Bertha Palmer

A

Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

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And here's your 30 second summary.

A

On the surface, Bertha Palmer looked like she had it all. She was born into wealth and married into even more with a man who loved and appreciated her. She used her position, personality and vast circle of friends to not only affect change within her own home city, but also to showcase women's achievements on a global scale. She influenced art, helped develop a city, and you know what? Even though she did make some missteps along the way, and who of us hasn't, Bertha did have it all. And then some. It was an extraordinary life.

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The end. Let's talk about Bertha Palmer.

A

But first, let's drop her into history. In 1855, the first bridge to span the Mississippi river connecting Minneapolis and St. Anthony, Minnesota was opened. A little more than three months later, a tornado damaged the bridge so badly it had to be rebuilt. Known as Alexander the Liberator for his reforms to abolish serfdom in the country, Alexander II became Tsar of Russia. The Antwerp Rotterdam Railway connecting Belgium to the Netherlands officially opened its first route. Florence Nightingale was working as the superintendent of female nurses during the Crimean War. Castle Garden Immigrant Depot, American's first immigration receiving center, opened at the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. 35 years later, after over 8 million immigrants had come through, it was replaced by Ellis island businessman and inventor of the safety razor, King Gillette and philanthropist and extremely wealthy man Andrew Mellon were both born. Charlotte Bronte died and in 1855, a young girl from the south moved to the small frontier town of Chicago, Illinois. A a town that would become her hometown for the rest of her life and a town that she will have a historic impact on.

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Bertha Matilda Honore was born on May 22, 1849 on her grandpapa's property just outside of Louisville, Kentucky, the second of the six living children of Henry Hamilton Honore and Eliza Jane Carr Honore. Information about Mama, I am sorry to say, is remarkably thin on the ground everywhere you will read she was intelligent and beautiful and the beautiful. You can verify for yourself by looking at photos. Check. Definitely beautiful. You will read that she was the descendant of a prominent Kentucky family who her mother in particular held inherited enslaved people. But ahead of both the Civil War and emancipation had freed all of the people that she held in bondage before she was required to. As for Papa, I am nearly 100% sure that his family held enslaved people when he was growing up. As anytime you look up his own papa, it Refers to him as, quote, living on a plantation. And I did see actual documentation about some of the extended family. We talked about the situation in Kentucky before. When we did our episode on Mary Todd Lincoln, it was a very strangely situated border state, like the one I'm in right now, like Missouri, that was the most evenly divided between supporting the north and the South. Later, you know, when the Civil War happened, technically, Kentucky never seceded from the Union, which surprises a lot of people, including me, the first time I heard it. Fun fact, fun fact, not so fun. Kentucky did not ratify the 13th Amendment, the one that legally ended slavery, until I. I kind of want you to guess what year. Oh, I saw this.

A

I don't know. Tell me it's faster.

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1976. Yeah. So, anyway, there you go. What we know about Papa is whatever. What we know about Mama is whatever. The person that we know the most about in their genealogy happens to be Bertha's great grandpa, John Honore, who was friends with the famous Marquis de Lafayette, of Revolutionary War fame, of Hamilton, the musical fame, the man that jumps off the table.

A

Lafayette. Sorry.

B

Both of them were Frenchmen, of course. Grandpa John had a house in town and a thriving wholesale hardware and cutlery import company.

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Papa's roots can be traced back to 1600s Belgium. That's as far back as they can look. That Grandpapa, his name, when he immigrated to the United States at the age of 23, shortly after the American Revolution, was Jean Antoine, Americanized to John Anthony.

B

But he.

A

He came into New York, learned an industry, a hardware store. He decided he wanted to move on to someplace that was ready to grow, and he found Louisville, Kentucky. So he moved there, bought some property, and helped to grow the town of Louisville.

B

He also ran what was not a ferry exactly, but kind of a drayage service, a commercial cargo service from Louisville down to New Orleans and back, which

A

makes perfect sense, because if you are an importer of things and it comes into the port of New Orleans, you want to get it from New Orleans up to Louisville. It's easier to own the shipping company than to put your stuff on somebody else's.

B

When Bertha's parents got married in 1842, Mama, by the way, was 16 or 17 at the time of their marriage, and her husband was 18. John invited his grandson, Papa Henry, we're going to call him Bertha's Papa, to become a partner in his business. Now, Papa was an astute businessman. He just got it, you know, like, intuitively almost. And he absorbed the lessons that his grandpa taught him. And he was remarkably Driven when it came to a side hustle of his, that of real estate acquisition and development.

A

I think that grandpapa brought Henry into his embrace and he helped raise him. Henry grew up between his parents house and his grandparents house. His parents house was that plantation you were just talking about. And Henry's father is described as a country gentleman, which on a plantation tells me everything I need to know without any more details. But he doesn't seem as get up and go as entrepreneurial as Henry did. And I bet his grandfather recognized that in him.

B

It was almost like grandpa was relieved to see somebody with some get up and go, you know what I mean? And he threw all of his knowledge onto this young guy. Now three children and a great deal of research later, Papa decided to sell up in Louisville and move his young family to the new upcoming powerhouse city of Chicago. He was good at pattern recognition and he saw the hallmarks of burgeoning. I love that word, I never use it. Economic growth, railroad lines were coming in and it seemed like everything had to come in to Chicago before it moved to points further west.

A

Henry had been going to Chicago for that industry that you were talking about. He needed contacts in Chicago. And that's where he looked around and just saw lots and lots of land and not a lot of building on it, but a lot of tempting things like a waterfront to bring people into the city.

B

Industries are being born here, enriched here. And for a man who liked to dabble in real estate, the real estate speculation here, getting in on the ground floor of it was irresistible. And he, like other speculators, bought large parcels of land and began developing it now, well, well in advance of the city beautiful movement which created all these boulevards and fountains in, in my town of Kansas City that I'm currently sitting in right now. He was ahead of his time. A boulevard, meaning a street that has a park in the middle. That was his thing.

A

I loved how he was all in. Papa Henry sold everything he had in Louisville and he moved his family. Our Bertha was just six at the time. She had been growing up as if she was going to become, you know, the Southern belle that her mother was. It was just tradition. And their family, the family was wealthy in Louisville and Bertha was being raised to do things that young ladies of wealth in the south did up in Chicago.

B

Bertha began school at the exclusive St. Xavier's Academy and then ultimately moved on to the Dearborn Seminary at around eighth grade. They were both girls schools, prestigious girls schools. They did receive a thorough grounding in academic subjects as well. Of Course, as the traditional feminine accomplishments such as music, drawing, needlework and dancing.

A

As Bertha was getting her education, the city of Chicago was growing up around her, close to her. Her father had bought lots of land just west of the city and had broken it up into tract and was so good at telling his people back in Kentucky how wonderful and what a great future the city of Chicago had that they were moving up in such numbers that it was like an entire enclave of Kentucky people in their neighborhood with very large mansions.

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I read an article about Ashland Avenue. 231's not there anymore. No dope da dope. Sorry, but you know, we'll put a photo of it on the website. But anyway, I read an article about that street that talks, yes, about the fine houses, but goes on, on and on for paragraphs about the paving of the street. The sound was minimized. They couldn't believe it. The housekeepers all along the avenue danced with joy at the lack of filth that was tracked into the houses. This street it's called, it was like, here's a new word for you, the public. Tar macadamy. It's the highest perfection in the art of street paving. And I'm like, we literally just covered Laura Ingalls Wilder who went through Topeka, Kansas. And what is this? What is this covering the street? Oh, it's called tar macadam. That's ridiculous. No one would ever pay that much money for it. So evidently tar makadamine was taking over the world. It was a big deal. And you know what, we take the street for granted, don't we? Until we hit a pothole. So with everyone having come from Kentucky to join their friends up in Chicago, it was with ease, I think, that mama began to gather about her a wide and ever increasing social circle in their new city. Bertha's education continued at home too, where her mother demonstrated to her the proper deportment and etiquette. How to pay calls, how to conduct yourself as a hostess, how to direct servants, poise, how to read a room and manage its inhabitants. These were skills a lady must have. And as the great men of the city were entertained in her parents home, Bertha began to get exposed to the news of the day, the world, politics, the art of debate. I, well, I don't feel good. I don't feel good about recounting this part of this story. But since it all turned out okay, here we go. One of papa's friends, an entrepreneur and real estate speculator named Potter Palmer, age 36, caught sight of 13 year old Bertha and got the thunderbolts. I know. I knew right then that one day I would marry her. He kept it all inside, which is a point in his favor, but, ugh, you know what I mean?

A

Yes, I absolutely know because it gave me the creeps when I read that the first time. I mean, he's 23 years older than her. She's just 13 at the time. Yeah, that's definitely creepy. I think he saw her potential. You know, she, she was poised, she was intelligent, she was articulate at such a young age that he thought, oh, only good things are going to happen to this young girl. Someone's going to be lucky enough to marry her when, you know, she becomes of marriage age. What if it's me? But he kept it inside. I think at this point.

B

Here's a little bio of Mr. Palmer since he's going to be a main character. I feel like we've gone beyond spoiler alert at this point given his last name and the fact that we're talking about him at all. He had actually been born in New York and by the time he was only 22, he owned his own dry goods store. So he, like Papa is a go getting self starter, didn't wait around to be handed things went out and got them. By the time he was 30, he, like Papa, had sent the fortunes to be made in Chicago. And he opened a store. It was called p. Palmer Co. Dry goods, which we really need like spicier names. All these places were like Selfridges, Macy's, you know, we needed some fire, but we didn't have it.

A

Yeah, Palmer could have been just as popular a name as Macy's eventually.

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Right. He soon established himself very, very well among the finest retailers. And the thing about him and his store, he made customer service a priority and he carried everything. And he had a bit of the razzle dazzle, didn't he? A couple of radical concepts. Number one, you could return things. What? Yeah, take them home, see how they worked, bring them back for exchange. If it, you know, who's to say if it's going to match? We'll take it back, don't worry. We would rather that you be satisfied. Other merchants put their hands over their heart at this. Like, how on earth are you ever going to get your books straight if things keep randomly coming back? How are you going to make a profit if people just haul things back to you and you have to give them their money back? People loved it so much though, that it overcame all the objections. People loved the flexibility, they loved being trusted and also the extension of credit. Not exactly a credit card, not yet, but where you could simply say, please put it on my account. You feel fancy, you feel awesome. You feel like you're behind the velvet rope.

A

Well, the people that were his customers were the kind of people that appreciated that, that they were the wealthy people of the city. They were the wealthy women who came in and knew that they were going to be fawned over and shown the most current fashions. I mean, worth gowns. Where else are you going to get those in Chicago without mailing away for them? You know, they've silk fabrics. Anything and everything that a woman of society would need was being offered by Potter Palmer's store in the way that we think of very upscale stores dealing with customer service. That kind of started with Potter Palmer

B

and he had trained all of his salespeople. I mean, just the most excellent customer service. You felt so valued when you went there. And I'm sorry to say this seems skeevy to me, but I read in multiple sources that whenever Bertha and her mother went shopping in his store, he personally would drop everything and come downstairs and be their personal salesperson.

A

Okay, I'm gonna stop. I get the skeevy part of that. But I also get that Bertha and her mother were the women of one of the most wealthiest men in the city. The guy that was involved in making Chicago what it is as a center of commerce. So that may have been why he was bending over backwards. But you know what else he also did? He was the first guy to offer bargain days like a sale. A sale. The ladies flocked to the store to get that. And eventually, I mean, we think, oh, that's just treatment. That happens at every retail store. No, it started with Potter Palmer and then it spread to New York and Macy's and Paris and Beaumarchais. You know, it started here in Chicago with Potter Palmer.

B

Major retailers from Europe and New York City sent spies to see, how on earth is he making all of this work? Mostly he was making it work by being on the spot most of the hours of every day. His eagle eyes were everywhere. His standards for his employees were very, very high. Yeah, and you're right that maybe he was paying a special attention to the wife of a business colleague.

A

Yeah, and I bet the other people of that income bracket in the city were also treated the same way. That's what I'm telling myself. I'm skeeved out by the 23 year old age difference, but this one I can kind of get because that's what he's teaching his people to do.

B

And you know what? The only thing that happened is a grown man pushed his papers aside and threw his jacket on as he ran downstairs. Like, that's. That's it. That's all that happened. Nothing like, nothing sketchy.

A

Yep.

B

Like, yup. You know?

A

Yep.

B

Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I will give it to you.

A

Okay.

B

The Civil War had broken out the year before Thunderbolt City. And this far seeing entrepreneur, Mr. Palmer immediately saw that cotton was going to be at a premium, and he cornered the market on cotton. Even as the war progressed, if you wanted it, you had to come to him. He started selling his backstock to his competitors at a vastly inflated price. He was printing some real money.

