Connecting the Windy City

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

November 26, 1938 -- Moody Bible Institute Unveils New Auditorium Plans

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November 26, 1938 – The president of the Moody Bible Institute, Dr. Will H. Houghton, announces that plans are in place for a half-million dollar auditorium, an addition that will require the razing of one of the city’s oldest landmarks, the original Moody Church, built in 1872 at the northwest corner of Chicago Avenue and La Salle Street.  The auditorium, designed by architecture firm Thielbar and Fugard, will be one of the largest of its kind in Chicago with a seating capacity of 3,000.  The new auditorium comes on the heels of another project nearing completion for the Moody campus, a twelve-story administration building on La Salle Street.  The last step in Moody’s building program will be the removal of fourteen feet from the front of the women’s dormitory building on La Salle Street to allow the city’s widening of the street.  Since the founding of the institute n 1886 more than 130,000 students have received education and training there.  More than 2,100 students have gone on to serve as missionaries in 70 countries.  The Torrey Gray Auditorium is pictured above. 

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November 26, 1978 – Before the Big Snow that would end his career moves in, Mayor Michael Bilandic unveils a $7.4-billion public works plan that over a period of five years “promises to change the face of much of Chicago by the early 1980’s.” [Chicago Tribune, November 27, 1978]  Nearly $1.1 billion will fund projects in the heart of downtown.  The biggest of these projects, one that never made it off the wish list, is the Franklin Street subway project that, as it is proposed, will run beneath Franklin Street in the Loop. $173.8 million will go toward roads and infrastructure improvements associated with the development of Illinois Center.  Columbus Drive will be extended to the north from Monroe Street at a cost of $44.7 million, and a Columbus Drive bridge across the river will be built for $20.2 million.  Also in the works is the straightening of the “S-Curve” on Lake Shore Drive, relocating and reconstructing Lake Shore Drive from Wacker Drive south to Twenty-Third Street, extending Roosevelt Road and Eighteenth Street from Michigan Avenue to Lake Shore Drive, completing the rehabilitation of Navy Pier, and the construction of a new State of Illinois office building at the site of the old Sherman House Hotel.  Away from downtown, the biggest project is the Crosstown Expressway, expected to cost in excess of a billion dollars, following a path along South Cicero Avenue from the Eisenhower Expressway to Midway Airport and from the airport on a southeasterly path along an undetermined route to join Route 57. Upgrading terminals and construction of a new terminal at O’Hare Airport will take up another billion dollars.   All in all, the plan totals close to 30 major projects, and with the exception of the Franklin Street subway (which most probably would have brought the end of the Loop elevated structure) and the Crosstown Expressway project, it is amazing to see how much of the plan actually was brought to completion.   Although the reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive as it passes the museum campus did not occur for nearly two decades, it was one of the items listed on the ambitious five-year plan Bilandic revealed.  The comparison of the two photos shows what a dramatic difference just this one project made.

November 26, 1877 – The City Council takes up a special ordinance authorizing the leasing of lake front property to the “Chicago Base-Ball Club” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 17, 1877] for a fee of $1,000 a year.  There is a spirited exchange.  One alderman asserted that “if the city hadn’t the right to sell the ground, it hasn’t the right to lease it.”  An opposing alderman said that “there was nothing whatever in the proposition that would be detrimental to the city, and that there was no good reason why it should not be accepted.”  After various amendments are offered and rejected, the ordinance is approved.  Thus, at a cost of a thousand bucks the team that would eventually become the Chicago Cubs is given permission to play “base-ball” on the northeast corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue where Wrigley Square and the Millennium peristyle stand today.  After playing four years at a park on Twenty-Third Street, the team would move in 1878 to the new lakefront park.  In 1877 the team finished second-to-last in the National League with a record of 26-33. The move bumped them up one notch and four games as the team finished fourth out of six teams with a record of 30-30.

November 26, 1963 – The first steel column for the new Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States building at 401 North Michigan Avenue is put in place at 10:00 a.m.  Workers for United States Steel place the 19-ton, 35-foot long column in position on the north side of the site that sits between Tribune Tower to the north and the Chicago River on the south.  The tower, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, will be located on the site where Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, built his home in the early 1780’s, a site that is a National Historic Landmark.  The Chicago Tribune sold the land to Equitable on the condition that the new building could not be taller than Tribune Tower.  Today 401 North Michigan has been joined by a new neighbor to the south as the new Apple store continues to wow visitors with its transparent design. Its older neighbor, Tribune Tower, is currently under renovation as it moves into a new life as a residential building while the tallest residential building in the city is proposed for a parking lot just to the northeast.

