University of Chicago - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

Page 10 text:

old town Dowdy Chicago isjealous without hope ofits more Spectacular sister e suave, cosmopolitan New York and brash, flashy Los Angeles. The Chicago River is not the Hudson; Lake Michigan is not the Pacihc. Is the Picasso anywhere near as striking as the Statue of Liberty e or the Watts Tower, for that matter? As America progreSSed from its worldly Eurpoean past to the chaotic blue- prints of the Californian future, Chicago was dropped right in the dull, ordinary middle of today. Chicago: ignored because it is too familiar and utterly mysterious. It doesrfl go in for space-age technology - only dumb things like steel, out of which most things are still made. Organized Cul- ture has little influence here e if you really want to think, you may have to do it by yourseif. An industrial metropolis attached to a slice of the rural Midwest. Glassy towers on the lakefront; squalid slums a mile inland; and the masses of the no longer poor living beyond both in the safe suburbs. '---,'--I t V: Ira; '. .

Page 9 text:

Chicago: once called City of the Broad Shoulder; what is it now? One of the great cities of the world in sheer size. it lacks the glamour that a city is entitled to. To say 'hChicago should evoke a set of hyperbolic, yet basically true, stereou types h connotations, a spirit. But it doesn't. The roaring twanties have roared away into the unreal past, and nothing has replaced them as Chicagohs image. It isn't even Hog Butcher for the World anymore; they do that in Omaha nowadays. Chicago river

Page 11 text:

Chicago is big enough and important enough and exciting enough not to be judged by the same Charitable standards of urbanity that we apply to the average middle-sized City; it is a great city. But what does its greatness consist of? The sheer defensiveness of its boosters comes from having to boost a Second City in all the distinctions ofgreatness. He Who persists in admiring Chicago will find it hard to support his pride by comparisons with the spectacles ofothr er cities. Having no image 10 suggest to us, it can show us only the honest glamor and fascination of the complexities of big-city life in AmeriCa today: those which remain in New York and Los Angeles also. but only after the tourists go home. There is in the muddled aspirations and problems of Chicago something representative of much more than Chicago. Chicago: the Great American Logical Contradiction. City of monotony and conformity which nevertheless has at least one of everything and everyone. The city which never plans ahead and is always there tomorrow. Chicago: City of the American Shoulders, huddling ner- vously in the middle of our age, good and bad. It has every- thing: sixty storeys and tenements; rich, poor, and middle- middle; white and black; right and wrong; a university. m til Mwmi. my aimwni 4 t Mus M! W- 54 : -mgmm o rim 46mm 0mm WW