Connecting the Windy City

Saturday, August 29, 2020

August 29, 2013 -- Wolf Point West Gets Go-Ahead for Construction

August 29, 2013 – Chicago issues a permit that allows contractors to begin drilling caissons for the 48-story Wolf Point West residential tower.  The construction of the tower will reportedly cost $170 million and bring 400 construction jobs to the area at the junction of the three branches of the river.  The 507-unit tower, designed by bKL, will have an all-glass curtain wall and a split in its western face to allow for twice the number of south-facing balconies inset into the structure.  It will be the first – and the shortest – of three buildings to be constructed on the historic site.  Wolf Point East, the second tower on the site, was topped of on August 30, 2019.  Work began on the third tower at Wolf Point, the 813-foot tall Salesforce Tower in the spring of 2020.

August 29, 1993 – A lengthy Chicago Tribune article seems to signal a coming rebirth for the Chicago River, a long-awaited event captured in one of the opening paragraphs of the article, “…a second life is being pumped into the 130-mile Chicago waterway. Once choked with steamboats and barges, the river—if developers and planners have their way—will be populated with pedestrians, tourists and businesses.  Already being built or on the drawing board are riverfront walks, parks, gardens, apartments and offices.” [Chicago Tribune, August 29, 1993] Three months away will be the opening of a “continuous Riverwalk from Michigan Avenue to the lake.”  In the coming spring the new downtown campus of the University of Chicago will open just east of Michigan Avenue.  And in another year a revitalized Navy Pier will open.  The city’s Commissioner of Planning and Development, Valerie Jarrett, observes, “We look at the river as a critical planning corridor … it’s just not enough that buildings have river walkways, but linkages – and it's challenging with the bridges.”  Numerous projects sit on the drawing board, all of them looking at the river as being an attractive enhancement to development.  River Bend includes 900 feet of river frontage; it will not be completed until 1992.  CityFront Center, a 60-acre mixed-use development on the north side of the river between Michigan Avenue and the lake has begun with the completion of the 1,200-room Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers a year earlier.  CSX Real Property, Inc., the real estate arm of CSX Transportation, Inc., owns property all along the South Branch of the river between Harrison Street to Roosevelt Road.  The company’s regional director of development, Bill Cromwell, says, “All our plans incorporate the river as an active ingredient.”  From Cermak Road to Sixteenth Street, the Chicago Park District is beginning to develop an eight-acre parcel on the east bank of the river for the Chinatown Riverfront Park.  It will be another half-dozen years before Ping Tom Memorial Park will open along that stretch.  The Park District also has a $35 million plan to renovate 100 acres of land around the mouth of the river with ground being broken in 1994 for Du Sable Park, to be developed jointly with the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust.

Google.com

August 29, 1969 – A Cook County grand jury indicts four members of the Black Panther party on charges resulting from a raid on Panther headquarters at 2350 West Madison Street on July 31.  The men, all between 21- and 25-years-old, are charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery in the wounding of four police officers in the raid in which police seized a sawed-off shotgun, two automatic pistols, three revolvers, ammunition and a bayonet.  This would not be the end of the confrontation between the Black Panthers and the Chicago police in 1969.  On December 9 over a dozen policemen raid an apartment in which Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are sleeping.  Over a hundred shots are fired, only one of which is determined to originate from inside the apartment in a subsequent investigation.  Hampton and Clark are both killed in the raid.  A federal grand jury fails to indict anyone involved in the raid, and although a subsequent grand jury indicts all the police officers involved, the charges are later dismissed.  Times change, as can be seen in the above photo ... on the site of the August, 1969 raid now sits a Walgreen's with a strip mall across the street that includes a Subway, King Wok, Domino's, and Fresh Market.

