John Peter Altgeld

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

20th Governor of Illinois
John Peter Altgeld

In office 1893 – 1897
Preceded by	Joseph W. Fifer
Succeeded by	John R. Tanner

Born	December 30, 1847 Westerwald, Germany
Died	March 12, 1902 Joliet, Illinois
Political party	Democratic

John Peter Altgeld (December 30, 1847 - March 12, 1902) was the governor of the U.S. state of Illinois from 1893 until 1897. He was the first Democratic governor of that state since the 1850s. A leading figure of the Progressive Era movement, Altgeld improved workplace safety and child labor laws, pardoned three of the men convicted of the Haymarket Riot, and, for a time, resisted calls to break up the Pullman strike with force.

1 Early years
2 Political career
- 2.1 Labor issues
3 Final years
4 Legacy
5 Views and Influences on Architecture
6 References

Altgeld, the son of John P. and Mary Altgeld, was born in Selters (Westerwald, Germany). He came to America early in life with his father's family, who settled on a farm near Mansfield, Ohio.

He left home at age 16 to join the Union Army (lying about his age), where he fought in Virginia with an ill-fated regiment and nearly died of fever. He then worked on his father's farm, studied in the library of a neighbor and at a private school in Lexington, Ohio, and for two years taught school.

After a brief stint in an Ohio seminary, he walked to Missouri and studied to become a lawyer while working on itinerant railroad construction crews. He was elected district attorney of Andrew County, Missouri, and a year later resigned and moved to Chicago, where he founded a prosperous law firm that soon employed such rising stars as Clarence Darrow.

He also became wealthy from a series of savvy real estate dealings and development projects, most notably the Unity Building (1891), the 16-story office building that was at that time Chicago's tallest building. In January of 1890, Altgeld bought a lot at what is now 127 North Dearborn Street in downtown Chicago, and he established the Unity Company to build and manage the future Unity Building. He indiscriminately contributed his own fortune toward the endeavor, and for a while the construction was moving more quickly than expected. However, this led to a $100,000 mistake and much of the framework of the building had to be rebuilt. Altgeld also made an error by trying to borrow $400,000 from John R. Walsh, president of the Jennings Trust Company and of the Chicago National Bank. Technicalities in the contract caused many problems for Altgeld. Eventually a new contract was signed, but Altgeld was only able to borrow $300,000 from Walsh. He ended up raising the rest of the money himself, and the construction of the Unity Building was completed. In 1893, he declared that the Unity Building had given him the most personal satisfaction of all his achievements.

He was married to Emma Ford, the daughter of John Ford and Ruth Smith, in 1877 in Richland County, Ohio.

Altgeld ran for Congress in Illinois's Fourth Congressional District in 1884. Although this district was heavily Republican, Altgeld garnered 45.5 percent of the vote in his race against incumbent George Adams, a better showing than well-known Democrat Lambert Tree had made two years earlier. As a Republican leader recalled, "He (Altgeld) was not elected, but our executive committee was pretty badly frightened by the strong canvass he made." He was elected to a judgeship in 1886, and served on the bench until 1891.

He was drafted by the Democrats to run for governor, and narrowly defeated incumbent Joseph W. Fifer. He suffered a nervous breakdown shortly after his victory, and nearly died of a concomitant fever. He managed to appear at his inauguration, but was only able to deliver a brief portion of his speech. Although the General Assembly hall was so warm as to cause several men to faint, Altgeld, clad in a heavy topcoat, was pale and visibly shivering. The clerk of the Assembly delivered the remainder of his speech.

As governor, Altgeld spearheaded the nation's most stringent child labor and workplace safety laws, appointed women to important positions in the state government, and vastly increased state funding for education.

Historically, Altgeld is remembered chiefly for pardoning the three surviving men convicted in the 1886 Haymarket bombing (four others had already been executed, one committed suicide in prison). After reviewing their cases, he concluded, as have subsequent scholars, that there had been a serious miscarriage of justice in their prosecutions. John F. Kennedy highlighted Altgeld's pardons in his acclaimed book, Profiles in Courage (as did an episode of the 1965 NBC television series based on the book).

In 1894, the Pullman Rail Strike, led by Eugene V. Debs, flared into riots, sabotage, and crucially, disruption of U.S. Mail deliveries, a Federal concern. Altgeld, however, refused to authorize President Grover Cleveland to send in Federal troops to quell the disturbances. But on July 4, 1894, Cleveland went ahead and sent several thousand troops to Chicago without Altgeld's approval, an action later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Altgeld's opposition was seen as a highly unusual stance for a state governor at that time.^[1]

The Pullman incident and the Haymarket pardons were used against Altgeld by his political enemies, conservatives and industrialists, and after one of the greatest firestorms of negative press ever encountered by an American politician, he was defeated for reelection in 1896 by John R. Tanner.

