Connecting the Windy City

Thursday, March 26, 2020

March 26, Wells Street Bridge Moved to Dearborn

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March 26, 1888 – A Chicago Daily Tribune article begins with a riddle … “There is no bridge at Wells street, yet there is still a Wells street bridge; there is no Dearborn street bridge, though there is a bridge at Dearborn street.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 27, 1888]  The answer to the puzzle occurred on the preceding day when 3,000 Chicagoans turn out at 5:30 a.m. to watch as the Wells Street bridge is moved off its center pier onto the decks of two pairs of boats  and moved east to Dearborn Street.  Each pair of ships “filled with water till their decks were nearly on a level with the surface of the river" takes a position at opposite ends of the turntable on which the bridge sits.  In order to lift the bridge off the center pier, 16 men man four hand pumps on each boat, working from 10:00 a.m. until noon when it is clear that a portion of the weight of the bridge is resting on the decks of the boats.  At this point steam pumps operating from two tug boats hasten the process until the bridge rests fully on the decks of the boats.  Slowly, the bridge is turned parallel to the banks of the river and slowly floated down to Dearborn Street, squeezing through the draw of the Clark Street bridge where “a half dozen crewmen … threw their shoulders against the pier and prevented a collision, though the end of the scow grated against the heavy timbers with a thrillingly suggestive sound.”  By 6:45 p.m. the bridge is safe at Dearborn Street, where it will wait for mechanical elements left behind at Wells Street to be installed on the pier at Dearborn Street.  The top photo shows the Wells Street bridge that replaced the span floated down to Dearborn Street.  The structure with the clock tower on the other side of the bridge is the terminal for the Chicago and North Western Railroad.  The second photo shows the area as it appears today.

March 26, 1962 – Six police squadrols are called to the Front Page Lounge at 530 Rush Street where 39 men and a woman are arrested after two detectives find two men kissing each other at the bar and several other men dancing.  The two men are charged with public indecency.  The other 36 men and the woman, a server at the bar, are charged with disorderly conduct.  Before the raid at the Rush Street bar, charges are also filed against a dozen men arrested in a raid at the Patio Theater 6008 Irving Park Road.  The men are arrested inside the theater on March 25 after police detectives allegedly witness “lewd acts.” [Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1962]

March 26, 1954 – The Chicago Land Clearance Commission authorizes a special study of the $400 million Fort Dearborn redevelopment project proposed for the Near North Side. The study will determine whether the project can be funded with public money as well as investigating the scope of condemnation allowable under state and federal law.  The project as planned will cover 151 acres along the north bank of the river and will include a new $165 million civic center, a University of Illinois campus, and 5,000 units of middle-income housing in privately-funded apartment buildings.  Developer Arthur Rubloff initiated the project five years earlier as an urban renewal effort to revive the old industrial and railroad property north of the river.  The proposed development was met with controversy as two organizations in the area led a resistance effort, claiming that the very prospect of the project had radically destabilized real estate values by creating uncertainty about the area’s future.  [McGowan, Stephen.  Urban Politics:  A Reader] Opposition also came from key business leaders and merchants in the Loop, primarily because of the civic center proposal.  With the publication in 1958 of the Development Plan for the Central Area of Chicago, the opponents won the battle, and the Fort Dearborn project was dead.  The black and white photo captures the area that would be developed under the Fort Dearborn plan. The second photo shows the area as it looks today.

March 26, 1888 – The formal opening of the North Chicago Street Railroad takes place with “speeches, music, enthusiasm, and a crowd, not to mention bunting, flags, and flowers.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 27, 1888] As early as 10:00 a.m. people begin to gather outside the power house at the corner of North Clark and Elm Streets.  At 11:15 a.m. company president Charles Tyson Yerkes appears with dignitaries that include Mayor John Roche, who makes a few brief remarks. The band plays America and there are other speeches and more music before Yerkes finally rises to say, “I find that there is nothing left for me to talk on.  The previous speakers got hold of my notes and I am practically left out.  I thank the people of the North Side for their patience in waiting for the fulfillment of the promises which are made.  They now see the great work upon which we were so long engaged.  I thank the city officials for the aid they have given us.  I wish to thank the press for their uniform kindness.  They have always been on our side.” After the band plays The Beautiful Blue Danube at 12:05 two thousand people rush the tracks, trying to get on the first car.  At 1:05 p.m. the cars make it through the crowds and reach the entrance to the La Salle Street tunnel.  Teams of horses are used to pull the cars over the crossing of tracks at Clark and Wells, and a horse pulling Car Number 186 is spooked by the crowd and dashes into it, throwing several onlookers into the mud and slush.  The first car to return passes out of the tunnel at 1:22 p.m., having made the tour of La Salle, Monroe and Dearborn streets in 17 minutes.  The first serious problem occurs at 5:30 p.m. when an accident with the grip on one car at Wisconsin Street ties up the cars behind it for 45 minutes.

March 26, 1867 -- Dwight Heald Perkins is born in Memphis, Tennessee. If a Chicago architect -- if an architect anywhere -- has been more forgotten by history, it is this guy. So skilled that he was asked to serve as an instructor at M.I.T. after only two years as a student, he returned to Chicago in 1888 and went to work with Burnham and Root in February of 1889. After the conclusion of the 1893 fair Daniel Burnham was forced to downsize the office and regretfully parted with Perkins. But he gave him the commission to design the Steinway Building, a gesture that says much about both men. It was in Perkins's offices in the Steinway building that Frank Lloyd Wright came to work after parting with Louis Sullivan as did a number of other architects who came to prominence in the following decades. The Chicagoland area would be a far different place today if it were not for Perkins. He co-wrote the 1905 Metropolitan Parks Report, a document that began a campaign for planned open space, set aside from development, a report that preceded the great Chicago Plan of 1909 by four years. It was also in 1905 that he was named Chief Architect for the Chicago Board of Education, a post he occupied for five years. In those five years he designed 40 school buildings. If in an entire career an architect could design one building as beautiful as Carl Schurz High School at Milwaukee and Addison, pictured above, he or she could end that career assured of having made an incalculable contribution.

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Labels: 1888, Chicago Architecture, Chicago RIver

Thursday, June 27, 2019

June 27, 1888 -- Bath House Blues for 600

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June 27, 1888 – A day before the big picnic for “waifs,” 600 boys are given baths at the Emeline Baths at 63 West Madison Street, which would be in the 500 block of West Madison Street today, just west of the Ogilvie Transportation Center.  Some of the lads “met their fate with heroic fortitude, and some of them quailed when the awful moment arrived,” according the Chicago Daily Tribune.  The paper follows a bath first-timer by the name of Billie who has his doubts about the adventure.  “I’ll bet yer I gets drownded,” he confides to a comrade as they queue up to enter the baths. When he sees the tub of water upon being escorted to a room, he “struggled, he kicked and he yelled,” but an attendant grabs him and “a loosening of one suspender, a yank at the shirt, and Billie was clad only in a coating of dirt.”  Into the tub he went, screaming, “I’m drownded.”  The ordeal is over in minutes, and standing upon solid ground once again, Billie observes, “I never knowed I was so white afore.”  When the last boy is scrubbed and shampooed, “Every bath-room was covered with water from floor to ceiling, and the bottom of every bath-tub was covered with soot and dirt … about two bushels of hair was swept off of the floor of the barber shop.”  The manager of the bathhouse, A. L. Lehmann, observes, “A great many of those who came for the first time on this occasion last year have come every week since and paid their five cents for a bath.  I suppose some more will do it after today.  The annual free bath shows them what it is.”

June 27, 2001 –A Chicago Park District committee gives preliminary approval to a measure that will lead to a $582 million renovation of Soldier Field.  Testimony at the meeting is split between opponents and backers of the plan with the biggest outcry coming from veterans demanding assurances that the Chicago Bears will not sell the name of the field to a corporate sponsor. Korean and Vietnam War veteran Norvel West says, “If anybody is crazy enough to put their name on Soldier Field, we will stop buying their product.” [Chicago Tribune, June 28, 2001] Ultimately Park District Superintendent David Doig receives authority to enter into four agreements to renovate Solider Field, tear down the old park district headquarters, add 17 acres of parkland to Burnham Park, and give the Chicago Bears a 30-year lease at the renovated stadium.  The above photos give a pretty good idea of the results of the measures approved that day.

June 27, 1899 – The Lincoln Park Commissioners sign an agreement with the N. P. Glann Construction Company to complete the paving of Diversey Boulevard form Clark Street to the North Branch of the Chicago River.  This will be the last link in the chain of boulevards that connect Lincoln Park with the West Side park system.  It has taken three years to get final approval for the project with the work twice being put out to bid with all of the bids subsequently rejected because, according to a park commissioner, “the lowest was too high.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 28, 1899] The board will follow the wishes of the property owners on Diversey in determining whether crushed cobblestone or crushed granite will be used as the roadbed.  The above photo shows the intersection of Diversey Parkway, Broadway and Clark Street just about this time.

