Showing posts with label 1961. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1961. Show all posts

Friday, September 25, 2020

September 25, 1961 -- Michigan Avenue's Water Tower Inn Opens

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September 25, 1961 – Mayor Richard J. Daley receives a symbolic golden key as the $6 million Water Tower Inn is opened at 800 North Michigan Avenue.  Standing next to the historic Water Tower, the 15-story hotel will have 300 rooms and indoor parking for 150 cars.  At a luncheon after the ceremony Hugh Michaels, the president of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association, says, “The opening of the Water Tower Inn provides north Michigan avenue with a new luxury that is not only exciting in its architectural design, but also is outstanding in its facilities.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1961]  The hotel brings a greener look to Michigan Avenue with the planting of more than 100 trees, 700 bushes, and 2,000 flowering plants on the Michigan Avenue and Chicago Avenue sides of the building.  The hotel will never make it to middle age.  It is demolished in 1997 to make way for the Park Hyatt.  The Water Tower Inn is shown in the top photo.  Its replacement, the Park Hyatt tower, is shown in the second photo.


September 25, 1930 – An exhibition of the latest works of Frank Lloyd Wright opens at the Art Institute of Chicago, a display to run through October 12, a collection that comes to the Art Institute from the Architectural League in New York City.  Wright, caught while helping to set up the exhibit the day before its opening, says, “I obtained my motif from an intimate study of nature rather than as a product of studies of architectural styles.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 24, 1930]  He explains that there “must be no conflict between architecture and nature,” illustrating that concept with a development he has proposed for Hollywood Hills, California, in which houses of concrete blocks conform with the contours of the hills in which they are built.  The exhibit also includes models of a tall apartment building of glass and steel and a gasoline filling station in which gas and oil tanks are hung from a cantilevered roof so that there are no obstructions in the way of motorists.


September 25, 1927 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that construction will soon begin on “one of the city’s most notable cooperative apartment buildings . .. . thoroughly American in its exterior design and in its interior treatment.”  The Powhatan, to be located at Fiftieth Street and Chicago Beach Drive, a design of Robert S. De Golyer and Charles Morgan, combines the modern qualities of Art Deco’s fascination with historical references.  The building will hold 45 apartments, ranging in size form six to ten rooms, that “will be the last word in luxury, with wood burning fireplaces, galleries with plaster beam ceilings, libraries, enough bathrooms to keep an entire family happy and so on.”  The twentieth floor will hold a ballroom, and owners will enjoy a community swimming pool on the first floor.  Today the Powhatan is an Art Deco jewel that has to be seen to be appreciated fully.  According to Emporis it is the most expensive residential high-rise on Chicago’s south side.  For the full story on this amazing building you can turn to this link. 


September 25, 1907 – The city’s Commissioner of Public Works, John Hanberg, following a conference with officials of Marshall Field and Company, rescinds his decree against public clocks on State Street, issued two days earlier. The commissioner had earlier also notified Spaulding and Co., Lewy Bros., and J. Florsheim to remove clocks from the street even though the city council had passed permits for them, noting that they violated the city’s prohibition against projecting advertising signs.  Marshall Field officials agree to omit any advertising features from the clock, so the timepiece, one of the main features of State Street today, is allowed.


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Friday, June 26, 2020

June 26, 1961 -- Ogden Slip Real Estate to Be Developed ... Sometime


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June 26, 1961 – Officials of the Chicago Dock and Canal Company announce that the firm will be conducting a study to assess the potential of a 45-acre plot along the north bank of the Chicago River, surrounding the Ogden Slip and the adjoining area east of Lake Shore Drive.  The firm, founded by the first mayor of Chicago, William B. Ogden, has owned the property since 1857.  All good things take time.  It will be 25 years before the company seals a joint agreement with the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States to pool the 45-acre site of Chicago Dock and Canal with 50 acres to the west that is owned by Equitable.  In June of 1986 it is viewed as a $3-billion development deal, involving 20 to 25 million feet of space running along the north of the Chicago River in close proximity to Lake Michigan.  The three pictures above show the change over time.  The first one, taken in the 1950’s shows the shaded area controlled by Chicago Dock and Canal with the Ogden Slip shown in blue.  The second photo shows Lake Point Tower as it nears completion on the east side of Lake Shore Drive.  The final photo shows the area as it exists today. 


