Talk:Paul Cornell (lawyer)

Early article development discussion

Very little of this is encyclopedic; and where do those repeated references to a visionary come from? the local Chamber of Commerce? Septentrionalis 23:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

2/3rds of the page is derived from the Encyclopedia of Chicago. See sources. TonyTheTiger 17:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

"Among his contributions to the city was the spirit of guardianship over the Lake Michigan waterfront,"

What does this mean? If it is a direct quotation from the Enc. of Chicago, it is also copyvio.

He was a visionary whose successful planning and push for a town with a lakefront park, a Plaissance, an adjoining park and boulevards shaped the town. His vision for a cornerstone institution to complete the implementation of his plan arrived with the University of Chicago that resulted from the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller and Marshall Field in 1890.

Visionary twice in one paragraph? Really this will not do. Wikipedia is not a booster club. (And did he really mispell Plaissance? the French is plaisance, the Englsh pleasance.) Septentrionalis 18:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

In response to <<spirit of guardianship over the Lake Michigan waterfront,">> It is my own phrasing summarizing his banning of industry on this lakefront neighborhood. See my Burnham Plan article about how Chicago is rare among Great Lakes Cities for banning industry on the lakefront.

I believe visionary is my own word. I have to check about 10 places in the Encyc. of Chicago because Cornell is listed on several pages in the index. I will get back to you later, but possibly not until tomorrow. Much of the rest of the phrase may be a bit close to the original text, I will correct as necessary.TonyTheTiger 19:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Then both are your private conclusions, stated in Wikipedia's voice. Please substitute the facts from which you have drawn them, and let the reader make up his own mind. If you are correct, the reader will agree with you, and also have the facts. Septentrionalis 19:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Quotes from En of CHic:

• In 1856, Paul Cornell initiated the railroad suburb in greater Chicago, when he persuaded the Illinois Central Railroad to operate local passenger service to Hyde Park, six miles south of the city center. pg 192.
• The development of hte Hydep Park community began in 1853 when Paul Cornell, a New York Lawyer, purchased 300 acres of property from 51st to 55th streets. Always a shrewd investor, Cornell deeded 60 acres to the Illinois Central Railroad in exchange for a train station and the prommise of daily trips to the heart of Chicago's commercial core. the community conintued to prosper over the next 30 eyars, as residential construction expanded and the transportation network grew dense. pg 404.

I admit the phrase <<town with a lakefront park, a Plaissance, an adjoining park and boulevards shaped the town.>> came from somewhere, but I can't find it in the EoC. Must be from one of the other refs. If you feel it is plagurism feel free to change it.

I have no idea whether it is plagiarism; I hope that "plaissance" is an error. Septentrionalis 19:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction

How do we reconcile the claims in the Hyde Park article that Cornell was an abolitionist and station master on the underground railroad with the "enforcing racially restricted covenants" text? I suspect that the racial covenants applied in a smaller area than the whole Township.

No contradiction. See Washington Park, Chicago (subdivision). The racial covenants were in the 1920s and 30s. TonyTheTiger 17:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Additionally where the Cornell article says "specifically forbade heavy industry development in Hyde Park" it must be referring to the smaller Hyde Park core neighborhood, not the Township. But I am not privy to the historical documents to check this for sure. The Hyde Park Historical Society has a website with some archival material if somebody wants to comb through it; http://www.hydeparkhistory.org In my opinion the members of the society are not pro- or anti-Cornell. Speciate 00:35, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Make sure you have your eras correct on this query. I am not sure where it is going. TonyTheTiger 17:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Good Article status

I don't think that this article is worthy of GA status. For one, it's ugly. The pictures are cumbersome, and they should be reorganized. For another, there are too many sub-sections that are underdeveloped. Also, it's not well written and there are two lines with strange indents. I'd fail it. Jolb 02:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Good Article on hold

