Showing posts with label 1966. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1966. Show all posts

Monday, August 24, 2020

August 24, 1966 -- John Hancock Center Stops Work


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August 24, 1966 – Developers of the 100-story John Hancock Center at Michigan Avenue and Delaware Place announce that they have ordered a second round of tests for 57 caissons, a portion of the caissons that will form the foundation of the building.  The action comes after voids and imperfections are found in five of those caissons, starting about 60 feet below ground level.  Engineers predict that testing and repairs will continue for three weeks.  Construction on the super-tall building was halted on August 5 when a caisson moved sideways after a 12-ton test beam was placed on top of it.  J. Theodor Dailey, a co-developer on the project, says, “Such a review is necessary because of the unique design of the building, its foundation, and soil conditions at the site.  When approved, the foundation will have undergone one of the most complete analysis in construction history.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1966].  The problems originated with the steel tubes that were used to hold back soil and water as the caisson holes were excavated.  These tubes were removed as concrete was poured, which resulted in concrete being pulled up with the tubes in some caisson holes, allowing voids to form which filled with soil or water.  Over two-dozen of the caisson holes required corrective work, adding six months to the construction schedule and another $1 million to the budget.  It is fortunate, though, that the problems were discovered and corrected.  Considering what might have happened if the problems were not detected, the Engineering News-Record opined, “Cost in dollars or in lives from damage that might have befallen a completed 100-story John Hancock Center if its faulty caissons had settled years hence is just too horrible to dwell upon.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1985]



August 24, 1968 -- Seven leaders of the Youth International Party and their candidate for the Presidency of the United States, a 150-pound pig named Pigasus, are arrested at the Civic Center, today’s Richard J. Daley Center.  The Chicago Tribune reports, “Moving quickly and without incident, 10 uniformed policemen and several detectives under the personal direction of Comdr. James Riordan of the First District, loaded the pig into a police wagon as soon as it was placed in the plaza.”  The seven leaders of the demonstration are loaded into the wagon with the pig.  The Yippie leaders are taken to police headquarters where they are charged with disorderly conduct and released on $25 bonds with a court date scheduled for September 19.  Pigasus is taken to the Anti-Cruelty Society where he is “given a bath, fed, and placed in an outside pen,” according to the society’s director.  The demonstration, attended by about 50 Yippies and watched by 200 spectators, apparently is enough to scare Country Joe and the Fish away as the San Francisco  rock group withdraws from the Hippie Festival of Love, scheduled to begin in the city later in the day. 


August 24, 1982 – Archbishop Joseph Louis Bernardin is installed as the seventh Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago in a candlelight service at Holy Name Cathedral. Reverend John Richard Keating reads the papal letter assigning Archbishop Bernardin to the archdiocese of Chicago at 8:01 p.m. before 1,500 priests in attendance. After the reading of the letter is completed, the priests provide Archbishop Bernardin with a two-minute standing ovation.  The Archbishop’s homily is entitled “I Am Joseph, Your Brother,” and in it he promises, “We will work and play together, fast and pray together, mourn and rejoice together, despair and hope together, dispute and be reconciled together.  You will know me as a friend, fellow priest and bishop.  You will know also that I love you.  For I am Joseph, your brother.” [Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1982]
bartholomew photo
August 24, 1920 – The full-sized plaster model of Lorado Taft’s “The Fountain of Time” is completed after years of work and stands at the head of the Midway Plaisance, west of Cottage Grove Avenue.  The sculptural piece is described as comprising “ . . . scores of figures, arising from mystery, moving through life, and vanishing in mystery.  Some are dancing, some proceed sorrowfully, some are Galahads, some are satyrs.  Towering over all is Mr. Taft’s conception of Father Time.  The huge, weird figure dominates the movement of the pushing mob it faces.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 25, 1920]
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Wednesday, August 5, 2020

