Whilst I have been backdating the layout to the 1930s, I have been thinking about what I would expect to see on a layout depicting Chicago in the 1930s.
Things such as steam locos and freight cars, automobiles and billboards are some obvious examples but I am modelling from a very English perspective, using books, movies and RR videos to try and get the feel of the place and set the era.
I'd like to ask for an American (and others) opinion of what you would expect, or like, to see on a Chicago-based layout depicting the 1930s.
I'll try to include as many as possible.
Thanks
Jon
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If it is prohibition era then a scene of cops busting a brewery would really set the time..
Chris
The Prohibition Era was from 1920 to 1933 (source: Wikipedia.) So, depending on when you set your layout, you can have either a bustling brewery, or a busted one.
It was also the era of the Great Depression. The US Government sponsored a lot of projects just to give people jobs. (Many communities still have public buildings, like libraries, as a result of these efforts.) There were also soup kitchens with long lines to feed the large numbers of unemployed individuals. An orderly line of shabby men, stretching out the door of an old building and around the corner, would be an interesting scene to model.
Edward J. Kelly reigned as Mayor of Chicago from 1933 until 1947. The Democratic political machine has been in City Hall ever since. Campaign posters, either downloaded or free-lanced, would help to set the era.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Lots and lots of black Ford old Model-T and new Model-A trucks & automobiles. A few remaining horse drawn ice, milk, trash, and probably mail wagons.
Two recommendations before I get into the real meat of things.
First get two movies. The Untouchables with Sean Connery in it, and The Sting. The second thing would be to try and get a hold of a season or so of the Untouchables TV series starring Robert Stack. The reason for the first two movies is that the Untouchables takes place in 1930's Chicago, and is pretty good at scenery depictions of the city, and The Sting because it too takes place in the 30's post Prohibition. So they are a good sample of things that might be found. The TV show is better at it and shows more.
Stock yards and slaughter houses. The city reeked for all of the stock yards, and slaughter houses. From the photo's that you have posted it looks to be an upper lower class to lower middle class area. Clothes lines are going to be more prevelent, as are power lines/telephone lines. Poles will have anywhere from 6 to 7 or more cross arms. More fire plugs on the streets. One on every corner would not be overkill. Depending on the season depicted one of the plugs may be open and kids playing and adults watching. Litter, there needs to be more of it. Around the layout it needs to taste like cinders, because they were everywhere. Between the trains and the ships the city was stained grey and black. Base colors of bricks, about every sixth or seventh building should be Cream colored brick. Milwaukee at one point had a thriving brick trade and they easily found thier way south. The unstained color would be very close to beige that the Milwaukee Road used in thier 1930's Hiawatha scheme. The Depression may or may not be in full swing, by 1937 there were signs of the economy coming around, but bread lines and soup kitchens would be common. Marine recruitment posters would start becoming more evident as things in China were turning ugly and for the US that meant the Marines. WPA (Works Progress Administration) and CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) recruitment posters would be up as well. People on doorsteps, Beat cops, horse mounted officers. 1930's Chicago over all is going to be closer to 80% personal cars of the early 30's vintage, but seeing horse drawn delivery wagons wouldn't be out of the ordinary. Remember that in many American cities horse drawn delivery wagons were grandfathered in and could still be seen until the early 1960's, so hitching posts (cast iron ones) wouldn't be too out of the ordinary. The majority of the infrastructure is going to look worn.
The film worth watching is "The Naked City" While filmed in 1948 and in New York City instead of Chicago, a big city is a big city, and the film is shot as if it was a documentary, not Hollywood's idea of what they think we ought to understand about the past. The industrial district scenes show a lot more bustle then I thought there would be, and I was astonished to see how many horse-drawn delivery wagons there were at that date.
RWM
For me it wouldn't be Chicago without Al Capone and his boys unloading a truck
full of boze at the back door of a trackside warehouse
TerryinTexas
See my Web Site Here
http://conewriversubdivision.yolasite.com/
There was very little construction in Chicago between 1931 and 1945. The only significant construction was WPA construction (post offices, etc.) and modernized facades.