June 27, 1965 – Ira Bach, the Chicago Plan Commissioner, predicts that the Chicago River in the downtown area will be transformed into “one of the world’s most beautiful waterways in the next 10 years.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1965]  He only missed the mark by forty years.  “The new Pioneer Court dedicated . . . by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and the Tribune company, is the latest exquisite example of how the river bank can be beautified by an unusual development,” Bach said.  “With other major riverbank construction programs on the planning boards, other plazas and landscaped open spaces can be expected to be created along the river in the next decade.”  A year ago in June Bach’s prediction proved, for the most part, to have come true as the 100 million dollar Riverwalk has opened the entire south side of the river from Lake Michigan to Lake Street.

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Labels: 1888, Madison Street

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

February 5, 1888 -- Chicago in the Early Days

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February 5, 1888 –The Chicago Daily Tribune publishes a letter from A. D. Field, in which he describes the hamlet of Chicago in 1836, the year that his family moved into a small one-room house on the northwest corner of Clark and Madison Streets.  Field notes that on the east side of Clark Street “there were buildings form Madison street to the river … scattered along on the separate lots.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 5, 1888] On the west side of the street there were woods with no building on the west side of Clark Street south of Madison Street.  Later that year the family moved to a one-room log house on what would become the corner of Kinzie and Canal Streets. Field writes, “As it was open prairie it is difficult to tell just where the house stood.”  His father was transporting brick from F. C. Sherman’s brick yard on the North Branch of the river to the town, and the move made for easier access to the business.  Field says that there were “a few scattered houses along West Lake street and down along the river as far as Washington street.”  In June, 1843 Field went to live with his brother, who built a house at Halsted and Madison Streets.  Field writes, “We began on the open prairie, where there was not a ditch or a furrow.” Between Washington and Randolph Streets there was “a small frame house.”  East of Halsted on Monroe Street “there were a few scattered dwellings and one or two on Desplaines street.”  Charles Cleaver’s soap factor was on Jefferson Street, east of Halsted.  West of the Field’s new house “there was no house for ten miles.”  In 1843 lots in the vicinity sold for $50 apiece.  A little over 20 years later, Field observes, his nephew sold a “bare lot” for $40,000.  In the whole summer of 1843, Field writes, “I do not remember seeing a single human being out our way.  We were too far out of town!”  In 1844 Field moved to the corner of Clark and Kinzie Streets.  The house stood on a lot on which “the stumps of the forest trees were so plenty it was difficult making a garden.”  There were buildings on the west side of Clark Street as far as Illinois Street.  Beyond that there was open country all the way to Lincoln Park.  Field recollects wandering along Rush Street in October of 1848 toward the water- works through land that was “nothing but wooded sand hills … It was so far out of town even the adventurous boy had never ventured so far.” Field remembers that the North Side had “one lone church in 1849, one grocery, not a hotel, perhaps a few liquor holes, Lill’s brewery, a slaughterhouse – and this was the sole business then of the North Side.  The South Side had won, and the North and West Sides were deserted by business.” It was a rough, rugged frontier town … Field concludes his letter, “There was not enough people of the sort needed in the whole city to keep up one stylish house.”

February 5, 1923 – Buck and Beauty, along with Dan and Teddy, gallop out of the fire station at 10 East Hubbard Street, on this day, responding to a false alarm at Chicago Avenue and State Street.  It turns out that the alarm has been pulled purposely as part of a celebration of the retirement of horse-drawn firefighting equipment in Chicago.  With the retirement of the Hubbard Street horses, the city becomes the first city in the country with more than 500,000 residents to claim a completely motorized fire department.  In April of 1921 there were still 350 horses pulling fire equipment in the city.  That was when the fire department’s business manager, John F. Cullerton, led a city council subcommittee through a dozen cities to see if motorized fire equipment was workable.  The answer was clear.  Cullerton estimated that the changeover would save the city a half-million dollars in maintenance fees alone since each horse cost the city an average of $3,621 a year to maintain while motorized vehicles cost $1,000. [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1983]  Buck and Beauty were sold to a country pastor.  No one knows what happened to Dan, but Teddy ended up pulling a milk wagon. While on that job he was hit by an auto at Forty-Seventh and Michigan, and was thrown to the ground with his hip and leg smashed.  As the Chicago Daily Tribune reported, “… Ted lay still as a police patrol wagon sped to the scene.  As the wagon approached – its bell clanging – Ted, conditioned to the fire bell, responded.  He rose to three legs, plunged ahead a few feet, and then toppled.  A veterinarian, tears in his eyes, ended Ted’s misery with a bullet.”

