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September 9, 1968 – The National Broadcasting Company carries a special report that airs the full televised news conference, held earlier in the day, in which Mayor Richard J. Daley speaks out “with vigorous, compelling words in a coast-to-coast newscast in support of tough action his administration and Chicago police took against the rioters who tried to tear the city apart during the Democratic national convention.” [Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1968]. A reporter asks His Honor if he is satisfied with the conduct of the police department. At first, Daley says no one is ever fully satisfied with any branch of government and that accounts of overzealous police work are being investigated. But he is just getting warmed up as he continues, “If someone is throwing excrement in your faces, you newspapermen, and you were being called names …. I’d like to ask you what would you do under those circumstances, whether you’d be the calm, collected men you think you are … The confrontation was created by the people who charged the police.” Another reporter asks if Daley is satisfied with the job police commanders did in commanding officers. “Were you ever in one of these things,” Daley asks. “Were you ever a policeman. What IS effective control if someone hits one of the men alongside of you, knocks him down with a rock or a brick, and hits his eye and throws oven cleaner into his face and blinds him? What would you do?” A reporter asks the mayor about the future of the kinds of demonstrations such as the one that took place in Chicago. Daley says he supports the right of peaceful protesters, continuing “The police department in this country should not have to be subjected to this kind of abuse and this kind of action. What are we coming to as a society? What are we coming to as a country if policemen are treated the way they have been treated, not only in Chicago but all over the country?”
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September 9. 2003 – Architect Frank Gehry visits Chicago, appraising the bandshell that he designed in Millennium Park, as both the bandshell and the park are still taking shape. He leads a tour of the bandshell for “a well-dressed, well-heeled group of Millennium Park donors.” [Chicago Tribune, September 11, 2003] Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin describes the upbeat mood of the event, led by Gehry “with stand-up comic skill.” Gehry pays particular attention to the bridge he designed that will weave sinuously across Columbus Drive, linking Millennium Park with the Daley Bicentennial Plaza, which today is Maggie Daley Park. He says that he sold Mayor Richard M. Daley on the idea for the bridge through the use of a dinner knife, saying that he didn’t threaten the mayor with it … rather, he turned it on an angle to show how the bridge with its sloping sides would look smaller than the mayor thought. Looking at the “trellis” of steel pipes that will rise above the 300 foot wide by 600 foot long great lawn in front of the bandshell, he quips that he told Cindy Pritzker, who contributed $15 million toward the $63 million bandshell that if it rains, “… you can always pull a shmata over the top and cover it,” using a Yiddish word that is sometimes used in reference to clothing. Toward the end of the talk, someone in the audience asks the architect about the noise from Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street and how it would affect concerts in the new pavilion. Gehry answers, “You ask the mayor to turn it off.” The above photo shows the pavilion under construction, close to the time when the architect visited the site.
September 9, 1975 – The trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago announce that no new students will be admitted to the Goodman School of Drama and the final class will graduate in the spring of 1978. The chairman of the Goodman Theater committee, Stanley M. Freehling, says that it costs the Art Institute $200,000 a year to maintain a school of 25 faculty members for students who pay an average annual tuition of $1,950. It is stated that the decision concerning the school will not affect the professional theater at the Goodman or future seasons on its main stage. The school moved to DePaul University in 1977, and the following year the Goodman Theater separated officially from the Art Institute and now functions as the nonprofit Chicago Theatre Group, Inc.
September 9, 1935 – A proposal to extend Wacker Drive from where it ends at Michigan Avenue by building a road east to the point where it is expected to join the new outer drive bridge is brought up in the City Council. The estimated cost of the project, which will allow traffic from the west side of the Loop to reach the outer drive, is $1,700,000. When the ordinance is read, Twenty-Fifth Ward Alderman James B. Bowler asks that consideration also be given to the extension of Wacker Drive along the south branch of the river from its present end at Madison Street to Roosevelt or Cermak Roads “in order to provide a connecting link with whatever superhighways might be constructed in the future to serve the west side.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1935] As it turned out, the extension of Wacker Drive to Lake Shore Drive was not completed until 1975, 40 years after the city council considered the resolution in 1935. Even in the City that Works change can take a long, long time. The above photo shows the completion of work on the Wacker Drive extension in 1975. At that time it linked up with the old "S" curve south of the Lake Shore Drive bridge across the river.
September 9, 1917 – The cornerstone of the Church of St. Clement at Deming Place and Orchard Street takes place at 3:30 p.m. in a ceremony at which Cardinal George Mundelein presides. The Reverend John Webster Melody of St. Jariath’s church delivers the principal address of the afternoon, which stresses that in the national crisis brought on by the war in Europe “liberty and democracy mean greater national opportunity and are best served by spiritual means.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1917] After the service a parade of 2,000 men and boys moves past a crowd of over 8,000 people, most of them members of the congregation. The church was designed by architect George D. Barnett in the Byzantine-Italian Romanesque Revival style, influenced by the architect’s design of the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. [openhousechicago.org] In 2018 a SMNG A project to develop a new entrance to the church and parish center rectory buildings was awarded a Chicago Small Project Award by the American Association of Architects.
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