Approximately 2/3 of the city proper was built up, with most houses built of dark brick. Cream colored brick is a post WWII feature.
Most buildings outside of downtown were 2 - 3 story buildings; there were a handful of taller buildings. Nothing over 12 stories. The tallest buildings in most neighborhoods were the churches. Catholic churches had a large facility, consisting of the church, school, rectory, and convent. Other churches had smaller facilities.
There were many projects that were interrupted by the depression. You might see a half built church or a courtyard house with only on side of the courtyard built.
Bars were common after Repeal; you could have one bar per block. Or more, depending on the neighborhood.
The biggest change between 1931 and 1945 were the cars and trains. In 1931 cars were blocklike (think Ford Model T). By 1945, most of the cars were streamlined. The trains of 1931 were "standard era" and all steam. By 1945 there were a significant number of streamliners and diesel locomotives.
Organized crime was never as visible in Chicago as it was depicted in the movies. Violence turned a normally tolerant public against organized crime. In fact, the murder of a newspaper stringer turned the public against Al Capone, leading to his conviction on tax evasion charges.
I will be doing chicago but around the early fifties, about the peak of steam and early diesel.
Chicago is like the Mecca of railroads, everywhere!! You would have streetcars (Chicago Surface Lines) the elevated, the North Shore, the South Shore, IC electric, CA&E, C&NW, UP, NKP, Wabash, the underground freight tunnels, C&EI, IHB, Belt Railway of Chicago, NYC, I prolly cant remember more lines offhand.
In the 30's practically all steam, the progress to steam superpower was just starting, so your going to see 2-8-2's, some 4-8-4's, 4-4-2's, 4-6-2's.
Nearly downtown was the South Water Street market and very close was a freight terminal that IC pretty much owned but other roads gained trackage rights in, I will be modeling a kinda freelanced style of this, there's no way I can fit it all on a small shelf modules, so I will be capturing the flavor of it.
Do web photo search South Water street chicago, it may turn up a few things.
Minor details but:
Street name signs should be black lettering on yellow background.
Trolley cars were still in use. You might want to research the history of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the "L", and surface lines.
My grandfather once talked about how he watched a WPA(?) crew smashing cobblestone streets in preperation for black-top paving. However, I remember seeing an intact cobblestone street in a Chicago neighborhood in the early 1970s, and seeing cobblestones through a hole in the blacktop.
Dan
Take a look at This Page from Robert Gallagher WWII Web Site - Mr Gallagher has written a very interesting multi-page website about his training & deployment to Europe as part of an Anti-Aircraft battery - extremely detailed and quite comprehensive (I found it fascinating). The page I linked to describes his life (teen years) in pre-WWII South Side Chicago, with various stories, descriptions, and images.
Note that there was some significant business cycles during the 1930s - of course, there was the Depression till 1934, then an improving business economy (thanks probably to FDR) till about 1936, then a sharp recession in 1937, and finally steadily improving conditions till the start of WWII for the US (this last period I perceive as the general time-frame for the hilarious childhood/teenage 'Holman, Indiana' stories of Jean Shepherd, he of 'A Christmas Story' fame).
Jon: My family lived on the South side of Chicago since the 1880's and I grew up there. Naturally I heard alot about how things were in "the good old days" Be aware that the North and South sides of the city are very different, and great rivals. Certain things are associated with one side of the city or the other. For instance the Capone organization was mainly a South side operation. The south side also had a lot more heavy industry and a lot more railroad related stuff. Here are a few ideas:
The great Pullman works and company town. Don't know that this has ever been modeled, but this was the factory where a sizable portion of the US passenger car fleet was built and repaired. Even if you don't model the factory, you can justify a large amount of traffic to and from the plant, either new cars going out or old cars being shipped there for refurbishing (a lot of this was done during the cash short 30's rather than build new equipment)
There were also a lot of firms in the area that specialized in building or rebuilding freight cars. Some of these were quite unusual. Even in the 50's I can remember seeing strings of bright yellow Heinz wooden cucumber tank cars being brought into a plant near my school for rebuilding.
