“I Like to Get Around”

The Origin of Chicago’s Music Saloons

Music saloons originated in Chicago during the 1850s, when German immigrants introduced them as adapted versions of the “music-beer-halls” common in their homeland. As one commentator at the time recognized, Americans did not have a tradition of combining “lyrics and lager, music and malt.” Rather, it was “a practice borrowed from the old country.” ¹³ By 1858, several music saloons operated on West Randolph Street, between Dearborn and State streets. One was owned by Louis Heintz and offered both instrumental and vocal music. ¹⁴ “Not infrequently,” a local paper reported, “an hundred or more gather to imbibe with ears and mouth the flowing products of keg and concert.” ¹⁵ As transplanted institutions, these early music saloons replicated the social features of beer halls in Bavaria and other Germanic states. Most notably, they attracted women as well as men. A reporter for the Chicago Press and Tribune visited two music saloons in 1858 and found crowds “of both sexes” gathered together drinking lager beer and German wine, listening to popular tunes, and dancing with one another. ¹⁶ On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, some music saloons catered to entire families. At one saloon on North Clark Street, a reporter found “men, women, and children” sitting at small circular tables listening to an old man “touching the keys of [a] spavined piano” and a pale-faced young man “scraping a violin.” All of the patrons—including the women and children—drank beer. ¹⁷

Despite their Germanic inspiration, these early music saloons were not strictly ethnic institutions. Most tellingly, the music tended towards popular tunes rather than Germanic music. The musicians at Louis Heintz’s saloon, for example, were “negroes,” who sang and played popular songs and “plantation jigs” on the piano and fiddle. ¹⁸ The music at another saloon was supplied primarily by banjo. ¹⁹ Some proprietors sought to disassociate their music saloons from an ethnic identity by choosing strongly native names, such as Hiawatha and Young America. ²⁰ Even saloons with a strong German character nonetheless attracted many non-Germans. One “Lager Bier Saloon” welcomed patrons with a sign that read “Frei Concert heute Nachmittag.” Despite the ethnic moniker, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune found “many of our own nation,” by which he meant native-born Americans, in attendance. The large crowd of immigrants and natives showed, he concluded, that Americans were “learning to adopt the tastes which are hereditary with [Germans].” ²¹ Chicagoans of many backgrounds and both sexes were coming to appreciate the pleasures of music, alcohol, and mixed-gender sociability.

During the 1860s, two types of music saloons developed in Chicago out of these early music beer halls. ²² One was a basic saloon in which a musician or two played popular tunes in the background to enliven the atmosphere and attract patrons. Many of the musicians were African Americans, who typically played piano, fiddle, or banjo from a corner of the saloon. While their tunes filled the room, the musicians remained peripheral to the social happenings. Patrons focused their attention primarily on one another and the bar. ²³ A reporter for the Inter Ocean described a music saloon of this type: “It is in a deep narrow room, with the bar in the front and a piano on the opposite side, and the tables in the rear. A man in his shirt-sleeves presides at the instrument and thrums away without purpose.” ²⁴ By the early 1870s, some basic music saloons relied on wind-up music machines called orchestrions rather than musicians. The orchestrions consisted of an organ and cymbals and played a limited repertoire of songs, consisting mostly of “patriotic and operatic airs.” ²⁵ Contemporaries did not identify these early music saloons by a particular name—sources simply referred to them as “saloons” and noted the presence of musical entertainment.

“Concert saloon” was the more specific name given to the second type of music saloon that developed in Chicago during the 1860s. ²⁶ They were more formal venues and typically contained a stage in the rear, where a small band or orchestra performed arranged sets of music. The music was often provided free, but some proprietors hung curtains to divide the saloon into a front bar and rear music room and charged a small admission fee to enter the music room. ²⁷ Concert saloons were typically decorated with pillars, paintings, evergreens, or other pretentious facades intended to give the impression of elegance and respectability. The “orchestras” usually consisted of a pianist, violin player, vocalist, and sometimes a banjo strummer and tambourine player. The music tended toward minstrelsy, and many of the musicians were African Americans. ²⁸ Concert saloons with less pretense of respectability provided additional entertainment, such as “jig dancers.” ²⁹ Some, such as Lew Johnson’s saloon on South Clark Street and George Brown’s Tivoli on Pacific Avenue, were owned by African Americans and attracted a mixed crowd of men and women, both black and white. ³⁰

After the Chicago fire of 1871, concert saloons flourished and became concentrated into one of three entertainment and vice districts in the city. The largest number clustered along State Street in an area that became known as the Levee. A study in 1882 found 100 concert saloons operating there along with many other saloons, brothels, gambling houses, “cheap theaters,” and poolrooms. ³¹ A smaller number of concert saloons operated along Clark Street north of downtown and on the city’s West Side around Halsted Street. These areas became popularly known as the North Side Levee and the West Side Levee. ³² Most of Chicago’s basic music saloons also operated in these three entertainment districts and probably outnumbered concert saloons in the North Side and West Side levees. This geographical concentration resulted primarily from the city’s “segregated vice” policy, in which officials allowed music-centered saloons, variety theaters, brothels, and gambling houses to operate with minimal police interference as long as they remained within the designated vice and entertainment districts. ³³ Also during the 1870s, the music at both basic music saloons and concert saloons expanded beyond minstrelsy to include Victorian piano tunes, operatic overtures and arias, and popular European orchestral music. ³⁴ This shift in music coincided with a shift away from African American musicians. Although some black performers are mentioned in sources from the 1870s, most of the musicians and singers were now white men and women. ³⁵

