Morgan Park Days – Part 3
By Carol Flynn
The Morgan Park Improvement Association (MPIA) held its regular meetings in May 1901 at Blake Hall on the Morgan Park Academy (MPA) campus. The public meeting was attended by more than 200 people.
E. D. Kenfield, elected to a second term as President, challenged the residents of the village to make Morgan Park the most beautiful suburb of Chicago. He assured homeowners the value of their real estate would double if they carried out this plan.
Kenfield expressed concern that the churches and schools should improve their grounds. He hoped to have a committee of children in each block to keep the sidewalks and streets clean. He also reported that a man was hired to sprinkle the streets [to keep down dust] and to trim the grass and weeds in vacant lots.
Mrs. Alice Earl Crosman, President of the Morgan Park Woman’s Club, gave some tips for beautifying homes through gardening. Among her nuggets of wisdom were: “Don’t put little beds of flowers all over your yard and make it look as if it had the chickenpox;” and, “Don’t forget the moral side of all your work. The love of flowers is an enemy to sin.”
The attendees discussed putting in cement sidewalks and waste baskets on street corners. They also grappled with the controversial question of building a gas plant in the Village but, as much as they wanted gas service for light and heat, they did not reach a decision on this topic.
MPIA held Morgan Park Day on September 2, Labor Day, on the athletic grounds of the MPA. There were twenty athletic contests including running high jump, hammer throw, pole vault, bicycle races and foot races. Flag exercises were performed by the children of the public schools.
During the day there was choral singing by fifty voices, and music, presumably by the Morgan Park band. No doubt the usual confection and lemonade tables were set up.
The keynote speaker was Professor Charles Zueblin, a controversial sociologist of the University of Chicago, and President of the National League of Improvement Associations, the name of which he changed that year to the American League for Civic Improvement. He spoke on “Public Beauty.” He called for developing a park system for the city and outlying areas, including the rivers, bluffs, and ravines that surrounded much of the city.
Over 2,000 people attended the event. The City of Blue Island had started its own civic group by then and the president of the Blue Island Improvement Association participated in the Morgan Park festivities.
On October 5, a conference was held at the Art Institute of Chicago of all the civic improvement associations in Cook County, attended by 200 people. One of the speakers was Gertrude Blackwelder, a well-known education, art, and women’s rights leader from Morgan Park, who “described the effective and typical efforts of the MPIA.”
The keynote speaker was Dwight E. Perkins who spoke about “municipal engineering” to create planned cities that would have adequate power, transportation, communications, recreation, etc. Perkins was an architect of the Prairie School of design and a reformer, and is considered the founding father of the Cook County forest preserves.
Next: Morgan Park Days take on more significance