August 5, 1966 -- Cr. King Felled by Rock in Chicago March

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August 5, 1966 – The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King leads a large number of people in an open housing march on a real estate office on Sixty-Third Street as “a hail of rocks, bottles, and curses and jeers” [Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1966] greets the group.  Forty-one people protesting the march are arrested and still more are arrested afterward when an attempt is made by whites shouting racial slurs to block Kedzie Avenue from Marquette Road to Sixty-Third Street.  Projectiles hurled at Dr. King’s marchers, including bricks and bottles and at least one knife, injure at least 30 people as well as four police officers.  Dr. King himself is struck by a rock as he gets out of a car on Sacramento Avenue in Marquette Park to join 700 demonstrators.  He is knocked to one knee and stays there as he attempts to clear his head.  He says, “I have to do this – to expose myself – to bring this hate into the open.  I have seen many demonstrations in the south but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I’ve seen here today.”  An estimated 1,200 policemen are on hand to provide protection for the marchers.  At Sixty-Fourth Street and California Avenue, the marchers are stopped when 300 white teenagers sit down in the street.  Police disburse them, only to have the group run a half-block north and block the road again.  Police charge the youths again, and the march continues to the F. H. Halvorsen Co., Inc., real estate office at 3145 West Sixty-Third Street, which is closed.  Re-tracing their steps in relative calm, the marchers return to Marquette Park where an estimated 4,000 people jeer, heckle and throw rocks and firecrackers at them.  The assistant deputy superintendent of police, Captain James Hartnett, calls the violence the worst of the summer.


August 5, 1970:  With 200 police officers gathered from seven other suburbs on hand, Highland Park’s Ravinia Park gives its stage to Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band.  The Chicago Tribune describes the scene as a mob consisting of “20,000 clapping screaming youths listening to the Full Tilt Boogie band . . . Highland Park Police Chief Michael Bonamarte waiting for a riot.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1970]  “In her satin hooker clothes,” Tribune music critic Linda Winer writes, “no less than a full fall of purple feathers sitting atop her tangled hair, foot stamping, bottom waving, Southern Comfort swigging Miss Joplin could almost convince you to just watch her sing all night.”  Eight days after the concert at Ravinia Joplin gives her final public concert at Harvard Stadium.  On October 4, in the middle of recording her album Pearl, she fails to show up at the studio, and at the age of 27 she is found, dead of an overdose at Hollywood’s Landmark Hotel.

gpgallery.com
August 5, 1967 – A thief nabs an Andrew Wyeth painting, “Artist’s Studio,” from the Sears-Vincent Price Gallery at 140 East Ontario Street and vanishes.  Although a dozen patrons are inside the gallery when the painting disappears, no one sees the thief, who escapes with the 50-pound painting and its driftwood frame at 2:00 p.m.   At least ten galleries are located within the general area and the director of the gallery, Harold Patton, says, “People are always walking around with paintings in this area.”  The painting was completed in 1966 and had hung in the gallery since Sears opened the showroom. In the Fall of 2000 the painting, depicting the artists’ studio in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, turned up at Christie’s Auction House in New York.  Its value had grown from $30,000 at the time of the theft to more than $500,000 by the time it re-surfaced.   

Leo Noble Burnett
August 5, 1935 –The announcement is made that a new advertising agency, known as the Burnett Company, Inc. with offices at 360 North Michigan Avenue, has been formed.  The founder, Leo Noble Burnett, was born in St. Johns, Michigan where he resided until his graduation from the University of Michigan in 1914. He came to Illinois, working briefly as a reporter for the Peoria Journal before moving on to edit the company magazine for the Cadillac Motor Car Company.  Burnett served a stint in the United States Navy during World War I before becoming vice-president of the Lafayette Motor Company and later, vice-president of the Homer McKee Advertising Agency in Indianapolis.  In 1930 he joined Erwin, Wasey and Company where he oversaw the account of the Minnesota Canning Company, a marketer of Niblets and Green Giant canned vegetables.  On August 1, 1935 Burnett resigned and four days later began the new firm with three accounts: Minnesota Canning, Hoover, and Realsilk Hosiery.  The motto of the new agency became “Reach for the Stars.”  AdAge said of the man, “Although a short, somewhat stout man with little physical charisma or pretense, Burnett became a central figure in the Chicago advertising scene as his agency grew competitive with the major New York shops. In 1953, the Leo Burnett Company moved onto the list of the top 10 American agencies with billings of $46.4 million.  The following year it won Philip Morris Cos.’ Marlboro account; Burnett took a personal role in repositioning the brand from a women’s cigarette to a men’s with the introduction of the ‘Marlboro Man’ campaign.”  Burnett died at his home in Lake Zurich on June 7, 1971 after putting in a full day at the office.  In 1999 Advertising Age named him as the third most important advertising person of the century.  The same publication named the agency’s Marlboro Man, Jolly Green Giant, Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger among the top ten advertising icons of the century.  No other agency in the country had more than one in the list.


