I'd like to go on record as being opposed to granting landmark status to 1710 Crilly Court, one-time home of gay pioneer Henry Gerber, a proposal announced by Peter Scales, spokesman for Chicago's Planning Department and reported in local papers before the New Year [ see updated news this edition of WCT ] . But first I'd like to apologize for Windy City Times' attribution of an article on Gerber, to Joseph Sprague-;the article's writer was Gregory Sprague. Greg was a preeminent gay historian who was indeed co-founder of Chicago's Gerber-Hart Library and inductee into Chicago's Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame a few years back.
The charter issued by the State of Illinois for the non-profit corporation "Society for Human Rights, Chicago. Illinois" was indeed granted on Sept. 10, 1924 to the Society with a business address of 1710 Crilly Court—the home address of two of the Directors, Henry Gerber, Secretary and Henry Teacutter, Trustee. The Rev. John T. Graves, President and Ellsworth Booher, Treasurer were shown at 1151 Milton Ave., while Al Meininger, Vice President is listed at 1044 N. Franklin St. John Sather, Trustee ( any relation to Ann Sather of restaurant fame?? ) resided at 5855 University Ave. Fred Panngburn, Trustee the last of the seven Directors is shown at 1838 East 101st St. Cleveland, Ohio.
In a 1962 article Gerber described these fellow directors as a Preacher of brotherly love to small groups of Negroes, an indigent laundry queen and another "whose job with the railroad was in jeopardy when his nature became known." Later Gerber learned that Al Meininger had two small children and a wife who had reported his "strange doings" to a social worker who called the police into the affair when she learned that Al and the young men he brought home were carrying on before the kids. Gerber was also arrested and his stock of homophile periodicals, including copies of the Society's Friendship and Freedom ( which lasted only two issues ) , and his diaries were confiscated. The case was eventually dismissed, but Gerber lost his job at the Post Office and his diaries were never returned.
Regardless of what lofty ideals led Gerber to try to put this organization together-;he wanted to pattern it on one of the same name he had visited in Germany while stationed there with the Army of Occupation after World War I-;the purpose of the Corporation makes me cringe. I quote from the document: "The object for which it is formed is to promote and protect the interests of people who by reasons of mental and physical abnormalities are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence... ." Gerber left Chicago fairly soon after the Society crashed, but continued to write in support of and/or criticism of gay issues throughout the following three decades. I have no quarrel with his memory being honored in the name of our Midwest Lesbian and Gay Resource Center, though my bias would argue that Pearl Hart's contribution to Chicago gays certainly outweighs his.
It was my understanding from the early days of the Old Town Triangle Art Fair that the Crilly Court block was already an architectural landmark. I guess I'd have to check that out. There probably is no reason the same structure couldn't have two landmark designations. But if you want to put a bronze plaque on something meaningful to gays in the city-;I could suggest a number of other structures. Or better yet, how about naming a park in our honor-;the Free Speech bastion of Bughouse Square, long a cruising ground for gays and kick-off point for the first Pride march in Chicago. Henry Blake Fuller may even have sat cogitating there on one of his many trips to the Newberry Library in the century before last. He may even have plotted his gay play "At St. Judas'" there or perhaps his 1919 gay novel, Bertram Cope's Year—both the first of their kind in the U.S. Nearby Newberry is the home of the papers of both Pearl Hart and Greg Sprague. Preferable by far to making a landmark building where a guy drafted a document that said I had rights even though I was abnormal. I wouldn't put a plaque on Orchestra Hall either, even though in 1915 lesbian Edith Ellis spoke there to an audience of 1,200 women and 300 men urging acceptance—Nature has and therefore, society should have, a place for "abnormals" like Oscar Wilde, Michaelangelo, Rosa Bonheur and Tchaikovsky.
But I might opt for a plaque next door on the Fine Arts Building for a variety of gay/lesbian endeavors housed there including Margaret Anderson's The Little Review in which she ran her response to Ellis' lecture. Historian Jonathan Ned Katz says: "Anderson's critique also constitutes the earliest ( 1915 ) militant defense of homosexuality known to have been published by a lesbian in the United States." Space precludes listing but a few of the dozens of other LGBT milestones anchored there. Gay author Henry Blake Fuller and gay artist J. L. Leydendecker who created the "Arrow Shirt" man were part of the turn-of-the-last-century scene. In 1969 Mattachine Midwest held a benefit performance of Boys in the Band at the Studebaker Theatre on the main floor, and in the 1970s the Jane Addams Bookstore, that hotbed of lesbian ferment, was located on the 2nd floor.
If, dear reader, you'd like to peruse documents by Gerber, Ellis, or Anderson please refer to Katz's classic reference books Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. published in 1976, and the 1983 Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary.