Showing posts with label Fires. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fires. Show all posts

Friday, October 9, 2020

October 9, 1921 -- Chicago Fire, a 50-Year Recollection



October 9, 1921 – On the fiftieth anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, the Chicago Daily Tribune features the recollection of the only newspaper reporter who covered the 1871 story who is still alive.  Michael Ahern, working for the Chicago Republican, was a night reporter on duty when the fire started on October 8, 1871.  Ahern begins his recollection with a description of what happened on the night before the fire. On Saturday night, October 7, a fire started in a planing mill on Canal Street, and “it wiped out everything from Clinton street to the river and from Adams street to Van Buren street.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 8, 1921] That fire brought every piece of fire-fighting equipment in the city to the scene, and “all that kept the entire west side from burning up was the strenuous work of the fire brigade.” Some firefighters did not return to their quarters until Sunday afternoon and “The department was exhausted from the long, hard battle and some engines were disabled.”  That was the state of affairs at 9:30 p.m. on October 8 when Ahern is called “to a red glow in the sky east of Halsted street and north of Twelfth.”  When he reaches the scene, he finds several cottages and sheds burning “in the vicinity of De Koven and Jefferson streets.”  The fire is “only a small one compared with the previous night’s fire,” so small that Ahern does not even take notes.  The fire had apparently burned for 20 minutes to a half-hour before the first unit responded, a problem attributed, for the most part, to the fire that had occurred on the previous day.  Matthias Schaeffer, the watchman in the courthouse tower downtown, spotted the fire, but, due to the haze left by all of the smoke from the previous fire, reported it in a spot nearly a mile away from its actual location.  The attendant in the alarm office also saw a glow in the sky, but he assumed that it was the product of embers still glowing from the October 7 fire.  A druggist near Canalport Avenue and Halsted Streets tried twice to turn in an alarm from a box in the area, but the previous fire had destroyed some of the lines, and neither alarm registered at fire headquarters.  The first unit on the scene was the “Little Giant” company, but it was only half-manned. Other companies were nearer to the fire, but they were sent out of their way to fight the non-existent fire that Schaeffer reported from his perch downtown.  Engine Company No. 5, with the steamer “Chicago,” was the second company to arrive.  Its crew had worked over 15 hours in the Saturday night fire, and the men were exhausted.  The No. 5 men laid lines from a hydrant at Forquer and Jefferson, but the equipment broke down and was out of service for nearly an hour.  The Fire Chief, Bob Williams, arrived early on and called out every company in the city – 17 steamers, 54 hose carts, and 3 or 4 hook and ladder trucks.  Before long three particularly incendiary businesses – the Bateham shingle mill and box factory, the Frank Mayer Furniture company, and the Roelle Furniture company – went up in flames and the fire quickly reached the west bank of the river.  One steamer, the Fred Gund, set up at the west approach of the Van Buren Street bridge. Its crew fought until their clothing caught fire, and the men were forced to run for their lives.  Ahern reports, “The Gund went down in a sea of flame with steam up and fighting the foe.”  Not long before midnight the fire crossed the river between Adams and Van Buren Streets.  In its path were a tar works and the gas company’s reservoir.  All of the fire apparatus was still on the west side of the river, and at this point Chief Williams ordered a few companies to the other side of the river.  But  the battle was lost.  “Blazing bits of timber were carried to the court house from the west side … more than a mile distant … The flames swept east toward Michigan avenue, and there were a dozen fires burning at the same time.”  Several companies stood bravely at Michigan Avenue and Harrison Street, and their efforts kept the fire from spreading south, but “All night long the work of devastation went on ceaselessly, ruthlessly.  Business blocks, public buildings, theaters, churches, hotels, banks, newspaper offices, retail and wholesale emporiums of trade, railroad depots, grain elevators, marble mansions, and breweries – all went down in the blazing mass.”  Only two buildings escaped the flames downtown -- the Lind Block, at Randolph Street and the river, and a three-story building on the northwest corner of La Salle and Monroe Streets, a building under construction.  Just before 2:00 a.m. the courthouse on Washington Boulevard caught fire.  In its basement sat 150 prisoners awaiting trial.  Except for a few who were kept under guard, they were all turned loose. At about 6:00 a.m. the waterworks on the north side caught fire, and with that, with no water, the fire department’s efforts were at an end.  Just about that time the huge Galena elevator on the north side of the main branch of the river caught fire between State and Rush Streets.  The fire continued on, burning all the way north to Fullerton Avenue, consuming “twenty-nine churches, nineteen hotels, nine theaters and halls, five public schools, twenty-seven daily newspaper offices, about seventy-five other publications, seventeen breweries, the post office, the courthouse, the chamber of commerce, one police station and every big store in the city.” The last paragraph of Ahern’s reminiscences contains news that Catherine O’Leary’s cow, Daisy, would appreciate … “I wish to state that the fire was not started by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lamp.  Nothing of the kind occurred.  That version of the origin of the fire was a concoction which the writer of these reminiscences confesses to a guilty part.  In justice to the maligned animal and to Mrs. O’Leary, who died many years ago, I make this belated reparation.”


