Chicago a phoenix city risen from the ashes of its great fire; downtown business buildings two, three and four stories high, more of former than latter, few a little higher, elevators a rare luxury; across the river many one-story stores and shops with signs in large lettering, pioneer style, on their false fronts; streets paved with granite blocks echo to the rumble of iron-tired wheels and the clank of iron-shod hoofs; a continuous singing of steel car-cables on State Street and Wabash Avenue; horse-drawn cross-town cars thickly carpeted with straw in winter; outlying residential streets paved with cedar blocks; avenues boasting asphalt. Bonneted women with wasp waists, leg o’ mutton sleeves, bustles, their lifted, otherwise dust-collecting, skirts revealing high-buttoned shoes and gaily-striped stockings; men in brown derbies, short jackets, high-buttoned waist-coats, tight trousers without cuffs and, when pressed, without pleats; shirts with Piccadilly collars and double-ended cuffs of detachable variety (story told of how a famous author’s hero, scion of an old house, when traveling by train, saw a beautiful young lady, undoubtedly of aristocratic birth, possibly royal, and wanting to meet her, love at first sight, object matrimony, first retires, with true blue-blood gentility, to wash-room and reverses cuffs. Romance, incident ruthlessly deleted by publisher, proves a best seller). Black walnut furniture upholstered in hair-cloth, pride of many a Victorian parlor, is gradually being replaced by golden oak and ash; painters’ studios, especially portrait variety, are hung with oriental rugs and littered with oriental screens and pottery. High bicycles, the Columbia with its little wheel behind and the Star with the little wheel in front, soon to disappear, are still popular. Low wheels, called “safeties,” are beginning to appear, occasionally ridden by women wearing bloomers. Pneumatic tires unknown.
Recognized now as a period of over-ornamentation and bad taste, the Nineties were nevertheless years of leisurely contacts, kindly advice and an appreciative pat on the back by an employer, and certainly a friendly bohemianism seldom known in the rush and drive of today.