Peculiarities of American Cities

Besides the Cleveland and Portsmouth Canal, which opened up a line of traffic with the south and southwest, communication was also had with the East, by means of canal to Pittsburg and to New York, and the lakes were a highway, not only to the East but to the North and West. Cleveland became the great mart of the grain-growing country. Its harbor was extended and improved by the erection of piers each side of the mouth of the river, two hundred feet apart, and extending out several hundred feet into the lake, furnishing effective break-waters, and ample room for the loading and unloading of vessels. A lighthouse was erected at the end of each pier, and one already stood upon the cliff.

In 1845 the number of vessels which arrived by lake was 2,136; and of these 927 were steamers. The tonnage then owned at that port amounted to 13,493, and the number of vessels of all kinds eighty-five. The total value of exports and imports by the lake for that year was over $9,000,000. Cleveland occupied a small region on the cliff at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Ontario street was filled with boarding-houses and private residences. Euclid avenue and Prospect street extended for a few squares, and were then lost in the country. The flats through which the river wound its devious way were occupied as pastures for the cows of persons living in the heart of the city. The business portion of the town was contained, for the most part, in the two squares on Superior street, west of Ontario. Ohio City was a separate corporation, a straggling, dilapidated town, looking like a country village, on the western bank of the Cuyahoga, connected with Cleveland by means of drawbridges.

In the fall of 1852 the first whistle of the locomotive was heard down by the river side, in the city of Cleveland. It started the city into new life, and woke all the farmers within the sound of its hoarse screech into renewed energy. That fall and winter there was a butter famine in all that region. The market being opened to New York, butter went suddenly up from eight and ten cents a pound, to twelve, sixteen, and then to twenty cents. Buyers could afford to pay no such fancy price for an article which might be dispensed with; and producers were equally unwilling to put upon their own tables anything which would yield them such a handsome profit on selling. And so many families, not only of mechanics, but of farmers as well, went without butter that winter; the latter happy in receiving, first twenty, then twenty-two, and finally twenty-five cents per pound for the products of their dairies.

This first railroad gave the city a fresh start, and presently others found their terminus here. Population and business have both steadily increased since then, until in 1880 the former was 160,142, and its commerce immense, especially with Canada and the mining regions of Lake Superior. Since 1860 the city has rapidly developed in the direction of manufacturing industries. The headquarters of the giant monopoly, known as the Standard Oil Company, Cleveland is the first city of the world in the production of refined petroleum. The old pasture grounds of the cows of 1850 are now completely occupied by oil refineries and manufacturing establishments; and the river, which but a generation ago flowed peaceful and placid through green fields, is now almost choked with barges, tugs and immense rafts. Looking down upon the Cuyahoga Flats, from the heights of what was once Ohio City, but is now known as the West Side of Cleveland itself, the view, though far from beautiful, is a very interesting one. There are copper smelting, iron rolling, and iron manufacturing works, lumber yards, paper mills, breweries, flour mills, nail works, pork-packing establishments, and the multitudinous industries of a great manufacturing city, which depends upon these industries largely for its prosperity. The scene at night, from this same elevated position, is picturesque in the extreme. The whole valley shows a black background, lit up with a thousand points of light from factories, foundries and steamboats, which are multiplied into two thousand as they are reflected in the waters of the Cuyahoga, which looks like a silver ribbon flowing through the blackness.

Cleveland is acknowledged to be the most beautiful city of the many which are found upon the shores of the great lakes. It stands on a high bluff overlooking Lake Erie. It is laid out, for the most part, with parallel streets, crossed by others at right angles; and even in the heart of the city nearly every house has its little side and front yard filled with shrubbery and shaded by trees, a large majority of the latter being elms. The great number of these trees fairly entitle Cleveland to be known as the "Forest City." The streets are very wide, and the principal ones are paved.