October 9, 1915 – Governor Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne, speechifying at nearly every stop, leads an intrepid band of travelers as they start off on the first day of the 1,500-mile drive on the new Dixie Highway.  Twenty cars leave Chicago “for the land of orange blossoms, over the ceremonially virgin road.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 9, 1915] Short ceremonies are held in Grant Park as Juilia Stubblefield, representing Florida, and Lucille Finnegan, representing Illinois, lead a procession of girls representing the states in between, as they place flowers at the Fountain of the Great Lakes, “forming a floral highway, over which Miss Dixie and Miss Chicago crossed the waste of mud and mountains.”  Governor Dunne says, “The main essentials for the future development of Illinois is the development of its highways and waterways.  First in agricultural development, second in the production of wealth, third in population, political and commercial importance, Illinois is nevertheless lamentably behind in the development of its roads – twenty-third of all the states.”   Representing Mayor William H. Thompson, Henry D. Miller, the city prosecutor, then leaves a letter intended for the mayor of Miami with the motorists. The first day’s drive ends in Danville, Illinois with a night’s rest there before the group continues on to Indianapolis.


October 9, 1908 – The informal dedication of the new County Building on Clark Street between Washington and Randolph sees several thousand Chicagoans tour the new government headquarters.  The County Recorder’s office on the first floor has vases of flowers on each desk while “festoons of autumn leaves [are] draped from post and pillar.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 10, 1908]  The County Clerk has a store of carnations for those passing through.  County Board President Busse receives callers as they move through his offices on the fifth floor.  Busse says at the end of the day, “First of all I wish to acknowledge the indebtedness of the county board to the people of Cook County for their constant and general support.  No extras, no scandal, not even adverse criticism grew out of the work, and the cost of the building was kept within the contract price.  The cost per cubic foot was from 15 to 25 per cent less than that of some of Chicago’s notable buildings.”  The Holabird and Roche designed building is one-half of the government complex, designed in the Beaux-Arts style, stretching from Clark Street halfway to La Salle.  The Chicago City Hall, also designed by Holabird and Roche, is a near mirror image of the county building and sits west of the 1908 structure and is completed two years later.  The County Building is pictured above with the old City Hall still standing to the west.

chicagology.com
October 9, 1881 – On the tenth anniversary of the Chicago Fire, the Chicago Daily Tribune runs an editorial that touts the strides that the city has made since the day that 90,000 of its residents lost everything in a conflagration that consumed over 17,000 structures.  On October 9 of 1871 the smoldering city had 330,000 inhabitants … a decade later that number had jumped to 555,000.  The losses suffered in the fire amounted to $200,000,000 (nearly $4.5 billion in today's dollars) with insurance and salvage payments covering about $55,000,000 (about $1.1 billion today) of that amount.  With that seed money “the people of the city undertook to cover the vacant places, and upon the ruins to build up again that stores, and warehouses, and dwellings and public buildings.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 9, 1881]  Borrowing liberally and with city-mandated fire limits established, the city rebuilt with architecture that was “more ornate and the structures more costly, more substantial, more uniform, more durable, and far more numerous.”  Unfortunately, in the fall of 1873 the bottom dropped out of the nation’s economy and the borrowed money, most of it secured at high interest rates, took its toll and the city “overwhelmed with debt, private and public, was subjected to trials under which no other city less blessed with imperishable resources could have been maintained.”  Then in 1874 another huge fire leveled a sizeable portion of the newly rebuilt city.  Those who held mortgages on city property showed confidence in Chicago’s citizens and were rewarded for their patience.  “… at this date, on this tenth anniversary of The Great Fire,” the Tribune editorializes, “there is not practically a mortgage given for money borrowed to rebuild Chicago that has not been paid or discharged with interest and taxes, or on which the money to pay the unmatured mortgage cannot be obtained on demand.”  Concluding the piece, the editorial extends the gratitude of the city to all those who helped it back to prosperity.  “To the people of the United States, to whom this city owes so much of gratitude, Chicago makes report today of the great growth in all the essentials of commercial and manufacturing metropolis which she has made during the ten years which have followed the disaster which has become memorable in the record of public calamities.”  The Chicago and North Western Railroad's station on Wells Street, pictured above, was completed in 1881, just ten years after the destruction of the city.  That same year Union Station on Van Buren Street near the West Bank of the river, was also completed. 
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Monday, September 7, 2020

September 7, 1948 -- Brach Candy Explosion Kills 15

Chicago Tribune Photo


September 7, 1948 – An explosion and fire rips through a building of the massive Brach Candy plant at 4656 Kinzie Street around 3:00 a.m., killing 15 workers and injuring 18 more.  It is fortunate that day shift workers had not reported for duty when the explosion occurs, so there are fewer than the 2,400 workers that would have been at the site five or six hours later.  Most of the damage is confined to two rooms on the top floor of the three-story building that covers an entire city block.  Fire Commissioner Michael J. Corrigan says that the explosion could have been one of the greatest disasters in recent years if it had occurred when all employees were on duty.  One employee says that there was no warning of the explosion which blows out a portion of the building’s north wall, temporarily blocking the Chicago and North Western Railroad tracks on one side of the building.  Investigation reveals that a fire preceded the explosion, and that the explosion, probably caused by suspended corn starch in the air, killed several men who were fighting the fire along with a dozen others who were in the vicinity.



