Connecting the Windy City

Monday, August 3, 2020

August 3, 1978 -- State of Illinois Office Tower to Anchor Massive Redevelopment Project

Chicago Tribune Graphic

August 3, 1978 – The Chicago Tribune reports that Illinois governor James Thompson has approved $15 million in state funds to proceed with land acquisition and design of a new Chicago-based state office complex.  The new building, expected to replace an office facility at 160 North La Salle Street, will contain 1.3 million square feet of space and employ 4,000 state workers.  The governor also announces the formation of a committee that will advise the state on the best ways to finance the new structure.  On the same day that this announcement is made, developer Arthur Rubloff announces a two-block long project that will insert a shopping mall, hotel, apartments and a commercial tower in an area bounded by Wacker Drive on the north, State Street on the east, Washington Boulevard on the south, and Clark Street on the west.  Rubloff says, “This will be the foremost development ever undertaken in any city in the nation.  When completed in about five years, it will make the Loop the foremost downtown in the country.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1978]  According to Rubloff’s scheme every building except the 222 North Dearborn building and the Reliance building on State Street in a seven-block area will be demolished to make way for the new mixed-use complex.   Most of the area was eventually re-developed although it took decades for the process to unfold, and it ended up with a completely different vision, depicted in the above graphic, than Rubloff proposed in 1978. 

August 3, 1999 –Destruction of the Chicago Amphitheatre at 4220 South Halsted begins.  The huge exhibition arena opened in 1934 as a venue to exhibit and showcase the sheep, cattle and hogs that came through the Union Stock Yards.  The building was a miracle of construction.  When a disastrous fire, fed by 60-mile-per-hour winds, destroyed six square blocks around the stockyards on April 18, 1934, architect Abraham Epstein and his staff were asked to have another building in place by December 1 of the same year.  Using 11 solid steel arched trusses, at the time the largest in the world, the team had the building finished, complete with air conditioning and press and broadcast media facilities, just seven months after the disastrous fire. When the stockyards closed in 1971, the livestock shows moved south, and the aging building lost bookings to other, more modern – and far less pungent – facilities.  Over the years, though, events went far beyond livestock exhibitions.  The 1952 Republican National Convention chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower as its presidential nominee in the building.  That same year the Democratic Party chose Adlai Stevenson to oppose Eisenhower and repeated the decision in the Amphitheatre in 1956. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus brought its act to the arena for 18 years.  Musical acts from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans to The Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead entertained crowds there.  The Beatles played at the arena on September 5, 1964 and returned to the big barn to perform before 13,000 fans on August 12, 1966. In May of 1999 the city announced that it had acquired the 12-acre-lot on which the building sits and would be using the space to expand the Stockyard Industrial Corridor, stretching from Ashland Avenue to Halsted Street and from Pershing Road to Forty-Seventh Street. The International Amphitheatre’s chief engineer for 31 years, 65-year-old Dutch Trentz, said, “I’ve had a lot of deaths in my family. But when they tear that place down, that one’s really going to hit me.  It’s history to you, but that’s life to me.” [Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1999]

August 3, 1906:  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that at a recent meeting the trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago approved the purchase of El Greco’s “Assumption of the Virgin” for the price of $40,000.  The canvas, measuring 13 feet by two inches high and seven feet by six inches wide, will be the largest painting on display at the Art Institute.  It was commissioned by Don Diego de Castilla in 1577 as an altar piece for the convent church of San Domingo El Antiguo in Toledo, Spain.   The Art Institute today describes the priceless work in this way, “The artist’s use of flickering, high-keyed colors and broad brushwork further lend the work an ecstatic feeling sought after by Catholic Church patrons during the Counter-Reformation.  El Greco used such bold colors and figural arrangements to arouse a spiritual fervor in the viewer and impart the deep sense of faith he himself felt.”  The work may be found In Gallery 211 in the European Painting and Sculpture section.

