“I Like to Get Around”

Abstract

This article examines the previously unstudied history of Chicago's nineteenth-century music saloons, tracing their development from transplanted German beer halls to Americanized entertainment resorts to commercial dance halls. Drawing on evidence from scattered newspaper sources, the article documents women's ubiquitous presence in music saloons as waiters, performers, prostitutes, and patrons and then interprets what their presence reveals about the public role of women in nineteenth century American cities. The women in music saloons asserted considerable social freedom, articulated a public identity that emphasized sexual expressiveness, and helped create a morally ambiguous environment that defied the prevailing Victorian distinctions between respectable and disreputable. In doing so, they helped define what it meant to be a modern city girl. The article also examines the affect that municipal regulation had upon the operation of Chicago's music saloons. City officials restricted the presence of music and women but only periodically enforced the restrictions. The sporadic enforcement never removed women or music for long but nonetheless structured the social and cultural environment of the city's music saloons.The chorus girls made quite an entrance to George Silver's saloon in downtown Chicago on the night of May 30, 1903. Having just finished their performance at a local theater, they burst through the front door shortly after midnight, sauntered past the bar, and seated themselves in the rear room, which was already packed with men and women listening to "a ragtime artist" pound away on piano. Among those in the rear room, some had come as couples, while others, like the chorus girls, came in single-sex groups. The crowd drank beer, sparkling wine, and mixed drinks. As the night wore on, the frivolity increased. Encouraged by the "riotous piano playing," a woman rose from her chair and performed a "skirt dance," which won "the plaudits of the men and the scowls of the other women." In one corner, a woman talked emotionally to two men before falling into their laps. The promise of another bottle of wine, however, quickly revived her. Soon thereafter, several more women arrived from another saloon, which they declared was