Connecting the Windy City

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

September 23, 1931 -- Post Office Celebrates 20 Years of Air Mail Service

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September 23, 1931 – The city celebrates twenty years of air mail service, a period in which Chicago has taken a lead in moving the mail by airplane.  A quarter of the 9,000,000 pounds of air mail carried each year either originates or passes through Chicago.  Eighty planes depart from the city each day, carrying mail, passengers and freight, and air mail service is available to 140 cities in 44 states.   Twenty-six of the Chicago-based planes are operated by United Air Lines, one of the largest carriers in the country.   Air mail flights in the United States began in September of 1911 when eight pilots made daily flights from Garden City Estates in New York to Mineola, dropping mailbags from their planes to the ground.  Five years later the United States Congress approved $50,000 for air mail experimentation, and on May 15, 1918 regular air mail service between New York City and Washington, D. C. began.   On February 22, 1921 the first night flight from San Francisco to New York was staged, and in 1923 the Post Office Department began building a national network of beacons to guide flyers making their way across the country at night.  The first section of the route, from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Chicago, was built with emergency landing fields every 25 miles and five regular landing fields, each of which was marked by 50-foot towers with rotating beacons.  Between landing fields 289 beacons, visible for up to nine miles, were installed every three miles.  By 1925 this network had made it all the way to New York City.  As a separate class of service, domestic air mail ended in October 1975 when the Postal Service announced that First-Class postage, three cents cheaper than the air mail rate, would buy the same level of service.  [about.usps.com]

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September 23, 1933 – Sally Rand is found guilty of “willfully performing an obscene and indecent dance in a public place” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 24, 1933] by a jury of twelve men.  This is the second time she has been tried on a charge that began with warrants sworn out on August 4 after Rand’s performances at the Chicago Theater.  Before the jury adjourns the Assistant State’s Attorney proclaims, “Are you gentlemen, whether married or single, to permit the stamp of approval to be put on such a nude and indecent performance?  I warn you that if you do you will revive the animalism of Greece, approve the lust of Rome, set the stamp of approval on the free love of the middle ages and condone the loves of the Borgias.  You will return us to paganism.”  Previously, the jurors watched the dancer, dressed in a skirt and a high-necked satin blouse go through her moves in the courtroom before they adjourned to the jury room, where they needed just one hour and fifteen minutes to render a verdict. The judge waits until Rand returns from a performance at the theater before he pronounces the maximum sentence under the law – one year in jail and a fine of $200.  The judge denies a request from Rand’s attorney for a new trial although he does agree to a stay of 60 days to allow the attorney to file a motion and releases Rand on a bond of $2,000.  Rand says, “If the jury is right, and the dance I do actually is indecent, and the court is right in sentencing me to a year in jail, all I can say is that every one who is engaged in sculpture, painting, music or dancing ought to quit.”  Rand’s attorney reacts as well, saying, “It’s asinine for the law to permit us to view the life-size statue of a nude man in the Art Institute – and experts agree that a man is more ugly in the nude than a woman – and yet bring a criminal charge against a woman for dancing with her body covered with thick white cream.” 

September 23, 1933 – Another mile of Lake Shore Drive is opened to traffic from Montrose to Foster Avenue.  The road will only be open during the day as streetlights still need to be installed.  This will be the first major thoroughfare to be opened as a result of $20,840,000 in gasoline and license taxes that the Illinois legislature had approved earlier.  It is expected that 35,000 cars a day will be using the new road each day although there are still obstacles to be overcome.  The junction with Sheridan Road at Foster Avenue will be a significant bottleneck.  George Barton, an engineer for the Chicago Motor Club, says, “Unless every assistance is given to traffic at Sheridan road and Foster avenue the utility of the new mile of outer drive is seriously curtailed.  This intersection will be the new bottleneck in the north side boulevard system, replacing the present bottlenecks at Montrose and Clarendon avenues and at Lawrence avenue and Sheridan road.”  The junction of Sheridan and Foster is shown above several years after the Lake Shore Drive extension is opened.  The second photo shows the same area today.

September 23, 1933 – Work begins on the final section of the Field building being erected between Clark and La Salle Streets on the east and west and Adams and Monroe Streets on the south and north.  Steel workers begin erecting the first beams for the tower, which it is estimated will contain 4,000 tons of steel.  Three of the four corner units of the Art Deco tower, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, are complete with placement of steel for each section taking between 35 and 57 days.  