August 5, 1912 – As the new National Progressive Party with Theodore Roosevelt at its head is at the beginning of its rise, suffragettes parade through Chicago in recognition of the fact that the new party will carry a plank in its platform that advocates giving women the right to vote.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, “A crowd of many hundreds, flaunting banners and headed by a band, formed in front of the Art Institute and marched to the Coliseum.  It included women of every age and many stations in life.  There were gray haired grandmothers and young girls still with their schooling unfinished; mothers of families and old maids.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 5, 1912] So many women showed up for the parade that it was difficult to get the march organized.  At one point the main group of marchers was asked to move back about six feet.  Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, responding to the request, said, “What!  Retreat?  We never retreat!”  A squad of mounted police leads the procession, followed by a marching band, the band followed by a group of young women from the University of Chicago. The lead automobile carries Miss Jane Addams, Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth and Mrs. Isabella Blaney, a delegate from California.  Other cars follow, but the most impressive portion of the procession is made up of the ranks of women, many of whom have never been in a public march before.  One Methodist deaconess, Miss Estella Manley, says, “We are progressives and believe in suffrage because we see the necessity of a progressive movement in our work against the traffic in women.  No one realizes how ineffective a law can be and how much a community is in need of progressive lawmakers until one has done some uplift work in a community.”


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Wednesday, July 29, 2020

July 29, 1966 -- Mayor Daley Meets with Activist Women



July 29, 1966 – Mayor Richard J. Daley hosts an hour-long meeting with 30 members of the Women Mobilized for Change while 250 other members wait on the sidewalk at the La Salle Street entrance to City Hall.  Pledging support to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, the women urge Daley to abandon the use of tall public housing in favor of low-level housing.  The group’s spokeswoman, McHenry County resident Mrs. Kay Holper, says that the group was formed shortly after riots on the west side of the city and includes both Chicago and suburban women.  The group asks Daley to bring together civil rights leaders and city officials in order “to develop a cooperative coordinated approach to problems of Chicago.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 30, 1966].  The group also speaks out in favor of the recent open occupancy executive order issued by Illinois governor Otto Kerner.


July 29, 1936:  The motor ship Material Service sinks early in the morning a mile north of the lighthouse at Eighty-Sixth Street as she is caught in an open-water gale for which she was not designed.  Although seven members of the crew are rescued, Captain C. D. Brown and 15 other crew members die.  First Mate John M. Johnson says upon his rescue, “We were going along as usual when suddenly the vessel listed to port.  Then it came back on an even keel, but immediately began to sink.  We had the usual complement of lifeboats, but the sinking was so sudden that there was no chance to launch them.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 29, 1936]  The ship had hauled a load of gravel from Lockport to Chicago, and had left the mouth of the Chicago River around midnight, headed south for a dock in the Calumet Harbor area when disaster struck.

