though strictly prohibited. Regardless of its failure, the landscape of

Pullman is regularly praised for its orderly aesthetic, receiving the designation as a National

Landscape District. The relationship between employer and employee shows in the landscape.

The employer’s overbearing desires forced the workers to modify their landscape in immaterial ways.

John Garner’s work, “Leclare, Illinois: A Model Company Town 1890-1934,” written in

1971, shows a successful industrial town. Garner attributes Leclare’s success to the philanthropic origins of the N.O. Nelson Manufacturing Company’s owner N.O. Nelson, coupled with the lack of paternalism. Essentially, the treatment of N.O. Nelson Manufacturing Company employees as agents in their living situation arguably created the only successful American industrial town to date. Unlike Pullman, founder N.O. Nelson’s wanted to create an industrial community that resolved labor problems, not correct environmental and social ills. Focusing on improving living conditions, fostering educational and cultural advancement, and eventually allowing his employees to be shareholders, set Leclare as a unique community, a refuge from the developing urban areas.21 Leclare boasted of having the highest percentage of paved streets in the world per capita (in the late nineteenth century) set on a non-grid layout, reminiscent of the park-like suburbs, not industrial towns.22 Garner claims that the “intelligent foresight” in planning created a “visual and social success.”23

21 John Garner, “Leclare, Illinois: A Model Company Town, 1890-1930,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 30, no.3 (Oct.1971): 219 22 Ibid., 222. 23 Ibid., 219. 57

In “Three Industrial Towns by McKim, Mead, and White,” Leland Roth argues that not only were industrial towns often products of positive reform but that the architecture became one of the most important determinates of worker happiness. 24 In his discussion of architecture,

Roth focuses his attention on the construction of the buildings, the orientation of the buildings to the rest of the town and the industry, and whether the building was public or private. Like many other studies of industrial towns, Roth points to these significant factors to demonstrate the importance of architecture to these three towns in determining the quality of life. Roth also expunges that the careful planning of these buildings, such as the simple painting of houses yellow to distinguish the Roanoke Rapids from the growing hinterlands, signifies the amount of care and thought put into towns by the owners and by McKim, Mead, and White.25

In 1992 Roth built off his research in “Three Industrial Towns” to inspire his essay

“Company Towns in the Western United States.” Here he looks at two industries, mining and lumber; create industrial towns innately different from their brethren east of the Mississippi.26 He argues that the geography and industry, not the founder’s desire, influenced the architecture. This argument is exemplified by the relationship between the industry and the town rose and fell together. When industry failed, such as the lumber mill in Brookings, Oregon, the town became dilapidated.27 In these three towns, we see that designing with the worker’s desires in mind resulted in a cleaner community and happier employees. It should come as no surprise, after reading of the unsanitary conditions of early Canaryville, that crime, riots, and strikes were common. One question may be, what is the more significant influencer of architecture, the

24 Leland Roth, “Three Industrial Towns by McKim, Mead and White,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 38, no.4 (Dec 1979): 317. 25 Ibid., 330. 26 Leland Roth, “Company Towns in the Western United States,” in The Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age, ed. John S. Garner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 173. 27 Ibid., 190-191. 58 builder’s desires, or the geography? When we look at Canaryville, we see a neighborhood confined by both. As we will see, Canaryville could not grow and build as residents may have wanted. Hampered by finances, geography, and government, the Canaryville landscape is still under the influence of the Industrial Landscape.

James Michael Buckley’s 1997 essay entitled “A Factory without a Roof: The Company

Town in the Redwood Lumber Industry argues that the evolution of the town and its’ buildings, from simplistic to designed, demonstrate the evolution of the relationship between the workers and the company. 28 He articulates this point through the development of public buildings.

Hoping that desirable (meaning sober and loyal) workers would feel rewarded to live in attractive Scotia, Pacific Lumber built a series of civic buildings from theatres to hospitals, along with the American ideal, the detached single-family home. 29 Simple changes, such as the building of a neoclassical bank, but with natural redwood columns instead of stone, reinforces the power the employer has over the employee and the community. As Buckley acutely notes,

“the didactic message of this “Redwood Doric” structure is straightforward: save your hard- earned pennies, but do not forget where those wages came from.”30

We find similar subtle reminders in the imagery surrounding the stockyard buildings. For example, while the Stockyard Inn had no ranch or cattle themes visible on the exterior, the interior certainly did. The most prestigious club associated with the industry was the Saddle and

Sirloin Club. Oral histories also describe Halsted Street as a shopping destination for all things western. Trying to draw in the ranching crowd making annual business trips to Chicago, the

28 James Michael Buckley, “A Factory Without A Roof: The Company Town in the Redwood Lumber Industry,” in Exploring Everyday Landscapes: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, ed. Annmarie Adams and Sally McMurry (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 75. 29 Ibid., 85. 30 Ibid. 59 stores would sell elaborate Western wear; cowboy boots, hats, studded belts, and jackets. Unlike other areas of the city that specialized in the urbane and trendy, Canaryville belonged to the

Stockyards.

In what would later become a chapter in her book, Workingman’s Paradise, Margaret

Crawford, like Leland Roth’s “Company Towns,” discusses the role of architecture in industrial towns through the designer. In “Earle S. Draper and the Company Town in the American

South,” Crawford explores the impact of Draper, a city planner, upon the industrial towns in the south, which historically developed into bastions of social conflict. These industrial towns, centered around mills, focuses on the several southern towns where Draper held a role in developing the city layout. She begins her discussion of the industrial towns formed before the arrival of Draper in the south. Within this discussion, she exculpates the underlying social order produced by the economic traditions in the south. Vernacular architecture, such as the development of useless baseball diamonds over critical, but expensive, hospitals, play a key role in interpreting the results of these traditions as they mirror the struggle between the worker and the employee.31

In the second half of the essay, Crawford examines the “mill problem” before Draper’s arrival. The industrial town symbolized the stereotype given to the mill workers as backward and thus in need of reformation, preferably by an outside professional source.32 Using the complex framework cultivated by the southern middle-class and mill owners, Crawford discusses the steps Draper developed in response to the conflicting views of the industrial town’s evolution. Most importantly, she extorts that Draper’s plans were more than simple design

31 Margaret Crawford, “Earle S. Draper and the Company Town in the American South,” in The Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age, ed. John S. Garner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 144. 32 Ibid., 153. 60 solutions but demonstrate the process of problem-solving in a design field where an eraser will not create a blank slate.

Draper provides an interesting comparison to Canaryville. As the Town of Lake was already established, and later annexed by Chicago, it lacked the opportunity for the Stockyard owners to input their opinion on the employees’ landscape. Instead, we can see Stockyard’s influence in the buildings, landscape, and environment that served a direct purpose to their business, which will be discussed later.

While Canaryville is not a company town in the traditional sense, a quick look at the history of the area indicates the influence of the Stockyards on the neighborhood. As such, it is important to analyze the many transitions of the area through the lens of company and factory towns to understand the close relationship between the employer and employee; especially, in this case, when the employer leaves. Works like Margaret Crawford’s Building the

Workingman’s Paradise are important to consider. Crawford’s study investigates the transformation of the planning of company towns from top-down to bottom-up.33

Crawford makes a compelling argument for worker agency in company towns. Ethnic and immigrant workers negotiated the process of their Americanization while also speaking out against labor injustices.34 Of particular note is evidence demonstrating the desires of the employees to differentiate themselves from urban spaces and presumed negative connotations of congested urban life. In the formation of Indian Hill just after World War I, many workers objected to attached housing, preferring the more suburban, and arguably more “white

American” single-family home.35

33 Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns (New York: Verso, 1995), 1. 34 Ibid., 7. 35 Ibid., 113. 61

Crawford’s contributions to understanding the influence of the worker on the formation of company towns provide greater insight into how the “ideal” American working-class neighborhoods coalesced. It reminds us that the built environment may reflect other desires and agendas besides those of its occupants. For Canaryville, Crawford’s work alludes to the early desires of a working-class community for the surroundings of a middle-class neighborhood. In this light, the desire for a middle-class existence might have been a long-term goal for a community like Canaryville, not one which arose in the post-war era of middle-class growth and urban decline. Unlike the housing surrounding Chicago’s stockyards, which was slapdash, unregulated, and unsanitary, these company towns had the advantage of controlling urban planning by a single organization. Perhaps, if the Stockyards were owned by one individual instead of a conglomeration, the surrounding areas may have become more uniform.

One final historian examines Canaryville from the perspective of a worker’s enclave.

Elaine Lewinnek studies New City (Canaryville and Back of the Yards) as a nineteenth-century suburb and then an annexed periphery of Chicago in the 20th century. She approaches Chicago’s urban history from a new angle, where the development and growth of Chicago became a self- fulfilling prophecy. The developers and real estate speculators of Chicago promised a booming metropolis; thus, it became one through careful “imagining in suburban marketing, financing, mapping, critiquing, and building.”36

Lewinnek believes the previous scholarship of suburbs is one-dimensional as it focuses on the middle-class. She argues that Chicago’s suburbs, as places of “working-class immigrants’ struggles for homeownership,” show the diversity and inequity of urban growth.37 America’s move to the suburbs was initiated by industry and industrial workers, not a post-war housing

36 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s 5. 37 Ibid., 8, 10. 62 boom. Workers moved to the suburbs for a lower cost of land and to be closer to their employers.

Suburbs and homeownership were the promised “Working Man’s Reward,” safer than a bank for their money’s investment and a tangible aspect of the opportunities America promised.

Additionally, she argues that suburban homeownership promised a middle-class level of consumption; thus, it was an attempt to blur the class lines between working-class and middle- class.38 My thesis brings Lewinnek’s ideas regarding nineteenth century suburban Chicago and demonstrates how they manifested themselves in the twentieth century. Homeownership as a mode of class transformation is still as important today as it was then.

Labor

In terms of organizations and institutions, labor unions have an large degree of influence over an industrial landscape. The union often acts like a sieve taking in all the wants and desires from individual workers and refining it down to obtainable goals. The higher pay, benefits, and working hours the union negotiates and defends can shape a neighborhood and how the residents move within that space. Their actions can better the factory building, the surrounding environment, and their own homes and community buildings. In the case of Canaryville, the two biggest unions were the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) and the

Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America (AMC).

David Brody’s The Butcher Workmen: A Study of Unionization provides a history of the unionization of the meat industry through the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America and the United Packinghouse Workers of America. Focusing on these two unions, Brody documents more than a simple history of recruitment of workers. His work explores the rise of the union in the New Deal Era, its eventual fall post World War II, and how

38 Ibid., 86. 63 both the influence of trade unions and union strategy influenced each other to the formation of larger industry unions.39

Brody’s account provides a timeline of the meat packer’s unionization across the

Midwest without much analysis of motivations for joining the unions or the struggles endured by employees from other social and cultural influences. However, given its publication date in

1964, it is safe to say that Brody’s work piqued the interest of many other budding labor historians like James Barrett, Roger Horowitz, and Rick Halpern, who examine the ways external factors, such as race, class, and the built environment, affect unionization.

James Barrett’s Work and the Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse

Workers 1894-1922 focuses on the ways in which the community and living situation influenced and were affected by organized labor in the Packinghouses. Barrett looks at the Union

Stockyards and the quality of life and work of the employees of the packinghouse at the turn of the twentieth century.40 More importantly, Barrett looks at the “changing characters of class relations.”41 While Barrett does spend time discussing the process of labor organization, the standout of his work is the research on the quality of life for the workers in the nearby communities. The poor quality of life in neighborhoods like Canaryville and Back of the Yards became a key grievance in worker strikes.42 The workers’ firm belief that union membership would improve the quality of their living situation motivated them to overcome racial, gender, and ethnic stratification, which “complicated the process of working-class formation.” 43

39 David Brody, The Butcher Workmen: A Study of Unionization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964). 40 James R. Barrett, Work and the Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers 1894-1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 3-4. 41 Ibid., 4. 42 Ibid., 6. 43 Ibid., 7. 64

Like most sources about the Stockyards, research on Back of the Yards dominates. For some reason, perhaps because Canaryville was occupied by more skilled workers, not very many contemporary studies focused on the living accommodations of the area. His research does allow for some assumptions of the built environment in Canaryville backed up by a few scant resources, namely that there were few paved roads or sewage facilities. Many of the homes were wood frame and occupied by more than one family. Commonly, the owning family took in boarders of their same ethnic background.44 Even given the lack of analysis of Canaryville,

Barrett’s work points to some of the actions the residents took in order to maintain and improve a higher standard of living and class identity. It is not surprising then that they also took actions to alter their built environment, too.

Barrett’s discussion relies primarily on archival sources. Historians Horowitz and

Halpern, however, used extensive oral histories to determine that what makes meatpacking unions unique is the presence of workers of different races. Halpern and Roger Horowitz rely on the same cache of oral histories of meatpackers across the Midwest located at the University of

Wisconsin. As such, they both come to similar conclusions involving the role of race in unionization.

Rick Halpin finds that race is a primary factor in a labor organization. He argues that historians, like many unions, have excluded people of color from their discussions. For unions, excluding minorities weakened the labor movement overall.45 Labor historians, he claims, have treated African American workers as if they were “hermetically sealed off from their white counterparts and entered only minimal influence” on working-class history.46 He hopes that

44 Ibid., 39, 71, 104. 45 Rick Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1904-1954 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 2. 46 Ibid., 2. 65

Down on the Killing Floor will correct some of these errors by looking at the Chicago

Stockyards and how race “shaped the development of the working-class.”47 He covers three major eras in interracial labor organization, 1904-29 when African Americans entered the packinghouses, 1930-46 when the Congress Industrial Organizations and United Packinghouse

Workers of America brought unity to workers across racial and skill lines, and the immediate postwar period when the power of the unions and the Packinghouses began to dwindle.48 In tracing the path to integration of unions at the packinghouses, Halpern hopes to show that

“ordinary people can unite and bring about change by organizing around their common material interests.”49

Using an extensive oral history of union members from meatpackers in Chicago, Sioux

City, Kansas City, and Austin, Minnesota, Roger Horowitz argues that packinghouses do not fit into the typical narrative of labor unions in the twentieth century.50 Other sectors of industry did not have as large of a presence of black workers. Their numbers in the packinghouses meant that the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) needed to fight for racial equality more than other unions order to engender significant change.

Prior to union organization in the 1930s, the packinghouses in Chicago heavily encouraged separation in and out of the workplace. Job types were separated by race and ethnicity, with the best jobs going to white Irish and German men. The packinghouses also sponsored social clubs and other recreational activities designed to discourage organization.51 To

47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., 3. 49 Ibid., 5. 50 Richard Horowitz. Negro and White, Unite and Fight! A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-1990 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 7. 51 Ibid., 59. 66 overcome the societal divisions in the packinghouse, organizers frequently reminded workers that the enemy was their boss, not their fellow worker.52

Horowitz argues that race is overlooked as an important influence on white-dominated labor organizations in the twentieth-century.53 He notes that many white workers supported black membership and activism within the union, contrary to contemporary society, as they saw it a path to maintain and increase their standard of living.54 Horowitz’s research demonstrates that when given an opportunity to organize among class lines, some racism and sexism could be overcome. The question to be answered, then, is why the presumed equality inside the workplace did not translate to the outside, particularly in a segregated neighborhood like Canaryville.

Outside of the packinghouse, society and physical environments separated workers,

Polish and Lithuanians in the Back of the Yards and African Americans in the Black belt.

Horowitz only references Canaryville as the “hostile Irish neighborhood” that separated the two groups. In this one short passage, Horowitz implies that the Irish residents of Canaryville were a bigger hindrance to unionization than aid. While he does not state it outright, perhaps the

Canaryville Irish were the few white workers who refused to join a union with African Americas in the early stages.55

These unions significantly raised the standard of working and living in Canaryville and the surrounding areas and contributed to a growing sense of middle-class identity among union members. Including unions in this conversation demonstrates the complicated duality of class identity for union workers. They may have access to some characteristics of middle-class identity, such as income and material goods, but not education and occupation. Lizbeth Cohen

52 Ibid., 60. 53 Ibid., 8. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 67 notes organizations like the CIO and AFL became “obsessed with expanding workers’ purchasing power,” promoted traditional gender roles of a male breadwinner, and created credit unions all with the goal of creating the “affluent worker.”56 While labor organizations were not as successful with brining the working-class into middle-class identity, the majority of blue- collar workers remained in the working-class. The small advantages to union membership, such as an increase in wages and retirement, did not increase their purchasing power to the point of middle-class lifestyles and financial security. The hard work of the unions put working-class neighborhoods like Canaryville on a path where they eventually had to choose a class identity.

A choice made even easier in the 1970s and 80s when labor unions and industrial jobs were in decline and education and white-collar jobs on the rise.

Today Canaryville’s union members would be more likely to be a city employee or skilled laborer. The physical presence of the unions is still visible on S. Halsted St., the site of the Teamsters Health & Pension office, and most notably through lawn signs that identify a house as a “Proud Union Home.” [Fig. 4]. The deeper meaning behind the signs is uncertain.

Are the signs a way to hold on to working-class and middle-class identities simultaneously?

Perhaps they are an attempt to show their working-class identity in the face of a middle-class landscape. These signs are evidence of conflicting class identities. The industrial landscape is peaking through the suburban façade.

Movement of Industrial Buildings Out of the Neighborhood

One of the biggest indicators of a change in the landscape reflecting class identity was the rise and retreat of the secondary stockyard businesses. These subsidiary businesses infiltrated

Canaryville in the later years of the nineteenth century. Clustered around the north end, most

56 Cohen, Consumer’s Republic. 68 likely because of closer proximity to the train tracks, smaller packing houses, tanneries, renderers, and canneries used the proximity to the Stockyard to grow their businesses. As the

Stockyards grew and declined, however, these businesses waned and eventually closed.

For example, in 1895, on the corner of Emerald and W. 41st Street, there were four clearly labeled businesses in the Stockyard trade, Noonan & Hoff, Hess Brothers, Reddy &

Sheehan, and The B. Wolf Slaughtering Co. [Fig. 5] By 1925 however, Noonan & Hoff and adjacent vacant property were overtaken by The Independent Packing Company. While the Hess

Brothers and Reddy & Sheehan were overtaken by Magnus Metal Company, a Brass Foundry, and The B. Wolf Slaughtering Company, was likely bought out by the City as space for the public transportation train track. [Fig. 6] By 1950, the property and purpose changed once again.

This time the large Independent Packing Company was split into the Zero Food Storage

Company and Hart & Harrington Company, a tanning company. Magnus Metal changed back to a Stockyard related business with the American Key Can Company. [Fig. 7] Today, the corner of

Emerald and 41st is residential.

The corner of Emerald and 41st provides a good picture regarding the pattern of large stockyard related businesses in the neighborhood shrinking and eventually disappearing from the neighborhood. In the early years, there was higher competition among smaller meatpackers and butchers, as the power of the Union Stockyards had not reached its peak. By 1925, two years after the 1922 strike, the power of unionized stockyards was on the mend, as evident by the large, conglomerated Independent Packing Company. When the parcels split again, we see the evidence of the effects of World War II on the Stockyards. Instead of direct packing, it was likely more profitable to be involved in businesses related to animal renderings, such as tanning leather for uniforms and other necessary materials for the war effort. 69

In addition to the clearly labeled Stockyard related businesses, there are other types of businesses reliant on the stockyards that were left unlabeled or existed after Sanborn maps stopped being drawn for the area. There is little historical evidence of Stockyard related buildings between 1950 and today. Except for a few historical photographs and zoning maps, it is difficult to identify and where they would have been located.

Industrial Landscapes and Deindustrialization

When the Stockyards began to decline in the 1950s, it became less necessary to have stockyard related businesses east of S. Halsted St. The decline of the Union Stockyards is but one of the many examples of deindustrialization. Industry across the country entered a period of decline beginning in the early 1960s. Many factors led to a slow and steady economic decline and, eventually, a period of deindustrialization, or the closing down and decommissioning of the industry rapidly built up during and after World War II. The combination of rising energy costs and union wages, coupled with the ability for business owners to move production to cheaper places, had cataclysmic effects for the scores of industrial workers across the United States.

According to Bluestone and Harrison, whose study coined the term, deindustrialization saw the disinvestment of production capital for the presumably more profitable unproductive speculation.57 Bluestone and Harrison blamed deindustrialization not only on the rising costs to manufacture goods, but also the desire of the factory owners to disrupt union power, and discovered they could do so by simply moving the factory across stateliness.58 The same happened in Canaryville. As early 1900 Armour & Co and Swift & Co looked to bring the stockyard business model closer to the cattle ranges. They built in Fort Worth, TX, Kansas City,

Sioux City, IA, slowly chipping away at Chicago’s dominance.

57 Bluestone and Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America (New York City: Basic Books Publisher, 1982), 6. 58 Ibid.,16. 70

Deindustrialization did more than just shutter factories. It removed employment, tax- bases, and adjacent economies. As such, many scholars focus on how deindustrialization attacked specific places like Detroit or Youngstown and demonstrate that deindustrialization was a larger historical movement with lasting effects on the fabric of America. Essays such as

Howard Gillette, Jr.’s “The Wages of Disinvestment: How Money and Politics Aided the

Decline of Camden, New Jersey,” which documented former industrial communities like

Camden, New Jersey, who experienced a domino effect of industrial decline. They struggled to maintain their tax base, city services, attract new employers and keep upper and middle-class residents after their largest employer left.59 Others, like John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon, explore the damage done to a community like Youngstown which lost its identity as a place of industrial power and came to symbolize the negative effects of deindustrialization on the community in the national eye. In both cases, the residents struggled to combat the negative reputation created by outsiders.60 Similarly, we see Canaryville’s industrial landscape changed as the community tried to control the narrative of their changing identity after the Stockyard closure. Community action seems content to leave the Stockyards behind and move forward with their new identity.

Christine Walley’s Exit Zero: Family and Class in Postindustrial Chicago show many are still mourning the destruction of their community. Walley speaks from a place of familiarity with the effects of deindustrialization in the 1980s on the families and neighborhoods of

Southeast Chicago. Part auto-ethnography, part memoir, part oral history, Walley argues the

59 Howard Gillette, Jr. “The Wages of Disinvestment: How Money and Politics Aided the Decline of Camden, New Jersey,” in Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization, Jefferson Cowie, Joseph Heathcott, and Barry Bluestone, eds. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 139-158. 60 John Russo and Sherry Lee Linkon, “Collateral Damage: Deindustrialization and the Uses of Youngstown,” in Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization, Jefferson Cowie, Joseph Heathcott, and Barry Bluestone, eds. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 201-218. 71 origin of contemporary inequality can be found with deindustrialization and its profound effects not only on the local and national economy but in our understanding of class identity. Often focused on her father’s story, she notes that for the “Greatest Generation” who assumed the future was “one of an expanding middle-class and growing prosperity for all,” the closing of both employment and dreams was psychologically damaging to them and their children.61

She asserts that class is at the center of the story of deindustrialization, but it is rarely talked about, one of the many side-effects of deindustrialization. For Walley, class demonstrates economic production, gender, ethnicity, race, personal and collective histories, perceived morality, and contribution to the community. Even though she acknowledges the complexity behind a simple phrase like “working-class” or “middle-class,” it seems as if Walley laments the fact that class is only discussed through euphemisms like “I worked hard for what I have” or

“they are good people.” Yet, with each chapter, she further proves that so much meaning is hoisted upon social class that it is all but impossible to untangle it. The inability to discern specific attributes of class complicates the ability of the average American to discuss it.

Losing union wages wreaked havoc on class identity. Those wages allowed her father and community to define themselves as middle-class. While they rarely labeled themselves as such, they demonstrated it through “newfound respectability through neat bungalows and tidy lawns with colorful lawn ornaments that showed off their industriousness and worthiness in contrast to “poorer” others.”62 Deindustrialization took middle-class respectability away. After the closing of his employer, Wisconsin Steel, she heard her father, who never found reliable employment again, mutter to himself, “Yeah, we thought we were middle-class there for a while.

61 Walley, Exit Chicago: Family and Class in Post Industrial Chicago, 68. 62 Ibid., 54. 72

We were almost middle-class.”63 With this one example, among the numerous others, Walley’s assertion that “class is about the trajectories of our lives – individually and collectively” is well documented.64

Walley’s work offers the opportunity to demonstrate a contrast between two areas in

Chicago that felt the full effects of deindustrialization but differ in the potential opportunities offered to them afterward. For Canaryville, the replacement of the Stockyards with a light industrial park and the closer proximity to other employment opportunities in Chicago may have lessened the damage to class identity felt in Southeast Chicago. Canaryville, unlike Southeast

Chicago, seems to have avoided the drastic demographic changes. It continues to survive, bolstered by other economic opportunities, unlike the steel towns of Northwest Indiana. Access to other economic opportunities gave the neighborhood the chance to remake the landscape to an urban suburb.

Stockyard Buildings in Canaryville

While the city planning, urban organization, and housing structures are important factors in forming a landscape, the biggest influencer in an industrial landscape are buildings associated with the industry. The Stockyard’s architecture stood as a continual reminder to the nearby workers of their place in society. Tamsen Anderson explores the way that the architecture of suburban industrial sites, such as Pullman, mirrored their downtown skyscraper counterparts stylistically. While the Union Stockyards did not have a loop counterpart, evidence of trying to convey the same level of gravitas architecturally is apparent.65 Looming over small frame

63 Ibid., 71. 64 Ibid., 10. 65 Tamsen Anderson, “Linking Factory and Skyscraper in Chicago,” in Out of the Loop: Vernacular Architecture Forum Chicago, ed. Virginia B. Price, David A. Spatz, and D. Bradford Hunt (Chicago: Midway Books, 2015),47- 51, 48-49. 73 cottages, the buildings making up the Stockyard’s reinforced the notion that businesses held move social value than workers. The workers then, as we often do today, drew their identity from their profession. If the presence of the Yards failed to reinforce class identity, then the juxtaposition of relative poverty and squalor to the grander buildings of the Yards certainly did.

Each day Canaryville residents walked by these impressive structures. Rarely able to afford to patronize these places, these buildings served to isolate the community further.

The few buildings that would have received patronage from residents could be found on

Halsted Street. Halsted Street, the division between the Yards and the residential neighborhood, became a natural central business district. The area quickly filled with bars, restaurants, banks, stores, hotels, and boarding houses, such as a hotel known as the Farnsworth House, “a large wood-frame, low-cost hotel and restaurant, situated directly across Halsted Street from the

Transit House.”66 The built environment of Canaryville’s central business district before the

1930s was a unique Chicago enclave, given its proximity to the impressive buildings of the

Stockyards. The towering buildings serving as hotels, high-end restaurants, and entertainment venues gave Canaryville the feel of having its own downtown, almost a separate city from

Chicago. Designed to impress visitors and encourage financial investment, the Union Stockyards constructed a series of buildings along S. Halsted St. to house their guests and conduct business.

One of the first structures built was the Hough House, a hotel with 263 rooms. [Fig. 8]

Designed by Frederick Baumann and Edward Burling, the hotel was six stories high, with two wings, verandas, and porches. Made of Illinois white brick, a mansard roof, and complete with a cupola, the Hough House, later renamed the Transit House, took up 130-foot frontage on Halsted

Street, making an impressive statement regarding the status of the new Stockyards.67 By 1867, a

66 Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stockyard and the World It Made, 64. 67 Ibid., 38. 74 fine restaurant was included in the hotel with Irish waitresses who knew how to handle the rougher cattlemen coming off long drives in hopes that they might be attracted to the more

“civilized” Transit House over the less-reputable saloons and cheaper hotels lining Halsted.68

The most memorable hotel was the Stockyards Inn (1900-1977) a brick Tudor style complete with Pigeon house. [Fig. 9] The interior was reminiscent of a grand English hunting lodge.69 The Inn was a hotel, of course, but it also hosted important dinners and was widely regarded as the best steakhouse in town. The Sirloin Room even let customers brand their initials into a steak of their choosing.70 The Tudor style Inn gave the neighborhood an air of sophistication. A classy space where wealthy livestock dealers could make deals sheltered from the smells and sights of the actual Stockyards. Inns and hotels are places that welcome outsiders.

It keeps outsiders away from the filth of the streets and out of the low-quality boarding houses used by the working-classes. It also conveys a message to workers that they were less valued members of the community. The patrons of the Stockyards Inn, enjoying its finery, were more valued by their employers than those that produced the wealth.

The Stockyards were always a place of tourism and entertainment. In 1867, Sherman ordered the construction of Dexter Park racetrack for horse races and gambling [Fig. 10]. The eighty-acre racetrack included a gambling parlor for distinguished gentlemen, a grandstand for

1,500 spectators, and a smaller area reserved exclusively for 200 women.71 Later the Park became the first baseball diamond for what is now known as the Chicago Cubs. It also housed a

68 Ibid., 41. 69 John Drury, Dining in Chicago (New York: The John Day Company, 1931), 69-70. 70 Phil Vettel, “That Steak Mystique,” Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1991. 71 Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stockyard and the World It Made, 42. 75

Zoo of animal oddities like a six-legged pig and camel-backed horse, if the spectacle of the packing houses were not enough to draw crowds. 72

By the 1890s, the racetrack was expanded to accommodate and show the approximately

1,500 horses purchased daily at the Yards. The Pavilion had a five-hundred-foot-long track covered by an iron dome and skylight. The included amphitheater could seat 3,000 people who viewed the events on the track through electric lights.73 By 1905, the structure proved to be too small again and was rebuilt and renamed the Dexter Park Pavilion. The new amphitheater could fit 10,000 and was supposedly fireproof (even though it caught fire in 1897).74

When the Park burned down in 1934 (so much for fireproofing), the rebuilt structure became known as the International Amphitheater [Fig. 11]. Costing $1.3 million, it extended 534 feet along Halsted Street. It included seating for 10,000 in the arena and two new exhibit wings.75 Small glimpses of Art Deco details exist on the exterior above the main entrances. The building itself was quite imposing, spanning from roughly 42nd Street to 45th Street. As a livestock auction, the interior was bare-bones, emphasizing functionality and versatility over ornamentation. The Amphitheater outlasted the Yards as the largest public venue in the city until the opening of the McCormick Place in 1960. Perhaps most famously, it was the site of the 1952

Republican Party and 1960 and 1968 Democratic Party conventions, the first home of the

Chicago Bulls, and multiple music concerts before being torn down in 1999.76

Several other notable buildings were dedicated to the business of the Stockyards. Made of white Illinois brick, two stories, gabled attic, the Exchange Building overlooked the Stockyards

72 Ibid., 43. 73 Ibid., 95. 74 Ibid., 96. 75 Ibid., 148. 76 Ibid., 174-176. 76 from the corner of S. Morgan St. and W. Exchange Ave. [Fig. 12]. The first floor had company offices, a bank, sixty by eighty-foot exchange with tables and chairs, a bar, and an eating counter. A second floor accommodated dealers, commission firms, and telegraph.77 Expanded in 1873 and again in 1878 by Burnham and Root when a water tower and lookout platform to keep an eye on fires.78 The Exchange Building also housed the exclusive Saddle and Sirloin

Club, a private club for the principal packers, commission men, bankers, and officers of the

USY&T Company.79

At 4122 S. Union, one of the few buildings left from the Stockyards era is still standing.

The Chicago Telephone Company Stockyards Exchange was designed by Daniel Burnham in

1899-1900 to house the offices and infrastructure to operate the telephones. At the time of construction, the building would have been located at the apex of the railroad switches near Root and S. Halsted, a prime location considering the interdependent relationship between the two industries. Originally, the architectural drawings show an ornate neoclassical design that was revised for a simpler, Greek revival. [Fig. 13]

Drovers National Bank building located at S. Halsted St. and 42nd St. is Richardsonian

Romanesque inspired, an architectural style was popular in the 1880s and found elsewhere in the neighborhood, most notably with St. Gabriel church. [Fig. 14] This style was found from homes to institutions and conveyed an elevated, imposing status on the landscape. Drovers held the payroll of the stockyard workers and were used as a symbol of resistance when the Stockyards workers pulled out all of their money, so the Stockyards use the cash to pay strikebreakers. [Fig.

15] The bank was formed in 1883 and closed in 1978. At the time of its closure, it had $250

77 Wade, Chicago’s Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and the Environs in the Nineteenth Century, 53. 78 Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stockyard and the World It Made, 51. 79 Ibid., 97. 77 million in assets, $210 million in deposits, and managed $35 million in trust assets. It was the

14th largest bank in Chicago. Its failure was credited to bad real estate investments and Illinois banking laws that prohibited bank branches.80

The last remaining building of the Stockyards is the second bank used by the Stockyards, the Stockyards National Bank. [Fig. 16] Built-in 1925, it is a colonial revival inspired by

Independence Hall in Philadelphia. While in use, the building held the Stockyards National Bank and some offices for higher-level Stockyards administrators. Towards the end of its use, the building rented out office space to businesses not affiliated with the Yards. Today, there are rumors of the building being transformed into a Stockyards museum, but there does not seem to be enough money or community support to create one. Banks and financial institutions act as symbols of employers and extensions of capitalism. They can be sites of wealth, anxiety, or protest against employers, especially when the bank was founded for their interests.

One of the most important architectural symbols of the Stockyards was a decorative arch designed by Burnham and Root in 1879. [Fig. 17] Made of Lemont Limestone, the neo-Gothic arch was comprised of three arches, one large one over the railroad and two smaller pedestrian arches to the left and right. The center arch was almost 30 feet tall with a bust of a bull meant to represent founder John Sherman in the center.81

Of course, we cannot examine the role of the Stockyards on the landscape without looking at the infrastructure of the Stockyards, namely the animal pens and the railroads. The stockyards took up an impressive 450 acres of land, slaughtering no fewer than 13 million

80 “Drovers National Bank Declared Insolvent,” The New York Times, January 20, 1978, section D, 3. 81 Pacyga, Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stockyard and the World It Made, 51. 78 animals a year from 1893-1933.82 From 1865 to 1971, these two things took up a major proportion of space in the neighborhood and claimed the residents’ auditory and olfactory senses as well.

The presence of such grand structures next to small, over-crowded frame buildings provided a distinct visual representation of class lines in Canaryville. The workers of the

Stockyards would rarely enter these important structures, reinforcing class status. When these buildings started to disappear after World War II, so too did the visual reminders of working- class identity on the industrial landscape.

Meaning and Industrial Buildings

A newcomer to Canaryville might think the residents regularly think about the

Stockyards and the industrial park that borders the neighborhood. Even though the industrial park is no longer an imposing figure, it is certainly noticeable, so much so, that it seems inescapable that it would hold significant influence over the identity of the residents. However, when talking to residents about the Stockyards, very few people seemed to think about them at all. Those who could remember the Yards when they were productive shared a few antidotes.

Those who were a bit younger were more likely to share stories about the International

Amphitheater, which was active until the mid-1980s. I anticipated a community ready and eager to talk about the Stockyards. I falsely assumed our conversations would be dripping with pride over the history of Canaryville’s part in creating Chicago as the blue-collar “City of Big

Shoulders.” Instead, I encountered indifference.

82 Anne Bramley, “How Chicago’s Slaughterhouse Spectacles Paved The Way for Big Meat,” National Public Radio, December 3, 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/03/458314767/how-chicago-s- slaughterhouse-spectacles-paved-the-way-for-big-meat (accessed January 10, 2020). 79

In terms of identity formation, the vestiges of the Stockyards do not hold significant sway over the identity of Canaryville. As will be discussed later, the bigger influences of identity are their ethnic and racial heritage, the importance of family and community organization, and lastly, their built environment. Yet, we cannot ignore that the absence of industrial buildings, and the very real, built, and sensory environment it creates, has on class identity. Without the consistent reminder of the working-class, it allows the community to create an identity of their choosing.

Once free from the Stockyards, Canaryville found itself facing a new obstacle to middle-class respectability, the changing racial demographics slowly closing in on the neighborhood. This forced them to alter their landscape in opposition by erecting barriers and adopting white imagery.

Zoning

The closing of the stockyards in 1971 coincided with deindustrialization across the country. Industrial buildings went unused, leading to the second reason for why the stockyard buildings left, rezoning. Tearing down the buildings and rezoning the area for other uses seemed logical. Zoning affected all three landscapes but is most visible in the industrial landscape.

Zoning laws might be the source of why industrial buildings were removed on

Canaryville’s north end. Both Kenneth Jackson and Christine Hunter remind that cities established zoning laws to keep poverty out of certain areas. Lot sizes, residential building sizes, and business locations were all regulated by the upper and middle-classes to keep visible markers of the working and poorer classes out of their landscapes. Thus, the move of Stockyard related industries out of the residential areas could be a sign of the rising class status of Canaryville.

The most logical explanation would be the rezoning of Canaryville to separate residential from industrial uses to alleviate blight or potentially hazardous living conditions. Examination of historic zoning maps shows a slow transformation of zoning laws pushing commercial and 80 manufacturing out of the neighborhood. Further complicating documenting the transformation of the built environment is that the zoning of Canaryville conflicts with the identified usage of the structures on Sanborn Maps, making it difficult to know which source to trust. Examination of the zoning in Canaryville can provide us with a timeline of where and when residences were allowed to be built. In doing so, it further supports the argument that the most drastic changes in the built environment coincided with the greatest time of new construction in the neighborhood from 1950-1970 and again after 2000.

Chicago saw some inkling of land and real estate regulation beginning after the fire in

1871. The Great Fire gave the city a blank slate allowing planners to re-draw streets and parcels.

It also regulated the building codes for new structures, requiring them to be built of fire-resistant materials.83 By 1875, the city finally adopted regulations for general building type and construction.84 As they progressed, zoning laws also regulated what type of home could be built in a neighborhood and how they could be used. Zoning prevented homeowners from taking in boarders or from creating small rental properties out of garages.85

In Chicago, zoning really took off in 1923. The 1923 zoning ordinance, the product of almost five years of state and city legislative debate, resulted in only four classes of use districts, residential, apartment, commercial, manufacturing, and five-volume districts that regulated building height. The bare-bones zoning was the result of many businesses and landowners pushing back against regulation.86 The first zoning maps of Canaryville depict a neighborhood designed for a densely populated working-class neighborhood and industrial site. In 1923 and

83 Joseph P. Schwieterman and Dana M. Caspall, The Politics of Place: A History of Zoning in Chicago (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), 6. 84 Ibid., 6. 85 Christine Hunter, Ranches, Rowhouses, And Railroad Flats (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 53. 86 Schwieterman, The Politics of Place: A History of Zoning in Chicago, 12-22. 81

1927, the area from 43rd Place to 46th place; Emerald to Normal were zoned for apartments. [Fig.

18 and 19] The buildings facing Halsted with 43rd Street and 47th Street were all zoned for commercial, and the areas north of 43rd Street east of Normal and south of 47th Street were zoned manufacturing. The entire area from Halsted to Cottage Grove Avenue was zoned only for apartment occupancy, commercial, and manufacturing.

The Great Depression put additional strain on the housing stock in Chicago, particularly on the Southside. Here the problems of aging housing were now complemented with over- crowding and over-divided housing. The 1923 ordnance, which over-zoned areas for apartments and not enough single-family homes, created density issues.87 The growing problems resulted in a re-surveying of the city to identify areas needing remediation.

In 1938, the area of Canaryville was so densely populated and rundown it earned a ranking of Class D by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), meaning the area was redlined from receiving any financial assistance, and the FHA would not issue mortgages of any kind. 88

[Fig. 20] In 1942, the Chicago Planning Commission classified the area as “blighted” and slated for redevelopment, meaning the entirety of Canaryville fell under the 7.8 percent of single- family homes and 19.8 percent of apartments city-wide as inadequate.89 [Fig. 21] In 1949, a building code revision attempted to correct many of the problems with unsafe housing.

However, Chicago housing codes were rarely enforced and often operated by corruptible agencies. Additionally, the 1949 housing code was not retroactive, meaning that older homes did not need to be brought up to code. When a code violation was discovered, it rarely resulted in

87 Ibid., 30. 88 Chicago Plan Commission, “Mortgage Risk Classified by Districts,” https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/collections/maps/chigov/ 89 Chicago Housing Authority “Types of Planning Areas in Chicago,” 1938 https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/lib/public/full_screen.html?https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/collections/maps/chigov/G 4104-C6G45-1942-C51/ and Amanda I. Seligman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 75. 82 legal punishment for the owner, and by the early 1950s, critics argued the housing codes were essentially useless.

The 1940s also distinguished a change in the industrial footprint of the neighborhood. By

1942, the manufacturing districts started to shrink. Duplex zoning expanded as far north as Root, east to the railroad. The 1942 zoning changes diversified housing for differences between different types of residences (family, duplex, group homes, and apartments), specialty shops, businesses, commercial, manufacturing, and industrial. [Fig. 22] Altering the density of the residential neighborhood from apartment to duplex influenced the population density of the area.

Lower density leads to a more suburban-like neighborhood. We know that the census saw a decline from 10,564 people in 1920 to 9,375 in 1950. It also set the tone for the built environment until 1957 when the area was opened to homes of all types.

The code was rewritten and finally enforced in 1957, at the insistence of newly elected mayor Richard J. Daley. 90 Rezoning opened the neighborhood to all residential homes and expanded the areas open to dwellings, most notably along 43rd Street. [Fig. 23] Of course, there were dwellings already grandfathered in, but opening the area along 43rd, allowed for newer structures to be built. Predominately, single-family, one and two-storied, brick homes filled up these spaces.

Zoning changes in 1957 also saw the slow change of the industrial districts north of Root.

First, the area moved from a MI-2 zoning “restricted manufacturing,” to CI-5 “retail storefronts.”

Areas along Halsted also became more diversified, moving from strictly commercial to B5-2

“general service districts,” to B4-2 “restricted service districts,” CI-2 “restricted commercial

90 Seligman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side, 43-49. 83 districts,” allowing for apartment living above storefronts and C2-2 “general commercial districts,” or bigger commercial endeavors that might require parking.

After 1957, zoning changes were relatively minute, with only a few changes of blocks of businesses to accommodate different square footages for commercial, manufacturing, and businesses. Beginning in 1997, however, we see a stronger push of residential zoning north of

Root. [Fig. 24] Most likely, the rezoning was done on the request of residential developers, as many of the homes in these areas are new. Building new homes in areas zoned for industrial manufacturing signifies two things: first, there is a distinctive erasure of the neighborhood’s working-class past stemming from the movement of stockyard-related businesses. Secondly, that manufacturing and the products produced in the area now innocuous enough to invite nearby residences. Changing the zoning laws in 1957 to exclude manufacturing businesses essentially pushed any reminders of a working-class identity out of the neighborhood and allowed the area to move along with other formerly working-class Americans into post-war middle-class

America.

Commercial Landscape Industrial and residential landscapes are the most prominent visible features of

Canaryville’s built environment. Commercial buildings and their obvious absence comprise the other third of Canaryville’s built environment. However, contested landscape are still vital representations of middle-class landscape. The idealized middle-class landscape can be found outside of a residential setting. For example, Miles Orvell examines the importance of Main

Street as a symbol of American culture and society.91 Viewing Main Street as both a physical space and ideology, he explores the ways in which the small American town became a socially

91 Miles Orvell, The Death and Life of Main Street: Small Towns in American Memory, Space, and Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 1. 84 constructed space and idea.92 Relying on an analysis of “Main Street” through cultural outputs like literature, photography, film, and urban planning, Orvell views the discourse of Main Street through social and political terminology, physicality, and symbolic representations. He demonstrates that the meaning of Main Street changes depending on the society using it.

According to Orvell, the simulacra of Main Street, that is, the ideal American place has become a physical place.

Orvell’s work moves well beyond the concept of Main Street and discusses the significant changes in urban and suburban development in the twentieth century and how the idealized “small town” influenced those changes. Case in point, his discussion about the move to create “New City communities” in urban spaces post 1980s. These New Cities are the antithesis of postwar, government-sponsored housing developments. Instead of skyscrapers trying to maximize occupancy, these housing developments are modeled after the suburban ideal.

They are often single-family homes or townhomes with yards and fences. Designed simply to be attractive to potential occupants, these areas often lack areas like a “Main Street,” and with it, they have no easy access to retail centers or places for the community.93 The isolation creates both a protective barrier from outsiders and makes it difficult to integrate into the larger city.

Canaryville, while not a state-sponsored New City, mimics the same principals. There is no retail corridor in the neighborhood, and there are very few places for community interaction

(two parks, two churches, and one library, to be exact). This is an interesting concept to consider given that Canaryville originally had a Main Street with Halsted or 43rd Street, but as it developed into an urban suburb, it moved towards a New City model.

92 Ibid., 3. 93 Ibid., 225. 85

Historically, Canaryville had three primary commercial districts, South Halsted Street,

West 43rd Street, and West 47th Street. [Table 4] During the height of the Stockyards, these areas were vibrant districts serving residents and visitors. But their decline demonstrates a move from a historic Canaryville acting as a separate city to one taking on the mantel of an urban suburb.

As Dolores Hayden argues, suburban areas highly segregate their commercial districts from residential. Using commercial districts as a barometer of a changing neighborhood, we can also evaluate historical photographs, maps, and city directories to show the neighborhood moving from a bustling neighborhood in a walking city to an insular urban suburb.

Commercial Streets in Detail Sanborn maps show businesses, dwellings, and vacant lots along Halsted Street remained relatively steady from 1895-1950. The city directory shows businesses suffered from 1928 to the postwar period. In 1928, city directories Canaryville boasted roughly 305 businesses ranging from manufacturing, restaurants, dry goods, groceries, banks, hotels, and entertainment. By 1952 their numbers had declined to only 236. Admittedly, the 1952 numbers are not as accurate as of the 1928 calculations, given that the 1952 directory is more abbreviated than its predecessor.

The discrepancy of almost 100 more listed businesses is attributed to several businesses occupying the same commercial space. Sanborn maps count the buildings, not the actual tenants.

Additionally, Oral history accounts and built environment evidence describes small commercial endeavors within the neighborhood. Corner stores and taverns were the most common. These are also unmarked on Sanborn maps.

By the early 1900s, historical photos and Sanborn maps show a Halsted Street lined with substantial buildings made of stone, demonstrating the permanence and longevity of

Canaryville’s business district. Gone were the quick wood-frame cottages and cabbage patches.

In their place, three-story stone dry goods stores, hotels, and prominent banks, such as the 86

Drover’s Bank and Amity Federal Savings and Loan, paved sidewalks and streets, streetcars all existed under a web of telegraph wires. [Fig. 25]

After the close of the stockyards, the buildings across the street started to disappear slowly. Some structures, particularly those tied to financial aspects of the Stockyards, such as the

Stockyard Bank or the Drover’s Hotel, had longevity. Others were likely destroyed in a 1934 fire. By the 1950s, photos show Halsted with growing vacant lots, particularly at 43rd Street, where the International Amphitheater needed additional parking. The remaining buildings near the Amphitheater advertise themselves as hotels and rooms for let. The Amphitheater, once used for livestock shows, became a primary source of economy for the neighborhood. It was one of the few places in Canaryville left that catered to outsiders. [Fig. 26, 27, 28] This shows again that Canaryville pulled away from economic autonomy and moved towards the City as a whole.

It relied less on the Stockyards and rebuilt itself as an isolated neighborhood, possibly to protect itself from the changing dynamics.

An explanation for the decline in businesses could be the presence of the Great

Depression and then the restricted small business economics of WWII. While this most likely played a small factor in some decline, we know from census data that the median income of

Canaryville was roughly stable during the three decades, most likely due to the financial influence of the Stockyards. Furthermore, by 1952, the U.S. economy exceeded the pre- depression numbers, both of which mean the decline is likely a result of something else.

Drastic changes in technology likely played a key role in the decline. For example, there was less of a call for local granaries and farriers in 1952. On the flip side, we see a rise in taverns and other drinking establishments by 1952, a stark comparison to 1928 when prohibition forced drinking underground. Another possible explanation could be the increase of Canaryville 87 residents leaving the neighborhood for their purchasing needs. Large retail chains grew dramatically post 1950, driving down prices and putting smaller stores out of business. The time period from the 1920s and 1950s also saw the rise in regional, nationwide chain stores, which could have hurt the bottom line for local businesses in the neighborhood.94

Collectively, the decline in businesses predating the close of the Stockyards in 1971 demonstrates a neighborhood that was slowly becoming less dependent on the Stockyards and the neighborhood for their needs. Simultaneously, the decline also demonstrates a neighborhood slowly becoming more insular. Having fewer businesses oriented towards hospitality (hotels, restaurants, entertainment) shows a neighborhood less open to outsiders.

Beginning in the 1980s, most of the remaining commercial structures were torn down.

Those that survived did not change hands more than a few times in the last 40 years. The vacant lots are privately owned, indicating that the owners either have plans for future development, sale, or find value in the land as is. Private ownership also indicates that the neighborhood never found itself in a position where land needed to be repossessed by the City, a high indicator of poverty. It also did not find a developer with the right price to make the owner sell, showing the area’s perceived lack of profitability. Additionally, personal accounts demonstrate the community strongly discouraged the development of multi-use buildings and rental apartments.95

Discouraging this type of commercial development shows a community content with the status quo and wary of outsiders. Tearing down the taverns and businesses on S. Halsted and

94 Lizbeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 95 Knowledge regarding discouraging commercial and multi-use buildings came from off-the-record conversations at CAPS meetings with residents, the CAPS agenda, the alderman’s office (who would not consent to a formal interview) and casual conversations with oral history participants. 88 preventing development of new multi-use structures cleared out one of the last visible vestiges of the working-class.

Today, S. Halsted is primarily vacant. [Fig. 29, 30] Coupled with the former entrance of the stockyards, preserved for its historical importance, the street gives a clear visible representation that the stockyards (even though still a part of a light industrial complex) are no longer an active influence in the built environment or class identity of Canaryville. Instead, what is visible are the new standards of middle-class identities in Canaryville. Rows of two-story single-family homes with garages, presumably built by the same developer (given their shared age and similar appearance), the vacant lots on Halsted serve as a visual buffer. On one side, the neighborhood’s past, the other, the future.

As the second primary business corridor, 43rd Street saw a dramatic change from 1895 to the present. Indicated by Sanborn maps, 43rd originally served an important commercial purpose.

Dropping from 109 businesses to 47 and 31 dwellings to 8 between 1895 and 1925, the area became much less dense in thirty years. According to oral histories and city guides, 43rd Street held the businesses geared more towards the everyday life of Canaryville residents, such as corner stores, hardware stores, and butchers. In contrast, Halsted often found itself populated with businesses designed to attract and entertain stockyard workers or stockyard related. The decline of density in the business districts harkens back to a gradual guarding of the neighborhood. Today, when entering the neighborhood by 43rd St, first impressions indicate a high traffic residential street, not a business corridor. This change means that the first impression newcomers have upon entering the neighborhood is that of a residential neighborhood without anything to offer outsiders. 89

The last primary business area, 47th Street, is the one currently active commercial area.

Most of the businesses within the boundaries of Canaryville are not retail oriented. Instead, they are mechanics, lumberyards, tire shops, and store fronts used occasionally. The closest shopping district to Canaryville is tucked away in Back of the Yards on 47th and S. Ashland, almost too far to walk, necessitating the use of public transportation or a car. There is only one convenience store, a Walgreens, in Canaryville, at the far south end, at Halsted and 47th, and roughly four eating establishments within Canaryville proper. Even the closest retail shops to Canaryville are on the west side of Halsted and 47th Street, technically in Back of the Yards. Visible from

Canaryville, but not intruding on the neighborhood. Forty-Seventh Street’s continued dominance in commercial buildings is interesting when considering that it is the boundary of

Canaryville. Thus, for Canaryville residents, their shopping needs are met without the perceived risk of interloping outsiders.

A fourth place for commercial activity is spread out into the residential areas. Like many walking cities, Chicago neighborhoods had many corner stores. Historically, these shops would sell all types of goods, part grocery, part pharmacy, part dry goods store. Often, owners- operators would live in the same building or rent a small apartment above. There are no corner stores in Canaryville today. Many of these buildings were turned into multi-unit structures, and now, have been turned into single-family homes. Several former commercial buildings used to have multi-units included (either top or rear) that have been renovated into single-family homes.

These corner stores (as most of them are on corners and did hold that function) have been adopted and erased away. The suburban landscape does not have corner stores, and neither should the urban suburb. [Fig. 31] 90

Of course, the three landscapes frequently overlap. The commercial landscape benefited from the industrial, same as residential. A noticeable place of this intersection can be found in the types of leisure the working-class patronized around Canaryville. The commercial land is where workers make their biggest impression. They patron businesses over others, participate in community organizations, in their children’s education, and rent and own the homes nearby.

They participate in leisure activities and create spaces for them. Leisure is an important facet of understanding the attributes of class. How we choose to relax, what organizations we participate in, and what relationships we develop all reflect how we see ourselves in the greater context of society. As Roy Rosenzweig sees it, the inclusion of leisure contributes to a comprehensive history of the labor class and helps answer questions regarding values, morals, traditions, and evolution of the working-class. As such, the spaces and structures created to spend that leisure and community-building are equally important to this picture.

For Canaryville and other working-class landscapes, an important space for leisure was the saloon. The invention of the “saloon” was a response to the change in the structure of the worker in the Antebellum Era, moving from a more relaxed, social atmosphere (which often involved copious amounts of drinking) to one influenced by increasing regimentation of the

Industrial Revolution – which forbade drinking on the job and demanded efficiency. Thus, the

American saloon came into being, giving the workers a place to socialize and relax when off the clock.96

The consumption of alcohol became a visible class divider. By the 1860s, “respectable” homes no longer served alcohol to their guests, an effect of the temperance movement which began 40 years earlier. The working-class, however, stayed away from the temperance

96 Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in An Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 35-36. 91 movement, while their employers increasingly tried to regulate when and where their employees could drink through the Gilded Age. As Rosenzweig points out, the increasing demands for a

10-hour workday in the Antebellum Era coincide with the restrictions employers put on alcohol consumption during the workday. The less opportunity there was for drinking and socializing on the job (providing some very much needed rest for the strenuous jobs performed), the louder the cries were for reduced working hours. 97

Saloons “grew out of the subordination of the working-class,” providing additional income and alternative spaces for workers to spend their time and pay. While all classes imbibed, going to a saloon was a distinctively working-class attribute.98 Saloons were places where workers could get a hot lunch, cash a check, place a bet on a local sporting event, and form a community.

In Canaryville, most accounts recall bars lined up along S. Halsted St, ready to help the

Stockyard workers unwind before going home. Informal taverns could also be found scattered across the neighborhood, and each couple of blocks had their own local tavern to patron. When the neighborhood said no more to drunken displays on the street and closed the saloons, it is yet another example of the turn to the suburban imagery. Suburbs do not have neighborhood saloons among single-family homes, and they no longer found a welcome in Canaryville once the industrial landscape was erased.

Leisure appeared in other ways. Sanborn maps mark more than one movie palace and dance hall. In the early days, Dexter Park held horse races. The Intternational Amphitheater continued well beyond the Stockyards. It became a salesfloor, political arena, sports arena, concert venue, community hall, disco, and a roller-skating rink. The International Amphitheater

97 Ibid., 36-39. 98 Ibid., 49-53. 92 was a lasting link between international and commercial landscapes. In the end, the separation of leisure from residential created more division from urban life.

Meaning and Commercial Districts

Commercial buildings play a unique role in the landscape of a neighborhood. They are sites of public interaction for the residents of the community. Commercial and retail locations act as a combination of both public and private land. Typically, they are open to the public, but they also allow the government to take a step back in the burden of regulation. A mall or department store are private entities that rely on private funds for maintenance and security.

Stores can refuse service to individuals (within reason) or make them very uncomfortable for

“undesirables.”99 Often, the commercial landscape becomes the location where contested landscapes are visible. Businesses cater to a certain clientele, reject others, and relay to the public what type of area the neighborhood is.

They are also the motivation for outsiders to enter the neighborhood. The presence and type of commercial structures also convey different messages. Often, those messages relate to class identity. For example, a neighborhood with high-end boutiques sends a message of upper- class homes and residents. In contrast, the commercial districts of Canaryville, populated with light industrial businesses and adjacent big box stores, convey one of a working-class.

When, as the evidence below demonstrates, residents must leave their neighborhood for shopping, it allows them to adopt the class identity of wherever they chose. Canaryville residents can choose the working-class shopping of nearby Back of the Yards, the upper-class shopping of downtown Michigan Avenue, or the middle-class shopping that a short journey to

99 The historical basis of the conflict of commercial spaces is heavily documented by Lizabeth Cohen in A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, 286-289. Cohen’s evidentiary support confirm the accusations of Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, as to the problems that would arise if walking cities were replaced by suburban planning ideals. 93 the malls of the suburbs provides. Consumption is conspicuous and performative and removing that performance from the shadows of a working-class past allows for further dissociation with class identity.100

The lack of commercial districts sends different messages. Possibly the neighborhood is impoverished, strictly residential, or a place that subtly conveys “no trespassing” to visitors.

Closing stores can also be an effective segregation tactic. Cohen notes that between 1964 and

1992, all of the department stores and other retail locations in Newark, NJ, closed.101 The stores, instead of staying in urban centers to cater to new clientele, moved out to the suburbs following the dollars of white customers. Minorities in urban centers often do not have the mobility to shop outside of the city. Therefore, moving commercial districts outside of Canaryville creates an extra barrier and deterrent for any future visitor or resident.

In the transformation of the built environment of Canaryville to urban suburb, a business district on Halsted, 43rd, and 47th would be too close to the residential districts to mimic the suburban landscape. Additionally, many buildings formerly zoned commercial or mixed-use

(typically commercial on the first floor, residency on second) were demolished in the 1950s and replaced by single-family homes. When applying Hayden’s theories of suburban structure, where commercial districts are far removed from residential, the move to the ideal middle-class landscape is visible.

Residential Landscape

The most visible landscape in Canaryville is residential. It is also the key characteristic comprising the urban suburb. To evaluate the residential landscape, I relied on Sanborn maps,

100 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, reissue ed. (Oxford University Press, 2007); Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, 2nd ed. (Berkley: University of California Press, 1999). 101 Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, 288. 94 tax records, visual analysis, and quantitative recordings. Together, these methods provide images of Canaryville’s historical and present-day residential landscapes. It shows how the homes changed and how, when given the opportunity, residents and developers reclaimed the industrial and commercial landscape to embrace the triple dream.

Piercing together the historic residential landscape requires us to evaluate change based on density (number of buildings and people), quality of structures, and architectural styles. The evidence shows Canaryville becoming less dense, less business-oriented, and in some respects, less diverse neighborhood as the Stockyards hit their peak before the post-World War II decline.

First, let us look at the changes in density, where the transition to urban suburb began with the decline in the number of all structures. [Table 5] As discussed in Chapter 1, early

Canaryville was a densely populated, unsanitary, industrial neighborhood growing uncontrolled in the absence of government regulation. The density of structures grew from 1895 to 1925.

Dwellings decreased, but multi-units and overall structures increased by 272. The classification of dwellings versus multi-units is complicated. We do not know from Sanborn maps exactly how many people lived in a “dwelling.” What we do know is that the cartographers made a specific, physical distinction between a “dwelling” and a “multi-family” unit. Most likely, a designated multi-family unit would be an apartment building with more than three units or a boarding house. Unless indicated with signage, it is unlikely Sanborn cartographers would know if a structure was a private residence turned boarding house. When need and laws regulating boarding houses and Single Room Occupancy apartments and hotels (SROs), we then see an uptick in formal multi-unit homes.

The increase in multi-unit structures could also indicate an increase in SROs. SROs were a popular alternative to boarding houses beginning in the early 1900s and lasting until 95 today.102 At the height of SROs, patrons could be anyone from a young person who just moved to the city, a student, a low wage worker, to an elderly person. Beginning in the 1960s, SROs tended to get a reputation of catering only to a rough crowd.103 One resident recalls, “…the rooming houses that we used to have? A lot were on Emerald Ave and Halsted because those were closest to the Yards. Those were places that in the 50s and 60s, they had turned kind of derelict. You really didn't want to go around those.”104

City directories did record the number of families. Documented buildings accommodated more families in 1928 than in 1952. For example, in 1928, on 42nd St, 36 structures held more than one family.105 According to Sanborn maps, the structures in this area were typically two-story wood-frame dwellings, meaning most structures were divided up into apartments or duplexes. By 1952, however, there were only 23 structures in total, with fewer than five holding more than one family.106

Sanborn maps are great records of landscapes, however, there are some drawbacks. To some degree Sanborn maps can indicate architectural style, primarily in size. At the time of their creation, the Sanborn Company color-coded their maps to reflect building materials.

Unfortunately, many of these colored maps were digitized in black and white, including those of

Canaryville. For the Sanborn maps, the number of multi-units increased from 1925 to 1950, arguably the time period when Canaryville experienced the most recorded blight. This increase likely resulted from the continued occupation of derelict homes and other single-family homes

102 SROs are a popular alternative to modern-day demographics of people who tend to be homeless (veterans, the mentally ill, or those with substance abuse problems). However, in Chicago, the last remnants of SROs are being sold to luxury developers to be remade into luxury SROs complete with amenities like exercise rooms, common kitchens, and concierge-like services – all for a luxury price. 103 Paul Groth, Living Downtown The History of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkley: University of California Press, 1994). 104 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 105 R. L. Polk & Co., Polk’s Chicago City Directory 1928. 106 R. L. Polk & Co., Polk’s Chicago City Directory 1952. 96 divided up into apartments. The 2016 numbers, taken from tax records are more detailed and exacting due to the assessor having additional information of the property from either building permits or inspections.

Setting aside the difficulties of reconstructing a neighborhood using limited resources, we can make several strong assumptions regarding the early architecture of Canaryville’s dwellings.

First, the majority would have been wood balloon frame structures, given their relative ease in construction and cost-savings.107 Additionally, while the rest of Chicago-proper mandated buildings of stronger, fireproof materials, suburban Town of Lake (Canaryville) was excluded from these building codes and after annexation the older structures were grandfathered in.

Secondly, the wood frame homes were overwhelmingly two-story. For example, in 1895, 59% of the wooden structures recorded were two-story.108 Lastly, almost all the dwellings had a stone or brick foundation or at least gave the appearance of one.109 This might seem unusual given the lack of financing construction of these homes had, but when thinking back to the physical difficulties of living in Chicago, essentially a swamp, strong foundations were essential.

Given that we know the majority of Canaryville’s dwellings were, and still are, frame structures, it behooves us to remember that many of the structures were most likely built without regard to building codes. Chicago’s first building codes started in 1890 but were not generally enforced until 1957. Additions and modifications would have been ad hoc and largely completed by the homeowner, not a professional. Understanding what these modifications were and the purpose they served also provide a challenge to analysis. First, they are not reflected in

107 Bigott, From Cottage to Bungalow, 19. 108 Sanborn Map Company. Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, 1895, 1925, 1925-1950. New York: Sanborn Map & Publishing Co, 1895, 1925, 1925-1950 "Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps". https://www.chipublib.org/chicago-sanborn- maps-index/ (accessed February 2016). 109 Oral histories discuss older homes not having a full foundation or footings discovered only because of fires or other renovations. 97 the historical record. It is unlikely that additions would have been caught by Sanborn cartographers, given that they only documented the residential areas every 25-40 years. Also, because these additions would have been illegal, documentation through permits and tax records are unlikely. Secondly, visual analysis to document these types of additions is also difficult, as many of them happen in the rear of the buildings. Without access by the owners, an observer from the street may never notice an addition.

Housing

Evaluation of historical landscapes shows that in all three categories, the number of almost all types of structures were reduced by half. The number of commercial, housing, and vacant lots all significantly decreased, leaving an environment reminiscent of a suburb, not a neighborhood located five miles south of Chicago’s downtown. As discussed, the blighted classifications and enforcement of zoning law in 1957 created a new landscape. The blighted classification and weaker housing codes explain why the number of new homes counted by the census was remarkably higher in the 1950s and 1960s. This also means that the older homes visible today are of a high enough standard to pass inspection, or at the very least, cost-effective enough to warrant bringing to code. It also means that areas were demolished, allowing for newer forms of architecture to take their place. These newer forms of design often reflected the popularized suburban styles of ranch and bungalow homes, which fit best on smaller Chicago lots.110

Of course, this observation assumes the autonomy of the residents when building structures. Yet, we know from zoning maps that most homes in Canaryville were zoned for multi-occupancy only. This knowledge does not change the perceptions and influence of the

110 James Jacobs, Detached America: Building Houses in Postwar Suburbia (Richmond: University of Virginia Press, 2015). 98 residential on the casual observer or even a resident, as he or she is unlikely to know the historic building restrictions in the neighborhood. When they see newer buildings reflecting middle- class cues, the visual timeline shows one progressing to a middle-class urban suburb. As more homes in Canaryville are torn down, remodeled, and newly constructed, the neighborhood continues to progress to the urban suburb.

A key component of Canaryville’s built environment are homes. Homes have been the vehicle to the middle-class since the Victorian era. Buying a home in a suburb, away from the ethnic congestion of urban cities was a part of a newer trend in achieving middle-class status, according to Lizbeth Cohen. The new “mass-consumption based middle-class” viewed homeownership as the first step in class ascension.111 Moving to the suburbs not only distanced aspiring working-class whites from their pasts, it also set up a clear line of demarcation. In the post-war years, where you lived became an important indication of class membership. Moving to the suburbs had a higher price tag than living in an apartment in the city, a clear indication of middle-class mobility. The neighborhood one chose to live in was also an indicator of class status as the postwar housing market became “increasingly segmented.”112 Thus when some residents of Canaryville started to alter the physical environment in the 1950s to emulate the more middle-class areas of Chicagoland, it put the neighborhood on a path to middle-class identity, even if it conflicted with a working-class reality.

One of the cultural changes allowing residents to begin identifying as middle-class was the ability to purchase a home. Examination of housing statistics regarding ownership, value, and quality also shows a neighborhood equitable to the city and the nation. Homeownership rates for Canaryville are slightly higher than the city. These numbers strongly underscore the high

111 Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, 196. 112 Ibid., 202. 99 social value placed on homeownership among members of historically working-class, ethnic, and immigrant groups. The importance of homeownership in neighborhoods such as Canaryville and

Back of the Yards is well documented back to the early 1900s by sociologists Breckenridge and

Abbott as a method of earning additional income and financial security. This continues to be a trend, as discussed by Becky Nicolaides in My Blue Heaven and Maria Kefalas in Working-class

Heroes.113 Today, oral histories relate the passing of homes between family members, creating an easier pathway to homeownership for Canaryville residents.

When examining the median value of homes in Canaryville compared to Chicago, we see values usually 20-40% lower, meaning that homeownership is more affordable than elsewhere in the city. [Table 6] Given the long history of homeownership in Canaryville and the price of owning a home, it would be more surprising to find census data that shows homeownership rates lower than the city average.

When compared to the drastic decline of dilapidated homes, that is, homes without indoor plumbing, we see a significant change in the way the neighborhood appeared to the residents and outsiders. 114 Gone were the pre-war homes reminiscent of the over-crowded industrial neighborhood with a poor-living standard of working for the stockyard. Here were homes that mirrored the suburbs' sanitized cleanliness and the ideal living situation for middle-class

Americans.

After WWII, the need for new housing was more than apparent. Unfortunately, for urban

Chicago, the new housing was built on the city's outskirts in the first ring of suburbs. By 1960,

113 Maria Kefalas, Working-class Heros: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003) 114 Throughout the 60 years analyzed of census records, what qualified a home for “dilapidated” status changed dramatically. For example, in the 1940s, a home might be considered dilapidated in Chicago if it did not have access to plumbing or indoor kitchen facilities. By 2000, a home could be considered subpar if it did not have a refrigerator. For consistency, I consider homes without working plumbing to be “dilapidated.” 100

688,222 new housing units were erected in the Chicago area, with roughly 76% being single- family homes.115 New structures in the city were primarily funded through government programs.116 The racial and class lines of these building efforts were clear cut. They benefited white upper-class and upwardly mobile individuals but made little attempt to correct the housing issues for poor whites and non-white groups.117 The percent of owner-occupied to total dwellings follows a logical path if we presume the key factor many Americans attribute to middle-class identity is homeownership.

The neighborhood underwent significant change in housing stock between 1960 and

2000. For example, residents tore down 596 homes between 1960 and 1990, replacing them with only 499 new homes, the most significant new home contributions were between 1950 and 1960 with 208. Replacement of housing stock was in sore need by 1950 as census data shows no new homes, but a housing stock that was overwhelmingly built pre-1919 (2,075) and only 25 new homes built between 1920-1939. [Table 7] By 1990, the overall housing stock declined. Gone were the dilapidated buildings and multi-unit homes. They were replaced with vacant lots and single-family homes. What we see in 1990 is an uptick of owner-occupied homes, a 50% contrast to the steady decline beginning 1950. By 2010 there is another a decline of owner- occupied homes. Speculative causes for the decline may be the 2008 real estate foreclosure crisis, which caused some to lose their homes, but others to buy the homes for cheaper rental investments.

115 Arnold R. Hirsch, Making The Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 27. 116 Ibid., 28. 117 Ibid. 101

Homes and Fieldwork

To evaluate the modern residential landscape, from June to November 2016, I surveyed

Canaryville by foot, noting the property type, material, and stories. The method of survey was completely visual, meaning there will be inaccuracies. For example, a two-story structure could be a single-family home, a duplex, or apartments. To respect privacy and not violate trespassing laws, I only viewed homes from the sidewalk. If there were three or more mailboxes or utility meters easily visible, the property was noted as an apartment building. However, the exact number of units or building materials is not always visible, leaving room for error.

Except, misclassifications like these are not errors. Instead, they are a truer representation of the perception of built environment. When entering or exiting a built environment, how many times do people walk the perimeter of each building or explore the backyard before consciously assessing their opinions of the structure’s influence? Instead, the influence of the built environment happens on both the conscious and subconscious levels.

While not as unperceivable as affect, the built environment leaves an impression on all those who pass through it. The effect of the built environment, for lack of a better phrase, leaves a passerby with a feeling that an area is safe or unsafe, wealthy or poor. Yes, other indicators in the built environment are acknowledged on the conscious and unconscious levels, such as a wealthy neighborhood having massive homes and a poor neighborhood full of derelict buildings. But in the “average” neighborhood like Canaryville, it is the subconscious cues that send a stronger message of what class of person lives there. In this respect, what I recorded during my fieldwork, while it takes note of conscious evaluation, also has the subconscious element. I only recorded that which was quickly visible.

How I, an outsider, classify and perceive the residential landscape better demonstrates the subtle cues the built environment gives its residents than tax records or residents’ insider 102 knowledge. Because each day when a resident steps outside their front door, their subconscious sees an apartment building or a single-family home and their brain does not take the time to correct the subconscious. The impression that the building across the street gives forms how the neighbor sees their neighborhood and themselves more so than conscious knowledge.

These results show a neighborhood overwhelmingly constructed of two-story wood duplexes and two-story brick single-family homes. [Tables 8, 9, 10, 11] Together, the two most prevalent building types present a neighborhood with working-class roots and middle-class aspirations. Yet, when considering the next three most frequent housing types are single-family homes totaling 689, roughly 53 percent of the 1,288 individual housing units counted, the feeling of the neighborhood changes. Working-class structures, duplexes, apartments, and mixed commercial and residential homes total only 412, or 32 percent.118

These two housing types provide an almost conflicting appearance of the neighborhood.

