This Old Palette: February 2007

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Rooming House

Our country's constitution, ratified in 1789, requires that an "actual enumeration" of our population be made every ten years. This is vital to our democracy--the number of representatives each state has in the House of Representatives varies by population.

The first census was in 1790. There has been one every ten years since then. The Fourteenth Census took place in 1920.

The records of course were kept by hand. Census-takers went door to door and wrote down the information required by their forms: name, age, relationship to household, national origin, occupation. Quite remarkably, the records still exist.

Posted above is the section of the 1920 census form showing those persons living at 1012 N. Dearborn the year before the club bought it in 1921: the place was a rooming house--sixteen people lived there.

Hannah Maloney, age 58, was the head of the household; she owned the building, having purchased it in 1918. (The title records prove that, but the house was built well before her.) Her occupation is listed as "Rooming House." Her son, Joseph, 25, "clerk, cigar store," lived here, as did another fourteen people. Their occupations are given as:

milliner;
musician;
waiter, soda fountain;
draftsman, architecture;
musician, picture show;
ticket agent;
house wife;
clerk, grocery;
stenographer, railroad;
clerk, stock co.;
nurse;
engineer;
accountant;
nurse, private.

What a decline in fortune! From elegant mansion of the 1880's to common boarding house . . . Nothing lasts, does it?

Except maybe art. We hope.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

A La Joe

When the P&C moved into its current quarters in the summer of 1921, it was equipped with two live-in caretakers in the form of a Mr. and Mrs. Penfield. The Penfields lived in the basement and were beset with bugs--shortly after moving into the house, the club gave the Penfields $1.50 for "Bug-powder." Apparently they were beset by heat as well, and the club split the ice bill with them 2/3rds (the P&C) and 1/3 (the Penfields). Mrs. Penfield helped with the opening of the new club house on October 1, 1921 (she was paid $3.50 for her services at the soiree), but the Penfields didn't last long. By February 1922, they were no longer welcome at 1012 N. Dearborn: they received two months notice that their "tenancy in these premises will cease" after April 30, 1922.

With the departure of the Penfields in 1922 commenced the Joe Haynes era. Joe Haynes was the P&C's factotum, cook, drink-fixer, and general handyman--Joe washed the window curtains and wheeled coal into the house to fill the coal bins. When there was a sit-down function at the club house, he served dinner; he greeted people at the door for the gallery. And I suspect that Joe had connections that served him and the members well during Prohibition.

In April 1923, these advertisements appeared in the club newsletter:

At a salary that ranged mostly between $85 and $115 per month, Joe remained with the P&C for years. He was Jeeves to the P&C's Bertie Woosters. But there were flies in the o--these Woosters often lacked for green.

For example, in July 1926, at the instance of Emory Seidel, one J.W. Hansen was called to account before a special board meeting "to answer to the following charge: 'We the following members charge J.W. Hansen with actions unbecoming a member in running a bill with our chef Joe and refusing to pay with loud language. Emory Seidel and Leo Marzolo, House Com. Carried." (The results of the special meeting are not recorded.)

An unpaid debt to Joe also led to the expulsion from the club of Fred Gray, who painted the portrait of Leo Marzolo and the "Portrait of a Young Girl" hanging in the club's library today. (Gray's "Portrait of a Young Girl" was exhibited at the Art Institute for the 1945 fiftieth anniversary of the P&C, and along with the Marzolo portrait is my favorite artwork in the club's collection.)

(From the June 1923 club newsletter.)

By 1932 Gray's debt to Joe was more than $150, and the club was forced to consult with its attorney, Charles Selleck, about the "legal procedure necessary to attach money Mr. Gray would realize from pictures in hands of Chicago Galleries Association for the purpose of satisfying the debt he owes Joe Haynes, the Club caretaker." Gray's paintings didn't sell, and the club booted him out in 1932.

From the club's June 1931 newsletter:

(The "cut" the author is referring to is the woodcut reproduced at the top of this post.)

In the summer of 1940, another member, one Mr. McKee, was reminded of the "by-law concerning indebtedness to Joe Haynes" and was told to clear up his indebtedness to Joe at once.

(From the February 1923 club newsletter.)

On December 2, 1941, Joe's salary was increased to $82.50 per month. That gives an idea of the magnitude of the depression, since Joe had been earning $85 per month in 1923--18 years earlier.

In August 1942, Joe was the victim of an assault by a lawyer whose offices were next door to the club, where the Ruth Page Foundation is located now. (In 1942 that property belonged to the Independent Order of Forestry, a fraternal organization.) It seems the lawyer pulled a gun on Joe and another man and was thereafter arrested.

Joe remained with the P&C until 1959. At retirement, his salary was $150 per month. In reviewing the minutes of the club meetings from 1922 to 1959--monthly meetings that spanned the thirty-seven years of his service--I did not find a single complaint or criticism of Joe.

When he retired, Joe was replaced by another live-in couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Krsnik.

But then Joe has never really been replaced, has he?

Cyrus Leroy Baldridge

Cyrus Leroy Baldridge became a student of Frank Holme, one of the founders of the P&C, at the age of 10. (Holme, a newspaper illustrator, had founded a school of illustration in Chicago. ) Here is Holme's sketch of Baldridge as a boy:

A short biography of Baldridge can be found here: he paid his own way through the University of Chicago, class of 1911, by doing graphic illustrations for the school. After graduation, he kicked around a fair bit--punching cows in Texas, learning to ride in the Illinois National Guard, chasing Pancho Villa in New Mexico with the cavalry. When World War I broke out, he joined the French army as an ambulance driver. He was a member of the P&C at that time. With the United States entry into the war, Baldridge was assigned to the creation of the Stars and Stripes, where he was in charge of illustration. He later published a book of his sketches from the first war called I Was There--these drawings are taken from that book.

(I Was There has been published in full online. You can find it here.)

Baldridge had a fascinating life--marrying a writer, Caroline Singer, travelling in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, illustrating books, designing posters. Apparently after all that he had seen on the western front, Baldridge became a committed pacifist--at least until Pearl Harbor.

When he felt his health failing in 1977, at the age of 88, he took his own life with the pistol that he had been issued in World War I. The University of Chicago has a large group of his drawings and prints.

(note: more on Baldridge is written here )

Trygve Rovelstad

Trygve Rovelstad, of Elgin, was a sculptor, a student of Lorado Taft, and member of the Palette and Chisel. He designed a commemorative half-dollar coin for the U.S. Mint, the combat infantry badge, and other military decorations. Apparently he was a photographer as well as sculptor--he took movies of a party at the P&C and took shots of the members displaying their artwork.

When Rovelstad's health failed and he entered a nursing home, his wife, Gloria Rovelstad, wrote to the club to see if the P&C would be interested in the movies he had made and photos he had taken in the 1920's and '30's. Mrs. Rovelstad gave her address and phone number in Elgin where she could be reached.

As I reached the foot of this letter, where Mrs. Rovelstad's phone number appeared, I couldn't claw my cell phone out of my pocket fast enough--but the Rovelstad's phone had been disconnected. That was when I noticed the date on the letter: December 8, 1990.

Trygve Rovelstad has passed away, as has his wife. His papers are at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but the index of that material does not appear to mention the treasure trove his wife once offered so generously to our club.

(The Rovelstad sculptures illustrated here are the founder of Elgin, the pioneer family group in Elgin, the colossal head of a never-completed figure called "I Will" (Chicago's motto), and a long-time state senator.)