The main business thoroughfare and fashionable promenade is Superior street, which is one hundred and thirty-two feet wide, and lined with handsome hotels and retail stores. From the foot of this street, and on a level with it, was completed, in 1878, a great stone viaduct, connecting the East Side with the West Side, reaching the latter at the junction of Pearl and Detroit streets. This roadway is 3,211 feet long, and cost $2,200,000. Some years before a bridge had been constructed in the same locality, at a sufficient elevation to permit the passage under it of various craft; but even at this height there was quite a descent to reach it, and an equal ascent on leaving it on the other side. The drawbridge near the mouth of the river was totally inadequate to meet the needs of business, and was often open for long periods of time while vessels were passing through.

Ontario, Bank, Water, Mervin and River streets and Euclid avenue are other important business streets on the East Side. Detroit, Pearl and Lorain are the principal thoroughfares on the West Side.

Monument Park is a square ten acres in extent, in the centre of the city, crossed by Superior and Ontario streets. It is divided by these streets into four sections and is shaded by fine trees. In the southeast section stands a monument to Commodore Perry, the hero of the battle of Lake Erie, erected in 1860, at a cost of $8,000. It contains a colossal statue of the Commodore, in Italian marble, standing on a pedestal of Rhode Island granite, the entire monument being about twenty feet in height. In front of the pedestal is a marble medallion, representing Perry in a small boat passing from the Lawrence to the Niagara, in the heat of battle. In the southwest corner of the Park is a pool and cascade, and in the northwest a handsome fountain. In this park was erected the large catafalque under which the casket containing the remains of the late President Garfield was laid in state until and during the grand public funeral, after which it was taken to the cemetery. This park is surrounded by very handsome churches and public buildings, among which latter are the Custom House, Post Office, Federal Courts, County Court House and City Hall, all magnificent edifices. Case Hall, near the park, contains a concert hall capable of seating fifteen hundred persons, a library, reading room, and the rooms of the Cleveland Library Association. The Opera House, a new and handsome building, is on Euclid avenue. There are, besides, an Academy of Music and the Globe Theatre and several minor theatres.

The business portion of Euclid avenue extends from the Park to Erie street, beyond which it is lined with handsome residences, elegant cottages and superb villas, the grounds around each being more and more extensive as it approaches the country. It is one of the finest avenues in the world, and is not less than ten miles in length, embracing during its course several suburbs which a generation since were remote from the city, and are now considerably surprised to find themselves brought so near it. Euclid avenue crosses the other streets diagonally, and was evidently one of the original roads leading into the city before it attained its present dimensions. The majority of the streets are parallel with the lake front, which pursues a course from the northeast to the southwest. But Euclid avenue runs directly eastward for about three miles, to Doane's Corners, one of the historic spots in the neighborhood of Cleveland, and then turns to the northeast, following nearly parallel to the course of the lake. Prospect street runs parallel to Euclid avenue, and is only second to it in the beauty and elegance of its residences. St. Clair street is also a favorite suburban avenue, extending parallel to the lake, a little distance from it, far out into the country, and containing many handsome residences.

Newburg, once three miles from the city, and the site of the first saw and grist mill on the Reserve, is now included as a suburb of Cleveland, and contains extensive iron manufactories.

The Union Depot, erected in 1866, is one of the finest and largest in the country. It is built on the shore of the lake, below the bluff, and near the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Streets more or less steeply graded furnish access to it for carriages and vehicles of all descriptions, while a long flight of massive stone steps conduct the pedestrian directly to the summit of the cliff, where horse-cars, leading by various routes to all quarters of the city, are waiting for him. All the railroads leading out of the city centre here. In the keystone over the main entrance of the depot is a bas relief portrait of Mr. Amasa Stone, under whose supervision it was built. Similar portraits of Grant and Lincoln are found upon keystones at either end of the building.

The waterworks stand near the lake, west of the river, and by means of a tunnel extending some six thousand feet out under the lake, pure water, forced by two powerful engines into a large reservoir upon the cliff, is supplied to the entire city. This reservoir is a popular resort for pleasure seekers, and furnishes a fine view of the city, lake and surrounding country.

Cleveland enjoys superior educational facilities. Her schools are not excelled by any in the country, and she has, besides, several large libraries. The Western Reserve College, until recently located at Hudson, a small village about twenty miles to the southeast, has been, within the last few years, removed to this city. The Medical College, a branch of the Western Reserve College, founded in 1843, occupies an imposing building at the corner of Erie and St. Clair streets. Near this college, on the shore of the lake, stands the extensive United States Marine Hospital, surrounded by grounds nine acres in extent, beautifully laid out and well kept.