“Pretty Waiter Girls” and the Controversial Presence of Women

Middle-class Chicagoans expressed a litany of complaints about music and concert saloons throughout this early period—charging that they disturbed the nighttime peace, served as haunts for street criminals, and promoted drunkenness and dissipation—but their primary concern was the presence of women. ³⁶ After explaining that “a disorderly crew of both sexes congregated” in music saloons, a reporter for the Chicago Press and Tribune condemned the sexualized atmosphere of “low songs” and “lewd dances.” ³⁷ In 1872, the Tribune further criticized music saloons by questioning the propriety of allowing “unescorted women” to frequent them, noting that they were “permitted to dodge in and out by the side entrance, and no account is taken of [their] comings and goings.” ³⁸ The underlying concern was that music and concert saloons enabled young women to act anonymously in public without the restraining and controlling influence of family, community, or public authority. When taken together, these two concerns reveal why many middle-class Chicagoans objected to these new institutions: They seemed an almost ideal setting for prostitution to flourish. The uncontrolled, mixed-gender environment gave prostitutes direct public access to male clients. Music created an atmosphere of frivolity and carnal excitement. Dancing enabled physical contact between males and females. And alcohol impaired judgment and weakened adherence to cultural restraints. In such an environment, critics concluded, the sex trade would thrive. And, to a certain extent, it did. ³⁹

These early concerns about women’s presence in music and concert saloons culminated in an 1874 moral crusade against “pretty waiter girls.” Beginning in 1873, proprietors of some music and concert saloons began employing young women to serve drinks and socialize with male customers. ⁴⁰ In return, the “girls” expected male patrons to tip them and treat them to drinks. Newspapermen, Protestant ministers, and other middle-class Chicagoans became convinced that the waiter girls also sold sex and demanded that the city prohibit their employment. Among the many protests received by Chicago mayor Harvey Colvin was one from the Association of Liberal Minded Citizens, which claimed that the “waiter girl saloons” were “an outrage on the community and a municipal disgrace.” The group asked the mayor to suppress the practice “in the interests of morality.” The Tribune agreed, editorializing that music and concert saloons that employed female waiters “are, in their very nature, disreputable and disorderly houses. They flaunt their vice in the face of the public, and make it loud with the music of cracked horns and banged-up pianos.” ⁴¹

While critics assumed the waitresses were thinly guised prostitutes, their concerns extended beyond the likelihood of commercial sex. They objected more generally to the public role these women had taken on. In particular, they objected to women using sexual allure and physical appearance as a basis for employment. During the crusade, a Tribune reporter visited several waiter girl saloons and detailed his experiences in a feature article. None of the waiter girls tried to sell him sex, but he nonetheless found their appearance and behavior objectionable. One waitress named Dora wore short dresses because, as she explained, “I have a mighty pretty limb, and ’tis a pity to keep it out of sight.” The immodest Dora lamented that she was not allowed to wear tights: “I weigh 145, and you ought to see how I’d pan out in tights. I tell you I’d make you stare.” The reporter shuttered. Another waitress named Lib worked in the concert saloon because she enjoyed meeting and socializing with men. “I like to get around and talk to the boys,” she explained. At the end of the article, the reporter concluded that women such as Dora and Lib were “dangerous to the morals of the community,” not just because they might be prostitutes, but because they defied prevailing social and cultural conventions by cavorting in public with men and by presenting themselves publicly in a sexualized way. ⁴²

Some waiter girls surely worked in concert saloons to sell sex, but the role of many was considerably more ambiguous. ⁴³ In 1874, for example, a young man named Arthur Clark was arrested for stealing $103 from his grandmother in order to buy “an elegant new dress and other finery” for a saloon waiter girl named Kitty Bancroft. The police blotter did not speculate as to what Arthur might have expected in return for the gifts. ⁴⁴ He was probably courting her. Such a relationship formed through commercial contact in a saloon no doubt shocked many middle-class Chicagoans in the 1870s, but to modern eyes it looks like dating not prostitution. Another young woman named Emma Ettleman, who was found working as a waiter girl in the Mayflower concert saloon, had run away from home a few months earlier. She was the daughter of German immigrant farmers and likely desired greater independence than her parents would permit. The waiter job offered Emma that independence, but the historical record is silent on what ultimately became of her. ⁴⁵ The waiter girls themselves claimed to be respectable working girls who needed employment to support themselves. In the midst of the 1874 controversy, seven waiter girls wrote mayor Colvin claiming they were “earning an Honest Support for our Selves and Dependant [sic.] ones at Home.” ⁴⁶ Another delegation of waiter girls called on the mayor and insisted there were “plenty of other worse places” in the city where they could earn a living, including “any store in town.” ⁴⁷

The waiter girls are perhaps best understood as service-industry pioneers. They recognized that by flirting with male patrons and presenting themselves as sexually desirable, they could increase their earnings through tips and commissions on drinks sold. Recall Lib and Dora, the two waiter girls featured in the Tribune exposé. Lib was originally from Scotland but spent time in Canada before immigrating to the United States. At first she worked in the “false-hair trade” to support herself, but eventually found it too dull. Desiring social interaction with “boys” and higher pay, she took on the waiter job. Dora claimed to make $18 in a good week, which was far more than she could earn in most other jobs available to her. ⁴⁸ In order to maximize her earnings, Dora aggressively flirted with male patrons and wore short dresses to show off her legs. ⁴⁹ Some waiter girls surely engaged in prostitution and some were likely exploited by unscrupulous proprietors, but the examples of Lib and Dora reveal young women making calculated decisions about what job would earn them the most money and how best to act and dress in order to maximize their earnings.