July 29, 1934 – The Dymaxion, a three-wheeled automobile, arrives at the Century of Progress World’s Fair with Buckminster Fuller, its designer, driving the vehicle onto the fairgrounds where it will be exhibited at the Crystal House on Northerly Island.  Nineteen feet long with front wheel drive and a single wheel at the rear, the car is capable of traveling at 120 miles per hour.  The photo above shows the Dymaxion beside architect George F. Keck's "Crystal House" on Northerly Island.
chicagology.com
July 29, 1918 – Stink bombs “which distributed a most pungent and overmastering odor” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 30, 1918] are thrown “with great liberality” on Wells, Madison, La Salle, and Randolph Streets, with the final detonation occurring in the Celtic barroom in the Hotel Sherman.  The last bomb sends guests in the hotel “into the open air with tremendous alacrity.”  It is believed that the attacks are the result of a feud between warring taxicab organizations, the Checker Cab Company and the Yellow Cab Company. This was just the tip of the iceberg in a battle that would last throughout most of the Roaring Twenties. Checker, the smaller firm, made up of owner-operators operating, like Uber or Lyft, under a single name, battled it out with the much larger Yellow Cab Company.  When Checker began using Loop taxi stands, previously exclusive Yellow Cab turf, the fight was on.  Things got so bad by June, 1921 that two aldermen introduced a resolution in the City Council, calling on the police chief to keep cabs from both companies off the streets until cabmen stopped killing each other.  Things got even more heated when Yellow Cab divided into two factions, one composed of union drivers and the other of non-union chauffeurs.  The whole thing finally calmed down by the end of the 1920’s when the owner of Yellow Cab, John Hertz, sold his stock in the company and got out of the business.  Ultimately, Yellow Cab and Checker merged, and the city found a way to damp down violent competition and make money at the same time by selling taxi cab medallions that limited the number of cabs on the street.  A terrific explanation of the whole mess can be found here. 



July 29, 1914:  Destruction begins on the swing bridge at Canal Street to make way for the new vertical lift bridge for the Pennsylvania Railroad as the new bridge stands, nearly complete, above it.  The new bridge will be the heaviest lift span in the country.  Today it is the only bridge of its type on the Chicago River system.  When it is raised, the bridge provides 130 feet of clearance for traffic on the river below.  According to historicbridges.com “The lift truss span was constructed outward from the towers with the use of special falsework that angled back into the tower so that it would not be in the river obstructing boats … As built the bridge contained 6,941,000 pounds of structural steel and machinery. An interesting design feature of the bridge was that the northern piers of the bridge were built overly wide, so that half of these piers could support half of a second vertical lift bridge, should the railroad have wished to add more trackage to the line.”  The top photo shows the new bridge towering above the original swing bridge in 1914.  The color photo shows the bridge today in its lowered position.
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Friday, July 10, 2020

July 10, 1966 -- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Delivers Soldier Field Address

Chicago Tribune Photo
July 10, 1966 – The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. heads up a rally at Soldier Field, beginning a summer-long Chicago campaign against segregation in education, housing and employment.  It was a brutally hot day with the temperature standing at 98 degrees … the city’s beaches were crowded with over 100,000 people.  Before a crowd of 30,000 people, King declares, “This day we must declare our own Emancipation Proclamation.  This day we must commit ourselves to make any sacrifice necessary to change Chicago.  This day we must decide to fill up the jails of Chicago, if necessary in order to end slums.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1966].  “We are here,” he continues, “because we’re tired of living in rat-infested slums.  We are tired of having to pay a median rent of $97 a month in Lawndale for four rooms while whites in South Deering pay $73 a month for five rooms … We are tired of being lynched physically in Mississippi, and we are tired of being lynched spiritually and economically in the North.”  Following the Soldier Field rally, King leads a crowd of tens of thousands to the La Salle Street entrance of City Hall where he uses adhesive tape to affix a series of demands, calling for an end to police brutality and discriminatory real-estate practices, increased Black employment and a civilian review board for the police department.  The next day he presents the demands to Mayor Richard J. Daley in person.  As tactful as he has ever been in his political career, Daley observes, “Dr. King is very sincere in what he is trying to do.  Maybe, at times, he doesn’t have all the facts on the local situation.  After all, he is a resident of another city.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2016).  Operating from an apartment at 1550 South Hamlin Avenue in Lawndale, Dr. King directs a campaign that lasts throughout the summer, culminating in an open-housing agreement between Daley and him that was signed on August 28, an agreement that many consider a template for the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

chicagology.com
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 is 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.
J. Bartholomew Photo
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]  