There was also large International Harvester plant in the area which manufactured all manner of agricultural implents including tractors, trucks, plows, etc. Almost all of these items were shipped by rail, usually on flat cars.
There were a lot of steel mills and rolling mills in the area. Not only did they use many car loads of ore, coal, etc, but they also got a lot of scrap shipments, as well as shipping out finished products.
There also were coal dealers and coal yards everywhere. Most of them were small operations with a trestle for unloading hoppers, a fleet of trucks or wagons for delivery, and conveyers for loading the trucks.
Finally do some research on the 1933 Chicago Railway Fair, which was part of the Century of Progress exhibition. Many, many of America's most famous steam engines and historic rolling stock were there and were operated as part of the fair. Also a number of railroads and locomotive builders exhibited their lastest up to the minute products. (One of my great uncles ran many of the engines exhibited there. I've got some great photos of him running 999.) Of course all these engines were shipped in by rail, some in trains, others on flat cars, and many under their own power. Certainly would make for some interesting consists
JBB
Thanks for all the suggestions so far, I have a bucketful of information to get stuck into. Here are a couple of recent progress photos with 1930s vehicles on the layout and a short video with 1930s freight cars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-BmCAl5vp0
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot Visit my blog! http://becomingawarriorpoet.blogspot.com
Jon,
There are two indispensable photo collections online that will give you a MUCH better feel for Chicago in the 1930s than will any Hollywood boondoggle.
First is the Library of Congress' "American Memory" digital collection:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
Specifically, do a search for "Jack Delano". Those South Water Street images will come up, as will hundresds of other COLOR images from across America during the late 1930s and early part of WWII, all taken as part of a Government-sponsored program through the Farm Security Administration. Searching for other FSA photographers will yield thousands of the best B&W photographs of the USRA during the Depression ever taken (search for Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein and John Vachon).
Second is the Charles Cushman photo collection over at the Indiana University website:
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/index.jsp
Charles was a pioneer in the use of Kodachrome color slide photography, and he took several thousand shots of the Chicago and LA areas from the 1930s through the 1960s. They are THE best photos of Chicago neighborhoods of the pre-highway age that I've ever seen (he specifically took a lot of shots of the older neighborhoods that were to be demolished to make way FOR the highways)
Anyone who wants to seriously model a large city in the 1930-1960 time period needs to study these two sets of photos. I'm not specifically modeling Chicago (I'm modeling a smaller city three hours to the south) but I lean heavily on them as inspiration. Going through these images is well worth your time.
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
Great Western Rwy fan wrote:Don't forget gangsters,John Dillinger.Ma Barker.and Bonnie and Clyde to name some big ones.You could have the cops shooting it out with the bad guys at the local bank,remember tho the bad guys had tommy guns.I'm not sure what the cops used.
He's from England. Perhaps we should tell him what a "tommy gun" was:
A Thompston .45 calliber hand held machine gun. It kicked like a mule and was great for shooting at people who were running uphill to the right .....
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Jon the scenes are great. One quick thing, I don't know if it was a practice in Europe, but in the use the railroad that owned the bridge usually had the name spelled out or thier marker clearly displayed on the bridge. Either across the middle if it was spelled out or near the middle if it was the logo.
One other aspect. There aren't any manhole covers in the street. I don't know you want us to get that picky, but they are a very common feature of American streets.
Not enough arms on the telephone and power poles and not enough horse drawn delivery wagons.
Hi!
I certainly agree with Cbq9911a's posting. I'm a third generation Chicago boy and grew up there in the late '40s, and left in the late '60s. May I add to the responses.......
