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| The Masonic Temple Building 1892-1939 |
A big kerfuffle on
this day, November 6, of 1890 as the city turned out for the ceremony to lay
the cornerstone for the building that would rise at the corner of State Street
and Randolph. The Masonic Temple, it was
promised, would be the tallest building in the world when it was completed.
As dignitaries
gathered the box to be placed inside the cornerstone was prepared. The stone which was to seal the box within
the base of the building stood ready, inscribed with these words, “Erected by
the Masonic Fraternity, A. D. 1890, Temple Association.” [Chicago
Tribune, November 7, 1890] The paper
pointed out that such heavy stones were purely decorative, observing that “In
this structure, a type of the American school of architecture, the masonry is
only to protect the real supports of the building steel beams.”
Music blared as
horses “prancing with military spirit” passed by. The parade was a dazzling display as “Men
bearing glittering swords came by, their snowy plumes shining against the black
background of the Knights’ dress. There
were red crosses, black crosses, and double-barred crosses, and every uniform
as neat as wax, each uniformed man wearing spotless gloves. Magnificently-embroidered banners with
knightly crests then floated on the breeze.”
The streets were
packed. Windows were filled with
spectators. The roofs along State Street
were lined with hundreds of people.
As Chicago began to
prepare for the great World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, an event that
citizens saw as placing Chicago among the great cities of the world, the Masonic
Temple would strengthen that notion.
Towering 275 feet above State Street, this would be the tallest building
in the world. “All of the arts of the
present century will be employed to embellish its interior and give it an
attractive exterior, and no expense will be spared to make it one of the most,
if not the most complete structure in existence,” wrote The Tribune.
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One of the many interior meeting rooms
(Chicago Daily News Archives - Library of Congress) |
In fact, it was
anticipated that the new building would cost $2,000,000, close to 52 million
dollars these days. The entrance, 42
feet high and 28 feet wide, led into “a rotunda having an area of 3,700 square
feet and open to the extreme height of the building, finished up to the
275-foot roof with plate-glass and white polished marble.” [Chicago Tribune, November 7, 1890]
In addition to
several hundred offices, there were over 100 Masonic lodge rooms, some of them
having a capacity of over 1,000 people.
Each floor had a 12-foot central corridor with offices and stores lining
each side, half looking through windows to the street, the other half
overlooking the central atrium.
Fifty thousand safe
deposit boxes were placed in the basement of the building, providing for annual
income of $125,000. The Bankers’ National Bank with a capitalized valuation of
$1,000,000 agreed to a ten-year lease on the corner space on the ground floor
of the building for $160,000.
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The light court and atrium lobby
(Chicago Daily News Archive - Library of Congress) |
There were 17
elevators, capable of carrying 70,000 passengers a day. The Tribune brayed, “Even that of the great
Eiffel tower of Paris and the World Building of New York will have to yield the
honor to Chicago in this respect.” [Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1892]
Hydraulically
operated, the pumping apparatus used to run them was capable of “supplying
water every day to a town of 60,000 inhabitants.” The elevator cables alone would span a
distance of 16 miles. Rough calculations
suggested that the elevators would travel 123,136 miles a year or “nearly five
times around the earth.”
Three of the lifts
would be dedicated to ferrying people to the observatory at the top of the
building where a “beautiful pavilion garden will relieve the eye after the
grand panorama of the city and the surrounding lake and country scenery has
been viewed.”
The great building soon became a tragic memorial as less than three
months after the dedication the building’s genius architect, John Welborn Root, died suddenly after
“being seized with a severe chill” after a visit of architects from the east
coast, who had shared the preliminary plans for the 1893 fair at Root's house.
Although Mr. Root
was not a member of the order, the Masons gathered together to “join with our
citizens generally in the deep sorrow felt at the loss of this prominent
citizen, whose personal worth and professional skill brought him in close
contact with this ancient fraternity, as the designer of the great Masonic
Temple, the erection of which had so auspiciously begun under the direction of
his master mind.” [Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1891]
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View of Randolph and State from the roof
(Chicago Daily New Archive - Library of Congress) |
By March 1, 1891
the foundation for the great building was complete with “piers completed,
cap-stones on, and the base of the steel columns set.” [Chicago Tribune, March
1, 1891] Workers had toiled in three
shifts around the clock to complete this section of the project, and that was
the first part of a schedule that moved forward at breakneck speed.
There were
penalties for any contractor who could not meet the ambitious schedule. The contractor responsible for erecting the
steel frame of the building was required to take out a $100,000 bond, payable
if the company did not meet the deadline for having that phase of the project
finished. There was a $500 a day penalty
for each floor not completed on time.
The steel contractor was to forfeit $1,000 a day for each day a
scheduled delivery was late.