 June 26, 1919 – The steamer Lake Granby with Captain John Klang in command casts off her lines in the Chicago River and starts her run to Liverpool with a cargo of meat products.  This will be the first shipment of goods from Chicago directly to a foreign port. The Lake Granby carries a Chicago crew and was built in the Chicago area.  Before departure, lunch is served on the steamship for a group of businessmen and a bottle of champagne is broken over the ship’s bow.  The Vice-President of meat-packing company Morris and Co., Charles M. MacFarlane, explains the purpose of the trip, saying, “The advantages of this mode of sending shipments to Europe are great, as it eliminates rail shipment to New York.  It relieves the congestion at the seaboard and does away with all the reloading, demurrage, and other charges usually incident to shipment to the seaboard.  Shippers from points west of Chicago, on the Missouri river and the other points in that direction are all interested in the development of this branch of the service because it means their own commodities can be handled to much greater advantage through Chicago than by having them shipped to New York.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 27, 1919] The through-freight rate from Chicago to Liverpool by the all-water route is $1.25 per 100 pounds for the meat products the Lake Granby is carrying.  The rate would be $1.45 per 100 pounds for the same cargo, using the railroads to New York and a ship to Liverpool.  Notice how high the Lake Granby rides in the water in the above photo.  Because the maximum depth in the Welland Canal locks permits only 14 feet of draft and the Lake Granby draws 25 feet when loaded to the water line, the ship will stop in Montreal to take on additional cargo.

June 26, 1893 –On the occasion of its sixtieth anniversary, the Chicago Daily Tribune provides a history of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago.  The church, located in 1893 at Indiana and Twenty-First Street, was formed on June 26,1838 inside the walls of Fort Dearborn.  Twenty-six members made up the first congregation, 16 of whom were soldiers stationed at the garrison. The first real meeting place for the new congregation was situated “on a lonely spot at the southwest corner of Lake and Clark Streets.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 26, 1893] People approached that first church “across a large slough, bridged with benches from the meeting-house.”  It was here that “North-Siders came, not as you come to church now in carriages, but braving the angry flood in a canoe and climbing along the fences to escape the unknown depths of prairie mud.”  Classes in the first public school in Chicago were also held in the 40- x 25-foot building. The church has moved several times over the years.  For a number of years services were held in a substantial stone building at Twenty-First Street and Indiana Avenue.  The present Gothic-Revival building at 6400 South Kimbark Avenue was dedicated on October 24, 1928 and came about as a result of a merger of the First Presbyterian congregation and the Woodlawn Park Presbyterian Church which was formed in January of 1885.  Today the congregation is known as the Woodlawn Collaborative First Presbyterian Church. The congregation's church building at Twenty-First and Indiana Avenues is shown in the above photo.
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June 26, 1886 – An accident at Dearborn Street on the Main Stem of the Chicago River sets the river on fire.  While a ship is being unloaded at the Chicago and North Western Railroad dock at Dearborn Street, a barrel of kerosene is accidentally dropped, the contents of which spread across the surface of the river.  After the ship departs, a dock worker throws a lighted match into the river “just to see if the stuff would burn.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 26, 1886]. It did.  A sheet of flame shoots across the river toward the Clark and State Street bridges and surrounds the excursion boat Albert J. Wright.  An alarm is sent in from the corner of Clark and South Water Streets, but before the engines can arrive, the fire burns itself out, leaving only a blackened set of pilings along the edge of the river., The State Street bridge and the Dearborn Street bridge beyond are shown in this photo taken a few years earlier.
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June 26, 1862 – The Chicago Tribune begins yet another editorial about the Chicago River in this way, “It is conceded by all men that something must be done immediately to improve the sanitary condition of the Chicago River.  The good name of our city, the lives of thousands of our citizens, and, its commerce, growth and prosperity imperatively demand immediate and energetic action . . . In its present condition, a week of hot weather will render a block or two on each side of the river uninhabitable.  And, besides what is to become of our vast shipping interest—the men who navigate our tugs and attend to the bridges, and virtually are forced to live during the season amid the intolerable pestilence-breeding stench of the river, and the crews of our propellers, canal boats, and vessels that are obliged to live upon the river from one to three days at a time?  A week of hot weather will drive them from the river, and no man is so stupid as not to know that Chicago is nothing without her commerce.”  The paper has solutions.  Pumps at Bridgeport “can clear it out and, aired by the process and mingled with the water of the Des Plaines it will pass South without inconvenience or offence to any body.”  But the North Branch, with virtually no current, is a different story, and the Tribune has a solution for that as well:  “Place one or half a dozen pumps, if necessary, driven by wind mills on the Lake shore, at or near the north end of the old cemetery, and let the water be discharged in a ditch running due west into the North Branch.  Let the pumps be of the largest size, and such are now used upon our railroads.”   How different North Avenue would be today if instead of its popular beach and nautical-themed boathouse it was the site of a half-dozen windmills, churning away in the Windy City, pumping lake water west to the river.

