North Clarendon Avenue at Wilson Avenue
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Wilson Avenue Bathing Beach, ca. 1910 |
Between 1900 and 1930, as the number of people living on Chicago's north and northwest sides grew dramatically, the Lake Michigan beachfront was placed into ever greater use by the city's residents. Indicative of this trend were the beaches in the thriving Uptown business, entertainment, and residential district, including the privately owned Wilson Avenue Beach. Although extremely popular among young Chicagoans, private amusement beaches were frowned upon by politicians, clergy, and other self-respecting citizens in the early years of this century. Among other things, they condemed the excessive alcohol consumption, the risque bathing-suit fashions, and the improper relations between the sexes that these establishments allegedly sponsored and profited from.
In 1911, an especially rowdy summer beach-going season galvanized opposition to the private beaches and boosted support for the construction of a municipally owned and operated beach to the south of the increasingly notorious Wilson Avenue Beach.
Municipally-owned Clarendon Municipal Bathing Beach was the result. Financed by the publicly approved sale of municipal bonds, planning of the new facility began in 1912. The beach was opened to the public in 1915 and the bathing house was completed the year after. Barely two blocks in length, Clarendon Beach attracted over 425,000 admission-paying visitors during the summer of 1916, and this figure soared to an estimated 2 million or more by 1929.
1913 Description of the Planned Reconstruction of Clarendon Beach
Clarendon Beach, the finest strip of sandy beach in the city, which was acquired by the Commission last year at a cost of $188,000, was kept open to the public, and a director and two lifeguards provided. Plans and specifications have been completed and construction work already started on Clarendon Beach, which will be the largest and most practical in the country, accomodating over eight thousand at one time, and allowing promenade space for many thousand spectators. The building will be composed of a central adminstration building, locker wings for men and women, a kindergarted or child welfare station, a laundry and a promenade over 650 feet long by 50 feet wide. The main adminstration building will contain a swimming pool and assembly hall that may be used for a recreation or neighborhood center, thus utililizing the building through the enire year. It is estimated that this new building will cost approximately $180,000, and it is expected that it will be completed by June, 1915.
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Every measure possible was taken to prevent the sort of rowdiness that bedeviled the nearby private amusement beaches. Policemen carefully patrolled the beach. Alcoholic beverages were discouraged, dress codes were enforced, and men and women were kept apart from mingling with one another, not merely in the locker rooms but also on the beach itself.
Official Bathing Suit Rules
The following rules and regulations governing bathing suits were adopted [in 1916] at a conference of representatives of the various park boards and private beach owners and will be enforced hereafter:
Bathers at all bathing beaches must conform to the following prescribed standards for bathing suits:
GENERAL — No all white or flesh colored suits permitted, nor suits that expose the chest lower than a line drawn on a level with the arm pits.
LADIES — Blouse and bloomer suits may be worn, with or without skirts, with or without stockings, providing the blouse has one-quarter arm sleeve or close fitting arm holes and providing the bloomers are full and not shorter than four inches above the knee (top of patella).
Jersey knit suits may be worn, with or without stockings, providing the suit has skirt or skirt effect, with one-quarter arm sleeves or close fitting arm holes and trunks not shorter than four inches above the knee (top fo patella), the bottom of the skirt must not be shorter than two inches above the bottom of the trunk.
MEN — Men's suits must have skirt effect, or shirt worn outside of trunks, except when flannel knee pants with belt and fly front are worn. The trunks must not be shorter than four inches above the knee (top of patella) and the skirt must not be shorter than two inches above the bottom of the trunks.
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Despite the congestion and the restrictions on their activities, beachgoers appeared to have greatly enjoyed their visits, both for social-recreational reasons as well as for more utilitarian ones (e.g., to bathe, to enjoy cool temperatures, etc.). Indications are that, by the late 1910s, the public, not beach officials, were ordering the beach to their own liking. Bathing-suit requirements were gradually relaxed to attract more visitors and co-ed sections of the beach were alloted. Officials even grew to accommodate the less desirable habits of beach-goers, not the least of which was the constant proliferation of picnic garbage and broken soda bottles along the beach.
The campaign to build and effectively manage Clarendon Beach revealed the extend to which Progressive urban reformers tranformed matters of popular culture and outdoor recreation into political causes. By regulating access to and behavior upon Uptown's beaches, they believed it would be possible to instill into the rest of society their own middle-class values and sensibilities.
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Related News Articles
"Want Bathing Beach License Taken Away," Chicago Record-Herald, 13 June 1911.
"Riot Follows Race Repartee at Clarendon," Chicago Daily Tribune, 22 June 1921.
Internet Resources
Photograph:
Bathers
in the water at Wilson Avenue beach, 1908 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Ice
on rocks in Lake Michigan at the Wilson Avenue bathing beach in
winter, 1910 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Men
and boys, some wearing bathing suits, playing a ball game in the sand
at the Wilson Avenue bathing beach, 1911 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
People
wearing street clothes sitting on benches under a roof at the Wilson
Avenue bathing beach, 1911 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Clubhouse
at Clarendon Beach, 1916 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Women
in the waves at Clarendon Beach, 20 June 1916 [Library of
Congress]
Photograph:
Women
playing with a beachball at Clarendon Beach, bathing house is visible
in the background, 20 June 1916 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Lifeguards,
in front of their tent, testing a lung motor machine on a female
bather lying on a stretcher on the sand at Clarendon Beach, August
1916 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Bathers
standing on the beach and in the water at Clarendon Beach, 1917
[Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Clarendon
bathing beach, Lake Michigan, crowds at West Sunnyside Avenue, 1919
[Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Wilson
bathing beach ,Lake Michigan, rowboats and people in water, 1919
[Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Two
girls pushing a rowboat holding another girl into the water at
Clarendon Beach, male lifeguard standing behind them, 1927
[Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Clarendon
Beach, a boy flying in midair above a crowd of people who are holding
a large blanket, standing on the sand at Clarendon Beach in Chicago,
1929 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Crowds
of people wearing bathing suits or street clothes and sitting, lying,
and standing on the sand or swimming and standing in the water at
Wilson Avenue bathing beach, 1929 [Library of Congress]
Suggested Reading on Urban Beaches
· John F. Kasson,
Amusing
the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (Hill and
Wang, 1978).
· John R. Stilgoe,
Alongshore
(Yale Univ. Press, 1994).
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Illustrations: "Wilson Avenue Bathing Beach," postcard, V.O. Hammon #1758 (n.d.).
Sources: For official beach description and bathing suit rules, see Annual Report of the Committee on Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches, 1916 (Chicago: Committee on Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches, Special Parks Commission, City of Chicago, 1916), 11, 37-9.
Page authored: 27 April 1997
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