Connecting the Windy City

Thursday, June 13, 2019

June 13, 1903 -- McKinley Park Dedicated

google.com

June 13, 1903 – McKinley Park is formally dedicated as 10,000 people gather at Thirty-seventh and Western Avenues to view the proceedings.  The 35-acre park hosts a baseball field, tennis courts and a 350-foot long swimming pool.  President Henry G. Foreman of the South Park Board makes the speech of dedication, talking more about the board’s plans for future city parks, specifically Grant Park, than about the park being dedicated. He says, “It is intended to make greater Grant park the finest city park in America, if not in the world.  In this park we shall have more than 202 acres, with the business district on the west and Lake Michigan on the east, and residence and business property to the north and south.  There is a lake shore frontage here of about one and a quarter miles. Just stop and consider such a place for a park in the heart of a big city!”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 14, 1903].  According to the Chicago Park District’s website, the South Park Commission elected to name a new park after William McKinley, the twenty-fifth president of the United States in October, 1901, one month after his assassination.  McKinley Park was the beginning of a noble experiment as J. Frank Foster, the South Park superintendent at the time “envisioned a new type of park that would provide social services as well as breathing spaces” [www.chicagoparkdistrict.com] in sections of the city that would allow access to residents living in overcrowded tenement areas.  To accomplish this, the district began acquiring land near the Union Stockyards, much of which had formerly been the Brighton Park Race Track.  McKinely Park would be the first of a whole system of neighborhood parks on the south side, the first ten of which were Sherman, Ogden, Palmer, Bessemer, and Hamilton Parks, and Mark White, Russell, Davis, Armour and Cornell Parks.  This system of neighborhood parks led the nation in introducing natural areas that would serve dense population centers.  McKinely Park proved so popular that the South Park Commission obtained more land, doubling its size to its present 71.75 acres.  McKinley Park can be seen lying a few blocks south of the river in the lower left corner of the above graphic.

June 13, 1879 – Pipeman Henry T. Coyle, working on a hose-truck belonging to Engine No. 11 of the Chicago Fire Department, drowns when the truck is driven into the river at full speed.  The night is dark, and the driver, next to whom Coyle is seated, cannot see whether the State Street bridge is in position for crossing.  Unfortunately, the rotating bridge is in the open position, and the truck’s driver “dashed on through the darkness to the terrible catastrophe which followed.” [Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1879]  The driver and another truckman leap from the truck, but Coyle drowns.  It takes the better part of a day to find the body of the missing firefighter.  The whole affair prompts the Chicago Daily Tribune to react strongly to the danger that the rotating bridges pose in this way, “The bridges of Chicago have been a continual source of danger and annoyance to the impetuous people of Chicago … Scarcely a week passes by that some accident does not occur at some of them, mostly on account of the impatience of pedestrians … Why people, great and small, will persist in swarming upon and over the bridges of our main thoroughfares while they are swinging, at the risk of life and limb, it would be hard to tell.  The wonder is that more fatal accidents do not occur.”

June 13, 1922 – Representing the Illinois Athletic Club, John Weismuller smashes four world’s swimming records at Kahului on the island of Maui.  Weismuller takes 14 seconds off the previous record in the 400-yard freestyle, finishing in 4:40.4.  In the 400-meter freestyle he breaks the old world’s record by six seconds.  He also sets a new record in the 500-yard freestyle and the 500-meter freestyle events.  In addition to the records Weismuller also takes gold in the 100- and 50-yard freestyle races. The champion’s family came to the United States from Germany when he was just seven-months-old, eventually settling in Chicago where his father, Peter, worked as a brewer.  When the young man contracted polio as a teenager, a doctor suggested he take up swimming to combat the ravages of the disease.  He dropped out of Lane Technical High School, working as a lifeguard on Chicago beaches, eventually ending up as an elevator operator at the Illinois Athletic Club.  It was there that he was given a chance to show his skill.  A little over two years after his success in the Hawaiian Islands, Weismuller will compete in the 1924 Olympic games in Paris, taking four gold medals.  Four years later in the Amsterdam Olympic games he will win another two gold medals.  In the early 1930’s he will ink a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, beginning a career that is notable for the six Tarzan movies in which he starred.

