Hidden in Plain Sight: The Architecture of Chicago's Labor Movement

Chicago has always been known as a labor town, and for this Labor Day we'd thought we look at three Chicago structures whose role in the city's labor history is often overlooked.

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The Forum on 43rd Street, designed by architect Samuel A. Treat in 1897 was not only a ballroom and performance center, but also a regular home to political, civil rights, and union organizing events.  After nearly being demolished in 2011, Urban Juncture has began securing the structure and is working on a plan and building a coalition to bring it back to life.  And for the first time in recent memory, you'll be able to see it, as well - it's one of the sites for the Chicago Architecture Foundation's Open House Chicago in October.

Another key structure in Chicago's labor history is Pond and Pond's Chicago Commons building at Morgan and Grand, from 1901, which we hope to be writing about in far more detail soon.  The Chicago Commons Association was founded by Graham Taylor in 1894, patterned after Jane Adams' Hull House to serve the area's poor immigrant population. 

The Commons was home to pro-labor organizing activity, including a 1902 mass meeting to reduce retail worker's 14 hour days.  Although only 100 clerks showed up for the meeting, one speaker noted that the clerks had formed 13 unions and gained 2,000 members, and their efforts secured the reform that �nearly every store from Belmont to the Chicago River had been induced to close evenings.�

After the Chicago Commons merged, it moved its operation and sold off the building in 1947.  It's had an often-troubled past since then, but that may now finally changing with AJ LaTrace of Curbed Chicago reporting in July that the structure is to be restored as the centerpiece of a new campus for the Bennett Day School.

Finally, there's the building at Sheridan and Diversey that, since a late 1970's/early1980's renovation and expansion, has housed offices for medical professionals affiliated with St. Joseph Hospital. Originally, however, it was the proud, modernist headquarters for the Amalgamated Meat Cutters International, chartered by AFL in 1897 to consolidate seven Chicago unions.

A 1904 strike saw 18,000 meat cutters go out on strike for higher wages.  Although joined by most other major unions in the city, national leadership refused to support the strikers.  Employers turned to the city's large population of unemployed African American workers to serve as strikebreakers, which resulted in union members attacking the strikebreakers, police rallying to protect them,  4,000 union workers rioting, and the strike ending in total defeat.  Jane Adams interceding with stockyards magnates to procure a contract that would save face for union members, and keep the union, itself, from being destroyed.

image courtesy The Chuckman Collection

At it's peak, the union had over 200,000 members, but centralizing processing and work rule changes - remember when you couldn't buy meat after 6:00 p.m.? - decimated their ranks.

Today, the only surviving remnant of the original union presence is Egon Weiner's Brotherhood, an identical pair of sculptures positioned at either side of the entrance.  According to Jyoti Srivastava's essential Public Art in Chicago blog, each bronze grouping of Brotherhood depicts four �kneeling figures whose extended arms are interwined  [to] represent unity of people of Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Each grouping bears a different set of inscriptions  . . .

. . . Brotherhood. Liberty. Tolerance. Equality. Peace and Unity. Justice.  Friendship. Knowledge.

Happy Labor Day

Also Read:

 Worker Spaces, In Fiction and Fact

The Architecture of Chicago's Unionville

Bell & Howell: Where Arts and Crafts meet International Style

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It's still there, the Brown Line trains still speeding by.  It's one of a number of old factories along Ravenswood Avenue and the Northwestern tracks on Chicago's North Side.  Many follow the same pattern: broad loft floors, and above the entrance a tall tower - usually with a clock - that hid a water tank at the top for fire protection.

The factory was built for the Bell & Howell Company, one of those great Chicago corporate success

stories that have faded in memory.  It was founded by two projectionists in 1907, when Chicago was still a center of motion picture production.  Bell & Howell was one of the pioneers in standardizing the emerging film industry on 35mm, coming up with a device to create the perforations that drove the film through the projector.  They made the hand-cranked cameras that became the standard of quality for early film studios.  In 1934, Bell & Howell introduced the first light-weight 8mm movie camera, helping create the market for home movies.  During World War II, 2,000 workers made gun cameras and other military equipment.  The Bell & Howell camera you see to the right was used by Abraham Zapruder to capture the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

In 1949, they made 30-year Charles Percy President of the Company.  He came to be known as the �boy wonder� - increasing sales by a factor of 32 and the number of employees by 12 - before beginning a career as liberal Republican (remember those?), losing a race for governor to Otto Kerner - who would later be sent to prison - before winning three terms to the U.S. Senate.   After Percy left, the company had the usual trajectory of lost opportunities.  It bought - and sold - what's now the Proquest database of newspapers.  It acquired Devry Technical Institute, but spun it off in 1987. In 2000, it was split into separate companies, with soon-to-be-bankrupt Kodak acquiring the company's scanner business in 2009.  In 2011, B�we Bell & Howell itself went bankrupt and was sold to Versa Capital to pay off the debt.  That same year, the corporate headquarters was moved to Durham, North Carolina, where the company has had a plant since 1997.  About 250 employees are left.

The Chicago firm of Pond and Pond were Bell & Howell's architects. On May 1, 1927, Irving K. Pond celebrated his 70th birthday by doing a somersault on the roof of the YMCA Building. Bell & Howell sent its cameraman to record the event.

In 1926, Pond & Pond had designed the striking Bell & Howell factory building at 1801 West Larchmont, a couple blocks south of Irving Park, and added an annex in 1931. 

The factory on Larchmont shows a stripped-down version of Pond and Pond's Arts and Craft ornament.  The top of the clock tower is spare and striking.  Most striking, however, is the use of continuous strip windows.  Pond didn't quite have the nerve to have them turn the corner, but in all other ways, the Bell & Howell factory is a very modern building. It may now be the kind of unappreciated, long-lived architecture people walk - or ride - by almost without seeing, but it sticks to the retina as one of the landmarks that moors the community, even in the mind's eye.  

Read More:

Out from the Sidelines:  The Autobiography (and Confessions) of Irving K. Pond.