Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Architecture. Show all posts

Monday, August 24, 2020

August 24, 1966 -- John Hancock Center Stops Work


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



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


August 24, 1982 – Archbishop Joseph Louis Bernardin is installed as the seventh Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago in a candlelight service at Holy Name Cathedral. Reverend John Richard Keating reads the papal letter assigning Archbishop Bernardin to the archdiocese of Chicago at 8:01 p.m. before 1,500 priests in attendance. After the reading of the letter is completed, the priests provide Archbishop Bernardin with a two-minute standing ovation.  The Archbishop’s homily is entitled “I Am Joseph, Your Brother,” and in it he promises, “We will work and play together, fast and pray together, mourn and rejoice together, despair and hope together, dispute and be reconciled together.  You will know me as a friend, fellow priest and bishop.  You will know also that I love you.  For I am Joseph, your brother.” [Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1982]
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August 24, 1920 – The full-sized plaster model of Lorado Taft’s “The Fountain of Time” is completed after years of work and stands at the head of the Midway Plaisance, west of Cottage Grove Avenue.  The sculptural piece is described as comprising “ . . . scores of figures, arising from mystery, moving through life, and vanishing in mystery.  Some are dancing, some proceed sorrowfully, some are Galahads, some are satyrs.  Towering over all is Mr. Taft’s conception of Father Time.  The huge, weird figure dominates the movement of the pushing mob it faces.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 25, 1920]
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Tuesday, April 28, 2020

April 28, 1896 -- Art Institute of Chicago Opens Jules Guerin Exhibit

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April 28, 1896 – A collection representing two years of work by artist Jules Guerin opens with a reception at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The Chicago Daily Tribune characterizes the artist’s work “as a refreshing harmony in greens and grays.  The artist [Guerin] keeps all his work in extremely low tone.  He uses few colors.  His method is simple, but wonderfully forceful.  Several of his pictures possess a rare and rich quality of light and atmosphere, and in all of them he evinces a good knowledge of composition and skill in using that knowledge.  Every work he shows is full of sentiment and a fine feeling for the intimacy of animate with inanimate things.  His studies of the effect of surrounding nature upon human and brute life are admirable.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 29 1896]  Guerin is best known these days for the plates that he created to accompany The Chicago Plan of 1909, illustrations in muted tones that painted pictures of what a “city beautiful” might look like.  He actually was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri before he came to Chicago in 1880 to study at the Art Institute of Chicago.  In 1900 he set himself up in New York City, where he worked as an architectural illustrator.  In that capacity he met and was hired by Charles McKim, who at the time was working with Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted on the McMillan Plan, a massive initiative to improve the core and park system of Washington D. C.  Guerin was hired to prepare illustrations for that plan, which led to a host of other commissions.  Burnham subsequently hired Guerin to illustrate the Plan of Chicago in 1907, which he and Edward Bennett were compiling for the Commercial Club of Chicago.  After work on that plan was completed, Guerin went on to enjoy a long career in which he did everything from illustrating books to designing the original fire curtain for the Civic Opera House.  He died in 1946.  The illustration above shows one of Guerin's plates for the McMillan Plan in Washington, D. C.

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April 28, 1969 – Mayor Richard J. Daley announces that the Grand Central railway station at 303 West Harrison Street will be abandoned and that the two railroads using the station will move to the North Western railway station. Although the move must be approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the mayor is optimistic that everything will be worked out by the end of summer.  Taking down Grand Central, which was designed by Solon S. Beman and completed in 1890, will free up 45 acres for development.  It took quite a while for that development to begin … 50 years, more or less.  Things are happening in a big way on the site today, though, as the Riverline development is under construction, a project that will eventually bring 3,600 residences on a site that will include a half-mile boardwalk along the river and close to four acres of open green space.  A rendering of the completed project is shown above.

April 28, 1952 – Acquisition of land for the Congress Street expressway comes to an end as the Chicago City Council approves purchase of three downtown properties, the last of 1,860 parcels that have been acquired since 1942. The final three properties, purchased for $540,212, are for the widening of the expressway as it reaches Michigan Avenue by means of creating sidewalk arcades at Roosevelt College, the Congress Hotel, and Annes Restaurant at 51-59 East Congress Street.  The Commissioner of Subways and Super Highways, Virgil E. Gunlock, says that about 96 percent of the Congress corridor’s right of way has been cleared of buildings and that the super highway is expected to be completed by 1955.  He didn’t miss by much. The completed expressway opened on April 10, 1956.  The above photo gives some idea of how those 1,860 parcels of land came into play as the swath carved out for the new expressway brings it closer to the Loop. 
  

