March 4, 1961 – An F2 tornado strikes the city’s
south side at around 5:00 p.m. It
develops over Ninety-First Street and Hoyne and carves out a corridor of
destruction as it moves northeast across the city until it dies out over the
lake off Sixty-Eighth Street. One person
is killed and another 115 people are injured as over 3,000 homes are damaged or
completely destroyed. The greatest
number of injuries occur at the Melody Lane Drive-In at 1425 West
Eighty-Seventh Street where about 25 customers and 20 employees are dining and
working. One of the restaurant’s owners
says that “the whole building began to shiver, the walls started crumbling, and
the roof came off.” [Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1961] At the house next door a family
with eight children huddle in the basement as the structure is lifted off its
foundation and moved several feet. Miraculously,
no one is injured there. A resident at
8808 Justine Avenue says, “My brother and I saw cars being tossed around like
toothpicks. They were just rolling
around. It only lasted a few
minutes. Then we went outside and it was
horrible.”
March 4, 1953 -- Demolition begins on the mansion once occupied by Harold and Edith Rockefeller McCormick, a once-grand residence at the corner of Oak Street and Bellevue Place. Edith McCormick was the fourth daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who in 1895 married Henry Fowler McCormick, the son of the mechanical reaper magnate, Cyrus McCormick. She divorced him in 1926 and spent much of her last years in the 41-room mansion on Lake Shore Drive until she died in 1932. She is buried in Graceland Cemetery. The photos above show the mansion as it was and the residential tower that replaced it -- what is now One Thousand Plaza.
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