This Newsletter is published by

the Hyde Park Historical Society, a

not-for-profit organization founded

in 1975 to record, preserve, and

promote public interest in the history

of Hyde Park. Its headquarters,

located in an 1893 restored cable car

station at 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue,

houses local exhibits. It is open to

the public on Saturdays and Sundays

from 2 until 4pm.

Web site: hydeparkhistory.org

Telephone: HY3-1893

President: Michal Safar

Vice-President: Janice A. Knox

Secretary: Gary Ossewaarde

Treasurer: Jay Wilcoxen

Editor: Frances S. Vandervoort

Membership Coordinator:

Claude Weil

Designer: Nickie Sage

VOL. 38 N0. 3 SUMMER 2016Published by the Hyde Park Historical Society

Hyde Park HistoryNon-Profit Org.

U.S. PostagePAID

Chicago, IL Permit No. 85

HP HS

Hyde Park Historical Society 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue Chicago, IL 60637

SUMMER 2016

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Chances RMemories of a wonderful restaurant By Linda R. Andrews

Author’s Note:Before the rise of the shining new twelve-

story, mixed-use development at 53rd and Lake Park, there was the urban-renewal complex known as Harper Court: a duplex commercial center along Harper Avenue, between 53rd Street and 52nd Place. The Harper Court complex included a variety of small specialty shops centered around a pedestrian mall, with a sunken, brick-paved plaza and benches well placed for people-watching, enjoying an ice cream cone, or playing an afternoon game of chess. Two restaurants anchored its upper level, and thirty-five years ago, those two restaurants were The Court House, offering formal dining; and the casual, “burger-and-brew” establishment, Chances R.

I began waiting tables at Chances R in September 1975, leaving to pursue graduate study in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, then moving to a career as a writer and editor for a Chicago-based management consulting firm. I first wrote this article early in 1981 as a class assignment in creative non-fiction, my Chances R experiences still fresh in my mind. A little over two years later, in September 1983, Chances R would close its doors forever—“the end of an era,” according to its owner.

As a restaurant, Chances R had the distinction of appealing to both the University of Chicago community

and to residents of the South Side. Revisiting this article has brought back many memories. I am happy to share this piece with a present-day audience, many of whom have equally fond memories of the unique Hyde Park establishment that was Chances R.

Anyone who happens to be in the vicinity of 52nd and Harper at about 10 a.m. will notice a distinctive aroma

in the air: onions. Sliced onions. Chopped onions. Grilled onions. Fried onions. The smell is perceptibly stronger near the intersection of those streets, but it often succeeds in wafting its way as much as half a block from this point, courtesy of the prevailing winds.

Chances are those onions are the best advertising agent a restaurant could have. And though a significant number of Hyde Park’s dining options are concentrated in this area of the neighborhood (the Court House, Mallory’s, Mellow Yellow, Café Enrico, Gold City Inn, Yogurt Deli, Valois), chances are none of those establishments would care to lay claim to this shameless, yet subtle form of publicity.

Onions? At ten in the morning? You may well find yourself deciding to forgo your usual lunchtime salad. Suddenly a hamburger, smothered in grilled onions, seems tempting at 10 a.m.

At 10:17, a smoke-grey Chrysler Cordoba turns east off Harper Avenue and pulls up at the service entrance of the restaurant

responsible for perpetrating the tantalizing aroma. The driver of the Chrysler steps out. He’s tall, built like a linebacker, with short black hair, a close-trimmed beard, and wire-framed glasses that lend a certain gravity to his face. Today he wears a dark brown leather overcoat, one of the half-dozen or so leather coats and jackets he tends to favor. His complexion is just about the color of his coat. His name is Cleveland Holden, Jr., and he happens to ➤ 2

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➤ 1 be the manager of the restaurant in question.The restaurant in question? Chances R.