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Saturday, January 25, 2020

January 25, 1961 -- Skidmore, Owings and Merrill Architect Looks to "City of Water"

William E. Hartmann
January 25, 1961 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that architect William E. Hartmann, a managing partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, has delivered an address at the annual meeting of the State Street Council in which he urges a “sweeping downtown building plan.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 25, 1961] Hartmann says, “I suggest a ‘City of Water.’ The idea of Lake Michigan, the Chicago river, and Buckingham fountain should be extended into further water exhibitions in the center area.  The federal and civic center might enlarge on this theme.” He goes farther, asserting that 30 percent of the downtown area should be given over to housing.  An all-weather sport stadium for 60,000 people should be located close to downtown and children should have “a Tivoli, sort of Disneyland or Freedomland, perhaps on an island in the lake.”  Hartman proposes a center for the performing arts as well with a symphony hall, opera house, and theaters.  The focus on art should continue with “public art as focal points – public sculpture, plazas and fountains.”  Finally, the architect suggests that “the iron girdle of the Loop” be replaced with an improved transit system.  With the exception of the performing arts center and the massive sports complex, it is amazing today to see how many of Hartmann’s ideas are on display in today’s Chicago – fountains, public art and sculpture, Maggie Daley and Millennium Parks, and on and on.

January 25, 1955 – The Chicago Daily Tribune goes to press with the following headline on Page One:  Halas to Quit as Bears Coach After ’55.  George H. Halas, the coach of the Bears for three decades, will continue as president of the club that he organized in Decatur, Illinois in 1920 and brought to Chicago the following year.  Says Halas, “I decided to step down two years ago.  When we began rebuilding, I made up my mind that as soon as we were a strong contender again, so I could turn the club over under the most favorable circumstances, I’d move out.  I figured it would be about 1956.  Fortunately, everything went according to schedule.  We’re contenders now, we’ll be better next fall and by 1956 I won’t have to ask anybody to take over a loser.”  Halas kept his word, leaving the team in the 1956 and 1957 campaigns, but he was back again in 1958 and coached the team for another decade, winning his last championship with the club in 1963.

January 25, 1925 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that because the roads through Lincoln Park are the only practical way of getting from the Loop to the residential sections of the city north of North Avenue, the park, originally designed for leisurely carriage rides, is dealing with 5,000 cars per hour passing through it. That volume comes at a cost. In 1924 there are 1,420 cars damaged in accidents with 499 people injured. The photo above shows Lake Shore Drive in the 1920's, looking north from Oak Street. At the end of the road is Lincoln Park, where things got really congested at North Avenue.
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January 25, 1906 – Plans are presented to the United States Secretary of War Charles Joseph Bonaparte for “the finest naval station in the world … to be erected at Lake Bluff.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 26, 1906]  Total cost of the new base, including the land on which it will be built, is expected to be $2,500,000.  Plans include an administration building, an instruction building, four dormitories, a mess hall, guardhouses, a powerhouse, detention barracks, officers’ quarters, a general storehouse, marine barracks and a hospital.  A railroad spur from North Chicago will run into the base, for which the Chicago and North Western Railroad will pay $14,000.  Plans are for the initial phase of construction to accommodate 1,000 recruits.  Captain Albert Ross, who will oversee construction of the new naval base, says, “We depart from old notions, with the idea that in bringing the youngster in he should not be allowed to pollute the body politic, and so the first step is detention in barracks.  He enters the front door, turns to his right, is taken up by the officer of the day to see that the papers given him are all right and that he has been enlisted properly. He then goes into the barber shop, where he is shaven and shorn, and from there into the disrobing room – all valuables are stored in lockers for that purpose – and he removes his clothes. He then goes into the bathroom where he is scrubbed; from there he is taken to the surgeons’ room, where he is examined, then to the paymaster’s issuing room where he is clothed in uniform. He comes in as a civilian and goes out as a naval recruit … we have five units to cover the training scheme – the detention, messing, sleeping, drilling, and instructing – each one under a different roof and surrounded by the best sanitary and fireproof building attainable.  No other nation in the world has gone so far in this business.”  Between 1909 and 1911, 39 buildings would be built at what is today Naval Station Great Lakes.  All of them would be designed by architect Jarvis Hunt, working from his offices in Chicago’s Monadnock building.  On July 3, 1911 Joseph Gregg of Terre Haute, Indiana is the first recruit to arrive at the base, officially opened two days earlier.  The above photo shows Building One and a parade of recruits in 1913.
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Friday, December 13, 2019