A

He absolutely was. And what were these Southern ladies doing during the Civil War? You know, Chicago wasn't a battlefield state. It was firmly Union. They were safe up there. There was, however, a Union prison in the Chicago area called Camp Douglas. The Chicago Southern women kind of straddled the line between the Union and the Confederacy, just like Kentucky was doing. Some were Confederate, some were Union. A lot of them wished they were nothing. You know, they wanted to be neutral. But the ladies, the society ladies in Chicago were making clothes and bringing food to Camp Douglas for Confederate soldiers. They were also raising money for Union field hospitals as well as money to help train Civil War nurses. So they were helping both sides.

B

Right. They did actually roll bandages and knit stockings and make jam. I have a question about that last one. I think we are firmly in the. I've never seen the inside of my kitchen class. So they had jam made.

A

I don't know.

B

And sent. I don't know.

A

You're probably. I'm gonna. I. I don't know on that one.

B

I mean. But under it all was the sentiment. Almost like the lady bountiful example that mama was setting. If you can help, you do.

A

Yes.

B

And you don't think too much about the philosophy behind the person that you're helping.

A

Correct.

B

But if we're being honest with ourselves here, Bertha was largely insulated from having grown up in interesting times.

A

Yes.

B

She did not feel the pain and deprivation that other parts of this country did during the Civil War. She did not experience the fear that Betsy Ambler felt during the Revolutionary War. She was not in personal danger.

A

No.

B

As the Civil War came to a close, Mr. Potter Palmer, which sounds like that can't be his real name, but it is, Was sort of a broken man, you know, burnt out, we'd say now. He had been buying up property on State street and his real estate speculation was going like gangbusters. Simultaneously, of course, Bertha's papa was doing the same thing, buying up properties, erecting whole city blocks of buildings. But the stress was taking a toll on Mr. Palmer and his doctors got after him. Genuinely, dude, either keep the store or keep your real estate speculation. But you have to get some downtime because you're falling apart. And so he called in at his friend Mr. Honoray's house to take his leave. He was going to go to Europe for a doctor mandated change of scenery. Where are the doctors that I can go to that would write me a prescription for that? Because sign me up, it's probably not included on my insurance. So anyway, he came along with the news that he had sold his famous store to two young men named Marshall Field and Levi Leiter. Now you know the name of Marshall Field probably as he took that store and took it to the moon. But we, Susan Volumleiter and I have talked about Mr. Leiter before. I mean at the very beginning of this podcast. Cast your mind back to the dark ages, I think episode nine, I think when we talked about the gilded age heiresses. Mr. Lighter was so wealthy in a number of years that his daughter's dowry when she married George Curzon was 110 million in 2026 money. His daughter Mary later became the vice reign of India, the second most high ranking woman in the entire British Empire, just under Queen Victoria. So the buyers of Mr. Palmer's store are going to do okay. That's what I'm saying. They're going to be all right. Summer is upon us. And with that comes a re evaluation of my skincare routine. And for a long time it was very hard to find something that would moisturize my skin that you wouldn't have to wait around for with your arms out, waiting for it to sink in. Because then you'd throw on your skirt, sure enough, your skirt would stick to your legs. Super annoying. And that is not the case with Osea andaria body oil.

A

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A

Shorts and a T shirt.

B

Why?

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s e a malibu.com.

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In 1865, the year that the Civil War was over, Bertha was 16 and it was time for her to be finished. Meaning she needed to attend finishing school. Because she was of that class of girls, the honorees, her parents sent her across the country to a boarding school in Georgetown, which is a very posh area of Washington D.C. the name of the school was Covenant of the Visitation. It's a Catholic boarding school, all girls. And in case you have to ask, yes, very wealthy girls attended there. Washington D.C. was a very protected union city during the Civil War. It was also in the south and until a couple of years before Bertha arrived, there were enslaved people working at this school. As a terrible thing, the school was partially funded because of the sale of these humans. There is a legend that the nuns who ran the boarding school also taught the enslaved children to read. But even the school's website disputes that. Yeah, actually five years before Bertha arrived, our old friend Emily Roebling graduated from this school.

B

More posh curls as to their curriculum. Honestly, it might be easier to tell you what she did not study there. This was a course of study that is very rigorous and widespread. History, geography, chemistry, meteorology. There is a random one. Astronomy, botany, philosophy, Rhetoric, Literature, Composition, Geometry, algebra and Domestic economy. Now, in addition, she played the harp and the piano. The harp man. I know, I love that is something. Yeah, I love that every time I hear that somebody plays the harp, I always think of Mansfield park and how that neighbor played the harp and was so irritated that she couldn't get any farmers to bring her harp up to the big house because it was harvest season.

A

Oh, you know what I think of? I think of my wedding reception because we didn't have a band or a dj. We had a harpist and she played everything. There was one point that somebody was toasting the dead people, the dead family members. And I was like, do you know Zippity doo dah? And she started playing it.

B

I think I'm going to let rest upon the ears of the listeners the concept that Zippity doo Dah was a song you chose for the memorial section of your reception. Oh, my goodness. And pivot back to Bertha and her school.

A

This particular school had opened in 1799 and now it's still in operation. It's Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. Go Cubs. It's a day school, so there is no boarding, but tuition comes in at about 40 grand. But our Bertha stayed there all year. She boarded, obviously kind of far to get to Chicago from Washington.

B

Now, I do not think this is the whole reason, but as Bertha began her last year at this school, Papa moved the family to a large mansion at 157 Michigan Avenue. And you'll read that he did it to provide the backdrop to introduce Bertha into society, which I guess was sort of a consideration. I mean, they're already pretty high in society. And I guess this was a more glamorous backdrop, like a more fitting backdrop for a debut season. But he'd probably been wanting to move to a better location for a while. He was instrumental in getting that big park on the shore, which now of course includes Lakeshore Drive. And this move fits right into that whole concept of the land he was trying to develop. Yes. Nevertheless, when bertha graduated in 1867, she came home to a brand new fabulosity. And here's what I want to know, though. As a person whose father still lives in the house we moved to when I was 8, as a person who still lives in the same house I bought before my 21 year old son was born, how does it feel to come home from school and find your home gone? You know, unfortunately, that's a sentiment Bertha will have at least once more in her life. More on that later, but I have never experienced that. And people whose parents move their senior year of high school, I mean.

A

Yeah.

B

How does that feel? I don't know.

A

I moved after my freshman year. That was not great. I wouldn't recommend it unless you have to, which is. My parents did.

B

Yeah.

A

Well, it was a really nice house and I can't quite figure out where it was. As far as I can tell, it like butts up to the Art Institute, like by Grant Park. It's obviously not there anymore.

B

Yeah. And I think that the north south designation matters now where it might have not done before. Because honestly, yes, I looked it Up. And guess what came up? And I couldn't believe it. I have this thing. Susan knows this already, but I have this thing from my childhood called the original rainbow cone. When you look up that address, that's what comes up. And I just started laughing out loud. And it's in the bottom of a large skyscraper. So that could be the location which would bring this around full circle for me.

A

Oh, well, I went. I went so far. It's like on the corner of what is now South Michigan. It wouldn't be north south for many years, but by Adam Street.

B

I just looked it up and started to laugh. And then I stopped because I'm just like, you know. No, I don't even need to go. That's a satisfying rabbit hole. I'm going to leave it there.

A

Well, I wondered. I was so intri. Intrigued of where this house used to be. It is actually right by the marker for the start of Route 66, as far as I can tell. Yeah.

B

Well, Bertha came home after graduation, after receiving honor after honor in almost every subject. She is an accomplished young lady. Her parents new house was an amazing venue for such a social success. But Bertha was not, and I repeat, not allowed to do the waltz. It was considered to be too saucy. You didn't change partners? The guy had a hold of your waist the whole time?

A

No.

B

And that for me shone a little bit of light on Gone with the wind.

A

Oh, really?

B

And the waltz scene there, because it's the same exact era. The mamas often thought ladies that waltz were a little bit forward.

A

Well, it wouldn't be very long before the waltz was accepted in society ballrooms. Bertha had a younger sister named Ida. And by the time Ida had her debutante party, she could waltz at it.

B

Not fair. But I suppose Bertha, as a married woman could waltz. Also wanted because nobody's the boss. Speaking of marriage, Mr. Palmer came back from Europe and from spending time in some of the upper class haunts on the east coast of America. He was a completely changed man. Loosening his grip on business. Had done a lot to lighten him up, let's say. Also style mavens had gotten a hold of him. You know, he was much more fashionable than that worried frazzly shopkeeper who had left. You know, his doctors were right. Again, I say, please point me in the direction of those doctors that point to a rest cure. Yes, he bided his time a little bit and he started to build a grand hotel. Though, sir, if you look across to your old stomping grounds, there are bows Aplenty, circling around. And everyone in Chicago just sort of assumed Bertha was going to be snatched off the marriage market immediately. She was beautiful and intelligent, from a good family, had magnetismo. And I don't know if you're a lady, if it's magnetism in the world.

A

I consider it made up.

B

Worms.

A

I don't know.

B

Yeah, well, you can do what you want, you know, there. But he started sending flowers and beginning his campaign because he saw, oh, no, I'm gonna have competition.

A

Yeah, yeah. And at first, she kind of laughed it off. He was asking if he could call on her, and she's just like, yeah, you're so funny. And then, you know, looked over at the younger suitors, and it took a while before she and her papa realized that, oh, this guy's serious.

B

He was still in the family's orbit. I mean, he's been there all along. So his presence was not weird or unusual. And I don't know if papa maybe knew what was going on, or mama, maybe he had made his case in the background.

A

Yeah, I think he did, but I don't think. I think they were just kind of sitting back and waiting to see, you know, who else was going to throw their hat in the ring and how serious he was. But at this point, Potter Palmer had been developing, if you've been to Chicago, where Marshall Field is now, State street, which is a shopping district that was built by Potter Palmer. He bought all that land and the buildings that were there, and he was trying to widen it to be a larger boulevard. Some of the buildings he was able to push back. I don't know how that happens, but, you know, some he couldn't. It was just kind of zigzaggy. But he was working to create State street as the place to go shopping. Shopping. And he was succeeding. He may have been in Europe, but he was still making buckets of money.

B

Of course, that real estate. That real estate development was the one that sent him into the death spiral of burnout in the first place. It's why he's in Europe, is because he took on too much. But it was working out. Hooray. Well, once Bertha turned 21, he decided it was time to be brave, and he proposed marriage. He put himself forward as husband material at last. And Bertha's parents approved of him, of the marriage. And here's the thing. Bertha seems to have been absolutely ready. I mean, I don't have any. I don't have any feelings that she was in any way in love. He was practical. He was entrepreneurial. A lot like her father. A lot like the men that frequented their house. You know, he was a familiar quantity. He certainly was devoted. He had a lot of backbone. And likely if you married a person like this, you would not be facing the uncertainty you might with a young husband who hadn't made his mark in the world yet. So she, as we can see from the future, we're shaking our head like she is. Seeing that it's going to be like, okay, I'm going to get married to this guy. We're going to have this fancy house. It's just going to go in a linear fashion. I like this life sounds good, let's do it type of thing in 10 minutes. Get back to us about like, oh, no. Yeah. Times wagged a little bit in Chicago. She was 21. He was 44. But certainly society had seen such age differences before. We'd be silly to say that that shocked anyone. A very super young wife. Classic. And accusations of. I don't know what to call it. Gold diggery. Were kind of cut off at the knee because. Regard her father. Right. You know what I mean? Like it was suitable. What. What else can you say?

A

Right.

B

Wow. You've got the diamond of the season, sir. Congratulations.

A

Exactly.

B

They were only engaged for two months before they were married.

A

Which, given the amount of parties that her mother had planned, I imagine was all she needed.

B

Right.

A

The two were married in a very quiet church service with like 40 people there, followed by a very high society event at the family's home that had hundreds.

B

Seven hundred. And I like the blithe way that these people are like, oh, and the family silver was in use. And I'm thinking, did you call it in from the entire world? What household has, oh, an extra 692 sets of hanging around from family dinner.

A

What I thought was very interesting, and this is gonna be such a swap later, but the Chicago Tribune wrote up. I mean, it's a high society wedding. Of course there was an article, but they spent like two paragraphs of this article talking about how he looked. He's six feet high, slight, but well made and as erect as a poplar. Sorry, I actually said that With a straight face. The forehead is full and its bumps well developed. The eyes are sort of hazel with a glimmer of fun in their sharp, scrutinizing gaze. The lips are clearly cut and when compressed indicates strength of character and inflexibility of purpose. That same article described Bertha's dress. White satin with point lace. And this is all they said. Ms. Bertha Honore belongs to one of the most respectable families in the city. She's endowed with personal charms and a high order. She is well educated and very intelligent. She is particularly distinguished for her Christian principles.

B

You know what? At least here's the thing I'm going to give them props for is they focus. Because you can see in any photo that you ever see of her. And who's to say? Maybe there was a photo of the bride, which we are in photography and now, in which case you wouldn't need to describe her, and you can see how beautiful she is. I actually like that the article focused on her inner attributes.

A

Okay. And I was looking at as they are just like talking about how she was raised. You know, she was endowed with personal charms by her parents and her education and the society that she lives in. So it's kind of like she's an accessory, is how I was reading it. And Bertha Palmer is nobody's accessory. I could tell you.

B

I don't know. I think endowed with personal charms means that she was beautiful. I don't know. But then they went on to say that she was intelligent and blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Anyway, I read that as a positive thing. Okay. And you saw it as a negative thing. So I guess it's just like perception went on so much about the.

A

How the guy looked and just these two sentences about her.

B

I don't know.

A

I don't know.

B

Who's to say?

A

Well, if you are curious, she was about five. Five, thick, wavy brown hair. And she had a very low and calm voice.

B

That is a cultivated. Yes, yes. I think that comes straight from Mama.

A

Yes. I do not have one of them.

B

What?

A

You don't think my voice is low and Cal, there's nothing calm about me. I'm just gonna tell you that right off.

B

Someone once found you among a crowd in Kensington palace by listening for the sound of your voice.

A

But someone.

B

I'm gonna give that a no.

A

Someone also wrote a review about us and said of both of us that we possess nerdy charm. I know I put that in my bio.

B

We are endowed. Endowed with nerdy charm. After a honeymoon in Europe, her first trip abroad, actually, they came home to Chicago and Mr. Palmer presented her with her final wedding present.

A

Palmer House Hotel.

B

It wasn't quite done yet.

A

No.

B

But like, imagine this. Imagine that if you would.

A

Voila. Yes. And there was. They called it the Bridal suite, which is where he saw them living after they were married. But this hotel is so opulent. Crystal chandeliers, marble. It was Modeled after the most exclusive and fancy hotels of New York and Europe. Places that Palmer had been. He wanted a place like that in Chicago. And he built it in honor of his new brother. Died.

B

The Palmer House finally opened the year after they were married. But unfortunately, the hotel was only alive for 13 days. Because on October 8, 1871, a fire began in a barn. Mrs. O' Leary's cow kicking over a lantern, some say. Or a man running away after an illegal card game. Or in some cases, they say it was started by meteors. I don't even know.

A

I think it's very convenient that they could blame an immigrant for this tragedy. Mrs. O'. Leary. And there's enough evidence that says it was probably not her and her cow. It was her barn.

B

It's such a better story than a guy running away from an illegal card game and knocking over a lane. Kids sneaking around.

A

Yeah. Oh, for sure not. But unless you're in o' Leary and you and your descendants spend the rest of their lives defending their ancestor.

B

Well, whatever caused it, the Great Chicago Fire swept through the city for two days. And it destroyed more than three square miles of the city. I was reading descriptions of fire, tornadoes, terrifying. The waterworks that everyone depended on succumbed to the flames and no longer functioned. And luckily, the city was safe. Spared from further destruction by a fortuitous rainstorm. But it was madness. It left nearly 100,000 people homeless. It caused an estimated, at the time, $200 million in damage. You know, Right. Who's to say what exorbitant amount it would be now? A lot of small businesses were just swept away. And Bertha saw the whole thing. From their summer place just outside the city. She was safe herself. And her husband was out of town, also safe. But she was absolutely terrified for her parents and couldn't get to them.

A

No.

B

As soon as she could, after the fire was extinguished, Bertha made her way into the city. And I am struck by her sighting of her mother. Collapsed on one of the fancy sofas from the house. Sitting on the shore of the lake with its legs sinking into the sand. People were camped all over the shore of the lake with whatever they were able to flee with. And it was mostly the central business district that was burned to the ground. Outside. The stockyards were fine. The industrial district was fine. The economy could keep going to an extent. The railroads were pretty much as a class, still able to operate. But the Palmer fortune was deeply invested in real estate. Almost 95% of the Palmer's property had just burnt to the ground. And you Know most of that you hadn't made your money back on your investment yet. And you could forgive a man for wanting to just peace out and throw his hands up and just get out. Do what, go back to New York probably. But Bertha stood by him and had faith in his ability to claw back from this abyss. And his wife's sentiments were extremely important to Mr. Palmer. She was a true partner. You know, she understood the stakes, tried to understand what he could do. Word says, survey says, legend says that she herself got in a carriage, went to a nearby place that still had a telegraph line and arranged a loan. I just don't know if that seems reasonable.

A

I think I read like three different versions of this particular loan. That one of them was that Potter stopped on his way back to Chicago and borrowed this money. And then another one was he got it lent to him. And then the third was that she was able to get the loan.

B

And you know what though of course it was also a testament to his reputation and bankers faith in his ability.

A

Yeah, he had excellent credit. You know, he, they said yeah, I'm going to make this up, you'll get your money back. And they said yeah, you're going to. I have no doubt.

B

Yeah. So Mr. Palmer and Papa by the way were able to get loans and as the economy worsened, unfortunately they also had some poor timing with regard to a general recession. But those loans made no sense really without collateral, which they didn't have and they had to borrow at a higher rate of interest. But you know what, roll the dice. I mean this was gambling on a large scale on everybody's part. Both Papa and Mr. Palmer did have to sell off some of their property to preserve the rest of it. You know and really they had say now on how the new city of Chicago was going to be a phoenix. Not a Phoenix Arizona, but a bird phoenix rising from the ashes. Other cities with their big round eyes looking towards Chicago were starting to take a look at their own vulnerabilities. The fire didn't just cause changes in Chicago. Everybody kind of had to take a look at urban planning. How do we make sure that waterworks problem doesn't happen again? Because that was not good. If it hadn't rained, what would we be looking at? You know, they had to look at building materials, architecture, fire codes. And so Chicago with this blank slate in the middle had a good opportunity to start from scratch. And Chicago is where the concept of steel framed skyscrapers came from, from this disaster. You know, the first building that could really be called a modern skyscraper. Was built in Chicago because this fire had leveled everything, including the hotel that

A

had just opened and they hadn't even moved into yet. The Palmer House.

B

Okay. Summer in the Midwest has just hit the humidity. I don't know what the exact percentage is. It is just barely in the two digits.

A

It's pretty high. But with that comes heat and with that comes our summer wardrobes. And I know I speak for myself and you, Beckett, that a lot of our wardrobe comes from quintessential.

B

Yes, yes, absolutely. They have high quality essentials made in breathable fabrics like linen, organic cotton, washable silk. But what they don't have is the luxury markup.

A

And their styles are just classics. I have a European linen sleeveless swing dress. I think this is third summer and it looks amazing. It just gets softer with every wash and that. Wash machine, wash, tumble dry.

B

A linen dress, I'm obsessed. Also hundred percent European linen with the smocked midi dress. And I have it in multiple colors. And the gingham is the cutest of all time. It is like, you should see me out there in this garden. I'm wearing this dress and these ridiculous Wellingtons that have birds on them and watering. And I'm feeling like I wish somebody could see me right now. And then you can just literally take the Wellingtons off, obviously, scrub under your fingernails and meet some friends for frozen French 75s at the Little French place down the block. Okay. Love it. It goes everywhere. It is the best thing. And it's just. It just like speaks summer to me.

A

And I mean, I don't usually reach for jeans too much in summer, but you and I are getting ready to go on another trip and I am bringing a pair of my Quint jeans, the Bella stretch jeans with patch pockets and wide legs. And what I, as a 5 foot 2 woman, appreciate is that they come in different lengths. I love these jeans so much.

B

Everything at Quinn's is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands that you will find. And they work directly with factories, ethical factories at that, and cut out the middlemen. So you're still paying for quality and not brand markup.

A

And Quint is not just a destination for clothing. It's also a destination for elevated essentials in your home, like bedding.

B

I have some Italian leather travel, like cosmetic bags.

A

Just go check them out at Quint. There's so much in there. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quints.com chicks for free shipping on your order. And 365 day returns now available in Canada too.

B

That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com chicks for free shipping and 365 day returns.

A

Quince.com chicks. Potter had started a second hotel not too far away, still in the same business district that he was building up. So they were able to use the foundation of that building to begin building their own fireproof hotel. And in the category of silver linings, he had been trying to get State street to be a wider street and was having problems getting some of the buildings back. It was kind of zigzaggy. Now he had to rebuild the whole thing. So he was able to build a wider street and a more attractive shopping area all cohesive. And what he had in his brain, that's, that's good, that's a good thing to see.

B

And you know what? New building codes were put into place in Chicago. But human nature and human budgets being what they are and ever shall be. Amen. A lot of people fudged and built with wood after all. But. And oh, Mr. Palmer. Nope, not for this new and improved Palmer House. We're not going there. The building itself, iron and brick. The roof was made of terra cotta tiles. They advertised themselves as the world's only fireproof hotel. It was a calling card and it was a symbol. It became known as one of the most fashionable hotels in America for its sheer opulence, which the old one also had for 13 days. Yeah, by the way. But there's a funny feature I have to talk about. Like it's kind of comedy to me, but it was much talked about. The barber shop's floor in the new. The new, improved Bomber House was inlaid with silver dollars. You know how people kind of make those bathroom floors out of pennies? Well, it came from this. I mean, there were 800 of them in the floor, so an $800 floor, whatever. But I'm thinking kind of stay with me. In a borough market in London, they have these like creme brulee donuts. So Instagram famous. They're donuts, right? It's like, what's the big deal? They're donuts. But no, it's like the super hype man. 5,000 for the borough market. And so before Instagram, this floor was Instagram worthy. Something to come see and say that you had seen it and tell your friends, like how funny. I saw all the. This floor made out of silver dollars and it was really cool. You know, I don't know why this happens, but the US government decided like not very long after this that that it Was illegal to use American currency like that. So, like, okay, that's a very specific regulation. So they actually had to go in and pry up all those silver dollars. And they just put Mexican pesos in there. It looked the same from a distance, like, okie dokie.

A

The Palmer House Hotel is still in Chicago, and it is still at this particular location on the corner of State and Monroe Street. We actually had our honeymoon at the Palmer House. And that barber level, it's the lower level of the hotel. But I don't know if they still have that floor.

B

No, they don't. Because there was a third iteration of the Palmer House that was built in 1923.

A

Right.

B

So they do not. But I will tell you, although we'll never be able to see it flash forward in the time machine to 1925 when it was being built. There is a cornerstone with artifacts in it. And one of Bertha's sons put in the cornerstone. One of the original silver dollars that had been on the floor of the barber shop is in the cornerstone of the currently existing Palmer House. But there, you can't see.

A

Well, I didn't know about the next remodel of it, but I wondered if they kept the floor. Cause it seems like an easy thing to keep if you're remodeling a building.

B

I don't think so. Okay, well, we'll look in a week, but I don't think so.

A

We'll let you know. We'll go down there in front of the barbershop and take a picture of the floor.

B

Well, after the reconstruction of the Palmer House, the second iteration, not the third one, the second, the fireproof one. They briefly took up residence there. Susan mentioned it earlier, that bridal suite came back for an encore. And they were waiting for their new house to be built. They actually called it a castle. It was right on the. On Lakeshore Drive. And it cost a million dollars ultimately, which is the equivalent of $32 million today. I have to tell you, Potter Palmer, after a little while, just like, stop bringing. I don't want to know. Just stop bringing me these bills. Like, have a guy pay him. I don't want to know how much this is costing me because, like, wow.

A

Yeah, it. Bertha was involved. I mean, they were working together. They were an amazing team. And she kept thinking of ways to improve, and she was just spending money. And at one point, he's like, okay, I'm going to just walk away from this project because it's costing too much. But it was cost prohibitive. He couldn't get what he'd put into it. So they kept going. Back when Potter Palmer was looking for a place to make his new mansion his castle, they actually called it the castle. He looked at this land that was just being used for nothing. It was just north of the city. It had beautiful views of the lake. It was a suburb, essentially. There was nothing on it. So he did exactly what he'd done down on State street, exactly what Bertha's father had done, and just bought up huge tracts of land. And he actually put a pathway, a road. There's no cars yet, but it was just for carriages and strollers and only for people of wealth because the working class couldn't get to this area. There was no streetcars that ran there. They just hike. Why would they go there? But in this area, Potter Palmer was beginning to sell those tracks of property for people to build mansions. Not quite like his, but definitely beautiful and large. And now if you think to the city of Chicago, that's the gold coast of Chicago, and he is responsible for having it built. In 1874, Bertha was 25. They were just moving in when the first of their two sons was born. Her son's name was Honore, after her maiden name. I love it when they do that. The second son didn't get such a creative name. He was born a year later. His name was Potter Palmer Jr.