August 3, 1884 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints a letter from a Professor J. H. Long in which he describes the results of an “elaborate examination” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1884] of the city’s drinking water.  “Our water is bad enough,” writes Professor Long, “but it might be a great deal worse.  Any one interested in the subject will find in Bridgeport eight large pumps at work night and day drawing water from the river and throwing it into the Illinois and Michigan Canal at the rate of 60,000 cubic feet per minute. By this means a current is created which carries the sewage of the south and main branches of the river away from the lake and into the canal running toward the Mississippi.”  The professor says that chemists usually consider three parts of “free” ammonia and five parts of “albuminoid” per hundred million parts of water “as limits beyond which the nitrogenous matter should not go” in water that is to be used for consumption.  At the State Street bridge a test found seven parts per million of free ammonia and seventy parts per million of albuminoid.  At the Bridgeport pumps there were found 200 parts per million of ammonia and 100 parts per million of albuminoid. The area that came to be known as Bubbly Creek yielded 500 parts per million of ammonia and 140 parts per million of alubuminoid. At this site the analysis revealed “a great variety of specimens of lower animal and vegetable life. The north side was not exempt. At the Fullerton Avenue bridge there were found 240 parts of free ammonia per million parts of water and 84 of albuminoid per million. “From whatever standpoint we take,” the professor writes, the North Branch appears to be an evil.” The conclusion of the study suggests that boiling and then filtration of water should be undertaken to ensure the health of the city’s populace.

doc.newberry.org

August 3, 1879 – The Chicago Daily Tribune provides details of the tremendous growth that is occurring in the area around the Union Stock-Yards, first opened 14 years earlier.  The paper calls the population that has gravitated to the area “the largest industrial population gathered in any single industry in any one square mile in the world.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1879]. The three major producers in the Stock-Yards – Armour, Hutchinson, and Fowler – each employ more than 2,000 people working at 32 packing houses.  As many as 20,000 workers are employed as laborers, clerks, bookkeepers, and managers at the sprawling facility, some of these workers traveling four miles to get to the job.  Two new streets have been opened up and sidewalks and water distribution lines have been added to Paulina, Laflin, Loomis, Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth Streets.  A new church has been built at the corner of Laflin and Loomis, and a new brick school is going up four blocks north of the church.  Houses can be purchased for around $500 … the area lies outside the fire zone established after the 1871 fire, so the new homes are built of wood and are designed to be inexpensive. Lots sell for between $150 and $170 with most of the property and homes built with a workers’ available cash, free from any loans.  “The development of this industrial army,” the Tribune reports, “is the growth of Chicago in only one direction, and for only thirteen years.”  The above photo shows a typical neighborhood near the stockyards at the time of the Tribune article.

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Labels: 1978, Chicago Development, Chicago Event, Chicago Politics, Clark Street, State Street, Washington Boulevard

Thursday, July 23, 2020

July 23, 1931 -- Chicago Historical Society Moves into New Quarters

JBartholomew Photo

July 23, 1931 – The cornerstone of the new Chicago Historical Society building at North Avenue and Clark Street is laid with no formal ceremonies.  Articles placed in the cornerstone include photographs of the society’s trustees, a list of members and contributors to the building fund, booklets containing the history of the society, and copies of daily newspapers.  The new building, a red brick Georgian-style museum designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, is officially opened on October 9, 1932.  In 1986 a new wing and an underground storage facility, along with a new façade was added according to designs by the architectural firm of Holabird and Root.  It is the city’s oldest cultural institution.

July 23, 1978 – Forty years ago on this date the Chicago Tribune runs an article on Wells Street with the headline, “Can Wells St. be Turned Around?” [Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1978] with the lead, “It’s a ragtag street, North Wells Street – a place that has been trying to be a lot of things at once, a place that has been up and, more recently, down.”  In the words of one Old Town merchant, as the area between Goethe on the south and Lincoln Avenue on the north began to change in the 70’s to nude dancing establishments and adult book stores, “The families didn’t want to come.  Those places are what killed us, and too much dope around – that’s not good.  No businessman here is making any money now. At the end of the week we’re pulling money from our pockets to pay the bills.”  Two months before the article runs, though, a collection of community groups in Old Town forms the Near North Association, and Robert A. Begassat, the president of the new group, says, “What we want to do is make Old Town a place people will come to again, and at the same time a place for the people in the neighborhood.”  Already, bowing to community pressure and increased police surveillance of prostitution, three of six bars with nude dancing have closed.  Recently, Alderman Burton F. Natarus successfully has passed a zoning change for the east side of Wells between Burton Place and Schiller designed to keep new taverns out. Sam Glassman, the president of the Old Town Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Book Joynt in Old Town, is cautiously optimistic, saying, “This street will never be what it once was, but if we can do half what we did, it will be terrific.  I’ve been here 12 years and I’ve seen it at the top and I’ve seen it at the bottom.  There’s only one way to go now, because we’ve hit the bottom.  But it’ll come back.”  And come back it has as a stroll down Wells Street on a July afternoon or a salad and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc at Topo Gigio will clearly show.

