Connecting the Windy City

Monday, January 27, 2020

January 27, 1917 -- Great Lakes Naval Station Takes Off

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January 27, 1917 –  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that after a two-day conference involving Captain W. A. Moffett of the Great Lakes Naval Station and Navy officials, “Recognition by the navy department of the Great Lakes naval training station as of equal importance with the Newport training station was practically assured.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 27, 1917]  As a result of the conference, the Navy Department has agreed to send the United States ship Gopher to the base to train recruits.  It will be renamed the Great Lakes.  The department has also agreed to hold a summer camp at Great Lakes in which between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians will be invited to attend.  Trade schools, equivalent to the ones at Newport, will also be created, permitting recruits to choose one or more trades out of a dozen at which they will become proficient while qualifying to serve  Great Lakes will also send a contingent to Washington, D. C. to participate in the inaugural parade of Woodrow Wilson as he begins his second term in office.  At the beginning of 1917 Great Lakes held 39 permanent buildings with about 1,500 sailors.  The entry of the United States into World War I impressed officials with the base's importance, and by the end of the war, 45,000 sailors were in training at the base, which had built 737 new buildings in just under two years.  In the early 1990’s the Base Realignment and Closure Commission closed the only two other naval training centers in Orland and San Diego, leaving Great Lakes as the only training facility for the Navy.  Today over 50,000 trainees move through the base annually.  The above photo shows thousands of Great Lakes sailors in the formation of a large American flag sometime during that momentous year of 1917.

January 27, 1901 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that there are only five wolves left within Chicago's limits where once there were thousands. When the great herds of bison on the Great Plains were slaughtered almost to extinction, the wolves that depended on them suffered as well, often turning to the herds of domestic cattle to survive. That, of course, only hastened their already tenuous existence as they were hunted ruthlessly with a good gray hide bringing $5 or more. "In America," the paper wrote, "no one renews the game supply and everybody seeks to destroy, blindly, selfishly, unreasoningly . . . There is no other country of equal enlightenment with this which allows its wild game, the property of the whole people, to be stolen for the individual profit of a few." The 1903 photo above shows one of the five wolves in Chicago on display at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

January 27, 1916 – Mrs. Lois Dunning, the president of the Three Arts Club, passes judgment on a Claude Monet painting that hangs among French and Belgian works drawn from the Panama-Pacific exhibition of 1915, a collection on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The Monet painting, “Vetheuil,” priced at $9,000, draws the attention of Dunning as she leads 200 women “gathered to hear her discourse on art.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 28, 1916] “Now look at this thing,” Dunning begins.  “A 10 year old could have painted it.  I don’t know whether the artist meant the lavender foreground for a bog, a stream, or a level bit of ground.  It’s awful.  It’s one of the worst things in the gallery.”  The tour continues as Dunning points to a painting by Pierre Carrier-Belleuse, “The Ballet Slipper.” The artist, Dunning declares, “ought to have known better than to have had the girl’s dress up to her knees.  You don’t see such beastly things in American art … we don’t want to see women’s faces brutalized.  That’s what this new school of art does.  It’s a far cry from that art of long ago when flesh was painted so delicately that it looks as if one might pinch it.” 

January 27, 1929 – The Chicago Motor Club opens its new 17-story headquarters at 66 East South Water Street, inviting members of the public to inspect the gleaming interior of this new Art Moderne masterpiece.  The structure is a testament to the marriage of design and the labor necessary to bring the design into reality.  It is the first office building in the city to “embody the ‘art moderne’ theme,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 27, 1929] for one thing.  It is impressive that the building was completed in just 234 days, a period that included the razing of the building that originally stood on the site.  The touring bureau for the club occupies the first floor of the tower, a site that reaches 30 feet in height and has no columns or posts.  The artwork is particularly impressive.  The Tribune offers this description, “The east wall is marked by three large windows, extending from floor to ceiling.   On the west wall is painted a map of the United States.  It was executed in modernistic style by John Norton, widely known Chicago mural decorator.  The size is nineteen by twenty-nine feet.   On it are portrayed nineteen transcontinental highways, together with the various mountain ranges and national parks.” The Chicago Motor Club moved its headquarters to Des Plaines in 1986, and the building on South Water Street closed in 2004.  In 2013 MB Real Estate led an effort to convert the unused tower to hotel space, paying about $9.5 million for the building and overseeing its rebirth as a Hampton Inn. 