June 13, 1967 – Efforts to correct the sinking north wall of the Monadnock building are finished.  After a real estate investment group headed by Carroll H. Sudler, purchased the building for more than two million dollars, it was discovered that the 1891 structure is sinking.  For the preceding two months, according to the Chicago Tribune, 31 pipes, each of them 14 inches in diameter, have been sunk under four supporting piers of the north wall and then filled with concrete.  On this date the work is completed.  The Monadnock is safe, but Jackson Boulevard on which the narrow north face of the Monadnock sits, is a mess, “slumping badly in sections,” according to the Tribune as a result of excavation work for the new Federal building that is being constructed directly across the street from the Monadnock.

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

Labels: 1903, Chicago Parks, Lake Michigan

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

March 12, 1903 -- Lake Street Miracle

chicagotirbunephoto

March 12, 1903 – Two traditions are a part of life in Chicago as the winter begins to wind down. There is the dying of the river on St. Patrick’s Day.  And there are potholes.  In February 20 crews were out, working seven days a week, trying to limit the damage that potholes would inflict on automobiles.  Maybe this is a good time to consider the fate of one William Rensteed, in 1903 a poor soul from Udine, Illinois who, having missed the elevated stop at Oakley Avenue, decided he was going to walk from Campbell Avenue back to Oakley on the elevated structure.  Bad idea. Somehow, in climbing from the two-story platform to the tracks, Rensteed slipped and fell head first onto Lake Street. He survived … because the paving stones of Lake Street were under such a deep covering of mud that the out-of-towner escaped with nothing more than scalp wounds.  Recovering from shock in the County Hospital, Rensteed, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune, “was thankful to be alive, but wondered that he escaped drowning.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 12, 1903]  The grainy photo published in the Tribune shows the conditions of the street at the time Rented fell.

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. 

Dr. Philip M. Hauser

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: 1903, Lake Street

Thursday, February 28, 2019

February 28, 1903 -- State Street Bridge is Dedicated

chicagology.com

February 28, 1903 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a new bridge across the river at State street has been opened to decidedly negative reviews.  H. D. Dean, a construction engineer from Benton Harbor, Michigan, in town to provide his expertise to a subway subcommittee, says that the new bridge “is not wide enough by fifty feet.  It was a mistake to build so narrow a bridge there on account of the awkward bend in the river at that point.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 1, 1903] Present at the dedication of the new bridge a day earlier are members of the South Water and State Street Business Men’s association “who have seen their business dwindle much more rapidly that the bridge grew during the last year.” Mrs. Adelaide Smedberg of 184 North State Street breaks a bottle of wine on the bridge. The Tribune explains how Smedberg ended up with the bottle in her hand, noting that association president J. T. Keane “corked his eloquence, chased the woman, explained to her that she was the first to cross the river, and took her back to break the bottle of wine. “I christen thee State street,’ said Mrs. Smedberg, and the dedicators hurried away to a banquet at which there was more oratory and spilling of wine."  On May 29, 1949 a new bridge was dedicated at State Street in a far more dignified ceremony, one that honored the men from the Chicago area who fought and died in the battle of Bataan and Corregidor and who suffered through the “death march” that followed that battle.  The bridge closest to the bottom of the photo is the 1903 bridge.  

February 28, 1970 – Ten thousand demonstrators line both sides of State Street opposite the Palmer House, jeering French President Georges Pompidou, as he arrives to address a group at a dinner sponsored by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the Alliance Francaise. The protestors voice loud objections to France’s recent announcement that it will sell 100 Mirage jets to Libya.  Among the protestors is U. S. Representative Roman Pucinski who says he considers the sale of the jets “a unilateral escalation of the Mideast conflict.” [Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1970] Chants of  “Poo, Poo, Pompidou,” “France Oui, Pompidou No” reverberate over bullhorns as protest marshals work hard to keep crowds from spilling into the street.  Mayor Daley’s special events director, Colonel Jack Reilly, praises the orderly protest, saying, “If the city had it this easy in all demonstrations it would be easy.”  As the French delegation leaves from O’Hare on the following day, an official says that the Chicago police “’either thru incompetence or design,’ relaxed security to the point where it was impossible for Pompidou to avoid embarrassment.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1970] At the airport Pompidou himself, speaking in French, says that the protestors “placed a stain on the face of America” and that “the immense majority of the Chicago population … is ashamed of it all.” The French President is especially upset about an incident that occurred inside the lobby of the Palmer House in which six individuals jumped in front of him and his wife and shouted, “Shame, shame on you!”  An official says, “The police assured us this would not happen. They said the lobby would be clear.  Yet there were these people, accosting the president of France on an official visit.  The French delegation cannot understand how this was permitted to happen.  Tempers are running very high.”

