Connecting the Windy City

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 12:30 AM 11 comments

Labels: 1900, Chicago Bridges, Chicago Event, Chicago RIver, Chicago Sanitary District

Sunday, May 24, 2020

May 24, 1954 -- Water Filtration Plant Wins in Court

May 24, 1954 – The Illinois Supreme Court rules that Chicago may proceed with construction of its 96 million-dollar water filtration plant just north of Navy Pier. Near north side property owners are huddling to determine whether to ask for a rehearing or take the case against the city directly to the United States Supreme Court. In his opinion Judge Harry B. Hershey finds that the 85-acre filtration plant will not be an “unreasonable interference” to navigation and will not violate an 1891 series of contracts in which lake front property owners gave up their rights to submerged lands with the understanding that the park district would use the property for park purposes. The court finds that the property in question is beyond the 250 feet over which the park district has control. “. . . the reclamation of this submerged land and the construction of a filtration plant thereon can constitute no violation by the park district of its covenant with the property owners,” the court’s opinion states. [Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1954] In the above photo to the right of the long Municipal Pier, today's Navy Pier, extending out into the lake is the location of the site of the proposed water purification plant. It took nearly a half-dozen years of court battles to get the project finally prepared for take-off.  Things have changed a bit since 1954 as the above two photos clearly show.

May 24, 1927 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that “A bridge at the mouth of the river and a new stretch of Wacker drive along the bank are suggested in the Chicago Plan commission’s recommendations for linking the outer drive in Grant park with Lake Shore drive.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 24, 1927] The commission recommends that “the bridge and its boulevard approaches should follow the classic architecture of the boulevard link and Wacker drive.”  The proposed route would have the approach to the bridge start at Randolph Street, where “a raised avenue, at least 140 feet wide, would be built over the Illinois Central railroad yard in a direct line to the river. There the drive would curve to the right and extend along the river to is mouth, becoming an extension of Wacker Drive.”  James Simpson, the chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, says, “The early construction of the remaining portion of the Wacker Drive extension will enable the outer drive to function to even greater traffic advantage because it will permit vehicles bound to and from the west side to use the wide streets that form the quadrangle, thereby avoiding congested loop streets.”  Contrast the two pictures above and you can see that the original plan, which was built, has changed dramatically since.

May 24, 1919 --  West bound Harrison street car No. 1818 leaves the rails of a temporary bridge at Harrison Street just west of the river and slides down a 25-foot embankment as 40 passengers experience a terrifying plunge toward the water.  The hero of the day is a city fireman, Cornelius E. Burke, who stands at the front of the car, straining to hold the hand grips, breaking the fall of passengers tumbling toward the front of the car.  Burke is battered and bruised and faints while helping passengers through the front doors and windows of the streetcar.  Motorman Richard Pierce says, “As the car lunged most of the passengers believed we were falling into the river.  They all tried for the back of the car, but couldn’t make it.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 25, 1919]. The car comes to rest at a 45-degree angle as fire wagons, ambulances and boats converge on the scene.  Everyone gives fireman Burke credit for his actions, saying that his shouting “that there was no cause for fear seemed to still the fears of the passengers.”  One passenger, Edward Leppl, sums up the ordeal, saying, “It was more like a football scrimmage.  After the first panic every one tried to find his hat.”  Fireman Burke is inset in the Tribune's photo of the wreck.

Chicago Tribune Photo

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Labels: 1954, Chicago Sanitary District, Court Cases, Lake Michigan

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

January 1, 1939 -- Chicago Sanitary District Opens Begins New Era

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January 1, 1939 – Jeff J. Davis, an engineer in the Chicago Sanitary District power house in Lockport, flips a switch and, without fanfare, the city’s artificial sewage system, costing $177,000,000, takes over most of the sewage disposal work that has been done for over a century by the Chicago River.  The action is a direct result of a United States Supreme Court decision issued in 1930 mandating that the flow of water from Lake Michigan into the river be reduced to 1,500 cubic feet per second by December 31, 1938.  With the flip of the switch the sewage system is now about 90 percent finished with additional capacity to be added until it is complete in 1945.  Sensing that the winds of change were against them, the city began an ambitious construction program in the 1920’s which brought sewage treatment plants online that still form the foundation of the city’s wastewater treatment plan.  The Calumet sewage treatment works went into operation in 1922, followed by the North Side works in 1928, the West Side works in 1931 and the Southwest works in 1939.  These last two eventually were merged to become what is today the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, one of the largest wastewater treatment facilities in the world.  The above photo shows work on the system in the 1930's at Kilbourn Avenue and Thirty-Eighth Street.

