About
During the Calumet Quarter at The University of Chicago, students simultaneously enroll in three courses focused on the history, culture, geography, and ecology of the Calumet Region. Designed as a “study abroad at home” sequence focused on experiential learning, students participate in weekly field trips to the Calumet and complete practical, hands on research as part of their coursework.
In one of the courses, CEGU 26367: Objects, Place, and Power: Collecting and Display in the Calumet, students studied the ways in which material culture is both created by a specific sense of place and shapes identity in the region. Through a partnership with local historical societies and museums, students in the course studied individual objects to learn how their histories are connected to broader ones of the region and nation. Please browse their reports here, including some podcasts discussing a behind-the-scenes look at their research processes, as students learned about the power and politics of visual representation in placemaking.
Object Histories of the Calumet
About
During the Calumet Quarter at The University of Chicago, students simultaneously enroll in three courses focused on the history, culture, geography, and ecology of the Calumet Region. Designed as a “study abroad at home” sequence focused on experiential learning, students participate in weekly field trips to the Calumet and complete practical, hands on research as part of their coursework.
In one of the courses, CEGU 26367: Objects, Place, and Power: Collecting and Display in the Calumet, students studied the ways in which material culture is both created by a specific sense of place and shapes identity in the region. Through a partnership with local historical societies and museums, students in the course studied individual objects to learn how their histories are connected to broader ones of the region and nation. Please browse their reports here, including some podcasts discussing a behind-the-scenes look at their research processes, as students learned about the power and politics of visual representation in placemaking.
Beer foam scraper
Koenecke company
Late 19th-early 20th century
Blue Island Historical Society
If you go to a bar today and order a beer on tap, you will likely see the bartender tilt the glass before opening the tap. As beer fills the glass, there will be a brief pause about two thirds of the way up the glass before it is topped off straight up, resulting in ½-1 inch of foam, or head, on top. But decades ago—indeed more than a century ago—draft beer drinkers enjoyed a full head of beer, into a glass straight up. To deal with the excess foam bartenders would use a scraper such as this one to take off the excess head, thereby allowing the beer to be poured straight up without excess head. This particular beer foam scraper can be identified by the label “BELLE OF BLUE ISLAND AND SMOKE HOUSE CIGARS” printed on its front. “Belle of Blue Island” and “Smokehouse” were both hand rolled cigars rolled by the Koenecke Cigar Company in Blue Island, in operation from the early 1880s to until 1933, when they company was sold to two former employees, who formed the Blue Island Cigar Company.
Given the time period that the Koenecke Cigar Company was in operation, we might be able to guess that the beer foam scraper was made of celluloid, a material used extensively from the mid 19th century through the early 20th century. Plant based, it had been invented as a cheaper alternative to ivory (which incidentally had occasionally been used to manufacture foam scrapers as well), and was used as billiard balls, pocket calendars, napkin rings, collars, brushes, letter openers, and all sorts of goods. It was coming into popularity at the same time pre-prohibition America was experiencing one of its largest periods of brewery expansion in its history—4,131 opened in 1871.
Blue Island had breweries. In fact it had more than its fair share—Chicago’s natural marsh conditions and surficial limestone made it almost impossible to dig cellars to store beer. But Blue Island was different, a “geological curiosity,” featuring nearly 75 to 80 feet of loose material possible to build cellars into. In the 1850s beer was being made the old way—meaning in cool conditions and stored in cellars for several months to make “Lager beer” (Lager meaning stored in German). Blue Island Lager beer was well known and sold widely throughout the region until modern brewing techniques destroyed the local industry. After August and Fred Koenecke had run their cigar company for a decade, in the late 1890s, August Koenecke took over management of the Bush and Brand brewery in Blue Island.
But cigars and old breweries were both part of a fading world. WWI popularized the cigarette and began the cigar’s long decline, and modern refrigeration and brewing spelled the end for Blue Island’s breweries. By 1922 Blue Island was home to the Cal-Sag channel and by 1955 it was widened, decimating the downtown Blue Island commercial district. Blue Island’s Breweries and cigar companies both experienced a sharp decline into the 20th century, leaving behind items like this beer scraper.
—Daniel Arad, ’25 (Environmental Science)