February 28, 1955 – The Chicago Housing Authority awards a $7,998,700 contract to Corbeita Construction Company for the first stage of an addition to the Frances Cabrini public housing project just north of Chicago Avenue and east of Larabee.  The contract calls for eight high-rise buildings with 859 apartments along with a heating and service building.  The chairman of the C.H.A., John R. Fugard, states that a contract will be let later in the year for seven more buildings with 1,066 apartments.   The work at Cabrini will be just one part of the biggest program of public housing construction in the city’s history.  It is anticipated in 1955 the C.H.A. will break ground at six different sites for 4,500 apartments.  All of the projects, which were approved in 1949, will be subsidized by the federal government and will be rented to low income families.

February 28, 1939 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that owner P. K. Wrigley has taken matters into his own hands "in moving the spring flair of Diz (Dizzy Dean) as problem child." When Wrigley's personal representative comes upon the Cub pitcher "pitching full blast at the full pitching distance [he] broke up the display in the name of the Cub owner, following full instructions from the Chicago throne room." [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 1, 1939] Dean, a pitching phenom for the St. Louis Cardinals between 1933 and 1937, was injured by a line drive in the 1937 All-Star game. In 1938 Wrigley paid $185,000 to put the compromised pitcher on the Cubs roster. In September of that year, in what he called the greatest game of his career, Dean pitched the second game of a series with the Pittsburgh Pirates, winning 2-1, pulling the Cubs within a half-game of the league leading Pirates, a team from which the Cubs would wrest the National League championship the next day. Dean pitched Game Two of the World Series, pitching admirably until he gave up a two-run homer to Joe DiMaggio in the top of the ninth, ultimately losing 6-3. He struggled along with the Cubs until 1941 when he retired. Wrigley's interest in protecting his investment was certainly understandable, but ultimately it would not matter.

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

Labels: 1903, Chicago Bridges, Chicago Events, Chicago RIver, State Street

Saturday, January 19, 2019

January 19, 1903 -- Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Upgrades Service

encyclopedia.chiagohistory.org

January 19, 1903 – Illinois Telephone and Telegraph workers begin wiring downtown buildings for “automatic telephones” with 10,000 phones to be in operation by the First of May.  A building at 191 Fifth Avenue – today’s Wells Street – will house five floors of switching equipment, making possible the elimination of party lines in the business section of the city and cutting the cost of telephone service by half.  The maximum charge for office telephones will be $85 a year with a $50 charge for private residences.  The phones will first be installed in all drug stores and other public places where “slot” telephones are placed.  A customer who wishes to make a call will be charged five cents, payable to a store clerk.  The business will get to keep the profit from all receipts that exceed the $85 yearly charge for the business.  The president of the company says, “We are going to make telephoning cheap in Chicago – so cheap that I expect to see 250,000 phones in use here within ten years where there are now only 40,000 main line instruments.  If we can realize the average amount which the gas company collects – which is about $3 a month a customer, I believe – if we can realize that much we will still make a better profit than the gas company for we will have no coal bill.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 18, 1903]

January 19, 1970 – Judge Julius J. Hoffman rules in United States District Court that the conspiracy trial of the “Chicago 7” will be conducted seven days a week, beginning at the time of the decree.  William Kuntsler, one of the defense attorneys for the individuals accused of conspiracy and inciting to riot during the 1968 Democratic convention, argues that the defense needs the weekends to continue to prepare its case.  The decision to add Sunday court sessions in a trial that started on September 24 is made when Kuntsler protests Hoffman’s order on the previous day to add Saturdays to the court schedule to move the trial along.  When the judge denies Kuntsler’s motion to end Saturday court sessions, Kuntsler then moves for the court to meet seven days a week, to which Hoffman agrees.  It isn’t until February 18, 1970 that a verdict is returned with each of the seven defendants acquitted of conspiracy although two men are found guilty of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot.  While the jury is deliberating, Hoffman cites each defendant and the lawyers in the case with a number of contempt charges, carrying sentences from a few months to four years.  On November 21,1972 all convictions are reversed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh District, and the contempt charges are dropped as well.  The United States decides not to retry the case.