February 5, 1921 – Formal action is taken on this date to obtain a state charter for the Chicago Zoological Society which plans to build a zoo and gardens on 300 acres of land that Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick has donated to the forest preserve.  The president of the county board and the head of the forest preserve commissioners, Peter Reinberg, who is also one of the incorporators of the society, writes, “Though only in its tentative stage, the prevalent idea is that the organization shall follow closely that which has brought the Art Institute of Chicago to its acknowledged high standard.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 6, 1921] Commissioners of the new society will include:  Frank J. Wilson; William Hector MacLean; George A. Miller; Charles L. Hutchinson, president of the Art Institute of Chicago; Charles H. Wacker, chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission; and Judson F. Stone, manager of the McCormick family realty interests.  The location of the anticipated zoo is between Thirty-First Street and Thirty-Fifth Streets and is bordered by the Des Plaines River and Salt Creek.  It is anticipated that Pershing Road will lead to the grounds and that the Chicago Plan Commission will “lend its aid toward beautifying the approach to the gardens.”  The story explains why the street that runs past the south lot of Brookfield Zoo is Rockefeller Avenue.

February 5, 1998 -- The Canadian National Railroad Co. announces that it is in negotiations to acquire the Illinois Central Railroad, the "Main Line of Mid-America," a railroad that began in 1849 when Senator Stephen Douglas secured a federal land grant for the start-up, the first such grant ever awarded to a railroad. Douglas was also instrumental in a deal that allowed the I. C. to purchase a 200-foot right of way through the South Side for $21,310. Later, the line built a trestle in the lake opposite the center of the city that carried trains to a freight yard on the river. The fill that was over the years placed between that trestle and the edge of the city is now Grant Park. Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot on an Illinois Central boat that connected the railroad to the south. A young engineer named John Luther "Casey" Jones began his career operating trains that carried passengers form the Loop to the 1893 fair in Hyde Park. With Canadian National's announcement a love-hate relationship between Chicago and the Illinois Central that has lasted for close to 150 years is nearly at an end.

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

Labels: 1888, Chicago History, Clark Street, Halsted Street, Lake Street, Madison Street, Monroe Street, Rush Street, Washington Boulevard, Wells Street

Sunday, March 26, 2017

March 26, 1888 -- Cable Car Debuts on the North Side

March 26, 1888 – The formal opening of the North Chicago Street Railroad takes place with “speeches, music, enthusiasm, and a crowd, not to mention bunting, flags, and flowers.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 27, 1888] As early as 10:00 a.m. people begin to gather outside the power house at the corner of North Clark and Elm Streets.  At 11:15 a.m. company president Charles Tyson Yerkes appears with dignitaries that include Mayor John Roche, who makes a few brief remarks. The band plays America and there are other speeches and more music before Yerkes finally rises to say, “I find that there is nothing left for me to talk on.  The pervious speakers got hold of my notes and I am practically left out.  I thank the people of the North Side for their patience in waiting for the fulfillment of the promises which are made.  They now see the great work upon which we were so long engaged.  I thank the city officials for the aid they have given us.  I wish to thank the press for their uniform kindness.  They have always been on our side.” After the band plays The Beautiful Blue Danube at 12:05 two thousand people rush the tracks, trying to get on the first car.  At 1:05 p.m. the cars make it through the crowds and reach the entrance to the La Salle Street tunnel.  Teams of horses are used to pull the cars over the crossing of tracks at Clark and Wells, and a horse pulling Car Number 186 is spooked by the crowd and dashes into it, throwing several onlookers into the mud and slush.  The first car to return passes out of the tunnel at 1:22 p.m., having made the tour of La Salle, Monroe and Dearborn streets in 17 minutes.  The first serious problem occurs at 5:30 p.m. when an accident with the grip on one car at Wisconsin Street ties up the cars behind it for 45 minutes.

March 26, 1867 -- Dwight Heald Perkins is born in Memphis, Tennessee. If a Chicago architect -- if an architect anywhere -- has been more forgotten by history, it is this guy. So skilled that he was asked to serve as an instructor at M.I.T. after only two years as a student, he returned to Chicago in 1888 and went to work with Burnham & Root in February of 1889. After the conclusion of the 1893 fair Daniel Burnham was forced to downsize the office and regretfully part with Perkins. But he gave him the commission to design the Steinway Building, a gesture that says much about both men. It was in Perkins's offices in the Steinway building that Frank Lloyd Wright came to work after parting with Louis Sullivan as did a number of other architects who came to prominence in the following decades. The Chicagoland area would be a far different place today if it were not for Perkins. He co-wrote the 1905 Metropolitan Parks Report, a document that began a campaign for planned open space, set aside from development, a report that preceded the great Chicago Plan of 1909 by four years. It was also in 1905 that he was named Chief Architect for the Chicago Board of Education, a post he occupied for five years. In those five years he designed 40 school buildings. If in an entire career an architect could design one building as beautiful as Carl Schurz High School at Milwaukee and Addison, pictured above, he or she could end that career assured of having made an incalculable contribution.

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

Labels: 1888, Chicago Events, La Salle Street