Author: Jonathan Turner Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1626199094 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
"German immigrants created leafy beer gardens here nearly two centuries ago, establishing Bucktown as the heart of entertainment in downtown Davenport for generations. In 1916, the founding of the Tri-City Symphony Orchestra at the Burtis Opera House embodied the neighborhood reputation for high culture. The numerous saloons and theaters, as well as the forty-two documented brothels that flourished within two blocks, lent a bawdy side to the good times. Varied industries thrived through World War II, and downtown bustled with shoppers visiting department stores like Petersen . Later, the neighborhood struggled and declined as a farming crisis hit the region hard. With revitalized landmarks like the magnificent Hotel Blackhawk and the historic Redstone Building, the community is growing more vibrant as a place to live, work and play. Author Jonathan Turner explores this dynamic history and transformation."--Publisher description.
Author: Jonathan Turner Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1625854404 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
German immigrants created leafy beer gardens here nearly two centuries ago, establishing Bucktown as the heart of entertainment in downtown Davenport for generations. In 1916, the founding of the Tri-City Symphony Orchestra at the Burtis Opera House embodied the neighborhood's reputation for high culture. The numerous saloons and theaters, as well as the forty-two documented brothels that flourished within two blocks, lent a bawdy side to the good times. Varied industries thrived through World War II, and downtown bustled with shoppers visiting department stores like Petersen's. Later, the neighborhood struggled and declined as a farming crisis hit the region hard. With revitalized landmarks like the magnificent Hotel Blackhawk and the historic Redstone Building, the community is growing more vibrant as a place to live, work and play. Author Jonathan Turner explores this dynamic history and transformation.
Author: Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1467141062 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 112
Book Description
Divided by state lines and the Mississippi River, the Quad Cities share a common haunted heritage. If anything, the seam that runs through the region is especially rife with spirits, from the Black Angel of Moline's Riverside Cemetery to the spectral Confederate POWs of Arsenal Island. Of course, the city centers have their own illustrious supernatural residents--the Hanging Ghost occupies Davenport's City Hall, while the Phantom Washwoman wanders Bettendorf's Central Avenue. At Igor's Bistro in Rock Island, every day is Halloween. Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin hunt down the haunted lore of this vibrant midwestern community.
Author: Marcia Noe Publisher: Indiana University Press ISBN: 0253061849 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
In the early 1900s, three small-town midwestern playwrights helped shepherd American theatre into the modern era. Together, they created the renowned Provincetown Players collective, which not only launched many careers but also had the power to affect US social, cultural, and political beliefs. The philosophical and political orientations of Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell generated a theatre practice marked by experimentalism, collaboration, leftist cultural critique, rebellion, liberation, and community engagement. In Three Midwestern Playwrights, Marcia Noe situates the origin of the Provincetown aesthetic in Davenport, Iowa, a Mississippi River town. All three playwrights recognized that radical politics sometimes begat radical chic, and several of their plays satirize the faddish elements of the progressive political, social, and cultural movements they were active in. Three Midwestern Playwrights brings the players to life and deftly illustrates how Dell, Cook, and Glaspell joined early 20th-century midwestern radicalism with East Coast avant-garde drama, resulting in a fresh and energetic contribution to American theatre.
Author: Jeffery Kennedy Publisher: University of Alabama Press ISBN: 0817321403 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 641
Book Description
A comprehensive history of the Provincetown Players and their influence on modern American theatre The Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theatre, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance unlike anything that characterized the commercial theatre of the early twentieth century. In Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players, Jeffery Kennedy gives readers the unabridged story in a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative that sheds new light on the history of the Provincetown Players. This study draws on many new sources that have only become available in the last three decades; this new material modifies, refutes, and enhances many aspects of previous studies. At the center of the study is an extensive account of the career of George Cram Cook, the Players’ leader and artistic conscience, as well as one of the most significant facilitators of modernist writing in early twentieth-century American literature and theatre. It traces Cook’s mission of “cultural patriotism,” which drove him toward creating a uniquely American identity in theatre. Kennedy also focuses on the group of friends he calls the “Regulars,” perhaps the most radical collection of minds in America at the time; they encouraged Cook to launch the Players in Provincetown in the summer of 1915 and instigated the move to New York City in fall 1916. Kennedy has paid particular attention to the many legends connected to the group (such as the “discovery” of Eugene O’Neill), and also adds to the biographical record of the Players’ forty-seven playwrights, including Susan Glaspell, Neith Boyce, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Floyd Dell, Rita Wellman, Mike Gold, Djuna Barnes, and John Reed. Kennedy also examines other fascinating artistic, literary, and historical personalities who crossed the Players’ paths, including Emma Goldman, Charles Demuth, Berenice Abbott, Sophie Treadwell, Theodore Dreiser, Claudette Colbert, and Charlie Chaplin. Kennedy highlights the revolutionary nature of those living in bohemian Greenwich Village who were at the heart of the Players and the America they were responding to in their plays.
