Showing posts with label 1900. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1900. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

August 25, 1900 -- Coliseum Dedicated


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August 25, 1900 – Dedication exercises take place for the Coliseum at 1513 South Wabash Avenue with Charles F. Gunther, chairman of the Chicago Coliseum Company, leading the ceremony before 4,000 members of the Grand Army of the Republic, in town for the organization’s encampment.  The dedication address is made by Colonel Frank O. Lowden, who would go on to serve as the governor of Illinois from 1917 to 1921.  Lowden ends his speech, saying, “It is particularly appropriate that this vast building, which will be one of the sights of Chicago, should be dedicated by ceremonies connected with the encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic.  The building stands on the site lately occupied by the old Libby Prison, in which many of the men who will march through the streets of Chicago on Tuesday and participate in exercises held in this half were kept in dungeons.”   After Lowden’s address, Mayor Carter Harrison accepts the building in the name of the people of Chicago.  The Coliseum’s outer walls actually were built in the 1880’s to surround a Civil War museum constructed by candy manufacturer Charles Gunther.  The centerpiece of the museum, to which Lowden referred in his address, was the Confederate Libby Prison, which was transported from Richmond Virginia and re-assembled on the site.  [owlcation.com].  Gunther dismantled the museum in 1897 after a fire claimed the largest arena in the city, hoping to develop a facility to take its place.  Its construction cost 11 construction workers their lives when a dozen 33-ton steel arches collapsed, one upon the other, on August 28, 1899.  What a remarkable ride the old Coliseum took, though, hosting five consecutive Republican conventions from 1904 through 1920, providing home ice for the Chicago Black Hawks in 1928 and 1929, and drawing crowds in the 60’s to see the likes of Cream (twice), The Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Doors.  The old hall was shut down on March 13, 1971 for fire code violations, and in 1982 it was demolished.  The Soka Gakkai USA Culture Center, run by a Buddhist organization with 12 million practitioners in 192 countries and territories, now stands at this location.

August 25, 1983 – Another great idea that didn’t fly … On this day the developers of the Gateway IV building on the Chicago River ask the Chicago Plan Commission to approve a private rooftop heliport.  Alan Goldboro, the president of Tishman Midwest Management Corporation, the developer of the four Gateway buildings near Union Station, asserts that the other necessary approvals are all in place for what will be the first such rooftop flight deck since the city toughened safety regulations 21 years earlier. Goldboro emphasizes that the heliport will be used only by office tenants and police and fire helicopters with no common-carrier service to O’Hare or Midway Airports. One hurdle that has been cleared is the approval of the Friends of the River, a group that managed to shut down a plan for a commercial heliport at Wolf Point in 1980.  The coordinator of the group says of the Gateway plan, “From street level it shouldn’t make as much noise as a passing bus. From the drawings we’ve seen, the pad won’t even be visible from the street.  It’s completely different from Wolf Point.  

August 25, 1972 – Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackman refuses to block the merger of the Illinois Central Railroad and the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad.  The Missouri Pacific Railroad had claimed that the proposed merger would create a near-monopoly that would cripple it.  The merger, which had occurred on August 10 gives the new Illinois Central Gulf Railroad control of 13,532 miles of track.


August 25, 1955 – John J. Mack, the owner of a five-story building at the southwest corner of State and Monroe Streets, announces that the building will be torn down to make way for a new structure.  The building to be razed was built in 1872 by E. S. Pike and called the Pike Block.  It later assumed the name of the Ayer Block, and over the years it had been remodeled at least six times.  The loss of the building is significant because the Art Institute of Chicago called the building home when the Academy of Fine Arts, as the Art Institute of Chicago was known at the time, when it was established in 1886.  The corner today is seeing yet another transformation as New York-based Tishman and an investment partner paid $35 million for the 60-year-old property in March, 2015 in order to carve 70,000 square feet of retail and office space out of it and an adjoining structure.  The rendering of the new space is shown above.


