Connecting the Windy City

Thursday, May 7, 2020

May 7, 1941 -- South Side Community Art Center Dedicated

magazine.iit.edu May 7, 1941 – Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt spends ten hours in Chicago, during which time she dedicates the South Side Community Art Center at 3831 South Michigan Avenue.  Dr. Margaret Burroughs, a graduate of Englewood High School, with a group of other African American artists, collarborated in the establishment of a place where their art could be created and displayed.  Burroughs served, at the age of 25, as the youngest member of the center’s Board of Directors.  She would spend much of her career, teaching at DuSable High School.  During that career she and her husband, Charles, co-founded what is today the DuSable Museum of African American History.  Chicago’s Thirty-First Street beach is named after her as, among her many other accomplishments, she served as a commissioner of the Chicago Park District for 25 years.  The South Side Community Art Center was established with help from the Federal Art Project of Illinois, which was itself part of the Works Progress Administration, a massive federal effort to provide relief to a wide variety of Americans suffering as a result of the Depression of the 1930’s.  The government agreed to provide an administrative staff, faculty, and renovation funds for the center if the community would raise the money to purchase a building and the necessary supplies to make it function.  It is still in operation today.  According to its website, “SSCAC continues to serve as an established resource for the art community locally, nationally and abroad.  As the oldest African American art center in the USA SSCAC takes pride in its past and present contributions to the development and showcasing of emerging and established artists.”  The center seeks to nurture and educate young artists, providing gallery space, along with educational programs.  The building in which the center is located was completed in 1893.  Architect Gustav Hallberg designed the building as a home for grain merchant George A. Seaverns, Jr.

May 7, 1993 –The Chicago Tribune reports that the United States Coast Guard has approved a request by the city to restrict the opening of river bridges to recreational boaters.  The trial period will run through May 31, “to see if the city request for the additional restriction on the operations of the bridges would be feasible.” [Chicago Tribune, May 7, 1993] Under the provisions of the plan bridges will be opened for recreational boaters only between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Sundays and after 6:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  There must be at least five boats in a group in order for the bridges to open with 25 boats as the top limit.  Additionally, a request must be made to the city at least 24 hours in advance. For years Mayor Richard J. Daley had groused about opening the river bridges for pleasure boaters, saying at one point, “Did you ever see a sailboat at 12 o’clock, downtown, you see one sailboat going down the Chicago River? You have to raise all these bridges for one sailboat – then you wonder why fire and police can’t get across and you wonder why when [bridges] get stuck.”  Once the test period is over, the city must support its claim of heavy surface traffic over the bridges by supplying the Coast Guard with the number of vehicles passing in 15-minute periods over two weeks, among other forms of documentation. Today the bridges raise for pleasure boaters during the spring and autumn months on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  In the above 1993 photo pleasure boaters sail north past the Civic Opera building, headed for the main stem of the river and Lake Michigan.

May 7, 1959 – The Chicago Daily Tribune engages in a bit of gloating after a day earlier it had run an editorial that called for the revival of a 1957 proposal for the improvement of the south bank of the Chicago River near the Michigan Avenue bridge.  Voices are heard in City Hall endorsing the long-range plan that includes the extension of Wacker Drive east from Michigan Avenue to meet Lake Shore Drive as well as “a river bank of flowers with outdoor, French type cafes spotted along the banks.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1959] With the exception of a 190-foot city-owned parcel just east of the bridge, the land on the south bank is owned by the Illinois Central Railroad.  The article includes a rendering, shown above, that gives an idea of what the south bank might look like if the plan is implemented.

