Connecting the Windy City

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

August 13, 1883 -- Ivan Mestrovic Is Born

www.flickriver.com

August 13, 1883 – On this day Ivan Mestrovic is born in Slovania, an eastern section of what is today Croatia, the son of a sheep-breeder.  At the age of 16 he began working under the guidance of a master stonemason in Split, and by 1905, after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he offered his first exhibit of sculpture.  By 1908 he had developed an international reputation. Auguste Rodin hailed him as “a phenomenon among sculptors.”  [sniteartmuseum.nd.edu].  Between 1925 and 1928 he was invited to stage exhibitions at 18 different museums in the United States and Canada, a time during which he also oversaw the installation of his Native American equestrian figures at the Congress Street entrance to Grant Park.  In 1955, at the age of 62, Mestrovic came to Notre Dame University from Syracuse University in New York, where he had taught wince 1947.  He lived in South Bend with his wife, Olga, until his death in 1962. At one point in his life Mestrovic observed, “Throughout my life I carried with me an incomparable inheritance: poverty; poverty of my family and my nation.  The first helped me to never be afraid of material difficulties, for I could never have less than at the beginning.  The second drove me to persevere in my work, so that at least in my own field my nation’s poverty would be diminished.”

August 13, 1969 –The chairman of Illinois Central Industries, Inc., William B. Johnson, announces the formation of Illinois Center Plaza Venture, the corporation that will develop the 83-acre site east of Michigan Avenue, between Randolph Street and the Chicago River.  Jupiter Corporation, Metropolitan, Inc., and the Illinois Central Corporation will be equal partners in the plan, which will see the new company purchasing the property from the Illinois Central Railroad for a base price of $83,625,000 with an escalation rider over a 15-year development period.  The site on which the proposed Standard Oil building will be constructed as well as the site of the 111 East Wacker Drive building, which is under construction, along with two adjacent sites, are excluded from the sale. The Prudential building and the Outer Drive East apartments were constructed on air rights in which the Illinois Central did not share in the profits of the buildings.

August 13, 2009 – Bank of America initiates a suit against Shelbourne Development Group Inc., the developer that began construction of the 150-floor Chicago Spire, construction that was subsequently halted after foundation work was completed.  Bank of America claims that the developer has defaulted on its loan.  The bank says that it is filing a suit in United States District Court in Chicago, seeking $4.9 million in principal and interest from Shelbourne and its chairman, Garrett Kelleher. The complaint alleges that the firm has failed to obtain an “irrevocable construction loan commitment” from a lender, leading the Bank of America to declare a default. [Chicago Tribune, August 14,2009] The photo above shows the remains of the project as they look today.

August 13, 1928 – Construction begins on the Merchandise Mart on the site of the old Chicago and North Western station on the north bank of the Chicago River between Wells Street and Orleans.  A force of 5,700 workers will speed the construction, using cement brought from Wisconsin by boat, and by May 1,1930 the first 200 tenants will begin moving into the 4,000,000 square foot building.