* * * *This particular Chances R, in Hyde Park’s Harper

Court, is sixteen years old. But the concept behind it and the original restaurant on Wells Street go back twenty years, to 1961. The brainchild of Richard (“Dick”) Baldwin, the Chances R chain has had operations on Wells Street and in River Oaks and Skokie, as well as in Hyde Park. Baldwin, the son of an executive of the Swift meatpacking company, says he entered the restaurant business, along with two of his bachelor buddies, “as a hobby. We liked beer. We liked peanuts, and we liked girls.” At the time, the only place draft beer and hamburgers could be had under one roof was The Pump Room at the Ambassador East. As for girls, Baldwin married in 1962; his buddies followed suit. Where business was concerned, the beer and the peanuts assumed priority.

Enter the idea for Chances R, with its fast, feisty waitresses, its charcoal-broiled “steakburgers” (on sesame bun or black bread), its draft Michelob, and (lest we forget) the free peanuts on every table, the shells to be tossed onto the floor.

Décor was “reverse chic,” an innovative idea at the time that included creaky wooden floorboards, wainscoting-paneled walls painted matte black, Thonet bentwood chairs, and fine instances of antique stained glass in the Tiffany-style lampshades and sections of the windows. Old-time saloon-style lettering formed the Chances R logo and spelled out the handful of items on the menu, itself a clever foldout in the shape of a beer stein. The off-beat combination proved a success: casual (the peanut shells, the burgers), but with elegant touches (the antiques, the heavy white china and frosted beer steins, the exotic house drinks). It was a shrewd brew of parody and paradox, and it worked.

As for the name, Chances R was “just a pickup on a popular expression,” says Baldwin, countering, once and for all, any romantic speculations that it may have been a tribute to the 1957 hit by Johnny Mathis (and possibly the song associated with the Baldwins’ courtship).

But the restaurant business has always been notoriously risky. It is, after all, a business, subject to all the hazards and perils of ordinary market fluctuations, and then some. As a hobby, it would have been fraught with unusual risks. Perhaps Dick Baldwin didn’t take enough risks; or, having once taken them, he may have considered once was enough. Perhaps it was the hobby of a younger man, and as he grew older, he simply lost interest. Whatever the reason, Dick Baldwin began to divest himself

of his restaurants, one by one, until now, twenty years after the start of his original venture, only the Hyde Park store remains in operation—the last of a vanishing breed, or so it seems.

Soon even this will change, although the Chances R in Harper Court will still survive. It will remain in Harper Court, but with certain subtle differences. Chief among these differences is that soon it will

no longer be Baldwin’s baby—it will be Cleveland Holden’s. The legalities of the adoption proceedings are now nearing finalization.

* * * *Chances R has inspired a wide spectrum of

characterizations. At one extreme, Nightmoves, the arts and entertainment biweekly, once described it as “an anonymous black bar.” At the other extreme, a professor in the University of Chicago’s philosophy department pronounced it “the most integrated restaurant in Hyde Park.”

By some standards, the success of Chances R is a mirror of the success of racial integration in the wider Hyde Park community. Just as the Tabasco sits atop the table alongside the Grey Poupon, so do the restaurant’s black clientele sit table to table with the white. Likewise, so does the black manager supervise a white assistant manager, and the young black mother of two wait tables beside the white U of C graduate student in theology. It’s the restaurant that works, in the neighborhood that works, in the city that works. What’s more, it’s a result one could never have predicted, based on Dick Baldwin’s original concept of the restaurant. In Hyde Park, under Holden’s management, it makes perfect sense. There’s a reason this, of all Baldwin’s restaurants, is the last

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The Hutton Sisters

By Michal Safar

Odessa and June Cowan were born in 1916 and 1919 respectively. They lived on 40th Street and both attended Hyde Park High School in the 1930’s. Odessa went on to become Ina Ray Hutton a vocalist and leader of an all-woman band, the Melodears, in the late 1930’s. In the 40’s she lead a male band and from 1951-1956 had her own television show, the Ina Ray Hutton Show, in Los Angeles. June Cowan went on to become June Hutton, a singer and actress with performances on the Frank Sinatra show in the 1950’s as well as appearances as a singer in several movies.