B

Although, like I keep reading that he's Potter Palmer the second. The second I know. Which isn't that usually what happens if you name a nephew or a cousin? Like a lateral move is a two. I don't know.

A

It's also. Well, it's a little more refined than saying junior, you know, the second implies that there's going to be a third and an eighth, you know, I guess so. That's. Yes, Potter Palmer, the second one. He did have a nickname. As often this happened in my family because my brother and my dad have the same name, they needed nicknames. They called him Min for, I think, minimal or minor because he was small as a baby. I'm not sure.

B

Oh, that's kind of cute. That's kind of cute. You know, like in Little Women, how Meg has a son who has the same name as his dad, and they call him Demi.

A

That's cute.

B

Like Half John.

A

That is cute. Better than little, Little and Big. Little Potter and Big Potter. Potter actually had a nickname for Bertha, too. He called her.

B

Yeah, I think her whole family called her. Makes me wonder if brother Adrian was like, bubba, I will bet you a thousand dollars he was not.

A

Had a hard Time saying, or any of the kids, because Bertha was the second. And so any of the ones behind her would have of if they couldn't say Bertha works. Interesting.

B

Okay, well, everyone calls me Luke, so who's to say? And how old am I? And they still call me, well, Potter 2 Potter II was born on the fourth anniversary actually of the Chicago Fire. So I think his older brother has a better anniversary birthday to match your birthday rather than the Chicago Fire. Well, so in their fabulous house, which was at the time Chicago's largest private residence, they entertained politicians, socialites, royalty. Their social circle was global. Her charm and beauty and intelligence and fire were just irresistible. And I feel a kinship with Mr. Palmer, who his social battery would drain when like suddenly drained, he's out and he would go hide in a quiet room like Richard Gilmore on the porch of the Gilmore Girls. And just like Rory did with her grandpa in Gilmore Girls, Bertha would send him a drink in a newspaper, perfectly fine with where he felt like he had to be. She would handle the circus.

A

Yeah, but she liked being the handler of the circus. You know, she was raised in society with parents who gave parties all the time, you know, lavish parties. So this is what she was, she was raised to do. And she was really good at it.

B

And you know, I always say that my husband knows a guy, but the Palmers knew all the guys and it went all the way up to the top. Bertha's sister, her younger sister Ida, had married the eldest son of President Ulysses S. Grant, which meant Bertha's in laws. I mean, this is like Civil War royalty, really the highest position you can get in the United States. Ida actually lived in the White House with her husband's family. And from time to time, Bertha would go to the White House like you do and preside with her sister over society events.

A

And the Grants would often have her standing in the receiving line. And when the Grants came to Chicago, guess where they stayed? At the Palmer House. It was like their Midwest base.

B

Ida's daughter Julia, as a matter of fact, would in the future honestly be treated like Bertha's own daughter. They traveled together. Bertha helped facilitate her marriage to Russian nobility. Dressed her, introduced her to the finest things, advised her on everything. They were extremely close. She never had a daughter of her own. And so she co opted Julia to handle that role for her.

A

It worked because they got along great.

B

Closer to home though, and back in our timeline, incidentally, Bertha threw herself in to Chicago's reform world.

A

She started with social clubs. We've talked about women's clubs, popping up at this point in time, before, many times before. And some of them were social, they were literary, they had come speakers and poets and others actually worked for change either nationally or locally. These women's clubs, for the most part were high society women or middle class women. But what they all had in common was they were white women. These groups did not include black women in their numbers. It would be 15 years after Bertha joined the Chicago Women's Club where black women were included. And that didn't happen until after a full year of debate. It was put on the table and they talked about it for a year. Do we let these black women in? No, we don't. A full year before they opened their doors to black women. I just wanted to make sure that was out there. I think it's important to realize, and

B

it almost seems, and we've talked about this before during suffrage conversations, that it almost seemed like it was too much to transcend class lines and they just couldn't add another plate to it. I don't know. And it's a factor that's not gone even now, is it?

A

Bertha started with the social club. She actually helped start one called Fortnightly, which is a literature and current events club. She even gave a lecture there at one point called the Obligations of Wealth. So she's given some thought about what her place in progress in the city of Chicago is. And it's not necessarily throwing another ball, unless of course, it had a purpose. She moved on from there to the Chicago Women's Club, and it was there that she met our old friend, Jane Addams.

B

We've talked about this before. The settlement house movement was full of college educated women. And society didn't really foresee a place for college educated women. And they did a lot of good in the settlement house movement. There were things that they helped with making kindergartens, the safe distribution of healthy and healthily produced milk to children, legal advocacy for women facing the court system, even things like the Women's Trade Union League attracted her attention.

A

Bertha wasn't necessarily one of those people that lived at Hell House.

B

No, no.

A

But she knew what they were doing. She was educated by them, by Jane Addams about the programs that they were implementing. So it wasn't like she was just writing checks because Jane Addams came to her and said, you know, I need money. And she wrote her a check. Bertha knew where that money was going to go. And she also threw a lot of parties and balls that, yeah, of course they elevated her even higher in society. But the whole point of them Was to raise money for programs like Hull House.

B

Yeah. Her social gatherings were, yes, sometimes viewed as frivolous, but they were strategic. She would organize her guest list so that the purely social couples were not mixed in with the do Gooder.

A

Right.

B

Because she felt like this is not going to be a good party. But she understood, I think, that influence needed relationships first. And so she cultivated them as if they were a garden, I think. And people knew. People in the reform world knew if they could make a good case, they could likely get some help from the Palmers. Maybe. Maybe more than they bargained for, Because Bertha was a masterful organizer. But if you want the needle to move on your project, you would want to get Bertha involved because she would make things happen. Yeah.

A

Her connections were vast, not just in Chicago, but. But throughout the whole country and even internationally. So if she couldn't help, she knew. She knew the guy. Bertha, you said that. Yeah, she was a definite. I know a guy. We. You had mentioned that she was involved in women workers rights, in union rights, which kind of dovetails to our conversation not too long ago about Mary Harris, Mother Jones, who was instrumental in creating labor unions in Chicago at this same period of time. So you would think, oh, they got along great. No, no, no, no. I'm going to link you up to a letter that Mary Harris wrote to Bertha. It wasn't like a private letter. It was a published letter. Basically, Mother Jones said to Bertha, you know, you're helping all these working class women, but you can't because you do not understand the life of them. You can't because of where you are in society socioeconomically. You are so far removed from these women that you're trying to help, that you really can't help them. Basically stay in your lane, rich lady. I. That tracks with her personality, I think, in Mother Jones, who was kind of brash.

B

There's something to be said, though, for not literally applying sandpaper to the face of a person who could pull strings and have a river of monetary support coming your way.

A

I agree.

B

Agree there. I'm just saying. And especially when. And I am not in Mother Jones's brain, certainly, but, like, especially when this person was not a bad or selfish person to begin with, and people knew that. You know what I mean? Like, she was willing to give up money freely with no strings.

A

Right.

B

If she believed in your cause, the price of it was not peeing in her Cheerios. I guess. I don't. I don't. It seems like a small price to pay.

A

I think a lot of People, and I see this even in modern society and progressive groups, their goal is the same. The road to the goal is very different, you know, and that's exactly what was going on, I think, with Bertha and Mother Jones.

B

Well, and also here's the thing. I bet that Bertha's lifestyle rubbed Mother Jones the wrong way. Many people saw her when they didn't know her as completely frivolous. Because if you were to look from the outside, especially by, say, the 1880s, Bertha was a national famous figure. She wore so much expensive jewelry at the same time that once upon a time, so goes the story, she walked in wearing infinite amounts of shiny diamonds. And the opera star singing on stage stopped having been blinded by the ferocity of her jewelry. She. Once upon a time, her husband leaned over to his son and said, look there, boy. Your mother's got $200,000 around her neck. She also took that frivolous appearance on the road to Europe, where she took in art, fashion and culture, like almost as if she was studying it as a class. She met diplomats, she met artists. She brought their ideas back to Chicago with her. She became kind of the unchallenged societal leader of Chicago throughout her adult life.

A

There are cases, and I can just think of two, that one you just said, and also when she's talking to Palmer, he's talking about his work to her. It's like she's absorbing it. She's asking questions. He's not like, little lady, you can't do the math thing. You know, he can't. He's not saying that to her. He's involving her. And she's absorbing everything like it was an education.

B

As if on cue, a glorious opportunity arrived, One that was tailor made for Bertha Palmer. Chicago was selected over other cities to host the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It's a world's fair that was intended to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Chicago wanted to prove it was back, you know, that it was a, quote, real city. They wanted to put themselves on the same footing as Paris and London and New York. We are a global power.

A

Chicago was up against other cities in the United states. New York, St. Louis, Washington, D.C. all wanted to host this fair. There was a congressional committee put together to oversee this entire project. So that's who all these cities were presenting to. Like, why you should have the fair in my city, you know, it was infrastructure, it was transportation, all necessary. It was clean water. We have clean water for all these people. You know, that was Important, but like a lot of things in politics, it came down to money. At the very end, there was kind of a race to see which city could raise the most money to finance the fair. And at the last minute, Chicago led with a very large donation and got the opportunity to become the host city. Thank you, Congress.

B

When Congress approved the fairs charter for Chicago, women's groups lobbied hard for representation. Everyone pulled in whatever connections they had, and Congress responded by mandating that there be a board of lady managers. The planning committee, of course, was dominated by men, but they needed someone who to lead the board of lady managers. And that was a group that was going to be responsible for overseeing women's contributions to the fair. Literally, only one name came to the top. No one had any doubt as to who it should be. Bertha Palmer.

A

When they were building the fairground, most of it was in Jackson Park.

B

This was an enormous project. It took almost three years to build. It is 600 acres of new buildings, statues, 57 miles of roadway, three miles of waterways, the whole grand basin and lagoon system. Gardens, sculpture courts, foreign pavilions, state buildings. It ended up being larger than the footprint of modern day Disneyland in California. Although most of it you cannot see today, there are very, very few remnants of this exposition that still exist.

A

So still existing now is the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. The Griffin part is new to me, maybe to you. And also what we know as the Art Institute then it was called the World Congress auxiliary building. It was a convention space, essentially, not an exhibit space. It was off the fairgrounds. But the uniqueness of this building, it was built on landfill from the fire. They just took all the debris and put it on the beach, essentially creating a giant landfill. And then the city of Chicago, the entire coastline of Chicago, kept growing. And this using landfill to grow the city into the lake was not unique. Just to 1871 or years past from the fire, it was up until the 20th century. They were still extending via landfill. But that's the only two buildings that still exist from the 1893 World's Fair.

B

So it was time for Bertha and her committee to begin work. And the first thing they had to decide was what was the women's involvement going to look like? What was the structure? Bertha and those that thought like her demanded a separate women's building. But there was an opposing party within the women's movement. They were out to stop it from existing. Women themselves were divided over whether this kind of segregation of women into their own building was empowering, which is what Bertha thought, or marginalizing, which is what the opponents thought Bertha was like. Women's achievements are routinely overlooked in mixed exhibitions. So we need a separate building to make sure. Sure that we have visibility. You know, a women run building also is going to prove women's competence. We can have women architects, women designers, women creating the exhibits, women curators, and it'll create this kind of centralized, international showcase of products and processes, all run by women. Otherwise, we're going to be scattered all over the place. And then the opponent said, if you put us in a separate building, it's going to reinforce that we're secondary to men. You know, I don't want an annex.

A

Right.

B

I don't. I don't want to be a token here. I want full integration into science, into industry, into fine arts. Right. In particular, there was a group of professional, educated women led by a woman named Phoebe Cousins. And this group believed that women were equal to men, the ENT and were capable, fully capable of pursuing professional careers Whatever they chose to study. This group took as their inspiration Queen Isabella of Spain, who had made Columbus's voyage to the new world possible. And I don't remember the episode number, but we did cover her. Yes. Members of the association were referred to simply as Isabella, and they're the ones that wanted complete integration, like every building. Also a strong public suffragist position for the fair itself. They did not care about refinement. They did not care about appeasing the man managers or, in fact, society as a whole. And they thought that creation of a women's building allowed all the organizers to claim they were honoring women, you know, while simultaneously keeping them out of the way like little ladies.

