Carl Luefke with dog Modacxs

This photograph is one of many black and white photographs that depict the Findeisen family, their friends, and neighbors in the period preceding World War I on the East Side. The East Side was known as a more prosperous neighborhood in Southeast Chicago and was largely populated by skilled workers and their families as well as established immigrant groups, including Germans and Swedes. In many oral histories, older residents described wintertime in glowing terms for children. Because of the pervasive wetlands, children could ice skate at will across the neighborhood. One early resident, Robert Koche, recalled his own childhood during this same period, “Next to our house is where that Neiman (?) Slough started with those bulrushes and cattails. In the winter time, you could get on your ice skates, and you could go all the way to 106th Street – course you had to step over that boardwalk on 104th Street. You got to 106th Street; you had to go up and over [the boardwalk] and down again. From there, all the way out to Wolf Lake, you could skate. It was water. Next to our house and all along in this slough, there were muskrats. There were muskrat huts, mounds.”