Showing posts with label 1968. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1968. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

September 9, 1968 -- Mayor Daley Blasts Protestors on National Television

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September 9, 1968 – The National Broadcasting Company carries a special report that airs the full televised news conference, held earlier in the day, in which Mayor Richard J. Daley speaks out “with vigorous, compelling words in a coast-to-coast newscast in support of tough action his administration and Chicago police took against the rioters who tried to tear the city apart during the Democratic national convention.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1968].  A reporter asks His Honor if he is satisfied with the conduct of the police department.  At first, Daley says no one is ever fully satisfied with any branch of government and that accounts of overzealous police work are being investigated.  But he is just getting warmed up as he continues, “If someone is throwing excrement in your faces, you newspapermen, and you were being called names …. I’d like to ask you what would you do under those circumstances, whether you’d be the calm, collected men you think you are … The confrontation was created by the people who charged the police.”  Another reporter asks if Daley is satisfied with the job police commanders did in commanding officers.  “Were you ever in one of these things,” Daley asks.  “Were you ever a policeman.  What IS effective control if someone hits one of the men alongside of you, knocks him down with a rock or a brick, and hits his eye and throws oven cleaner into his face and blinds him?  What would you do?”  A reporter asks the mayor about the future of the kinds of demonstrations such as the one that took place in Chicago.  Daley says he supports the right of peaceful protesters, continuing “The police department in this country should not have to be subjected to this kind of abuse and this kind of action.  What are we coming to as a society?  What are we coming to as a country if policemen are treated the way they have been treated, not only in Chicago but all over the country?” 

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September 9. 2003 – Architect Frank Gehry visits Chicago, appraising the bandshell that he designed in Millennium Park, as both the bandshell and the park are still taking shape.  He leads a tour of the bandshell for “a well-dressed, well-heeled group of Millennium Park donors.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 11, 2003]  Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin describes the upbeat mood of the event, led by Gehry “with stand-up comic skill.”  Gehry pays particular attention to the bridge he designed that will weave sinuously across Columbus Drive, linking Millennium Park with the Daley Bicentennial Plaza, which today is Maggie Daley Park. He says that he sold Mayor Richard M. Daley on the idea for the bridge through the use of a dinner knife, saying that he didn’t threaten the mayor with it … rather, he turned it on an angle to show how the bridge with its sloping sides would look smaller than the mayor thought. Looking at the “trellis” of steel pipes that will rise above the 300 foot wide by 600 foot long great lawn in front of the bandshell, he quips that he told Cindy Pritzker, who contributed $15 million toward the $63 million bandshell that if it rains, “… you can always pull a shmata over the top and cover it,” using a Yiddish word that is sometimes used in reference to clothing.  Toward the end of the talk, someone in the audience asks the architect about the noise from Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street and how it would affect concerts in the new pavilion.  Gehry answers, “You ask the mayor to turn it off.”  The above photo shows the pavilion under construction, close to the time when the architect visited the site.


September 9, 1975 – The trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago announce that no new students will be admitted to the Goodman School of Drama and the final class will graduate in the spring of 1978.  The chairman of the Goodman Theater committee, Stanley M. Freehling, says that it costs the Art Institute $200,000 a year to maintain a school of 25 faculty members for students who pay an average annual tuition of $1,950.  It is stated that the decision concerning the school will not affect the professional theater at the Goodman or future seasons on its main stage.  The school moved to DePaul University in 1977, and the following year the Goodman Theater separated officially from the Art Institute and now functions as the nonprofit Chicago Theatre Group, Inc.


September 9, 1935 – A proposal to extend Wacker Drive from where it ends at Michigan Avenue by building a road east to the point where it is expected to join the new outer drive bridge is brought up in the City Council.  The estimated cost of the project, which will allow traffic from the west side of the Loop to reach the outer drive, is $1,700,000.  When the ordinance is read, Twenty-Fifth Ward Alderman James B. Bowler asks that consideration also be given to the extension of Wacker Drive along the south branch of the river from its present end at Madison Street to Roosevelt or Cermak Roads “in order to provide a connecting link with whatever superhighways might be constructed in the future to serve the west side.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1935] As it turned out, the extension of Wacker Drive to Lake Shore Drive was not completed until 1975, 40 years after the city council considered the resolution in 1935.  Even in the City that Works change can take a long, long time.  The above photo shows the completion of work on the Wacker Drive extension in 1975.  At that time it linked up with the old "S" curve south of the Lake Shore Drive bridge across the river.