A

Yeah, and when you start reading, the Isabellas also wanted a building, but not for exhibits. They wanted it for services, like apartments, a hotel, childcare services, medical services, not an exhibit building. And they were also fundraising for a giant statue of Queen Isabella for the fair. I mean, they were putting money into it, even though it wasn't approved yet.

B

Yet. Well, okay, let's talk about the statue for a second. So the group commissioned a statue of Queen Isabella from a sculptor named Harriet Hosmer, who was also a member of the Queen Isabella society. The head of the Isabellas was a woman named Phoebe Cousins, and she had been elected as the secretary of the board. And now we're understanding this from Bertha's perspective. Okay. On this episode, like we always do. And so From Bertha's perspective, Ms. Cousins and her followers obstructed progress, objected to everything, and made life so hard in the room and not Only that they did not keep it in the room. They kind of took the beef out to the public.

A

Yeah.

B

To the papers. That Bertha thought, you know what? I am not having this. I'm not. I'm not going to live this life. And she removed Phoebe Cousins completely, completely from the board of lady managers and replaced her. So Harriet Hosmer had completed her Isabella statue, but now the Isabella's, who, who suddenly had no access to the resources of the board or the fair in general, did not, after all, have the money to pay for it. I know. And Bertha Palmer offered to buy it for the. Outside of the women's building. But the animosity, it was just too strong. And even Ms. Hosmer is like, nope, you're not even buying this. Like, I would rather nobody buy it than you buy it. You know, it was really deep. She instead sold it to a woman we'll probably cover at one point, an inventor named Harriet Williams Russell Strong, who basically made it possible for us to have the Hoover Dam. By the way, she was a irrigation and water engineer. Yes, I know.

A

That's so cool. I love very cool jobs like that.

B

Yeah, well, she was another Isabella, I'm assuming, because Harriet Hosmer sold her the statue and it was at the World's Fair. But instead of being outside the women's building, it was placed outside the California building. And for something so big, that statue, believe it or not, even though it is giant, is currently regarded as a lost artwork, believe it or not, it traveled back to California and they were going to cast it in bronze because this was a. Like a plaster statue, and they were going to cast it in bronze and mount it in California. But the local Jewish community strongly protested. They reminded the city that Queen Isabella, pretty famous for the Spanish Inquisition, you know, which resulted in the exile or death of thousands of Jewish people. Not hilariously for me, they didn't really focus on the atrocities of Columbus.

A

I know. Oh, I know himself.

B

And maybe that comes later.

A

I know. I actually. I wonder if it wasn't widely known of the atrocities that he did. All they were saying was, you know, what we learned in grade school, Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas looking for a route to India, period, you know, and all the other things that happened, I think, came into the public consciousness well after the 1893 World's Fair.

B

Right. Well. But as a result of this controversy, no one wanted to spend the money to cast this statue in bronze. And so the plaster statue was likely completely destroyed to powder during the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

A

And Maybe, maybe, maybe as a slight concession to the Isabellas, I'm going to look at it that way because I guess there's probably another way to look at it. But ultimately, Bertha was able to petition Congress and they approved and minted a new coin specifically for the World's Fair with Queen Isabella on it, called the Isabella Quarter.

B

Isn't it legal tender? It's not just a commemorative coin, Right?

A

Right, yes, yes, correct.

B

But I wouldn't spend it because I think it is worth some money, especially if you're in Chicago, you might check your grandpa's coin jar. So back to Bertha and the women's building. Who, oh, who was going to be the one to design this building, this critically important building for the women of Chicago and ultimately the world?

A

There was held a competition across the United States to find a woman architect to design this building. Now that's great. The pool is actually very small. In 1893, there was only 22 of them across the United States and only 14 submitted drawings for this competition. The winner was a 22 year old recent MIT graduate from their architecture program named Sophia Hayden. And it was great that they held this competition focused on women. But women were not the ones that selected Sophia. It was men. So men were in charge of selection of the architect as well as paying them. And in this instance, she was paid $1,000 for her contribution of the design work of this building, which yay, that's great. Except when you look at the fact that men who designed similar buildings for this fair were paid $10,000 each for their designs. So 10 times what she was paid.

B

It was 80,000 square feet inside, about the size of an American football field, plus both end zones and the seats on the ends in both directions. Super big. Half of a Titanic, I guess, is another half of the capacity of the Titanic. It contained exhibition halls of all sizes. A library which. Susan has a fun fact about the books in this library.

A

You will read that there were 8,000 books written by women in this library, which there were. But this alone, there were 47 translations of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin into different languages. So that's just one book. So if there's other books in there that are popular, they're also translated into different languages. So it's one book with, well, 47 copies. So going towards that. But still impressive. Still impressive at 8,000, I think.

B

Well, there was also an assembly room with a stage offices and a hall of honor. There was in addition a model kitchen where demonstrations of cookery was held within the building. And the women's building had its own tea room.

A

Of course it did. Lately I've had a hard time when it comes to getting all my protein in every day and made harder by myself because I don't like going into the grocery store anymore. Now that we're empty nesters. A lot of the time I'm just shopping for myself. My husband doesn't want to eat this high protein, high vegetable foods that I do and it just takes a lot for me to get to the store and buy the items. So I'm going to fire up my Hungry Root subscription again.

B

You have heard me talk about how I have a day job and the history chicks job and and here's what I like about hungryroot. It handles the weekly grocery shopping I'm not focused on, particularly the my protein macro, but nevertheless hungryroot reaches in and learns my preferences and shops for me and suggests things that I might not have tried before that I end up loving.

A

And they have over a thousand grocery items. Smoothies and snacks and sweets and salad kits in addition to their ready to eat meals and meal kits. Hungryroot has all of that stuff. They even have supplements. I went on to fire up my hungryroot subscription and two things that just caught my eye right away were the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich and also Summer Seafood Roll. It's like a shrimp roll, but they use the right kind of bread. They use a brioche roll. Mm yep.

B

They hold all their food to high standards. They screen. This is important to me. They screen for 200 additives, including high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners and preservatives. Their meat and seafood has no hormones or antibiotics and they also offer organic and non GMO produce.

A

You're going to love Hungry Root as much as we do. For a limited time, get 40% off your first order, plus get a free item in every box for life.

B

Go to hungryroot.com chicks and use code chicks.

A

That's hungryroot.com chicks. Code chicks to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life.

B

Bertha worked with a Chicago art curator named Sarah Hallowell on both the art exhibits throughout the fair and the murals within the women's building. And apparently it was Bertha Palmer who chose the theme of Primitive Woman for the mural on one end of the building and Modern Woman on the other end. And our old friend Mary Cassatt, after some wrangling, was nominated to do the Modern Woman side. She got in a hole in the Ground and painted it. We talked about that painting. Her giant painting that is lost to history was rolled up and nobody knows where it is. Go listen to Mary Cassatt's episode for more on that. So it's probably in a broom cupboard or somebody's attic. Or the thought is that it might have been in Bertha Palmer's attic when her house was destroyed in 1950. We can't think about that. It's bumming us out.

A

What do you mean you can't think about it? You're still thinking about Carrie Nation's mirror.

B

Oh, no. It was a painting of a half naked lady that she put her hatchet through. Yeah, yeah, that's somewhere too. So look around if you see a big, suspiciously rolled up canvas. You never know, you may have discovered some art history.

A

Well, Edmonia Lewis's sculpture from this fish there, I believe. Right. Was discovered many, many years later. It had been spray painted in like a storage warehouse.

B

History's just full of misplaced objects. Witness the end of the Indiana Jones movie and that big warehouse. Although in the real world, it's probably like shelves in people's basements and the back rooms of thrift stores, etc. It's tantalizing fact of life. Right. So back to the fair. Bertha had a lot of good ideas, not only for the building, but for the experience of the women attending the fair.

A

One of them. And they did have to raise money for this, but they had another building built. It was for use as a women's hotel. If women came to the fair and they did not have their husbands with them or anybody else, they could stay in this hotel. It was a women's hotel, but attached to it also was a daycare center. So if families came to the fair, they could check their children into the daycare center and be well taken care of while the family went and rode the Ferris wheel without them. Also in this building was an exhibit that was an example of a kindergarten which was just starting to come to the United States. And it hadn't caught on quite yet. And it was a pet project of Bertha's. So she made sure that that was also in this separate women's building.

B

Back to the main event, the actual official women's building. What was in the building? The official catalog lists hundreds of exhibits. They divide it into different categories. There's fine arts. There's industrial arts, in which they include textiles and ceramics, which I would have thought ceramics might be in fine arts, but no domestic science innovations, literature and manuscripts. Educational displays from women's colleges. Statistics, charts, that kind of thing. Results of surveys they had done and scientific and technical inventions by women. And then there were international rooms that would show women's work from dozens of countries. And we're going to post a link to the complete PDF of the catalog of the Women's Building. It's very extensive.

A

It's like 150 pages of very small font of everything that was in there, just down to details of who contributed what item and what the item is. I, I, it's, it's fascinating. It's not like something you sit down and read like from COVID to cover.

B

Although I did find a couple of curiosities. Ms. Minnie Howell of Des Moines, Iowa, presented her extensive collection of slime molds if you want to know how deep we get into niche interests. Also flower bouquets made of the hair of the members of the ladies committee of the St. Louis World's Fair. Excellent, very specific. Our old friend Edmonia Lewis has statues represented. She's in this catalog. I know she was represented elsewhere in the Fine Arts Building, but she is in the catalog for the Women's Building, so maybe there was one of her works there too.

A

I had read that it was a statue of Phillis Wheatley.

B

Amazing.

A

Yes. Like I'm pulling this out of my, out of my head, but yeah, right, yeah, yeah. There is a statue that she made of Phillis Wheatley at this fair. I believe it was in the Women's Building.

B

And then under the name Cochrane, Mrs. J.G. it simply says the word dishwasher. That's literally all it says. Never knowing, of course, how much this invention would go on to help the world, world in general. And the fact that this machine was actually installed in most of the restaurants at the fair, behind the scenes, not on display. This machine, however, won awards. Yeah, so people knew, but in the catalog it just says dishwasher.

A

You know what else speaking there's art in this building. Queen Victoria contributed a painting.

B

Many of the items in this building have HRH and Princess and other titles before their names. As Bertha had traveled the world and canvassed her contacts for contributions to this project, her connections, of course, were necessarily those of the very highest caliber. You know, that was actually one of the criticisms people had of the Women's Building. Is that it? I mean, not only that it just was a white woman's endeavor, but it was more of a middle and upper class perspective. And a lot of the lower class, the working class women, didn't get their objects represented. I will tell you in this catalog, there Is a on loan from the Smithsonian exhibit that was in this building. And I am so sorry. I'm just telling you. Its name is called women in savagery. And it was a native American and polynesian women's exhibit. I am not happy about that. New York state had an exhibit of, quote, afro American women's work. After all of the talk about segregation of women's work into this building, Then you have an overarching segregation, and then you have, within that, further segregation within the women's building. So women's achievements were centralized in the women's building. However, across the whole fairgrounds, which should have pleased Isabella's, Women were represented in the other buildings as well. Women artists did show pieces in the fine arts building. There were women represented in the industry buildings, in the horticultural buildings, et cetera. In fact, in the decades leading up to the fair, I got this statistic from the national women's history museum. Women obtained 5,500 patents between 1865 and 1900.

A

Wow.

B

The era in which those sort of inventions might be shown at the fair, I mean, women were just actively patenting things, and those things were shown at the fair. That's a large pool of women inventors.

A

Yeah, I'm making a little heart with my hands, But I guess nobody can see it now.

B

As for the fair, the structure itself, I learned something on our recent trip to Chicago, and I'm so intrigued by this. And I wanted to talk about one group of women in particular. Once upon a time, before the fair was due to open, the artist in charge of the large majority of the statues, a Mr. Taft, the statues that were to be placed on top of the pediments and rooftops of all the major buildings. He was running into a time crunch as the deadline approached for these pieces to be completed and installed, and he was desperately flailing around for fellow sculptors to help him. Too busy. You know, you can't squeeze blood from a turnip or whatever that is. Like, whatever that saying is, like, there's nobody to be had. And he approached the board and said, look, these aren't going to be done Unless I have a large body of assistants and I can hire them. I know a great group of people, people that can help me, but they are all women. And the folklore goes that the board of directors said, we do not care if you hire white rabbits to help you as long as these statues are finished in time. Hooray. So this large group of young women sculptors began working for $168 a day, and they got $248 on Sundays. That's modern money. The white rabbits, which is one of those terms that sort of started out derisively, but they began to adopt for themselves. They started work. And what they did was artists around the country would send to Chicago these small model statues about a foot tall. And it was their job to turn these into full scale sculptures that could be seen from the ground on top of large fair buildings. And these were then installed on all the ornate buildings of the fair. These sculptures were made of something called staff, which is cement and natural fibers and plaster. And they worked out of a studio under the glass dome at the horticulture building. That's where they had the most open space. And other people involved with the fair, this is how it went. They would come there to eat their lunch and watch the spectacle of all these ladies rushing around. Because the time crunch was real, the pressure was real, and it was very entertaining. Training several of the white rabbits, actually, since they were so famous and obviously good at their jobs. I can't wait for you to see this picture, by the way, of all of them working on these large statues. That's so good. Anyway, they were asked or commissioned, they were paid to do figures for other parts of the fair, specifically lots of state buildings. In particular, I have got a picture of the goddess Pele, oh, 24ft tall at the time, the tallest sculpture ever made by a woman.