 April 28, 1909 -- The Cubs come back in the ninth inning to beat Cincinnati in a squeaker, 6-5. Another sports reporting gem, this one by I. E. Sunburn in the Chicago Daily Tribune. "Meek as so many cosset lambs during the early innings of today's game," he writes, "Chance's [player-manager Frank Chance] men suddenly tore off their disguises, converted themselves into ravenous wolves, snatched away from the Reds the victory which was apparently clinched, and plunged a stiletto deep into the vitals of Clark Griffith [Cincinnati's manager]." Reds pitcher Bob Ewing is in command until the seventh inning when he allows two runs, but the Wrigley nine is still down by three going into the top of the ninth. Chance leads off the final frame with a single to right. Third baseman Harry Steinfeldt "poled a long fly" to left, but shortstop Joe Tinker "smashed one so hot that [Red shortstop Mike] Mowrey had no chance of stopping it. Outfielder "Circus Solly" Hofman laces a line drive into center. Chance scores, and "only two runs were needed to tie her up." Cubs second baseman Heinie Zimmerman pulls a line drive between short and second and Reds left fielder Dode Paskert, hustling to cut down a run at the plate "fumbled the ball in his eagerness and it bounded gleefully back toward the fence." Tinker and Hofman score and Zimmerman "sneaked around to third a toenail ahead of Paskert's throw in." Cubs catcher Pat Moran hits a bounder to Reds second baseman Miller Huggins, who makes "a fine shot to the plate to nil Zim's run," but Cincinnati catcher Frank Roth drops the ball. That is all that is needed to seal "the grandest rally that has been pulled off this season in any section of the map." The game is played at Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans, pictured above.


April 28, 1893 – The Chicago Club moves into “new and commodious quarters” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 29, 1893] in the structure that formerly held the Art Institute of Chicago before the museum’s move to its new building on the lakefront.  Designed by John Root, the headquarters for the Chicago Club, at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street, “meets the taste of the critic in its plain yet rich proportions.”  Francis M. Whitehouse is the architect charged with renovating the building to make it suitable for the wealthiest private club in the city.  The first story wall will be lowered to make the ceilings of the entry level appropriate for the use of club members and “By this arrangement an extensive and finely proportioned hall was secured two and one-half feet below the level of the reading room.  A flight of marble steps leads up to the latter room.”  Servants’ rooms and a laundry are contained in an addition that has been built over the former courtyard of the Art Institute.  The club’s new headquarters will also have its own ice plant and electricity generating plant.  The elegant building would remain the Chicago Club’s headquarters until 1929 when it collapsed while being remodeled.  The top photo shows the building that the Chicago Club moved into in 1893.  The photo below that shows the same corner today.
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Saturday, January 25, 2020

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

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

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

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

December 26, 2004 -- Jeanne Gang Receives Critic's Praises


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December 26, 2004 – The architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, Blair Kamin, writes  a glowing appraisal of 40-year-old architect Jeanne Gang and her firm, Studo/Gang, which employs a dozen people.  He writes, “Gang designs in a modernist idiom, but unlike the abstract steel-and-glass boxes of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, her work usually has some recognizable feature that invites non-architects to explore it.”  [Chicago Tribune, December 26, 2004]  He cites as an example the Kam Liu Building in Chicago’s Chinatown, noting that it “flaunts a skin of titanium shingles that resemble the scales of a dragon.”  Gang and her husband and co-principal, Mark Schendel, are about to embark upon what might be, for some, an intimidating transition as the firm has been tapped to design residential towers in the Lakeshore East development, rising on what was once a freight yard for the Illinois Central Railroad and, more recently, a nine-hole Par 3 golf course on the lakefront just south of the Chicago River.  Five years after Kamin’s article runs, Gang’s Aqua, an 82-story mixed-use tower, opens with James Loewenberg of Loewenberg and Associates as the Architect of Record.   These days the Vista Tower is nearing completion.  The 101-story hotel and residential building, consists of three sections and, according to Kamin in a September, 2019 article, “Vista’s snaking curves stand out in a city where the right angle has long been king.  So does its sleekness which contrasts with the muscular X-bracing of the former John Hancock Center and other high-rises that boldly express the hidden heavy lifting.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 3, 2019]  In the same article the editor of the journal of Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Daniel Safarik, says of Vista, “For lack of a better word, luxury is communicated by smoothness or sleekness as opposed to musculature.”  Gang stands in front of Aqua in the above photo.