J. Bartholomew Photo

May 7, 1902 – Hundreds of people line Lake Shore Drive north of Oak Street to pay a final tribute to Potter Palmer. The Reverend James S. Stone, rector of St. James’ Episcopal Church, leads modest services inside the Palmer mansion. The honorary pallbearers are led by Marshall Field and Robert T. Lincoln. Active pallbearers include: Carter H. Harrison, J. Ogden Armour, Frank O. Lowden, H. G. Selfridge, James H. Eckels, Cyrus H. McCormick, Watson E. Blair, and Otto Gresham. Carriages line up on Schiller, entering the mansion’s yard through the north gate as Mrs. Palmer, accompanied by her sons, Potter Palmer, Jr. and Honoré, enter them for the ride to Graceland Cemetery. Large delegations from the Iroquois Club and the Hotel Men’s Association also are present.

world'sfairchiago1893.com

May 7, 1893 –A sad day at the World’s Columbian Exposition as poor General Davis, a Florida alligator, is laid to rest, having succumbed to the less-than-tropical conditions of the fair’s lagoon.  It seems that five weeks earlier two alligators were caught in Central Florida and shipped to the Fisheries Department of the World’s Fair.  They were named Columbus and General Davis and upon arrival at the fairgrounds, they were “given space at the edge of the Lagoon.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 8, 1893].  Apparently, no one stopped to consider that an early May day in Florida is a considerably different day than one finds in Chicago.  The newspaper account dryly observed, “After the ‘gators had shivered in the lagoon for a day or two, it was determined to take them out again and give them warmer quarters until the weather got warmer.”  The guests from Florida were in no mood to be moved once again and “the Aquarians showed fight, and everyone was afraid to go near them.” At last, though, they were taken to the Horticultural Building and allowed to bask in the 90-degree heat – too late, it seems, for poor General Davis, and notification was sent that one dead alligator needed to be transported from the building.  A gang showed up, led by an unfortunate soul “who simply knew that he was to find an alligator in a box and haul it off and who thought it was a simple affair.”  The worker, wielding an axe, knocked the top off the box and “seized the animal by the tail in a business-like way”.  Columbus, the live alligator, had been roused.  The creature’s tail “flourished around for a minute or two like the tail of a terrier; and but for the sides of the box would have broken every bone in the man’s body … the great jaws opened and shut savagely with a clash like a steel trap, and the snorting of the insulted alligator could be heard down at the Administration building.”  The worker who opened the box fled and would not return.  The rest of the gang nailed the top back on the box, then lifted the “rude casket” of General Davis into a wagon and headed off.  The wagon’s driver accepted the hide of General Davis in return for his morning’s work.

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Labels: 1941, Architects, Chicago Event, Michigan Avenue

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

July 17, 1941 -- Blighted Areas Identified for Renewal

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July 17, 1941 – The executive director of the Chicago Plan Commission, T. T. McCrosky, designates three additional areas of the city as “blight districts” suitable for redevelopment by a private corporation.  The first area is on the North Side in an area bounded by Chicago Avenue, the alley between Rush Street and Michigan Avenue, Grand Avenue, and the alley west of Wells Street.  The second area is on the West Side in an area bounded by Congress Street, Racine Avenue, Roosevelt Road, Canal Street from Roosevelt north to Polk street, Polk Street west to a line with Union Avenue, and north to Congress Street.  The final area is on the South Side, an area bounded by Federal Street, Thirty-First Street, Lake Park Avenue, and Twenty-Sixth Street. McCrosky says, “All three of the districts I have designated would be suitable for apartment houses.  The one on the north side should be for the benefit of middle salaried white collar workers … The west side district which also would permit the worker to walk to the loop, would provide for the start of a general west side improvement.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 18, 1941]  McCrosky’s announcement comes a week after Illinois Governor Dwight H. Green signs the Neighborhood Redevelopment Corporation Act, which permits private corporations to condemn property for slum clearance … but only after the corporation has obtained 60 percent of the land needed for the project and has received approval from a municipal redevelopment commission. 

