Showing posts with label Chicago RIver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago RIver. 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 22, 2020

September 22, 1959 -- Chicago River Properties Given Warning ... Clean It Up

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September 22, 1959 – Chicago port officials and Mayor Richard J. Daley announce that they are sending letters of warning to 67 property owners, including the Illinois Central Railroad, in an effort to clean up and repair property along the Chicago River.  If owners ignore the letters, Daley says, the city will take them to court.  The mayor huffs, “I must add that the property owned by the Illinois Central that extends 1,900 feet east of Michigan Avenue, on the south side of the river bank, certainly cannot be called an encouraging sight.  I notice this area every time I walk across the Michigan Avenue bridge, and it is definitely not pleasing.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1959].  Illinois Central officials maintain that they have no responsibility to maintain the area in question since the company granted the city an easement for connecting Michigan Avenue to the Outer Drive, today’s Lake Shore Drive, in 1919.   Illinois Central president Wayne A. Johnson says, “The railroad’s position on this matter has not changed.  Our attorneys tell us that when we offered the easement the obligation became that of the city of Chicago, with reference to the shore upkeep.  The above photo shows the area in question seven years later when 19 honey locust trees are finally planted east of the Michigan Avenue bridge on July 26, 1966.  



September 22, 1981 – Two firefighters die and six others are injured while fighting an extra-alarm fire in the Willoughby Tower office building at 8 South Michigan Avenue.  Fire Commissioner William Blair says, “There was no chance … there was no way out for them.”  The two firefighters, Joseph Hitz, a snorkel truck driver with Hook and Ladder 1 and Craig McShane, a rookie with Engine 42, fall to their deaths down an open elevator shaft from the twenty-fifth floor to the roof of an elevator stopped at the ninth floor.  The fire on the floor from which they fell started in materials a cleaning crew had left in the elevator, and as a result the car fell until its brakes activated and stopped it on the ninth floor.  Six firefighters exit an elevator on the twenty-fifth floor to find the hallway filled with smoke.  Breathing through air masks, they find an open office through which they are able to reach a fire escape at which point they discover that one of their number, Hitz, is missing.  McShane, the only firefighter who still has air in his self-contained breathing apparatus, crawls back to check, and he falls through the same open elevator shaft into which Hitz had fallen earlier.  Mayor Jane Byrne, standing at the scene as the search for the two men is being conducted, says, “I am deeply sorrowed by the loss of the lives of these two brave firemen …I have conferred with Commissioner Blair and directed him to immediately procure, by the end of the week at the latest, two-way hand radios for every Chicago firemen in hopes that this would prevent a recurrence of such tragic accidents.”  Hitz and McShane are the first Chicago firemen killed on duty since 1978 and the first multiple deaths of Chicago firefighters since 1973. The plaque, pictured above, memorializing the two firefighters, can be seen at the firehouse at 419 South Wells Street, about a mile away from the tragic fire of 1981.


September 22, 1974 – The Chicago Tribune reports that Harry Weese and Associates has won the highest award of the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for an apartment building at the southwest corner of South Lake Park Avenue at East Forty-Seventh Street.  A.I.A jurors call the design a “good design at the highest level within the narrow constraints of publicly financed housing.”  The 26-story tower, Lake Shore East, features 38 angled, vertical planes of glass and brick which “give the building’s shape and its interplay of elements many different appearances as they are viewed from various perspectives.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1974]

 

September 22, 1935 – In the six hours that the Chicago Tribune opens the doors of the new home of its radio station, 4,368 people tour the facilities.  Over 500 visitors fill out forms for a chance to gain admission to the auditorium when performances begin.  The paper describes the new digs in this way, “The lighting effects, the sharp slant of the auditorium for purposes of better vision, the richly covered, deep cushioned seats and the sound proofed walls attracted appreciative comments.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1935]  The building just to the north of Tribune Tower is laid out or “squared off” with Polaris, the north star, as a sighting point, an innovative approach that allows a variance of about an eighth-inch along the building’s frontage on Michigan Avenue.  On October 5 the auditorium opens with two orchestras entertaining all of the workers who had labored on the building, along with their families.  Colonel Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of the paper, tells them, “This victory of peace has a sadness for me, for it means I must part from the men I have watched at this building for the last year and a half . . . You have piled stone on stone, color on color, and joined wire to wire.  You have built here, forever, something that your children will thank you for.  You leave me with emotion.  God bless you and be with you always.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 2, 1935]. Well, not quite forever ... the facility is undergoing significant alteration as it transitions into a new life as part of the Tribune Tower conversion from a commercial skyscraper to a residential tower.
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Saturday, September 19, 2020

September 19, 2006 -- Wallenda Crosses the River

September 19, 2006 – Mario Wallenda, a 65-year-old paralyzed high wire artist, crosses the Chicago River 100 feet in the air near the Merchandise Mart.  “I’m doing this because I need the money, and I’m tired of sitting around the house. I tried lapidary, woodcarving, even needlepoint,” Wallenda says. [Chicago Tribune, September 20, 2006]  The performer was paralyzed in 1962 when a seven-person high-wire pyramid collapsed, and two Wallenda family members were killed.  Wallenda is paid between $50,000 and $100,000 for the stunt, according to the event sponsor, WLUP-FM.  At 9:09 a.m. a crane drops Wallenda and his specially-designed electric bicycle above the river.  Two minutes later he is on the other side of the river.  He pauses for a few moments, and by 9:14 he re-crosses the river where the crane waits to lift him back to ground level.  “Things are tough,” Wallenda says. “I have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life, as long as I don’t live past next week.”

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September 19, 1961 – The Vice-President of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, Laurence Reiner, confirms that the company has asked the New York State insurance department for its approval of a plan to build “a large, modern building in Chicago on the tract just south of the Tribune Tower.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 20, 1961]. Reiner says, “We have discussed the purchase with the Chicago Tribune Building Corporation.  We hope sometime soon to come in and make a fine neighbor for the Chicago Tribune.”  According to Reiner the company has outgrown its location at 29 South La Salle Street.  “We have always had a great interest in Chicago.  We hope now to be able to do something nice for the city,” he says.



September 19, 1927:  Wreckers begin tearing down a four-story building at Randolph and La Salle Streets as bands play and city chieftains make speeches, and the long-awaited widening of La Salle Street from Washington Boulevard to Ohio Street begins.  The project, which has its beginnings in the Chicago Plan of 1909, is expected to cost $7,455,000, an expenditure that will provide another through street to the near north side and relieve congestion on Michigan Avenue. The president of the Board of Local Improvement, Michael J. Flaherty, wields a pickax and chips away briefly at an old building south of the river on La Salle even as one tenant, the Hub Raincoat Company, refuses to vacate the structure, saying that the firm has a right to remain until September 23.  The $3,500,000 bridge across the river at La Salle Street is projected to be completed sometime in late 1928.  The widening of La Salle Street had the city acquiring 20 feet from each property facing the street, which resulted in the complete loss of many buildings and significant alterations to buildings such as the Reid-Murdoch building on the north side of the river, which lost one whole tier on its west side to make way for the expanded roadway.  A picture of the building before and after the truncation can be seen above.


September 19, 1911 – A wild night on the river as a newly-hired wheelman on the Manistee locks himself in the pilot house and “with whistles tooting and engine bell chiming . . . steamed his Dreadnought up and down the river, charging every craft in sight.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 20, 1911]  The seaman, Martin Daley, is hired that day and almost immediately “took on a cargo of rum.”  He locks himself in the pilot house, signals the engine room for “full speed ahead,” and gets someone to cast off from the wharf at Michigan Avenue.  He brings the Manistee so close to the Rush Street Bridge that “most of the fresh coat of paint on her side adhered to the bridge.”  Steaming back toward the lake, Daley then “directed his energies toward running down smaller craft – launches, ‘party boats,’ and dingies [sic]”  as members of the crew break the windows of the pilot house in order to stop the rampage.  Finally, a Chicago policeman manages to clamber aboard at the life saving station at the river’s mouth and arrests the drunken sailor.  Daley tells the officer that he is going back to the Atlantic Ocean “because they can’t take a joke on the lakes.”  The above photo, taken in 1905, looks east from the Rush Street Bridge to just about the location where the Manistee was berthed.  The Kirk Soap Works stands where 401 North Michigan and the Michigan Avenue Apple Store can be found today.
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Friday, September 11, 2020

