Connecting the Windy City

Saturday, August 22, 2020

August 22, 1982 -- Wabash Avenue Strip Joint Busted

 

August 22, 1982 – Police raid the Candy Store at 874 North Wabash Avenue at about 1:30 a.m., arresting 13 people on prostitution charges. A 63-year-old woman is charged with being a keeper of a house of prostitution, and 11 other women are charged with being inmates of the house.  Things change, right?  Today the Sofitel Chicago Magnificent Mile stands on the site.  The hotel, which opened in 2002 with a design by French architect Jean-Paul Viguier, is on the American Institute of Architects America’s Favorite Architecture list.

August 22, 1969 – The City Council Buildings and Zoning Committee unanimously approves the guidelines for the development of the Illinois Central land and air rights south of the Chicago River and east of Michigan Avenue, asking for a change so that advertising signs will be banned in the area.  Louis Hill, the Commissioner of Development and Planning, says that developers will provide streets, utilities, a fire station, a dock wall along the river, a six-acre park, a school, and a subway station to serve the area.  The approval follows four days after the Chicago Plan Commission approves the same plan.   The area approved for the new development is shown in the photo above.

Chicago Tribune photo

August 22, 1961 – Ted Erikson, a rocket fuels research engineer at the Illinois Institute of Technology, sets a world’s record for open water long distance swimming by becoming the first person to swim the nearly 37 miles between Chicago and Michigan City, Indiana.  The waves are over six-feet high when Erickson and five other swimmers set out from Burnham Harbor at 8:00 a.m. on a Monday morning.  Winds continue to build until they are cresting at 16 feet by 9:00 p.m.  At that point there are just two swimmers remaining – Erikson and Elmer Korbai, a Hungarian refugee.  Shortly before midnight, Korbai, too, drops out.  When officials accompanying him in a boat ask if he wants to call it quits, Korbai shouts, “Put the boat in front of me, and I’ll follow it.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 23, 1961]. By that time he is far off course, a fact he learns later when it is disclosed that he actually swam 43 miles, close to seven more miles than he had originally planned on negotiating.  As he draws closer to Michigan City, a squadron of small boats comes out to meet him, and someone in the flotilla informs him that he has just two miles to go, and “he took 54 strokes a minute for more than an hour before it was discovered that the beach was really six miles away.”  As if that was not enough, a squall line moves into the area and between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. Erickson only manages to progress a half-block.  Finally, at about 3:00 p.m. he sights a crowd of people gathered on Washington Park Beach, and he tells the sponsor of the effort, auto dealer Jim Moran, that he is going to finish with the butterfly stroke.  (If you have ever tried doing the butterfly for 50 or 100 yards, imagine doing it after 37 hours of continuous swimming!).  That’s what he does.  An estimated 10,000 people are on the beach to greet him, and he is pulled from the lake as waves pound him against the pier just short of the beach. He is placed on a stretcher and given oxygen as he protests, “I don’t want to go to the hospital.  I want to go home.”  In the above photo Erikson is seen shaking the hand of Jim "the Courtesy Man" Moran at the completion of the marathon swim

August 22, 1942 – At 3:00 p.m. the United States Navy formally commissions the aircraft carrier Wolverine off Madison Street.  The ship is the country’s only paddlewheel aircraft carrier and will be used to train pilots operating out of the Naval air station in Glenview as they practice carrier landings and take-offs.  Captain E. A. Lofquist, Chief of Staff of the Ninth Naval District, makes the dedication address, after which the Navy’s commission pennant, displaying one red stripe, one white stripe, and seven stars set in a field of blue, is raised from the Wolverine’s masthead.  Two fighter planes, one of which is piloted by Commander Edward J. O’Neill, a pilot who flew in the Battle of Midway and the officer in charge of operational training once the ship is commissioned, circle overhead during the ceremony.  The city fireboat Fred Busse and two tugs carry several hundred young men who have signed up to take the naval aviation course. For more on the Wolverine and her sister carrier, the Sable, you may turn to entrees in Connecting the Windy City here and here.  Information about Navy Pier and its service during World War II can be found here. 