And yet, these calculated decisions were based in part on what they perceived male patrons desired. At one point in the journalist’s visit, Dora pointed out an unnamed girl sitting alone in the corner. “She’s too homely to attract attention,” Dora commented. “She’s not the kind that goes down with the men. She’s too thin.” ⁵⁰ As Dora’s comment suggests, successful waiter girls—those that “attract attention”—had to appeal to the aesthetic tastes of male patrons. These tastes were undoubtedly diverse, but, at least in Dora’s mind, there were certain characteristics most men desired—voluptuousness in this case. ⁵¹ Accepting the public role of visual object—which waiter girls certainly did—was not necessarily liberating even thought it defied prevailing conventions. ⁵² The women simply replaced one standard for another. For the saloon waiter girls, they chose to conform their appearance and behavior to the standard that came with immediate pecuniary benefits rather than the one that conformed to bourgeois cultural values. ⁵³

Initially, mayor Colvin refused to prohibit the employment of female waiters in music and concert saloons. He had been elected in 1873 as a People’s Party candidate and sympathized with poor and working-class Chicagoans. He did not presume the waiter girls were prostitutes or threats to public morality. Nor did he believe it proper “to discriminate between male and female labor.” Given the economic hard times in 1874, he did not want to deprive anyone of employment. ⁵⁴ The moral crusaders and their allies on the City Council, however, eventually prevailed upon the mayor and convinced him to prohibit the practice. On August 6, 1874, Colvin issued an order declaring that any saloon employing female waiters would have their license revoked. The order was not backed by a municipal ordinance outlawing the waiter girls. Rather, it was based on the mayor’s discretionary power to revoke the licenses of “disreputable” saloons. As of August 1874, that designation included any saloon that employed female waiters. ⁵⁵

Mayor Colvin’s order ended the practice of employing female waiters but did not drive female workers out of music and concert saloons. In response to the prohibition, proprietors began paying young women to provide conversational companionship to male patrons but not serve them drinks. As men entered the saloon and found a table, one or more female habitués descended upon them and insisted on being treated to a glass of watered-down beer, wine, or liquor. The male patron then enjoyed the company of the woman until her drink was consumed, at which point she ventured off to find another man to treat her. The female “companions” received a token for each drink patrons purchased for them, which they later redeemed for pay. “No girl that ain’t got a strong constitution can stand the pace,” explained one companion. “First, its whisky, then beer, then back to booze again, from 2 to 6, and from 8 to 1.” ⁵⁶ By the late 1870s, large numbers of female companions inhabited Chicago’s music and concert saloons. A reporter for the Tribune visited Jerry Monroe’s Garden in 1879 and counted 107 women, all of whom he presumed were companions employed by the saloon. As he described them, the women “drank beer, roamed from table to table in search of ‘friends,’ shook hands with the waiters and addressed them by their Christian names, and made themselves perfectly at home.” ⁵⁷

The prohibition of female waiters also likely encouraged proprietors to begin employing women as singers and musicians. Prior to 1874, sources mention few female singers or musicians in Chicago saloons. By 1878, however, the Inter Ocean identified women as the most common singers in concert saloons and hinted at the reason for their popularity: “To the strumming of a piano and rasping of a fiddle, [women] howled out songs of a suggestive nature.” ⁵⁸ A decade later, in 1888, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune visited four of the city’s concert saloons and described them in detail. Women sang at all four saloons, and two had female orchestras. At Matthai’s Opera Pavilion, “Mademoiselle Adolphine” titillated listeners by singing provocatively in French. According to the paper, the crowd of male and female patrons “feels sure that something naughty is being sung. . . . Ladies blush; their escorts grow uncomfortable.” The head-waiter relieved the tension by explaining that the song was actually about the pleasures of wine. Adolphine was backed by a female orchestra, consisting of two “brunets” on violin, a “brunet” on the violoncello, and a “plump blonde” on piano. In addition to sultry French songs, the orchestra also played operatic pieces, such as Bize’s Carmen, and Strauss waltzes. Another concert saloon named Andree’s Pavilion also featured a female orchestra, which favored operatic pieces by German composer Friedrich von Flatow and waltzes by Parisian composer Emile Waldteufel. ⁵⁹ The music selections suggest that the women had talent, but they served another purpose as well. Without being able to attract men with flirtatious waitresses, concert saloons appealed to them with “brunette” violinists, “plumb blonde” pianists, and “suggestive” songs sung by women who had assumed French identities.

The Significance of Female Patrons

When the Tribune reporter visited Matthai’s Opera Pavilion in 1888, he found several “ladies” in the audience blushing during Adolphine’s risqué performance. What are we to make of these female patrons who were respectable enough to blush at the suggestion of naughtiness?

Commentators at the time assumed that women found in music and concert saloons were paid habitués, performers, and/or prostitutes but not actual patrons. Of the 107 women found in Jerry Monroe’s Garden one night in 1879, a newspaper reporter concluded that “there wasn’t a decent one amongst them.” ⁶⁰ In 1882, a reporter for the Inter Ocean visited several music and concert saloons and found women he presumed to be prostitutes at each one. At a basic music saloon “having a piano but employing no paid performers,” there were “plenty of women” whose “evil glances rest upon every man.” He concluded that “these places are nothing more than assignation houses.” At the more formal concert saloons, he found “courtesans sitting promiscuously through the audience and plying their arts.” ⁶¹ Other contemporary sources likewise condemned the women in music and concert saloons as moral outcasts. In a widely read 1882 guide to New York City’s nightlife, James McCabe described concert saloons as “among the social evils” and “places where the devil’s work is done.” He concluded that all the women found in them were “prostitutes of the lowest order.” ⁶²

