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On this particular evening he dined at ‘Rector’s,’ a restaurant of some local fame, which occupied a basement at Clark and Monroe Streets. Rector’s was a noted Chicago restaurant at Clark and Monroe. In Sister Carrie, Dreiser inserts it at a crucial psychological pitch: Hurstwood is moving through the city’s pleasures, self-regard, and temptations. The phrase “of some local fame” is characteristically Dreiserian—half advertisement, half diagnosis. The restaurant helps him register Chicago as a commercial theater in which desire is always attached to a visible place and price.