I tend to agree with the above comment, but I think the problems with the article can be fixed with some editing from the main contributors. For starters, I want to see inline citations after every sentence. Tell me exactly where you are getting every fact in this article. Someone who is a good writer also needs to do a thorough copyediting job on this article, with particular attention to spelling, grammar usage, and overall flow. Some of the sentences are choppy. I am less concerned about the layout of the photos and the appearance of the page, but I am admittedly less visual than I am copy-oriented. Someone may be able to arrange the photos so the page looks better too. The overall content is quite solid and the subject matter is important. For that reason, I'm putting the article on hold rather than failing it.--Bookworm857158367 02:51, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Failed "good article" nomination

This article failed good article nomination. This is how the article, as of February 24, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: No. Could use some copy-editing, needs more in-line citations, paragraphs need more development. 2. Factually accurate?: Largely solid. 3. Broad in coverage?: Yes. 4. Neutral point of view?: Yes. 5. Article stability? Yes. 6. Images?: Acceptable, but poorly arranged. When these issues are addressed, the article can be resubmitted for consideration. Thanks for your work so far. --Bookworm857158367 15:17, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Second "good article" nomination and review

I am not sure why it was thought this was ready to be reviewed again, but it does not presently meet the criteria for a good article, as of April 22, 2007.

The pictures are misplaced in that they don't refer to the text. Apostrophes are misused, and there are some capitalization errors. The text is not well-written, and paragraphs are not complete; they need development. This article is about both Paul Cornell and the neighborhood of Hyde Park. It would be better if it focused more on the person and less on the neighborhood. I am placing this on hold and if someone works on it, I will also to try to help clean it up, but the paragraphs need expansion and it can have NO grammatical errors ... Argos'Dad 01:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

For the reasons stated above. Argos'Dad 04:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

GA review - failing once again

Before I start, let me first state that I really find it a bit disconcerting to see WikiProject Chicago repeatedly nominating underdeveloped articles that often glaringly don't meet GA criteria, not to mention are simply quite poorly written. This is the third time around for this article, and the major issues still weren't addressed, and I see many articles hastily renominated despite still failing to meet the criteria raised in the original review. Many issues accross the articles from the scope of this WikiProject exhibit the same shortcomings, so one would expect not to see them anymore after a few reviews...

I am afraid some members of the WikiProject who nominate articles choose to ignore or somehow pretend not to understand important parts of the reviews. While the persistence of the WikiProject in pushing for GA status for as many articles as possible is remarkable, the methods employed and the apparently desired outcome (having as many GA tags rather than actual Good Articles as possible) is not worthy of praise, to say the least. I would urge the members of the WikiProject to take the comments from GA reviews to their hearts, as well as acquaint themselves with the Good Article Criteria better. I am afraid that the standards of the WikiProject are simply much lower than those of the Good Articles system, and I believe this might lead to disappointment and misunderstandings.

I must also say I was really hoping to be able to promote this article to show the WikiProject an example of a truly Good Article, but unfortunately this is yet another example of an article clearly not ready for a nomination. Therefore, please do not renominate it until the issues would TRULY be addressed.

Now, I will only highlight the major issues with the article, which are more than enough to fail it. Please note, therefore, that some areas I have not covered in my review might also exhibit some more minor shortcomings, so please make sure all criteria are met before renominating.

• Criterium 3b - staying focused - as indicated above, the article contains a significant portion of text devoted to the Hyde Park rather than Paul Cornell. Although he might have been very involved in the development of the Park, the article should focus on him, perhaps branching out to other articles to provide details on that. To give you a parallel, it would improper to have an article on, say, da Vinci, go on describing how he came about to pain Mona Lisa, what he painted and how, who was the Gioconda etc. etc. A succinct summary would suffice.
• Criterium 1 - well written - quite a few issues here.
  • First of all, the article, for the most part, consists of poorly linked simple sentences like "He did that", "This was that" etc. I am afraid this is not good prose at all.
  • Secondly, the subject of the article, or a given sentence for that matter, has to be clear all the time. So, Cornell cannot be referred to as "he" throughout the article, the personal pronoun should be reserved for instances when he needs to be referred to in two consecutive sentences and thus the repetition of his name would be improper. Additionally, sections are meant to divide the article, and be accessible on their own, so the prose cannot just "flow" from one into another, like in the case of the first sentence of the "Hyde Park" section (who is "he"? what "Douglas"?)
  • "Although these streets have different names they are the same street." - no comment. And this is only one sample quotation!
  • Last but not least, the structuring of the article is rather poor. On the one hand, there are very short subsections in the part on "later ventures", which would be better dealt with in a single paragraph, or perhaps two (or perhaps even interspersed throughout the text with more comments on those, if the article would not be focused on the Hyde Park that much), on the other - the "civic leadership" section, which consists of one, very hard to read, chunk of text. Moreover, the "memorials" section would be better dealt with in a paragraph of prose (bulleted lists should be avoided in articles), and perhaps adjoined to some other section, not to mention those are not quite "memorials".
• Criterium 4 - NPOV There is much praise for Cornell and assertion of his positive role interspersed in the article, and I guess the border of POV has been crossed. Not everything that can be sourced is automatically NPOV, and the article should focus on facts and not how somebody assesses the subject. Please leave that to more appropriate publications and focus on factual details.

That's all from me now - as I mentioned, those issues are pretty major and I do believe this article requires a major rewrite and not just some quick touch-ups. So, until the former takes place, please refrain from renominating to spare reviewers some unnecessary stress and effort. Thank you, PrinceGloria 22:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

GA pass

Wow this article took a lot of talk page reading! Ive done a good read of the article and have looked at all the past comments raised in previous GAC's and I believe that the article is now at GA level and has answered the NPOV, reference and structure points raised in the previous GAC. I do however have some minor suggestions which might further improve the article. Firstly the image captions are acceptable for GA, but the last - the Hyde Park hotel image captions could do with expanding (I also think the image sizes might be worth increasing).

Secondly in the lead the sentances "He had a wealth of notable social contacts based on lineage, marriage and profession. He was influenced by these connections and eventually built a legacy." doesnt appear either necessary nor encyclopedic. Of allmost every historical political and economic figure in history has built a legacy, in part based on contacts with family and friends. IMO I would suggest dropping it.

Finally (again with the lead) whilst I myself can see that the sentance is correct (given his ventures etc) the following might be subject to some contention/debate: "Most of the south side of Chicago was developed and eventually annexed into the City of Chicago as a result of his foresight." IMO perhaps you could rewrite suggesting that parts of Chicago were developed and it was a result of his efforts. Even better add a reference if a published source shares this viewpoint. I would suggest another peer review as the article might reach FA given a wider input and a little more editing. Good work. BTW the boxes at top might need updating. LordHarris 00:03, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

GA Sweeps (kept)

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. The article history has been updated to reflect this review. Regards, Ruslik 09:39, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Cornell Watch Company was not in Chatham

Tony, if you look in the Encyclopedia of Chicago article, it says "Industrial development began to the north after 1876 when Paul Cornell, founder of Hyde Park, established the Cornell Watch Factory at 76th and the Illinois Central tracks." It does not say the Watch Factory was in Chatham, it says the Watch Factory brought development "to the north." Then, if you look at the map of Grand Crossing, and find 76th and Greenwood, do you see that weird deviation from Chicago's normal grid? Or you can look here at Google Maps here. Cornell plunked his factory down in that circle before there were any streets there, just to the west of the actual Grand Crossing. Seedless Maple (talk) 08:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

• PS, just Google "Cornell Watch Company", and many of the hits say "Grand Crossings" without even having to click on them. Here's one hit from the Smithsonian. Seedless Maple (talk) 09:01, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

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