August 29, 1925 – After 80 years the South Water street market dies at noon as progress moves forward and the first link of the new Wacker Drive, between Franklin and Market Streets prepares to open to traffic the following day. This is the day on which wreckers start demolishing buildings on the north side of South Water Street east of La Salle to begin the eastern extension of Wacker Drive.  With this action a market that began on the oldest street in the city, on a street where the first Board of Trade was established in 1848, with annual business of over $300,000,000, closes down and moves to a new location bounded by Fourteenth Place, South Morgan Street, South Racine Avenue, and the Baltimore and Ohio terminal.  That market would be closed in 2001.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 12:30 AM 3 comments

Labels: 2013, Chicago Architecture, Chicago RIver, Wolf Point

Sunday, March 29, 2020

March 29, 2013 -- Chicago River Walk to Be Extended to Lake Street

EricAllixRogers.ChicagoArchitectureCenter

March 29, 2013 – United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announces that a $100 million federal loan to extend Chicago’s river walk from State Street to Lake Street is a “done deal”.  As envisioned, the Riverwalk will focus on the history and ecology of the river, include a zero-depth fountain for children, kayak rentals, and a section with floating gardens.  LaHood says that about 70 percent of the revenue for the loan repayment will come from higher fees that two companies – Mercury Skyline Yacht Charters and Wendella Sightseeing --  will pay the city to dock boats along the river.  It is anticipated that there will be a significant contribution from retail space and other amenities and vendors along the river.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel says, “The truth is, we’re now at a juncture in the history of the city of reintroducing the city to the river and the river to the city.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 29, 2013]  



March 29, 1970 – The Chicago Tribune reports on new construction at 111 East Wacker Drive, beginning with the statement, “To many, the 111 E. Wacker Drive building is just another glass box or another building designed with the distinctive flair of Mies van der Rohe.” [Chicago Tribune, March 29, 1970]  One of the architects on the project, Gerald Johnson, working in the office of Mies van der Rohe, quickly corrects the stereotype, saying, “This is architecture for today and tomorrow.  It is clean and current and will express the twentieth and the twenty-first century.”  How appropriate it is, then, that this “clean and current” commercial tower standing on the south side of the river, is today the home of the Chicago Architecture Center. Johnson points out the volumetric aspects of the building with the glass at ground level giving a sense of openness and a defined formal entrance, the clear glass at this level contrasting with the tinted glass of the windows above.  Gone is the symmetrical rendering of older designs.  Instead, there is a regularity at work with the building’s corner columns rising up from the plaza and running all the way to the top of the building without being covered by the glass of the curtain wall.  Instead of classical ornamentation or terra cotta details one sees in so many earlier Chicago buildings, there is a meticulous order in the details of the plan, a technical precision that one may not notice at first. The terrazzo squares of the floor for example, are laid in five-foot squares with the joints of the floor slabs meeting the joints of the granite wall slabs precisely and bisecting the building’s supporting columns with equal precision.  Johnson says, “There is order in the design and it makes people comfortable, whether they are aware of it or not.”  Although Mies van der Rohe died in 1969, a year before 111 East Wacker Drive opened, a partner in the firm, Joseph Fujikawa oversaw its completion.  It was the first building put up in the new Illinois Center development by Metropolitan Structures, Inc., the firm that descended from real estate developer Herbert Greenwald, who died in the crash of American Airlines Flight 320 on February 3, 1959 and who was responsible for a collaboration with Mies van der Rohe that did much to change the style of architecture in the city.  

