March 19, 1911 – Over two-dozen firemen are
overcome by smoke and fumes on a day in which 71 fires are reported in the city
as a fire rips though Warehouse “B” of the Monarch Refrigerating Company plant
at 40 East Michigan Street. The flames
are fed by a million pounds of butter, and the thick walls of the plant, along
with the small refrigeration cells within it and narrow hallways connecting
them make it nearly impossible to get water onto the blaze in sufficient
quantities to do much good. Chief Arthur
Seyferlich of the second battalion is among the first to reach the fire and helps
to carry injured firemen down fire escapes. He is overcome by smoke in his
second search of the building and has to be rescued by his brother. Fourteen horse-drawn fire engines work on
Cass Street, four more work on Rush Street and another four are placed at
Michigan and State. The fire, which most probably results from frayed wires on
the fifth floor, burns for days. Lost in
the fire are 764 cans of eggs that the United States government had seized as evidence
on the ground that they contained “putrid matter.” The eggs were to be presented as evidence
before Judge Kenesaw Landis the following week. Chief Seyferlich, who served as Chicago's Fire Marshal from 1921 to 1926, is pictured above.
March 19, 1928 -- The Morrison Hotel, the first building outside of New York to rise more than 40 stories, is selected by Mayor William Hale Thompson's Radio Commission as the building on which the "Lindbergh Light" will be placed. The hotel agrees to pay for the cost of the 200 foot tower on which the light will sit and assume the responsibility for its maintenance. In 1927 Mr. Elmer G. Sperry, President of the Sperry Gyroscope Company, offered the beacon, which will be seen for 250 miles, providing that Chicago find a way to mount and maintain it. GREAT NEWS! But it didn't work out. A competition began between two great beacons, one proposed for the Roanoke Building on La Salle Street and Mr. Sperry's Lindbergh Light. In the end a stationary beam was placed on the brand new La Salle-Wacker Building and the Lindbergh Light ended up at the top of the Palmolive Building, completed in 1929. It turns out that Elmer Sperry never saw his controversial beacon. He died two months before it cast its first beam into the Chicago night. The Morrison Hotel was demolished in 1965 to make way for the new First National Bank of Chicago building, now Chase, at Clark and Madison.
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