January 19, 1872 – A little over a year after Chicago is destroyed by fire, the Chicago Tribune reports on the progress being made at establishing a fire-proof ordinance within the city.  The City Council, according to the article, is leaning toward a strict fire-proof ordinance within the center of the city, but seems inclined to exempt “that part of the South Division west of State and south of Twenty-fifth street, and west of Halsted street; all of the West Division south and west of Halsted, Rebecca, Throop, Twelfth, Reuben and Van Buren streets, and west of Western avenue … all of the West Division beyond Western avenue, north and west of Walnut and Reuben streets and Chicago avenue … in the North Division, all of the territory north and west of Chicago avenue, Wells street, and North avenue.”  [Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1972] This plan, the article indicates, “surrounds the city, north, west, and south, with a cordon, several miles deep of wooden buildings.”  The plan seems to take special care to avoid damaging the lucrative house-moving business, an industry the paper did not look upon with favor.  “No man who erects a permanent building,” the article states, “can tell the day when there may not be backed in on each side of his building some old rotten tenement, to be rented out at extortionate rates for prostitution, gambling, or other equally disreputable business.”  Contained within the ordinance, though, is a stipulation that whenever the owners of a majority of the ground on any block outside of the fire district shall so request, that block shall come under the provisions of the fire ordinance.  The paper urges the legislators to go farther, to make it unlawful “to erect any wooden building, barn, or shed within 150 feet, in any direction, from a brick or stone building already erected.”  The article ends with a plea to pass the legislation, “The passage of an ordinance prohibiting the erection hereafter of any wooden buildings in the city, with proper provision for the enforcement of the law, would be equal, in its financial effects, to the free loan of several millions of dollars.  It would relieve this city of an enormous indirect tax, and would invite hither a large amount of capital for permanent investment, which will avoid us if we continue to be a city of shanties.”

January 19, 2010 -- Researchers report that for the first time DNA of Asian carp has been found in Lake Michigan. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies quickly move to allay fears about the invasive species spawning on the balconies of River North high rises, saying that there was still no evidence that live carp had entered the lake. Army Corps Major General John Peabody says, "The fact is that we don't know where the fish are. DNA tells us there is a presence in those areas and we've got to begin looking at whether we are getting false positives or negatives so we know what we're dealing with." Hours before the announcement the U. S. Supreme Court refuses to address the carp issue, rejecting Michigan's request for an injunction that would force Illinois to stop any sources of water that might flow into Lake Michigan.

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

Labels: 1903, Chicago Events, Technology

Monday, April 16, 2018

April 16, 1903 -- Marine Firemen's Strike Brings Violence

April 16, 1903 – Violence flares all along the river as the marine firemen’s strike continues.  Gangs board ships leaving their docks in an attempt to halt the non-union firemen while other men man the bridges and hurl stones at boats as they pass to and from the lake.  One boat, the Seneca, inbound from Buffalo with non-union stokers manning the shovels, is boarded and a 65-year-old is left unconscious in the hold.  As night falls a crowd of fifty strikers attempting to board the steamer Clarion as she leaves for Buffalo are driven back by the police.  Retreating to a bridge, the mob showers the boat with rocks.  One deck hand is hit before he can find shelter from the onslaught.  In an attempt to end the strike, arbitration is proposed at a meeting that lasts into the next morning, but the Chicago local votes unanimously to continue its walk-out.  Even the University of Chicago is dragged into the fray as President William Rainey Harper is forced to issue a statement concerning students who took positions as strike-breakers on ships headed to Buffalo.  Harper asserts that if the students had consulted him or their deans “they would undoubtedly have been advised not to undertake such service.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1903] He adds, though, “That the university takes no side on any question, political or religious, or, indeed, of any kind, individuals of the university, professors, or students being left absolutely free to think and do as they see fit.”