Scholars have largely accepted these conclusions, because they have had to rely upon these types of sources as their primary evidence for recovering the social history of saloons during this period. ⁶³ Newspaper exposés and reform tracts, however, are flawed sources because the authors set out to discredit saloons and were thereby predisposed to find the women in them morally objectionable. In one of the most influential scholarly assessments, historian Kathy Peiss concludes that the women present in nineteenth-century concert saloons were mostly prostitutes with a smattering of “female curiosity seekers.” ⁶⁴ She based this conclusion primarily upon a highly moralistic 1869 account of New York City nightlife written by Protestant minister and temperance reformer Matthew Hale Smith titled Sunshine and Shadow in New York. Hale’s account actually acknowledges the presence of some ostensibly respectable women mixed among the diverse array of female patrons at one saloon:

Girls of great promise and education; girls accomplished, and fitted to adorn any station; girls from country homes, and from the city; missing maidens; wives who have run away from their husbands; girls who have eloped with lovers; girls from shops and factory, from trade and the saloon, can here be seen in the dance. The only child of a judge, the wife of an imminent lawyer, showy, flashy, and elegantly dressed, and women of a lower degree, all mingle. ⁶⁵

Despite their diversity, Hale nonetheless concludes that all these women—by their mere presence in such a place—were “on the road to ruin” and had “begun their life of shame.” This interpretation of women in concert saloons clearly served his reformist intentions. Hale wanted such places driven out of business. What better way to substantiate their danger to the community than by claiming respectable girls entered and ruined women left? ⁶⁶ Scholars have largely accepted the latter judgment—that women in saloons were morally ruined—but ignored the first—that concert saloons attracted a diverse group of women, some of whom were ostensibly respectable. Because of Hale’s obvious bias, both judgments should be discounted. Similarly, in his classic and still standard history of saloons, Perry Duis devotes two paragraphs to concert saloons and concludes they were “a department store of vice” with “prostitutes circulating among the crowd.” He based this conclusion on a few scathing newspaper exposés and a blatantly anti-saloon reform tract written by a Methodist minister titled Chicago’s Dark Places. ⁶⁷ At best, these contemporary sources are problematic and inconclusive. ⁶⁸

The recent digitalization of newspapers has made available less biased sources that enable more finely grained research into the social history of nineteenth-century saloons. Bits and pieces of information that had previously been almost impossible to find because they were buried in seemingly irrelevant articles can now be found using carefully selected keyword searches. In particular, crime reports printed in Chicago newspapers contain uniquely insightful information about women in music and concert saloons because, unlike other sources (including the same newspapers’ scathing exposés), the crime reports were not attempting to convince readers that the saloons were morally dangerous. Rather, they offer tidbits of relatively objective information that—when pieced together—provide a more complete and accurate social portrait.

These bits and pieces of information show that the blushing “ladies” at Matthai’s Opera Pavilion were not unusual—that women commonly frequented music and concert saloons as patrons in order to access the musical entertainment and to socialize with men. In 1876, for example, a group of three well-dressed couples “dropped in” to Martin Hennessey’s music saloon for drinks and entertainment after attending a dance. This unremarkable happening appeared in the Chicago Tribune only because a fight broke out at the saloon while they were there. ⁶⁹ In 1879, two young girls—one sixteen and the other thirteen—were taken into custody at Jerry Monroe’s Garden because a police officer assumed they were prostitutes. The older girl, it turned out, worked in a nearby factory and had taken to visiting the saloon after work in order to hear the music and watch a walking game known as “pedestrianism.” It is not clear whether the younger girl worked, but she came from a respectable working-class family. Her father worked as a painter for a firm owned by Chicago mayor Carter Harrison. The Tribune described the father as “a decent, hard-working man.” Acknowledging that music saloons appealed to young working girls and girls from respectable families who were not prostitutes or paid habitués, the paper bemoaned: “Were they simply resorted to by the fallen women and criminals, there would be less to say about them.” ⁷⁰ Three years later, in 1882, two “theatrical” girls, presumably employed at the nearby Lyceum Theater, entered through the side door of an unnamed music saloon located near the corner of West Washington and Desplaines streets. They rushed out into the barroom and ordered whiskeys with lemon. Drinks in hand, they returned to the rear room and shouted, “Let’s have a dance!” The pianist suddenly stopped playing “Killarney” and struck up a lively tune called “Cancan.” The girls quickly met two young men, and the couples danced “with wild leaps and contortions.” ⁷¹ What happened after the dance was not recorded, but these two young women clearly patronized the music saloon to have fun and meet men.

Music and concert saloons during the 1870s and 1880s are perhaps best understood as morally ambiguous environments, where prostitution and paid companionship coexisted with dating, entertainment, and male–female sociability. A fight reported in the “Crimes” section of the Chicago Tribune best reveals the mixed company that gathered together at music and concert saloons. In 1876, a man and a “lady” entered the Toledo, a Madison Street saloon, where a loud “music-box” played popular tunes. While the couple jockeyed for a table, two women described in the crime report as “brazen-faced huzzies” accused the man of insulting them. A “cross-eyed [man] with a violent temper” employed by the saloon quickly intervened on behalf of the two women and attacked the man until several police officers arrived to stop the fight. The newspaper’s choice of words to identify the various women in the story and the circumstances of the altercation suggest that the man and “lady” came to the saloon for entertainment and that the “huzzies” were likely employed by the saloon as companions and maybe prostitutes. In this case, women deemed respectable and disreputable both occupied this public commercial space simultaneously. The social environment was morally ambiguous, but most nineteenth-century Americans, especially middle-class Victorians such as Matthew Hale Smith, did not recognize moral ambiguity. Their value system led them to see the world in stark terms. According to them, women became ruined and necessarily lived shameful lives by their mere exposure to such vice. ⁷² The women patrons no doubt thought otherwise. They surely knew that prostitutes frequented these spaces but did not feel morally contaminated by them. And, their desire for musical entertainment and public sociability outweighed the threat to their perceived respectability.

