Connecting the Windy City

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

November 12, 1879 -- Ulysses S. Grant Comes to Chicago

chicagology.com

November 12, 1879 – At the end of a world tour that began in 1877 Ulysses S. Grant comes to Chicago to be greeted by the city and 80,000 veterans in town for a reunion of the Army of the Tennessee.  On this day citizens line up in a cold rain to view the procession of 3,000 veterans and 15,000 civilians that General Philip Sheridan, acting as Grand Marshall, leads through the streets of the city.  Miraculously, within ten minutes of the start of the parade “… the rain ceased for the day [and] a rainbow appeared in the northeast.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 13, 1879]  Citizens crowded into the “sticky mud” of Michigan Avenue to get closer to the former Commander-in-Chief “until scarcely room enough was left for the passage of the double row of carriages.”  The buildings lining the avenue were crowded “with a solid sea of faces, and up and down the cross-streets each way the stores and residences were also overflowing with curiosity-seekers.”  North of the Exposition Building (which sat on the east side of Michigan Avenue where the Art Institute of Chicago stands today) an “enterprising speculator” had built a stand in which seats were for sale for 50 cents to a dollar just south of the White-Stocking Park (the first home of the team that would become the Chicago Cubs, standing where the peristyle stands today in Millennium Park).  The rain, however, spoiled the hopes of the speculator and “the long rows of empty benches showed his scheme was a failure.”  To deafening cheers the procession turned west on Washington Street with the cross streets packed “with vehicles of every description, the peddler’s wagon jostling the aristocratic private carriage”.  The parade continued to Clark Street, where it turned north, passing the courthouse, still under construction, where “adventurous men and boys climbed its unfinished stories and perched on cornices and unset pilasters or columns for a better opportunity to see.”  The marchers continued through the center of the city, ending at the Palmer House, where Grant would be honored.  It was quite a day for the city and for Grant.  As the Tribune reported, “All the people wanted was to see and to be allowed to cheer … they submitted to be wet to the skin, to be crushed, and pounded, and shoved without a word of remonstrance.”  At the Palmer House, Grant sat at the banquet in his honor as more than a dozen speakers, the last being Mark Twain, toasted him and offered speeches filled with appreciation for his service to the nation.  Shortly thereafter, Grant would sign a contract with Twain, who had started a publishing house.  The humorist gave Grant 70 percent, instead of the usual ten, of the proceeds of the sale of his book.  Grant finished Personal Memoirs, which ultimately earned $450,000 just a few days before his death on July 23, 1885.  The above photo shows the Palmer House as the procession in honor of Ulysses S. Grant passes.

November 12, 1962 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a portion of Wacker Drive near Dearborn Street will become a “suspension bridge” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 12, 1962] for a few weeks as a result of problems encountered during the construction of the new Dearborn Street bridge, problems that caused Wacker Drive to sink seven inches. The drive was propped up with huge timbers while the bridge was being built, but with the superstructure of the bridge nearly complete, it is now time to return Wacker to its correct alignment on new permanent supports.  A big problem presents itself, though – how to raise the street while foundation pilings are prepared.  The innovative approach consists of stationing two cranes on the sidewalk east and west of the bridge, dropping cables from the cranes through holes in the roadway, and attaching them to huge I-beam “collars” around two sunken piers that support the road.  The cranes will then lift the road up to the correct height while the bases of the damaged piers are excavated and new caissons prepared for each pier.  The city’s bridge engineer, Stephen J. Michuda, says that the project should cost about $300,000.  During the project the lower level of Wacker Drive will be closed to westbound traffic.  The construction of the Dearborn Street bridge has caused big problems.  The old bridge was removed in 1959, and the construction of the new bridge has been repeatedly delayed, principally because of problems in sinking caissons to support the structure.  The above photo shows the foundation for the bridge on either side of the river in the foreground, adjacent to Marina City as it is midway through its rise.  

November 12, 1943 – Plans for the construction of a $2,000,000 bridge over the north branch of the Chicago River at Grand Avenue with a viaduct extending from Orleans to Des Plaines are submitted to the city council subcommittee on motor fuel tax.  Oscar E. Hewitt, the Commissioner of Public Works, says that as part of the project a viaduct will span the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul and Chicago and North Western railroad tracks with a roadway that is 56 feet wide, a plan that will relieve congestion on the approach to the present Grand Avenue bridge, which has a roadway width of only 19 feet.  Hewitt concedes that construction will not begin until after the war is concluded.  It was a good plan, but as is the case with many good plans, it never happened.  The bridge, finished in 1913, still carries traffic and pedestrians across the river.  Volume on the bridge was greatly diminished when the Ohio Street expressway feeder ramp and bascule bridge, a few blocks to the north, was completed n 1961.