A wood-frame duplex signals a neighborhood with residents earning working-class wages. A community requiring income-earning properties with a lower cost construction material results in lower market values. Frame duplexes are also among the oldest in the neighborhood likely built after the Chicago Fire, but before building codes began to be enforced in the 1920s.

The second most frequent housing type is a two-story, single-family brick home. These structures are a mixture of new and old construction. The majority of the 1-1.5 story brick structures appear to be built during the 1950s boom, but almost all of the newest constructions appear to be two-story brick homes. The use of brick in Chicago does not always indicate middle-class status as it might elsewhere in the United States. Due to the city’s building codes, brick is the most cost-effective fireproof building material.

118 The remaining structures total 15% 103

Furthermore, with land space at a premium, a developer might find using any other building material a waste of effort, especially when homebuyers in Chicago come to expect masonry. Given these exceptions, it is difficult to link a brick single-family home with middle- class occupants automatically. Yet, the reputation of these types of structures as a hallmark of the middle-class are still prevalent and influence the appearance of the built environment as one belonging to a middle-class neighborhood.

Conclusion

The meaning behind home structure and homeownership is discussed in detail in the next chapter. As the most visible aspect of the urban suburb the “home” plays a performative role, adopting certain suburban attributes, eschewing others. It relies on cultural perceptions of what the suburbs look like, and the meaning the geographic space of “suburb” plays in American history. This chapter details the physical attributes of the three landscapes of Canaryville, industrial, commercial, and residential. It shows how those landscapes originated and changed over Canaryville’s 250 year history. It also provides context as to some of the reasons and motivations behind the changes in the landscapes. Collectively, it provides a foundation for understanding the contested landscapes of race, class, and ethnicity when we move to the evaluation and meaning behind Canaryville’s turn to urban suburb.

104

CHAPTER 3. PERFORMING THE URBAN SUBURB Evaluating geographical space, like the industrial, commercial, and residential landscapes, in its fullest sense happens when we move beyond its physical aspects. This chapter takes note of more subtle suburban attributes, such as yards, vacant lots, and green space, that comprise more than physical spaces but rise into the cultural imaginary. These features send unstated visual cues. They provide a form of suburban affect, subconsciously perceptible, but consciously unacknowledged. Again, relying on visual analysis, I document numerous examples of such “suburban” attributes throughout Canaryville. These examples isolate where Canaryville performs the urban suburb.

To place such attributes in context, this chapter begins by looking at the two scholarly areas that form the foundation of how an urban suburb could exist, suburban history and the history of the urban crisis. It then discusses theories surrounding performativity of space. It concludes with providing examples of ‘urban suburban’ performativity. The chapter helps us understand how the physical landscape contains the contested landscapes of race, ethnicity, and class, and shows what a culturally constructed “white” suburb is and how it can be reproduced to convey a white, middle-class identity.

What Suburbs Look Like

To understand how Canaryville became an urban suburb, we have to examine what a suburb has been culturally constructed to ‘look like’ and the meaning of the connection between suburb and middle-class. How did Americans come to understand what a “suburb" looks like and what type of people live there? Many individuals across disciplines try to answer this question, the historiography of which is worthy of review. Outlined below are some works that explore how America formulated the ideal American suburban landscape. 105

In American Dreamscape, Tom Martinson identifies three major types of suburbs; suburbs developed before World War II, suburbs developed after World War II, and small towns that became suburbs as the nearest city grew.1 Among those typologies also includes mythology of the type of suburban resident, which Martinson suggests falls into the American mythos of

Yeoman and Gentry. Most suburban homeowners, he argues, are yeoman, a "honest, hard- working, resourceful, and practical individual... focus[ed] on his own home and family and upon his immediate community."2 Furthermore, a traditional suburban state of mind can be characterized by a "minimal attachment to downtown, and a healthy distrust of political authority and centralization."3 Martinson argues for a distinction between suburban residents and types indicated that suburbs in the Northeast are filled more with the urban gentry and in the Midwest with the middle-class yeoman. He also notes that many early neighborhoods in cities spread to the far reaches of the city to achieve a “barren landscape” similar to contemporary suburbs.4

Given Martinson’s typology, and what we know about the occupants of Canaryville, we can place the neighborhood within the classification of "suburb," particularly, if we consider

Canaryville as a formerly independent town that later became engulfed as the city of Chicago grew.

Dolores Hayden classifications of suburban eras are more detailed than Martinson’s. She isolates seven historic periods of suburban landscapes from 1820 -2000. First is the building of borderlands from 1820-1850s followed by picturesque enclaves' development in the 1850s to

1870s. Next, from 1870s-1900s came the suburbs that developed in conjunction with the

1 Tom Martinson, American Dreamscape: The Pursuit of Happiness in Post-War Suburbity (New York: Carroll & Greif, 2000), xxv. 2 Ibid., 8. 3 Ibid., xxiv. 4 Ibid., 128. 106 streetcars. Hayden, and others, might classify Canaryville as a streetcar suburb, in that it popped up on the city’s edge, was near transportation, and largely “consisted of dwellings for skilled workers and people of modest middle-class status.”5

The next epoch came in the 1900s with the development of mail-order and self-built suburbs. These homes came from providers like Sears and Roebuck, and mark an era where homeowners took on a new form of control in their housing situation. They chose designs that emulated their understanding of the American Dream and assembled it piece by piece. The fifth era brings us to the mass-produced, urban scale “sitcom” suburbs, as Hayden labels them. These are the homes we think of when we think of the suburbs. Little boxes on the hillside, emblematic of white, middle-class America. The 1960s brought in what Hayden and geographers refer to as the edge nodes, places where commercial and office buildings were built first followed by residences. The last era began in the 1980s as the rural fringes grew. Often referred to as sprawl, these areas are built on former farmland and increase the appearance of urban landscapes.

Hayden is another that rebuffs the idea that the suburbs were exclusive places for the middle- class. She reminds that all seven eras you could find suburbs of all class types.

In addition to outlining the seven eras suburban landscapes, Hayden also puts forth the concept of the “triple dream,” or house, yard, neighborhood. Americans idealized individual property (home and yard) over an ideal neighborhood and town. Americans valued affordable homes for a male breadwinner (women and children’s concerns are not considered here), a place of respite in nature, and a small scale neighborhood where one could know their neighbors (even though one can easily know their neighbors in a densely packed urban neighborhood, too).6 That

5 Hayden, Building Suburbia, 73. 6 Ibid. 107 these desires supersede the convenience of a well-planned community is unreasonable, but not surprising.

Most relevant to this conversation is her description of sitcom suburbs. Sitcom suburbs, in their quest for the triple dream for the homeowner, and the bottom line for the developer, exacerbated sexism and racial segregation. They offered less economic flexibility than streetcar suburbs, in that tract homes provided no flexibility in taking in boarders or elder family members for money saving costs. Even with government subsidies, the homeowners found themselves paying extra for things like sewer systems, which developers like the Levitt brothers decided not to build, or the increased property taxes the formerly small towns levied to meet the demands of the new residents for infrastructure.7

Much like the streetcar suburbs and the self-built homes of their grandparents, the generation buying into the sitcom suburbs frequently found themselves burdened with financial problems from their housing, not the promised easier life that came with upward mobility. They isolated women from community and prohibited non-whites from purchasing. Sitcom suburbs did not provide the triple dream or the most home for their money. Instead, housing “was flattened into a stereotype” which created greater expense for the citizen as developers did away with the infrastructure and amenities a better planned community would have.8 In the end,

“sitcom suburbs complicated class relationships rather than erasing them.”9

Factually, we know that the suburbs, and their key characteristics, homeownership, green space, homogeneity, elements of city-planning, and perceptions of achieving the American

Dream, alters the landscape and creates a visual manifestation of “a suburb.” In turn, other

7 Ibid., 128-151. 8 Ibid., 153. 9 Ibid., 147. 108 communities striving for the same characteristics will imitate a similar aesthetic. Thus,

“suburban” is more ideology than reality. When considering this scholarship, it is important to note that as an outsider, one of my first opinions of Canaryville was that it strongly resembled a suburb. I could not come to that classification were it not for the centuries of indoctrination of how a suburb should look.

The attributes of how a suburb should look began in the Middle Ages. Lewis Mumford reminds us that the correlation between middle-class and suburbia is an American construct. In

European history, the suburbanites were the working-classes, particularly those who engaged in foul and odorous work. The tanners, dyers, and laundresses were forced to live outside the city walls.10

In this respect, we can see similarities between early Canaryville and European cities of old. The site of future Canaryville was chosen because of its proximity to Chicago proper, but far enough away to alleviate the smell, filth, and congestion of the slaughterhouses from the densely populated urban areas. The first workers of the Union Stockyards specifically moved to the suburb of Lake to be close to their employer.

It is also important to remember Canaryville would have remained a suburb were it not for annexation into Chicago in 1889. As Richard Harris points out, the commonly held assumption is that decentralization also pushed the working-class out to the suburbs to follow their employer.11 But with the evidence of the stockyards and many other company towns, we know that the correlation between working-class and suburbs began as early as the Antebellum period and was not unusual for a suburb to be built in service to an industry.

10 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York: Mariner Books, 1968). 11 Richard Harris, “The Suburban Worker in the History of Labor,” International Labor and Working-Class History, 64 (Fall 2003), 8-24. 109

Other times workers moved to the suburbs because they were more affordable with less restrictive building codes. At the turn of the nineteenth century, many urban areas established stricter building codes to combat fire risks and unhygienic dwellings. Chicago did the same after the fire in 1871 establishing a series of building codes that forced those who badly wanted to own their own home, but could only do so if they constructed it, out of the city limits.

Canaryville, with its proximity to the stockyards and other nearby work, was an ideal location for these working-class homeowners. For these individuals, most of whom were immigrants, the prospect of slowly earning home equity while also providing a shelter for their families without the complications of building regulations, made Canaryville and adjacent neighborhoods appealing. Often, this resulted in ramshackle housing dangerous to the residents and neighborhood. They may have moved to the suburbs, but the problems plaguing over-crowded urban neighborhoods followed.

By and large, our modern understanding of suburbs being outside of the city and consisting of middle-class residents comes in the postwar era when government funding, a housing shortage, increased automobile transportation, and a desire for a “new world” precipitated many Americans leaving the city. Lizbeth Cohen points out that a move outside of the city to a true suburb requires a heavier price tag. The cost of a detached home aside, additional cost of living away from the city included things like purchasing a car and travel expenses to employment still predominately located in the city. For industrial workers, the additional costs of moving to the suburbs were only one factor. While union membership increased blue-collar wages in the postwar era to middle-class levels, those union workers still 110 had to deal with the blue-collar reality of second and third shifts making a commute undesirable.12

It is vital to note that while historians and other scholars point that suburbs are not reserved solely for the middle-class, American culture does not seem to care. For most

Americans, living in a suburb equates a middle-class identity. Thus a change in the landscape moving from urban to suburban features would also influence how the residents view their class status. To better understand Canaryville as an “urban suburb” and how mimicry of suburban landscapes influence class identity, we must better understand the role suburbs play in creating members of the middle-class.

Typically, a move to the suburbs signals a move out of the working-class. The suburbs became the “hallmarks of the new social order” in the twentieth century and a “reward” for those who successfully managed to find themselves in higher managerial positions.13 Nevertheless, as authors like Becky Nicholides and Richard Harris show, moving out of the city does not always shed working-class ideologies. The advantage of moving to the suburbs, that is, the ability to own one’s own home, has often been a stronger indicator of the working-class over the middle- class. As Richard Harris notes, homeownership for the working-class meant “evading the uncertain, petty tyrannies of tenancy, as financial security (especially for old age), as a method of creating wealth and also as an object of self-expression.”14 Additionally, for the middle-class, who could easily rent a more comfortable home without the fear of eviction, the desire for homeownership came much later in U.S. history. For the working-class, owning a home,

12 Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Thomas J. Sugrue, These United States: A Nation in the Making 1890 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), 330. 13 Bigott, From Cottage to Bungalow Houses and the Working-class in Metropolitan Chicago 1869-1929, 205. 14 Harris, “The Suburban Worker in the History of Labor,”10. 111 regardless of the quality or location, meant a guarantee of shelter and a modest income if needed.15

Not every suburb is exclusive to the middle-class, as Becky Nicolaides notes. She also sees a strong connection between homeownership and “Americanism” in My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965. Providing a case study of the working-class suburb of South Gate, she notes the centrality of homeownership to an individual’s identity as the focus of American working-class lives shifted from their workplace to leisure.16 As such, homeownership became a core aspect of how people saw themselves in relation to the city and federal governments; how they viewed their citizenship, race, and class.17

Given this important connection, she finds a close examination of a working-class suburb is valuable historical work to explore how the social, community and economic setting of modern workers influenced their political beliefs and behaviors.

The working-class suburb, unlike the stereotypical upper middle-class suburb, represented both self-sufficiency and upward mobility. She notes that the people who migrated to suburbs like South Gate did so to create an “economic safety net” for themselves. In doing so, over the course of 40 years, the residents of South Gate erected a “buffer” that “cultivated a political sensibility that revered self-help and reviled threats to those efforts.”18 She concludes that this buffer sewed the “seeds of working-class conservatism” setting the stage for the South

Gate residents’ violent reactions to the possibility of racial integration in their neighborhood.

In general, then, the American trope of the suburb contains the following key elements.

In reference to the landscape of a suburb, it should be some distance from an urban center,

15 Ibid., 19. 16 Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven. 17 Ibid.,122. 18 Ibid., 2. 112 contain a majority of single-family homes, and have some form of privatized green space.

Demographically, the suburb should have some element of homogeneity. This may be racial, economic, or class-based, but a feeling of community should arise out of membership to the dominant group of the suburb and could also be a reason for why an individual might migrate to that particular geographic local. Economically, residents do not need to occupy a certain income bracket, but there should be some indicator to the residents that living in the suburb represents a level of economic mobility or safety.

Suburbs come in different types. According to Bernadette Hanlon, there are five different types of suburbs; vulnerable ethnic, lower-income and mixed, old, and middle-class.

She points to these five types as proof of suburban diversity over their perceived homogeneity.

Hanlon classifies middle-class suburbs as having a median household income at about $75,000 and a poverty rate at above 5%. These middle-class suburbs lost population from 1980-2000 while suburbs with a high poverty class grew. Of particular note, the middle-class suburbs in the

Rust Belt region were on average 80% white in 2000. Middle-class suburbs also developed into middle-class overtime. Most were originally wealthy suburbs that avoided annexation into the major city and maintained a middle-class.19 Regardless of type, residents of suburbs should also feel assured their geography offers some achievement of the undefinable “American Dream” or actively working towards it.

The working-classes were not the only groups shaping the image of suburbs in the nineteenth century. Mary Corbin Sies traces the origin of the “Suburban Ideal” in American culture. In other words, how did Americans come to arrive at what they view to be “suburban?”

She discovers that the underpinnings of a suburban home consisting of the single-family home

19 Bernadette Hanlon and Thomas J. Vicino, “The Fate of Inner Suburbs: Evidence From Metropolitan Baltimore,” Urban Geography, vol. 28. 3 (2007), 249-275. 113 with a yard and open space predates World War II. She locates this origin from roughly 1877-

1917, or from the Reconstruction period to World War I. Furthermore, she notes that for too long, the scholarship on what classifies as “suburban” has been too focused on the homes themselves. Instead, she utilizes a methodology of examining the built environment and ethnography to locate the “dynamic relationship between suburbanites and their material culture” namely through the close examination of archival records discussing the community building in specific early suburban neighborhoods.20 While examining the formation of specific upper middle-class suburban communities, she found the two most important considerations for suburban residents were to alleviate the social problems and poor housing conditions in the city while also formatting their lifestyle and position in an appropriate residential setting.21

Corbin Sies’s research focuses on what the upper middle-class desired of a suburban setting. The desires of the working-classes in Canaryville were not too far off, if slightly different due to economic and geographic factors. For example, a key component of James

Barrett’s Work and the Community in the Jungle is that the support of unionization was largely in part to elevate the standard of living in the neighborhood.22

Another key attribute of a suburb is distance from the city. A suburb cannot be too far from a city. Too far would make it an independent town. Of course, independent towns may be absorbed into a suburban status as urban areas continue to grow and spread. With Canaryville’s history as an independent city then annexed, it falls into a unique suburban/urban status.

20 Mary Corbin Sies, “Toward a Performance Theory of the Suburban Ideal, 1877-1917,” Perspectives on Vernacular Architecture, IV. 199. 21 Ibid., 202. 22 Barrett, James R. Work and the Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers 1894-1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 7. 114

Anne Krulikowski finds that for many working-class suburbs, they formed in an unplanned landscape versus the highly regimented and designed upper middle-class suburbs studied by Corbin Sies.23 Canaryville falls under the category of “unplanned” suburban landscape in that it was not a designed community, but an eventual extension from the Town of

Lake and Chicago. The built environment of unplanned suburbs lack an easily visible cultural ideal, one curated to reflect a suburban aesthetic. Canaryville’s built environment is heavily influenced by the city’s regulation and the Stockyard’s proximity. However, their cultural ideals can be reflected in the homes they build, the businesses, or lack thereof, they patron, the lots they keep vacant, and the public spaces they create.

Lastly, suburbs need an element of city-planning that represents whatever is the opposite of the nearby urban landscape. This could be a lack of apartments, commercial buildings, pollution, crime, or an emphasis of nature and green space. Historians on suburban landscapes affirm the importance of imagery in determining what is or is not “suburban.” Kenneth T

Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier argues that that “suburbia is both a planning type and a state of mind based on imagery and symbolism.”24 In one of the most highly regarded works on the formation of suburbs in the United States, Jackson’s work outlines the transformation of suburbs from slums built outside the safety of the city walls to perceived cites of family bliss through the

Postwar and Baby Boom years. He discusses many of the more famous suburbs in American history, such as Brooklyn, New York; Riverside, Illinois; and Levittown, New Jersey; along with the now stereotypical characteristics of the suburban landscape, such as curvilinear streets and large yards, and the famous men, such as Vaux and Olmsted, who designed the first suburbs.

23 Anne Krulikowski, “A Workingman’s Paradise:” The Evolution of an Unplanned Suburban Landscape,” Winterthur Portfolio, vol 42.4 (Winter 2008), 243-285. 24 Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier. 115

His primary focus is on the middle-class understanding of the suburb throughout

American history. Through this lens, he hopes to understand why Americans, unlike the rest of the world, vacated urban centers. How and why did they change their assumptions about what constituted the “good life?” 25 While he does find that certain trends arise regarding American sentiments about housing, such as a preference for rural over urban living, ownership over renting, and detached homes over row houses, his work is too broad to get into the nitty-gritty later authors of the suburbs do.26 As a starting off point, however, Jackson provides the underpinnings of America’s fascination with a “good home” in the suburbs as the pinnacle of achieving the American dream.

Greg Hise argues that the cannons of Jackson and Robert Fishman view suburbs as isolated entities “creating a setting for an idealized domestic sphere.”27 He critiques that the

“state of mind” approach does not include suburban areas such as Los Angeles which are organized in looser landscapes, but still examples of suburbia. Furthermore, Eric Avila, argues that popular culture creates a stark opposition of how to view people in the city versus the suburbs, which in turn “became a basis for a new political subjectivity that valued white homogeneity in the suburban public.”28 When speaking about being an urban suburb, I am referencing the moves Canaryville’s residents have taken to imitate this similar aesthetic, by supporting and continuously choosing “suburban” characteristics which given the opportunity.

A commonly associated characteristic of the suburban life is the single-family home.

Hayden’s Redesigning The American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life finds “single-

25 Ibid., 10. 26 Ibid., 11. 27 Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 28 Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Ages of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban L.A. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006). 116 family suburban homes have become inseparable from the American dream.”29 The predominance of housing and urban planning models that developed in the 1940s have

“transformed the American landscape,” and as such transformed “economic, social and political life in the United States.”30 Furthermore, Hayden argues that the dream of a home is “uniquely

American” to the point that when Americans fantasize about what it means to be middle-class or have the “good life” they “speak about their hopes or their fears in terms of buying houses.”31

Even more poignant, she remarks debates about the suburban home often encode “complex conflicts of class, gender, and race and characterize our society.”32

In addition to her discussion about the strong connection between homeownership and the American Dream, Hayden frequently points to the home and city as gendered spaces.

Housing and urban planning is still based on the 1940s model, of the single-family home, male breadwinner, and largely disregards the needs of females and children. These homes “encode

Victorian stereotypes about a ‘woman’s place’” as the single-family home and neighborhood were designed for a family unit with a full-time homemaker in mind. In planning the suburb, developers designed residential neighborhoods to be a retreat from working life for men. In doing so, they placed necessities of the female’s life, such as schools and grocery stores, in specialized commercial districts far away from the home making a cars necessary for daily life.

A homemaker who is able to adapt her life to the suburban landscape and drive around to the various stores, schools, and jobs needed to sustain home life. These suburban landscapes and homes ignore the needs of older children, the elderly, and working women.33

29 Dolores Hayden, Redesigning The American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002). 30 Ibid., 30. 31 Ibid., 34, 73. 32 Ibid., 58. 33 Ibid., 29. 117

When evaluating Canaryville as an urban suburb, we see Hayden’s brand of gendered spatial analysis. Considering this leads to a conclusion that the middle-class landscape may have distinct gender roles that it reinforces through physical landscape. While a gender preference is not easily visible from the exterior of the home, it is in consideration to the lack of easily accessible shopping, schools and other sites that exist within the “woman’s sphere.”

Archer et, al. notes that neighborhoods, like Canaryville, which perform “suburbia” in the sense of the built environment, may not consider themselves suburban. But to be “suburban” means a neighborhood maintains a suburbanite reality and mindset – whatever that maybe.34 For the editors of Making Suburbia, “suburbia” is made through discourse, built environment, object performance, and topographies.35 Ultimately, while their consciousness may not consider themselves suburban, given their Chicago addresses, their performance is. For Canaryville, the suburban performance primarily takes place in the built environment.

Dianne Harris examines the intersection of the built environment, architecture, class, and race in post-World War II suburbia in Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed

Race in America. Citing actual homes, mass-circulation magazines, catalog articles and images, builders, architects and trade journals advertisements, and ordinary household objects, Harris examines the how these homes “created, re-created, and reinforced midcentury notions about racial, ethnic, and class identities – specifically, the rightness of associating white identities with homeownership and citizenship.”36

Unlike other studies of whiteness and homeownership, which focus on the exclusion of other races from purchasing and occupying homes in certain locations, Harris takes a closer look

34 John Archer, Paul J.P. Sandul, Katherine Solomonson, eds. Making Suburbia: New Histories in Everyday America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), xv. 35 Ibid. 36 Dianne Harris, Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America, 1. 118 at how the material and popular culture reinforced conceptions of race through the house. Seeing race everywhere, she argues that “architecture is about race …when situated in an all-white suburb.”37 In regards to her assertion that people observing the buildings and materials saw them as “white,” she takes the stance that it is much like white privilege, where it is so ingrained in the fiber of society, that it does not need to be acknowledged by the practitioner or recipient for it to be true, it just is.38

She convincingly argues that seemingly inconsequential things, such as the emphasis of suburban developers on the value of privacy in and surrounding the home, landscaping, and ample storage for new housewares, all encoded messages of whiteness to Americans. For example, Harris discovered that postwar Modernism was more than just a trend. Advertisements and model homes that emphasized the concepts of sleek lines, ample storage, and cleanliness all existed to convey whiteness in comparison to the former cluttered, heavily decorated of immigrant and non-European ethnic homes.39 Making things appear to be more modern, and by extension, less ethnic, architectural drawings, advertisements, model homes, and actual homes all experienced a “whitewashing.” Harris’s work contributes a deeper understanding to the prevalence of seemingly suburban, postwar homes and their austere appearances in Canaryville.

Collectively, these scholars demonstrate that suburbs are not monolithic entities designed for middle-class white Americans. The span differences in geography, architectural styles, class, race, and economic brackets. Their landscapes reflect different needs and desires by the occupants and developers. There is commonality, but the characteristics of a suburb allow for adaptability among community and geography.

37 Ibid., 3. 38 Ibid., 12-13. 39 Particularly that which were covered in Lizbeth Cohen’s “Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes, 1885-1915, “Journal of American Culture, 3 (Winter 1980). 119

Urban Crisis and White Flight

The scholarship of suburban history marks the suburbs as places of escape from the ills of urban areas. Examination of the urban crisis and white flight shows us some of the realities and perceptions of urban neighborhoods undergoing changes from 1940-1970s. It looks at the reasons, real or misconceived, why white people left the city in the postwar era. It is necessary for us to understand why others left Chicago and why the residents of Canaryville stayed, as it provides greater insight into the Canaryville community and neighborhood.

Studying the urban crisis also brings in the conversation of race. Chapter 4 is dedicated to exploring race, space, and class as it stands for current Canaryville residents. However, it is almost impossible to have a conversation about performing the urban suburb without discussing how the suburbs equate whiteness and how the imagery of the suburbs is used as a form of protection. The performativity of race in the urban space as conveyed through landscape is discussed in this Chapter. The relationship between race and urban space as conveyed through people is discussed in the next.

No conversation about the importance of race, housing, and place would be complete without including Arnold Hirsch’s Making The Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago

1940-1960. Hirsch argues that the Race Riots of 1919 and the 1960s were visible manifestations of Chicagoans trying to reshape and reinforce black ghettos. While these two riots received the most press, they were not isolated events. Instead, Hirsch found forty years of “silent violence” where whites organized and literally fought back the perceived invasion of Blacks into their neighborhoods, with little to no press notice. Using Chicago as a case study, Hirsch finds that what happened in Chicago also happened across major cities in the North in the postwar years. 120

He notes that Chicago became a pioneer in developing the strategies later used by the federal government to “control and mitigate the consequences of racial succession” nationwide.40

Of interest to this project is Hirsch exploration of white ethnics’ participation in ghetto formations. In 1949, the first and second generations of immigrants that were unable or unwilling to leave the city, mostly Catholic Irish and southern and eastern Europeans, became a

“buffer” between more prosperous fleeing whites and expanding black neighborhoods.41 In many cases, it was the Irish who worked in the stockyards that were the most determined to keep

African Americans out of “their” neighborhoods.42 Hirsch, and the primary sources he quotes, do not get into any specifics about where exactly these Stockyard workers lived, but given the proximity of Canaryville to the Stockyards, it is likely the rioters were at least familiar with the neighborhood.

Combining the problems of deindustrialization, race, white flight and segregation, and urbanity, Thomas Sugrue describes how Northern cities in the Rust Belt went from bustling, industrious meccas, to abandoned, impoverished urban centers within the span of twenty years.43

He suggests that the origins of the urban crisis and subsequent ‘underclass,’ are much earlier than social sciences recognize, and the origin is closely tied to the intervention of race, residences, and labor. In using Detroit as a case study, he isolated two “unresolved problems” as the cause for the city’s decline; economic inequalities generated by capitalism and the fact that African

Americans bear most of the impact of these inequalities.44 Economic changes, such as anti- communism which weakened progressive reform and unions which made it “un-American” to

40 Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, xviii. 41 Ibid., 78. 42 Ibid. 43Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, 1996), 4. 44 Ibid. 121 challenge business, coupled with the technological and legal advances that allowed industries to move to more favorable locations (skirting union laws and taxes) changed the employer/employee status quo and deindustrialized urban centers.45 Racially, Sugrue shows perceptions of racial differences were influenced by popular culture, geography, (where they lived and the physical state of those places), local and national politics.

His discussion about Detroit’s housing issues are the most relevant to this discussion. He notes that with an opening of the housing market, everyone who could leave the city center did so, regardless of race. Whites moved to white suburbs, and the more affluent African Americans moved into former white spaces. This solidified class divisions within Detroit making the perimeter a space of wealth and the interior that of poverty.46

Those who could vacate Detroit proper saw homeownership “as much an identity as a financial investment.”47 Proper homeownership, meaning a well-kept property in the right neighborhood, demonstrates to many immigrants and ethnic groups that they were successful

Americans capable of upward mobility into the middle-class.48 Furthermore, the stark separation of the haves and have nots reaffirmed the growing understanding that “to be fully American was to be white” and that white people owned homes in the suburbs.49 This notion will be most evident later in the next chapter.

Sugrue concludes that “the shape of the postwar city… is the result of political and economic decisions, of choices made and not made by various institutions, groups, and individuals.”50 David Freund’s work takes a closer look at the mindset of the people who

45 Ibid., 7. 46 Ibid., 118. 47 Ibid., 213. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 9. 50 Ibid., 11. 122 experienced violent segregation firsthand. He seeks the answer to the question, “why did so many Northern whites from 1940-1960 believe themselves to be non-racist while they actively segregated their cities?” This question is still relevant when studying all-white neighborhoods like Canaryville, where people may often find themselves thinking and doing racist acts while believing themselves not a racist. He argues the dynamic nature of racism allowed and advocated for redlining, restrictive covenants, white flight, and violent protests in the urban north, while simultaneously being horrified of the segregation in the South. Using Detroit as a case study, he concludes that aversive racism was “shaped by the powerful new institutions and private practices that fueled postwar suburban growth” for white America.51

Freund illuminates the important role neoliberalism played in forming these negative race relations. The ubiquity of government policies supporting home buying for all Americans in theory but giving preference to white buyers altered the perception that home-buying was available to all. Aids like FHA loans and G.I. bills, widely available to all white Americans, allowed them to ignore the prevention of access to the black population. The resulting smaller percentage of Black homeowners is not indicative of personal failure, but institutional racism.

The narrative of universal access to an unrestricted real estate market is important to understanding why people saw their actions as protecting their investment, not advocating for segregation.52 Examining the developments in both local and federal housing policies, Freund demonstrates the way the policies “shaped white people’s understanding of metropolitan growth and racial privilege.”53 His examination of Detroit provides a useful foundation for

51David M.P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 8. 52 Ibid.,19. 53 Ibid., 32. 123 understanding one of the possible ways that Canaryville maintained itself as a white neighborhood in an era of white flight and “urban crisis.”

For the contributors to America’s Urban Crisis, the issues surrounding urban areas are inherently racialized. This edition discusses the different issues that continue to effect Detroit, and by extension, other urban centers, in regards to the Urban Crisis by focusing on the different areas where problems with the inner cities manifest, namely color-blind ideology, education, the prison system, and segregation. It looks as the ways in which “structural discrimination exacted against black population … have minimized this history in the minds of primarily white suburban populations” who instead view the problems of the urban centers a by product of black population’s inability to govern.54 In this light, the white flight of the late twentieth century becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This flight was precipitated on concerns that African

Americans would cause their cities to crumble. However, the white exodus greatly contributed to urban demise. In Canaryville, however, the white populations further dug-in to their community. They closed ranks and altered the environment to reflect the “good” parts of the suburbs (buildings and landscapes) while trying to keep the “bad” (people of color and outsiders) parts out.

Not all white residents left during the post-war years. Canaryville did not suffer a mass exodus of its long-term residents in the postwar years. Amanda Seligman offers a different story as to why many white urbanites left their cities for the suburbs. Instead of the generally accepted narrative that they were fleeing the “invasion” of African Americans. Seligman argues that the reason why white homeowners left the Westside of Chicago was more complicated.

54 Curtis L. Ivery and Joshua A. Bassett, eds. America’s Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-Blind Politics: Education, Incarceration, Segregation, and the Future of U.S. Multiracial Democracy (Latham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 6. 124

White flight was a response to the “transformation in Chicago’s physical and social landscape” that created “discontent with the postwar urban environment.”55 She documents their battles with aldermen and City Hall over the neglect and decline in the West Side’s physical infrastructure, worsening schools, increased racial tensions, and the apathetic Chicago government. The urban crisis really consisted of “twin threats of environmental decay and racial succession.”56 New black neighbors were more the last straw for residents, not first. The ghetto that formed on the West Side in the 1970s was “the product of the neighborhood’s exclusion from postwar urban redevelopment, the political powerlessness of preceding white residents, and their racism.”57

Rachael Woldoff studies another unique suburban area, she names as Parkmont.

Parkmont is a suburb that experienced not only “White Flight,” but also “Black Flight.” Black

Flight happened when the first Black residents, labeled the “pioneers,” left. As more of the original white residents of Parkmont left, the reasons which had attracted the pioneers left with them. The replacements of the white residents were people who appeared to care less about their home upkeep, less about community, and less about education. Woldoff argues that the focus on the whites who left these areas and where they moved to has dominated the scholarship. Instead, she argues that “we cannot fully understand white flight and its ramifications without first coming to terms with the cultural and social dynamics that occur in the aftermath of white residents leaving a community.”58 Instead of talking about those who left, she focuses on the whites who stayed, the blacks who first moved in, and the blacks who arrived after resegregation.

Her findings point to a few new features of these newly black neighborhoods, largely that these

55 Seligman, Block by Block, 4. 56 Ibid., 6. 57 Ibid., 9. 58 Woldoff, White Flight/Black Flight, 2-3. 125 are not “bad” ghettos, but rather neighborhoods with responsible homeowners, business districts, and communities.59

Often white flight is discussed as something that happened through individual action and community organization with little state involvement or political ramifications. White Flight:

Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, sets to correct that misconception. Kevin

Kruse demonstrates the ways in which local governments helped create a new form of segregation bolstered by a rhetoric of individual rights, freedom, and personal liberty. The result shows that “white flight, in the end, was more than a physical relocation. It was a political revolution.”60 Key to his study is the fact that segregationists were not monoliths. Racism and segregation was not an “all-or-nothing” ideology that ultimately failed. Instead, he shows that segregationism morphed into white residents convincing everyone and themselves that white flight was not a sign of segregation, but from innocuous middle-class growth and urban sprawl.61

By convincing themselves that they were fighting for their “right” to “select neighbors, their employees, and their children’s classmates,” the participants of white flight were able to justify their actions.62 This justification later became codified into conservative politics. As more people participating in the ideologies of personal freedom moved to the suburbs, “America found itself dominated by the suburbs, in turn, dominated by the politics of white flight”63

Desegregation was as much class as it was race, according to Kruse. The upper-class whites in the Atlanta area did not need to keep public spaces segregated, because they had a long-standing history of using private spaces, such as private schools, private pools, and private

59 Ibid.,, 4. 60 Kruse, White Flight, 6. 61 Ibid., 8. 62 Ibid., 9. 63 Ibid., 259. 126 country clubs. Thus, when the upper-classes supported and praised court-ordered desegregation, the working-class whites, who frequently viewed the public pools, schools, parks as “theirs” were appalled and angry.64 The last to leave the city, the working-class’s flight to the segregated suburbs was symbolic of them withdrawing “their support – financial, social, and political – from a society that they felt had abandoned them.”65

Performing the Urban Suburb

Thus far, this chapter discusses the historic and traditional formations of our understanding of suburbia and the middle-class as a way to explore how American culture has developed a simulacra of middle-class landscapes that can be translated to an urban suburb.

Now it will examine the alterations Canaryville are essentially a performance of a suburban landscape to make an urban suburb.

The crux of this study argues that suburban landscapes have moved beyond the constrictions of geography and are now performative. As already mentioned, may scholars such as J.B. Jackson, Denis Cosgrove, and John Archer question the importance of location to the identity of a space. The identity and meaning of a space is reflexive and often changes depending on the viewer, culture, and society. The father of understanding space beyond geography is Henry Lefebvre and his landmark work The Production of Space. Lefebvre’s work is complicated, but his discussion of appropriation and detournement of spaces is relevant to analyze the way the Stockyards altered the landscape and meaning of Canaryville. For Lefebvre, space is not an a priori condition. Institutions cannot live without special moorings that bind them to reality. In the same sense, class identity cannot exist without physical space to demonstrate it.

