April 8, 1935 -- Chicago to New Orleans Overnight

April 8, 1935 – With pilot Victor Haganson in the cockpit, a Stinson monoplane takes off from the Chicago Airport, today’s Midway International Airport, and inaugurates overnight passenger and mail service between Chicago and New Orleans.  The plane lifts off at 8:00 p.m. and lands the following morning at 8:45 a.m.  The carrier, Chicago and Southern Airlines, has been flying the route during daylight hours for ten months.  The overnight flight, which allows passengers to arrive in time for the opening of the business day, becomes possible when the installation of light beacons along the airway south of St. Louis is complete.   Five passengers make the trip, among them two Chicagoans – R. J. Thain, president of the Federated Advertising Clubs of America and P. W. Kunning, trade promotion director of the Chicago Association of Commerce.  The two men bring a greeting from Mayor Edward Kelly to New Orleans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley, along with merchandise that is placed on display in New Orleans store windows after they land.

April 8, 1947 -- Chicago park district board members approve the revision of a1931 agreement with the Saddle and Cycle Club at Sheridan and Foster, allowing the extension of Lake Shore Drive to the north. In 1931 the club agreed to give up its rights to the Lake Michigan shore. In exchange the park district agreed to build a lagoon for the club. In the 1947 agreement the club gives up the lagoon, which was never constructed. In return, the park district gives the Saddle and Cycle Club 235 feet of land extending toward Foster Avenue and 325 feet on Berwyn Avenue to the north. The club also will be permitted to extend its building lines 185 feet farther east on Foster and 275 feet east on Berwyn. The Saddle and Cycle Club began in 1895 and was literally a "country club". A Jarvis Hunt designed clubhouse was built in 1898, on a five-acre property that sat right on the lake at the southern border of Edgewater. Landfill and the extension of Lake Shore Drive barricaded the club from its lakeshore frontage, but it's still there on Foster Avenue today with about 500 families in its membership. The photo below shows the club in 1915, sitting as pretty as you please right on the edge of the lake.