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.   
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Sunday, May 3, 2020

May 3, 1966 -- Dick Gregory Sentenced to Five Months


May 3, 1966 – Comedian Dick Gregory is fined $1,500 and sentenced to five months in the Cook County jail on charges related to a march through Grant Park a year earlier. Five police officers testify during the trial that Gregory “kicked and hit arresting officers and had to be carried to a squadrol.”[Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1966] No witnesses are called to rebut the testimony. Gregory’s lawyer, Mrs. Jean Williams, says that the length of the jail sentence stems from the fact that “it would be expedient to have him [Gregory] out of circulation in the forthcoming election.” In addition to his civil rights activism Gregory was also running for mayor of Chicago. Four years later, on March 10, 1970, the United States Supreme Court struck down disorderly conduct sentences against Gregory and others who were involved in peaceful demonstrations in the city.

May 3, 1932 – Al Capone leaves Chicago aboard the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad’s  Dixie Flyer “in a blaze of photographers’ flashlights and surging crowds.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 4, 1932]  “You’d think Mussolini was passin’ through,” says Capone. In Drawing Room A on Pullman car 48 Capone talks freely to reporters before he goes to bed as the train heads for the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.  “What do I think about it all? Well, I’m on my way to do eleven years … I’m not sore at anybody but I hope Chicago will be better off and the public clamor will be satisfied,”  he says. Conversation is interrupted when the train stops two miles south of Watseka to take on coal and water.  When three hoboes are discovered on the engine, guards hustle to the door of Capone’s car, but “the hoboes, having no machine guns or other murderous weapons, convinced the detectives they were not planning to free Capone.” As the evening wears on Capone dons “glove silk blue pajamas” and, shackled to a two-bit auto thief named Vito Morici, climbs into an upper berth with Morici following. Capone had been in the Cook County jail since October 24, 1931 when Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson sentenced him to an 11-year prison term for income tax evasion.  He will arrive in Atlanta in bad shape – overweight and ridden with syphilis and gonorrhea with withdrawal symptoms from a cocaine habit. In June of 1936 Capone is transferred to the prison on Alcatraz Island, from which he is paroled on January 6, 1939. He serves another six months at Terminal Island for a contempt of court charge, and then goes into hospital treatment for his late-stage syphilitic condition and related neuropsychiatric disorder.  After treatment he retires to his home on Palm Island, Florida where he dies in 1947.  He is buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.
silentfilmstillarchive
May 3, 1915 – Fans of the moving pictures turn out to view the “most costly American moving picture production ever made” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 4, 1915] as “The Diamond from the Sky,” a “three-reel masterpiece” opens at 16 theaters in the city.  Lines are long as movie fans are drawn by the film and by the chance to win a prize of $10,000 for the best idea for a sequel.  Entrants in the contest are directed to submit a treatment of no more than 1,000 words to the Tribune.  The highlights of the film – a real meteor streaking across the sky and the drop of the film’s hero, Arthur Stanley, over a cliff in an automobile make the film “a startling sensation, with unexpected thrills for every minute.”  The silent film stars Lottie Pickford, Irving Cummings and William Russell.  No known copies of the film exist today.  The plot clearly invites a sequel, hence the $10,000 gimmick promotion.  A priceless diamond is found inside a meteorite and becomes the property of the Stanley family who call the gem The Diamond from the Sky. Wealthy Virginians Colonel Arthur Stanley and Judge Lamar Stanley battle over ownership of the diamond with a gypsy, a stolen baby, a yacht, a hunchback and “a half-drunk cowboy”  [www.silentfilmstillarchive.com] all a part of the mix.