choosechicago.com

July 23, 1975 – In Chicago as part of a 58-city tour, the Rolling Stones make a splash in the city that gave them the music that formed the heart of their act.  The group arrives at O’Hare with an entourage of 30 people, heading downtown to the Ambassador East in six limousines, arriving at 9:30 p.m.  Then come the suitcases with “a large truck depositing more than 130 pieces of luggage at the Ambassador’s doorstep.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1975]  The suitcases fill the entire lobby as “bellhops worked furiously until it disappeared like the stars and filled the 32 rooms Jagger had reserved.”  Then one of the guests on the fifteenth floor, Michael Benz, the assumed name of front man Mick Jagger, slips out the back door and heads to the Pump Room for dinner. From there he heads to Faces on Rush Street, where he “slumps in his seat, playing imaginary drums to the piped-in music, staring at the dance floor.”  Bumming a cigarette from a reporter, he remarks, “It can make you mad – the road.  No sleep, no regular food, a lot of drinking – crazy … very tired all the time.”  At 4:00 a.m. Faces closes down and Tribune reporter Rick Soll writes, “Mick Jagger goes out into the darkness, led to waiting cabs by his protectors … He turns, then stops to wave, then stops himself, shrugs, and climbs inside … They’re all strangers.”  Could this have REALLY been 45 years ago?  Whew .... THAT went by in a hurry.

July 23, 1925 – Chicago’s new Union Station is formally opened at 11:30 a. m.  The ceremonies begin with Mayor William Dever and other officials touring the structure that covers 35 acres just west of the river between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard.  After the tour is completed the guests are entertained at a luncheon served in the terminal's Fred Harvey restaurant.  The waiting rooms are finished in marble and cover an expanse as large as three baseball diamonds.   The terminal includes a jail for prisoners in transit, a hospital and a chapel.  Graham, Anderson, Probst and White are the architects of the complex.  The photo above shows the massive terminal as it appeared when it opened in 1925.

July 23, 1897 – Five thousand invitees come to the Art Institute of Chicago to honor the sculptor August St. Gaudens and the widow of General John A. Logan.  “For nearly two hours,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “the throng filed in and out of the room known as the Henry Field gallery, where they were greeted by Mrs. Logan, Mr. St. Gaudens, and the members of the receiving party.  Charles H. Hutchinson, President of the Art Institute, stood at the head of the line, introducing the guests to Mrs. Logan, who offered her hand to each in a hearty grasp.  Scores of times during the evening did Mrs. Logan demonstrate her rare faculty for remembering the names and faces of those whom she had met only casually before.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 24, 1897]  The event is held just two days after the widow of the great Civil War general arrives in the city from New York for the dedication of her husband’s statue in Grant Park.  The sculptor, August St. Gaudens, spends the evening of the Art Institute reception in humility.  The Tribune reports that he “stood almost at the end of the line of those receiving the guests.  He who was most talked of among the thousands who thronged the galleries and promenaded the corridors, who was the cynosure of all eyes, was in mien and bearing the most unassuming man in the entire assemblage.  With quiet dignity he received the congratulations that were showered upon him, his clear, keen eyes lighting up now and again as some artist friend added a word of appreciative criticism to his friendly greeting and congratulation.”  For more information on the Logan statue you can turn to this link in Connecting the Windy City.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 3 comments

Labels: 1931, Chicago Event, Chicago History, Clark Street, Museums

Saturday, May 30, 2020

May 30, 1968 -- Medussa Challenger Strikes Again

May 30, 1968 – It has only been a year that the Medusa Challenger has been at work on the Chicago River, but the big lake freighter will continue to make her presence known for years, indirectly causing enough traffic problems during her time sailing through the city to cause Chicagoans to refer to her as the “jinx ship.”  On this night the 562-foot ship is halted in her trip up the river when the Clark Street bridge short-circuits and refuses to open.  With the Dearborn and State Street bridges open to allow the ship to approach Clark Street, the malfunction causes traffic on all three streets to stop for an hour and 15 minutes.  Finally, at 7:30 p.m. the Clark Street bridge is made operable and “with a blast of its horn, the ship was under way as was the traffic, including one car driven by a man who had a permanent solution to the whole problem … ‘You know what they should do with this river?’ he said.  ‘They should have it paved.’” [Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1968] For all you might ever want to know about the ship and its ill-fortune in Chicago, you can head to this section of Connecting the Windy City.

May 30, 1939 – The Chicago and North Western Railroad rolls out a set of brand new diesel-electric locomotives, just off the assembly line of the Electro-Motive Corporation in LaGrange, to pull the “400,” its famous high-speed train, to Milwaukee. In the coming week the locomotives will be placed in service between Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota.  The new locomotives are capable of running 117 miles an hour even though they are still pulling standard equipment.  Sometime in August new streamlined cars from the Chicago shops of the Pullman Standard Car Manufacturing Company will be added to the consist.  The new locomotives are powered by four 1,000 horsepower 12-cylinder diesel engines, which drive four generators that supply current to eight traction motors, four on each unit.  Finally, after nearly a half-century of trying to clear the smoke of steam locomotives from the lakefront and the southwest side of the city, it appears that a solution has arrived.

