Connecting the Windy City

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

May 15, 1880 -- Illinois Central Railroad Bridge Opens at River Mouth

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May 15, 1880 – A new bridge opens on the Chicago River, one that carries Illinois Central railroad trains over the river near Elevator “A,” located on the south side of the river near its mouth.  A steam locomotive and one passenger car carries 30 men across the river to celebrate the completion of the project “which was conceived by the late William B. Ogden, and finally brought about by William F. Whitehouse, the Solicitor of the Dock and Canal Company.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1880].  The cost of the one-track bridge comes in at $27,000, and it is built “on a pier of solid masonry … the strongest and most substantial one of the river, and probably the Northwest.”  Various speeches are made at the offices of the Peshtigo Company (There still is a Peshtigo Court – one block long, the last street one crosses before heading under Lake Shore Drive on the way to Navy Pier on Grand or Illinois Street), including one by Mayor Carter H. Harrison.  Attorney B. F. Ayer, the general solicitor of the Illinois Central Railroad and the chairman of the Western Railway Association, offers a toast to the success of the bridge.  Illinois Central shareholder B. H. Sheldon observes that “in order to remain the Imperial City she is … it was necessary for Chicago to have afforded her every facility for the transaction of business cheaply and expeditiously,”  going on to say that before the bridge was completed “two great railroads, within 300 feet of each other, had not been connected before. Until now cars had to be transferred by the belt line nine miles around, which involved vexations delays and great inconvenience.”  The bridge is long gone … I have searched and searched and can’t find a single photo of it – just this 1893 rendering.  Elevator A is circled in red with the bridge just east of it indicated as well.  The tracks on the left side of the bridge belong to the Illinois Central.  The tracks on the right side of the bridge are the property of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, running along the north side of the river all the way from Kenzie Street on the North branch.  The elevator stands just about where the Hyatt Hotel is located today.

May 15, 1893 –It’s a big, big day in the city as the first of the World’s Fair Congresses kicks off at the spanking new Art Institute, a building that will for the next seven days be the “Place aux Dames” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1893] or the site of the Woman’s Congress, a colloquium that “is to be conducted by women, for women, and the subjects that will be discussed are all related to some phase of the life of modern women.” Preparations have been ongoing since May, 1892 and provide for four classes of meetings, the largest of which will consist of two daily sessions held in the Hall of Washington and the Hall of Columbus, each of which will accommodate 3,000 people.  Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. Charles Henrotin will open the Congress on this day with a welcoming address.  One subject that the Woman’s Congress will cover in depth is “Woman’s Progress,” with discussion of such topics as “civil and social evolution of woman; the administrative ability of woman; woman the new factor in industrial economics; the ethics of dress; woman as an actual force in politics; woman as financier; woman in municipal government; the political future for woman and woman’s war for peace.”  One of the unique features of the Congress will occur on the final day, May 21, a Sunday, when religious services will be held at the Art Institute at which only women ordained as ministers will take part.  On that closing evening a “sacred concert” will be held “in which the line of sex will again be drawn, both as to composers and performers, both being, it is hardly necessary to say, women.”  The highlight of the concert will be the Columbian Ladies’ Harp Orchestra, “led by Mme. Josephine Chatterton, who has arranged for this harp orchestra a grand ‘Marche Triumphale,’ … the first time in this country so large a harp orchestra will be heard.

May 15, 1881 – With a fresh legal judgment giving the South Park Commissioners responsibility to improve and maintain streets that move people onto boulevards leading to or passing around parks, the Chicago Daily Tribune offers an opinion on what should be done with Michigan Avenue south of the river.  The editorial shines a spotlight on the one thing “which all the property-owners and residents along the line of Michigan avenue ought to agree to, and which will greatly enhance the beauty of the new boulevard.”  That is … getting rid of all the fences along the front yards that line the street.  “It is only by this means,” the editorial says, “that uniformity can be secured and protection guaranteed against rickety or incongruous fences.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1881]  

May 15, 1938 – An “autogiro” takes off from the Chicago Airport (today’s Midway) at 1:40 p.m., lands on the roof of the main post office at 1:45 and heads back to the airport 15 minutes later. This is a symbolic flight. The two-seater rotor craft will only carry 200 pounds of mail, and it can only fly about 100 miles per hour. BUT this event, as the Chicago Daily Tribune points out, “ . . . presages the day when all mail will be flown between these two points.” With pilot Johnny Miller in the cockpit, the autogiro takes off on the first day of National Air Mail Week, commemorating the day twenty years earlier when air mail service was initiated. The sacks of mail are delivered directly to Postmaster Ernest J. Kruetgenon who stands on the roof of the post office, 14 stories above the Chicago River. Only 200 guests are on the post office roof, but the event is seen and heard by many. The Field Building at 135 South La Salle opens its entire fortieth floor to spectators, and the Board of Trade opens its forty-fourth floor to the public. The event is also covered by W.G.N., WBBM, and the coast-to-coast Mutual broadcasting system. 

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Labels: 1880, Chicago Bridges, Chicago Events, Chicago RIver, Illinois Central

Monday, July 9, 2018

July 9, 1880 -- Canal Commissioners and Mayor Spar over Pumping Works

July 9, 1880 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on a conference in Lockport between the Canal Commissioners, Mayor Carter Harrison of Chicago, and a delegation of citizens from the city and towns along the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The particular issue is the establishment of the Bridgeport Pumping Works, for which the Chicago City Council has appropriated $100,000. The Mayor maintains that the Canal Commissioners must guarantee that the works will carry off a specific amount of water while the Commissioners are unwilling to make such a guarantee. Mayor Harrison and his delegation make the trip to Lockport “over the not placid bosom of the raging canal.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 9, 1880] The trip begins at the Adams Street bridge and although “in some places the water was black and turbid, in others of a clayey hue,” the delegation from Chicago finds the trip rather pleasant.  It is a different story in Lockport, though, as neither the mayor or the commissioners want to enter into an agreement that will put them in a corner.  Harrison wants the commissioners to say to the city, “From the necessity of the circumstances we are creating a nuisance along the line of the canal.  You are secondarily responsible because you make that water foul. You are the wolf that fouls the water, and these people down here on the canal are the lambs … We haven’t the means to purify it, but we propose that if you do that we will do our share, and say what that share is.”  A member of the Sanitary Commission states its position … that the commission was a creature of the State of Illinois and was charged with overseeing the function of the canal and could not go outside of the powers delegated to it by determining sanitary conditions.  Considerable give-and-take follows with the mayor maintaining that although the city contributes to the offensiveness of the canal, it is the Sanitary Commission’s responsibility to do something about it, the Commission arguing that it had no legal authority to do that.  At one point Mayor Harrison says to a commissioner, “You and I are giving a stench to the people on this river,” to which the commissioner replies, “I deny that. You are.” The meeting breaks up with little headway made.  The participants agree to communicate about the proposed pumping works at Bridgeport with Mayor Harrison saying, “I don’t want to buy a pig in a poke or put Chicago’s neck in a noose.”  The Commissioners agree “to support him in every undertaking to relieve the city where it had the authority of law to do so.” The above photo shows the lock that originally separated the Chicago River from the Illinois and Michigan canal.

July 9, 1974 – For the first time a woman sits behind the wheel of a Chicago Transit Authority bus as Ms. Mary Wallace pilots the State Street bus on the 36A route, starting at the C.T.A. garage at Seventy-Seventh and Vincennes Avenue.  Ms. Wallace says that the training took her 15 days during which time she says “it rained a lot.”  She added further that she applied for the job and was “in it for the money.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1974] Ms. Wallace is pictured in the photo above with former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.