November 12, 1932 -- The president of the Chicago Historical Society, Charles B. Pike, dedicates the society’s new building in a ceremony that is “long on dignity but short on oratory.” [Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1932]  Pike says, “We stand here today at the portals of a building expressive of its purpose, ready to open it to the public.  We are looking through the trees of Lincoln park to the waters of Lake Michigan and St. Gauden’s statue of the Great Emancipator . . . Lincoln belongs to the ages.  So also do Columbus and Washington.  Housed in this building are relics of all of them, and many others who influenced the shaping of America’s destinies.”  First in the door is Miss Rhea Zugenbuehler of Maywood who pays a quarter to enter.  Anyone who shows up on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays will be admitted for free.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 1 comments

Labels: 1879, Chicago Events, Clark Street, Michigan Avenue, Washington Boulevard

Saturday, August 3, 2019

August 3, 1879 -- Stockyards Growth Takes Off

doc.newberry.org

August 3, 1879 – The Chicago Daily Tribune provides details of the tremendous growth that is occurring in the area around the Union Stock-Yards, first opened 14 years earlier.  The paper calls the population that has gravitated to the area “the largest industrial population gathered in any single industry in any one square mile in the world.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1879]. The three major producers in the Stock-Yards – Armour, Hutchinson, and Fowler – each employ more than 2,000 people working at 32 packing houses.  As many as 20,000 workers are employed as laborers, clerks, bookkeepers, and managers at the sprawling facility, some of these workers traveling four miles to get to the job.  Two new streets have been opened up and sidewalks and water distribution lines have been added to Paulina, Laflin, Loomis, Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth Streets.  A new church has been built at the corner of Laflin and Loomis, and a new brick school is going up four blocks north of the church.  Houses can be purchased for around $500 … the area lies outside the fire zone established after the 1871 fire, so the new homes are built of wood and cheap. Lots sell for between $150 and $170 with most of the property and homes built with a workers’ available cash, free from any loans.  “The development of this industrial army,” the Tribune reports, “is the growth of Chicago in only one direction, and for only thirteen years.”  The above photo shows a typical neighborhood near the stockyards at the time of the Tribune article.

August 3, 1999 –Destruction of the Chicago Amphitheatre at 4220 South Halsted begins.  The huge exhibition arena opened in 1934 as a venue to exhibit and showcase the sheep, cattle and hogs that came through the Union Stock Yards.  The building was a miracle of construction.  When a disastrous fire, fed by 60-mile-per-hour winds destroyed six square blocks around the stockyards on April 18, 1934, architect Abraham Epstein and his staff were asked to have another building in place by December 1 of the same year.  Using 11 solid steel arched trusses, at the time the largest in the world, the team had the building finished, complete with air conditioning and press and broadcast media facilities, just seven months after the disastrous fire. When the stockyards closed in 1971, the livestock shows moved south, and the aging building lost bookings to other, more modern – and far less pungent – facilities.  Over the years, though, events went far beyond livestock exhibitions.  The 1952 Republican National Convention chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower as its presidential nominee in the building.  That same year the Democratic Party chose Adlai Stevenson to oppose Eisenhower and repeated the decision in the Amphitheatre in 1956. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus brought its act to the arena for 18 years.  Musical acts from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans to The Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead entertained crowds there.  The Beatles played at the arena on September 5, 1964 and returned to the big barn to perform before 13,000 fans on August 12, 1966. In May of 1999 the city announced that it had acquired the 12-acre-lot on which the building sits and would be using the space to expand the Stockyard Industrial Corridor, stretching from Ashland Avenue to Halsted Street and from Pershing Road to Forty-Seventh Street. The International Amphitheatre’s chief engineer for 31 years, 65-year-old Dutch Trentz, said, “I’ve had a lot of deaths in my family. But when they tear that place down, that one’s really going to hit me.  It’s history to you, but that’s life to me.” [Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1999]

August 3, 1884 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints a letter from a Professor J. H. Long in which he describes the results of an “elaborate examination” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1884] of the city’s drinking water.  “Our water is bad enough,” writes Professor Long, “but it might be a great deal worse.  Any one interested in the subject will find in Bridgeport eight large pumps at work night and day drawing water from the river and throwing it into the Illinois and Michigan Canal at the rate of 60,000 cubic feet per minute. By this means a current is created which carries the sewage of the south and main branches of the river away from the lake and into the canal running toward the Mississippi.”  The professor says that chemists usually consider three parts of “free” ammonia and five parts of “albuminoid” per hundred million parts of water “as limits beyond which the nitrogenous matter should not go” in water that is to be used for consumption.  At the State Street bridge a test found seven parts per million of free ammonia and seventy parts per million of albuminoid.  At the Bridgeport pumps there were found 200 parts per million of ammonia and 100 parts per million of albuminoid. The area that came to be known as Bubbly Creek yielded 500 parts per million of ammonia and 140 parts per million of alubuminoid. At this site the analysis revealed “a great variety of specimens of lower animal and vegetable life. The north side was not exempt. At the Fullerton Avenue bridge there were found 240 parts of free ammonia per million parts of water and 84 of albuminoid per million. “From whatever standpoint we take,” the professor writes, the North Branch appears to be an evil.” The conclusion of the study suggests that boiling and then filtration of water should be undertaken to ensure the health of the city’s populace.