- Chicago was a hard working, blue collar city that "got the job done". The political machine was second to none and very evident. Organized crime was known to all and accepted as a part of life. Frankly, "civilians" were pretty safe and secure. My Mother (Italian) says it was very safe to play outside and "everybody knew everybody". My grandfather was a stationary engineer for the Fox de Luxe brewery (and yes, he was employed throughout Prohibition).
- Chicago was a city of "neighborhoods", each with their own ethnic majority. Chicago was a magnet for the working man, and they settled in areas of folks with similar backgrounds.
- Coal was King! Most every house/business burned coal for heating, and I recall the coal truck dumping its load in front of our store, and then it would be wheel barrowed to the basement chute. In the mid-'50s, the coal was delivered in large canvas sacks, eliminating the wheelbarrow and mess on the streets. Of course burning coal meant that most buildings were dirty, some a lot worse than others.
- Many major streets were paved with large cobblestones - very hard bricks about 1 1/2 times the thickness of a regular brick. Their surface color ranged from brown to almost red. Our street was like this, and there were streetcar tracks with red streetcars, replaced by green trolleys and later buses in the late '50s.
- The spring and fall weather was usually terrific, summer was wonderful but could be very hot. Winter could last from November thru March, and could be brutal.
- Chicago was the railroad center of the country (no trains passed through Chicago) and most trains were steam powered. Railroad right of way's were no nonsense and imposing to behold. Everyone knew that the city depended on its railroads to exist, and they were built to last.
- The Chicago lakefront (with its Gold Coast) was simply beautiful. Most neighborhoods were as clean as they could be and had their own charm. Manufacturing facilities were usually segregated into industrial areas, and of course the business district was "downtown".
- The El (elevated train) circled downtown which gave the area the name "the loop". Most folks took the El to commute.
- Oh, Chicago is called the "windy city". That is derived from the politians (windbags) and not the gentle breezes that float thru the city.
Got to go,
Mobilman44
ENJOY !
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
The only one is that list who would had ever been in Chicago was of course John Dillinger. He was killed in the alley along side the Biograph Movie Theatre--which is still there.
Hmm, jon grant, did you ask this question a number of months before on this forum (or another forum, or some magazine even)? I ask because I readily recognized your street scenes (especially the knocked-over yellow street sign) - I seem to recall you were backdating from the 1950s maybe?Is this an ongoing process, as I thought you had finished with the backdate when (and wherever you posted the images)?
jon grant wrote: Thanks for all the suggestions so far, I have a bucketful of information to get stuck into. Here are a couple of recent progress photos with 1930s vehicles on the layout and a short video with 1930s freight cars. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-BmCAl5vp0Jon
Looking at these pictures, jon, it looks like you captured one other thing I wanted to mention. Throughout much of the City, railroads run on embankments which carry the tracks over the streets. A typical arrangement is a concrete retaining wall, a steep green space, and then the track. At streets concrete or stone abutments hold through-girder bridges. (there are also concrete bridges as well.) Some of these bridges might have billboards, or be painted with advertising for the owner's railroad.
jon grant wrote: Whilst I have been backdating the layout to the 1930s, I have been thinking about what I would expect to see on a layout depicting Chicago in the 1930s. Thanks
Whilst I have been backdating the layout to the 1930s, I have been thinking about what I would expect to see on a layout depicting Chicago in the 1930s. Thanks
Lived there in the 30's. Grew up there. .
MEMORIES: Buildings made of red brick with black mortar (soot). Street cars (trollys), - Chicago river Canal and bridges, Elevated trains, Interurbans to suburbs, Black snow (soot), Old delvery trucks, Mounted Policemen, Street cleaners with push carts, brooms & shovel. Billboads advertised local products (Campbell Soups, Wrigleys gum. Palmolive soaps, etc.),'Dads Old Fashioned Root Beer ("Have you had it lately?").