September 23, 1929 – Construction of the Wabash Avenue bridge begins, an event that, it is hoped, will usher in “the beginning of a new era of prosperity and business activity in the community …” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1929] Projected completion date for the new span is anticipated to be December 1, 1930 as the contractor in charge of the construction of the bridge’s sub-structure has been given 11 months to complete the work.  The bridge will connect the north end of Wabash Avenue at Wacker Drive with the south end of Cass Avenue on the north side of the river.  A viaduct will also be constructed across the tracks of the Chicago and North Western Railroad at Kinzie Street with a gradual grade bringing the road down to grade level at Illinois Street.  The $3,700,000 span will be a two-leaf, single deck bascule bridge, 232 feet long and 60 feet wide with sidewalks on each side of the bridge spanning 13 feet.  Completing the project entailed coming to terms with the C and NW concerning the placing of piers, columns and easements.  Before construction even begins, businessmen on Cass Street are planning improvements that they hope will bring shoppers, new businesses and residents to the area.

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Labels: 1931, Chicago Event

Thursday, July 23, 2020

July 23, 1931 -- Chicago Historical Society Moves into New Quarters

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July 23, 1931 – The cornerstone of the new Chicago Historical Society building at North Avenue and Clark Street is laid with no formal ceremonies.  Articles placed in the cornerstone include photographs of the society’s trustees, a list of members and contributors to the building fund, booklets containing the history of the society, and copies of daily newspapers.  The new building, a red brick Georgian-style museum designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, is officially opened on October 9, 1932.  In 1986 a new wing and an underground storage facility, along with a new façade was added according to designs by the architectural firm of Holabird and Root.  It is the city’s oldest cultural institution.

July 23, 1978 – Forty years ago on this date the Chicago Tribune runs an article on Wells Street with the headline, “Can Wells St. be Turned Around?” [Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1978] with the lead, “It’s a ragtag street, North Wells Street – a place that has been trying to be a lot of things at once, a place that has been up and, more recently, down.”  In the words of one Old Town merchant, as the area between Goethe on the south and Lincoln Avenue on the north began to change in the 70’s to nude dancing establishments and adult book stores, “The families didn’t want to come.  Those places are what killed us, and too much dope around – that’s not good.  No businessman here is making any money now. At the end of the week we’re pulling money from our pockets to pay the bills.”  Two months before the article runs, though, a collection of community groups in Old Town forms the Near North Association, and Robert A. Begassat, the president of the new group, says, “What we want to do is make Old Town a place people will come to again, and at the same time a place for the people in the neighborhood.”  Already, bowing to community pressure and increased police surveillance of prostitution, three of six bars with nude dancing have closed.  Recently, Alderman Burton F. Natarus successfully has passed a zoning change for the east side of Wells between Burton Place and Schiller designed to keep new taverns out. Sam Glassman, the president of the Old Town Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Book Joynt in Old Town, is cautiously optimistic, saying, “This street will never be what it once was, but if we can do half what we did, it will be terrific.  I’ve been here 12 years and I’ve seen it at the top and I’ve seen it at the bottom.  There’s only one way to go now, because we’ve hit the bottom.  But it’ll come back.”  And come back it has as a stroll down Wells Street on a July afternoon or a salad and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc at Topo Gigio will clearly show.

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July 23, 1975 – In Chicago as part of a 58-city tour, the Rolling Stones make a splash in the city that gave them the music that formed the heart of their act.  The group arrives at O’Hare with an entourage of 30 people, heading downtown to the Ambassador East in six limousines, arriving at 9:30 p.m.  Then come the suitcases with “a large truck depositing more than 130 pieces of luggage at the Ambassador’s doorstep.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1975]  The suitcases fill the entire lobby as “bellhops worked furiously until it disappeared like the stars and filled the 32 rooms Jagger had reserved.”  Then one of the guests on the fifteenth floor, Michael Benz, the assumed name of front man Mick Jagger, slips out the back door and heads to the Pump Room for dinner. From there he heads to Faces on Rush Street, where he “slumps in his seat, playing imaginary drums to the piped-in music, staring at the dance floor.”  Bumming a cigarette from a reporter, he remarks, “It can make you mad – the road.  No sleep, no regular food, a lot of drinking – crazy … very tired all the time.”  At 4:00 a.m. Faces closes down and Tribune reporter Rick Soll writes, “Mick Jagger goes out into the darkness, led to waiting cabs by his protectors … He turns, then stops to wave, then stops himself, shrugs, and climbs inside … They’re all strangers.”  Could this have REALLY been 45 years ago?  Whew .... THAT went by in a hurry.

