Sunday, May 10, 2020

May 10, 2001 -- Boeing Chooses Chicago

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May 10, 2001: Choosing Chicago over Dallas and Denver, the Boeing Company announces that it will accept tax breaks and incentives totaling $60 million over a 20-year period and make Chicago its new home. Philip M. Condit, the company’s chairman and chief executive, speaking on a tarmac at Midway Airport, says, “Our decision to move was a strategic decision. We believe that having a headquarters separate from any of our businesses will help us to grow.” [New York Times, May 11, 2001]  To lure the company to Chicago, the State of Illinois offers Boeing up to $41 million in tax incentives over a 20 year period. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley also serves up some treats, offering millions more in property tax abatements and other benefits over that same period.  Governor George Ryan says, “It’s going to be a very modest investment for the State of Illinois.”


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May 10, 1980 – Police estimate that at least 20,000 people participate in a march to demonstrate their support of women’s rights.  The Chicago Tribune reports, “They came in white dresses, overalls, hard-hats, aprons, T-shirts, and turn-of-the-century costumes to walk arm-in-arm down Columbus Drive.  A variety of signs proclaimed dedication to the cause.  “Actually We’re Superior, But We’ll Settle for Equality,” read one. [Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1980]  “Men of Quality Are Not Threatened by Women with Equality,” read another.  Undaunted by the fact that the equal rights amendment had been defeated ten times in the Illinois legislature, E.R.A. supporters, estimated to number between 80,000 and 100,000, gathered in Grant Park to listen to an afternoon of speeches in support of the cause. Mayor Jane Byrne does not march in the parade, but she speaks at the three-hour rally, saying that she was from “a city that looked at a woman and said, ‘Why not?’ It’s time we women of Illinois were looking at the legislature to say, ‘Why not?”  Actress Marlo Thomas says, “Perfume and azaleas are not going to do the trick this year.  We want ERA.”  In the above photo Bella Abzug, Phil Donahue, and Marlo Thomas join marchers in support of the amendment.



May 10, 1928 – After a delay caused by rain, combined with landing at the wrong airfield, the “Bremen airmen” touch down at Chicago Airport (today’s Midway) and are greeted by 5,000 Chicagoans who have waited for three hours in intermittent drizzle to greet them. Nearly a month earlier the three airmen had taken off in a Junkers W 33 airplane from Baldonnel Aerodrome in Ireland, arriving on Greenly Island, Canada on April 13, thereby becoming the first fliers to make a successful crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from east to west. The crew is made up of pilot Captain Hermann Köhl, a navigator, Major James Fitzmaurice, an Irishman, and the owner of the aircraft, Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünsfield. They leave for Chicago earlier in the day and stop in Cleveland in the early afternoon. Taking off from there at 1:52 p.m. they fight fog and rain and a 35-mile-per-hour headwind all the way to Chicago. They mistake a Maywood air strip for their destination because the map they are using indicates that it is the only air field in Chicago. Landing there causes further delay. But once they arrive at the Chicago Airport, they receive an exuberant reception, so exuberant, in fact, that the crowd has to be restrained. A procession of 40 cars decorated with flags of the United States, the Irish Free State and the German Republic, carry the heroes along Sixty-Third Street to Kedzie with the roads lined with cheering crowds. The celebration moves up Kedzie to Garfield Boulevard and east to Michigan Avenue where the three men are delivered to the Stevens Hotel. “After an hour’s rest,” reports the Chicago Daily Tribune, “the trio emerged to be photographed and interviewed. The booming of flashlights was delayed for a moment while Maj. Fitzmaurice, something of a dandy, smoothed back his pompadour with a comb borrowed from one of the camera men.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 11, 1928] The celebration continues into the next day when a two-hour reception is held at Soldier Field (pictured above) and Mayor William Hale Thompson holds a luncheon at South Shore Country Club to honor the city’s guests of honor.



May 10, 1894 – The annual exhibition of the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club begins at the Art Institute of Chicago, but that is not the big event of the evening.  At the front of the museum calcium lights shine on two sculptures “swathed in covers of dirty canvas” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 11, 1894], and at the appropriate time “ … a couple of institute employés seized the covers and quickly pulled them off … Under the light of the lamps the animals had a life-like appearance that was startling.  With low bent heads and eyes fastened on some distant object, they seemed looking through the darkness of the night to something far beyond.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 11, 1894] It is this evening that the Art Institute lions, the work of Edward Kemeys, “the nation’s first great animalier (sculptor of animals,”[http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections] are unveiled.  According to the Art Institute, “Kemeys focused his talents on sculptural portrayals of North American wildlife, capturing such native creatures in anatomical, naturalistic detail.  For the Art Institute, he modeled larger-than-life African lions, the one positioned north of the steps ‘on the prowl’ and the lion to the south ‘in an attitude of defiance,’ in Kemey’s words … Each weighing more than two tons, the Lions were cast in Chicago by the American Bronze Founding Company.” 


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