The Newberry Library's genealogy news page has alerted us to more goodies available for free online. I check this site about once a week for valuable resources and workshops: http://www.newberry.org/genealogy/news/default.asp?id=150&action=single The mention was this: the link was provided to the following Chicago Journal article: 11/2006 10:00:00 PM One camera, one Chicago Charles Cushman’s photos vividly capture the city before urban renewal By HAYDN BUSH, Managing editor The bustle of the Maxwell Street market. Charles Cushman documented a vanishing city in the 1940s and 1950s. Photos courtesy of Indiana University Archives Cushman was especially enthralled by vibrant city street life, shooting untold rolls of film on Maxwell Street. At first take, Charles Cushman’s photos are breathtaking simply because of the abundant color found in nearly every image. An amateur photographer of Americana who spent the better part of four decades snapping everything in sight, Cushman’s collection is first notable because of the Kodachrome color film he used at a time when most serious photographers stuck to black and white. But for Chicagoans, Cushman’s photos are more than just a bright peek into a past. Cushman, a man of somewhat independent means who worked intermittently for most of his life, first came to Chicago in 1919 and was an off-and-on resident and visitor over the next four decades, taking more than 1,200 photos of the city. Mostly, though, Cushman worked in a handful of inner-city neighborhoods in the 1940s and 1950s, at a time when postwar prosperity and urban renewal was just beginning to transform city life. Thanks to Cushman, bygone neighborhoods and ways of life were captured in full color, sometimes only a year or two before they were destroyed. His photo collection, recently archived online by Indiana University, contains images of horse-drawn carts traversing the brick-paved streets of the Maxwell Street area, an ice cream vendor using a pulley to service a customer on the second floor of a walkup at Halsted and Cabrini, and children playing behind a tenement building at Grand and Sangamon. Cushman put down his camera in the late 1960s and bequeathed nearly all of his collection of Kodachrome slides to Indiana University, his alma mater, who received the slides when he died in 1972. For 25 years, Cushman’s photos languished in storage. In the summer of 1999, Bradley Cook, Indiana University’s photography curator, happened upon the collection in a university storage building. Cook was leafing through of some of Cushman’s more quotidian photos of trees and flowers when he came across photographs of Emmett Kelly, a renowned circus clown who worked for Ringling Bros. "I’d never seen a color image of Emmett Kelly before," Cook said. Soon after that, Cook, a Chicago-area native, discovered Cushman’s Chicago photographs. At an unrelated meeting a short time later with Richard Remsberg, then the Photographic Support Coordinator at Indiana’s School of Journalism, the two men discovered that they both had been sent parts of Cushman’s massive collection. Soon, Cook was soon scheming to catalogue the 14,000 photos. The project took several years to develop; Cook had to line up grant funding, sort the unorganized slides and send some of the photos to a Swedish photo institute to correct images that had shifted to red over time. The project went online in October 2003, and can be found at http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp. While Cushman lived much of his later life in San Francisco—and was fascinated by Western landscapes as well—nearly 10 percent of the collection is devoted to Chicago. And a high percentage of those shots center around the Near West Side and Bronzeville, in neighborhoods later demolished to make way for CHA housing projects, the Eisenhower expressway and, ultimately, the University of Illinois-Chicago. "The Chicago pictures truly document a lost world: unlike the streets that Cushman shot in lower Manhattan, the blocks that he walked in Chicago’s so-called Black Belt would, in great part, be soon destroyed," writes Eric Sandweiss, a professor of history at Indiana University, on Cushman’s website. Indeed, the Chicago photos capture the clamor for urban renewal alongside its destructive failures. A forlorn frame house at 628 W. 13th Street reveals abject decrepitude, with a rotting wooden facade, broken windows and an off-kilter frame with little hope of redemption. For some slum shots, Cushman’s notebook recorded his horror of the squalid living conditions with the simple line "people live here." But other photos reveal rich street life that has long since been demolished. A photo taken near 14th and Sangamon in the late 1940s depicts two well-dressed women strolling past a thriving meat market, housed in a mixed-use building with a stone facade that is reminiscent of buildings that remain to this day a few blocks south in Pilsen. "Cushman’s search for colorful street life and rich architectural detail led him into neighborhoods on the brink—communities held momentarily together by an all-purpose corner store or a particularly sociable front stoop—but places nonetheless