July 9, 1934 – Eleanor Roosevelt has a full schedule of events as she visits Chicago for two days. At 9:30 a.m. the wife of President Franklin Roosevelt holds a press conference in the NBC studios at the Merchandise Mart.  At 10:15 a.m. she visits the Simmons exhibit at the Century of Progress and participates in a commercial broadcast for the company, the proceeds of which will be donated to charity.  At noon the First Lady takes lunch with the president of the fair and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Rufus C. Dawes, after which she requests to see the fair without any escort.  At 5:30 Mrs. Roosevelt is the guest at a reception given by the Women’s Trade Union League at 530 South Ashland Avenue.  Unbelievably, she arrives in Chicago on the night of July 8 from Madison, Indiana with no official escort.  She and two female companions make the 265-mile drive, taking turns at the wheel of a “low slung, sand colored automobile,” their arrival at the Blackstone Hotel “heralded by no fanfare, their path was cleared by no police escort and no committee of notables was waiting to greet them.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 9, 1934]

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Labels: 1880, Chicago RIver, Illinois and Michigan Canal, Politics

Monday, June 25, 2018

June 25, 1880 -- Census Figures Released

June 25, 1880 –The Chicago Daily Tribune publishes the census numbers with an analysis of how the city has changed between the last census in 1870 and 1880.  In the preceding decade, the city has gained 170,083 people, an increase of 60 percent. The figures show that the city’s population stands at 705,000 souls.  The article indicates that the First Ward shows the most dramatic change over the decade, reporting, “Previous to the big fire, Wabash and Michigan avenues south of Madison street were lined with private houses, in which hundreds of young men employed in the wholesale houses on Lake and South Water streets found their homes.  Now there is nothing of any moment on Michigan avenue, with the exception of the Gradner House, the Pullman Block, and the Exposition Building, until Harrison street is reached.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 2018] Wabash Avenue, according to the article, has been completely rebuilt on the east side of the street “with large mercantile houses.” The west side of the street is in a “very ragged condition” between Van Buren and Eldredge Court, due to a fire in July of 1874 which destroyed 709 stores and dwellings, 89 barns, 8 churches, 4 hotels, a post office, a school and a theater. [Chicagology.com]On State Street the Palmer House is the most imposing structure with retail stores running south from the hotel as far as Congress Avenue.  The west end of the First Ward, formerly occupied “by the lowest classes of humanity …. Dives in which flourished the most abandoned characters; boarding-houses in which drunken brawls were of nightly occurrence …” has become the dry-goods district of the rebuilt city.  The transition has forced about 50 percent of the 1870 population of that area to move to other wards.  The above photo from 1880 looks south on State Street at the Palmer House Hotel from Monroe Street.

June 25, 1953 – Federic Clay Bartlett dies at his home in Beverly, Massachusetts at the age of 80.  Bartlett was born in Chicago in 1873 and at the age of 19, instead of pursuing a university degree, he headed for Europe to study art.  He returned to the city at the age of 27 and took up professional residence in the Fine Arts building, from where he worked on notable commissions for murals at the University of Chicago and the University Club of Chicago.  Bartlett’s first wife, Dora, died in 1917, and in 1920 he married Helen Louise Birch, a relationship that led to a life of art collecting, in which the couple amassed an impressive array of French avant-garde paintings.  In 1924 Bartlett became a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, and with the museum in mind the Bartlett’s made what would be their single-most important acquisition, purchasing George Seurat’s Sunday Morning on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the work of an artist that up to that time had not been represented in any major collection.  When Helen Birch Bartlett died in 1925, Bartlett presented the collection of paintings the two had assembled to the Art Institute of Chicago, and a part of the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection has been on display ever since.  In reacting to the artist’s death the director of the Art Institute, Daniel Catton Rich, says, “Frederic Bartlett was talented as a painter and it was with a painter’s eye that he judged the great French art of this period … He and his wife built up a collection of remarkable quality.  The center of the Birch Bartlett collection is Seurat’s great mural-like painting … This has sometimes been called the greatest painting of the nineteenth century … Frederic Bartlett gave a gallery of these paintings to the Art Institute in 1925.  This became the first room of modern art in any American museum … It remains as a monument to its generous collector, the rare example of a group of paintings gathered with deep knowledge, taste, and warm understanding.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 26, 1953] Bartlett and Helen Birch Bartlett are pictured above.