September 7, 1968 – Mayor Richard J. Daley releases “The Strategy of Confrontation,” a 77-page report that chronicles the disturbances that took place in the city during the Democratic convention two weeks earlier.  The report claims “to point out the nature and strategy of confrontation as it was employed in Chicago,” [Chicago Tribune, September 8, 1968] It pinpoints the origin of the disturbances as November 16, 1967 when Jerry Rubin, the leader of the Youth International Party, issued a call to demonstrators to come to Chicago and “Bring pot, fake delegates’ cards, smoke bombs, costumes, blood to throw and all kinds of interesting props.  Also football helmets.”  Others blamed for the violence were Rennie Davis, Chicago coordinator for the National Mobilization Committee to end the War in Vietnam; David Dellinger, national chairman for that committee; Tom Hayden, one of the founders of the Students for a Democratic Society; and Abbie Hoffman, an associate of Rubin’s.  The report also indicts the news media for aiming “malice to the authorities while presuming good will and sincerity on the part of the protestors,” leading to “ugly and distasteful scenes … reported all over the nation and the world without sufficient explanation to allow the reports to be placed in perspective.”  The city’s Corporation Counsel, Raymond F. Simon, with the help of the police, the United States attorney’s office, and the city law department, is responsible for the report that concludes that the ultimate goal of the protestors “was to topple what they consider to be the corrupt institutions of our society, education, governmental, etc., by impeding and if possible halting their normal functions while exposing the authorities to ridicule and embarrassment." 


September 7, 1939 – In the space of a day 75 million gallons of raw sewage are diverted from the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to a new southwest side treatment plant in Stickney.  The transition occurs through the removal of a wooden bulkhead at the Western Avenue sewer at Thirty-Eighth Street, an action that diverts the sewage into the southwest side intercepting sewer leading to the new plant.  This sewer drains 12.5 miles of the city, including half of the waste from the stockyards.  Prior to the transition to the Stickney plant, the sewer had dumped 40 tons of solid waste into the canal each day.  Within a few weeks all of the sewage from the area between the canal and Eighty-Seventh street will be diverted to the plant.  The Stickney plant is just one part of a $162,000,000 sewage disposal program begun after the U. S. Supreme Court ordered a reduction in the diversion of water from Lake Michigan earlier in the decade. Today the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant is the largest wastewater treatment facility in the world, serving 260 square miles, including the central part of Chicago and 46 suburban communities.  It covers 413 acres with nearly 400 employees managing the treatment of up to one million gallons of water every minute.


September 7, 1934 – At a time when the city and its occupants swelter in the summer heat with little they can do about it, the Chicago Daily Tribune prints a glowing article that touts its super-swell air conditioning system, installed during the cold weather months, a system that has already provided 1,358 “air cooled hours” for employees and tenants of Tribune Tower.  Holmes Onderdonk, the manager of the building, says, “The whole idea was to make working conditions better for employees and tenants . . . When the air cooling system was first contemplated there was an opinion that a building already erected couldn’t be air conditioned.  The working of this system shows it can be done.  The refrigeration machinery will be built into new buildings in the future, but it was an accomplishment to install the system here.” 

Chicago Tribune photo
Chicago Tribune photo
September 7, 1928 – Mobster Antonio Lombardo is shot dead at the corner of Madison and Dearborn Streets, one of the busiest corners in the Loop, at 4:30 p.m.  One of two bodyguards accompanying Lombardo receives a fatal shot in the back while the other slips into the crowd and escapes.  Police on the scene chase the attackers, and crowds jamming the streets at the beginning of rush hour panic as “policemen and gunmen ran through crowds with menacing revolvers.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 8, 1928]  Lombardo and his two bodyguards had just left the offices of the Italo-American National Union at 8 South Dearborn Street, just three blocks from City Hall and walked 50 feet west on the south side of Madison Street when they are attacked.  A “crowd of thousands” had already gathered in the area, watching an airplane intended as a display at the Boston Store being hoisted to an upper floor window. Born in Sicily in 1891, Lombardo came to Chicago as a teenager, building a lucrative grocery business in his early adulthood while also working in various mob-influenced bootlegging operations until in 1925 he became president of the 15,000-member Unione Siciliana, an organization that “involved substantial political influence over an important voting bloc … [creating] the opportunity for the one who held that position to become a ‘fixer’ with connections to city hall.”  [chicagocrimescenes.blogspot]  A rival for the position, Joseph Aiello, became enraged at the slight and threw his allegiance to the North Side gang, plotting to avenge the perceived injustice by killing Lombardo.  Aiello did become president of the organization for about a year while Al Capone was in a Philadelphia prison.  Shortly after Capone returned to Chicago, Aiello, too, was gunned down. One man was arrested in the shooting of Lombardo – Frank Marco “a New York hoodlum and a known acquaintance of Aiello’s,” but before street justice found him, the law did, and “his bullet-riddled body was found on East Nineteenth Street in New York City” in February, 1930.  The top photo shows the crowd gathered around the murder scene while the second photo shows the plane that was being lifted into the Boston Store, an event that had attracted a massive crowd to the location of the assassination.
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Friday, July 31, 2020