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Labels: 1938, Chicago Architecture, La Salle Street

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

August 20, 1938 -- Douglas Corrigan, the "Wrong Way" Flyer, Mobbed by Chicagoans

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August 20, 1938 – Police estimate that a half-million people line the ten-mile route from the Chicago Airport, today’s Midway International Airport, at Sixty-Third and Cicero Avenue to the Chicago City Hall, every one of them straining to get a glimpse of Douglas Corrigan, the young aviator who, weeks earlier, had completed a solo flight from New York to Dublin, Ireland. “I like it,” Corrigan says modestly. “But I don’t understand it.  I’ve been getting the same thing everywhere. It’s surely strange.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 21, 1938].  The crowd begins to gather at the airport two hours before Corrigan’s expected touch-down at 11:00 a.m.  The pilot arrives exactly on time as 50,000 spectators line Cicero Avenue outside the airport.  He is met in front of an American Airlines hangar by Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly, who welcomes him, saying, ”Son, we’re really glad to see you. I’m Mayor Kelly.  You’re the kind of folks we like to see.”   Corrigan responds, “Two months ago I didn’t expect ever to be in a situation like this.  I’m in your hands and whatever you say goes.”  With that the entourage is off to City Hall, where the aviator answers a few questions from reporters after spending a few moments with the mayor in his private office.  Then it is off to the Blackstone Hotel for a luncheon, followed by a tour of the city’s parks and a stop at the Edward Hines Hospital in Maywood where Corrigan is cheered by veterans.  A dinner in his honor is held at the Chicago Athletic Association where Corrigan is asked about the most money he has ever made in a year.  “Oh, about a thousand dollars,” he answers.  “Do you have any ambition to make any more,” another questioner asks.  “What’s the use,” answers Corrigan, who is rumored to have received offers from major movie sutdios as well as from airline companies.  “The government’ll take it all away anyhow, and, so far as I can see, it deesn’t put the taxes it collects to any good purpose.  I don’t want any more money.”  Corrigan caught the attention of an American public, starved for some good news in the throes of a world-wide depression.  In a plane he had virtually constructed himself, and with a fuel tank that he knew was leaking gasoline when he took off, he made the trip from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York to Baldonnel Aerodrome in County Dublin after a 28-hour, 13-minute flight with provisions consisting of two chocolate bars, two boxes of fig bars, and a quart of water.   The plane had no radio, and the compass he used was 20-years-old.

August 20, 1936 – Before a crowd of more than 10,000 people, Mayor Edward Kelly and other city officials dedicate the new Ashland Avenue bridge over the north branch of the Chicago River at Elston and Clybourn Avenues.  The bridge is worth the $1,713,000 it costs to build it because it is the final link in the widening and extension of Ashland Avenue from Ninety-Fifth street to Devon avenue, a project that began in 1922.  A parade of cars begins at Sixty-Ninth Street and moves along Ashland to Milwaukee Avenue where it is joined by a series of floats that depict the development of the city’s traffic from horse cars to streetcars and buses.  Kelly says, “All of the city will benefit by this great improvement.  It required much planning and is a concrete expression of the ‘I WILL’ spirit of Chicago.  It is a credit to the community, a mark of achievement.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 21, 1936]

August 20, 1899 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on a controversy surrounding United States government buildings at the upcoming Paris exposition.  The man in charge of settling the kerfuffle is Chicagoan Ferdinand W. Peck, who must somehow come to a decision regarding the huge issue of whether the letter “V” or “U” will be used on American buildings at the exposition.  Those who argue against substituting the “V” in words that normally would use “U” say that the substitution “is an unwarranted bowing of the knee to the French, an effort unduly to honor words already borrowed from them and a pledge that the United State by and by will make their entire language its own.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 20, 1899] Peck is the one man most responsible for seeing the great Auditorium Theater built a decade earlier, and that building on Congress Street and Michigan Avenue uses “V” in place of “U” in its nameplate.  One of the architects of the Auditorium, Louis Sullivan, says, “The letter “V’ has always been considered more artistic than the letter “U” … the letter is ugly, totally too heavy in the lower portion, and made of no artistic lines.  The “V” is copied from the old Roman and may be found in practically every inscription designed by an artist or an architect.”  In Rome the Latin language of antiquity had no “U,” so one could speculate that the use of the “V” in neo-classical design enhances the effect of the design style.  One could also ask a stone carver which letter he or she would prefer to carve and be fairly accurate in predicting the response. 