September 11, 1981 -- Chicago River "a Venomous Snake Coiled to Strike"


September 11, 1981 – Under the heading, “Chicago’s river worse than it looks,” the Chicago Tribune’s lead reports, “The Chicago River is so heavily polluted with chemical poisons in some places that the river bottom is classified as ‘hazardous waste.’” [Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1981] The article goes on to report that the United States Army Corps of Engineers, while sampling the river bottom preparatory to dredging the river, has discovered that “the mud and muck are tainted with chemicals that are just waiting to be stirred up, like a venomous snake coiled to strike.”  As a result, the Corps has delayed the dredging operation. The problem is the worst on the North Branch of the river where concentrations of PCB are found as high as 110 parts per million.  Any concentration over 50 parts per million is considered hazardous waste.  Rick Watson, an environmental engineer with the Corps, says, “We can’t dredge because we don’t have a disposal area that is environmentally acceptable … River quality depends on river use. If it is used by heavy industry and boat traffic, you will get only a certain quality. It is unreasonable to expect it to return to its natural state.  That’s the price of civilization.” 


September 11, 1963 – The city council “after more than three hours of heated debate” [Chicago Tribune, September 13, 1963] passes an open housing ordinance by a vote of 30 to 16.  The ordinance bans discrimination by real estate agents, prohibiting them “from discriminating in the sale, rental, or leasing of property of race, color, religion, national origin, or ancestry.”  A “block busting” section of the ordinance makes it unlawful to “solicit for sale, lease or listing any property on the contention that loss of property value may result because of entry into the area of persons of another race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry.” The Chicago Real Estate board goes on record as saying it will take the issue to the courts. The board’s president, Percy Wagner, says, “We’re going to proceed legally but firmly. The time has come when we shall have to take a position of political action. This does not mean we will take political sides, but we will do all we can to protect property rights.”  Shortly before the vote Third Ward alderman Ralph Metcalfe says before the council, “This ordinance … means that people who have the means and good will can move where they want to.  This is a first step.  It is not the ultimate.  The world will not come to an end.  But Chicago today is at the crossroads, and we must support something that is morally right or go backward.”  Outside City Hall thousands of people march against the ordinance.  “The throng,” reports the Tribune, “composed mostly of housewives, formed close lines four and six abreast and encircled the building in a moving, chanting surge.  They waved their placards bearing such slogans as ‘What has happened to our constitutional rights?’ and “We are opposed to open occupancy.’”  Alderman Metcalfe, the winner of four Olympic gold medals and the fastest man on earth in 1934 and 1935, is pictured above.


September 11, 1954 – Three years after the two 26-floor residential buildings at 860 and 880 Lake Shore Drive are completed, the developers, Herbert S. Greenwald and Samuel N. Katzin, reveal that they have acquired the block just north of those towers, a lot bordered by Lake Shore Drive, Walton Street, DeWitt Place, and Delaware Place.   The Chicago Tribune reports that the next project will be similar to the twin towers just to the south although “the new structures will be more conservative in use of wall materials than the ‘860’ towers.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 12, 1954]

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September 11, 1937 – The world champion backstroke swimmer from the Lake Shore Athletic Club, Adolph Kiefer, wins the twenty-third Illinois Athletic Club’s Chicago River marathon swim.  He covers the 2.75-mile course in 47 minutes and 51 seconds, finishing 35 yards ahead of a swimmer from Buffalo, New York.  Kiefer enters the race less than 30 minutes before it is due to begin and holds the lead for the entire swim, from its start in the lake just off Van Buren Street to its finish at the Wells Street bridge.  In 1935 Kiefer became the first person to break a minute in the 100-yard backstroke when he was just a 16-year-old Illinois high schooler. The time he posted in the Illinois High School Championships in 1936 lasted for another 24 years.  In that same year he represented the United Sates in the Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, setting a record in the 100-meter backstroke in the preliminary heat, the second-round heat, and the final.  That record stood for another 20 years.  In the over 2000 races of his career, Kiefer lost only twice.  He joined the United States Navy in late 1943 and in short order was put in charge of training over 13,000 Navy swim instructors in a program that ultimately trained two million recruits.  After he left the service, he established Adolph Kiefer and Associates in Chicago which specialized in starting blocks, lane lines, lifeguard safety equipment and apparel.  It was Kiefer’s company that marketed the first nylon competition swimming suit in 1948. He paid the city back for his success, working with Mayor Richard J. Daley to build swimming pools in the inner city, giving thousands of young people the chance to learn to swim.
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Wednesday, September 2, 2020