presencehealth.org

January 27, 1963 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the General Chairman of the St. Joseph Hospital building fund drive, John Sexton, has the first million dollars in pledges for the new $22 million hospital that is being built at 2900 Lake Shore Drive.  Ground was broken for the new St. Joseph in 1961, and it is expected that the 492-bed facility will be completed by December, 1963. The hospital will be 13 stories high and its “Y” shape will allow 85 percent of its rooms to face either Lincoln Park or Lake Michigan.  The new facility will replace the old St. Joseph Hospital, located at 2100 North Burling Street, which is largely antiquated.  One of its two wings is 90 years old while the more recent addition is nearly a half-century old.  The origin of St. Joseph Hospital goes all the way back to 1868 when three Daughters of Charity founded Providence Hospital in a two-story cottage at the corner of what is now Clark Street and Diversey Avenue.  [presencehealth.org] In 1871 the Daughters of Charity built a new hospital at what is now Burling Street and Dickens Street.  The Great Fire of 1871 spared the facility, and it served as shelter for many victims of the fire.  That same year the hospital was the first in the city to open a psychiatry unit.  In 1893 the Saint Joseph School of Nursing, affiliated with DePaul University opened and by the time of its closing in 1964, 1,504 nurses had graduated from the school.  Today the hospital is a part of Presence Health, the largest Catholic health care organization in Illinois. The black and white photo shows the hospital under construction in the early 1960's.

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Labels: 1917, Chicago History, Chicago Places, Lake Michigan, Politics

Thursday, October 17, 2019

October 17, 1917 -- Michigan Avenue Traffic Woes

Chicago Tribune photo

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October 17, 1917 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints a photograph that shows the traffic conditions on Michigan Avenue before the building of the bridge that carried traffic across the river.  Before the bridge was completed in 1920 traffic headed north on Michigan Avenue was forced to move from a 91-foot roadway south of Randolph Street to a 39-foot artery north of that location.  M. J. Flaherty, the president of the board of local improvements, says, “It’s like the neck of a bottle.  If the courts decide in the city’s favor we will have a continuous roadway ninety-one feet wide all the way across the river to the north side.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 17, 1917]  The court action to which Flaherty refers is a suit filed by the James S. Kirk and Co. soap factory,  contesting the city’s condemnation suit against its property, a large plot of land that is today occupied by the Wrigley building and Trump Tower.  The photo above shows the conditions at Randolph Street where traffic squeezes into a lane less than half the size of the road south of the intersection of Michigan and Randolph.  Today’s Chicago Cultural Center can be seen at the left of the photo.  The second photo shows the same scene as it appears today.  

October 17, 1956 – Mayor Richard J. Daley receives notice from the city’s air pollution control board that hydrogen sulphide gas from the North Branch of the Chicago River has created a “critical condition on the northwest side that may require emergency action by the mayor.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 18, 1956]  Phone lines are overwhelmed at the pollution control office as the director, Thomas H. Carey, reports the “complaints from home owners that the gas was polluting the air, attacking the paint on houses, and tarnishing silverware in homes.”  A city engineer assesses the dire situation, noting that it is the result of “unseasonable heat, low water levels because of a lack of rain, and a lack of wind to loft away the gas.”  Residents in the area between Caldwell and Milwaukee Avenues are experiencing the greatest hardship.  On the following day Chicago firefighters set up shop and, with assistance from the Niles fire department, begin pouring between 8,000 to 10,000 gallons of water per minute into the river, using six hose lines.  That isn’t enough for a dozen women from the neighborhood who make their way down to the mayor’s office, charging that “the stream has been polluted for months and that the pollution has caused illness among children and brought large rats to the neighborhood.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 20, 1956] The mayor’s office refers the women to the fire commissioner.