Altgeld did not go down without a fight, however. He was instrumental in driving President Cleveland from the national Democratic ticket, and worked vigorously for Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan during the 1896 presidential election campaign. Typical was the reaction of Harper's Weekly, which, in October 1896, endorsed Republican candidate William McKinley for fear that Bryan would be a puppet of Altgeld, whom it referred to as "the ambitious and unscrupulous Illinois communist". Both Altgeld and Bryan lost in Illinois, although Altgeld outpolled Bryan by 10,000 votes. Altgeld was popular enough in the Democratic party that, if he had been a native-born citizen, it is possible that he could have won the presidential nomination himself.

Altgeld ended his political career with a run for mayor of Chicago as the candidate of the Municipal Ownership Party in 1899. Although an early favorite to win, he finished a humiliating third, garnering only 15.56 percent of the vote.

Sickly since his brush with death in the Civil War, Altgeld had suffered from locomotor ataxia while governor, impairing his ability to walk. He lost all of his property except his heavily mortgaged personal residence, and only the intervention of his friend and former protégé, Clarence Darrow, saved him from complete financial ruin. Altgeld was working as a lawyer in Darrow's law firm when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while delivering a speech on behalf of the Boers in Joliet, Illinois in March 1902. He was 54 years old when he died. Thousands filed past his body as it lay in state in the lobby of the Chicago Public Library, and he was eulogized by Darrow and by Hull House founder Jane Addams. Altgeld is buried in Uptown, Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.

Quotes on Altgeld's headstone in Graceland Cemetery

Altgeld was beautifully memorialized in the Vachel Lindsay poem "The Eagle That Is Forgotten."
A biography was published in 1938, "Eagle forgotten"; the life of John Peter Altgeld, by Harry Barnard, published by Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, Indiana (and reprinted in 1973, ISBN-13: 978-0882861005).
The statue of Altgeld in Chicago's Lincoln Park was created by Gutzon Borglum, the carver of Mt. Rushmore.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign dedicated Altgeld Hall, built in 1897 [1]. It is one of the oldest buildings on the campus.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale dedicated Altgeld Hall in 1896. It is the second oldest building on campus.
Northern Illinois University dedicated Altgeld Hall in 1895 and re-dedicated the hall in 2005 after multi-million dollar renovations.

This section's length may adversely affect readability.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page and help summarize or split the content into subarticles of an article series.

During his administration, Altgeld expressed certain opinions on how buildings should be erected in the state of Illinois. In his second biennial message to the state legislature, he discussed how buildings were being constructed without consideration for their outward appearance. He stated that it was time for buildings to become more aesthetically pleasing in addition to being functional, and he suggested the Tudor-Gothic style as the most inexpensive way to do this. Consequently, several of the state universities in Illinois erected buildings which resembled castles in his honor. Supposedly these buildings have aligned corridors and rooms so that they can all be “put together” to create one large building, but there is no evidence to support this rumor.

Built between 1895 and 1899, Altgeld Hall was originally called the "Castle on the Hill." Northern began as a teachers' college and originally was named Dekalb, and then the Northern Illinois State Normal School. The building architect was Charles E. Brush of Chicago. The general contractor was William J. McAlpine. Construction started on September 17, 1895 and was completed on September 22, 1899 at a cost of $230,000. On October 21, 1963 the Administrative Building as it was known, was changed to Altgeld Hall in honor of the late Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, who backed and signed the legislation creating NIU. It was built in Tudor Gothic or English-castle architecture because Governor Altgeld had an eye for architecture and wanted a stately building to unify the state normal schools. The building is among the most recognizable on the respective campus. This is a building that was meant to stand alone, which was a contrast to most college buildings of the time.

When Altgeld Hall first opened, it housed the entire university. It was classroom, boardroom, library, gymnasium, administrative office building, and lecture hall. It housed chemical and physical laboratories, executive offices, a 1,200 seat auditorium , biology labs, a study hall, a museum, classrooms, a manual training shop, an independent water system, and finally a "dynamo" for light and power.

