Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890-1919.

Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890-1919. By Robin F. Bachin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 448 pp.).

In Building the South Side, Robin Bachin examines several aspects of urban development to explore the ways in which Chicago's public culture was shaped, debated and formed during the early twentieth century, and the ways in which those debates were reflected in the physical space of the city. By examining the development of the University of Chicago, the South Park system, Comiskey Park and the emerging Black Belt, Bachin investigates the ways in which contested cultural ideas are played out in the creation and use of local spaces, and offers a detailed examination of contending political and social values during the Progressive Era.

Bachin divides her study into three parts, each examining a discreet aspect of urban culture and public space. Focusing first on the creation of the University of Chicago campus, Bachin suggests that the built environment was consciously designed to promote elite ideals of order and cultural uplift. According to Bachin, the founders of the University of Chicago suggested that "the University could provide a new model of civic culture in Chicago,... one defined by the scientific pursuit of truth rather than by cultural uplift through the stewardship of commercial elites." (p. 31) Bachin, however, highlights the irony of the school's initial construction being entirely dependent upon the generous contributions of Chicago's business elites, noting that "the financing of the university illustrated the tensions and contradictions in some of its founding ideals and their implementation" because "rather than challenging the rise of commercialism in Chicago, the financing reflected the central role of corporate capital in promoting and defining culture in the city." (p. 31)

The contradictions and conflicts over the control of public culture and its implications for the built environment are evident throughout Bachin's account. In the case of the physical construction of the University of Chicago campus, for example, the ultimate design resulted from a compromise among competing perspectives on architectural style and building placement. In Bachin's analysis, "the link between Gothic architecture and moral values allowed Chicago's industrialists to divert attention away from their mercenary practices" at the same time that the "campus design also illustrated the segmentation and specialization of knowledge created by the modern research university." (p. 72) Bachin's purpose here is not so much to provide a detailed historical overview of the creation of the University of Chicago, although she does do that, but rather to show the ways in which contending elites held competing values whose ultimate resolution was reflected in both the built environment and the creation of a new public culture for Progressive-era America. In this endeavor, she is largely successful. In addition to exploring aspects of financing the University of Chicago, Bachin also looks at the contending public values over the role and function of the University during the Progressive era, particularly in the face of professors such as John Dewey, among others, who were arguing for greater engagement with the civic life of the community, particularly as it related to the settlement movement. Ultimately, however, "the emphasis on science and professionalism limited the kinds of public activities available to professors," and those professors had to find allies outside the university to enact their vision. In a spatial sense, though, the ascendancy of the kind of specialization and differentiation within the university that undermined the type of integration and discourse with public culture envisioned by Dewey "was inherent in the design of the institution, with each department occupying separate facilities, with its own libraries and laboratories." (p. 124) According to Bachin, the physical spaces actually built reflected the contending visions of their creators.

Bachin also examines how different perspectives on the use of public space manifested themselves in the development and subsequent use of the parks and playgrounds. Neighborhood parks became places for a multitude of uses satisfying the needs of a multitude of users. No longer simply places for urban residents to be uplifted by the harmony and beauty of nature, during the Progressive era parks became sites for structured play and the promotion of ethnic and civic identity. As Bachin explains, although most residents simply wanted to enhance their neighborhoods, by "justifying the use of park space for a variety of activities through the language of democracy and citizenship, working-class urban residents, women, ethnic groups, and African Americans could lay claim to their rights as participants in refashioning the urban public sphere." (p. 168) But even as new values surrounding neighborhood parks and playgrounds successfully contended with older ideals of park spaces designed to induce moral uplift, the decentralized model of providing small parks and playgrounds also contended with developing notions of comprehensive planning arising out of the city planning movement, the Chicago Plan Commission and the adoption of the Burnham Plan, all of which sought to "unite all aspects of civic design into a comprehensive schedule for urban growth" (p. 201). Thus, like the campus design of the University of Chicago, park space in Chicago physically embodied contending ideals concerning civic identity and public culture.

Contending values concerning public culture and public space are equally evident than in Bachin's examination of spaces for commercial leisure, Comiskey Park and the rise of Chicago's Black Belt as a site of both commercialized vice and racial uplift. Bachin not only looks at the role of baseball in American culture, but explores such issues as the 1919 Black Sox scandal to show how "sites of commercial leisure like Comiskey Park became arenas for negotiating the meanings of Americanism, civic culture, labor, and leisure." (p. 246) Bachin offers a similar treatment of the developing vice culture of the Black Belt and the proliferation of dance halls, saloons and cabarets. Bachin notes that "the relative freedom of spaces along the Stroll allowed for new black identities," and that by "claiming these spaces as their own, infusing them with race pride, and celebrating their role in fostering the entrepreneurial spirit" Chicago's African-American community "helped recast the meaning of public spaces" allowing them to serve as "focal points of community interaction, local identity, and civic debate." (pp. 296-297)

In all of these arenas, the design and construction of the new University of Chicago campus, the development of neighborhood parks and playgrounds, and the creation of new sites of commercial leisure, contending views of the proper use and design of space to foster appropriate civic values can clearly be identified both in the physical construction of the space and in the public aspect of political debate. In Bachin's analysis, the physical creation of public or semi-public space in the city reflects diverse and contending views about civic identity and political discourse and provides the terrain upon which the open and contested process of urbanization in a democratic society occurs. Well-illustrated with maps and photographs, and drawing upon a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, Building the South Side represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the complex forces at work in the creation of urban America and Progressive-era urban culture.

Steven J. Hoffman

Southeast Missouri State University