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

Monday, September 14, 2020

September 14, 1950 -- Loop Elevated Line's End Is Near, Mayor Says

transitchicago.com

September 14, 1950 – Mayor Martin Kennelly observes that the old Wabash Avenue elevated tracks may be torn down sooner than people think, adding that the new Dearborn-Milwaukee subway will siphon off substantial amounts of traffic from the line.  Chicago Transit Authority officials concur, estimating that the eastern half of the Loop elevated structure, running form Van Buren Street to Wabash Avenue and from there to Wells Street, may be removed within four years.  The executive secretary of the Wabash Avenue Association, George W. Swanson, says, “The sooner the better.  Then we can put up new street lights and outshine State Street.”  [Chicago Daily tribune, September 15, 1950].  Not so fast … not only is the Loop elevated still very much in use, on August 31, 2017 a brand-new Washington/Wabash station replaced century-old stations at Randolph and Madison Street with new elevators, a street to mezzanine escalator, wider platforms, real-time train tracker displays, 100% LED lighting, security cameras, and a gleaming modern canopy.  [transitchicago.com]. With that expenditure of $75 million it appears that the elevated will be around for a long time to come.  The new station is pictured above. 



September 14, 1939 – The Chicago Housing Authority is notified that its application for $7,719,000 of Public Works administration funding for the construction of a public housing complex has been approved.  This will be the fifth federal housing project in the city, following the Jane Addams houses, Julia Lathrop homes, Trumbull Park apartments, and the Ida B. Wells project that is under construction at Vincennes Avenue and Pershing Road.  Although the location is not disclosed so as to forestall real estate speculation, it is most likely that the new project will be near the Jane Addams homes and will comprise the Robert Brooks Homes with 835 row houses.  Elizabeth Wood, executive secretary of the Chicago Housing authority, says, “We will definitely be in competition with the lowest slum area houses.  We particularly want to afford accommodations for those families who now live in $15 a month flats.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 15, 1939]  


September 14, 1934 – United States marshals seize the excursion boat Florida at its dock east of Michigan Avenue, pending a court hearing and settlement of the claims of 21 crew members for $2,000 in back pay. The Florida has a fascinating history, as it turns out.  As far as I have been able to determine the boat is still taking up space at the bottom of the river just east of Goose Island, opposite the north end of 600 West Chicago, the old Montgomery Ward's warehouse building.  What eventually became the S. S. Florida was originally the City of Mackinac, built in 1882 as a side-wheeled cruise boat on Lake Michigan.  The latter part of its service was spent providing lakefront excursions to the 1933 Century of Progress.  In the mid-1930's it was sold to a scrapper at which time its upper decks were removed, its engines stripped, part of a conversion into a barge.  The Columbia Yacht Club bought the vessel in 1937 to serve as its club house.  On Friday, May 13, 1955 a galley fire caused the ship to sink at its dock.  Members raised the funds and raised the ship, which was used until 1982 when the club acquired the former Canadian ferry, the Abegweit, as its new base of operations.  A trucking magnate, Joe Salon, bought the ship in 1985, renaming it the Showboat Sari-S II, using his daughter's name in its new appellation, and moved it to the river a few blocks north of Ontario Street, before selling it.  The Showboat Sari-S II might be confused with another paddle-wheel steamboat that Salon ran as a restaurant, beginning in 1962.  They are two different vessels.  The last reference to the boat that I can find is in the "Metropolitan" section of the Chicago Tribune on August 28, 1992.  This brief item reports, "The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has ordered the owner of a 215-foot boat that sank last month in a little-used part of the North Branch of the Chicago River to remove the vessel or face legal action . . . The owner of the vessel was ordered to install markers around the boat until it is removed.  The vessel sank in 16 feet of water on the east side of Goose Island just north of Chicago Avenue, said Lt. Col. David Reed, commander of the Corps District . . . Only the cabin portion is now above water, and the sunken craft obstructs about half of the navigational channel, Reed said."  Kind of a sad story of a once proud vessel that was very much a part of the city's history. The photo above shows the boat when she was the clubhouse for the Columbia Yacht Club.  