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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

August 11, 1900 -- Diversey Parkway Bridge Completes Chicago Boulevard System

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August 11, 1900 – The Chicago boulevard system is completed when the Diversey Parkway bridge over the North Branch of the Chicago River is opened.  Chicagoans can now have a complete set of scenic roads over which they can travel “over Diversey and Humboldt boulevards to Humboldt Park, Central Park boulevard to Garfield Park, Southwestern boulevard to Douglas Park, thence over Western Avenue boulevard to Garfield boulevard and Jackson Park, and north in Michigan avenue to Lincoln Park, completing the circuit.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 12, 1900].  Only one small section – a part of Southwestern Boulevard, between Twenty-Sixth and California Avenue where the boulevard approaches the canal – still needs to be improved.  The boulevard system of Chicago was first proposed by developer John S. Wright and begun in 1870.  Wright predicted, “I foresee a time, not very distant, when Chicago will need for its fast increasing population a park or parks in each division.  Of these parks I have a vision.  They are all improved and connected with a wide avenue extending to and along the Lake shore on the north and south, and so surrounding the city with a magnificent chain of parks and parkways that have not their equal in the world.”  [logansquareist.com].  The south section of the system was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, which included the Midway Plaisance. William Le Baron Jenney designed the western section, which linked Humboldt, Garfield and Douglas Parks.  In 2018 the Chicago Park Boulevard System Historic District, which covers the majority of the original system, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  The district encompasses nearly 26 miles, including eight parks, 19 boulevards, and six squares, along with a number of significant properties.  [en.wikipeida.org]  The above photo shows the Diversey Parkway bridge which completed the boulevard system.  It was removed in 1967 and a new bridge, the second at this location, opened a year later.


August 11, 1985 –Paul Gapp, the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, pens a column in praise of the Cobbler Square development in Old Town in which “a conglomeration of some 30 old interconnected factory and warehouse structures” have been converted into 297 rental apartments, an exercise Gapp calls “one of the most extraordinary new housing complexes in Chicago.” [Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1985]  The buildings are in the area bounded by Wells and Schiller Streets and Evergreen and North Park Avenues with the oldest buildings occupied originally by the Western Wheel Works, a bicycle manufacturer. Dr. William Scholl rented space in the bicycle factory and while he “parlayed a line of shoes and foot care products into a corporation grossing more than $250 million a year … sporadically built a hodgepodge of additions to it.”  The company Scholl founded left Chicago for Tennessee in 1981 and developer Richard Perlman commissioned architect Kenneth A. Schroeder to create a residential community out of the three- and five-story buildings that remained. Gapp writes of the plan, “The new façade facing Wells Street is a crisp and clean essay in brick and limestone, evocative of both Gold Coast images a few blocks to the east and the storefronts of Wells Street itself.”  The plan includes three courtyards, each larger than the one before it that “planted with locusts, are oases that can almost make you forget you’re in the center of the city – and in a somewhat fringy neighborhood, to boot.” The plan took the 30 original buildings that were part of the complex and reduced them to five, cleverly combining many of them in a scheme that is “the kind of place where youngish or young-thinking men and women pay a lot of attention to what they call their lifestyles and … don’t mind climbing tiny staircases to reach the sleeping platforms supporting their futons.”  In summing up the new community, Gapp views Cobbler Square as an indication that the former tawdry area around Wells Street is, itself, beginning to make its way back to respectability with “Cobbler Square … among the best additions to the neighborhood in recent years – a vehicle of gentrification, actually … obviously an architectural success with considerable fringe benefits.”  


August 11, 1977 – The Chicago Plan Commission votes down a proposed four billion-dollar development proposed for land in the south Loop along the east side of the Chicago River.  The project, a Bertrand Goldberg design for six 72-story towers and 6,000 apartments, is proposed for a 45-acre site bounded by Harrison Street, Roosevelt Road, the Chicago River and Wells Street.  Lewis J. Hill, the city commissioner of development and planning, asserts that city guidelines recommend 1,750 units on the site, and the Goldberg plan far exceeds those guidelines.  “In short,” Hill says, “the River City plan proposes development that is three to five times more intense than that recommended in the guidelines.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 12, 1977] Hill also says that the huge project would also stand in the way of the proposed Franklin Street Connector that is planned to link the Dan Ryan Expressway with Wacker Drive.  Forty years later River Line, a project involving ten high-rise residential buildings lining the banks of the river, is underway, with Perkins and Will responsible for siting the massive project to the north of the current River City, a 1986 community of about 440 units, the scaled-down design that eventually came out of Bertrand Goldberg’s 1970’s proposal.


