Showing posts with label 1990. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1990. Show all posts

Saturday, September 5, 2020

September 5, 1990 --- Crate and Barrel Opens on Michigan Avenue

Crains Chicago Business
curbedchicago.com
September 5, 1990 – Gordon Segal opens the new North Michigan Avenue Crate and Barrel store, a three-level housewares emporium, as 1,100 guests, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, ogle the goods, “sliding garlic shrimp off toothpicks, or swirling red pepper steak in an ominous sauce … rubbing palms over Shaker tables, bouncing fists on mattresses and turning over price tags.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 6, 1990]. Soon after graduating from Northwestern University, Segal and his wife, Carole, open the first Crate and Barrel in 1962 in an old warehouse on North Wells Street in Old Town with merchandise displayed on packing crates and barrels.  In 1968 the Segals opened their second store in the Plaza del Lago shopping center in Wilmette.  The first store outside Illinois opened in Massachusetts in 1977, and in 2008 Crate and Barrel opened its first store outside the United States in Toronto.  There are over a hundred stores today.  Unquestionably, though, the great success of the brand began with the decision to purchase an old terra cotta-clad medical building at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Erie Street and use the site for a new store.  In a break with the design of most stores at the time, the Segals commissioned architect John Buenz of Solomon, Cordwell and Buenz to create a store that “with its sweeping white lines, glass façade and open escalators … broke with the street’s [Michigan Avenue] traditions.”  [Chicago Tribune, January 21, 2018]. The plants and flowers that were placed outside the store served as inspiration for the planters that now line the street.  In 2018 the Segals, who had sold a majority interest in the company to the Otto Group in 1998, said good-bye to the Michigan Avenue store.  It is today a 43,000 square-foot Starbucks Reserve Roastery, the third Roastery to open in the United States. 


September 5, 1982 -- The Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago transit officials have selected the Forty-Ninth Street corridor as the route that a 9.1-mile rapid transit line will use to move people from the Loop to Midway Airport.  According to the plan, the route could be in operation by the end of the 1980’s with costs kept to a minimum through the use of railroad rights-of-way for much of the distance.  It is expected that the federal government will provide 80 percent of the funding for the $453 million project.  The hope is that 18,000 to 35,000 residents of the Southwest Side will use the line, relieving the area’s population of the burden of depending on bus service in the only section of the city without rapid transit service.  Nine stations will be built along the new line, including a stop at Midway along Cicero Avenue, at Pulaski Road and Fifty-First Street, Kedzie Avenue and Forty-Ninth Street, California avenue at Forty-Ninth, Western at Archer, Ashland Avenue just north of the Stevenson and Halsted Street at Archer.  The line will connect with the Loop elevated with a proposed link between the Ryan line (today’s Red Line) and the State Street subway to get Ryan line trains off the Loop elevated structure.  Before any of this can happen, though, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration must approve an environmental impact statement.  This is another one of the projects that took decades to bring to completion.  A high-speed subway line between the Loop and Sixty-Third Street was first proposed in the 1940’s.  In 1987 the project finally kicked off, and the new line was opened on October 31, 1993.


September 5, 1931 – The general manager of the Union Station Company, O. H. Frick, announces that work will soon begin on a $2,000,000 powerhouse that will supply heat to the new post office building, Union Station, and other railroad property along the river.   The new structure will sit midway between Taylor Street and Roosevelt Road on the west bank of the river.  The new building is necessary because the present Union Station heating plant sits on the site of the new post office, currently under construction.  Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the same architectural firm that designed Union Station and the new post office, will also design the power house.  The specifications for the new structure are impressive, according to Frick.  He says, “The first unit will have four 1,600 horse power boilers, normal rating, with a maximum rating of 4,000 horse power each.  Its capacity will be 16,000 horse power.  The maximum length of the distributing system will be about one mile and will use both overhead and underground pipe systems, thoroughly insulated to reduce condensation losses.”  The Union Station Company, jointly owned by the Pennsylvania, Burlington, and Milwaukee railroads, projects the cost of the powerhouse at $2,000,000.