 

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September 14, 1908 – Work begins on the laying of trolley tracks in Garland Court on the west side of the Chicago Public Library. Elaborate preparations have been made for the project, which will ultimately allow the removal of the tracks of the City Railway on Michigan Avenue and on Madison Street..  The City Railway has agreed to pay the expenses for changes in the public library building that are required because of the railway that will pass adjacent to it.  These alterations to the building will be completed according to plans prepared by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the original architects of the structure. The top photo shows the tracks turning south off Randolph Street and ducking down Garland Court with a streetcar on Randolph making the turn onto Garland Court on the west side of the library, today's Chicago Cultural Center.  The second photo shows Randolph Street as it appears today.
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Sunday, August 16, 2020

August 16, 1978 -- Loop Elevated Should Go ... Says Tribune Editorial



August 16, 1978 – In an editorial the Chicago Tribune states its opposition to a recommendation by the Chicago branch of the American Association of Architects that a way be found to preserve Chicago’s Loop elevated structure.  The paper asserts, “Anyone who finds a resemblance between Chicago’s elevated and San Francisco’s cable cars must have been standing at Lake and Wabash so long that the screeching has softened his brain.  No way can the “L” be considered charming, quaint, fun, or attractive to visitors . . . There is no good reason, either sensible or sentimental, to preserve the “L” one day longer than is economically unavoidable.  The noisy, dirty eyesore is of no architectural value and will interfere with the practical and esthetic pleasures and profitability of both the State Street mall and the North Loop renewal plan.”   

August 16, 1965 – United Air Lines Flight 389, carrying 24 passengers and a crew of six, disappears from radar screens only five minutes from its scheduled arrival at O’Hare International Airport.  Boats searching the lake about seven miles off Highland Park are hampered by darkness, but twisted pieces of wreckage are reported.  The last communication with the flight occurs at 9:18 p.m. as the O’Hare control tower gives directions for approach to the airport, receiving a “Roger” from the pilot.  Search planes and helicopters drop flares in an attempt to illuminate the search area, and by 1:00 a.m. more than 20 vessels are there, many of them private boats from yacht clubs along the North Shore.  A temporary morgue is also set up in the gymnasium of Highland Park High School. The plane had only been in service for three months at the time of the crash.  Three months later another Boeing 727 crashes on approach to Cincinnati, killing 62 of the 66 passengers on board.  Three days after that United Airlines Flight 227, another 727, crashes on landing at Salt Lake City International Airport, killing 43 of 91 on board.  There is widespread concern that the Boeing 727, first flown in 1963, is an accident waiting to happen.  Extensive review, however, reveals that the airplane is airworthy and properly certified. Those reviews also reveal that pilots, accustomed to flying DC-6’s and other propeller planes, were having trouble adjusting to the rapid descent of the new plane.  The Federal Aviation Agency subsequently required airlines to make changes in training procedures to emphasize the importance of stabilized approaches. The above Chicago Tribune photo shows the crowd gathered on a Highland Park beach, awaiting word from the search area.

www.loc.gov/resource
August 16, 1963 – The Commission on Chicago Architectural Landmarks appoints a committee to draft an ordinance that will provide a framework for the city to preserve its important architectural and historical places.  At the meeting, held at the Art Institute of Chicago, the commission also designates Hull House an architectural landmark and initiates an inquiry into the status of the vacant Sullivan house at 4575 Lake Park Avenue.  Its last order of business is the decision to submit a request to the building department as well as the department of city planning, asking that the commission be notified if a proposal is made to demolish the Reliance building at 32 North State Street, a building that has already been designated a landmark.  It is too bad that the initiative was launched so late, after many historic city treasures had been lost and many more were soon to be gone.  The Sullivan home on Lake Park Avenue is an example.  Originally built for architect Louis Sullivan's mother, it was finished about the time of her death in 1892.  Sullivan, himself, lived in the home until 1896 when his brother, Albert, took up residence with his family.  Despite being designated a landmark in 1960, the home was razed in 1970.  It is pictured above.