September 9, 1917 – The cornerstone of the Church of St. Clement at Deming Place and Orchard Street takes place at 3:30 p.m. in a ceremony at which Cardinal George Mundelein presides.  The Reverend John Webster Melody of St. Jariath’s church delivers the principal address of the afternoon, which stresses that in the national crisis brought on by the war in Europe “liberty and democracy mean greater national opportunity and are best served by spiritual means.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1917]  After the service a parade of 2,000 men and boys moves past a crowd of over 8,000 people, most of them members of the congregation. The church was designed by architect George D. Barnett in the Byzantine-Italian Romanesque Revival style, influenced by the architect’s design of the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.  [openhousechicago.org]  In 2018 a SMNG A project to develop a new entrance to the church and parish center rectory buildings was awarded a Chicago Small Project Award by the American Association of Architects.




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Saturday, May 30, 2020

May 30, 1968 -- Medussa Challenger Strikes Again


May 30, 1968 – It has only been a year that the Medusa Challenger has been at work on the Chicago River, but the big lake freighter will continue to make her presence known for years, indirectly causing enough traffic problems during her time sailing through the city to cause Chicagoans to refer to her as the “jinx ship.”  On this night the 562-foot ship is halted in her trip up the river when the Clark Street bridge short-circuits and refuses to open.  With the Dearborn and State Street bridges open to allow the ship to approach Clark Street, the malfunction causes traffic on all three streets to stop for an hour and 15 minutes.  Finally, at 7:30 p.m. the Clark Street bridge is made operable and “with a blast of its horn, the ship was under way as was the traffic, including one car driven by a man who had a permanent solution to the whole problem … ‘You know what they should do with this river?’ he said.  ‘They should have it paved.’” [Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1968] For all you might ever want to know about the ship and its ill-fortune in Chicago, you can head to this section of Connecting the Windy City.


 May 30, 1939 – The Chicago and North Western Railroad rolls out a set of brand new diesel-electric locomotives, just off the assembly line of the Electro-Motive Corporation in LaGrange, to pull the “400,” its famous high-speed train, to Milwaukee. In the coming week the locomotives will be placed in service between Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota.  The new locomotives are capable of running 117 miles an hour even though they are still pulling standard equipment.  Sometime in August new streamlined cars from the Chicago shops of the Pullman Standard Car Manufacturing Company will be added to the consist.  The new locomotives are powered by four 1,000 horsepower 12-cylinder diesel engines, which drive four generators that supply current to eight traction motors, four on each unit.  Finally, after nearly a half-century of trying to clear the smoke of steam locomotives from the lakefront and the southwest side of the city, it appears that a solution has arrived.