July 31,1985 -- Arlington Park Race Track Destroyed by Fire


July 31, 1985 – More than 150 firefighters from 25 communities fail to save the clubhouse, grandstand, and exposition center at Arlington Park race track.  The fire begins at approximately 1:30 a.m. with the first alarm turned in about 45 minutes later.  The loss is devastating, coming just a little more than three weeks before the “Arlington Million” is due to be run on August 25.  The State of Illinois takes in about seven percent of the $1.5 million that is bet each day of the racing season at the track, and the final 55 days at Arlington are out the window as the complex is a total loss.  Estimates are that 1,000 people will be left without jobs.  Because the 1929 Post and Paddock Club, where the fire began, had been remodeled a number of times over the previous half-century, the number of false ceilings and concealed spaces between floors allowed the fire to spread in ways that could not be detected.  The sprinkler systems were ineffective because of the concealed nature of the flames, which eventually spread from the club to the grandstand.  At one point demolition experts were even brought in from Ft. Sheridan to see if part of the grandstand could be blown up in order to stop the flames from advancing.  By noon, though, it was clear that nothing more could be done, and the fire burned itself out at about 5:00 p.m.  None of the 1,900 animals at the track was endangered.  It would be four years before the track would reopen.

July 31, 1930 – Announcement is made that Mrs. Kersey Coates Reed and Mrs. Charles Schweppe, the daughters of the late John G. Shedd, have given the Chicago Latin School at 1531 North Dearborn Parkway a nine-acre athletic field on the west bank of the North Branch of the Chicago River.  The new field stretches from Addison to Grace Street bordered on the west by California Avenue.  George Morton Northrop, the Head Master of the school, says, “It may be that eventually it will seem wise to move the upper school to this new location.  In time a boathouse, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, and five courts could be added.  Eventually it might be well to have a dormitory for housing a number of boarding pupils and some of the younger, unmarried masters.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 1, 1930] The new athletic campus was purchased from the Commonwealth Edison Company and the estate of Sophie Beyer for approximately $125,000.  The campus served the Latin School until 1959 when it was sold to Gordon Technical High School, now DePaul College Prep.  Funds from the sale were used to complete the upper school at North Avenue and Clark Street and the roof gymnasium, which was completed in 1992.  The parcel originally given to the Latin School is outlined above.
July 31, 1922:  The city is thrown into turmoil as a storage tank of the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company collapses and explodes at West Twenty-Fifth and Throop Streets, injuring a hundred people, severely burning the majority of them.  Since the location sits on the bank of the Chicago River with a neighborhood close by, most of the injured are teamsters, pedestrians, or children playing in the area.  The tank, which was 180 feet high and 180 feet in diameter, contained 4,000,000 cubic feet of illuminating gas.  The tank collapses at about 12:30 in the afternoon with the Chicago Daily Tribune describing the scene in this way, “Wild scenes followed immediately.  Men, women, and children attacked by the weird flames ran screaming.  Some threw themselves flat on the ground.  Others flung their clothing over their faces and hands in frantic efforts to escape the fire.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 1, 1922]  The chief engineer for the company, J. H. Eustace, says that there was no explosion, adding, “In fifty years of experience in gas manufacturing I have never heard of anything like this . . . In some way the crown of the tank was ruptured, and gas, escaping in great quantities, ignited.  What caused the rupture is a mystery; and what would ignite escaping gas from the top of a holder high in the air is equally a mystery.”

schoarlycommonslaw.northwestern.edu
July 31, 1919 – Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson signs the Illinois Central Electrification and Lake Front ordinance at noon after representatives of the South Park Board of Trustees and the railroad accept the city’s proposal.  The act calls for an expenditure of $110,000,000 for the electrification of the Illinois Central tracks along the lakefront, the construction of a new railroad station at Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue, the completion of a huge park along the lakefront as well as a new harbor south of Grant Park.  Charles H. Wacker, the chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, is present at the ceremony, along with representatives of the Association of Commerce, the Chicago Real Estate Board and other civic organizations. The mayor says, “As far as jokers are concerned, I have read the ordinance carefully, and am convinced that it is a good one.  [Illinois Central attorney] Schuyler, whom I have known since we were boys together, has given me his word of honor that there is no joker in this ordinance.  In addition to that I have every confidence in Mr. Wacker of the commission.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 1, 1919]  The above photo shows the lakefront in 1913 with a maze of railroad tracks and smoking steam engines running between Michigan Avenue and the lake in the area that would one day become Grant Park.

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Friday, June 5, 2020

June 5, 1946 -- La Salle Hotel Fire

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June 5, 1946 --  Just after midnight fire breaks out at the La Salle Hotel at the intersection of La Salle and Madison Street.  Before morning 61 people will be dead, including Battalion Chief Eugene T. Freemon of the Chicago Fire Department’s First Battalion.  Thirty more people are hospitalized and over 200 others sustain injuries.   Although the exact cause of the fire will never be identified, it originates behind the walls or above the false ceiling of the Silver Grill Cocktail Lounge just off the hotel lobby.  There is a delay in summoning the fire department as hotel employees attempt to put down the flames with seltzer water and sand.  The fire, feeding on the varnished wood paneling of the lounge, quickly spreads to the two-story hotel lobby, and the second-floor balcony that overlooks it.  The fire department receives its first call at 12:35 a.m., and within minutes of the first units arriving  the fire is upgraded to a 5-11 alarm, summoning more than 300 firefighters to the hotel.  At this point the fire had moved through two open staircases to the third, fourth and fifth floors, and smoke had begun to fill the entire 22-story building.  Doors planned for these stairways had never been installed, and the stairways become chimneys, sucking smoke into the upper floors.  Firefighters save guests on lower floors with ladders while guests on the upper floors have to move in the dark down fire escapes.  Most guests are asleep when the fire breaks out, and the majority of those who lose their lives probably die of smoke inhalation in the early stages of the disaster.  During that time the night manager tells the hotel’s switchboard operator, Julia C. Berry, to leave the building, but she refuses and dies at her post after alerting scores of guests.  The devastating event prompts the Chicago City Council to enact new hotel building codes and fire-fighting procedures, including the installation of automatic alarm systems and instructions of fire safety inside hotel rooms.  The hotel underwent a $2 million renovation after the fire and continued to operate until it was razed in July of 1976, making way for what is today the Two North La Salle building.


June 5, 1944 –There are probably better times to bring this up … but … it is on this day in 1944 that the Fort Sheridan baseball team beats the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game, 8 to 6.  The Sox have a 6 to 1 lead after the team’s half of the fifth inning, but the Army team scores three runs on two hits, an error and two walks in the sixth, adding an insurance run in the seventh, going on to score three more times in the eighth inning.  Left fielder Guy Curtright and first baseman Ed Carnett are the only regular Sox players to take the field while pitcher Joe Haynes, making his second appearance of the season, holds the Fort Sheridan nine to one hit through the sixth inning. Three thousand soldiers and guests watch the game.  The above photos show the entrance to the fort at the time of the game and as it appears today -- as the Town of Fort Sheridan.

June 5, 1942 – The United States Naval Training station at Great Lakes opens its doors for the first time to African-American recruits bound for active duty as apprentice seamen and firemen aboard warships. The first of the recruits, Doreston Luke Carmen, Jr., a 19-year-old, one of nine children from a Galveston, Texas family, is sworn in on this day after his first train trip. “I like the Navy fine already,” he says. “Last night I slept in a hammock for the first time and didn’t fall out.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 6, 1942] The commandant of the station, Lieutenant Commander Daniel W. Armstrong, says that he will wait until all 50 recruits have arrived before issuing them regulation uniforms and sending them through the classification office. The Navy opened all ratings to African-American sailors from the time of the Civil War until 1922, but from that date until 1936 the Navy ended the policy. In 1936 that policy was reversed, but African-American sailors were only posted as mess attendants.

June 5, 1897 – A “mud scow” being towed by the tug Andrew Green explodes by the Rush Street bridge at 2:00 a.m., killing the lone crewman on board.  Thousands of windows along the river are broken with damage reaching as far as the Newberry Library, which has nearly all of its plate glass windows shattered.  The ship belonged to the A. H. Green Dredging Company and had been working on dredging the South Branch near the Bridgeport Gas Works.  One theory is that dynamite being used in hardpan during dredging operations may have found its way into the hold of the boat and exploded without warning.  Hundreds of people, roused from sleep by the tremendous blast, head to the docks and streets along the river near the scene.  Many of them rush to the scene on bicycles, only to see their tires flattened by the glass.  The wheelman for the steamer City of Traverse, moored directly opposite the scene of the explosion, says that “a bluish flame shot up for at least a distance of fifteen feet and was followed loosely by the explosion.  The scow heaved forward and then split from stem to stern and went to the bottom.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 4, 1897]. The direction of the explosion was toward the north, and the concussion caves in part of the walls of the warehouse of the Western Transit Company, where 300 dock laborers are at work, with many of them blown over by the explosion.  The report travels as far north as Lincoln Park where glass fragments cover the sidewalks.  It is even heard clearly in South Chicago where the men in the town's police station run out of the building, thinking that a powder factory across the state line in Indiana had exploded.  All of the broken windows offer an easy target for thieves, and police flood the area to guard against looting.  The lone crewman on the stricken vessel, August Komerika, disappears beneath the water and is feared lost.  Miraculously, with all of the traffic near the busiest bridge on the river, no one else is killed although a crew from the life saving station rescues one man from the river.  The above post card shows the vicinity of the Rush Street bridge at the time ... one can only imagine the carnage that would have resulted if the scow had exploded during the daylight hours.


June 5, 1893 – The Chicago Daily Tribune features a short article that summarizes the recollections of James Whistler Wood of Marshall, Michigan regarding the first sailing vessel to reach what would become the Port of Chicago.  According to Wood the first vessel to drop anchor at the mouth of the Chicago River was the schooner Tracy in the year 1803.  The ship was either “owned or chartered by the government, and conveyed Capt. John Whistler, U. S. A., and his command, together with supplies and material for the construction of a fort at the mouth of the Chicago River.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1893] The first steamships to arrive in Chicago, according to Wood, were the Sheldon Thompson and the William Penn that “stirred the waters of Chicago harbor and arrived there together on July 8, 1831, having on board Gen. Winfield Scott and soldiers for the Black Hawk war.” When these two ships arrived, the small hamlet could still “boast of only five houses, and three of those were built of logs.”  The portrait above is of Captain John Whistler, who was born in Ulster in 1756, ran away from home and fought with the British Army in the Revolutionary War, then settled in Hagerstown, Maryland before joining the United States Army.  Severely wounded in 1791 in the Indian Wars, he commanded the military settlement at Fort Dearborn when it was established in 1803.

