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

Monday, October 5, 2020

October 5, 1929 -- Merchandise Mart Provides First Exhibit of Air Rights Taxation


October 5, 1929 -- The Chicago Board of Assessors agrees on a tax assessment against the Merchandise Mart that rises above the Chicago and North Western Railroad tracks north of the Chicago River and west of Wells Street, the first time in the history of the city that taxes have been assessed against "air rights".  The rule the board applies is "the value of the air rights is the size of the entire fee under the building, less the added cost of constructing a building on air rights over a railroad, and less the loss in value owing to the loss of rentable space."  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 6, 1929].  In the case of the Merchandise Mart the formula determines that the total area covered by the structure is 267,775 feet, resulting in a taxable value of $2,677,750.  The cost of constructing the building over the railroad tracks, determined by examining the books of the architects, Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, is fixed at $200,000.  That sum is subtracted from the total price.  An additional debit from the building's total cost is estimated for the loss of rentable office space that cannot be used because of the existence of the railroad tracks.  That sum is estimated at $104,164.  Another $67,267 is subtracted because of delays in finalizing the agreement between the building's owners and the railroad.  The final figure is 86.12% of the building, the sum on which the massive building will be taxed.  The photo shows the tracks of the Chicago and North Western Railroad running from west to east beneath the Merchandise Mart just after the Mart was completed.


October 5, 1964 – The tunnel at Oak Street, costing $5 million and designed to move northbound traffic on Michigan Avenue onto a ramp providing access to Lake Shore Drive, opens for its first rush hour.  The tunnel eliminates a bottleneck that has plagued Lake Shore Drive at Oak Street for years. The top photo shows the junction of Michigan Avenue, Oak Street and Lake Shore Drive before the tunnel was constructed.  The lower photo shows the area today with the tunnel peeking out in the lower left corner of the photo.


October 5, 1938 – Red Ruffing, pitching for the New York Yankees, goes up against the Chicago Cubs 22-game winner, Bill Lee, in the first game of the 1938 World Series, played in Chicago.  The Yankees go up, 2-0, in the second inning after Lou Gehrig walks and moves to third on a single by Bill Dickey. An error by Cubs second baseman Billy Herman allows Gehrig to score, and Joe Gordon brings Dickey home with another single.  The Cubs get a run back in the third inning, but the Yankees add another run in the sixth inning to end the scoring in a game in which Ruffing gives up nine hits and beats the home team, 3-1, before 43,642 spectators in a game that takes less than two hours to complete.  The men from the Bronx go on to defeat the Cubs in a four-game sweep.
Chicago Tribune photo

October 5, 1937 – A new day dawns in the city as the long awaited link between the north and south sections of the city, the bridge over the Chicago River at Lake Shore Drive, is dedicated in front of nearly 10,000 spectators.  The highlight of the ceremony is the appearance of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, who speaks very few words concerning the bridge.  Instead he uses the opportunity to make a major address concerning the responsibility of the United States in joining like-minded nations in opposing countries that would wage war to achieve domination.  “And mark this well,” Roosevelt says, “When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.  War is contagion whether it is declared or undeclared.  It can engulf states and people remote from the original scene of hostilities.  Yes, we are determined to keep out of war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the dangers of involvement.”  [Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1937] The dedication of the bridge is shown in the photo above.
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Sunday, October 4, 2020

October 4, 1982 -- Sears Recommended for Landmark Status


October 4, 1982 – For the second time in four years, city planners recommend landmark status for the original Sears State Street store, finding that the structure, “adds to the State Street mall’s inviting pedestrian circulation.” [Chicago Tribune, October 5, 1982] The store, originally built for Levi Z. Leiter, an early Chicago merchant, was originally recommended for landmark status in 1979, but attorneys for Sears opposed the landmark designation for the building.  It is unknown how Sears will greet the new recommendation for the 1891 building.  William McClenahan, the director of the city’s Landmarks Commission, says that the building is “an important landmark in the city and an effort to have it so designated is worth another try.”  On January 14,1997 the store finally received landmark status and rightfully so.  As the city’s website on landmarks states, “Renowned as one of the nation’s most important early examples of skeletal-frame commercial architecture, this building is discussed in every major history of American architecture.”


