. Chicago. sand tilled our prairie land. Now, as Istroll through the heart of the city at thehour when the great office buildings anddepartment stores are emptying them-selves, I search the scurrying crowds invain for a familiar face; and as I am borneon by the human torrent gushing from thecrag-like walls about me, I feel that, likemy Puritanical traditions, I belong to an-other age. While insurgent fellow citizensdodge recklessly beween the wheels ofpassing motor cars in order to save a fewseconds of time, my ingenuous respect forthe law of the land halts my steps when-ever a crossing police
. Chicago. sand tilled our prairie land. Now, as Istroll through the heart of the city at thehour when the great office buildings anddepartment stores are emptying them-selves, I search the scurrying crowds invain for a familiar face; and as I am borneon by the human torrent gushing from thecrag-like walls about me, I feel that, likemy Puritanical traditions, I belong to an-other age. While insurgent fellow citizensdodge recklessly beween the wheels ofpassing motor cars in order to save a fewseconds of time, my ingenuous respect forthe law of the land halts my steps when-ever a crossing policeman raises his white-gloved hand. Bewildered by the hurly-burly of my native city, I—a lonely figureof a pristine day—try then to compre- 44 The Heart of the City hend the multifarious changes a few shortyears have wrought in its life and char-acter, try to realize that within my ownlifetime more than two million peoplehave been added to its population. In Old Washington Street III. The Great JVest Side. Ill THE GREAT WEST SIDE ONE must be truly an old Chicagoanto recall the time when the shadystreets which lie west of the river vied insocial standing with any in the city. Herefactories now belch their smoke upon themansard roofs of dilapidated tenementsthat once were the mansions of wealthycitizens whose scions blush for their origin,the Great West Side, as it is called de-risively, being now a proletarian domainremote from the ken of fashionable so-ciety. In all Chicago, however, there are nostreets so reminiscent of our strait-lacedpast as are those of the disdained WestSide. Here block after block of marble-fronts and red-brick mansions stand un-altered, except by the ravages of time. 49 Chicago Their lawns are unkept, their iron balus-trades are rusty; yet like decayed aristo-crats who have known better days, thesegrimy old houses of an austere past evincea courtliness and dignity quite lacking inthe Lake Shore palaces of modern mil-lionaires. Moreover, like the famili
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectchicagoillhistory
