Daniel Crouch Rare Books will present the first four Chicago Wage Maps from the Hull House Maps and Papers series first published in 1895 ($25,000) at the inaugural Chicago International Map Fair, on September 28+29, at the Primitive Gallery, 130 North Jefferson Street, it was announced by Daniel Crouch.

Says Daniel Crouch, “The first four of the wage maps detail the area from Polk Street to West 12th Street Chicago – known now as Little Italy for the mass influx of Italian immigrants to the area during the late nineteenth century.”

According to Crouch, these maps are among the first to document a range of socio-economic data from slum neighbourhoods in the midst of third wave immigration into the United States. When impoverished Europeans fled to the U.S in search of financial security, the rapid rate of immigration and lack of housing that awaited them led to atrocious conditions of decay and overcrowding in industrial centres.

The Hull House Maps and Papers project was led by Florence Kelley and colleagues at Hull House; a settlement house at 335 South Halsted Street, Chicago. First opened by Jane Addams in 1889, Hull House acted as a residential facility as well as a community centre for newly arrived immigrants. A place where integration into American society was taught through various skills and language classes, Hull House illustrated the burgeoning social concerns circulating throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Chicago International Map Fair is a fitting setting for these astonishing examples of American history as the remaining originals of the Hull House Wage Maps are held nearby at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

For more information visit: www.crouchrarebooks.com