Regulating Chicago’s Music Saloons, 1878–1900

Whereas the presence of women had long been the primary concern about music and concert saloons, middle-class critics became increasingly alarmed about the music in the 1880s and 1890s. Temperance reformers led the attack on music in Chicago saloons, claiming that it lured nondrinking men and women into saloons where they were then tempted to imbibe. “Young men frequent saloons for pastime and drink,” one reformer commented, “not because they care to, but because buying a glass of beer gives them a right to remain and listen to the music.” ⁷³ They further complained that music prolonged patrons’ stay in saloons and thereby contributed to thorough intoxication. ⁷⁴ Critics also charged that music saloons were noise nuisances that, according to the Tribune, caused “the other occupants of the block [to] suffer untold agony.” ⁷⁵

Most significantly, critics worried about the moral influence of saloon music. Victorian reformers generally attributed considerable power—for good and ill—to music. An 1871 book titled Music and Morals, for example, warned readers, “let no one say the moral effects of music are small or insignificant.” ⁷⁶ Cultivated music heard in the proper setting, bourgeois reformers claimed, would uplift the individual and benefit society by deterring intemperance, stimulating refinement, and encouraging orderliness. Conversely, “low” forms of popular music heard in commercial settings would supposedly degrade public morals and encourage rowdiness. ⁷⁷ Saloons were of particular concern, because many reformers viewed music as an additional intoxicant. As one commentator later explained:

Music is purely sensuous. Often it is sensual—sometimes grossly and destructively so. . . . It is simply an intoxicant—perhaps the most seductive one we have. . . . Is indulgence in music anything but a species of drunkenness? Like other species of intoxication, music unwholesomely excites the mind, unbalancing and misdirecting it, while quickening its activity. It pushes judgment from its seat and enthrones purblind impulse and stone-blind passion in its stead, as the dictators of action. ⁷⁸

This concern about the intoxicating effects of music added to reformers’ concern about the presence of women in saloons. They came to believe that the combination of music, mixed-gender crowds, and alcohol unleashed sensuality and lust and led to a litany of moral transgressions, including sexualized dancing, public caressing, seduction, and, of course, rampant prostitution. ⁷⁹

In response to these concerns, city officials periodically banned music and women from saloons by threatening to revoke the licenses of offending establishments. These efforts began in the late 1870s and continued sporadically through the early 1900s. Mayor Monroe Heath established the basic means of regulating music in saloons in 1878, when he modified the general saloon license by having the words “no music shall be permitted” written on it. ⁸⁰ The mayor could issue special “amusement licenses” that permitted music, but sources indicate that few saloons acquired such licenses. ⁸¹ Despite the ostensible prohibition, many saloons continued to offer music, but it was now at the discretion of city officials. The city also regulated women’s access to music saloons. Several times during the late nineteenth century, the mayor or police chief issued an order barring women from entering saloons or restricting their access in some way. They were motivated by the outcry of influential moral reformers, but most public officials did not share reformers’ intense concern and only briefly enforced the orders. As a result, women continued to frequent Chicago’s music and concert saloons throughout the 1880s and 1890s.

Carter Harrison I, a Democrat who replaced Heath as mayor in 1879, generally allowed music and women in saloons. As he explained upon entering office, saloons were the most common place for poor and working-class Chicagoans to hear music. He would not take it away from them, “so long as [the music saloons] give good music and don’t simply make a noise to attract people into their places.” ⁸² And yet, in order to pacify reformers, Harrison periodically instructed the police to restrict musical performances and women’s roles in saloons. In May 1883, for example, he temporarily banned live music, allowing only orchestrion machines. One month later, Harrison rescinded the order and allowed the return of live performances but only by male musicians. The ban on female musicians and singers, however, lasted only briefly. ⁸³

Harrison’s successor as mayor, the reform-minded Republican John Roche, was less tolerant of saloon music. Upon entering office in April 1887, Roche enforced the existing regulations more consistently and drove most of the city’s large concert saloons out of business. By April 1888, the Chicago Tribune counted only four concert saloons left in the city and anticipated that those too would “soon cease to exist.” ⁸⁴ After Roche left office in 1889, music returned to some saloons but not on the scale that had existed during Harrison’s time. New Democratic mayor DeWitt Cregier permitted music in saloons and allowed concert saloons to reopen as long as they remained relatively quiet and inconspicuous. ⁸⁵ Some saloonkeepers installed “nickel-in-the-slot” music boxes at the time, which were produced by the local Chicago Automatic Company. ⁸⁶ Music had returned to Chicago saloons, but it was not as loud as before.

