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

Sunday, September 13, 2020

September 13, 1977 -- South Shore Country Club Recommended for Landmark Status

 

September 13, 1977 – The Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks sends a proposal to the Chicago Planning Commissioner, Lewis W. Hill, recommending that the South Shore Country Club be designated a landmark.  This is the best hope for saving the club, designed by Benjamin Marshall and Charles Fox and opened in 1905.  The club has been threatened since the Chicago Park District bought the property in late 1974 for $9,775,000 with plans to tear down the old clubhouse and replace it with a new cultural center.   At the same meeting the commission sets dates for similar hearings to determine whether or not landmark status will be recommended for the Old Colony Building, the Fisher Building, and the Manhattan Building, three buildings that stand next to each other on the east side of Dearborn Street. 

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September 13, 1963 – It is announced that the American Dental Association is completing plans for a 22-story office building on Chicago Avenue just east of Michigan Avenue.  The architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White will design the office building which will have 280,000 square feet of space and cost $5 million.  The association has 100,000 members and plans to use only part of the building, leasing the remainder.  The site, which has a frontage of 200 feet on Chicago Avenue and a depth of 135 feet contains two buildings which will be razed, along with a surface parking lot.  It was purchased from the American National Red Cross for $700,000.  The building still is holding its own at 211 East Chicago, right next door to the Lurie Children’s Hospital.


September 13, 1940 – Wendell L. Wilkie, the Republican candidate for President, tours nearly 50 miles through the city and its industrial areas, giving four speeches to Chicago workers.  The candidate says that “he had never been so thrilled in his life as when he stood before thousands of workers and urged them to forsake the New Deal and come into his crusade for a productive, united and strong America, one with real jobs instead of promises.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 14, 1940] Citizens line the curbs of many of the streets through which Wilkie’s motorcade passes, and La Salle Street is “thick with confetti and streamers.” The largest gatherings of the long day are at the Western Electric plant in Cicero and at a baseball park at Thirty-Ninth Street and Wentworth Avenue where 15,000 people crowd together to see him. The loudest applause comes when Wilkie promises “never to send American boys to fight in the trenches of Europe.” On his way back from his address in Cicero, Wilkie stops for a sandwich at a lunch counter at 4714 Cermak Road. At the end of the busy day he retires to the Stevens Hotel where he confers with political leaders.


September 13, 1908 – The Chicago Daily Tribune announces the intention of the Peoples Gaslight and Coke Company to build the “highest building of its kind” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 13, 1908] at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.  Fronting 196 feet on Michigan Avenue and 171 feet on Adams Street, the structure’s cost is anticipated to surpass $3 million with 1,500 offices located within the D. H. Burnham and Co. design.  The outer walls of the first three stories will be of granite.  Above that the walls will be of terra cotta “without the glossy effect, as in the Railway Exchange building.”  The new tower will be constructed in two sections, with the north section of the 20-story building finished first, followed by the section at the corner of Adams Street and Michigan Avenue.  The second half of the building is seen nearing completion in the above photo. 


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Saturday, September 12, 2020

September 12, 2006 -- F.B.I. Opens New Chicago Headquarters




September 12, 2006 – Although the FBI will not be moving into its new ten-story, 350,000-square-foot office building until the spring of 2007, the building is still officially opened on a rainy day as a color guard, speechifying officials, and the girls’ choir from Neuqua Valley High School contribute to the festivities.  The new $125 million headquarters at 2111 West Roosevelt Road will feature state-of-the-art facilities for processing evidence and for training the 350 agents who will eventually work there.  It is a huge improvement over the old Chicago headquarters in the Dirksen Courthouse on Dearborn Street.  “I am told it was not unusual for the temperature to change from ice age to global warming in a matter of minutes,” says FBI Director Robert Mueller in his address to hundreds of officials and guests at the dedication. He adds.  “Like this new building, today’s FBI is stronger, today’s FBI is more flexible and today’s FBI is more modern.” [Chicago Tribune, September 13, 2006] Today the headquarters building is the world's first LEED for Existing Buildings: Operation and Maintenance project to earn a Platinum level of certification. 




