December 6, 1953 – The Chicago Daily Tribune runs the fourth in
a series of articles discussing the “origin, history and significance of some
of Chicago’s principal thorofares.”
[Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1953], and some interesting tidbits
turn up. Wells Street, for example, was
named after Billy Wells who was raised by the Miami Indians and died in the
1812 massacre near Fort Dearborn. It
became such a tawdry byway that the section of Wells south of the river was
changed to Fifth Avenue in 1870, the name it carried until 1918 when the name
was changed back to Wells Street. The
first jail in Chicago was on LaSalle Street on the southeast corner of Randolph
Street. The last bear that was shot
within the corporate limits of the city was killed at the corner of LaSalle and
Adams on October 6, 1834. LaSalle Street
also had the city’s first bank, the Illinois State Bank, which was chartered on
December 5, 1835. At the corner of
LaSalle Street and Washington Boulevard the first courthouse was built in
1837. Just before the Chicago fire in
1871 the first tunnel beneath the river was finished on LaSalle, a bore that
could carry “50,000 vehicles and 1,000,000 pedestrians” each day. The tunnel served as the only passage between
the north and south sections of the city for three months after the fire
destroyed all of the bridges downtown.
Clark Street may possibly be the oldest street in the city, the result
of an old trail from the south. “Clark
Street,” the Tribune repored, “early
became known as a street of contrasts, alternating fine residences and
substantial businesses with shanties and dives, and that character seems to
cling to it.” Chicago’s first newspaper,
the Chicago Democrat, was published
at the corner of Clark Street and Water Street.
It was in a cigar store on South Clark Street that Bathhouse John
Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna held forth, the place “where they swapped
handouts to the impoverished for votes.”
At the turn of the century a section of Halsted Street was populated by
Italian immigrants, “crowded into lodging houses which advertised rates of ’20
cents a day, bath and two meals included.’”
Clark Street angles off to the west just north of North Avenue,
eventually connecting with Ridge Road and the Green Bay trail, making it a
street that from the beginning of the city’s history leads into the city from
the south and north. Any connection on
Clark Street between the south and the north sections of the city has long
since disappeared, but for a long time the street followed Rush Street to
Chicago Avenue where it turned to the northwest for about a mile to the junction
with North Avenue. The above sketch shows the city, looking south, in 1888.
December 6, 1892 – In the wake of the United States Supreme Court deciding for the State of Illinois and Chicago in its suit against the Illinois Central Railroad over the right to submerged lands, the Chicago Daily Tribune tempers elation with a warning: “This decision does not give the Lake-Front to the city for Aldermen to speculate with and enrich themselves. It is given to the city for ‘public uses’ . . . The land south of Monroe street, including that which may be reclaimed from the water between the government dock line and the shore, should be converted into a beautiful park. There should be no building there except the Art Institute which is now erecting . . . Boodle Aldermen must keep their hands off. They must not be allowed to make private profit out of this property of the people, the use of which they have been deprived of for nearly a quarter of a century, but which has been saved to them.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1892] The above photo shows the Lake-Front park two years later, a year after the Art Institute was completed.
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