Influence
| Interior of Pullman Residence (1922) Al Capone residence: 7244 S. Prairie Ave. (1929) | |
| Mercy Hospital: 2537 S. Prairie Ave. (1910) | |
During the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, upper Prairie Avenue residents were central to cultural and social fabric of the city. The economy was supported by the thousands of jobs created by the Pullman Car Company and Armour and Company. Chicago's richest man, Marshall Field, changed the buying habits of the city. John Shorthall saved the property from total chaos after the Great Chicago Fire by saving property records. At one point in the 1880s, sixteen of the 60 members of the Commercial Club of Chicago lived on Prairie Avenue. George Armour headed the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, which became the Art Institute of Chicago. 1801 South Prairie resident, William Wallace Kimball, employed about 1500 people around the start of the 20th century in his organ and piano manufacturing company. John Glessner, a founder of International Harvester, built what has been described as the centerpiece of the historic district.
As a home to many of Chicago's leading families, Prairie Avenue became the base of many important political movements. Woman's suffrage had activists, such as Illinois Women Suffrage Association President Jane Jones, on Prairie Avenue. Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. State of Illinois, 146 U.S. 387 (1892), pitted the public welfare of the city against the railroad industry and was the foundation for the public trust doctrine which facilitated the city's reclamation of much of the lakefront. Prairie Avenue residents bolstered other efforts to fight against the railroads. The concentration of wealth also made Prairie Avenue the target of complaints about taxation inequities.
Many of these leading families also took part in philanthropy. John Shorthall, founder of Chicago Title & Trust and Prairie Avenue resident, created the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and convened local and state societies to unite under a national organization (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) that could combine its political strength and lobby Congress. The Illinois Institute of Technology was a successor entity of the Armour Institute of Technology, which was an outgrowth of the generosity of Philip and Joseph Armour.
Read more about this topic: Prairie Avenue
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.”
—George Washington (1732–1799)
“The adolescent does not develop her identity and individuality by moving outside her family. She is not triggered by some magic unconscious dynamic whereby she rejects her family in favour of her peers or of a larger society.... She continues to develop in relation to her parents. Her mother continues to have more influence over her than either her father or her friends.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Just what is the civil law? What neither influence can affect, nor power break, nor money corrupt: were it to be suppressed or even merely ignored or inadequately observed, no one would feel safe about anything, whether his own possessions, the inheritance he expects from his father, or the bequests he makes to his children.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)