January 10, 1904
Dear Gussie,
It had seemed such a delightful idea at the time. Bored with country life and eager for adventure, I had decided to take the train from Louisville and pay an unexpected visit to cousins Minna and Ada in Chicago.
As you know, no one in the family had seen them for a number of years, although their escapades have kept tongues wagging–their early marriages and divorces and their new careers on the stage. Not what their lawyer father had in mind for his girls! At least they spared the family embarrassment by changing their surname from Lester to Everleigh–a tribute to their grandmother, who signed her letters, “Everly yours.”
They traveled the country, writing home faithfully, until they finally settled in Chicago four years ago. Chicago! How I longed to see that great city. And so, after a particularly un-pleasant argument with my mother, I decided to pay the cousins a visit. How surprised they would be to see a familiar face from home! Little did I know the surprise they had in store for me.
When I stepped off the train in Chicago, I asked a porter for directions to Minna and Ada Everleigh’s house at 2131 S. Dearborn. The porter gave me a strange look and asked repeatedly if I was sure about the location.
As my carriage drove down Dearborn Street, I soon saw why. I spotted a number of men stumbling from the effects of drink. Some were accompanied by women who hung about them in a most improper manner. Loud piano music and raucous singing echoed from saloon after saloon. Women with painted faces shouted from the windows of hotels. “Welcome to the Levee!” said my driver with a leer. In Chicago, it seems, the most unsavory entertainments are concentrated in these few blocks south of the central business district.
“Ah, the Everleigh Club!” the driver said when I pointed out the number on a house. “Good place for you to work, my girl. Very hoity toity.” The realization sunk in: My dear cousins were not actresses, but madams! In their own brothel!
“It’s not at all what you think,” Minna said later as she handed me a cup of tea. She had recovered from the shock of seeing me on her doorstep and had insisted I join her in what she called the Rose Parlor. I admit to being apprehensive about entering such an establishment. However, the club’s decor was that of a respectable home. The wood-paneled front hall was lined with potted palms and marble statues. The parlor could have been that of a well-bred society lady: divans covered with plush pillows, elaborate Oriental carpets and paintings in gold frames.
Minna and Ada were not yet 30 years old. Minna, the youngest, was clearly the one in charge. Both of them had the gentle voices and elegant manners of Southern ladies. So how could they be in this horrible business?
Minna said, in her frank manner, that it wasn’t such a leap from making a living on the stage to making a living in the bedroom. They soon found that they could make far more money running the business than being one of the “workers.” She said they had started their business in Omaha during the Trans-Mississippi Exposition six years ago, using an inheritance from their father, and doubled their money in a year.
“Really, my dear, how else can a woman make her own money and control it?” asked Ada. “You can’t depend on a husband, we know that from experience.”
Far from being ashamed of their occupation, the sisters actively court attention. They place advertisements in booklets and programs that are distributed to out-of-town visitors. They ride through town in an elegant carriage, accompanied by their most lovely young employees. Minna told me she is even designing a booklet with photographs of the club that will be distributed throughout the country. “For visitors to Chicago,” she said, “there are two outstanding points of interest: the Union Stockyards and the Everleigh Club.”
Minna and Ada insisted on giving me a tour of the club, and I must say I was curious. They spared no expense to create rooms decorated in a variety of themes: the Moorish music room, the Italian-inspired Rose Parlor, a glittering ballroom, and the exotic Japanese Room filled with painted vases, murals of women wearing kimonos, and a raised throne covered with a yellow silk canopy. I gasped when I saw the Gold Room, with its gold-rimmed fish bowls, solid-gold cuspidors and–most impressive of all–a gold piano.
And the bedrooms? Those dens of sin were not so different from the rooms of Chicago’s most respectable citizens. They were furnished with sturdy wood cabinets, patterned carpets, silk drapes and brass beds tucked back in discreet alcoves. Paintings of beautiful women and statues from Greek mythology hinted at the rooms’ amorous purpose.
High prices ensure only the wealthiest clientele. According to Minna, “The Everleigh Club is not for the rough element, the clerk on a holiday or a man without a check book.” A bottle of wine there costs $12, and a lavish dinner $50, not including female companionship. “Prices for the women start at $10,” said Minna, “but anyone who spends less than $50 per visit is not welcomed back.”
My cousins give all their employees lessons in manners and proper deportment. These women may not be ladies, but they certainly act as if they are. “I tell them, ‘Be polite, and forget what you are here for,'” said Minna.
Small wonder, then, that the club attracts mostly rich businessmen and the sons of well-to-do families. Only two years ago, Minna told me, the brother of the king of Prussia made a midnight visit. During dinner, a young woman dancing on a table accidentally kicked off her shoe and spilled a glass of wine. A gallant gentleman drank the wine from her shoe, and soon the whole table was toasting the prince by drinking from young ladies’ shoes. Ada tells me that this sort of toast has since become quite the fashion, but I refuse to believe such an unsavory gesture will ever catch on.
I completed my tour with wide eyes and a conflicted heart. Despite Minna and Ada’s kindness to me, I knew I could not pass the night in such a house. They escorted me to their carriage and insisted that I take money to pay for a hotel room.
As we embraced and bid farewell, I found that I was filled not with contempt but pride at seeing my dear cousins living a life of luxury. Their dreams had led them in an unexpected direction, but they were successful and happy.
Your cousin, Elizabeth
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UPDATES AND DETAILS
The rest of the story
In order to put together this issue of the magazine, certain liberties had to be taken. A few of the photographs, for instance, are not precisely from 1904 but are of that era. The stories have been reconstructed from various sources, including histories, biographies and Tribune files.
The article about the Everleigh sisters (page 19), for example, is based principally on “Come into My Parlor: A Biography of the Aristocratic Everleigh Sisters of Chicago” (1936), whose author, Charles A. Washburn, interviewed the sisters.