May 30, 1893 – The laying of the cornerstone of the new Memorial Hall on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street takes place under the direction of the Grand Army of the Republic. Both streets are crowded with veterans and ordinary citizens “all anxious to behold the ceremony and listen to the addresses incident upon the formal commencement of the creation of a magnificent structure, which will be a credit to the city and take high rank among the costly edifices already so numerous in Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 31, 1893] The plot of ground, known as Dearborn Park, was originally part of the southern boundary of Fort Dearborn, part of the “public ground” that extended east to the lake and south to Madison Street. It required a coming together of the Directors of the Chicago Public Library and the Grand Army of the Republic to get a bill through Congress that would allow construction on the land. It took persistence . . . the legislation only passed after three attempts over the course of ten years. In a simple ceremony the flag is run to the top of the flag pole, a band plays the Star Spangled Banner and dozens of artifacts are placed in a copper box that will lie below the cornerstone. Then General E. A. Blodgett, the Commander of the Illinois Grand Army of the Republic, closes the ceremony, saying, “In the name of the soldiers and sailors who have saved our nation we thank you for the honor. We rejoice that our city thus proclaims to the world that patriotic self-sacrifice is not to be forgotten. We trust that our beloved land may never again be deluged in blood. Yet we remember that the perils of peace are scarcely less than the perils of war. The demands for loyalty are as great upon the sons as they were upon the sires. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” The Memorial Hall with its great dome occupies the northern half of what is today the Chicago Cultural Center. The photo above shows the site at the time with Randolph Street on the right and Washington Boulevard on the left. The second photo shows the area as it appears today.
chicagocop.com
chicagocop.com
May 30, 1889 – Little Frank Degan, the son of a policeman who lost his life on May 4, 1886 at what today we call the Haymarket Riot, pulls a cord and unveils the statue that will commemorate the events of that day.  There are close to 2,000 spectators, more than one might expect for an event staged on a rainy day. Over 175 uniformed officers are in attendance.   Chicago manufacturer Richard Teller Crane, head of the commemoration committee, opens the ceremony, saying that the event “… commemorates an important event in the history of our city and our country.  It commemorates a sacrifice of life made in the interests of the people.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 31, 1889]. Then Mayor DeWitt Clinton Cregier accepts the monument on behalf of the city, ending with his speech with these words, “This is a free and lawful country, with plenty of room for the people of all the earth who choose to come here to breathe the free air and to obey these laws, but not an inch of room or an hour to dwell here for those who come for any other purpose.”  Following the mayor is Franklin H. Head, the president of the Chicago Historical society, who delivers a lengthy speech that traces the development of democracy in the country, leading up to the May day in 1886 when a bomb exploded in a protest march and 67 policemen are killed or maimed.  Head warns, “It should be borne in mind that apostles of anarchy do not propose a modification of existing laws and institutions, but a wholesale destruction by violence and throttling of all law.  History would, as always, repeat itself: violence would beget violence, and crime would beget crime.  All the powers and forces of evil would come again and inaugurate anew the reign of Chaos and Old Night.”  At the end of Head’s address, Mayor Cregier asks the crowd for three cheers “for the monument and the heroes whose brave deeds it commemorates.”  And then “… the crowd slumped away through the mud and the water.  The Haymarket Monument was unveiled.”  The statue dedicated that day in May of 1889 has had a nomadic existence.  It was dedicated in the middle of Haymarket Square on Randolph Street, just west of Desplaines Street.  Forty-one years later a streetcar, whose motorman claimed he was sick of looking at the statue, left the tracks and crashed into the monument.  It was patched up and relocated to Union Park.  Then, in 1956, with half of the old market square obliterated by the Kennedy Expressway, the statue was moved back, close to its original location, sitting on a plinth overlooking the highway.  In the turbulence of anti-war protests of 1969 a bomb targeted the statue, breaking over a hundred windows in the neighborhood and spraying pieces of the statue onto the Kennedy Expressway.  It was rebuilt only to be blown up again on October 6, 1970.  Once again the statue was rebuilt, and afterwards given a 24-hour police guard.  In 1972 it was moved to the lobby of the Central Police Headquarters and from there, in 1976 to the Chicago Police Academy.  Today it can be found behind a controlled access fence at Chicago Police Headquarters at 3510 South State Street.  There it was placed on a new pedestal and unveiled by Geraldine Doceka, the great-great granddaughter of Officer Matthias Degan, the officer whose son unveiled the original statue in 1890. The original work was designed by Frank Bathchelder of St. Paul, Minnesota and sculpted by Johannes Galert of New York with funds raised by the Union League Club of Chicago.  It was Galert’s first major commission.  The statue's first location and its present location are shown above.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2020

