Tuesday, September 22, 2020

September 22, 1959 -- Chicago River Properties Given Warning ... Clean It Up

Chicago Tribune Photo


September 22, 1959 –
Chicago port officials and Mayor Richard J. Daley announce that they are sending letters of warning to 67 property owners, including the Illinois Central Railroad, in an effort to clean up and repair property along the Chicago River.  If owners ignore the letters, Daley says, the city will take them to court.  The mayor huffs, “I must add that the property owned by the Illinois Central that extends 1,900 feet east of Michigan Avenue, on the south side of the river bank, certainly cannot be called an encouraging sight.  I notice this area every time I walk across the Michigan Avenue bridge, and it is definitely not pleasing.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1959].  Illinois Central officials maintain that they have no responsibility to maintain the area in question since the company granted the city an easement for connecting Michigan Avenue to the Outer Drive, today’s Lake Shore Drive, in 1919.   Illinois Central president Wayne A. Johnson says, “The railroad’s position on this matter has not changed.  Our attorneys tell us that when we offered the easement the obligation became that of the city of Chicago, with reference to the shore upkeep.  The above photo shows the area in question seven years later when 19 honey locust trees are finally planted east of the Michigan Avenue bridge on July 26, 1966.  



September 22, 1981 – Two firefighters die and six others are injured while fighting an extra-alarm fire in the Willoughby Tower office building at 8 South Michigan Avenue.  Fire Commissioner William Blair says, “There was no chance … there was no way out for them.”  The two firefighters, Joseph Hitz, a snorkel truck driver with Hook and Ladder 1 and Craig McShane, a rookie with Engine 42, fall to their deaths down an open elevator shaft from the twenty-fifth floor to the roof of an elevator stopped at the ninth floor.  The fire on the floor from which they fell started in materials a cleaning crew had left in the elevator, and as a result the car fell until its brakes activated and stopped it on the ninth floor.  Six firefighters exit an elevator on the twenty-fifth floor to find the hallway filled with smoke.  Breathing through air masks, they find an open office through which they are able to reach a fire escape at which point they discover that one of their number, Hitz, is missing.  McShane, the only firefighter who still has air in his self-contained breathing apparatus, crawls back to check, and he falls through the same open elevator shaft into which Hitz had fallen earlier.  Mayor Jane Byrne, standing at the scene as the search for the two men is being conducted, says, “I am deeply sorrowed by the loss of the lives of these two brave firemen …I have conferred with Commissioner Blair and directed him to immediately procure, by the end of the week at the latest, two-way hand radios for every Chicago firemen in hopes that this would prevent a recurrence of such tragic accidents.”  Hitz and McShane are the first Chicago firemen killed on duty since 1978 and the first multiple deaths of Chicago firefighters since 1973. The plaque, pictured above, memorializing the two firefighters, can be seen at the firehouse at 419 South Wells Street, about a mile away from the tragic fire of 1981.


September 22, 1974 – The Chicago Tribune reports that Harry Weese and Associates has won the highest award of the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for an apartment building at the southwest corner of South Lake Park Avenue at East Forty-Seventh Street.  A.I.A jurors call the design a “good design at the highest level within the narrow constraints of publicly financed housing.”  The 26-story tower, Lake Shore East, features 38 angled, vertical planes of glass and brick which “give the building’s shape and its interplay of elements many different appearances as they are viewed from various perspectives.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1974]

 

September 22, 1935 – In the six hours that the Chicago Tribune opens the doors of the new home of its radio station, 4,368 people tour the facilities.  Over 500 visitors fill out forms for a chance to gain admission to the auditorium when performances begin.  The paper describes the new digs in this way, “The lighting effects, the sharp slant of the auditorium for purposes of better vision, the richly covered, deep cushioned seats and the sound proofed walls attracted appreciative comments.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1935]  The building just to the north of Tribune Tower is laid out or “squared off” with Polaris, the north star, as a sighting point, an innovative approach that allows a variance of about an eighth-inch along the building’s frontage on Michigan Avenue.  On October 5 the auditorium opens with two orchestras entertaining all of the workers who had labored on the building, along with their families.  Colonel Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of the paper, tells them, “This victory of peace has a sadness for me, for it means I must part from the men I have watched at this building for the last year and a half . . . You have piled stone on stone, color on color, and joined wire to wire.  You have built here, forever, something that your children will thank you for.  You leave me with emotion.  God bless you and be with you always.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 2, 1935]. 
Well, not quite forever ... the facility is undergoing significant alteration as it transitions into a new life as part of the Tribune Tower conversion from a commercial skyscraper to a residential tower.

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