There are a number of parks and gardens in the suburbs of Cleveland, one of the most extensive having been a donation to the city by Mr. Wade, one of her millionaires. The favorite drive, however, next to the avenue, is across the Cuyahoga and seven miles westward to Rocky River, which flows into the lake through a narrow gorge between perpendicular cliffs which project themselves boldly into the lake. Here a park has been laid out, and all that art can do has been done to add to the natural beauties of the place. From this point a distant view of the city may be obtained, its spires pointing to the sky out of a billow of green. To the west is Black River Point, with its rocky promontories, and on the north stretches out an unbroken expanse of water, with here and there the long black trail of a steamer floating in the air, its wake like a white line upon the water; or white specks of sails dotting the horizon. The coast between Cleveland and Rocky River is high and precipitous, the emerging streams rushing into the lake by means of rapids and waterfalls. On this inhospitable coast, which affords no landing for even a small boat, more than one frail bark came to grief in the early days of the white man's possession of the land, and nearly all its living freight found a watery grave. In 1806 a man by the name of Hunter, his wife and child, a colored man named Ben, and a small colored boy, were driven by a squall upon these rocks. They climbed up as far as possible, the surge constantly beating over them, and finally they died, one after the other, from exposure and hunger, and after five days only the man Ben was rescued alive. A similar occurrence transpired the following spring. Of the eighteen deaths which took place at Cleveland during the first twelve years after its settlement, eleven were caused by drowning.

Twenty or thirty years ago nothing more desolate or devoid of beauty can be imagined than was the lake and river approach to Cleveland. The cars ran along the foot of the cliff, while the space between the tracks and the table land upon which the city is built was given up to rubbish and neglect. Little huts, the size of organ boxes, were perched here and there, swarming with dirty, half-clad children and untidy women, and festooned with clothes-lines, from which dangled a motley array of garments. Blackness, dirt and decay were visible everywhere; and the vestibule of the most beautiful city in America presented to the visitor the opposite extreme of repulsiveness. But now all this is changed; one enters the Forest City through a continuous park. Coming from the east, the waves of the beautiful inland sea almost wash the tracks. On the left the steep slope is covered by green grass, shrubbery and trees, the line broken here and there, perhaps, by private grounds no less beautiful, while the United States Marine Hospital crowns the cliff, at Erie street, with its ample and well-kept grounds. Reaching the depot the traveler at once ascends the cliff, and avoids the necessary ugliness of the immense railroad yard, with its gridiron of tracks. Even the river, once so unsightly, presents to view the ceaseless movements of multifarious business, all of which indicate the prosperity and thriving industry of the city.

It is a peculiarity of western cities that they give so much thought and spend so much money in public improvements, and especially those which are merely decorative. Cleveland is in no wise behind the rest. No city in the east, though many of them boast extensive and expensive public parks, bestows so much thought, labor and money, to make her general appearance beautiful and attractive to the stranger. If first impressions count for much, as it is said they do, then Cleveland has proved herself wise. She possesses many natural advantages of position. She is not in a slough, like Chicago, being built on a gravelly plain about one hundred feet above the lake. Nor is she subject to inundation, like Cincinnati, most of her business sites and residences being far above the water. The Cuyahoga River sometimes, however, does damage to the manufacturing establishments along its shores. In February, 1883, a freshet occurred, which raised the river ten feet above its ordinary level, and flooded all its valley. Enormous quantities of lumber and shingles were washed from the lumber yards. The Valley Railroad was several feet under water; paper mills, furnaces and other property submerged nearly to the top of the first story. The Infirmary Farm, further up the river, was under water, and the damage of the flood was estimated at not less than a million dollars. The water was higher than at any period since 1859, when a similar disaster occurred.