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Thursday, April 23, 2020

April 23, 1925 -- Chicago Fire Department Battles Massive Elevator Fire

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April 23, 1925 – An entire area of Bridgeport is threatened with destruction as two grain elevators containing more than two million bushels of corn and oats are destroyed by fire and embers from the conflagration start over a dozen other fires in the area.  Fire brands fall over a ten-block area as 50,000 people watch firefighters battle the flames through the early morning hours.  An initial 4-11 alarm is followed by seven special calls, bringing 44 fire engines, four hook and ladder trucks, three fire boats, three fire squads and a water tower to the scene.  There are no fire hydrants in the lot on which the two elevators are located, and fire crews battle low water pressure for the first hour of their attack.  Most of the fire trucks are driven close to the river and take water directly from it as the fireboats Graeme Stewart, Joseph Medill, and Dennis J. Swenie attack the blaze from the river.  At the most dangerous point in the blaze 60 firefighters narrowly escape when the 150-foot north wall of one elevator crashes to the ground.  This also has the effect of dumping tens of thousands of bushes of grain into the river, completely blocking the South Branch.  Chief Arthur Seyferlich decides early on that there is no chance of saving the grain elevators, and he dispatches a number of his men to the roof of the Omaha Packing Company across the river where they soak the plant and adjoining structures to save them.  Emanuel F. Rosenbaum, president of the company that owns the elevators, estimates damages to amount to $2,250,000.  “Both elevators had a capacity of something more that 2,000,000 bushels (close to $37,000,000 in today's dollars) and they were filled to capacity,” he says.  The Rock Island elevator is shown in the distance in the right hand corner of the photo above.
April 23, 1992 – The Lake County Forest Preserve commissioners vote to protest a decision by the Department of Defense regarding the fate of Ft. Sheridan.  Playing both offense and defense, the commissioners vote to write a strongly worded letter to the Pentagon while stating that they still want to get their hands on 250 acres of the base that are comprised of a golf course, ravines and Lake Michigan shoreline.  This follows an earlier announcement that half of the 250 acres would go toward a veteran’s cemetery with the remainder put up for bid by local governments.  Andrea Moore, the president of the district, says, “I don’t think the Department of Defense ever intended that there be much local use of the land.  They have cut the natural resources in half.  How do you manage half a ravine?”  [Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1992] Commissioner Robert Buhai of Highland Park says that while the communities involved in the Ft. Sheridan commission had worked hard to preserve much of the land for public use, Lake Forest had actively lobbied veterans’ groups for the national cemetery.  He says, “The clout that Lake Forest had has superseded everything else.” All of the controversy comes as the clock ticks steadily closer to the closing of the base on May 31, 1993.  The district did not get its golf course.  Instead, it received much of the area covered by the former golf course, a military air strip, rifle range, and Nike missile site.  The restored prairie area contains roughly 4.5 miles of trails for hiking, 3.7 miles for cross-country skiing and 1.3 miles for bicycling.  

April 23, 1970 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks has voted unanimously to give landmark status to two Chicago historical sites – the Hull House mansion at 750 South Halsted Street and a block of 40 row houses on Alta Vista Terrace, not far from Wrigley Field.  The Hull House mansion was built in 1856 for Charles J. Hull, a Chicago real estate broker but by 1910 had become the center for a 13-building complex that was home to the social settlement community of Jane Addams.  The mansion and one other building are the only two structures that remain after the University of Illinois leveled the area for the building of its Chicago campus.  The Alta Vista Terrace area is only the second such district to be designated as a landmark, the first being the area surrounding the Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue.  Hearings within the month will determine the status of the Leiter I building at 208 West Monroe Street and the Monadnock Building at 55 West Jackson Boulevard.  Leiter I would not make the cut and would be demolished in 1972.  The Monadnock, fortunately, received landmark status and was meticulously restored.  Alta Vista Terrace is shown in the above photo.
chicago tribune photo
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April 23, 1962 – The Home Federal Saving and Loan Association’s new 16-story building at the southeast corner of State and Adams Streets is topped out.  One of the last beams to be hoisted in place carries a broom with it to signify a “clean sweep,” a building’s superstructure erected without a fatality.  The bank’s president, Otto L. Preisler, signals a construction crew to begin lifting the final beam into place, using a walkie-talkie.  In the black and white photo above architect William Hartman joins other dignitaries as they watch the last piece of structural steel placed at the top of what is today 11 East Adams.  The building as it appears today is shown in the second photo.