December 13, 1961 -- Michigan Avenue Sees First Hotel in 40 Years

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December 13, 1961 – In ceremonies that officially mark the completion of foundation work, the new hotel under construction at the northeast corner of Delaware Place and Michigan Avenue is officially named the Continental.  Several hundred civic and business leaders are on hand for a ceremony that marks the first hotel to be built on North Michigan Avenue in four decades.  The hotel will rise 15 stories and cost $15 million with a total of 400 rooms, meeting rooms, and a swimming pool on the top floor.  The Continental is long gone.  It is today a Westin.

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December 13, 2014 – Although visitors will still be kept from walking on new sod and a section of the children’s play area won’t be finished until the spring of 2015, Maggie Daley Park opens at 11:30 a.m.  Replacing the Bicentennial Plaza east of Columbus Drive between Randolph and Monroe Streets, the park is named for the former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s wife, who died from breast cancer in 2011.  Under the guidance of landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, the 27-acre park takes two years to construct at a cost of $60 million.  The park features a one-quarter-mile ice skating ribbon, tennis courts, rock-climbing walls, and a Play Garden, along with the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Garden, as well as many other features.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel is especially impressed with the children’s playground, saying, “It will allow kids to challenge themselves and do things they didn’t know they could do.”  [Chicago Tribune, December 13, 2014]  


December 13, 1882 – The Chicago Daily Tribune publishes an editorial in which it protests strongly against an elevated railroad in the city, saying:  “The public should organize its protest against any scheme of this kind with a promptness and emphasis that shall leave the Council no doubt about the popular disapproval which unquestionably prevails.  There is neither necessity nor demand for elevated railways in Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 13, 1882] The editorial goes on to remind those behind the elevated scheme of a provision in the Illinois Constitution that “private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without just compensation ... such compensation, when not made by the State, shall be ascertained by a jury.”  Using this constitutional provision, the writers go on to say, “Probably the full significance of this constitutional provision has not occurred to the gentlemen who are so eager to supply Chicago with an elevated railway system which Chicago doesn’t want.  They may discover that their purses, long as they are, will not hold out to satisfy the owners of the property which they propose to destroy.”  It took another ten years of wrangling, but the elevated system’s first train left the station in June of 1892.


December 13, 1951 – Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II, Indiana Governor Henry Schricker and Cook County Board President William Erickson come together to dedicate the Calumet Expressway and its Tri-State Parkway extension, extending from U. S. Route 41 in Hammond to Doty Avenue and 130th Street in Chicago.  The new parkway allows motorists to bypass the industrial areas of northern Indiana and South Chicago in order to connect with a national toll road that will cross Indiana and Ohio and join the existing Pennsylvania turnpike. 


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Tuesday, November 5, 2019

November 5, 1961 -- N.A.S.A. Parks a Rocket at the Sheraton


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November 5, 1961 – A ten-ton Scout missile, standing 75 feet tall, is erected at the turnaround in front of Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue just north of the bridge.  Originally destined for the Sheraton-Chicago Hotel, which today is the Hotel Intercontinental at 505 North Michigan Avenue, the missile is moved slightly south after officials determine that its display on hotel property along Michigan Avenue would be unsafe because of its size and weight.  The extraordinary display is designed to draw attention to the efforts of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to attract scientists and engineers to its ranks.  N.A.S.A. administrator James E. Webb says that the agency wants to hire 2,000 trained workers with science or engineering degrees for a range of projects, from its lunar program to supersonic transport study.  “We are especially interested in meeting the recent science graduates who are just beginning their careers,” Webb says.   [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 6, 1961]  The recruitment program is being conducted at the Sheraton Hotel ... hence, the big missile.  Marj Abrams, a member of the hotel public relations staff, says that when a N.A.S.A. spokesman told her he could get a rocket that could attract attention to the hotel, “I knew it was going to be big, but not this big.  When it arrived I was called out of a meeting with the news there was a rocket waiting for me.  It was in three sections on a 47 foot trailer parked at the curb.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 1961]    