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 12:30 AM 2 comments

Labels: 1882, Chicago Event, Crime, Criminal Acts, Wabash Avenue

Monday, April 13, 2020

April 13, 1882 -- Wells Street Bridge Tied Up All Day As Ship Runs Aground

chuckmanchicagonostalgia.files. wordpress.com

April 13, 1882 – Trouble comes again to the Wells Street bridge as “the monster propeller”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 14, 1882]  City of Rome hits bottom and comes to a dead stop.  After an ineffective attempt to free herself, two tugs, W. H. Wolf and Hackley are called, and they pull at the stuck ship for over an hour to no effect.  Two more tugs, the A G. Van Schnick and Constitution, are summoned, but even with four tugs yanking on the grounded ship, the City of Rome refuses to budge.  During this time the Wells Street bridge, the main point of entry to the Chicago and North Western train station north of the river on Wells Street, remains in the open position.  At 7:15 p.m. two more tugs are called and the six tugs manage to work the ship free from the bottom of the river.  Unfortunately, during this final exertion the fireman on the Van Schnick is severely burned when he is drenched in a discharge of boiling water from the City of Rome’s steam condenser.  He is taken to the County Hospital.  The City of Rome is carrying 75,000 bushels of corn, and as she heads toward the lake she draws 14 feet, nine inches aft and 14 feet forward, giving very little margin for error in the shallow channel.  Two Anchor Line steamers lie abreast of one another just west of the Wells Street bridge, making it very difficult for ships the size of the City of Rome to enter the draw of the bridge.  It’s another day on the crowded Chicago River.  The above photo shows the Wells Street bridge, looking north toward the Chicago and North Western terminal.  Notice the clearance on the north side of the draw ... once the bridge was rotated parallel to the banks of the river, it took a pretty nice piece of navigation to squeeze through.

April 13, 1955 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a proposal to link Midway and O’Hare Airports to the Loop by way of a monorail system able to move trains at 75 to 150 miles per hour will be proposed to the city council at its next meeting on April 21.  The plan calls for the system “To run west form the Loop to Cicero av. In the Congress st. super-highway, where it would not interfere with surface railway operation, and then branch north and south, one branch going to Midway, the other to O’Hare.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 13, 1955] The system would be double-tracked with trains “supported on the arms of ‘T’ shaped supporting structures 26 feel high,” giving the trains 16 feet of clearance above the ground.  Estimated time from the Loop to O’Hare is 14 minutes with a little less time required for a trip to Midway.  Officials estimate the cost of the project to be close to $12,000,000 with $2,000,000 required for the construction of terminals.  Another great idea that goes nowhere.  On June 7, 1956 the City Club of Chicago recommends that the city study the idea.  The next time the concept comes up is in September of 1959 when the city’s transportation department introduces the idea of a monorail system between the Loop and the proposed exposition center on the lakefront.  Of course, that didn’t happen either.  It would take considerably more than $12,000,000 to make the idea happen today, and the conversation is still  going on over sixty years later about how to move people quickly from downtown to the outlying airports.

April 13, 1953 – Dr. Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor of the West German Republic, stops in the city while on a goodwill tour of the United States to make a major address in which he asserts that he would never agree to “a neutralized, disarmed Germany, barred from an equal treaty making status with other nations.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 14, 1953]  On this day the Chancellor’s T.W.A. plane arrives at 5:20 p.m. after circling to show Adenauer a good view of the city.  His daughter and a party of 21 people accompany him, and the German consul general meets the group as does Otto K. Eitel, owner of the Bismarck Hotel where the German leader will spend the night.  On the following day Adenauer attends a luncheon at the Chicago Club for which Robert E. Wood, the board chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co., serves as the host.  Next on the docket is a reception in his honor at the University of Chicago at which Adenauer presents the university chancellor, Lawrence A. Kimpton, with several scholarships for study in Germany.  The day concludes at a Germania Club dinner where Adenauer makes his policy address in German.  In the photo above Dr. Adenauer is shown second from the left at the University of Chicago reception.  Dr. Kimpton is at the far right of the photo.

April 13, 1948 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that Chicago Transit Authority workmen have begun salvaging rails and signal equipment form the Market Street elevated stub, which will be torn down during the summer. Once the elevated structure is out of the way, the section of South Wacker Drive on which it is located will become the north approach of the Congress Street expressway, which is in a preliminary phase of construction. The photo above shows the Market Street stub where it ended on the east side of the Civic Opera Building.

