Connecting the Windy City

Saturday, July 4, 2020

July 4, 1974 -- Marquette Building in Jeopardy

J. Bartholomew Photo

July 4, 1974 – The Chicago Tribune reports that an attorney for the owner of the Marquette Building on the northwest corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets has labeled a city proposal for saving the building as “premature and not pertinent.” [Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1974]  The city’s proposal had been put forth on June 10 when the city Commissioner of Development and Planning, Lewis H. Hill, suggested that the building could be saved if the owner, Romanek-Golub and Co., was given “lucrative zoning bonuses” that would allow it to raze the buildings in the block bounded by Adams, Dearborn, Clark and Monroe Streets while allowing the Marquette to remain.  The position of Romanek-Golub is that it cannot “earn a fair income on operation of the Marquette under any circumstances” and that landmark status for the building “stigmatizes any building in the eyes of lending agencies and others.”  A position paper in which the Department of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle assesses the worth of the building states, “The preservation of the great works of architecture, which are this city’s unique, valuable, and ongoing contribution to the culture and civilization of the twentieth century, must be seen as a positive force that will enhance the quality and thus the life of the city.”

July 4, 1902 – 10,000 people gather in Independence Square at Douglas Park and Garfield Boulevard as Illinois Governor Richard Yates unveils a great fountain as a band plays, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean and 700 school children sing along.  In his speech the governor says, “You may go around the world, and into every port, and you will find no flag so dear to the seekers for freedom as the stars and stripes that wave over there.  It represents an unequaled, a sublime, and unprecedented citizenship.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 5, 1902]  The sculpture by Charles J. Mulligan stands on top of a 15-foot base in the shape of the Liberty Bell.  The children in the sculpture hold Roman candles that once served as fountainheads.  They also carry a flag, bugle and drum in the celebration of an old-fashioned Fourth of July.  Today the fountain basin is dry, surrounded by a ten-foot high fence as the above photo shows.

flickr.com

July 4, 1891 – The flag at Fort Sheridan is raised for the first time on its new flagstaff at 9:30 a.m. The Fifteenth Infantry is called out in full dress parade at 9:00 a.m., forming up on the road between the main entrance to the fort and the guardhouse, opposite to and facing the flagstaff.  Edith Crofton, the youngest daughter of the post’s commandant, Colonel R. E. A. Crofton, is given the honor of raising the flag.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “It was no light task for a young woman to hoist a large flag to the top of a staff 210 feet high.  Nevertheless she bravely tugged at the rope and the flag slowly but surely ascended.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 5, 1891]. As the flag reached the top, the assembled soldiers presented arms, and as spectators applauded, the post’s musicians played “The Star Spangled Banner.”

July 4, 1883 – A reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribune sets out for a stroll through the Lake-Front park, today’s Grant Park, as “a deliciously cool breeze fanned his perspiring brow.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 4, 1883] He discovers that nearly every bench had one or two occupants, concluding that “as a tramps’ paradise the park was an eminent success.  Deep, raspy snores, indicative of a tranquil slumber, floated up from various quarters of the park, and here and there could be dimly seen a recumbent figure, flat on its back, its arms and legs ungracefully distributed about it, a coat serving as a pillow and darkness as a cove.” Encountering a police officer on his way out of the park, the reporter asks if the situation is normal and if anything is being done about it. “Yes, sometimes we pull ‘em in,” responds the officer. “but not often. It’s only when they’re drunk and come down here disturbing the quiet sleepers.  They’re not all bums that sleeps here.  Some of ‘em are pretty well-to-do, but put on their old clothes, leave their valuables at home, and come down here to sleep.  It’s cooler, you know, than sleeping in a close room.  Come down and try it some night, and I’ll see that you ain’t arrested.” The above photo shows the park as the decade comes to an end.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 1 comments

Labels: 1974, Adams Street, Chicago Architecture, Dearborn Street

Sunday, May 31, 2020

May 31, 1960 -- Federal Center Announced

May 31, 1960 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that four Chicago architecture firms are joining together to plan “a glass and steel 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 are: 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.

chicagoparkdistrict.com

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.

