Found on the pages of The Chicago Tribune . . . this was taking place in Chicago on May 17, 1921 . .
.
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| South Branch straightening (Chicago Historical Society) |
A big story in the May 17 Trib was a $270,000,000 proposal to change the face of
downtown. On this date 45 city officials
inspected the improvements, some of which had already begun.
The paper stated, “After interviews with
railroad officials and other concerning the Union station project, the lake
shore development plan, the straightening of the south branch of the river, and
the ‘uncorking of the loop bottle’ by relocating south side railroad
terminals, he consensus among the
sightseers was that a settlement of the building trades lockout and a reduction
in money rates will result in the biggest public improvement boom in the city’s
history.”
The chairman of the Committee on Railroads,
Alderman Cermak, along with William F. Lipps of the Railway Terminal
Commission, met in the morning to look at an artist’s rendering of what the
proposed $10,000,000 “head house” at Union Station would look like.
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| Union Staion as originally proposed (Chicago Tribune) |
“The plans under contemplation call for a
sixteen story office building over the station proper,” J. D’Esposito, the
chief engineer for the project said.
“The foundations are being laid to accommodate a skyscraper, though it
may not be built at once.”
The group, joined by Michael J. Faherty of the
Board of Local Improvements and Charles H. Wacker, the Chairman of the Chicago
Plan Commission, then toured the lakeshore as far south as Gary, Indiana.
“When the union station is completed,” Mr.
Faherty said as the trip ended, “there will be a rapid development of factories
and warehouses southwest of it. As
Clinton, Desplaines, and Jefferson streets are only forty feet wide from
Harrison street to Roosevelt road, congestion is sure to result. The problem of widening these streets to at
least eighty feet must be met within the next few years.”
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| Union Station as it looked in 1925 (Google Images) |
The planning for the new Union
Station began in 1913 with the original plans drawn by Daniel Burnham’s
firm. The architect died a year earlier,
and the plans were finished by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. The project took up more than nine city
blocks and took more than a decade to finish.
Finally, on May 16, 1925 the great station opened with a significantly
shorter office tower than was originally proposed.
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