Revueltas, The Chicago Years

Abstract

I came to Chicago in March 2003 to look for previously undiscovered threads of Revueltas lore that could be woven into the narrative of his life in that city between 1919 and 1925. My recent research of Revueltas in San Antonio and Mobile1 piqued my interest in his Chicago years. Greeted by the heaviest snowstorm of the season, I was reminded of the letter Revueltas wrote to Carlos Chávez in December 1924 after returning to Chicago from an extended stay in Mexico City. The letter begins, "White and gray, and more white and more gray."2 He had had quite enough of snow in Chicago after six years. Silvestre Revueltas and his younger brother Fermín were in Chicago by January 1919, after Silvestre had completed high school at St. Edward's Academy in Austin, Texas in 1918. The upheaval in Mexico's school system prompted their father to send them abroad to continue their education. Silvestre was by 1919 a promising twenty-year-old violinist, who had studied both violin and composition in Mexico. Fermín's talent was in the graphic arts. They were accepted, respectively, into the Chicago Musical College and the Art Institute of Chicago, two of the most prestigious training centers for the arts in the city. The Chicago Musical College had been founded in 1867 by Florenz Ziegfeld, Sr., and at first was called the Chicago Academy of Music. It was located in 1919 in the fourteen-story building that now houses Columbia College at 624-630 South Michigan Avenue. The Art Institute (originally Chicago Institute of Design) was in 1919 in the stately, neo-classic building it now occupies at 111 South Michigan (the instructional arm of the institute was, during Fermín's matriculation there, at the same location). The earliest Chicago residence I could find for the Revueltas brothers turned up in the 1920 census report of the Albert Stein family's rooming house at 102 East Oak Street (between Rush Street and Michigan Avenue).3 [End Page 180] Its downtown location was within easy walking distance to both the Musical College and the Art Institute. A letter from Silvestre to his parents on 1 June 1919 mentions their usual Sunday custom of going to the lake or playing ball at nearby Lincoln Park.4 In the same letter he reports that his violin teacher Leon Sametini wanted to find him a better instrument—one that better suited him.5 He says he has met a friend (una amiga) from the college who wants to teach him to swim, play ball, ride horseback, fly, dance, sing, and so on, telling him it will be a boon to his health and will "soothe his beautiful character." "Thunders," he writes, "I don't have it so bad after all." Is this the Jule Klaracy he married on 31 December 1919? Stay tuned! Click for larger view Figure 1 102 East Oak Street (center building), residence of Silvestre and Fermín Revueltas in January 1920. "Oak Street Scene, 1965." Photographer—Sigmund J. Ostey, Chicago Historical Scoiety.

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