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

Thursday, September 24, 2020

September 24, 1992 -- Michigan Avenue Bridge Yields Toppled Crane

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September 24, 1992 – Construction crews remove the last section of a 40-ton crane that had wedged itself into the mechanism operating the Michigan Avenue bridge, immobilizing the main north-south route between the Loop and North Michigan Avenue.  The base of the crane had plunged into the trunnion pit five days earlier when the southeast leaf of the bridge unexpectedly acted as a catapult, springing up with such force that the crane's boom was thrown onto Wacker Drive.  Officials still do not know how much damage has been done to the bridge.  On September 23 city officials acknowledge that no city inspector had ever checked whether proper balance was being maintained on the bridge as construction workers overhauled it.  A spokesman for the city’s Transportation Department, Chuck Wolf, says, “This department really doesn’t have the manpower to do that.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1992].  The city has previously said that inspectors made daily inspections at the site.  Because of the compromised bridge Chicago Park District officials have warned that it will not be open for sailboats returning to winter storage from Lake Michigan.  Eight hundred boats usually make their way up the river to storage as the cold weather season approaches.  Coast Guard Captain Larry Balock says, “To have it in the down position for any period of time is going to put a lot of people in a difficult position.”  For more information about the accident itself you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City.

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September 24, 1966 – A top city planner, Louis Wetmore, says that the drafting of a master plan for the 16 blocks of air rights over the Illinois Central railroad property between Randolph Street and the Chicago River will be “the first major step before construction can be started.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1986]  Wetmore observes that much of the preliminary planning has been done as the result of the adjudication over the preceding eight years of the legality of the railroad’s claim to air rights ownership.  The legal challenge ended on the preceding day when the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in favor of the railroad.  Wetmore says that a master plan for the I. C. air rights between Randolph and the river would be part of a larger plan that includes 77 acres owned by the Chicago Dock and Canal Company, an area bounded by St. Clair Street, Grand Avenue, and Streeter Drive, just to the east of Lake Shore Drive.  Preliminary plans for the 16 blocks south of the river specify “decking” the area with three levels.  The lower deck, which will rise at least 18 feet above the Illinois Central tracks will be for trucks.  The second deck will be for automobiles and underground pedestrian walkways, and the upper deck will be for plazas and pedestrian use.  The three development companies with options on the property look at a total expenditure of nearly $1 billion before the project is brought to completion in 20 years.  Bernard Weissbourd, the president of Metropolitan Structures, one of the developers, says, “We intend to give the city and the other developers our fullest cooperation, for we believe that this area promises to become one of the most magnificent places in the world.”  The top photo shows the area when planning for development first began before the Second World War.  The second photo shows the area as it appears today.  Times have changed.


September 24, 1966 – Shortly after the Illinois Supreme Court finds that the Illinois Central Railroad holds full rights of ownership to 186 acres east of Michigan Avenue from Randolph Street to the river, the Chicago Tribune runs an editorial, entitled “A Whole New City on Our Doorstep,” proclaiming that the opportunity with which Chicago has been presented, “comes rarely to a big city, and it should not be missed.” [Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1966] The editorial notes that the development “will require major street improvements. Lake Shore drive must be rebuilt to eliminate the two sharp turns. Wacker drive must be extended east from Michigan avenue in two levels.  A new bridge across the Chicago river will be needed. “Wise planning for the area should include connections with the projected downtown subways for rapid transit trains.”  Despite the work needed, the piece is forceful in the warning contained in its conclusion, “City officials should not delay their part of this program until the private developers become discouraged.”  The photo above captures the area of Illinois Center where the Hyatt Hotel stands today.   


September 24, 1954 – With the decision to move to the suburbs, the Butler Brothers Catalog Company announces the appointment of Hogan and Farwell, Inc., a Chicago realty firm, as the leasing agent to develop its headquarters building on the northeast corner of Canal and Randolph Streets.  The building has close to one million square feet of floor space with the Prudential Insurance Company of America leasing the tenth and eleventh floors and the United States government holding short-term leases for the Social Security board and the Air Force.  George and Edward Butler founded their mail-order company in Boston in 1877, opening a Chicago warehouse two years later.  By 1910 over a thousand people worked in its Chicago operation.  The 1922 warehouse, originally designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, is today Randolph Place Condos with 340 loft apartments.  The photo above shows the complex in 1950.

