"Miss I Will"

There was a Ray Bradbury story I read years ago about how all the literary characters in novels end up living on Mars, but when the books they were in cease to be read, the characters fade from view leaving a hole in the community. I think that’s what happens when you can’t find something on Google. I've discovered one such case--search engines can’t cope with Miss I Will.

I learned about Miss I Will in the 1970s in the Eagle, a wonderful bar in Hyde Park. In the middle room, there were two large murals from the 1930s, facing each other across the room. On the south wall, was the 1930's skyline of New York, with Miss Liberty front and center. On the north wall, was the skyline of Chicago with Miss I Will, looking like a chorus girl from the Gold Diggers of 1933. Her marcelled hair was bottle blonde. She was smiling, close up, from somewhere out in the lake in front of the skyline of Chicago. I always liked the face-off.

Turns out, she was invented for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. My favorite defunct newspaper, the Inter Ocean, ran a contest for a cartoon symbol of Chicago. Three hundred people entered the contest, which was judged by the queen of Chicago, Bertha Honore Palmer, plus Thomas Nast, Harriet Monroe, and William French, Daniel Chester French’s brother who ran the nascent Art Institute. The winner was Charles Holloway. The runners up were apparently a cowgirl or a society matron near a Gothic cathedral who needed to pick up her floor. Back in the 1970s, I thought it was an eagle (or really a chicken) on her head, but it is, of course, a phoenix. D’oh

Some of the apparent entries were less than flattering, portraying Chicago chasing the dollar or being “Jeanne de Pork.” My favorite of the alternatives seems to be Fair manager Daniel Burnham wearing one of his skyscrapers on his head—Chicago as the Drum Major of Cities. His cuff says Pork.

Here is the winner, Miss I Will, in all her glory on Chicago Day, October 9, the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Miss I Will was resurrected for the second World’s Fair in 1933, the Century of Progress Fair. That’s obviously what the Eagle murals are commemorating, though where they commemorated her originally, I would like to know.

She was on a lot of the promotional material. I admit I prefer the Eagle version. This one seems to have been the one most used. She’s rather ominously crooking her finger at us in invitation, clearly not very happy about the state of things. The phoenix looks more like the NRA eagle than a friendly chicken. Maybe it’s the dispossessed Pottawatomie (wearing a Plains Indian headdress) behind her that’s making her uncomfortable. After all, the 1833 anniversary represents the Treaty of the Three Council Fires, which seized indigenous land rights so the Federal government could make money selling Illinois to real estate speculators.

Apparently Miss I Will stayed popular for a while. Here’s Miss Carlotta Lagoria, Chicago socialite, portraying Miss I Will at the “Night of Stars” benefit in 1938. I have no idea what is on her head. It looks like something out of Flash Gordon.

The formal motto of the city is City in the Garden, but “I Will” is not forgotten. Ellsworth Kelly created a statue named “I Will,” which stands where the fire finally burned out on the north side at Fullerton Avenue and Cannon Drive.

By the way, the Chicago Tribune also had a contest and that winner became the official Chicago Municipal Device: the Y symbol representing the three branches of the Chicago River. A fun scavenger hunt is spotting the Y on city property and even the neon sign of the Chicago Theater.