August 23, 1914 – Henry Korthagen, an unemployed
painter, pays the 25-cent admission to the observatory of the Masonic Temple
Building on State Street, crawls through a window to the northwest corner of
the building and then jumps. His body
strikes the crowded sidewalk on State Street at noon on a Saturday. A dentist on the twelfth floor of the
building, Dr. A. Jay Blakie, sees the body fly past his window, with a black
derby hat following 20 feet behind.
“From my position above,” Blakie says, “the sidewalk looked like the
surface of water after a stone has been thrown in. A circle of humanity just eddied back from
the crumpled object in the middle of it.”
[Chicago Daily Tribune, August 24,
1914] Korthagen had visited the Painters
and Decorators District Council at 300 West Madison Street earlier, seeking to
pay back dues and gain reinstatement to the union. Those at the union headquarters describe him
as cheerful at the time. The observatory at the Masonic Temple is pictured above, all the way up there at the top of the building.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment