Connecting the Windy City

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

March 17, 1864 -- Chicago Avenue Crib Begun

encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org

March 17, 1864 – Mayor Francis Cornwall Sherman breaks ground for the first tunnel under Lake Michigan that will bring fresh water to the city from an off-shore crib.  About a hundred men “gather on the lake shore at the foot of Chicago Avenue to assist in and witness the ceremony of breaking ground for the tunnel.”  [Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1864]  Note the language “on the shore at the foot of Chicago Avenue” ... the Water Tower and the pumping station across Michigan Avenue to the east were located at the point on land where the water tunnel surfaced … everything from that location to the lake itself today was beneath Lake Michigan at the time the ceremony took place.  Mayor Sherman makes a “brief address,” which the paper summarizes as follows.  “For two years past, the Board of Public Works had been engaged in the discussion of plans [to relieve the difficulties caused by a lack of pure water], and in making experiments needed to verify the conclusions arrived at.  They had ascertained that all along the lake shore for many miles in each direction, the water was muddy, while at one or two points to the Northward there were marshes draining constantly into the lake, to say nothing of the constant precipitation of decaying organic matter from the city sewerage.  It was necessary to go out a distance of at least a mile and a half into the lake to secure the clear, blue water.”  With the address concluded, the Mayor took a pick and broke ground for the project “amid the cheers of the assembled company, many of whom complimented him on the adroitness with which he handled the tool.”  The new crib, located two miles east of Chicago Avenue, will replace an operation of the Chicago City Hydraulic Company that began in the early 1850’s.  It consisted of a “timber crib … sunk 600 feet from the shore” from which a wooden inlet pipe 30 inches in diameter conveyed water to a pumping well 25 feet beneath Chicago Avenue."  The new operation will consist of a tunnel, five feet in diameter, that will run two miles into the lake.  It will sit 64 feet below the surface.  Total cost for the project is estimated to be $400,000 (about $8,200,000 in 2020 dollars).  With miners and workers on the job 24 hours a day, six days a week, the project was completed in March, 1867.  The two-mile crib is shown in the above photo.

March 17, 1960 -- A Northwest Airlines plane with 63 passengers and crew members explodes above the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky and spreads wreckage over a five-mile wide area.  The plane is less than an hour out of Midway Airport, headed to Miami, when two explosions blow it apart.  Air experts are quick to point out that the accident is almost exactly like an earlier Lockheed Electra explosion less than a half-year earlier over Waco, Texas.  An eyewitness, Ted Wilson, a farmer living about three miles from Tell City, Indiana, pins the time of the disaster at around 3:20 p.m.  “There was an interval of about 5 seconds after the first explosion when there was a second one,” he says.  “I’d not quite reached my porch.  When I got there I looked one way but saw nothing.  Then right out in front not over 200 yards away in a neighbor’s soybean field there came down the main cabin.  It hit the ground and there was a terrible sound—like another explosion, but no fire.” [Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1960] Among the victims are Judge John A. Sharbaro, a 71-year-old judge, Marty Collins Chalfen, the producer of the Holiday on Ice skating shows and her three children, and Mrs. Andy Frain, the wife of “the nation’s top expert on controlling crowds.”  Subsequent investigation determined that the probable cause of the accident was the in-flight separation of the plane’s right wing while cruising at 18,000 feet.

March 17, 1937 – Mayhem reigns in the Loop as “organized mobs of striking taxicab drivers, led by professional sluggers, attacked cabs at a score of points … Drivers were knocked senseless and passengers were threatened and thrown from their seats.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 18, 1937] Police arrest 23 during the violence that lasts for an hour downtown and continues in other areas of the city as night falls.  A Checker cab is rolled over at Wells and Randolph Streets, and another one is turned over on Randolph between Wells and La Salle.  Two other cabs are overturned in the vicinity, and a mounted policeman is pulled from his horse and beaten.  The reports continue to come in … “One driver who abandoned his cab and ran for refuge to the city hall was caught at the Randolph street entrance and slugged by ten men … Twenty strikers rushed a Checker cab near the Garrick theater and overturned it as the driver fled … At Randolph and La Salle streets Policeman Pat Neylon dispersed some rioters by leveling a shotgun at them … In front of the Woods Theater hundreds gathered as a Yellow cab met the same fate … Rioters struck again in front of the Burnham building, 160 North La Salle street, overturning a Yellow cab … Joseph Ellers, 28 years old, a Checker driver, was beaten by a gang of eight men who overturned his cab in Washington street near Michigan avenue …”  The riot begins after 1,700 strikers attend a meeting early in the afternoon at Atlas Hall, Milwaukee Avenue and Noble Street.  At the conclusion of that meeting some 200 men begin walking east in small groups toward the Loop, looking for trouble.  The police department floods the Loop with all of the men it can find – 75 student policemen from the East Chicago Avenue station, 19 squads from other districts, and six detective bureau squads.  All leaves and days off for police are cancelled until the taxicab strike, now into its twelfth day, is over. The strike goes on for another week before it finally ends.

Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus

March 17, 1921 -- Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus dies at his home at 2919 Prairie Avenue at the age of 66. J. Ogden Armour, who gave generously to fund the Armour Institute, over which Dr. Gunsaulus presided for its first 27 years, said of the man, "His life was one of achievement; his success lay in helping others to help themselves . . . No one associated, as I have been all my life, with such a lovable character could be other than bowed down with grief at his untimely passing." Gunsaulus came to Chicago in 1887 as a Methodist minister and quickly became a civic leader of the first degree. His sermons and lectures constantly reminded the members of the city's elite of their responsibility toward the poor and uneducated. His philosophy led directly to the establishment of the Armour Institute of Technology, a trade school for the practical arts and sciences, endowed by Phillip Armour and nurtured by his son. He was the author of 15 books and was a key figure in pushing Chicago as the site of the 1893 World's Fair.  His commitment to art and culture prompted railroad equipment tycoon William Miner to donate $50,000 to the Art Institute for new galleries on condition that the addition be named for Dr. Gunsaulus. Gunsaulus Hall, of course, spans the railroad tracks, as it connects the original institute to the eastern campus on Columbus Drive.

explore.chicagocollections.org

March 17, 1910 – President William Howard Taft arrives at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s temporary Thirty-Third Street station and from where is transported to the La Salle Hotel at the corner of La Salle Street and Madison Avenue. Along the route the president is “the recipient of a continuous round of cheering and other salutations from the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who flanked both sides of the boulevards along which the parade moved.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 18, 1910]  Several groups form independent greeting parties for the president who is in town for the St. Patrick’s Day celebration.  The Webster School at Thirty-Third Street and Wentworth Avenue had its students out in front of the school building, and the youngsters “waved flags, cheered, and sang patriotic songs.” As Taft passed, he remarked, “I like that – I like that.  I love to see the children.  It does me good.” 

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Labels: 1864, Chicago Development, Chicago Event, Chicago Politics, Lake Michigan

Monday, February 3, 2020

February 3, 1864 -- Rush Street Gets a New Bridge

chicagology.com

February 3, 1864 – A two sentence notice appears in the Chicago Tribune on February 4, 1864:  “The bridge at Rush street is so far finished as to have been swung for the use of foot passengers yesterday.  It will be ready for the passage of teams in a day or two.”  Rush Street, in the early days was the most important connection between the north and south sides of the river, and this will be the second bridge to cross the river at this location. The first one, which was completed in 1857, suffered a calamitous fate when it broke in two while a herd of cattle was passing over it. The bridge tender began to turn the bridge to allow approaching ships to pass with at least 150 head of cattle on the south end.  The unbalanced bridge broke in two, sending at least 50 steers and a dozen people into the water with one young girl dying.  For more on that you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City. The bridge that opened in 1864 only lasted seven years before it, too, was lost in the fire of 1871.  There would be two more bridges at this location before the bridge that allowed Michigan Avenue to cross the river was finally finished in 1920.  The last Rush Street bridge was dismantled shortly after that.  It is interesting to look at the photo of the 1864 bridge, shown above, and observe how close the site was to the mouth of the river at the time.  It gives a good appreciation for the amount of man-made land that has extended the area along both sides of the river for blocks.  

interactive.wbez.org

interactive.wbez.org

February 3, 1945 – The vice-president of the Chicago Motor Club, James E. Bulger, offers a suggestion for joining the proposed Illinois and Michigan canal superhighway (today’s Eisenhower Expressway or Interstate 290) to Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. The suggestion is an alternative to the route prepared by Allied Engineers, Inc. of Detroit which has the proposed expressway extending along Archer Avenue past South Halsted Street and then across the river at which point the road would take traffic northward where it would join proposed northwest and southeast highways west of the Loop.  Bulger’s suggestion has an elevated roadway running along Archer Avenue to Cermak Road with an eastward extension connecting to Lake Shore Drive.  This would save the expense of bridging the river.  A third alternative, prepared by the Chicago Plan Commission, would see Franklin Street extended south to Archer Avenue as an elevated highway over railroad tracks east of the river.  This plan is problematic because of the legal implications of building on air rights over railroad property.  The highway was ultimately constructed between 1949 and 1961 at a cost of $183 million, a project that displaced an estimated 13,000 people and boarded up more than 400 businesses in the city. [interactive.wbez.org]  The black and white photo was taken near Paulina Street on Congress Street, looking west.  The second photo is from the same location and shows what the area looks like today.

February 3, 1906 – At two o’clock in the afternoon both the Coliseum building and the First Regiment Armory open their doors for “the greatest display of automobiles ever seen in Chicago.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 3, 1906] Ninety-eight automobile companies and 140 dealers in automobiles and accessories are represented in the two buildings.  Says one dealer, “Ten years from now you will see certain streets in the larger cities restricted entirely to motor vehicle service.  You may think this is fanciful language, but the time is coming.  The commercial automobile has grown more in favor during the last year than in the preceding five years.  Good men are coming forward to apply for positions to drive these wagons, and with a supply of serviceable men to draw on, more firms will adopt motor vehicles to do their carrying.  The motor car is a quicker and more economical delivery wagon than the horse drawn wagon.”  As visitors from all over the Midwest crowd into the city’s hotels, attendance at the auto show is projected to be as high as 100,000.  The above photo shows that not even a snowstorm could stop the show from going on as cars line up outside the Coliseum at Fifteenth Street and Wabash Avenue.

February 3, 1902 -- A dispute between Chicago and the Illinois Central Railroad is finally resolved after being dragged through the courts for nearly two decades. The United States Supreme Court found for the city in a case that involved "made land" running from Sixteenth Street to the river, land which did not exist when the city granted the railroad a 200-foot easement in the lake to build a trestle in the mid-1860's. When over the years that section of the lake lying between the trestle and Lake Park -- today's Grant Park -- to the west was filled in, the Illinois Central assumed ownership of the new land. If the case had gone the other way Chicago would be a much different city today because the railroad would have been given control of one of the great stretches of urban shoreline in the world. BUT the Supreme Court found that the Great Lakes were to be preserved for the COMMON GOOD, and no private encroachment was to be allowed. The photo above gives a good look at what the lakefront looked like in the mid-1890's. The building closest to the railroad tracks with the squared dome and cupola is the Interstate Exposition Building, which was torn down in 1890 to make way for the Art Institute of Chicago.

February 3, 1882 – A Chicago Daily Tribune editorial puts forth fears that the “disgusting and shameless practices” of the Levee district [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2, 1882] are beginning to spill over into the center of the city and “unless attacked now in their incipiency will soon become so firmly rooted that extermination will be next to an impossibility.”  The editorial spends the most time lamenting the movement of prostitutes (“the vilest, lowest and most revolting of the scarlet women, the dregs of the demi-monde”) who have moved westward from south State Street in the Levee, making “La Salle Street nearly as bad as State street at its worst.”  Lodging on the east side of Clark Street between Madison and Monroe and on the west side of Clark between Monroe and Adams the women come into the night “… from their dingy, foul-smelling rooms, and with their hideous features concealed beneath a mask of paint, their shrunken forms rounded by the arts of the costumer and hidden under an outward show of rich clothing, haunt the shadowy side of the street, soliciting the patronage of every man they meet.”  The editorial introduces a reporter who walks twice around the square bordered by La Salle, Madison, Clark and Monroe Streets, most of the way within a hundred yards of City Hall.  On his first pass he is solicited by nine women; the second trip around the block brings offers from another four.  “It is hard to conceive of women becoming so lost to decency as to flaunt their immodesty and immorality in the faces of the public,” the paper cries, “but they make no bones about it and keep it up.”  The editorial concludes, “Something should be done … It is especially bad to have this depravity exhibited in La Salle street, for the reason that it is a street much used by passengers for the suburban trains on the Rock Island Road, and it is not pleasant for a gentleman with a lady companion to have to pass through and listen to all the filth that he will encounter and hear on his way.”

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Labels: 1864, Chicago Bridges, Chicago Development, Chicago Event, Chicago RIver

Saturday, July 28, 2018

July 28, 1864 -- Chicago River Beckons and Repels

July 28,1864:  The Milwaukee Sentinel publishes a story, most probably apocryphal, about the Chicago River from a “reliable gentleman” who had gone to Chicago some days earlier and reports “A heavy fog rested over the water as they approached that city [Chicago], rendering objects even close at hand indistinguishable.  Under these circumstances the boat came near running past the city entirely, and would have done so but for the fragrance of the Chicago River, which fortunately enabled the Captain to run his craft safely into port. Light-houses dwindle into insignificance beside this all powerful guide to mariners. Whew!” [Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1863]

July 28, 2010 – The jury begins deliberations in the corruption trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blogojevich, sooner than expected and without testimony from a number of witnesses, including Blogojevich himself.  Assistant U. S. Attorney Reid Schar says, “This guy had more training in criminal background than the average lawyer and somehow this guy is the accidentally corrupt governor?” [Christian Science Monitor, July 28, 2010] One of Blagojevich’s attorneys, Sam Adam, Jr., says, “He’s got absolutely horrible judgment on people.  And that’s the case and they want you to find him guilty of these horrible things because of that.”  As they went through their closing arguments the opposing attorneys exhibited different styles with Adam “pacing, sweating and alternately shouting and whispering to the jury” while Schar “did not raise his voice throughout his argument,” which concluded with his saying, “I don’t know how you begin to put a price on the damage defendant Blagojevich has caused.  The time for accountability for the defendants is now.”  On August 17 Blagojevich was convicted of one count of lying to federal agents while a mistrial was declared on the other 23 crimes with which he was charged because the jury could not agree on a verdict.  A retrial was then set to begin on April 20, 2011.  

July 28, 1970:  The day after a Grant Park riot occurred when a crowd of 35,000 to 50,000 waiting for a concert by Sly and the Family Stone reacted violently as the concert was delayed and ultimately cancelled, Mayor Richard J. Daley orders that all rock concerts planned by the Chicago Park District Board be cancelled.  The mayor calls the fighting “A riot, a brawl, and mob action.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1970]  He continues, “There were a lot of liquor and wine bottles thrown at the policemen.  I believe the young people who attend these concerts should assume some responsibility for policing themselves.”  At least 162 persons are injured in the turmoil and hundreds of windows are broken all along Michigan Avenue opposite Grant Park as well as on some side streets between Michigan and State Streets.  Damage to police vehicles is estimated at $10,000 with one car destroyed by fire.  As the mayor reacts, three men and two women are arrested near the Grant Park band shell after a report that the performance venue will be set on fire.  Police search the truck belonging to Mike Patrick of Brommel, Pennsylvania and find a five-gallon can of gasoline and one-fourth pound of marijuana, almost never a good combination.

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Labels: 1864, Chicago RIver, Lake Michigan

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

July 11, 1864 -- The Tribune Visits the Distillery

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 caught fire, which concealed the damage as firemen used the city’s horse-drawn steamers with assistance from fireboats to douse the flames. Then the terrible carnage was 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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Labels: 1864, Chicago RIver

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

June 28, 1864 -- The Union Stockyards are Born

June 28, 1864 – The members of the Chicago Packers’ Association agree on four resolutions at a meeting in the Tremont House.  They are as follows:

Resolved, That it is the sense of this association that the various stock yards of this city should be consolidated into one.

Resolved, That said yards should be conducted by a joint stock company, the stock of which should be accessible to all.

Resolved, That the said yards to meet the requirements of the different interests concerned ought to be located near the city limits of the South Division.

Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed to confer with the committee of the Common Council in relation to the sanitary condition of the Chicago river, and that such joint committee examine each and every slaughter, rendering and packing establishment and their relation to the condition of the river.

In this same year of 1864 the Union Stockyards opened on 320 acres of swampland just southwest of the city, land that was purchased for $100,000.  Within five years the area would be incorporated into the city.  On July 20, 1974 the enterprise closed, 110 years after the four resolutions were adopted in the Tremont House on the southeast corner of Lake and Dearborn.

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Labels: 1864, Chicago Events, Stockyards