The radical community in Chicago had numerous points of contact. The Arbeiter-Zeitung building, on Fifth Avenue (now Wells Street) just north of Madison Street, was the home of the Socialistic Publishing Society. Here the English-language Alarm, edited by Albert Parsons, as well as the Arbeiter-Zeitung, edited by August Spies, were published.

Ethnic, political, and workers' organizations met regularly in a few dozen halls located throughout the city, though these were most densely concentrated in the North and Northwest Sides of Chicago. These halls provided a social nexus for working-class Chicagoans, particularly those of German background. Typically consisting of a first-floor saloon with one or more rentable rooms (some the size of ballrooms and including space for a small band or orchestra), these halls hosted everything from union meetings and political debates to concerts, theatricals, and social receptions.

There were several halls in the Haymarket area, and a veritable string of them on or near North Avenue, and up and down Milwaukee Avenue near Wicker Park. Greif's Hall (middle) was on Lake Street between Clinton and Canal Streets. Zepf's Hall (bottom) was a little further west, on the northeast corner of Lake and Desplaines, half a block north of the site where the bomb exploded. The building that housed Zepf's Hall still stands today, occupied by the Grand Stage Lighting Company.

Albert Parsons, who had left the Haymarket rally a few minutes before the bomb was thrown, saw the flash of the explosion through the window of the saloon in Zepf's Hall, where upstairs the Furniture Workers' Union had held their weekly meeting earlier that evening. In was in Greif's Hall, the prosecution maintained, that the Haymarket bombing was plotted the previous evening. Different companies of the Lehr- & Wehr-Verein met in halls in their members' respective neighborhoods, and they drilled together once a month at Neff's Hall on Clybourn Avenue.

This is the first of many images on this site from Chicago Police Captain Michael Schaack's book on Haymarket, Anarchy and Anarchists. Schaack is more fully discussed in Act III.