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

Labels: 1883, Chicago Sculpture, Chicago Statues, Grant Park

Saturday, November 24, 2018

November 24, 1883 -- Commercial Club Bids Farewell To General Sheridan

collections.armynavyclub.org

November 24, 1883 –The Commercial Club of Chicago hosts an evening for General Phillip Sheridan as he prepares to leave the city as a consequence of his appointment as General-in-Chief of the United States Army.  The banquet and reception are held at the home of the Commercial Club on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Twentieth Streets.  A sumptuous meal is served beginning with blue point oysters with pompano, prepared “New Orleans style” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 25, 1883], turkey, spinach, partridge, terrapin, and sweetbreads also on the menu. At 10:20 p.m. the president of the Commercial Club, A. A. Carpenter, begins the business of the evening, thanking Sheridan for what he has done for the city and wishing him well as he departs for the nation's capital. The second toast is offered by J. W. Doane, who says, “Chicago can never forget General Sheridan, when the city was in flames, when men’s hearts failed them and ruin and desolution stared us in the face, all eyes were turned to him whom we honor here this evening.  It was his cool brain, and prompt and ready courage that greatly helped to check the devouring fire.”  Sheridan responds, saying, “I saw the city in its magnificent boyhood, and I saw it burn down, and grow up into manhood, and I have seen the country, West, Northwest, and Southwest, which fifteen years ago, was the home of the buffalo and the Indian, settle up until that wilderness is now covered with cities and towns, and farms and stock ranches and mines and railroads … And I assure you that there is no honor that could be given me – no honor that I appreciate so highly – as being the guest of the people who have been the agents in bringing about this great change, as I see before me in this Commercial Club, the very men who have been instrumental in doing this.”  The General, leaving for Washington, D. C. to live in a residence that wealthy Chicago men have provided for him, ends his remarks with a toast, “The good health and happiness of every gentleman here tonight, member of the Commercial Club or citizen, and prosperity to the City of Chicago, which I think will be the greatest city in the world.  If you will only spend all the money you can in making good streets here (you must not forget that) you won’t have to build so many hospitals; you will improve the sanitary condition, and in the course of time make this the most beautiful city in the world.  The health of all of you, and the prosperity of the City of Chicago.”

November 24, 1951 – Albert Pick, Jr., the president of Pick Hotels Corporation, the owner of the Congress Hotel, announces that 15 feet will be removed from the north end of the hotel so that a sidewalk arcade can be created along the proposed Congress super-highway.  The Glass Hat dining room will be moved to another part of the hotel, and the Pompeiian Room will be enlarged.  According to Pick, new shops will line the arcade with 13 first-floor shops along the Congress Street and Michigan Avenue frontages of the building.  Holabird, Root and Burgee will be in charge of the plans for the buildings re-configuration.  When the arcade is completed, and a similar arcade on the south side of the structure is also finished, Congress Street will have a pavement width of 63 feet.  Similar arcades will be created at the south end of the Sears, Roebuck and Company’s State Street store to allow the widening of Congress between Wabash and State.  The top photo shows the Pompeiian Room as it appeared after the move was completed.  The photo above shows the dining room as it appeared in 1921.

November 24, 1936 – Nine people are killed and 58 others injured as a North Shore Line train crashes into the rear of an Evanston express elevated train.  The Evanston train is standing at a switch 50 feet north of the Granville Avenue station when the first car of the North Shore train slams into the back of it, plowing “all the way through the wooden rear coach of the Evanston train, shearing off its roof and splintering it like a match box.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 25, 1936]  The wreck occurs at about 6:30 in the evening, and the horrors unfold in near total darkness.  The motorman of the North Shore train, Van R. Grooms, says, “I was traveling about 40 miles an hour.  Then I saw the rear of the Evanston train.  The lights were very dim.  I put on my brakes, and that’s the last thing I know.”  Firemen, working with flashlights, raise ladders along the elevated embankment and carry passengers from the wrecked trains.  Eventually, more than 600 police are at the scene, along with two companies of firemen, 20 police ambulances, and three fire department ambulances.  A regular rider on the Evanston train says, “I’ve been taking the train almost regularly for a number of years.  Each evening a few moments after the express switches onto the local track the North Shore roars by on the express track.  I have often thought that the timing of the two trains was too close for safety.”

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

Labels: 1883, Chicago Events, Chicago Fire

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

July 4, 1883 -- Lake-Front Park, a "Tramps' Paradise"

July 4, 1883 –A reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribunesets out for a stroll through the Lake-Front park, today’s Grant Park, as “a deliciously cool breeze fanned his perspiring brow.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 4, 1883]He discovers that nearly every bench had one or two occupants, concluding that “as a tramps’ paradise the park was an eminent success.  Deep, raspy snores, indicative of a tranquil slumber, floated up from various quarters of the park, and here and there could be dimly seen a recumbent figure, flat on its back, its arms and legs ungracefully distributed about it, a coat serving as a pillow and darkness as a cove.” Encountering a police officer on his way out of the park, the reporter asks if the situation is normal and if anything is being done about it. “Yes, sometimes we pull ‘em in,” responds the officer. “but not often. It’s only when they’re drunk and come down here disturbing the quiet sleepers.  They’re not all bums that sleeps here.  Some of ‘em are pretty well-to-do, but put on their old clothes, leave their valuables at home, and come down here to sleep.  It’s cooler, you know, than sleeping in a close room.  Come down and try it some night, and I’ll see that you ain’t arrested.” The above photo shows the park as the decade comes to an end.