September 5, 1880 – A Chicago Daily Tribune editorial issues praise for an expanding lakefront “as a beautiful breathing-spot for the people” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 5, 1880] after which it issues a warning.  The paper first observes, “The debris from the great fires of ’71-‘74 furnished the material to fill up the basin between the Illinois Central Railway and the old breakwater, and, after various vicissitudes, the space has been leveled off, with walks and grass plots it affords an inviting retreat on sultry evenings for all classes, the working people especially finding there much needed rest and recreation.  It is hoped in the not distant future that stately maples and elms will replace the starveling poles that now disgrace it, and make it one of the most beautiful, as it is the most inviting, resort that can be found in any city in the country.”  Disrupting the process of beautification, though, is a proposal to make the area a parade ground for the military. “No one will accuse THE TRIBUNE of opposing anything that can contribute to the comfort and efficiency of our military organizations,” the editorial ends, “but the use of the park for this purpose is entirely unnecessary … by common consent base-ball has usurped a part of this north end of the park (the organization that eventually would become the Chicago Cubs began its life, playing in an area that is now occupied by the peristyle on the southeast corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue) … A strong remonstrance has been prepared, and it is hoped the Council will adopt it.  Let the park be kept forever for the people.  They need it, and it is their right that they should have it.”  The photo above shows the park, looking south, about ten years after the editorial appeared.


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Thursday, August 20, 2020

August 20, 1990 -- Standard Oil Sheds Its Carrara Marble


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August 20, 1990 – William Gruber, the business columnist for the Chicago Tribune, reports on what will be done with the expensive Italian marble that is being removed from the Standard Oil building on Randolph Street.  Five hundred tons of the Carrara marble will be headed to Lashcon Inc. of Barry, Illinois, which will employ men and women with disabilities “to make awards, specialty products and decorative items using the stone.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1990].  Lashcon, which has already received its first shipment of the stone, has entered into a two-year contract with the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services to undertake the project.  Another 1,000 tons of the marble, with each piece one and a-quarter to one and a-half inches thick and four feet square, is headed to Governors State University where the stone will be crushed and used for decorative ground cover around the University Park Campus.  The remaining 4,500 tons will end up at Amoco’s oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana where it will be crushed and used as ornamental rock at the company’s facilities.  The company received more than 200 requests for the marble after its discovery that all of the exterior stone on its 83-story tower would have to be replaced with Mount Airy granite from North Carolina after a number of the original slabs warped and began to disintegrate.  The above photo shows the building under construction in 1973 with the Carrara marble that would become such a nightmare streaming up its face.

 

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

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


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


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


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Saturday, March 28, 2020

March 28, 1990 -- Milwaukee Clipper Sentenced to Auction


March 28, 1990 – U. S. District Court Judge William Hart issues an order to sell the 85-year-old S. S. Clipper, the former Milwaukee Clipper, at auction on May 2 with only minimum bids of $100,000 accepted.  Alan Amos, the custodian for the 361-foot-long former Great Lakes pleasure cruiser, says that he has received about 30 inquiries about the ship.  He says, “As far as I can recall, none of them came from scrap yards.”  Although there are more than $500,000 in claims filed against the owner of the ship, the vessel will be sold free from those claims, according to Judge Hart. The Clipper was built in 1904 as the Juanita by the Anchor Line of the Erie and Western Transportation Company. According to the National Park Service, “For savvy and well-heeled travelers, the steamer Juanita offered the epitome of first-class Great Lakes coastal maritime travel between Buffalo, New York, and Duluth, Minnesota.” [www.nps.gov]  The Juanita was rebuilt in 1940 and renamed the Milwaukee Clipper. The ship had facilities to load and store 120 cars as well as a dance hall, bar, movie theater, casino, soda fountain, children’s nursery, and cafeteria.  She began service between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Muskegon, Michigan on June 3, 1941, a service that ended in 1970.  The ship was moored in Muskegon from 1970 to 1977 at which point she was renamed the S. S. Clipper and moved to Chicago’s Navy Pier to serve as a restaurant and floating museum.  In 1983 the ship was named to the National Register of Historic Places and in 1989 she was designated a National Historic Landmark.  In 1990 the S. S. Clipper was moved to Hammond, Indiana as the centerpiece for a new marina, and seven years later an organization purchased the boat and moved it once again to Muskegon, where Milwaukee Clipper Preservation, Inc. set about the enormous task of raising funds to restore the vessel.  Today the ship is a floating museum, moored at a pier in Muskegon at the corner of Lakeshore Drive and McCracken Street.

