Levy Lecture Series: Chicago by Gaslight: A History of Chicago’s Netherworld with Rich Lindberg

Based on his 1994 book, “Chicago by Gaslight,” author Richard C. Lindberg guides us on a colorful and intriguing journey back in time to study the Windy City as it looked in the waning years of the late Gilded Age and at the dawn of the Progressive Era, 1870-1905. Through words and pictures, Rich presents both famous and forgotten events of Chicago in its formative years –- from the Chicago Fire to the gilded and glittering mansions of Prairie Avenue inhabited by such society mavens as Mr. and Mrs. Potter Palmer. He probes the back alleys of squalid Chicago slums and highlights a cadre of female reformers (Jane Addams, Lucy Flower, Ida Wells, Frances Willard and others) dedicated to improving living conditions amid a place and time awash in criminal activity, gambling, political corruption and labor foment, culminating in the Haymarket Riot and the 1894 Pullman Strike. Chicago, a city of contradictions, stood at the cusp of a new century with its citizens optimistically looking to the future with a sense of renewed hope that the 20th Century would become an age of miracles.