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

Labels: 1960, Adams Street, Chicago Architecture, Chicago Development, Dearborn Street, Jackson Boulevard

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.

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

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

Thursday, April 30, 2020

April 30, 1922 -- McVickers Theater Demolition Begins

McVickers about 1864 (chicagology.com)

McVickers 1865 renovation (chicagology.com)

McVickers February, 1871 (Chicagology.com)

McVickers 1872 (Chicagology.com)

McVickers 1891 (Chicagology.com)

McVickers post 1923 (Chicagology.com)

April 30, 1922 – Just minutes after the last audience member leaves the McVicker’’s Theater, workmen begin demolishing the structure.  J. H. McVicker opened the original McVicker’s Theater in 1857 on West Madison Street near Dearborn Street.  It was destroyed by fire and rebuilt twice on the same spot, after the Great Fire of 1871, and in 1890. Even when it wasn't burning, various renovations changed the appearance and configuration of the theater over the years as well.  The 1890 theater was designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, who had also extensively re-designed the theater that it replaced.  “It is told of McVicker,” the Tribune reports, “that he was himself a comedian of parts and that his great aspiration always was to play the grave digger in Hamlet.  Each time as Hamlet was played by the various great actors who came from time to time, McVicker always supplanted the regular comedian in the supporting company, and played the grave digger himself.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 1, 1922]  The original theater cost $85,000 ($2,500,000 in today’s dollars), an impressive sum in a hamlet of around 40,000 people.  After the Adler and Sullivan building was demolished in 1922, yet another McVickers (minus the apostrophe) was built according to a design by the firm of Newhouse and Bernham.  The theater opened on October 26, 1922 and seated well over 2,000 people.  It rolled along for five decades, functioning mostly as a motion picture theater until its luck ran out in 1985 when it was torn down.  Today’s One South Dearborn now occupies the site.  The above photos show the various theaters that stood on the site for over a century.

April 30, 1959 – At 10:30 a.m. the Dutch freighter Prins Johan Willem Friso, slides into a berth at Navy Pier and becomes the first ship to travel through the new St. Lawrence Seaway to Chicago.  Forty American Indians ride a tugboat out to the ship and accompany it back to the dock where Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Fifth Army band greet the ship and its captain, Sander Klein.  From the dock the mayor escorts Klein to Michigan and Ohio Streets where a parade kicks off, heading down Michigan to the Blackstone Hotel for a reception at which the captain is made an honorary citizen of Chicago.  A small amount of the ship’s cargo is offloaded from at the pier, but the bulk of the freight will be taken off in Calumet Harbor where the ship will receive a cargo of industrial and agricultural products bound for European ports.

Marble Place (google.com)

Calhoun Place (google.com)

Couch Place (google.com)

Benton Place (google.com)

Holden Court (google.com)

Garland Court (google.com)

Haddock Place (google.com)

Arcade Place (google.com)

Court Place (google.com)