All eyes were turned towards Cleveland, when, in September, 1881, a mournful cortege proceeded thither, accompanying the remains of the murdered Chief Magistrate. A mighty concourse of people assembled in the park to assist at the last sad rites, and then the funeral procession passed out the beautiful Euclid avenue to Lake View Cemetery, where the casket was deposited in a vault prepared for it, and was guarded by soldiers night and day; and there, on a spot overlooking the lake, and surrounded by a lovely country, varied by hill and dale, cultivated farms and elegant suburban residences, all that is mortal of James Abram Garfield has found its last resting-place, while his memory lives in fifty millions of hearts, and his fame is immortal. The youngest son of his mother, and she a widow, reared in poverty and obscurity, by dint of his unswerving integrity and overmastering intellect, he rose to occupy the highest position which man can accord to his fellow man, that of being the chosen head of a free, intelligent and powerful people. Cut off as he was, in the prime of his life, a nation mourned her dead, and Lake View Cemetery is to-day a spot of national interest. It is five miles from the city, contains three hundred acres, and lies two hundred and fifty feet above the level of the lake. It commands extensive views, and though opened as late as 1870, is already very beautiful. It was here that Garfield expressed his desire to be buried. Here, on a knoll commanding one of the finest views the cemetery affords, his tomb will be eventually constructed, and a monument reared to him, as a mark of the nation's appreciation of his character and sorrow at his untimely death.

CHAPTER IX.

CHICAGO

Topographical Situation of Chicago. – Meaning of the Name. – Early History. – Massacre at Fort Dearborn. – Last of the Red Men. – The Great Land Bubble. – Rapid Increase in Population and Business. – The Canal. – First Railroad. – Status of the City in 1871. – The Great Fire. – Its Origin, Progress and Extent. – Heartrending Scenes. – Estimated Total Loss. – Help from all Quarters. – Work of Reconstruction. – Second Fire. – Its Public Buildings, Educational and Charitable Institutions, Streets and Parks. – Its Waterworks. – Its Stock Yards. – Its Suburbs. – Future of the City.

"See two things in the United States, if nothing else – see Niagara and Chicago," said Richard Cobden, the English statesman, to Goldwin Smith, on the eve of the departure of the latter to America. And truly, if one would obtain a proper sense of America's wonders and achievements, then Niagara and Chicago may be accepted as respectively the highest types of each. Niagara remains the same yesterday, to-day and forever. But if it were a desirable thing to see Chicago at the time of the visit referred to, how much more so is it to-day, when, Phœnix-like, she has arisen from her own ashes, turning that which seemed an overwhelming disaster into positive blessing; drawing her fire-singed robes proudly about her, crowning herself with the diadem of her own matchless achievements, and sitting beside her inland sea, the queenliest city of them all.

Situated upon a flat and relatively low tract of country, Chicago is yet upon one of the highest plane elevations of our continent. Lake Michigan represents the headwaters of the great chain of American lakes, through which, in connection with the St. Lawrence, much of the rainfall of that city finds its way to the Atlantic; while through the canal to the Illinois River, its sewage is borne to the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps no more hopeless site could have been selected for a city than that seemed half a century ago. A bayou or arm of the lake penetrated the land for half a mile or more, but a sand-bar across its mouth prevented the ingress of all but the smallest craft. This bayou, called by courtesy the Chicago River, separated into two branches, the course of one of which was in a northerly direction, and of the other in a southerly one. The land was barely on a level with the lake, and at portions of the year was a vast morass, some parts of it being entirely under water. Teams struggled helplessly through the black ooze of its prairies, and a carriage would sink three or four feet in mud and mire within two miles of where the court house now stands. Sometimes in this slough a board would be set up, with a rude inscription: "No bottom here." But American enterprise has found a bottom and reared a city, the history of whose seemingly magical building almost rivals the tales of the Arabian Nights.

Chicago is an Indian word, signifying the widely-varying titles of a king or deity, and a skunk or wild onion. In its early history, while drainage it had none, and its water supply was mere surface water, foul with all the accumulated impurities of the soil, and while from the lagoon, which lay stagnant for twelve or fifteen miles, a horrible, sickening stench constantly arose, the latter appellations seemed singularly appropriate, and no doubt originated in these conditions. But since the city has been purified by fire, and its sanitary conditions made such as they should be, it has earned its right to the nobler titles.

