Connecting the Windy City

Thursday, March 5, 2020

March 5, 1972 -- Amtrak Ends Intercity Runs into Roosevelt Road Station

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March 5, 1972 – The end of the line is reached for intercity passenger trains using Central Station at Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue.   Switching to Union Station will be the overnight Panama Limited to and from New Orleans; the Shawnee, serving mostly the universities at Champaign-Urbana and Carbondale; and the George Washington-James Whitcomb Riley, serving Cincinnati and Washington, D. C.  Central Station opened on April 17, 1893, just in time for the May 1 opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition.  It was designed by New York architect Bradford Gilbert in a Romanesque style, using red brick and sandstone.  It was, perhaps, the grandest of the great train stations that served the city in the heyday of passenger trains.  When it opened, the terminal’s train shed was the world’s largest, measuring 610 feet long by 140 feet wide.  Passengers waited for their trains in a waiting room that was three stories high.  There was a balcony that allowed them to look out over Lake Michigan and a 225-foot clock tower that along “with its arched windows, rounded support columns, red-tile pitched roof, and spiral peaks” made the building resemble “a Medieval Europe castle one might see in ancient France, Spain, or England.”  [American-rails.com]  The Illinois Central Railroad continued to use the building until 1974 when it completed its new headquarters at 233 North Michigan Avenue.  By the end of that year the entire complex was razed.

J. Bartholomew Photo

March 5, 1970 – U. S. Representative Melvin Price, the chairman of a House Armed Services Committee sub-committee, announces that the defense department has notified him of the closing or transfer of military installations in the state, including the transfer of Fifth Army Headquarters from Ft. Sheridan to Fort Sam Houston, Texas where it will be combined with the Fourth Army.  U. S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird says that 371 different cost-cutting actions will be taken in the near future, leading to a saving of $914 million.  Laird estimates that 35,300 military personnel and 58,000 civilians will be affected.  Plans call for the movement of Fifth Army headquarters to be completed within a year although few details are available for what the status of tFort Sheridan will be in the future.  The fort, which the U. S. government established in 1887, would continue on for almost a quarter-century, celebrating its last birthday On July 24, 1992. Today its 230-acre historic district is composed of 94 preserved buildings, most of them dating from 1890 to 1905, that have been transformed into private residences.  With abundant green space, it is a hidden gem on the North Shore lakefront.

March 5, 1962 – The largest public housing project in the country opens with Mayor Richard J. Daley presenting the keys to the first tenant.  The Robert R. Taylor homes will provide 4,415 apartments as subsidized units on a 35-acre site between State Street and the Rock Island Railroad tracks, extending from Thirty-Ninth to Fifty-Fourth Street.  The development is named after Robert R. Taylor, a civic leader and former chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.  Designed by Shaw, Metz and Associates, the development consists of 28 16-story buildings, most of them clustered in groups of three. The Robert Taylor homes will add to the 26,739 apartments that the C.H.A. already operates.  The housing authority also has 1,860 more apartments under construction at 32 different sites with another 2,767 apartments in the land acquisition or planning stage.  The best of intentions cannot salvage a bad idea, and the Robert Taylor homes, marooned in a two-mile stretch of commercial and retail desert, became a cautionary tale in how not to provide subsidized housing.  Originally intended to shelter 11,000 residents, the development at its peak held 27,000 people, 95 percent of whom were unemployed.  The decision was made in 1993 to replace the entire project with a mixed-income community of low-rise buildings, and the last building of the Robert Taylor homes was demolished almost exactly 45 years after the project opened.

March 5, 1901 – In 1889 John Chippewa Crerar, a wealthy Chicago industrialist died and left approximately 2.6 million dollars to fund a library in the city. In 1894 that library was legally incorporated and by 1901 the board of directors had hatched a plan to erect a building for the library in Grant Park at the foot of Washington Street.  On this date in 1901 the Chicago Daily Tribune endorsed the plan in an editorial, stating, “If built as planned the structure will be one of which the city will be proud.  It will be an ornament to the lake front, against which the property-owners cannot make a reasonable objection.”  The only possible drawback to the plan, according to the paper, was “the smoke nuisance form the adjacent railroad tracks.”  The editorial concluded, though, that “if the smoke nuisance were always to be considered there would be no building at all in Chicago.”  There followed a long dispute over erecting the building in Grant Park, followed by a lengthy delay caused by the First World War.  Groundbreaking did not take place for the Holabird and Roche designed building until 1919 when it was begun on the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street.  It was torn down in the early 1980’s and the collection moved to the University of Chicago.    