October 17, 1936 – Elma Lockwood “Ma” Streeter dies at the Cook County Hospital.  She was the daughter of Ashwood Lockwood who came to the area around today’s Elkhart, Indiana in 1839.  She was the indefatigable wife of George Washington “Cap” Streeter who in 1883 ran his boat, Reutan, aground on a sand bar about 450 off the shore east of what is today some of the most valuable real estate in the city.  As sand accumulated around the craft, he realized that it would be better to stay put and take advantage of a law allowing Civil War veterans to homestead on unclaimed land. The silting action of the lake had land piling up around the Reutan, and Streeter claimed it as his, declaring it the United States District of Lake Michigan or “the Deestrict.” Nearly two decades of run-ins with the law followed, and “Ma” Streeter watched it all as her husband was arrested, tried, convicted and set free only to repeat the process all over again.  In 1918, three years before her husband’s death, she reacted when hirelings of the Chicago Title and Trust Company burned the Streeter home to the ground.  She charged the group with a meat cleaver, and the men retreated. Her last indignity occurred in 1924 when she filed suit against property owners of “her” land, only to have the suit dismissed because Cap Streeter had been abandoned by his first wife but not divorced, so Ma Streeter’s marriage was declared invalid.  In the above photo "Ma" Streeter is shown on her houseboat just a year after her husband died.

October 17, 1933 – The first man to be jailed for attempted piracy on Lake Michigan is sentenced to six years in the federal penitentiary by Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson.  The United States District Attorney is able to show that the 28-year-old man, Joseph Pennick, boarded a boat at the Wrigley building and rode it to the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront.  On the return trip, at a point about a mile off Roosevelt Road, Pennick pulled out a revolver and ordered the pilot of the boat to surrender his cash.  The pilot, James M. Nester, and another passenger overpowered Pennick, but not before he got off two shots, one of which grazed the passenger’s head.  Pennick’s plea was that he had been drinking.

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Labels: 1917, Chicago Bridges, Michigan Avenue, Rush Street

Monday, July 1, 2019

July 1, 1917 -- Pathé Films Loses $750,000 in Film Explosion

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July 1, 1917 – An investigation begins into the origins of a fire that consumes $750,000 worth of valuable film from the vaults of the Pathé Film Company in the Consumers’ Building at 220 South State Street.  The Chicago manager of Pathé, C. W. Bunn, speculates that the fire is the product of labor unions sending a message as they seek to unionize film company employees. He says “Taken in connection with threats that have been sent to me and to other film managers, I am convinced the fire was of incendiary origin.  Four employees were at work in the office.  They heard a noise in the vault, as if something had fallen.  An explosion followed and the vault door was blown out with a blast of smoke and flame.  The falling noise probably was the working of a time mechanism that touched off a bomb.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1917]  After the blast and fire, police officers are stationed at the offices of 16 film companies in the city as Attorney Lewis F. Jacobson, representing the film exchanges, holds a conference with police officials at City Hall.  Jacobson presents a letter that the president of Local No. 157 sent to all film company managers, in which he states, “Get busy and organize. Start at once or we will start our work.”  The deputy police commissioner then orders the arrest of the organizer and former business agent of Local 157.  Two days later a judge grants an injunction against Locals 110, 134 and 157 of the Moving Picture Machine Operators’ union, restraining the unions “From picketing, spying, assaulting, or intimidating, congregating about, at, or near the places of business of the complainants; from attempting to deal with employees toward unionization, and from boycotting or otherwise molesting exhibitors using the films of its complainants.”   [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 4, 1917].  Through quick work firemen were able to confine the Pathé fire to the sixth floor of the Consumers’ building, a building in which three other film distribution companies are located – the Universal, Mutual and the Feature.  This catches the eye of the city’s corporation counsel, who notes “flagrant violations of city ordinances in regard to the handling of moving pictures.”  Fire officials announce that they will prepare an ordinance that excludes all companies handling motion pictures from the central business district because of the danger of explosions.  The above photo shows a detail of the Consumers' Building, one of the last of the Chicago School designs, a 1913 building designed by the firm of William Le Baron Jenney, William Bryce Mundie and Elmer C. Jensen.  