thisdayinwaterhistory.wordpress.com

January 1, 1900 –With the beginning of a new year and a new century, a new era begins in the city as at 10:00 p.m. “a big steam dredge began clawing into the narrow dam of earth which held back the water in Mud Lake from flowing into the main channel of the drainage canal.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 2, 1900]  Sluice gates prevent the water from the river from flowing into the new canal, eight years in the making, with the hope that the water would be contained until permission was received from the Governor of Illinois.  The dredge is positioned just west of the bridge at Kedzie Avenue at a point where the new drainage canal is about 3,000 feet to the south of Mud Lake, the obstacle that historically separated the Chicago River from the interior waters of the state.  The dredge would have to claw away about 15 feet of an earthen barrier that was 25 feet wide before the water from the river could be released.  With no permission from the state on hand and with the workers on the dredge keeping up steam for the operation, Chief Sanitary District Engineer Isham Randolph orders earth cut way in order to create a channel “as wide as two shovels of the dredge.”  In a give-and-take between city and state, the city is asking permission to open a section of the canal from the Chicago River to Lockport, saying that it will seek permission to open the section from Lockport to Joliet at a later date.  The state, however, is willing only to issue a permit for the complete 28-mile project. A Sanitary District trustee says, “We went to Joliet in the hope that the permit to open the canal would be ready and we could let the water in tonight.  The State commission decided [that it] must confine itself to one final statement covering the whole canal.  That it was not ready to make, and so we came away without the permit we wanted.”  So in a Meigs Field maneuver the officials at the site set the dredge to work, hoping that the sluice gates would keep the waters in check until, one way or another, permission came from the state to open the canal.  The photo above shows the operation to remove the earthen dam as it continues on January 2, 1900.

January 1, 1954 – Today’s headline in the Chicago Daily Tribune reads, “Girls Take ‘Em Off for Last Time at Rialto” as Minsky’s Rialto Theater at 336 South State Street, a “strip tease center in Chicago for 35 years” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 1, 1954] closes its doors after the last show ends at 1;30 a.m.  The building will be demolished and a group of one-story “taxpayers” will be erected in its place.  The theater opened in 1917 and was designed by Marshall and Fox, the same architects that designed the Blackstone Hotel and the Drake on North Michigan Avenue.  It could seat 1,500 when it opened for vaudeville shows, but it turned to burlesque shows in the 1930’s.  Today it is long gone, along with the one-story shops that took its place.  The site is now the home of Pritzker Park on the northwest corner of State Street and Van Buren, a bit of green space facing the elevated tracks and the Harold Washington Library just to the south.

January 1, 1913 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune begins 1913 with this headline, “Murders Spread as Police Fail.”  The city coroner reports that through December 1, 1912 there were 287 homicides in Cook County for the year, all but 14 of them inside the city.  London, according to the paper, “with a population three times that of Chicago, reported only thirty-three in 1910.”  There were more murders in November than in any November in the preceding eight years.  The coroner’s jury determined that 168 of the 297 homicides could be classified as murder.  Of that number only 32 people had been convicted.  The article states, “For years the public and the police have been talking about curbing the use of revolvers and the carrying of concealed weapons.”  In fact, an ordinance was passed several years earlier that required dealers to report the sale of firearms and owners to register weapons that they purchased, but the ordinance was never seriously enforced and was repealed during 1912.  Pessimistically, the paper observes, “If history repeats itself, it is a safe guess that the police will have the murderer and the evidence to convict him in about 20 per cent of the cases.”

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Labels: 1939, Chicago Event, Chicago RIver, Chicago Sanitary District

Friday, May 31, 2019

May 31, 1926 -- Grant Park's "Seated Lincoln" Is Unveiled

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May 31, 1926 – “The Seated Lincoln” is unveiled in Grant Park at a location just east of Van Buren Street. It is the last work of Augustus St. Gaudens, who died in 1907.  Judge Charles S. Cutting delivers the principal address at the ceremony, saying, “Lincoln was in every sense a real human character.  Abraham Lincoln has become a world figure.  He is the symbol of law and liberty throughout the world.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 1, 1926]. All of the principal players involved in bringing the statue to Chicago have long since died.  Augustus Saint-Gaudens completed the first model for the sculpture in 1897, but it was destroyed by a fire in his studio.  He had another model ready for casting in 1906 and died a year later. John Crerar, who died in 1889, began the process by which the statue came to Chicago by leaving $100,000 in his will to create it.  Both of the trustees entrusted with Crerar’s Lincoln fund have died as has New York architect Stanford White, who St.-Gaudens named to design the architectural setting for the monument.  It has been 37 years, then, between the time Crerar funded the statue and its unveiling in Grant Park.  Originally, according to a design by architect Daniel Burnham, the monument was to have stood near a similar monument to George Washington near the proposed Field Museum in Grant Park.  Nothing was done for nearly two decades, though, as Aaron Montgomery Ward led the city into a series of law suits over the appropriate use of Grant Park, ultimately prevailing in his belief that the park should remain parkland. The final case was decided in 1910, and development of the park began.  During this time the sculpture was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as the 1915 San Francisco Exposition.   In 1924 the South Park Commissioners allocated a permanent site on what they intended to be the Court of Presidents and the sculpture was dedicated on this date in 1926.  The commissioners’ intent to install a similar monument to George Washington opposite Lincoln’s seated form never materialized. 

