Showing posts with label Grant Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grant Park. Show all posts

Thursday, October 8, 2020

October 8, 2003 -- Sting Entertains 40,000 at Grant Park Free Concert

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October 8, 2003 – As the Chicago Cubs are in the midst of defeating the Florida Marlins, 12-3, in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series at Wrigley Field, Sting performs before a crowd of 40,000 at a free concert in Grant Park.  The show takes place on a 140-foot stage that took eight days, 150 laborers, 24 trucks and $2 million to construct.  [Chicago Tribune, October 9, 2003]. With an eight-piece band behind him, Sting makes his way through 19 songs, ranging from his first hits to a couple of songs from his just-released “Sacred Love” album.  The concert was received favorably ... it is best not to reflect upon what happened in the 2003 National League Championship.  Certainly, don't ask Moises Alou about it.  Ever.

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October 8, 1949 – The Edens Parkway is dedicated with a bronze plaque honoring William G. Edens placed at the new road’s grade separation over Cicero Avenue just north of Foster Avenue.  In 1912 Edens, a banker, became the first president of the Illinois Highway Association and in that capacity began a campaign to pave the state’s roads, an effort that ultimately saw over $60 million in bond issues raised to fund highway construction.  Although construction continues on the new highway, by the end of 1950 it is anticipated that the new six-lane highway will carry more cars in a 24-hour period than existed in the entire state when Edens began urging a plan for the area’s future transportation needs.  Speaking at the event is Virgil E. Gunlock, the Chicago Commissioner of Subways and Superhighways and Illinois Lieutenant Governor Sherwood Dixon, who praises the cooperation of the state, county and city in the construction of the 15-mile highway as the three governmental bodies shared the $21 million cost of the project.  The highway ultimately opens on a December day in 1951 and is considered to be the city’s first true expressway. [newswttw.com] It was a better day in October than the official opening of the road on December 20, 1951 as the above photo shows.

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October 8, 1943 – The Art Institute of Chicago announces that it has acquired Salvador Dali’s “Inventions of the Monsters,” a 20- by 30-inch canvas that will be added to the Winterbotham collection, a group of paintings the acquisition of which was made possible through a trust fund established by Joseph Winterbotham in 1921. According to stipulations of the trust agreement, the fund was to be used solely to purchase modern paintings by foreign artists with the total number of paintings acquired to be capped at 35.  Although the painting has been on display at the museum since July, this is the first indication that the Art Institute will add it to its permanent collection.  According to the Art Institute’s website, Dali, when he learns that the Chicago museum has obtained his work, responds, “Am pleased and honored by your acquisition.  According to Nostradamus the apparition of monsters presages the outbreak of war.  This canvas was painted in the Semmering mountains near Vienna a few months before the Anschluss and has a prophetic character.  Horse women equal maternal river monsters.  Flaming giraffe equals cosmic masculine apocalyptic monster.  Cat angel equals divine heterosexual monster.  Hourglass equals metaphysical monster.  Gala and Dali equal sentimental monster.  The little blue dog alone is not a true monster.  Sincerely, Salvador Dali.”  [artic.edu]   Today “Inventions of the Monsters” can be viewed in Gallery 396 at the Art Institute of Chicago.


October 8, 1937 – Less than 72 hours after the new bridge opens carrying Lake Shore Drive across the Chicago River, the first accident occurs at 3:00 a.m. when a northbound auto hits the wall on the west section of the tricky s-curve leading onto the bridge.  The 21-year-old driver continues driving north in the darkness, rather than making the right angle turn and heading toward the lake where the second right angle carries the bridge across the river.  He ends up traveling over an 18-inch divider, crossing the southbound lanes of traffic, and slamming his car into a retaining wall.  A spokesman for the Illinois Automobile Club had observed earlier that no motorist would be able to make either of the two right-angle turns south of the bridge traveling any faster than 15 miles-per-hour.  Otto Jelinek, the traffic engineer for the Chicago Park District, says, “The new bridge is of benefit to the entire Chicago street transportation system, and if critics will be patient we’ll iron out the wrinkles in a few weeks.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 8, 1937] It would be 49 years before the “wrinkle” that choked Lake Shore Drive south of the bridge would be ironed out, but in 1986 a sweeping curve was opened, allowing for a far more efficient movement of traffic.  The above photo shows the dedication of the bridge on October 7 ... the accident occurs 72 hours later at the right angle shown in the bottom left of the photo.


