November 26, 1877 – The City Council
takes up a special ordinance authorizing the leasing of lake front property to
the “Chicago Base-Ball Club” [Chicago
Daily Tribune, November 17, 1877] for a fee of $1,000 a year. There is a spirited exchange. One alderman asserted that “if the city
hadn’t the right to sell the ground, it hasn’t the right to lease it.” An opposing alderman said that “there was
nothing whatever in the proposition that would be detrimental to the city, and
that there was no good reason why it should not be accepted.” After various amendments are offered and
rejected, the ordinance is approved.
Thus, at a cost of a thousand bucks the team that would eventually
become the Chicago Cubs is given permission to play “base-ball” on the
northeast corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue where Wrigley Square
and the Millennium peristyle stand today.
November 26, 1963 – The first steel column for the new Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States building at 401 North Michigan Avenue is put in place at 10:00 a.m. Workers for United States Steel place the 19-ton, 35-foot long column into place on the north side of the site that sits between Tribune Tower to the north and the Chicago River on the south. The tower, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, will be located on the site where Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, built his home in the early 1780’s, a site that is a National Historic Landmark. The Chicago Tribune sold the land to Equitable on the condition that the new building could not be taller than Tribune Tower.
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