A

Nice.

B

There is one of these rabbits called Enid Yandel. And she was selected to make the figures that supported the roof garden of the women's building. She was specifically chosen for that also later on. If you have ever been to the Parthenon in Tennessee, I don't know if you've ever been. I have never been.

A

Have I been to tennis. I've been to Nashville. I think that's the only Tennessee.

B

Well, there's a replica of the Parthenon there. And there is a statue of Athena in there now. And that one is a modern version. And it was made by a male artist. But when it was first commissioned for the Tennessee anniversary celebration, this artist, Enid Yandel, made a 42 foot Athena to live inside of that Parthenon. Wait till you see that picture. The head is taller than the artist. And that unfortunately was made out of the same sort of material that the fair sculptures were made of. And it just didn't make it with the freezing and thawing cycles or whatever. But at least we have photography of her original. So some of these white rabbits went on to illustrious careers of their own. And we'll give you some links to their story. And I had never ever heard of them before I went to Chicago and went to the Chicago History Museum.

A

Oh, wasn't that a wonderful museum? A lot of these things that we're talking about. Beckett has put on our Pinterest board for this fair. She's been working on it for quite some time. We cannot get the rights to put things on our website necessarily. So they are all on the Pinterest boards. So just go check that out. We'll link you up in the show notes.

B

So Bertha, obviously powerhouse behind the scenes, but she was also comfortable in the public eye. She delivered speeches with the theme. She was reminding her audience that women were not just decorative participants in the world, but they were essential contributors to the progress of human society. I'm going to quote from one of her speeches. The theory which exists among the conservative people that the sphere of woman is her home. Home. That it is unfeminine, even monstrous for her to wish to take a place beside or to compete with men tells heavily against her because manufacturers and producers take advantage of it to disparage her work and obtain her services for a nominal price. We are forced to turn from the realm of fancy to meet and deal with existing facts. The absence of a just and general appreciation of the truth considering the status of women, women has caused us here to call special attention to it and to make a point of attempting to create, by means of the exposition, a well defined public sentiment in regard to women's rights and duties and the propriety of their becoming not only self supporting, but able to assist in maintaining their families. The sentimentalists again exclaim, would you have a woman step down from her pedestal in order to enter practical life? Life, yes, a thousand times yes. If we can really find, after a careful search, any women mounted on pedestals, we should ask them to step down in order they may meet and help to uplift their other sisters. Now I will tell you, this sounds like suffrage, doesn't it? And the suffrage movement had spent decades fighting for women to be included in national civic life. And this world's Fair was a global stage. And if women were going to demonstrate any power, artistic, intellectual, economic, political, whatever it was, this was the moment. This was the venue. And Bertha Palmer controlled the programming. And so when Susan B. Anthony, let's call her sba, as we did during her episode as well, and the National American Women's Suffrage association petitioned for a formal presence at the fair, Bertha took the meeting. And she listened. And she always listened. I mean, you know, Famously diplomatic. I'll listen to whatever, like. You may not like the answer, but I'll, you know. So she allowed suffrage exhibits. She allowed papers to be read, speeches to be given. She allowed SBA and other suffrage activists to be visible, but not central. This is not going to be all about you and this issue. She wanted to present American womanhood as unified, like, this is a dignified section of the population. We're above partisan conflict. Yeah. SBA wanted to make the vote unavoidable. They weren't adversaries. You mentioned this before that so many times. People have the same goal. Perhaps they have waypoints in the middle that they're trying to get to. They just defined progress differently. You know, it always seems like we run into this. We've got Ida B. Wells wanting to rush ahead and Mary Church Terrell wanting to take it slow. We've got Alice Paul wanting hunger strikes and violence and blow it all up, and Carrie Chapman Catt wanting to negotiate. And you know what? Now that I'm thinking about it, Bertha and SBA had more in common than I realized, because there was a period of time in both of these ladies lives where their organization fractured, like tempers flared and people freaked out and took sides, and it really derailed the whole concept of progress. We've talked about SBA's challenges during our coverage of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, so we'll link you up to that. But during the fair, Bertha also used her position to promote women's economic independence. She argued that women needed access to education and professional opportunities and financial autonomy. And her speeches that she gave were widely reprinted, even far beyond Chicago. And we'll link you up to some of those speeches. But nevertheless, Bertha always rejected being labeled as or mistaken for a suffragist.

A

Yeah, Bertha Palmer is of that class. We've talked about these women before. They do not believe that women needed to vote because their husbands were voting for them and they were doing exactly what the women would have voted for. So why do we need the vote? We'll just stay in our sphere and work from here, and our husbands will vote accordingly. But she just couldn't see, and these other women couldn't see that just because it worked for their societal group, that doesn't mean it worked for everyone's societal group. And I really think every time I'm reading about her denying being a suffragist and she doesn't want to be involved in that, it reminds me of women who said they didn't want to be called feminist because it had this connotation of this harsh, scratchy woman that they just didn't want to present, but they live their lives as feminists want them to. Bertha Palmer was doing exactly that. The stuff she was presenting, the program she was enacting, were helping women get towards a vote. She just wouldn't call herself that.

B

She also kind of saw herself in a, like a mediator role between women, as a general rule, and the male establishment, you know what I mean? So she wasn't willing to jeopardize what she saw as her. Her access, her influence by taking a public, possibly unpopular in her social class, political stance. Philanthropy and charity are going to do more to improve the world. Setting an example, being the moral compass for society. But you know what? Bertha spoke to everyone very warmly about SBA in public. You know, she praised her intellect and her perseverance as. As one exceptional individual person, not as a representative of a cause. And back at you. SBA couldn't help but admire Bertha's power, really. By the end of the exposition, SBA acknowledged in public that Bertha's work at the fair had done more for the cause of women's progress than, And I quote, 25 years of agitation. Nice. So they are nodding politely to each other. Yes. And tipping their hats. Yes. Now, this camaraderie, respectful, you know, understanding each other's strengths, did not extend to black women.

A

There were no people of color on any planning committee for this fair. The final participation of black people, their presence in the fair was either as a menial labor person or as an exhibit in the fair. And that would be a very stereotypical, very racist portrayal. People such as Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass protested, and they said, we need to be represented in this fair better and the best, and that's in quotes. The best that organizers could do was have a single day, August 25, called Colored American Day.

B

So Ida B. Wells arrived at the World's Fair fired up. You know, fired up. She was in the midst of her anti lynching crusade. She had been documenting racial violence. She'd been fighting for the political and. And physical survival of black Americans. And here she comes to the fair, this massive celebration of American progress, and it had no place for black women's voices. The only black woman a visitor would likely encounter, unless she went to the African Village Zoo exhibit, would be Aunt Jemima serving pancakes out of a big barrel. And everybody loved her. But that was not. That was not suitable. That was not suitable. Ida Wee Wells, along with Frederick Douglass and other activists, produced a pamphlet called the Reason why the Colored American is not in the World Columbian Exposition. And it was a direct challenge to the oh, oh, progress, unity, onward and upward story that Bertha and other organizers were telling themselves. This was in direct opposition to that. Do you want to hear the real story? So because the women's exhibits excluded her, Ida B. Wells distributed the pamphlet from the pavilion of the country of Haiti. Frederick Douglass had once been an envoy to Haiti and made that space available to her. And that was a decision made by the entire leadership of the fair, including Bertha, that they simply were not going to make space for black voices. They just weren't. Even Mary Church Terrell, who we've talked about, polished, diplomatic, respectable, like, she's the opposite of Idy B. Wells in temperament or in outlook, you know, like she's like. But we can get there in the end if we just keep talking. Maybe even closer to Bertha's worldview than Ida B. Wells. Didn't matter. Didn't matter. Bertha did not engage with Mary Terrell, did not reference the black women's club movement in America, didn't react to the pamphlet coming out of the pavilion at Haiti, did not really consider black women to be part of the, quote, American womanhood that she tried to showcase. I mean, she never referenced them. She had to be aware of the activism and the movement. She just simply chose not to incorporate it. We talked about Mary Church Terrell. This blatant discrimination she faced at the World's Fair proved to be a major turning point for Mary Church Terrell. It became very obvious that black women needed their own independent national network to advocate for racial and gender equality. And if you see a need, it's up to you to fill it if you can. And so the World's Fair and her exclusion from it led directly to Mary Church Terrell creating and founding the national association of Colored Women. And only three years later, she served as its first president. And their motto is lifting as we climb. So the horrible exclusion of black women ended up having, out of necessity, a beneficial outcome. But it didn't have to be that way.

A

No, no. And how much farther along could it have been if. If they had said, you're right, and given black women, you know, representation in the fair, Black people in general, imagine this.

B

We've talked about her enough that you all know how much firepower Bertha Palmer had should she choose to deploy it?

A

Yes.

B

And she chose not to deploy.

A

Wasn't just black people who were being left out of anything to do with this fair. It was people who had any color to their skin, including Native American tribes. There's a man named Simon Pokagan. He was the leader of the Pokagan band of the Potawatomi tribe. And he wrote in a magazine called the Red Man's Journal specifically about the fair. And this is just a little bit of what he wrote, quoting him. On behalf of my people, the American Indians, I hereby declare you the pale faced race that has usurped our lands and homes, that we have no spirit to celebrate with you. The great Columbus Fair now being held in this Chicago city, the wonder of the world. No sooner would we hold high joy days over the graves of our departed fathers than to celebrate our own funeral, the discovery of America. End quote, Drop mic.

B

The fair itself, let's go back to the fair itself was a spectacle unlike anything Americans had ever seen. Over the course of it being open, it had more than 27 million visitors. It was called the White City.

A

All the buildings were painted white so it would be glistening and look clean and modern. 27 million. At the time, that was almost half of the US population. Now, of course, all the visitors were not from the United States, but that's how many people filed through the World's

B

Fair in addition to the whole white city being lit with electric lights. Enough of a jazz hands phenomenon in its own. Had nothing else ever happened. The fair became a symbol of American ambition.

A

There were so many firsts introduced, and there usually is at a world fair. But this particular one, the visitors, all those 27 million people would have learned about the Ferris wheel. They would have learned about the automatic dishwasher, which of course we all know. Thank you, Elizabeth Cochran, inventor of it. They were introduced to Cracker Jacks, Juicy

B

Fruit Gum, Wrigley Field, anybody?

A

Yeah, that's right. Alternating current electrical systems. Both Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse were represented at the fair. They learned about the zipper. The zipper. It didn't come along until now. Cream of Wheat. You already mentioned Aunt Jemima. And there is a legend that Bertha is given credit for and that is the creation of a dessert. She was trying to put together a menu for lunchboxes that would be distributed in the women's pavilion. And she went to the chef at the Palmer House and she said, I need a dessert. Not a cookie, but something not messy. Maybe if it could be eaten with your hands by some people, that would be great. Something that had a shelf life. And so the chef went and invented a fudgy and dense chocolate cake covered with walnuts and an apricot glaze. A dessert that we now know as the Brownie yay. Invented in the Palmer House. And they take credit for it. And it may very well have been, that's got that story has the best legs. But there's also other versions that say that no, it was a housewife in Bangor, Maine that created it.

B

I want to give it to the Palmer House and Bertha Palmer.

A

I love that story.