64 Ibid., 106-107. 65 Ibid., 107. 127

Lefebvre is also concerned with the detournement of spaces, or the hijacking of space for performative art, usually art that makes a social or political space. Lefebvre’s interpretations are loose and applicable to the adaptation of urban space for many purposes. As urban spaces become increasingly regulated and planned to attract residents, industry, and tourism, individuals feel more control over their landscape than they have at any point in urban history.

In discussing a new understanding of space and place, Doreen Massey argues that space is socially constructed and identities regarding that space are non-static and malleable.66

Geography can no longer be the primary interpretive factor when considering what importance or purpose a space holds. For example, we can no longer consider urban areas as the only spaces for industries especially as industrial areas continue to move to suburban areas.67 Furthermore, places are “open and porous networks of social relations… their ‘identities’ are constructed through the specificity of their interaction with other places rather than by counter position to them… those identities will be multiple … and the dominant image of any place will be a matter of contestation and will change overtime.”68 Massey’s understanding of space is similar to J.B.

Jackson’s but differs in the sense that it places a stronger emphasis on the interpretation of space by those that use it.

Space and organization of living quarters also alters the behavior of a community.

Kenneth T. Jackson suggests spatial organization “sets up living patterns and condition our behavior.”69 Mike Davis examines the outside forces shaping physical space can change a community’s social ties. He sees the effects of capitalism, the post-World War II boom, and globalization in downtown Los Angeles. Los Angeles became a place where power is exerted

66 Doreen Massey, “Geographies of Responsibility.” 67 Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 22. 68 Ibid., 121. 69 Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 3. 128 through space, class struggle is built into the architecture, where “downtown LA is a fortress and those with means choose to move into the desert.”70 Collectively, this scholarship points to the ways in landscape and the built environment reflect and influence social and cultural identity.

Often, performative urban space is discussed in terms of meticulously crafted urban areas, such as theme parks, industrial parks, and retirement and suburban communities with the user in mind. John Findlay argues these communities reflect the high ideals of what a community should look like instead of the chaotic urban centers nearby.71 Similarly, Sharon

Zukin studies the power that is built in the American landscape through close analysis and critique of the preference given to economies and markets.72

Both Findlay and Zukin look directly at constructing power through urban space. They survey specifically crafted spaces where the planners and architects had defined goals in mind.

Of course, not every landscape has a master puppeteer behind the curtain. In order to understand these organic spaces, I employ Jean Baudrillard’s theories of Simulation and Simulacra or the substitution of signs that used to indicate an authentic reality for actual reality and hyperreality, or a reality that is based on a set of simulated codes and models.73 Is what we see today in

Canaryville is a simulated ideal of what the residents perceive to be a middle-class landscape? Or does it become a middle-class landscape because it already fulfills a preconceived notion of a middle-class neighborhood’s appearance?

A key aspect of this project is an analysis of the landscapes that are presumed to reflect working-class or middle-class social life. Earlier, we examined how these types of landscapes are prescribed and decided upon and how Americans came to know how middle-class, white,

70 Davis, City of Quartz. 71 Findlay, Magic Lands. 72 Zukin, Landscapes of Power. 73 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations. 129 suburban spaces look. In many respects, these landscapes are simulations of reality. They are hyperreal in the sense that they no longer mirror something existing in reality but are landscapes that mirror what society believes to be real, and, in doing so, make it a reality. It is a simulation of what is believed reality should be, not what it is.

As Americans, we exist in this simulated truth of class. We firmly believe the advantages of our society to be one of meritocracy because we lack the rigid class structure that prohibits people from doing so in foreign countries. However, we also believe in the very realness of an important middle-class, a signifier of achieving the American Dream. Without the metrics of

“middle-class,” it is almost impossible to ascertain our success. In short, we know the characteristics and appearance of “middle-class” are a simulation, which affirms our belief that its real. Was it not, then how could we identify what is middle-class, given that the two of the three characteristics, economies and ideologies, are nearly unidentifiable to the eye? When confronted with different opinions about what is and is not middle-class, we find ourselves questing the truth of the “reality” set before us. That challenge creates conflicting ideologies surrounding our class identity. We pick and choose which attributes of the middle-class we desire because anything less or more than middle-class is un-American.

The most relatable analogy of Baudrillard’s simulacra and the hyperreal is Disneyland.

Disney’s replication of Main Street, U.S.A., supposedly mirrored a real place (small towns across America) in a real era (the Gilded Age). Yet, Main Street did not exist in reality, and instead of seen as a constructed space in a theme park, it became the model to which many towns aspired. The real was modeled after the unreal which was modeled off the presumed real. Main

Streets, existing in cities across America, became simulations of the simulacra. The suburb finds itself in the same hyperreal. Yes, real suburbs exist and had thoughtful planning. Other 130 locations imitated common attributes, such as curvilinear streets, single-family homes, neat trim lawns, and attached garages. These attributes were then promulgated and exaggerated through pop culture, which in turn became the new desirable attributes. Today, the “American Suburb” can be replicated regardless of geography.

It is helpful to see another example of performative space. Laura Barraclough discusses how the imagery of one landscape can be purposely copied in another to “borrow” its meaning.

Specifically, she looks at the San Fernando Valley “that has deliberately drawn upon ideas about rural land and western heritage as a strategy of urban development.”74 Coining this process “rural urbanism,” where urban entities benefit from this association, she notes that the “mélange of rural, suburban, and urban landscapes … are intimately linked to the ways in which racial, class, and national identities are being negotiated in Los Angeles and the metropolitan U.S. West.”75

In the same ways that Barraclough coined the term “rural urbanism” to explain how the meaning of one landscape can be co-opted to place a new meaning on a different type of landscape, I to do that with the idea of the urban suburb. Specifically, this is so in the sense that urban policy is shaped to promote the myths that accompany these idealized landscapes (rural western and picture perfect suburbs). Barraclough’s subject of the San Fernando Valley is dripping in landscape iconography. Street signs are designed in a cowboy motif. Subdivision names are cliché western names. The case of the San Fernando Valley exists because it was relatively undeveloped until the 1960s, the same era urban development of this kind first appeared. Canaryville, however, was set in stone. The changes made to mimic a different

74 Barraclough, Making the San Fernando Valley, 2. 75 Ibid., 3.

131 landscape would be less obvious, but that does not mean they do not convey the same meanings rural urbanism.

Dolores Hayden finds another example of a simulated landscape in Celebration, Florida,

Disney’s attempt in real estate development. Since the 1990s, there has been a growth of designed nostalgic city planning, which represented itself, much like the Disney theme park, as a town of yester-year, that never even existed. It portrays the fantasy people wanted in small town

America, not reality.76 So too does the urban suburb. It portrays the fantasy associated with certain architectural styles and other elements. The urban suburb claims: “We are white. We are middle-class. We are homeowners. We are the American Dream,” while designing away the reality of urban living.

Importance of the Home and Homeownership

As discussed in the analysis of the industrial landscape, the meaning conveyed by structures can influence class identity. It should be no surprise, though, that the meaning placed on homes and homeownership is weighty. As these authors demonstrate, American culture equates homeownership with middle-class status and the American dream. Single-family homes are often construed as owned by middle-class, single families. It is difficult for the observer to know otherwise. Seeing a landscape full of single-family homes, then conveys certain attributes of middle-class status and identity. The scholarship surrounding the importance of homeownership, unsurprisingly reveals a more complicated story. Homeownership happens across classes and the meaning of owning a home has changed throughout American history.

Gwendolyn Wright’s scholarship centers on the meaning of the ideal home. She astutely concludes that Americans are self-conscious about where they live, particularly because a

76 Hayden, Building Suburbia, 223. 132

“decent home” is seen as a “basic tenet of the American way of life.”77 As such, they place great importance on the appearance and functionality of those structures which has “encouraged a staunch defense of social homogeneity on the one hand, and a cult of personalized decoration on the other.”78 Wright discusses ideological and architectural models of homes from the Puritans to the 1970s. She discovered that discussing the design and purpose of a home was actually coded messages about the “involved hopes of fears about family stability, attitudes about community, and beliefs about social and economic equality.”79

Her work is broad, attempting to cover many different historical eras and housing designs. Relevant for this conversation is her discussion of the bungalow. Wright notes that smaller bungalows were easier for women to maintain, an important consideration given that as

American society moved later into the twentieth century, more women needed to spend more time outside the home at jobs and took a more visible role in the family’s social life.80 Given this understanding of the appearance of worker’s cottages and bungalows in Chicago, we can see why Canaryville residents find similar appeal in small homes.

Joseph Bigott argues that the exchange between the “ordered values of middle-class culture” and “disorderly growth of working-class neighborhoods” altered the material culture and built environment of Chicago’s neighborhoods.81 He focuses on the transformation of

Chicago area homes, specifically those in Hammond, Indiana, and West Hammond, Illinois, from 1869-1920. Particularly, he opines that the production of modest homes, first cottages and then bungalows, “refined qualities of urban life” in terms of standard of living more so than the

77 Wright, Building the Dream, xviii. 78 Ibid., xvii. 79 Ibid., xvi. 80 Ibid., 156. 81 Bigott, From Cottage to Bungalow, xiii. 133 input of reformers.82 Bigott claims historians privilege the viewpoint of social and housing reformers regarding immigrant and working-class housing, and as so favored the “middle-class suburban ideal” and “overlooked the significance of respectable working-class houses.”83 He attempts to remedy this error by using not just the material culture about the home, as that only speaks to the home itself and not the occupants, but by also including visual and statistical evidence.

Bigott also argues that the move from cottages to bungalows represented a significant trend of upward mobility for many immigrants. 84 Homeownership provided freedom from landlords, possible eviction, and the promise of additional income from room-letting.

Homeownership also anchored the immigrant to the city, sometimes, as we will see, for generations. Furthermore, the purchase of a home provided recent immigrants with the rights to symbolic citizenship through participation in property ownership. It gave them freedom outside of their former landlords, in many cases, become the landlords themselves.

Relevant to this conversation, Bigott’s tracing of the evolution of Chicago’s home construction from cottages to bungalows reveals the underlying perceptions of class in structures.

Each type of construction conveys a class identity. The perception of that class changes depending on the viewer. For example, where Progressive reformers viewed cottages as structures engendering unsanitary and criminal activities, Bigott uses photographic evidence of one cottage in particular shows that cottages could be as “reformed” as other middle-class homes occupied by middle-class reformers.

82 Ibid., 4. 83 Ibid., 6-7. 84 Ibid., 9. 134

Bigott’s strong argument for subjectivity of class in buildings is weakened when combined with social and cultural influences. For example, he does not account for homeownership by an extended family. The homes discussed by Bigott were often income- earning by inviting in non-related tenants and boarders. Many of the duplex and three-flat homes in Canaryville, however, are occupied by the same extended family, where one grouping, such as the elderly parents, owns the building and “rent” the former income properties to their adult children. In cases such as these, homeownership provided a place to straddle both working and middle-class constructs.

The question of the importance of homeownership is one pondered by Margaret Garb in

City of American Dreams: A History of Homeownership and Housing Reform in Chicago, 1871-

1919. She notes that the concept of homeownership drastically changed after the Civil War. As the United States moved from an agrarian society to urban, the changes in labor, concepts of race and ethnicity, the influx of immigration, material conditions along with others was conveyed in both the physical environment and the American imaginary.85 She challenges the modern notion of the pervasive desirability of a single-family home with a yard. Focusing on Chicago she argues that “the struggles over property rights in housing fundamentally transformed living conditions and social relations in American cities.”86 Garb’s research determined that the period after the Civil War saw the development of connecting homeownership with middle-class status and an “American standard of living.”87 In the late nineteenth century, workers cottages were believed to be a sign of decline in fortunes, not making a smart investment. Middle-class

85 Garb, City of American Dreams. 1. 86 Ibid., 2. 87 Ibid., 1-5. 135 families found investment in stock or business a safer place for their money over homeownership while keeping up appearances by living in a luxury apartment.88

Like many other scholars mentioned here, Garb notes that the importance of homeownership is socially constructed. More meaning is placed on the actual institution than understanding the underlying society and culture which created it. In this case, the celebration of the ability for more people to own a home promoted the appearance of a classless society.89 The meaning attached to homeownership illuminates class divisions, despite opinions to the contrary.

The working-class did not purchase a home to become middle-class. Instead, owning a home was

“a mark of autonomy and dignity.”90 Garb asserts that it was the working-classes, not the middle-class, that are responsible for connecting homeownership with an important characteristic of “being American.” While Garb’s findings are accurate, the ideology formed in the 1950s that connected homeownership to middle-class identity holds great influence in American culture over reality.

Importance of Home Architectural Style

When asking residents to describe their neighborhood, many of them first took to describing the buildings they see. The most common description of the buildings in the neighborhood was that they were frame, single-family homes. The ways the residents describe building landscapes is important to note. They provide insight into how they feel when occupying these places. It also illuminates the subconscious observations of the landscape’s identity. Thus, when residents describe Canaryville as “Old fashioned neighborhood. It's mostly frame homes.”91 That response contains layers of meanings.

88 Ibid., 19. 89 Ibid., 5. 90 Ibid., 7. 91 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 136

The best way to begin to understand the simulation of the middle-class, and how the home and buildings in Canaryville convey a suburban simulacra, is to understand the architectural styles commonly found in the neighborhood. In performing the urban suburb, architectural style is paramount. There is a great deal of meaning placed on the type and architectural design of a home. Even without higher-level understanding of architectural and art history, everyone can sense how the design of a home emotes feeling.

Understanding Chicago’s architectural design is important to understanding how

Canaryville stands out. Terry Tatum believes that Chicago, “for all of its world-renowned architecture … is, at its heart, a working-class city in terms of its architecture.”92 There are roughly four types of homes in Canaryville, cottage, bungalow, two-flat, and duplex.

The oldest surviving neighborhoods in Chicago were constructed around 1870 and 1880s and tended to reflect Italianate and Queen Anne Styles.93 Some of those styles were found at one time in Canaryville. Greystones, named after the grey limestone quarried in Indiana, are most commonly two to three flats and use the grey limestone for the façade and common brick on the sides. They tend to be Romanesque or Classical. While Canaryville has a few, particularly on S.

Emerald Ave, they are atypical. They are more often found in the middle-class areas of North

Lawndale or Lakeview, built in the late nineteenth century.94 Their presence in Canaryville are primarily found in the areas settled by the middle and upper-classes in the early years of the

Stockyards.

92 Terry Tatum, “A Brief Guild to Chicago’s Common Building Types,” in Out of the Loop: Vernacular Architecture Forum Chicago, Virginia B. Price, David A. Spatz, and D. Bradford Hunt, eds., (Chicago: Midway Books, 2015), 9-18., 9. 93 Ibid., 11. 94 Ibid., 14. 137

Beyond the physical characteristics, the meaning and identity we associate with the density, quality, and style of a residential landscape revolve around our cultural understanding of housing and homeownership. Again, we see how the physical landscape contains the contested landscapes that comprise the urban suburb through implying a certain type of owner and occupant. Architectural styles and building materials are visible indicators of the class status of the owners. In the Northern parts of the country, use of brick over wood, frequently denotes a higher class as brick is more costly. While a majority of the new builds in Canaryville are brick, and most of this can be accounted for to Chicago building codes, it is difficult to deny that the connotation of brick lends itself to a more middle-class identity – even if it is forced upon the builder.95

In some geographic locals, even the particular design of conveyed economic class status to outsiders. Attached homes and duplexes were built for the lowest middle-class, ranch homes slightly above, split level homes, and then two-story colonial homes at the highest as surveyed by one Pennsylvania development.96 In Chicago, a similar stratification might be created. With the stand-alone single-family home occupying highest echelons followed by townhomes, and condos of course the size and level of each also complicated this stratification. These classifications fluctuate however, as architectural styles go in and out of fashion. For example, bungalows, once a sign of a working-class, or lower middle-class occupant are now highly sought after for their quaint charm. At the same time, many developers, particularly in

Canaryville, imitate the bungalow, to blend in with the neighborhood, but also provide that little level of prestige that the true bungalows carry in the real estate market.

95 Ibid., 208. 96 Ibid., 208-209. 138

The predominant home structure in working-class neighborhoods on the Southside are workers cottages and bungalows. Both of these structures have a long history and several loose adaptations and modifications which make it difficult to identify. Chicago worker cottages are usually one or one-half stories constructed of wood or brick. Typically, they are built with raised basements, but some built right after the 1871 Fire, were built directly on the ground. A front- gabled roof and typically finished façade are the only places that show ornamentation. If there is style, it is usually focused through cornices and the windows, and tend to be Italianate, Queen

Anne, Classical Revival, or late Greek Revival.97

The floorplan of cottages does not have much variation. Cottages are typically rectangular with doors on the front and back. Bedrooms are usually on one side and parlor and kitchen on the opposite side. Variations that have a second story typically have the bedrooms on the second floor and a formal hall.

The two predominant materials in the landscape of Canaryville are wood frame and brick. The presence of wood-frame structures in Chicago is atypical, as, after the 1871 Chicago

Fire, new ordinances required all replacement structures to be fire-proof, meaning brick. Brick is a costly building materials and time-consuming labor. Chicago’s working-class found themselves without the funds to build. At the same time, industrial employers, like the

Stockyards, were leaving the then city limits. The working-class followed their employers and built what had been the traditional Chicago home, a wooden balloon frame. What had been the ubiquitous building type of all Chicago became associated with became the structure of the working-class.98

97 Ibid., 11. 98 Later, when these neighborhoods were annexed, the frame structures were grandfathered into building codes. 139

Wooden cottages prior to 1870 were easily adaptable and even easily moved to different

Chicago lots, adding to their ramshackle reputation.99 After the fire, surviving wooden cottages were often raised onto brick foundations creating apartments or moved to the back of the lots to allow for bigger brick structures in the front. The cottages became overcrowded and unsanitary.

Apartment buildings were built around the city, often outfitted with luxury amenities, such as pools and elevators or units with Maid’s quarters. These apartments were favorites by the white, middle-class, and were particularly found along the lakeside in both the north and south of the city. There is one such example of this type of “middle-class” apartment building, located on the corner of S. Emerald and W. 45th St, the area typically occupied by the white-collar workers of the Stockyards in the earlier years. [Fig. 32]

Prior to the increase in single-family homeownership in 1920s, the presence of multi- family homes indicated a path to the American dream. Occupation of apartments, duplexes, condominiums, or townhomes indicated a firm place in the middle-class.100 Family occupation of an independent apartment versus crowded makeshift rooming house, or residence with extended family indicated a more away from the “old” ways of living to the “new” way of a middle-class nuclear family.

By the 1920s, most worker cottages were viewed as out-of-date and Chicagoans embraced the newest architectural trend, the bungalow, with gusto. Bungalows are difficult to define. The ubiquity throughout the Twentieth century means that almost all smaller detached homes could be described as such. As Clay Lancaster notes, “the average bungalow reflected the society that produced and used it… displayed no predominant ancestry.”101 How do we describe

99 Joseph C. Bigott, “Housing Types,” Encyclopedia of Chicago, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/609.html (accessed on January 15, 2020). 100 Bigott, From Cottage to Bungalow. 101 Clay Lancaster, The American Bungalow 1880-1930, (New York: Dover Publications, 1995), 11. 140 a bungalow, especially since the term seems to apply to small shacks in India to grand estates in the English countryside? The most recognizable features of a bungalow are the low-pitched roof extended to the eaves. The structures sit low to the ground and typically remain unpainted, alluding back to its pastoral background while promoting “the informal life among those who dwell therein.”102

In the United States, the bungalow style first appeared in the East around 1876. 103 Their design and key functions were quickly adapted and modified.104 According to Richard Moe, the appeal of bungalows ranged from their “affordability and ease of construction,” and their appeal to a wide audience of potential homeowners because of their simplistic ornamentation, built-in furnishings, large windows and porches, and “other features that made bungalows convenient and healthful.”105 Bungalows were a reaction to the negative aspects of Industrial Revolution.

They were created to be urban escapes that emphasized nature. Seeing them in a residential landscape denotes a neighborhood is trying to immolate Hayden’s triple dream within the constraints of urban life.

While the late 1890s and early 1900s are commonly known for the over-the-top architecture of the obscenely wealthy of the Gilded Age, the same era also began growing a middle-class. Bungalows, taking their cues from the Arts and Craft and Craftsmen movements, were heralded a departure from the gaudy Victorian homes and represented “simpler… democratic middle-class values.”106 Bungalows were designed to meet all basic needs in a price

102 Ibid., 13. 103 Ibid., 43. 104 Ibid., 43-44. 105 Diane Maddex, Bungalow Nation (New York: Abrams, 2003), 6. 106 Ibid., 12. 141 the average citizen could afford even though the variety of bungalows ranged in size and purpose from “camp shacks to large and luxurious retirement homes.”107

While varying in appearance and size, the common denominator in bungalows are their floorplan and roofline. Maddex places an early 1900s bungalow as having “one or one and one- half stories with a low, sloping roof, an open plan inside, and a front porch tying it to nature,” which allowed it to become “America’s first national house type.”108 Bungalows took on regional attributes, but the basics were the same. One of the reasons for this was the pervasiveness of similar home plans, available nationwide for a low cost. Where Lancaster finds the version of the Bungalow that appeared in Chicago and the Midwest a “tangible image” of the true American bungalows found primarily on the East and West Coasts, Dianne Maddex disagrees. She finds Chicago’s bungalow is heavily influenced by the Prairie Style and the old workingman’s cottage all squeezed into a narrow Chicago lot.109

The interior floorplan is easily recognizable, as it follows the same pattern as a workers cottage.110 You step directly into the living room, very rarely is there a foyer, unless the small front porch was enclosed at one time. From there the home takes on almost a double shotgun effect, living room, kitchen, and dining room one side of the house, bathroom and two bedrooms on the opposite. In some models, there may be a third bedroom and storage upstairs, and a low- ceiling basement providing storage and often, extra living space.

While reminiscent of a worker’s cottage, the bungalow was a step above with its brick construction and large front window, woodworking, and often, built-in cabinetry, a structure

107 Lancaster, The American Bungalow 1880-1930, 12-13. 108 Maddex, Bungalow Nation, 13. 109 Ibid., 157. 110 Bigott, “Housing Types.” 142 demonstrating upward mobility. 111 The homes built post-WWII in Canaryville are stripped- down versions of the more typical and elaborate bungalows built during the 1920s and 30s in

Chicago’s bungalow belt. Whereas other neighborhoods in Chicago try to capitalize on the costly, small land parcels by building condominiums or multi-family rentals, Canaryville developers stick to an updated version of the bungalow, the iconic single-family, middle-class starter home. One residential developer continuously builds single-story brick bungalow homes because it is “what sells” instead of building potentially more profitable condominiums or apartments. 112 Evaluated collectively, the continuation of the bungalow over other architectural styles indicate a consumer base that strongly feels connected to the style’s transitional class roots. Purchasing these homes shows a community that reaffirms its built environment to be one of a working-class heritage but middle-class aspirations.

Evidence of how the new homes reaffirm this working-class/middle-class dichotomy are easily seen when comparing the first round of middle-class homes built in the late 1950s and early 1960s to those built after 2000. For example, compare the homes on South Wallace Street in Figure 33 and South Emerald Avenue in Figure 34. Figure 33 shows the first wave of homes built inspired by middle-class, suburban design. These homes were built after 1957 in a part of

Canaryville previously designated by the FHA as blighted. Figure 34 shows homes built on

Emerald Avenue in an area re-zoned for residential use in 1997 and constructed in 2006. These homes show the progression of the standard single-family home in Canaryville. Again, we see a replication of styles. There is a lack of variation in comparison to Figure 33, likely attributed to time and different owners altering the structure. The yards are smaller, likely because housing trends have moved towards desiring more square footage and less land. The use of a yard to

111 Ibid., 156. 112 Canaryville Building Developer, Interviewed by April Braden, Chicago, IL, October 13, 2016. 143 convey identity and class is still possible with a small patch of grass to the left. Most residents have a small garden area and frequently decorate with seasonal law decorations.

The trend of bungalows continues to present-day. Figure 35 shows three homes under construction on Root Street. The home was completed in 2017, contingent within 38 days and sold within 79 days, above the average time on the market in Chicago is 94 days.113 The three other neighboring structures built congruently were sold off-market, indicating they were sold prior to the start of construction. The speed at which these homes were purchased indicates their desirability above other areas in Chicago. While the bungalow style is represented, we do see variation created at the time of construction. Different brick colors and inclusion of a bay window are visible. Whether this was a choice of the developer or the owner (who purchased the property before completion), we do not know.

Another interesting point of comparison is the newer bungalows to the workman’s cottages in the southern part of Canaryville. The cottages come in a variety of materials, wood, stucco, and brick. Many have received modifications over the years with additions, dormered attics, basements converted into garden apartments and enclosed back porches. [Fig. 36, 37, 38]

Wood structures were often built by those on a restrictive budget. Many of the current owners describe the discovery other cost-cutting measures in construction. For one home originally built in 1889, a foundation was not added until 1955. After a fire, the current owner discovered the 1955 foundation did not include footings.114 Examples of “making due” with what they could afford are found in many renovation stories. Renovators find newspapers

113 Numbers based on April 2017 home sales as listed on the MLS database. These numbers were graciously obtained from licensed realtor Jeremy Fisher on January 14, 2019. The database is the most complete record of home sales and purchases, with the few exceptions of the homes which are purposely not recorded on the MLS at the request of the owner/seller. Oddly, the other three homes which were built at the same time as the publicly sold house, were kept off the MLS. The only evidence of their “sale” comes from current tax records. 114 Canaryville Residents 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 144

instead of insulation in the walls. Frame structures so thin you could sit in your house hear the

neighbors talking in theirs. Of course, there is also the matter of a significant number of homes

without hot water well into the 1970s.115

Adaptions to these cottages fade the working-class landscape into the background and

emphasize the suburban attributes. Siding covers the weathered wood underneath. Flowers in

the front yard add touches of frivolity attributed to middle-class available leisure time. These

adaptations, demonstrate a community attempting to blend the historic structures of the

neighborhood with the newer suburban mindset.

Like the rest of white, working-class America from 1950-1970, Canaryville wanted to

participate in the move to the middle-class. Part of this move included looking the part. We see

this desire in their changing built environment. From their appearances to what they consumed,

looking middle-class is just as important as being it. For some though, buying the quintessential

single-family home was not an option. For these, maintaining a multi-family home was a

necessity. But the landscape of Canaryville was changing. Where multi-family homes and

duplexes used to be the landscape norm, they were being replaced with single-family homes.

What is interesting is that almost all of the multi-family homes pre-date the FHA order to tear down dilapidated homes in 1949. This tells us a few things. First, the homes that are still standing were structurally sound enough to make the cut. Second, these homes are located predominately on the south end of the neighborhood. This is unsurprising given that the north end was known as “Little Hell” in the early days of the neighborhood, and also the area marked with the most amount of derelict homes. Third, keeping these homes around and split into two or more units shows a need for these kinds of structures within the neighborhood. Why does any of

115 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 145 this matter? Why bother splitting hairs in this way? Well, some residents claim that most of

Canaryville is comprised of single-family homes when in reality the economic need for multi-unit homes was still there.

Historic Preservation

Of course, not every workers’ cottage and pre-war home was demolished. For those

that remain, some have been restored and remodeled. Historic preservation has several

implications for the urban suburb. Preservation is associated with increased home values,

affirmation of heritage, gentrification, and efforts to maintain the racial character of a

neighborhood. Architectural styles are important to denoting an urban suburb, but so too is the

ability to demonstrate financial investment in your property and community.

Movements to preserve homes, and through homes, a neighborhood, can be pinpointed to

the 1970s, according to Suleiman Osman. Osman notes that home restoration, particularly in

urban areas such as brownstones in Brooklyn, and neighborhood organization in other cities like

Baltimore, Chicago, and Cleveland, were a part of a growing movement throughout the “Me

Decade” and an attempt to breathe life into urban centers. The neighborhood movement found

membership from a variety of different groups, African Americans involved in the Civil Rights

Movement, young professionals, and particularly important to this study, white ethnics. Ethnics

who participated in neighborhoodism often did so as an offshoot of the white backlash of the

1960s. For them, the neighborhood movement was part of their efforts to reclaim their

community. Their participation, however, should not be conflated with purely racist motivations.

Instead, Osman asserts that at the heart of the movement was a distrust of big institutions and “a

championing instead grassroots institutions.”116

116 Suleiman Osman, “The Decade of the Neighborhood,” in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, eds. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 106-127, 115. 146

The article outlines three “architectures of memory,” preservation, demolition, and reproduction. For Canaryville, we see elements of all three. Preservation in keeping the

“important” buildings such as the Stockyards gates, the Exchange building, and St. Gabriel’s, the

“architecturally significant” structures. We also see preservation in the keeping of older homes and remaking them for new needs. Demolition in the destruction of the unusable buildings, yes, but also in the commercial and industrial districts which were torn down for parking space or to make room for more residences. Or simply because the older buildings distracted the viewer from the suburban landscape Canaryville was striving for.117

Lastly, there is reproduction. In Loughran’s example of Philadelphia's Independence

National Historical Park, the city re-built buildings that were destroyed long ago to provide an idealized “colonial urban fabric” while also hopefully drumming up investment interests by creating a space sure to be a tourist attraction.118 For Canaryville, we do not have a larger entity purposely making these decisions like the City of Philadelphia. Instead, we have an unconscious effort to create the simulacra of suburban identity by each homeowner in Canaryville. Together, they created a space that reinforced the new identity that white Americans should have in the post-industrial, post-flight America. They recreated it with the urban suburb.

Preservation is also associated with gentrification. Gentrification is taking advantage of the lower market values in an impoverished neighborhood and remaking the landscape in a middle-class image. How then do we classify the actions of long-term residents remaking their own, previously impoverished neighborhood? In Canaryville, preservation is not an act of

117 Kevin Loughran, Gary Alan Fine, and Marcus Anthony Hunter, “Architectures of Memory: When Growth Machines Embrace Preservationists,” Sociological Forum, 33. no. 4, (December 2018), 855-876, 865. 118 Ibid., 872. 147 gentrification, but an act of creative financial investment and most importantly, that of memory keeping.

Preserving and rehabilitating historic structures is often a strategy to reaffirm a neighborhood’s importance to ethnic heritage. For example, when the population of Cleveland’s

Slavic Village declined in the 1970s, the neighborhood took steps to establish two historic districts and have six buildings added to the National Register of Historic Places, one local historic district, and 16 other landmark buildings. Community groups also added signage announcing that the neighborhood was the “Slavic Village.” The motivation of these designations was a part of the branding strategy to replace the vacating residents with more

Eastern European immigrants. 119 In more recent years, neighborhood organizations have encouraged homeowners to renovate their homes, but not at the cost of jeopardizing their historic value. Arguing that even working-class homes can have historic value in the heritage they convey, community organizations work to help homeowners subsidize maintenance and repairs to historic porches and facades and to help retain the neighborhood’s walkability.120

While Canaryville has no organizations or funds directly geared towards preserving the heritage of the neighborhood through the built environment, it also does not suffer from the financial issues of Slavic Village. Slavic Village was hit hard by the real estate crash in 2008 where many homes were foreclosed and subsequently looted for valuable copper and other building materials. Instead, Canaryville’s preservation happens on a more individualized level.

Owners have restored homes to bring them up to modern standards in an effort to save money and beautify their neighborhood.

119 Stephanie Ryberg-Webster, “Heritage Amid An Urban Crisis: Historic Preservation in Cleveland, Ohio’s Slavic Village Neighborhood,” Cities, 58 (2016), 10-25, 14. 120 Ibid., 14-15. 148

In placing Canaryville within this movement, we come up slightly short on physical evidence. Nearby Back of the Yards was very active in grassroots participation with their Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, but Canaryville has not revealed itself to have a similar institution. Instead, Canaryville’s participation takes on more subtle notes with each individual’s actions to preserve and remodel existing homes instead of moving on or even by returning to the neighborhood to reclaim a family property.

For the homes preserved instead of demolished, they generally shed their working-class shell. Historic preservation can both affirm class and racial/ethnic identity, but it requires a certain amount of disposable income or time to either hire professional or complete the work yourself. The restoration and remodeling of a home is typically a sound investment; a way for a working-class income earner to create wealth where traditional wealth creation, by investing in the stock market, for example, are usually only available to upper-middle and upper-class individuals. Home preservation signifies investment in a neighborhood. As one resident noted,

“people are constantly fixing up their homes here and it’s a bit like the resurgence.”121 Residents who restore their historic homes often take pride in pulling out key historic elements to display, such as a photo of the home from an earlier time, or keeping particular architectural elements which do not serve a purpose otherwise. (Fig. 39, 40, 41, 42)

Building preservation in Canaryville does have practical components. For example, one renovator talked about their 120-year-old home lacking basic infrastructure like foundation footings and insulation.122 Another mentioned needing to take their home “down to the studs”

121 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 122 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 149 because the previous owner “lived here for 45 years” and the “house was in complete disrepair.”123

Arguably, homeowners are subtly encouraged by the neighbors to maintain their historic homes, through witnessing their neighbors doing the same. Others, who want to remain in their neighborhood to be closer to family and friends, chose to update older relatives’ homes. A third option is to occupy the same home as their elders. They may also be encouraged through seeing newer constructions mirroring older styles.

The tradition of home renovation could also begin as a solution to the neighborhood being redlined due to its proximity to the Stockyards. Possibly having a difficult time selling a property or take a loss might have resulted in a need to be more creative in order to take the space they already had and transform it into the middle-class home they desired. If you wanted to stay in the neighborhood prior to 2000s your only option was to, “buy an old building and renovate it.”124 When they do remodel, changes are often only visible from the interior. As one renovator notes, when you walked in, you’re expecting it to be a little wooden cottage, but that’s not what it is anymore.”125 It seems like preservation is done to the façade, with only a few key elements kept on the interior. Additions are common and often happen by either raising the roof or building into the yard.

Canaryville’s preservation movement also works as an act of memory preservation. One resident discussed renovating a commercial building from their childhood into a residence.

Elements of the original drugstore, such as the soda bar, mirrors, signs, and telephone booths were all kept and incorporated into the home. The owner felt strongly about these elements

123 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 124 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 125 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 150 staying as reminders of the owner’s childhood.126 Through preserving what was left of the original homes, many residents participated in neighborhoodism that has lasted beyond the

1970s.

Christine Hunter reminds us that Americans move and abandon neighborhoods in higher frequency than other cultures. Our culture values technological advances in housing and landscape design that encourages us to seek out newer living situations, especially since our culture does not have as long of a housing history as one might find in older cultures, which allows for both experimentation and devaluing of current housing.127 Given these obvious statements about American culture, the fact that Canaryvillians choose to remain in their neighborhood and maintain the historic homes is unusual. It also explains why other residents chose to build new homes, but not why they choose to replicate older designs. It says something about the cohesiveness of a community’s culture which actively chooses to blend in and not stand out

Yards and Privacy

Yards are incredibly important as a symbol of the urban suburb. As a component of the triple dream, a good yard can convey several aspects of suburban and middle-class identity. A well-maintained yard signals an owner with extra time and finances, someone who takes pride in their home and investment, and a valuable member of the community. As Robert Bruegmann notes, “Front Yard landscapes certainly reflect, in many cases even more than any architectural features, the social status of the property owners and the way they wish to present themselves to the larger world.”128 In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, yard space was

126 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 127 Hunter, Ranches, Rowhouses, And Railroad Flats, 18-21. 128 Robert Bruegmann, “Residential Landscaping in Chicago,” in Out of the Loop: Vernacular Architecture Forum Chicago eds. Virginia B. Price, David A. Spatz, and D. Bradford Hunt (Chicago: Midway Books, 2015), 43-46, 45. 151 more utilitarian. Fencing was built to keep chickens and small livestock from wondering away and other animals out of gardens.