August 11, 1966 – The Beatles arrive in Chicago in the middle of a swirling controversy, and John Lennon, in a press conference at the Astor Towers Hotel, apologizes for his part in creating the furor that developed after his casual remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.  “I wasn’t saying whatever they say I was saying,” says Lennon, described by the Tribune as a “Shaggy-haired Liverpool performer.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1966] “I‘m sorry I said it really.  I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing.  I apologize if that will make you happy.  I still don’t know quite what I’ve done.  I’ve tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry.”  For a personal essay on the event and how it has stayed with me for fifty years, you may want to look up this blog entry from 2009.  Information concerning Astor Towers, where the press conference took place, may be found here.



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Saturday, February 1, 2020

February 1, 1900 -- Graceland Cemetery Receives Philip D. Armour, Jr.




February 1, 1900 – Phillip D. Armour, Jr. is buried in Graceland Cemetery following a funeral held in the family residence at 3700 South Michigan Avenue where the casket is placed in the library and the public is allowed to enter and pay its respects.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Hundreds of persons filed past the casket, among them many employés of Armour and Co.  The entire faculty and students of Armour Institute attended the funeral in a body.”  Reverend Frank W. Gunsaulus conducts the services and a quartet from the Second Presbyterian Church sings, “Nearer, My God to Thee.”  The funeral cortegé passes down Michigan Avenue to Fortieth Street where a special train waits to take the funeral party to Graceland.  The youngest son of Philip Danforth Armour began his career at Armour and Company at the bottom, working in the stockyards.  At the age of 25 he became a partner in the company his father, who was to outlive him, started.  He was 31-years-old at the time of his death.

February 1, 1911 – The United States engineer stationed in Chicago, George A. Zinn, speaking at an Association of Commerce luncheon at the La Salle Hotel, condemns center pier bridges “as a serious obstacle to the advance of Chicago commerce.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2, 1911] Zinn says, “Until the center pier bridge is removed over both the Chicago and Calumet rivers, the manufacturers whose plants line the river banks will be unable to receive the full advantage these rivers offer in a commercial way.  They will be unable to ship by water to any great advantage.”  He added that it was his intention to make certain that every bridge on the river maintained a height of at least 16 feet over the water.  On the same day the attorney for the Pennsylvania Railroad, speaking at a meeting of the Chicago Real Estate Board, offers his opinion that the river should be closed to navigation except for small vessels, carrying light cargo from an outer harbor, assuming that such a harbor could one day be built.  According to the Tribune’s coverage of the meeting, the attorney, Frank J. Loesch, “contended that fixed bridges with an adequate lighterage system would solve the problem which would place Chicago in a line with other cities that have been confronted with river conditions similar to those in Chicago.”  The above photo shows the Madison Street center pier bridge in the process of giving way to its trunnion bascule replacement in 1922.
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February 1, 1928 – Moving vans line up on Wells Street as all the furniture is removed from the Briggs house and taken to an auctioneer’s warehouse.  It is, the Chicago Tribune reports, “… like carrying out the history of Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2, 1928]  As the furniture is being moved from the building, someone apparently drops a cigar butt into the air shaft above the kitchen, setting off a grease fire.  The Tribune observes, “With the smoke that poured out into the surrounding streets came the savory odors of roasts cooked in Briggs house ovens for more than two generations.  It was probably the odors of the buffalo steaks, venison chops, bear steak, and mallard ducks for which the old grill was famous.”  The Briggs House hotel was completed at the corner of Randolph and Wells Street in 1856.  It was in Parlor A that Abraham Lincoln received word of his nomination for the presidency of the United States.  Although it was not as luxurious as its chief competitors, the Palmer House and the Sherman House, the hotel was one of the top tier of hotels in the city and, being close to the courthouse and the business sections of the city, it became a gathering place for businessmen and politicians.  Designed by John Mills van Osdel, the five-story hotel was razed to make way for a skyscraper that would house the Steuben Club.  The tower that replaced the Briggs House is today the 45-story Randolph Tower at 188 West Randolph Street, finished in 1929 and designed by Karl M. Vitzhum in a Gothic Revival style.  It was added to the Register of National Historic Places on May 22, 2007 and today serves as an apartment building with 312 apartments.  The black and white photo shows the original Briggs House. The second photo is today's Randolph Tower.