September 12, 1973 – The Hyatt Regency, the first new major downtown hotel in Chicago in more than 20 years, is topped out as Mayor Richard J. Daley attends the ceremonies on Wacker Drive.  Hoisted into place at the top of the new hotel is a piece of limestone, signed by Mayor Daley and Jay Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Corporation, that has been salvaged from an old Illinois Central Railroad warehouse that stood on the site for over a hundred years, a structure that served as a shelter for thousands of Chicago citizens who were trapped in the Chicago Fire of 1871.  The hotel also stands on the spot where Captain Nathan Heald, the commander of Fort Dearborn, ordered the fort’s whiskey supply dumped in the riveron August 13, 1812, an action that may have been the chief provocation for the attack that two days later led to the death of 63 soldiers and settlers.  [Chicago Tribune, September 13, 1973]

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September 12, 1953 – Officials at the Glenview Naval Air Station disclose that an undetermined quantity of jet fuel that could be as high as 190,000 gallons has leaked out of underground tanks at the base, moving through storm sewers and into the North Branch of the Chicago River.  The Glenview fire department works most of the day to flush the film downstream.  Calls begin coming in 36 hours earlier from residents complaining of a smell of kerosene in the Chicago River with more than 40 calls being handled before the police learn from the air station that fuel tanks are leaking. Commander Thomas W. McKnight, executive officer at Glenview, says that sometime during the afternoon it was discovered that sump pumps had somehow begun pumping fuel into the storm sewers.  By September 17 Chicago fire department officials had ordered a close watch on the jet fuel floating down the river, and the Chicago Sanitary District ordered the opening of two locks “to hasten passage into the Illinois river.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 18, 1953]  At that point the fuel had reached Foster Avenue, and a fire was reported on the river at Niles.  Chicago Fire Commissioner Michael J. Corrigan takes the air station to task “for making no attempt to burn the fuel while it was moving thru the countryside.” 


September 12, 1915 – James A. Pugh takes his 40-foot hydroplane Disturber IV and skims it across the lakefront at over 60 miles per hour.  Off the Grant Park shore Pugh makes six runs over a half-mile stretch of the lake.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, “Disturber IV’s twenty-four cylinder 1,800 horse power Dusenberg motors ran as smoothly as the movement of a Swiss watch.  The roar of the heavy exhausts could be heard on Michigan Avenue and brought out thousands of spectators, who lined the shore of Grant park and watched the spectacular flights of ‘Dynamite Jim’ and his two mechanics.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 13, 1915] In the above photo Disturber IV is launched in the Chicago River in July of 1914.
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Sunday, August 23, 2020

August 23, 1985 -- Navy Pier's Slow Disintegration Lamented

 

August 23, 1985 – Under the headline “Tattered Navy Pier Finds Dance Card Empty,” the Chicago Tribune describes the sorry condition of the municipal pier at the end of Illinois Street and Grand Avenue, finished in 1916 for $4 million.  According to the paper, “…the unique 3,000-foot pier has deteriorated to the point that its sewer system has been plugged up and its roofs are sieves.  The upper walkways are too dangerous, and the floors of lower storage rooms can barely support their own weight.”  The pier has no adequate fire protection system, so that any event held there must keep a fire engine standing by.  With one exception, a major event has not been held at the pier since the inauguration of Mayor Harold Washington two years earlier.  Joe Wilson of the Department of Public Works says, “I don’t think $60 million would give you much more than the basic structure, but it depends on what you want.”  Wilson says that an average of 20 people visit the pier on weekdays and about 75 on weekends.” The above photo shows the east end of the pier in the 1980's.


August 23, 1933 – A stone from San Antonio’s Alamo is dedicated at 11:00 a.m. in a ceremony held at Tribune Tower to coincide with Texas Day of the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront.  The stone is presented to the Chicago Tribune by Miss Emma Kyle Burleson, whose brother was the Postmaster General in President Woodrow Wilson’s administration and whose grandfather, General Edward Burleson, served as the third Vice-President of the Republic of Texas. Mayor Edward Kelly serves as the master of ceremony with a prominent Texas newspaper editor, Peter Molyneaux, offering thoughts on the stone that will join stones from other historic structures from around the world in the tower on Michigan Avenue.  There are a total of 149 rocks embedded in the exterior of the tower, down from 150 after NASA reclaimed a rock from the moon.




August 23, 1914 – Henry Korthagen, an unemployed painter, pays the 25-cent admission to the observatory of the Masonic Temple Building on State Street, crawls through a window to the northwest corner of the building and then jumps.  His body strikes the crowded sidewalk on State Street at noon on a Saturday.  A dentist on the twelfth floor of the building, Dr. A. Jay Blakie, sees the body fly past his window, with a black derby hat following 20 feet behind.  “From my position above,” Blakie says, “the sidewalk looked like the surface of water after a stone has been thrown in.  A circle of humanity just eddied back from the crumpled object in the middle of it.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 24, 1914]  Korthagen had visited the Painters and Decorators District Council at 300 West Madison Street earlier, seeking to pay back dues and gain reinstatement to the union.  Those at the union headquarters describe him as cheerful at the time.  The observatory at the Masonic Temple is pictured above, all the way up there at the top of the building.

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August 23, 1890 – The South Park Commissioners offer the Midway Plaisance to the World’s Fair directors, giving the planners of the fair 600 acres of land with the Plaisance at its center, a tract that is 600-feet wide and one-mile long with a roadway in the middle.  With that action the location of the World’s Columbian Exposition appears to come down to two sites, one on the south side and the other in the Buena Park area on the north side.  Landscape architect Charles Law Olmstead has surveyed both sites and found them equally capable of hosting the fair, although Olmstead finds the Jackson Park site as “being especially adapted for some of the principal buildings.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 23, 1890].  The directors of the fair adopt a resolution that allows them to “proceed on the basis of comparison and select the site that can register the greatest number of good points.  It reads:

WHEREAS, It is necessary that this committee shall have full information of the physical features of the sites offered for the Columbian Exposition, the approximate cost of preparing them for occupancy, their susceptibility of proper drainage, the approximate cost of suitably adorning them and of erecting the Exposition buildings thereon, and the hygienic conditions accompanying them,

RESOLVED, That competent engineers be employed to report as soon as possible upon the physical features of each site and the approximate cost of preparing in each case an area of 400 acres suitably diversified in land and water; and that competent drainage and sanitary engineers be employed if necessary in addition to the foregoing to suggest plans and estimate the approximate cost of drainage and water supply and the disposition to be made of the sewage; that a board of three responsible and well-known physicians, one from each division of the city, be selected to report upon the hygienic conditions of the grounds proposed as sites and of their surroundings, with a view to determining the probable healthfulness of each if occupied during the summer of 1893 by from 40,000 to 50,000 exhibitants and assistants, beside 100,000 to 200,000 visitors daily; that the consulting architect be required to report a general plan for and an approximate cost of constructing buildings suitable for the Exposition and covering an area of, say, 100 acres, it being understood by this committee that said estimates may be based upon the Philadelphia and Paris Expositions, due consideration being given to changes in prices of labor and materials.”

The photos above show the Midway Plaisance as it appeared during the 1893 fair and as it appears today, running through the campus of the University of Chicago.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2020

August 18, 1904 -- Lake Bluff Protests Navy Proposal for North Shore Base


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August 18, 1904 --  The president of the village board of Lake Bluff calls for a meeting at which objections will be made to the U. S. government’s plan to establish a naval training station in the North Shore suburb.  The principal objection appears to be that Lake Bluff, along with several other suburbs, would end up in the unenviable position of being bookended between the new base, if it is built as proposed, and Fort Sheridan to the south.  A letter of protest is circulated, the text of which reads:

 

“The residents of the north shore suburbs object to having the new naval training station located at Lake Bluff.  They find, through the secretary of the navy that this is not a naval college, as was supposed, but a naval recruiting station, where the government will enlist 6,000 men and boys each year.  After keeping them for a few months it will select 2,000 of the best and send them to the east, where they will be put on vessels, the other 4,000, known as culls, being turned loose.

 

“The residents of this beautiful north shore district are horrified at the thought of this scum of humanity being released in their midst.  Many of these people, after being attracted to this station to get plenty to eat and drink for a few months, will be turned free to become a menace to the safety of the community.

 

“These people are at a loss to understand why the government should ever consider the idea of locating a naval station along this shore, where there is nothing but high bluff without any inland body of water or chance of ever making one, and with scarcely a possibility of constructing an outer harbor.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1904]

 

Opened in 1911, Naval Station Great Lakes is the Navy’s largest training facility and home of the service’s only Boot Camp.  It is located on 1,600 acres overlooking Lake Michigan with 39 of its 1,153 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  [https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/installations]


The above photo shows sailors marching past the base administration building in November of 1913, two years after the base opened.



August 18, 1969 – The Chicago Plan Commission approves a zoning ordinance for the 80-acre air rights site of the Illinois Central Railroad south of the river and east of Randolph Street.  Lewis Hill, the Commissioner of Development and Planning, says, “Successful planned development here will greatly affect the future of the whole central area and much of the city and metropolitan area.  It is in both the public and private interest that this development proceed beyond a mere meeting of minimal standards to the achievement of an environment of high quality.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1969]   Illinois Center today occupies the upper left section of the railroad yard below the river in the above photo.
August 18, 1960 – James F. Tobin, president of Wieboldt Stores, Inc., announces that the firm will take over full control of Mandel’s stores at State and Madison Streets as well as in Lincoln Village Shopping Center at 4041 Milwaukee Avenue.  “Wieboldt’s will bring to State street the same high standard of merchandise and customer service policies which has spearheaded the Wieboldt progress and steady growth in the Chicagoland area for the past 77 years,” says Tobin. [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1960] Werner A. Wieboldt, the chairman of Wieboldt says, “I have great personal admiration for State street and for the many reputable merchants who have made it great.  We are dedicated to add to its strength of attraction and hope to make it an even greater retail center.” 



August 18, 1935 –A double bill of “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” opens at 8:15 p.m. in the auditorium at Navy Pier.  This will start an eight-week series of opera at the pier with performances being offered at a cost of 50 cents and a dollar.  Part of the program is underwritten by the city council through an appropriation of $2,500.  Prior to the evening’s program an announcement is made that opera-goers will be admitted in their shirt sleeves and that patrons will “enjoy the advantages of the natural cooling system provided by Lake Michigan.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 18, 1935] The above photo shows the pier in 1936 in a view taken from Oak Street.



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Wednesday, July 1, 2020

July 1, 1963 -- Jackson Park Coast Guard Station Shuts Down

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July 1, 1963 – The United States Coast Guard station in Jackson Park closes with responsibility for the station reverting to the Chicago Park District, from which the Coast Guard has been leasing the property.  The station had been manned by only 11 men and handled only 75 to 80 calls in an average year.  The Coast Guard stations at Calumet Harbor and the lake, along with the station at the foot of Randolph Street, will pick up the slack.   The Jackson Park station was established in 1890, and, according to Chief Warrant Officer Robert Ashton, the commander of Group Chicago, “Back in the early days, there was a real need for the station … In 1902, you had to walk the beaches to spot an accident.  Now, accidents on the lake often are spotted by planes.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 30, 1963].  The old station is still there on the western edge of the Jackson Park Outer Harbor.  If you are biking or walking on the lakefront trail, you will move right past it around Sixty-Fourth Street.  The top photo shows the station early in the twentieth century.  The second photo shows the park district property in the left center of the photo with the Jackson Park Yacht Club across the basin and La Rabida Children's Hospital beyond that.

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July 1, 1940 – The 440-foot nautical-themed beach house at North Avenue Beach opens.  The facility has 14 showers and 1,440 baskets that allow men and women to check personal effects while heading for the beach.  In order to give the “ship” a credible lake-worthy appearance the art deco structure is equipped with a crow’s nest, booms, yard arms, lanterns, portholes and flags.  The North Avenue Beach was completed as part of a $1,250,000 Works Progress Administration project, that wound up in 1939, an undertaking that added 875,000 square feet of new parkland extending north to Fullerton Avenue with a new overpass at that juncture.  The beach house is a design by architect Emanuel V. Buchsbaum.  It was replaced in 2000 by a new facility with 22,000 square feet of space. The above photo shows the beach house as it appears today.



July 1, 1933 – The Museum of Science and Industry opens its doors for the first time at 10:00 a.m.  No formal ceremony is held.  Only the great Central Hall will open as many of the exhibits that will eventually be displayed are being shown at the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront a few miles to the north.  All of the exhibits at the museum will be free with the exception of the Coal Mine, for which there will be a twenty-five cent charge.  A feature of the museum will be its interactive displays, exhibits “capable of being operated by switches or levers, to demonstrate scores of processes or inventions.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1933]  The museum, originally the Palace of Fine Arts at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 housed the Field Museum of Natural History for a time, but then fell into decay.  In fact, the South Park Board voted to raze it in 1921.  Fortunately, that didn't happen.  The photo above shows the condition of the building before the effort to restore it began.

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July 1, 1917 – An investigation begins into the origins of a fire that consumes $750,000 worth of valuable film from the vaults of the Pathé Film Company in the Consumers’ Building at 220 South State Street.  The Chicago manager of Pathé, C. W. Bunn, speculates that the fire is the product of labor unions sending a message as they seek to unionize film company employees. He says “Taken in connection with threats that have been sent to me and to other film managers, I am convinced the fire was of incendiary origin.  Four employees were at work in the office.  They heard a noise in the vault, as if something had fallen.  An explosion followed and the vault door was blown out with a blast of smoke and flame.  The falling noise probably was the working of a time mechanism that touched off a bomb.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1917]  After the blast and fire, police officers are stationed at the offices of 16 film companies in the city as Attorney Lewis F. Jacobson, representing the film exchanges, holds a conference with police officials at City Hall.  Jacobson presents a letter that the president of Local No. 157 sent to all film company managers, in which he states, “Get busy and organize. Start at once or we will start our work.”  The deputy police commissioner then orders the arrest of the organizer and former business agent of Local 157.  Two days later a judge grants an injunction against Locals 110, 134 and 157 of the Moving Picture Machine Operators’ union, restraining the unions “From picketing, spying, assaulting, or intimidating, congregating about, at, or near the places of business of the complainants; from attempting to deal with employees toward unionization, and from boycotting or otherwise molesting exhibitors using the films of its complainants.”   [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 4, 1917].  Through quick work firemen were able to confine the Pathé fire to the sixth floor of the Consumers’ building, a building in which three other film distribution companies are located – the Universal, Mutual and the Feature.  This catches the eye of the city’s corporation counsel, who notes “flagrant violations of city ordinances in regard to the handling of moving pictures.”  Fire officials announce that they will prepare an ordinance that excludes all companies handling motion pictures from the central business district because of the danger of explosions.  The above photo shows a detail of the Consumers' Building, one of the last of the Chicago School designs, a 1913 building designed by the firm of William Le Baron Jenney, William Bryce Mundie and Elmer C. Jensen.  


July 1, 1910 – Comiskey Park opens for its first game as 24,900 fans watch the Chicago White Sox lose to the St. Louis Browns, 2-0.  Despite the loss, the opening of the new park is a success that “crowned the tremendous efforts which have been put forth in the last few weeks to get the mammoth plant ready for its christening and it passed through its baptism as if to the manor born, while tens of thousands of the Old Roman’s friends cheered at every possible opportunity to show their appreciation of the gift he had prepared for them.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1910] A thousand people wait in line to purchase tickets when the gates at the new park open at 1:00.  A brass band greets entering fans, who cheer the Chicago team when it “emerged from its dressing rooms, clad in new coming out gowns of dazzling white, nattily trimmed with blue and designed by G. Harris White, dentist, pitcher, and outfielder as well.”  Cheers rise again as Charles Comiskey is presented a big banner at home plate as a band on the field plays “Hail to the Chief.” In January of 1909 Charles Comiskey, who had owned the club for ten years, bought a plot of land used by the city as landfill and commissions Zachary Taylor Davis, a graduate of the Armour Institute, to design a new ballpark for the White Sox.  On March 17,1910 the cornerstone for the new park is laid.  Less than four months later the park opens. The same architect designed Weeghman Field, today’s Wrigley Field, on the north side which opened four years later.





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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

June 30, 1929 -- Grant Park, A Parking Lot?

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June 30, 1929 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints a photo essay, showing the amount of space in Grant Park given over to the parking of automobiles.  There was at the time a pay station for those who wanted to park in what is now primarily Maggie Daley Park, an area where between 5,000 and 7,500 cars were parked each day.  In the grainy Tribune photo above one can see the long lines of cars with the Illinois Central Railroad freight yard in the lower left corner of the photo.  The second photo shows another view of the parking lot.  The third photo shows what the area looks like today. 
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June 30, 1961 – The land on which the 100 North La Salle Street building stands is sold to the building’s owners for $1,750,000 or $200 a square foot.  The sum is believed to be the highest price paid for land in the downtown real estate market since 1929.  Vincent Curtis Baldwin, president of the consortium that owns the building, says that the price paid eclipses the previous high for a lot on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street which sold for $115 a square foot. The corporation that owns the building was reorganized in 1942 under federal bankruptcy law after having fallen behind in rent, taxes and bond interest during the 1930’s Depression. Acquiring the land will allow the building’s owners to free themselves of the annual lease on the property, which, on an annual basis, amounts to seven percent of the purchase price.  Several years ago an Atlanta-based firm, the Bridge Investment Group, purchased the 47-story tower for $113 million.

June 30, 1950 – The formal dedication of Merrill C. Meigs Field takes place on the lakefront.  Although the airport has been open since December 10, 1948, it carried no name.  Speaking from prepared notes, Meigs, who had served as the head of the city’s Aero Commission, said, “When my name was brought up last year before the city council, there were objections that no airport should be named for a living person.  I was honored at the original suggestion but felt that the sacrifice involved—in order to qualify—was too great a price, even for that glory.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1, 1950]   Special guests were drawn from 30 states—the Flying Farmers of Prairieland and the National Flying Farmers.  It is estimated that 890 of their planes, carrying 2,047 persons, landed at Chicago area airports.   

June 30, 1941 – Superior Court Judge Ulysses S. Schwartz awards $1,275 to A. F. Cuneo, the owner of two three-story buildings at 933 and 939 North State Street, an amount that covers the cost “of protecting the buildings against possible collapse as the result of subway excavation” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 31, 1943] related to the 8.75 mile subway we know today as the Red Line.  The case is seen as a precedent, impacting “millions of dollars” that are involved in the dispute between the city and property owners over damages incurred during the construction of the subway.  City officials plan on appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, but a clause in the Illinois Constitution does not appear to support their case.  It reads, “Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without compensation.”  Already 50 suits have stacked up, amounting to a million-and-a-half dollars, mostly costs associated with underpinning buildings to protect them from collapse as the subway tunnel is bored beneath them.  Construction of the State Street subway is shown in the photo above. 

June 30,1863 – The setting of the cornerstone of the Theological Seminary at the corner of Halsted Street and Fullerton Avenue takes place in a ceremony which opens with the assembled guests singing “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.” Reverend Dr. Matthews of Monmouth, Illinois then presents the past history of the Seminary, after which he lays the cornerstone. Today’s McCormick Theological Seminary is the descendant of this seminary which, according to the McCormick website, “was born in a log cabin” in Hanover, Indiana with a faculty of two and a “handful of students.”  Seeking a Presbyterian seminary in Chicago, Cyrus McCormick provided a $100,000 donation to endow four professorships, allowing the Seminary to move to 25 acres in today’s Lincoln Park.  In 1975 the seminary moved to Hyde Park, a move that allowed the school to share resources with the Jesuit School of Theology and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.  The above photo shows the Halsted Street entrances of McCormick Hall, built in 1883; Ewing Hall, built in 1863, and the seminary chapel, built in 1875.  
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Saturday, June 27, 2020

June 27, 2001 -- Soldier Field Renovation Approved




June 27, 2001 –A Chicago Park District committee gives preliminary approval to a measure that will lead to a $582 million renovation of Soldier Field.  Testimony at the meeting is split between opponents and backers of the plan with the biggest outcry coming from veterans demanding assurances that the Chicago Bears will not sell the name of the field to a corporate sponsor. Korean and Vietnam War veteran Norvel West says, “If anybody is crazy enough to put their name on Soldier Field, we will stop buying their product.” [Chicago Tribune, June 28, 2001] Ultimately, Park District Superintendent David Doig receives authority to enter into four agreements to renovate Solider Field, tear down the old park district headquarters, add 17 acres of parkland to Burnham Park, and give the Chicago Bears a 30-year lease at the renovated stadium.  The above photos give a pretty good idea of the results of the measures approved that day.

June 27, 1965 – Ira Bach, the Chicago Plan Commissioner, predicts that the Chicago River in the downtown area will be transformed into “one of the world’s most beautiful waterways in the next 10 years.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1965]  He only missed the mark by forty years.  “The new Pioneer Court dedicated . . . by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and the Tribune company, is the latest exquisite example of how the river bank can be beautified by an unusual development,” Bach said.  “With other major riverbank construction programs on the planning boards, other plazas and landscaped open spaces can be expected to be created along the river in the next decade.”  Three years ago in June Bach’s prediction proved, for the most part, to have come true as the 100 million dollar Riverwalk opened the entire south side of the river from Lake Michigan to Lake Street.


June 27, 1899 – The Lincoln Park Commissioners sign an agreement with the N. P. Glann Construction Company to complete the paving of Diversey Boulevard form Clark Street to the North Branch of the Chicago River.  This will be the last link in the chain of boulevards that connect Lincoln Park with the West Side park system.  It has taken three years to get final approval for the project with the work twice being put out to bid with all of the bids subsequently rejected because, according to a park commissioner, “the lowest was too high.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 28, 1899] The board will follow the wishes of the property owners on Diversey in determining whether crushed cobblestone or crushed granite will be used as the roadbed.  The above photo shows the intersection of Diversey Parkway, Broadway and Clark Street just about this time.

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June 27, 1888 – A day before the big picnic for “waifs,” 600 boys are given baths at the Emeline Baths at 63 West Madison Street, which would be in the 500 block of West Madison Street today, just west of the Ogilvie Transportation Center.  Some of the lads “met their fate with heroic fortitude, and some of them quailed when the awful moment arrived,” according the Chicago Daily Tribune.  The paper follows a bath first-timer by the name of Billie who has his doubts about the adventure.  “I’ll bet yer I gets drownded,” he confides to a comrade as they queue up to enter the baths. When he sees the tub of water upon being escorted to a room, he “struggled, he kicked and he yelled,” but an attendant grabs him and “a loosening of one suspender, a yank at the shirt, and Billie was clad only in a coating of dirt.”  Into the tub he went, screaming, “I’m drownded.”  The ordeal is over in minutes, and standing upon solid ground once again, Billie observes, “I never knowed I was so white afore.”  When the last boy is scrubbed and shampooed, “Every bath-room was covered with water from floor to ceiling, and the bottom of every bath-tub was covered with soot and dirt … about two bushels of hair was swept off of the floor of the barber shop.”  The manager of the bathhouse, A. L. Lehmann, observes, “A great many of those who came for the first time on this occasion last year have come every week since and paid their five cents for a bath.  I suppose some more will do it after today.  The annual free bath shows them what it is.”

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