March 28, 1974 – Appearing before a United States Senate sub-committee on water resources, Mayor Richard J. Daley once again talks about swimming with the fishes.  The committee is reviewing plans for the proposed Deep Tunnel project and its 120 miles of waste water tunnels designed to eliminate flooding and clean up the city’s waterways.  Speaking to the committee chairman, Senator Mike Gravel, the mayor says, “Senator Mike, we hope to clean up the Chicago River so you can fish in the river at noontime.  And with the help of the President of the Forest Preserve District, we hope to have a forest preserve, too, and you can barbecue your fish.” [Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1974]  When Gravel asks Daley to place a value on the benefits that would come from a project as expensive as the Deep Tunnel, the mayor responds, “How do you put a value on young people in the inner city being able to fish in the river, which they never had before?  Would you say $500, or $1,000?  It is very difficult to put a value on that.”  The hearing is held at the headquarters of the Metropolitan Sanitary District as a first step in obtaining federal funds to help carry out the huge project.

March 28, 1943 -- Chicago officially becomes a city with a subway when at 3:18 p.m. a three-car train leaves the elevated tracks south of Arrmitage Avenue and enters the Clybourn-Diviision-State Street tube, today's Red Line. The train carries newspaper reporters and about 150 employees of the subway department. Operating the train is Charles Blade of 1127 Newport Avenue, an elevated lines motorman for 29 years. Since Blade has never seen the inside of a subway, an electrical engineer, C. J. Beck, stands at his shoulder. Although Chicago's first subway will not officially open for another six months, this trip and another one on April 2, 1943, shown in the photo above, are made just in time for the re-election campaign of Mayor Ed. Kelly.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, "Women standing in their backyards waved as the train dipped into the ground. Kids lined the railings. A passenger shouted for a bottle of champagne to christen the subway but only a cask of drinking water had been brought along."
  

 March 28, 1930 – The United States Postmaster General, Walter Brown, refuses to approve plans submitted by Chicago architect Ernest R. Graham for a new $14,000,000 post office, sending the plans back to the firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White for revision.  Brown says, “This is the first time I have given the matter my personal attention.  Up until 10 days or two weeks ago the whole proposition was handled by subordinates.  Then the exterior plans arrived.  I took one look at them and decided they were no good.  Mr. Graham has submitted plans for an unsightly … building.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1930] In Chicago an exasperated Graham says, “I have submitted not one but three different sets of plans.  One of those was for a flat roofed building on which airplanes could land … I do not consider any of the plans are of an unsightly building, but efficient in handling the vast amount of mail in the largest post office in the world was a large consideration.” Representatives of Chicago builders and labor unions meet as soon as the news reaches the city.  As the Depression grinds the workers of the city into poverty, there is desperation in trying to get such a massive project off the ground.  A telegram is sent to Washington, D.C. tersely stating, “Unemployment conditions in Chicago very serious.  Possibly more than 60 per cent of building trades have been out of work prior to Jan. 1.  Urgently request that you make every effort with postoffice department to hasten plans at once in order for construction work on new postoffice building in Chicago to be started as soon as possible.”  The pressure had its intended effect; the above photo shows the completed post office building in 1932.
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Sunday, March 8, 2020

March 8, 1990 -- Wacker Drive Skyscraper to Be World's Fourth Tallest



March 8, 1990 – The Chicago Plan Commission approves a plan by Chicago real estate developer Harvey Walken to construct an 83-story office building on the northeast corner of Wacker Drive and Madison Street.  If the project is completed, the building will be the fourth tallest office structure in the world, behind Sears Tower and the World Trade Center towers in New York City.  Walken says, “What we’re proposing to build is what we believe will be the address of choice for large office tenants in search of a prime location for the twenty-first century.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1990] The building, to be known as One North Wacker, will be designed by New York architect Kevin Roche, who has also designed the headquarters for the Leo Burnett Advertising agency on West Wacker Drive.  One North Wacker will have about half the rentable office space that exists in Sears Tower with floors measuring 25,000 to 30,000 square feet.  “Because most of the other office buildings being built downtown today are being designed for the small-to-midsize tenants, we felt that we could achieve a niche for ourselves in the market by appealing to large office users like corporations and large law and accounting firms,” says Walken.  It was another great plan that never made it past an architectural model.  In 2001 One North Wacker opened with 33 fewer floors than the 1990 proposal.  Developer John Buck brought the project to completion with Lohan Associates serving as the architectural firm responsible for the building’s design.  Walken and the model of his 83-story proposal is shown in the top photo. Below that is the Lohan-designed One North Wacker, which opened in 2001.