February 1, 1955 -- Daniel Ryan (there is a name that sounds familiar), president of the Cook County board and William J. Mortimer, county highway superintendent, report that the first completed portion of the Congress Street "super-highway" is taking as many as 11,596 motorists a day from other highways. The 2.5 mile stretch from 1st Street in Maywood to Mannheim Road, is dubbed "the road to nowhere," but Ryan observes, "What we are finding is that motorists definitely will go out of their way to enjoy safe, continuous travel afforded on an expressway."
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Friday, January 10, 2020

January 10, 1900 -- Mariano Park Gets Its Start

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January 10, 1900 – A big day at the Chicago Women’s Club as the designs for a small triangular park bounded by North State Street, Rush Street and Bellevue Place are placed on display.  The women of the club will select one of the designs for implementation from a set of designs that are the result of a competition of the Chicago Architectural Club.  Three of the original ten designs were rejected because it was decided that “the architect’s plan would exceed the limit placed upon the amount to be used in execution.”  [Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1900]  A three-man jury narrowed the entrants to the final seven, the jurors being sculptor Lorado Taft, architect Martin Roche, and landscape architect O. C. Simonds.  The women of the club have agreed to raise $1,000 to create the park.  Today Mariano Park, renamed in 1970 for Louis Mariano, a reporter and editor for the Chicago Daily News, is “a peaceful oasis from the bustling crowds on Michigan Avenue and Oak Street.”  [chicagoparkdistrict.com]  According to the park district this is at least the fourth name that the park has carried since the .18 acre plot was acquired by the city in 1848.  When the women were busy deciding what plan would be used to develop the site, it was known as Green Bay Triangle, its name a reference to the Green Bay Trail that had once run along what today is Clark Street.  Two elements still remain from the 1900 plan – a fountain and a prairie-style pavilion, designed by Birch Burdette Long, a staff member of Frank Lloyd Wright.  The top photo shows Long's original rendering of the pavilion and fountain.  The second photo shows Mariano Park as it appears today.
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January 10, 1954 – The Chicago Daily Tribune features the ninth in a series of articles discussing “the origin, history, and significance of some of Chicago’s principal thorofares.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 9, 1945]  This feature covers some of the mansions that once graced the wealthiest areas of the city, residences that are disappearing, victims of “The automobile age, which has dispersed the very wealthy on country estates in the suburbs, the substitution of gadgets and self-service for costly or unobtainable domestic help, and a change in social values [that] have made the Lake Shore dr. that was a relic of the past.”  Just in the preceding year two of the most impressive mansions on Lake Shore Drive have been lost to the wrecking ball – the home of Edith Rockefeller McCormick at 1000 Lake Shore Drive and the Potter Palmer “castle” a few blocks to the north. Also notable vanished relics are the home in which Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd, lived at 1234 Lake Shore Drive and another at 1020 built by a lawyer and mining engineer by the name of William Borden.  The article labels Astor Street, just to the west of Lake Shore Drive, as “the last fashionable residence street left within the city proper and singles out the residences at 1430 and 1365 as particularly noteworthy.  The home at 1430 Astor was the home of Joseph T. Bowen who built a mansion with 40 rooms in 1891. The home of James Charnley, a lumberman, at 1365 Astor “is now taken for an early specimen of the style made world famous by Frank Lloyd Wright” with plans drawn by Adler and Sullivan.  There also was a “millionaires’ row” on South Michigan Avenue, starting at about Twenty-Sixth Street.  Of the homes in this area the one designed for Ferdinand Wythe Peck by William LeBaron Jenney, was perhaps the most impressive.  Also notable were the Charles W. Brega house at 2816 South Michigan, the mansion of John W. Gates at 2944, and the brownstone mansion of John Cudahy, the meat packer, at 3254.  Ashland Avenue, named after the Lexington, Kentucky home of Henry Clay in 1859, also had its day as “the finest residence street of the west side.”  The Cudahy mansion on South Michigan Avenue is pictured in the black and white photo.  The corner as it appears today is shown in the second photo.