July 1, 1910 –Comiskey Park opens for its first game as 24,900 fans watch the Chicago White Sox lose to the St. Louis Browns, 2-0.  Despite the loss, the opening of the new park is a success that “crowned the tremendous efforts which have been put forth in the last few weeks to get the mammoth plant ready for its christening and it passed through its baptism as if to the manor born, while tens of thousands of the Old Roman’s friends cheered at every possible opportunity to show their appreciation of the gift he had prepared for them.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1910] A thousand people wait in line to purchase tickets when the gates at the new park open at 1:00.  A brass band greets entering fans, who cheer the Chicago team when it “emerged from its dressing rooms, clad in new coming out gowns of dazzling white, nattily trimmed with blue and designed by G. Harris White, dentist, pitcher, and outfielder as well.”  Cheers rise again as Charles Comiskey is presented a big banner at home plate as a band on the field plays “Hail to the Chief.” In January of 1909 Charles Comiskey, who had owned the club for ten years, bought a plot of land used by the city as landfill and commissions Zachary Taylor Davis, a graduate of the Armour Institute, to design a new ballpark for the White Sox.  On March 17,1910 the cornerstone for the new park is laid.  Less than four months later the park opens. The same architect designed Weeghman Field, today’s Wrigley Field, on the north side which opened four years later.

July 1, 1933 – The Museum of Science and Industry opens its doors for the first time at 10:00 a.m.  No formal ceremony is held.  Only the great Central Hall will open as many of the exhibits that will eventually be displayed are being shown at the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront a few miles to the north.  All of the exhibits at the museum will be free with the exception of the Coal Mine, for which there will be a twenty-five cent charge.  A feature of the museum will be its interactive displays, exhibits “capable of being operated by switches or levers, to demonstrate scores of processes or inventions.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1933]  The museum, originally the Palace of Fine Arts at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 housed the Field Museum of Natural History for a time, but then fell into decay.  In fact, the South Park Board voted to raze it in 1921.  Fortunately, that didn't happen.  The photo above shows the condition of the building before the effort to restore it began.

July 1, 1940 – The 440-foot nautical-themed beach house at North Avenue Beach opens.  The facility has 14 showers and 1,440 baskets that allow men and women to check personal effects while heading for the beach.  In order to give the “ship” a credible lake-worthy appearance the art deco structure is equipped with a crow’s nest, booms, yard arms, lanterns, portholes and flags.  The North Avenue Beach was completed as part of a $1,250,000 Works Progress Administration project, that wound up in 1939, an undertaking that added 875,000 square feet of new parkland extending north to Fullerton Avenue with a new overpass at that juncture.  The beach house is a design by architect Emanuel V. Buchsbaum.  It was replaced in 2000 by a new facility with 22,000 square feet of space. The above photo shows the beach house as it appears today.

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Labels: 1917, Crime, Labor Unrest, State Street

Sunday, October 28, 2018

October 28, 1917 -- City Beautiful Movement Takes Hold

October 28, 1917 –The Chicago Daily Tribunetakes prints a pictorial essay that demonstrates how Commonwealth Edison, with more than fifty substations scattered throughout the city, is showing a “growing recognition of the value of dignity and appropriate adornment, as shown by the ‘Chicago plan’ movement”. [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 28, 1917] One station in particular shows this recognition, a new substation at the north end of Graceland Cemetery, facing Montrose Avenue on the south and Clifton Avenue on the west.  It is designed to supply 600-volt direct-current to the Chicago Surface Lines and the Northwestern Elevated Railroad and 4000 volts of power to lighting and power customers in the area.  According to a trade periodical at the time, “The location of the substation in the midst of a fairly high-grade residence section made it necessary to erect the building with special care to muffle the noise of the converters in order that the station might not be disturbing to the near-by residents.”  [Electric Railway Journal, Vol. 50, No. 21, November 24, 1917]  With special attention to its residential setting, the company also chose a design “embodying a simple, dignified beauty in its endeavor to make the building an attractive addition to the neighborhood, and one which would not detract from the value of the surrounding property.” We would call the style, with its red ornamental brick and tile insert frieze, the Prairie Style today.  The substation is still there although a new substation was built just to the north in the 1970’s.  