March 29, 1968 – Millions of dollars of damage is done to Carson, Pirie, Scott and Co., and minor damage to Wieboldt’s and Montgomery Ward and Co. as fires of suspicion origin call firefighters to State Street.  An estimated 25,000 spectators gather at State and Madison Streets during the noon hour on a Saturday as rumors quickly spread that all of State Street is on fire.  Extra alarms bring 280 firemen and more than 100 pieces of fire equipment to the area.  The most serious fire at Carson’s apparently starts on the sixth floor in a department that houses art and picture frames.  It quickly spreads to the seventh floor as firefighters break big windows on the sixth floor of the State Street side of the building to get water onto the flames.  Fire Commissioner Quinn says that the fire suppression system on the sixth floor of the building was inoperative because of ongoing remodeling work.  A Carson’s official says that losses would run into the millions, and the store would be closed until an inventory could be taken.  Directly across Madison Street firefighters are able to put out the fire at Wieboldt’s with fire extinguishers. Fire equipment is moved two blocks south on State Street when a fire is next reported at Montgomery Ward’s.  Windows are broken on the third and fourth floors so that firefighters can get some of the smoke out of the building.  Another fire is reported at Goldblatt Brothers State Street store, but firefighters find no working fire although an employee reports that he extinguished a corner of a smoldering bedspread in the furniture department by smothering it between his thumb and forefinger.  At least three firefighters are injured and require hospital treatment for smoke inhalation.  Thousands of customers and employees are evacuated from Carson’s and Wieboldt’s, none of them with a stranger story than 23-year-old Pam Meyers, a Carson’s employee.  She is under a hair dryer at the Carson’s hair salon when everyone is ordered to leave the store.  Customers at the beauty shop are taken to the Wieboldt’s salon where Meyers hears the second fire alarm of the day.  Happily, she makes it on time to her wedding that evening at the Church of the Atonement.  The bridegroom, Eugene Holland, shows up without his wedding suit, which is still at the Carson’s store.  Carson’s and the Chicago Tribune each offer $25,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest of the parties responsible for the fires.

March 29, 1917 -- The Chicago City Council receives the design for a city flag, designed by Wallace Rice, and submitted by the Chicago Flag Commission. The commission describes the flag in this way: "Its uppermost stripe, of white, is eight inches broad; the second stripe of blue is nine inches; the central bar, of white is eighteen inches, and the two lower stripes correspond with the uppermost two. Near the staff on the broad white stripe are two six pointed red stars, fourteen inches tall. Viewed locally, the two blue stripes symbolize the Chicago river with its two branches and the three white bars represent the three sides of the city. The red stars stand for the Chicago fire and the World's fair [of 1893], two great influences on the city's history. The six points in the first star stand for transportation, trade, finance, industry, populousness, and healthfulness; those in the second for religion, education, aesthetics, beneficence, justice and civism. Considered nationally the blue stripes stand for the mountain ranges which flank the plain of which Chicago is the center. The central white bar stands for this plain and the two outer white bars for the Atlantic and Pacific coasts." [Chicago Tribune, March 30, 1917]. Two stars have been added to the flag since this first attempt. One corresponds to the establishment of Fort Dearborn in 1807; it was added in 1939. Added in 1933, the final star symbolizes the Century of Progress World's Fair, held on the lakefront in the summers of 1933 and 1934.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 10 comments

Labels: 2013, Chicago Development, Chicago Places, Chicago RIver, Lake Street, State Street

Sunday, February 9, 2020

February 9, 2013 -- Michelle Obama Attends Hadiya Pendleton Funeral

February 9, 2013 – The funeral for Hadiya Pendleton is held at the Greater Harvest Baptist Church, 5141 South State Street.  Pendleton died on January 29 at Harsh Park when a gunman fired into a group of bystanders.  Her death came just one week after she had participated with her majorette team in performances associated with the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. First Lady Michelle Obama meets privately with the family before the service and then walks with Cleopatra Pendleton, Hadiya’s mother, to the open casket at the front of the church and comforts her as the casket is closed in preparation for the funeral rites.  Also in attendance are Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, United States Representative Bobby Rush and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.  Many of Pendleton’s teammates and friends rise to speak of the times they shared with a friend who had become another one of the victims of the city’s gun violence.  Father Michael Pleger says that Pendleton is a tragic example of the “epidemic of violence causing funeral processions around the country.”  [Associated Press in Chicago, February 9, 2013] “Sisters and brothers, I beg you,” Fleger says.  “We must become like Jesus.  We must become the interrupters of funeral processions.”  The funeral program includes a handwritten note to the family from President Obama that reads, “Michelle and I just wanted you to know how heartbroken we are to have heard about Hadiya’s passing.  We know that no words from us can soothe the pain, but rest assured that we are praying for you, and that we will continue to work as hard as we can to end this senseless violence.”