Ina Ray Hutton was the subject of a one-woman show by Melissa Ritz. Melissa contacted Hyde Park Historical Society in July 2014 while trying to research Ina Ray’s history. We located one mention of her in the 1930 Aitchpe, the yearbook of Hyde Park High School. Melissa’s show, Journey of a Bombshell, was performed as part of the Chicago Fringe Festival on September 3, 5, and 6, 2015.

Local Author Writes about the Civil War

By Michal Safar

The Hyde Park Book Club meeting on April 18 featured author Pam Toler, whose recently published book, The Heroines of Mercy Street: the Real Nurses of the Civil War is a companion to the PBS series, Mercy Street, and tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House in Alexandria, Virginia. Pam led an interesting discussion of nursing during the Civil War with lively participation from the group. Pam’s blog, http://www.historyinthemargins.com/ has lots of interesting information on Heroines and other historical topics. The next book club meeting will be May 16 and will have as a discussion topic: The World’s Columbian Exposition: Fact and Fiction. The Hyde Park Book Club meets the third Monday of the month in the lower level meeting room at Treasure Island.

New MembersThe Society welcomes the following new members: Andrew Call (new Board member), Sandra Chiarlone, Ahmed Karrar (new Board member), and Paul R. Ingersoll.

Bert’s Words (Part 10)Correction: Bert’s Words in the Spring edition of Hyde Park

History were erroneously identified as Part 5. They were, in fact, Part 9.

“It takes courage for a man to crusade for his ideas and stake his life and fortune on them. It takes still greater courage for a man to stake life and fortune on a belief that his ideas will become obsolete.”— Per Julius Rosenwald, a comment by Daniel J. Boorstein

Letter from Jean Block’s Daughter

Hello HPHS –

I am delighted to see that HPHS is active and vibrant. I enjoy your newsletters and web site, and send my congratulations to the Board and to John Boyer. I appreciate the work that you all do to keep alive the history of Hyde Park and my mother’s devotion to it.

Elizabeth Block

Saturday, June 11, 2-4 PM. Exhibit opening and reception: Hyde Park Neighborhood Club historic posters. HPHS headquarters.

Sunday, June 26, 2-4 PM. History Fair winning projects, panel discussion, and reception. Location to be announced.

Sunday, August 21, 2-4 PM. Hyde Park Kenwood Stories, program, and reception. Montgomery Place.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Answer to Mystery Quiz:

Peregine falcons (Falco peregrinus)

These handsome birds, whose speed in flight is the fastest on record—up to 240 mph in a dive for prey, neared extinction in the 1970s because of the effects of DDT. Now found on all of the world’s major land masses except New Zealand, peregrines feed mainly on other bird species, which they knock from the air with their powerful flight.

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Jazz artists at Chances R: Cleveland Holden (left) with Larry Smith and Frieda Lee. Photo from early 80s.

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Chances R standing.Holden believes his restaurant fills a definite

need in the Hyde Park community. As far as its characterization as “a black bar,” he says, “A lot of the people who think that about Chances R seem to forget we’re primarily a restaurant.” He pauses, frowning. “I don’t think the customers who come in here regularly think of us as being a black bar, or a black restaurant, per se.”

He concedes that “most outsiders—people who are not familiar with Chances R or with the community—could very easily put a label on us that’s not accurate. But I’d say sixty percent of our business is white.”

Holden should know. Over the years, he and Baldwin have conducted a series of market surveys of the restaurant’s clientele.

One such survey was relatively informal. For a three-week period, each waitress was asked to note on her checks the racial composition of each party she served—with a ‘B’ for ‘black,’ ‘W’ for ‘white,’ ‘O’ for ‘other.’ The checks could be quite closely tabulated by the hour, and some interesting observations emerged, many of them validating Holden’s intuitions about the establishment.

