Edward Gorey in Chicago and Wilmette
Edward Gorey in Chicago and Wilmette
After a four-month absence I’ve decided to restart my substack, partially due to Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter. If that ship goes down, which appears to be happening more quickly than people anticipated, I might as well share my history and architecture nerdiness elsewhere for the time being.
Although celebrated author and illustrator Edward “Ted” Gorey was born and raised in Chicago where he attended the prestigious Francis Parker School, many people don’t know he spent part of his childhood in suburban Wilmette. An only child, Gorey was born at St. Luke’s Hospital to Irish-American parents Helen Dunham and Edward Lee Gorey in 1925. His father, who started at the City Press Bureau, was a crime/police reporter and editor for the Chicago Evening Post, then switched careers working as an aide to an alderman and later as a publicity director at the Drake and Blackstone Hotels.
While his drawings are inescapably spooky and gothic, Ted later admitted in 1978 that the myth didn’t live up to his relatively normal and happy childhood: “I did not grow up in a large Victorian house.” Instead the young family went from apartment to apartment, living at five different addresses in Chicago’s East Rogers Park. Ted later recalled in 1995: “I hated moving and we were always doing it. Sometimes we just moved a block away into another apartment; it was all very weird.” He attended Joyce Kilmer Elementary School for at least one year. The school’s March 1934 newsletter reported that Ted celebrated his 9th birthday with ice cream, cookies, and candy provided by his mother in Room 309.
Three years before his parents’ divorce in 1937, his father moved the family away from Chicago to the North Shore where the family rented a stucco American Foursquare in the western part of Wilmette. No one will know why Gorey’s father chose to live farther away from his hotel job in downtown Chicago. But let’s not forget real estate developers and advertisements were selling the affluent suburban lifestyle to the rising middle class throughout the 1920s and 30s. Skipping a grade, nine-year-old Ted enrolled at Arthur H. Howard School where he fit right in, contradicting his later reputation as a loner whose only friends were cats. On his spring 1935 report card, Ted’s homeroom teacher, Viola Therman, mentioned a puppet play he was working on and said “He does superior work…with apparent ease, and socially he is well adjusted.”
In June of 1936 the family left the large house behind and moved to an apartment on the other side of Wilmette described in an advertisement as “moderate rents in a desirable neighborhood.” Twelve years earlier the village had issued a permit to construct the town’s first multi-unit residential building - a large double courtyard structure known as Linden Crest Apartments - located just a block away from the Purple Line ‘L’ station at 4th and Linden (being closer to the train might’ve been the reason for their move). The Gorey’s future family home proved to be controversial throughout Wilmette with “No Flats” signs appearing on many front lawns and business storefronts. The impact of all this outrage? Very few apartment buildings were constructed in this North Shore suburb until the 1960s.
Now an 8th grade student at Bryan C. Stolp School (open from 1915 until 1962), Ted became the ultimate joiner, serving as the assembly president and belonging to the typing, glee, art, and Shakespeare clubs. Ted also did fully signed illustrations for various school topics and interests like photography, travel, and journalism. A popular teacher, Warren Saunders, was a former WPA artist who started the art club, which also included future actor Charlton Heston. Born John Charles Carter in either No-Man’s Land or Evanston, Charlton was living with his mother, stepfather, and two siblings in a large Victorian house at 325 Maple Avenue just a few doors down from the ‘L’ tracks. His stepfather Chet, working as a welder for a defense plant, had saved enough money to put a down payment on the home during the Great Depression. Charlton, who had the third floor attic space all to himself, later attended New Trier High School and Northwestern University (on a drama scholarship…surprise!) then left the North Shore suburb behind for New York (and later Hollywood) while his parents and sister remained in Wilmette for the rest of their lives.
But let’s get back to the story of the Goreys. It was around this time that Ted’s dad left his wife and son for Corinna Mura, a singer of mainly Spanish songs, whom he met on the nightclub circuit while working at the Blackstone Hotel. In October of 1937, not long after his parents’ divorce and 8th graduation, Ted and his mom moved to Florida where they lived with her relatives in Miami for five-and-a-half months. Then the two returned to Chicago, renting rooms in the affordable housing project, Marshall Field Garden Apartments, in the Old Town neighborhood for about a year. In the fall of 1939 Helen and Ted moved into a high-rise apartment at 2620 North Lakeview Ave overlooking Lincoln Park and walking distance to Francis Parker School where the young boy was a student from 1938-1942. Supposedly the story goes that Ted left his picture in the school’s yearbook blank and would draw himself if anyone asked. He also had an extreme aversion to sweat, often skipping gym class which led to a disciplinary letter from the school’s registrar to his mother. But what stands out is Ted’s art teacher, Mr. Hackett, claiming he was “not working up to his capacity in art.”
After his graduation in June of 1942, Ted studied for a semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago followed by one course at the University of Chicago. Except for his two-year stint in the army, Ted lived with his mom until 1946 when he left to begin his studies at Harvard University. She continued to reside in the high-rise for a total of 30 years. It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it, considering how often the family moved and she only had to pack up when the building was torn down for a taller structure. Ted’s parents later reconciled, and Edward Lee Gorey was living at the 2620 North Lakeview address at the time of his death in March of 1963. Mother later followed her son to Cape Cod, a place he called home until his death of a heart attack in 2000 (she had passed away in 1979).
Sources:
Loyola University Chicago Digital Special Collections
Born to be Posthumous by Mark Dery
Charlton Heston by Marc Eliot
Houses of the Lakefront Suburbs by Stuart Cohen and Susan Benjamin