After Oakenwald

A Field Guide to a Quarter-Section. Text and images by Hui-min Tsen.

This work was produced as part of Navigations, a series of artist projects in and about public space sponsored by Roman Susan. A text version appears in Bureacratic Realisms published by Noxious Sector Press and edited by Meg Duguid, Ted Hiebert & Duncan MacKenzie.

Introduction

If you take a square and lay it flat on the ground, the interior becomes a scene set aside by the frame around it. Instead of open space, it is now a human landscape, brought to order by the one who drew the lines. Millions of squares, both visible and invisible, cover our country in a system of townships (6 miles squared), divided into sections (1 mile squared), divided into quarter sections (¼ mile squared) which can be divided and subdivided indefinitely. Each square gives a promise, “as owner, you can make and name the world inside my border.”

Our square is the Northeast Quarter of Section 34, Township 39, Range 14 East. There is nothing remarkable about its size and shape other than a small curve in the top corner where the lake once cut westward (the “meander of Lake Michigan” as the original survey plat phrased it in 1832). Measuring ½ mile by ½ mile and 160 acres, it is the size of a classic American homestead; small enough for a family to farm, big enough to sustain them. Randomly pick any quarter section and you will find a story to tell, filled with local color. Threading through will be common themes of private equity and speculation, arteries and memory lines heading into and out of the area, ideologies imprinted on the land and subsequently erased.

Our story, though, looks at one specific square and its specific lineage. This is about Senator Stephen Douglas’s former estate and what happened in its aftermath. It is presented as a field guide to help recognize the impact of actors and events on our inherited public spaces.

Throughout, I use the word “our.” Our story, our quarter section, our remains, our country. The word our means “of or relating to us.” To say our implies that you and I are one, and that the subject belongs to us in a joint ownership. This is not literally true; I have no personal relationship with the quarter section in our story, it is not my story to define. The lineages and ideas behind these spaces, though, belong to all of us. Even if we rebuild the land, the past is written there, shaping our movements and determining the plot we live within.

Section I. Recognizing a time before Chicago.

As the story begins, we find ourselves on a major foot trail, three miles south of present-day downtown Chicago. The land is scarcely 15 feet above lake level.

The Ox’s Body

Chicago was officially opened for settlement by the U.S. government on August 12, 1833. To prepare the land for sale, the U.S. Surveyor General and his deputies measured it out on a grid, walking the land with a metal surveyor’s chain, numbering townships, sections, and the quarter-section family homesteads. 10 chains and you have a furlong, 8 furlongs and you have a mile, and so on until the land is divided. A furlong, short for “furrow long,” is a foundational Anglo-Saxon unit of measurement equal to the distance an ox can plow before it needs to rest. So, the United States grid system is based on a memory line stretching back to the physical stamina and limitations of an English ox’s body. This is the space our bodies occupy.

Echoes of the Shoreline

3000 years ago there was no square here. We are on a strip of land that ran between Lake Michigan a few hundred yards to the east and a swampy area a few hundred yards to the west. Here, the bison took the line of least resistance to create a long trail stretching around the southern edge of the lake. Later, the path became part of an extensive network of Native American trails and, most recently, Cottage Grove Avenue. Along this centering line just to the south was a small Potowatomi village and ‘chipping station’ where the Potowatomi made flint tools and arrow heads. In 1833 the Potowatomi were forced from their lands and Chicago was incorporated.

Section II Recognizing Oakenwald: A gentleman’s estate by Senator Stephen Douglas

The land that became our quarter section was first defined by the lake, then the foot traffic near the lake, then the borderlands of the city boundary just to the north. It was homesteaded by Samuel Ellis and, twenty years later, subdivided and resold. The Graves family bought the norther half and Senator Stephen A. Douglas bought the rest. Douglas named his land Oakenwald.

It is 1852. A newly built railroad runs right along the lakefront. The Graves family cottage is on the west side of Cottage Grove and small oaks woods is to the east. The rest is prairie.

Our Remains

The physical remains of Stephen Douglas’ body lie in a sarcophagus at the base of a 96-foot tomb in Oakenwald. Exhausted by a failed run for president, Douglas died in 1861 of Typhoid Fever at the age of 48 and was buried in a temporary grave. When his body was exhumed and moved to its permanent location in his tomb seven years later, “the public was allowed to view the face of the deceased senator through the glass cover of the casket. It appeared quite natural, being well preserved by the embalmment, and presenting no appearance of deceomposition.”

