Featured Collections

Digitized Newton Manuscript

Series II, Series IV, and Series V of the Joseph Halle Schaffner  Collection in the History of Science, may now be viewed online.  Series II contains letters to and from Charles Darwin and the Darwin family, dating from the 1860s to early 1900s.  The Sir Isaac Newton material in Series IV includes manuscripts outlining and illustrating Newton’s idea for a portable furnace,  pyrotechny, and an 1693 letter from Samuel Pepys to Newton. 

John Carver notations on Newton’s Principia

Newton’s influence carries over to Series V, which includes early nineteenth-century notes made by John Carver on mathematical and geometrical problems from Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia and other works.

This image of Anthony Braxton is from the John Steiner Collection of the Chicago Jazz Archive

Anthony Braxton, born June 4, 1945 in Chicago, celebrates his 67th birthday today. Braxton is an American music pioneer whose style closely resembles jazz but spans many genres and forms. Braxton’s instruments include saxophones, flute, clarinet, and piano. 

Braxton was born and raised on Chicago’s South Side. In 1963, he joined the army and was stationed with the Fifth Army Band in the northern suburbs of Chicago. In 1965, he went to South Korea and played with the Eighth Army Band all the while keeping up with the recordings of free jazz pioneers Albert Ayler and John Coltrane. Braxton returned to Chicago in 1966 and sought out and joined the newly-formed Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). He formed his own ensembles with musicians such as Leroy Jenkins, Thurman Barker, Charles Clark, Kalaparush, and Leo Smith while also playing in groups led by AACM members like Ajaramu, Amina Myers, and Muhal Richard Abrams. Although greatly influenced by John Coltrane, Braxton quickly developed his own voice.

Braxton spent time recording and performing with his own group in Paris in the late 1960s. Throughout much of the early 1970s, Braxton played in New York and the Midwest, touring with Chick Corea’s trio and Musica Elettronica Viva.

In 1994, Braxton was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship for his outstanding and original contributions to jazz. Braxton founded the Tri-Centric Foundation, a New York based not-for-profit corporation that includes an ensemble of musicians, vocalists, and computer-graphic video artists all of whom aid in the performances of Braxton’s compositions. Braxton studied philosophy at Roosevelt University. He is currently a tenured Professor of Music at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, teaching music composition, music history, and improvisation.

Despite the many improvisational aspects to Braxton’s compositions it is difficult to categorize his music solely as jazz . In March 2007, in an article that appeared in Time Out-New York, Braxton is quoted as saying: “I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.”

The Special Collections Research Center is home to the Chicago Jazz Archive, which contains a small collection of materials related to Anthony Braxton as well as many collections that document jazz in Chicago and the work of Anthony Braxton.

In the 1920s, as Chicago was quickly becoming a major hub for jazz, many jazz hotspots were popping up all over the city. One that stood out was Bert Kelly’s Jazz Stables, pictured in the map on the left between Grand and Kinzie (click on the image for an enlarged view.) Kelly’s Stables, as it was commonly referred to, was located in what was then known as the Towertown neighborhood on the Near North Side. Located at 431 N Rush Street,  in the heart of what was once a bohemian enclave, Kelly’s Stables showcased many of the great Chicago jazz legends night after night. Counted among the respected alumni are Alcide “Yellow” Nunez, Joe “King” Oliver, Freddie Keppard, and the Dodds Brothers: Johnny and Baby. Nunez composed a popular tune titled “Livery Stable Blues,” which served as inspiration for the club’s name.

Exterior view of Kelly’s Stables

The club’s namesake and founder, banjoist Bert Kelly, was no stranger to swing and is often cited as the first to bring jazz to Chicago, a distinction believed to have been assigned by Kelly to himself. Kelly also claimed to have coined the term “jazz.” Regardless of these various assertions one thing is certain: Kelly’s Stables was one of the most popular jazz clubs in Chicago during the 1920s. Bert Kelly went on to open Kelly’s Stables on 52nd Street in New York City. The New York City location quickly became a prominent club during the 1930s and 1940s when New York took over as the reigning Jazz Capital.

The history of Kelly’s Jazz Stables and many other popular historic Chicago Jazz venues can be found in the John Steiner collection, one of the many distinctive collections that comprise the Chicago Jazz Archive. Jazz scholars and enthusiasts have much to view and enjoy thanks to the diligent collecting of John Steiner, who began attending jazz shows in and around Chicago starting in 1924.

General Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, Lord Arthur James Balfour, and Sir Herbert Louis Samuel, in Jerusalem, 1925.

Researchers come to the Special Collections Research Center looking for items of all kinds, from Aztec manuscripts, to fragments from Walt Whitman, to stereoscopic images of skin diseases, to a picture of former University of Chicago quarterback Milton “Mitt” Romney (cousin and namesake to the former Massachusetts governor and current presidential candidate). Once in a while, a request will direct us to an unexpected gem.

Philip Quincy Wright (1890-1970) joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as a professor of political science in 1923. Among his enduring legacies to the University is the Committee on International Relations, which he founded in 1928. A scholar of international law, politics, and social science, Professor Wright made many trips overseas for his research, and today his vast collection of papers and photographs are held at the Special Collections Research Center. In 1925, he took a trip to Palestine and other areas of the Middle East. This was a particularly potent time for the relationship between the region’s inhabitants and their colonial governors in France and Britain. French troops had shelled Damascus in October of 1925, while the British were negotiating their mandate in Palestine and Trans-Jordan.

With this context in mind, Professor Wright’s photograph is all the more astonishing. Taken in Jerusalem, the print depicts three men, all of whom had a direct hand in shaping the politics of the Middle East in the early twentieth century: General Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, head of the military forces which conquered Palestine and Syria; Lord Arthur James Balfour, former Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom and author of the Balfour Declaration of 1917; and Sir Herbert Louis Samuel, British High Commissioner of Palestine from 1920 to 1925. The picture was taken in front of the Government House, located on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

The Quincy Wright Papers do not yet have an online finding aid, but researchers are welcome to consult our paper guide to the collection in the Special Collections Research Center.

Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference, undated photo

The Special Collections Research Center is pleased to announce that the records of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference are now open and available to researchers.

The Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC) was founded in 1949 to stem growing physical decay of our South-Side neighborhood and to promote better race relations in the community. Confident that white and African-American people could live peacefully together, and convinced that urban decay was a mutual problem, community leaders formed a new organization whose goal was “to build and maintain a stable interracial community of high standards.” The Conference’s first efforts concentrated on arresting rampant building and zoning violations, improving housing conditions through rehabilitation and tenant unions, and actively engaging with city-wide urban renewal planning. Through the formation of Block Groups, the Conference provided the means for neighbors to interact, discuss common interests and concerns, and cooperatively solve problems at a grass roots level. Over the years, HPKCC programs grew to encompass other issues, including parks and recreation, youth and schools, safety, transportation, and environmental concerns. Today, the HPKCC continues to promote “an attractive, secure, diverse, and caring community.”

The collection contains a wide range of material documenting over sixty years of this important community organization’s activities. This includes administrative records, correspondence, press releases, surveys, newsletters, brochures, clippings, photographs, maps, posters, pamphlets, and much more. The collection captures a unique period in Chicago history, the complexities of urban planning and urban renewal, and the efforts of our neighborhood to remain a diverse and prosperous community.

To learn more about the collection, check out our online guide!