chicagotribune.com

February 9, 1956 –The Chicago Transit Authority proposes seven additions to the system that could potentially cost as much as $127 million.  The proposal will be submitted to the CTA board, city officials and planning councils for consideration.  The first addition, costing over $16 million, would involve building an elevated line to O’Hare International Airport in the median of the Northwest Expressway, continuing along a proposed tollway extension west of Cicero Avenue.  The line would connect with the Milwaukee Avenue subway line near California Avenue.  Elevation of the Lake Street rapid transit line west of Laramie Avenue is also proposed. The abandonment of the Lake Street elevated line east of Kenton Avenue (4600 west) is also part of the plan.  Trains would run south from Kenton by way of a new route to Congress Street from where they would run east to meet the downtown subway. A fourth addition would see the extension of the south side elevated line from Sixty-Third Street and Prairie Avenue southeast 5.2 miles along South Chicago Avenue to Ninety-Second Street and Commercial Avenue.  This, along with the elimination of the Jackson Park spur, would cost about $12,610,000.  A fifth project would involve extending the Englewood elevated branch west from Sixty-Third Street and Loomis Avenue to Sixty-Third Street and Cicero, a distance of 4.25 miles.  Connecting to this Englewood extension would be a sixth project, a cross town route 10.8 miles in length by way of California and Western Avenues from the Northwest Expressway to the Englewood elevated.  Another cross town route would complete the proposed set of projects, a route of 12.25 miles from the Northwest Expressway at 4600 west to the proposed Englewood extension of the elevated at Sixty-Third Street. It is estimated that 170 new passenger cars will be needed to make the system run, at a cost of $9,350,000. The proposed changes are shown in the graphic above.

February 9, 1954 -- The Chicago Park Fair corporation names the architectural firms of Holabird and Root and Burgee and Ralph H. Burke to make a world-wide survey of convention and exhibit halls with an eye toward building the city's very own state-of-the-art convention hall. The non-profit corporation is funded with Cook County's share of the one percent tax on race track betting. Ground will be broken on the hall, McCormick Place, in 1958 with its completion coming two years later. It lasted seven years until a spectacular fire on a frigid night in 1967 destroyed the structure.

February 9, 1890 – The Chicago Daily Tribune describes a ride in the Auditorium building’s elevator, opened for use the week before.  The “elevator man” is clearly pleased to be showing off the new device.  “We go at a pretty good clip,” he says.  “Our speed is 450 feet a minute.  This is the longest ‘lift’ in the world.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 9, 1890] A guard takes tickets at the door to the rooftop, a place where a visitor finds “a sense of elation . . . with his feet on stone as solid as terra firma and walked about with a parapet waist high.”  It is a place where “Dante might stand . . . and fancy himself suspended at a comfortable distance over the Inferno.  Smoke, fog, and clouds combine in a debauch of murkiness.  Look to the east, the west, the south, and everywhere you see miles and miles of chimneys spouting smoke, and each one belching as if it feared to be surpassed by its fellows.”  Through the smoke the visitor sees little of the lake, but looking directly to the east he sees “what the railroad has left of the Lake Front Park—a narrow stretch of green embroidered with walks and lying between Michigan avenue and the parallel tracks of the Illinois Central … And all these cars and engines from this distance look like the toy trains that a boy amuses himself with on the nursery floor.”  Two floors above the observation roof are the offices of the federal weather bureau, nearing completion, with eight employees manning a variety of gauges and a map printing room.  Soon enough the visit is over and “Entering the elevator again the visitor shot downward eighteen stories, dropping from winter’s cold into sultry weather.”  The above photo shows the "parapet" that was open to the public just above the three arches that cap the windows of the tower.  The weather bureau would have occupied the space above that.