July 23, 1925 – Chicago’s new Union Station is formally opened at 11:30 a. m.  The ceremonies begin with Mayor William Dever and other officials touring the structure that covers 35 acres just west of the river between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard.  After the tour is completed the guests are entertained at a luncheon served in the terminal's Fred Harvey restaurant.  The waiting rooms are finished in marble and cover an expanse as large as three baseball diamonds.   The terminal includes a jail for prisoners in transit, a hospital and a chapel.  Graham, Anderson, Probst and White are the architects of the complex.  The photo above shows the massive terminal as it appeared when it opened in 1925.

July 23, 1897 – Five thousand invitees come to the Art Institute of Chicago to honor the sculptor August St. Gaudens and the widow of General John A. Logan.  “For nearly two hours,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “the throng filed in and out of the room known as the Henry Field gallery, where they were greeted by Mrs. Logan, Mr. St. Gaudens, and the members of the receiving party.  Charles H. Hutchinson, President of the Art Institute, stood at the head of the line, introducing the guests to Mrs. Logan, who offered her hand to each in a hearty grasp.  Scores of times during the evening did Mrs. Logan demonstrate her rare faculty for remembering the names and faces of those whom she had met only casually before.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 24, 1897]  The event is held just two days after the widow of the great Civil War general arrives in the city from New York for the dedication of her husband’s statue in Grant Park.  The sculptor, August St. Gaudens, spends the evening of the Art Institute reception in humility.  The Tribune reports that he “stood almost at the end of the line of those receiving the guests.  He who was most talked of among the thousands who thronged the galleries and promenaded the corridors, who was the cynosure of all eyes, was in mien and bearing the most unassuming man in the entire assemblage.  With quiet dignity he received the congratulations that were showered upon him, his clear, keen eyes lighting up now and again as some artist friend added a word of appreciative criticism to his friendly greeting and congratulation.”  For more information on the Logan statue you can turn to this link in Connecting the Windy City.

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

Labels: 1931, Chicago Event, Chicago History, Clark Street, Museums

Friday, October 25, 2019

October 25, 1931 -- Home Insurance Building Gets a Final Inspection

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October 25, 1931 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a “host of architects” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 24, 1931] is studying the Home Insurance Building on the northeast corner of Adams and La Salle Streets as the building is “fast disappearing from the the sight of man."  The purpose of such careful examination is to determine “once and for all its claim to fame as the first structure of skyscraper construction ever to be erected in the world” with the understanding that the definition of a skyscraper is “a building of skeleton framework, with the outer walls hung onto and carried by the framework instead of supporting themselves as under construction methods carried on down through the ages.”  Part of the reason the careful examination is being made is to determine whether the Home Insurance Building is the first of its kind.  It had previously been thought that the Tacoma building at Madison and La Salle, designed by the architectural firm of Holabird and Roche, was the first true skyscraper.  Investigators have discovered that the upper three floors of William Le Baron Jenney’s Home Insurance Building, added some time after the building went up, are of steel construction.  Below the sixth floor heavy wrought iron beams have been found.  A representative of the American Institute of Steel Construction has verified that he had found “no deterioration in the metal work.”  The owner of the salvage yard to which several thousand tons of metal from the building have been brought, A. J. Clonick states that “So far as the metal work is concerned the Home Insurance building could have remained standing until doomsday.”  An entire window bay taken from between the third and fourth floors of the building has been turned over to the Museum of Science and Industry where the 16 x 16-foot section will be part of an exhibit showing the origins and development of the skyscraper.  Today the Art Deco-inspired Field Building at 135 South La Salle stands where the first metal-framed skyscraper in history once stood.

October 25, 1925 –A neat photo appears in the Chicago Daily Tribune on this day that shows “a significant and impressive step in the creation of Wacker Drive out of old South Water street …” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 25, 1925] In the background of the photo is the ten-story warehouse and office building occupied by Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett and Co., a building that is in the process of being razed to make way for the construction of Wacker Drive.  In the foreground, across South Water Street is the skeleton of the first few floors of the Jewelers’ Building, today’s 35 East Wacker Drive.  The top photo shows the photo that accompanied the Tribune article.  Below that is the area as it looks today from approximately the same angle. The last photo shows the ten-story warehouse that was removed to make room for the building of Wacker Drive from Wabash to State Street.

October 25, 1957 – The Chicago Sun-Times begins moving from 211 West Wacker Drive into its new headquarters \on the north branch of the Chicago River between Wabash Avenue and Rush Street.  Completion of the move is expected by the end of November. As part of the groundbreaking ceremonies in November of 1955, 600 dignitaries, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, Governor William Stratton, and Senator Everett Dirksen, came together in the Palmer House to celebrate what was considered to be the keystone of the Fort Dearborn Project, a plan to redevelop the city north of the river and west of Michigan Avenue.  The building was the first building in the city to use “curtain wall” technology, in which the building’s steel frame provides structural integrity, and the window glass and mullions act as a curtain covering that frame. The structure was designed by the architectural firm of Naess and Murphy, the same firm that designed the Prudential building, finished two years before the Sun Times building opened.  Critical opinions of the building differed.  Said Professor Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois at Chicago, “If it got as far as 2007, there would be a very considerable interest in putting it on the National Register of Historic Places.  A lot of these buildings are killed off at just the moment before they come back into their own.” [Chicago Magazine, January 5, 2004] The building was leveled to make way for Trump Tower which opened in 2008.

October 25, 1974 – Riding a 40-horse wagon, following a parade of elephants, clowns and circus wagons, sculptor Alexander Calder rides into the Loop to dedicate two sculptures.  As Calder’s wagon stops at the Dirksen Federal Building Plaza at Dearborn and Adams, architect Carter Manny, Jr. blows a whistle and announces, “Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, I present to the people the one and only Alexander the Great – Sandy Calder.”  [Chicago Tribune, October 26, 1974]  The sculptor and Mayor Richard J. Daley share a gigantic pair of scissors to cut the rope surrounding the 53-foot-high Flamingo.  In his remarks His Honor calls the Loop, “one of the world’s largest outdoor museums for contemporary sculpture” before naming Calder an honorary Chicago citizen.  Arthur Sampson, head of the General Services Administration that commissioned the $350,000 sculpture, reads a letter from President Gerald Ford that calls the Federal Center sculpture “a conspicuous milestone in the federal government’s effort to create a better environment.”  The entourage continues on to Sears Tower where Calder sets in motion his 32-foot-high kinetic wall mural and delivers his only speech of the day, saying, “Mr. Arthur Wood [the board chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company] wanted me to give it a name.  So I thought of a name.  I call it, ‘Mr. Wood’s Universe.’”

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:00 AM 2 comments

Labels: 1931, Adams Street, Chicago Architecture, La Salle Street, Madison Street

Friday, April 6, 2018

April 6, 1931 -- Lincoln Square Library Opens

April 6, 1931 – A new regional branch of the Chicago Public Library at 4536 Lincoln Avenue is dedicated at 3:00 p.m. with its opening to the general public anticipated within a week.  It will be the largest regional library branch in the city with more than 60,000 volumes and a capacity of up to 80,000 volumes.  The library will fulfill two functions: (1) to lend books to the area in the surrounding community and (2) to furnish books to other branch libraries in the north and northwest sections of the city.  Ms. Jessie Reed, formerly the librarian at the Sheridan branch, will supervise a staff of 32 assistants.  Books in 20 languages will be on the shelves with a large German collection. The library is named after Frederick Hild, the city’s chief librarian from 1887 to 1909.  Hild was the guy who oversaw the planning and construction of the city’s main library on Michigan Avenue, the city’s cultural center today.   Fifty years later the collection became too large for the original building, and a new library opened just up the street at 4455 North Lincoln Avenue.  The Hild building sat vacant for over ten years before the Old Town School of Folk Music made a deal with the city in the early 1990’s to renovate the structure, turning it into one of the most artistically vibrant spaces in the city. The above photos show the original Art Deco Hild Library and today's Old Town School of Folk Music.

April 6, 1968 – Four thousand national guard troops are on city streets and three more units are on alert as rioting and looting rage on the city’s south side.  Heavy sniper fire pins policemen and firemen working fires near Sixty-Fifth Street and Ingleside, and crowds continue to grow between Cottage Grove and South Park Avenues on Sixty-First, Sixty-Third, and Sixty-Seventh Streets.  Deaths attributed to the rioting stand at nine, and at least 800 have been arrested as hundreds are left homeless and thousands more have no electric power.  One of the worst areas of destruction is the area of Roosevelt Road between Kedzie and Homan Avenues.  Thirty buildings on the south side of the street are set on fire with 16 more on the north side torched.  The fire alarm that signals the beginning of the riots is turned in at 3:49 p.m. on April 5 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the previous evening. Eventually 125 arson fires are reported with 210 buildings burned or heavily damaged.

April 6, 1878 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune launches yet another editorial about the conditions found on the South Fork of the South branch of the Chicago River, widely known today as "Bubbly Creek." "Throughout the mile or more of its course there is absolutely nothing to gladden its wretchedness or to hide its beggarly rags of muddy bank and oozing filth," the paper moans. "A dirtier, uglier, more wretched-looking body of water it would be hard to find . . . the Fork is worse than ever before, for the reason that its present state is as bad as could possibly be attained." And it got worse . . .

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Labels: 1931, Chicago Events, Chicago Neighborhoods