During the 1890s, the city’s regulation of music saloons alternated between permissive and stringent. During most of his term as mayor, from 1891 to 1893, Republican Hempstead Washburne permitted music in saloons, but shortly before running for reelection in 1893 he suddenly began enforcing the prohibition, even forcing saloonkeepers to silence their music boxes and phonographs. ⁸⁷ After Carter Harrison I returned to the mayor’s office in 1893, the music also returned. The Chicago Tribune reported that “since election the [music prohibition] has been a dead letter; everything from a mouth organ to a grand piano has furnished music for saloon visitors.” ⁸⁸ Carter was assassinated, however, in October 1893, and his successor, John Patrick Hopkins, was less tolerant of saloon music. In response to the publication of William Stead’s scathing exposé of Levee vice titled If Christ Came to Chicago, Hopkins’s Chief of Police Michael Brennan “commenced war” on music saloons in November 1894, issuing an edict that “no more melodies would be tolerated.” The war was quickly won. Days after the announcement, the Tribune reported that “the saloons along West Madison and Clark streets, usually the scene of dancing and mid-night revelry, were silent last night and no music came from piano, violin, or concertina.” ⁸⁹ The prohibition lasted five months. By March and April of 1895, saloons were back in full swing. ⁹⁰ Brennan also targeted women who patronized music saloons. He periodically instructed officers to arrest women found in music saloons and issued orders prohibiting saloons from allowing women into the rear music rooms. These restrictions, however, were only enforced sporadically. ⁹¹

When Carter Harrison II became mayor in 1897, the city’s approach to regulating music saloons became decentralized and clearly corrupt. Police inspectors issued orders out of local police stations prohibiting saloon music in their precincts. A day or two later the local orders would be rescinded or revised so that they only applied to certain nights of the week. The full prohibition might then be reordered a couple weeks later. The Harrison Street Police Station, located in the midst of the downtown Levee, was particularly active in issuing and rescinding such orders. ⁹² The unpredictable regulation was not without purpose. It was part of an elaborate system of graft that involved blackmail and “rake-offs” by policemen and local magistrates. An investigative journalist for Harper’s Weekly named Franklin Matthews found that Chicago police allowed music in saloons if the proprietor “occasionally” paid $100. The orders forbidding music in saloons and the subsequent police raids enforcing the orders were designed to coerce proprietors into paying for the protection. The raids also contributed to the graft in another way. Local magistrates in Chicago received a $1.00 fee for each bail bond they issued. The more people brought before the magistrate the more money he earned. Matthews found that police officers received a share of the fees, which encouraged them to find reasons to arrest people. The proprietors and employees of music and concert saloons were particularly vulnerable to this type of shake-down, because they operated at the discretion of the police. Music in saloons was not protected by law or, in most cases, by license. ⁹³

In response to the damning exposé, which was published in January 1898, Harrison II silenced music in the city’s saloons and restricted women’s access. He ordered that music “be barred at all hours of the day” and instructed police inspectors to enforce it throughout the city. ⁹⁴ Harrison also ordered that no unescorted women be permitted in saloons. Police actively enforced this second order only at music and concert saloons, an obvious recognition that those were the types of saloons women most likely frequented. ⁹⁵ Two weeks later, Chief of Police Joseph Kipley announced that “there is no saloon at present in Chicago where music is furnished, nor will there be any more while [I am] Chief of Police.” ⁹⁶ Kipley’s obituary for saloon music, however, proved premature. By early March, the uproar over the Harper’s article had subsided and city officials loosened their grip. As word spread among saloonkeepers that music would once again be permitted, they scrambled to find musicians. The six-week prohibition had caused many to lose contact with their former performers. ⁹⁷ Over the next several years, the Harrison II administration veered back and forth between strictly enforcing restrictions on music saloons and permitting them to operate without interference. ⁹⁸ Harrison never wanted to eliminate music or women from saloons, but he periodically did so to placate the city’s active and politically connected reformers. ⁹⁹

Consequences of Regulation

Even though the city’s regulation of music and concert saloons did not silence the music for long or eliminate the presence of women, it did structure the social and cultural environment of the saloons. For one, the regulatory efforts limited women’s roles within the saloons. As detailed earlier, the city forbade female waiters in 1874, which led proprietors to hire women as conversational companions and performers. Female musicians and singers remained common through the 1880s. As late as 1888, a reporter for the Tribune found that most performers in the city’s concert saloons were women. ¹⁰⁰ Mayor Roche’s year-long crusade against saloon music, however, drove concert saloons out of business and drove the music out of many basic music saloons. When Roche left office in 1889 and the music returned, proprietors increasingly hired orchestras and bands composed of male musicians, especially immigrant men. ¹⁰¹ While this shift from female musicians to immigrant men began after the Roche crusade ended in 1889, it continued in 1895, when police chief Brennan periodically prohibited women from entering music and concert saloons. In response, proprietors mostly stopped employing women as musicians or singers, because they could not afford to have their performers arrested or their saloons temporarily closed. Unlike the female patrons and conversational companions, who continued to inhabit music and concert saloons even during the ban, musicians and singers were too conspicuous and indispensable for proprietors to risk employing women in those roles. ¹⁰²

In 1897, a reporter for the Tribune visited dozens of music saloons and wrote a feature article that captured the full effect of the shift from female musicians to immigrant men. The reporter found many women in attendance at various music saloons around town, but none was a musician or singer. The “Wabash” employed a “full-fledged Hungarian orchestra.” The “Social” featured a male pianist and violinist and a “burly young man [who] sang songs meant to touch the heart.” Tony Randich’s saloon employed “two men in their shirt sleeves [who] strummed on a guitar and mandolin.” Most common, however, were the “professors,” who played piano at The Boston, The Berlin, The Trilby, High’s Place, and several more saloons along State Street. ¹⁰³ The professor at The Boston played a sentimental Victorian tune named “Only Me,” while the one at The Berlin played a John Philip Sousa march. The paper described the pianist at the Capital as “a long-haired, scholastic young man” and claimed that he “was the most industrious of all the inglorious Paderewskis” working in Chicago saloons. Ignancy Paderewski was a famous Polish piano virtuoso at the time. By referring to saloon pianists generally as “Paderewskis,” the paper expressed the common knowledge that most of them were European immigrants. ¹⁰⁴