March 8, 1971 – Fans who show up at the Chicago Coliseum and the International Amphitheater to watch the Muhammad Ali – Joe Frazier fight on closed circuit television end up staging their own boxing matches as police are mobilized to combat near riots at both venues.  Trouble breaks out at the Coliseum at 1513 South Wabash Avenue when projection equipment breaks down, and the audience of 7,000 people is asked to leave the building minutes before the fight is due to begin.  Some angry patrons begin to throw ticket counters through the front windows; others toss folding chairs and bottles from the balcony onto the main floor of the building.  Close to 80 police officers are summoned to restore order.  At the Amphitheater at Forty-Third Street and Halsted a thousand people are turned away when the building reaches its 13,000-person capacity.  Bottles and rocks are thrown, and 40 windows are broken on the Halsted Street side of the building.  Police and maintenance staff members turn fire houses on the crowd, and the riot is ultimately brought under control.  Police are kept busy all night long, even rushing to the Civic Opera House when fans who have been turned away at the Coliseum show up there, hoping to gain entrance at the last minute.  All of this occurs exactly a dozen years to the day that Ali won the Golden Gloves Championship at the Chicago Stadium, a young boxer from Louisville using his birth name, Cassius Clay

March 8, 1952 -- Students of the Navy Pier branch of the University of Illinois start a mile-long petition for a state-operated four-year college in Chicago at a dance and rally at the pier. M. L. Berenbaum, president of the parents' organization, signs the petition after Representative Paul Randolph, who promises legislation to establish a four-year branch of the state university. Berenbaum says that nine out of ten students at the pier live at home and work part time in Chicago and that many of those cannot afford to leave the city to continue their educations after they complete the two-year courses of study at the pier.

March 8, 1945 – In excavating a new 600-foot dock for the Chicago and North Western Railroad on the west bank of the river about a block north of Grand Avenue, the Great Lake Dredge and Dock Company unearths a white marble slab with the words, “To the memory of Mrs. Maria Stevens, wife of …” with the words “wife of” almost completely worn away.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 9, 1945]  The company’s superintendent stops work at the site and jumps into the excavation, where he finds “about six feet down in heavy clay … rotted planks and human ribs, skull and thigh bones …”  The Chicago Historical Society sites a reference in A. T. Andreas’ History of Chicago, published in 1886, of “a ‘common acre; on the west side of the north branch of the river which in early times was used as a burying ground by the settlers around Fort Dearborn.  Since the city set aside common areas as burial sites in 1835, researchers at the society speculate that the burial ground was used before that date.  The area labelled "A" to the left top of the above aerial view, now a part of property owned by Tribune Media Company, is the site of the discovered remains.  In February of 2019 the company put this huge parcel of prime riverfront land up for sale with development to follow.  The letter "B" at the bottom left of the view is the approximate location of Fort Dearborn.  
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Thursday, September 5, 2019

September 5, 1990 -- Crate & Barrel Opens Michigan Avenue Store

Crains Chicago Business
curbedchicago.com
September 5, 1990 – Gordon Segal opens the new North Michigan Avenue Crate and Barrel store, a three-level housewares emporium, as 1,100 guests, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, ogle the goods, “sliding garlic shrimp off toothpicks, or swirling red pepper steak in an ominous sauce … rubbing palms over Shaker tables, bouncing fists on mattresses and turning over price tags.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 6, 1990]. Soon after graduating from Northwestern University, Segal and his wife, Carole, open the first Crate and Barrel in 1962 in an old warehouse on North Wells Street in Old Town with merchandise displayed on packing crates and barrels.  In 1968 the Segals opened their second store in the Plaza del Lago shopping center in Wilmette.  The first store outside Illinois opened in Massachusetts in 1977, and in 2008 Crate and Barrel opened its first store outside the United States in Toronto.  There are over a hundred stores today.  Unquestionably, though, the great success of the brand began with the decision to purchase an old terra cotta-clad medical building at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Erie Street and use the site for a new store.  In a break with the design of most stores at the time, the Segals commissioned architect John Buenz of Solomon, Cordwell and Buenz to create a store that “with its sweeping white lines, glass façade and open escalators … broke with the street’s [Michigan Avenue] traditions.”  [Chicago Tribune, January 21, 2018]. The plants and flowers that were placed outside the store served as inspiration for the planters that now line the street.  In 2018 the Segals, who had sold a majority interest in the company to the Otto Group in 1998, said good-bye to the Michigan Avenue store.  It is set to become a 43,000 square-foot Starbucks Reserve Roastery, the third Roastery to open in the United States. 