August 3, 1906:  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that at a recent meeting the trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago approved the purchase of El Greco’s “Assumption of the Virgin” for the price of $40,000.  The canvas, measuring 13 feet by two inches high and seven feet by six inches wide, will be the largest painting on display at the Art Institute.  It was commissioned by Don Diego de Castilla in 1577 as an altar piece for the convent church of San Domingo El Antiguo in Toledo, Spain.   The Art Institute today describes the priceless work in this way, “The artist’s use of flickering, high-keyed colors and broad brushwork further lend the work an ecstatic feeling sought after by Catholic Church patrons during the Counter-Reformation.  El Greco used such bold colors and figural arrangements to arouse a spiritual fervor in the viewer and impart the deep sense of faith he himself felt.”  The work may be found In Gallery 211 in the European Painting and Sculpture section.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 0 comments

Labels: 1879, Chicago Places, Stockyards

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

June 13, 1879 -- Chicago Firefighter Drowns at State Street Bridge

June 13, 1879 – Pipeman Henry T. Coyle, working on a hose-truck belonging to Engine No. 11 of the Chicago Fire Department drowns when the truck is driven into the river at full speed.  The night is dark, and the driver, next to whom Coyle is seated, cannot see whether the State Street bridge is in position for crossing.  Unfortunately, the rotating bridge is in the open position, and the truck’s driver “dashed on through the darkness to the terrible catastrophe which followed.” [Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1879]  The driver and another truckman leap from the truck, but Coyle drowns.  It takes the better part of a day to find the body of the missing firefighter.  The whole affair prompts the Chicago Daily Tribune to react strongly to the danger that the rotating bridges pose in this way, “The bridges of Chicago have been a continual source of danger and annoyance to the impetuous people of Chicago … Scarcely a week passes by that some accident does not occur at some of them, mostly on account of the impatience of pedestrians … Why people, great and small, will persist in swarming upon and over the bridges of our main thoroughfares while they are swinging, at the risk of life and limb, it would be hard to tell.  The wonder is that more fatal accidents do not occur.”

June 13, 1922 – Representing the Illinois Athletic Club, John Weismuller smashes four world’s swimming records at Kahului on the island of Maui.  Weismuller takes 14 seconds off the previous record in the 400-yard freestyle, finishing in 4:40.4.  In the 400-meter freestyle he breaks the old world’s record by six seconds.  He also sets a new record in the 500-yard freestyle and the 500-meter freestyle events.  In addition to the records Weismuller also takes gold in the 100- and 50-yard freestyle races. The champion’s family came to the United States from Germany when he was just seven-months-old, eventually settling in Chicago where his father, Peter, worked as a brewer.  When the young man contracted polio as a teenager, a doctor suggested he take up swimming to combat the ravages of the disease.  He dropped out of Lane Technical High School, working as a lifeguard on Chicago beaches, eventually ending up as an elevator operator at the Illinois Athletic Club.  It was there that he was given a chance to show his skill.  A little over two years after his success in the Hawaiian Islands, Weismuller will compete in the 1924 Olympic games in Paris, taking four gold medals.  Four years later in the Amsterdam Olympic games he will win another two gold medals.  In the early 1930’s he will ink a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, beginning a career that is notable for the six Tarzan movies in which he starred.

June 13, 1967 – Efforts to correct the sinking north wall of the Monadnock building are finished.  After a real estate investment group headed by Carroll H. Sudler, purchased the building for more than two million dollars, it was discovered that the 1891 structure is sinking.  For the preceding two months, according to the Chicago Tribune, 31 pipes, each of them 14 inches in diameter, have been sunk under four supporting piers of the north wall and then filled with concrete.  On this date the work is completed.  The Monadnock is safe, but Jackson Boulevard on which the narrow north face of the Monadnock sits, is a mess, “slumping badly in sections,” according to the Tribune as a result of excavation work for the new Federal building that is being constructed directly across the street from the Monadnock.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 1 comments

Labels: 1879, Chicago Bridges, Chicago RIver