Speculative Real Estate Development

The historical marker refers to Oakenwald as a “Gentleman’s Estate.” Douglas had large visions for the nation (expansion!), Chicago (prominence!), and his own neighborhood (gentility!). Douglas made a fortune through land speculation and his wife’s cotton plantation in Mississippi (home to 150 enslaved people). When he was elected Illinois senator, he orchestrated a powerful deal to route the nation’s rail traffic through Chicago, issuing the first land grants to the Illinois Central Railroad. He divided his 70 acres of land into two gated subdivisions, donated 10 acres for the first University of Chicago, and set aside a corner at 35th and the lakefront for his home, strategically placing it next to the railroad he built. Dying before his estate could be fully developed, he now rests at Oakenwald.

Atop the column at the Douglas Tomb is a 10 foot statue of the Little Giant himself (as Douglas was called). He stands with his back to us, eyes looking out at his biggest accomplishment, the Illinois Central Railroad (ICRR) running 700 miles to connect Chicago, Mississippi and all points in between.

Private Land

Complete with brick Victorian gatehouse, Groveland Park is a private subdivision developed in the 1850’s from Douglas’s original acreage. Secluded from the city, the grounds are perfect for leisurely strolls. The gentle curves of the road follow fashionable landscaping trends set by the private estates and parklands of the English upper classes. Joy Morton (of Morton Salt) entertained Grover Cleveland here, and his kids rode ponies in the park. Exclusive communities were attractive in the 19th Century for the same reasons they are today: safety, privacy, control. Today, posted rules include “don’t climb trees” and “bicycle riding and parties on the lawn are prohibited.”

The Slavery Issue

Douglas was a dealmaker, a populist, a Jacksonian democrat, and one of the most influential politicians of his era. At the time of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the “slavery issue” dominated national politics. Lincoln felt the Declaration of Independence established all men to have equal rights, including the right to govern themselves. “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent,” he said.

Douglas took a different stance:

When you say that the Declaration of Independence includes the negro, you charge the signers of it with hypocrisy. I say to you, frankly, that in my opinion, this government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and was intended to be administered by white men in all time to come. But while I hold that under our Constitution and political system the negro is not a citizen, cannot be a citizen, and ought not to be a citizen, it does not follow by any means that he should be a slave.

Douglas believed in state’s rights. To him, a border meant the men inside were free to make their own decisions. Douglas’s doctrine of “popular sovereignty” argued each state and territory should vote on the slavery issue for themselves. With the “Kansas-Nebraska Act” he wrote popular sovereignty into law, inadvertently increasing tensions between north and south and hastening the outbreak of the Civil War.

Section III Recognizing Camp Douglas: A deadly prison camp by the Union Army and Illinois State Militia

It is 1861 and evidence of Chicago’s growth is visible in our quarter section. Groveland Park, Woodland Park, and Douglas’s temporary cottage dot the land at Oakenwald. A horse-drawn trolley line runs down Cottage Grove Ave, bringing students to the stately new University of Chicago built on land donated by Stephen Douglas.

Unexpected Connections

A line is a movement connecting two points in space. The most significant lines in our quarter section are two parallel migration routes passing through from south to north; one modern, one ancient.

In 1862, a year after his death, Douglas’s railroad connected his world to points beyond the frame in ways Douglas could not have anticipated. When the Union won the battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee, there was a sudden and urgent need to move thousands of captured Confederate soldiers. The prisoners were put aboard the newly constructed ICRR and sent to a camp in Chicago where they were held captive, far away from enemy lines.

Porous Boundaries

The front wall of Camp Douglas ran down Cottage Grove Ave, enclosing the quarter section’s west side with a plank board fence. White Oak Square, the prisoner barracks and dungeon, was directly across the street from Groveland Park’s private gatehouse. Chicagoans’ opposition to slavery did not always translate into support for abolition, and there were many southern sympathizers within the city. The young soldiers (and the Irish Brigade guarding them) were rowdy, and the boundary surrounding the prison camp was difficult to enforce. Soldiers frequently escaped. Sometimes they walked right out through the gates after bribing the guards with money or liquor. Other times they pushed the fence planks aside or dug through the sandy soil and ran out through tunnels beneath the wall. Once free, they could hop on the Cottage Grove trolley to downtown where the city’s pro-south sympathizers helped them return home. The same trolley brought gawkers down to look at the “traitors” from across the enemy divide.

