Union Stock Yards

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The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards, operated in the New City community area of Chicago, Illinois for 106 years,^[1] helping the city become known as "hog butcher to the world" and the center of the American meat packing industry for decades. From the Civil War until the 1920s and peaking in 1924, more meat was processed in Chicago than in any other place in the world.^[2] Designed by architects Burnham and Root and Octave Chanute, construction began in June 1865 with an opening on Christmas Day in 1865, The Yards closed at midnight on Friday, July 30, 1971 after several decades of decline during the decentralization of the meat packing industry. The Union Stock Yard Gate was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 24, 1972.^[3]

Contents 1 History 1.1 Effect on industry 1.2 Fire 2 Decline and current use 2.1 Gate 3 In popular culture 4 Bibliography 5 Notes 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] History

Before construction, tavern owners provided pastures and care for cattle herds waiting to be sold. With the spreading service of railroads, stock yards were created and around the city.^[4] In 1848, small stockyards were scattered throughout the city along various rail lines.^[5] There was a confluence of reason necessitating consolidation of the stockyards: westward expansion of railroads, causing great commercial growth in a Chicago that evolved into a major railroad center; the Mississippi River blockade during the Civil War that closed the north-south river trade route; the influx of meatpackers and livestock to Chicago.^[5] To consolidate operations, the Union Stock Yards were built on swampland south of the city. A consortium of 9 railroad companies acquired a 320-acre swampland area in southwest Chicago for $100,000 in 1864.^[6] The stockyards were connected to the city's main rail lines by 15 miles of track.^[6] Eventually, the 375 acre site had 2300 separate livestock pens in addition to hotels, saloons, restaurants, and offices for merchants and brokers.^[7] Led by Timothy Blackstone, a founder and the first president of the Union Stock Yards and Transit Company, "The Yards" experienced tremendous growth. Processing two million animals yearly by 1870, the number had risen to nine million by 1890. Between 1865 and 1900, approximately 400 million livestock met death in the confines of the Yards.^[8] By the turn of the century the stock yards employed 25,000 people and produced 82 percent of the domestic meat consumption.^[9] In 1921, the Stockyards employed 40,000 people.^[10] 2000 thousand of these worked directly for the Union Stock Yard & Transit Co. and the rest worked for companies such as meatpackers who had plants in the stockyards.^[8] By 1900, the 475 acre stockyard contained 50 miles of road, and had 130 miles of track along its perimeter.^[6] At its largest size of 475 acres, The Yards covered nearly a square mile of land, from Halsted to Ashland and 39th to 47th Streets.^[3][11]

At one time, 500,000 gallons a day of Chicago River water was pumped into the stock yards. So much stock yard waste drained into the South Fork of the river that it came to bear the name Bubbly Creek due to the gaseous products of decomposition.^[6] The creek bubbles to this day. When the City reversed the flow of the Chicago River in 1900, the intent was to prevent the Stockyards' waste products from flowing into Lake Michigan.^[12]

The meatpacking district was served between 1908 and 1957 by a short "L" line with several stops, devoted primarily to the daily transport of thousands of workers and even tourists to the site. The line was constructed when the City of Chicago forced the removal of surface trackage on 40th Street.^[13]

[edit] Effect on industry

The size and scale of the stockyards, along with technological advancements in railcar refrigeration, allowed for the creation of some of America's first truly global companies led by entrepreneurs such as Gustavus Franklin Swift and Philip Danforth Armour. The mechanized process with its killing wheel and conveyors helped inspire the automobile assembly line. In addition, hedging transactions by the stockyard companies played a key role in the establishment and growth of the Chicago-based commodity exchanges and futures markets.

Numerous meatpacking companies were concentrated near the yards, including Armour, Swift, Morris, and Hammond.^[9] Eventually, meatpacking byproduct manufacturing of leather, soap, fertilizer, glue, imitation ivory, gelatin, shoe polish, buttons, perfume, and violin strings prospered in the neighborhood.^[9]

[edit] Fire

The Chicago Union Stock Yards Fire started on December 22, 1910, destroying $400,000 of property and killing twenty-one firemen, including the Fire Marshal James J. Horan. Fifty engine companies and seven hook and ladder companies fought the fire and it was extinguished by Chief Seyferlich at on December 23rd, 1910.^[14] In 2004, a memorial to all Chicago firefighters who have died in the line of duty was erected at the location of the 1910 Stock Yards fire.