“One hour this place can be entirely black, and the next hour it’s entirely white. Two hours later,

and it’s equally mixed. It depends on the time of day and the day of the week.” He notes that people’s dining patterns are different. “You go to a place like the White Castle down on 79th and Stony Island. A place like that is packed after midnight.” So the grill at Chances R stays open until midnight on weekdays and until 2 a.m. on weekends—later than anyone

else’s kitchen closing.Chances R isn’t just a burger place with beer, or a

White Castle with White Russians. The bar has its regulars—devotees of its happy hour (and the hours thereafter, too). The restaurant has its own regulars: the family from Oak Park who stop by for lunch on their way to an afternoon at the Museum of Science and Industry; the divorced father who comes in with his sons for lunch on Sunday, the day he has custody; the CTA bus driver with a penchant for the Reubens (and for a particular waitress who works Monday and Wednesday evenings); the professor of constitutional law who knows to come in for his favorite bowl of chili no sooner than Wednesday, after the week’s batch has been cooking for a couple of days—but who nonetheless asks, “How’s the chili today?”

“We’re unique in Hyde Park because we cater to such a wide spectrum of customers,” Holden says. “We get everyone in here, from criminals to bank presidents, from Nobel Prize winners to winos, and people just don’t seem to mind.”

The Hyde Park community is sufficiently small, and the number of restaurants sufficiently few, that the community of restauranteurs all know each other, and each other’s restaurants, quite well. The manager of The Court House has been known to stop by Chances R for a burger and a Budweiser after his own kitchen has closed for the night. Dino Alexapoulos, proprietor of The Agora on 57th Street, came over for a few burgers himself, sizing up the competition in the months before he opened his new establishment, Harper Square, at 53rd and Harper. Then there was the time the manager of The Original Pancake House at 51st and Lake Park came over one Saturday afternoon, doubtless looking to duck out for a leisurely steak during a lull over at his own restaurant. He arrived at Chances R, however, in the middle of a frenetic and inexplicable mid-afternoon rush. (Incidentally, he left a generous tip, along with profuse expressions of admiration for his Chances R waitress’s skillful service.)

Everybody knows everybody in Hyde Park. So when The Eagle, a small local pub, lost its lease last year (reportedly to be transformed into a Giordano’s pizzeria), the entire restaurant community took notice. Holden admits the news took him by surprise. Chances R is perhaps the closest approximation to The Eagle, in terms of its menu and price point, if ➤ 4

Mystery Quiz:Question: What endangered species of bird

lives in the bell tower of Rockefeller Chapel?

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rA Bolshevik in Hyde Park

Alexander Mikhailovich Krasnoshchyokov, whose real name was Avraam Moiseevich Krasnoshchyok, was known in the United States as Stroller Tobinson. Born in Chernobyl, Ukraine on October 10, 1880, as a 17-year-old student in Kiev he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, was arrested, imprisoned and exiled to the town of Nikolaievsk near the Black Sea where he met Leon Trotsky. He returned to Ukraine, became a political agitator, and in 1901 was again arrested and released. At about that time he decided to become a Bolshevik (in opposition to Czarist Russia) and went to Berlin to avoid exile to Siberia.

In 1903 he left for the United States, where he joined the Socialist Labor Party and worked as an agitator for the American Federation of Labor. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Chicago where he enrolled in the University of Chicago Law School, graduating in 1912. After graduating, he moved to the east coast where he defended striking workers in the “Bread and Roses Strike” in the textile town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. He left the United States in August, 1917, sailing to Vladivostok in eastern Siberia with his wife and two children. He joined the city council of Nikolsk-Ussurisk, a town north of Vladivostok. Within two weeks he had set up a soviet (council)

that rivaled the existing government. Eventually, he became head of state of Russia’s Far Eastern Republic (FER), a state as large as Western Europe, the capital of which was Chita on the Trans-Siberian Railway, now a city of more than 300,000 people.

After Lenin’s death in 1924, Krasnoshchykov’s policies fell afoul of those being established by Stalin. He was arrested in 1925, released, and established himself in the business of agriculture, including cotton and other fiber crops. In 1937 he was arrested again, sentenced to death for espionage on November 27, 1937, and shot the next day. After Stalin’s death in 1956, his image was rehabilitated. FSV

Wikipedia: Alexander Mikhailovich KrasnoshchyokovNorton, H. K, The Far Eastern Republic, 1923.

Nineteenth Century Picnic Menu

This charming menu for a successful picnic was taken from the November, 1979 issue of the Hyde Park Historical Society Newsletter (Vol. 1, No. 4, P. 3), by Leslie Bloch.