September 2, 1973 -- Marquette and Joliet Tricentennial Voyageurs Visit Chicago

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September 2, 1973 – Eight explorers in birchbark canoes paddle down the Chicago River, beaching their canoes at the mouth of the river where they are greeted by a lone Native American, White Beaver, of the Winnebago tribe.  The eight Illinoisans set out in the spring from St. Ignace, Michigan to commemorate the tricentennial of the voyage of Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, who embarked in 1673 on a 3,000-mile trip in search of a route to the Pacific Ocean.  The Reverend Charles J. McEnery plays the part of Father Marquette, leading the other seven from St. Ignace, across Lake Michigan to Green Bay, Wisconsin, following the Fox and Wisconsin River system to the Mississippi River.  The group paddled down the Mississippi to the Arkansas River, at which point they began their return, entering Illinois through the Illinois River and from there following the Des Plaines River, which led to the Chicago River.  At this point in the trek the group still has 500 miles left before the end of its journey.  All along the way the group has been welcomed into people’s homes, according to McEnery, where they have been housed and fed.  He says, “After this trip we really realize what courage it took for these men, who were terribly superstitious anyway, to make a 3,000-mile trip into an unknown land.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 3, 1973].  The group of voyagers is kept busy on this day.  Along with the greeting ceremony Cardinal Cody conducts a special outdoor mass in Pioneer Plaza close to where the seventeenth century voyageurs would have beached their canoes.  He urges a crowd of 300 people, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, to “admire the deeds of brave men while seeking to do equally brave and good deeds in the time that is ours.”  While all of the hoopla is taking place, four canoeists who had joined the eight voyagers for the day are kept busy with two river rescues.  A nine-year-old girl is pulled from the river, apparently after falling in while watching the ceremonies.  She is given artificial respiration and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where she is reported to be in good condition.  Minutes later screams are heard from the Michigan Avenue bridge as a 54-year-old woman hurtles into the river.  The canoeists pull her out, and she is taken to Henrotin Hospital where she is treated before being returned to Chicago State Hospital. 



September 2, 1981– Mayor Jane Byrne unveils a $3.3 billion, five-year public works plan that, if implemented, will bring major changes to the city.  In the plan’s 142 pages a half-billion dollars are allocated for projects in the Loop and at O‘Hare International Airport with $2 billion allocated to the rest of the city.  Byrne says, “This capital improvements program is indeed ambitious, but in that respect it is typical of Chicago.  It embodies not only the best hopes of Chicago citizens and my administration, but also our shared commitment to a better city in the years ahead.” [Chicago Tribune, September 3, 1981] Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of the plan is the $64.8 million proposal to eliminate the S-curve on Lake Shore Drive.  The plan also includes: the construction of the Columbus Drive bridge; the reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive from the Chicago River north to Huron Street; construction of a central public library in the block bounded by State and  Van Buren Streets, Plymouth Court and Congress Parkway;  and redevelopment of the six-square block area bounded by Washington, LaSalle, and State Streets and Wacker Drive.  Close to a half-billion dollars is allocated for improvements at O-Hare, including renovating and expanding terminals, upgrading parking facilities and the possible construction of a monorail system.  Midway is scheduled to see $50 million in improvements as well.  Elimination of the S-curve where Lake Shore Drive crossed the river, shown above, was one of the major projects outlined in the $3.3 billion plan.  