Olaf Bensontclf.org

April 13, 1902 – Speaking at the annual banquet of the Chicago Architectural Club at the Victoria Hotel, landscape architect Olaf Benson predicts that by the middle of the century Chicago will be known as the “City Beautiful.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 14, 1902]  benson makes it clear that such an achievement will not come easily.  He says, “We must reconstruct and remodel our city, on entirely new ‘beauty lines.’ From a state of chaos and incongruous mixture of all kinds of buildings, standing side by side, without regard to character, we must bring order and introduce a system adapted for use, comfort, beauty, and happy and contented human living.” Benson, who served as superintendent of the Lincoln Park board from 1875 to 1889, continued, “Chicago of the future will have parks and boulevards the grandest the world has ever seen … A beautiful vegetation of graceful trees and shrubs and delicate flowers will receive more consideration, and scenic landscape effects will be among the chief attractions in our parks.”  Earlier in the day Daniel Burnham returns to the city from Washington, D. C. where he has convened the first planning session of the commission appointed to beautify the nation’s capital.  Burnham says, “A general plan of procedure was outlined, but nothing definite was done by the commission, which is composed of Charles McKim, Frederick Law Olmstead, and myself.  We will not complete our task for many months.  The results of our work will be submitted to Congress next winter.”  

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

Labels: 1882, Chicago Bridges, Chicago RIver, Wells Street

Friday, April 3, 2020

April 3, 1982 -- Chicago Elevated Needs Repair or Condemnation: Tribune Editorial

drloihjournal.blogspot.com

April 3, 1982 – With the Chicago Transit Authority looking to close the east-west Jackson Park elevated line running along Sixty-Third Street from King Drive to Stony Island Avenue, a Chicago Tribune editorial observes, “Chicago’s entire elevated system is wearing out.  Sooner or later, it will have to be renovated or replaced at enormous cost – or demolished.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1982]  The Jackson Park line in 1982 is 89 years old, a life that has long outlasted its original purpose, which was to transport passengers to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park.  If the line is abandoned, it will join a host of other elevated lines that have disappeared since the 1940’s, among them the Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Stock Yards and Kenwood elevated lines.  The system that is left dates from before 1920.  The Tribune observes, “The CTA has no master plan for replacing or renovating the entire elevated system.  It has barely enough money to meet operating expenses and maintain reasonably adequate service … City Hall and the CTA had better begin drafting some realistic ways of coping with the inevitable.”  The first elevated line in the city, called the “Alley el” because it operated along alleys and back yards from Congress Parkway and State Street to Thirty-Ninth Street, opened on June 6, 1892.  Today the elevated system is still hauling passengers – over a million a year along the elevated and subway system on 220 miles of track.  The photo above shows the alley el in its early days ... about six years after it began service, the line was converted to electricity.

April 3, 1971 – Roger Henn, the Executive Director of the Union League Club of Chicago, pens a guest editorial for the Chicago Tribune concerning plans for a federal correctional facility at Clark and Van Buren Streets.  He writes, “Chicago has an almost unbelievable opportunity for development of a great tract of land immediately adjacent to the Loop … Here is an opportunity to build a ‘city within a city’ … Housing of all varieties could be built that would retain the white-collar workers who are now fleeing to the suburbs.  Here, also could be more expensive dwellings for Loop businessmen … Not needed is the proposal of the federal government to place a penal institution and gigantic parking facility squarely on the gateway to this promising area … What is needed is overall planning and cooperation, not spot development for the convenience of the federal government with the resulting loss to all of Chicago.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 3,1971]  The above photo of Harry Weese’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, completed in 1975, is proof that the federal government ultimately got its way.

April 3, 1911 – The Engineering Committee of the Sanitary Board passes an injunction against 16 firms in the Union Stockyards, seeking to restrain the companies from dumping refuse into Bubbly Creek, the south fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River running along the edge of the stockyards.  The members of the committee accuse the firms of “damaging the main channel of the Chicago river and endangering the health and lives of the public.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 4, 1911] The firms are ordered to appear before the committee on April 10 and “show cause why proceedings should not be brought against them.”  The packers did show up and “agreed to appoint a committee to investigate the condition and suggest action.”  A week later the two sides come together again with the stockyards representatives reporting they have taken no action.  The chairman of the engineering committee, Wallace G. Clark, reaches the end of his patience, stating, “It is my opinion that your firms can be indicted, and that we can have injunctions issued against you to stop this pollution and unless there is immediate action on your part we intend to act.”  Three months pass before the packers agree to authorize the expenditure of $28,000 to clean up the festering ditch.  The effort is ineffectual at best, and it actually brings about a whole new problem as the dredgings from Bubbly Creek are dumped in the lake.  In fact, part of what we treasure today as the south end of Grant Park rests on landfill partially made up with what came from Bubbly Creek.  The above photo shows Bubbly Creek around 1915.