May 30, 1893 – The laying of the cornerstone of the new Memorial Hall on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street takes place under the direction of the Grand Army of the Republic. Both streets are crowded with veterans and ordinary citizens “all anxious to behold the ceremony and listen to the addresses incident upon the formal commencement of the creation of a magnificent structure, which will be a credit to the city and take high rank among the costly edifices already so numerous in Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 31, 1893] The plot of ground, known as Dearborn Park, was originally part of the southern boundary of Fort Dearborn, part of the “public ground” that extended east to the lake and south to Madison Street. It required a coming together of the Directors of the Chicago Public Library and the Grand Army of the Republic to get a bill through Congress that would allow construction on the land. It took persistence . . . the legislation only passed after three attempts over the course of ten years. In a simple ceremony the flag is run to the top of the flag pole, a band plays the Star Spangled Banner and dozens of artifacts are placed in a copper box that will lie below the cornerstone. Then General E. A. Blodgett, the Commander of the Illinois Grand Army of the Republic, closes the ceremony, saying, “In the name of the soldiers and sailors who have saved our nation we thank you for the honor. We rejoice that our city thus proclaims to the world that patriotic self-sacrifice is not to be forgotten. We trust that our beloved land may never again be deluged in blood. Yet we remember that the perils of peace are scarcely less than the perils of war. The demands for loyalty are as great upon the sons as they were upon the sires. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” The Memorial Hall with its great dome occupies the northern half of what is today the Chicago Cultural Center. The photo above shows the site at the time with Randolph Street on the right and Washington Boulevard on the left. The second photo shows the area as it appears today.

chicagocop.com

chicagocop.com

May 30, 1889 – Little Frank Degan, the son of a policeman who lost his life on May 4, 1886 at what today we call the Haymarket Riot, pulls a cord and unveils the statue that will commemorate the events of that day.  There are close to 2,000 spectators, more than one might expect for an event staged on a rainy day. Over 175 uniformed officers are in attendance.   Chicago manufacturer Richard Teller Crane, head of the commemoration committee, opens the ceremony, saying that the event “… commemorates an important event in the history of our city and our country.  It commemorates a sacrifice of life made in the interests of the people.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 31, 1889]. Then Mayor DeWitt Clinton Cregier accepts the monument on behalf of the city, ending with his speech with these words, “This is a free and lawful country, with plenty of room for the people of all the earth who choose to come here to breathe the free air and to obey these laws, but not an inch of room or an hour to dwell here for those who come for any other purpose.”  Following the mayor is Franklin H. Head, the president of the Chicago Historical society, who delivers a lengthy speech that traces the development of democracy in the country, leading up to the May day in 1886 when a bomb exploded in a protest march and 67 policemen are killed or maimed.  Head warns, “It should be borne in mind that apostles of anarchy do not propose a modification of existing laws and institutions, but a wholesale destruction by violence and throttling of all law.  History would, as always, repeat itself: violence would beget violence, and crime would beget crime.  All the powers and forces of evil would come again and inaugurate anew the reign of Chaos and Old Night.”  At the end of Head’s address, Mayor Cregier asks the crowd for three cheers “for the monument and the heroes whose brave deeds it commemorates.”  And then “… the crowd slumped away through the mud and the water.  The Haymarket Monument was unveiled.”  The statue dedicated that day in May of 1889 has had a nomadic existence.  It was dedicated in the middle of Haymarket Square on Randolph Street, just west of Desplaines Street.  Forty-one years later a streetcar, whose motorman claimed he was sick of looking at the statue, left the tracks and crashed into the monument.  It was patched up and relocated to Union Park.  Then, in 1956, with half of the old market square obliterated by the Kennedy Expressway, the statue was moved back, close to its original location, sitting on a plinth overlooking the highway.  In the turbulence of anti-war protests of 1969 a bomb targeted the statue, breaking over a hundred windows in the neighborhood and spraying pieces of the statue onto the Kennedy Expressway.  It was rebuilt only to be blown up again on October 6, 1970.  Once again the statue was rebuilt, and afterwards given a 24-hour police guard.  In 1972 it was moved to the lobby of the Central Police Headquarters and from there, in 1976 to the Chicago Police Academy.  Today it can be found behind a controlled access fence at Chicago Police Headquarters at 3510 South State Street.  There it was placed on a new pedestal and unveiled by Geraldine Doceka, the great-great granddaughter of Officer Matthias Degan, the officer whose son unveiled the original statue in 1890. The original work was designed by Frank Bathchelder of St. Paul, Minnesota and sculpted by Johannes Galert of New York with funds raised by the Union League Club of Chicago.  It was Galert’s first major commission.  The statue's first location and its present location are shown above.