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Labels: 2013, Chicago Event, Cool Photos I Took Myself, Criminal Acts

Monday, November 4, 2019

November 4, 2013 -- Obama Honors BlackHawks for Second Time

denverpost.com

November 4, 2013 – President Barack Obama hosts the 2013 Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks during a seven-minute ceremony in the East Room of the White House, the second time in three years that the team has made the visit.  “Since I took office,” the President observes, “we’ve hosted a lot of championship teams, from Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and Miami, but since I’ve been president only one team has brought a world championship to my hometown of Chicago and now the Blackhawks have done it twice. Twice!”  [Chicago Tribune, November 5, 2013]  Blackhawks chairman Rocky Wirtz and President John McDonough present Obama with a white Hawks sweater with “Obama” and the number 13 on the back after which Coach Joe Quenneville says, “To me, this is the one moment when you really can reflect back and say, ‘Wow, it was a heck of a year we had,’ and we got to share it with one another.  We’ll walk that together forever.  It’s great to be a part of the history that’s in this building and sharing it with the president is a special moment.”  With the Stanley Cup displayed next to him, the President concludes the ceremony, saying, “To the Bulls, Bears, Cubs, White Sox, I am term-limited, so you guys have to get moving.  I need to see you here soon.  Championships belong in Chicago.  So, to the Blackhawks, thank you for brining it back home.  Thanks for bringing the Stanley Cup.”

November 4, 2014 – The first Shake Shack in Chicago opens at 11 a.m. in the former Harley-Davidson gift store in River North.  A line stretches out the door with people waiting for an hour or more, the wait becoming longer as lunchtime nears.  The chain of burger restaurants war born in a summer hot dog cart in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, just across the street from the Flatiron Building.  In a Chicago Tribune review Kevin Pang writes, “… everything we tried was solid and serviceable, though nothing would justify waiting more than 20 minutes in line.” [Chicago Tribune, November 5, 2014] Today there are three Shake Shacks in the city in addition to the original restaurant at Rush and Ohio.  One is in the Chicago Athletic Association building at 12 South Michigan Avenue while the other is in the West Loop at 185 North Morgan.  The third is at 3519 North Clark Street.  There is also a Shake Shack in Skokie in the Westfield Old Orchard shopping center.

November 4, 2008 – Before a crowd of 240,000 people jamming Grant Park, newly elected President Barack Obama delivers his victory speech.  Before he steps onto the stage Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” fills the great park on the lakefront, followed by “Only in America” by Brooks and Dunn and “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” the Jackie Wilson standard.  Obama takes the stage with Joe Biden as the families of the two men join them.  When the networks placed Virginia in the Democratic column at 11:00 p.m., a crowd that waited all day erupted, and now here he was -- the new president, who did not disappoint the folks who had waited much of the day to witness history. He begins with this declaration, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer … it’s been a long time, coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.” Nearly 22 minutes later Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” ends the program after Chicago’s hometown hero finishes his victory speech with this thought, “This is our moment.  This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:  Yes We Can.  Thank you.  God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.”

November 4, 1929 – The Chicago Opera Company, eight years old, takes up residence in its new home on Wacker Drive.  On the bill for opening night is Aida with Rosa Raisa in the title role.  There is little fanfare involved in the dedication of the new house although the lights are brought up before the performance begins and the 3,471 people in attendance stand as The Star Spangled Banner is played.  The crowd begins to arrive over an hour before the opera begins, and in the foyer Samuel Insull greets each person.  He is “the man without whose planning and ciphering and propagandizing and dragooning and bludgeoning the dream of civic opera on a solid foundation of Bedford stone never would have come true.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 5, 1929]  Insull is undoubtedly smiling as subscription sales of seats in the opera’s new quarters have already exceeded sales of seats in its former home in the Auditorium Theater by more than a quarter million dollars.  The speedy construction of the building really is a marvel as old buildings stood, waiting to be razed, on the site in February of 1928, and in June of that year the Chicago Civic Opera Company gave a concert in the excavation that had been dug for the building.  It is a joyous evening, perhaps one of the last joyous evenings for many of those in attendance as just six days earlier panicked sellers traded nearly 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange, starting a string of bad news that would last for another 15 years.  But all was joyous on this night as the paper reported, “The memory of the night will abide.  It will linger upon many a radiant detail, but in the long recollection it will center upon that foyer where the leaders of a great commercial capital met to survey their task, and looking up at the columns of gray travertine and the grills of golden bronze and the panels of rose and gold, found that art for art’s sake was a master worth working for.”  The above photo shows the Civic Opera Building under construction in late spring of 1929.