Forced Containment

The camp was erected partially on Douglas’ land and, in his honor, took his name. The site was picked for its flat emptiness and proximity to water and rail transportation. The location was full of inadequacies, though, and within weeks the prison hospital was full. Soldiers arrived in thin clothing, unprepared for Chicago winters. Freezing air blew through plank board walls and the flat land caused sewage to stagnate around the latrines. Polluted drinking water was brought in from the lake. Methods of torture included starvation, beatings, and hanging prisoners up by their thumbs. Cholera, measles, and dysentery were common causes of death.

Harmonious Forgetfulness

More than 26,000 Confederate soldiers were incarcerated at Camp Douglas, 6000 of whom died there, making it the deadliest Civil War camp in the North. At the war’s end, the camp was erased, leaving no trace of where it had once stood. The confederate soldiers who died there are buried in a mass grave in nearby Oakwoods Cemetery at 67th Street. Containing somewhere between 4500 to 6000 bodies, it is the largest mass grave in North America. Thirty years later, to encourage “harmonious forgetfulness,” a 40-foot monument was added to the gravesite. It was adorned with scenes from Confederate history such as “The Call to Arms,” “The Lost Cause” and “The Eternal Sleep.” 100,000 people attended the monument’s dedication.

Chicago Tribune, 1895

The dedication of the monument over the Confederate dead at Oakwoods passed off yesterday in a manner so happy as to reflect credit on everyone connected with it ... The opinion was general the ceremony constituted an epoch in the life of the Nation and the formal close of the period of ill-will engendered by the War of the Rebellion.

Forced Migration

For centuries, the Trail East (aka the Old Chicago Road) was the main migration route around the lake. The current name of this trail, Cottage Grove Ave, is derived from the old Graves family cottage at 33rd Street and grove, meaning “a round cluster of trees devoid of underbrush and surrounded by open land.” Groves are common in savannah grasslands like the Illinois prairie and connect us to ideas of protection, sacredness, and continuity with ancient times. Our quarter section is on the unceded homelands of the Anishinaabe, or the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potowatomi Nations. Many other tribes have (and still) call the area home including the Miami, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee. The Treaty of 1833 saw the removal and forced migration of the people from their homeland.

Section III Recognizing Area D-53: Blight by the collective citizenry.

After the fire of 1871, the neighborhood finally saw the construction of elegant houses that Douglas had envisioned. By the turn of the century, the wealthy and fashionable had moved on, and the stately homes lining the avenues were divided into rental properties.

Migration and Connections

Fifty years after Camp Douglas, the ICRR was a major migration route once again, this time bringing 500,000 African Americans up from the south during Jim Crow and the Great Migration. New arrivals were segregated into a narrow band running through our quarter section termed “the black belt.” At first, the neighborhood saw a black renaissance with a strong business district and middle class, but in the aftermath of World War I tensions over jobs and housing led to tighter restrictions. During the Great Depression, the neighborhood collapsed. There was an increase in predatory renting and the grand old houses were divided and redivided into smaller and smaller apartments, often without heat, running water, or proper kitchens.

Invisible Boundaries

Cottage Grove Ave, running through the center of our quarter section, is an invisible boundary. Through institutionalized, restrictive lending practices by the federal government and banks, the land west of Cottage Grove was “redlined.” The D classification meant “hazardous” and residents were systematically denied loans and investments. After World War II, the area was condemned as “blighted” and slated for complete clearance and redevelopment.

The Federal Government, 1940

In order to meet monthly rent payments, several families combine; rooms are rented in shifts; and beds occupied almost continuously… Many buildings have been wracked for obsolescence; improvements are all old ... Realtors say they have been hoping for 30 years this area would develop entirely into industry but this has not happened. Badly blighted area. Security Grade 4th, Class and Occupation Cheaper class colored, large families, many on WPA.

Section IV Recognizing Redevelopment Project Number 1: A planned community by the Chicago Land Clearance Commission and New York Life Insurance.

When you stand at the center of the quarter section today, there is a blankness that reveals almost nothing of the land’s past. Manicured lawns stretch between modernist towers.