July 17, 1933 – A parade to honor General Italo Balbo and the aviators who accompanied him from Italy to Chicago begins at the Stevens Hotel on Michigan Avenue at 2:30 p.m. and proceeds north to the bridge across the Chicago River.  The Italians ride in United States Army cars and are escorted by cavalry troops from Camp Whistler on the grounds of the Century of Progress Exposition.  At the bridge the troops “present sabers and leave the flyers to an escort of army officers, who will take them to Fort Sheridan.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1933] At the fort the flyers review the troops at 3:30 p.m. and watch “an aerial demonstration by Army planes from Selfridge Field, Michigan, exhibition jumping by army riders and a polo game.” The afternoon ends with a reception at the Officer’s Club. This will be the last official act in honor of the Italian airmen.  On the following day, they will fire up their 24 Savola-Marcinetti seaplanes and head on the thousand-mile trip to New York City.  For more on the flight of Balbo and his men you can turn to Connecting the Windy City for this blog entry and this one.

July 17, 1977 – Paul Gapp, the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, evaluates the new Apparel Mart at 350 North Orleans Street, observing that once the Joseph P. Kennedy family bought the land where the new building stands on Wolf Point, family members “began a leisurely study of what to do with it.”  Gapp continues, “After all this high-powered cerebration, one might have expected an imposing structure to rise on a precious patch of 7.5 acres.  Instead, we got the Apparel Mart, a disappointing, $56 million architectural performance that succeeds mostly in saving money … The Mart, inside and out, has that hard-edged crowd control look that speaks of hustling retailers racing up in taxis and airline limos; sprinting from showroom to showroom to buy brassieres and bush jackets; having a late dinner, then flopping into bed for a few hours before arising to catch an early plane back to Cleveland, Omaha, or Sarasota, Fla.”  Gapp seems willing to forgive the buildings “windowlessness” because it “does not intrude into an elegant environment, and thus is not as blatantly offensive as [Water Tower Place] the marble monstrosity on North Michigan Avenue.”  In the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill design Gapp sees “a watch-every-nickel structure of little distinction and absolutely no elegance, done by a first-rate firm.”  Gapp ends his assessment with a remarkably accurate prediction, by way of Skidmore architect Bruce Graham, whose assertion that the Apparel Mart buildings are “’background buildings’ that someday may be dwarfed into nothingness.  “The Mart must stand on its own demerits, even if Graham is right when he says that a skyscraper approaching the size of the Standard Oil Building may be built on the very tip of Wolf Point,” writes Gapp.  A 48-story apartment building, Wolf Point West, a bKL architecture design, opened last summer.  A 60-story commercial building is currently just coming up out of the ground.  And the tallest building on Wolf Point will almost completely obscure the Apparel Mart when it rises in the next few years.  The conceptual photo of the completed Wolf Point development project, shown above, seems to validate Graham's belief that the Apparel Mart would one day become a "background building."

July 17, 1881 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the report of William H. Genung, the chief tenement house inspector, who provides figures on the work of his department during the preceding week.  The report gives some idea of the size of the problem with which the city is faced as 180 houses are inspected, containing 2,086 rooms, inhabited by 559 families, consisting of 2,550 people.  Small pox will claim the lives of 1,181 people in the last months of this year, and the city is hard at work to eliminate the conditions that foster the disease.  In the Second Ward that today encompasses the east side of the Loop, part of the Gold Coast, and Streeterville, tenement houses such as the one Genung’s department inspected were places in which people lived in cramped circumstances in deplorable sanitary conditions.

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Labels: 1941, Chicago Gardens, Chicago Neighborhoods, Chicago Places, Michigan Avenue, Rush Street, Wells Street

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

July 10, 1941 -- German Consulate Delegation Leaves for Home

chicagology

July 10, 1941 – Members of the German consulate in Chicago leave the city, one day ahead of the U. S. State Department’s deadline.  The chancellor of the consulate, Dr. Wilhelm Freidel, turns over the keys to the consulate offices to the manager of the 333 North Michigan Avenue building, the site of the German consulate for the previous decade.  Office furniture and equipment was placed in storage.  The diplomatic contingent will sail from New York on July 17, bound for Lisbon, Portugal on the S. S. George Washington. From there the individual members of the group will return to their homes in Germany.

