Fete Charrette

In a small room off the mezzanine floor of Chicago's Drake Hotel one evening last week sat a nude young woman of considerable charm, safe behind a barrier of chicken wire. For $1 anyone could go in, sit behind a drawing board for ten minutes and try or pretend to sketch her. Elsewhere in the Drake that evening were peep shows, slot machines, bars, roulette tables, smart shops, fortune telling booths, a gangplank and reproduction of one side of the lie de France. Milling around in costumes that tried earnestly to look bohemian were 2,500 Chicago socialites and celebrities. Fresh from welcoming Governor Roosevelt to town, Mayor Anton Joseph Cermak arrived in an orange beret, stayed late.

The occasion was an effort by Chicago's architects to raise money for the 1,200 architects' draughtsmen whom Depression has stranded without work. Having read reports of the progressive cocktail parties, exhibitions of hobbies and other festivals by which Eastern architects were attempting to take care of their unemployed (TIME, Feb. 22; June 6), a committee of Chicago architects organized the affair, which was unofficially called a Fete Charrette. Survivors last week were still too disorganized to know just how much money had been raised beyond expenses.

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