J Bartholomew Photo

April 3, 1909 -- The University Club at Michigan and Monroe is opened as 500 members and 700 guests participate in the ceremonies. Members wear academic garb representing their colleges and march in a procession from the old club headquarters on Dearborn to the banquet hall on the ninth floor of the new quarters. There a 75-person glee club joins a 30-piece orchestra and a pipe organ, and "the big dining hall reverberated with the songs of colleges east and west. Latin hymns, drinking songs, chants and serenades were punctuated with yells and cheers." [Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1909] A banquet is served on the eighth floor. The Holabird and Roche design still occupies its place on Michigan Avenue where University Club members are still active.

chicagocollections.com

April 3, 1902 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on “a group of business-men who drive to their offices from their North Side residences”.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 3, 1902]  In an informal discussion the men generally agree that La Salle Street is the best means of connecting the Loop with the portion of the city north of the river.  One participant says, “The route is the most central.  It will require the least attention, and it passes through one of the best districts between the heart of the city and Lincoln Park.”  To make the connection a reality would require about $200,000, the men estimate, a sum that would pay for “about a mile” of asphalt paving, a bascule bridge over the river and lowering of the cable car tracks at Illinois Street.  An attorney on the Lincoln Park board says of the plan, ‘Legally, there would be little trouble with the plan.  It seems to me to be a good plan, even though it might be merely temporary.  The name sounds well, for Chicago and the Northwest owe much to La Salle.  They have given him far too little credit.”  The opinion of the men is borne out, in part, as in 1927 work begins on widening of La Salle Street north of the river.  Seven years before that, though, the Michigan Avenue bridge is completed, making Michigan Avenue the principle north-south street leading across the river.  The photo shows opening ceremonies for the new La Salle Street bridge in 1929.

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

Labels: 1882, Chicago Elevated, Chicago Transit Authority, State Street, World's Columbian Exposition

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

May 8, 1882 -- Madison Street Eviction Fight; Go Fish

Gardner Spring Chapin and James Jefferson Gore csoarchives.files.wordpress.com

May 8, 1882 – There’s a neat place at 63 West Adams Street that was constructed in 1904 to house the distilling company of Chapin and Gore.  Gardner Spring Chapin and James Jefferson Gore first met in the 1850’s and by 1865 had opened a grocery store on the corner of State and Monroe Streets.  At some point they added a liquor department and began selling a whiskey named “1867 Sour Mash”.  Urban legend has it that when the Chicago fire roared through the Loop on October 8, 1871 the enterprising partners hired workers to roll the whiskey barrels into the lake in order to protect the valuable stock.  Supposedly, the partners sold the recovered hooch after the fire, advertising that it was “as smooth as silk” and calling it “Lake Whiskey.” [pre-whiskeymen.blogspot]. The events of this day in 1882 deal with a different event – the effort of Chapin and Gore to gain control of a business property in what is today the 1400 block of West Madison Street.  A caterer by the name of Robert H. Fish had held a lease on the property for his business from Jacob Beidler, but sometime before May 1 Fish was notified that his rent would be raised from $50 per month to $60.  Fish did not object to the raise, but he did ask for a clause to be inserted into the rental contract “giving him the privilege of transferring the lease, should he at any time desire to do so.”  Beidler agreed, and that should have been the end of the matter.  When Fish showed up to sign the contract, though, he was notified that the building had been rented for $100 a month to Chapin and Gore for a saloon. By May 8 goons had thrown Fish out of the premises three times.  Fish responded to each assault by returning his possessions to the store and suing for $5,000 in damages in the Superior Court. On May 8 the process was repeated. Complicating the situation was the fact that Fish’s wife was an invalid “whose condition has been made much worse by the behavior of the mobs who invaded her husband’s premises.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 9, 1882].  Fish moved to stop the fourth effort at evicting him and grappled with one of the men at work in throwing his possessions into the street. Both men were arrested.  After posting bond, Fish returned to the establishment to find that his friends in the area had, for the fourth time, returned all of his possessions to their original places.  Although Chapin and Gore claimed they had no knowledge of the raids “it was stated positively that one of their wagons was down to the place while Mr. Fish’s effects were being thrown out, and that the wagon was loaded with saloon stock, but none of it was unloaded … the firm offered no explanation in the matter further than t; Go o say that Mr. Fish would have to go.” 