August 20, 1980 – Things become heated at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Dearborn Street as Judge Marvin Aspen sends 14 sweaty jurors downstairs to the offices of the General Services Administration to complain about conditions in the “sweltering courtroom.”  “Maybe they’ll listen to you,” the judge says.  “They certainly ought to, because you’re paying their salary.”  The Chicago Tribune reports that the assistant building engineer, Michael O’Connell, tells the jurors, “Don’t expect it any lower than 80,” as he explains President Carter’s energy guidelines, which call for the cooling of public buildings to no less than 80 degrees.  The real problem, though, seems to be with the engineering of the building.  According to the Tribune, “In recent years, some Dirksen Building courtrooms have been so hot or so cold that a number of judges have said they cannot conduct business and have threatened to cite the GSA for contempt of court for obstruction of justice.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1980]    

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Labels: 1938, Chicago Events, Midway Airport

Monday, March 18, 2019

March 18, 1938 -- Central Trust Company Building Is Razed

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March 18, 1938 – Wreckers begin the razing of the Central Trust Company building at Monroe and La Salle Streets with the cleared site to be used as a parking lot.  The Central Trust Company, completed in 1900, housed a number of different financial institutions.  The Home Savings Bank and offices occupied the first floor.  On the second and third floors the Equitable Trust Company was located.  Offices of the Chicago National Bank, the Home Savings bank, the Equitable Trust Company and the Chicago Safe Deposit Company were scattered throughout the building.  There was a café for the use of employees and bank officers on the fourth floor.  The basement was “fitted with the largest, most complete, and most luxurious safe deposit vaults in the world.”  [chicagology.com]   It must have been a magnificent building with walls “made of the rarest and most beautiful marble that man has yet wrested from the bosom of the earth,” much of it Pavanazzo marble, imported from Carrara. The banking room on the first floor was also adorned with sixteen murals painted by Lawrence C. Earle, depicting scenes in the growth of the city from the winter quarters of Father Marquette in 1674 to the Chicago River at Lake Street in 1900.  A Skidmore, Owings and Merrill office tower rising 37 stories was completed on this site in 1974.  The former building and the new tower are shown in the photos above.

March 18, 2014 – Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Senator Dick Durbin announce that work will begin on an elevated lakefront path, stretching for 1,750 feet, near Navy Pier.  The $60 million, multi-year project will be called the Navy Pier Flyover, and it has been on the drawing board for over ten years.  The construction process will consist of three tricky phases in one of the most congested areas of the city.  In fact, part of the structure will run just nine inches to the west of Lake Point Tower, and engineers will have to remove part of the shoulder of Lake Shore Drive to  wedge the path into place. Phase one will begin on the lakefront trail just north of the Ohio Street Beach and move to the north bank of Ogden Slip with a spur for bicyclers and pedestrians leading toward Navy Pier.  Phase two will carry the flyover across Ogden Slip.  Phase three will bridge the Chicago River, alongside Lake Shore Drive before sloping down to DuSable Park.  The last phase is expected to finish up in the spring of 2018 (although that has now been changed to sometime beyond mid-2019).  In most places the new trail will be 16 feet wide, a superior trek for bikers and walkers who have been forced to vie with one another on a dark, narrow sidewalk across the lower level of the Lake Shore Drive bridge.

March 18, 1903 – The Chicago Daily Tribune editorializes favorably about a bill that will be discussed in Springfield allowing “the commissioners in charge of parks and boulevards bordering on public waters to extend them over and upon the bed of such public waters.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 8, 1903] One result of the bill, if approved, will be the ability of the south park commissioners to gain title to the submerged land several hundred yards off shore from Jackson Park north to the Lake-Front Park.  “There is no room for differences of opinion as to the wisdom of an enabling act of this kind,” the editorial writers state.  “It will save for public use and enjoyment what may otherwise be lost to the city.  Chicago has what few other great cities have, a frontage upon a large body of water.  That natural advantage has been utilized thus far for esthetic purposes in Lincoln and Jackson parks … There is no reason why there should not be in the future a lake front open to the people between Grant and Jackson parks.”   The editorial admits that the ability to take advantage of the city’s riparian rights will be hindered by a lack of financing to fund a project of this size.  Despite this the editorial concludes, “The bill to give the park commissioners title to the submerged lands should pass without opposition.  Then the lands will be preserved for the city to be utilized by it when it shall be in a position to do so.”  The above photo, taken in 1907, shows the ongoing project of creating made land in the area that is today Grant Park.