May 3, 1894 – Under the “Things Could Have Been a Lot Different” category … on this date the Chicago Daily Tribune carries news that the Chicago architectural firm of Hill and Woltersdorf has completed designs for a three-story post office building that will rise between Randolph and Madison Streets with a 700-foot frontage on Michigan Avenue.  Complementing the new home of the Art Institute a block to the south, the building’s first story will be six feet above street level with terraced steps leading to the entrance in the center of the building, which will face Washington Street.  That main entrance will be “flanked with abutments crowned with sculptured groups emblematic of the postal service.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1894] The entire building will have a steel frame, be fire-proof and cost somewhere between $2,000,000 and $2,500,000.  As pictured above, there apparently was a post office building that stood at this location from 1896 to 1905, but when contrasted with the original two million dollar plan depicted in the sketch, the actual building seems to have been far more modest and far more utilitarian with virtually all of the classical touches eliminated.
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Friday, March 27, 2020

March 27, 1966 -- Lake and Van Buren Become One-Way Streets


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March 27, 1966 – Lake and Van Buren Streets become one-way streets on this day with Lake Street carrying eastbound traffic between Wacker Drive and State Street and Van Buren carrying westbound traffic between State Street and Wacker Drive.  Additionally, one-way traffic on Madison Street will be extended from its current ending point at Franklin Street to Jefferson Street.  Except for Lake Street east of State Street every east-west street in the Loop is now a one-way street.  

March 27, 1969 – The Port of Chicago Unification Study Committee forwards a study to the Illinois Economic Development Commission that recommends closure of Navy Pier as a Chicago port in favor of new facilities in the Calumet region.  The announcement precedes by one day hearings in the State of Illinois building, 160 North La Salle Street, into widespread dock thefts that “threaten the future of Chicago as an inland seaport.” [Chicago Tribune, March 28, 1969] The committee’s report is unflinching in its appraisal, stating, “We must question the wisdom of assuming a bonded debt of 11.4 million dollars on a facility that currently is operating at a deficit and has such a limited potential for future use. The future of the port lies in the South Chicago area.” The report describes Navy Pier as a “deficit operation” with annual losses between $644,900 and $843,800 with $11.4 million in bonds still outstanding  It recommends state funds be diverted from Navy Pier to develop a lakefront port at the mouth of the Calumet River, property owned by the Youngstown Steel Company. Other urban ports have begun to adapt to the shipping industry’s approach of shipping merchandise in large steel containers to reduce pilferage, and the commission makes clear that the facilities at Navy Pier will never be adequate to support this new method of operation.  The head of the commission, Arthur B. Gottschalk, says, “We don’t believe money should be spent at Navy Pier to build more warehouses, piers, and jetties which would destroy our beaches and valuable lakefront property.  A container port there is simply out of the question.”  The above photo shows the pier in 1961 when it was still struggling valiantly to do the business of handling the city's shipping needs.


 March 27, 1939 – William Bryce Mundie dies at the age of 75.  Mundie was born in Hamilton, Ontario and moved to Chicago in 1884 at the age of 21 where he began working as a draftsman for William Le Baron Jenney.  By 1891 he was a full partner in Jenney’s firm and had married Jenney’s niece.  Mundie was therefore in on the development of the earliest metal-framed commercial buildings, and his expertise led to his being named the supervising architect for the Chicago Board of Education from 1898 to 1905.  He designed Wendell Phillips High School, along with Armour, Coonley, Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Plamondon, Darwin, Jungman and Sullivan elementary schools.  Mundie was a charter member of the Cliff Dwellers, a member of the Union League Club, the Chicago Yacht Club, and a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, for which he served as vice-president for many years.  Muncie's Wendell Phillips High School is pictured above.