May 8, 1925 – Ground is broken at Lake Shore Drive and Chicago Avenue for the building of the Alexander McKinlock Memorial campus of Northwestern University. The plan includes five buildings, with donations from prominent citizens funding each of them.  Mr. George A McKinlock is present at the ceremony to turn the first shovel of dirt. McKinlock came to Chicago in 1886 and started the Central Electric Company, eventually selling the firm to the General Electric Company. He also owned substantial real estate properties. After their son, George Alexander, died in World War I, Mr. and Mrs. McKinlock pledged $250,000 to buy nine acres on Lake Shore Drive for a campus for the professional schools of Northwestern University.  McKinlock ultimately pledged more than $500,000 to Northwestern, but most of his fortune evaporated during the Great Depression.  In 1937 the university forgave his debt, cancelled the pledges he had made and returned his contributions to the family.  At that point the family’s name was removed from the campus, and it was renamed the Chicago Campus of Northwestern University. The university continued to purchase land in the area, eventually increasing its holdings to 25 acres.  When Passavant Hospital moved to the campus in 1927, it began the sprawling medical complex that fills much of the area today.  Still standing is a reminder of the gift the McKinlocks gave to honor their 25-year-old son, killed by a sniper near the French village of Berzy-le-Sec on July 21, 1918.  It is the McKinlock gate on the northwest corner of Huron Street and inner Lake Shore Drive, created by artist Samuel Yellin. The photos above show the McKinlock gate as it appeared when the campus was dedicated and as it appears today.

May 8, 1861 – It all could have been worse, as a day later the Chicago Tribune reports under the headline “Whisky and Water” … “The watchman on Rush street bridge yesterday morning just before daybreak heard a cry of distress from the water near the south abutment, and going thither succeeded in saving the life of a gentleman from the rural districts, named Dun, who coming in on the cars got gloriously tight, and suddenly on his travels found himself diluting the whisky he had swallowed with the whole amount of water in the river.  He was saved, damp and damaged, and with a sprained ankle.  He is now in the Hospital.”  This would not be the last time someone from “the rural districts” found himself “gloriously tight” in the city. The photo above shows the bridge at Rush Street in 1860.

May 8: 1929 – After knocking the 600-ton Clark Street bridge from its foundation on April 30 the Sandmaster, a dredging vessel, is singled out by Assistant Corporation Counsels Charles McDonnell and Thomas W. Barrett, who prepare a suit against the owners of the ship. Records indicate that since May 21 of 1926 the wayward Sandmaster has struck 13 city bridges on 44 separate occasions. In these three years the ship rams the Fullerton Avenue bridge 18 times and the Diversey Boulevard bridge 13 times. 

Here are the incidents a search of the records reveal, damages that total an estimated quarter of a million dollars:

1926

May 21:  Fullerton Avenue (damage to bridge ladder)

May 27:  Fullerton Avenue (damage to beams under walk)

June 20:  Diversey Boulevard (sidewalk)

August 10:  Diversey Boulevard (beams under walk)

August 10:  Fullerton Avenue (ladder to pier lights)

November 30:  Lake Street (sidewalk)

December 22:  State Street (sidewalk)

December 27:  Diversey Boulevard (channel lights)

December 27:  Kinzie Street (protection rails)

1927

January 3:  Diversey Boulevard (sidewalk)

January 9:  Western Avenue (protection rails)

January 20:  Cortland Street (bridge house – bridge tender hurt)

January 23:  Fullerton Avenue (iron beam)

February 2:  Diversey Boulevard (protection rails)

February 3:  Western Avenue (cable)

March 9:  Fullerton Avenue (iron walk support)

March 18:  Halsted Street (bridge house door)

May 18:  Diversey Boulevard (sidewalk)

June 2:  Diversey Boulevard (pier light, ladder)

1928

January 15:  Fullerton Avenue (sidewalk)

February 4:  Diversey Boulevard (pier platform)

March 18:  Erie Street (bridge house)

April 18:  Fullerton Avenue (bracket stringer)

April 22:  Fullerton Avenue (sidewalk bracket)

June 12:  Fullerton avenue (sidewalk)

June 15:  Division Street (porch, pier lights)

July 13:  Fullerton Avenue (sidewalk)