 November 5, 1915 –The South Park Commissioners issue a formal denial which attempts to counter a popular notion that they “had ‘thrown down’ Lorado Taft, the sculptor and were trying to induce Auguste Rodin, the noted French sculptor, to come to Chicago to beautify the Midway Plaisance.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 6, 1915]Charles Hutchinson, a member of the South Park Board, says, “Mr. Taft is to be given the opportunity now to do the biggest thing in his life.  It is his ‘Fountain of Time.’ Under his contract he is given ten years in which to perfect his working model, and for that model alone we have given him $50,000. He has been working three years on it.” It is expected that, when erected, the Taft’s monumental sculpture will cost over a quarter-million dollars.  The president of the South Park Board, John Barton Payne, is emphatic in his backing of Taft.  “There is not a word of truth in the gossip that the commissioners are negotiating with Rodin or ever thought of such a thing,” he says.  With the support of the commissioners, the project moved on and was finally completed in 1920.  The final work was only a small portion of the original scheme proposed for the Midway Plaisance.  According to the UCHICAGOArts website the original plan included a “Fountain of Creation” at the Midway’s east end in Jackson Park with a canal running the length of the Midway, “traversed by bridges and lines with avenues of commemorative sculptures.” [arts.uchicago.edu] The grand beaux arts scheme lost favor after World War I as “critics began to view the costly proposal as pedantic and anti-modern.”  In the end, even the 120-foot wide sculpture was compromised, finished in concrete instead of the marble that was originally proposed.  Still, it makes a heck of a statement as it stands on the west end of the Midway Plaisance. 

November 5, 1912 – In a public hearing before Colonel George A. Zinn, the army engineer in the city, the Patawatomi tribe formally protests the construction of a bridge at Michigan Avenue and the river.  Attorney W. E. Johnson asserts that the Patawatomi own a large portion of the south shore of Lake Michigan, saying, “The site of the proposed bridge the city is seeking the right to erect is outside of the domain of Illinois and Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 5, 1912] The head of the rivers and harbors committee of the Chicago Association of Commerce answers that the committee is not ready to file formal objections to the plan and delays the hearing until November 20.  A lot of water has gone under the bridge since the Potawatomi laid claim to this section of the city over a century ago as the above photo clearly shows.


 November 5, 1998 – The architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, Blair Kamin, prints the sixth of a series of articles on plans for Chicago’s lakefront, in which he takes Mayor Richard M. Daley to task for “shying away from the bold moves necessary to get the job done” when it comes to shaping the downtown lakefront.  In the article Kamin looks at three lakefront attractions and assesses the potential and the plans for each of them.  “Navy Pier,” Kamin writes “enables us to sample the carnival midway pleasures of urban life, yet it causes suburban-style pain, particularly through the traffic jams that result from funneling thousands of cars through already-busy Lake Shore Drive and narrow feeder streets.”  Turning south to Soldier Field, Kamin says, “Wouldn’t it be wiser to look at what Soldier Field and its environs could do for the lakefront 365 days a year, not just during the 10 regular season and exhibition games that the Bears play . . . whether the Bears leave or stay, Soldier Field can be transformed from a stadium in a parking lot to a stadium in a park.”  Then, moving to the east, Kamin takes up the issues surrounding Meigs Field.  “Meigs must go,” Kamin writes.  “To stand on this peninsula – to be removed from the clamor of the city and glimpse the stunning views it affords of the skyline and the south shoreline – is to realize that Meigs is an anachronism.”  What Kamin urges is something he calls “a new architecture of both landscape and public policy.”  He recommends appointing a “powerful lakefront commission that would coordinate the efforts of the dizzying array of agencies that control the lakefront, seeing to it that the more than $500 million in projects planned for the next 12 years – roads, buildings, and revetments – turn into an ensemble that is more than the sum of its parts.”

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