Author: Kimberly Harper Publisher: University of Arkansas Press ISBN: 1610758099 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Men of No Reputation is the first account to explore the life of Robert Boatright, one of Middle America’s most gifted, but forgotten, confidence men. Boatright’s story provides a rare window into the secret world of Missouri’s criminal past, which influenced the methods of confidence men across the country. Boatright took the preexisting big-store confidence scheme and perfected it. With the assistance of a talented coterie of confederates known as the Buckfoot Gang, this “dean of modern confidence men” fleeced the gentry of the Midwest on fixed athletic contests in the turn-of-the-century Ozarks. Working in concert with a local bank and an influential Democratic boss, Boatright seemed untouchable. A series of missteps, however, led to a string of court cases across the country that brought his criminal enterprise to an end. And yet, the con continued. Boatright’s successor, John C. Mabray, and his cronies, many of whom had been in the Buckfoot Gang, preyed upon victims across North America in one of the largest Midwestern criminal syndicates in history before they were brought to heel. Like the works of Sinclair Lewis, Boatright’s story exposes a rift in the wholesome Midwestern stereotype and furthers our understanding of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American society.
Author: Michael McCarty Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1467151165 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 176
Book Description
The Quad Cities have a rich history of brewing that started with the influx of German citizens in the 1800s. Breweries were established on both sides of the Mississippi River. Some of these historic breweries managed to reopen after Prohibition, but national competition ultimately closed the last of these stalwarts in 1956. In 1989, Iowa created a special class "A" brewpub permit, and the first of many brewpubs in the area, Front Street Pub & Eatery, opened in 1992. Blue Cat Brew Pub, on the Illinois side of the river, opened shortly after. The brewing renaissance has helped to establish the Quad Cities as a craft beer destination. Join authors Michael McCarty and Kristin DeMarr as they celebrate the heady heritage of the region.
Author: John Brassard Jr. Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1625859767 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1
Book Description
Scott County is one of the oldest counties in Iowa. It is where the Blackhawk Treaty was signed and where the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi River was built. But Scott County has also been witness to many shameful deeds. Travel down Utica Ridge Road, where young Grace Reed paid the ultimate price for spurning the affections of a local farmer. Enter the bedroom of Margaretha Nehlsen, who poisoned her children with chocolate candies. Hear the tale of Harry Hamilton, a former policeman turned career criminal who played a key part in perhaps the most infamous bank robbery in Scott County history. Come and explore these stories and more with author John Brassard Jr. as he guides you through the darker side of Scott County history.
Author: Darrel E. Bigham Publisher: University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 9780813131146 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
No other region in America is so fraught with projected meaning as Appalachia. Many people who have never set foot in Appalachia have very definite ideas about what the region is like. Whether these assumptions originate with movies like Deliverance (1972) and Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), from Robert F. Kennedy's widely publicized Appalachian Tour, or from tales of hiking the Appalachian Trail, chances are these suppositions serve a purpose to the person who holds them. A person's concept of Appalachia may function to reassure them that there remains an "authentic" America untouched by consumerism, to feel a sense of superiority about their lives and regions, or to confirm the notion that cultural differences must be both appreciated and managed. In Selling Appalachia: Popular Fictions, Imagined Geographies, and Imperial Projects, 1878-2003, Emily Satterwhite explores the complex relationships readers have with texts that portray Appalachia and how these varying receptions have created diverse visions of Appalachia in the national imagination. She argues that words themselves not inherently responsible for creating or destroying Appalachian stereotypes, but rather that readers and their interpretations assign those functions to them. Her study traces the changing visions of Appalachia across the decades from the Gilded Age (1865-1895) to the present and includes texts such as John Fox Jr.'s Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908), Harriet Arnow's Hunter's Horn (1949), and Silas House's Clay's Quilt (2001), charting both the portrayals of Appalachia in fiction and readers' responses to them. Satterwhite's unique approach doesn't just explain how people view Appalachia, it explains why they think that way. This innovative book will be a noteworthy contribution to Appalachian studies, cultural and literary studies, and reception theory.
Author: Carol Haddix Publisher: University of Illinois Press ISBN: 025209977X Category : Cooking Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
The Chicago Food Encyclopedia is a far-ranging portrait of an American culinary paradise. Hundreds of entries deliver all of the visionary restauranteurs, Michelin superstars, beloved haunts, and food companies of today and yesterday. More than 100 sumptuous images include thirty full-color photographs that transport readers to dining rooms and food stands across the city. Throughout, a roster of writers, scholars, and industry experts pays tribute to an expansive--and still expanding--food history that not only helped build Chicago but fed a growing nation. Pizza. Alinea. Wrigley Spearmint. Soul food. Rick Bayless. Hot Dogs. Koreatown. Everest. All served up A-Z, and all part of the ultimate reference on Chicago and its food.