September 5, 1982 -- The Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago transit officials have selected the Forty-Ninth Street corridor as the route that a 9.1-mile rapid transit line will use to move people from the Loop to Midway Airport.  According to the plan, the route could be in operation by the end of the 1980’s with costs kept to a minimum through the use of railroad rights-of-way for much of the distance.  It is expected that the federal government will provide 80 percent of the funding for the $453 million project.  The hope is that 18,000 to 35,000 residents of the Southwest Side will use the line, relieving the area’s population of the burden of depending on bus service in the only section of the city without rapid transit service.  Nine stations will be built along the new line, including a stop at Midway along Cicero Avenue, at Pulaski Road and Fifty-First Street, Kedzie Avenue and Forty-Ninth Street, California avenue at Forty-Ninth, Western at Archer, Ashland Avenue just north of the Stevenson and Halsted Street at Archer.  The line will connect with the Loop elevated with a proposed link between the Ryan line (today’s Red Line) and the State Street subway to get Ryan line trains off the Loop elevated structure.  Before any of this can happen, though, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration must approve an environmental impact statement.  This is another one of the projects that took decades to bring to completion.  A high-speed subway line between the Loop and Sixty-Third Street was first proposed in the 1940’s.  In 1987 the project finally kicked off, and the new line was opened on October 31, 1993.


September 5, 1880 – A Chicago Daily Tribune editorial issues praise for an expanding lakefront “as a beautiful breathing-spot for the people” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 5, 1880] after which it issues a warning.  The paper first observes, “The debris from the great fires of ’71-‘74 furnished the material to fill up the basin between the Illinois Central Railway and the old breakwater, and, after various vicissitudes, the space has been leveled off, with walks and grass plots it affords an inviting retreat on sultry evenings for all classes, the working people especially finding there much needed rest and recreation.  It is hoped in the not distant future that stately maples and elms will replace the starveling poles that now disgrace it, and make it one of the most beautiful, as it is the most inviting, resort that can be found in any city in the country.”  Disrupting the process of beautification, though, is a proposal to make the area a parade ground for the military. “No one will accuse THE TRIBUNE of opposing anything that can contribute to the comfort and efficiency of our military organizations,” the editorial ends, “but the use of the park for this purposes is entirely unnecessary … by common consent base-ball has usurped a part of this north end of the park (the organization that eventually would become the Chicago Cubs began its life, playing in an area that is now occupied by the peristyle on the southeast corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue) … A strong remonstrance has been prepared, and it is hoped the Council will adopt it.  Let the park be kept forever for the people.  They need it, and it is their right that they should have it.”  The photo above shows the park, looking south, about ten years after the editorial appeared.


September 5, 1931 – The general manager of the Union Station Company, O. H. Frick, announces that work will soon begin on a $2,000,000 powerhouse that will supply heat to the new post office building, Union Station, and other railroad property along the river.   The new structure will sit midway between Taylor Street and Roosevelt Road on the west bank of the river.  The new building is necessary because the present Union Station heating plant sits on the site of the new post office, currently under construction.  Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the same architectural firm that designed Union Station and the new post office, will also design the power house.  The specifications for the new structure are impressive, according to Frick.  He says, “The first unit will have four 1,600 horse power boilers, normal rating, with a maximum rating of 4,000 horse power each.  Its capacity will be 16,000 horse power.  The maximum length of the distributing system will be about one mile and will use both overhead and underground pipe systems, thoroughly insulated to reduce condensation losses.”  The Union Station Company, jointly owned by the Pennsylvania, Burlington, and Milwaukee railroads, projects the cost of the powerhouse at $2,000,000.