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Labels: 2013, Chicago Sports, Politics

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

August 29, 2013 -- Wolf Point West Receives Caisson Permit

August 29, 2013 –Chicago issues a permit that allows contractors to begin drilling caissons for the 48-story Wolf Point East residential tower.  The construction of the tower will reportedly cost $170 million and bring 400 construction jobs to the area at the junction of the three branches of the river.  The 507-unit tower, designed by bKL, will have an all-glass curtain wall and a split in its western face to allow for twice the number of south-facing balconies inset into the structure.  It will be the first – and the shortest – of three buildings to be constructed on the historic site.  Today Wolf Point West, the second tower on the site, is moving skyward.  

August 29, 1993 – A lengthy Chicago Tribune article seems to signal a coming rebirth for the Chicago River, a long-awaited event captured in one of the opening paragraphs of the article, “…a second life is being pumped into the 130-mile Chicago waterway. Once choked with steamboats and barges, the river—if developers and planners have their way—will be populated with pedestrians, tourists and businesses.  Already being built or on the drawing board are riverfront walks, parks, gardens, apartments and offices.” [Chicago Tribune, August 29, 1993] Three months away will be the opening of a “continuous Riverwalk from Michigan Avenue to the lake.”  In the coming spring the new downtown campus of the University of Chicago will open just east of Michigan Avenue.  And in another year a revitalized Navy Pier will open.  The city’s Commissioner of Planning and Development, Valerie Jarrett, observes, “We look at the river as a critical planning corridor … it’s just not enough that buildings have river walkways, but linkages – and it's challenging with the bridges.”  Numerous projects sit on the drawing board, all of them looking at the river as being an attractive enhancement to development.  River Bend includes 900 feet of river frontage; it will not be completed until 1992.  CityFront Center, a 60-acre mixed-use development on the north side of the river between Michigan Avenue and the lake has begun with the completion of the 1,200-room Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers a year earlier.  CSX Real Property, Inc., the real estate arm of CSX Transportation, Inc., owns property all along the South Branch of the river between Harrison Street to Roosevelt Road.  The company’s regional director of development, Bill Cromwell, says, “All our plans incorporate the river as an active ingredient.”  From Cermak Road to Sixteenth Street, the Chicago Park District is beginning to develop an eight-acre parcel on the east bank of the river for the Chinatown Riverfront Park.  It will be another half-dozen years before Ping Tom Memorial Park will open along that stretch.  The Park District also has a $35 million plan to renovate 100 acres of land around the mouth of the river with ground being broken in 1994 for Du Sable Park, to be developed jointly with the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust.

August 29, 1925 – After 80 years the South Water street market dies at noon as progress moves forward and the first link of the new Wacker Drive, between Franklin and Market Streets prepares to open to traffic the following day. This is the day on which wreckers start demolishing buildings on the north side of South Water Street east of La Salle to begin the eastern extension of Wacker Drive.  With this action a market that began on the oldest street in the city, on a street where the first Board of Trade was established in 1848, with annual business of over $300,000,000, closes down and moves to a new location bounded by Fourteenth Place, South Morgan Street, South Racine Avenue, and the Baltimore and Ohio terminal.  This market closed in 2001.

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Labels: 2013, Chicago Architecture, Chicago RIver