October 4, 1969 – At the conclusion of a march sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society from Grant Park to the Federal Building and back in which 350 protestors demand the immediate withdrawal of all troops in Vietnam, two protestors, armed with guns, knives, and swords, are arrested in Old Town.  The cache is discovered in a camper from which the two men from California apparently are selling weapons to be used between October 8 and 11 at protests planned by the Weatherman faction of the S.D.S.  The occupants of the truck, Dennis Sleeth and Daniel Brucher, both from California, are arrested after police find a 20-gauge shotgun, 25 rounds of ammunition, a 22-caliber pistol with 58 rounds, five Samurai swords and 13 knives in sheaths.  At the same time the subversive unit of the police department raids the S.D.S. national headquarters at 1608 Madison Street and arrests Caroline Tanner of Pennsylvania for her involvement in the beating of four policemen in front of the Federal Building on September 24. 

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October 4, 1918 – The Chicago Health Commissioner announces that any church building that is found to be poorly ventilated during Sunday services on the following day will be closed.  The action is taken “to put all Chicago on active guard against the epidemic of influenza and pneumonia.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 5, 1918]  Similar prohibitions have been issued to schools, theaters, restaurants, streetcar and elevated lines.  Police officials have been issued an order to “instruct all members of their command to visit all public places … where people congregate and request the proprietors to urge their patrons to aid in the work of mutual protection … also instruct your officers that when they see a person on the street or any other place sneezing or coughing without placing a handkerchief to his mouth, to ask him in a courteous manner to do so, explaining why the use of the handkerchief for that purpose is imperative.”  Although the epidemic has not yet impacted the city as much as it has downstate, there are still 916 cases reported in the preceding 24 hours with 81 deaths.  The entire Chicagoland area is on alert.  In Highland Park, for example, 56 women make a house-to-house search in automobiles to locate cases that have not received attention, finding 667 cases during their rounds.  Wilmette orders all schools, churches and theaters to be closed as town officials suggest that it may be necessary to call out the Illinois National Guard to patrol streets for a day or two “to aid in keeping the children on their own premises and prevent  the running about of those with colds and coughs.”  In the world-wide influenza outbreak of 1918 and 1919 more than one fifth of the world’s population contracted what was known as the “Spanish flu.”  More than 21,000,000 people died, including 600,000 in the United States with 8,500 Chicago residents losing their lives to the illness.  Between the start of Chicago’s epidemic on September 21 and the removal of restrictions on November 16, the city experienced 38,000 cases of influenza and 13,000 cases of pneumonia.  


October 4, 1909 – A good night’s sleep is a difficult thing to come by if you’re staying in a hotel along the lakefront, according to a report in the Chicago Daily Tribune on this date.  An investigation by the paper finds “engines puffing, wheezing, snorting, exhausting, and making every other kind of noise that a locomotive is capable of” just across Michigan Avenue. “Whistles were tooting, bells were ringing, and cars were bumping together with a crash that would awaken the soundest sleeper.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1909]  A reporter, who is keeping an eye on the railroad action along the lakefront from the Art Institute at Monroe Street to a point near where Congress Street runs today, encounters a clerk at one of the Michigan Avenue hotels, who says, “Many a night has some guest of the house who couldn’t sleep come down to the office and kept me company.  Guests who come here for the first time make a loud kick against the engines, and I don’t blame them … It is almost impossible for a nervous person to get any sleep between 2 and 7 o’clock.  Between those hours the engines are constantly pushing back and forth, and there isn’t one person in twenty who can sleep through the noises that come from the yard.”  The above photo shows the railroad tracks east of Michigan Avenue at Monroe Street.   


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Saturday, October 3, 2020

October 3, 1949 -- David Adler ... Spontaneity, Grace and Elegance




October 3, 1949 –The Chicago Daily Tribune praises the life and work of David Adler, who died on September 27.  Adler was born in Milwaukee in 1882, studied at Princeton University, and, after a time in Europe, joined the office of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw in 1911. He failed the architect’s exam in 1918, and it wasn’t until 1928 that he was awarded an honorary license.  At that point he had over 30 commissions to his name, all of them authenticated by architects who had a background in structural engineering.  During the 1920’s, though, Adler designed some stunning residential homes, many of them on the North
Shore.  The Tribune observes, “Somebody once said that Adler’s houses had the quality of Mozart’s music and, indeed, they have Mozartean spontaneity, grace, and elegance in line and decoration.  They are always fresh but never eccentric or startling.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 3, 1949]  The paper points out a set of row houses near the Elks’ memorial in Lincoln Park as a particular achievement, pointing out that they “display his genius for dealing freshly with established styles and conventional forms.”  The row houses are landmarked and have a fascinating history as can be seen in Chicago’s historic preservation report that can be found at the city site here.  Adler designed them with a partner, Henry Corwith Dangler. In the past couple of years they have seen an impressive renovation effort, resulting in two city homes at Adler on the Park.  According to the @properties website one unit, at 2700 North Lakeview, is listed at $6,600,000. The three photos above show the row houses as they looked in 1922 when they were completed, a few years back when they were serving as what appeared to be a halfway house, and as Adler on the Park.

Chicago Tribune photo

October 3, 1933 – The Illinois Commission to A Century of Progress and the Dante Alighieri Society host a luncheon to honor the Marchese and Marchessa Guglielmo Marconi.  After the luncheon and a visit to the Hall of Science, today’s Museum of Science and Industry, the Marconis are given a reception in the Italian pavilion at the World’s Fair site, which is closed to the public where Marconi, Italian Consul Castruccio and David Sarnoff, all make speeches that are broadcast to Italy.  In the evening the president of the Century of Progress, Rufus C. Dawes, and his wife entertain 125 people at a dinner held in honor of the Marconi’s at the Federal building.  President Walter Dill Scott of Northwestern University presents the Italian inventor with an honorary Doctor of Science degree.  Although everyone in the entourage is exhausted, Marconi insists on traveling back to the fair grounds to visit the amateur radio station, W9USA.  In the darkened Travel and Transport Building of the closed fair, he finds two operators on duty who do not seem to know their visitor, complimenting the men on their transmitting equipment.  One responds, “But it was only built by an amateur,” to which the inventor replies, “Ah, but I am only an amateur myself.”  [rfcafe,com], quite a modest reply, considering he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 and is credited today as being the inventor of radio.  In the above Tribune photo Marconi and his wife meet with Cardinal George William Mundelein after attending services at Holy Name Cathedral during their stay in Chicago.


October 3, 1906 – The Chicago Daily Tribune decrees in its lead on this date, “Chicago is the baseball center of the earth.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1906] “Since last night a combination pennant pole, marking the site of Chicago has served as the earth’s axis, and around it something less than 2,000,000 maddened baseball fans are dancing a carmagnole of victory, while in every other city in the American and National leagues there is woe.”  After the New York Yankees lose to the Philadelphia Athletics, the city realizes that the magic number has been reached, and the White Sox have clinched the American League pennant.  In one week the team will meet its crosstown rival, the Chicago Cubs, in the World Series.  At the end of July the White Sox were mired in sixth place.   The paper observes that, despite the hopelessness of the situation, “People who cannot understand how the White Sox can win pennants should have visited the American league park and seen Comiskey and Jones working with their bunch of mediocre material, trying to make them into a pennant winning team.  Now Comiskey has a theory that team play will beat individual ability.  He was teaching his team the points.”  After finishing the season with a team batting average of .230, the worst in the American League, the White Sox defeat the Cubs in the World Series in six games.


October 3, 1885 – On this date the Chicago Daily Tribune reports on a letter that the Chief Librarian of the city has sent to the Chairman of the Council Committee on Buildings.  The letter provides detail about the location of the city’s first library, housed in a converted water tank on Dearborn Street, just east of today's Rookery Building.  Mr. Poole, the librarian, urges the temporary removal of the library to the new City Hall, just up the street on Washington Boulevard, citing the grave risk of the city’s entire collection of books being destroyed by fire.  The present location of the library is "overcrowded already, many valuable books being in consequence stored in out-of-the-way corners for want of a place to put them.”  The library has four floors and no elevator.  On the fourth floor is a newspaper reading room of 3,292 square feet, a periodical reading room with 2,307 square feet, and a room for patent books and documents continuing 2,503 square feet.  The floor below contains the main collection in 16,324 square feet of space.  Since the collection of the library is increasing by 10,000 volumes a year and the threat of fire can not be ignored in a city that burned to the ground just 14 years earlier, Librarian Poole is a bit distressed that he has not received an answer from Alderman Mahony, to whom he had directed the letter.  The book room of the "water tank library" can be seen in the engraving above.
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Monday, September 21, 2020

September 21, 1950 -- Columbus Hospital Dedicates New Wing

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September 21, 1950 – The Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, Cardinal Samuel Stretch, blesses and formally opens the new addition to Columbus Hospital at 2540 Lake View Avenue.  Columbus Hospital was founded in the early 1900’s when Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, who arrived in Chicago in 1903, followed a directive from the city’s archbishop, James Edward Quigley, leading an effort to purchase a Lincoln Park Hotel which was turned into the hospital.  With the 1950 addition the hospital’s capacity rises from 500 to 750 beds.  Also part of the new addition is the narthex of a chapel that will be built to accommodate visiting pilgrims.  The chapel is completed in 1955 and, despite the fact that the hospital was shuttered in 2001 and a swanky Lincoln Park high rise residential tower, 2550 North Lake View, was completed on the site in 2012, the chapel still exists.  The chapel and shrine were a separate property belonging to the order of nuns founded by Mother Cabrini, and, through donations from the faithful, they were preserved and refurbished under the direction of architect Mark Sullivan.  The above photo shows the careful preservation of the chapel as Columbus Hospital was being demolished.  A look at the chapel and the history of Columbus Hospital can be found in this YouTube video … and a look at the work of Mother Cabrini can be found in this entry in Connecting the Windy City.  

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September 21, 1979 – Governor James Thompson signs a bill that allows banks to install electronic teller machines away from their main premises.  The bill had previously passed the Illinois General Assembly with more than a three-fifths majority, despite the fact that critics labelled the measure as a form of branch banking that would give larger banks an unfair advantage over smaller banks. The bill allows banks or savings and loan associations “to install automatic teller machines in up to 10 locations that could receive deposits and loan payments, issue withdrawals, and transfer funds between accounts.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1979]  The new law also allows expansion of “point of sale” terminals that can cash checks. According to history.com, the first automated banking machine in the United States was created by a former professional baseball player named Donald Wetzel, and in 1969 a Chemical Bank branch on Long Island installed the first of his machines.  Machines were installed in various locations after that, but the new technology really moved forward when Citibank spent more than $100 million in 1977 to install the machines across New York City.  Shortly thereafter, a huge January blizzard blanketed the city, and banks closed down for days.  The use of automated teller machines increased by 20 percent during the storm.  A new era had begun. 


September 21, 1941 – A near tragedy is averted as the Midnight Special on its way out of Chicago and bound for St. Louis is halted just in time to avoid falling into the Chicago River when the railroad bridge at Twenty-First Street is opened to permit a lake freighter to pass.  The engineer brings the train to a halt with “its small front wheels and first large drive wheels already over the water and beyond the rail ends.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 22, 1941]  No one is hurt in the mishap, the passenger cars are pulled back to Union Station, and the passengers continue the trip after the fouled tracks are cleared.


September 21, 1906 – The laying of the cornerstone for the new Cook County building is highlighted by the presence of United States Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks, who arrives to preside at the ceremony.  A long and circuitous parade begins at 2:00 p.m. at the Auditorium Annex where Fairbanks is staying and moves north to Clark, where the principal speakers ascend the dais.  Mayor Edward F. Dunne, Governor Charles S. Deneen, and Vice-President Fairbanks deliver the addresses at the Clark Street ceremony.  In the cornerstone rest volumes of Cook County history, the proceedings of the Cook County board for the year, the membership rolls of the principal clubs of the city, various artifacts supplied by the Chicago Historical Society, and copies of the day’s newspapers.  In the evening a banquet is held at the Auditorium Annex for 500 people.  Pictured above, the county’s half of the building on Clark Street, designed by Holabird and Roche, will be completed by 1908.  The city’s half on La Salle Street will follow two years later.  


September 21, 1891 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that because of the attractiveness of its quarters and because of the easy access it will have to the much-heralded World’s Columbian Exposition, due to open in 1893, there has been “much wire-pulling among officers and men of influence to secure the detail” at Fort Sheridan, under construction on the North Shore.  As the spring of 1892 comes to an end it is anticipated that close to 1,000 soldiers will be stationed at the new garrison, including eight companies of the Sixth Cavalry, currently stationed in Nebraska, eight companies of the One-Hundredth Infantry, already at the fort, Light Battery E, an artillery unit, just ordered to the base, and, at the end of the spring, four troops of cavalry.  Over a million dollars has already been expended on the construction at Fort Sheridan with at least another $200,000 worth of construction still to be completed. The base will be the most expensive military garrison in the country, and, when it is completed, it will also be the largest.
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Sunday, September 20, 2020

September 20, 2004 -- Spertus Institute Announces New Headquarters

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September 20, 2004 –Chicago architects Ron Krueck and Mark Sexton and the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies unveil a plan for the Institute’s new home on Michigan Avenue.  The plan will be the first test of whether a contemporary building will meet the design guidelines of the Michigan Avenue Historic District. Frist reactions are favorable. Jim Peters, the Director of Planning for the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois, says, “It adheres to many of the more key design guidelines for the district, including height, proportions and mild projections.” [Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2004] The proposed building, projected to cost $49 million, will contain a 400-seat lecture hall, a library, museum, and public facilities and will stand on what had previously been a vacant lot in the 600 block of South Michigan Avenue, just north of the Spertus Institute’s current home at 618 South Michigan Avenue.  Early in 2018 the Spertus Institute’s new building was named as one of Illinois’ 200 Great Places by the Illinois Council of the American Institute of Architects.  The structure’s window wall is built from 726 individual pieces of glass in 556 different shapes.  The multi-faceted planes of the window wall bring light into the building, an important factor on a couple of levels.  According to the Spertus website, “This emphasis on light echoes the Spertus logo, a flame accompanied by the biblical phrase “yehi” or, Hebrew for ‘let there be light,’ symbolizing both physical light and the light of learning.” [https://www.spertus.edu/610at10]


September 20, 1992 – Big commotion on Wacker Drive east of Michigan Avenue when the Michigan Avenue bridge turns into a slingshot, shooting a 70-foot crane into the gap between the span and Wacker Drive. The crane’s boom falls across Wacker Drive with the iron ball and hook at the top of the crane bouncing off Wacker Drive and through the rear window of Jesus Lopez’s Ford Escort.  Says Lopez, “I guess I was just lucky. I’m glad I wasn’t sitting in the back seat.” [Chicago Tribune, September 21, 1992] Jeff Boyle, the city’s Commissioner of Transportation, says, “The southeast leaf of the Michigan Avenue bridge was the last of four leafs under construction. The bridge, which is out of balance during construction, started to rise and went up into a straight vertical position.  What stopped the bridge from going any further or falling back down was the crane that got wedged in there.” Diana Morales, a police officer directing traffic at the time of the accident had just stopped a CTA bus in an effort to divert it to the Wabash Avenue bridge just to the west. “I was behind the bus directing traffic and trying to get the bus out of the way, but [the driver] said he couldn’t move so I told him to just stay there.  [The Northwest leaf] was coming down and the Southeast side started coming up really fast and I just ran the other way.”  Six passengers on the bus are injured as flying debris come through the open windows.  The accident closes down the bridge indefinitely and ultimately leads to an acknowledgement on the part of the city that none of its inspectors had the experience or training to determine the proper balancing of weight on a bridge that is under construction.


September 20, 1915 – Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis orders the steamer Eastland sold with bids to be opened and the sale to take place on December 20, 1915 in the United States marshal’s office in the Federal Building.  The order is issued in order to cover the costs of the Great Lakes Towing Company, the firm that raised the hulk from the river bottom after the ship capsized on July 24 with a loss of life approaching one thousand souls.  According to Jay R. Bonansinga’s The Sinking of the Titanic:  America’s Forgotten Tragedy, “. . . only two bidders showed up at the macabre auction held on a cold December morning." One of them was an attorney from Boston, who represented an East Coast steamship company.  The other was Captain Edward A. Evers of the Illinois Naval Reserve.  Evers won the auction with a bid of 46,000 dollars, taking possession of the hulk on December 28.


September 20, 1889 – Miscommunication between Captain James A Brown, in command of the steamship E. P. Wilbur, and his engineer lead to the big ship of the Lehigh Valley Line slamming her 5,000 tons of dead weight into the closed Rush Street bridge.  At 8:00 a.m. the bridge was crowded with teamsters guiding their horse-drawn loads into and out of the Loop as well as men and women hustling to their jobs.  When the ship struck the bridge, it “reeled under the blow, and then settled back upon the solid abutment,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 21, 1889] recoiling again into a partially open position.  Horses were frightened, reacting violently and “could only with the utmost difficulty be prevented from plunging into the river from the ends of the bridge now hanging over the murky waters below.”  The iron girders of the bridge are bent and twisted by the collision, and the bridge tender appears later in the day before a judge to swear out a warrant for the captain’s arrest.  The error seems to have occurred when the captain sounded two bells to the engineer below who mistook the signal to go astern as a signal to move forward.  Another day on the river.  The photo shows the Rush Street bridge and the Chicago River as it would have appeared at about the time The E. Wilbur tried to get through the draw.


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Thursday, September 17, 2020

September 17, 1974 -- Mercantile Exchange Approves Plans for New Headquarters

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September 17, 1974 – The Chicago Tribune reports that members of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have approved plans for a twin-towered office building that the exchange will occupy at Wacker Drive and Madison Street.  The vote is overwhelmingly positive, with 2,478 in favor of the plan and 567 standing in opposition.  It is expected that construction will begin in spring of 1975 on a site where a city parking garage is located.  The Chicago Mercantile Exchange will own the 40,000-square-foot trading floor that will be located at the base of the structure, joining the two towers together, along with ten percent of the first tower.  Metropolitan Structures, Inc. and JMB Realty Corporation will own the rest of the space in the buildings.  The new trading floor and office space will replace the exchange’s location at 444 West Jackson Boulevard, where a 25,000-square-foot trading floor is located along with adjacent office space.  The twin-towered project would be finished in 1981 according to plans drawn by architect Joseph Fujikawa.  For more on the architect you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City.  When it opened what is today CME Center was the city’s first all-concrete skyscraper.  At the time it was the home of the largest open outcry futures exchange in the country.  With floor plates of 29,000 feet the LEED Gold® building encloses 2.3 million square feet of space overlooking the Chicago River.