In the postwar era, Harris notes that the presence of gardens was strictly for leisure. The use of outdoor space to grow foods, like the victory gardens of the war years, was taboo. Toiling in the soil for anything but recreation indicated a lower class, one who relied upon whatever food they could produce. The tradition of leisure gardening reflecting a member of the upper-class has a longer history, along with the presence of furniture dedicated to the outdoors and occupying outdoor spaces in private, backyard areas.129 Again, association with an urban, presumably ethnic, landscape, was to be avoided. In urban areas, where yards are rare, communities often commandeered the front steps, sidewalks, and other public spaces, as the locations for private recreational activities. In post-war suburbia, however, the same activities were to happen in often enclosed backyards.

Major changes happened in desirable housing design after WWII. No longer was there an overwhelming desire for a “proper” home with formal parlors or sitting rooms or two floors for added privacy for the bedrooms. Ranch-style homes and split levels included a garage or car port for parking, were more economical to build for developers (which made them cheaper to purchase) and were on trend. What we now refer to as an “open concept” is featured prominently in these homes along with minimal ornamentation inside and out, creating the modern aesthetic associated with the post war era.

The desirability of exposure to nature was also reflected in changes to the home style.

Both bungalows and ranch homes have associations with being in tune with nature. Combined with the green spaces of the front and back yards, the low profile of the homes, large windows,

129 Harris, Little White Houses, How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America, 105-109. 152 and openness of the interior, the homes emphasized rural qualities; a oneness with nature.

Simultaneously, being within close proximity of their neighbors and other amenities, they possessed urban qualities.130 However, suburban ranches require a larger lot, which

Canaryvillians often cannot build on the narrow city lots. Instead, a brick bungalow is preferable.

In Canaryville, front yards are neatly maintained and backyards are typically enclosed with a fence. [Fig. 43 and 44] Normally, the fence separating the backyard does allow for some visibility from the street, but privacy overall is maintained for the owners. As an entryway to the home, lawns are also the first location of privacy and surveillance in a suburban setting.

Suburban trends for fencing, often allowing the owners to gaze out to the street, but obscuring any return glances, are minimized in Canaryville. Other fences, typically rod iron, reinforce separation and surveillance. The juxtaposition of both provides the illusion of safety and privacy, while also allowing for the act of conspicuous consumption in homeownership.

These characteristics – privacy, but publicity, safety, but the danger of exposure - are all hallmarks of suburban, white middle-class landscapes, as identified by Anna Andrejewski. [Fig.

45, 46, 47, 48, 49] Andrejewski argues that post war suburban housing developments were rife with contradiction. Marketed as private abodes, the homes contained several architectural elements that erased privacy and allowed for public surveillance, such as large picture windows and curvilinear streets allowing many eyes to view a resident without revealing themselves. 131

A key element of post-war suburban architecture are large picture windows. These windows allowed occupants to watch their children playing outside, their neighbors, and scan the

130 Barbara Miller Lane, Houses For A New World: Builders and Buyers in American Suburbs 1945-1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 10. 131 Anna Vemer Andrezewski, “Building Privacy and Community: Surveillance in a Postwar American Suburban Development in Madison, Wisconsin,” Landscape Journal 28, no. 1, 2009, 40-55. 153 street for any newcomers. The continued use of large windows facing the street not only reflects the staying power of a design element, but also the desire of the neighborhood to watch over their own. In this sense, the ability to see one’s neighbors does not create hostility, much like

Andrewjewksi points out, but reinforces community. Barbara Miller Lane argues that picture windows “allowed the house, the front yard, the sidewalk, and the street to be perceived as extensions of one another, so that the quasi-public spaces of the house formed a partial continuum with the more public places of the surrounding community.” Furthermore, given that picture windows allowed outsiders to see into the home, they displayed the individuals who achieved an important attribute of the American Dream, property ownership.132

Elements of privacy, panoramic surveillance, and community are visible throughout the neighborhood. As seen in Figures 49, 50, 51, and 52 many Canaryville homes uphold the illusion of community while maintaining security. For example in Figure 51, note the presence of a security fence, security camera, but the transparent front door that allows the outsider to see into the living room and view the floral upholstery. The storm door also allows the owner to survey the street easily. Figure 52 shows three homes each with a rod-iron fence providing security while also the illusion of accessibility. Many homes in Canaryville follow a similar pattern of fencing that allows the community to see the home but ensures only welcomed guests can approach the door. Figure 49 shows a home with a fence creating complete privacy for five feet and the appearance of transparency with the diamond cuts along the top. Viewing the yard from the street, however, would require an individual to break social decorum and by standing too close to the fence to peer through the holes. Thus, the owner can maintain privacy and security, while also holding on to a place as a willing participant in the community.

132 Lane, Houses For A New World, 25-27. 154

Even though Canaryville has moved away from its “out and proud” history of violent action towards outsiders, they still carefully guard against them. The formal interviews I had with residents did not discuss surveillance, but it was difficult for me to move throughout the neighborhood without curtains fluttering or people approaching me asking me what I was doing.

In some respect, I am sure I looked strange. Throughout most of my fieldwork, I walked up and down sidewalks with a clipboard, stopping to make notes and take pictures regularly. A normal person might assume I was up to no good at the worst, or, as one upset resident thought, the

County Tax Assessor.

Yet, I could not have been too threatening. Most of the time I visited Canaryville I had a toddler with me. On those visits, most of the residents who stopped to talk to me engaged me in conversations about my son and asked if I had recently moved to the area. Of course my race, white, also gave me a pass into the neighborhood. Even then, I was told by some of my interviewees that they had heard others talking about a girl walking around the neighborhood.

One respondent joked that this was normal for the neighborhood to know who entered the neighborhood and to ascertain their purpose quickly. They told me about hosting a wedding reception for their son at their home. His employer was invited and got lost along the way. As soon as he stepped out of his car, someone approached him and gave him directions to the party.

This interaction is not unusual, except the guest had not even asked for directions before they were offered. The resident knew simply by looking at him that he was an outsider.

Vacant Space

Another distinguishing factor of the built environment of Canaryville are the vacant lots.

Vacant lots and space are a consistent presence in Canaryville, which is uncharacteristic for highly desirable geographic areas in Chicago. The open space adds to the performance of the urban suburb, as suburban spaces strive to integrate nature as much as possible. Additionally, 155 vacant lots can also contribute to the triple dream if used as an adjacent side yard. [Fig. 53 and

54] Possibly the result of slower redevelopment from blighted areas or the result of not having the ability to rebuild after a fire or disrepair. They are multifaceted places for the neighborhood, serving as locations of bucolic respite, vehicles of economic mobility, and indicators of economic decline.

For generations, the lots were play areas for Canaryville’s children. One resident recalled, “We used to call them ‘prairies.’ I mean that’s where we played and there were some on every single block.”133 The naming of these lots as “prairies” holds local roots. An empty lot or any grassy space in any Midwestern city might be awarded that designation given the vernacular and regional environment. It harkens to a more rural environment, one where the suburbs are increasingly encroaching upon and stealing away the real prairies and farmland through urban sprawl. As many theorists remind, the division between urban and rural, city and nature, are socially constructed.134

Kevin Loughran discusses these types of accidental open spaces, such as vacant lots, as

“imbricated spaces.” These spaces “present ‘city’ and ‘nature’ as active agents in their creation through the decay of the built environment and the growth of natural environment.”135 These spaces, which may have been viewed as blights in the past, are now valued. In cities vacant lots and abandoned public spaces, such as an old elevated railway like Loughran explores, are converted into parks, community gardens, or locations for public art. What used to be considered opposites of “city” and “nature” are now seen as “spatially and socially linked.”136

133 Canaryville Residents 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 134 Kevin Loughran has a wonderful historiography of the sociological theories surrounding city, nature, and public space in his article, “Imbricated Spaces: The High Line, Urban Parks, and the Cultural Meaning of City and Nature,” Sociologial Theory, 34 no.4, 2016, 311-334. 135 Ibid., 311. 136 Ibid., 312. 156

Building on farmland and prairies fits soundly into class stratification of the suburbs.

The farther away one could build from the city center, the higher social status was attributed to them. In more recent stratification of Chicago suburbs, the opposite is often true. The so-called

“first-tier” suburbs, those closest to the city, often have a higher price tag.137 Regardless of price tag, the connection between a suburb having some element of rurality to it is a key characteristic.

In the suburban ideal of the American mind, there needs to be some element of nature for it to stand out in opposition to urban spaces.

For some residents, vacant lots provide economic mobility. Residents note purchasing the lots adjacent to their homes for extra yard space. The lots are relatively easy to purchase, provide space and a yard for the owners of adjacent homes, and are an easy sale for future capital.138 Vacant lots also create economic problems. For example, when the International

Amphitheater closed, residents worried about the unused parking lots along Halsted Street owned by someone outside of the neighborhood which stood vacant and closed off to any revitalization. Many residents view vacant lots as bringers of crime, drug use, and pollution. It is difficult to sell a home or business adjacent to these lots, for these reasons. Of course, well- maintained vacant lots can also act as neighborhood revitalization, but often the negative connotation wins out.139

Vacant lots are also vital to the economy of a neighborhood. Without space, it is hard for new development or business opportunity. Today, the vacant lots left from unused parking lots, shuttered industrial sites and demolished derelict buildings are now being used for new

137 There are exceptions to this generalization. Specifically, first tier suburbs on the Southside or Southwest sides with a higher population of African American or Latino residents have lower market values, such as Calumet Park, IL, Berwyn, IL, Forest Park, IL, Cicero, IL, and more. 138 Canaryville Residents 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 139 Michele W. Berger, “Cleaning Up Vacant Lots Makes Neighborhoods Safer,” Penn Today, March 8, 2018, https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/cleaning-vacant-lots-makes-neighborhoods-safer (accessed November 10, 2018). 157 construction. As previously mentioned, the design of these new homes mirrors the design of an idealized 1960s suburban bungalow. For some, they “hate to see these old buildings torn down, cause the new buildings aren’t… they’ve no character.”140 For others, they see the combination of new construction and long term residents fixing their homes as “a bit like the resurgence” of the neighborhood.141 Something that is taking Canaryville to the level of house proud it was in its early history and the post-World War II years.

One resident notes that the spread of Chinatown out of the Bridgeport neighborhood and across Pershing Road into Canaryville is filling the vacant lots with new homes which is “great because … the neighborhood is being rebuilt. And the people that have been here … all their lives are reaping the benefits. Because anything new comes in, it helps the value of your property.”142 The long-term Canaryville property owners benefit from the sale of these lots which they inherit and purchase cheaply. Knowing that they are not looking for upward mobility allows them to make long term investments in their geography.

Green Space, Parks, and Public Space

Purposeful open space, such as parks, also hold significant value for the urban suburb landscape. It provides place for community and echoes the suburban, bucolic lifestyle. Kevin

Loughran argues that a link exists between urban parks and race, where in places like Chicago, the choosing of park locations and the level to which they are maintained, fall along racial lines.

Predominately white areas receive more and better parks than non-white neighborhoods.

Historically, nineteenth-century parks were both places of beauty and refinement and places of danger. In already white middle-class neighborhoods, parks were meant to add a level of beauty

140 Canaryville Residents 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 141 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 142 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 158 or create a boundary from non-whites. In non-white areas, parks were often viewed as potential places of crime and sexual liaisons.143

Parks were also viewed as serving different purposes for different classes. For the middle and upper-classes, parks offered places of repose. For the poor and working-classes, parks were to be cites of reformation. When non-white, working-class groups visited parks, it was the hope of prominent landscape architects like Frederick Law Olmsted, that the design of parks like

South Park (eventually Washington and Jackson Park) would be an uplifting experience, or at least, discourage working-class people from “perverse inclinations.”144

By the twentieth century, instead of large parks like South Park in Chicago or Central

Park in New York City, cities took up the “small parks” movement. Large parks were designed for white audiences away from the mixed city. Small parks, however, were increasingly designed for white ethnic neighborhoods. These parks intended to refine the cultural tastes of the neighborhood and create more “socially desired behaviors.”145 Meanwhile, the few parks built for the Black Belt (the area where African Americans were allowed to live) were places that originated out of white desires to keep the bigger parks segregated for themselves or to act as boundaries to white spaces. In addition to the segregation, black parks were also meant to avoid race-based violence that took place in public parks, such as that which started the 1919 Riots.146

By the 1950s, several changes in urban landscapes, such as the rise of suburbanization, the growth of African American populations in Northern urban centers, and the shifting notions of what purpose a park should play, changed the parks in Chicago. Parks began to take on more

143 Kevin Loughran, “Race and the Construction of City and Nature,” Environment and Planning, 49 no. 9, (2017) 1948-1967, 1950. 144 Ibid., 1952. “perverse inclinations” is the language used by Olmsted when describing his design of the buildings and lagoons of South Park. 145 Ibid., 1953. 146 Ibid., 1953-1954. 159 utilitarian designs, featuring more baseball diamonds and playgrounds, for example. More importantly, as more African Americans came to border parks previously socially designated for whites only, the new parks that were built were in the growing Westside of Chicago, the predominately white areas. Additionally, the purpose of these parks was seen as a possible solution to the developing problems of juvenile delinquency that began to develop during World

War II and continued afterward. A park could be a place to provide social services and youth activities. As white flight continued and African Americans continued to break out of their

Black Belt boundaries, the Chicago Park District continued to divest their spending from parks on the South and West Sides and funneling that money to white Northside.147

The perceived concern regarding multi-racial use of public spaces largely stems from the perception that the presence of non-whites in public spaces will lead to decay and destruction of the space. To uninformed individuals, the correlation between the presence of non-whites and urban decay is clear. However, as many scholars point out, it is not non-white occupants destroying a neighborhood, but rather the combination of racist public and private funding that pulls funding from neighborhood and facility maintenance after the racial composition of an area shifts from white to non-white, which is the root cause of urban decay.148

As the vacant lots have slowly disappeared with newer homes, we see more designation of public space for recreation purposes. In 1925-1950, the maps reflect the space near W. 42nd St and S. Lowe Ave show the setting aside of land for a park. The inclusion of the park indicates several key things. First, it demonstrates the move of the neighborhood from its identity as

147 Ibid., 1954-1958. 148 Beryl Satter, Family Properties: How the Struggle over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009); Themis Chronopoulos, “The Politics of Race and Class and the Changing Spatial Fortunes of the McCarren Pool in Brooklyn, New York, 1936-2010, Space and Culture, 16 no.1 (February 2013), 104-122; Christopher Mele, “Neoliberalism, Race and the Redefining of Urban Redevelopment, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 no.2 (March 2013), 598-617. 160 solely a residential space tied to an industrial setting. While the area had four schools, setting aside places for children and adults to enjoy green space, appears not to be a priority prior to

1950.

Secondly, the park sits on a space that was formerly industrial. Reclaiming industrial spaces for public purposes like this indicates a community pulling away from an industrial, working-class identity, and moving to one focused on the people in the community. Canaryville no longer needs industrial landscapes. They have moved beyond the working-class heritage that used those spaces and want to embrace the advantages and facilities of their middle-class future.

Designating public green space shows a community shifting its values in terms of landscape, moving from an urban industrial space to one that is primarily residential and possibly attempting to gentrify. Jane Jacobs argues against the notion that public parks are either sources for vagrancy and crime or designation spaces that serve a specific community.

Organizing community events and social services around neighborhood parks has an unintended effect of clanning. Even though, technically, any Chicago resident can participate in a Chicago Park District, it is understood that those services are meant for the immediate neighborhood of the park. Over the years, the community services can develop into a mentality of “this is our park.” For example one resident started a little league team with a racial make-up reflecting the local public school demographics.149 The team received “a lot of blowback from the neighborhood. People I have known for years and there’s still a lot of racism in the neighborhood.”150

149 Even though Canaryville is predominately white, most white families send their kids to the private catholic school, St. Gabriel’s and the public school students come from Canaryville, Back of the Yards, and Fuller Park. 2019 demographic numbers show the school has 27.7% Black, 46.6% Hispanic, 25.1% White, and 0.6% other students. 150 Canaryville Residents 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 161

Fighting in and around parks often takes up a racial dynamic. In 2015, what was disputed as a hate crime or gang violence ended with four white residents found charged with attempted murder over the stabbing of two African Americans. The victims claimed it was a hate crime as the attacks used racial slurs during the stabbing. Others, including the Alderman, claimed the involved parties had gang affiliations which was the cause for the fight.151 In this case, the fight stemmed not from negotiation space, but from the availability of space for which it to take place.

While parks are not inherently attractions of crime, they do present the opportunity.

Another fight happened in August 2017 at the Little League field in Canaryville. The field is a source of pride in Canaryville as its maintenance is largely funded out of private donations. For unknown reasons, a fight broke out after a game. The fight seemed to be non- related to the game. Part of the fight was recorded and played over local news. On the video you can hear the woman recording the fight saying things like, “These people are ghetto as hell,” “All these mo****ers are from 18th Street,” “All these 18th Street people started it [the fight] up.”

“18th Street” in this context, is most likely referring to the main street that runs through the Pilsen neighborhood, a predominately Hispanic area. When the woman engages with some of the individuals she identifies as the instigators (who were both African American and Hispanic), one

Hispanic girl shouts at the recorder “You a f***g Hillbilly.”152

While the fight does not seem to be started from racial issues (the police officially never determined the cause), it seems that racial dynamics rose to the top very quickly. The video

151 Patrick Butler, “11th Ward plagued by sudden upsurge in violence recently,” Gazette Chicago, July 2, 2015http://www.gazettechicago.com/index/2015/07/11th-ward-plagued-by-sudden-upsurge-in-violence-recently/ (accessed September 19, 2019); Geoff Ziezulewicz “4 charged in mob attack at Canaryville park,” Chicago Tribune, June 7, 2015 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-canaryville-park-attack-court-20150607-story.html (accessed September 19, 2019). 152 Joe Ward, “’Major’ Brawl Outside Canaryville Little League Game Brings Out Police,” DNAinfo.com, August 4, 2017, https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170804/canaryville/canaryville-little-league-fight-brawl-children- parents-video-live-leak (accessed September 19, 2019). 162 demonstrates the negotiation of public space and the precarious role race and community play in opening neighborhoods to “outsiders.” The implication of maintaining boundaries and the creation of “outsiders” is discussed further in Chapter 4.

Conclusion

This chapter demonstrates the subtle ways the urban suburb appears. Using the hegemony of middle-class characteristics, Americans associate the “suburb” as the bastion of middle-class, white America. Whether this assumption is correct, is irrelevant. Instead, American culture views certain attributes of the suburb, such as building type, green space, and geography, as aspects of middle-class identity. The connection between the physical and the ideological creates the first step to forming an urban suburb. The second step is the performance of that suburb. Changing and maintaining a landscape to reflect the commonly held assumptions of the suburban appearance changes the identity of the neighborhood. As we will see in the next chapter, it can also influence the identity of the residents. Before the urban suburb could exist, it needed to have the space and the motivation to do so. The urban crisis and white flight created both of those things. It provided the Canaryville residents with enough fear that their neighborhood would change, that they began to change the landscape to protect it. The aspects of the urban suburb that perform race or change the landscape to protect against racial integration are discussed in the final chapter.

163

CHAPTER 4. ORAL HISTORY AND CONSIDERATION OF LANDSCAPE, CLASS, AND RACE The negotiation of race in spatial and social boundaries are the last aspects of understanding the performance of the urban suburb. As already alluded to, the story of race in

Canaryville is complicated. Throughout the history of Canaryville, the tensions between this insular neighborhood and the surrounding non-white neighborhoods have shaped both the landscape and consciousness of it. The urban suburb is partly constructed to affirm racial identity and we know that Canaryville edited and maintained its landscape to reflect whiteness.

However, it is difficult to evaluate the role of race within the landscape and community. Race is a taboo subject, and people, especially white people, tend to talk around the issue or use code. In the built environment, it is even more difficult to see a “white space” over a “non-white space” except when considering that our understanding of “suburban” is inherently “white.”

However, the demographics of Canaryville are changing. Neighboring Bridgeport is slowly becoming a more desirable and upscale neighborhood with a higher price tag. Groups which used to live in the Bridgeport area, particularly those of Chinese ethnicity, are finding themselves priced out. To own a home, they are moving to more affordable Canaryville.

Additionally, the Latinx and mixed-race population has grown in recent years.

This chapter demonstrates how the adoption of the urban suburban landscape is an exercise in preserving the neighborhood’s ethnic and racial heritage in the midst of changing demographics. Through examining the theoretical formation of imagined communities, neighborhoods, and the concept of whiteness, the chapter finds race to be a primary motivator in landscape formation. This chapter also adds the voices of the residents through oral histories. It evaluates the human element of Canaryville by analyzing resident’s discussion of their 164 landscape, their neighborhood, their race, and their class. The chapter finds that while race may not be a conscious factor in creating the urban suburb, it is one of the most influential.

Before discussing the performance of race in the built environment and language, we will examine the importance of the isolation and community of Canaryville to creating an urban suburb. This community’s identity was built upon its insularity from adjacent neighborhoods, a distance that contributed to create the landscape of an urban suburb. Creating an urban suburb is, in part, an act of creating a boundary to isolate the landscape from the surrounding urban area.

It also heavily relies on the community to reinforce the suburban performance. A homeowner cannot create an urban suburb alone. In short, an urban suburb community needs two things in order to succeed: a strong community identity and strong boundaries, physical or otherwise.

The last framework that informs my analysis of Canaryville is the ways in which community forms and creates identities. Of great importance here is Benedict Anderson’s

Imagined Communities.1 Anderson’s “Imagined Community” refers to the ways in which a group of people come together to share a community identity without ever having met one another. The community identity is also based on intangible things such as nationalism, religion, or shared language. To explore how we recognize these imagined communities, he provides an analogy of recognizing our own baby photo. He points out that in the act of growing up, we forget thousands of days between childhood and adulthood. We reach a point where we have to be shown and then told by third parties that the baby we are looking at in a photograph is actually us. We might be able to recognize some familiarity, but we need an outside source to confirm.

1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006). 165

The same kind of forgetting and interpretation happens for the built environment.

Neighborhoods change. Buildings are altered or destroyed. Their purpose changes as occupants move in and out. Time passes and we are presented with a new neighborhood that seems familiar, but we cannot be sure. Except how often are we told what buildings are or how they relate to us? We fill in the blanks ourselves through common architectural signifiers as to what a house or a factory “look” like. They stand as symbols for us. If we replace these symbols, how does that affect our collective memory? We have to remake it relying on the other imagined communities.

Anderson’s work is also important to analyze the way Canaryville talks about its community and the residents. The rhetoric of “outsiders,” i.e. those who exist outside of the

Canaryville space, not necessarily those who try to enter and occupy the space, is a tremendous influence in shaping the community’s identity. Without explicitly stating who is “in” and who is

“out” or the characteristics of those individuals, Canaryville uses this rhetoric to formulate their community, racial, and class identity. They also use the rhetoric to justify and reinforce the physical and perceived boundaries of the community.

Anderson’s work shows how communities can exist beyond physical boundaries. The physical, however, is also important to creating communities and identity. Robert Sampson notes that we tend to downplay the importance of neighborhoods and communities in the modern era. 2 Access to greater transportation, communication, and media would have us believe that we have moved beyond geographical boundaries. These communities are still important because, even in our globalized society, where you live greatly influences one’s life. He argues that “we react to neighborhood difference, and these reactions constitute social mechanisms and practices

2 Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 6. 166 that in turn shape perceptions, relationships, and behaviors.”3 Furthermore, he asserts that neighborhoods are “important determinants of the quantity and quality of human behavior.”4

Benjamin Looker discusses how the concept of “neighborhood” evolved from World War

II to the Reagan Era and how the term became a “proxy for fiercely disputed models of civic and communal life.”5 He notes that the imagery, language, and ideology of neighborhoods became a

“symbolic vehicle for constructing visions of a wider national body politic and mechanism for navigating social divisions” and eventually became a place to discuss the characteristics to forming a national identity.6 This allowed the social struggles of the postwar era to play out in the “imagined neighborhood.”7 The imagined neighborhood became a place for concerns over an increasingly nationalized culture. Conflicts between socioeconomic and racial stressors played out in an idealized setting. Often rhetoric over what the community used to look like versus concerns of what the community would look like in the future became the vehicle of expressing these issues. In addition, using neighborhoods to discuss stresses, Looker notes that neighborhoods also changed to reflect these stressors. Neighborhoods became places to protect residents from the troubles happening in the rest of the city and nation.8

In the same respect, the urban suburb landscape insulates the residents from exterior conflicting identity cues. The “neighborhood” real or imagined, plays an important role in understanding the identity of an individual or the community. In the oral histories, many residents refer to “the neighborhood” or the “community” as a stand in for their own thoughts and feelings. The individual becomes a part of the collective.

3 Ibid., 21. 4 Ibid., 22. 5Benjamin Looker, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2015), 2, 9. 6 Ibid., 2. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 8. 167

The Connection Between Race and Class

The other uniting factor of Canaryville is the neighborhood’s ethnic and racial heritage.

Canaryville is known to be “whites-only.” The status of Canaryville as “white” is further complicated when considering the Irish ethnic heritage of the neighborhood. Historically, the

Irish were not considered “white.” The Irish path to whiteness in the nineteenth century resulted in often violent clashes with African Americans, who the Irish often viewed as their primary competitors. Race and class also share a special bond in American culture. In many ways, race supersedes any other factor in determining an individual’s class identity. As such, race is an important factor in the conversation of forming and shaping the built environment.

To understand the dynamics of race and class, it is best to start in the nineteenth century when the United States experienced the biggest wave of immigration, while congruently experiencing the Civil War, Emancipation, and the constitutional defining of “citizenship” during Reconstruction. In the late nineteenth century, the United States experienced a second wave of immigration. Hailing mostly from Europe, these immigrants found themselves in a society based on a hierarchy of race. Struggling to find their place in this binary, black/white system, many immigrants experienced an identity disconnect. The Irish were not “white” in our modern understanding. Similarly, native-born Americans also struggled in trying to reconcile this new group who historically, was treated as a racially inferior group by their English colonizers. The Irish, while lower in social status, were also different than African Americans.

Instead of changing their worldview, native-born Americans subconsciously adopted a process many scholars term “whiteness,” where the Irish and other European immigrant groups slowly gained the rights and privileges of whiteness. During this process, immigrants’ stereotypical negative attributes were forgotten as their cultural attributes were adopted by the white 168 mainstream. What the scholars of whiteness try to locate are those moments of conflicts when race and color come under question to arrive at American’s current hegemonic racial definitions.

Perhaps one of the first, most notable works on whiteness is Noel Ignatiev’s How the

Irish Became White. Ignatiev specifies how the Catholic Irish move from ‘oppressed’ to

‘oppressor’ as he “attempt to reassess immigrant assimilation and the formation (or non- formation) of an American working-class. (my emphasis)”9 The thesis of this book is striking for two reasons. First, Ignatiev makes sure to separate Catholic from Protestant Irish, most likely because historically, Protestant Irish were more closely tied to British colonial rule and not viewed and treated as “savage” Catholics. Parsing out the difference between the two religious affiliations alludes to the notion that to be Catholic in America meant an immediate questioning of racial membership.10

Secondly, Ignatiev focuses on how members of the working-class became white. He illuminates an important caveat of ethnic and racial membership in the United States, that is, class membership strongly indicates whiteness. Of course, that is not to say that anyone who has specific attributes of the middle-class can become white, (there is that pesky thing of skin color, both socially and biologically constructed), but membership of the working-class does mean that racial identity was negotiable prior to the twentieth century.

Thus, the Irish, among others, took up the process of solidifying an immutable relationship between being “working-class” and being “white.” David Roediger’s The Wages of

Whiteness finds that place where race becomes linked to class. Roediger traces the ways in which whiteness was used as a form of social currency to help nineteenth and twentieth century

9 Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995), 1. 10 Perhaps the one exception to this corollary would be German Catholics, but even then, their relationship to the political and labor movements of the 1840s to 1900s placed many Germans at a disadvantage. 169 immigrant groups, most notably the Irish, set themselves apart from African Americans.

Roediger argues that white members of the working-class “constantly feared downward mobility” economically and socially. Thus, they used whiteness, something which could not be taken from them, as a way to set themselves apart from Blacks and other non-white ethnic groups.11 In doing so, they simultaneously created a working-class consciousness that belonged exclusively to white people. Roediger traces the way that Americans dealt with the problems in categorizing and classifying these new groups of wage workers, immigrants, and, the latter half of the nineteenth century, recently freed slaves. This process was both acknowledged and supported by both the Anglo-Saxon middle and upper-classes, along with the ethnic immigrants who relied upon the distance from African Americans that race and class categories provided.

Roediger joins a chorus of scholars reminding that class does not erase racism and we must look at the “racism of class” also.12 Often, class is viewed as being more objective, more real, because of its presumed close ties to economics. In its objectiveness, class provides a place for people of the same socioeconomic backgrounds to overcome the divisions of racism.13

Roediger sets to debunk the claim that the only barrier to working-class solidarity is race, and that racism is a construct created by the bourgeois meant to divide white and black workers from their collective interests. Instead race and class are intrinsically linked because their ideologies formed at the same time. White ethnics needed both their race and their working-class status in order to differentiate themselves from African Americans in the same occupations.

Examining race and class through labor, shows very few examples in history where race was tossed aside for common economic goals. Additionally, the identity work of immigrants in

11 David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working-class (New York: Verso, 2007, second edition), xxiv. 12 Ibid., 7. 13 Ibid. 170 antebellum America as explored by Roediger and Matthew Frye Jacobson, put American society down a path that forever entwines race and class. The shining examples of them are cases in the

1920s-1940s where workers of all racial backgrounds joined to unionize. By the time we reach the 1950s, to claim a “working-class” or “middle-class” identity was to claim whiteness. The ability to see a race as an indication of a class status is one of the most perplexing hallmarks of

American culture.

Class is incapable of acting as an equalizer. Whenever a non-white group tries to move beyond their assigned underclass, they threaten the stability and privileges associated with the white race. Thus, when African Americans attempted to obtain the economic and civil protections afforded to them in the Constitution during the Civil Rights Era, white coworkers and potential neighbors saw it as attacks on their livelihood and very existence.

One influential study on the relationship between class and race is John Hartigan, Jr.’s

Racial Situations. Hartigan notes that race, while socially constructed, is not static. What it means to be black or white changes on a micro level. Additionally, our tendency to couch things as “white” or “black” as if there is a cultural checklist, is problematic. He campaigns for thinking about race differently by paying attention to local settings where “racial identities are actually articulated, reproduced, and contested” instead of evaluating the bigger, harder to refute abstract of race.14 There is a great variety of racial relations between people of different classes.

To demonstrate this, he examined three neighborhoods in Detroit. In Detroit, like in Canaryville,

“white racialness is constituted, evaluated and revised” depending on the setting. It is shaped by national and local history, class membership, and geography.15

14 John Hartigan Jr., Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 4. 15 Ibid., 6-7.

171

He finds that class background and geography are the two biggest determinants for racial matters instead of the commonly held racial attitudes. Racial matters are the by-product of a person’s lived experience in race. It is the process in which we formulate our racial ideology through the process of experiencing race. Racial matters are dynamic. Racial attitudes are flat.

Racial attitudes are the typical manner of studying race relations. Looking at race on a macro- level through surveys, media, and other national indicators. Racial attitudes assume that whites will act one way, blacks another. Urban Suburb looks at the racial matters. It looks at race in a micro level, not necessarily through comparing three communities, but by comparing one community to a simulacra of the suburb.

One illustrative example is his analysis of Warrendale, a lower working-class white community on the outskirts of Detroit. The community was in turmoil over the reopening of a local school. The school was intended for black students with an African-centric curriculum designed to foster pride and academic resilience among black students who were falling through the cracks. The school, opened in 1992, was immediately viewed as a threat to the community.

Community members were upset over not being informed by the school board. They were angry because the local school, which was overcrowded, was denied extra funding for expansion.

Some residents were worried that the increase of black students to the neighborhood would increase crime and gang activity.

The media and non-locals painted the white residents as “racist,” specifically, “blue- collar” racism, meaning they lacked the articulation and finesse of more educated and professional whites when explaining racial relations.16 To the residents fighting the school, they did not feel their actions were racially motivated. Rather, they feared for their own community,

16 Ibid., 214. 172 their own children being pushed aside for others. Nevertheless, objectors were consistently put in a place where they had to justify their protest by claiming, “I’m not a racist.” The fact that the school was built in a white enclave made it seem racialized to outside observers. Here, racial matters show that class and geography influence how one interacts with racial situations.

Hypothetically, were the community wealthier, they would have been able to articulate less

“racist” ways of protesting, instead of shouting things like, “What about the white kids!?”

Geography played a key role as well. A school official noted that if they built the school in an all-black neighborhood, there would have been no issues.

This example is illustrative to Canaryville. We see the same sentiments of community preservation. They want their children and community resources to flourish. They do not necessarily want others to suffer, but they do not want what little they have taken from them. As a white enclave, they are under greater scrutiny from outsiders. Their statements and actions are perceived as racial, even if they are not racially intended. Their ability to preserve their community as a place for whites puts the community under the suspicion of “racist” from outsiders, a label they adamantly deny.

A more recent study that tries to locate the place where the identifier of “white” finds itself on shaky grounds when conflicting with class is Monica McDermott’s Working-Class

Whites. McDermott set out to “provide empirical evidence of the continued existence of anti- black prejudice among white Americans … that often coexists with friendliness, civility and avowed opposition to explicit racial discrimination.”17 She performed ethnographic research in two neighborhoods where white people, once the majority, now found themselves the racial and economic minority in otherwise black neighborhoods. Living in Boston and Atlanta for a year

17 Monica McDermott, Working-Class White: The Making and Unmaking of Race Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), ix. 173 each, she determined that her subjects in Atlanta, “experienced their whiteness as a mark of individual weakness or failure: a successful white person should live and work in more affluent, suburban areas.”18 In short, there is no reason for a white person to be a failure.19 In Boston, whites often identified themselves as working-class or as a member of an ethnic group with

European roots. Being white often meant they were entitled to certain things, like “their” neighborhood.20 Race is important to maintain some aspect of superiority.

For affluent whites who do not live in close proximity to blacks, race “may function more like an abstraction … unlikely to be continually considered.”21 For less affluent whites who live and work near blacks, “race is … a major factor in everyday life.”22 Census would not place all of Canaryville as “less affluent” but the majority are. Reinforcing racial attributes through the urban suburb then may help ameliorate some feelings of inadequacy or racial and class anxieties.

Redlining

A clear place where we can see the connection between race and property is in the history of segregation through redlining. Atypical for an all-white neighborhood, Canaryville was redlined. Its proximity to industrial sites and racial neighborhoods meant the government viewed it as a bad investment. Redlining is often cited as the primary reason more white people are capable of owning homes over non-white. Elaine Lewinneck notes that by the early 1900s racism and segregation resulted in mortgages of whiteness: an implicit, often unfulfilled promise that white people might profit from homeownership as long as they could keep blacks away from

18 Ibid., x. 19 Ibid., 40-41. 20 Ibid., 2. 21 Ibid., 37. 22 Ibid., 37. 174 their neighborhoods.”23 Redlining was the government’s response that made the mortgages of whiteness a protected policy.