October 28, 1975 – In his Chicago Tribune column Jack Mabley awards the Mary Tyler Moore Show his “Bad Taste” award for the episode run on Saturday night three days earlier.  He says the show was “in incredibly bad taste.  Unless you think death and funerals can be hilarious.” [Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1975] The plot of the show had Chuckles the Clown, who had been a running gag in the series, talked about but never seen, dying in an accident.  Mary’s co-workers make jokes about the circumstances, and at the office she scolds her co-workers for their behavior.  During the funeral, though, it was she who could not control herself, as she breaks into prolonged and uncontrollable laughter.  Mabley wrote, “It’s not surprising that some boobnik could write a script like this, but that it would be accepted by the producers, and the actors, and the network, with no one questioning its offensiveness is a commentary on the depths to which televised mass entertainment has sunk.”  If you missed the original episode 42 years ago (WHA …), here it is. 

October 28, 1928 -- With the 1927 winner of the Nobel Prize, Professor Arthur Holly Compton, in the lead, a procession of 300 University of Chicago faculty members in their academic robes lead a procession into the university’s new Rockefeller Chapel for its dedication service.  Last in the procession is the Acting President of the university, Frederic Woodward and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., son of the benefactor who made the construction of the chapel possible.  As the procession enters the church a 150-voice choir sings O God Our Help in Ages Past.  During the service of dedication the Reverend Charles W. Gilkey is installed as Dean of the Chapel.  Gilkey concludes his short address by saying of the chapel, “It must not be a stone rolled from the ancient hillside, while the stream of life of this university goes around it.  It must be a channel through which that stream may flow, giving it new life and force.”   Rockefeller, Jr., on behalf of his father, addresses the assemblage, saying, “True religion means an abiding faith in God and our fellow man.  May this chapel help all who cross its threshold to lay hold upon so priceless a possession.  And may there be centered here a religion of activity and service as well as a religion of contemplation and faith.”   For an in-depth look at this special day and the generosity that made it possible, please head here.

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Labels: 1917, Chicago Architecture, Chicago Neighborhoods

Sunday, September 9, 2018

September 9, 1917 -- St. Clement Cornerstone Placed in Northside Ceremony

September 9, 1917 –The cornerstone of the Church of St. Clement at Deming Place and Orchard Street takes place at 3:30 p.m. in a ceremony at which Cardinal George Mundelein presides.  The Reverend John Webster Melody of St. Jariath’s church delivers the principal address of the afternoon, which stresses that in the national crisis brought on by the war in Europe “liberty and democracy mean greater national opportunity and are best served by spiritual means.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1917]After the service a parade of 2,000 men and boys moves past over 8,000 people, most of them members of the congregation. The church was designed by architect George D. Barnett in the Byzantine-Italian Romanesque Revival style, influenced by the architect’s design of the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.[openhousechicago.org]. In 2018 a SMNG A project to develop a new entrance to the church and parish center rectory buildings was awarded a Chicago Small Project Award by the American Association of Architects.

September 9, 1935 – A proposal to extend Wacker Drive from where it ends at Michigan Avenue by building a road east to the point where it is expected to join the new outer drive bridge is brought up in the City Council.  The estimated cost of the project, which will allow traffic from the west side of the Loop to reach the outer drive, is $1,700,000.  When the ordinance is read, Twenty-Fifth Ward Alderman James B. Bowler asks that consideration also be given to the extension of Wacker Drive along the south branch of the river from its present end at Madison Street to Roosevelt or Cermak Roads “in order to provide a connecting link with whatever superhighways might be constructed in the future to serve the west side.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1935] As it turned out, the extension of Wacker Drive to Lake Shore Drive was not completed until 1975, 40 years after the city council considered the resolution in 1935.  Even in the City that Works change can take a long, long time.  The above photo shows the completion of work on the Wacker Drive extension in 1975.  At that time it linked up with the old "S" curve south of the Lake Shore Drive bridge across the river.

September 9, 1975 – The trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago announce that no new students will be admitted to the Goodman School of Drama and the final class will graduate in the spring of 1978.  The chairman of the Goodman Theater committee, Stanley M. Freehling, says that it costs the Art Institute $200,000 a year to maintain a school of 25 faculty members for students who pay an average annual tuition of $1,950.  It is stated that the decision concerning the school will not affect the professional theater at the Goodman or future seasons on its main stage.  The school moved to DePaul University in 1977, and the following year the Goodman Theater separated officially from the Art Institute and now functions as the nonprofit Chicago Theatre Group, Inc.

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Labels: 1917, Chicago Events