September 17, 1969 – The City Council, by a vote of 30 to 6, approves two ordinances that clear the way for the office and residential development that Chicago now calls Illinois Center.  One ordinance establishes guidelines for the development of the area, and the other codifies the relationship between the city, the owner of the property, Illinois Central Industries, and three developers.  The plan calls for buildings of up to 90 stories with 45,000 workers, and 17,500 apartments with 35,000 residents.   In an editorial the Chicago Tribune writes glowingly about the project, asserting, “Chicagoans must feel some exhilaration to see, at long last, this strategic area built on in a manner suitable to its location in the center of the city.  And Chicagoans should take an eager, continuing, and responsible interest as Illinois Center plaza gradually develops . . . A brilliantly successful development here will be a civic asset the importance of which it would be almost impossible to exaggerate.” [Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1969]  The photo at the left shows the approximate area where the Hyatt Regency Hotel stands today.

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September 17, 1962 – The $2.75 million Loyola University Center at the southwest corner of Rush and Pearson Streets opens to students.  Loyola’s president, the Very Reverend James F. Maquire, says, “The center enables the university to accommodate meetings and gatherings of alumni and friends, to provide facilities for public lectures, luncheons, and conferences, and to serve other functions and activities for business and community groups.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 16, 1962]  The new building will include two cafeterias, 18 classrooms, a bookstore, conference rooms, student lounges, and a formal meeting room for administrative meetings.  A two-story enclosed walkway will connect the University Center to Lewis Towers, the main classroom building, which sits to the east just off Michigan Avenue.  As part of the dedication ceremony, at which His Eminence the Archbishop of Chicago Albert Cardinal Meyer officiates, a mural by Park Ridge artist Melville Steinfels is dedicated.  It depicts 400 years of Jesuit education.  The student center is the next step in a move downtown that began in 1946 with a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank J. Lewis – an 18-story skyscraper located at 820 North Michigan Avenue, located just to the west of the city’s historic Water Tower. The site is considerably different today as Loyola’s eight-story School of Communication wraps around the north and west sides of The Clare, a senior independent living high-rise, at 55 East Pearson.  A new student center is located just to the west on the northwest corner of Pearson and Wabash Streets.  The photo shows Lewis Center as it appeared in the 1950's, shortly after its purchase.
The second photo shows the area as it appears today.



September 17, 1954 – The first new office building to be constructed in the Loop since 1933, the ten-story Sinclair Oil Corporation’s office building on the northeast corner of Wacker Drive and Randolph Street, is officially opened as more than 200 business leaders and officials from the state and city attend the ceremonies.  The new building contains 225,000 square feet of office space and 14,000 square feet of basement parking space.  The structure will consolidate various divisions of the corporation that were previously scattered in four separate locations.  The building is gone today, replaced by the Goettsch Partners tower, finished in 2010, at 155 North Wacker Drive.  The Sinclair building is outlined in the older photograph.  The award-winning Goettsch replacement is shown to the left.


September 17, 1922 –The new $1,600,000 Madison Street bridge is lowered into position for the first time at 2:00 p.m., leaving the Clark Street bridge as the only center-pier bridge left in the central area of the city.  It will be three weeks before pedestrians will be allowed across the new bridge, and it will be at least six weeks before traffic crosses the new span.  The bridge’s sidewalks will be 13.5 feet, eight feet wider than the sidewalks on the old center pier bridge that is being replaced.  Work on the new bridge began on December 1, 1919, but there is a long delay in the fabrication of the steel for the span.  It isn’t until late September of 1921 before work resumes.  In March of 1922 the bridge’s bond issue expires, and work is once again ordered to a halt.  In June Chicago voters approve a new bond issue, and work resumes on August 1.  According to historicbridges.org “This bridge stands out among the bridges of Chicago as one of the most historically and technologically significant since it is the first example of a design that Chicago would use in construction on many bridges during a period of over 40 years.  It also retains ornate sidewalk railings that greatly contribute to the visual beauty of the bridge.” The above photo shows the bridge under construction in 1922.  In the right foreground is the swing bridge which it will replace.




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