July 16:  Diversey Boulevard (platform, pier lights)

September 27:  Diversey Boulevard (protection rails, platform)

September 28:  Diversey Boulevard (protection rails, platform)

October 16:  Fullerton Avenue (sidewalk)

October 18:  Fullerton Avenue (sidewalk)

October 27:  Fullerton Avenue (bracket, stringer)

November 5:  Fullerton Avenue (rail posts)

December 2:  Fullerton Avenue (sidewalks)

December 4:  Michigan Avenue (cables)

December 5:  La Salle Street (cables)

December 8:  Fullerton Avenue (sidewalk brackets)

December 10:  Diversey Boulevard (sidewalk)

December 31:  Fullerton Avenue (two iron brackets)

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

Labels: 1882, Adams Street, Madison Street, Monroe Street, State Street

Sunday, February 24, 2019

February 24, 1882 -- Loop Cable Car Demonstration Is Successful

forgotten chicago.com

February 24, 1882 – Just after midnight the first successful operation of a cable car in the Loop is accomplished as the car is taken from the barn at Twenty-Second Street, proceeds north to Madison Street and from there completes a “loop” that ends at Lake Street.  Adjustments are made to the cable after the first trip with men descending into the tunnel through which the cable runs to adjust the its tension.  After a second trip, the tension again is increased which allows the third trip to end in “a complete success.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 24, 1882]  On the final trip the gripman moves the car along at four miles-per-hour, half the speed that is possible on the main line, and stops three times at the corner of Wabash and Lake Streets “to exhibit the perfect control he had over the machine.” The system is not yet ready for prime time … operators will need another three or four weeks to perfect their ability to make the “jump” between the main cable and the Loop cable at Madison Street.  Until then horses will be used to move the cars from the “loop” to the main line. The Tribune observes that in a month the city will see’ cable-cars running up and down State street in all their glory, without the aid of horse-power to do any switching at Madison street.”  The above photo shows cable cars running on Wabash Avenue just after the Auditorium building was completed in 1889 but before the Loop elevated line was completed in 1897 one block to the north. 

February 24, 1992 – In a guest column in the Chicago Tribune Gerald W. Adelmann, the Executive Director of Openlands Project, a non-profit organization with a mission of protecting open space in northeastern Illinois, writes of the opportunities the city has in such vacant lots as Block 37.  “For the first time since the Great Fire of 1871,” Adelmann writes, “a number of major parcels in downtown Chicago stand vacant.  Three of the lots – Block 37, the old Montgomery Ward’s site and the temporary park by the Washington library – face directly onto State Street … Openlands Project urges the city and civic leaders to transform one or more of the vacant parcels into permanent public space.” [Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1992] Citing an earlier inventory that the city’s Department of Planning published, Adelmann notes that only 3.3 percent of the land area within the Central Area of the city is given over to public space.  “While much attention correctly should be focused on business development,” Adelmann continues, “creating high-quality open space can help make Chicago competitive in attracting businesses and the qualified workers who sustain them.  Open land contributes to an economically healthy urban environment as much as do roads and utilities, and must be planned for similarly.”  Adelmann concludes by saying that the downturn in the economy and the resultant lag in construction of the period provides an opportunity for such planning.  Pritzker Park on the northwest corner of State and Van Buren is shown above.

February 24, 2009 – United States Interior Secretary Ken Salazar initiates the transfer of the Chicago Harbor lighthouse, previously under the control of the U. S. Coast Guard, to Chicago.  The lighthouse, which stands 48 feet above the lake, was built in 1893 and transferred to its current location east of Navy Pier in 1917.

February 24, 1920 -- With three out of every four voters favoring six South Park bond issue propositions on the ballot, Charles H. Wacker, chairman of the city's plan commission, says, "The victory of the South Park Commissions' bond proposals is the biggest, finest, and most far-reaching undertaking for the public good Chicago has launched in its entire history." The financing would allow for grading and completion of Grant Park at a cost of $3,700,000. Also forthcoming would be creation of the two levels of what is now Wacker Drive running east and west along the river, the building of the southern portion of Lake Shore Drive, the widening and improvement of Ashland Avenue, and at least a half-dozen other plans that within the space of a half-dozen years would change the city. The photo above shows the south section of Lake Shore Drive from about Thirty-Ninth Street just after it opened in the spring of 1930.

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

Labels: 1882, Lake Street, Madison Street, State Street, Transportation