Commercial Club of Chicago
Encyclopedia
The Commercial Club of Chicago is an anti-labor club resulted from the 1907 merger of two predecessor Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 clubs: the Merchants Club
Merchants Club
The Merchants Club was a predecessor club to The Commercial Club of Chicago. It was organized in Chicago in 1896. It merged with the Commercial Club in 1907. Its leaders included Charles G. Dawes, Frederic A. Delano, and Charles H. Wacker. It was responsible for commissioning Daniel Burnham's...

 (organized in 1896) and the Commercial Club (organized in 1877). Its most active members included George Pullman
George Pullman
George Mortimer Pullman was an American inventor and industrialist. He is known as the inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, and for violently suppressing striking workers in the company town he created, Pullman .-Background:Born in Brocton, New York, his family moved to Albion,...

, Marshall Field
Marshall Field
Marshall Field was founder of Marshall Field and Company, the Chicago-based department stores.-Life and career:...

, Cyrus McCormick
Cyrus McCormick
Cyrus Hall McCormick, Sr. was an American inventor and founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which became part of International Harvester Company in 1902.He and many members of the McCormick family became prominent Chicagoans....

, George Armour, Frederic Delano, Sewell Avery
Sewell Avery
Sewell Avery was an American businessman.Born in a wealthy family of lumber barons in Michigan, Avery attended public schools in Saginaw and Detroit and the Michigan Military Academy. He was a financier of the American Liberty League and a National Advisor for one of its front organizations, the...

, Rufus C. Dawes
Rufus C. Dawes
Rufus Cutler Dawes was an American businessman from a prominent Ohio family.Dawes was born in Marietta, Ohio, to American Civil War Brigadier General Rufus R. Dawes and Mary Beman Dawes. He was a younger brother of Charles G. Dawes and great-great-grandson of Revolutionary War figure William Dawes...

, and Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...

. The club has promoted Chicago's economic development for generations and championed member Daniel Burnham
Daniel Burnham
Daniel Hudson Burnham, FAIA was an American architect and urban planner. He was the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He took a leading role in the creation of master plans for the development of a number of cities, including Chicago and downtown Washington DC...

's Plan of Chicago (1909), also known as Burnham's plan. The plan gave the blueprint
Blueprint
A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a technical drawing, documenting an architecture or an engineering design. More generally, the term "blueprint" has come to be used to refer to any detailed plan....

 for the future growth and development of the entire Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 region.

The Commercial Club addressed many other progressive reform issues: supported street cleaning and paving projects, smoke abatement and sanitation schemes, and the development of city parks and playgrounds. They also maintained a consciousness of social reform issues like juvenile delinquency, race relations, and old-age pensions.

The club remains in existence today tracing its origins back to the 17 founding members of the Commercial Club in 1877. The current Chairman is Lester Crown
Lester Crown
Lester Crown is the son of Chicago financier Henry Crown , who created Material Service with two brothers in 1919, which merged with General Dynamics in 1959. He has been a perennial member of the Forbes 400 list since 1982...

 and the current President is R. Eden Martin
R. Eden Martin
R. Eden Martin is an American lawyer. Martin was a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin LLP from 1975 to 2004. Martin has served as President of The Commercial Club of Chicago since 1999...

.

External links

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