July 10, 1929 –The Clark Street bridge is dedicated in a program arranged by the North Clark Street Committee of the North Central Association.  A parade starts on North Avenue and Clark Street with marchers and floats and several members of the Sac and Fox tribes in native dress, an acknowledgement that Clark Street began its life as a trail for Native Americans.  After the ribbon for the new bridge is cut, participating dignitaries adjourn to a luncheon at the Sherman Hotel.

July 10, 1893 -- Halfway through the greatest event in the city’s history, tragedy occurs on this day.  A day later the lead in the Chicago Daily Tribune captures the depth of the tragedy as the paper reports, “The World’s Fair received a baptism of fire and blood yesterday afternoon, the Cold-Storage Building proving a funeral pyre for twelve firemen, twenty-four persons receiving serious injuries.”  The cold storage building, the location of the tragedy, was erected by the directors of the Hercules Iron Works and sat on the east side of Stony Island Avenue just south of the Sixty-Fourth Street entrance to the fairgrounds.  The building, designed to resemble a Moorish palace, was five stories high and included a skating rink on the top floor.  There were four towers on each corner with a central tower, encasing the boiler flue, the central tower rising 191 feet above street level.  A promenade encircled the central tower about 70 feet below its inaccessible top.  The flue that ran up this central tower had been a subject of considerable debate since it veered so dangerously away from original specifications and had been subject to minor fires that had flared up in June, causing the cancellation of most of the insurance policies on the building.  At 1:30 p.m. an alarm went out when a small fire was spotted at the top of the flue stack in the tower’s crowning cupola, an area that was supposed to have been made of wrought iron instead of wood and lined with asbestos.  About a dozen firemen climbed to the gallery around the tower, nailing boards to the structure to get closer to the fire.  As they climbed, a puff of white smoke at the roof level of the warehouse preceded flames that cut off the escape of the fourteen firefighters trapped on the narrow ledge surrounding the tower.   As 50,000 fair-goers watched, the trapped men began to jump, one by one, leaping 60 feet onto the burning main roof.  The paper described the horrific scene, “Strong men turned their heads away and women fainted by the score.  The crowd was so dense that escape was impossible.  Down on his knees in the center of the plot surrounding the Pennsylvania railroad exhibit went a well-dressed man, and with hands uplifted he prayed to the Almighty to avert the awful calamity that seemed imminent.  As he prayed tears streamed from his eyes and his words were lost in the sobs and groans of those around him.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 11, 1893]  Twelve brave firefighters lost their lives on that July day, along with three civilians.   

July 10, 1925 – Building Commissioner Frank Doherty gives approval for the proposed 40-story Jewelers’ Building, today’s 35 East Wacker, recommending that Corporation Counsel F. X. Busch issue the necessary building permits as quickly as possible.  There is one major hang-up in getting the construction started – Fire Commissioner Joseph Connery wants a delay in construction until considerable modification is made in a scheme that would see 572 cars parking in the lower levels of the structure.  Connery believes that nothing will eliminate the hazards attendant to a huge parking garage in a skyscraper.  The Corporation Counsel seems ready to take the chance, saying, “Recent surveys indicate that an average of 3,000 automobiles are parked daily in loop streets.  Five or six other such buildings with equal facilities would nearly solve the parking problem and certainly relieve street congestion.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 11, 1925]  

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Labels: 1941, Michigan Avenue

