Paul Steinbrecher is depicted in the middle with his brother George on the left and Fritz on the right. Photo ca. 1900. (This and most of the other historic photographs are courtesy of my friend Paul Steinbrecher.)
Houses for Sale by Paul Steinbrecher & Co., Chicago Tribune, April 5, 1914. (Steinbrecher’s firm ran thousands of classified ads in the Tribune over the years.)
When researching historic buildings in Chicago, I often pore over old real estate advertisements in archival newspapers. A couple of years ago, I was reviewing ads and a particular real estate firm kept jumping out at me—Paul Steinbrecher & Co. This stood out because I have a close friend and colleague named Paul Steinbrecher who is a principal in the firm of Interactive Design Architects. When I finally got around to asking Paul about it, he said, “Yes, that was my great uncle, and I am his namesake!” We then began what turned into many conversations about the Steinbrechers. So, now I’d like to introduce you to the impressive Steinbrecher family.
Paul Steinbrecher, ca. 1925.
Born and raised in Chicago, Paul Steinbrecher (1878-1937) was the eldest son of William Paul and Elizabeth Hatterman Steinbrecher, German immigrants who married in Chicago in 1877. According to U.S. Census records, William Steinbrecher worked as a chemist in 1880, as the manager of a firm that made safe deposit vaults twenty years later, and as an art dealer in 1910. Despite the frequent job changes, he achieved prosperity. The family lived on Armitage Avenue, and all three sons graduated from Lakeview High School and went on to college.
Paul Steinbrecher (the grandnephew) in front of the Steinbrecher family home at 419 W. Armitage Avenue.
Uncle Paul studied at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, and Northwestern University Law School; the middle son, George (my friend Paul’s grandfather), received a law degree from Northwestern; and the youngest, Frederick (known as “Fritz”), earned a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago. Fritz was a member of the university’s baseball team that travelled to Japan in 1910 to play in the first of a series of games against Waseda University. (Incidentally, the family’s connection with the U of C continues today. My friend Paul Steinbrecher is a trustee of the Disciples Divinity House of the University of Chicago, and he and I have been working together to consult on landscape heritage studies for the U of C’s Facilities Services division.)
Fritz Steinbrecher is fourth from the left in this photograph of the University of Chicago baseball team at Kamakura, Japan, 1910. University of Chicago Photographic Archive apf4-00142, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
Edith Steinbrecher is shown with her mother Anna Anderson, and two daughters, Betty (in her mother’s lap) and Ann, standing nearby, ca. 1915.
In 1906, Paul Steinbrecher began a successful career in real estate. As a member of the firm George W. Cobb & Co., Steinbrecher made some high-profile sales. For example, he sold a lot on N. State Parkway for Chicago writer and socialite Hobart C. Chatfield Taylor. That October, Paul Steinbrecher married Edith Anderson (1883-1971), a grandniece of Carl Schurz, the beloved German immigrant politician, reformer, and journalist who had helped found the short-lived Liberal Republican Party.
In 1911, Paul bought out George Cobb’s real estate company and began business as Paul Steinbrecher & Co. He was then quite active in the progressive wing of the Republican Party, a group that supported Theodore Roosevelt’s reform-minded agenda. By this time, Illinois had become deeply entrenched in corruption, partly due to the powerful “Blond Boss,” William Lorimer, a Republican U.S. Senator. In 1912, when Lorimer backed Ninth District congressional candidate William C. Moulton, the progressive members of the party asked John F. Bass, a highly-regarded war correspondent, to run against him. Bass agreed, but that March, he withdrew from the race. Paul Steinbrecher, then chairman of the progressive campaign committee, jumped in as a primary candidate. Steinbrecher didn’t win, but he had a good showing in the polls, and both he and the winning candidate, Fred Britten, received more votes than the Lorimer-backed politician.
Paul Steinbrecher congressional campaign poster, 1912.
Steinbrecher home at 418 W. Oakdale Avenue.
Paul Steinbrecher was becoming quite prominent in the city’s real estate circles. In December of 1915, the Chicago Real Estate Board unanimously elected him as its president. The Chicago Tribune noted that he was one of the youngest and most active members of the real estate board. By then, Paul and Edith were living in a spacious apartment in a Greystone three-flat at 418 W. Oakdale Avenue with their two young daughters, Ann and Elizabeth (who went by Betty), and their Swedish immigrant servant, Emma Peterson.