June 25, 1912 – President Charles H. Markham of the Illinois Central Railroad heads for New York with a copy of a new contract between the railroad and the Chicago south park commissioners that is designed to bring about electrification of the line’s suburban service within five years. This is a BIG DEAL for the city.  The railroad agrees to remove its Twelfth Street station east of Indiana Avenue, allowing for the widening of Indiana Avenue from Thirteenth to Twelfth Street, thus providing space for the proposed Field Museum.  The I. C. will also provide a 40-foot wide piece of land to the city on the east side of Michigan Avenue south of Twelfth Street so that Michigan Avenue may be widened at that point.  The contract states, “. . . that no building of any dimensions whatever, excepting such as may be required for passenger service accommodation and the like, shall be directed or maintained upon any part of the right of way between a line 500 feet north of Twenty-ninth street and Fifty-first street, and that this portion of the right of way shall not be used as a railroad yard, or for the storage of cars, locomotives, or equipment, or be put to any use except for the passage of trains, and that there shall not be erected upon this portion of the right of way any advertising signs or other obstructions to the view of the adjacent property or lands.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 24, 1912]  With this understanding in place, another step is taken in providing unobstructed green space along the lake shore.  The photo above, taken in 1893, shows the Van Buren Street terminal in what today is Grant Park with the Illinois Central station and office building to the left of the photo in the distance.

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Labels: 1880, Madison Street, Michigan Avenue, Wabash Avenue

Thursday, February 15, 2018

February 15, 1880 -- Old Town Triangle Sold

February 15, 1880 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the triangular block lying between North Avenue, LaSalle Street, North Clark Street, and Eugenie Street has been sold to H. A. Hurlbut for $100,000.  Close to the horse cars and adjacent to Lincoln Park, the property “has had no charms for the speculator or investor” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 15, 1880], but plans are now in place to build a private residence between Clark and LaSalle south of Eugenie Street and a dozen residences, six on each side of the triangular tract, just south of that home.  The houses “will have marble fronts, and will be three stories high, besides basement, with a frontage of 20 and 22 feet.”  The area in question has not seen development, despite its excellent location, because no single buyer was willing to risk such an investment without knowledge of what would be built on the adjoining lots.  “Now that the whole property has passed into a single hand,” the Tribune reports, “… this quarter will certainly take its place as one of the most eligible residence spots in the city.  People who live there will have a marine view of the lake, over the trees of the park, not to be rivaled by anything else in Chicago.  They will be in the continuation of the most fashionable thoroughfare of the North Division, and within easy distance of the heart of the city.”  The “Old Town Triangle,” purchased for a hundred-grand back In 1880 is within the red boundary shown above.  Today the Moody Church, a couple of gas stations and a bank occupy the property.

February 15, 1935 – Louis H. Skidmore, the man in charge of the demolition of the buildings at the Century of Progress exposition, announces that work will begin on clearing the site.  The buildings that are to be demolished originally cost over $10,000,000 and include the Sky Ride, the Hall of Science, the Home Planning, Food and Agriculture buildings, the States building, the Dairy building, the Wings of a Century theater, the Electrical building, and the Lagoon Fountain.  Although the wrecking company is based in Springfield, the 500 men working on the razing of the buildings will all be hired in Chicago.  Remaining on the site will be the Administration building, Fort Dearborn, the Lagoon Theater, the DuSable cabin, and the boardwalk around the lagoons.

February 15, 1933 -- Postmaster General Walter F. Brown dedicates the world's largest post office in a ceremony that includes speeches, singing and music by the post office band in the lobby of the building's Van Buren Street entrance. In his remarks Brown says, "A few less than 7,000 workers normally will spend about one-third of their adult lives in this building. Here will be sorted and dispatched 6,500,000 letters and circulars, 300,000 packages and 80,000 sacks of newspaper and parcel post, which originate in Chicago each week, destined for every part of the globe."

