ATDTDA (2): Chicago Originals - The Everleigh Sisters

[Tim Strzechowski]

from Kenan Heise and Ed Baumann, _Chicago Originals: A Cast of the City's Colorful Characters_.  Bonus Books, Inc.: Chicago, 1995.  pp. 73 - 76.
 

Chicagoans, looking back over their city's history, are fascinated by four phenomena or events:  The Chicago Fire, the Fort Dearborn Massacre, AlCapone, and the Everleigh Club, not necesarily in that order.  People -- including many high school students who do not know what the Fort Dearborn Massacre was or when the Chicago Fire occurred -- can tell you about the Everleigh Club and its owners.
 
The two sisters ran the Everleigh Club, the most expensive whorehouse in Chicago, from 1900 to 1911.  Its prices were $10, $25, and $50.  The $10 fee was little more than an entrance charge.  If a customer, in the course of the evening, did not spend $50, he was requested not to come back.  It is difficult to translate that into current dollars, but it would certainly amount to $500 today.
 
So what did a man get for such an extravagant outlay of cash?
 
First, there was the ambiance.
 
The first floor of the brothel at 2131 - 3 S. Dearborn St., in the city's Levee district, included: a music room, a library, a grand ballroom lit by cut-glass chandeliers and an art gallery, furnished with some very good paintings.  Also there was a dining area for large parties; a Pullman Buffet, made from part of a railroad dining car; and several parlors where "boarders" could entertain gentlemen customers.
 
Leading to the second floor were two mahogany staircases, flanked by potted palms and statues of goddesses.  The parlors these led to included ones labeled and decorated in: Moorish, Gold, Silver, Copper, Red, Chinese.  Each contained, in addition to cushions, a drum and plush rugs -- a gold-plated spittoon and a fountain that sprayed perfume.
 
What else did the club offer besides ambiance?
 
Minna indicated the "how" if not exactly the "what" in a speech she made to her courtesans the first night the club was open.  Her talk was reconstructed in _Come Into My Parlor_, the sisters' biography, by Charles Washburn.
 
"Be polite, patient and forget what you are here for," Minna has said in her final instructions.  "Gentlemen are only gentlemen when properly introduced.  We shall see that each girl is properly presented to each guest.  no lining up for selection as in other houses.  There shall be no cry, 'In the parlor, girls,' when visitors arrive.  Be patient is all I ask.  and remember that the Everleigh Club has no time for the rough element, the clerk on a holiday, or a man without a check-book.
 
"It's going to be difficult, at first, i know.  It means, briefly, that your language will have to be lady-like and that you will forego the entreaties you have used in the past.  You have the whole night before you and one $50 client is more desirable than five $10 ones.  Less wear and tear.  You will thank me for this advice in later years.  your youth and beauty are all you have.  Preserve it.  Stay respectable by all means.
 
"We know men better than you do.  Don't rush 'em or roll 'em.  We will permit no monkeyshines, no knockout drops, no robberies, no crimes of any description.  We'll supply the clients; you amuse them in a way they've never been amused before.  Give, but give interestingly and with mystery.  I want you girls to be proud that you are in the Everleigh Club.  That is all.  Now spruce up and look your best."
 
The two sisters, who grew up in a village near Louisville, KY, had a grandmother who signed her letters, "Everly Yours."  In looking for a pseudonym that buried their past as respectable young wives who both abandoned abusive husbands, the adopted the word "Everly" as their last name, changing the spelling.
 
Although never involved directly or indirectly in prostitution, they opened a high-ticket brothel in Omaha and saw it fail for lack of wealthy customers.
 
They then surveyed Washington, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco for possible opportunities, and Chose Chicago.  Their grand opening was January 1, 1900, a date that many people throughout the world were strongly convinced would be the end of the universe.
 
The Everleigh Club prospered, despite attacks on it by reformers and the 1911 Vice commission Report, which singled it out but refused to name the club.
 
Minna, commenting some 20 years later, said:
 
"[The Crusaders] not only filled us with embarrassment and shame, but they made fools of themselves . . .
 
We gave little resistance to the rebels.  Truthfully, we were open to offers.  We believed we could have adjusted an age-old problem if given half the chance to supervise its operations.  We weren't consulted."
 
The boarders did well.  None is ever known to have left to "go straight."  They made up to $100 a week, more than ten times what they might have earned in the sweatshops, which were the personal hell of young women of the day.
 
The sisters did even better.  After a brochure they thought restrained and dignified fell into the hands of Mayor Carter H. Harrison II, the word went out to them to close up shop.  They did, leaving with over $1 million in cash, considerable jewelry and I.O.U.s amounting to $25,000.
 
The Everleigh sisters left the business as madames and never returned to it.