March 24, 1968 -- Metropolitan Structures Ups the Ante

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March 24, 1968 – The Chicago Tribune runs a feature on Metropolitan Structures, Inc. as it embarks on creating a $300 million “new town” for 50,000 people on a 1,000-acres island near Montreal.  The firm is a descendant of a development entity that was overseen by Herbert S. Greenwald before he died in a plane crash in 1959.  Greenwald’s company was responsible for such Chicago gems as 860 and 880 Lake Shore Drive, Commonwealth Plaza, and the Promontory apartments, all designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  Greenwald’s attorney, Bernard Weissbourd, originally a chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project, set up Metropolitan Structures after the developer’s death, and the new firm turned to large-scale developments such as the 2400 Lake View apartments and the Essex Inn in Chicago and the Baltimore Hilton and One Charles Office Center in Baltimore.  The next major project to which the firm has committed is the development of Illinois Central Railroad air rights east of Michigan Avenue and south of the Chicago River.  It has attained the distinction of being the first firm to gain approval for erecting a building in the area, the anticipated 30-story tower that is today 111 East Wacker Drive, the home of the Chicago Architecture Center.  According to the Tribune, “Weissbourd has conceived an exciting city within a city.  His plan is to group office and residential buildings together, and to link all with underground commercial development.  This in turn would flow south to the lower level of the Prudential building at Randolph street, thence to the Illinois Central railroad station, and into the State street subway station.  Access would be provided to State street department stores and further on to the Civic center, Brunswick building, and a developing underground tunnel network on Dearborn street.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1968]  Here began what would become a large part of Chicago’s extensive and ever expanding pedway system.  The dark tower in the center of the above photo is 111 East Wacker Drive.


 March 24, 2014 – A C.T.A. train operator falls asleep at the controls as her train approaches the end of the line at O’Hare International Airport just before 3:00 a.m., and the train crashes through a barrier designed to stop trains at the end of the line and continues to travel up an escalator.  More than 30 people are hurt, and Blue Line service to the airport is halted for over a day as authorities try to determine the cause of the accident.  C.T.A. President Forrest Clayppol says, “We run a half a million train trips a year. So when something like this happens, we want to work closely with our engineers and theirs (the National Transportation and Safety Board) to get to the very bottom of this as fast as we can.”


 March 24, 1949 -- Satchel Paige, at the age of 43, starts his first game of the 1949 season as the Cleveland Indians, with Lou Boudreau as a player-manager, meet the Chicago Cubs in a spring training game in Los Angeles. After a 1948 season that saw the oldest man ever to play major league baseball in contention for post-season honors, the 1949 season would be a disappointment as Paige would go 4-7 even though he managed a 3.04 earned run average. Bill Veeck would give Paige an unconditional release at the conclusion of the season, but he would play four more years and be named to the American League All-Star team in 1952 and 1953.

March 24, 1923 – The Vice-President of the Illinois Central Railroad, C. N. Kittle, says that the road is considering improving railroad property between Randolph Street and the Chicago River, east of Michigan Avenue with hotels and skyscrapers.   Kittle says, “… it is our plan to improve it with office buildings, hotels and other structures, similar to the development over the New York Central tracks in New York, where the Biltmore and Ambassador hotels have been built over the tracks.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 25, 1923] Attorney Walter L. Fisher, counsel for the City Railway Terminal Commission, says, “This territory will serve as a commercial outlet to the loop for years to come.  With the transportation which will be afforded by the Illinois Central railroad it should prove amazingly popular following electrification of the road.”  Change takes time.  It would be another half-century or more before this “amazingly popular” area that is today known as Illinois Center would see its first high rise building.  The black and white photo shows the area as it looked in the 1920's.  The photo below that shows Illinois Center (almost impossible to believe it's the same place) today.

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March 24, 1914 --  The organizers of the federal reserve banking system decide that Chicago will be the center of one of the largest of the twelve districts that will be created in the new system.  Minneapolis will share the midwestern territory with Chicago. The Chicago district is tentatively organized to include Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska, a territory in which banks have a total capital of more than $300,000,000.  Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913 primarily to put an end to the bank runs and panics that had plagued the country as a result of its decentralized banking system.  By the middle of November, 1914 the 12 cities chosen as the sites for regional banks in the system were open and ready for business.  The photo shows the Federal Reserve Bank under construction in Chicago in 1915.
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Tuesday, October 15, 2019

October 15, 1968 -- General Maxwell Taylor Defends Vietnam Policy

General Maxwell Taylor
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October 15, 1968 – The former Ambassador to Vietnam, General Maxwell Taylor, delivers s speech to 1,500 people at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in which he strongly defends the United States involvement in that country. Taylor observes that “the increase in manpower and airpower since last February has produced a change in the war in our favor.”  [Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1968]. Acting as a special consultant to President Lyndon Johnson, Taylor comes to the city at the invitation of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations as part of a country-wide tour he is making.  As pickets protest his presence outside the hotel, Taylor expresses dismay over demonstrations of United States participation in the Vietnam war, saying, “I regret them because of the effect they will have abroad, not among our friends but our enemies.  The hope that there is a division among us will stiffen our enemies.  He does not speculate on how many troops the United States will eventually send overseas beyond the 140,000 soldiers currently in Vietnam.  Taylor says that bombing of North Vietnam will be helpful in convincing Hanoi that “little by little, they are paying an increasing price for continuing the war.”