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Labels: 1968, Chicago Bridges, Chicago RIver, Clark Street, Dearborn Street, State Street

Saturday, May 23, 2020

May 23, 1969 -- First National Bank of Chicago Makes a Move

J. Bartholomew Photo

May 23, 1969 – Brink’s armed guards move all of the money and securities in the First National Bank of Chicago through a temporary underground tunnel and into the hands of waiting tellers in the bank’s new building on Monroe Street, between Dearborn and Clark. The whole operation takes less than 30 minutes. At the close of business on this Friday tellers are told to move to their spaces in the new building just to the east, where they find workers still installing bullet proof windows at their counters. The following Monday the new bank will open, and the process of tearing down the old one will begin.

May 23, 1959 – With a royal visit from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth coming on July 6, city officials are working feverishly to tidy up the city for Her Majesty.  This day brings news that an area one thousand feet south of the Chicago River and just east of Lake Shore Drive which has for more than 30 years been used to load thousands of tons of garbage onto railroad cars will be cleaned up.  “When the wind is right,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “odors are wafted over Lake Shore drive and into Grant park, where the queen will enter Chicago” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 23, 1959] The shut-down of the operation on the lakefront is made possible by the completion of a new incineration plant at One-Hundred Third and Doty Avenue and a new system in which large trailer trucks are used to haul refuse to Lake Calumet.  The area shown in the photograph isn't far away from where Studio Gang's Vista Tower is being constructed today.

May 23, 1913 – In another of a series of articles dealing with the “new slogan” for the city [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 23, 1913], “Where ‘We Will’ There’s a Way,” the Chicago Daily Tribune discusses the impact that the railroads have had upon the city.  Leading with a description of the business district, an area circumscribed by Chicago Avenue on the north, Sixteenth Street on the south, Halsted Street on the west, and the lake, the paper states, “Of this 2,140 acres the railroads own approximately 50 per cent, one-half of all downtown Chicago.  Something like 1,000 acres in the heart of the city are given up to railroad terminals and rights of way.” Taking one portion of that area, the paper veers toward the unimaginable, the development of the huge railroad freight yards south of the river, east of Michigan Avenue, and north of Randolph Street.  “By way of violent and impossible supposition,” the article states, “imagine that the eighty acres now occupied by the freight yards and houses could be thrown open to office and business buildings.  There would be plenty of sites out there on the lake shore which would offer almost unequaled opportunities for fresh air, sunlight, ventilation, and unobstructed views.” Of course, that development eventually did occur – over 60 years later in what is now Illinois Center and Lakeshore East.  The article also traces the impact the railroads have had on getting from place to place within the city.  Because of the blockade of railroad tracks, the article asserts, there are only four streets left, running form the center of the city to the west side, “on which any sort of retail business can be expected to develop as it overflows from the east side of the river.”  It is even worse on the south side of the city … “Running to the south from the business center there are only three streets possible for retail business and one of these, Michigan avenue, is already almost solidly filled with the salesrooms of a single line of trade [the automobile].”  The top photo shows the extent to which the rail yards dominated the South Loop in 1929 when the river's course was changed in a massive construction project.  The photo below that shows how dramatically things have changed since that time, a change that continues with the development of land east of the river, south of Van Buren Street and all the way to Roosevelt Road today.