July 4, 1974 – The Chicago Tribune reports that an attorney for the owner of the Marquette Building on the northwest corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets has labeled a city proposal for saving the building as “premature and not pertinent.” [Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1974]  The city’s proposal had been put forth on June 10 when the city Commissioner of Development and Planning, Lewis H. Hill, suggested that the building could be saved if the owner, Romanek-Golub and Co., was given “lucrative zoning bonuses” that would allow it to raze the buildings in the block bounded by Adams, Dearborn, Clark and Monroe Streets while allowing the Marquette to remain.  The position of Romanek-Golub is that it cannot “earn a fair income on operation of the Marquette under any circumstances” and that landmark status for the building “stigmatizes any building in the eyes of lending agencies and others.”  A position paper in which the Department of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle assesses the worth of the building states, “The preservation of the great works of architecture, which are this city’s unique, valuable, and ongoing contribution to the culture and civilization of the twentieth century, must be seen as a positive force that will enhance the quality and thus the life of the city.”

July 4, 1902 – 10,000 people gather in Independence Square at Douglas Park and Garfield Boulevard as Illinois Governor Richard Yates unveils a great fountain as a band plays, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean and 700 school children sing along.  In his speech the governor says, “You may go around the world, and into every port, and you will find no flag so dear to the seekers for freedom as the stars and stripes that wave over there.  It represents an unequaled, a sublime, and unprecedented citizenship.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 5, 1902]  The sculpture by Charles J. Mulligan stands on top of a 15-foot base in the shape of the Liberty Bell.  The children in the sculpture hold Roman candles that once served as fountainheads.  The also carry a flag, bugle and drum in the celebration of an old-fashioned Fourth of July.  Today the fountain basin is dry, surrounded by a ten-foot high fence as the above photo shows.

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

Labels: 1883, Grant Park

Monday, March 12, 2018

March 12, 1883 -- U. S. Supreme Court Upholds City on Bridge Raisings

March 12, 1883 – The United States Supreme Court hands down a decision in the case of the Escanaba and Lake Michigan Transportation Company vs. The City of Chicago, a case that tests the validity of city ordinances providing for keeping the bridges over the Chicago River closed during certain morning and evening hours.  The city maintains that in the hours specified in the ordinance there are three times the usual number of pedestrians going and returning than at other hours of the day and that “Any unusual delay in the morning would derange their business for the day and subject them to a corresponding loss of wages.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 13, 1883] The city further maintains that the ten-minute limitation on vessels passing through open bridges in the morning and evening “is ample time for any vessel to pass the draw of a bridge, and the allowance of more time would subject foot passengers, teams and other vehicles to great inconveniences and delays.”  The railroad argues that “the rights of commerce by vessels are paramount to the rights of commerce by any other way,” an argument that the court quickly disallows.  “Independently of any constitutional restrictions,” the justices state, “nothing would seem more just and more reasonable or better designed to meet the wants of the population of an immense city consistently with the interests of commerce than the ten-minute rule and the morning and evening hours which the city ordinance has prescribed.”  Although Congress has full control over navigable streams within the United States, the decision explains, “nowhere could the power to control the bridges in that city, their construction, form, and strength and the size of their draws, and the manner and times of using them be better vested than with the State or the authorities of the city upon whom it has devolved that duty.”  The decision concludes with this thought, “All highways are subject to such crossings as the public convenience may require, and free navigation is consistent with bridges across a river for the transit of persons and merchandise, as the necessity of the community may require.”  Thus does not end the battle; the city battles over the opening and closing of bridges for nearly another hundred years. 

March 12, 1978 – The Chicago Tribune interviews Dr. Philip M. Hauser, a sociologist and population trends expert, who starts off the Q and A with this statement, “This city has lace pants in the front, and soiled drawers behind.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 12, 1978] Hauser spends much of the interview talking about the plight of the city’s minority population, saying, “It would be naive to assume that Chicago’s minorities will indefinitely accept their lot.  Continuing frustration, alienation, despair, and hostility can readily translate into extreme forms of violence.  History should have taught us that there is nothing as dangerous as a nation, a group, or a person with nothing to lose.”  Tribune reporters ask Hauser, “On the assumption that the statistical trends will not significantly change, what can be done to save the city?”  His answer is not very encouraging.  “Not very much unless someone does something about changing the trends . . . Chicago’s leaders have been very busy putting up statues and making the lakefront pretty, but it is people who make cities what they are, and at the moment Chicago is in an apartheid situation, both residential and business.”

March 12, 1849 -- A year after the Illinois and Michigan Canal joined the Chicago River to the Illinois River, an event occurred that must have caused some questioning of the wisdom of that engineering feat. It had been a snowy winter, followed by a rapid thaw and three days of rain. The interior of Illinois was waterlogged, and the rivers and streams were over their banks. At about 10:00 a.m. a massive ice dam on the south branch of the Chicago River gives way with results that are devastating. There are at least 90 vessels of various sizes on the river, and most are swept from their moorings and pushed toward the lake. As the mass of ice, water, and entangled ships is swept along, a small boy is crushed to death at the Randolph Street bridge. A little girl meets death as a ship's mast falls into a group of onlookers. Late in the afternoon a man is spotted waving a handkerchief form a canal boat about ten miles offshore, but there are no undamaged boats to send to his rescue. 40 vessels are completely wrecked, a dozen float free on the lake, the lock at Bridgeport is totally destroyed, and not a single bridge is left spanning the river. Three weeks later cholera breaks out and before the year is out, 678 Chicagoans will have died from the disease.

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

Labels: 1883, Chicago Bridges, Chicago RIver

Sunday, December 10, 2017

December 10, 1883 -- Illinois Supreme Court Decision on LaSalle Street Published

December 10, 1883 -- The Illinois Supreme Court affirms the decision of the lower court in the case of A. C. Hesing vs. W. L. Scott et al., a suit that seeks to prevent the vacating of LaSalle Street for the purpose of constructing a new headquarters for the Chicago Board of Trade.  Hesing, the plaintiff, asserts that he would “suffer an applicable loss in the reduction of the rents of his property” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 10, 1883] if the street is vacated between Jackson and Van Buren so that the building can be constructed.  The decision of the Supreme Court rules against any injunction to stop the work, stating that the plaintiff “does not allege that it will impose on him a particle of loss, nor that he has or will sustain the slightest injury or inconvenience distinct from the general public.  He has therefore shown no right to the relief sought, and the court below did not err in sustaining the demurrer and dismissing the bill.  The decree of the court below is therefore affirmed.”  On April 29,1885 the seventh headquarters the board of trade will have occupied since its formation on April 3, 1848 opens on LaSalle Street.  Designed by W. W. Boyington, the same architect who designed Chicago’s beloved Water Tower, the building lasted into the late 1920’s when it was razed to make way for the Holabird and Root design that stands on LaSalle today, all of this made possible by the decree of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1883.

December 10, 2010 – Following a federal judge’s refusal to close Chicago’s locks as a result of an emergency suit five Great Lakes states have filed out of concern over Asian carp, the Chicago Tribune offers this opinion, “We hope this ruling . . . will persuade our Midwestern neighbors to abandon their money-wasting, finger-pointing lawsuit.  It isn’t helping anything.”  [Chicago Tribune, December 10, 2010]  The paper concedes that the fish do pose a threat although there is little evidence that they have made it close to the lake – or that they even want to head there.  Yet, the editorial states, “The consequences of closing the locks, meanwhile, would be devastating and immediate.  More than $29 billion in goods move through the locks each year on barges.  Tour boats and recreational boaters also pass through on their way to and from the lake . . . Nobody on this side of the locks wants the carp to get into Lake Michigan, either.  Illinois has spent more than $13 million to keep them out, not counting the resources wasted on this ridiculous legal fight.  We’re all in the same boat, neighbors.  Drop that suit.”

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

Labels: 1883, Chicago Architecture, La Salle Street