At our pleasant September 15 outing to the Naper Settlement, the bag lunches were prepared by Thelma Dahlberg, Jean Ervin, Gladys Finn and Chris Lehigh. Thanks, ladies.

HPHS members enjoyed reading the explanatory sheet which accompanied each lunch. It explained that every item on the menu—plum jam, sandwiches, deviled eggs, pickles, apple and black walnut cookies, butter cookies with hazelnuts, fresh-picked grapes,

cider—could have appeared at an early 19th century picnic.

The bread too was made by “setting the sponge” from a carefully kept “starter.” The cookie recipes came from century-old cookbooks. The jam and pickles were homemade. Only the butter was “modern”— i.e., store-bought, not churned at home.

Our 20th Century cooks also used plastic bags and paper products—much more convenient than following the 19th century proactive of wrapping sandwiches in a damp cloth, then packing them in a tin can or wicker box. There’s a limit to one’s yearning for authenticity.

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HPHS

Broadcaster Harry Carey (at right) visits Chances R. Cleveland Holden is in the back. Photo from the late Photo 1970s.

Krasnoshchokov's speech on the moving of the Government to Chita

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➤3 however, he will not be inheriting all the outstanding bills; this is what is proving time-consuming about the transfer of the property.

In the meantime, Holden is looking ahead to that transfer.

“Here at Chances R, we’ve not yet reached our potential,” he says carefully. Clearly, he has plans of his own. “There’s a lot we can do, a lot we are going to do.”

He sips coffee (Stewart’s, the house brand), then continues. “A food service operation has to be flexible enough to bend with the wind. To respond to the market, you have to know the market. If you can’t produce what your customers are looking for, you’re out of business.”

Then there’s Dick Baldwin: gluing down his antiques, making promises he knew he’d have difficulty keeping, and in recent months having no closer contact with his creation than putting his signature to the checks.

Holden shrugs. “Business isn’t something you can turn on and off like a faucet.” And he grins.

* * * *Holden once studied classical trumpet with Renold

Schilke of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was also a student of the Jazz Institute of Chicago’s Richard Wang. (Expect a lot more jazz and a lot less “easy listening” on the Chances R sound system in the future.) He took courses in concert band and conducting from Dieter Kober, longtime conductor of the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, and served in the U.S. Military Band during his years in the U.S. Army.

“A lot of times, management reminds me of conducting,” he says, leaning back in his executive swivel chair and getting a faraway look in his eyes. “Just think of the parts each person plays, the relationship to the whole. It’s just like conducting an orchestra.”

“Everybody’s essential, very essential. Yet there’s got to be one person behind the whole thing, one person to give directions when necessary, to keep the tempo, steady the tempo.”

It’s now 2:45. Cleveland Holden, Jr., has finished his coffee. There’s a meeting this afternoon of the National Restaurant Association, downtown in the Loop. He finds the assistant manager at one of the back tables, just finishing a late lunch of steak and fries; he hands over his keys.

“Hold the fort, Victor,” Holden says, slipping on his dark brown leather overcoat. He opens the back door, kicking aside a couple of empty french-fry cases. He sighs and shakes his head.

“What a way to make a living!” he says. But he chuckles as he says it.

Thomas A. Edison Comes to the Fair

Thomas A. Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, was bitterly disappointed when the powers-that-be of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park Fair chose to power the Fair with Serbian inventor Nicola Tesla’s system of alternative current electricity rather than Edison’s direct current system pioneered as the system of choice

for New York City. None–the-less, Edison was determined to visit the great Fair, and with his wife and son boarded a train in New York City, arriving in Chicago in early August for a two-week visit. They promptly settled down in a house on Lake Avenue (now Lake Park Avenue), from where he could walk to the Fair in a few minutes.

Although still stinging from having his electrical program snubbed, the latest version of his phonograph, which could play an entire opera on plastic cylinders rotating in a hand cranked phonograph, and his newly designed Kinetescope—a combination peep show and film projector that presented short films to one person at a time, were sensations.