[edit] Decline and current use

The prosperity of the stockyards was due to both the concentration of railroads and the evolution of refrigerated railroad cars.^[15] Its decline was due to further advances in post-World War II transportation and distribution. Direct sales of livestock from breeders to packers facilitated by advancement in interstate trucking made it cheaper to slaughter animals where they were raised and excluded the intermediary stockyards.^[1][8] At first, the major meatpacking companies resisted change, but Swift and Armour both surrendered and vacated their plants in the Yards in the 1950s.^[8]

In 1971, the area bounded by Pershing, Ashland, Halsted, and 47th Street became The Stockyards Industrial Park. The neighborhood to the west and south of the industrial park is still known as Back of the Yards, and is still home to a thriving immigrant population.

[edit] Gate

Main article: Union Stock Yard Gate

A remnant of the Union Stock Yard Gate still arches over Exchange Ave., next to the firefighters' memorial, and can be seen by those driving along Halsted Street. This limestone gate, marking the entrance to the stockyards, survives as one of the few relics of Chicago's heritage of livestock and meatpacking. The steer head over the central arch is thought to represent "Sherman," a prize-winning bull named after John B. Sherman, a founder of the Union Stock Yard and Transit Company.^[3]

[edit] In popular culture

• The Yards were a major tourist stop, with visitors such as Rudyard Kipling, Paul Bourget and Sarah Bernhardt.
• In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle uncovering the horrid conditions in the stock yards at the turn of the Twentieth Century.
• The stockyards are referred to in Carl Sandburg's poem Chicago: "proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation."
• Frank Sinatra mentioned the yards in his 1964 song, "My Kind of Town."^[16]
• The "Stockyards" receive a mention in the opening chapter of Thomas Pynchon's novel "Against the Day".
• On Jan 9, 2007, a 3-alarm fire destroyed a large warehouse owned by the Rosebud Display and Packaging Company, on the north side of the Stockyards, less than a mile from the memorial. One firefighter suffered a twisted ankle while extinguishing the blaze.^[17]

[edit] Bibliography

• Anderson, John. "'Hog butcher for the world' opens shop." Chicago Tribune, 30 January 1997, Chicago ed.: sec. 2, p. 2.
• Barrett, James R. Work and . 3rd ed. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1982.
• Halpern, Rick. Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
• Hirsch, Susan, and Robert I. Goler. A City Comes of Age: Chicago in the 1890s. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1990.
• Holt, Glen E., and Dominic A. Pacyga. Chicago: A Historical Guide to the Neighborhoods: the Loop and South Side. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1979.
• Jablonsky, Thomas J. Pride in the Jungle: Community and Everyday Life in Back of the Yards Chicago. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
• Liste, J. G., and George Schoettle. Union Stockyards Fire Photo Album. CHS: 1934.
• Mahoney, Olivia. Go West! Chicago and American Expansion. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1999.
• Pacyga, Dominic. Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880-1922. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991.
• Pacyga, Dominic, and Ellen Skerrett. Chicago: City of Neighborhoods. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986.
• Parkhurst, William. History of the Yards, 1865-1953. Chicago, 1953.
• Rice, William. "City creates nation's livestock center." Chicago Tribune, 16 July 1997, Chicago ed.: sec. 7, p. 7b.
• Skaggs, Jimmy. Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the U.S. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1986.
• Slayton, Robert A. Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.
• Street, Paul. "Packinghouse Blues." Chicago History 18, no. 3 (1989): 68-85.^[18]
• Chicago (Ill.). Fire Dept. Report of the Fire Marshal. 1910. pp.23-24.

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Chicago Board of Trade
• Chicago Mercantile Exchange

[edit] External links

• Chicago Historical Society's "History Files"
• History of the Yards in A Biography of America
• Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 41.815722° -87.656565°
  • Street map from Google Maps or MapQuest
  • Satellite image from Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, or WikiMapia
  • Topographic map from TopoZone
  • Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA

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