March 18, 1895 -- Twenty paintings by Claude Monet are placed on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. They are described by the Chicago Daily Tribune as "much more rational than those of his followers and imitators. They form an interesting showing of the rapid noting of illusive appearances in nature upon which the fame of the painter rests." Monet had been painting since 1856 and had completed his "Grain Stacks" series, a kind of visual manifesto for Impressionism in 1890. He had painted his series of Rouen Cathedral in 1892 through 1894. It would be interesting to know what 20 paintings went on display in the new building that the Art Institute had occupied for only two years when Monet's works went on display.

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Labels: 1938, Chicago Architecture, La Salle Street, Monroe Street

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

February 12, 1938 -- Lake Street to Become an Elevated Superhighway?

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February 12, 1938 –Mayor Edward Kelly announces that he is considering a proposal to convert the Lake Street elevated line into a superhighway, using a $10,000,000 loan from the federal government. Kelly says, “Proponents point out that with a federal loan construction on this Lake street job might be started promptly … A toll of 10 cents per passenger car and perhaps 3 cents from each bus fare would probably be sufficient to make a federal loan self-liquidating.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 13, 1938]  In a November 22, 1937 report city engineers wrote that the Lake Street elevated structure could be converted into a four-lane elevated highway from the Chicago River to a point three-quarters of a mile from the western city limits for $6,750,000.  The price included entrance and exit ramps at the western end of the highway and a terminal at Wacker Drive and Washington Street.  Engineers also estimate that a six-lane elevated highway could be built on Randolph Street, connecting with Lake Street at Union Park just east of Ashland Avenue, for approximately $3,250,000.  A key feature of the plan is that, unlike the Congress Street highway plan, which requires an expenditure of over $17,000,000 for land and acquisition and the razing of buildings, a Lake Street toll road would require no additional land acquisition for its right of way.  It is probably a good thing this one didn't get done.

February 12, 1893 – The Chicago Daily Tribune runs a long feature article on sculptor Philip Martiny.  We don’t hear a whole lot about the guy today, but back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s he was quite the stone chiseling fellah.  At the time of the Tribune article Martiny was finishing up work on most of the sculptural work for the Agriculture Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition.  The majority of the sculptures at the Palace of Arts, today’s Museum of Science and Industry, was the product of Martiny’s workshop as well.  The carved spandrels that sit atop the arches on the Michigan Avenue side of the Art Institute of Chicago are also from Martiny’s design.  Martiny was born in Strasbourg, a city that teetered back and forth between French and German rule over the centuries.  When it once again became part of Germany, the sculptor, who was at the time designing furniture, came to the United States at the age of 20 to avoid being conscripted into the military.  A stroke of good fortune led him to study with the great sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens for five years at which point he opened his own studio.  Martiny only spent a year or so in Chicago as he worked on his groupings for the Columbian Exposition; most of his work was done in New York where he kept his studio.  It was a momentous year, though, and although his name has slipped into obscurity, the fact that he was chosen to work on enhancing the palaces of the Great White City shows how much his work was valued at the time.

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ebruary 12, 1955 – Authorities begin an investigation into the fire that kills 29 men and injures over a dozen more at the Barton Hotel.  It is estimated that 245 men are asleep in the hotel, located on four floors above the Standard Store Fixture Company at 644-48 West Madison Street.  Many of the victims are down-and-out men who are trapped in “cagelike rooms” that they have rented for 60 to 85 cents a night.  [Chicago Tribune, February 13, 1955] The Tribune describes the sleeping accommodations as “cubicles four feet wide, six feet long, and seven feet high.  The bunks were separated by corrugated iron sheets and each was covered at the top by meshed chicken wire.  An aisle ran between each two rows of cubicles.”  The fire starts just after midnight on the second floor, and flames quickly spread to the upper floors, engulfing the building as men, blinded and choked by thick smoke, run, screaming, toward exits.  Firemen are hampered by temperatures close to zero, and three of them are injured in the desperate attempt to rescue victims.  The hotel maintenance man, Tony Dykes, says, “About 2 a.m. I heard someone in the back of the hotel holler: ‘Fire!’ … I heard the alarm go off in the hotel and then the lights went out.  I went back toward room 137 to see what I could do, but the smoke was so thick I had to give up.”