B

I do too. And people often give this fair the credit for the ice cream cone. And I am playing the tiny, teeny, tiny, sad trombone at you. The ice cream cone theoretically came out of St. Louis World's Fair. So you could be forgiven for thinking, well it's Midwest and you know, yeah, we're good. That said, I will say the original rainbow cone. Speaking of ice cream cones, if you're in Chicago, hit one of those places up. That's a taste of my childhood. Also coming out of this is the whole concept of spray paint. To people's dismay. Well, a couple of years after the fair, Bertha facilitated Josephine Cochran to install the first commercial dishwasher. A machine that had debuted back in the fair in the restaurants like they weren't for sale. They were operating, cleaning all the dishes. Bertha facilitated the installation in the kitchens at the Palmer House Hotel, the first commercial dishwasher ever. The fair was a miracle. It shaped architecture, urban planning and consumer culture for decades and absolutely made the reputation of Chicago as a world class

A

city and Bertha Palmer as a world class organizer. I am seeing so many of my kids friends having babies right now and I also know that they're cat lovers. And I keep thinking the Whisker litter robot would be so handy for them. You know, there's so many things that you have to do as a new parent. Before you have the baby there's all that nesting and after you have the baby there's all that everything. And what a relief it would be to have the Whisker litter robot. It is the world's leading self cleaning litter box.

B

It automatically cycles after every time your cat or cats use it. So you are not yourself having to handle any cat waste or scoop daily at all. Plus being an advanced technological product, the Whisker app gives you you real time notifications on usage, your cat's weight, which I don't know. My cats are both very rotund to the point where my son walks in and says I have to put these cats on a regime

A

the big cat.

B

But yes, if I, if I would like to track that it's available to me. Or more importantly, it lets you know when your little robot needs attention, which is certainly not every day.

A

It's good for new parents, it's good for empty nesters. And in the middle I gave one of these to my 21 year old son. He has two cats. He loved this app and okay, he's a 21 year old guy but he showed it to me and it was very user friendly.

B

So I have two cats. They're fastidious when it comes to cleanliness, like many cats are. And they have stopped coming to tell me about the litter box.

A

How about that?

B

I like that they talked to me, but that wasn't the conversation I really liked to have. So now it handles it for me.

A

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B

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A

Bertha's big project ended at the six month mark of the 1893 World's Fair. When it closed, the fair glow in Chicago dimmed pretty quickly. The buildings had never been intended to be permanent structures. They were made and they were made safe, but they weren't made to be long lasting. There were a couple of fires that burned several of the buildings down, including the women's building.

B

After the fair, Bertha's attention turned increasingly toward art. She traveled back to her old stomping grounds of Europe, meeting with dealers and artists, and started buying Impressionist works. She was already buying contemporary French work with the help of a woman agent. And she was just doing it long before most American collectors got on board with the painters that we now love so much. Monet, renoir, Degas, Pissaro, etc. So by the 1890s, Bertha Palmer had built one of the largest private Impressionist collections in the United States. She influenced others in her social circle to buy them. She displayed her collection publicly. She loaned pieces to exhibitions, the Impressionist movement and what came out of it became one of the most beloved forms of artistic expression in the country. I think every single one of us has had something among mug a mouse share had a framed picture on the wall of your college dorm. Yes, and they were Bertha's purchases, made with her own eye and her own taste. So I will say none of her pieces made it into the World's Fair, though. No. Even though she had a sizable collection by the time of the fair, most of her paintings were by men, which wouldn't, of course, fit into the women's building. And then the conservative patriarchs of the Fine Arts Building did not really approve of the avant gardeness of the Impressionists.

A

I read somewhere that people were saying that Bertha was buying all these paintings as an investment. So she could just sell them for a profit. I'm not saying that she didn't sell paintings for a profit, But I do think she bought pieces that she herself liked. She had a whole room built at the castle just to house her paintings. It wasn't a gallery to show them. It was a gallery for her to enjoy them.

B

Them. I do have kind of a frowny face when I read that. That she bought them for investment purposes. And I think it might be both aesthetics and investments. I mean, like, you see something's going to be the wave of the future, and no one seems to know yet. So you get in on the ground floor, witness her family looking at the mud of Chicago.

A

Right, right.

B

You know, or Louisville, Kentucky, or whatever. So I don't think she saw them as purely monetary investments. She also loved their expression and their style. And I think she wouldn't have bought them if she didn't personally think they were something else. You know, our old friend Suzanne Valadon was still a model at this time. She was not an artist yet, but Bertha owned pieces in which Suzanne Valadon was the model. Very nice. Yes. Renoir's Dance at Bougival. That's famous. Famous and also in the Circus by Toulouse Latre Trek. And I was pleasantly and completely surprised. I turned a corner, and there in front of my face that I was familiar with from our coverage of Suzanne Valadon was the very first painting that Suzanne Valadon had ever posed for. Her very first one that she got hired by. Standing at the fountain and waiting for an artist to come by and choose her. It's called the Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Artist and Muses by the artist Puvy de Chavon. And I would have been excited to see it in that context, having talked about it and looked at it during our coverage of Suzanne Baladan. But to look at the card and realize that Bertha Palmer once bought this piece and had it in her house made it even more special to me.

A

When she went to buy these, it wasn't just like, you know, nowadays you go To a gallery? No, no. She's, like, going to their house.

B

House.

A

He went to Monet's house at Giverny. Hang out with him. Buy some of his art like you do.

B

Like we have.

A

I'm like, I, I.

B

But I didn't buy anything but a seed packet.

A

Oh, I, I bought a lot. It was a great place to buy gifts, Christmas gifts. It was great.

B

It is a very good gift.

A

It is.

B

I am going to venture to say that during Bertha's time, there was not a gift for it. Bertha's collection of impressionist works eventually grew to more than 90 pieces. And many of those you can now still see at the Art Institute of Chicago. They make up the majority of their impressionist holdings. The impressionist movement became beloved in America, and it was mostly due to birthday.

A

Bertha had helped form Chicago society. She had been accepted into society in Europe. But there's another society closer to home. That she was like, maybe these people will like me. They seem like my people. So she set her eye on Newport. Newport, Rhode Island. We have talked about this so many times, especially in the Gilded Age Heiresses episodes. This is where the cottages air quotes. These big mansions that they called cottages were owned by the very wealthy in the Gilded Age. So she went to Newport in the summer, which is the season, and she rented a house. Her first summer, she met a few people, but these are very cliquish. See Mrs. Asters, the 400, that's these people. So they're not really great on welcoming people in. And their idea of Chicago still is that it's a backwater, it's a muddy place. It's like, it's not our standard standards, dear. The first summer, she rented a cottage, a mansion for the summer, and she held the debutante ball of her beloved niece, Julia Grant. And there were quite a few people that were there, but she was not exactly welcomed into society. She rented for the next two summers, and each one there was minimal inclusion and minimal advances. But the third summer, the third summer, she began to invite her European friends, the Prince of Flanders, who would next be King Albert of Belgium, the Prince of Turin, which is in modern day Italy. Royalty was coming to her cottage. And nothing got the attention of aristocratic families from New York more than royalty. So she's starting to get noticed at this point. The parties surrounding their visits were pretty well attended by the elite of New York. And then, then came the fourth summer, late summer, 1899. Bertha's 50 years old. She held the wedding of her beloved niece, Julia Grant, to a prince, a Russian prince there.

B

I mean, there's nothing more that Newport salivates over than somebody with a title man.

A

This summer, she rented William Waldorf Astor family's cottage. So it was in prime position. It's right on the riverwalk. It's right where all the rest of the high ladies of society can see. So this big party is going on in her backyard. And she did invite the neighbors. Of course she did. But that really cemented her place in Newport society.

B

The next year, President William McKinley appointed Bertha Palmer as the only female member of the American committee that was going to represent this country at Paris's 1900 exhibition Universelle. Above wives of diplomats that were literally already on the site. Above people that were connected in other ways. There was great resentment in the land that, yet again, Bertha Palmer was gathering to herself the laurels and honors that might have gone to other people. She was so well regarded, however, by the organizers of the exhibition, that she received the French Legion of Honor. Yes.

A

Only the third woman to receive it behind Florence Nightingale and a really cool French artist that I hope we can cover real soon. Her name is Rosa Bonheur.

B

So there you go.

A

And I don't know how this went over, but at one of the events where you wear a Worth gown, Bertha showed up in a Worth gown with a giant cornstalk embroidered on the skirt.

B

I mean, it was.

A

It was artistic. It was all one color, you know, But a cornstalk, I mean, is that saying, this is where I'm from? You know, stick it in their face. I don't know. I don't know.

B

Or stick it up your. But the thing is, I mean, how Chaparelli of her. You know, the lobster dress. Yep, yep. So you know what? Worf knew what he was doing, too, and he would not have done that unless she had requested it. I don't think so. So. So I think it was definitely a message.

A

Yeah.

B

Like, I think the message was, how about it? That's what the message was. I am very, very sorry to tell you that shortly after she returned from the high honors in Paris, Mr. Palmer's help was failing. Potter Palmer died on May 4, 1902, leaving the bull bulk of his enormous estate to his wife.

A

In his obituary in the New York Times, this was the headline. Chicago millionaire unexpectedly passes away in his home. Immediate cause of death, heart failure. He made a fortune during the Civil War. That was the headline of his obituary.

B

So can we please tell you something funny about his will? And I and Susan sort of. Sort of differ. I know there's, like A right answer. We haven't dug in further, but either he was making a joke about this or it actually ended up in his will. But he once wanted to leave a bequest knowing his wife was significantly younger than him. He wanted to leave a separate bequest in his will for, quote, whoever marries her after I'm gone. Why is that, sir? Said the lawyer and Potter Palmer just said, because he's gonna need it. So I don't know if it's really there, but what I do know is that Mr. Palmer, I like him very much.

A

Me too. Me too. And I wonder if we would have liked him as much if he hadn't taken the doctor's advice and done those five years in Europe.

B

Right. And I don't know if Bertha Palmer would have married him had he not done that. I mean, it uncranked him significantly. Yeah, he. He started to realize, oh, I can be a human. Like I'm authorized to have many facets, you know. It was really good for him. I thought, well, so Bertha in her early widowhood bought a house in London and, and a place in Paris and spent the equivalent of today $4 million a season entertaining. While she was in London, she was close personal friends with the new king and Queen Edward, having replaced his mama Victoria only the year before. She counted many of the titled aristocracy up and down the continent as her close personal friends. So much so that the newspapers could not wait to connect her name to titled men all over the continent. But she never did get married again.

A

Her friendship with King Edward, remember we called him Birdie during, during Queen Victoria's episode. Oh, and Jenny Jerome Churchill's too. See, we've talked about him a lot. But she would play golf with him. She went to Ascot with him. That's how in she was. She was in his inner circle.

B

He loved American women, though. He loved their freedom, he loved their sass. He liked the fact that they hadn't grown up like worshiping at the altar of the royal family. It was know. And they were willing to give him a little like elbow type of thing. He was about that life. And he had been a prince in waiting for so long that he, unfortunately for his mama, developed a kind of a party prince reputation. You know, Bon ami, thy name is Edward, you know. And she fit right in to his friend group. Absolutely.

A

But you cannot live your entire life in the castles of Europe. You need to come home to your own castle in Chicago. So when Bertha came home to Chicago, it was another one of those times where she's like now What? I, I, I'm still young. I need to do something. I need to have a project. And so she followed the sun like a lot of northern people do, to Florida. She was looking for a less opulent life, or at least a less opulent place to go. And the town of sarasota, Florida, population 900. Salute. Do you get that reference?

B

I have no, I'm totally dating myself.

A

That's from Hee Haw. Whenever they mentioned the name of a town and it's and its population, everybody in the audience would go, salute.

B

Wow. I think I might be too young.

A

I know you are.

B

I watched Petticoat Junction reruns on Nickelodeon.

A

No, we're talking heah. It came on before Lawrence West Elk. It seems very public television.

B

Okay, Okay. So everybody that is a fan of Hee Haw assemble in the lounge and commiserate with Susan.

A

I was a very small child, I'm going to admit that, but I said this to my brother, who's also a very small child, as we are exactly the same age, and he remembered it, so,

B

so you remember that grandpapa, seeing Louisville, thought, hey, look, it's open season on development here. And then fast forward, Papa said, oh, look, Chicago, it's open season for development here. Well, guess what? Their eminent relative, Bertha Palmer, saw the environs of Sarasota, Florida, and said, hey, look, it's open season for development here. She bought tens of thousands of acres in and around Sarasota. Ultimately, she would buy 140,000 acres. That's no small potatoes. She wanted to develop this. And the first order of business was to figure out how to drain the land. You know, a large amount of it was mud and marsh. And her friends in Europe would have been quite astonished to see the drift tripping with jewels at the opera lady, the wearing $200,000 around her neck lady, dressed in simple linen clothes with boots on her feet and a big hat, tromping through the mud in a wilderness. They would be like, who, who is this? Where is my friend? But she made a point of learning from experts, you know, about the climate, about the plants, about the wildlife, about the, you know, the weather. People call her an autodidact. And she is like, she does learn a lot of things by herself, but she's also completely willing to consult experts to summon them, if you want to be truly honest, to summon the experts to her, to teach her about things. She had a vision of kind of a winter destination.