The city’s unpredictable regulation of music in saloons also had secondary effects. Most notably, it caused the musical performances to become less formal. Concert saloons had been driven out of business during the 1888 Roche crusade, but they reappeared on a smaller scale in the early 1890s. They were again silenced in 1894, when Chief Brennan began his “war” on saloon music. When Brennan’s war ended in early 1895 and music was allowed to return, most proprietors chose not to offer the elaborate performances of the past. As the Tribune reported in March 1895, “there are no regular exhibitions in any of the [Levee] saloons, but there is everything in the way of music.” ¹⁰⁵ As detailed in the Tribune’s 1897 feature article, there were still some music saloons that featured “orchestras,” but most now employed a lone pianist or a pianist and violinist. ¹⁰⁶ This trend away from multipiece orchestras and formal concerts to lone musicians plunking away on pianos continued in 1898 as a result of the Harrison II crackdown. The six-week prohibition on saloon music caused, in the words of the Tribune, “the Hungarian musicians . . . to have their fiddles and bows hung up.” When the prohibition ended in early March, saloonkeepers were understandably anxious to know how long music would be permitted. It only made sense to contract with an orchestra or band if they expected a long run. City officials did not make it easy for proprietors to plan for the future. In response to one inquiry about “the bands’ chances for a long stay,” a police official responded vaguely, “You can run so long, and no longer.” ¹⁰⁷ The uncertainty caused by the Harrison II administration’s unpredictable enforcement led “most of the proprietors [to part] company with their orchestras or bands” and employ lone musicians to provide the musical entertainment instead. ¹⁰⁸ A single musician could be hired and dismissed more easily than a full band or orchestra, which typically demanded a contract and required larger up-front costs.

The shift to less formal musical performances and lone musicians coincided with the return of African American musicians and the introduction of ragtime music. Beginning in 1898 and continuing thereafter, black men again became common musical performers in Chicago’s saloons. When sources from this period note the social identity of the musician, it was often a “negro.” An 1899 Tribune article about the Two-Step saloon, for example, noted that “the piano was presided over by a negro, who played in ragtime, while the half intoxicated patrons gave exhibitions of dancing.” ¹⁰⁹ In 1902, a Tribune reporter found “four negroes” playing musical instruments and singing at a saloon on Dearborn Avenue. ¹¹⁰ Over the same period, ragtime became the most popular genre of music in the city’s saloons. Local newspapers first mention ragtime being played in a saloon in 1898. The number of references increased rapidly thereafter. ¹¹¹ By 1901, ragtime had become so pervasive that the Tribune used it as a generic term to refer to saloon music. ¹¹²

It is difficult to determine the exact relationship between the shift to less formal performances and the simultaneous shift to black musicians and ragtime music. Ragtime undoubtedly would have become popular in Chicago saloons regardless, but the Harrison II administration’s unpredictable regulation seems to have opened the door for ragtime to replace orchestral music and Victorian piano tunes. The stringent enforcement in 1898 caused saloonkeepers to “part company” with the musicians they had employed previously. When the Harrison administration once again permitted music in saloons, the proprietors had the opportunity to hire new musicians unencumbered by past commitments. The inertia of maintaining the same musicians and the same music had been broken. They were free to seek out what was newly popular. Furthermore, ragtime was particularly well suited for the uncertain regulatory environment. With the ongoing threat of no music, a single African American piano player could be dismissed and rehired much more easily than larger bands or orchestras. The city’s regulation did not cause saloonkeepers to switch to ragtime music and African American musicians, but it certainly facilitated the shift.

The city’s regulation of music and concert saloons also largely determined where in the city they operated. During most of the late nineteenth century, the city did not consistently enforce restrictions on music and women in saloons as long as they operated within the city’s three entertainment and vice districts. In this way, public officials quarantined music and concert saloons in designated areas and kept them out of residential neighborhoods. The periodic crackdowns during the Harrison II years—which targeted Levee saloons—had the opposite effect. In December of 1900, the Tribune noted that Harrison II’s suppression of music in “down-town saloons” had caused “music [to be] introduced in many saloons in other parts of the city.” ¹¹³ That same year, an investigator for the Chicago Commons, a settlement house run by Graham Taylor, found saloons offering musical entertainment “scattered throughout the city, within easy reach of any neighborhood.” ¹¹⁴ Mayor Harrison himself acknowledged that his administration’s periodically stringent enforcement had caused music saloons to spread throughout the city: “Ever since the notorious places in the downtown district were closed, little levee spots have been breaking out in various parts of the city, and it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to keep them suppressed.” ¹¹⁵

Many Chicagoans did not appreciate the trade-off. The Tribune editorialized that “if the strict regulation of disreputable resorts in that part of the city where most of them are found necessarily involved the scattering of such resorts throughout the city then the expediency of such regulation would become questionable.” ¹¹⁶ Bertha Kemp agreed. She lived with her husband, Albert, and their seven children on Winchester Avenue, near McKinley Park in southwest Chicago. Both had emigrated from Germany in the early 1880s, and Albert worked as a “laborer.” The city’s commercial entertainment districts must have seemed a world away to them. In 1902, however, several “dance halls with saloon attachments began to spring up on the corners” of their neighborhood. The Kemp’s oldest daughter, seventeen-year-old Augusta, was attracted into the saloon dance halls by the ragtime music, the “polished floors,” and the boys. One night she met a young man while dancing at the Utah Concertina Pleasure Club. The following night they met again at a local “cheap theater,” and Augusta never returned home. Mrs. Kemp lamented the appearance of the dance hall saloons in her neighborhood, blaming them for her daughter’s disappearance. In language reminiscent of earlier critics, the Tribune claimed that dance hall saloons were a “door to ruin” for young women such as Augusta. ¹¹⁷