February 12, 1949 -- A spokesman for the North Central association charges that construction of a huge water filtration plant on 55 acres north of Navy Pier would cause property values on the near north side to plummet. Frederick M. Bowes, vice president of the association, says that if the city attempts to build the plant it would be in violation of a contract signed by the former Lincoln Park board when riparian rights were obtained for the construction of what is now the inner drive, and he promises that the association will fight in the courts to have the project stopped. Harry L. Wells, the business manager for Northwestern University, which controls a significant chunk of land in the area (and still does), says, "We'd like to see a fine territory developed around the university. When you start putting a filtration plant there it isn't going go be that kind of territory." The purification plant was, tied up in court for years, but it finally opened in 1968 as the James W. Jardine Water Purification Plant in the exact spot on which it was originally proposed.

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Labels: 1938, Lake Street, Randolph Street, Transportation

Monday, December 17, 2018

December 17, 1938 -- Subway Construction Kicks Off

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December 17, 1938 –The first dirt is turned in the $40 million project to bring a subway to the city, a project that has been in the discussion stages for over 50 years.  Thousands of citizens on the sidewalks of LaSalle Street follow a parade of local officials and city leaders to just south of Chicago Avenue where the ceremonies convene on State Street.  In 24-degree weather Public Works Administrator Harold L. Ickes delivers a 3,000-word speech, saying, “Today we are able to come together to inaugurate the most portentous civic undertaking since this city shook off the ashes of the great fire and started hopefully and determinedly to build again for the future … The subway that we inaugurate today will be only a beginning. As the city is able to extend it, this will be done, until Chicago will have as complete an underground traction system as any city in the world.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 18, 1938]  Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly says, “Chicago digs its first spadeful of pay dirt today … Day and night during the coming months the barometer of business in Chicago will respond to this mighty stimulus of money and men in overalls … We did not want to wind up with a makeshift transportation system.  We are achieving modern transportation in step with the times.  Yes, it has taken almost half a century to get under way, but Chicago has got what it wants – and without additional taxes or special assessments.”  The plan is to run the subway from Congress Avenue north to Lake Street, west under Lake Street to Canal Street, then northwest under Milwaukee Avenue to meet the Logan-Humboldt elevated lines.  The line opened in October of 1943.  A second subway project was suspended during World War II and was opened in February of 1951.  The above photo shows subway construction in progress on State Street, looking north from Madison Street.

December 17, 1905 – Looking back over the preceding year, the Chicago Daily Tribune reports that in 1904 the city erected “the equivalent of over forty-seven solid miles of buildings, single frontage, costing approximately $62,000,000.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 17, 1905] Additionally, the real estate transactions for the year totaled approximately $140,000,000.  The construction of apartment houses was double that of 1904, and “despite all these new buildings, builders and agents having them in charge report that they are being filled as soon as completed.”  The southern portions of the city lead the building boom which, the article points out, “simply goes to show what must be accepted as a great sociological fact, that the foreign elements of Chicago’s population, which predominate in the northwest division of the city, are greater home builders and are more attached to the individual home than the more well to do native born element which predominates n the south division.”  Leading the city as far as factory and warehouse construction is the new Sears, Roebuck and Co. plant on Harvard Street on the city’s west side.  In the central business district there were 71 real estate transactions, 30 more than in 1904 and “there is no doubt that they have strengthened greatly, especially in the choicest section of the business district,” where Joseph Leiter refused a $60,000-a-year rental of a small lot at the southeast corner of State Street and Jackson Boulevard which “at the present time … is a trifle startling, to say the least.”  The above photo shows the Sears complex on the west side, designed by Nimmons and Fellows, and begun in 1905.

December 17, 1936 – The Chicago Park District announces a project that will hopefully streamline the traffic flowing through Lincoln Park while providing a new bathing beach and bathhouse for the area as well.  A $1,100,000 grant from the Works Progress Administration is still needed to get the plan going, but when fully funded the project will carry Lake Shore Drive past North Avenue for another half-mile while La Salle Street will be extended from its terminus at Stockton Drive to meet the new section of Lake Shore Drive.  Additionally, a breakwater will be built 1,500 feet from the shoreline at North Avenue, and sand will be used to fill the space between the new breakwater and the shore, creating a new beach.  It is hoped that the new plan will reduce the congestion that has plagued the two lanes of Stockton Drive as it winds through the park, carrying rush hour traffic from both LaSalle Street and Lake Shore Drive south of North Avenue.  The 1934 photo above shows Stockton Drive to the left, winding north past the statue of Abraham Lincoln that today stands below and south of the La Salle Street extension.

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Labels: 1938, La Salle Street, Lake Street, Transportation