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Labels: 1880, Clark Street, La Salle Street, Lincoln Park

Monday, December 11, 2017

December 11, 1880 -- Selling the Lake Front, Again

December 11, 1880 – The Judiciary Committee of the City Council agrees to sell prime lake front property to the Illinois Central Railroad Company, adopting the following resolution:

Resolved, That the Mayor be authorized and requested to take such steps as he shall deem proper and expedient to procure the passage of an act of Congress at the present session relinquishing to the City of Chicago all the right, title, and interest of the United Sates in and to the streets and public ground in Fort Dearborn Addition to Chicago, with authority in said City of Chicago to sell and convey so much of the latter as lies east of Michigan avenue and south of the south line of Randolph street for the erection of a railroad passenger depot.

On top of this, the committee has also prepared a bill to be considered in Congress, as follows:

A bill to confirm to the City of Chicago the title to certain public grounds: That all the right and title of the United States to the streets and grounds dedicated to public use in that part of the City of Chicago in, the State of Illinois, known as “Fort Dearborn Addition to Chicago,” subdivided and platted under the authority of the secretary of War in the year 1839, be and the same hereby is relinquished and granted to the said city and its successors, with authority to sell and convey so much thereof as lies south of the south line of Randolph street and between the east line of Michigan avenue as now laid out and improved and the roadway of the Illinois Central Railroad Company for the erection thereon of a railway passenger station-house and other purposes incident thereto: provided, that nothing herein contained shall deprive the owners of contiguous lots of any valid right or claim, if such exists, to compensation on account of the change of use to which the public ground herein authorized to be sold and conveyed was originally dedicated by the United States.

So … once again the city fathers make an attempt to sell the city’s lakefront property, showing how close we came to having no lakefront in the central city at all today.  The first attempt at making a deal occurred in 1869 when the Illinois General Assembly passed legislation allowing the sale of property north of Monroe Street and west of the Illinois Central trestle for the sum of $800,000.  Additionally, the area east of the railroad tracks and a mile east into Lake Michigan was to be given to the Illinois Central to build a harbor for the city.  The plan raised a storm of public indignation, and the city refused the initial part of the $800,000 when the railroad offered it.

Out of the 1880 legislation a railroad station did get built – for the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, which had obtained trackage rights from the Illinois Central Railroad. It would be decades of litigation before citizens could finally be assured that the property on the lakefront would be protected.  It would be nearly a century before the railroads would, for the most part, leave the city’s front yard.

The above photo shows the lakefront in 1858, dominated completely by the railroad and warehouses.

December 11, 1911 – At a meeting of the Chicago City Council Mayor Carter Harrison reveals that an agreement has been reached between the South Park commissioners and the Illinois Central railroad in which the city will take possession of the lakeshore between Park Row on the south end of what is today Grant Park and Fifty-First Streets.  The Chicago Daily Tribune says of the deal, “These riparian rights, heretofore held in the grip of the railroad, have a value to the citizens of Chicago that is considered by the park commissioners beyond computation, considering that they will now be enabled to construct a shore boulevard drive between Jackson and Grant parks, with bathing beaches, pleasure piers and islands.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 12, 1911]  A direct result of the agreement will be a place between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets for the Field museum after the railroad tears down its central station and associated outbuildings in that area. The railroad will also lower its tracks below grade north of Twelfth Street, in effect hiding its operation as much as possible from sight.  There are dozens and dozens of other stipulations in the agreement, but there is probably no other document in the city’s history that has done more to create the extensive green space along its shoreline than this one.  South Park Board President John Earton Payne says the agreement will make the connection between Grant Park and Jackson Park “the most beautiful parkway and drive in the world.”  The above photo shows the south end of Grant Park and the Illinois Central terminal in 1911.  The statue in the middle of the park is the statue of General John A. Logan -- still in the same location today -- showing how much the lakefront has changed in this area along in the past century.

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Labels: 1880, Grant Park, Illinois Central, Lake Michigan, Randolph Street