January 5, 1954 – Bad news comes today for
motorists north of Chicago. After
watching a demonstration of radar designed to track speeding motorists in Springfield,
state officials announce that the device will be placed into operation on the
new Edens expressway, completed three years earlier, a modern roadway plagued
with a number of accidents for which the contributing factor is speed. The device has been tested for six months in
Moline and has been successful in convicting motorists who defy the
speed limit, justifying its $700 cost.
Things will never be the same again.
Also on this date from an earlier blog . . .
January 5, 1910 -- Basing its action on an Illinois legislative act of 1903 that gave park boards the right to condemn easements as a matter of public necessity, the South Park Board decides to file a petition to condemn the easement of A. Montgomery Ward and permit the erection of the $8,000,000 Field Museum at the foot of Congress Street along with the Crear Library. This would be the last battle in the long fight between Ward and the city. Grant Park would survive unsullied; Ward would be dead less than three years later. The photo above shows the land over which the battle was being waged at the time.
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