chicagotribune.com

May 23, 1897 --  Mayor Carter Harrison leads over 6,000 city cyclists, 3,200 of them representing 34 riding clubs, over the streets of the city.  Before him, clearing the way, are “a dozen husky policemen, who felt the awful responsibility that rested upon them riding with the eye of the Executive upon them.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 24, 1897].  The grand tour starts at Thirty-Fifth Street and Grand Boulevard, finally rolling to a stop at the Thistle Cycling Club House at Washington and Paulina Streets.  The only glitch comes when the keeper of the Rush Street Bridge turns the bridge just as the Delaware Club comes to the river … “So the Delawares stopped and said things to the bridge man, and spent their money for pink pop and other things, until they finally found their way across, and went pounding over to the West Side like a suburban fire company responding to a four-eleven.”  The mayor wears a suit of “somber brown,” with a Red Cross emblem on his arm as he rides with the Red Cross corps attired “in blue suits and wearing the red emblem,” attracting “the eyes of every one that had not been hypnotized by the fierce glances of the fat policemen in front.”  The tour starts at 11 minutes before 11:00, and the procession proceeds down Michigan Avenue “at a lively clip,” touring the North Side before heading back south with contingents still heading north passing riders heading south at Ohio and Rush Streets.  In an hour and 45 minutes it is over and at Union Park “several thousand people were going in several thousand directions, and everybody apparently trying to beat the best record, whatever it is, of a hungry man riding to a dinner.”   In 1896 the Chicago Daily Tribune observed, “Chicago is the bicycle center of the United States.” [Chicago Tribune, May 3, 2014]  In the half-dozen years from the early 1890's Chicago’s bicycle manufacturing had grown from four companies to 25.  The average cost of a bicycle was $75 (That would be $2,000 today}.  The manufacturers in the city were cranking out 250,000 bicycles a year.  Mayor Harrison even had a campaign picture taken on a bicycle in 1897, observing that in a city with 50 cycling clubs with 10,000 members the photograph “would carry weight with the vast army of Chicago Wheelmen.” Whether the photo helped or not, this would be the first of his five mayoral wins.  The above photo shows the Lakeview Cycling Club in the 1890’s in front of their clubhouse on Orchard Street.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 0 comments

Labels: 1969, Chicago Architecture, Chicago Event, Clark Street, Dearborn Street, Monroe Street

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

April 21, 1855 -- Lager Beer Riot Leaves One Dead

chicagocop.com

April 21, 1855 – Imagine that you are a hard-working German or Irish immigrant in 1855.  You work a six-day week, ten or twelve hours a day.  What happens on that seventh day?  You rest.  And what is the best way to rest back in those primitive days when there was no YouTube or Tik-Tok?  You head out to one of hundreds of small pubs that are scattered throughout the north and west sides of the city.  Perfect … until trouble comes a-knockin’ on the tavern door when Levi Boone is elected mayor.  Soon after his election on March 6, the mayor convinces the City Council to raise liquor license fees by 500%, mandating that the licenses must be renewed quarterly.  Boone also triples the size of the municipal police force before decreeing that the city would enforce an old ordinance requiring bars and taverns to close on Sunday.  Before long, hundreds of arrests are made for violating the Sunday ordinance, and the tired and downtrodden – and now beer-less – German workers raise a defense fund for those who were now not IN bars, but BEHIND them.  A judge schedules April 21, 1855 for a test case to hear arguments concerning the legality or illegality of the actions of those who have been arrested.  On the appointed day a swarm of completely sober and exceedingly angry Germans crosses the river, headed for the Cook County Court House.  Mayor Boone orders the bridges across the river swung open, so that the invasion can be stalled long enough to summon additional police to the area.  Despite being outnumbered, the police are still able to push the protestors out of the Court House, and they retreat to the north, across the river.  In the afternoon, however, an armed mob comes back down Clark Street, determined to make their voices heard.  Boone once again orders the bridge at Clark Street opened.  Since the bridges open by rotating on a turntable located in the middle of the channel, many protestors are stuck on the bridge when they are opened.  This does not help their dispositions.  Tempers are heightened further when the police open fire on the protesters on the Clark Street bridge.  In the mayhem one person is killed and over 60 arrested.  Boone declares martial law, and cannon are set up around the courthouse square.  It is over for the mayor, though.  No one arrested during the Lager Beer Riot is punished, and the license law does not last through the summer.  In 1856 heavy turnout from the German and Irish drives Boone and his cronies out of office, the first time in the young city’s history that a coalition of working class citizens determine the outcome of an election.  As a bit of city trivia … chicagocop.com notes that Hunt Avenue in Beverly is named for Captain Leander Hunt, a Chicago policeman who lost his arm after being wounded during the riot.  For a hilarious recounting of the events of the day, tune into this YouTube offering.  The above photo shows the Clark Street swing bridge at about this time.

dnainfo.com

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April 21, 1975 – City planning officials release “The Riverside Plan of Chicago,” a document that, for the first time, assembles all of the proposals for river improvements in a single place.  The Chicago Tribune reports that if the plans are carried out as proposed “the 1.5-mile stretch of the Chicago River, between Wolf Point and Lake Michigan, could one day rival the lakefront as the city’s recreational mecca.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1975]  The report looks toward an eventual string of small parks and walkways along both banks of the river, a 100-acre park on landfill south of the river and east of Lake Shore Drive, improvements to Navy Pier, and the conversion of Ogden slip, south of Lake Point Tower, into a park.  Another recommendation is the placement of artwork on both public and private property along the river, especially along the south bank near Michigan Avenue, at Wolf Point and at Navy Pier.  A small park is proposed on a site at the foot of Rush Street on the north bank, along with a 25-foot landscaped walkway for the river frontage at Wolf Point. The report also looks toward construction of some residential buildings along the north bank of the river between Lake Shore Drive and the proposed bridge at Columbus Drive.  The two photos form a stark contrast between what the river and the adjoining area looked like in 1970 and what it looks like today.