The building also housed NIU’s original library . With NIU’s second library almost complete in Swen Parson Hall in 1952, ideas were being passed around among the administrators on how to move all of the books because there was no money left in the budget to pay to have them moved. President Leslie A. Holmes, the President's Panel, the Student Affairs Committee, and the Administrative Council made the final decision to have "Library Move Day" be a campus event. Holmes sent a memo out to faculty indicating they were to take roll in their classes and then lead the class over to old library in Altgeld and devote all class period to moving books to the new library in Swen Parson. The members of the Dames’ Club (now the University Women's Club) served refreshments for the book movers.

Altgeld Hall underwent a $24 million renovation project which began in 1999 and ended with the rededication on October 7, 2004. The Altgeld restoration was undertaken to rescue the university’s landmark structure, which was badly deteriorated. The interior of the building was remodeled several times over the years, but major structural problems went largely unaddressed. By the 1980s, the building suffered from water seepage, cracked plaster and badly outdated electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems. The newly restored building is a point of pride on campus, both for its beauty and the sense of history it affords, according to NIU President John Peters. “The restoration of Altgeld Hall was an important step for NIU. It is a physical connection with our very roots as a university and we are proud to see the project recognized by the construction industry.” said Peters. “Altgeld Hall is not a museum, but a living, working public space where the roots of American higher education are still very much in view.”

Currently, Altgeld Hall houses the Office of the President, Academic and Student Affairs, Finance and Facilities, University Advancement & NIU Foundation, University Legal Services, University Council, Community and External Affairs, the NIU Art Museum, the Instructional Technology Teaching Laboratory, conference rooms, and an auditorium with seating capacity for 500.

A time capsule was buried under the front arches on NIU's 75th Anniversary in 1974. It will be opened on the 150th anniversary in 2049.

On the campus of Illinois State University, Governor John Peter Altgeld ordered the construction of a castle-like building. This building, now known as Cook Hall, was once known as “Altgeld’s Folly.” This is because when the original plans were drawn up for the construction of the building, Governor Altgeld rejected them because he wanted a building that looked more like German castles along the Rhine river. In 1898 the building was completed by local architects, Miller & Fisher, who took some creative liberties in the castle’s construction. Though the building contains turret styles with towers and battlement like Governor Altgeld wanted, the architects also added their own flair by using Bedford limestone.

In the design for the building, it was made to be fireproof, which is why the University decided to move the library into it. The building was also originally used as a gymnasium and it was stocked with all the newest exercise equipment. It had rope ladders, rings, slippery poles, parallel bars, and weights. There were also plans to add a bowling alley and swimming pool, but these plans were eventually abandoned.

After being a gymnasium for so long, the building eventually came to also house the University radio station, WGLT. More recently, though, Cook Hall has been remodeled to become the School of Music building. The building holds practice rooms, rehearsal halls, and many classrooms. Cook Hall is the only building on the Illinois State University campus that is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana is home to a castle-style building constructed under the order of Governor John Peter Altgeld. It was completed in 1897 by the architects Nathan Clifford Ricker and James White.

Like the building on Illinois State University’s campus, the Governor wished it to be built in a Tudor-Gothic style, but due to outside pressure it was given a more Richardsonian Romanesque style. The Board of Trustees initially adopted the classical design by prominent Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. Altgeld's opposition to the classical design ultimately caused Burnham's withdrawal from the project.

Since its construction, Altgeld’s building has undergone many names and purposes. Governor Altgeld has a huge interest in education and believed that the campus should have a library, so the building was originally used for this purpose. At the time of its construction the building became know as simply the University Library. In 1927, though, the Law Department decided it needed a new place on campus and it moved into University Library, renaming the building “Law Building.” In 1940, the Law Building was renamed in honor if its creator, and was hereafter called Altgeld Hall. Eventually the Law Building was yet again converted into a new purpose, housing the Mathematics Department while the Law Department received a new building. Though the Mathematics Department and the Mathematics Library reside in this building, one can still see the title “Law Building” engraved on the North entrance.

Old Main (formally named the Livingston C. Lord after EIU’s first president), another of the five "castles" Altgeld influenced built in the 1890s at the major Illinois state colleges, was completed in 1899. Old Main was built with Indiana limestone with a Gothic revival style with turrets, towers, and battlements. This distinctive outline is the official symbol of the school. EIU and Illinois State are the only schools where the "castle" is not named after Altgeld.

Altgeld Hall, built in 1896 at the cost of $40,000, is the oldest building on SIUC’s campus. It originally housed the library and laboratories for the departments of physics, chemistry and biological science, and a gymnasium. Following a major remodeling project in 1958, Altgeld became the home to the School of Music, like at ISU. It is currently going under renovation, to preserve the building from the weather damage it has received.