September 2, 1954 – Ten thousand people watch as the captured German submarine U-505 is hauled across Lake Shore Drive at Fifty-Seventh Street on its way to a permanent place at the Science Museum. The drive is closed to traffic at 7:00 p.m. and opened again at 7:00 a.m. the following day as the submarine is moved on rails for a distance of 300 feet across the highway  Directing the move is Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery who commanded the task force that captured the vessel off the coast of West French Africa in 1944, taking control of the first submarine ever commandeered in naval combat.  Workmen of the La Plant-Adair Company, a house moving company from Indianapolis, are in charge of jacking up the submarine and transporting it safely to its final resting place at the museum.  The above photo shows the U-505 sitting on the beach at Jackson Park after being rolled off the floating dry dock preparatory to being hauled across Lake Shore Drive to the Science Museum, today's Museum of Science and Industry. 

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September 2, 1945 – Over 20,000 people visit the LST-412, a 328-foot tank landing ship tied up in the Chicago River west of the Michigan Avenue bridge on the first day that the ship is open to the public.  In the afternoon a unit of U. S. Marines stage a demonstration of invasion tactics at the Foster Avenue Beach with 40 Navy planes leading the “invasion” in a mock 20-minute bombardment of the beach.  The LST, or “Landing Ship, Tank” was developed after the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk in the early stages of World War II.  One of the lessons learned in the evacuation was that there was no vessel capable of loading or unloading artillery or vehicles from a beachhead.  By November of 1942 the United States had developed the LST, a vessel capable of reasonable stability in the open sea with a bottom flat enough to make a beach landing practical. By the end of World War II more than 1,000 of these vessels would be built.  The LST-142 was one of 113 ships delivered to the Royal Navy under the Lend-Lease Act.  She was laid down in September 1942 at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland and launched just seven weeks later.  Sailing with a British crew, In September 1943 she saw her first action, supporting the Allied landings at Salerno and Anzio.  In June 1944 LST-142 supported the Allied invasion at Normandy, making seven trips to the beach, carrying tanks, trucks and artillery in one direction and evacuating wounded troops in the other.  At the end of the war the United States reclaimed the ship, and she barely made it to the Azores “with her welds cracking and the whole ship threatening to break up.”  [ww2db.com]   Not one of the LST-412’s 10 officers and 60 crewmen were lost in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.  After a tour of the Great Lakes, LST-412 was struck from the Navy list of ships on March 20, 1946, and on December 19, 1946 she was sold to the Northern Metals Company and scrapped.  LST-412 is pictured above offloading material in Sierra Leone in 1943.



September 2, 1914 – Federal officials begin an investigation to determine the cause of a fire that rips through the passenger ship City of Chicago, which lies beached at the life saving station at the entrance to the Chicago River.  The one big question about the wreck is how a fire could have gained such force if all members of the crew were on duty.  The boat sits with its hull resting on the bottom of the lake in about twelve feet of water with a load of Michigan grapes, cantaloupes and peaches still aboard.  The official report of the Coast Guard describes the event, “When within 5 miles of the end of her run in the early morning of September 1, 1914, the 1,439-ton passenger steamer City of Chicago, bound from St. Joseph, Mich., to Chicago, with 94 passengers, a crew of 56, and a full cargo of fruit, was discovered by her master to be on fire amidships.  To avoid panic no alarm was sounded, and the presence of the fire was kept secret on board until the master was able to lay his vessel, head-on, upon the breakwater protecting Chicago Harbor.  As the steamer rested upon the barrier referred to she lay within a few feet of the old Chicago Coast Guard Station.  The station lookout had observed smoke rising from her before she struck, and keeper and crew lost no time in beginning the work of extinguishing the fire.  The women and children on board were carried down ladders set against the steamer’s side.  With everybody safely landed, the Coast Guard crew devoted their entire attention to subduing the fire, and succeeded, with the help of a fire tug, in putting it out after three hours’ effort.”  The captain of the City of Chicago, Oscar Bjork, says, “There isn’t much to say about it.  You can see where the boat is, and you can bet I didn’t put her there for nothing.  I don’t think it would have been possible to save her anyhow – but I wasn’t figuring on saving her.  It was the passengers I was worried about.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 2, 1914]
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Monday, August 31, 2020