April 21, 1967 -- The third and final tornado to strike Illinois on this day begins northwest of Joliet at about 4:45 p.m. It moves east-northeast, building power and momentum as it goes. It takes six minutes for the monster funnel to carve a path of damage 16 miles long through the suburbs of Oak Lawn, Hometown, and Evergreen Park. At the intersection of Ninety-Fifth Street and Southwest Highway it throws several dozen cars stopped in traffic off the road, and sixteen people are killed at just this one location. The south end and east wall of Oak Lawn High School are destroyed at 5:26 p.m. when the school clocks stop. With winds of over 100 m.p.h., the tornado finally blows itself out over the lake off Rainbow Beach. Even though it is no longer on the ground, it still has enough power to pop windshields out of cars parked at the Filtration Plant at Seventy-Eighth Street and the lake. The disaster is immense -- 33 people lose their lives, and over 1,000 suffer injuries. 152 homes are totally demolished, and another 900 or more are damaged. In its analysis of the tornado the National Weather Service concludes, "Most of those killed were people who were not in a position to hear the warning because they were away from home. Actually, the tornado could hardly have come at a worst [sic] time of day or week to catch the greatest number of people out in the open."

April 21, 1948 – A gang of more than a hundred railroad workers begins laying tracks form the Illinois Central tracks across South Lake Shore Drive at Twenty-Eighth Street and into the grounds where the Chicago Railroad Fair is set to open on July 20.  A cut is made in the southbound lanes of the drive so that tracks can be laid with the northbound lanes tackled the following day.  Assurances are given that asphalt resurfacing of the road will "leave the drive as good as ever.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 22, 1948] Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry organized the Railroad Fair “to celebrate the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Opening of the West in the United States, by holding an Exposition in Chicago, showing in Educational, Scientific and Graphic form the building and development of the Railroads of North America with a demonstration of their place and importance in the American Economy.”  [chicagology.com] The fair was originally supposed to run for just the summer of 1948, but it was so successful that the city brought it back for the summer of 1949.  Held on 50 acres of Burnham Park between Twentieth and Thirtieth Streets, the fair was planned in just six months and featured exhibits from 38 railroads and 20 railroad equipment manufacturers. During the two summers the fair ran, over 5.5 million people trekked to the lakefront to see the show.  The laying of the tracks across Lake Shore Drive is shown in the photo above.

April 21, 1901 – A huge iron tank breaks from its supports on the roof of the Galbraith Building on Madison Street and smashes through six floors to the basement.  Seven people are injured, none of them seriously, and all the glass on the Madison Street side of the building is broken.  Two crows are killed in the Slotkin Pet Store on the ground floor.  Fortunately, the accident occurs on a Sunday.  There was no warning, and if the tank had fallen on any other day of the week, casualties would have undoubtedly been far higher.  The tank had been installed a month earlier to supply water to the fire suppression system, and the water in the tank alone weighed almost six tons.  Harry Solomon, one of the fortunate souls who escaped the tank’s fall, said, “The thing was over before we could realize our peril.  A deluge of water and wreckage poured on us as we stood gazing into the great gap that had been cut through the floor not three feet from where I had stood.  I knew in an instant that it was the tank, as we had spoken of the danger of installing the great weight in the old building.  The whole building shook, and I thought there was no hope for us, but we rushed to the fire-escape to avoid going down with the floors.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 22, 1901] In the above plate from Rand McNally's 1893 View of Chicago the Galbraith Building is #10 at the very top of the rendering toward the right corner.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 2 comments

Labels: 1855, Chicago Event, Chicago History, Chicago Politics, Chicago RIver, Clark Street