Redlining originated from New Deal programing, the Banking Act of 1933, and the

National Housing Act of 1934, intending to shore up the housing market during the Great

Depression through outlining which areas were “safe” investments. We cannot fully understand

Redlining without examining the Homeowners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Home

Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The HOLC was established by congressional appointments to help curb the high number of foreclosures during the Great Depression. HOLC appraised urban properties and refinanced loans with lower interest rates. The refinancing of the loans was certainly beneficial to the homeowners and real estate market. As Louis Woods notes over one million homeowners were helped between 1933 and 1936.24 The FHLBB “established unified national lending standards” based off “scientific appraisal standards”25 Together, the two agencies used appraisal techniques that intended to isolate unfavorable neighborhoods for bank investments. These appraisals, however, moved beyond an appraisal of the actual property and included an analysis of the residents inside. Racial, ethnic, or other “undesirable” residents as determined by HOLC, “influenced national lending policy by disadvantaging entire communities it deemed a hazardous bank investment.”26

The identification of these areas did two things. First, it created a “powerful set of incentives” for all parties involved in the real estate business.27 Second, these actions lead to home mortgage redlining resulting in the devaluing of “surprisingly large portion” of urban

23 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward, 172. 24 Louis L. Woods, "The Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Redlining, and the National Proliferation of Racial Lending Discrimination, 1921–1950," Journal of Urban History, 38, no. 6, (2012), 1036-1059. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 James L. Greer, “Historic home Mortgage Redlining in Chicago,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 107, no. 2 (Summer 2014), 204-233, 204-205. 175 properties.28 Using seemingly empirical data, the federal government determined very few homes qualified for their new mortgage insurance. Those that did not qualify ended up

“redlined,” or highlighted red, category D, indicating Fourth Grade, or “hazardous” for investment purposes.

Redlining made certain city neighborhoods bad investments and created a nearly impossible environment for African Americans and other people of color to purchase a home with a mortgage or help of FHA loan. It also spurred further exodus to the suburbs as white homeowners found it easier to purchase in areas supported by FHA loans. FHA underwriting manuals structure a great deal of our understanding of the suburban landscape. As most new homes built in the Post War era were funded with GI Bills and other federal loans, the FHA’s standards greatly shaped the landscape.

Redlining policies were so “systematic and forceful” that it perpetuated segregation in the urban landscape.29 In the 1920s, racial exclusion was based on false notions of biological difference and “natural” laws of order. Homeowners and the real estate industry took measures to prevent racial mixing. Restrictive covenants, or clauses written into deeds preventing the current owner from selling their home to certain racial or ethnic groups, were introduced in the

1920s.

In the 1930s the appraisal industry opposed the “mixing” of the races and the belief that intergraded neighborhoods would cause “the decline of both the human race and of property values.” FHA’s policies towards backing African American properties; the logic that one black family could destroy the property values for the whole block, often motivated the actions of

28 Ibid., 205. 29 Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017), viii. 176 white homeowners beyond nebulous reasons of the “decline of a neighborhood.”30 By the 1940s,

Chicago led the nation in their use, covering approximately half of the city’s residential neighborhoods. Racial and ethnic groups found themselves boxed into certain areas. As Beryl

Satter notes, the ghettos of Chicago were forced on African Americans, and not of their choosing. 31

Still, African Americans purchased homes with either exorbitant interest rates or drained their savings to pay cash. The costs of purchasing a home led black owners to neglect general maintenance, cut the home up into apartments, or rent it to more people than would normally be comfortable. They worked double shifts leaving little time for childcare and other necessities of basic life. To the outside, this gave white neighbors the perception that black residents brought urban decay, fueling white racism and fears. By the 1950s, these false ideas developed into contemporaries blaming urban problems on African American’s “pathological behavior in destroying their own residences” or the whites who abandoned their community when blacks moved in. By the 1980s and 90s when this rhetoric was no longer politically correct, conversations changed to a discussion about a “culture of poverty,” “deindustrialization,” and

“Wars on Drugs.”32

In postwar America, racial exclusion was based more on the whites’ perceived rights as property owners than biology. While the federal government and real estate industry prohibited

African Americans from integrating white neighborhoods, it also facilitated white flight to the suburbs. All parties involved claimed that real estate transactions and market value determinations resulted from “impersonal market forces” and had nothing to do with state and

30 Ibid., 45. 31 Satter, Family Properties, 40-41. 32 Ibid., 6. 177 federal involvement.33 Scholars agree that the postwar era laid the foundation for the Civil Rights backlash of the 1960s and “white racial conservatism… fueled by whites’ preoccupation with protecting their neighborhoods, status, and privileges from minorities” due to the perceived threat, real or otherwise, that racial integration in neighborhoods and the workplace would threaten their way of life.34

In 1968, Congress passed the Federal Housing Act which forbade the discrimination of housing based on race, sex, religion, and national origin. It effectively outlawed the mapping of neighborhoods worthy of real estate investment. As a result, the FHA maps were supposed to be destroyed, except for one, a map of 1938 Chicago. [Fig. 20] The destruction of the FHA maps was ineffective, several survived. Also, HOLC maps that were based upon the initial FHA maps and their production were preserved. Most historians agree that HOLC maps are true enough to the original FHA maps to use them as a stand-in.

As previously mentioned, Canaryville was redlined. [Fig. 20 and 36] The 1940 HOLC description for district D72 reads:

“Located between 35th and 63rd, Wentworth to Halsted, a mixed area consisting of

foreigners, mostly Lithuanian and Italian. Colored people are on Tremont, between

Normal and the railroad. Many railroad yards, shops, etc., are in the area, with a poor

class of property adjoining them. Stockyard odors are detrimental when the prevailing

wind is from the west; stockyard location is at 43rd to 47th, Halsted to Western. This has

a tendency to soften rents and depress sales. Area improved somewhat south of Garfield

where there are more single homes. Transportation is not good, especially in the north

section. It is better south of Garfield. On Union are many poor frame houses, with a few

33 Ibid., 9. 34 Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America, 6. 178

2's; and south of Garfield the situation improves somewhat both as to brick, frames and

2's. On Lowe are a number of frames, old, in fair condition. 63rd and Halsted is a good

business location, ranking with Uptown as an excellent retail section, notwithstanding

the class and occupation of the surrounding districts; Sears Roebuck have one of their

largest, modern retail stores here. The Gar Wood Industries, Inc., are on 37th west of

Wentworth. Another blighted area.”35

D72 reaches beyond Canaryville and includes a large portion of Back of the Yards. What is important to note is the detailing of which races and ethnicities live in the area. It notes the relationship of the Stockyards to the low rents and sales of properties. It also relates that the areas with more single-family homes improve a neighborhood, implying that multi-family homes are detrimental. Lastly, the description makes a direct correlation between the presence of commercial districts and the improvement of an area.

The lasting effects of redlining continue today. Economically, historically redlined neighborhoods receive higher mortgage interest rates, less access to lines of credit, lower home market values, increased poverty, and higher rates of unemployment.36 The implied detriment of multi-family homes to a neighborhood is particularly salient to Canaryville. Today, current residents still express anxiety over the perceived value of single-family homes over multi-use.

Single-family homes bring invested neighbors and stability. Renters bring unkempt buildings and no positive contributions to the community.

35 Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al., “Mapping Inequality,” American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=3/36.67/- 96.86&opacity=0.8&text=about (accessed January 8, 2019). 36 Daniel Aaronson, Daniel Hartley, and Bhashkar Mazumder, “The Effects of the 1930s HOLC “Redlining” Maps,” August 3, 2017, http://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Aaronson.pdf (accessed on January 8, 2019) 179

Zoning and redlining in Chicago, as in the rest of the country, was also used to regulate race. Legally, race could not be zoned. Declared unconstitutional by Buchanan v. Warley in

1917, race could not be explicitly zoned. Instead, race was regulated by deed restrictions and restrictive covenants. When these methods were also declared unconstitutional in 1948, white neighborhoods formed organizations to review zoning amendments, such as the permission to build apartments – seen as a draw for lower-income minorities – out of their neighborhood.37

Because Canaryville was already redlined, the lack of formalized neighborhood organizations designed to enforce racial segregation in order to maintain their property values is unsurprising.

The eradication of redlining and restrictive covenants raised the potential of racial integration.

With single-family homes in the area being grandfathered into the 1923 zoning code or built after 1957, Canaryville’s zoning as a multi-unit neighborhood made a strong statement regarding the City Hall’s opinion of Canaryville resident’s financial means, social mobility, and class.

The assumptions Chicago made about Canaryvillians indicates a level of class bias, as it prevented residents from altering their landscape to suit their own desires. Whereas other neighborhoods, zoned for a middle-class built environment of single-family homes, were able to build residences reflecting their “white” status. Working-class Canaryville, however, was zoned similarly to the neighborhoods populated by racial minorities. Unmistakably, given

Canaryville’s long reputation as a “whites only” neighborhood, zoning the neighborhood for multi-use only indicates the zoning commission placed the residents on the lowest rung a white person could occupy in the racial hierarchy. Perhaps this zoning explains some of the reactions the community has taken to close off their neighborhood to others.

37 Schwieterman, The Politics of Place: A History of Zoning in Chicago, 28-50. 180

The zoning created a system which residents were forced to maintain a working-class landscape until 1957. Coincidently, or perhaps not, the lifting of the zoning restrictions in the

1950s coincided with the beginning of the decline of the stockyards. Perhaps the beginning of the end of the main source of working-class employment in the neighborhood influenced some of the Zoning Board members to view the area, among many others, as potential middle-class neighborhoods or the threat of yet another all-white neighborhood becoming black could have motivated the Board to relax regulations. Certainly, the city’s restrictive zoning in Canaryville was not to the severe level done to contain racial groups elsewhere. Residents of Canaryville were free to move anywhere in the city. Many did move to more affluent white neighborhoods like Mt. Greenwood and Beverly in south Chicago in the post war years. Perhaps the Zoning

Board feared more white Chicagoans would leave for the suburbs if not given the opportunity for a single-family home.

More recent research regarding single-family home zoning shows that a preponderance of single-family-homes-only-districts is a form of segregation.38 Nevertheless, these zoning restrictions did create a sense of class segregation. To be cliché, you can’t be what you can’t see.

Without being able to view a preponderance of middle-class homes, or build the type of home you desire, how can you consider yourself middle-class? The homes built after 1957 are overwhelmingly single-family homes modeled after architectural styles popular in the suburbs.

These styles demonstrate that a population, now given the freedom to alter their built environment after restrictive zoning laws lifted, chose one to imitate a white middle-class ideal.

38 Henry Grabar, “Minneapolis Confronts Its History of Housing Segregation,” Slate, December 7, 2018, https://slate.com/business/2018/12/minneapolis-single-family-zoning-housing-racism.html (accessed on January 2019) and Rothstein, The Color of Law. 181

Race and Boundaries

The physical aspects of racial boundaries can happen in three ways, through physical barriers, preventing mobility in and out of a space, visual cues such as the maintenance of property or the celebration of ethnicity, and human barriers, like the violence taken against black bodies in the early 1990s. These physical reinforcements of race are the most visible and identifiable aspects of boundary policing. Participating in these types of actions is an easy way for a resident to claim who belongs in that space. Not participating allows residents to believe their space is open to all, while tacitly benefiting from the physical restrictions.

Given America’s history of institutional racial segregation, it should be no surprise that physical separation of races is coded in the American built environment. The built environment and architecture are often created to exclude certain groups. For example, some wealthy neighborhoods turn away public transit opportunities so the poor have difficult times accessing those areas. Bridges may be built too low for a bus to travel under, preventing poorer people and people of color from accessing parks or beaches.39

Legal arenas have addressed the issues of institutional racism through contract and funding means, such as restrictive covenants or tax distributions. However, the law does not view architecture as a means of exclusion. Instead architecture is but rather as a by-product of functionality, and thus, objective. Lawmakers also fail to recognize the power of architecture in terms of accessibility, and thus ignore how inaccessibility harms.

Sarah Schindler concludes that one of the reasons why courts, tasked with enforcing antidiscrimination laws, fail to find illegality with architectural exclusion is because they view changes to the built environment as facts of life over intentional discrimination. It is difficult to

39 Sarah Schindler, "Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment." The Yale Law Journal 124, no. 6 (2015): 1934-2024, 1934. 182 show intent to discriminate when building a bridge or re-directing a street, when the justification on the part of the urban planners is seemingly innocuous.40

According to George Lipsitz, from the onset of its colonization, American space was designed to be a location of high moral ground in comparison to the rest of the world. The “City on a Hill” not only existed ideologically but also, physically. The ideals of which were

“institutionalized within the national culture.”41 With such narrowly defined aspirations,

America’s landscape shifted to reflect only those desires – In doing so eliminated diversity and created homogenous spaces void of “impure populations.”42 Through the forced removal of

Native Americans, to today’s planned, gated communities, all of these actions reflect people who find power and value, be it moral or financial, in the “exclusion of non-normative others.”43 Thus a place which purports itself as open to people of all cultures only ever truly accepts those groups who abandon almost all of their own cultural heritage for the homogeny of America’s.

In the US built environment, for example, “ethnic neighborhoods” are accepted only if they conform to the “Americanized” version. Small elements of publicly visible ethnic identity can survive, but only if they are accepted into the broader American culture. Most cultural expressions are relegated to the interior of the home. In some respects, Americanizing a built environment is a step in the cultural assimilation process. In others, it can be viewed as something forced upon occupants as they may not have the means or ability to build to suit their desires.

40 Ibid., 1939. 41 George Lipsitz, “The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race: Theorizing the Hidden Architecture of Landscape,” Landscape Journal, 26, no. 1, (2007): 10-23. 42 Ibid., 15. 43 Ibid. 183

In Canaryville we find examples of this with the newer influx of Chinese Americans. The housing structures they occupy are distinctly “American” with minimal Chinese exterior decorations. [Fig. 55] In the approved Chinese neighborhood of Chinatown, larger demonstrations of cultural expressions in the landscape through mimicked Chinese architecture and style are acceptable because they occupy a commodified space, a tourist attraction couched in a cultural celebration.

The second most visible ethnic identity is Irish. In Canaryville that identity is complicated, primarily because the ubiquity of Irish heritage in the US almost cancels one another out. To claim Irish heritage today is a source of pride, whereas in the past, it may have been one of derision. Exterior decorations celebrating Irish heritage (outside of St. Patrick’s Day which is celebrated by many Americans regardless of heritage) code Canaryville as a white space. Decorations like Figure 56 celebrates their “white” status and pride in their heritage.

Visual cues, like these, help maintain racial divisions that Lillian Knorr discusses. She concludes that the urban built environment can “maintain and reinforce” racial division through providing visual cues to outsiders of what identity and race look like, particularly lower-income black and white neighborhoods.44 Particularly useful to this discussion of Canaryville is Knorr’s typology of urban divisions, which outline different types of divisions that happen in urban areas and their cultural meaning. For example, a constructed division, such as a border wall or gated community sends a different message than infrastructural divisions (highways, train tracks) or morphological divisions (dramatic shifts in architecture, housing or street patterns).45 In the case

44 Lillian Knorr, “Divided Landscape: The Visual Culture of Urban Segregation,” Landscape Journal, 35 (Spring 2016), 109-125, 109. 45 Ibid., 113. 184 of Canaryville, the neighborhood “benefits,” for lack of a better word, from several of these divisions, which act as both a racial segregator and as a suburbanizer in one stroke.

First, the neighborhood is separated from the surrounding neighborhoods on three sides by to large train tracks. [Fig. 57, 58] While these tracks are easily crossable by both car and foot, they provide a clear dividing line for anyone entering the area. On the fourth side, the stockyards, a morphological division, creates another clear separation for the neighborhood. Not only does the industrial area signal the end of Canaryville, but it also acted as a guardian against any encroaching from other communities that might have migrated closer to the Canaryville area throughout history.

Topographically, Canaryville worked to maintain divisions and send subtle “Not

Welcome” signs to outsiders. By only having three city-sponsored public spaces (Taylor

Lauridsen Park [Fig. 59], McInerney Playlot Park [Fig. 60], and Canaryville Branch of Chicago

Public Library), there is little reason for non-residents to enter the area.46 Furthermore, as already stated, the lack of commercial draw on Halsted, 43rd and 47th streets, even the promise of commercial viability, do not encourage others to visit Canaryville.

Lastly, the visual divisions of Canaryville present as an exclusively white space.

Particularly notable is the lack of tagging and graffiti in the area, which is heavily prevalent in the surrounding Fuller Park, Back of the Yards, and parts of Bridgeport. Another indicator of a lower-income neighborhood are vacant and boarded-up buildings. Homes rarely stay vacant in

Canaryville or are demolished, as more vacant parcels are present than derelict buildings.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Fuller Park, there is a higher presence of dilapidated, boarded up, and

46 There is a fourth space, the Canaryville Little League Baseball Field. It is both public, in the sense that it is a 501 (c)3 non-profit, and the park, when unreserved, is open to the public. But it is also a privately run organization and the community, viewing it as a point of pride, can see it as something which is “theirs” to be protected from “outsiders”. See Chapter 3 for more. 185 vacant houses. All of which is commonly associated in the public culture with predominantly non-white neighborhoods.

Boundaries can also be erected through demolition and repurposing. In “Making space, making race,” the authors demonstrate that spaces associated with African American culture are perceived as threatening and face eradication. An example of this is found in the Buckhead neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. The residents are 81% white but has an “increasingly ‘black’ scene” at several local night clubs. The white residents “created the notion and subsequent action that reinstated the near completeness of Buckhead as a space of whiteness,” by evicting and demolishing the nightclubs.47 In particular, the residents of Buckhead conflated whiteness and economic viability which allowed them to advocate for a new luxury retail district without acknowledging the racial undercurrent of their actions.48 In the case study presented by Hankins et al., we see the relationship between certain aspects of conspicuous consumption and their racial overtones. In this case, partying and nightlife, and the criminal element that sometimes accompanies, signified “black” and threatened the preserved status of Buckhead as a wealthy, white enclave. In response, the residents advocated for economic development hoping to reaffirm

Buckhead’s global reputation as a posh destination for wealthy tourists.

Canaryville’s neighborhood organization takes on similar, if less glamorous, actions.

Canaryville does not want to draw people to the neighborhood. It actively tells outsiders to move along. Instead, they continue to replicate the version of “white, middle-class, neighborhood” through building certain styles of new homes and the ways in which they organize what little community space available. Canaryville replicates the simulacra of a 1950s

47 Katherine B. Hankins, Robert Cochran, Kate Driscoll Derickson, “Making Space, Making Race: Reconstituting White Privilege in Buckhead, Atlanta,” Social & Cultural Geography, 13, no. 4 (June 2012), 379-397, 380. 48 Ibid., 384. 186 suburban middle-class America and keeps visual representations of the working-class out. In doing so, they reaffirm the whiteness of the space.

Boundaries can be affirmed through visual cues and reinforced with action. As previously discussed, the physical and often violent enforcement of boundaries is well documented throughout American history. Canaryville holds a reputation of maintaining unspoken racial boundaries. With the 1919 Race Riots, many historians note they, and other

Chicagoans, rioted over spatial politics. The riots of 1919 reflected “the hardening geography of racial boundaries.”49 A more recent example, however, is found in 1989 with the beating of two black children.

The event took place on August 15, 1989, when police picked up two black 14-year old boys waiting at a bus stop outside of Comiskey Park. Accusing the boys of breaking curfew, the police “slapped them around” and then drove them to Canaryville, and told them to get out of the police car.50 There, at least seven teens took to beating the 14-year olds while other residents watched from their porches. Many of the onlookers were responsible enough to call police to report the beating, but no bystanders intervened.

The two police officers, male and female, were swiftly let go from the force, as the city’s outcry over repeated incidents of police brutality grew. The police officers were then reinstated as they were suspended without a hearing.51 Later, the officers were indicted for official misconduct and misdemeanor charges of battery.52

49 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward, 151. 50 Sharman Stein, “Canaryville Beatings prompt 2 cop firings: Police panel sides with teen victims,” Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1992, S5. And “Facing up to police brutality.” Chicago Tribune, Editorial, September 15, 1989. 51 Robert Blau, “2 suspended Chicago cops reinstated,” Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1989, 3. 52 Matt O’Connor, “2 cops face charges of misconduct.” Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1989, 5. 187

Two of the seven teenagers were arrested for participating in the assault and charged with ethnic intimidation, mob action, aggravated battery, and unlawful restraint.53 Other residents commented on the beatings. Many believed the Canaryville teens were likely provoked by the victims in some way. In the end, seven were arrested, five pleaded or were found guilty.

Two were acquitted. Of the guilty, they were sentenced to community service helping the

NAACP.54

The incident resulted in a peaceful march of 800 African Americans through Canaryville and into Bridgeport, the home of then-Mayor Daley. Residents of the neighborhoods had mixed reactions. Some silently watched, others cheered in support. One resident from Bridgeport claimed, “There are no [racial] problems here… all these police incidents are exaggerated.” A

Canaryville resident, who lived at the same corner where the two black teens were dropped off, told a reporter, “I don’t know what they are trying to prove … Do you think if white people marched through their neighborhood we’d have all that police protection?”55

Three years after the horrific 1989 beatings of the African American teens, a reporter went to Canaryville to test the racial temperature. It seemed not much changed. One resident went on the record and admitted to jumping or chasing black people out of Canaryville when he was a teenager. He stopped the behavior as an adult, but still openly admitted to “I don’t like blacks at all … The black man that works, he’s OK. I work over there in Evergreen Park and

Hyde Park and all over, and I look at these people and I don’t know how they can live with ‘em.

They just got their own language, their own walk, their own everything. I just stay away from

53 “2 Youths indicted in racial incident.” Chicago Tribune, September 27, 1989, 3. 54 George Papajohn, “Racial tension fact of Canaryville life,” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1991, 1. 55 A. Dahleen Glanton and Jack Houston, “800 March in Daley’s neighborhood,” Chicago Tribune, October 22, 1989, 33. 188

'em."56 The implication that African Americans are willingly unemployed, lazy, and so culturally different than a white man prevented peaceful cohabitation is an unfortunate longstanding ideology held by many.

In 1991, the reporter noted that racist views were unlikely to be willingly shared.

Improvement in race relations was likely to be found in thought and deed. One resident, who refused to publish his name, stated he would be okay with a black family on the block, but would never want his neighbors to know because “I’d probably be thrown out of Canaryville.”57

The integration of Canaryville continued to be difficult. By 1991, most of Canaryville residents pointed to only one black resident, a woman who moved from the Northside and purchased a three-flat on 47th. She rented the other units to black residents. The neighborhood responded to her presence with several racially motivated incidents, including shooting out her car and home windows with BB guns and low-caliber handguns and one bomb threat. She and her children were frequently verbally abused and chased by other teenage and adult residents.

Not all residents felt the owner deserved harassment or “didn’t belong” in Canaryville. Her neighbors helped defend her, called the police on her behalf, and warned her of the bomb threat.

At the time, the resident claimed that while her neighbors didn’t like her, she saw some positive trends for the future. The white neighborhood kids loved playing with hers and often spent time over at her house.58

56 George Papajohn, “Racial tension fact of Canaryville life.” 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 189

Race and Space

Dianne Harris argues that “race matters … everywhere in the United States.”59 She notes that there are spaces designed with a particular race in mind. “Space” in this context, refers to both the visible space of a home’s exterior, the neighborhood, and the private interior. 60

Subsequently, the design of the buildings and landscapes are meant to appeal to that dominant race.61

It cannot be stressed enough how influential the post-1950 buildings are on Canaryville’s class identity. By modeling typical suburban homes native to Illinois primarily as discussed in

Chapter 3 bungalows, the landscape was recoded as one meant for white residents. The

Bungalow Belt in Chicago was an area popularized and protected for white residents.

Replicating that style encodes whiteness for a new landscape. Considering that the move to suburban landscapes was often precipitated by postwar white flight, we must consider the suburban landscape as one that is designed to attract white occupants and repel others.62

In Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America, Dianne

Harris reminds that architectural meaning does not begin and end with the built structure.

Instead, it is socially constructed through other images, such as advertisements, television, film, and other sites of visual meaning transmission.63 In this respect, the construction of seemingly representative white, middle-class homes in Canaryville is a reflection of how all parties involved, the developers, residents, homeowners, and myself as the researcher, have come to understand the physical representations of class and race in an urban setting For example, Harris

59 Dianne Harris, “Seeing the Invisible: Reexamining Race and Vernacular Architecture,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 13 no. 2 (2006/2007), 96-105, 101. 60 Ibid., 100-101. 61 Dianne Harris, Little White Houses, 3. 62 Cohen, A Consumers Republic, 213. 63 Harris, Little White Houses, 10. 190 notes that ladies' magazines and other lifestyle publications worked to develop a language for

Americans to discuss white, middle-class homes with words like “informality, casual lifestyle, leisure, individuality, privacy, uncluttered, and even clean.”64 Along with architectural drawings in popular magazines, the images provided reaffirmed the norms they already associated with class, race, and identity.65

After identifying the homes and the attributes most closely associated with “whiteness,” in this case the stripped-down Chicago bungalow, the replication of similar homes structures plays a significant role in maintaining class identity. Replication as seen in Figures 41 and 42 move beyond a cost-cutting measure of the developer. A similarity provides a sense of belonging among residents.66 When several structures change in a short period of time and mimic the same identity markers in their architectural styles, their presence can influence the identity of those who live in those homes nearby.

Historically, race shaped the built environment more than reflecting it. The long history of redlining, restrictive covenants, denying minorities mortgages, and even the denial of VA loans for minority veterans, purposely excluded minorities from purchasing homes in certain areas.67 In addition to legal roadblocks, there is a violent history of maintaining racial segregation in Chicago, as studies by Arnold Hirsch, Thomas Sugrue, and Janet Abu-Lughod show. Abu-Lughod compares the race riots in Chicago, New York, and LA to examine their causes and effects. She found that in Chicago the causes for key race riots in 1919 and 1968 are based around maintaining space, with a subtext of concern regarding a lack of employment and a

64 Ibid., 60. 65 Ibid., 86 It should be noted that this affirmation of middle-class interior design has found numerous other visual outputs since the 1950s. Recently, the biggest output of middle-class standards arguably is Home and Garden Television (HGTV). 66 Ibid., 104. 67 Ibid., 221, Amanda Seilgman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 163-208; David Friend, Colored Property: The Color of Law. 191 demand for “respect,” Chicago’s riots in 1919 and 1968 were “spatially confined and locally mounted because participants moved largely on foot and the objectives were not only to express rage but to gain or maintain control over local space.” For Chicago, the answer to maintaining

“racial peace” was to maintain a “metropolis-wide apartheid.”68

No longer were the Canaryville and Back of the Yards neighborhoods to be ethnically diverse. Now those areas were reserved for white ethnics who saw their violent actions as a way of “preserving property values.”69 Preservation of these racial boundaries continued throughout the 20th century and up to the present, with evidence of a racially motivated crime as recent as

2015 with a stabbing at Taylor Lauridsen Park.70

What then, does a “white neighborhood” in Chicago look like? And for that matter, what might a “black neighborhood” look like? Taken at their most stereotypical, a white neighborhood might have manicured lawns, neat, well-maintained homes, clean parks and public spaces, and a diversity of businesses. Often racial landscapes exist off the false assumptions that

African Americans and other non-white do not take care of their property. On the opposite end, a minority neighborhood might have unkempt lawns, derelict or vacant buildings, a majority of uninspired, government subsided apartment buildings, no or poorly maintained parks and public spaces, and few businesses. It should be noted that these stereotypes are the product of my own upbringing as a white, working-class woman, growing up in a rural area with little racial diversity. Thus, any stereotypes came from the images pushed in popular culture. A white, upper-class male or a black, middle-class woman would likely produce different visuals. Thus, it

68 Janet Abu-Lughod, Race, Space, and Riots: in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 13, 15,18-19. 69 Lewinnek, The Working Man’s Reward, 151. 70 The victims of the stabbing city officials claim to African Americans, claim the attack was unprompted and racially motivated. All parties involved had gang affiliations and the attack was gang motivated. The case is still under investigation. 192 is almost impossible to pin down what a racial enclave looks like, except to say that you know it when you see it.

But to argue that the built environment reflects race, we must look past the proactive measures of the white majority to sideline minorities from the white standards of the American

Dream. Instead, we look at how these actions have altered the built environment, making it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Certain areas “look” white because color is not allowed. In the same respects, certain areas look black or Hispanic because the advantages of “white” landscapes are kept from them.

The boundaries of Canaryville are a part of the actions taken to designate a racial space.

As Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura summarize, scholarship of race and space conclude definitions and meanings of “space” and “spatial” are not universal and the meaning of which is under constant struggle. As a result, the meaning of space constantly changes over time and often, those changes reflect who is in power politically and socially.71 The authors point out their work, in conjunction with the body of race and space scholarship, argues that in order for “white space” to exist, there needs to be places of the opposite. Canaryville cannot be a “white neighborhood” unless there are other spaces which are not “white.”

Performing Race and Class Race is as much performative as it is socially constructed. Given such, the way the home is presented to the neighborhood and strangers is done to reflect the racial identity of the inhabitants. The exterior appearance of the home greatly conveys the class identity, and to some extent the presumed race of the occupants. In her book, Working-class Heroes: Protecting Home,

Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood, Maria Kefalas shows how white working-

71 Brooke Neely and Michelle Samura, “Social Geographies of Race: Connecting Race and Space,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34, no. 11 (2011): 1933-1952, 1938-1939. 193 class neighborhood views of race in the post-Civil Rights area “define residents’ distinctive sense of place.”72 For the people of Beltway (a pseudonym for one of Chicago’s Southwest side neighborhoods), the built environment of their neighborhood symbolizes the residents’ values.73

Kefalas’ research stems from the five years she spent studying the community as a research assistant for another project on race relations in Chicago. During her ethnographic research, she noticed strong ties between homeownership, neighborhood pride, working-class values, race, and national pride. For the residents of “Beltway,” and other similar neighborhoods, such as Canaryville, Kefalas demonstrates that homeownership is a step many working-class individuals take in order to grasp a middle-class identity. Owning a home separates the responsible, hard-working citizen from the welfare takers.74 Racial groups deemed to be prodigious and fastidious, such as Mexican Americans, are welcome to the neighborhood, provided they keep their part of the neighborhood to the same standard as their white neighbors.75 Through observational analysis and in-depth oral histories, she concludes that “the cornerstone of working-class urban whites’ racism is the fear that racial turnover threatens property value.”76

Beltway residents, like many other Americans, believe “that you are middle-class if you say so.”77 When probed, they often define their class identity as “not being poor,” “believing what one has achieved is due to one’s hard work and efforts,” and “having some choice about where to live and how to live.”78 Kefalas notes that “other indicators of status, like a college

72 Kefalas, Working-class Heros, 4. 73 Ibid., 5. 74 Ibid., 99. 75 Ibid., 5, 43. 76 Ibid., 99, 108. 77 Ibid., 47. 78 Ibid. 194 degree … do not take on a physical form the way a house does.”79 Subsequently, it is not surprising that many Beltway residents, and other similarly situated Americans, tend to represent their class identity through their home.

Kefalas’s research heavily relies on the words of Beltway residents. She and her partner worked hard to gain the trust of a group typically closed off from outsiders. Even so, most of her research involves coded language. Beltway residents know they should not openly speak about class, race, and prejudices and work hard to avoid them in conversations. Because of this,

Kefalas’s conclusions often come from her reading between the lines. This is dangerous, given that the audience must rely on her interpretation and trust that the relationship she fostered with her subjects gives her authority to do so. Her analysis of material culture and the built environment is more reliable, but it too forces the audience to trust her opinions, as there are few photos included, most likely to maintain anonymity for her subjects.

Yet, her interpretations are valuable to the study of Canaryville for several reasons. First, the two areas are similar in ethnic demographics, socioeconomic class, and residences. Both areas are house-proud, and value neighbors who are the same. In interviews, the residents of

Canaryville often speak in the same coded language regarding race and class. Given that not achieving the middle-class status is often seen as a sign of weakness by many white members of society, as McDermott discussed, grasping after physical representations of class status visible to outsiders takes on an important role in identity making.

Oral History Methods and Demographics

Race is difficult to see in the built environment and the same applies to the community.

To ascertain what residents thought about their landscape and their community, I conducted

79 Ibid., 99. 195 interviews. I gathered interview subjects in three ways. I attended community events to introduce myself to potential interviewees, make myself available to the community, and make potential subjects feel more comfortable talking about social class. The first event was a walking tour of the neighborhood held as a celebration of the area’s history. This acted as a guided introduction for the structures and places the residents felt were important to their identity and how they placed meaning on the space.

Outside of being the first opportunity I had to introduce myself as a researcher, this walking tour allowed me to see the community’s engagement with public memory. I listened to the stories told about the neighborhood, what social and ethnic groups are emphasized/deemphasized, what important events are remembered/forgotten – how public memory attempts to construct the space.

I met many of my interview subjects through simply walking around the neighborhood. I introduced myself to anyone I saw on their porch, several residents stopped me and inquired about my presence. Some consented to a formal interview. Others declined but then proceeded to discuss their neighborhood off the record. Off record conversations were used to identify and highlight other areas of study, such as the mentioning of a former business or recommendation of a neighbor. In a few instances, off-record conversations helped me understand the transformation of a building through the additions and alterations made by an owner.

I attended the Canaryville CAPS meeting to find potential subjects. CAPS, or Chicago

Alternative Policing Strategy, are meetings hosted by the local policing district, alderman, and the community members. They intend to be a place where the police and community joins together and create a dialogue about the expectations and results of the policing community.

Oftentimes, these meetings acted as unofficial community meetings where any topic might be 196 discussed. These meetings, which meet monthly, are usually only attended by residents who are closely self-identified with their community. This type of connection to place and community involvement usually develops after living in an area for several years. By announcing myself as a researcher at a CAPS meeting, I was able to be introduced to willing interview participants who have lived in the area for a significant length of time.

Through this, I found 34 potential participants. Of these 34, when contacted a second time to schedule an interview, only eight agreed to participate. From the ages of 20 to 75, there were four men and four women. While asked, many chose not to reveal their annual salaries.

However, two were retired, one was semi-retired, one worked part-time, and four were active in the workforce. Their professions were in law enforcement, education, transportation, and lower- level white collar office workers. All eight participants identified as white. All eight participants identified as middle-class.

Oral histories are an important source when discussing something as complicated as the built environment and social class. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva relies on interviews to discuss something designed to be imperceptible, in his case, color-blind racism. He believes that surveys are too limiting when explaining ideology.80 They run the risk of being treated like a test in political correctness. The speaker knows the correct response or the one that fits public conventions to certain questions like “do you experience racist thoughts?” (no) or, for this project, “what class do you belong in?” (middle-class).81

Additionally, Jean Baudrillard’s theories are helpful in analyzing oral histories and allow me to discuss the perception of Canaryville’s landscape as an ethnographer in terms of what

80 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), 11. 81 Ibid. 197 symbols and codes the landscape holds and imitates. His theories isolate the same symbols and signs in the interpretation of my subjects’ interviews. For example, if a subject responded to the question of “why do you think your neighborhood is middle-class?” by saying “there are a lot of families, homes, and over it is a quiet community to live in,” I could make an educated guess that important signs of being middle-class revolve around family life and homeownership. Analysis will then come in trying to determine if these signs contribute to the simulacra of a middle-class.

Trying to see past the simulated aspects of a post-industrial working-class and middle-class landscape are all key to arriving at an understanding of the physical ways that social class identity forms.

Following in the methodological footsteps of Setha Low in her study of Costa Rican public space, the observations that I made through the walking tour, fieldwork, CAPS meeting, and visual analysis are the basis for some of the questions I ask during the interviews.82 Before the actual interview, I sent each participant a list of topic questions so they would have time to think about their responses. Example introductory questions included:

• What was life like when the Stockyards were still active? (assuming they lived in

the area long enough to remember)

• What was life like right after the Stockyards closed?

• What class do you consider yourself?

• Why do you consider yourself a member of that class?

• What class do you think most of your neighbors are?

82 Low, On The Plaza, 41. 198

• What characteristics does one need to be considered working-class? middle-class?

upper-class?