January 10, 1965 – Shareholders of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific approve a merger with the Union Pacific Railroad by a margin of 8 to 1. This end-to-end merger would give the Union Pacific entry into the Chicago market, but the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad led a number of railroads that objected to the deal to such an extent that the government took ten years to make a decision on whether or not to allow the merger.  During that crucial ten-year period the “Rock,” a railroad that began in 1851 on trackage between Chicago and Joliet, hemorrhaged money … 1965 would be the last year the railroad would show a profit.  Between 1965 and 1974, the road’s management, hoping for the merger to be approved sooner rather than later, conserved cash by scrimping on track maintenance and locomotive servicing.  Rolling stock began to look tired, and derailments occurred with increasing frequency.  By the time the merger was approved in 1974 the railroad had deteriorated so much that Union Pacific ended up walking away from the deal.  On January 24,1980, a federal judge announced his decision not to approve the railroad’s plan for reorganization, and the last train on the line tied up in Denver on March 31,1980.  In the above photo a "dead line" of Electro Motive Division E-8's waits for final disposition in 1981 after the shut-down of the railroad in the preceding year.

 January 10, 1956 – Plans are announced for a $5,000,000 building program that will give the Armour Research Foundation at the Illinois Institute of Technology “one of the most complete industrial research centers in the world,” according to foundation vice-president Dr. Haldon A. Leedy.  The plans call for three new buildings on the I. I. T. campus with “extensive additions” made to two other buildings on the south side campus of the school.  The buildings will include a physics and engineering research building, a chemistry research building, an administration building at 10 West Thirty-Fifth Street, a mechanical engineering research building and a metal research building.  According to Leedy, “The building plans are based on the assumption that the foundation will have a research volume of $16,000,000 a year and a staff of 1,600 by 1961.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 11, 1956]  Leedy says that since the foundation was established in 1936, it has conducted 70 million dollars of research in more than 3,000 projects for industry and the government.  The Richard D. Irwin Publishing Company building at 3201 South Michigan Avenue, pictured above, was the original home of the electrical engineering research labs when the Armour Research Foundation opened in 1936.

January 10, 1951 -- Claiming that he had "important architect-engineer projects involving the national defense" and, with a year still remaining in his tenure as the chairman of Chicago's Plan Commission, Nathaniel A. Owings submits his letter of resignation. The decision comes 48 hours before a city council committee was to deliberate over a resolution demanding that the principal in Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill be forced to step down because of contracts the firm had obtained for the design of the 100-acre, 1,870-unit public housing site that would come to be known as Lake Meadows/  That site is pictured above.
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Sunday, October 20, 2019

October 20, 1900 -- Montgomery Ward Gives Up a Statue


October 20, 1900 – Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce, a statue over 21 feet in height, is lowered into place atop of the Montgomery Ward headquarters at 6 North Michigan Avenue.  It is not intended merely to sit atop the building; it will function as a weather vane that “obeys every change of the wind.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 21, 1900]  Richard Schmidt, the architect who designed the building, oversees the placement of the statue.  The figure is that of a young woman who holds a flaming torch in her right hand and a caduceus, or a short staff intertwined with two snakes, in her left.  In Roman mythology Mercury, who was the messenger of the gods, and the protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars and thieves, is often seen carrying a caduceus in his left hand.  Scottish-American sculptor John Massey Rhind was the artist who created the piece.  The statue was taken down in 1947 and cut into nearly three-dozen pieces.  Some of those pieces may still sit in parlors all over the city.