April 23, 1955 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that mass injections of the Salk anti-polio vaccine for Chicago first and second graders in 65 parochial schools will begin on April 25. Herman Bundesen, the president of the Board of Health, also announces that the rest of the 16,200 boys and girls in these schools, along with students in 38 private and five Jewish schools will begin receiving vaccinations on April 26. The first shot will be given by Dr. Bundesen at Immaculate Conception School, 1415 N. Park Avenue. Reverend Monsignor Daniel Cunningham, Superintendent of Catholic schools in the city, will be present as well as Mayor Richard J. Daley. Chicago School Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis reports that shots for public school youngsters will begin on May 2 with 89 percent of parental permission slips for first and second graders already returned.
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Friday, April 17, 2020

April 17, 1899 -- Chicago River On Fire at Kinzie Street


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April 17, 1899 – Once again the Chicago River catches fire with “the flames from the murky ooze rising to a height of fifty feet,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 18, 1899] setting the Kinzie Street bridge and the Chicago and North Western Railroad bridge next to it on fire, along with the approaches to the two bridges and the docks between them.  Firemen respond before an alarm can be turned in since the smoke from the oily fire could be clearly seen from the north, south and west sides.  The fire brigades work first to save the two bridges before moving to strike the fire in the North Branch of the river.  The origin of the fire is unclear, but fire officials all agree that the river’s surface was covered with oil, the source of which was probably the Kinzie Street sewer that emptied into the river under the Kinzie Street bridge.  The railroad flag man for the crossing at the west end of the Chicago and North Western bridge, D. C. Stockwell, is within 20 feet of the fire when it starts.  “I can’t tell anything about it, except that I sat here smelling the gas,” he said.  “The first thing I knew the river and the sky was on fire and I was all out of breath from running away.”  The source of the gas is also unclear although some theorize that it came from “the filth in the river bed.”   The Kinzie Street bridge is closed to traffic because of the damage, and it is thought it will take some days to repair it.  Hero of the evening is bridge tender William O’Hara who climbs onto the Kinzie Street bridge while it is on fire and, using a hand wrench, opens the bridge so that the fireboat Yosemite can get to a position where it can fight the flames.  More alarms are turned in for the fire than for any fire since the alarm system was put into operation.  Every manhole from Kinzie Street to Halsted Street belches smoke from the Kinzie Street sewer, resulting in every alarm box on that route registering a call.  Twelve more still alarms are turned in along with the alarms that bridgetenders, who run in opposite directions turned in.  Firemen agree that the Chicago River is a fire hazard, and “A match or a lighted cigar thrown into the river might cause it to burn at any time” and that “…it should be watched with the same care as the picture frame factories and other inflammable things.”  The conditions at the Kinzie Street railroad bridge at the time can be seen in the photo above.

April 17, 1972 – Illinois Governor Richard Ogilvie announces the creation of a task force to study the possibility of a mass transit link between the Chicago Loop and O’Hare International Airport.  William F. Cellini, the state’s Secretary of Transportation, will head the group with a mandate to report findings within 60 days. At a press conference at the State of Illinois building at 160 North La Salle Street, Ogilvie says, “The need for direct, fast and low cost mass transportation [between the Loop and the airport] is an urgent one.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 18, 1972]  The governor adds that serious consideration will be given to extending the present mass transit route along the Kennedy expressway to the airport, adding that he is sensitive to claims by the Chicago and North Western Railroad that such an extension will cripple the railroad financially.  A dozen years later, on September 3, 1984, the first passengers to ride the combination subway and surface train to O’Hare enter the airport.

 April 17, 1950 – Speaking in the Crystal Room of the Blackstone Hotel, Walter Gropius, head of the Department of Architecture at Harvard University, speaks of a new era in which art and industry will work together.  The gathering is a celebration of the formal announcement of the addition of the Institute of Design as a degree-granting program at the Illinois Institute of Technology, a department at the school that grew out of the New Bauhaus that Gropius and László Maholy-Nagy established in the city in 1937.  Gropius says, “The artist is coming into the fold of the community.  From his ivory tower he will move closer to the test laboratory and to the factory; he will become a legitimate brother of the scientist, the engineer, and the business man.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1950]  The architect also praises the program at I.I.T. for its commitment to creating such collaboration.

April 17, 1937 – Work begins on a 6,000-foot runway to expand the city’s commercial airport – today’s Midway International Airport.  Three hundred workers under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration turn out to begin construction near Cicero Avenue and Fifty-Fifth Street, a project that will use $2,000,000 in federal funds.  Only half of the one-mile square area is usable at this point, but the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad has agreed to reroute its tracks on the north half of the tract once the city supplies it with a new right of way.  Even as work begins, the city still holds out hope for a lakefront airport.  During a stopover in the city, Washington Senator J. Hamilton Lewis says that he has recently talked with President Franklin Roosevelt about the lakefront project after Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly had offered an explanation of it to the President.  Says Lewis, “The President feels that because of the growing importance of aviation, Chicago as a great traffic center should have aid in developing the facilities.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1937] The President will find disagreement from his Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, who says that the price in material for such an undertaking is too great.  The photo above shows the old Municipal Airport’s runways to the left and the new field to the right with the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad tracks bisecting the main diagonal runways before the tracks were rerouted.

April 17, 1893 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune provides a list of the world's congresses to be held in the brand new Art Institute building as part of the World's Columbian Exposition. According to the article, "The intention of these congresses is . . . to sum up the progress of the world in each department of the civilized life involved; to make a clear statement of the living questions of the day which still demand attention; and to receive from eminent representatives of all interests, classes, and peoples, suggestions of the practical means by which further progress may be made and the prosperity and peace of the world advanced."[Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1893] The World's Fair Congress Auxiliary paid the Art Institute $200,000 (close to $6 million in today's dollars)  for the use of 33 meeting halls and six committee-rooms in the building, plus two large rooms, each capable of seating 3,000 people. It is planned to hold up to 36 large meetings and 300 special meetings or conferences at the site during each week that the fair runs.  The following is a list of events for the fair's congresses:


May 15 -- Education.  Industry.  Literature and Art.  Moral and Social Reform, Philanthropy and Charity.  Civil Law and Government.  Religion.

May 22 -- Public Press.  Religious Press.  Trade Journals.

May 29 -- Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery.  Eclectic Medicine and Surgery.  Medico-Climatology.

June 5 -- Organizations represented by the National Temperance Society of America, Sons of Temperance, Catholic Temperance Societies, Women's Christian Temperance Union, Non-Partisan Women's Christian Temperance Union, Independent Order of Good Templars, American Medical Temperance Association. Vegetarian Societies.  Social Purity Organizations.

June 12 -- The International Conference and National Conferences of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy.  Instructors of the Feeble Minded.  Humane Societies.  The King's Daughters.  Society of St. Vincent de Paul and kindred organizations.  The Salvation Army.  A Conference on Charities, Correction, and Philanthropy will begin in one of the smaller halls of the Art Institute June 8.  This will be preliminary to the General Congress.

June 19 -- Bankers and Financiers.  Boards of Trade, Railway Commerce, Building Associations, Merchants, and Insurance Congresses, including:  Fire, Marine, Life and Accident, Mutual Benefit and Assessment, Fidelity and Casualty, Conference on Insurance Specialties.

July 3 -- Musical Art. Musical Education.

July 10 -- Authors.  Historians and Historical Students.  Librarians.  Philologists and Folk-Lore.

July 17 -- College and University Faculties, including University Extension, College and University Students, College Fraternities, Public School Authorities, Representative Youth of Public Schools, Kindergarten Education, Manual and Art Training, Physical Culture, Business and Commercial Colleges, Stenographers, Educators of the Deaf, Educators of the Blind, Chautauqua Educations, Social Settlements, and a General Educational Congress, in which all branches of education will be represented.

July 31 -- Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mining and Metallurgical Engineering, Engineering Education, Military Engineering.  Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture.  Aerial Navigation. 

July 31 -- Architecture.  Painting and Sculpture.  Decorative Art.  Photographic Art.  Conference on Art Museums and Schools.

August 7 -- Jurisprudence and Law Reform.  Civil Service Reform.  Suffrage, in Republic, Kingdom and Empire.  Government of Cities.  Patents and Trade Marks, social and Economic.  Science -- Weights, Measures, Coinage and Postage.  Arbitration and Peace.

August 14 -- Dental.  Pharmaceutical.  Medical Jurisprudence.  Horticulture.  Congress on Africa, the Continent, and the People.

August 21 -- Astronomy.  Anthropology.  Chemistry.  Electricity.  Geology.  Indian Ethnology. Meteorology.  Philosophy.  Psychical Research.  Zoology.

August 28 -- The Condition of Labor. Work and Wages of Women and Children.  Statistics of Labor.    Literature and Philosophy of the Labor Movement.  Labor Legislation.  Living Questions and Means of Progress. Arbitration and Other Remedies.

August 28 -- Economic Science.  Science of Statistics.  Taxation and Revenues.  Separate Conference on what is called "The Single Tax."  Profit-Sharing.  Weights, Measures, Coinage, Postage.

September 5 -- A series of union meetings in which representatives of various religious organizations will meet for the consideration of subjects of common interest and sympathy.  Denominational presentations to the religious world as represented in the parliament of religions of the faith and distinguishing characteristics of each denomination, and the special service it has rendered to mankind.  Informal conferences in which the leaders of a particular denomination will be present to answer inquiries for further information.  Denominational Congresses in which the work of the denominations will be more fully set forth and the proper business of the body be transacted.  The Art Building will be so occupied that these Denominational Congresses cannot be held in it.  They will for that reason be held in Chicago churches, which will be placed at the disposal of the denominations for that purpose.  Congresses of Missionary Societies.  Congresses of Religious Societies.

September 28 -- On Physiological Grounds.  On Economical Grounds.  On Governmental Grounds.  On Social and Moral Grounds.  On Religious Grounds.

October 13 -- Sanitary Legislation.  Jurisdiction and Work of Public Health Authorities.  Prevention, Control and Mitigation of Epidemics and Contagious Diseases.  Food Inspection and Other Food Problems.

October 16 -- General Farm Culture.  Animal Industry.  Fisheries.  Forestry.  Veterinary Surgery.  Good Roads.  Household Economics.  Agricultural Organizations and Legislation.  Agricultural Education and Experiment, including Agricultural Chemistry, Practical Geology, Economic Climatology, Economic Entomology and Practical Botany, and other scientific subjects.
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