March 5, 1862 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune editorializes about the nearly intolerable condition of the Chicago River, observing that "A walk across Rush street, Madison street or Polk street bridges will work conviction of the trouble upon the happy possessor of the obtusest of noses." The paper finds that between Fullerton and Chicago Avenues over 4,000 head of cattle are being "stall-fattened," and that "The entire drainage of these sheds . . . pours directly into the river." In the three miles from Bridgeport to Madison Street the paper found "no less than seventeen packing houses . . . the aggregate number of animals slaughtered on or near the river's banks whose blood swells the crimson tide, is not less than five thousand per day." In conclusion, the editorial states, "There have been, since October last, poured into the river the blood and entrails of more than eighty thousand head of fat cattle and of four hundred thousand hogs, besides the sewage and the winter's refuse of a hundred and twenty thousand well fed people. Let us not wonder, when this conduit of corruption is leaking out its contents into the lake, that when the wind is right, the water is abominable. Rather let us account it a mercy that it is no worse."

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Labels: 1972, Chicago Architecture, Down They Forgot as Up They Grew, Illinois Central, Michigan Avenue, Transportation

Friday, January 17, 2020

January 17, 1925 -- Chicago Loop Turns Day into Night -- Smoke Menace Increases

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January 17, 1925 – Day is turned into night in the Loop as “every available light in the central business district was utilized to offset the darkness” as a “condensed cloud of smoke, soot, dirt, tar, ash, ferric oxide and gasses … reduced the light to such an extent that it was all but dark.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 18, 1925]  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the city’s damage by smoke is in excess of $50 per family each year, “the sheer physical damage to property of all kinds from collars and cuffs to lace curtains and rugs.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 12, 1925]  “Each year Chicago throws away for smoke damage almost as much money as it cost to build the world’s fair and the sanitary canal,” the article continues.  The city has been trying to do something about the problem of smoke pollution since 1881 when the first crude anti-smoke ordinance was passed.  In 1912 the city spent $46,000 in an attempt to moderate the problem.  By 1924 that figure had slipped to $26,600.  In 1910 the staff of the smoke inspection bureau numbered 34, but by 1924 that number had dwindled to 10.  On January 21, 1925 the City Council orders its health committee “to begin at once and continue from day to day an inquiry of the causes and effect of air pollution in Chicago, and to report its finding and recommendations to this council not later than March 1, 1925," noting that in failing to confront the issue the city “not only fails to meet its obligation and one of the first purposes of its existence, but also directly contributes to sickness, suffering, and possibly death, which fails to take all reasonable precautions and measures to protect, promote, and conserve public health.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 22, 1925]  Things did not improve quickly ... the above photo shows the corner of Lake and State Streets at 10:15 a.m. on February 1, 1957 ... 32 years after the Tribune cried out for change in 1925.

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January 17, 1909 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reviews “the greatest wrecking operation that ever was carried out in Chicago,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 17, 1909] the demolition of four square blocks bounded by Canal, Clinton, Fulton and Madison Streets. Beginning on May 2, 1907 a hundred individual structures that housed more than 500 businesses were leveled within 18 months to make way for the new passenger terminal for the Chicago and North Western Railroad.  Two months before the operation began, three men, working for the Garden City Wrecking Company, inspected every building in the area, in an attempt to assemble an accurate bid for the work.  Leading the list of salvageable material that the appraisers found was lumber worth between $400,000 and $500,000.  The Tribune reports the buildings held “… old joists, beams, and stringers of cork pine that the lumber market today could not equal in quality and sizes.  Timbers twenty odd feet in length without a knot to mar them were the rule.  Forty years ago this pine – now almost extinct – could be bought for $12 a thousand feet; today such pine will sell for $150 a thousand.”  Over a hundred workers spent 18 months clearing the area, hauling away millions of tons of material from the 13-acre site.  The Ogilvie Transportation Center at the bottom of the highlighted rectangle now anchors the section of the city that was cleared in 1909.  It replaced the Chicago and North Western terminal that was demolished in 1984.

January 17, 1920 – Chicago wakes up to the realization that the day of the hangover is gone as Prohibition begins at midnight.  On the previous day “auto trucks were at a premium during the late afternoon and early evening” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 17, 1920] as individuals pursued the last chance to buy liquor for home consumption and transport it to their homes.  Major A. V. Dalrymple, the “head of the prohibition enforcers” promises that no effort will begin at enforcing the new law for ten days. “Of course I don’t mean that you can sell the stuff tomorrow,” he says. “Far from it. But we will not start any search of seizure until this ten day period has passed.”