August 31, 1902 -- Lake Michigan Melee


August 31, 1902 – It is a wild night aboard the City of Milwaukee, sailing from St. Joseph, Michigan to Chicago as a spat between Clarence Bloss and his wife, both passengers on the paddlewheel steamer, turns into a near-riot.  Midway between Michigan and Chicago the couple begin to quarrel, and Mr. Bloss tries to get his wife down to their stateroom, a move which she resists.  The fracas draws the attention of the ship’s assistant purser, Sinclair Bastar, who attempts to separate the two, only to have Mrs. Bloss bite him in the arm.  It takes a number of crew members to take Mrs. Bloss to her cabin where she is held for the remainder of the trip.  In Chicago members of the Bloss family call the police, and seven crew members are arrested and taken to the central district station.  Mr. Bloss levels a charge of assault against Bastar, saying that Bastar attacked him and his wife, “striking him in the face and after disabling him [keeping] his wife in a stateroom contrary to her wishes.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1902] The other six crew members are released, and the return trip of the City of Milwaukee is delayed by a half-hour.  Mrs. Bloss, in the meantime, is taken to the West Side Hospital. 



August 31, 1994 – After 137 years Continental Bank at 231 South La Salle Street, the oldest financial institution in the city to operate as an independent bank, becomes part of BankAmerica Corp., the holding company for Bank of America.  With $187 billion in assets Bank of America scoops up Continental and its $22 billion in assets for a reputed $2 billion. Continental Bank was formed in 1857 as Merchants’ Savings, Loan and Trust Co. with founders such as Cyrus McCormick, George Armour and the city’s first mayor, William Butler Ogden.  In 1924 the bank moved into an impressive new building on the southeast corner of Jackson Boulevard and La Salle Street.  Standing across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago the impressive headquarters had a spacious Grand Banking Hall and a second-floor chairman’s office paneled in oak taken from a sixteenth-century English mansion. [Chicago Tribune, August 31, 1994] In the 1960’s and 1970’s the bank pulled ahead of its chief local rival, the First National Bank of Chicago, and was the first local bank to open a branch in a foreign country.  By 1981 it was the nation’s sixth largest bank.  Things soured in the 1980’s, however.  In 1982 the failure of Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City forced Continental to write off $326 million in Penn Square loans. Two years later rumors that the bank would be sold started a world-wide run on the bank that caused the United States government to step in with a restructuring plan that included a $4.5 billion commitment by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.


August 31, 1925 – The first one-eighth mile of the new Wacker Drive, running east and west along the south side of the river is opened, a project that is expected “to take 41 per cent of the traffic congestion out of the loop.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 31, 1925] All day motorists are attracted “into that broad one-eighth of double decked esplanade like bees to a posy.” The “smooth upper level roadbed” is 72 feet wide and is bordered on one side by a 24-foot sidewalk and on the other by an 18-foot sidewalk which overlooks the Chicago River, 15 feet below.  The paper reports that United States Vice-President Charles G. Dawes has recently conducted a tour of the project for General Geroge Goethals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, finished 11 years earlier.  Goethals reportedly remarked, “There isn’t anything equal to this at home or abroad.” Reports the Tribune, “From the finished one-eighth he could visualize the finished stretch of concrete quays, lower level street, upper level street, circling stairways, balustrades, pylons, lamps, pilasters, pedestals and arches which will sweep gracefully along the river’s south bank for three-quarters of a mile from North Michigan boulevard to the junction of Lake and Market streets”. In the above photo the east end of Wacker Drive begins to take shape where the barges are docked across the river from the Wrigley Building.


August 31, 1891 – The Chicago Daily Tribune greets news that a new art museum will be built on the lakefront with an editorial in its favor.  “The most important feature of the scheme, however, is the securing of a permanent art gallery for the city of sufficient dimensions to meet all demands for long years to come . . . It may be anticipated that the new structure will be as perfect as money and skill can make it, and as beautiful as artistic taste can suggest . . . something which will more clearly reflect the growth of enterprise, skill, and artistic taste in the World’s Fair City.”  The paper, and the city along with it, got its wish.

 
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