In Babel: Stories of Chicago was published by McClure, Phillips in 1903. The stories were set in the world of Chicago’s residential hotels — the institutions where single workers, traveling salesmen, retired couples, and assorted eccentrics lived in uneasy proximity. Each story focused on a different resident, and the hotel itself functioned as a microcosm of the city: a place where people of different classes, origins, and ambitions were thrown together by economic necessity.
The title’s allusion to the Tower of Babel pointed to the diversity of voices and experiences within a single American institution — everyone speaking past each other, everyone misunderstood, everyone convinced of their own centrality.
Collecting In Babel
First edition (McClure, Phillips, New York, 1903): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- Fine condition: $40–$100
- Very good: $15–$40
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
The Hotel as Microcosm
Ade uses the residential hotel — a ubiquitous institution of turn-of-the-century American urban life — as a microcosm of Chicago’s social order. Each boarder represents a different stratum: the clerk aspiring upward, the widow clinging to respectability, the salesman living beyond his means, the young woman navigating the city alone. The linked stories create a community portrait that anticipates Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio in its method, though Ade’s tone is comic where Anderson’s would be elegiac.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the residential hotel in American life? Before the apartment building became standard, urban Americans — especially single people, young couples, and the elderly — frequently lived in residential hotels or boardinghouses. These provided furnished rooms, shared dining, and a communal life that was both supportive and claustrophobic. Ade captured this world with documentary precision.