January 17, 1915 – South Halsted Street between Polk and Madison Streets becomes a battle ground as 1,500 unemployed men, women, boys and girls battle the police.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, “Shots were fired, clothes were torn, eyes blackened, and heads cracked while clubs, blackjacks, and revolver butts were used with bruising effect on heads, arms and knuckles” as the “hunger procession” proceeded up Halsted Street.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 18, 1915] The battle occurs after a meeting of the unemployed at Bowen Hall at the Hull House settlement.  Two detectives inside the hall, dressed as unemployed workmen, listen as Lucy Parsons, the widow of Albert Parsons, who was hanged for alleged complicity in the Haymarket Riot of 1886, speaks.  The detectives, Sergeants Fred Krueger and Herman Eastman, report that trouble is brewing.  First Deputy Superintendent of Police Herman Schuettler, who himself was at his post during the Haymarket riot, orders, “Demand a permit from them, and if they haven’t got one order them to disperse. The reserves will be on the way to help you.” A procession forms on Polk Street, just west of Halsted and begins to march, six people abreast, up Halsted, carrying a large black banner with one word, “Hunger,” displayed in white letters.  The police order the marchers to disperse, but the marchers continue onward, a voice crying out, “To h___ with the orders.  We’re hungry!”  The policemen, small in number and waiting for reinforcements, are surrounded.  According to the paper’s reporter, “In a minute the cluster under the swaying ‘hunger’ banner was a maelstrom of fists and clubs.  Girls and women shrieked and fell to the ground in the fray.  A small, dark haired girl, climbing on to the shoulders of a man, dove head foremost into the center of the fight, her fingers reaching out for the eyes and hair of the policemen … The detectives drew their revolvers and began to lay to right and left, felling all within reach … Women threw their arms around the necks of the plain clothes men, biting them and tearing their faces with finger nails.”  On the marchers move, coming up to a phalanx of policemen at Harrison Street; the procession breaches the line and continues north to Adams Street where they encounter mounted officers.  On they continue to Monroe Street.  Battered at each new block “the ranks of the marchers were becoming noticeably thinned.  Those remaining appeared to be the more vindictive who had succeeded in fighting their way through.”  Finally, at Madison Street the marchers find themselves surrounded, and many of those who are left “made for doorways, alleys, saloons, lunch rooms, and basements, where they mingled with the surprised patrons and escaped.”  At each intersection along the route of the march arrests are made, and those taken prisoner charged with rioting, unlawful assemblage and parading without a license.  At the conclusion of the festivities the Tribune reports, “Halsted street looked like an armed camp with squads of police stationed at the corners and mounted men patrolling the middle of the street.”  Mrs. Lucy Parsons is shown above, missing a glove, after her arrest.

January 17, 1903 -- Judge Arthur Chetlain sentences George Wellington "Cap" Streeter to an indeterminate term in the penitentiary at Joliet for manslaughter for the killing of John S. Kirk on February 11, 1902 in the "District of Lake Michigan." The dead man had been a watchman for Henry W. Cooper, the man lakefront property owners had engaged to protect their interests on the north side of the river near Oak Street. "Cap" Streeter was not personally connected to the scene where the killing occurred; he was held responsible because testimony indicated that he had told the occupants of the district that if anyone "came fooling' around" to shoot him. After being found guilty in December 3, 1892, Streeter said, "They found us guilty but it only goes to show that when a lot of millionaires get together and get the help of the state the liberty of a man ain't safe. This whole thing is a scheme." The captain and his missus are pictured above.

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Labels: 1925, Chicago Event, Down They Forgot as Up They Grew

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

December 31, 1967 -- Riverview Amusement Park Leads Year in Farewells

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December 31, 1967 – Chicago said farewell to a number of buildings and institutions during 1967, a list detailed on the last day of the year in a Chicago Tribune article.  Riverview Amusement Park closed for good, ending a 63-year run.  Gone for good were the Bobs, the Fireball, the Silver Flash, Flying Turns and Shoot the Chutes (“Keep your hands inside the boat … don’t rock the boat”).  The Edgewater Beach Hotel also closed.  With the northward expansion of Lake Shore Drive the hotel, which opened in 1916, was separated from the lake, making the first two words in its name a promise on which it could no longer deliver.  It was used as a dormitory for Loyola University students for a couple of years but was finally demolished between 1969 and 1971.  The headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Church at 1549 Astor Street, across the street from the Cardinal’s mansion, was razed to make way for a residential tower, and, immediately to the north, the Old Swift mansion that sat at Astor and North Avenue across from Lincoln Park was demolished as well.  Also on North Avenue, the Plaza Hotel at North and Clark, fell to the wrecker’s ball as did the Werner Storage Company garage where seven members of “Bugs” Moran’s gang were gunned down on Valentine’s Day in 1929.  The oldest riding stable in Lincoln Park, the New Parkway at 2153 North Clark, also closed, ending an era.  New Parkway had been in business since the 1890's, and in 1966 sent out 600 riders every weekend to Lincoln Park.  No one complained, I would guess, when the immense Cutty Sark billboard on the south bank of the river just east of Michigan Avenue departed the city.  Also departing was the Italian Court at 619 North Michigan Avenue at Ontario street.  Built between 1919 and 1926, the complex of shops and artists’ apartments revolved around a lovely restaurant, Le Petit Gourmet.  Finally, on December 2 at 6:00 p.m. the Twentieth Century Limited, the express train of the New York Central Railroad that operated between Grand Central Station in New York City and the La Salle Street Station in Chicago, made its last run, arriving in Chicago nine hours and 50 minutes late, due to a freight train derailment in Ohio.

