May 17, 2016 – As it nears its first year of operation the Bloomindale Trail,
Chicago’s “606,” comes under fire as hundreds of people march in a protest
against the trail, saying that its popularity is making the area unaffordable
for families who were there before the trail opened. In a press release the Logan Square
Neighborhood Association announces the march with this assertion, “Our families
are being displaced from the community they love because housing costs are
skyrocketing.” The protest aims to get
six aldermen from the area to get behind two ordinances. One would institute a property tax rebate
that would make it easier for families to stay in the neighborhood. The other would cordon off an area on the
west end of the 606 in which demolition fees would be assessed by the number of
residential units in a building being demolished with fees as high as $25,000
for a single-family home. Gentrification
on the west end of the trail creates particularly strong pressures – the median
income in the area is less than $50,000 a year while on the east end of the
trail the median income is over twice that amount. A report by the Institute for Housing Studies
at DePaul University concludes, “Before 2012, the abandoned rail line was a
penalty on property values of about 1.4 percent. After the 606 was underway, being near the
606 began to command a premium, but only on the western side of the trail. Although the rail line was no longer a
penalty in 606 East, buyers did not pay an additional premium for homes near
the trail in this higher value market.
The story is different in 606 West.
There, buyers were willing to pay a 22.3 percent price premium for
properties within one-fifth of a mile of the trail.”
May 17, 1913 – In a rare display of cross-town (even cross-country) unity over 35,000 Chicagoans slip through the turnstiles at Comiskey Park to pay tribute to New York Yankee manager Frank Leroy Chance, a former North Sider. As I. E. Sanborn reports for the Chicago Daily Tribune, “It was impossible at anytime to tell Chance fans from Sox fans. For that one day each was both and both each.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 18, 1913] The festivities begin at 2:00 p.m. when the White Sox band marches onto the field from the south entrance and settles behind home plate. For an hour afterward the “field looked like anything but a baseball park. The diamond was full of acrobats, tumblers, jugglers, trick dogs, human snakes and Sandows (professional bodybuilders).” Just before 3:00 Chance heads to home plate with the Yankee line-up, accompanied by Governor Edward Dunne and Mayor Carter Harrison. The fans jump up “with a roar which in the aggregate sounded like several hundred Niagaras all working at once.” The crowd is even more enthusiastic when it is learned that Chance will play first base for an inning with the New York team. Before that, though, he is presented with a pair of giant floral pieces eight feet tall, and a horseshoe of red carnations and roses. Chance had led the Cubs to World Series championships in 1907 and 1908, but in 1912 while in the hospital recovering from blood clots that resulted from blows to the head from pitches, the Cubs released him and the Yankees signed him to a three-year contract worth $120,000. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946, 22 years after his death. On this day in 1913, though, the city is his – not so the game, which the last-place Sox win, 6-2. As Sanborn wrote, “It was a wonderful testimony to the warm spot Chicago has in its heart for the young Lochinvar (You won’t see too many baseball writers these days making references to Sir Walter Scott in their copy . . .) who came out of the farthest west more than a dozen years ago, stole a bride among its fairest daughters, and gave the city in return a proud place in the annals of baseball.”
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