October 20, 1929 – A crowd of 35,000 packs the new Curtis-Reynolds Airport in suburban Glenview as the $3,000,000 facility is dedicated.  A hundred airplanes are on display as spectators are treated to an afternoon of “parachute jumping, aerial bombing and a short course race”. [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 21, 1929]  Roads in the area are not equipped to handle the crowds, and four hours after the event ends, there are still cars stuck on the 18-foot gravel of Harms Road.  Wiley Post, flying a Lockheed Vega, is the first to finish in the afternoon’s air race, followed by Art Davis in a Waco biplane.  John Livingston, a pilot from Aurora, flying another Waco, is also among the leaders, and he also leads in a 5,000-mile competition that will end the next day in Detroit.  The race is the first such contest to be held in the area since the great air show on Chicago’s lakefront in the summer of 1911.  Amelia Earhart also attends the dedication, landing early in the afternoon. She says, “I was in Columbus attending a meeting when I heard about the airport opening here today so I flew on over—it’s a peach, isn’t it?”  The new airport is composed of two flying fields.  A 125-acre field on the south end will facilitate instruction of the 103 students enrolled at the Curtis flying school. Unfortunately, the dedication takes place a little over a week after the 1929 stock market crash.  The field continues operation, though, even hosting the International Air Races and the Graf Zeppelin that comes to town in 1933 as part of the Century of Progress Exposition.  By the mid-1930’s, the United States Navy found its quarters too small at the Great Lakes Naval Base and leased part of the hangar for a Naval Reserve air base.  The Navy dramatically expanded its presence at the base during World War II.  In 1942 “1,300,000 square yards of concrete mats and runways were poured in only 121 working days,” [airfields-freeman.com] and in August of that year the Carrier Qualification Training Unit began operating out of the field, using two converted side-wheel excursion ships as carriers on which to practice landings off the shore of Chicago.  In April of 1993 the Base Realignment and Closure committee recommended the base for closure, and the last fixed-wing plane took off from the base in February of 1995.  The former airport is now the site of a planned community with shopping, restaurants, and over 1,500 homes.

October 20, 1975 – Branches of Marshall Field and Company and Lord and Taylor open for business on the first eight levels of the new Water Tower Place, the 74-story skyscraper on North Michigan Avenue.  Lines begin forming at 8 a.m. at the doors of the “vertical shopping center” [Chicago Tribune, October 21, 1975] and crowds inside both stores are so large employees have trouble getting to their posts.  “We couldn’t be more pleased,” says Arthur E. Osborne, Vice-President and General Manager of the Marshall Field’s stores in the Chicago area.  “We’re just as excited about this as anything we’ve ever done.  There are wall-to-wall people …”  Charles Siegmann, Vice-President and Regional Managing Director of Lord and Taylor, says, “I’m running out of superlatives.  We knew it was going to be great, but never anything like this. I’ve never seen such great-looking people, the way they’re dressed and how friendly and gracious they are.  This is probably the biggest thrill our company has ever had.  And it’s just amazing the number of men who are here.”  The complex is a joint development of Urban Investment and Development, a subsidiary of Aetna Life and Casualty Company, and Mafco, a subsidiary of Marshall Field and Company.  Architect Edward D. Dart of Loebl, Scholssman, Bennett and Dart is the leading architect on the project.

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Sunday, June 9, 2019

June 9, 1900 -- William Le Baron Jenney Appointed to U. S. Delegation

William Le Baron Jenney
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June 9, 1900 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the U. S. State Department has appointed architect William Le Baron Jenney as one of the official delegates from the United States to the Congress of Architects, to be held at the Hotel de Ville in Paris from July 28 to August 5.  Adding to this honor, the American Association of Architects has named Jenney as a member of the main executive body of the Congress when it convenes.  He will be the only representative that Chicago will have in the Congress.


