Chicago Cycling Club

At home in the Pepperland

Doing digital searches is such a wonderful gift to what I do, but it takes a lot of tweaking to find everything that’s out there. Last year I wrote about the Pepperland apartment building and the Rosalie Villas (link below). At the time I thought that the building was exploiting the prestige of the Rosalie Villas by calling itself the Rosalie Flats, but I was wrong. In pursuing more of an article about Rosalie Buckingham’s project, I stumbled into a very different story.

It was actually part of the land that Rosalie Buckingham bought to create her development. She sold the lot to a relative, who then built the multi-unit building, using the real estate firm that Rosalie was using, Chandler and Company.

People have noted that there’s a bit of a disjunct in the limestone decoration. It seems the building was indeed built in two sections. The first was the section by the tracks with the high turret and two east doors.

They were advertised as elegant, 7 room flats. With the Illinois Central Railroad still running at ground level, they gave views of the newly landscaped Jackson Park and the lake. The very large and very elegant South Park train station, running trains every 10 minutes to the Loop, was half a block away. The fast cable car system was just a step further north of that. The Rosalie project offered the clean air and calm of the far south and easy access to the center of everything Chicago.

The Rosalie Music Hall on the west corner of 57th and Rosalie Court (Harper Avenue) had fine grocery stores and a pharmacy on the first floor. The second floor had a large performance space, roller skating to music nightly, and a series of performances. The Cafe provided some of the best cuisine in Chicago. It was the perfect combination of park, clean air, the city, local services, and entertainment.

As a result, it attracted the attention of the Chicago Cycling Club, which saw the building as the perfect opportunity for a club house. According to the Inter Ocean, the Chicago Cycling Club was the “oldest, the largest, and the most powerful cycling organization in America,” founded in 1879. Their racing team was literally the “champion of America” in 1888 after a race in Buffalo. They had about 200 members.

The club took over the whole space accessible from the easternmost door. It’s not clear whether it had to be remodeled or was built from the first for them. The door led to a central staircase. On the first floor were a lounge, office, library, smoking room, and dining room. The second floor provided a billiard room, a card room, and business offices. West of the central stairs were two arched doorways into two large rooms that could be combined to form an even larger dance floor. The third floor held six bachelor apartments rented to members. The basement held a bowling alley, bicycle storage and repair rooms, and an apartment for the janitor.

Even the lower windows had views of the recently landscaped north end of Jackson Park. The third floor and turret provided sweeping views of the lake beyond.

It was such a popular move that their membership jumped by 200 when the announcement was made that they’d be right by Jackson Park with easy access to the boulevard system where they’d launch their group rides. The club apparently made its presence in the building known! The sign was on the wall facing east. The turret flew the club flag of a bicycle in blue and gold.

The Inter Ocean, Sunday September 22, 1889

The opening reception was held in January 1890. The central hall and stairwell were covered with the photos of champion members and winning races. The parlors were decorated with cut flowers and tropical plants. After the crowd of 400 invitees and their companions were shown around the new facilities, they exited under a canopy that led west 300 feet across Rosalie Court to the Rosalie Music Hall. The hall was decorated with more ferns and tropical plants. Blue and gold bunting, the club’s colors, draped the rafters, interspersed with bicycles with the spokes intertwined with blue and gold silk suspended from the iron girders. The orchestra played behind a blue and gold screen. The dance programs were printed with the club motto—Pedibus, curremus alatis (let us run with winged feet). The renowned Cafe of the Red Roses put on the banquet. Each table had a centerpiece of flowers and bicycles made out of macaroons.

The club loved its new house throughout 1890. It had almost weekly events of all kinds, even indoor baseball in the Music Hall. It was a great stopping off point after the huge (and scandalous) balls that the cyclists held in the Jackson Park Pavilion, which I documented when writing about the Iowa Building (link below). It held classes in riding for the ladies, vowing no one would be left out.

But their joy was short lived. The first ominous sign was a meeting in the Rosalie Music Hall that announced the plan to hold the 1893 World’s Fair in Jackson Park. Soon all the things that made the clubhouse so attractive vanished. The tracks were raised so their windows had no view. The Park and the pavilion were off limits for years with construction and the fair itself. Soon the rest of the Pepperland was built and the club moved out.

The scandalous sport of cycling (women in bloomers!) and the Jackson Park Pavilion:

My earlier look at the Pepperland: