Connecting the Windy City

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

May 27, 1939 -- Monroe Street Viaduct Opens

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earth.google.com

May 27, 1939 – The new $264,300 Monroe Street viaduct across the Illinois Central Railroad tracks east of Michigan avenue is opened to traffic at noon.  The viaduct carries six lanes on a 60-foot roadway, doubling the size of the viaduct that it replaces.  The new viaduct is part of a series of city improvements that come as a result of state legislation related to the construction of the new Union Station.  Other projects included in the initiative are:  connecting Canal and Orleans Streets, uniting the north and west parts of the city; widening and elevating Canal Street between Washington Street and Roosevelt Road to make a direct route to the new Illinois Central terminal; building a Congress Street viaduct; assisting the city in straightening the Chicago River’s South Branch, thereby relocating railroad tracks that strangled the south portion of the city east of the South Branch.  The black and white photo shows the construction of the viaduct in 1939.  The second Google Earth photo shows the corner of Monroe and Michigan as it appears today.

May 27, 1975 – After a City Council subcommittee approves $7.2 million for the rehabilitation of Navy Pier, a project that the Department of Public Works estimates may take closer to $34 million, the Chicago Tribune weighs in with its opinion. “Either it will be revived somehow,” the editorial states, “or it will be a big black eye on Chicago’s face as long as it remains. We hope a practical way can and will be found to make Navy Pier once again used, attractive, well served by public transportation from end to end as well as to it. The site is one of the most scenic and interesting urban sites in the country. Surely some time Chicago will find a means of turning Navy Pier’s unused potential into reality.”

J. Bartholomew Photo

May 27, 1933 – A creditors’ petition for reorganization is filed in the United States District court for the One La Salle Street building.  According to the suit the building’s owners are in default $5,250,000 on a first mortgage and have accrued taxes of $500,000.  The petition puts forward a plan to seek a new mortgage of $750,000 to pay off taxes and establish solvency to an operating fund while issuing 52,500 shares of stock to first mortgage holders.  The attorney for the building’s bondholders claims that the half-million in taxes have been paid and a cash surplus exists.  The attorney, Bernard Nath, says, “Eighty-nine percent of the bondholders and the owner of the building, the One La Salle Street Building corporation, have approved the reorganization plan.  We expect to go through with the reorganization foreclosure proceedings now under and bid in the property for the bondholders.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1933]. For 35 years this 49-story building, designed by the architecture firm of Vitzhum and Burns, was the tallest building in the city.  It was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. 

May 27, 1930 –The President of the 1933 Century of Progress, Rufus C. Dawes, pulls a lever on a steam shovel and scoops the first dirt from the site where the administration building will be erected for the Century of Progress World’s Fair, to be held along Chicago’s lakefront in the summers of 1933 and 1934,.   The Vice-President of the South Park commissioners, Philip S. Garver, addresses a gathering of fair directors and public officials, officially turning over the use of the park property to the fair’s trustees.  In accepting the site, Director Dawes says, “We pledge ourselves to the use of this land for the enjoyment, education, and entertainment of the people of the world.  The exposition will fittingly portray the history of Chicago and be worthy of the city’s proud position among the cities of the world.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1930] In the top photo President Dawes moves the first bucket of dirt, which will give way to the Art Deco Administration building shown in the second photo.

May 27, 1917 – Seven weeks after the United States Congress approves a declaration of war on Germany, the Chicago Conference Committee on Terms of Peace holds a rally at the Auditorium Theater in which protestors rail against the country’s entanglement in the war an ocean away.  Two thousand people are turned away from the packed Auditorium, and they instigate what the Chicago Daily Tribune calls the city’s first “war riot.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1917] The paper reports, “The scene was Grant park, just across from the Auditorium hotel.  Michigan avenue’s thousands of Sunday promenaders came to an amazed halt.  A steady flowing stream of automobiles pulled up short, blockading the boulevard for many blocks in each direction … Then a huge, bearded and mop headed Russian thrust himself above the heads of the others … ‘Why should American workmen fight the workmen of Germany for any _______   _________ in the White House?’ he bawled.”  It took an hour to put down the riot as “The air was filled with clubs, that cracked down upon the heads of the rioters.  The members of the meeting shrieked imprecations, women bit and scratched the police, bull throated malcontents bawled threats and ‘Down with the government!’ “Free speech!’ and 'No war.’”  At first 40 officers show up, followed by 35 detectives.  In ten minutes there are another 400 policemen trying to maintain order.  The Tribune reports, “’Free speech!’ screamed the women. ‘We want free speech!’ ‘You’ll get it,’ bellowed back a square shouldered policeman as he whacked another disturber over the head.”  The Reverend Irwin St. John Tucker, chairman of the peace terms conference, issues a statement in which he separates the meeting in the Auditorium from the disturbances across Michigan Avenue.  It reads, “The Chicago permanent conference on terms of peace is responsible only for the mass meeting held in the Auditorium and for the resolutions officially presented therein … The conference is determined, while exercising all our rights under the law, strictly to observe all our obligations under the same.”

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Labels: 1939, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Development, Illinois Central, Monroe Street

Friday, May 22, 2020

May 22, 1933 -- Art Institute of Chicago Gets Approval to Tap Ferguson Fund for New Building

artic.edu

chuckmannostalgia.wordpress.com

May 22, 1933 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a Circuit Court judge has arrived at a decision that will allow the Art Institute of Chicago to build a $400,000 addition to the east of the original 1893 building.  Judge William V. Brothers interprets the will of B. F. Ferguson, a wealthy lumberman who created a $1,000,000 trust that could be used to build “statues and monuments commemorating national figures and historical events”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 22, 1933], finding that the word “monument” can include a building.  The museum’s addition will be the twelfth “monument” that will be created through the funds in the Ferguson trust.  It will be a long time before the judge’s decision led to a building.  The Ferguson Wing on the north side of the original 1893 building was not opened until 1958.  The black and white photo shows the corner on Monroe and Michigan before the Ferguson Wing was completed.  The second photo shows the Ferguson Wing on the north side of the original building just after it opened. 

May 22, 1963 – James H. Gately, Chicago Park District president, announces the details of a $60,000 dairy barn planned for the zoo in Lincoln Park.  Donated by a Chicago affiliate of the National Dairy Council, it will be the second of six buildings projected for the area south of the present zoo that will demonstrate the working of a midwestern farm.  Gately says that visitors will be able to watch cows being milked on a raised platform behind glass walls.  The first building in the project, the main barn, was underwritten by Walter Erman, the chairman of the Luria Steel and Trading Company, and his wife, Ida.

May 22, 1960 – Mayor Richard J. Daley dedicates the new Stanley McCormick Court at the Art Institute of Chicago on the southeast corner of Michigan Avenue and Monroe Drive. Mrs. Stanley McCormick, the donor, sits “quietly in the front row and declined to step into the spotlight of attention to accept the plaudits of the 125 governing life members, trustees, staff members, and other guests who attended the dedication.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 23, 1960].  McCormick dedicates the new garden and courtyard in honor of her late husband, the son of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the mechanical reaper.  The court is a 42,000 square foot garden with an 80-foot by 30-foot pool and fountain. William McCormick Blair, president of the Art Institute’s Board of Trustees, calls the court “a significant addition to the landmarks of the city.”  McCormick Court today holds three significant sculptures:  "Large Interior Form" by Henry Moore; "Cubi VIII" by David Smith; and "Flying Dragon" by Alexander Calder.

May 22, 1956 – Mayor Richard J. Daley says it might be a fine idea to have gondolas, “operated by experts from Venice,” [Chicago Daily Tribune May 23, 1956] on the Chicago River.  He added further that it would be great to see boys and girls fishing from the river banks.  Behind the message lies a motive – the mayor adds that for such pastimes to occur the federal government would need to permit an increased diversion of Lake Michigan water into the river, something that cities and states on the Great Lakes have fought for over four decades.

May 22, 1934 – Disaster occurs at the Oakley building, 143 West Austin Avenue, when a 40,000 gallon water tank on the top of the building falls through the roof and smashes through the core of the building to the first floor. Five workers inside the building are killed and another half-dozen seriously injured. One of the injured, Clyde Otto, who was hurt in the stampede for the fire escapes describes the event: “The walls began to shake all of a sudden and we heard a series of crashes – I guess it was the tank hitting the various floors. The girls began to scream and every one rushed for the fire escape.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 1934] The last inspector to examine the tank was Daniel Hartford, who had approved it in January. Appearing before an inquest on June 1, he was asked how much he knew about the work he was doing. Hartford answered, “I didn’t know anything about it . . . I’m just the same as you or anybody else who might inspect it.” A few days later the city’s building commissioner says that of the 3,000 water tanks on city roofs the building department only has records for two-thirds of them. At least a thousand such tanks were built before 1919 when the state required that blueprints of the tanks be filed with the building department.

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Labels: 1933, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Architecture

Monday, May 18, 2020

May 18, 1893 -- Susan B. Anthony at the Women's Congress

worldsfairchicago1893.com

May 18, 1893 – Susan B. Anthony appears on this day at the World’s Congress of Representative Women, a week-long convention in which 150,000 attendees came to World’s Congress Auxiliary Building, today’s Art Institute of Chicago, to listen to speeches by nearly 500 women, at 81 different meetings.  Of the 100 congresses that were held during the run of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, this would be the most heavily attended.  The Women’s Congress was arranged under the supervision of Bertha Honoré Palmer, and of all the speakers who appeared, Susan B. Anthony, now in her seventies but still delivering at least 100 speeches a year, was the most popular.  The Chicago Daily Tribune describes her appearance thusly, “The way she whisked along the corridors in her flight from meeting to meeting, the untiring energy with which she made opening addresses and closing speeches, receiving between times numberless congratulations and hand-shakings, was nothing short of miraculous.  And wherever she went the sense of woman’s suffrage screamed.  Indeed, all other subjects sank into insignificance beside this burning one.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 19, 1893] 

May 18, 1967 – Officials of Chicago Helicopter Airways, Inc. predict that the helicopter line may be hauling a million passengers annually within a few years. The chairman of the company, John S. Gleason, Jr., says that preliminary plans have begun for developing a downtown heliport in Grant Park or on adjacent Illinois Central air rights. Gleason is encouraged by reports that a projection of 300 flights a day operating out of a revamped Midway Airport could result in the shuttling of a million passengers a year between Midway, O’Hare and the Loop. He is also optimistic about a third major airport being built in the lake. Optimism is the engine that turns the rotors, right? Even if the craft never gets off the ground, the noise sure gets your attention.

May 18, 1952 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that another pair of old mansions will be reduced to rubble so that a 17-story rental apartment building can be built at 1538 and 1540 State Parkway.  Completion of the new building, designed by Shaw, Metz and Dolio is scheduled for 1953. The apartment building will have space for 60 families and indoor parking for 36 cars.  All units will be at least five rooms with two bedrooms and two bathrooms.  A unique feature of the new building is that it will be constructed in the shape of a cross with only one apartment occupying each arm of the cross, allowing for wider views and better cross ventilation.  Scheduled for demolition is the home at 1538 North State Parkway, built by William H. Bush in 1887 on land that he purchased from Hobart Chatfield-Taylor, a Chicago author who owned all of the land extending from that lot to Lincoln Park.  Today's 1540 North State Parkway is pictured above.  

May 18, 1886 – The Schiller Monument in Lincoln Park is unveiled on a Saturday afternoon before 7,000 people, including members of 60 separate German societies and lodges of the city.  Mayor Carter Harrison and William Rapp, editor of the Staats-Zeitung, make speeches appropriate to the occasion.  The Chicago statue is recast from a model of the original sculpture that stands in Marbach, the birthplace of Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.  The original sculptor was Ernst Rau.  According to the Chicago Park District a large number of German immigrants held a meeting in Turner Hall, after spending several years raising money for the monument, and subsequently placed a cornerstone and foundation for the work in Lincoln Park.  William Pelargus, a sculptor from Stuttgard, was hired to recast the original Marbach monument, and a Lake View stone cutter was given the commission to create the granite base.  The Laing and Son Granite Company repaired the monument in 1959 and installed a bronze plaque on the base.  It still stands in its original location. The top photo shows the original monument in Marbach.  Below that is the memorial as it looked in the early 1900's.  It is not much changed today, as can be seen in the final photo.  