 March 27, 1935 -- Officials of the Electro-Motive Company, a subsidiary of General Motors Corporation, break ground for a new plant in McCook, at which diesel-electric locomotives will be produced. H. L. Hamilton, the president of the company, says, "This new industry created by the railroads' demand for high speeds is as strange to us as it is to Chicago . . . we are planning in such a way that we can add to the plant as we get experience in the new art of building locomotives with diesel-electric power plants." Just west of Chicago, McCook, with a population of under 400, makes a particularly attractive choice for the locomotive manufacturer. First, it is close to the Indiana Harbor Belt line tracks, so getting raw materials in and finished locomotives out will be fairly easy. Secondly, the area has a bed of Niagara limestone just below the surface, an excellent foundation for the heavy fabricating equipment of the new production facility. In 1938 the first road freight is tested on an 83,764 mile, 11-month run. The test shows that the locomotive can do twice the work of a steam engine at half the cost. With Chicago's ever more stringent ordinances against smoke pollution (the first such legislation went back at least to 1909), the new plant in McCook was profitable from the beginning. It stopped producing locomotives in 1991 when operations were transferred to London, Ontario. Pictured above is demonstrator FT103, the innovation that changed an industry.

Angus S. Hibbard
www.cjow.com
March 27, 1923 – At a luncheon of the Electric Club of Chicago, held at the Morrison Hotel, Angus S. Hibbard, a consulting engineer and former vice-president of the Chicago Telephone Company, puts forth a plan for placing shops on new fixed bridges as part of his idea to “roof” the Chicago River with a 200-foot boulevard and parking garage.  Hibbard says, “Workers taking their noonday rest, in the parks on top of the garage would have no traffic policeman’s whistle constantly shrieking in their ears ... On either side of the boulevard will be ideal sites for hotels, theaters, or public buildings.  And the bridges, being fixed, will be bridges no longer, but will become integral parts of the cross streets, and might very properly be lined with small shops.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 28, 1923]  The river roof that Hibbard proposes would accommodate autos on its upper deck and four railroad tracks on the lower level.  “The usefulness of the Chicago river is past,” Hibbard says.  The
harbor of the city is on the Calumet, where, I am told, there is more water traffic than there is on the Suez canal.  The type of freight now transported by water is carried in barges too big to make the turns in the Chicago river.”  Mr. Hibbard was no slouch in terms of engineering and management.  At the age of 21 he was made the General Superintendent of the Wisconsin Telephone Company, where he supervised the creation of more than 50 telephone exchanges.  Five years later he went to New York City where in seven years he oversaw extension of telephone lines northward to Boston, Albany and Buffalo; westward to Chicago and Milwaukee; and southward to Washington, D. C.  He was responsible for a number of patents related to the telephone and even designed the "Blue Bell" long distance telephone emblem.  [www.cjow.com]
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Wednesday, October 30, 2019

October 30, 1966 -- Art Institute Recovers Renaissance Masterpiece from Grant Park Trash Can

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October 30, 1966 – An Italian Renaissance painting, “Madonna, Child, and St. John,” by the Italian painter Correggio is recovered from a Grant Park garbage can 17 hours after it is reported stolen from the Art Institute of Chicago.  The painting, valued at a half-million dollars, is recovered from a trash can along Roosevelt Road between Columbus and Lake Shore Drive.  An anonymous phone call alerts authorities to the location where they find the painting wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.  The caller says, “It started as a prank, but it got out of hand.”  [Chicago Tribune, October 31, 1966]  The director of the Art Institute, Charles C. Cunningham, examines the work at police headquarters and identifies a split in the wood on which the painting was done and some scuff marks on the neck of the Madonna.  Cunningham states that the security system in the Art Institute will be “definitely changed.”  Officials are at a loss to explain how a valuable work of art could be removed from a second-floor gallery and moved through a system of electric eyes and alarms.  The burglar apparently tore the painting and the frame from the wall and ran through ten galleries to a window at the southeast corner of the building.  Using a hammer, the thief pried a screen loose, broke a window and jumped to a ventilator on the roof a building ten feet below.  From there he jumped to a parking lot, dropping a large part of the frame in the process.  The broken window set off a burglar alarm at approximately 1:00 a.m.  The call concerning the location of the painting comes from “somewhere on the southside” at about 6:00 p.m. in the late afternoon.  According to Cunningham, the thief must have been an expert.  He says, “The thief apparently was interested only in this particular painting and it appears he was familiar with the museum and knew exactly where to go.”  The Tribune graphic shows the route of the thief as he escaped with the painting.