Friday, April 10, 2020

April 10, 1865 -- Lee Surrenders; Chicago Celebrates

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April 10, 1865 – As a new day begins, the Dearborn Light Artillery fires a hundred guns … “their echoes waking up the sleepers who had not left their beds at the stroke of the bell.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 11, 1865]  The bell is sounded to wake citizens to the news that General Robert E. Lee has surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, and war is all but over.  The Tribune reports, “The halcyon of peace – victorious peace – hovered o’er the head and the angel of prosperity was seen approaching with a balm for the healing of the nation.”  As the sun begins to rise, the streets of the city are full with bonfires burning, gunfire echoing, and flags flying in all quarters.  Business is suspended for the day, and schools are dismissed at noon.  A meeting of the committees of the Board of Trade is held at the Tremont House, ending in a resolution that a salute of 200 guns be made at 4:00 p.m. and the court house bell would be rung.  A hastily assembled parade is formed before the appointed hour, and thousands march up Lake Street to Franklin, down Franklin to Washington, east on Washington to Clark, down Clark to Van Buren, east on Van Buren to Michigan Avenue, and up Michigan to the starting point on Lake Street.  At one point the procession stretches nearly four miles.  In the evening “fireworks by the thousand and candles by the million” are set off with “scarcely a dark window … seen in the central part of the city.”  Bonfires blaze on every corner of Clark Street from Lake Street to Van Buren in the central part of the city.  The Tribune ends its coverage of the day with these words of hope for the future, “May the sun of peace now rising never know setting more.”

April 10, 2017 – The Chicago Cubs open Wrigley Field Plaza for the first time as Crane Kenney, the club’s president of business operations, says, “Our vision was to create a neighborhood center where families, fans, and visitors can find entertainment, unique and local food options and daily attractions in an urban park setting.” [Chicago Tribune, April 10, 2017] As part of the festivities the team hoists its World Series Champion banner at 6:15 p.m. prior to a 7:00 p.m. start of the first home game of the season against the Los Angeles Dodgers.  The Park at Wrigley fills a triangular spot just to the west of the ballpark between Clark Street and Waveland Avenue.  It features a two-story flagship Cubs Store that sells team gear and memorabilia.  It also includes a fountain and an artificial turf mini-field on which kids can run around and adults can soak up the Wrigley Field ambiance.  Plans are to use the area as an ice skating rink during the winter months.

April 10, 1992 – The U. S. Steel Group’s South Works closes its doors, ending a run at this location that goes all the way back to 1882 when the company began as the Chicago Railway Mill Company, and the mill that once produced steel beams for most of Chicago’s skyscrapers and jobs for thousands of area residents” ends its run [http://forgottenchicago.com/articles/south-works/], leaving an uncertain future.  A U. S. Steel spokesman, Thomas R. Farrall, says, “We want to get value from the facilities.  The mill is one direction real estate and development is another direction.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1992] About 730 workers will lose their jobs with the closing.  Only 30 of those are eligible for pensions. Various development schemes have been hatched over the intervening years.  The latest one for the 420-acre site, released early in 2017 envisions a build-out in four phases, each phase contributing 3,000 low- and mid-rise buildings, built around a harbor and spread over 30 city blocks along the lake shore.  The area that the South Works covered is shown in the photo above.

April 10, 1955 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune editorializes about a $5,000,000 appropriation 

bill sponsored by State Representative William E. Pollack, a Republican from Chicago, to locate a four-year campus for the University of Illinois on the North branch of the Chicago River around California Avenue. "The university's budget requests have been cut drastically." states the editorial. "For the university to expand its operations and expenditures in Chicago when it can't get enough funds for the proper operation of the facilities that it now has would be the height of folly." [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 10, 1955] Ten days later Mayor Richard J. Daley would begin his first term as the Mayor of Chicago, and he would say toward the end of his career that helping to arrange for a branch of the University of Illinois in Chicago was his greatest achievement. The university's library is named for him. The photo below shows His Honor officially opening the new university on February 22, 1965, ten years after and over six miles south of Representative Pollack's proposal.

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April 10, 1937 – Fire breaks out at 4:00 a.m. at the South Shore depot that sits alongside the Illinois Central Railroad station just east of Randolph Street.  It doesn’t take long before “flames burst through the roof of the structure, lighting up Michigan avenue in the vicinity of the public library, and attracting hundreds of motorists and loopgoers to the scene.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 11, 1937]  The fire brings a large response from the Chicago Fire Department as fire fighters keep their distance battling the 2-11 fire while crowds on the Randolph Street viaduct watch the heroics.  The twelve-year-old structure was first used by the Illinois Central but was turned over to the South Shore in 1931.  This is the second time a fire has gutted the depot.  In a May, 1934 fire, five fire fighters were injured.  In the above photo the station stands just to the right of the peristyle, which was torn down in February, 1953.  Today this is the northwest corner of Millennium Park.

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Labels: 1865, Chicago Event, Clark Street, Lake Street, Michigan Avenue, Washington Boulevard