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:
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)