October 15, 1937 – Thirty miniature rooms created by Mrs. James Ward Thorne go on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. The rooms look at French and English interior design from the time between Henry VIII and Louis XII to the present.  Eleanor Jewett, reporting for the Chicago Daily Tribune observes, "Each little room is a gem.  The colors are fascinating; the details are fascinating; the different periods of interior decorating illustrated are fascinating. To tell the truth, standing before each room in turn is to become much like a bird bewitched by a snake, the fascination that grips you is dangerous; mind and body you are swallowed up momentarily in the charm of each exhibit.” According to Curbed Chicago, Thorne employed more than 30 craftsmen to bring about her ideas … between 1932 and 1940 the team turned out 99 miniature rooms, 62 of which were gifted to the Art Institute.  The detailing of the rooms is exquisite.  Crystal chandeliers are made out of crystal. Paintings on the walls are commissioned works of original art, in postage stamp-sized frames.  There are even two bronze sculptures designed by John Storrs, the sculptor responsible for the statue of Ceres at the top of the Chicago Board of Trade.  The photo above shows one of the miniature rooms, a French library of the Louis XV period.


October 15, 2006 – A crowd of 300 lines Wacker Drive between Dearborn and State Streets to witness the filming of a commercial for Allstate Insurance, a production that reprises the scene from The Hunter, filmed in 1979. Hollywood director Phil Joanou films scenes in the city for three days – a car chase that begins under the elevated tracks at Lake Street, winds around Wacker Drive, up Dearborn Street, and onto the circular driveway of the parking garage at Marina City.  The commercial ends with a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass plunging off the tower and into the Chicago River, a catapult that is staged twice.   You can catch the commercial here. 

Charles L. Hutchinson
October 15, 1924 – Chicago learns that Charles L. Hutchinson, who died on October 7, has rewarded the Art Institute of Chicago, for which he served as president, handsomely in his will.  After providing $300,000 to his wife, Frances, he gives the museum the paintings that hang in the Hutchinson home at 222 East Walton Place.  Other stipulations in the will provide gifts to Hull House, the Cliff Dwellers’ Club, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Presbyterian Hospital, Michael Reese Hospital, and Lombard College.  Hutchinson was born into wealth as his father brought the family to Chicago in 1856 and made a fortune as a grain merchant, in meatpacking, and as one of the founders of the Corn Exchange National Bank.  Charles Hutchinson followed his father into banking and grain speculation.  The Newberry Library’s introduction to the collection of Hutchinson’s papers states, “Because he was a man of wide interests with a strong sense of civic duty, Hutchinson’s activities were not confined to finance but ranged over many aspects of Chicago life. Though his greatest enthusiasm was for art and the establishment and growth of the Art Institute, Hutchinson was president, board member, trustee and/or supporter of perhaps as many as seventy organizations and social institutions, orphanages, hospitals and schools. Among his numerous involvements, he served as president of the Chicago Board of Trade, director and chairman of the Fine Arts Committee of the World’s Columbian Exposition, trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, president of the Chicago Orphan Asylum, president of St. Paul’s Universalist Church, vice-president of the Egypt Exploration Fund, president of the American Federation of the Arts, and treasurer of the Cliff Dwellers, of the Municipal Art League, and of the Chicago Sanitary District. Also, at the founding of the University of Chicago, in 1890 he was named a trustee of the new institution where he served as treasurer until his death.”