Sunday, May 12, 2019

May 12, 1941 -- Elevated Train Accident on Market Street

chicago-l.org

thetrolleydodger.wordpress.com

May 12, 1941 – A two-car elevated train slams into a bumper on the dead-end tracks of the Market stub at the Madison Street-Wacker Drive station, runs over a platform, and finally comes to a stop with its front end dangling over the street 50 feet below.  Fortunately, there are no passengers on board the train. The train’s motorman says that the brakes did not hold as he tried to stop at the station.  When this portion of the elevated opened in 1893, Market Street, like much of the West Loop was primarily made up of light industry, warehouses, and small businesses, and it was in this area that the Lake Street elevated ended its run before the Loop elevated system was completed.  As early as 1897, when the Loop began operation, the stub was slated for demolition.  Yet, it kept operating, primarily as an overflow route, when the Loop reached capacity, until the late 1940’s when it was demolished, making way for today’s double-decked Wacker Drive.  A photo of the Market Street stub appears above, along with a photo of the accident in 1941.

May 12, 1947 –A doleful editorial in the Chicago Daily Tribune begins, ‘Chicago is in a civic slump, however much it may be thriving industrially.  Dozens of improvement projects are languishing in this, the very city that once was a pioneer in every kind of municipal enterprise.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 12, 1983] “We have many things to be proud of,” the editorial continues, “but most of them were achieved long ago.  Now we cannot even get rid of smoke, to say nothing of obsolete railroad terminals.”  As a result, Chicago, the paper observes, is losing ground to other cities, “New York is building bridges, tunnels, and roads to overcome the handicaps of its site. Los Angeles has vastly extended its boundaries and is getting water from sources hundreds of miles away.  San Francisco has solved its problems of expansion by building bridges that are unequaled in all the world.” In the meantime, “Chicago, the erstwhile city of ‘I Will,’ the city that once was a national symbol of energy and originality, lives on her past.”  As the Tribune nears its one-hundredth anniversary, the column concludes, “Those who should be pulling Chicago out of its slump may expect to hear form The Tribune frequently and not admiringly as this newspaper enters its second century.” Contrasting the 1947 photo taken looking east from where today's River Point tower stands with the site as it appears today shows that, fortunately, the lack of vision that the paper lamented did not last forever.

May 12, 1880 – A Criminal Courts judge upholds the right of the city to transfer the control of Michigan Avenue and Thirty-Fifth Street to the South Park Commissioners, upholding the Boulevard Act of 1879.  The judge states that on February 21, 1869 the charter of the Board of South Park Commissioners gave that body the responsibility for existing highways and “to lay out new ones within the defined limits of the South Parks, and to manage and control them, free to all persons, but subject to such necessary rules and regulations as shall from time to time be adopted by said Commissioners for the well ordering and government of the same.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 13, 1880] Subsequent legislation added to the charter but did not impair it.  The Boulevard Act of 1879 went even farther as the judge observed in his opinion, “It is an act to enable the Park Commissioners ‘to take, regulate, control, and improve public streets leading to public parks, and to levy and collect special taxes or assessments to pay for the improvement itself.’  It authorizes the Park Commissioners to ‘connect’ the present park system, including existing boulevards and driveways, with any point within the city by the use of ‘connecting street or streets, or parts thereof,’ and it authorizes the city, town or village ‘to invest any such Park Boards with the right to control, improve and maintain any of the streets of such city’ … ‘for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this act.’”  The commissioners, in other words, had the legal authority to connect any road leading to or abutting a park to city streets that would make a connection to a park, and they had the right, with permission of the city, to levy taxes to build and maintain such connections.  The judge upholds the right of the South Park Commissioners to assume responsibility for Michigan Avenue south of the river since it is an important connection to the roads and boulevards leading to city parks. The above photo shows Michigan Avenue in 1885 at its intersection with Van Buren Street.

May 12, 2011 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Chicago to improve its sewage treatment system so that the river will be clean enough for “recreation in and on the water.” [Chicago Tribune, May 13, 2011] The new order goes far beyond those of a state panel that a year earlier had issued guidelines that would make the river clean enough for canoers and paddlers who “briefly fell into the water”. The ruling will necessitate the overhaul of two out of three of the city’s massive sewage treatment plants. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District estimates the cost will be close to $1 billion while the EPA puts the estimate at something less than $250 million. “We’ve got a chance for our generation to do something big for this important river,” says Senator Dick Durbin.

