History
The original purpose of the neighborhood park was as a place of assembly to discuss community issues. Chicago has a long storied history of public speeches both for entertainment and educational purposes. The Haymarket Riot first started as an anarchist workers rally. Daniel Burnham’s March 27, 1897 lecture for the Commercial Club of Chicago inspired the club to provide $80,000 to publish the Burnham Plan.
Washington Square Park has been the geographic center of Chicago public speeches. By the 1890s the park acquired its Bughouse Square moniker. Soapbox orators waxed on topics ranging from gender relations to Communism. It served as a home for soapbox orators on warm-weather evenings from the 1910s to the mid-1960s. Like Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park, Washington Square became a popular spot for soap box orators. Artists, writers, political radicals, and hobos pontificated, lectured, recited poetry, ranted, and raved. A group of regulars formed "The Dil Pickle Club," devoted to free expression. For years Washington Square orators appointed their own honorary "king." In its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, revolutionary left soapboxers were occasionally joined by poets, religionists, and cranks. In 1959, the city transferred Washington Square to the Chicago Park District. In 1964, Life featured an article saying that it was a meeting place for cottaging among homosexuals. Six years later, it played host to Chicago's first Gay Pride March.
Read more about this topic: Washington Square Historic District (Chicago)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)