June 9, 1884 –The Committee on Harbors and Bridges introduces an ordinance at the City Council meeting, requiring that bridges remain closed for at least 20 minutes after being opened with the time that they are open restricted to ten minutes. The problem of balancing the needs of over a half-million people with river commerce that had 11,203 vessels entering the port in the preceding year is becoming more and more clear.  One alderman expresses the opinion that “citizens were entitled to as much consideration as the river interests … Business in the city should not give way for business on the river” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1884] Another alderman warns against “Shutting off the shipping facilities by guarding the river too closely and subjecting the vessels to too many regulations.” A third says that the problem could be greatly improved if “the bridgetenders were more attentive to their duties.” Still another alderman observes that such an ordinance “would be a great detriment to the lake interests and drive the business to Milwaukee.” The council approves the report of the committee and places the ordinance on file.  The subject would come up over and over again, but it would be close to a hundred and ten years before any meaningful restrictions were placed on the opening of bridges on the river.  The above photo shows the swing bridge at Kinzie Street, the predecessor to today's perpetually raised bascule bridge.


June 9, 1884 – The Chicago Harbor Master issues orders to stop a gang of men attempting to fill in a portion of the Chicago River at the Kirk Brothers Soap Factory, a river front operation that sprawled from approximately where today’s Wrigley Building stands to the east side of the lot where 401 North Michigan Avenue and the new Apple Store stand.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Work has been going on for several weeks, and in plain sight of the city officials engaged in building the bridge at Rush street.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1884] When Harbor Master McCarthy investigates the situation, he finds a row of pilings extending 250 feet along the river and a dozen feet beyond the property line of the factory.  The management of the company says the work is for a coffer-dam to protect the foundation of an addition to the factory, but they admit they have no permit.  They also reply that the “coffer-dam” will not be removed when the work is complete.  They are ordered to stop the construction and a police officer is posted at the site to make sure the order is obeyed.  At the time of the incident James S. Kirk and Co. is one of the world’s largest soap factories with a workforce of 250; by the time the century ends it will employ 600 workers and produce about 100 million pounds of soap each year.  The business ended in 1929. 


June 9, 1894 – The bronze statue “A Signal of Peace” is unveiled in Lincoln Park before 2,000 people.  The statue is a gift from Judge Lambert Tree, a prominent judge of the Cook County Circuit Court who also served as the United States ambassador to Belgium and Russia.  During the ceremony Lincoln Park Board President Crawford reads a letter from Tree in which the judge states, “I fear the time is not distant when our descendants will only know through the chisel and brush of the artist these simple, untutored children of nature who were, little more than a century ago, the only human occupants and proprietors of the vast northwestern empire of which Chicago is now the proud metropolis.  Pilfered by the advance guards of the whites, oppressed by government agents, deprived of their land by the government itself, with only scant compensation; shot down by soldiery in wars fomented for the purpose of plundering and destroying their race, and finally drowned by the ever westward tide of population, it is evident there is no future for them, except as they may exist as a memory in the sculptor’s bronze or stone and the painter’s canvas.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1894]  President Crawford then accepts the gift and the sculptor, C. E. Dallin, contributes brief remarks before he pulls a rope that reveals his work, which rests atop a pedestal northwest of the great equestrian statue of General Grant.  For more on Judge Lambert Tree and his gifts to Chicago you may refer to two pieces in Connecting the Windy City, here and here.  
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Tuesday, March 19, 2019