threatened with survival," Sandweiss writes. "It is only in retrospect, after the urban-renewal era and after the widespread departure of industrial worksites from the central city, that we can judge just how great, in the 1940s and 1950s, that threat was." Even when Cushman wasn’t dutifully recording slum life, he had a flair for the picturesque. There are scores of photos of sunbathers on Lake Michigan, the circus, blooming flowers in Jackson Park, or local parades, including a Polish festival on Augusta Boulevard. And regardless of whether Cushman was deliberately aiming his camera at nostalgia, his now-recovered photos have had that effect on thousands of visitors to the website. "Somebody emailed me and said "‘I hate your Cushman site because it’s all I [look at] at work every day,’" Cook says. Cook says the university has received hundreds of requests for prints from visitors to the website. A Chicago woman wanted a print of two houses on the 1800 block of South Prairie Avenue, where her large Italian family lived in adjoining buildings until they were demolished in 1968. Another woman wrote to say that one of the Cushman’s pictures in Italy immortalized the place where her parents met, while a Utah businessman came across a photo of Texas cotton fields that instantly took him back to his youth. "He was picking cotton in Texas at that time as a boy, and he wanted that image to hang on his office wall," Cook says. For Cook, whose job at Indiana University brings him into contact with photography collections on a regular basis, Cushman’s greatest accomplishment may have taken place off-camera. Cushman kept a meticulous notebook that recorded the exact time and place of nearly every photo, though rarely the people being shot. Out of 14,000 photos, Cook says that roughly 20 have insufficient caption information. "I’ll never come across another collection like this," Cook says, "simply because of the amount of images and level of description. He has everything. For the most part, you know exactly where he is." Ellen Plourde http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~opindex/

I wish to personally thank all whom has made this possible. The photos are a real flash back of time. This man was amazing to think of doing this. I travel somewhat and the photo's I have and this idea has given me new ideas to "Keep me off the streets" LOL I have Multiple Sclerosis. This work is amazing and a total pleasure to view. Thank you for posting. ~Dianna Saracco~ Coast of NC , born and raised Chicago area. ----- Original Message ----- From: Ellen Plourde To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 11:23 AM Subject: [IL-CHICAGO] Chicago Photos from the 40's and 50's The Newberry Library's genealogy news page has alerted us to more goodies available for free online. I check this site about once a week for valuable resources and workshops: http://www.newberry.org/genealogy/news/default.asp?id=150&action=single The mention was this: the link was provided to the following Chicago Journal article: 11/2006 10:00:00 PM One camera, one Chicago Charles Cushman's photos vividly capture the city before urban renewal By HAYDN BUSH, Managing editor The bustle of the Maxwell Street market. Charles Cushman documented a vanishing city in the 1940s and 1950s. Photos courtesy of Indiana University Archives Cushman was especially enthralled by vibrant city street life, shooting untold rolls of film on Maxwell Street. At first take, Charles Cushman's photos are breathtaking simply because of the abundant color found in nearly every image. An amateur photographer of Americana who spent the better part of four decades snapping everything in sight, Cushman's collection is first notable because of the Kodachrome color film he used at a time when most serious photographers stuck to black and white. But for Chicagoans, Cushman's photos are more than just a bright peek into a past. Cushman, a man of somewhat independent means who worked intermittently for most of his life, first came to Chicago in 1919 and was an off-and-on resident and visitor over the next four decades, taking more than 1,200 photos of the city. Mostly, though, Cushman worked in a handful of inner-city neighborhoods in the 1940s and 1950s, at a time when postwar prosperity and urban renewal was just beginning to transform city life. Thanks to Cushman, bygone neighborhoods and ways of life were captured in full color, sometimes only a year or two before they were destroyed. His photo collection, recently archived online by Indiana University, contains images of horse-drawn carts traversing the brick-paved streets of the Maxwell Street area, an ice cream vendor using a pulley to service a customer on the second floor of a walkup at Halsted and Cabrini, and children playing behind a tenement building at Grand and Sangamon. Cushman put down his camera in the late 1960s and bequeathed nearly all of his collection of Kodachrome slides to Indiana University, his alma mater, who received the slides when he died in 1972. For 25 years, Cushman's photos languished in storage. In the summer of 1999, Bradley Cook, Indiana University's photography curator, happened upon the