May 31, 1900 – At noon a Northwestern Elevated Railroad train carrying invited guests enters the Union Loop and “the new road, the last one to be completed of those composing the great elevated railroad system of Chicago—the greatest in the world—was formally opened.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 31, 1900] Twenty minutes later the train is speeding northward, having circled the Loop, carrying 250 passengers, all guests of the company.  It takes 22 minutes to reach the northern terminus of the line at Wilson Avenue. On the way the train passes five trains headed south, all packed with paying passengers.  It is a BIG DEAL.  The Tribune reports, “Along the entire line of the road the windows were filled with people, who cheered and waved their handkerchiefs as the four cars composing the first train rolled by.  Tugs and factory whistles violated the anti-noise ordinances in the most flagrant way.”  The guests on the train disembark at the Wilson Avenue station and make their way to Sheridan Park, a station on the Milwaukee Road, where lunch is served. Afterward a ceremony is held on a temporary rostrum.  The Chicago Commissioner of Public Works proclaims, “The completion of the road marks an era in the history of the North Side and will tend to the development of this part of the city.”  The President of the railroad, D. H. Louderback, says, “We intend to make our road the best in the country. Its construction is perfect, and with its four tracks it is the best and most flexible in the city.  We will aim to accommodate all passengers.” This was the last hurrah for Charles Tyson Yerkes, the last line of his transit empire, and he spoke on this day only of the development that would come to the north side of the city because of the new railroad line.  After attempting to pass around a million dollars in bribes to get exclusive rights to operate a city-wide transit enterprise for a period of hundred years in 1899 – and failing to get the appropriate legislation passed – he was persona non grata in the exclusive social circles of the city and at City Hall.  By the end of 1900 he had sold the majority of his Chicago transit holdings and departed for New York.  The Northwestern Elevated Railroad still exists today – hop on the Red Line in the Loop and head north.  The above photos show the railroad under construction and as it appeared at about the time of its opening.

May 31, 1960 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that four Chicago architecture firms are joining together to plan “a glass and steels structure” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 31, 1960] that will replace the federal courthouse.  It will sit on the east side of Dearborn Street between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard, providing more than 1.3 million square feet of space for somewhere around 5,500 employees of the United States courts and 19 federal agencies.  The paper reports that “The surrounding walks and plaza, as well as the lobby floors, will feature granite paving.  The lofty first floor of the 30 story building will be devoted primarily to the lobby, stairways, and 24 elevators.”  Plans include air conditioning and “if conditions warrant, atomic bomb shelters.”  Completion date for the building is slated for late 1963 with final drawings due by the end of 1960.  This will be the first of two tall government buildings that will replace the old courthouse across Dearborn Street, a building that will be razed as the courthouse is being constructed so that a new federal building can be constructed in its place.  The architectural firms involved in the project were: the office of Mies van der Rohe; Schmidt, Garden, and Erikson; C. F. Murphy; and A. Epstein and Sons.

May 31, 1952 – Major Lenox R. Lohr, president of the Science Museum, today’s Museum of Science and Industry, announces that visitors will soon be able to walk through an 18-foot heart, part of a 3,000 square foot exhibit sponsored by the Chicago Heart Association. As part of the experience a human pulse will be audible. In another part of the exhibit the circulation of blood will be illustrated. The heart would fit into the chest of a 28-story human, which will make the museum an educational facility with a very big heart, indeed.

