ATDTDA (2): Forty-seventh and Ashland

[Tim Strzechowski]

     No one had offered to take Professor Vanderjuice's hat, so he held it in his lap, as an insecure young actor might a "prop."
     "They treating you all right over at the Stockman's Hotel?" the magnate inquired.
     "Well, actually, it's the Packer's Inn.  Forty-seventh and Ashland.  Right in the middle of the Stockyards and all --" (p. 31).


Although "Stockmen's Hotel" and "Packer's Inn" sound realistic, I do not find records of any hotels by those names ever having existed in Chicago.  Anyone else?

http://www.historicchicagohotels.com/#

http://www.patsabin.com/illinois/vintagehotel.htm

[...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.

http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/


[...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as "Automobile Row" on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html

History Files - The Stockyards (photo gallery)

http://www.chicagohs.org/history/stockyard/photos.html

The Back of the Yards Neighborhood

http://www.chicago.com/neighborhoods/Back_of_the_Yards/

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/img/crops/478.jpg

Photograph of rally at 47th and Ashland during 1904 Chicago meatpackers's strike:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/FRONTIER/Image/fr-bufbill.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/FRONTIER/Image/index.html&h=277&w=408&sz=112&hl=en&start=17&tbnid=IQe3x_SZ_hqfQM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=125&prev=/images%3Fq%3D47th%2Band%2Bashland%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
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