July 11, 1964 –The Executive Director of the North Michigan Avenue Association, Nelson Forrest, says that the group will renew its fight to obtain stricter zoning laws governing advertising signs in the business district. Three months earlier the chairman of the association’s outdoor advertising committee, Howard L. Storch, had written the city’s commissioner of planning, Ira J. Bach, informing him of a number of complaints that had been received about a 60-by-60-foot billboard just east of 333 North Michigan Avenue that displayed a “full-rigged sailing ship advertising Cutty Sark whisky … on which news headlines are displayed.” [Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1964] Storch wrote, “We believe the sign depreciates avenue environment. We are asking the department of city planning for its comment and possible amendments to the city zoning ordinance.” Forrest speaks for the association, saying, “In our opinion it is illegal because it violates an existing zoning provision. Rooftop signs higher than 50 feet from curb level without a special use permit are not permitted.” The city’s chief electrical inspector offers his opinion that the sign is completely legal since it is in C3 zoning atop a warehouse where height requirements are measured from the ground level which is the lower level of Michigan Avenue. The black and white photo shows what the corner of Wacker and Michigan looked like in 1964. The photo below that shows the corner as it appears today.
July 11, 1864 – A Chicago Tribune article on this date begins, “The Chicago river is not a very pleasant thing to see, smell, or read about, especially as a Sunday morning dissertation; it is not agreeable to swim in, or to drink out of; it has few charms for the voyager, and there are few indeed who care to walk or drive along its banks.” [Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1864] In an attempt to find some good news, the paper pays a visit to the distillery of U. H. Crosby, located on the North Branch of the river, near Chicago Avenue. One of the major problems with the distilleries of this era was that “the products of the still are fed to the cows, and those animals make the nuisance complained of, their dung and other emissions running into a bog which, abutting on the river, is periodically emptied into it.” A year earlier, the paper notes, the “cowsheds of Mr. Crosby were equally bad with the rest …” Over the twelve months since, though, the firm has installed a system that collects the waste of the cattle in a settling tank, the contents of which are pumped up and carried away with “three teams having been constantly employed through the season for that purpose.” The work that the Crosby distillery has done shows, the paper notes, that the system is a practical solution to one source of the river’s pollution. If other such industries cannot do similar work, the article observes, “then the sheds must be removed … the filth from these cowsheds must be not only kept out of the river, but taken away from where it will not poison the atmosphere of the city.” As the above photo shows, the area looks a bit different these days.
July 11, 1890 – The steamship Tioga blows up while tied to a dock on the east side of the river just south of Randolph Street. The ship ties up at 5:30 after a Great Lakes trip that originated in Buffalo, New York. Stevedores begin immediately to carry cargo from her hold. Not long after that unloading begins a tremendous explosion that can be heard all over the south side of the city erupts and “A shower of glass flew across Randolph Street Bridge like a heavy sand-storm on one of the Western deserts, and bits of wood from the wreck hit people blocks away.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 12, 1890] The ship catches fire, which concealed the damage as firemen use the city’s horse-drawn steamers with assistance from fireboats to douse the flames. Then the terrible carnage is revealed. Two bodies are floating in the river. One is slumped against the boat’s pilothouse. 14 more bodies are found below deck. Bodies continue to be found as the days progress with the dead climbing above two dozen. The victims, almost all of them African-American laborers from Tennessee, are brought to the morgue as crowds watch silently. The Tribune reports, “The men who were killed were almost unknown. Many of their homes were in other towns, and no wives or mothers came to claim the bodies. Their only friends were the men who had worked with them, and these gathered in groups in the warehouse and talked over the explosion.”
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The zipper above the Cutty Sark ad was powered by a perforator-transmitter system supplied by Chicago's own Naxon Telesign. Does anyone know where the grid for the time/temperature display came from? It was once ubiquitous across the country - if a 6 x 9 grid as I suspect, on the three Magikist signs along the Dan Ryan, Kennedy and Eisenhower Expressways; that's not counting the 7 x 11 grid along Michigan Avenue both advertising Coca-Cola on one end, and Pepsi near the Illinois Central terminal.
In answer to my own question: Very likely Time-O-Matic supplied the ocntrols for the time/temperature display (which they marketed as "Time-O-Temp") - or if not them, a rival company, Signatrol, which was founded and staffed by ex-Time-O-Matic employees. A year or so from that photo, Telesign's fonts on that zipper would change from that square display (as had been a fixture on their traveling message signs since 1939) to a rounder version which was designed for use on two news zippers operated by Life magazine - one around the Allied Chemical Tower in New York's Times Square, the other atop the Walgreens building at 151 North State Street on the northeast corner of East Randolph Street - both of which went into operation in April 1965.
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