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Wednesday, September 4, 2019

September 4, 1968 -- Italian Court Demolition Begins

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chicago.gov
September 4, 1968 – Wreckers begin to raze a collection of shops and apartments on the southeast corner of Michigan Avenue and Ontario Street known as the Italian Court, a development that was built in the 1920's when two brothers, Chester and Raymond Cook, hired architect Robert S. DeGolyer, to come up with a plan to unite several small existing buildings. The apartments in Italian Court appealed to artists and writers.  Marianne Monroe, the editor of Poetry Magazine, orchestrated poetry readings that saw the likes of Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters  and Marion Strobel holding forth at Le Petit Gourmet, the restaurant which the apartments surrounded on three sides.  [Chicago Tribune, September 23, 1990].  Today the 625 North Michigan Avenue building stands on the site, a 28-floor building constructed in 1970 according to a design by architectural firm Meister and Volpe.  The restaurant of the original building is shown in the top photo.  625 North Michigan, the building that replaced Italian Court, is shown in the second photo.


September 4, 1918 – Four people are killed and more than 30 are injured when a bomb explodes in the Adams Street entrance of the Federal building at 3:11 p.m.  The Chicago police and the United States Secret Service theorize that the explosion was the work of sympathizers with the International Workers of the World in an attempt to avenge the conviction of 93 of the group’s members in the courthouse. Hundreds of people are in the long corridor that leads away from Adams Street and toward the great rotunda beneath the dome eight floors above it. Dozens are thrown to the ground when the explosions occur.  Afterward they walk around dazed and blackened, covered with dust and debris. Officials find evidence that the bomb was actually planned to explode two days earlier as the Labor Day parade passed the reviewing stand on the Jackson Boulevard side of the building.  Nearly every window in the lower five stories of the Edison and Marquette buildings across Adams Street is blown in.  Buildings as far away as State Street also report damage.  Hundreds of customers rush from the Fair Store in a panic only to enter a torrent of broken glass falling from windows above them.  A horse hitched to a delivery wagon on Adams Street dies in the street as a result of the shower of glass shards.  William D. Haywood, the head of the I.W.W. is in the Federal Building at the time of the blast and denies that the group had anything to do with the explosion.  Police take him to the county jail, fearing that the crowd might attack him.  Members of the American Protective League, 2,500 strong, fan out to scour the city for suspects.  Fifty sailors from the Municipal Pier surround the Federal Building with fixed bayonets, and former Chicago alderman John Scully says, “It was evidently close against the back wall and spent its force backward and downward.  Had it been against one of the main walls it would have torn it out. The terrific power in the bomb is shown by the windows in the office buildings opposite.  They were not merely broken but were shattered into fine bits, right down to the sashes.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 4, 1918] Subsequently, the police round up almost 100 members of the I.W.W. with all but a few released within a few days.  No convictions are ever secured, and no final determination is ever made as to the perpetrator of or the motive for the crime.  As a footnote one of the many postal workers in the building at the time of the explosion was a substitute letter carrier by the name of Walt Disney. [postalmuseum.si.edu] 


September 4, 1973 – The City Council subcommittee on finance approves an ordinance calling for the construction of the Columbus Drive bridge over the Chicago River.  It is expected that the ordinance will move on to the full finance committee within the week and from there move to the City Council for final approval.  It passes despite the objections of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association which predicts that a bridge at Columbus Drive will cause gridlock north of the river.  The ordinance includes a proposal for the city to spend $180,000 to complete plans for the bridge, along with $580,000 for engineering and property acquisition costs.  Four blocks of land approximately 110 feet wide along Fairbanks Court between the river and Ohio Street must be purchased in order to connect Colunbus Drive south of the river to Ohio Street to the north.  The State of Illinois is expected to underwrite the cost of the bridge, expected to cost about $10 million. The executive director of the North Michigan Avenue Association says that the organization will demand a state and federal environmental impact statement concerning the bridge before it is built.


September 4, 1967 – It is a day that ends another season at Riverview Park, a final Labor Day fling at a park that has delighted visitors for 64 seasons, ever since auto dealer George Schmidt started the amusement park in order to attract visitors to his dealership on the east side of Western Avenue.  There is the Star Time Frolics Parade with its floats, elephants, marching bands, and dancers to ring down the curtain on another year at the gritty carnival that sits on the Chicago River just south of Belmont Avenue.  This weekend is a time for end-of-summer fun, but this will be it for Riverview.  Less than a month later, the property will be gone for good, sold to the La Salle Street Investment Group for an estimated 6.5 million dollars.