May 18, 1878 – The cornerstone is placed for the First Regiment’s armory on Jackson Street between Wabash and Michigan Avenues, celebrated in “one of the finest military parades and reviews that has taken place in this city for years.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1878] The first meeting to organize a National Guard regiment in Chicago took place on August 28, 1874 with the militia funded through private donations.  George M. Pullman contributed the first $500 with 22 of the city’s leading citizens contributing $100 apiece.  The first drill hall was established at 112 Lake Street.  In February of 1875 the First Regiment assembled as demonstrations swept the downtown area.  The six companies of the regiment were credited with saving the city from almost certain rioting as the men encamped in the armory.  The members of the regiment, still without a suitable place to call home, played an instrumental role in putting down the disturbances that came in July of 1877 during the rioting that occurred during the railroad strike, stationing cannons on the Twelfth and Sixteenth Street bridges.  Finally, the First Regiment dedicated its new armory on the site of the old Trinity Church on October 29, 1878.  The armory remained open until 1900 when a new armory was begun farther south on Michigan Avenue.  The above photo shows the armory as it stood on Jackson next to the Leiland Hotel.

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Labels: 1893, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Event, World's Columbian Exposition

Saturday, May 16, 2020

May 16, 2009 -- Nichols Bridgeway Opens Between Millennium Park and Art Institute

May 16, 2009 –The Nichols Bridgeway, a 625-foot pedestrian bridge connecting Millennium Park to the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, opens.  Designed by the Pritzker prize-winning architect of the Modern Wing of the museum, Renzo Piano, it gradually rises from the Great Lawn southwest of the Pritzker Pavilion to a height of 60 feet as it meets up with the Bluhm Family Terrace on the third level of the Modern Wing.  As walkers move along the 450 tons of steel that make up the bridge, they are treated to spectacular views, west down Monroe Street toward the South Branch of the river, east to the open space of Grant Park and Lake Michigan, south to the spectacular new addition to the museum (and the railroad tracks that once occupied the entire area), and, north to Millennium Park and its lush Lurie Garden.  The bridge, built by Industrial Steel, Construction, Inc., is named after its benefactors, John D. and Alexandra Nichols.  

May 16, 2000 – The Chicago Tribune editorializes about cost overruns at Millennium Park. “Private-sector corporations generally prefer the design-build method of contracting for new facilities,” the editorial observes. “They hire a unified team of architects and builders that can deliver an agreed-to building for an agreed-to price. Then there’s the method Mayor Richard Daley is using on the Millennium Project . . . you might call it the design-as-you-build method.” At issue is a Frank Gehry-design that, as originally proposed, was supposed to cost 150 million dollars and which had by this time risen to $270 million. “And crews are still building the support structure,” the editorial sniped. “What happens when they start adding the fancy stuff?” In a stinging conclusion, the editorial asks, “And one last question for the planners: After you’ve made your last change and gotten your elegant little culture park just the way you like, where are the hoi polloi going to go for the Blues, Jazz, Gospel and Taste concerts that are too big for Millennium Park? Or is that just another small, hanging detail?” A space of over 17 years is probably time enough to judge whether the “little culture park” was worth the investment. Judging from the crowds at what is now the most popular tourist destination in the midwest, it feels as if the “small, hanging details” worked out. The photo above shows the park as it started to take shape in 2001.

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May 16, 1930 – Charles B. Pike, the president of the Chicago Historical Society, presides over a ceremony at which a monument is unveiled on the bank of Portage Creek near Stickney, the site at which Father Marquette and Louis Joliet came into the vicinity of the Des Plaines River. In the 1670's Portage Creek would have been to the west of Mud Lake, through which the two French explorers had to carry their canoes and provisions after leaving the Chicago River   In his remarks Pike credits two Chicagoans, Dr. Lucius Zeuch and Robert Knight, whose research led to the establishment of the historical site. The Reverend Joseph Reiner, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University, provides a narrative of the development of Chicago, a process that begins with Marquette’s and Joliet’s discovery of the possibility that a route might exist between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River by way of the modest Chicago River and the interior waters of Illinois.  Bertha Lerman, secretary of the Junior Citizens’ Club, pulls a canvas covering from a granite boulder that was set by the Chicago Historical Society on the old trail.  Today there is a much more elaborate work of art at the site. Located in the Chicago Portage National Historic Site in Lyons, it is on the west side of Harlem Avenue on a line with Forty-Eighth Street.  The sculpture at the site, shown above, is by Guido Rebechini.

May 16, 1910 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that James A. Pugh, the largest stockholder in the Chicago Canal and Dock Company, has confirmed that the company will build piers into the lake at the mouth of the river without permission of the city – if the United States War Department renews the permit that it granted the company 18 months earlier.  A member of the City Council’s committee on harbors, wharves, and bridges says, “If Pugh gets his permit and goes ahead without a city franchise to build his piers he will get into a fight.  We’ll tie the thing up in the courts, if necessary, until we can get a bill through the legislature.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1910] Good luck, Mr. City Council Guy.  The terminal got built – it’s the long light-colored structure to the left of Ogden Slip, extending toward the brand new Lake Point Tower, nearing completion in 1968.  

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Labels: 2009, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Architecture, Grant Park, Lake Michigan, Millennium Park, Monroe Street

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

April 29, 2001 -- Art Institute of Chicago Announces Modern Wing Plans

J. Bartholomew Photo

April 29, 2001 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the Art Institute of Chicago has announced plans for a $200 million addition that will “create a major new entrance to the museum facing Lakefront Millennium Park and its parking garage, supply much-needed gallery and education space, and set the stage for one of the most dramatic internal reorganizations since the museum opened its doors in 1893.” [Chicago Tribune, April 29, 2001]   In order to make room for the new wing, the Goodman Theatre, sited mostly underground on the northeast corner of the museum, will be demolished.  The new building’s architect, Renzo Piano, says, “If you leave that building [the Goodman] there, you can’t do anything.”  The addition will add close to 300,000 square feet to the existing building’s 950,000 square feet of space.  Piano will also design a steel bridge that will connect the addition to Millennium Park to the north across Monroe Street.  The design for the new building, the first addition to the museum since the completion of the Rice Building in 1988, will feature a five-level structure with “three stories above ground and two below.  The top two floors will be for galleries.  The bottom two floors, both below ground, will be devoted to art storage and other ‘back of the house’ functions, such as a new loading dock that will replace the one along Monroe.  The ground floor, meanwhile, will house a visitors’ lobby, museum shop, resource facility for teachers and orientation areas for school children.”  Most striking, perhaps, will be the roof of the addition which Piano says represents his attempt “to strike up a dialogue with the football-field-size steel trellis" that [architect Frank] Gehry has designed just to the south of his band shell.  “Poetically speaking, it’s like a flying sculpture, a flying carpet,” Piano says.  Although optimistic projections called for the Modern Wing to be open by 2005, it actually opened in mid-2009, making the Art Institute of Chicago the second-largest art museum in the United States.  The Art Institute describes the Modern Wing in this way, “The building houses the museum’s world-renowned collections of modern European painting and sculpture, contemporary art, architecture and design, and photography.  The extraordinary scope and quality of these collections are a revelation, each displayed more comprehensively than ever before.  The Modern Wing allows the Art Institute to take its rightful place as one of the world’s great collections of modern and contemporary art.”  [archive.artic.edu/modernwing/overview/]  The above photo shows Renzo Piano's "flying carpet," the roof atop the Modern Wing with the entry arch from Louis Sullivan's Chicago Stock Exchange building in the foreground.

architect.com

April 29, 1982 – An announcement is made that the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust has signed a contract to exchange the land under Lake Point Tower at 505 North Lake Shore Drive for a property to be named later in the year.  American Ivsco Corp. retains ownership of the residential tower with a ground lease that will continue until about 2045.  The president of Chicago Dock, Charles Gardner, does not disclose the future owner of the land.  It is believed that the transaction is the result of the conversion of the building from rental apartments to condominiums.  Such a conversion could not legally take place unless the building and the land are held in common ownership.  Chicago Dock had owned the 3-acre parcel of land since the 1850’s and leased it to the developers of Lake Point Tower in 1965.  On June 1, 1983 Chicago Dock announced the property that it had acquired in the swap with Lake Point Tower.  Gardner disclosed that the company had acquired a 60 percent interest in the Playboy Building at 919 North Michigan Avenue, plus an undisclosed amount of cash.  It is speculated that Continental National Bank and Trust Company will be the majority owner of Lake Point Tower and the land beneath it.  