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September 24, 1907 – Title is filed for property on Wentworth Avenue between Thirty-Fourth and Thirty-Fifth Street, land that will be used to build an armory for the Seventh Regiment of the Illinois National Guard.  Architect W. Carbys Zimmerman will draw up the plans for the structure. The basement will contain a rifle range, bowling alleys and a swimming pool.  There will be two large areas for assemblages, one that will hold 2,000 people and another on the lower level that will accommodate 1,000. When completed the armory will surpass these projections.  For $500,000 the city got a building capable of holding 15,000 people.  In 1908 it hosted the Republican National Convention and later that year Eugene V. Debs, the socialist candidate for President, also spoke to large crowds there.  You won’t find the armory there today.  The site is the north parking lot complex for Guaranteed Rate Field. The above photo is an interesting one … it shows spectators watching the White Sox play the New York Giants in the 1917 World Series from the rooftop of the armory just to the north.  Note the “7” on the tower from which viewers take in the game. 
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Tuesday, September 1, 2020

September 1, 1924 -- Loop Draws 1,252,096 Daily

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September 1, 1924 – The city issues a report that estimate an average of over 1,252,096 people enter the business district every twenty-four hours.  More than 182,000 are pedestrians, 233,309 enter in passenger vehicles, and 34,184 are carried in commercial vehicles while 700,000 enter the business district on surface and elevated lines, steam railroads, and bus lines.  The figures come from an extensive survey conducted during the first six months of 1924.  Of all the ways into the Loop the Madison Street bridge seems to be the leader with 25,539 pedestrians crossing the bridge each day.  South State Street saw 22,511 pedestrians enter the Loop while 13,402 individuals entered by way of South Wabash Avenue.  A large number of passenger vehicles – 16,822 – drove into the Loop over the new Michigan Avenue bridge while 24,124 vehicles came by way of South Michigan Avenue.  The lower level of the Michigan Avenue bridge was used by 2,513 commercial vehicles, followed by the bridges at Lake Street and Franklin Street.  An average of 103,693 passenger vehicles entered the Loop each day while 31,077 commercial vehicles entered.  Each passenger vehicle carried an average of 2.25 passengers.  The above photo, taken in November of 1924, shows traffic heading north on Michigan Avenue ... 360 North Michigan, today's London House Hotel, is on the left.  At the time it was a year old.



September 1, 1977 – Employees at the Oriental Theatre, the second largest theater in the Loop, are told that the venue will close its doors at the end of the month unless a new tenant is found. Mickey Gold, the theater’s manager, says, “There is no panic.  Different people have lost leases on this and other theaters in the past, and we hope it will stay open.”  The Oriental opened in 1926 with an ornate design by the firm of Rapp and Rapp. It was built on the same site on which the Iroquois Theater stood, the theater in which over 600 people lost their lives in a 1903 fire.  In its best days, the most famous performers in the country graced the Oriental's stage, but in the 1970’s the theater mirrored the general decline of the Loop.  A 1971 experiment to bring live entertainment to the Oriental with such acts as Gladys Knight and the Pips and Stevie Wonder lost promoters $115,000.  The story ends happily as on January 10, 1996 a Canadian theatrical company purchased the property with a promise to renovate it, a plan that would be helped along with a $13.5 million grant from the city.  Although the company declared bankruptcy in 1998, the project was completed and on October 18, 1998 the theater reopened with a seating capacity of 2,253. In the restoration, architect Daniel P. Coffey came up with a plan that increased the theater’s backstage area by expanding into the adjacent Oliver Building.  Today the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre is one of the downtown palaces that hosts touring Broadway shows. 


September 1, 1949 – At the end of August the Chicago Daily Tribune carried a report on the death of noted landscape architect, Jens Jensen.  Oops.  Wrong guy.  It turns out that a 65-year-old Door Country, Wisconsin resident with a similar name was the guy who rode the Great Skyway and not Mr. Jensen, who is alive and well in his home in Ellison Bay.  Taking advantage of the error, the paper publishes a flattering piece on the contributions of Jensen, who came to the United States from Denmark in the early 1890’s and began work as a laborer in the west parks system of Chicago, going on to become one of the premier landscape architects of the twentieth century.  “Jens Jensen had a simple set of precepts,” the paper observes, “which he clung to stubbornly in the face of both politicians and millionaire clients, and defended with the rage of an inspired Viking when aroused.  He believed in the beauty of nature.  He detested formal gardens.  He taught the middle west the value of its native trees and plants in landscaping.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1949] The article continued, “To him, parks were placed where city people should find the comfort of natural beauty.  They were not for batting baseballs.  Neither were they automobile speedways.  In his judgment, 15 miles an hour was fast enough for people entering the parks to enjoy the lawns, the crab apple blooms, and the hawthorns.  In a day when efforts are made to encroach on the parks for almost every other public use, a revival of the Jensen principles would be a healthy thing for Chicago.”  Perhaps Jens Jensen's greatest work in Chicago is Columbus Park, shown in the photo above.



September 1, 1925 – Two days after the South Water Street market closes for business, the Chicago Daily Tribune rails against the street that will replace it, specifically the fact that the new road along the river will be named after Charles H. Wacker, the head of the Chicago Plan Commission.  “It is small town stuff at its worst,” the paper proclaims, “to rename South Water street because it is double decked and remade . . . We certainly acknowledge Mr. Charles Wacker’s civic spirit and his useful service in the protection and realization of the city plan . . . But to give his name to the chief thoroughfare of the city, after Michigan boulevard, is not only crude vandalism, but without fitness of proportion.  Mr. Wacker has been a useful citizen, but his service in the city does not tower above that of all other citizens . . . what of Daniel Burnham, who was the creator of the city plan, one of the most famous and gifted of our citizens? If we give Mr. Wacker’s name to our second greatest street, how are we going to honor Burnham with any respect for proportion?
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Wednesday, August 19, 2020

August 19, 1926 -- Chicago River Bridges Slammed by City Harbor Master


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August 19, 1926 – Chicago Harbor Master W. J. Lynch writes a letter to the Commissioner of Public Works, A. A. Sprague, in which he states that “the hoisting of Chicago river bridges by the city to make way for boats, barges, tugs and scows is nothing more nor less than a public subsidy to a private business.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 20, 1926].  Lynch does not deny the fact that navigable waters should provide freedom for all users, but he asserts that in a city the size of Chicago “the extreme observance” of such freedom is a “gross injustice to the vast majority of citizens.”  The current city ordinance dictates that the 20 bridges in the heart of the city be closed from 6:30 to 9:00 a.m. and from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., times which have not significantly changed since 1890.  During this nearly 40 year span, however, the city’s habits have changed, according to a street survey.  In 1890 people reported to work in a two-hour span between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m.  In 1926 the peak of bridge traffic occurs between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. when 18,000 cars per hour pass over the city’s bridges.  Between 6:30 and 7 only 8,000 vehicles cross the river.  The same trend occurs in the evening.  Along with this trend is the fact that virtually all of the 43 lake passenger vessels in service now dock at the Municipal Pier whereas in earlier days much of the ship traffic into the city used docks along the river itself.  The above photo shows the swing bridge at La Salle Street in 1926.  Note the 35 East Wacker Drive building, known at the time as the Jewelers' Building, under construction in the distance.



August 19, 1974 – Speaking before the Seventy-Fifth annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, President Gerald Ford proposes leniency for the 50,000 American military “deserters and draft-dodgers” [Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1974] if they agree to some form of alternative service upon their return.  Ford says, “I want them to come home, if they want to work their way back.”  The President’s speech is greeted with “whistles, cheers, and loud applause” when he sets aside his scripted remarks to say that he opposes “unconditional blanket amnesty for anyone who illegally evaded or fled military service.”  The crowd cools off, however, when Ford says, “I acknowledge a power higher than the people, who commands not only righteousness but love; not only justice, but mercy … These young people should have a second chance to contribute their fair share to the rebuilding of peace among ourselves.  In the spirit that guided Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, I reject amnesty and I reject revenge.  So I am throwing the weight of my Presidency into the scales of justice on the side of leniency.  I foresee their reentry into a new atmosphere of hope, hard work, and mutual trust.”


August 19, 1963 – Imagine this one happening today!  Coast Guard officials detain five men and a woman aboard a 75-foot boat after the leaking boat is stopped at the Chicago lock because it has no safety equipment and is judged to be unseaworthy.  After removing the crew from the boat, officials discover 500 pounds of dynamite on the top deck and remove the leaking vessel to a point 1,000 feet offshore.  Miss Kiiri Tamm, 21, one of the crew members, tells officials that the group planned to use the dynamite to blow up a sunken barge off Eighty-Third Street in an effort to salvage the metal, which they hoped to sell in order to start a salvage firm of their own.  The bomb squad removes the explosives and the boat is returned to its berth at Goose Island.