April 16, 1903 – Twenty-five terrified passengers go for a wild ride when a trolley car of the Southport Avenue line crashes into the end of the partly open Wells Street bridge at 8:00 p.m. and barely avoids tumbling into the river.  The swing bridge at Wells Street had been rotated to permit a boat to travel through the draw when the trolley approaches rapidly as it heads north.  Passengers panic as the trolley appears certain to plunge into the river, but the bridge begins to rotate back into place just in time for the car to crash into its girders.  The car is thrown nearly perpendicular to the tracks, and the impact throws all of the passengers to the floor and against the end of the car.  Fortunately, no one is seriously injured.  A dozen or more elevated trains and thirty surface cars wait to cross the bridge as it takes a wrecking crew an hour to extricate the Southport trolley from the bridge.  The Wells Street Bridge and the girders that saved the trolley are pictured above.

April 16, 1925 -- E. J. Stevens awards the contract for the $30,000,000 Hotel Stevens, today's Chicago Hilton and Towers on Michigan Avenue, to the Fuller Construction Company. The hotel will be the largest hotel in the world, according to Stevens. When it opened in 1927, the Holabird and Roche designed hotel had 3,000 rooms and, among other things, could produce 120 gallons of ice cream every hour. The Fuller Construction Company is an interesting footnote. Between 1900 and 1914 the Chicago firm was responsible for the construction of over 600 buildings. Chicago's beloved Marquette, Rookery, and Monadnock buildings were all built by Fuller. So, too, was the Flatiron building off Madison Square Park in New York City. The company was dissolved in 1970, and its last building was most probably the 150 North Wacker Drive building just south of Lake Street in Chicago.

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

Labels: 1903, Chicago RIver, University of Chicago

Monday, January 22, 2018

January 22, 1903 -- Michigan Avenue Tunnel Proposed

January 22, 1903 – Chalk one up to “the amazing projects that never got built” department.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the South Park Board and the Lincoln Park Board will submit a bill to the legislature authorizing a $2,000,000 bond issue to construct a half-mile subway beneath the river between Michigan Avenue and Pine Street.  The south portal will be at Washington Boulevard, and the north end will be situated at Ohio Street.  Daniel H. Burnham has already drawn plans for the subway which “is to be elaborately constructed with a view to securing the highest ornamental beauty.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 22, 1903] The length of the project will allow the grade to be slight and “in every detail it is proposed to make it free from the ordinary objections to tunnel communication.” Lincoln Park Board President W. W. Tracy says, ‘We believe that the subway project will appeal to the north side people as the only true solution of the communication problem.  A viaduct would not offer a satisfactory solution.  The proposed subway will be an elaborate and ornamental tunnel, which will not contain any of the objectionable features of ordinary subways.” The subway, of course, was never built, and it would be another 17 years before the bridge spanning the river at Michigan Avenue would be opened.

January 22, 1953 – The president of the Federal Reserve Bank, Clifford S. Young, announces that the summer will see the addition of four stories to the 15-story building.  The bank at 230 South LaSalle Street holds nine billion dollars in its own assets and 18 billion for the treasury and banks belonging to the federal reserve system.  The architects will be Naess and Murphy, the same firm that will design the Prudential building, still two years away, and the Sun-Times building on the river that will be started the year that Prudential finishes.  The four floors of the bank on La Salle Street will add 88,000 square feet of space to the building that first opened in 1923.  The building will not need any additional foundation work to support the weight of the addition, and that addition will relate aesthetically to the classical design of the building as well as to the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago directly across La Salle Street to the east.

January 22, 1954 -- The Chicago City Council Finance Committee votes to allocate $950,000 from motor fuel tax funds for construction of a steel viaduct extending Lake Street eastward across Michigan Avenue to Beaubien Court. At that point the viaduct will turn south to Randolph Street, passing along the west side of the Prudential building, which is under construction. A new viaduct might not sound like a big deal, but that piece of infrastructure, along with Prudential, were the first steps in converting the massive railroad yards, extending from the river south to Randolph and from Michigan Avenue to the lake, into what is today's Illinois Center. The grainy photo above, taken over ten years later, shows a portion of the viaduct, the "L" shaped roadway in the lower left corner of the photo. Randolph Street is the long horizontal roadway at the bottom of the picture with the river winding through the photo's middle. Just below the river, where the second long train shed from the left stands, is the location of today's Hyatt Regency Chicago on Wacker Drive.

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

Labels: 1903, Chicago RIver, Michigan Avenue, Transportation