April 29, 1963 – Mayor Richard J. Daley announces plans to build an 80-story apartment building west of the Merchandise Mart on Wolf Point.  The building will be the tallest building in the Midwest and the fourth tallest in the world, rising 782 feet with a 571-foot antenna at its top.  It is projected to hold 1,300 apartments and a 320-room hotel with a plaza that rises two floors above the bridge at Orleans Street.  The cost of the project, which will occupy 5.76 acres of land, is $45 million.  Studio apartments will rent from $120 to $200 a month; the 512 one-bedroom units will go for between $180 and $280 a month; 256 two-bedroom units will rent for between $270 and $370; and 128 three-bedroom units will top out at $420.  Each apartment will have glass from floor to ceiling with seven-foot balconies extending the width of the unit.  The first tier of apartments will not begin until the building reaches the 120-foot mark with four restaurants and a theater, along with shops making up the first floors.  There will be two levels of parking below ground that will hold 800 cars.  The architect for the project is Chalres Booher Gunther, who founded PACE Associates, an engineering firm that worked on early drawings of Marina City.  One can see the similarities to the two Marina City towers on the river six blocks to the east.  The project actually got a permit from the Federal Aeronautics Administration for the antenna, but that is as far as it ever went. The top photo gives some idea of the look of the colossus.  Below that is a Chicago Tribune rendering of the space that it was projected to fill at Wolf Point.  The bottom photo shows what Wolf Point will look like when the last of the three towers is topped out in the next few years.  Probably a good thing the original plan got shelved, right?

April 29, 1928 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the Gage Structural Steel Company, with offices at 3123-41 South Hoyne Avenue, has set a record for placement of steel in a tall building.  According to R. H. Gage, vice-president and engineer of the company, a record of 36 working days was established in the steelwork of the 100 North La Salle building. Gage says, “The first delivery of structural steel was made on Feb. 24, 1928, and the final delivery on April 13, 1928, and the erection of same was completed shortly thereafter in the record time of seven weeks, or thirty-six working days.  Three days were deducted for inclement weather, when the steel erectors could not work, and Saturdays were figured as half days, owing to the fact that the steel erectors quit at noon.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 29, 1928] The 25-story building at the corner of La Salle Street and Washington required 1,958 tons of structural steel.

April 29, 1862 -- Report in the Chicago DailyTribune for this date: "A drunken man named Gates, who resides on Wells street, became suddenly sobered Saturday night, as follows: He was walking along the river dock between Randolph and Lake streets, when, by some means unexplained, he got into deep water. He howled lustily for help, and was rescued by two men, just as he was sinking for the last time. Never was a pickled article more suddenly or completely freshened than was Gates. He was taken in charge by the police and furnished with lodgings in the Hotel de Turtle, West Market station." Poor pickled Gates nearly met his doom just beyond the nearest bridge at Randolph Street, pictured above.

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Labels: 2001, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Architecture, Millennium Park, Monroe Street

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

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

urbanplanning.library.cornell.edu

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.

perkinswill.com

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.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 5 comments

Labels: 1896, Architecture, Architecture (Connections), Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Development

Thursday, April 16, 2020

April 16, 1913 -- Art Institute of Chicago Says Good Riddance to the Moderns

archive.artic.edu

April 16, 1913 – From March 24 to April 16, 1913 the International Exhibition of Modern Art draws visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago, the second stop on a three-city tour that began in New York City at the Sixty-Ninth Regiment Armory.  This was the first large showing of modern art in the United States, and some critics still maintain it was the most import art exhibition in the country’s history.  The collection of 1,090 works displayed in New York is cut down to 634 for the Chicago run, and from contemporary reports it seems that for Chicagoans that was 634 too many.  When, on this day, the collection is packed onto the train for its final exhibition in Boston, the students at the Art Institute “held a jubilee and burned three alleged paintings that were left behind in the rush.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1913]  Copies of three paintings by Henri Matisse go up in flames after a mock trial is held.  At 4:00 p.m. the students carriy a “prisoner, “ an effigy of Matisse that personifies the “crimes” that have just left town, down the front steps of the museum to the south portico where the trial is held.  The Chicago Tribune reports, “The prisoner, heavily manacled, was thrust forward at the point of a rusty bayonet, and the prosecutor general … scowled darkly and read the indictments … ‘You are charged with artistic murder, pictorial arson, artistic rapine, total degeneracy of color, criminal misuse of line, general esthetic aberration, and contumacious abuse of title.’”  The “jury” finds the defendant guilty of “everything in the first degree” and the body is taken to the north end of the building where a sermon is preached from “the Second Chapter of Anatomy.”  A student presents a funeral oration in which he sobs, “We regret that you have only one life to give for your principles.  So let it be with all artistic traitors.  You were a living example of death in life; you were ignorant and corrupt, an insect that annoyed us, and it is best for you and best for us that you died.”  The original intention was to burn the “body,” but cooler heads prevailed and the entertainment ends.  The students are not alone.  Art Institute Director M. R. French says, “If this work were submitted to me without explanation, I should regard it as a joke.”  The Director of Finance for the museum, Charles H. Burkholder, agrees, saying that “hanging [was] too good” for some of the paintings in the show.  The installation photograph featuring works by Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin is shown above. 