During this period, Paul Steinbrecher & Co. began specializing in high-grade apartments. Though flat buildings had become stylish in Paris and New York, many well-to-do Chicagoans associated these structures with overcrowded tenements and feared that living in an apartment would lead to immoral behavior. Steinbrecher saw apartment houses as good investments and the units within them as excellent places to live. In 1915, he rhapsodized about the city’s fine stock of multi-family dwellings in a paper entitled “Apartment Buildings” that he presented to the annual convention of the National Association of Building Managers in Atlanta. Steinbrecher stated “…in Chicago, there are, in my judgement, more attractive buildings, with more desirable, airy, sunshiny, livable apartments, at comparatively more reasonable rentals, than anywhere else.”
Left: “Realty News in Pictures,” Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1917, with rendering of the Hugh M.G. Garden apartment house leased out by Paul Steinbrecher & Co. Right, Photograph of same building at 3330 N. Lake Shore Drive.
Among the many early luxury apartments that Paul Steinbrecher & Co. leased out were the spacious 12-room units in a 1916 building designed and developed by architect Hugh M.G. Garden. Located at what is now 3330 N. Lake Shore Drive, the apartment tower was one of the first to provide an enclosed garage that motorists could drive into. Apartments rented for as much as $6,000 per year (which would be equivalent to more than $120,000 today). Steinbrecher rented units to such prestigious businessmen as Cyrus McCormick, Jr., and A.B. Dick.
This row house at 48 E. Schiller was the Steinbrecher home from the mid-1920s until Edith died in 1971.
“Head of the City Club Outlines Plans of Year,” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1937.
The Steinbrechers continued to prosper, and in the mid-1920s they bought a beautiful row house at 48 E. Schiller Street. Paul and Edith were both civic leaders. Paul was a director of the Legislative Voters League, president of the Chicago Christian Industrial League, trustee of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, State Historical Society trustee, treasurer of the Chicago Geographic Society, Chicago Boys Club trustee, and member of the Forest Preserve Board. Edith served as president of the Woman’s City Club of Chicago and the Chicago Drama League. In 1933, Governor Henry Horner appointed her to be vice-chairman of the Illinois Hostess Committee for the city’s second world’s fair, A Century of Progress. The committee, which included the wives of the current and past mayors, hosted a luncheon for Eleanor Roosevelt. The first lady gave a speech that was broadcast by radio to the entire nation.
Paul Steinbrecher, an avid book collector, belonged to several literary and cultural organizations including the University Club, Caxton Club, Chicago Club, and Skeeters Club, a group that met for Saturday lunches and lively conversations at the Hotel LaSalle. Through the Skeeters, Paul became friendly with Carl Sandburg, the famous poet, author, and Lincoln biographer. During the 1930s, Carl Sandburg was living in Harbert, Michigan, so when he came to Chicago he often stayed with the Steinbrechers. Much to the consternation of Emma, the family’s maid, he and the Steinbechers enjoyed many boisterous evenings together at 48 E. Schiller, with music, poetry and booze drinking (despite Prohibition). Ann Steinbrecher even became Sandburg’s informal secretary, and it was her job to type as Carl recited poetry, sang, and played string instruments.
Carl Sandburg thanked Ann Steinbrecher for her role as unofficial secretary in an inscription of his book, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 1938.
One day, a couple of years ago, my friend Paul Steinbrecher was walking past 48 E. Schiller when the current owner was out front, working on her garden. She and Paul started chatting and she mentioned that her child had been waking up with recurring nightmares about an old man playing a musical instrument.
Carl Sandburg, 1930. Chicago History Museum, DN-0094246 Chicago Sun-Times/ Chicago Daily News collection.
Paul asked which room this was happening in, and when the woman replied, he told her that this bedroom had previously been the Steinbrechers’ library—the room where white-haired Carl Sandburg had played music and recited poetry. The woman laughed and said she would tell her child not to be frightened because the ghost is a friendly and very talented one indeed.