The first white visitors to the site of Chicago were Joliet and Marquette, who arrived in August, 1673. The year following his first visit Pere Marquette returned and erected a rude church. Later the French seem to have built a fort on the spot, but no traces of it now remain. Very early in the nineteenth century John Kinzie, an Indian trader, and agent of the American Fur Company, having traded with the Indians at this point for some time, probably influenced the government to build a fort here. Accordingly, in 1804, Fort Dearborn was built and garrisoned with about fifty men and three pieces of artillery. Mr. Kinzie removed his family to the place the same year.

In 1812, Fort Dearborn was the scene of a bloody Indian massacre. Captain Hull, then in command of the fort, having placed too great confidence in the professions of fidelity of the Pottawatomie tribe, and trusting to an escort of that tribe to convey the soldiers and inhabitants of the fort to Fort Wayne, saw his entire party either killed or taken prisoners, and found himself a prisoner. The fort stood at the head of Michigan avenue, below its intersection with Lake street. Abandoned and destroyed at this period, it was rebuilt in 1816, and finally demolished in 1856.

For four years the place was deserted by the whites, and even the fur traders did not care to visit it. In 1818 two families had established themselves upon the spot. In 1820 some dozen houses represented the future city, and in 1827 a government agent reported the place as a collection of pens and kennels, inhabited by squatters, "a miserable race of men, hardly equal to the Indians." The population numbered seventy in 1830. In 1832 there were six hundred people in the miserable little town. In September, 1833, the United States purchased of the Indians 20,000,000 acres of land in the northwest, the latter pledging themselves to remove twenty days' journey west of the Mississippi. Seven thousand redskins attended the making of this treaty, which was ratified by the chiefs in a large tent on the bank of the river. A year later four thousand Indians returned to receive an annuity of $30,000 worth of goods. The distribution of these goods was the occasion of, first, a fierce scramble, followed by a bloody fight, in which several Indians were killed and others wounded; the scene closing by a wild debauch, so that on the following morning few of the recipients were any better off for the property which had been given them. Similar scenes, with similar results, were enacted in 1835. But that was the last Chicago saw of the red men. In September, a train of forty wagons, each drawn by four oxen, conveyed away on their far westward march the children and effects of the Pottawatomies, while the squaws and braves walked beside them. It took them twenty days to reach the Mississippi, and twenty days longer it took them to attain a point which can now be reached from Chicago in fifteen hours.

In 1827, Major Long, a government agent sent to visit the place, spoke of the site as "affording no inducements to the settler, the whole amount of trade on the lake not exceeding the cargoes of five or six schooners, even at the time when the garrison received its supplies from the Mackinac." In 1833 the tide of immigration began. At the end of that year there were fifty families floundering in the Chicago mud. In 1834 there were nearly two thousand inhabitants of the town, and at the close of 1835 more than three thousand. In 1835-6 Chicago became the headquarters of a great land speculation. Multitudes of towns sprang up in every direction, on paper. The country was wild with excitement. Even eastern capitalists were seized with the mania, and fortunes were made and lost in this wild gambling in prospective cities. The bubble shortly burst, resulting in great business depression. The State was bankrupt, and Chicago languished. But not for long. Turning from the frenzy of speculation, its inhabitants wisely gave their attention to developing legitimate business interests. The United States had, in 1833, spent $30,000 in dredging out the Chicago River, and in the spring of 1834 a most timely freshet had swept away the bar at the mouth of the river, making it accessible for the largest craft. In 1838 a venturesome trader shipped from that port seventy-eight bushels of wheat. In 1839 four thousand bushels were sent. In 1842 the amount of wheat exported arose all at once from forty thousand bushels to nearly six hundred thousand bushels. In 1839 three thousand cattle were driven across the prairies, and sent to the eastern market; and every year thereafter showed a surprising increase. Yet with all this accumulating commerce, the streets of the city were still quagmires, and many a farmer came to grief with his load of grain within what is now city limits. Before there was a railroad begun or a canal finished, Chicago exported two and a quarter millions of bushels of grain in a year, and sent back on the wagons which brought it loads of merchandise.