Chicago Tribune
Piano used by Mary Garden is Fuel for ‘Bos.'
The grand piano at piano at the International Hobo college at 917 West Washington boulevard, which accompanied Mary Garden when she sang to the migratory workers a year ago, has gone up the flue — literally, not figuratively.
The last pieces of what was one a $700 instrument went into the stove last night to furnish heat for the lecture of Prof. William I. Thomas of the University of Chicago, who talked of "The Polish Immigrant" and the psychology of ethics.
The demise of the piano was due entirely to economic necessity, Irwin St John Tucker, presidents of the college explained.
"It was a case where a piano which cost $700 was cheaper as fuel than coal at $7 a ton — when you couldn’t get the coal," he said. "We were sorry to give it up, but our students decided they would rather live without music than freeze to the strains of Chopin funeral dirge."