Basically, Brick buildings, elevated railroad right-of-ways, and old cars/trucks,+ Steam engines with olive-green heavyweight cars. (Streamlined diesel trains were exhibited at the 1936 fair, but seldom seen). Atlantics & Pacifics ruled the 'name' trains. C&NWs '400' 4-6-2s & CM&St.P 4-4-2 competed daily for the Chicago - Minniapolis traffic - and advertised on Billboards.
Jon, I really enjoy the photos.
If you attempt a downtown scene, you may wish to include a downsized State Street with a selectively compressed Marshal Field's department store.
Meat packing was a big business and stock yards were a huge.
I recall rideing the "El" to Wrigley Field or Comisky Park.
Now, I reside at a location near at a source for "moonshine" that went to Chicago during Prohibition.
Now, Chicago style hot dogs and pizza are the best. Back then.......... anybody recall Wimpy's hamburgers?
Cheers!
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Heartland Division,
Come on guy, you're making me hungry!
Growing up in Chicago all I knew was hotdogs with mustard/relish/onions and the optional tomato/pepper/cucumber slice.
Every couple blocks was a mom/dad pizza place - each with their own unique style. And deep dish may have been popular in fancy places or in later years, but all I knew was thin crust. Oh, and ALL sausage pizza was made with clumps of Italian sausage.
But you missed something that was my personal favorite........... ITALIAN BEEF SANDWICHES, with peppers and "wet"........ Goodness knows you can't get them anywhere else I've been, and I miss them terribly.
I do hope the fellow that opened this subject puts a couple of "dog or beef" places on his layout. And of course, don't forget that neighborhood tavern!
One thing I will say about the "old days" in Chicago....... Folks worked hard, played hard, ate hard, and frankly drank hard too!
ENJOY,
I believe the Chicago Railroad Fair someone mentioned was actually after the war - 1948 IIRC. 1933-34 was the Chicago WORLD's Fair. That's the end spot of the famous Denver to Chicago non-stop run of the Zephyr in 1934.
BTW, hadn't thought about it until it was mentioned in a book I'm reading on the Twentieth Century Limited, but Chicago was very much the streamliner capital of the world in the thirties. By 1939 the CNW, Milwaukee, Union Pacific, Santa Fe, New York Central, Burlington, IC, and a few others were running steam or diesel powered streamlined trains into Chicago every day.
Fun fact: I remember reading somewhere that in 1935 the most number of daily scheduled inter-city trains between any two U.S. cities were the trains running between Minneapolis / St.Paul and Chicago. In 1995, the most number of daily scheduled inter-city airline flights between any two cities in the U.S. was between Minneapolis / St.Paul and Chicago.
Here are some classic Chicago photos from the Chicago Tribune collection
http://pictopia.com/perl/gal?process=gallery&gallery_id=5642&provider_id=334
Ditto from the Chicago Daily News
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html
Don't forget the Chicago Historical Society
http://chicagouncommon.com/photography/gallery/790/
Here is an interesting index of historic photo collections
http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/documents/clipsources.html
Dave Nelson
you need a couple of hoboes riding in an open door boxcar , or being chased away from the tracks by a railroad 'bull' (the railroad police , paid by the railroad companies to protect their property)
everything in your photos looks a bit too clean , dirty it up a bit in the industrial areas , and near the railroad . all that coal smoke had to go somewhere
ereimer wrote: everything in your photos looks a bit too clean , dirty it up a bit in the industrial areas , and near the railroad . all that coal smoke had to go somewhere
e:
I'd say add some smudges to the brickwork, but don't overdo the litter, and don't make it look too much like "1942 Stalingrad". A bit dingy but maintained, even on the industries. When there aren't a lot of customers ganging up on you, that's the time when you end up telling the laborers to go trim the grass, or sweep the front steps again, or paint the flagpole.
The OP should make sure to have lots of people walking around downtown. Too many of our RRs look like deserts with cars. That's a modern phenomenon.
The RPI site has a lot of excellent information for the OP. I'd pay for a month and browse, browse, browse, assimilate as much as possible from the Rensselaer time machine.
http://railroad.union.rpi.edu