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Home Room 711 Home Room 711 - Where Rotary Began HISTORY CALENDAR
THE STORY THE MOVE THE TOUR INSIDE 711 LOCATION PHOTOS
RI TOUR PAUL AND JEAN BACKGROUND 711 CLUB    

THE FIRST FOUR MEMBERS-->

 PAUL HARRIS S. SCHIELE GUS LOEHR HIRAM SHOREY  

Commentary by: Hank Ottery, Visitor Relations Manager, Rotary International Headquarters

Entering Room 711 truly is a step back in time to year 1905, when the first four Rotarians met here on February 23. On one wall is a photo of this pioneering quartet which includes Room 711 occupant Gus Loehr, a mining engineer whose mine maps are displayed on another of the office's two-tone green walls. His desk is a treasure trove of memorabilia, including his bowl of pipes, ledgers, eyeglasses, mail (with two cents first-class postage!), and a manual calculator. Glass-enclosed bookshelves reveal miners' tools and other paraphernalia of the trade.

The original Room 711, of course, was in a downtown Chicago building, where it had been preserved as a museum room by Chicago Rotarians until the building was demolished in 1989.

Before the wrecker's ball hit, however, Rotarians removed the doors, wood trim, radiators, ceiling lights, marble, and all furniture and artifacts; and the room was reassembled in One Rotary Center. Visitors today can walk around the office, though many of today's generation don't recognize the early cylindrical phonograph, Dictaphone machine, check printer, and mimeograph machines that Gus used.

Look out the windows of Room 711 onto the streets of 1905 Chicago, where businessmen in bowlers crowd the streets, and hardly a woman can be found in this man's world. Signs proclaim "Dinner 25 cents" and entice men to see the "Midnight Maidens" perform. The large back-lit photo helps set the mood of the time. In truth, however, when Gus looked out of his windows, he looked across the alley at another brick wall.

We asked Hank Ottery, Visitor Relations Manager at One Rotary Center about the authenticity of room 711.

Rotary Global History: How much that's here was there?

Ottery: As I remember, the furniture (and the wall paneling) are all from the original office?

Rotary Global History: The clock, Dictaphone, telephone also?

Ottery: The clock is new (for atmosphere), but most everything else is authentic - furniture, ceiling lights, radiators, all wood trim (but not the floor), the mining maps on the wall, even the awful two-tone green paint colors. The office ceiling here is lower than it was in those old buildings that had higher ceilings, and the office is three feet narrower than the original because of space considerations here. The windows aren't as big as the originals. The back-lit photo is from the Chicago Historical Society collection and was really taken in 1905.

 

For more information on tours of One Rotary Center, click on "Center Tours".

Room 711 of the Unity Building at 127 Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois was the office of mining engineer, Gustavus Loehr, who joined Rotary briefly, due to business pressures had to resign and died shortly after that. See Paul Harris' comments from "This Rotarian Age."
Photo Credit: Rotary International Audio/Visual Department

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