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Thursday, March 28, 2019

March 28, 1990 -- U. S. Clipper Faces Final Chapter

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March 28, 1990 – U. S. District Court Judge William Hart issues an order to sell the 85-year-old S. S. Clipper, the former Milwaukee Clipper, at auction on May 2 with only minimum bids of $100,000 accepted.  Alan Amos, the custodian for the 361-foot-long former Great Lakes pleasure cruiser, says that he has received about 30 inquiries about the ship.  He says, “As far as I can recall, none of them came from scrap yards.”  Although there are more than $500,000 in claims filed against the owner of the ship, the vessel will be sold free from those claims, according to Judge Hart. The Clipper was built in 1904 as the Juanita by the Anchor Line of the Erie and Western Transportation Company. According to the National Park Service, “For savvy and well-heeled travelers, the steamer Juanita offered the epitome of first-class Great Lakes coastal maritime travel between Buffalo, New York, and Duluth, Minnesota.” [www.nps.gov]  The Juanita was rebuilt in 1940 and renamed the Milwaukee Clipper. The ship had facilities to load and store 120 cars as well as a dance hall, bar, movie theater, casino, soda fountain, children’s nursery, and cafeteria.  She began service between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Muskegon, Michigan on June 3, 1941, a service that ended in 1970.  The ship was moored in Muskegon from 1970 to 1977 at which point she was renamed the S. S. Clipper and moved to Chicago’s Navy Pier to serve as a restaurant and floating museum.  In 1983 the ship was named to the National Register of Historic Places and in 1989 she was designated a National Historic Landmark.  In 1990 the S. S. Clipper was moved to Hammond, Indiana as the centerpiece for a new marina, and seven years later an organization purchased the boat and moved it once again to Muskegon, where Milwaukee Clipper Preservation, Inc. set about the enormous task of raising funds to restore the vessel.  Today the ship is a floating museum, moored at a pier in Muskegon at the corner of Lakeshore Drive and McCracken Street.


March 28, 1930 – The United States Postmaster General, Walter Brown, refuses to approve plans submitted by Chicago architect Ernest R. Graham for a new $14,000,000 post office, sending the plans back to the firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White for revision.  Brown says, “This is the first time I have given the matter my personal attention.  Up until 10 days or two weeks ago the whole proposition was handled by subordinates.  Then the exterior plans arrived.  I took one look at them and decided they were no good.  Mr. Graham has submitted plans for an unsightly … building.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1930] In Chicago an exasperated Graham says, “I have submitted not one but three different sets of plans.  One of those was for a flat roofed building on which airplanes could land … I do not consider any of the plans are of an unsightly building, but efficient in handling the vast amount of mail in the largest post office in the world was a large consideration.” Representatives of Chicago builders and labor unions meet as soon as the news reaches the city.  As the Depression grinds the workers of the city into poverty, there is desperation in trying to get such a massive project off the ground.  A telegram is sent to Washington, D.C. tersely stating, “Unemployment conditions in Chicago very serious.  Possibly more than 60 per cent of building trades have been out of work prior to Jan. 1.  Urgently request that you make every effort with postoffice department to hasten plans at once in order for construction work on new postoffice building in Chicago to be started as soon as possible.”  The pressure had its intended effect; the above photo shows the completed post office building in 1932.


March 28, 1974 – Appearing before a United States Senate sub-committee on water resources, Mayor Richard J. Daley once again talks about swimming with the fishes.  The committee is reviewing plans for the proposed Deep Tunnel project and its 120 miles of waste water tunnels designed to eliminate flooding and clean up the city’s waterways.  Speaking to the committee chairman, Senator Mike Gravel, the mayor says, “Senator Mike, we hope to clean up the Chicago River so you can fish in the river at noontime.  And with the help of the President of the Forest Preserve District, we hope to have a forest preserve, too, and you can barbecue your fish.” [Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1974]  When Gravel asks Daley to place a value on the benefits that would come from such an expensive project, the mayor responds, “How do you put a value on young people in the inner city being able to fish in the river, which they never had before?  Would you say $500, or $1,000?  It is very difficult to put a value on that.”  The hearing is held at the headquarters of the Metropolitan Sanitary District as a first step in obtaining federal funds to help carry out the huge project.


March 28, 1943 -- Chicago officially becomes a city with a subway when at 3:18 p.m. a three-car train leaves the elevated tracks south of Arrmitage Avenue and enters the Clybourn-Diviision-State Street tube, today's Red Line. The train carries newspaper reporters and about 150 employees of the subway department. Operating the train is Charles Blade of 1127 Newport Avenue, an elevated lines motorman for 29 years. Since Blade has never seen the inside of a subway, an electrical engineer, C. J. Beck, stands at his shoulder. Although Chicago's first subway will not officially open for another six months, this trip and another one on April 2, 1943, shown in the photo above, are made just in time for the re-election campaign of Mayor Ed. Kelly.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, "Women standing in their backyards waved as the train dipped into the ground. Kids lined the railings. A passenger shouted for a bottle of champagne to christen the subway but only a cask of drinking water had been brought along."  

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