jbartholomew photo
December 26, 1998 – The Sky Pavilion, the $30 million addition to the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, opens and Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin calls it “the most daring building in years along a shoreline dotted by gleaming white museums based on the temples of antiquity.” [Chicago Tribune, December 30, 1998]  The new addition, dubbed “the bra” for the way its C-shaped expanse wraps around the 1930 building, will add a new theater, additional exhibit spaces and a 200-seat restaurant, throwing exceptional views of the city’s skyline into the experience.  Kamin makes the point that the new pavilion teaches a lesson – “The present doesn’t have to parrot the past to respect it … [the pavilion] is both a sensitive expansion and a spectacular addition to the lakefront – every bit as much an expression of its era as its distinguished predecessor. Designed by Dirk Lohan and Al Novickas of Lohan Associates, the addition adds a stunning new space while it subtracts alterations that have taken “some of the luster off this diminutive gem.”  Kamin makes the point that the engineering that developed the addition would not have been possible without a computer that could calculate the complex angles in the new structure, a structure he calls “one of the finest meldings of space and structure in Chicago since Jahn’s masterful United Terminal at O’Hare International Airport was completed in 1988.”


December 26, 1911 – As the machinists’ strike on the Illinois Central Railroad continues, five dangerous incidents of vandalism take place between the Parkside and Grand Crossing stations of the railroad.  At 3:10 p.m. the Blue Island Express runs through an open switch at Grand Crossing, and the engine is thrown off the tracks.  At 7:00 p.m. a south bound freight train is broken in two near Grand Crossing with two freight cars derailed.  An hour later a five-coach South Chicago local train hits an obstruction near Seventy-First Street, and the engine and the first trucks of the following coach are derailed.  Ten minutes after that a south bound passenger train derails just fifty feet west of the South Chicago train.  At 8:30 p.m. two men are seen tampering with a switch at Seventh-Fifth Street, near the South Shore station, but they make their escape before police can be informed.  Reached at his home, F. S. Gibbons, the Vice-President and general manager of the railroad, says, “I don’t believe the strikers would deliberately plan to wreck trains.  I believe an investigation will disclose something else as the cause.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 27, 1911] Despite his assertion, Chicago police place an officer at every switch between Seventy-First and Ninety-First Streets.  The strike, which began in June of 1911, was not fully resolved until the middle of 1915.


December 26, 1951 – The holidays are stressful times, and motorists on Michigan Avenue on the day after Christmas back in 1951 have ample reason to be stressed as a result of a standoff between representatives of two city agencies.  Traffic policeman Phil Tolan arrests a CTA bus driver, William Wilson, at Michigan Avenue and Ontario Street in the height of the evening rush hour.  It starts innocently enough when Wilson, with a green light, moves his bus into the intersection of Michigan and Ohio.  You see this all the time today -- traffic is backed up and the bus blocks the intersection.  Officer Tolan approaches the window on the driver’s side of the bus and tells the driver he should have waited, and Wilson closes the window in the copper’s face.  “Well, I couldn’t let him sass me like that so I told him he was under arrest and ordered him to open the door and get out and show me his license,” Tolan says.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 27, 1951]  He orders the bus driver off the bus, but Wilson won’t open the door until Tolan threatens to break it.  A paddy wagon is called, Wilson is taken to the East Chicago Avenue station, and the CTA is left with the task of transferring passengers to another bus and getting the stranded bus out of the intersection, a process that takes close to 45 minutes.  The humor probably would have been lost on all of the motorists jammed up on Michigan Avenue that evening, but before he was a cop, Tolan drove a bus for the CTA.  The photo above was taken about a half-mile south of Ontario, but you get the idea of what a 45-minute blockade of a key intersection might have been like.


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Saturday, July 27, 2019

July 27, 1970 -- Sears Announces World's Tallest Building

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July 27, 1970 – Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest retailer in the world, announces its plans to build the world’s tallest building on South Wacker Drive between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard.  With 4.4 million square feet of interior space, the $100-million-dollar building will be the largest privately-owned office building in the world.  Gordon Metcalf, the chairman and chief executive officer of Sears, says that the building’s 1,451 feet is as high as the Federal Aviation Administration will permit.  About 16,000 workers are expected to work in Sears Tower with Sears initially occupying less than two million square feet, leasing the remainder of the building.  Mayor Daley greets the news enthusiastically, saying, “On behalf of the people of Chicago, I want to thank Sears for the confidence they are showing in the future, in planning and designing the building which will adorn the west side.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1970].  Sears Tower will rise on a two-block piece of land that has been assembled by private developers over a five-year period, beginning in 1964.  A total of 15 “grime blackened” buildings, purchased from 100 owners, will be torn down to make way for the project.  Sears will also pay the city $2.7 million to vacate Quincy Street between Franklin Street and Wacker Drive.  The architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill will design the tower with Bruce Graham acting as lead designer on the project.  These are heady times for the company as sales in 1969 reached $8.9 billion with net income totaling more than $440 million. Metcalf says that the company expects to increase sales by a billion dollars in 1970.  It is expected that the project will increase the redevelopment of the south branch of the river, where momentum for change has gained headway with the development of the Gateway Center on the opposite bank of the river where two 20-story buildings are already complete and a 35-story tower is under construction.  The above photo shows Sears Tower in 1973 as it begins to come out of the ground.