collection in a university storage building. Cook was leafing through of some of Cushman's more quotidian photos of trees and flowers when he came across photographs of Emmett Kelly, a renowned circus clown who worked for Ringling Bros. "I'd never seen a color image of Emmett Kelly before," Cook said. Soon after that, Cook, a Chicago-area native, discovered Cushman's Chicago photographs. At an unrelated meeting a short time later with Richard Remsberg, then the Photographic Support Coordinator at Indiana's School of Journalism, the two men discovered that they both had been sent parts of Cushman's massive collection. Soon, Cook was soon scheming to catalogue the 14,000 photos. The project took several years to develop; Cook had to line up grant funding, sort the unorganized slides and send some of the photos to a Swedish photo institute to correct images that had shifted to red over time. The project went online in October 2003, and can be found at http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp. While Cushman lived much of his later life in San Francisco-and was fascinated by Western landscapes as well-nearly 10 percent of the collection is devoted to Chicago. And a high percentage of those shots center around the Near West Side and Bronzeville, in neighborhoods later demolished to make way for CHA housing projects, the Eisenhower expressway and, ultimately, the University of Illinois-Chicago. "The Chicago pictures truly document a lost world: unlike the streets that Cushman shot in lower Manhattan, the blocks that he walked in Chicago's so-called Black Belt would, in great part, be soon destroyed," writes Eric Sandweiss, a professor of history at Indiana University, on Cushman's website. Indeed, the Chicago photos capture the clamor for urban renewal alongside its destructive failures. A forlorn frame house at 628 W. 13th Street reveals abject decrepitude, with a rotting wooden facade, broken windows and an off-kilter frame with little hope of redemption. For some slum shots, Cushman's notebook recorded his horror of the squalid living conditions with the simple line "people live here." But other photos reveal rich street life that has long since been demolished. A photo taken near 14th and Sangamon in the late 1940s depicts two well-dressed women strolling past a thriving meat market, housed in a mixed-use building with a stone facade that is reminiscent of buildings that remain to this day a few blocks south in Pilsen. "Cushman's search for colorful street life and rich architectural detail led him into neighborhoods on the brink-communities held momentarily together by an all-purpose corner store or a particularly sociable front stoop-but places nonetheless threatened with survival," Sandweiss writes. "It is only in retrospect, after the urban-renewal era and after the widespread departure of industrial worksites from the central city, that we can judge just how great, in the 1940s and 1950s, that threat was." Even when Cushman wasn't dutifully recording slum life, he had a flair for the picturesque. There are scores of photos of sunbathers on Lake Michigan, the circus, blooming flowers in Jackson Park, or local parades, including a Polish festival on Augusta Boulevard. And regardless of whether Cushman was deliberately aiming his camera at nostalgia, his now-recovered photos have had that effect on thousands of visitors to the website. "Somebody emailed me and said "'I hate your Cushman site because it's all I [look at] at work every day,'" Cook says. Cook says the university has received hundreds of requests for prints from visitors to the website. A Chicago woman wanted a print of two houses on the 1800 block of South Prairie Avenue, where her large Italian family lived in adjoining buildings until they were demolished in 1968. Another woman wrote to say that one of the Cushman's pictures in Italy immortalized the place where her parents met, while a Utah businessman came across a photo of Texas cotton fields that instantly took him back to his youth. "He was picking cotton in Texas at that time as a boy, and he wanted that image to hang on his office wall," Cook says. For Cook, whose job at Indiana University brings him into contact with photography collections on a regular basis, Cushman's greatest accomplishment may have taken place off-camera. Cushman kept a meticulous notebook that recorded the exact time and place of nearly every photo, though rarely the people being shot. Out of 14,000 photos, Cook says that roughly 20 have insufficient caption information. "I'll never come across another collection like this," Cook says, "simply because of the amount of images and level of description. He has everything. For the most part, you know exactly where he is." Ellen Plourde http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~opindex/ ==== IL-COOK-CHICAGO Mailing List ==== To unsubscribe: Send a message to [email protected] that contains (in the body of the message) the command unsubscribe ============================== View and search Historical Newspapers. Read about your ancestors, find marriage announcements and more. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13969/rd.ashx