November 22, 1905 – Marshall Field,
Jr. is discovered, shot through his left side just below the ribs at 5:30 p.m.
in the dressing room of his residence at 1919 Prairie Avenue. He is rushed to Mercy Hospital where Dr.
Arthur Dean Bevan attempts to save his life.
Field lingers for five days before succumbing to his wound on November
27, “… conscious until the last few minutes … his last act before he closed his
eyes was to smile encouragingly at his wife.” [Tebbel, John. The Marshall Fields: A Study in Wealth. E. P. Dutton and Co., 1947] The
circumstances of his death are cloaked in shadow. Some say that he was preparing for an
upcoming hunting trip and accidentally discharges a weapon while cleaning it,
but accounts at the time indicate that the weapon was almost impossible to
discharge accidentally. A report given by the doctor who responded to the
shooting at the Field mansion says that Field told him he had no idea how he
came to have been shot and called the wound an accident. Yet, reports suggest that, given the nature
of the wound, it would have been unlikely for the shooting to have been an accident. Rumors also circulate that Field had been
shot in an altercation at a club run by the Everleigh sisters on Dearborn
Street and carried to his home, just blocks away. On December 1, a coroner’s jury returned its
verdict, the official conclusion to the investigation. The decision reads, “We find that Marshall
Field Jr. came to his death from paralysis of the bowels following a bullet
wound in the seventh intercostal space, about four inches to the left of the
medial line, and from the testimony presented find that the said paralysis
resulted from a bullet wound accidentally inflicted by a revolver in the hand
of the deceased at his home, 1919 Prairie avenue.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 2, 1906] The Field home, where the only son of the great merchant suffered his fatal wound, still exists today, divided into a number of upscale residential units. It is pictured above.
November 22, 1936 – Ernest Robert Graham dies at his home at 25 Banks Street at the age of 68, his death attributed to overwork. At the age of 16 Graham went to work for his father in Lowell, Michigan, as a carpenter and mason. Of this early labor he later said, “Honest toil never hurt anyone regardless of age. My work with the trowel stood up with the best of them. These were the days when a bricklayer laid three thousand bricks a day.” [Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White – 1912-1936. Chappell, Sally A. Kitt] By the age of 20 he had earned degrees from Coe College and the University of Notre Dame. At that point he came to Chicago and entered the employ of Daniel Burnham, drawing plans for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. When Daniel Burnham died in 1912, Graham and three other architects took over the firm, going on to design some of the great second-generation buildings in the city. They include the Wrigley Building, the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, the Merchandise Mart, 135 South La Salle, Union Station, the Pittsfield Building, and the main post office. Services for the architect take place at the Fourth Presbyterian Church on November 24, after which he is interred in Graceland Cemetery.
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