Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

(photos courtesy of the Charles W. Cushman Collection at Indiana University)

One of the most astounding photo collections on the web is the Charles W. Cushman Collection at Indiana University. Cushman, who died in 1969, was a traveling businessman who worked for a variety of companies in Chicago. He was not famous; he was probably unknown outside of friends, family and associates. Yet Cushman did one thing in life that has now given him a bit of notoriety nearly 40 years after his death: As he traveled the city--and the country and world, for that matter---he took his camera with him and took lots of photos.

What's so amazing is Cushman shot with color slides as early as the late 1930s and 1940s. His digitized archives reveal a Chicago normally rendered in the romantic tones of black-and-white. It is a city rediscovered.  The photo above, one of my favorites from the collection, shows a black family in May 1942 huddled on the porch of a ramshackle Second Empire house at 95th and State. The family--and you can't quite make them out--appear relaxed and comfortable in their poses, almost undercutting the squalid nature of the home in which they live.

 (Above) The castle-like home of Potter Palmer in 1944. The home looks abandoned here and by 1950 it would be demolished. Palmer's legacy in Chicago is unmistakable. His name graces the Palmer House hotel and his dry goods store later became Marshall Field's. And the uber-rich of gaslight-era Chicago lived on Prairie Avenue south of Loop until Palmer built this castle at 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive in 1882. After that the rich relocated to that area, creating what became the Gold Coast. Those towers, by the way, were 80ft high.

(Above) St. Xavier Academy, a Catholic girl's school at 29th and Wabash, photographed by Cushman in July, 1946. The school closed in the 1950s, and was later demolished. My Chicago Archdiocese readers: help me out with this one...I think this school ultimately split up when this campus was closed and one branch of St. Xavier became Mother McAuley HS?

(Above) Here, in September 1948, Cushman photographed the then new State Street bridge over the Chicago River. Look at how empty the surroundings are as compared to today! Wrigley Building stands prominently with the Tribune Tower hiding behind the clocktower while the Medinah Building sits to the left.

And here: a nightmarish photo--an image almost Dali-like---from January 1949 showing the aftermath of a fire at 46th and Paulina:

And finally: Cushman spent a lot of time photographing Jackson Park and Promontory Point in Hyde Park. He also dug taking pictures of bathing beauties who frequented the beachfront there. Below is a "a brunette and a tanned blonde" at Promontory Point in July, 1941:

And then there was Annette from June 1942, described by Cushman as "an athletic girl with a generous bosom":

 And this heartbreaker---in tennis shoes!--Maria Grygier, from September 1949

Check out the rest of the vast Cushman archive and read the man's story here.