April 30, 1950 – The Chicago Daily Tribune runs a feature on the nine alleys that run through the Loop, providing an explanation of the significance of their names.  The feature is the result of the discovery of a street sign on “the hitherto nameless alley which runs from Wells st. to state st. between Monroe and Adams st.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 30, 1950]  That alley still is Marble Place.  The alley got its name as a result of the marble buildings that were constructed in the early days, the first use of a material other than wood in the center of the city.  Garland Court, which runs from South Water Street to Washington Street, between Wabash and Michigan Avenues, got its name from its sponsor, the Garland Stove Company.  Arcade Place, running from Franklin to State Street between Madison and Monroe Streets, began its life with an arcade over its eastern end.  An alley that led to the old courthouse, Court Place, runs from Franklin to State Street between Randolph and Washington Streets.  Calhoun Place, running from Franklin to State Streets, between Washington and Madison Streets, takes its name from John Calhoun, the editor of the first newspaper in the city.  An alley that runs between Lake Street and Randolph Streets from the river on the west to Michigan Avenue is named for, Ira Couch, the owner of the Tremont House, one of the city’s first hotels.  The Couch family mausoleum, by the way, can still be seen alongside La Salle Street near the Lincoln monument on the north side.  Couch Place becomes Benton Place east of State Street, a tip of the hat to Thomas Hart Benton, a United States senator from Missouri. Today Benton Place is a considerable distance east of State Street, running along a park in the middle of the Lake Shore East development.  Holden Court, which lies between State Street and Wabash avenue and extends in bits and pieces from Adams to near Roosevelt Road and over which elevated tracks run south of Harrison Street is named after C. P. Holden, a city councilman who lobbied for the construction of lake tunnels and water intake cribs to provide clean water to Chicagoans.  Finally, an alley running from Franklin Street to Michigan Avenue between Wacker Drive and Lake Street is named for Edward H. Haddock, a prosperous owner of Loop property during the time of William B. Ogden, the city’s first mayor.

April 30, 1903 -- A new tactic is used in an effort to appropriate land in Grant Park and use it for the construction of public buildings. The Illinois House of Representatives votes on a Senate bill to provide a site for the privately-funded Crerar Library, a legacy of Chicago businessman John Chippewa Crerar who left $2.6 million as an endowment for a free public library. The bill will empower park commissioners to authorize the construction of a free public library building on a site of their choosing, provided district tax payers approve the plan in a municipal election. The Chicago Daily Tribune editorializes, "There is land east of Michigan avenue where a site is available on which the trustees of the Crerar library will erect a handsome building if given an opportunity to do so. The land cannot be put to a better use. The house should give them an opportunity by concurring in the senate bill it is to vote on today." Although the legislation passed, the referendum never made it to the voters. The battle over the library, led by merchant A. Montgomery Ward for much of the rest of the decade, continued all the way to May of 1912 when the library trustees admitted defeat and announced their intention to purchase the land at Randolph and Michigan for the building. That building, designed by Holabird and Roche was delayed by the outbreak of World War I and finally finished in 1919. By the 1950's the building could no longer support all of the library's holdings, and the institution affiliated itself first with the Illinois Institute of Technology and then with the University of Chicago, where the current library, designed by Stubbins Associates, was completed in 1984. The late 1950's photo above shows the 1919 library across Randolph Street from what is now the Chicago Cultural Center and across Michigan Avenue from the Coca Cola sign. 150 North Michigan Avenue occupies this location today.  That is the A. Epstein & Son's design with the diamond top, pictured below the first photo.

April 30, 1886 – At the annual reception of the First Infantry, held a day earlier, word gets around that a fine gift for the organization would be a brand-new Gatling gun.  Members of the Commercial Club who are present get up a subscription list, and by the morning of April 30, $2,000 has been collected, and the gun is ordered by telegraph with the hope that it will reach the city by the evening so that it can be turned over to the regiment.  Representatives of the Commercial Club also assure officers of the First Infantry that when the lease on their present armory expires, “the regiment will find a new and permanent one ready for them.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May, 1886] Five days earlier 25,000 workers had walked in a procession from the west side, near where the Haymarket riot would occur a month later, to a rally on the lakefront near where many of the city’s elite families made their homes.  Their cry was for an eight-hour work day, and anger was in the air.  Following the events of May, the Commercial Club did far more than purchase a Gatling gun … the members made it possible for the United States government to secure land north of the city, next to the Chicago and North Western Railroad tracks, so that infantry and cavalry units could be easily moved into the city in case of trouble. That was the origin of Fort Sheridan.  The First Regiment Armory would be finished by 1890, standing on South Michigan Avenue not far from where those 25,000 workers rallied in 1886.  It is pictured above.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:00 AM 1 comments

Labels: 1922, Chicago Architecture, Chicago Development, Chicago Event, Chicago Fire, Dearborn Street, Madison Street