April 16, 1946 – Fort Sheridan welcomes 176 American soldiers who escaped from German prison camps in Poland and eastern Germany and found their way to Russian lines.  German prisoners-of-war serve the men a steak dinner.  Two dozen of the men grew up in the city or the surrounding area.  On the following day the men begin a 21-day leave to visit their homes before reporting to rest camps in Miami Beach, Florida or Atlantic City, New Jersey.  As world War II progressed, Fort Sheridan served as the central administrative headquarters for prisoner-of-war camps in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  A total of 15,000 prisoners were placed under this administration, many of them held at the fort. 

April 16, 1925 -- E. J. Stevens awards the contract for the $30,000,000 (a little over $54 million in today's dollars) Hotel Stevens, today's Chicago Hilton and Towers on Michigan Avenue, to the Fuller Construction Company. The hotel will be the largest hotel in the world, according to Stevens. When it opened in 1927, the Holabird and Roche designed hotel had 3,000 rooms and, among other things, could produce 120 gallons of ice cream every hour. The Fuller Construction Company is an interesting footnote. Between 1900 and 1914 the Chicago firm was responsible for the construction of over 600 buildings. Chicago's beloved Marquette, Rookery, and Monadnock buildings were all built by Fuller. So, too, was the Flatiron building off Madison Square Park in New York City. The company was dissolved in 1970, and its last building was most probably the 150 North Wacker Drive building just south of Lake Street in Chicago.

April 16, 1903 – Violence flares all along the river as the marine firemen’s strike continues.  Gangs board ships leaving their docks in an attempt to halt the non-union firemen while other men man the bridges and hurl stones at boats as they pass to and from the lake.  One boat, the Seneca, inbound from Buffalo with non-union stokers manning the shovels, is boarded and a 65-year-old is left unconscious in the hold.  As night falls a crowd of fifty strikers attempting to board the steamer Clarion as she leaves for Buffalo are driven back by the police.  Retreating to a bridge, the mob showers the boat with rocks.  One deck hand is hit before he can find shelter from the onslaught.  In an attempt to end the strike, arbitration is proposed at a meeting that lasts into the next morning, but the Chicago local votes unanimously to continue its walk-out.  Even the University of Chicago is dragged into the fray as President William Rainey Harper is forced to issue a statement concerning students who took positions as strike-breakers on ships headed to Buffalo.  Harper asserts that if the students had consulted him or their deans “they would undoubtedly have been advised not to undertake such service.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1903] He adds, though, “That the university takes no side on any question, political or religious, or, indeed, of any kind, individuals of the university, professors, or students being left absolutely free to think and do as they see fit.”

April 16, 1903 – Twenty-five terrified passengers go for a wild ride when a trolley car of the Southport Avenue line crashes into the end of the partly open Wells Street bridge at 8:00 p.m. and barely avoids tumbling into the river.  The swing bridge at Wells Street had been rotated to permit a boat to travel through the draw when the trolley approaches rapidly as it heads north.  Passengers panic as the trolley appears certain to plunge into the river, but the bridge begins to rotate back into place just in time for the car to crash into its girders.  The car is thrown nearly perpendicular to the tracks, and the impact throws all of the passengers to the floor and against the end of the car.  Fortunately, no one is seriously injured.  A dozen or more elevated trains and thirty surface cars wait to cross the bridge as it takes a wrecking crew an hour to extricate the Southport trolley from the bridge.  The Wells Street Bridge and the girders that saved the trolley are pictured above.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 1 comments

Labels: 1907, Art Institute of Chicago