There are a couple of interesting articles discussing the street name changes in Chicago, at the Newberry Library genealogy page. http://www.newberry.org/genealogy/news/ I check this page about once a week, and am always interested in the items that are posted. http://www.newberry.org/genealogy/news/default.asp?id=173&action=single German Street Name Changes in Bucktown, Part I By Jack Simpson When I first moved to Chicago, I lived on McLean Street in the Bucktown neighborhood. When I looked up my neighborhood on a map from 1886, I saw that McLean had been called Coblentz at that time. More striking, all of the east-west streets in the neighborhood had German names at that time. For example, Dickens Street had been called Lubeck, Charleston was called Frankfort, and Shakespeare was Hamburg. Looking into this casually, I learned that many of Chicago’s German street names were changed during anti-German hysteria in World War I. This seemed to explain why several of the streets were named for English cultural figures- I assumed that Anglophile Americans in the grip of xenophobic war fever changed “Hamburg” to “Shakespeare.” Since street name changes are a common question at the reference desk, I thought I would investigate the details of the German street name changes. As is usually the case with history, the true narrative is a bit more complicated than I expected. There was considerable anti-German sentiment in Chicago during the First World War. Historian Melvin Holli wrote in Ethnic Chicago that “no group fell from such high favor to such low regard as did German Americans during the period of World War I.” When the European war began in 1914, though, public opinion was not particularly anti-German. The U.S. was neutral in the conflict and in the European phase of the war, native American sentiment was also fairly neutral. In Chicago, early public discussion of the European war was not so much between Anglophile nativists and a German minority, but rather between groups of European ethnics. According to the school census of 1914, only 752, 111 of Chicago’s 2, 437,526 people were classified as native-born Americans, and so many Chicagoans identified strongly with their European homelands. Of Chicago’s ethnic groups, Germans and Austrians combined were numerically dominant. Irish nationalists tended to favor Germany in the conflict against the British. Early in the conflict, nationalist Poles and Bohemians viewed both sides of the war as obstacles to their dreams of nationhood. As the European war continued, the dynamics of the argument changed. Conflict between the U.S. and the Central powers over submarine warfare and the Zimmerman telegram shifted native American public opinion against the Central powers. With the collapse of Czarist Russia, Poles and Bohemians ethnics viewed Germany as the remaining obstacle to nationhood. This view was bolstered by Woodrow Wilson’s “Peace without Victory” speech, arguing that after the war “every people should be left free to determine its own polity.” Before U.S. entry into the war, Polish-Americans raised a unit, Haller’s Army, to fight against the Central Powers in France. Anti-German sentiment among Poles, Bohemians and other Chicago ethnic populations also grew from rivalry with Germans in the city. The German community was older, larger and better established in the city than other groups. More recently established ethnic communities such as Poles and Czechs felt that the Germans were unfairly dominant. This dynamic played out over the issue of foreign-language instruction in the public schools, for example. With U.S. entry into the war, a strong backlash against German-Americans and German culture began, fed both by wartime nativism and interethnic rivalry. The Chicago Athletic Club dismissed alien German employees, and the German conductor of the Chicago Symphony was pressured to step down until he completed naturalization. A group of clubwomen formed a “Use Nothing German” club, publicly smashing beer steins and other items “produced in Hunland.” Some German organizations and businesses changed their own names in response to the anti-German mood: German Hospital was changed to Grant Hospital and the Bismark Hotel was renamed the Hotel Randolph. This movement soon turned to German street names in Chicago. “As long as we are going after the Germans, let us go after their names,” said one young woman to the Chicago Tribune after tearing down the sign for Hamburg Street. The Tribune reported several examples of similar vandalism to German street signs, and soon aldermen introduced formal proposals for street name changes. The 28th Ward Alderman, Max Adamowski, presented a bill to rename the aforementioned streets in Bucktown. On April 15, 1918, the Tribune reported that One thousand (residents), most of them Polish-Americans, meeting yesterday at St. Hedwig’s parish school, joined in signing a petition to the mayor and the city council to change the names of the streets. Days later, the Tribune announced that the proposal was successful but did not describe the exact name changes. Later that year, Gold Coast residents pushed a similar proposal. In particular, residents of Goethe Street petitioned to change its name to “Boxwood Street.” In an article entitled “Goaty Street Goats Talk of Long Suffering,” residents insisted that there was no “German significance” to the proposal, but rather that the spelling and pronouncing of the name confused streetcar conductors, deliverymen and visitors. The proposal met with strong opposition from German organizations, and ultimately foundered. Today, Goethe street still exists in the Gold Coast (and is generally pronounced Go-thee rather than Gerta.) In part two of this article, I will describe my search for the exact street name changes in Bucktown, and a surprising discovery. Sources for Part I Journal Articles Melvin G. Holli, "Teuton vs. Slav: The Great War Sinks Chicago's German Kultur," Ethnicity, 8 (Dec. 1981), 406-451. Zimmerman, Jonathan, “Ethnics against Ethnicity: European Immigrants and Foreign-Language Instruction, 1890-1940.” The Journal of American History 88.4 (2002): 50 pars. 28 Jan. 2006 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/88.4/zimmerman.html>. Books Holli, Melvin and Peter D. Jones, eds. Ethnic Chicago. Eerdmans, 1995. Call No. Local History Ref F548.9.A1 E85 1995b (2nd floor open shelf) Chicago Tribune Articles "Part of Hamburg Street is Now Victory Place." April 1, 1918 pg. 5 "German Street Names Must Go, Loyalists Vote." April 15, 1918, pg. 13 "Use Nothing German." July 9, 1918 pg. 7 “ 'Made in Gemany' Things Made Useless". July 11, 1918, pg. 5 "Goaty Street Goats Talk of Long Suffering." Dec. 19, 1918 pg. 11 "Argue Blotting German Names From City Map." Jan. 3, 1919, pg. 13 "German Blood Rises to Defend Goethe Street." Jan 14, 1919 pg. 15 http://www.newberry.org/genealogy/news/default.asp?id=176&action=single German Street Name Changes, Part II In Part I, I examined the background of German street name changes in Chicago. In this post, I want to discuss how I found the exact name changes that occurred. There are some good resources for studying the history of Chicago’s streets online. The most useful resource William Martin’s Chicago Streets guide, which the Chicago Historical Society has placed online (it is also available at the genealogy reference desk here at the Newberry.) Martin listed every street that has existed in Chicago, and each street’s former or later names. However, the guide does not list the date of name changes. For example, it shows that McLean Street formerly went by a number of names: Bryon Ave. Canal Place, Caver Street, Coblentz Street, Powell Park, Tondern Street, C street, Ovitt Place. But the guide does not explain when those changes happened. Finding more precise details of a street name change requires a visit to the Municipal Reference Collection on the 5th floor of the Harold Washington Library Center – the main branch of the Chicago Public Library. At the reference desk, there is a photocopied card file of Chicago’s streets. For each street, it gives a reference to the City Council ordinance that changed the name. To start my search, I looked up Coblentz to see when it was renamed. The entry for Coblentz indicated that its name was changed June 17, 1918. The reference library also has print and fiche copies of the City Council Proceedings. Checking the Proceedings for June 17, 1918, I found the full text of the ordinance. The council agreed unanimously to the following changes: Berlin street, change to Canton street, from North Hoyne avenue to North California avenue Clara place, change to Canton street, from North Western Avenue to North Maplewood avenue Ems street, change to Colvin street, from North Leavitt street to North Maplewood avenue Frankfort street, change to Charleston street from North Robey street to North Maplewood avenue Lubeck street, change to Carolina street from North Robey street to North Western avenue Coblentz street, change to Carver street from North Robey street to North Western avenue Rhine street, change to Coyne street from North Leavitt street to Milwaukee avenue So now I understood when the German names were removed. Surprisingly, they were not replaced with the current names, such as Dickens and Shakespeare. So when were the current names adopted? And why were the German names replaced with street names beginning with ‘C’? To find the answer to the first question, I went back to the card file at the municipal library and looked up McLean Street. The card index for “McLean street” indicated that on October 7, 1936, Carver was changed to McLean. Hundreds of other names were also changed that day, as the City Council unified “broken link” street names. On Oct. 6, the Chicago Tribune reported on the debate in City Council. Mayor Edward Kelly was pushing a bill to connect many of the broken link streets- so that streets that ran along the same latitude would carry a single name. The renaming was a prerequisite for a federal grant for new street signs, and the mayor was anxious to push it through. Many aldermen were opposed to the change, perhaps because their constituents wanted to keep their street names. Some of the objection was sentimental. Alderman Coughlin objected to “changes which will eliminate names intimately connected with my childhood days.” Under the heading “Heart-Rending Tale,” the Tribune recorded Coughlin’s objection to renaming Lytle street. “ I played ball with the late Charles Comisky on Lytle street, and that street is dear to me.” Others objected for territorial reasons. Alderman Keen argued with Alderman Crowe over changing Iowa street to Chestnut Street. “Whoever suggested these changes must have had the gold coast in mind” declared Keane. “What’s the idea of changing names in my ward to fit those little streets over on the lake shore?” “We were trying to preserve the older street names” declared Crowe, who represents the Pearson and Chestnut street residents. “We thought that extending these exclusive gold coast names to the west side would increase property values there. And besides, who ever heard of Iowa street? “Iowa street is the greatest street in Chicago” declared Ald. Keane. Apparently, Keane’s stirring defense of Iowa street carried the day, as it still exists, parallel to Chestnut west of Wood street. The renaming of “broken links” was part of a longtime effort to rationalize Chicago’s street names and addresses, spearheaded by a man named Edward P. Brennan. His greatest achievement was the implementation of the standard address grid in 1909. Brennan also supported a street-naming plan devised by John C. Reilly, the Superintendent of the city Bureau of Maps. Reilly proposed that Chicago adopt an alphabetical pattern of street names. In the plan, the north-south street names in the first mile west of the Indiana border were to begin with “A”, names in the 2nd mile would begin with “B” and so on. It appears that the “C” names applied to the east-west streets in Bucktown may have been part of similar plan, although I haven’t found any record of such a plan. Sources: Chicago Tribune articles: "Aldermen on Spot; Votes vs. Street Names." Oct. 6, 1936 "109 More Street Names Changed by City Council." Oct. 8, 1936, pg. 3 Ellen Plourde http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~opindex/

Ellen, thanks so much for the information on the street name changes in Chicago - very interesting reading! Bonnie -- Bonnie J. Selig, RAOGK Volunteer, Find A Grave County Keeper, Jo Daviess Co., IL Researching B l a c k b u r n, D e p p m a n, G r o s s m a n, H e r b s t, S e l i g and G o d f r e y Visit my Genealogy Homepage: http://tinyurl.com/4zq7z