A

Of course, she was going to need to get all of those people from the north to come down to the south, they needed a method of transportation. One of the first things she did did is she donated land to a railroad company. So they would add a spur that went into Sarasota so her people could get there. Then she built some roads, and then she put in some water lines and started to clear land. Although she did leave as many trees as possible because she liked the shade. She realized, it's going to be hot here. We need some shade.

B

She started promoting the area to wealthy northerners, parceling out some of her land as gentlemen farm. You know, like, oh, are you tired of the rat race? Come down here and relax on your land with your animals and your plant life, you know, type of thing. It was very attractive.

A

And when they would come down to visit her, she would entertain them in her, what she called her beach cottage. There had been a house on one of the plots of land that she had refurbished and rehabbed and built upon. Ended up calling it the Oak. It was nowhere near as opulent as the castle, but it was a lovely house. And she would entertain in this beach cottage and bring out all that silver and bring out all the crystal and bring out the dresses so people would see, oh, this is just like my life up north, only much warmer.

B

And this has come to a lot of my friends, too. At a certain point, at a certain age, simplicity in daily life slowly became. Became almost more important to her than the elaborate trappings of her, you know, whole life. A grandchild meant more to her than the King of Belgium. A flower she had grown from seed meant more to her than a tiara type of thing. She had trappings which she would bring out from time to time. But largely she kept her Florida life a lot more simple, relatively simple.

A

Crystal and silver and gowns.

B

Right. That reminds me of Gertrude Bell traveling through the desert with her full china tea set. Yeah.

A

There was a quote I read, and I didn't write it down, so this is definitely paraphrased. What? But one of her sons said that, you know, she would just dress like a commoner during the day, but she always dressed right for dinner.

B

In addition to developing her real estate for residential and recreational use, she made a special study of all kinds of agriculture that would flourish in Florida. She researched citrus production. She researched ways to use the unused land under citrus trees to produce other crops. She took some practices for cattle ranching that were working well in Texas and moved those practices over into Florida. So she didn't invent any of these. She, in her research, found them, discovered them, brought people in that could help her implement them in Florida. And it really changed the agricultural production a lot. Like she left not only roads and street signs and anything, but a changed economy really.

A

And she had a cattle ranch. Like, it's one thing to grow, you know, oranges and grapefruits and celery. Celery was a big crop.

B

Celery was so expensive that it had its own. I actually have a celery, a crystal celery dish. It was so expensive back in the day that you used to make sure to put it in a vase. It's a. It's a celery vase. And you would put it in the middle of the table to be like, look what I can afford. It was a big deal to the point where my grandmother, who kind of came of age right out, you know, right about this time, they always served olives and celery and sometimes pickles in a little crystal dish. And that was like the height of pinky up refinement. My mother in law does that too.

A

They have to be on the table. Yeah, pickles like little gherkins, Black olives of celery and sometimes carrot sticks. Yep.

B

The relish tray came from this era.

A

The relish tray and the snowbirds.

B

That's true. I will say that. Where is the line. Where is the line of wealth where you are weird and you're eccentric? I don't know where that line is, but let me just tell you. We need to send you a picture of her. Her car. Her cockamamie 1907 custom Studebaker that was purple and pink with beveled glass and velvet. Light purple interior with crystal flower vases embedded in the dashboard. I am telling you what, that car is a beautiful. I would drive it around everywhere if I could. I mean, it's in a museum. Nobody can drive it. It's perfectly preserved, though. Somebody still has it. But like, can you. Can you imagine? No. I think back in our olden days, we were talking about, was it Dolly Madison that had the bright yellow carriage? She was trying to flee the British. And everybody's like, ma', am, that's right. You might need to incognito that carriage, like get another one. You knew whose car that was if you saw it any place. I love it so much, I can't wait to show you a picture of it.

A

Potter would have been so proud of her. She just absorbed all that business information that she picked up from him from her father 16 years after his death. So it's 1918. Sarasota is already a Destination, it's considered a resort area. People are building big houses and she's selling all that land to them. She's got commerce. She's making the money from that. So in 16 years after his death, she doubled the value of her estate. What she had received when Potter had died, she doubled it. It just blows my mind. Yeah, yeah.

B

And I would definitely say that her husband would be proud. But you know who was proud? Her papa, who was still alive until 1916. So Bertha continued to manage her investments. She maintained an extensive social network, was always learning, got new charitable causes to support. She was very, very, very busy. She had a very full life. But she was diagnosed with cancer, breast cancer, when she was 67 years old. She kept it largely to herself. She did not want to tell. She did not want anyone to tell her father.

A

She had a double mastectomy and she was able to hide things. The following spring after her double mastectomy, she had a cold and it developed into pneumonia. And on May 5, 1918, 68 year old Bertha Palmer died in her Florida home. Her body was returned to Chicago. She lay in state in the castle where people kept filing past to pay their respects to such a great lady. She was buried right next to her husband in Graceland Cemetery under this amazing canopy that she had designed. She began to think of it as soon as he had passed away. She wanted to come up with some type of physical memorial for him. And now it is also a physical memorial for her.

B

And while she was laying in state, the municipal flags all went to half mast at the order of the master mayor. Her sons handled her estate. And four years later, the Art Institute of Chicago was able to acquire most of her impressionist paintings. Here's the thing, when you see them on the wall, it will say, Potter Palmer Collection. No mention of Bertha Palmer. That's because it was the estate that gave them, and legalese meant it was the Potter Palmer estate. So Bertha was not listed as an individual. Don. So that's what you'll see on all the impressionist paintings. Potter Palmer collection. But you and I know, and Potter Palmer knew, and probably the Art Institute knows that it was Bertha Palmer who chose them, collected them, advocated for them. I don't think it's a dis. I guess I hate to use that word. It's. It's not an insult. And I don't think anyone has forgotten. They just, especially during the years that they acquired these pieces, have had a protocol you know, of. That's how you labeled things.

A

Right?

B

But anyway, Bertha's name Does not appear on any of the museum cards on the wall.

A

You know, when we went to Graceland Cemetery and we saw the Palmer mausoleum, it's open air, so it was an open air mausoleum. I'm not sure what you call it on the map. It talks about all the men that are buried there. And, like two women. One is a statue of a little girl that's supposed to be haunted. But in the Palmer write up, it just talks about Potter. Bertha was the one that designed that whole mausoleum. Bertha was the one that made sure that it was created, that their bodies were buried in these beautiful, intricate sarcophagi, I guess is the only word to call it that comes to mind. There's probably more technical one, but I don't know what it is right now. But I was just getting incensed because Bertha did it all and she's not even mentioned. Come on, Graceland. You have an amazing cemetery. We loved every moment we were there. Just fix the map.

B

There's also not on the map. Kate Warren, who we haven't covered yet, I know, was a vital member of the Pinkerton Agency during the time of Abraham Lincoln, and we accidentally came across her headstone. So I really do think, really do think a 2026 revision is necessary to the. To the map. Yes.

A

Yeah. In 1930, her younger son Potter sold the castle for 3 million. But within three years, the new owner realized that it was a money pit and sold it back to him for 2 million.

B

Oh, well, that's a way to make money.

A

I know, I know. He's got the. He's got the same Palmer touch. The house remained vacant until 1950 when it was stripped. The remaining artwork, about 80 pieces of art at that point. Point went to the Art Institute. It was demolished and replaced by a high rise apartment building.

B

Demolished maybe with Mary Cassatt's big mural in the attic. I don't know what. I hope not.

A

Could you just do it? Like rolling it up, putting it under your arm and.

B

No, no, it's way too big. I think it's 30ft long. I think it would be. No. So that's all I have for the life of Bertha Palmer. And I will say, say it was a full one. It was a full one. She did a lot of good. I mean, a lot of good. She also pulled her punches exactly at a time when she could have made even more of a difference to the African American community of America. I just really feel like an opportunity was missed there. I mean, she wouldn't even have to use her whole hand to push Things in a different direction. She might not have even had to touch it. Just use her fan and wave in that direction.

A

Yeah.

B

And society would have changed, but she chose not to deploy it.

A

Yeah. For somebody who her. Her husband, her father had spent their life doing things differently than was traditional. You don't build houses on bare land in Chicago. Oh, yes, you do. You don't build whole shopping areas. Oh, yes, you do. So she had a chance to not go with convention, and she did.

B

I know.

A

I don't want to leave it that way. She did so much and she was this huge personality that I think the people that. That were in her orbit were just delighted to have with them.

B

And her money and time and efforts pushed all of the Chicago reform movements into solvency. You know, she supported so many activists who, without her wealth and social capital, would not have been able to achieve all that they did in their own lives. So for that, we say thank you. And now it is time for media. And as usual, we will start with books. And most likely, as I page through my books that are all sitting on my lap, perched, most likely, we both used this book, Silhouette and The Life of Mrs. Potter Palmer by Ishabel Ross.

A

Yes, we did. It's an older book. I think it was published in 1960, but it had a lot of information. It was the only, like, pure biography of her I could find find. The other one that I used a lot was Suncoast Empire. Bertha Honore Palmer, Her Family and the Rise of Sarasota by Frank Castle. It's her life, but focuses on her work in Sarasota.

B

In my digging, I found the most fascinating book about the World's Fair. World's Fair. A woman journalist views Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition. And it is reprints of her articles along with photos of the things. Things that she talked about.

A

Nice. I have, I'm sure you do, too. Several books. Like I can almost say it's a collection of 1893 World's Fair books. Two that I used a lot in this one. One was the Fair Women, the Story of the Woman's Building. World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, by Jeanne Madeline Wyman. And the other one that I somehow found I loved is the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, a photographic record with text by Stanley Applebau.

B

And I liked Chicago Day at the World Columbian Exposition by G.L. dibwood and Joy V. Bliss. It is a collection of candid photography from the fair.

A

Many, many years ago, Dr. Amy Canfield sent me her dissertation entitled Discovering the Women's Performances at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. So thank you, Dr. Amy Canfield. I was able to use it quite a bit on this episode.

B

And in similar fashion, Hope L. Black submitted her master's thesis called Mounted on a Bertha Honore Palmer to the Department of Humanities at the University of South Florida. And we were able to use information from there as well.

A

We talked about links as we were talking. You know, we'll link that up. We'll link that up. So we will link that up in our show. Show notes. I don't want to go through the whole list.

B

I would like to point you to a website called Chicagy Chicago. And then L O G Y. There are things not only about Bertha Palmer, but about anything you would want to know about Chicago. It's there. And so definitely visit that website. Also, the Chicago History Museum has a glorious website, some of which, of course, refers to Bertha Palmer. The Palmer House, the World's Fair.

A

There is one documentary that I found. It's called Love under the Story of Bertha and Potter Palmer. It was produced by pbs. I rented it on Amazon for a couple bucks, but I think you could probably find it other places. It's about a half an hour. Obviously, you'll get to see more pictures than, you know, we can do on a podcast.

B

And sometimes you can get those kind of documentaries for free. If you have a library card and your library participates in hoopla, that is a place to check for any of those kind of materials.

A

I don't have anything else.

B

And in closing, how about a quote from a historian named Ernest Poole? Not only have the material exhibits drawn attention to the skill of women, but their interests, their capabilities, their needs and their hopes have been brought before the public and thoroughly discussed from every point of view during the Columbian Exposition. This was all due to Bertha Palmer, who was beautiful, dashing, quick and smart. And more than that, she was sure of herself and sure of her place in the world. Thanks for listening.

A

Bye.

B

If you liked what you heard today or learned a little something about a city you thought you knew, tell a few friends about us, especially if they live in Chicago. Please leave a review for us on Apple Podcast or on your favorite podcatcher today. In the intro music, I put in a couple of clips from waltzes, since Bertha Palmer was never allowed to waltz at her debut ball. And at the end, pardon the sound quality, a song called after the Ball by Charles Castle Harris, also a waltz. Incidentally, viola players like myself are not as fond of a waltz. As everyone else, because all you get to play during the whole song is is. I know, exciting. I guess you can think of other things the whole time you're playing this song. Anyway, this song after the Ball became the unofficial theme of the Columbian Exposition. The song at the time that stuck in everybody's head. It was later used in the musical Showboat. This that you'll hear is a recording from 1925 by the International Novelty Orchestra. I did actually find an original 1893 recording, but the pops and crackles are un overcomeable. So this is the oldest recording I could find that you will enjoy listening to. We will see you next time. After the ball is over, after the break of morn after the dancers leaving after the stars are gone Many a heart is age if you could reach them all Marry the hope that her vanish. Sam. This Father's Day when you ship UPS Air at the UPS store, your items

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