October 30, 1972 – The worst accident in Chicago transit history occurs as 45 people die and more than 350 are injured when a six-car commuter train slams into the rear of a four-car commuter train that is backing up to a station platform at Twenty-Seventh Street after overshooting it.  President Richard Nixon sends the Secretary of Transportation, John Volpe, to the scene and the National Safety and Transportation Board begins an investigation. It takes six hours for 240 fire fighters to remove the dead and injured from the two trains at a site just two blocks away from the emergency room of Michael Reese Hospital, which has doctors on the scene within minutes.  There are nearly a thousand passengers on the two trains as they collide at 7:27 a.m. at the height of rush hour.  Most of the deaths occur on the rear car of the lead train, which is composed of new “high-liner” double deck passenger cars.  The following train, composed of older single-level steel coaches, plows into the reversing train, over-riding the underframe of its last car and telescoping it.  The official report of the N.T.S.B. finds “that the probable cause of this accident was the reverse movement of train 416 (the lead train) without flag protection into a previously vacated signal block and the failure of the engineer of train 720 (the following train), while operating faster than the prescribed speed, to perceive the train ahead in time to avoid the collision.” 


October 30, 1931 – The largest Y. M. C. A. in the world is officially opened at dedication ceremonies on this date in 1931.  The new Lawson Y. M. C. A. on the northeast corner of Chicago Avenue and Dearborn Streets rises 24 stories and is built at a cost of $2,754,000.  The new building is named after Victor F. Lawson, the late publisher of the Chicago Daily News, who left $1,500,000 to start the project. There will be 650 residential rooms with 700 telephones, and each room in the building will have a radio speaker that allows a choice of five programs.  As described by the Chicago Daily Tribune, facilities include “a small chapel for private meditation and group worship; a completely equipped ‘log cabin,’ with an artificial woodland view out the window; a room of 1950, done in an ultra-modernistic style; the Lawson Memorial library; a boxing room with permanent ring; two large gymnasiums; volleyball and handball rooms; locker rooms with accommodations for 2,500 men; a rifle range; 10 studios for hobbies, handicraft, and music; mechanical exercise room; a swimming pool, 62 x 25 feet, with a 12 foot depth in the middle for diving; restaurants, grills and cafeterias, and fountain rooms.  There is also a roof garden on the nineteenth floor” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 25, 1931] In May of 2017 developer Peter Holsten, who paid one dollar for the building with the caveat that it provide affordable housing for at least 50 years, announced a $100 million plan to convert 583 units into 400 larger units with private bathrooms and kitchens.  The plan also will replace exterior fire escapes with two enclosed stair towers and install a new bank of modern elevators.


October 30, 1907 – Wouldn’t it have been interesting to be serving the coffee on this day as Mayor Fred Busse, First Ward aldermen Michael Kenna and John Coughlin and a committee from the Commercial Club meet in architect Daniel Burnham’s office atop the Railway Exchange Building on Michigan Avenue.  Two days earlier the city council had passed an ordinance directing the commissioner of public works to gather plans for connecting Beaubein Court on the south side of the river with Pine Street on the north.  The meeting in Burnham’s office is one more step in a process of trying to unite the north and south side boulevard systems that has been dragging on for over 15 years.  After the meeting Clyde M. Carr, chairman of the Commercial Club committee, says, “We have acted and will continue to act as a clearing house for ideas on this subject.  We have not given our support to any one plan, but are anxious to push the first worthy plan that the authorities may decide upon as feasible.  What we are striving to keep in mind is the future – something that will give glory to Chicago for a hundred years to come.  We do not want a makeshift or a compromise.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 31, 1907] It will be another 13 years before the lawsuits are settled, the property acquired, and the great bridge leading Michigan Avenue across the river completed.  Daniel Burnham is pictured above in his office atop the Railway Exchange Building.





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