  

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Labels: 1941, Madison Street, Railroads, Transportation, Wacker Drive

Saturday, December 16, 2017

December 16, 1941 -- Chicago Architects Step Up

Erenest A. Grunsfeld, Jr., the principal architect of the Adler Planetairum

December 16, 1941 – Just nine days after the Japanese attack on Pear Harbor, the Palmer House hosts a meeting of 550 architects at which 339 members of the American Institute of Architects agree to do full time work in support of the war effort with 241 members saying that they would be willing to go wherever they are assigned.  Ernest A. Grunsfeld, Jr., a member of the Institute’s executive committee, says, “The idea had its beginning at a meeting called to discuss air raid shelters.  We recalled that in the last war technical men rushed about in an effort to aid, and many ended by accepting any job to get in the swim rather than fitting in a position where they would do the most good.  So we set out to find what jobs the government needed done and what men were available to do them.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 17, 1941] Participants at the meeting also decide to open an office in the city to place architects where they can do the most good. 

December 16, 1942 – It is interesting to note how many things that we take for granted today begin as strange, curious, or contested, often taking years before they find acceptance.  One such item went to court on this date in 1942 as the City of Chicago, upon failing to get a permanent injunction against milk sold in paper cartons from Circuit Court Judge Benjamin P. Epstein, went immediately to the Illinois Supreme Court with its suit.  The case hinged on an interpretation of a 1935 city ordinance requiring that milk be sold in “standard” containers.  The United States Supreme Court had already sent the case back to Illinois, saying that it was a matter for the state courts to decide.  The case involved milk sold in single-serving containers, and in a 19-page opinion Judge Epstein ruled that the state legislature’s milk pasteurization law, passed on July 24, 1939, took precedence over the city’s law and permitted milk to be sold in the cartons.  “While the state legislature desired to preserve in the city the right to regulation,” Epstein wrote, “it did not intend to give to the city the right to prohibit that which the state permitted.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 11, 1942]  Interesting case . . . a mystery today why city officials would initiate a case, follow it through the local court, the Illinois Supreme Court, the U. S. Supreme Court, back to the local court and again to the state’s Supreme Court over a milk carton, all of this in the middle of wartime.

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Labels: 1941, Chicago Architecture

Friday, June 30, 2017

June 30, 1941 -- Damages Awarded for Subway Construction

June 30, 1941 – Superior Court Judge Ulysses S. Schwartz awards $1,275 to A. F. Cuneo, the owner of two three-story buildings at 933 and 939 North State Street, an amount that covers the cost “of protecting the buildings against possible collapse as the result of subway excavation” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1943] related to the 8.75 mile subway we know today as the Red Line.  The case is seen as a precedent, impacting “millions of dollars” that are involved in the dispute between the city and property owners over damages incurred during the construction of the subway.  City officials plan on appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, but a clause in the Illinois Constitution does not appear to support their case.  It reads, “Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without compensation.”  Already 50 suits have stacked up, amounting to a million-and-a-half dollars, mostly costs associated with underpinning buildings to protect them from collapse as the subway is bored beneath them.  Construction of the State Street subway is shown in the photo above. 

June 30, 1950 – The formal dedication of Merrill C. Meigs field takes place on the lakefront.  Although the airport has been open since December 10, 1948, it carried no name.  Speaking from prepared notes, Meigs, who had served as the head of the city’s Aero Commission, said, “When my name was brought up last year before the city council, there were objections that no airport should be named for a living person.  I was honored at the original suggestion but felt that the sacrifice involved—in order to qualify—was too great a price, even for that glory.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1, 1950]   Special guests were drawn from 30 states—the Flying Farmers of Prairieland and the National Flying Farmers.  It is estimated that 890 of their planes, carrying 2,047 persons, landed at Chicago area airports.  

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Labels: 1941, State Street, Transportation