Dark forelock curving over his handsome face, Edison traveled incognito through the Fairgrounds for several days and evenings. At one time he was spotted eating crackers and jelly while seated alone in the Agriculture Building.*

Thomas A Edison, who lived from 1847 until 1937, was known for his wit. At age 66 he said, “I’m proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.” Then, shortly before he died at age 84, he said that, “I am long on ideas but short on time. I only expect to live to be about 100.” FSV

*Chicago Record, Auguat 17, 1893

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not its atmosphere, but Holden does not expect to capture many of its clientele. “The Eagle had more regular customers. Chances R, on the other hand, has a wider range of customers who are constantly coming and going. People who drop in, from time to time, who probably at one time or another lived in this area or are old customers. It’s an ‘in’ spot. You go there to

see others and to be seen. You couldn’t really have said that about The Eagle.”

No, you couldn’t. And while both places had the creaky wooden floorboards and the Tiffany-style stained glass, only one of them had the peanuts and the peanut shells on the floor: Chances R.

* * * *The Great Peanut Shortage of 1980-1981Anyone who’s rolled a cart down the supermarket

aisles lately is aware of the catastrophic proportions of the present blight on the nation’s peanut crop. Beneath the shelves where the jars of Jif, Peter Pan, and Skippy ordinarily sit, little signs are now posted: “Due to the poor harvest, peanuts and peanut butter are in short supply. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Chances R has signs up, too. Every article the Tribune or Sun-Times publishes about the peanut blight, Cleveland Holden Jr. carefully clips it and tapes it to the windows in the foyer of his restaurant. Even so, it took a long time to silence the queries.

“Where are the peanuts?” a few customers still ask, on occasion. They—the free peanuts—have always been a quintessential part of the Chances R experience. This shortage has put the peanut bowls on hiatus.

For a while, business suffered. Then Holden began

to notice an increase in revenues, and further analysis revealed the uptick was from food sales, as opposed to drink sales. The restaurant was selling more steaks, particularly the big 10-ounce steaks. Moreover, for the first time, liquor began to outsell beer, this despite a recent expansion to a selection of five draft beers.

So has the “free peanuts” part of the original Chances R value proposition bit the dust? Holden concedes it’s quite possible.

If so, it won’t be the first such change, or even among the most momentous of such changes to have been undertaken at the Hyde Park store. In the latter of those categories is the transformation that took place in 1975, when Baldwin bought the adjacent retail space, with plans to expand the restaurant. Upon completion, the restaurant’s square footage more than doubled, allowing expansion of the kitchen and storage facilities and the creation of two distinctly different dining areas: the original dining room next to the grill, and in the new space a smaller, quieter room on a raised platform, with a fireplace. The floors were tiled in brick, and a new bar area was constructed, separate from the dining areas (much to the dismay of several of the bar’s regulars). “New” antiques were dusted off and brought out from Baldwin’s storerooms. The expansion took more than a year to complete, at a cost of $200,000, and Holden points out with pride that not for even a single day during the construction did the restaurant ever close.

It turns out 1975 was not the best time to have expanded a business, regardless of how profitable it had been in the past. The newer, bigger Chances R opened in the summer of 1976, and while some nights the restaurant was packed, there were many more evenings when only one dining room was necessary. Overhead costs soared, on top of construction bills that kept coming in from the expansion. A corresponding expansion of the menu, promised to clientele based on their input on yet another Baldwin survey, was postponed indefinitely—by Baldwin.

Then, amid rumors about cooks and busboys abusing certain freedoms and privileges, the Wells Street store closed. Then River Oaks. Then Skokie. Employee paychecks began to bounce. Meanwhile, Baldwin could scarcely be reached. No longer did he tinker around, overseeing how plates went out from the kitchen or the displays of his antique curios (they were all glued down). The hobby had become a headache. It seemed Chances R had become Baldwin’s albatross.

Holden defends Baldwin’s decision to expand: “In business, you have to take the chance. It was time to change; without it, the place would have become more run-down.”

One result is that Holden will inherit a larger establishment. When he takes over the operation, HPHS

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Cleveland Holden at his desk in Chances R