A Huge Picnic at the Hotel Riverview

More than 1600 members of the Chicago Wholesale Grocers’ Association picnicked on the grounds of the Hotel Riverview on August 20,1887. Visible at right are the large tents erected on the hotel grounds for the event. At far left, the river steamer Minnie Lillie can be seen at the hotel dock. The steamer made two trips daily between Kankakee and the hotel. (Kankakee County Museum Photo Archive)

 By Jack Klasey

September 13, 2025

On a sunny Saturday morning, August 20, 1887, three southbound Illinois Central excursion trains, each with ten passenger cars, pulled into Kankakee. Alighting at the depot from those thirty cars was a throng of passengers arriving in the city to enjoy what was possibly the largest picnic ever held here.

The picnic goers, some 1,600 strong, were members of the Chicago Wholesale Grocers’ Association and their families and friends, bound for the picnic site on the expansive landscaped grounds of the recently opened Hotel Riverview. The elegant resort hotel was located on the banks of the Kankakee River, less than a mile southeast of the railroad depot. Led by a 35-piece military band, the visitors trekked in a long column to the picnic grounds.

An article in the August 25 edition of the Kankakee Weekly Gazette described the excursionists: “Among the throng,” the newspaper reported, “were the solid businessmen of Chicago with their wives and children, the elegant young bookkeeper with his stylish sweetheart, the shrewd clean-faced young salesman who entertains an ambition of coming into the firm, the active young fellows with a ball or tennis racket in hand discussing the merits of the entries in the different games, and the sturdy teamster, who looked good-natured and was pleased with everything, and nothing short of a tornado or an attack of cholera was going to interfere with it….By all odds, it was the best-looking lot of excursionists that ever made Kankakee their pleasure grounds.”

The Hotel Riverview, which had opened for business on July 1, 1887, was a joint venture consisting of Kankakee entrepreneur/landowner Emory Cobb and two railroads (the Illinois Central and the “Big Four"). The three-story hotel was located in “Cobb’s Woods,” on a triangular site bounded today by S. Chicago Avenue, S. Greenwood Avenue, and Park Place. Constructed in a “rustic villa style,” the building displayed a tall, pointed turret on one corner and broad verandas on the west side facing the river. It offered 80 guest rooms, an elegant dining room with seating for 150, staffed by uniformed waiters, several formal parlors, a billiard room, smoking room, and a barber shop. The extensive grounds surrounding the hotel had been laid out by a New York landscape gardener.

The August 20 picnic day was jam-packed with activities for the grocers and their guests. “Immediately upon arrival at the grounds,” reported the Gazette, “the amusements for the day began with a game of ball between the blue and the red caps, which resulted in favor of the blue caps by a score of 8 to 6. Each member of the winning nine received a pair of gold-linked sleeve buttons, and the umpire a gold scarf pin.” Other activities included a tug-of-war competition, races for different age groups, other track-and-field events such as low hurdles, high jumps, and pole vaulting. Guessing games and other non-athletic events also were held. All the competitions awarded valuable prizes (such as diamond pins and gold watches) to the winners.

“The day was all that could have been asked,” noted the newspaper article, “light clouds obscuring the sun during the greater part of the time. The few drops of rain that fell about 3 o’clock did not interfere in the least with the amusements…the dining tent 80 x 125, dancing pavilion 75 feet in diameter, bandstand forty feet in diameter and the grandstand 110 feet long with seven tiers of elevated seats, all under canvas and the big hotel right at hand, one need have little fear of a shower.

“The day was one that will long be remembered by Kankakeeans, and we do not doubt by our Chicago visitors. We trust so favorably were they impressed with the charms of the Kankakee and its velvety banks that they will come next year with reinforced ranks.”

During its ten years of operation (1887-1897), the Hotel Riverview hosted many events, although none that approached the grocers’ picnic in terms of numbers. The resort attracted numerous vacationers from Chicago and other Midwestern cities. Its natural setting, elegant accommodations and ease of arrival by railroad made it an attractive “getaway” for visitors from the noisy, smoky and grimy atmosphere of the cities at that time. The hotel offered both daily and weekly rates—$3 per day, or $10 to $17 per week, depending upon the room selected.

From the mid-1890s onward, a financial panic seriously decreased the number of out-of-town guests; the hotel saw an increasing number of long-term boarders (including Emory Cobb and the families of his two sons, Walter and Charles). By 1897, when it was destroyed in a disastrous fire, approximately half the hotel’s rooms were occupied by long-term boarders. The fire, which broke out in the early-morning hours of November 12, 1897, roared through the wooden building in a matter of hours. By dawn, only four tall stone chimneys remained to mark the spot where Kankakee’s most elegant hotel once stood. Cobb and his fellow owners decided against rebuilding the hotel; today, the site is part of Kankakee’s Riverview residential neighborhood.

Jack Klasey is a former Journal reporter and a retired publishing executive. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.