Great Northern: 1900

Where is it in the pic? I can't find one.

It's hard to imagine now that long ago cigar smokers far outnumbered cigarette users, as evidenced by the many advertising signs in all these photos. When I was a kid in the 1960's the drug stores still had large glass-front humidor cases with open cigar boxes so you could purchase individual cigars, but this practice died out before the decade ended. Then we had to find another way to light our firecrackers.

I am struck by the similarities between these buildings and the Old Colony (where I worked in the mid 1980s) and the Manhattan, which still stand in the block between Van Buren and Congress and Dearborn and Plymouth Court. The Old Colony has the round corners, but the windows are very different.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1307733

I believe this building covers the entire block where the hotel stood.

Every building in this photo is gone. Although the photographer's vantage, Burnham & Root's 1893 Monadnock building, still stands.

didn't wear a pair of Ruppert's Dry Sox on his 1912 crossing!

We can narrow the date range a little bit thanks to the American flag flapping on the left side of the photo. That flag design was used starting July 4, 1896, when Utah became a state.

Behind the Great Northern there is an office for the Southern Railway. My Pop was a designated Southern Railway railroad doctor, and when I was a kid I had a bright red billed cap that had the SR with the arrow logo as seen on here. It was my favorite cap. . . .

The railroad liked having doctors in the various towns through which its lines passed, so that local workers, if injured, had a local doc to go to. Incidentally, Dad is still a railroad doc, though for Norfolk Southern now. Southern merged with I guess the Norfolk and Western line about 1985 & was later renamed Norfolk Southern.

Is roof fenced off for athletics, possibly tennis on the building behind the Great Northern at the top far right?

Any idea who the guy in the drink in the Ruppert shoe sign would be?

[A lost sole. - Dave]

Where's the milk bottle?

I've seen plenty of giant eyeglasses outside opticians' offices on Shorpy, but never a spigot outside a bathhouse. What a great idea.

And a great picture--keep the Chicago pictures coming.

...does "Slaunch and true, thru and thru" mean? Besides "knew/new," "slaunch" struck me as odd. Possibly a word that's out of usage?

[The word is "staunch," not "slaunch." - Dave]

I can actually see the characters come to life from "Sister Carrie." One of my favorite novels from 1900.

If the colorful carved pole is in front of the barber shop and a perched spigot is at the entrance to the bath-house, I would think the next place would be a locksmith?

[The sign says Chicago Bronze. - Dave]

If you wore Ruppert's shoes then you "knew" the feeling of dry socks…I guess. Otherwise, big multiple typo! Elsewhere, great fire escape where the tall buildings join!

Women cutting men's hair, ladies smoking cigars, or Lady as a last name?

Unfortunately the Great Northern building was demolished. Also, there is no Google street view of this block (Dearborn and Jackson) for some reason.

"Chicago School" architecture. It was designed by Daniel Burnham, who also did the Flatiron Building. It was demolished in 1940 and has since been replaced by the Dirksen Federal Building.