 July 27, 1970 – Returning to police headquarters at Eleventh and States Street, patrolman John Keane says, “I wouldn’t go back there unless I was in a tank.” The place to which the officer is referring is Grant park where a concert featuring Sly and the Family Stone, scheduled to go off at 4:00 p.m. turns violent as impatient attendees, fueled by rumors that the headliner wasn’t going to show, end up on a rampage.  One opening act, Fat Water, runs through its set, but when the second group, the Flying Burrito Brothers, gets ready to perform, the crowd hurls a wave of bottles, cans, stones and broken pieces of park benches at the stage.  The headliners, who had scheduled the free concert in the first place to make up for three shows the band had cancelled in Chicago earlier in the year, cancelled this one, too, asserting that it was too dangerous to go onstage.  The crowd courses through the park, some people acting violently, some just watching.  A police car and a driving instructor’s car are overturned and set on fire, and the violence spills into the Loop where windows of the Brooks Brothers and Fanny May Candy stores are broken, and some looting occurs.  The violence doesn’t die down until past 10:00 p.m. as 162 people are injured, 126 of them police officers, and 160 are arrested.  For the reaction to the violence you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City.


 July 27, 1890 – With all of the news today focusing on the effects of global warming and rising seas, it is interesting to look back on a feature in the Chicago Daily Tribune 127 years ago, an article that dealt with the changing nature of the city’s shoreline and how the forces of erosion and addition affected the Chicago River over the years.  Originally the “little block-house fort” at Fort Dearborn on what is now the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive stood where the Chicago River bent “more than 90° and finally emptied into the lake at or south of Madison Street.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 27, 1890] The sharp bend to the south was formed because the mouth of the river was blocked by a sandbar that prevented all but barges and flat-bottomed boats from entering. In 1835 the United States government cut a channel through the sandbar on a line with the channel to the west, building piers on the north and south sides of the new channel at the same time.  The pier on the north side drastically changed the natural flow of sand along the lake shore that resulted from the erosion of lakeside bluffs on the north shore.  As a result, the shore between the new mouth of the river and the area around today’s Chicago Avenue expanded so that by 1872 a new shoreline that extended 1,500 feet into the lake had accumulated just north of the river gradually diminishing to about 500 feet at Chicago Avenue.  In the preceding years the Illinois Central Railroad and various private property owners had been busy filling in the lake for freight yards opposite the ends of South Water, Lake and Randolph Streets.  In 1871 this process was increased as “debris from hundreds of acres of burnt buildings had to be disposed of, and in addition a place of deposit had to be found for hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of earth dug from the cellars of the new buildings which were being built.”  With the article the paper prints a map, showing the difference in the shoreline over three-and-a-half miles between 1839 and 1890.  Between Indiana Avenue and Randolph street, the shoreline had been extended nearly a half-mile into the lake..  The newly created land between North Avenue and the river had increased by 180 acres.  The amount of ground added to the city between Monroe Street and today’s Congress Avenue was about 32 acres.  Awaiting adjudication was the issue of entitlement to this newly made land.  It would be years of court cases, suits and counter-suits before the issue would be resolved.  Still pertinent today is the conclusion of the article, “Lake Michigan is the one grand topographical feature of the city, distinguishing it from other cities, tempering its climate, and causing the health-giving breezes which remove atmospheric impurities … We need the water more than we need the land … The filling of the lake for park purposes may be a necessity of the present public exigency, but not a foot more should be allowed to be converted to private or corporate uses.”
July 27, 1919:  Sparks from the smoke stack of the lake freighter Senator start a fire that destroys the coal sheds of the Peoples Gaslight and Coke Company on the east side of the north branch of the Chicago River at Hobbie Street.  The freighter had run aground as it moved past Goose Island, and the tug Racine was assisting it.  The sparks from the ships set the roof of the coal sheds on fire, which then spread to two buildings at 1145 Larabee Street, prompting a 4-11 alarm, another day at work on the North Branch.  The Senator didn't catch a whole lot of breaks.  On October 31, 1929 she was rammed amidships by the steamer Marquette and went to the bottom, taking seven crew members and a load of 241 brand new Nash Ramblers with her.
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