As a result, exactly one
year later, on November 6, 1891, the capstone was laid at the top of the
19-story, marking the practical completion of the great structure. “In one year’s time the big building has
progressed from the cornerstone to the capstone, and it stands today a towering
monument to the master minds that conceived it and to that fraternity, old
almost as history itself, which has caused it to be built,” The Tribune
reported. [Chicago Tribune, November 7, 1891]
“A grander or more
brilliant procession of Masons never marched along the streets in Chicago,”
wrote The Tribune. More than 500
uniformed knights were in the line, their white plumes waving and their highly
burnished swords clanking as they tramped along.” The procession was led by two platoons of
policemen who tried to clear a path through the spectators who had lined the
route. 1,550 more men, representing the Masonic lodges of the city, followed the
contingent of dignitaries.
A rope extending from
a crane at the highest point of the front wall of the building was attached to
the capstone, which lay on a table covered with the American flag. “It was so small and plain-looking that it
was dwarfed by the mighty Temple,” wrote The Tribune.
By June 1, 1892 the
conservatory in the building opened 300 feet above State Street. Although it was a foggy day when the opening
reception was held inside the space, optimism ran high. One of the directors of the Masonic
Fraternity Temple Association, Amos Grannis, observed, “During the World’s Fair
we expect the conservatory to become a popular resort . . . The dancing floor
has a surface of 10,000 square feet and the conservatory will make a splendid
place for parties. In clear weather the
Michigan shore can be seen, and a splendid view of Chicago, including the
World’s Fair, is one of the advantages offered.” [Chicago Tribune, June 2,
1892]
Ah, if only things
had worked out as well as they were planned.
Two weeks after the conservatory opened, the complaints of the
building’s tenants were so many and so vigorous that The Tribune observed that the “nice linen-woven paper” used to
record them was too thin to carry their weight.
There were
complaints about the elevators. There
were no signs to show which elevators went where and “the men who operate the
cages wear such an air of lofty superiority that the humble passenger hardly
dares to ask a question, fearing a rebuke for being so presumptuous.” [Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1892]
E. D. Neff in Room
1505 stated that “the supply of electricity has been so irregular as to make it
of no value to me. For the first twenty
days in May it was impossible to do business for the reason that the current
was shut off so frequently.”
Dr. F. A. Stetson
stated that until May 20 the hallway in front of his office door was
“ornamented by a large mortar box, and the passageways were so dirty and full
of plaster that he could not put down carpets until June 1.”
An owner who had
leased space in the building for a music conservatory was told to “stop the playing
of musical instruments in his rooms.” A
gentleman who had leased a space to sell candy and soda water found that leases
had been given to other parties to sell candy in the building’s hallways.
The rental agent
(you’re not going to believe this), E. R. Bliss, was shown the list of
complaints and responded that he “was tired of the job,” that he had only been
drawn into it by the death of one of the other partners.
By the end of July
even the building’s crown jewel had lost its sparkle. The glass roof of the twentieth floor
conservatory and its small windows tucked under the eaves of the roof, combined
to send the temperature in the showplace to 112 degrees and the air "became so
hot and stifling for a time that the banks of ferns and other plants set about
the room grew brown and seared like a Kansas cornfield when a hot wind blows
over it.” [Chicago Tribune, July 27,
1892]
And there was the
smoke. The Tribune observed dryly, “The
Masonic Temple has entered the field against the tugs, the switch engines, and
other able-bodied and veteran smoke-producers only a few months ago. Yet so
steady and so voluminous has been its output that the others have been compelled
to acknowledge its superiority.”
[Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1892]
A column at the building’s
entrance beckoned visitors to take a trip to the conservatory, “the highest
point of observation in the city.” The
Tribune declared, “The extent to which the Masonic Temple smokestack obscures
the view of the city is not dwelt upon in the advertisements of the
Temple. Certainly no other building does
more in that direction than the Temple.”
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The smoking titan
(Chicago Daily News Archive - Library of Congress) |
The great building
stood until 1939 when it was demolished.
Proposed construction of the State Street subway would have required
extensive and prohibitively expensive foundation modification. The
elevators never really lived up to their billing because the capacity of some of the spaces on the
upper floors would have required service that could not be delivered in
buildings that are being designed today.
But, my God, what a
building this was. Think about it –
within three short years, the tallest building on earth, a World’s Fair that
would attract 27.5 million people to the city, and an Art Institute worthy of
any city in the world. Chicago had become a city on the
make.
At the ceremony for
the laying of the building’s capstone on November 6, 1891, the Reverend Dr. H.
W. Thomas observed, “Men die, institutions live. When we are gone, when other feet shall walk
these streets a hundred or a thousand years hence, while the waters wash these
shores, till time is no more, may this temple stand for the glory of God, the
honor of the Masonry, and the good of man.”
Not quite a
thousand. A little less than half a
century. A really, really good one to
remember, though.
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Randolph and State, c. 1902
Notice the clock at Marshall Field's
Chicago Daily News Archive - Library of Congress |
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