Form Follows Function

In 1924, architect Louis Sullivan died in our quarter section, destitute, in a room at The Hotel Warner on the corner of Cottage Grove and 33rd, adjacent to Groveland Park. Sullivan was famous for inventing the skyscraper and coining the axiom, “form ever follows function,” which became a credo for modernist architects. In 1919, the hotel had been the site of the Black Sox gambling deal, and in 1933 it boarded visitors heading to the Century of Progress World’s Fair taking place just across the ICRR tracks on land in-filled from Lake Michigan. By 1956, though, the hotel had been razed along with the rest of the neighborhood.

It is nearly impossible to accidentally find yourself in the center of our quarter section; the streets don’t quite take you there. It is hard to even know how to enter it, to understand which side is front and which is the back. With each iteration of the land and each replacement of its occupants, the “entrance” seems to change. Once “inside” it is equally difficult to know which land is public and which is private (which space is ‘ours’ and which is not). Maybe this is why, every time I think I grasp the story, I have the impulse to replace it with a different story.

Modern Planning Projects

In 1950, the government launched Redevelopment Project Number 1, the first large-scale urban renewal project in the nation. 100 acres were demolished and 13,000 people were displaced from their homes. Oakenwald and Groveland Park were among the few parcels left untouched. Ferd Kramer, real estate developer, had several goals for the project: resurrect the neighborhood to the fine qualities of his youth spent there, create a stable and racially integrated neighborhood for middle income families, provide light, air, and a healthy environment. To achieve this, he said, complete removal was needed for the “rock-bottom slum.”

The Severed Artery

Redevelopment Project Number 1 was an opportunity to put high modernist ideas into practice by rethinking the city from nothingness, just as European cities, cleared by the bombings of World War II, were doing. The Chicago Planning Commission, acutely aware of being in charge of the first large-scale renewal project, felt pressure to showcase, and put into practice, all the most modern ideas. This included separating land usage into zones: residential, retail, and industrial. It also meant tearing out streets and the closure of Cottage Grove Ave, a centuries old trail, at 33rd St.

Nearby institutions, worried about their future in the face of neighborhood decline, advocated for action. Government agencies issued reports and financed the demolition of almost every building in our quarter section, then sold the land, confident that taxes would bring a return on their investment. The planning and construction was a for-profit venture by the project developer, New York Life Insurance. Once completed, they named the project Lake Meadows.

Chicago Land Clearance Commission

In place of the antiquated gridiron street pattern, the area will receive a new system of streets, off-street parking facilities, improved water and sewer facilities, and a modern network of lights and sidewalks ... Streets within the project are designed so that high speeds are impossible, thus affording greater safety for children as well as adults.

Between

The planning report touted that only 5% of the land was to be covered by buildings. On the ground, it now feels like built structures cover far more than that: parking lots, overhangs, the shadows of buildings. The largest open spaces are enclosed, fenced off and private, not a commons. The block towers are de-centered places and residents can be seen mostly walking between to pick up packages, do laundry, walk their dogs, or head to cars and buses. Sounds echo off buildings, defining the aural space as also between: traffic on Lake Shore Drive, a siren, the caw of crows, a train on Douglas’s old track. Items blow off balconies on windy days to get caught in trees, halfway between air and ground.

Section V Recognizing Extant Buildings.

It is hard not to see the towers of Lake Meadows as temporary or new. In fact, at 70 years old, they have been here for a lifetime. A person born into this when it was new, would now be in retirement. On opposite corners of our quarter section sit two buildings linking the visible landscape to what came before. Olivet Baptist Church on the northwest corner, and the former Soldier’s Home to the southeast. Olivet Baptist, the oldest African American church building extant in the city, was exempted from the demolition process of urban renewal. Over the years the congregation has shrunk from 20,000 members in 1940 to about 100 today, the interior sanctuary now closed due to deferred maintenance. The Soldier’s Home (housing offices for the Archdiocese of Chicago) was built with funds raised from the sale of a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, handwritten by Abraham Lincoln for this purpose. It is the only extant building directly linking Chicago to the Civil War. The copy of the Emancipation Proclamation sold as the fundraiser, however, was lost to the Fire of 1871.

In a built space, you have to fit yourself into a shape designed to another person’s ideas. Even with complete erasure, there are residues that resurface — paths blocked by signs or fences, reconfigured roads, security cars that patrol in a mobile version of the gatekeeper’s lodge — layered like the sounds echoing off one another. Anomalies in the pattern usually occur for a reason, decided by people. The square frame might define the space within, but one person’s center is another person’s edge, extending the meaning and experience of the specific place outward beyond the visible.