Chicago, 1900
“…The works of religion and charity have everywhere been manifest. Our country through all its extent has been blessed with abundant harvests. Labor and the great industries of the people have prospered beyond all precedent…”
— President William McKinley,
Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, 1900
Woolf’s
clothing store, situated on State Street across from the luxurious Palmer House,
closed early on the day before Thanksgiving in 1900, as it had done for years, in
order to get ready to serve a holiday dinner for the poor of Chicago. It was unseasonably cold that
afternoon; the temperature had already dropped into the teens when the store
clerks sprang into action. In what had become a well-orchestrated ritual, they
stored away the goods and removed the counters from the main floor. Next, the
table were brought in, covered with marbled oilcloth, and decorated with
flowers, fruit, and pyramids of small cakes.1
After carefully arranging a thousand place settings, reportedly with as much
precision as you would find at a fine hotel, the clerks donned white aprons and
jackets just before opening the doors at 6 PM, ready to serve old-fashioned
turkey dinners to the multitudes who would begin filing in from the frigid
weather.
