Document Packet: Chicago Defined: Space and Place, Homes and Journeys

Note: This blog post previously appeared on the Teacher Programs blog. I am reposting it here to add to my personal “archive” of posts

The image above comes from a collection of photographs that we have here at the Newberry Library called the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Collection, or sometimes the Granger collection. The CB&Q railroad hired two photographers, Esther Bubley and Russell Lee, to document the influence of the railroad on daily life in the Midwest

Bubley and Lee didn’t stop at taking pictures of train stations and cars (which they did, and to great effect), but they took pictures of the places that the railroad made possible, places like Chicago. This particular image depicts Michigan Avenue at night. You can see the lit up signs and the blur of traffic. The image makes Chicago seem equally exciting and ominious. The signal light of the Palmolive Building sits in the distance like a sentry or watchman, scanning the night horizon. Life moves quickly in the city depicted in this image, yet people are largely obscured and unintelligible in their backlit windows.

We featured this item in our most recent document packet. The packet coincided with the TAS seminar on Chicago literature, titled “Chicago Defined: Space and Place, Homes and Journeys” and led by Bill Savage from Northwestern University. The seminar intended to explore how texts like short stories and poem, but also maps and photographs, construct our notion of Chicago as a place

For an example of how space is contructed, and the meaning of that space can change, it is interesting to compare the night time image of the city to the one above. We can see that the same section of the city is being depicted (note the Baker Boy Crackers sign in both), and yet these two images convery very different impressions of the city. In this second image, we no longer are confronted with a potentially ominous city. Instead, we see people celebrating in a parade. The city becomes a space for communal life and celebration.

Yet just as the night time image contained a contradiction, so does this image. Yes, people are present in this day-time image, and present en masse, but the city dwarfs them, reducing each individual to a speck, looming over their social activities.

These are just some of the interesting questions that primary sources like these can raise. If you want to see more images from the CB&Q photograph collection, you can visit our online exhibit.

The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad

Starting in the 1940s, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad (CB&Q) began depositing parts of its company archive in the Newberry Library’s collection. Today, the CB&Q collection comprises nearly 5,000 cubic feet of materials, encompassing much of the company’s nineteenth and early twentieth century operations.

Hidden away in the archive, were thousands of photographic negatives taken for a project that the Newberry Library’s president, Stanely Pargelis headed up in the late 1940s. The CB&Q hired Pargelis along with Lloyd Lewis and two photographers–Esther Bubley and Russell Lee to document “daily life” in the places that were shaped–and in some cases, created–by the railroad. The project culminated in a book titled, Granger Country: A Pictorial Social History of the Burlington Railroad (Newberry Library, H 668 .1619).

Two years ago, the Newberry digitized some of these images to make them accessible to people who are interested in the social and cultural history of the 1940s, the Midwest, and railroad. The exhibit allows users to search for photos by keyword and examine each image in very close detail.

One of my favorite images from this collection (and there are many, many of these) includes this image (featured in the video) of a woman riding in one of the “vista-dome” cars that were a prominent feature of the Zephyr trains.

Morning Zephyr to Minneapolis. 5. Scenes along route

Between now and October 16, 2010, you can learn more about the CB&Q and the Newberry’s collection by visiting our Spotlight Exhibit on the first floor. In the meantime, be sure to watch the most recent Newberry Minute video in which one of the exhibit’s curators, Ginger Frere, talks about the Granger Country project and the CB&Q digital exhibit.