August 16, 1893 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the Art Institute of Chicago and the Armour Institute have joined forces “for the purpose of establishing in Chicago a full and thorough course of study in architecture.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 16, 1893] W. M. R. French will direct the Art Institute coursework, and the Reverend F. W. Gunsaulus will handle the work for the Armour Institute.  The Art Institute library in 1893 had 1,300 books and 19,000 photographs with 200 books and 1,000 photographs relating directly to the subject of architecture.  The Armour Institute had 10,000 volumes in its library as well as physical and chemical laboratories and courses of study in electricity, mining, and mechanical engineering.  Director French says of the decision, “The Armour Institute, under the Presidency of the Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus, has laid out courses of technical study of the highest order. The departments of mechanical engineering, electricity, civil engineering, etc., are equal to those of the Institute of Technology of Boston, and the laboratories, shops, library, and appliances are in accord with the most approved and modern practice in technical schools.  There are already 500 applicants to enter the various departments upon the opening of the first school year, Sept. 14.”  William French is shown above at the easel. Reverend Gunsaulus is the man at the desk in the photo above that.


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Wednesday, April 8, 2020

April 8, 1916 -- Lakeview to See Large Luxury Apartments Built on Surf

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Britton I. Budd
chicago-l.org
April 8, 1916 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reveals that a major real estate deal has been finalized in which property on the northwest corner of Surf Street and Pine Grove Avenue has been sold to Joseph H. Buttas of the B. W. Construction Company for a reported $40,000.  It is anticipated that the two brick homes on the property will be torn down and that “an extra high grade twenty-four unit apartment building, to cost in the neighborhood of $175,000” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 8, 1916] will be constructed on the site.  The apartments will contain four, five, six and seven rooms, each with two or three bathrooms.  At $400 a front foot, the price is a record for this area of Lakeview.  Today that building, which was finished in 1920, is the Britton Budd apartment building, a Chicago Housing Authority subsidized-housing complex “for active adults age 62 and older”.  [thecha.org]  The renovation of the original building has provided 173 studio and one-bedroom apartments on one of the prettiest streets in Lakeview.  The building’s namesake, Britton Budd, is an interesting figure.   Back in the day when Samuel Insull controlled nearly every mile of Chicago’s electric rail system, it was Budd who oversaw the system’s daily operations.  Apparently, Budd viewed his job in the same no-nonsense vein that he conducted his personal life.  One particular incident conveys the sense of the man’s approach.  When the Northwestern Elevated Railroad notified Wilmette officials that the line intended to extend its operations into the village, the city resisted, laying down strict conditions which Budd refused.  On April 1, 1912 he ordered a construction crew into the village at night, closed off Laurel Avenue and built an elevated platform on a spur track just south of Linden Avenue.  Later, when the Northwestern sought to build a permanent facility with a car storage yard, the city again refused.  Budd ordered the station and yard built, anyway.  [http://www.chicago-l.org/]  When the Chicago Rapid Transit Company went into receivership on June 28, 1932, Budd, along with Chicago Public Works Commissioner Albert A. Sprague, were named receivers, and they oversaw the company’s rise from its Depression low-point.  Budd died in 1965 at the age of 93.  The Britton Budd Apartments are shown above.






April 8, 1990 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the 65-year-old architectural firm of Loebl Schlossman and Hackl has five major projects in various stages of construction in the city.  Donald Hackl, a partner who came to the firm in 1962, says, “No two Loebl Schlossman and Hackl buildings are alike.  They literally evolve as signature buildings, but the signature is that of the developer …  Each of these projects is done for vastly different clients.  We begin with an exploratory design procedure; we design from micro to macro. And we analyze all of the options, no matter how ridiculous they may seem.”  The five towers that the firm has in various stages of construction are: (1) Prudential Plaza II, a 64-story office tower with a retail base that lends a post-modern flair to the 1955 Prudential building and plaza just to the south; (2) City Place, a 40-story building at Michigan Avenue and Huron Street, with a distinctive red granite retail base, a Hyatt Suite Hotel committed to 347 suites on 21 floors and 13 floors of office space at the top of the building; (3) 350 North LaSalle, a 17-story tower north of the river across from the Reid-Murdoch building, designed to fit in with the First Chicago School of Architecture buildings in the area; (4) 633 St. Clair Place with a three-story base of green granite and a glassy tower of 25 stories rising above it; and (5) Fairbanks Center at Ohio Street, Fairbanks Court and Grand Avenue, a 32-story granite and glass office building with six levels of parking above and below ground.


April 8, 1947 -- Chicago park district board members approve the revision of a1931 agreement with the Saddle and Cycle Club at Sheridan and Foster, allowing the extension of Lake Shore Drive to the north. In 1931 the club agreed to give up its rights to the Lake Michigan shore. In exchange the park district agreed to build a lagoon for the club. In the 1947 agreement the club gives up the lagoon, which was never constructed. In return, the park district gives the Saddle and Cycle Club 235 feet of land extending toward Foster Avenue and 325 feet on Berwyn Avenue to the north. The club also will be permitted to extend its building lines 185 feet farther east on Foster and 275 feet east on Berwyn. The Saddle and Cycle Club began in 1895 and was literally a "country club". A Jarvis Hunt designed clubhouse was built in 1898, on a five-acre property that sat right on the lake at the southern border of Edgewater. Landfill and the extension of Lake Shore Drive barricaded the club from its lakeshore frontage, but it's still there on Foster Avenue today with about 500 families in its membership. The photo below shows the club in 1915, sitting as pretty as you please right on the edge of the lake.


April 8, 1935 – With pilot Victor Haganson in the cockpit, a Stinson monoplane takes off from the Chicago Airport, today’s Midway International Airport, and inaugurates overnight passenger and mail service between Chicago and New Orleans.  The plane lifts off at 8:00 p.m. and lands the following morning at 8:45 a.m.  The carrier, Chicago and Southern Airlines, has been flying the route during daylight hours for ten months.  The overnight flight, which allows passengers to arrive in time for the opening of the business day, becomes possible when the installation of light beacons along the airway south of St. Louis is complete.   Five passengers make the trip, among them two Chicagoans – R. J. Thain, president of the Federated Advertising Clubs of America and P. W. Kunning, trade promotion director of the Chicago Association of Commerce.  The two men bring a greeting from Mayor Edward Kelly to New Orleans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley, along with merchandise that is placed on display in New Orleans store windows after they land.


April 8, 1890 – The Chicago River goes “downright crazy … its insane antics continuing until 11 o-clock in the forenoon. There were tidal waves every ten minutes over six hours.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 9, 1890]   At least a dozen ships are awaiting a departure to Buffalo, and as the first big wave hits at about 5:00 a.m. “… there was one of the liveliest movements in grain ever seen in Chicago.  Over a million bushels that the fleet contained bobbed up and down furiously.”  Three ships, lying alongside one another are carried a quarter-mile as lines snap or the timbers that moored them are pulled from the pier.  Each ship finds itself “solidly grounded” in front of the life-saving station. Most of the rest of the vessels are carried out into the lake “at a ten-mile pace” and were “knocked about like so many corks” until crews manage to let go the anchors and get enough steam up to maneuver them.  The first ship of the season to leave for Buffalo, the Harlem, is in tow of the tug T. T. Morford when a wave strikes her just as she passes the life saving station. The line to the tug parts “instantly” and she is carried “like a shot from a gun toward the north pier.”  The steel bow of the Morford cuts 17 feet out of the pier, but a return wave carries her free with little damage.  An agent of the New York Central Line, watching the tidal waves for two hours at the foot of Pine Street (today’s North Michigan Avenue) says, “I timed the current each way.  It was about five minutes from the beginning of each tidal wave until it ceased.  Then the current ran toward the lake for five minutes before the next wave came.  There is a good seventeen feet of water at our dock. When the waves were running in our boats, drawing fifteen and a half feet, would be lifted two feet.  Then when the current turned they would be aground. This would make a change every ten minutes of some five feet in the level of the river.”  All of the activity stirs up the river to such an extent that “all the accumulation of the winter [is] carried into the lake,” bringing the city’s water supply into jeopardy as the dirty water extends far beyond the breakwater toward the fresh water intake crib.  The above photo shows the heavy collection of ships in the river and harbor four years earlier.


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Friday, April 3, 2020

April 3, 1982 -- Chicago Elevated Needs Repair or Condemnation: Tribune Editorial

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April 3, 1982 – With the Chicago Transit Authority looking to close the east-west Jackson Park elevated line running along Sixty-Third Street from King Drive to Stony Island Avenue, a Chicago Tribune editorial observes, “Chicago’s entire elevated system is wearing out.  Sooner or later, it will have to be renovated or replaced at enormous cost – or demolished.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1982]  The Jackson Park line in 1982 is 89 years old, a life that has long outlasted its original purpose, which was to transport passengers to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park.  If the line is abandoned, it will join a host of other elevated lines that have disappeared since the 1940’s, among them the Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, Stock Yards and Kenwood elevated lines.  The system that is left dates from before 1920.  The Tribune observes, “The CTA has no master plan for replacing or renovating the entire elevated system.  It has barely enough money to meet operating expenses and maintain reasonably adequate service … City Hall and the CTA had better begin drafting some realistic ways of coping with the inevitable.”  The first elevated line in the city, called the “Alley el” because it operated along alleys and back yards from Congress Parkway and State Street to Thirty-Ninth Street, opened on June 6, 1892.  Today the elevated system is still hauling passengers – over a million a year along the elevated and subway system on 220 miles of track.  The photo above shows the alley el in its early days ... about six years after it began service, the line was converted to electricity.


 April 3, 1971 – Roger Henn, the Executive Director of the Union League Club of Chicago, pens a guest editorial for the Chicago Tribune concerning plans for a federal correctional facility at Clark and Van Buren Streets.  He writes, “Chicago has an almost unbelievable opportunity for development of a great tract of land immediately adjacent to the Loop … Here is an opportunity to build a ‘city within a city’ … Housing of all varieties could be built that would retain the white-collar workers who are now fleeing to the suburbs.  Here, also could be more expensive dwellings for Loop businessmen … Not needed is the proposal of the federal government to place a penal institution and gigantic parking facility squarely on the gateway to this promising area … What is needed is overall planning and cooperation, not spot development for the convenience of the federal government with the resulting loss to all of Chicago.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 3,1971]  The above photo of Harry Weese’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, completed in 1975, is proof that the federal government ultimately got its way.

April 3, 1911 – The Engineering Committee of the Sanitary Board passes an injunction against 16 firms in the Union Stockyards, seeking to restrain the companies from dumping refuse into Bubbly Creek, the south fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River running along the edge of the stockyards.  The members of the committee accuse the firms of “damaging the main channel of the Chicago river and endangering the health and lives of the public.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 4, 1911] The firms are ordered to appear before the committee on April 10 and “show cause why proceedings should not be brought against them.”  The packers did show up and “agreed to appoint a committee to investigate the condition and suggest action.”  A week later the two sides come together again with the stockyards representatives reporting they have taken no action.  The chairman of the engineering committee, Wallace G. Clark, reaches the end of his patience, stating, “It is my opinion that your firms can be indicted, and that we can have injunctions issued against you to stop this pollution and unless there is immediate action on your part we intend to act.”  Three months pass before the packers agree to authorize the expenditure of $28,000 to clean up the festering ditch.  The effort is ineffectual at best, and it actually brings about a whole new problem as the dredgings from Bubbly Creek are dumped in the lake.  In fact, part of what we treasure today as the south end of Grant Park rests on landfill partially made up with what came from Bubbly Creek.  The above photo shows Bubbly Creek around 1915.
J Bartholomew Photo
April 3, 1909 -- The University Club at Michigan and Monroe is opened as 500 members and 700 guests participate in the ceremonies. Members wear academic garb representing their colleges and march in a procession from the old club headquarters on Dearborn to the banquet hall on the ninth floor of the new quarters. There a 75-person glee club joins a 30-piece orchestra and a pipe organ, and "the big dining hall reverberated with the songs of colleges east and west. Latin hymns, drinking songs, chants and serenades were punctuated with yells and cheers." [Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1909] A banquet is served on the eighth floor. The Holabird and Roche design still occupies its place on Michigan Avenue where University Club members are still active.
chicagocollections.com
April 3, 1902 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on “a group of business-men who drive to their offices from their North Side residences”.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 3, 1902]  In an informal discussion the men generally agree that La Salle Street is the best means of connecting the Loop with the portion of the city north of the river.  One participant says, “The route is the most central.  It will require the least attention, and it passes through one of the best districts between the heart of the city and Lincoln Park.”  To make the connection a reality would require about $200,000, the men estimate, a sum that would pay for “about a mile” of asphalt paving, a bascule bridge over the river and lowering of the cable car tracks at Illinois Street.  An attorney on the Lincoln Park board says of the plan, ‘Legally, there would be little trouble with the plan.  It seems to me to be a good plan, even though it might be merely temporary.  The name sounds well, for Chicago and the Northwest owe much to La Salle.  They have given him far too little credit.”  The opinion of the men is borne out, in part, as in 1927 work begins on widening of La Salle Street north of the river.  Seven years before that, though, the Michigan Avenue bridge is completed, making Michigan Avenue the principle north-south street leading across the river.  The photo shows opening ceremonies for the new La Salle Street bridge in 1929.
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Friday, March 27, 2020

March 27, 1966 -- Lake and Van Buren Become One-Way Streets


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March 27, 1966 – Lake and Van Buren Streets become one-way streets on this day with Lake Street carrying eastbound traffic between Wacker Drive and State Street and Van Buren carrying westbound traffic between State Street and Wacker Drive.  Additionally, one-way traffic on Madison Street will be extended from its current ending point at Franklin Street to Jefferson Street.  Except for Lake Street east of State Street every east-west street in the Loop is now a one-way street.  

March 27, 1969 – The Port of Chicago Unification Study Committee forwards a study to the Illinois Economic Development Commission that recommends closure of Navy Pier as a Chicago port in favor of new facilities in the Calumet region.  The announcement precedes by one day hearings in the State of Illinois building, 160 North La Salle Street, into widespread dock thefts that “threaten the future of Chicago as an inland seaport.” [Chicago Tribune, March 28, 1969] The committee’s report is unflinching in its appraisal, stating, “We must question the wisdom of assuming a bonded debt of 11.4 million dollars on a facility that currently is operating at a deficit and has such a limited potential for future use. The future of the port lies in the South Chicago area.” The report describes Navy Pier as a “deficit operation” with annual losses between $644,900 and $843,800 with $11.4 million in bonds still outstanding  It recommends state funds be diverted from Navy Pier to develop a lakefront port at the mouth of the Calumet River, property owned by the Youngstown Steel Company. Other urban ports have begun to adapt to the shipping industry’s approach of shipping merchandise in large steel containers to reduce pilferage, and the commission makes clear that the facilities at Navy Pier will never be adequate to support this new method of operation.  The head of the commission, Arthur B. Gottschalk, says, “We don’t believe money should be spent at Navy Pier to build more warehouses, piers, and jetties which would destroy our beaches and valuable lakefront property.  A container port there is simply out of the question.”  The above photo shows the pier in 1961 when it was still struggling valiantly to do the business of handling the city's shipping needs.


 March 27, 1939 – William Bryce Mundie dies at the age of 75.  Mundie was born in Hamilton, Ontario and moved to Chicago in 1884 at the age of 21 where he began working as a draftsman for William Le Baron Jenney.  By 1891 he was a full partner in Jenney’s firm and had married Jenney’s niece.  Mundie was therefore in on the development of the earliest metal-framed commercial buildings, and his expertise led to his being named the supervising architect for the Chicago Board of Education from 1898 to 1905.  He designed Wendell Phillips High School, along with Armour, Coonley, Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Plamondon, Darwin, Jungman and Sullivan elementary schools.  Mundie was a charter member of the Cliff Dwellers, a member of the Union League Club, the Chicago Yacht Club, and a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, for which he served as vice-president for many years.  Muncie's Wendell Phillips High School is pictured above.


 March 27, 1935 -- Officials of the Electro-Motive Company, a subsidiary of General Motors Corporation, break ground for a new plant in McCook, at which diesel-electric locomotives will be produced. H. L. Hamilton, the president of the company, says, "This new industry created by the railroads' demand for high speeds is as strange to us as it is to Chicago . . . we are planning in such a way that we can add to the plant as we get experience in the new art of building locomotives with diesel-electric power plants." Just west of Chicago, McCook, with a population of under 400, makes a particularly attractive choice for the locomotive manufacturer. First, it is close to the Indiana Harbor Belt line tracks, so getting raw materials in and finished locomotives out will be fairly easy. Secondly, the area has a bed of Niagara limestone just below the surface, an excellent foundation for the heavy fabricating equipment of the new production facility. In 1938 the first road freight is tested on an 83,764 mile, 11-month run. The test shows that the locomotive can do twice the work of a steam engine at half the cost. With Chicago's ever more stringent ordinances against smoke pollution (the first such legislation went back at least to 1909), the new plant in McCook was profitable from the beginning. It stopped producing locomotives in 1991 when operations were transferred to London, Ontario. Pictured above is demonstrator FT103, the innovation that changed an industry.

Angus S. Hibbard
www.cjow.com
March 27, 1923 – At a luncheon of the Electric Club of Chicago, held at the Morrison Hotel, Angus S. Hibbard, a consulting engineer and former vice-president of the Chicago Telephone Company, puts forth a plan for placing shops on new fixed bridges as part of his idea to “roof” the Chicago River with a 200-foot boulevard and parking garage.  Hibbard says, “Workers taking their noonday rest, in the parks on top of the garage would have no traffic policeman’s whistle constantly shrieking in their ears ... On either side of the boulevard will be ideal sites for hotels, theaters, or public buildings.  And the bridges, being fixed, will be bridges no longer, but will become integral parts of the cross streets, and might very properly be lined with small shops.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 28, 1923]  The river roof that Hibbard proposes would accommodate autos on its upper deck and four railroad tracks on the lower level.  “The usefulness of the Chicago river is past,” Hibbard says.  The
harbor of the city is on the Calumet, where, I am told, there is more water traffic than there is on the Suez canal.  The type of freight now transported by water is carried in barges too big to make the turns in the Chicago river.”  Mr. Hibbard was no slouch in terms of engineering and management.  At the age of 21 he was made the General Superintendent of the Wisconsin Telephone Company, where he supervised the creation of more than 50 telephone exchanges.  Five years later he went to New York City where in seven years he oversaw extension of telephone lines northward to Boston, Albany and Buffalo; westward to Chicago and Milwaukee; and southward to Washington, D. C.  He was responsible for a number of patents related to the telephone and even designed the "Blue Bell" long distance telephone emblem.  [www.cjow.com]
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Monday, March 9, 2020

March 9, 1948 -- CTA Continues to End Streetcar Operations

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March 9, 1948 – The Chicago Transit Authority announces that it will convert four street car lines to bus lines and purchase 130 elevated and subway cars.  Discontinuing the Archer Avenue, Fourteenth-Sixteenth, Eighteenth, and Morgan-Racine street car lines will save the CTA $1.534,000 over a five-year period, according to Walter J. McCarter, the agency’s general manager.  The new train cars will be built of light-weight metal and will seat 50 passengers.  They will be able to run at speeds up to 45 miles-per-hour.  With an exterior paint scheme of cream, orange and green, the cars will have sets of double doors on each side to facilitate loading and unloading.  The 6000-series rail cars began to be delivered in 1950, the first of 720 cars that the CTA would purchase and that would run for more than 40 years.  Cars 6101 and 6102 operated on the last run for the 6000 series on December 4, 1992.  They were preserved for 23 years at the Fox River Trolley Museum before being sold back to the CTA in 2017, where they are not a part of the transit agency's heritage fleet.  The above photo shows 6101 and 6102 as they return to Chicago in 2017.


March 9, 2002 – Three people die as high winds cause part of a 25-foot aluminum scaffold to fall from the forty-third floor of the John Hancock Center onto Chestnut Street, crushing three cars.  As Saturday afternoon shoppers duck for cover, the section of the scaffold that did not fall swings dangerously in winds that approach 60 miles per hour before firefighters and workers can secure it.  The first 40 floors of the 100-story tower are closed as well as the building’s observatory and the Signature Room restaurant.  An investigation of the collapse that takes over two years to complete finds a combination of errors by a number of involved parties.  The operations manual for the scaffold called for it to be lowered to the ground or raised to the roof when it was not in use.  The contractor in this instance secured the scaffold at the forty-second floor of the structure, saving time – and thousands of dollars a week – at the beginning and end of the day by not having to raise or lower the scaffold.  The scaffold also had friction clamps that were supposed to be used in windy conditions; they were not utilized.  The scaffold itself was also found to be inadequate for the loads it was designed to carry. [https://failures.wikispaces.com] As a result the city code regarding scaffolds was changed in July, 2002.  Prior to this tragedy the city did not require permits for scaffolds, mandating only that they be “so constructed as to ensure the safety of persons working on or passing under or passing by the scaffold.”  The new code stipulated stronger requirements for scaffold design and construction and mandated training courses for those erecting and working on scaffolds. 


March 9, 1965 – At the conclusion of a conference at McCormick Place the federal government orders industries and cities bordering the southern end of Lake Michigan to stop the bacterial pollution of the lake within a year.  They are given an additional six months to cease the dumping of other pollutants.  Murray Stein, the chairman of the conference and the person in charge of the enforcement branch of the pollution control division of the United States Health Service, says, “This is indeed a milestone in pollution control if the industries and municipalities institute the recommendations we have outlined, the threat to the lake will be over.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1965]  Five other recommendations come out of the four-and-a-half day conference:  (1) All sewage treatment plants in the Indiana-Illinois area will be required to provide secondary treatment to sewage and to disinfect the effluent by chlorination;  (2) Beaches will be considered unsuitable for bathing if the amount of bacteria exceeds 1,000 per 100 milliliters; (3) Industries will be required to improve their housekeeping practices to minimize the discharge of waste from industrial sources and to end the pumping of untreated or partially treated wastes; (4) Industrial plants discharging wastes will be required to take samples of their wastes and to keep them in an open file; and (5) That the Thomas J. O’Brien lock, located in the Calumet River, be placed into operation to keep the Calumet River from flowing into Lake Michigan.  Stein says, “This pollution control process is inexorable.  Once the federal government enters an area that has a gross pollution problem, the law requires it to see that the pollution is cleaned up.”

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March 9, 1942 – The first engineering science and management defense training course offered exclusively to women opens at the Illinois Institute of Technology as 150 women, “housewives and artists, salesgirls and students,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 10, 1942] show up for their course of study.  The curriculum will consist of three courses: industrial chemistry, materials inspection and testing, and engineering drafting.  Each course will run for 12 weeks, during which students will meet for eight hours, five days a week. Upon completion of their coursework the students will receive certificates from the United States Office of Education.  A placement office at the school will assist enrollees in finding positions at the end of the program. 


March 9, 1902 -- The course of true love never did run smooth, and that was especially true for Miss Carolina Nuzioto and her distant cousin, Francisco Nuzioto, as they head with more than 20 of their friends in a half-dozen carriages toward their wedding in a church on Kinzie Street. As reported in the Chicago Daily Tribune, "As the first carriage crossed Madison Street the Taylor Street trolley car whirled down upon it. There was a shout of warning, and the carriage driver, A. J. Curry, whipped up his horses, but too late. The car struck the rear wheels, there was a crash of glass, a scream and the wrecked carriage was tossed on its side. The prospective bride and groom were thrown into the street . . . The wedding guests sprang from their carriages and hurried to the spot, thinking some one had been killed. They found Miss Nuzioto trying to remove the mud from her bridal gown and veil, while the groom was sorrowfully removing kid gloves that had once been white." As the crowd of angry wedding guests surrounded the driver and the motorman, a policeman intervened and scolded the group for keeping the priest waiting. "Go now and get married," he commanded. And so they did.
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 3:30 AM 1 comments
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