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Labels: 1926, Architecture (Connections), Chicago Sanitary District, Chicago Statues, Field Museum, Grant Park

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

May 14, 2011 -- Sanitary District Calls Cleaning the River a Waste of Money

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May 14, 2011 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s board says that making the Chicago River safe enough for swimming would be a waste of money while increasing the chances of people drowning.  At a news conference Terrence O’Brien says, “In these difficult economic times when public agencies are facing budgetary shortfalls, people are losing their jobs and homes … it is important … that public funds are used wisely.”  [Chicago Tribune, May 14, 2011]  Earlier in the week the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency notified the District that it had failed to prove over the course of three years of hearings that cleaning up the river “would result in substantial and widespread social and economic impact.”  The E.P.A. ordered the District to implement more stringent standards for bacteria and other pollutants so that stretches of the Chicago River, the Cal-Sag Channel, and the Little Calumet River are made safe for recreation.  THAT was just eight short years ago – when virtually no one could have imagined the transformation of the river that has occurred during that time.  In fact, a 2.5-mile distance swimming event is tentatively scheduled for September 15 of this year with intrepid swimmers leaving Ping Tom Park on the South Branch and splashing their way to the Clark Street bridge.   

May 14, 1938 –Workmen complete the razing of a three-story brick building at 601 West Sixty-Third Street, popularly known as the “Holmes murder castle.”  THIS is the building made famous 70 years later in Erik Larson’s popular book, The Devil and the White City.  It is where the owner of the building, Dr. H. H. Holmes, disposed of the bodies of six of his victims in the early 1890’s.  Holmes, who was hanged in 1896, allegedly murdered as many as 27 people before he was apprehended.  The United States government pays $61,000 for the building and lot, on which it proposes to build a post office.  The two buildings are pictured above.  The post office is still there. Note the elevated structure to the left of each building.  In the 1890’s that was the “Alley El,” the first elevated railroad in the city, one that carried passengers to and from the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Today it is part of the Green Line.

May 14, 1907 – At 2:40 p.m. Chicago White Sox officials begin the festivities that honor the team for the victory in six games of the “Hitless Wonder” in the 1906 World Series against cross-town rivals, the Chicago Cubs.  “For ten minutes,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “a stream of autos charged intermittently through the gate and deposited city and baseball officials, ball players, and rooters all over the outfield.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 15, 1907] Mayor Fred Busse, Police Commissioner George Shippy, and Charles Comiskey unfurl the World Series pennant and carry it to home plate where William Hale Thompson asks for and receives “three cheers for Comiskey, three more for the White Sox, and still another three for the mayor.”  As the ovation continues, a “mounted delegation” from the stockyards gallops “into the field and rode pell mell around it to the accompaniment of vigorous applause.”  Then, the president of the National Baseball Commission, August Hermann, presents the award to the mayor and Comiskey.  Silence fills the stadium as “the ropes were being fastened by expert hands to the pennant.  The white stockinged players, who had fought for and won that emblem of supremacy, grasped the hoisting rope, forming themselves into a long line with Manager Jones in the place of honor, and began to haul away.”  And then … “Just as 15,000 throats were swelling with the first notes of the grand paean which was to have marked the climax of Chicago’s biggest baseball féte, just as the silken banner, emblematic of the highest honors of the diamond, had shaken out its folds over the White Sox park and started its upward climb in response to the tugs of the heroes of the day, Comiskey’s veteran flagstaff swayed, trembled in every fiber, then broke squarely off in the middle and toppled back to the earth which reared it.”  The pennant is temporarily draped over a liquor sign in right center field as the game begins in threatening weather and is quickly called as the field is “flooded beyond all possibility of further play” within five minutes.  Several cars have to be pulled out of the mud in the outfield with the last one pulled off the field just before dark by a team of horses.  “The pennant will be raised another day,” the paper concludes, “when President Comiskey is able to have erected a new pole strong enough to bear the strain.  But there will be no heroics.  Chicago had those yesterday.”  The presentation of the pennant at home plate is shown above.

May 14, 1920 – The Michigan Avenue bridge is opened to traffic. It took 24 years and four city mayors to get the project completed, a project that began, according to Mayor William Hale Thompson, with a suggestion from the wife of the city controller in 1891, Mrs. Horatio N. May, who thought it might be just swell to have a link across the river at Michigan Avenue. Twenty years later the first plans for the bridge were drawn up, and in 1913 the first ordinance pertaining to the construction of the bridge was passed. Condemnation proceedings, authorization of bonds to finance the project, and the federal government’s objection to the use of steel for the bridge during wartime kept construction from beginning until April 15, 1918. Finally, at 4 p.m. on this day Mayor Thompson leads a motorcade from Congress Plaza up Michigan Avenue to the new bridge, where he cuts the ceremonial ribbon. Airplanes appear above and drop confetti. Four thousand cars follow the mayor’s automobile across the new bridge. A tiny dirt road on the north side of the river called Pine Street sits ready to become one of the city’s most impressive thoroughfares.

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Labels: 2011, Chicago RIver, Chicago Sanitary District, Clark Street