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July 7, 1954 – The vice-president of the New York Life Insurance Company, Otto Nelson, announces that the company will embark on the construction of the final 1,040 housing units needed to complete the 1,640-unit Lake Meadows housing project on the south side. Moving forward on the completion of the project was contingent on the city’s commitment to build a new school on two acres of ground near Thirty-First Street and the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, land that the insurance company would provide. Although the board of education, represented by the Superintendent of Schools, Benjamin Willis, could not give that commitment because its funds for 1954 and 1955 had already been allocated, assurance was provided that a school would be ready by the time the housing project iss completed. The John J. Pershing School for the Humanities is the school that currently stands at that location. Lake Meadows is shown in the above photo -- the glassy towers marching south in the right third of the photo. Toward the right corner is the Pershing School, sitting just west of the railroad tracks.
July 7, 1994 –Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, a “slender Cypress, Calif. Prodigy who has been hyped as a future ‘Michael Jordan’ of golf,” competes in the opening qualifying round of the week-long Western Junior Open. Observing a Par 4 on the sixteenth hole at Cog Hill’s No. 2 course in which Woods flied the green, landed behind a small tree, bumped the ball from there to within 18 feet of the pin, and made the putt, his father, Earl Woods, says, “He does that all the time. He gets deep in trouble and comes out with a par—sometimes a birdie. I’ve told him, ‘You’re gonna give me a heart attack.’ He just laughs.” [Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1994] Woods goes on to bogey Number 17 and 18, finishing the day with a 72, four strokes behind leader David Griffith of Aurora, Ohio. The score leaves him in good position to make the group of 32 qualifiers out of a field of 178 players who are 19 years-old or under. After the round, Woods says to reporters, “The attention I receive has been a big hassle, a pain in the butt. No matter how I play, the media ask questions about my golf. My father tries to tone this down, but the questions are always there.” As the photo above shows, six weeks later Woods would take the championship trophy at the U. S. Amateur Championship at the Tournament Players Club in Ponte Vedra, Florida, after being five down with twelve holes to play.
July 7, 1994 – The Lake County board agrees to join Lake Forest, Highland Park and Highwood in a committee that will determine ways in which Ft. Sheridan can be used. The county and the three towns agree to appoint representatives to the committee, which will be given the responsibility fordrawing up a comprehensive land-use plan for the closed Army base. Lake Forest, Highland Park, and the County board will pay 30 percent of the committee’s costs while Highwood will contribute 10 percent. Cook County board member Robert Buhai of Highland Park says that approval of the coalition at the county’s board meeting clears the way for the group to apply for federal grant money to help move the process along.
July 7, 1977 – The Chicago City Council sets up a special assessment district to collect revenue from State Street merchants for the cost and maintenance of the State Street pedestrian mall, scheduled for completion by March of 1979. With suburban malls springing up as fast as they can be built and with many patrons who traditionally do their shopping on State Street moving to the suburbs, the thinking is that closing the street to all but bus and pedestrian traffic will make it more attractive to shoppers. The idea comes a tad too late, and in the 17 years that the mall is open Wieboldt’s, Sear’s, Montgomery Ward, Goldblatt’s, Baskin’s, and the Bond store all go out of business. There are as many reasons for the mall’s lack of success as there are people to share them. Chicago’s Planning Commissioner in the 1980’s, Elizabeth Hollander, said, “The mall took the excitement out of State Street.” Adrian Smith, the lead architect in putting the street back together again, said, “The buses would line up, one after another, like a herd, with their diesel fumes.” Mayor Richard M. Daley, who hitched a ride on one of the machines that began breaking up the mall in 1996, said, “As Mayor I have found it difficult to find out whose idea this was in the first place.” [New York Times, February 1, 1996]
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