The Evolution and Decline of Chicago’s Music Saloons

By the early 1900s, the landscape of music saloons in Chicago had changed in significant ways. Whereas concert saloons had flourished during the 1870s and 1880s, they had largely disappeared by the turn of the century. The increasingly frequent crackdowns on saloon music during the 1890s deterred the elaborate performances that had defined concert saloons in the past. Also, patrons seemed to desire a less formal environment than had characterized concert saloons. They wanted to be the center of attention—dancing, singing, and cavorting—rather than focus their attention on the musical performance. Another significant change was that music had begun to enter “workingman’s saloons” located outside the entertainment districts. Previously, singing by patrons had been common in such places, but musical entertainment was extremely rare. ¹¹⁸ That had begun to change. A detailed study conducted in 1900 found that 8 of the 163 saloons located in the city’s seventeenth ward—a West Side working-class neighborhood—offered regular musical entertainment. ¹¹⁹ This was still a small number but nonetheless represented the beginning of a change from earlier times.

Most significantly, some music saloons had begun to evolve into dance halls. Dancing had always been an integral part of the happenings at music saloons. At the end of the 1890s, however, proprietors of some music saloons divided their establishments into two separate rooms: a front-room bar and rear-room dance hall. They did so primarily to make the dance hall accessible to minors. At first, newspaper articles referred to these reconstructed spaces as “saloons” with rear “dance halls.” Over time, however, the dance hall became the defining feature. By 1902, for example, the Tribune described them as “dance halls with saloon attachment.” And, in 1906, the paper referred to a long-time music saloon named Freiberg’s solely as a “dance hall.” ¹²⁰ This changing nomenclature reveals the historical importance of music saloons as antecedents to these early twentieth-century commercial amusements.

Beginning in 1905, reformers and public officials in Chicago initiated a prolonged anti-vice crusade intended to cleanse the city’s saloons of vice and criminality. Over the next several years, the city significantly increased license fees, severely restricted women’s presence in saloons, drove gambling and prostitution out of public sight, declared some Chicago neighborhoods dry, and finally closed the Levee in 1912. ¹²¹ These waves of reform crashed particularly hard on music saloons because they combined so many of the features reformers found objectionable. In 1905, reform mayor Edward Dunne imposed racial segregation on music saloons, claiming that mixed-race environments were necessarily “disorderly.” ¹²² In 1907, mayor Fred Busse ordered music barred from saloons and charged “special detectives” with enforcing the policy. ¹²³ Shortly thereafter, the city prohibited unescorted women from entering saloons and restricted women’s behavior and appearance while in saloons. Short skirts, smoking, putting their feet up on tables, talking loudly, and asking “strange men” to buy them drinks were all prohibited. ¹²⁴ In short, city officials banned the type of unconventional behavior and appearance that had been typical of women in music saloons for decades.

Unlike in the past, city officials enforced all these restrictions stringently and consistently. Perry Duis argues that the vice crusades after 1905 began “the long, slow death of the saloon” in Chicago. The same was especially true for the city’s music saloons, because the presence of women and music made them particularly objectionable to vice reformers. ¹²⁵

Conclusion

In his book Horrible Prettiness, Robert Allen notes that during the late nineteenth century, the question “What does it mean to be a woman?” was “constantly being asked in a wide range of forums and answered by many different, conflicting voices.” ¹²⁶ Although previously unrecognized, Chicago music saloons were one of those forums, and the women who worked in them and frequented them as patrons offered an elaborate answer to the question that directly challenged prevailing social and cultural norms. Their answer came not in words, however, but in behavior and appearance. They boldly navigated a commercial public space deemed disreputable by moral reformers and newspapermen. They flaunted their sexuality for pecuniary gain and to gain the attention of men. They met anonymous men and formed relationships with them that led to dating and likely to sex. They acted in masculine ways by drinking, smoking, swearing, and putting their feet up on tables. In all these ways, the women in Chicago music saloons redefined what it meant to be a city girl as pleasure seeking, convention defying, sexually expressive, and morally pragmatic.

This new definition of a city girl would prove significant because it became popularized during the twentieth century. The generation of young women who frequented early twentieth-century dance halls, amusement parks, movie theaters, and cabarets—and to whom historians have attached so much historical significance—acted and presented themselves in ways strikingly similar to the women who frequented Chicago’s music saloons during the nineteenth century. ¹²⁷ In her seminal and still standard account of gender roles and leisure during the early twentieth century, Kathy Peiss concludes that “in these commercial places [dance halls, amusement parks, and theaters] young women experimented with new cultural forms that articulated gender in terms of sexual expressiveness and social interaction with men.” ¹²⁸ The history of Chicago music saloons reveals that these cultural forms were not so new early in the twentieth century and that young women’s experimentation with public expressions of sexuality and public socializing with men actually began decades earlier. In short, the women who populated nineteenth-century music saloons pioneered the cultural forms that Peiss and others have rightly identified as the signature characteristics of modern, urban, young womanhood. Even the city girls of today—who live on their own, frequent bars and nightclubs, provide for themselves financially, and confidently assert their sexuality—continue to act within cultural parameters established in part by young women in nineteenth-century music saloons.