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December 31, 1902 –The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the results, taken form Railway Age magazine, that show the number of railroads that enter and leave Chicago on a daily basis.  A total of 23 separate railroads send trains into and out of the city, a number made even more impressive by the fact that some railroads such as the Chicago and North Western and the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul run multiple lines into the city.  596 passenger trains run into Chicago each day while 594 depart.  Particularly notable is the number of through passenger trains that make a stop in the city on their trip to the east and west. Union Station leads that total with 94 with Polk Street servicing 74 passenger trains each day.  Central Station handles 72, Wells Street 65, and Grand Central 64.  The Illinois Central Railroad is the leader in suburban passenger trains with 251 each day with the Chicago and North Western operating 223 daily suburban trains into and out of the city.  

December 31, 1978 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the Chicago Police Department and the F.B.I. have found security at the Art Institute of Chicago “to be inadequate, lax, and outmoded.” [Chicago Tribune, December 31, 1978], the tough assessment coming four days after three Cézanne oil paintings, valued at $3 million, are found missing from a storage room.  The stolen paintings include “Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Armchair”, “Apples on a Tablecloth” and “House on the River.” After police find that there is no list of people to whom keys to the room had been distributed, Arthur M. Wood, the chairman of the museum’s board of directors, says that “all safekeeping and security practices are under intense review.”  Commander William Murphy, the Chicago Chief of Police, finds at least three deficiencies in the institution’s security system.  First, works of art have been kept in storage rooms with simple door locks and no reinforced doors.  Secondly, the system of checking out keys to such rooms has been “haphazard” with virtually no attention given to whom keys have been given.  No one has any idea, apparently, of how many keys even exist to the room where the theft occurred.   Murphy guesses that at least 400 employees have had access to the room in which 25 post-Impressionist paintings are stored. Finally, a “nonchalant” attitude has taken over about enforcing security rules that had been in place for years.  An F.B.I. agent working the case says, “What you’ve got is essentially a broom closet.  It is far from the kind of vault you would expect the Art Institute to keep its valuables in.”  It didn’t take long to track down the paintings … stealing was easy for Art Institute worker Laud “Nick” Pace.  Unloading the loot was much more difficult.  Pace, who disguised the works as packages as he walked them out the door of the museum, was caught several months later and sent up the river for a decade.  "Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Armchair" is pictured above, safely back home.

December 31, 1943 – A year ends, one that began with President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill meeting in Casablanca and, midway through, marks the surrender of the German army in North Africa to the British and Americans.  Even in the darkest hours of the war Chicago begins to look toward to what will come afterward.  On this day the Chicago Daily Tribune makes that clear in an editorial, stating, “If Chicago wants to avoid being by-passed by the great air transport companies of the post-war age, it will have to see that they get the terminal facilities they need.”  The editorial board sees neither airport currently in existence as practical.  The place we know today as Midway is “nine miles from the heart of the city and accessible only thru the most densely populated sections.”  Douglas Field, today’s O”Hare, “would be 19 miles from the loop.”  What is the alternative?  The editorial favors something that has been talked about for a decade or more – an airport on the city’s lakefront.  “An airport built in this area on made ground,” the editorial states, “would be free of obstacles such as usually surround municipal airports, could be readily expanded to any size needed to accommodate great, new planes, and would be only a few minutes’ drive from the heart of the city.”  The editorial continues, “The present outer breakwater runs from the vicinity of South Water street almost continuously to the Shedd aquarium at the foot of Twelfth street.  Extending land outward from this breakwater would provide ample room for an airport and would give airplanes plenty of space to gain altitude, even in a westward takeoff, before reaching tall buildings.  It would in no way interfere with navigation, and would be less than a five minute ride to the loop over a short causeway.”  The editorial even makes reference to the fact that the Wolverine and the Sable, Navy aircraft carriers steaming along the lakefront, have taken meteorological surveys of the area north of Thirty-First Street and have found that it is “usually free of smoke and has wind velocity and ceiling suitable for a large airport.”  Imagine what the city’s lakefront would look like today if the clamor for this kind of new airport had gained a large enough audience to see it actually built.  Above, the early 1940's photo of Northerly Island -- later Meigs Field and now Northerly Island again -- gives some idea of what an airport facility much larger than this would have done to the lakefront.

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Labels: 1967, Chicago Event, Chicago History, Chicago Places, Down They Forgot as Up They Grew, Lincoln Park, Michigan Avenue