August 19, 1946 – Construction begins on the first major building project in the Loop in nearly a decade as a five-story building that will be occupied by the Baskin Clothing Company is begun. The new store, a design by Holabird and Root, is expected to be completed by May 1, 1947. The whole building will be air-conditioned and long strips of glass block will be featured on the Adams Street side of the structure. Exterior walls will be of Indiana limestone with a strip of polished granite framing the building from the roof line to a recessed space above the shop windows.  An entire floor will be devoted to women’s wear with men’s wear taking up the second and third floors.  Office and tailor shops will be placed on the top floor.  The new building will have a frontage of 76 feet on State Street and 148 feet on Adams Street.  The top photo shows the Baskin's Store at 137 South State Street.  The corner as it appears today -- with an EnWave Chicago cooling plant atop a C.V.S. drugstore -- is shown in the photo beneath that.

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August 19, 1890 – The Chicago Daily Tribune, under the headline, “It’s No Thoroughfare,” runs a lengthy article on the inadequacies of Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Lake Streets.  At the time the street is the only passage that leads to the Rush Street bridge, the sole public bridge across the river east of State Street. The passage is made difficult because of “the business firms which from early morn to eventide maintain an impassable blockade of wagons, trucks, baskets, skids, barrels, boxes, brooms, and crates from wall to wall on this thoroughfare, using the public street for their private need and denying its use to the public … forcibly severing one link from the chain that should stretch uninterruptedly from Stony Island avenue to Sheridan road.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1890]  On the previous day a Tribune reporter had canvassed the area, singling out the business of Sprague, Warner and Co. as a particularly zealous offender.  The reporter observed “the entire front of Sprague, Warner and Co. lined with wagons, loading or unloading.  A pair of skids was laid from each of the eight entrances.  Boxes, crates, and barriers were piled all over the sidewalk … No effort of any kind was made to keep the sidewalk even partially clear.”  The report exempts the firm of Reid, Murdoch and Company from the mess on Michigan, noting that “despite the volume of their business, [the company] does not preempt the street for it entirely and few complaints are received of them.”  If other businesses followed the practices of that company, the paper predicts, “the difficulty … would vanish into thin air.  But they have consulted their own convenience alone, and the exigencies of office room on the sunny side of the building weigh far more than the necessity or the rights of the public at large.”  
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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

August 11, 1900 -- Diversey Parkway Bridge Completes Chicago Boulevard System

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August 11, 1900 – The Chicago boulevard system is completed when the Diversey Parkway bridge over the North Branch of the Chicago River is opened.  Chicagoans can now have a complete set of scenic roads over which they can travel “over Diversey and Humboldt boulevards to Humboldt Park, Central Park boulevard to Garfield Park, Southwestern boulevard to Douglas Park, thence over Western Avenue boulevard to Garfield boulevard and Jackson Park, and north in Michigan avenue to Lincoln Park, completing the circuit.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 12, 1900].  Only one small section – a part of Southwestern Boulevard, between Twenty-Sixth and California Avenue where the boulevard approaches the canal – still needs to be improved.  The boulevard system of Chicago was first proposed by developer John S. Wright and begun in 1870.  Wright predicted, “I foresee a time, not very distant, when Chicago will need for its fast increasing population a park or parks in each division.  Of these parks I have a vision.  They are all improved and connected with a wide avenue extending to and along the Lake shore on the north and south, and so surrounding the city with a magnificent chain of parks and parkways that have not their equal in the world.”  [logansquareist.com].  The south section of the system was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, which included the Midway Plaisance. William Le Baron Jenney designed the western section, which linked Humboldt, Garfield and Douglas Parks.  In 2018 the Chicago Park Boulevard System Historic District, which covers the majority of the original system, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  The district encompasses nearly 26 miles, including eight parks, 19 boulevards, and six squares, along with a number of significant properties.  [en.wikipeida.org]  The above photo shows the Diversey Parkway bridge which completed the boulevard system.  It was removed in 1967 and a new bridge, the second at this location, opened a year later.


August 11, 1985 –Paul Gapp, the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, pens a column in praise of the Cobbler Square development in Old Town in which “a conglomeration of some 30 old interconnected factory and warehouse structures” have been converted into 297 rental apartments, an exercise Gapp calls “one of the most extraordinary new housing complexes in Chicago.” [Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1985]  The buildings are in the area bounded by Wells and Schiller Streets and Evergreen and North Park Avenues with the oldest buildings occupied originally by the Western Wheel Works, a bicycle manufacturer. Dr. William Scholl rented space in the bicycle factory and while he “parlayed a line of shoes and foot care products into a corporation grossing more than $250 million a year … sporadically built a hodgepodge of additions to it.”  The company Scholl founded left Chicago for Tennessee in 1981 and developer Richard Perlman commissioned architect Kenneth A. Schroeder to create a residential community out of the three- and five-story buildings that remained. Gapp writes of the plan, “The new façade facing Wells Street is a crisp and clean essay in brick and limestone, evocative of both Gold Coast images a few blocks to the east and the storefronts of Wells Street itself.”  The plan includes three courtyards, each larger than the one before it that “planted with locusts, are oases that can almost make you forget you’re in the center of the city – and in a somewhat fringy neighborhood, to boot.” The plan took the 30 original buildings that were part of the complex and reduced them to five, cleverly combining many of them in a scheme that is “the kind of place where youngish or young-thinking men and women pay a lot of attention to what they call their lifestyles and … don’t mind climbing tiny staircases to reach the sleeping platforms supporting their futons.”  In summing up the new community, Gapp views Cobbler Square as an indication that the former tawdry area around Wells Street is, itself, beginning to make its way back to respectability with “Cobbler Square … among the best additions to the neighborhood in recent years – a vehicle of gentrification, actually … obviously an architectural success with considerable fringe benefits.”  


August 11, 1977 – The Chicago Plan Commission votes down a proposed four billion-dollar development proposed for land in the south Loop along the east side of the Chicago River.  The project, a Bertrand Goldberg design for six 72-story towers and 6,000 apartments, is proposed for a 45-acre site bounded by Harrison Street, Roosevelt Road, the Chicago River and Wells Street.  Lewis J. Hill, the city commissioner of development and planning, asserts that city guidelines recommend 1,750 units on the site, and the Goldberg plan far exceeds those guidelines.  “In short,” Hill says, “the River City plan proposes development that is three to five times more intense than that recommended in the guidelines.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 12, 1977] Hill also says that the huge project would also stand in the way of the proposed Franklin Street Connector that is planned to link the Dan Ryan Expressway with Wacker Drive.  Forty years later River Line, a project involving ten high-rise residential buildings lining the banks of the river, is underway, with Perkins and Will responsible for siting the massive project to the north of the current River City, a 1986 community of about 440 units, the scaled-down design that eventually came out of Bertrand Goldberg’s 1970’s proposal.


August 11, 1966 – The Beatles arrive in Chicago in the middle of a swirling controversy, and John Lennon, in a press conference at the Astor Towers Hotel, apologizes for his part in creating the furor that developed after his casual remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.  “I wasn’t saying whatever they say I was saying,” says Lennon, described by the Tribune as a “Shaggy-haired Liverpool performer.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1966] “I‘m sorry I said it really.  I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing.  I apologize if that will make you happy.  I still don’t know quite what I’ve done.  I’ve tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry.”  For a personal essay on the event and how it has stayed with me for fifty years, you may want to look up this blog entry from 2009.  Information concerning Astor Towers, where the press conference took place, may be found here.



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Sunday, August 9, 2020

August 9, 1972 -- Columbus Drive Bridge to Make Traffic "Nearly Intolerable"






August 9, 1972:  A traffic study is released that concludes “Traffic conditions in the Near North Michigan Avenue area will be ‘nearly intolerable’ if the city constructs a bridge over the Chicago River at Columbus Drive.”  The report, prepared for the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association by R. W. Booker and Associates, partially validates a report issued earlier in the week by the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  The report observes that the city has not planned well in proposing a bridge that will connect Fairbanks Court north of the river with Columbus Drive and the developing Illinois Center property to the south.  Taking a special hit is the massive traffic jam that is anticipated during the lengthy reconstruction of the dogleg on Lake Shore Drive north of Randolph Street.  The report makes six recommendations to relieve problems in the River North area if the bridge is built.  They include:  (1) employing rapid transit or people mover systems in the area; (2) widening Fairbanks Court and making it one way south, in the area north of Ontario Street; (3) better enforcement of peak traffic rules and parking regulations in the area; (4) eliminating on-street parking in the area and creating new off-street parking areas; (5) making Ontario and Ohio Streets one way between Fairbanks and Lake Shore Drive and developing grade separation of these two streets with Lake Shore Drive; and (6) making thoro (sic) studies of alternate methods of handling traffic during the reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive, including staged construction to permit continued, limited use of the Drive.  [Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1972]  The bridge was finished in 1982 for a cost of $33,000,000, bringing almost instantaneous development of the area north of the river and east of Columbus Drive.



August 9, 1964 –Naval reservists participate in the second day of training in Lake Michigan aboard the 312-foot USS. Rauner.  Six ships of the “Corn Belt Fleet” and aircraft from the Glenview Naval Air Station join in the exercises as reservists practice anti-submarine maneuvers off Chicago.  After the exercises are concluded, the submarine is tied up east of the Michigan Avenue bridge for public viewing.  The USS Rauner, Hull Number SS-476, was a diesel-powered attack submarine launched on October 14, 1944. Her first war patrol was off Honshu, Japan where she sank an enemy minesweeper.  By the time the Rauner made it to her second patrol, Japan had declared defeat.  The Rauner entered Tokyo Bay, and with ten other United States submarines, represented the submarine service at the signing of the peace treaty. The summer of 1964 was the only time she worked in coordination with the Great Lakes Naval Training Center although after service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean she was towed to Great Lakes after decommissioning at the Boston Naval Shipyard on January 15, 1969. There she served as a Naval Reserve Training vessel until she was stricken from the Navy list on December 15, 1971.

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August 9, 1945 – The federal government’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation announces that the huge aircraft engine plant operated by the Studebaker Corporation at 5555 Archer Avenue has been put up for sale.  The main building contains 782,988 square feet and sits on a 50-acre site just west of Midway Airport.  Every B-17 Flying Fortress produced after January, 1944 came equipped with Studebaker-built R-1820 engines.  Engine components were fabricated and manufactured in the Chicago area plant and shipped to South Bend, Indiana for final assembly at a 1,500,000 square foot plant that sat on 318 acres.  During World War II Studebaker built 63,789 engines, each composed of nearly 8,000 finished parts.  The above photo shows another engine coming off the assembly line at the Studebaker plant.


August 9, 1937 – The rarest of real estate deals occurs when two of the city’s skyscrapers are swapped with no brokers involved in the transaction and with no commission fees paid.  The Marshall Field estate trades the 19-story Times building at 211 West Wacker Drive for the sixteen-story Central Life Insurance Company building at the southwest corner of North Michigan Avenue and East Superior Street.  A representative of the Field estate says that through the acquisition of the Central Life building it now owns the entire block bounded by Michigan, Huron, Rush and Superior.  Through the swap the insurance company will be able to consolidate all of its operations, scattered in various leased spaces in the area, in the Wacker Drive building.  The property on Wacker Drive, shown above, a Holabird and Root design, is still making money.  Saks Fifth Avenue now occupies the corner of Superior and Michigan where the Central Life building used to stand.


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Sunday, August 2, 2020

August 2, 1978 -- Michigan Avenue Bridge Honored as National Engineering Landmark


August 2, 1978 –The American Society of Civil Engineers unveils a plaque at the Michigan Avenue bridge that celebrates the reversal of the Chicago River as a national engineering landmark. David Novick, the president of the society, says, “This monumental engineering feat contributed to the health and growth of Chicago, enabling it to develop into the great metropolitan area it is today.” [Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1978] Both Novick and Nicholas J. Melas, the president of the Metropolitan Sanitary District, accept the plaque on behalf of the district and the city. The ceremony takes place on the Ninety-Third anniversary of a rain storm that forced the sewage borne by the river far out into the lake, threatening the city’s fresh water intake cribs. 
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August 2, 1967 – The Second City opens its new playhouse on at 1616 North Wells Street with a revue of past successes, entitled “From the Second City.” It was December of 1959 when The Second City opened its doors for the first time just up the street at 1942 North Wells.  Bernie Sahlins, a genius in the field of improvisational theater, tells the story of the terra cotta portrait heads and arches that grace the front entrance of the theater in his book, Days and Nights at the Second City.  He wrote, “We were building a new theater and they were tearing down the Garrick.  I happened to wander over and saw the building being demolished.  I saw the heads over the second floor balcony of the building and was interested in them.  I spoke to the foreman and told him, ‘I wanted four heads and I didn’t care which four.’  He referred me to his boss and I negotiated the deal.”  It cost Sahlins $1,500 for the front entrance to a theater that would become legendary.  To read a really, really exhaustive piece on a quest to identify the individuals that are depicted in the four terra cotta pieces at the entryway, you can check this out. It’s fascinating.

August 2, 1934:  Led by Chief Investigator John O’Donnell, a police squad raids six villages at the Century of Progress World’s Fair and closes down two performances judged to be risqué.  Gambling wheels are confiscated at the exhibitions of Paris, Tunis, Ireland, Mexico and Spain and in a section called the Bowery.  At the last site an exhibition called “The Red Light Girls” is closed and a fan dancer, Faith Bacon, is forced to put on pants for her final appearance.   The general manager of the fair, Major Lenox R. Lohr, unleashes the police on the concessions after giving them a warning to clean up their act.  After allowing the sale of liquor at lunch counters within the grounds, agreeing to more signage within the grounds promoting attractions, and reducing the charges for electricity and garbage removal at venues, Lohr warns the vendors, “We’ll give you all the help within reason and more money will be spent by A Century of Progress during the month of August than has been spent in any month in 1934 or 1933 . . . but the lid is not off.”
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August 2, 1891 – The Chicago Daily Tribune provides an update on the improvements that are ongoing at the new United States Army base at Fort Sheridan. The new barracks east of the water tower are being constructed in order to house two companies of the Fifteenth Regiment of infantry along with two companies of cavalry and two of artillery.  The cost of the new quarters will be $200,000, about $5,170,000 in today’s dollars.  Two “magnificent stables” are being built at a cost of $22,000 apiece or $569,000 in 2017 dollars.  Each stable will house 80 horses.  A main dining hall is also being built with room for 1,000 soldiers.  The cost of the building will be $48,000 or $1,242,000 in today’s dollars.  Four captains’ homes will be built near the lake at a cost of $9,000 or $235,000 for each in today’s dollars.  Finally, a 300-yard long Officers’ Club will be erected with separate quarters for a dozen officers.  This will cost $70,000 or $1,812,250 in 2017 dollars.  The land for the new garrison was purchased in 1887, and the Chicago architectural firm of Holabird and Roche selected to design the buildings.  One of the stables at the fort is shown in the above photo, these days a re-purposed residential building.
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Monday, July 20, 2020

July 20, 1986 -- Michigan Avenue Bridge Rammed by Lumber Ship

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July 20, 1986 – A lumber boat rams the Michigan Avenue bridge, leaving the important link between the south and the north halves of the city half-raised for much of the afternoon.  The incident unfolds just after noon when an electrical failure occurs as the north leaf of the bridge is being raised.  The boat is unable to stop and hits the bridge.  It is yet another incident in the narrow river, one of hundreds that have occurred over the preceding dozen decades.  As the 1980’s drew to a close, large merchant ships would be seen less and less on the river … and by the mid-1990’s bridges would be allowed to open just a few hours during the week.

July 20, 1984 – Strolling through Millennium Park today, it is difficult to imagine what the area was like before the transformation began.  Back in 1984 Cindy Mitchell, the president of Friends of the Park, had this to say about the area east of Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Monroe Streets, “This could be the premier spot of the downtown area, a real tourist attraction and a place for Loop workers to enjoy a lunch, but it needs a great deal of work and some creative thinking.  [Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1984] In a stroll through the garden with a Tribune reporter and photographer, Mitchell pointed out that “The flower beds have no flowers.  Benches are in need of paint.  Workmen were trying to start up the two large decorative and long-dry water fountains. When the water was turned on in the first fountain, a huge leak sprang through the deteriorated masonry.  The second fountain proved more of a challenge and refused to flow.”  That wasn’t the worst of it.  Grass along the Michigan Avenue sidewalk is nonexistent; what little grass there is in the “park” is parched.  Stairways are deteriorating at an alarming degree and most of the wiring in the park lights is so far gone that few of them work.  “Deeper in the park, the pigeons munch on piles of debris and share the lawn and benches with dozing derelicts, bag people and other itinerant-looking characters, some of whom frequent the back reaches of the park along the balustrade esplanade and dissuade visitors from using the area.” Commander Robert Casey of the First Police District says of the park that, although it is generally safe, “Office workers go there to smoke marijuana, and the bums sleep there during the night.  We run the wagons in there early in the morning to get rid of the rummies.” Mitchell asserts, ‘When you’ve got a problem, you can’t just throw up your hands and say, ‘It’s impossible.’ You have to say, ‘Let’s attack this problem. We can lick it.’ It takes some vision, some planning, some creative thinking. It takes determination. After all, Chicago’s motto is, ‘I will.’” Two decades later creative thinking paid off when Millennium Park opened and the city received a beautiful new front yard. The before and after pictures tell the story.
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July 20, 1913 – The Chicago Daily Tribune’s art critic, Harriet Moore, writes an opinion piece in which she supports the City Club in its campaign against billboards.  Her argument begins with a single question, one she asked at a previous hearing in which a City Council committee was listening to testimony from both advocates and opponents of the signs, “Is it your opinion that beauty has neither health value nor financial value in a modern metropolis?”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 20, 1913]  She then answers the question with three separate responses:  that beauty is a health producer (“Hideous objects and harsh sounds, assaulting eyes and ears in a manner not to be escaped, destroy the harmony of life by introducing discords, and reduce the joy of life by insulting the senses with ugliness.”); that beauty is a commercial asset in any community (“Without beauty a city is merely a place to make money in and get away from.”); and, beauty is a great investment (“Why does the whole world flock to Italy, spending there millions every year?  Because, a few centuries ago a few hundred artists builded and carved and painted beautifully.”)  Moore concludes, “Chicago has the opportunity to become one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  The lake, the long stretch of park which is to border it, Michigan avenue widened to the river and adequately connected with the Lake Shore drive, the widened Twelfth street, the new railway terminals, the enlarged business district—these and other conditions and projects will create a beautiful metropolis.  Along with these large plans for civic beauty should go eternal vigilance against all kinds of defacement and in favor of all kinds of minor improvements.  The fight against billboards is an important detail of the general campaign.”

July 20, 1881 – The Directors of the Board of Trade receive assurances that an ordinance vacating a portion of La Salle Street between Jackson Boulevard and Van Buren Street will be valid and, based upon this information, vote to purchase the property for $10,000.  The next step will be to organize a Building Association since Illinois law prohibits the Board from erecting a building exceeding $100,000 in valuation.  It is anticipated that the new building will cost at least $800,000, but the matter of the building itself is left for another day.  The Chicago Daily Tribune summarizes the results of the meeting in this way, “The Board of Trade purchases the property for $10,000.  This it leases to a Building Association for a term of fifty or one hundred years at a fixed rental.  The Building Association erects the edifice, and leases to the Board of Trade what may be required at a certain rental, yet to be determined upon.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 21, 1881] This is a decision that will produce a huge impact on this area. According to Homer Hoyt in his One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago, "From 1881 to 1883 the value of land on Jackson, Van Buren, Wells, and La Salle streets near the Board of Trade advanced from $200 and $400 a front foot to from $1,500 to $2,000 a front foot .. the total increase in the value of land and buildings within half a mile from the Board of Trade from 1881 to 1885 was estimated by current observers at from $20,000,000 to $40,000,000."  The first Board of Trade building to stand on this site is pictured above.  Barely visible above the front entrance at the base of the tower are the two statues of Agriculture and Industry that still stand in the plaza outside the present day Board of Trade building.
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July 20, 1863 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports of a gruesome accident at the lime quarry of Stearns and Company, about a half-mile west of Halsted Street.  At about 5:00 p.m. a foreman, Michael Gaven, makes preparations to blast a section of wall, calling workers away from the area and setting the fuse.  After waiting nearly ten minutes, he moves to the site of the intended blast to figure out what has gone wrong.  Just as he reaches the area, the explosion comes, “tearing Mr. Gaven’s body into fragments.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 20, 1863].  The 45-year-old leaves a wife and three children.  The 27-acre site was used as a limestone quarry from 1833 to 1969 by the Illinois Stone and Lime Company, after which it was used as a landfill for clean construction waste from 1969 to 1974.  During its run as a limestone quarry, enough rock was removed to carry the space 380 feet below the street level.  After the dump site was shut down the City of Chicago and landscape architecture firm Site Design Group began planning an “environmentally-sustainable design … inspired by the natural history of the site.” [www.chicagoparkdistrict.com]. The landfill was capped with more than 40,000 square feet of clean topsoil, culminating in a 33-foot hill that offers spectacular views of the city to the northeast.  The new park was named after Henry Palmisano, the owner of a bait shop at 3130 South Canal Street, who passed away in 2005 during construction of the park.




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