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Wednesday, August 7, 2019

August 7, 1968 -- Chicago River Lock Jams Second Night in a Row

forgottenchicago
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August 7, 1968 – For the second night in a row electrical malfunctions at the Chicago River lock trap sight-seeing boats and pleasure craft inside the lock in stifling summer heat.  For more than two hours passengers fume as boats bob up and down, trapped between lake and river.  Passengers on board the Sea King finally decide they have had enough and demand to get off, “clambering onto the sea wall looking strangely like a platoon of middle aged marines in mufti making an invasion landing.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 8, 1968].  Passengers in boats already out on the lake get a far longer ride than the one for which they paid as the boats sail up and down the lakefront, waiting to get back to their river docks.  The owner of Mercury Sightseeing Boats, Art Agra, greets the suggestion from a reporter that river passengers got a nice ride with, “Let’s face it – the river is junk, and this whole affair is a pain in the neck.”  Navy Pier in 1968 is circled in the distance of the top photo.  The area has changed considerably as can be seen in the second photo. 


 August 7, 1978 –Construction begins on Columbus Plaza, the first residential building to go up on the Illinois Central Railroad property between Randolph and Wacker Drive on the south and north and Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive on the west and east.  The 47-story building will contain 552 studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments. Five buildings have already been erected on the 83-acre site since development began in 1969, but they are all commercial or hotel buildings.  Two residential buildings have been completed east of Lake Shore Drive in this time period, the Outer Drive East condominium and Harbor Point; today they can be found to the west of the reconstructed Lake Shore Drive.  The tower is the product of the architectural firm of Fujikawa Conterato Lohan and Associates.


 August 7, 1973 – Following the third murder of a woman in Grant Park in less than a year, the Chicago Tribune editorializes about “Our Unsafe City.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1973] “That women should be killed in the front yard of downtown Chicago,” the editorial states, “is shocking and shameful.  That the murders remain unsolved compounds the shame.”  The Tribune offers three areas that should be considered immediately.  “The facts call for more than hand wringing.  They call for more rigorous police work in the future than in the past,” the editorial states.  Along with that, “The facts call also for constant concern on the part of everyone for the safety of both oneself and of others.  Public awareness of risk needs to be heightened, tho of course short of panic or neurosis.” And, finally, “… prudence suggests staying away from wooded areas without sight lines to passers-by, even when those areas are in heavily used public parks … Broad daylight is not sufficient protection.”  The editorial concludes, “It is shameful that, more and more, people have reason to become wary like antelopes among predators.  The harsh fact is that vicious crime in public places is an ever present possibility in cities, including Chicago.  Heightened vigilance by both police and public offers the best—tho an imperfect—defense.”


 August 7, 1910:  The Chicago Daily Tribune once again editorializes about the evil of the Illinois Central Railroad, writing, “Yesterday was a perfect day in Chicago.  The sky was cloudless and the lake a blue turquoise, save along the eastern edge of the south side.  There the vile smoke from a hundred coughing locomotives of the Illinois Central railroad made it seem the gateway to the inferno.  All along one-half of what should be the most magnificent city water front of the world went the disfiguring trains drawn by engines, the stacks of which belched forth clouds of smoke and showers of embers.  The public library, the Art institute, the hotels, the business blocks, and miles and miles of private residences are all begrimed and polluted by this nuisance.  Books, pictures, and furniture are discolored by it, health is endangered, and a property loss of millions constantly increased.” The paper presents only one viable alternative:  electrification.  Yet, it is pessimistic about such a remedy ever occurring.  “A corporation like the Illinois Central never improves its service until the balance goes against it,” the editorial ends.  “Or until a municipality takes it by the back of its corporate neck and squeezes it into compliance with a popular and imperative demand.”  At this point the Illinois Central operated over 300 steam trains into and out of Chicago.  It would take 16 more years before the commuter tracks were electrified from downtown to Matteson.
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Thursday, January 31, 2019