The purpose of sending the interviewee some of the topics in advance was not so the individual could formulate the perfect answer. Instead, it is so they are not caught off guard and struggle to find a memory during the interview, which could result in misremembering an event, increased anxiety over the interviewing process, or interrupt their narrative with “umms” and

“ahhs.” Giving advance notice allowed the interviewee ample time to consider their responses. I asked follow-up questions when necessary. Even with advance notice of the question set, some interviews were scattered. As we all do, people jump around chronologically and by subject matter in their storytelling. If it added to clarity but did not alter meaning, I organized their narratives. I also took the liberty to remove the ums or stutters from the text. For this project, I did not think it necessary to preserve the organic text, although the full transcripts remain unaltered. Lastly, if trying to convey a pause or emphasis that is clearly audible in the recording,

I indicated it in the text. Together, each interview was unique and became a piece of a puzzle to completing a larger map of the cultural terrain.

Additionally, I also sent them a brief survey. This survey allowed them to write down on paper their profession, annual salary, homeownership status, marital status, educational level, political ideology, and social class. On a practical level, this streamlined the interviews, by gathering simple demographic information. From a research standpoint, comparing the responses on the written survey to how they described their class identity allowed me to judge if there was an interesting disconnect between these responses. If there was a disconnect, this provided clues as to how people justify their class identity, and what is a part of that identity formation. I found that several of the respondents skipped over some of the important survey 199 questions. For example, people were willing to share their class identity when asked to fill in a blank, but not their salary. The omitted responses rendered the surveys less useful as a point of comparison.

After gathering and transcribing the interviews, I analyzed the dialogue for any indications that the built environment played a key part in the interviewees’ identity formation.

Mostly, I looked for any descriptors of personal class identity formation, connections between the built environment and class identity, or a connection between race and class identity.

Inevitably race played a large factor in the conversation about class.

The oral histories isolated five themes, race, class, staying and leaving the neighborhood, renting versus homeowning, and those outside of the community. The last category contains both geographical outsiders, but also those who come into the community, but do not belong. I attempted to organize the second half of the chapter around these five themes, but often themes bled into one another. Collectively, the themes demonstrate the community is conscious of its uniqueness. They view their neighborhood and community as something special to protect.

However, the interviews also determine there is class confusion and traditional attributes of the middle-class along with conflicting images in the built environment seem to be the culprit.

Language Around Class

The first subject matter the oral histories focused on was the relationship between class and the built environment. As already postulated, the urban suburb landscape effects the way residents express their class identity. It appears that the landscape has become another conflicting characteristic causing confusion around accurate class attributes. All responders were asked to talk about what class they thought they were, and what class they thought their neighbors were. As expected when they elaborated (as not all did) most of the language was coded. Unexpectedly, several responders were very willing to talk frankly about the subject. For 200 one responder, class was “all relative.” Signifiers such as owning a home, having gainful employment, insurance, and other niceties in Canaryville where poverty is easily visible makes one feel middle-class. But in other wealthier areas of the city, the comparison might make people feel working-class.

It’s all relative … In Canaryville, I feel like the richest person on the block… I have

everything… we have insurance and our house is nice and my husband and I both have

jobs. At [work] I feel like Oliver Twist.83

One responder touched on a concept of class in proximity that in the neighborhood, their social class seems higher than outside.

I remember becoming aware of [class] in high school. Your “class” what social class you

were, and I remember thinking, “eh we’re middle-class.” And then as I got into college

and I was thinking, nah, we are probably, well you don’t want to say “lower class” but

you certainly weren’t middle-class.84

Some long-term residents believed that the neighborhood has “gentrified” resulting in more residents “who make a decent amount of money and I think there always was a lot of city workers still are quite a few cops, maybe not as many as their used to be live here.”85 The use of gentrification applied to Canaryville provides interesting context. First, many scholars define

“gentrification” in racial and economic context. Gentrification happens when a historically non- white, lower-income space that is infiltrated by whites in the search for lower rents. Their presence raises the rents and market values and attracts more businesses catering to white

83 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 84 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 85 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 201 consumers. This, in turn, attracts more middle and upper-class whites and eventually prices out the non-white residents and business owners.

We also see a relationship between economies, gentrification, and class. For this resident, two things happened resulting in gentrification. First, the leaving of the working-class, thus freeing up space for newer, wealthier residents. Second, gentrification somehow happened before the influx of money which precipitates gentrification. From this discussion, we can determine that to Canaryvillians, “gentrification” may be code for the creation of a white, middle-class landscape, over a description of the erasure of non-white urban spaces. When residents speak of gentrification, what they are implying is the transformation of the landscape from a working-class, with unstable racial identity to an easily discernable white middle-class built environment. Given the racial context, many argue that historically white neighborhoods cannot be gentrified. A white resident would be able to maintain a life in the new neighborhood, perhaps even a better one provided they could afford the rent.

Perhaps the most illuminating place where we can gather the effect of the changing urban suburb landscape on class identity is how residents conflate working-class and middle-class characteristics. The origin for this kind of equating two different classes, working and middle, is exactly what this project is trying to locate. The interviews for this project were too brief and casual to probe the deeper meaning behind their class identity. These surface-level interviews were done on purpose. Too much discussion may confuse the responders’ identity and my goal was to determine their first reaction when asked to label their class. Unsurprisingly, the same inability to untangle working-class from middle-class that Christine Walley found in Exit Zero is found in Canaryville. We see some of the same socioeconomic markers in Canaryville as Walley found in Southeast Chicago. 202

In discussing class identity, many conflated working-class as different, but equitable to middle-class. For example, consider these three conversations:

Interviewer (I): what did you list as your class?

Responder 1 (R1): I put middle-class, working-class, middle-class, whatever.

(I): Any justification as to why?

(R1): I'm a working stiff.

(I): What do you do for a living?

(R1): I drove a truck for 11 years. Do a lot of home remodeling and construction.

(I): So what social class do you think most of your neighbors are then?

(R1): I would say middle-class.

(I): Any justification for why that too?

(R1): They are city workers, firemen, a lot of doctors, lawyers…86

Interviewer (I): What class would you say you are?

Responder 2 (R2): I would most likely say middle-class. Like I said most of the area is

middle-class. You know you're going to see them take care of their mortgage, usually a

nice car maybe a second car for kids and whatnot. Kind of, everyone still kind of lives

paycheck to paycheck, but you, know they take care of their bills, take care of the kids,

so…87

Interviewer (I): What class do you think your neighbors are?

86 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 87 Canaryville Resident 6, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 203

Responder 3 (R3): Mostly I think blue-collar, working, but then ya know, there's some

white collars that own the nice houses.

(I): But what social class would you consider yourself?

(R3): Working. My husband's a carpenter and I'm an executive assistant. So yeah

working, middle-class.

In the first example, jobs considered on the board of working-class / middle-class identity

(city workers, fireman) are conflated with professional jobs that often lead to upper-class identity

(doctors, lawyers). The speaker also refers to themselves as a “working stiff,” a moniker assigned to working-class, but the responder claims a middle-class identity. It also necessitates analysis to discuss the correction of identification. At first response, the speaker refers to themselves as middle-class and then working-class, then middle-class, then “whatever.” The dialogue plays out as if the speaker knows the appropriate response for a white American in 2016 should be middle-class. But he very quickly adjusts to a more accurate labeling. When that label feels wrong too, he brushes off trying to identify and responds as if it is not important or does not affect him.

Responder 2 is younger than Responder 1. Responder 1 falls in the 45-60 age range, while Responder 2 is roughly 20-35 years old. His/her identification of class is very important to understanding just how far the standards for achieving middle-class have fallen. To Responder

2, being middle-class has a material component, but no allowance for savings or the future. A middle-class person “can take care of their bills” and provide material comforts like second cars, but still lives “paycheck to paycheck.” Fifty years ago, living paycheck to paycheck would be more closely associated with the working-class or working poor rather than the middle-class. 204

Responder 3 is also a 20-35-year-old who capitulates over class identity. While transcript flattens tone, the voice in which Responder 3 states “Working. My husband’s a carpenter and

I’m an executive assistant” is very definitive and proud. There is no doubt in her mind regarding how she identifies. But as she finishes her sentence, she tosses in “so yeah working, middle- class.” The pride and certainly leaves her voice and again, we see the conflating of the two classes to be equal. Responders 2 and 3 quickly associate homeownership with class. For

Responder 2, paying the mortgage makes one middle-class. For Responder 3 owning “nice houses” is associated with white-collar jobs, another euphemism for the middle-class.

After asking about their social class, I asked some residents why they stated that class identity. The purpose of this was to identify the characteristics they thought was the most important to class identity. Many associate homeownership with middle-class status. However, in Canaryville, the ability to own a home is often made easier through inheritance, arms-length sales, and reduced prices. More than one resident discussed buying a home from the estate of their relative, being given a lower price due to a familial relationship, or even buying a home for the back taxes.88

The coded language is difficult to untangle. For example, one resident conflates class, homeownership, education level, and income all become tangled together.

Those children that graduate from college are staying in the neighborhood. So um. There

are not only blue collar people here anymore. I think that’s a huge difference because

they do have a little more cash to invest in their homes. And if they happen to win

88 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016., Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016., Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016., Canaryville Resident 7, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 205

Grandma’s property in a family lottery, they’re not just putting a coat of paint. They’re

practically redoing the whole property.89

This quote demonstrates several implicit assumptions about class identity. First, the interviewed assumes that I, the interviewer, share the knowledge that having a “blue-collar” job means they lack education, or that earning a college degree is how one stops being blue-collar.

Secondly, the resident notes that if this hypothetical younger, college-educated person has more cash to invest in their home, which they were able to purchase at a lower price, or possibly inherit outright. Whether or not this hypothetical person could purchase a home of equal value without the familial advantage, is unclear. There is also an aspect of applied class mobility. If you have a working-class background, possibly familiar with the physical labor, allows you the ability to do home renovations and construct a middle-class home on a working- class budget. However, it seems like the ways in which a person buys a home are inconsequential to the resident. Only that they will own a “nice home,” the ownership of which is the indicator of class, not the perceived status that comes with the economic ability to buy the home.

The physical status of the home plays an important part in discussing class. One responder described their social class growing up:

My dad was a Chicago cop and my mom always worked part-time as a bookkeeper and

they own [their home]… they were small business owners at one point ... and yet we

always had a beautiful home. My mom was always really into [keep a nice home]… I

guess I would say middle-class.90

89 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 90 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 206

To put a point on the connection between homeownership and perceptions of personal economy, one resident recounted their childhood home,

I did sense that, I don’t know, we had more money than other people. Not that we had

fancy cars or fancy vacations. But I think just based on, sort of the pride my mom and

dad took in our home, you know, keeping it nice. I always felt fortunate.91

Here class identity is connected to certain material culture, perceptions of financial security, and an overall feeling of comfort. The above accounts recount class confusion. The things sociologists isolated as characteristics of the middle-class have become too loose and confusing to vocalize. Instead, the identity is preserved by the physical.

Language and Race

Today, racial relations in Canaryville have taken on more nuance. Some conversations regarding race are frank, such as regarding describing the neighborhood as “white” or “not black” and referring to outsiders by their race (Chinese or black). Other times it is more coded, or not discussed at all. Like the reporter in the early 90s ascertained, racism is less likely to be overtly stated, and more likely to be discussed in code.

Language regarding race is often coded, stated while not being stated. In a study of one of the whitest cities in America, Ogden, UT, that is currently undergoing a demographic shift, language of “good” and “bad” were used to describe the white and non-white parts of town.

Language of “ghetto,” “shady,” “scary,” and “sketchy” were used by members of all races to describe the areas with a higher non-white presence. Meanwhile, the predominately white areas were described as “safer.” Often, white areas were described in economic or class terms. These

91 Ibid. 207 areas were referred to as “the Bel Air of Ogden” or “upper-class” in reference to the type of employment the occupants of a neighborhood were perceived to have.92 For Canaryville, the indicators of community membership may be closely tied to race. Discussions of reputation, outsiders, and “tight-knit” all skirt around the ways in which someone “identifies” who is and who is not a member of the community.

Examples of frank discussion of race primarily discuss the growth of the neighborhood to include other races. Only one respondent described Canaryville as, “predominantly white” but that the neighborhood was becoming “more ethnically mixed.” 93 The rest of the conversations operated on the assumption that everyone knew Canaryville was “white” and that the inclusion of Chinese or Hispanic residents deviated from Canaryville’s heritage.

As detailed by Satter and others, often, even if a neighborhood was fiercely protective and refused to violate restrictive covenants, they fell prey to block busters.94 Block busters would drum up suspicion and paranoia regarding the potential of African Americans moving into the neighborhood and then convince the owner to sell before the market value of their home dropped. How Canaryvillians were able to avoid the fate of other neighborhoods on the South and West sides is not specifically known.

On the few instances where race or racism entered a conversation during the interviews, they were again spoken in a context of matter of historical record. One resident provided me an explanation for why Canaryville never fell prey to White Flight in the 1960s.

This neighborhood didn't go black mainly because if you put up a For Sale sign in the

window, you get your window busted up. So in the 60s, 70s period where the Southside

92 Pepper G. Glass, “Dividing and defending Ogden: The Intersection of Race Making and Space Making In A Diverse Community,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40, no. 14 (2017), 2520-2538. 93 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 94 Satter, Family Properties. 208

went heavily black, this was a kind of community where you sold to your neighbor and

sold to your son or something like that. You didn't dare sell to somebody outside the

neighborhood.95

The same respondent later recalled an instance in the 60s or 70s where an African

American family did move into the neighborhood. A typical and horrible response in other

Chicago neighborhoods might be planting a pipe bomb, a measure that could have damaged the neighboring homes. Instead, a mob attached chains to the porch and tore the house down with a truck.

What the respondent shows could be true. There are plenty of documented cases of this level of violence. More likely it is an exaggerated truth that became a part of the mythology of

Canaryville. The neighborhood is a tough place, an insular community with a history of violence to show for it.

Other discussions of race are disguised as axioms regarding attributes of a particular race.

The most frequent was the stereotype that African American individuals and communities are criminal and violent.

I don't want to live in a community where I got to open the door when I'm seventy years

of age with my handgun in my hand. And I saw that happen to some of my friends'

parents from around the communities that went African-American. And the unfortunate

reality in the city, if you live in a black neighborhood, it’s a dangerous place to live. The

unfortunate problem is the African-American community until they get a handle on

95 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 209

violence you're still going to have race problems. I see a black guy walking the

neighborhood and I'm going OK. Who is he? Does he belong here? I pay attention.96

To this respondent, the cause of racism in Chicago stems from white communities associating blacks with violence and criminal activity. The respondent implies that “not all”

African Americans are violent criminals, especially when discussing his relationship to his black coworkers saying that “I invite my [coworkers] to my house. Some of them are black. I can't say that I have a whole lot of black friends, but I don't have a whole lot of friends in general.”97 At the end of that statement, the respondent falls back on the cliché many white people use to claim they could not be racist because they have “black friends.”98 Statements such as these are said with the intent of establishing the speaker as, “not a racist” so he or she can then proceed to say racist things without impunity.

The second aspect of this quote justifies his surveillance of any member of the African

American race. If the “truth” of African Americans is that they are dangerous, then his actions of watching any African American, or any stranger in Canaryville, is acceptable. It also justifies the racist actions of his neighbors or any white person for that matter. Racial suspicions are acceptable because they protect the neighborhood.

Altering the landscape to mimic a suburb is also a form of surveillance and protection for the neighborhood. Creating spaces associated with “whiteness” serves two purposes. First, to discourage non-whites from entering the area and second to reinforce the acceptability of white residents to maintain their racist predilection. Altering and maintaining an urban suburb

96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Matthew P Winslow, “Reactions to the Imputation of Prejudice,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 26, no. 4, (December 2004), 289-297. 210 landscape for the purposes of reinforcing whiteness is acceptable to community members given that some residents have acknowledged, and seem to accept, that race relations are changing.

Responder 1: But in general I don't have a problem with anybody living in my

community as long as they are decent people…Your ability to walk through the

neighborhood if you were African American or outside of the community, um, there's no

problem with that. You're not going to have those kinds of problems anymore. My son

has no problems with dating a black girl, and he did for a while. My wife and I weren't

exactly happy with it, but kids are much more open to that stuff than we were, which is

better than what we grew up with.99

Interviewer: Has the neighborhood changed a lot?

Responder 2: Yeah, I think a lot of people moved away. Now there's a little bit more

renters and stuff like that. It's become a little bit more ethnically mixed.

Interviewer: Do you think that's a good or a bad thing?

Responder 2: I think it’s a pretty good thing. I think people should have a choice where to

live. I don't have a problem with it.100

Responder 3: I know a lot of people say that we're racist. We're not. Well, I'm sure some

of us are, but not all of us.101

99 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 100 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 101 Canaryville Resident 7, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 211

Each responder acknowledges the increased diversity of the neighborhood over the years.

However, accepting the changes in the demographics of the neighborhood is different than letting go of the past 250 years of ethnic and racial heritage. By maintaining the landscape of an urban suburb, Canaryville keeps a visual monument to that heritage.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that some of the discussion of racism revolved around the perception of what it means to be on the Southside.

If I just tell them, “oh I live on the Southside” and I get a shocked face because. People

who aren't from the city think everyone who lives on the Southside is black…102

In some respect, the connection between the Southside and blackness is accurate. A long history of legal segregation and systemic racism kept African Americans in the Southside since the Great Migration. Furthermore, current news reporting of the Southside predominately focuses on African Americans, especially when they are involved in criminal activity. In and out of Chicago, the Southside has a reputation. The misconceptions associated with the Southside, poverty, violence, and race, may also be an underlying motivator to shape the landscape in a white, middle-class fashion. Trying to shake the Southside’s reputation could be an underlying factor for how Canaryville sees itself and further motivation to move towards an urban suburb.

Staying and Leaving

With the neighborhood falling apart by the 1950s and the Stockyards reducing their economic output, why then did people stay? Chicago from 1950-1980 found itself a hotbed of tension of violence from integration and white flight. As more whites left the city, more blacks took the opportunity to leave their communities and move into formerly white neighborhoods.

As outlined by Hirsch, this meant that some 7,800 units per year between 1955 and 1959

102 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016 212 switched from white to black occupancy. Of course, Canaryville remained relatively unchanged.

As the rest of Chicago felt an increase of racial tensions during White Flight, Canaryville became even more restrictive. In 1950, census workers documented 25 African Americans. By 1960, there were zero.103 Canaryville’s residents, like other white Chicagoans, could find jobs, housing, and good schools outside of the city. Yet many people decided to stay.

Among the justifications for residents who decided to stay, chief among them were low housing costs, convenience, and community. Some comment on the economic aspects of it "If you bought a house for $100,000 and you fix it, up why would you want to move to a $350,000 home and have a larger mortgage especially if you have kids in your private school."104 Another common argument for staying or leaving is the location of Canaryville. For many Canaryville residents, the convenience of the neighborhood in its location to public transportation to highway systems to downtown outweighs any sort of advantage they may have by moving further south or further west to the more white lower middle-class areas or solidly middle-class suburbs. “You can be anywhere in a matter of minutes from this location.”105

Easy access to transportation also became a reason to leave. In 1961 and 1967, the Dan

Ryan Expressway (or Southbound I-90/ I-94 and West I-54) opened. This Expressway connected downtown Chicago to the South and Southwest suburbs. While the Dan Ryan had devastating effects for many Southside neighborhoods (primarily African American and some Ethnic communities) it gave Canaryville three exits at Pershing, 43rd and 47th. The expressway allowed for quicker travel times around the city and to other places of employment. It also provided

Canaryville residents a way to move out of the neighborhood but keep familial ties.

103 Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 28. 104 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 105 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. And Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 213

Other people commented that the immediate and extended family and the community were the biggest reasons for staying. Many people told stories regarding living down the street from family members or in the same multi-family home as their immediate family. In fact, no one I interviewed was an “outsider.” Everyone who lived in the neighborhood either came as a child or was in a committed relationship with someone who was a long-term resident of

Canaryville. This is not to say there are not transplants, it is just they did not want to be formally interviewed.

Lastly, another reason why we might see many residents staying in Canaryville instead of leaving is that they feel safe and protected. They may have fewer services regarding access to grocery stores, retail, and convenience stores, but gladly take the trade-off. Thanks to the natural barriers of the neighborhood, the viaducts, the Stockyards, and the train lines, have given them a way to protect their neighborhood from other sort of development or those that may be deemed undesirable from moving in. That is unique within Chicago itself. A neighborhood would rarely have such a visible line of demarcation as to say, “that is your space and this is ours.” Over time, those boundaries have helped develop Canaryville into more of a small-town mindset than a big city.

Within the seclusion of Canaryville, this working-class community could form traditions allowing them to become upwardly mobile without having to leave. A reoccurring source of upward mobility is the ability to inherit wealth. For Canaryville, this source of wealth is the family home. These family properties were only inheritable because they were built with those cost-saving measures as previously discussed. They are also on the smaller side. Most of these family homes are not bigger than 950- 1,100 square feet of truly livable space. When inherited, they often need significant repair. Regardless of their state, the inherited home helps the 214 descendants avoid the costs of down payments, realtor commissions, or back property taxes leaving more money for repairs and upgrades.

Given all the logical reasons to stay, there are also equally as logical reasons to leave.

First, Chicago, like most cities across the United States, did become more dangerous during the

Urban Crisis of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Crime totals in Canaryville’s policing district in 1965 were 3,829 incidents. 106 They took a dramatic rise through to 9,135 in 1975, 11,501 in 1985, and 12,198 in 1995. By 2018 the crime rate dropped back down to 4,662 incidents.107 These statistics are interesting, especially considering that most of the residents I spoke to remember their childhoods (many of whom grew up during these 40 years) as safer times than current.108

Some residents remarked that the presence of taverns on every corner was a motivating factor for families leaving in the 1970s and 80s. The bars were “on every corner! Four every corner that you could choose to go to… Parents wanted to get their children away from those bars” especially since the patrons would often start fights.109

Canaryville did suffer a housing crisis like the rest of the United States in the postwar era, and the housing market was more easily obtainable outside of the city. The Stockyards also went

106 Chicago Police Department Annual Reports indexing include the categories of “Murder, Rape, Robbery, Aggravated Assault, Burglary, Theft, and Auto Theft.” By 1985, the police department began including Arson as an index category. By 2018, they had also included Human Trafficking as a category. I have subtracted out arson and human trafficking from the total index rate of crime to maintain consistency. 107 Chicago Police Department, Chicago Police Statistical Report 1965, (April 2, 1966), https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1965-Annual-Report.pdf (accessed on July 15, 2019,) 8.,Chicago Police Department, Statistical Summary 1975, Public and Internal Information Division (July 1, 1976), https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1975-Annual-Report.pdf (accessed on July 15, 2019,) 5, City of Chicago, Chicago Police Department, Statistical Summary 1985, (September 1, 1986) https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1985-Annual-Report.pdf (accessed on July 15, 2019,) 3., Chicago Police Department Bureau of Staff Services, Research and Development Division, Annual Report 1995. https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1995-Annual-Report.pdf (accessed on July 15, 2019,) 28. 108 Of course, “safety” is a relative term. Most residents probably feel the risk of they or someone else falling victim to criminal homicide, which is higher in 2018 than 1965. With that statistic, their feelings are correct. In 1965 there were 12 reported homicides in comparison to the 51 in 2017 and 30 in 2018. 109 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 215 into decline in the 1950s and closed in 1971. Coupled with the exodus of bigger employers from the Midwest’s major cities to the suburbs, to states without strict labor laws, or out of the country altogether, there was very little to keep people in Canaryville, let alone Illinois. Furthermore, for many white Americans during this period, the ability to earn a college degree and be upwardly mobile was easier than ever. Presented with all these personal reasons and national trends capable of dismantling Canaryville, the neighborhood remains intact.

Renting

The concern over vacant lots and public green spaces also stems from the concerns of creating places where transients can move in and out of the neighborhood without the watchful eye of the community knowing. This concern also writes itself over the many properties in

Canaryville that are available for rent. The census shows that the ratio of renters to homeowners typically stand around 50%. [Fig 25] The perception of non-community members as outsiders who pose a threat originates from many different experiences. Historically, neighborhoods like

Canaryville have a long history with tenancy and boarding houses. Apartments housed people from all walks of life and were vital to keeping the Stockyards employee pool plentiful.

Furthermore, renting a room or portion of a home has the vehicle to upward mobility to several families in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. Post-World War II, multi-unit homes like duplexes and three-flats may be rented out to extended family and close friends.

Today, discussing renting often brings animosity for absentee landlords and fears of slumlords.

We don't really like the absentee landlords even if they're originally from this

neighborhood. Bad landlords are worse than bad tenants.110

110 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 216

I mean this has always been an issue in Canaryville, the slumlords. I feel like slumlords

… it's a money-making venture for them. They have no interest in improving the

neighborhood. And it really … is detrimental.111

Fear or displeasure of slumlords is multi-faceted. Negligent landlords bring back bitter memories of a sign of a working-class background, where bad landlords could mean poor living conditions, unpredictable neighbors, and possible eviction. The desire to be free of a landlord is a large motivator for homeownership. While most Canaryville residents do not remember the pre-

1950s landscape, they do see the surrounding neighborhoods that have a higher rental population. Keeping renters out of Canaryville is less reactionary, (“We don’t want to go back to the way it was”) and more preservationist (“We don’t want to end up like them.”).

For today’s residents, “people taking care of their property” shows a neighborhood that is loved and thriving.112 For many, the objection to renting comes from the care of buildings, not the tenants, as one points out, “they're [the tenants] not criminals. They don't bother us” but “the building itself is falling down.”113 Broken down buildings lead to lower market values, environmental dangers, possible increase in criminal behavior.

Renters also bring diversity, which is sometimes welcome, sometimes not. Race plays a factor in the anxiety over rental properties. Arguments surrounding protecting property values have a long history as the justification of redlining, restrictive covenants, blockbusting, white flight, and of course, violence. When residents use them today to discuss their fears of rental properties, they are subconsciously echoing similar touchstones. As Dianne Harris points out,

111 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 217 homeownership is a vehicle to whiteness and used to reinforce and broaden racial identity.

Renting, regardless of being practiced by all races, does not hold the same racial affirmations.

Renting is acceptable when the landlord also lives in the neighborhood. When this happens, the perception is that these landlords will not be neglectful of their duties, even though there is no compulsion, outside of social peer pressure, to force a Canaryville landlord to be

“good.” In these cases, renting, especially when it is to other Canaryvillians, comes out as a kindness and a way to keep people within the community instead of bringing in outsiders.114

Others think that the increase in renters stems from the housing crash in 2008. When properties foreclosed, residents think that the banks turned them into Section 8 properties or

“renting to anybody they want.”115 This is all based on speculation, of course, as it is rare for banks to “rent” out properties owned by foreclosure. From a financial perspective, the banks should auction off properties instead of paying the property taxes and trying to take on the liability of managing a rental property.

What is more likely is that “outsiders” took advantage of the lower price point and purchased homes as rental investments. Several residents I spoke to mention the trend of these homes being purchased by Chinese - Americans, who are becoming increasingly priced out of

Chinatown and nearby Bridgeport. Theories regarding certain ethnic groups, namely Chinese and others of Asian descent buying new homes for cash and then renting, have some fact-based support, but it is difficult to determine the new owner’s plans for a property after purchase.

Residents also worry about the appearance of more apartment buildings in the neighborhood. Some mentioned that locations of former taverns had become new problems as

114 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 115 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 218 they were being cut up into apartments. There are also new apartment buildings, especially on the busier streets of 43rd and 47th that appeared in the last ten years. According to one resident,

The previous aldermen promised us … no apartment buildings … in the neighborhood.

And there were some apartment buildings built and that is a problem. The community

would rather have a single-family housing. You have single-family housing, you don't

have so many problems because you actually own the house you live in … so you want to

take care of it.116

Again, we see a connection between assumptions that only owner-occupiers will be respectful of their home and neighborhood. Outside of the physical upkeep of these buildings, renters represent transience, which is a danger to a neighborhood that relies heavily on knowing its community for the protection of their real-estate investments and the safety of their family.

Renters also threaten the tradition of the neighborhood as being a place to raise a family.

Clearly, there are many families who rent their homes. However, when one rents over owning, there are more variables. Maybe that family will move to a different location. Or they will leave after they buy a home. If they are unlucky, they might be evicted. Regardless of motivations, the average renter is less likely to be a mainstay in a neighborhood. For a community like

Canaryville, the increased likelihood of change is an unacknowledged fear. It cannot be ignored that some of the same comments and language used today to discuss renting were also used by people in the 1960s and 1970s about African Americans moving into “white” neighborhoods.

Even though the race of renters was rarely mentioned, several comments regarding “outsiders” as the primary perpetrators may also stem from long term us versus them mentality or clannish atmosphere present in the neighborhood.

116 Ibid. 219

Exclusion, Outsiders, and Reputation

A repeated word in many interviews was “outsiders.” Whether talking about actions done to welcome, exclude, or the reputation of Canaryville, the term worked its way into many of my conversations. What is unclear is who is occupying the outsider? Is it just other non-

Canaryvillians, race and socioeconomic status excluded? Or are there shades of race influencing this strawman? We exist in an American culture where most polite white Americans will not blatantly state any racial ideology. The use of language like “tight-knit” and “outsiders” is likely a signifier to racial and class commonality. Primarily, the residents spoke of “outsiders” in these three ways: 1. Outsiders as the cause of problems within the community. 2. Fear of outsiders coming into Canaryville preventing development. 3. Reputation of Canaryville as given by outsiders. The last category is closely tied to race.

Keeping out “outsiders” or blaming “outsiders” for community problems has a long history of racial segregation and violence. Often, urban race riots involved the fears of

“outsiders” infiltrating a white community or focused on running “outsiders” who already occupied a community out.117 I do not think it is accurate to label the use of the term “outsider” by today’s Canaryville residents in the same light as those of the past.

In the first category, some respondents blamed any physical fights on the presence of outsiders in the community. Anderson sheds some light on the concern regarding “outsiders” or others, even if those outsiders might be almost identical in their backgrounds, values, and actions. When a community is trying to form or keep hold of its perceived self, it is immediately

117 Arnold R. Hirsch in Making the Second Ghetto provides examples where the language used by rioters and those actively working to keep cities segregated used the language of “outsiders” to help identify who did and did not belong in certain areas. See page 93. 220 suspicious of foreigners or, in this case, outsiders.118 Merely having an outsider in the neighborhood could be a problem.

This neighborhood could always be violent. But it was violence more toward outsiders

you don't belong here. There was kind of honor among thieves kind of stuff.119

One resident recalls that in their youth, simply crossing the imaginary border could cause trouble.

Myself and my friends got attacked by a bunch of guys from Bridgeport, because we

didn't live there, we didn't belong there. And the same thing would happen if you came

into Canaryville. We went back with 17 guys and kicked a bunch of behinds and actually

one of my friends got arrested. But this is typical Chicago stuff forty years ago, fifty

years ago.120

Others see the presence of outsiders, or unwelcome community members, as both the perpetrators of violence and the origin for a bad reputation.

It's just a lot of very good people that live in this neighborhood. Sometimes you get a bad

name by a small handful of people that move in for a period of time, cause trouble. We

sorta get tagged as that, you know?121

This quote shows a perception that all things “bad” must be caused by non-community members, isolating that to be a member of the Canaryville community, you must be a positive influence.

118 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 83-111. 119 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 120 Ibid. 121 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 221

Many residents struggle with this dichotomy. How can Canaryville be a “good” community if residents are the perpetrators of the violence? To maintain the illusion of safety and uniqueness, residents have to create a strawman of the “outsider” as the cause for any problems. Yet, some residents realize they struggle with knowing the bad actors.

[I am] a little bit more concerned about what's going on in the neighborhood. I really

haven't witnessed anything, but I've heard stuff. I've heard recently there was a shooting,

I guess, on our block, which scared us to the bone. But it's weird because you sorta know

everybody that's involved too. You know the parents, and you know that they're not bad

people. They just fall into this crowd.122

Again, the language of falling into “this crowd” embodies the place of the outsider, an undefined group responsible for Canaryville’s problems.

The fear of outsiders as the instigator or perpetrators of violence may also be a primary motivation for preventing commercial development. When asked about the current lack of development along Halsted Street, which used to be one of three primary business corridors, one resident said,

I think Halsted Street is just a vast wasteland now…I know that there are people in the

neighborhood that don't want [development] because that will bring people who don't live

in the neighborhood to our neighborhood. And then what will that do to us?123

The same responder also commented that the presence of a “big fancy park … brings outsiders.” 124 Other public spaces, like the newer Chicago Public Library in the neighborhood

122 Canaryville Resident 7, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 123 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 124 Ibid. 222 constructed in 2001, is one of the nicer and newer libraries in the system. It could bring in outsiders, but “luckily” other Southside neighborhood libraries have also received a facelift in the last ten years. One resident sums up the lack of public and commercial space as both “a blessing and the curse of Canaryville. It creates an inconvenience to the residents but also protects the closeness of the neighborhood.”125

Not surprisingly, when asking residents about the reputation of Canaryville or of the

Southside of Chicago, many people were aware of the tough reputation of the neighborhood.

Even in popular culture, such as television shows like Shameless and Chicago Fire, Canaryville is represented as a neighborhood that turns out fighters and criminals.

Years ago, I would say that Canaryville had a scrappy reputation. I don't think that's true

anymore. I think that, ah, they're much more welcoming and happy to see newcomers

coming to the neighborhood.126

Even when working to contradict the negative reputation of the neighborhood, the responder places the community in an “us versus them” dichotomy by referencing being open to

“newcomers.” Referring to a group of people as a “newcomer” indicates ownership over an area and a community.

Canaryville’s reputation follows the residents into other areas of the city. Here is one resident’s story:

You know there was a time where I wouldn't tell people I was from Canaryville. I would

say I was from Bridgeport, and I don't do that anymore… The perception [of a

Canaryville resident] was that you were like a toughie. A tough street kid who would

125 Ibid. 126 Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL December 2016 223

fight their way out of anything. Which was really odd for me because that so wasn't who

I was or what we were about or what my family personally was about…they immediately

put you in this box that you're this crafty, like I said, fighting, drinker, or like even worse,

like a close-minded, you know, bigot.127

If a resident did not tie the negative reputation of Canaryville to violence, then the reputation was tied to a perception of racism. Here is how one resident responded to the reputation of racism:

You know, I know it's supposed to be like a tough sort of redneck neighborhood, I guess.

I know a lot of people say that we're racist. We're not. Well, I'm sure some of us are, but

not all of us. I don't know. I mean there's bad people everywhere, so I can't really say. It's

definitely not all of Canaryville, but I can see where some bad apples gave us that name.

And especially when it was in the paper in 1991 or something. When I think there were

some incident up at the [boys] park.128 [in reference to the 1989 beatings of two teenage

boys]

The interesting part of this comment is that the responder places the “racist” label as something from the early 1990s.

Other perceptions of Canaryville from a racial standpoint involve the location of

Canaryville on the Southside of the city, one of the predominately African American areas. In these misperceptions, residents deal with two different racial assumptions. First, that living on the Southside means you are black and second, that all Southside neighborhoods, and by

127 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 128 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 224 extension, all-black neighborhoods, are dangerous. Here is how one resident described telling non-Southsiders about living in Canaryville:

[When I tell people I live in Canaryville] You know I get the shocked face. Or if I just tell

them, ‘oh, I live on the Southside, I get a shocked face because people who aren't from

the city think everyone who lives on the Southside is black. I mean, I've had people say

to my face, "oh my god, you live there?! Like that's a bad neighborhood." And I don't

really know what they mean when they say that. [pause] I mean. [pause] You know,

oftentimes. [pause] Yeah. [pause] I just. [pause] I don't know what people mean when

they when they say that. If, if they mean it's dangerous if they mean it's close to black

neighborhoods, which I think is often it. Which is frustrating.129

The narrative includes pauses to reflect how the resident wrestled with the neighborhood’s reputation. Almost as if he or she knows what other people are thinking but trying to decide if he or she is going to share it with me. As if sharing that information will affirm or perpetuate the negative reputation. Or if she or he just thinks that the neighborhood is given a bad reputation because of its proximity to the black-dominated Southside.

The resident then goes on to say, “I drive through the neighborhoods that surround

Canaryville every single day. And it's [pause] I've never been a victim of a crime, let's put it that way,” indicating that the reputation Canaryville has is less of an individual reputation, but more of the one attributed to the entire Southside as a place of terrible violence.130

The other most common phrase to describe the community as “tight-knit.” There is a duality in this phrase as well. Of course, “tight-knit” or “close-knit” indicates something closely

129 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 130 Ibid. 225 or strongly woven together. On the positive side, this indicates a community that extends its focus beyond immediate familial needs. Instead, a tight-knit community is aware of their neighbors, their lives, and their needs.

One resident described their neighborhood as a place where,

A lot of the families live here… [and] have kind of stuck to the same area…Everyone

grew up with everyone's families and whatnot. So really close-knit. Really take care of

their own. You'll see lots of benefits for anyone in need, and they really just do quite a

good job taking care of their own.131

The benefits the resident describes are events such as passing the hat to help someone pay their bills after a serious illness or helping their community by organizing a fundraiser.

Others use “tight-knit” to describe how everyone in the neighborhood knew one another.

Here are a few examples:

So [Canaryville] was always pretty tight knit. We always played baseball, football, nerf.

Went to school together. Hung around in the allies, played hockey...”132

“That [Canaryville is] Tightknit. I mean, I think it's amazing knowing everybody on your

block. You know they just moved in, and we're super close already…It was a great place

to grow up, and it still is. I mean, there's still a lot of tight-knit families in the

neighborhood, and so we're not running away just yet.133

One resident used “tight-knit” to describe the way in which Canaryville has structured itself to discourage outsiders. When discussing the lack of commercial development, the resident

131 Canaryville Resident 6, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 132 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 133 Canaryville Resident 7, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 226 explained, “And I'm sure we're not alone. It's probably any small, tight-knit community that sort of likes that feeling of having things to ourselves.”134 Here we see an assumption that a tight- knit community is inherently exclusive in order to maintain its cohesiveness.

In other cases, “tight-knit” is used to put space between the “real” community of

Canaryville and those who create harm. Here is how one resident responded to the question,

“Can you describe your neighborhood?”

It's predominantly white. Very... pretty much peaceful and quiet. A few little gangs and

wannabees and stuff like that. Mostly the neighborhood is very tightknit. Everybody

seems to know everybody. And it's very much family-oriented. Church. And the little

league and stuff. Pretty good place to grow up.135

Again, we see a presumed understanding that “tight-knit” means knowing your neighbors. We also see that “family” may be synonymous with “tight-knit.” Where having extended families and created families help protect and perpetuate the community.

The use of words like “tight-knit” or “outsider” relies upon an imagined community. Not everyone knows all 5,710 residents. How could they? Even though the community is small with few public places, it is still possible to never meet someone. For example, one resident shared the story of meeting his wife elsewhere in the city. When he asked her where she was from, she responded Canaryville. To which he replied, “I'm from Canaryville, and I know everybody in

Canaryville, and I don't know you.”136 The internal divisions of Canaryville kept them apart during their childhood. She lived on the North end of the neighborhood (a slightly more affluent

134 Canaryville Resident 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016. 135 Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016. 136 Canaryville Resident 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016. 227 area), and he lived on the South end. He attended public school, and she went to St. Gabriel’s.

Were it not for meeting outside of the neighborhood, they would have never met.

Even with this potential for division, they collectively decided they are a close community that shares the same unidentified values. This also means there are those who do not share the same values and could potentially cause harm to the community. In the same aspect, claiming a unified status could influence why there seems to be a universal claim of middle-class status. If some residents are actually middle-class, those that aren’t needed to adopt a similar identity to retain “insider” status.

Conclusion

The creation of “whiteness” as we identify it today also shares history with the creation of “working-class.” As the role of working-class faded in reverence in American culture and culture placed more honor and pride in being middle-class, the racial identity associated with both working and middle-class became white. By the end of the twentieth century, claiming a middle-class identity became synonymous with claiming whiteness. As McDermott discussed, being white and not being “middle-class” is a sign of failing. Without vocalizing it, many know that the privileges of whiteness are closely tied to those of being middle-class.

For Canaryville, creating the middle-class landscape also included reinforcing racial boundaries. These boundaries could be implemented by the federal government through

Redlining, by the city through zoning, or by the residents themselves. Race is also performative and the stereotype of a middle-class suburb is typically white (although that stereotype is untrue).

As such, the landscape and community attempted to encode those subtle white aspects.

Language is another way to police a landscape. For Canaryville, describing their landscape and community is often discussed as “tight-knit” and insider/outsider dichotomy.

Establishing a strawman is an effective way to reinforce a racial landscape without challenging 228 any personal conflicts with racism. Maintaining the simulacra of the urban suburban landscape requires policing racial boundaries rhetorically and physically.

Lastly, the urban suburb cannot exist without a neighborhood collective. Individuals have little power to adapt a landscape on their own. The Canaryville neighborhood relies on their imagined community and geographical boundaries to maintain their urban suburb. They are protective from outsiders and work to foster community through language.

229

CONCLUSION In Figure 61, we see the juxtaposition of three contested landscapes. To the far left is a postwar bungalow. At left center is an updated, wood-frame worker’s cottage. To the right is a new construction, masonry, single family home. To the far right is a line of trees creating an extra boundary from the train tracks and Fuller Park. In the background is a rusted, industrial silo. In this photograph we see how the physical landscapes coalesce to create contested landscapes. These buildings demonstrate the urban suburb in Canaryville. The process to creating the urban suburb is not quick. Homes may be developed in mass by outside investors.

In these cases, the neighborhood receives three to twelve new brick bungalows that quickly sell, often for cash. In other cases, we see smaller adaptations wood frame homes undergo to meet the new urban suburb demand. They may be historically preserved, demonstrating wealth and heritage. They could also receive new additions, new interiors, or new exteriors. The community further adopts to the urban suburb landscape with each new fence, each re-sodded lawn and new flowerbeds. All of these attributes take on the performance of the urban suburb, where replication of design affirms their class and racial identities.

This project began out of curiosity about the American middle-class. Why did so many

Americans identify as middle-class when they were struggling paycheck to paycheck or relying on government programs? The confusion around class seems to causing more divisions as everyone wants to claim the “right” identity in order to make sure some other group be the ones blamed for societal problems.

In trying to isolate how everyone entered this middle-class mindset, I came across the scholarship of the built environment, space, contested landscapes, and imagined communities.

Combined with my understanding post-industrial landscapes, I decided to explore the way that the built environment influences class identity. I was certain that the inability to see a working- 230 class landscape created a false consciousness of an amorphous middle-class. I attempted a case study of a unique neighborhood in Chicago, Canaryville. Canaryville’s history is steeped in working-class hallmarks; industry adjacent, the home of immigrants, the site of labor strikes, and racial tensions.

In the 1950s, Canaryville received the unique opportunity through a FHA designation of several structures being unfit for occupancy. The destruction of these homes coupled with the decline of the Stockyards coincided with a national trend of suburbanization. Precipitated by a housing crisis, new home building technologies, and government subsidization, Americans moved to the suburbs. Except the Americans who moved often did so to avoid racial integration of the cities pushed by the Civil Rights Movement. Canaryville, a predominately white neighborhood, would have been a likely contender for neighborhoods that experienced this upheaval of demographics. Except, it remained white.

What did change was Canaryville’s landscape. The old structures of the Stockyards, the worker’s cottages, taverns, and boarding houses were all demolished. When rebuilding, the residents and developers of Canaryville chose to replicate the landscape of suburban, middle- class America. Today we see neat little bungalows, manicured lawns, and public parks where their used to be run-down wooden homes and lots full of rubbish.

From examining the history of Canaryville, urban America, and the suburbs, I found that yes, a landscape can denote class identity. The homes, lawns, parks, and urban planning of commercial districts can create an urban suburb. However, does that landscape supersede other categories of class identity formation? It is unlikely.

I thought that I would come away with undeniable evidence of the influence industrial buildings played on a formerly working-class community. What I found is that the buildings in 231 our landscape are reflective of social, cultural, and economic trends. Does the post-industrial landscape influence class identity? Yes. But perhaps not as much as the suburban landscape. A lack of industrial buildings may not be what pushes someone to identify as middle-class. But a landscape that imitates a suburban environment muddles class identity.

That does not mean that the landscape and built environment are silent actors. When given a blank slate, the fact that the people of Canaryville chose to imitate a suburb in an urban area is telling. Taking into account Dianne Harris’s, among many others, research regarding the

“whiteness” built into the suburban landscape, the choices made by Canaryvillians shows a neighborhood trying to hold on to their ethnic and racial tradition, while also trying not to be left behind in the move of white America to the middle-class.

There are other factors at play in this marriage of landscape, class, and identity. I believe that the oral histories and other scholarship of understanding the relationship between race and class identity proves that race is more formative than landscape. For many, race is the primary factor in deciding class identity with landscape supporting that class identity. For most

Americans, being white is synonymous with being middle-class. The long history of middle- class ubiquity that began in the post war era has created a connection between the two. If a white person is not upper or middle-class, then they have failed. Their racial status could be called into question. They move downward from being “white” to being “white trash,” a “hillbilly” or a

“redneck.”

For many of Canaryville’s residents, other hallmarks of middle-class identity were not obtainable. They did not have the right income, profession, or education. What they did have power over was their landscape. For this neighborhood, creating an urban suburb is a way to reinforce racial boundaries that are under threat. 232

Urban suburb demonstrates the close relationship between race, class, and landscape. It provides a new example for which to analyze this relationship through Canaryville. It also provides a better understanding of the ways that the suburban landscape transcends geography, as it is possible to replicate suburban design and ideology in an urban setting. Urban suburb also supports a new category of understanding class formation, the landscape, and advocates for acknowledging the place of race in class formation. Further study of other urban suburb sites could provide a greater understanding of how the ignored relationship between race, class, and landscape precipitate other divisions in American life, such as those visible through political rhetoric.

233

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Newspapers Chicago Daily Tribune

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The New York Times

Oral Histories and Interviews Canaryville Building Developer, Interviewed by April Braden, Chicago, IL, October 13, 2016.

Canaryville Residents 1 and 2, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016.

Canaryville Residents 3, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, November 2016.

Canaryville Residents 4, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, December 2016.

Canaryville Resident 5, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016.

Canaryville Resident 6, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016.

Canaryville Resident 7, Interviewed by April Braden, Oral History, Chicago, IL, July 2016.

Anonymous resident, interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 9, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL.

Mr. Chamberlain interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 7, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL

William Shinnick, interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 2, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL

247

Mrs. Gudrun Rom, interviewed under the direction of Vivien M. Palmer, October 1928, interview 6, transcript History of the Canaryville Community, Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL

Census and Demographic Information

Hauser, Philip M. and Evelyn M. Kitagawa, eds. Local Community Fact Book For Chicago 1950. Chicago: Chicago Community Inventory University of Chicago, 1953.

Hill, Lewis ed. Chicago Statistical Abstract Part 3, 1970 Census - Community Area Profiles, Chicago: Department of Development and Planning, 1973.

Kitagawa, Evelyn M. and Karl E. Taeuber, eds. Local Community Fact Book Chicago Metropolitan Area 1960. Chicago: Chicago Community Inventory, University of Chicago, 1963.

Manson, Steven, Jonathan Schroeder, David Van Riper, and Steven Ruggles. IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 14.0 [Database]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS. 2019. http://doi.org/10.18128/D050.V14.0 (Accessed September 2016)

The Chicago Fact Book Consortium, eds. Local Community Fact Book Chicago Metropolitan Area 1980, Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1984.

______. Local Community Fact Book Chicago Metropolitan Area 1990, Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1995.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2009-2013 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates, Prepared by American Community Survey, http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t Washington D.C., 2014.

U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2013-2017 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates: ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates, Prepared by American Community Survey, http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t Washington D.C., 2017.

APPENDIX A. FIGURES 248

Figure 1. Map of Canaryville Google Maps. “Canaryville, Chicago, Illinois.” https.//goo.gl/maps/KcAgydDtsudVV2n49 (accessed February 12, 2016) Source: Google Maps 249

Figure 2. Map of Chicago's 77 Neighborhoods Source: Allissa Pump

250

Figure 3. Bubbly Creek Bubbly Creek, man standing on crusted sewage Chicago Daily News, Inc., photographer. 1911 Apr. 19. DN-0056839, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum

251

Figure 4.1 Homes displaying Union Signs Photograph by Author

252

Figure 4.2. Homes displaying Union Signs Photograph by Author

253

Figure 5. 1895 Sanborn Map

254

Figure 6. 1925 Sanborn Map 255

Figure 7. 1925-1950 Sanborn Map 256

Figure 8. Hough House 1866 Source: Chicago Illustrated, published by Jevne &Almini, Chicago and the Midwest Collection, Newberry Library

257

Figure 9. The Stock Yard Inn, 1900-1925?. Photograph by Percy Sloan. Source: Newberry Library, Midwest Manuscript Collection, Midwest MS Sloan Box 1 Folder 32

258

Figure 10. Dexter Park Pavilion Exterior at the Stockyards. Photograph by Chicago Daily News, Inc. 1908, Source: DN-0006054, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum.

259

Figure 11.1. International Amphitheater Photograph by Bob Busser

Figure 11.2. International Amphitheater Photograph by Bob Busser 260

Figure 12. Exchange Building, c.1890s Photograph by J.W. Taylor, Source: Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, Box 63.8

261

Figure 13.1. Chicago Telephone Company, Stockyard Exchange Source: Ryerson and Burnham Archive

262

Figure 13.2. Chicago Telephone Company, Stockyard Exchange Second Rendering Source: Ryerson and Burnham Archive 263

Figure 14.1. Drovers National Bank, Also known as Drovers Safe Deposit Company, c. 1895, Source: Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, “Inland Architect,’ vol 27, no.3 “Chicago Tribune,” 01/27/1895, p. 31. Source: Chicago History Museum

264

Figure 14.2. Drovers National Bank Source: Chicago History Museum 265

Figure 15. Drovers National Bank and Strikers Source: Chicago History Museum

266

Figure 16. Stock Yards National Bank Source: Chicago Landmarks, City of Chicago

267

Figure 17. Stockyards Arch Photograph by Author

268

Figure 18. Zoning Map 1923 Source: Chicago City Council, Harold Washington Library

269

Figure 19. 1927 Zoning Map Source: George C Olcott & Co, Chicago Zoning Ordinance and Zoning Maps of Evanston, Chicago, 1927, Harold Washington Library 270

Figure 20.1. 1938 FHA Mortgage Risk Map yellow inset shows Canaryville Source: University of Chicago

271

Figure 20.2 1938 FHA Mortgage Risk Map yellow inset shows Canaryville

272

Figure 21.1. 1942 FHA Types of Planning Areas Map Yellow insert shows Canaryville Source: University of Chicago 273

Figure 21.2. 1942 FHA Types of Planning Areas Map. Yellow insert shows Canaryville 274

Figure 22. 1942 Zoning Map Source: Chicago City Council, Harold Washington Library 275

Figure 23. 1957 Zoning Map Source: City Council of Chicago, Harold Washington Library

276

Figure 24. 1997 Zoning Map Source: City Council of Chicago, Harold Washington Library

277

Figure 25. View of S. Halsted Street looking south early 1900s Source: Chicago History Museum

278

Figure 26. Northeast corner of Root and South Halsted February 1981 Source: Chicago History Museum Photograph by Casey Prunchunas

279

Figure 27. Aerial view of South Halsted from 43rd Street to approximately 44th Street looking east over Canaryville above the International Amphitheater. Photo Credit Chicago History Museum undated, but prior to 1999. Source: Chicago History Museum 280

Figure 28. View of South Halsted Street and West 42nd Street to approximately West 43rd Place. Date unknown, but likely taken prior to 1977 when the Stock Yard Inn, shown in the bottom left-hand corner, was demolished. Also visible is 43rd Street from South Halsted to approximately South Lowe Street. Source: Chicago History Museum 281

Figure 29. Vacant lots on South Halsted Street where businesses used to stand. Photograph by Author

282

Figure 30. A view of South Halsted and Root looking south. Reverse of homes along South Emerald Street that replaced Stockyard-adjacent businesses along with the vacant lots of South Halsted Street that used to host a vibrant business community. Photograph by Author

283

Figure 31. Commercial Buildings reconfigured as homes Photograph by Author

284

Figure 32: Limestone luxury apartment building. Siding likely replaced original decorative cornices. The first floor likely had bay windows. Photograph by Author

285

Figure 33. A few of many homes replacing the derelict homes torn down and re-built with “modern” (1950s) suburban-inspired homes. Photograph by Author 286

Figure 34. Homes along South Emerald Avenue built approximately 2006. Photograph by Author 287

Figure 35. New homes built on Root Street demonstrating continuance of bungalow style Photograph by Author

288

Figure 36. Working Man’s Cottages with suburban adaptations Photograph by Author

289

Figure 37. Showing Working Man’s Cottages with additions and adaptations. Also shows suburban bungalow style interrupting the working-class landscape. Source: Google Earth

290

Figure 38. Working Man’s cottage with suburban attributes including a fenced in yard, second-story additions, and altered porch to be a wraparound porch. Photograph by Author

291

Figure 39. Augmentation of a home incorporating both modern and historic elements of design. Photograph by Author

292

Figure 40. Notice the inclusion of decorative woodwork on the porch and top window keeping with the historic standards. Photograph by Author 293

Figure 41. The rare Victorian home in Canaryville. No longer a single-family home, however. There is a legal apartment in the basement. Photograph by Author 294

Figure 42. Historically refurbished home on the right and a new build imitating the Italianate style on the left. Photograph by Author

295

Figure 43. Updated Worker’s Cottage with well-maintained and decorated front yard. Photograph by Author

296

Figure 44. Postwar bungalow with neat lawn and flowerbeds. Photograph by Author

297

Figure 45. Home with a chain-link fence for security, but also displaying the flowered yard to strangers. Note to the left, the backyard fence that obscures all outside observation. Photograph by Author

298

Figure 46. This home demonstrates the stereotype of the middle-class white picket fence while also showing a yard decorated with the intent of drawing attention. Photograph by Author

299

Figure 47. Shows a unique double fence. The black fence prevents strangers from entering the front yard. The brown fence prevents viewers from looking into the side yard where an above ground pool is visible (not pictured) along with an elaborate patio furniture setup (not pictured). Photograph by Author

300

Figure 48. This home does not have a physical front yard but note the park bench positioned for voyeurism of the street, while behind to the left, a fence to the backyard the prohibits any surveillance. Photograph by Author

301

Figure 49. A home with a fence creating complete privacy for 5 feet and the appearance of transparency with the diamond cuts along the top. Viewing the yard from the street, however, would require an individual to break social decorum and by standing too close to the fence to peer through the holes. The owner maintains privacy and security, while also holding on to a place as a willing participant in the community. Photograph by Author 302

Figure 50. Note the privacy fence, a half-story tall, followed by security gate door, and two visible security cameras. Photograph by Author 303

Figure 51. Note the security fence, security camera, but the transparent front door that allows the outsider to see all the way into the living room and view the floral upholstery, as well as allowing the owner to easily survey the street. Also note the home’s obvious renovations, but the effort of the homeowner to refurbish the original wood detailing above the entrance. Photograph by Author

304

Figure 52. Three homes, of many, with rod-iron fences providing security while also the illusion of accessibility. Photograph by Author

305

Figure 53. Vacant lot acting as a side yard. Photograph by Author 306

Figure 54. Converted masonry two-flat to single-family home flanked by vacant lot side yards. Photograph by Author

307

Figure 55. For sale sign in English and Chinese. Photograph by Author

308

Figure 56.1. Homes with Irish decoration Photograph by Author

309

Figure 56.2. Homes with Irish decoration Photograph by Author

310

Figure 57.1. Viaduct of train track Photograph by Author

311

Figure 57.2. Viaduct of train track Photograph by Author

312

Figure 58. Barrier created by train track Photograph by Author

313

Figure 59. Taylor Lauridsen Park Photograph by Author

314

Figure 60. McInerney Playlot Park Photograph by Author

315

Figure 61. Juxtaposition of landscapes. Wood-frame Worker’s cottage to the left. New masonry single family home on the right. Tree boundary to the far right. Industrial silos loom in the background. Collectively demonstrating the contested landscapes of working-class, middle-class, physical barriers to isolate the neighborhood, and echoes of industrial past complicating the Urban Suburb landscape. Photograph by Author APPENDIX B. TABLES 316

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Canaryville $3,109 $6,318 $10,000-11,999 $10,750-14,400 $31,813 $41,591 $38,143-66,500 Chicago $3,293 $6,738 $10,242 $15,301 $26,301 $38,625 $48,522 Nation $3,319 $5,620 $9,867 $17,710 $29,943 $41,990 $49,276 Table 1. Median Household Income (in contemporary dollars) Census data prior to 1950s is sporadic in its categories. The information collected in one year, is not the same as the next. What classifies as “white” and “non-white” or “white-collar” or “blue-collar” labor changes or sometimes is not even counted. There are also years where very detailed information was published regarding race, housing, economies, etc, but the next year only provided total populations and total dwelling units. For these reasons, I decided to only look at Census data after 1950. Source: US Census, American Community Survey, IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System 317

Year 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Location Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject1 City Population 9,375 3,6,20,579 8,322 3,550,404 7,796 3,3,69,359 5,674 3,005,072 5,085 2,783,726 4,758 2,896,016 7,636 2,695,598 White 9,347 3,110,522 8,289 2,712,748 7,294 2,207,767 5,351 1,490,176 4,403 1,263,524 3,654 1,215,315 4,489 1,212,835 Non-White 3 17,148 10 837,656 -- -- 2 -- 17 ------Black 25 492,909 0 812,637 211 1,102,520 103 1,197,000 111 1,087,711 130 1,065,009 1,298 887,608 Mexican 45 ------547 248,502 632 422,063 899 352,560 -- -- 1,825 578,100 Hispanic/ ------557 167,067 -- 545,852 826 753,644 2,131 778,862 Latino Other ------19 24,760 212 -- 553 321,309 72 ------Table 2. Racial Demographics based off US Census Source: US Census, American Community Survey, IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System

1 The 2010 census information for the Subject area includes parts of Back of the Yards. Between 2000 and 2010, the census tracts were re-drawn and census tract 8438 includes the lower half of Canaryville and a larger portion of Back of the Yards. This explains the slight rise in population, especially in minority populations. 318

Year 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Location Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City

White Collar 1,103 635,680 463 626,872 847 373,729 748 651,492 974 640,750 960 673,574 1,797 701,196

Blue Collar 1,903 900,509 1,640 712,8532 1,618 1,009,522 933 584,373 1035 566,358 963 546,466 1,519 494,826

Unemployed 263 81,769 180 52,550 207 63,524 649 134,620 702 154,231 125 137,421 543 208,286

High School 865 793,640 864 753,181 685 505,141 849 496,382 1,888 512,969 2,358 418,113 4,352 2,218,483 Degree or Higher Table 3: Employment Figures from Census Source: US Census, American Community Survey, IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System

2 144,081 workers were classified as “occupations not reported.” Census of Population and Housing, 1960, Final Report Series PHC (1), Census Tracts 1961 Census of Population and Housing, 1960, Final Report Series PHC (1), Census Tracts 319

Year Street Commercial Dwellings Vacant Lots

1895 Halsted 82 27 46

43rd 109 31 12

47th 19 27 26

Total 210 85 84

% of Area 68% 7% 25%

1925 Halsted 71 19 50

43rd 47 8 40

47th 87 33 20

Total 205 60 110

% of Area 77% 5% 37%

1950 Halsted 72 18 38

43rd 53 9 54

47th 75 26 49

Total 200 53 141

% of Area 91% 5% 35%

2016 Halsted 34 11 28

43rd 17 64 9

47th 15 12 17

Total 66 87 54

% of Area 43% 7% 33%

Table 4. Sanborn Maps by Structure Type in Commercial Areas Source: Sanborn Maps 1895-1950, Cook County Assessor

319

Year Commercial Dwellings Designated Multi Units Vacant Lots Garages Total Structures

1895 310 1224 45 334 0 1579

1925 267 1216 36 294 332 1851 1925-1950 220 1018 131 405 538 1907

2016 154 682 508 166 -- 1344

Table 5. Structures by type 2016 numbers are tabulated using Cook County Assessor Tax Records. Cook County does not have a separate classification for garages like Sanborn Maps Source: Cook County Assessor and Sanborn Maps

320

Year 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City Subject City

Total 2,100 1,106,114 2,364 1,214,958 2,346 1,209,106 1,816 1,174,703 1,768 1,133,039 1,855 1,152,868 3,163 1,194,337 Dwellings Owned 845 345,916 857 397,291 863 396,357 586 245,977 884 425,259 934 464,865 1,389 469,562

New Builds 0 51,200 208 123,926 88 267,116 91 68,731 36 6,310 76 52,042 128 109,879

Dilapidated 358 65,436 764 170,094 221 52,053 46 84,855 18 23,191 12 24,593 0 8,360

Median $7,500- 11,891 $8,600- 18,000 $10,000- $15,000- $22,600- 47,200 $60,000- 78,000 113,233 132,400 232,966 222,900 Value 9,999 12,900 12,499 19,999 26,400 74,999 Table 6: Housing data based off US Census calculations. Source: US Census, American Community Survey, IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System

321

Year Percent of owner-occupied homes to total dwellings

1950 40.23%

1960 36.25%

1970 36.78%

1980 32.36%

1990 50.0%

2000 50.35%

2010 43.9%

Table 7. Owner-occupied Homes in Canaryville Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System

322

Number of Stories Building Type Construction Type Total

2 Duplex Wood 246

2 Single Family Home Brick 223

2 Single Family Home Wood 193

1 Single Family Home Brick 171

1.5 Single Family Home Wood 102 Table 8. Most Frequent Housing Types Source: Author Fieldwork

323

Property Type Number of Structures

Single Family Homes 843

Duplex 293

Apartment 111

Unidentifiable 33

Commercial/Residential 8 Table 9. Property Type Source: Author Fieldwork

324

Property Material Number of Structures

Wood 661

Brick 520

Unidentifiable 43

Stone 41

Wood/Brick 16

Stucco 5

Wood/Stone 1 Table 10. Property Material Source: Author Fieldwork

325

Number of Stories Number of Structures

1 251

1.5 157

2 829

2.5 1

3 22

4 1

Unidentifiable 27

Table 11. Number of Stories Source: Author Fieldwork

APPENDIX C. HSRB CONSENT 326

DATE: June 2, 2016

TO: April Braden FROM: Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [889960-2] The Effects of the Post-Industrial Landscape on Class Identity Formation: An Ethnographic Study of Canaryville, Chicago SUBMISSION TYPE: Revision

ACTION: DETERMINATION OF EXEMPT STATUS DECISION DATE: May 31, 2016

REVIEW CATEGORY: Exemption category #2

Thank you for your submission of Revision materials for this project. The Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board has determined this project is exempt from IRB review according to federal regulations AND that the proposed research has met the principles outlined in the Belmont Report. You may now begin the research activities.

Note that an amendment may not be made to exempt research because of the possibility that proposed changes may change the research in such a way that it is no longer meets the criteria for exemption. A new application must be submitted and reviewed prior to modifying the research activity, unless the researcher believes that the change must be made to prevent harm to participants. In these cases, the Office of Research Compliance must be notified as soon as practicable.

We will retain a copy of this correspondence within our records.

If you have any questions, please contact Kristin Hagemyer at 419-372-7716 or [email protected]. Please include your project title and reference number in all correspondence with this committee.

This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board's records.

- 1 - Generated on IRBNet 327

Informed Consent for Oral History Subjects

Introduction: If you consent, you are agreeing to participate in an oral history interview. The interview is a part of the research for a dissertation project conducted by April Braden, a doctoral candidate in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. She is working under the advisement of Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse. Ms. Braden is performing oral histories of Canaryville residents to determine if there is a relationship between the built environment and social class.

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to use oral histories of the residents of Canaryville 1. Record public memory of Canaryville 2. Document the relationship between the built environment (buildings, landscaping, parks, sidewalks, roads, ect.) to the formation of class identity. You will receive no monetary award should you decide to participate in this project.

Procedure: Should you decide to participate, you are agreeing to complete a short demographic survey, and participate in an oral history, which by definition is a narrative of your personal life. You might be asked to answer questions about your neighborhood, your personal home, personal economy, family life, and social class. You may also be asked to share personal memories about your childhood, family life, and other important relationships. Should you not wish to answer any question due to its personal nature, you may refuse to do so. Your interview will be one part of the research collection. Other research methods include historical analysis (looking at historical documents) and visual analysis (evaluating the built environment by sight)

You will be given the survey directly before the interview and it should take no longer than 5 minutes. Completing the interview should take no more than one hour. There is a small possibility that the interviewer may have some follow-up questions. If so, you will be contacted within one month of your interview. A follow-up conversation will be scheduled at your earliest convenience and last no longer than 30 minutes. You will also be given a chance to review and approve a transcript of your interview. Approval will happen sometime between October 2016 and March 2017. Review of your transcript should take no longer than two hours, but depends on the individual.

Voluntary nature: Your participation is completely voluntary. Should you decide not to participate, there will be no recourse. You are free to withdraw at any time. You may decide to skip questions or discontinue participation at any time without penalty. Deciding to participate or not will have no adverse effects. Nor will it jeopardize any relationship with Bowling Green State University.

Confidentiality Protection: This study is confidential. Should you decide to participate, your interview will be given a pseudonym during the transcription process. Your real name will not be used in any reproduction of your interview. Only the researcher, April Braden, will know your actual identity. If participating, this consent form, along with any other documentation or recordings that may contain your actual identity, will be safely kept in a locked file and a password protected computer file. After ten years, the transcripts, using a pseudonym, will be donated to the Chicago Public Library or Chicago Historical Society for other researchers to use.

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # __889960_ EFFECTIVE ____05/31/2016_ 328

Risks: Risk of participation is no greater than that experienced in daily life. Your interview might be highlighted in the final draft of the dissertation, meaning parts or all of your interview could be summarized or directly quoted. As a result, there is a slight possibility that someone may be able to identify you from your interview. While the researcher will attempt to the best of their ability to limit identifying quotations, it may be unavoidable.

Contact information: Should you have any questions about the research or your participation in the research, please contact April Braden at [email protected] or 773-706-4705. You may also contact her advisor Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse at [email protected] or 419-372-6056. You may also contact the Chair, Human Subjects Review Board at 419-372-7716 or [email protected], if you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this research. Thank you for your time.

I have been informed of the purposes, procedures, risks and benefits of this study. I have had the opportunity to have all my questions answered and I have been informed that my participation is completely voluntary. I agree to participate in this research.

______Participant Signature

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # __889960_ EFFECTIVE ____05/31/2016_ APPENDIX D. COPYRIGHT APPROVAL 329 Braden, April M

From: Juan Molina Hernández Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2020 12:34 PM To: Braden, April M Subject: Re: Photo Permission

Follow Up Flag: Flag for follow up Flag Status: Flagged

Dear April,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding permissions. Unfortunately, we are not copyright lawyers but we believe the images in this collection should be in the public domain. As far as permissions go, I am happy to share that the Newberry is an open access institution. We neither require nor grant permission to reproduce photography of items held in our collection. You are free to reproduce them as you wish. We request, but in no way require, that we be credited as the holding institution. If the image is being published we also request, but in no way require, that we be given a complimentary copy of the publication to add to our collections. Please send comp copies to the Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL 60610, ATTN: Digital Services Manager

I copy the text of our most up to date policy below: The Newberry makes its collections available for any lawful purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without licensing or permission fees to the library, subject to the following terms and conditions. Use of reproductions of Newberry collection items shall be at the user's sole risk. Researchers are responsible for determining whether the material is in the public domain or whether it is protected by copyright law or other restrictions. If the material is protected by copyright law, researchers are responsible for determining whether the intended use is within the limits of fair use and, if not, for obtaining permission from any rights holders. The Newberry shall not be responsible or liable for any claim of infringement or damage that may occur owing to the use of any material that the Newberry makes available. I hope this information is helpful. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. Stay safe. Best, Juan

From: Braden, April M Sent: Monday, March 30, 2020 3:45 PM To: Rights and Reproductions Subject: Photo Permission

Dear Archivist, I am completing my doctoral dissertation from Bowling Green State University in American Culture Studies. As a part of my research, I have one image, mms_sloan_bx_1_fl_32_21_o2.jpg, that I would like to include in my addendum that are in your archival collections. I will not be profiting from their publication and have no plans to publish my research, except to upload my manuscript to the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation database through OhioLink, as required by my Graduate College.

1 330 As it stands now, I have properly cited the photographs with your institution as the source and any other relevant information, such as the photographer. I have reviewed your website regarding permissions, but I am writing this email to ensure that I am not violating any copyright laws.

I realize that several of your staff may not be available because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Hopefully, my email will make it to the right inbox. Sincerely,

April Braden, M.A., Doctoral Candidate Professor of History Liberal Arts Division North Lake College [email protected] 972-273-3553

Juan Molina Hernández Digitization Technician (312) 255-3783 Newberry Library www.newberry.org

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This communication is confidential, may be privileged and is meant only for the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender ASAP and delete this message from your system.

2 331 Braden, April M

From: RightsRepro Sent: Saturday, March 28, 2020 11:22 AM To: Braden, April M Subject: Re: Photo Permission

Hi April,

Thank you for your message! CHM does not object to your use of images of our archival material in your dissertation and uploaded to the database. Thank you for checking with us!

Kind Regards, Angela

Rights & Reproductions Chicago History Museum [email protected] https://images.chicagohistory.org

From: Research Inquiries Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 4:21 PM To: Braden, April M Cc: RightsRepro Subject: Re: Photo Permission

Thank you for your email. The Museum is closed to the public and to staff through April 7: https://www.chicagohistory.org/covid19/ Staff is working remotely, and I am directing your question to our Rights and Reproductions Department. It sounds as though these are photos that you took yourself.

Best, Ellen Keith Director of Research and Access

From: Braden, April M Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2020 3:44 PM To: Research Inquiries Subject: [EXTERNAL] Photo Permission

Dear Archivist, I am completing my doctoral dissertation from Bowling Green State University in American Culture Studies. As a part of my research, I have a few photographs that I would like to include in my addendum that are in your archival collections. I will not be profiting from their publication and have no plans to publish my research, except to upload my manuscript to the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation database through OhioLink, as required by my Graduate College.

As it stands now, I have properly cited the photographs with your institution as the source and any other relevant information, such as the photographer. I have reviewed your website regarding permissions, but I am writing this email to ensure that I am not violating any copyright laws. 1 332 I realize that several of your staff may not be available because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Hopefully, my email will make it to the right inbox. Sincerely,

April Braden, M.A., Doctoral Candidate Professor of History Liberal Arts Division North Lake College [email protected] 972-273-3553

2 333 Braden, April M

From: Bob Busser Sent: Friday, January 10, 2020 9:39 PM To: Braden, April M Subject: Int. Amp. images Attachments: img587.jpg; img595.jpg; img634.jpg; img635.jpg

Follow Up Flag: Flag for follow up Flag Status: Flagged

Hi April,

Nice talking to you today. Here are the images.

-- Bob Busser

1 334 Braden, April M

From: Bob Busser Sent: Friday, January 10, 2020 1:06 PM To: Braden, April M Subject: Int amp

Hi April,

I can help you out. Can you call me 707 410 6889

-- Bob Busser

1