March 19, 1900 -- First Ward Hosts 746 Saloons

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March 19, 1900 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the City Missionary Society has produced a map to scale which shows that there are 746 saloons in the First Ward of the city with one block in that ward hosting “twenty saloons in an almost unbroken string.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 19, 1900] Although there are a dozen churches in the ward, the society indicates that is offset by the fact that there are 18 theaters in the same district.  The map does not count hotel bars, and some restaurants and clubs have been omitted or overlooked.  The Reverend J. C. Armstrong, the head of the Missionary Society, has looked beyond the First Ward, noting that n an area bounded by Seventeenth Street on the north, Wood Street on the east, Twenty-Fifth Street on the south, and Western Avenue on the west, a map shows 110 saloons, two breweries, and two dance halls.  In the area lying north of Oak Street, west of Franklin and northwest on each side of Clybourn Avenue, Armstong’s map shows 100 saloons, seven dance halls and a theater.  Commenting on the number of saloons in the city, the Reverend Dr. William E. McLennan, the pastor of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, says, “Wherever these saloons are found, in just proportion that they exist crimes are committed … Not only is this class of saloon an incentive to crime through dispensing liquor, but as an institution it is a shelter for criminals.  It breeds crime as much by concealing the criminal as by nerving him for his acts through drink.”  The Fred M. Kantzler Jr. Saloon at 2101 South State Street is pictured above in 1903.


March 19, 1963 – Joining 1,400 Democratic party workers at a luncheon at the Morrison Hotel, Illinois Senator Paul Douglas and Governor Otto Kerner urge listeners to get Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley “the biggest majority in the city’s history” [Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1963] in the upcoming April 2 election.  Kerner describes Daley as “the best mayor Chicago has ever had,” and jokes that his wife, who is the daughter of former Mayor Anton Cermak, may not let him in the door when he comes home after giving such an encomium to Daley. The only negative in the praise-fest is when State’s Attorney Daniel Ward urges the elected officials, precinct captains and party workers gathered below the dais “to take a question into each home, and that is what happened to the $94,940 in cash from Mr. Adamowski’s contingency fund. [Adamowski’s campaign got off to a hobbled start when whispering began that he had used part of his office’s contingency fund on his own campaign.] He is vocal about many things, but silent about that.”  Daley frowns at the mention of his opponent’s name.  Later, those close to Daley say that Ward broke one of Daley’s “cardinal rules in politics: never mention the name of your opponent, but campaign solely on your own record without any ‘mud-slinging.’”


March 19, 1911 – Over two-dozen firemen are overcome by smoke and fumes on a day in which 71 fires are reported in the city as a fire rips though Warehouse “B” of the Monarch Refrigerating Company plant at 40 East Michigan Street.  The flames are fed by a million pounds of butter, and the thick walls of the plant, along with the small refrigeration cells within it and narrow hallways connecting them make it nearly impossible to get water onto the blaze in sufficient quantities to do much good.  Chief Arthur Seyferlich of the second battalion is among the first to reach the fire and helps to carry injured firemen down fire escapes. He is overcome by smoke in his second search of the building and has to be rescued by his brother.  Fourteen horse-drawn fire engines work on Cass Street, four more work on Rush Street and another four are placed at Michigan and State. The fire, which most probably results from frayed wires on the fifth floor, burns for days.  Lost in the fire are 764 cans of eggs that the United States government had seized as evidence on the ground that they contained “putrid matter.”  The eggs were to be presented as evidence before Judge Kenesaw Landis the following week.  Chief Seyferlich, who served as Chicago's Fire Marshal from 1921 to 1926, is pictured above. 


March 19, 1928 -- The Morrison Hotel, the first building outside of New York to rise more than 40 stories, is selected by Mayor William Hale Thompson's Radio Commission as the building on which the "Lindbergh Light" will be placed. The hotel agrees to pay for the cost of the 200 foot tower on which the light will sit and assume the responsibility for its maintenance. In 1927 Mr. Elmer G. Sperry, President of the Sperry Gyroscope Company, offered the beacon, which will be seen for 250 miles, providing that Chicago find a way to mount and maintain it. GREAT NEWS! But it didn't work out. A competition began between two great beacons, one proposed for the Roanoke Building on LaSalle Street and Mr. Sperry's Lindbergh Light. In the end a stationary beam was placed on the brand new La Salle-Wacker Building and the Lindbergh Light ended up at the top of the Palmolive Building, completed in 1929. It turns out that Elmer Sperry never saw his controversial beacon. He died two months before it cast its first beam into the Chicago night.  The Morrison Hotel was demolished in 1965 to make way for the new First National Bank of Chicago building, now Chase, at Clark and Madison.
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