January 31 1968 -- Lake Michigan "Sick ... But shall Not Die"

time.com
January 31, 1968 –U. S. Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall, in a statement to 600 people attending the four-state Conference on Water Pollution in Lake Michigan at the Sherman House, says in a statement “Lake Michigan is sick, but I believe we are all determined it shall not die.”  [Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1968]Reading from a speech prepared by Udall, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Max N. Edwards, continues, “Delay means death to Lake Michigan, and the death of Lake Michigan would be a national tragedy.”  Udall, in bed with the flu after attending the opening night of Ford’s Theater in Washington, D. C., is unable to attend the conference in person, but his remarks are nonetheless cogent.  “I ask that the results of this conference be action – specific, strong, and coordinated action by the states, as individuals, the states as a group, and by the federal government,” he writes in his prepared remarks … I assure you that I will be prompt to do my part to see the recommendations carried out.” Mayor Richard J. Daley and Illinois Governor Otto Kerner open the conference with Daley saying, “Meet the problem in a bold and concerted manner.  Drastic action is required to meet an urgent problem … [the physical resources of Chicago] are ready to help save our lake.  It will never be cheaper to end pollution in Lake Michigan than right now.” Officials from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan hear Kerner’s plea to support a ban against dumping polluted materials into the lake and to support federal laws to regulate pollution from boats.  “The success of this action program to free Lake Michigan from pollution must be shared by every individual organization, corporation, and government agency,” Kerner says.  The above photo appeared in Life Magazine at the time and depicts the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal with a caption describing the canal as "an old caldron running through east Chicago."  Such were conditions up and down the shore of Lake Michigan.


January 31, 1958 – The Chicago Sun-Times holds a formal dedication for its new $15 million plant on the Chicago River between Wabash Avenue and Rush Street as Marshall Field, Jr. dedicates the nine-story building to the memory of his late father.  Ground was broken for the new building, designed by Naess and Murphy, in November of 1955.  Marshall Field, II founded the Sun-Times in 1941 as the Chicago Sun and the paper merged with the Chicago Times on February 2, 1948.  For more information on the building that sat where today’s Trump Tower sits, you can turn to this blog in Connecting the Windy City.


January 31, 1913 – The Board of Trustees of the Art Institute commission Lorado Taft to begin work on the sculpture that will be known as “The Fountain of Time.”  The plan is for the sculpture to be erected on the Midway in Hyde Park, with a fountain and “three bridges with groups – ‘The Arts,’ “The Sciences,’ and “Religion’ connected with single figures.”  The report proclaims, “If carried out the Midway with a small lagoon, fountains, bridges and statuary, will be one of the beauty spots of the world.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 1, 1911]  The sculpture will be created from “creamy Georgia marble” and will take five years to complete.  It will be paid for using $30,000 from the Ferguson endowment, held in escrow at the Art Institute.  The sculptor explains the plan in this way, “The scheme for the decoration of the Midway embraces the embellishment of the park space one mile in length, connecting Washington and Jackson parks at Sixtieth street, with fountains, bridges, and connecting rows of figures.  There would be a stream of water along this park space, and the principal bridges would be at Ellis, Woodlawn, and Madison avenues.  The Fountain of Time would be at the western terminus.  Whether it will or not rests entirely with the park board.  The Bridge of Arts at Woodlawn avenue, which practically bisects the Midway, would form the center of the whole scheme of beautification, and would be more elaborate than either of the other two bridges, Religion at Ellis avenue or Science at Madison avenue.”  Although the final sculpture is a spectacular addition to the western terminus of the Midway, the grand scheme proposed on this date was considerably scaled back from the grand vision that was introduced to the city on this day in 1913.  Even the “creamy Georgia marble” went, and the 200 figures of the sculpture are made of hollow-cast concrete reinforced with steel.


January 31, 1911 -- The Home Insurance Company building at the corner of La Salle and Adams Streets is sold for $2,150,000. James and Charles Deering purchase the property. Their father, William, had founded the Deering Harvester Company, and the family hit the jackpot when financier J. P. Morgan purchased the firm and merged it with the McCormick Reaper Company and several other farm implement manufacturers to create what we know today as International Harvester. The Home Insurance Building, designed by William LeBaron Jenney and completed in 1884, is considered by many to be the world's first metal-framed skyscraper. It was the tallest building in the world for seven years. It's gone now. It was demolished in 1931 to make way for the magnificent Art Deco skyscraper at 135 South La Salle.
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 0 comments
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