October 8, 1934 – The Chicago Daily Tribune presents information gained from an interview with the three remaining survivors of the 225 fire fighters who lost the battle to save the city 63 years earlier.  Hoseman George Leady, 89-years-old, starts the reminiscing as the Retired Fireman’s Association of Chicago honors the few remaining surviving firemen who fought the inferno.  On the anniversary of the fire that destroyed 17,500 buildings and left between 90,000 and 100,000 people homeless, it is interesting to think about what Leady had to say.  It wasn’t until the third alarm came that the city’s largest fire wagon was dispatched, Engine No. 9 with a pumping capacity of 500 gallons per minute.  “It got hotter and hotter,” Leady says.  “We took doors off their hinges and held them in front of the pipemen to keep their coats from igniting.  The hose in the street, full of water as it was, began to smoke and char.”  The fire drove the men to Polk Street and finally all the way to Michigan Avenue and South Water Street where hoses were dropped directly into the river because the hydrants no longer worked.  “I was the last man on the south side of the river,” Leady says.  “. . . all our men were gone, gassed or knocked out by the smoke, except the driver and me . . . we abandoned the hose in the street and got four scared horses harnessed up.”  The driver, Johnny Reese, provides a crucial piece of information about the cause of the fire, snorting at the idea that a cow burned the city to the ground.  “Why I saw the whole bunch of loafers who started that fire,” Reese says.  “Those fellows had been drinking all afternoon in O’Leary’s barn, and smoking their pipes.  Some sparks of burning tobacco – they didn’t have cigarets (sic) in those days -- got into the hay and set the barn.  The whole bunch was standing round the hydrant at Forquer and DeKoven streets and I know, because I heard them talking among themselves.” \
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Friday, September 4, 2020

September 4, 1983 -- Chicago Jazz Festival Draws Record Crowd to Hear Ray Charles

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September 4, 1983 – A record that stood for all of 24 hours is broken as 93,000 people flock to Grant Park to hear Ray Charles at the Chicago Jazz Festival after 82,000 had attended the festival on the preceding evening.  Backing up the virtuoso performer is a group billed as the Ray Charles Reunion Band, musicians who had key roles in the early days of Ray Charles’s career … horn players Marcus Belgrave and Phil Guilbeau, and reedmen Hank Crawford, David Newman and Leroy Cooper.  Guitarist Phil Upchurch and drummer Bernard Purdie complete the band.  Music critic Larry Kart’s review in the Chicago Tribune makes reference to the energy that Charles exhibited as a result of the reunion, writing “… one had only to look at the ecstatic way Charles slid along the piano bench to know that this was one of his nights for serious playing and singing.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1983].  Songs on the set list included “I Got a Woman,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Hot Rod,” and “Drown in My Own Tears”.  Attendance for the five-night run of the festival, the fifth annual jazz festival held at the Petrillo Band Shell, totaled 257,000.

September 4, 1973 – The City Council subcommittee on finance approves an ordinance calling for the construction of the Columbus Drive bridge over the Chicago River.  It is expected that the ordinance will move on to the full finance committee within the week and from there move to the City Council for final approval.  It passes despite the objections of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association which predicts that a bridge at Columbus Drive will cause gridlock north of the river.  The ordinance includes a proposal for the city to spend $180,000 to complete plans for the bridge, along with $580,000 for engineering and property acquisition costs.  Four blocks of land approximately 110 feet wide along Fairbanks Court between the river and Ohio Street must be purchased in order to connect Columbus Drive south of the river to Ohio Street to the north.  The State of Illinois is expected to underwrite the cost of the bridge, expected to cost about $10 million. The executive director of the North Michigan Avenue Association says that the organization will demand a state and federal environmental impact statement concerning the bridge before it is built.

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September 4, 1968 – Wreckers begin to raze a collection of shops and apartments on the southeast corner of Michigan Avenue and Ontario Street known as the Italian Court, a development that was built in the 1920's when two brothers, Chester and Raymond Cook, hired architect Robert S. DeGolyer, to come up with a plan to unite several small existing buildings. The apartments in Italian Court appealed to artists and writers.  Marianne Monroe, the editor of Poetry Magazine, orchestrated poetry readings that saw the likes of Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters  and Marion Strobel holding forth at Le Petit Gourmet, the restaurant which the apartments surrounded on three sides.  [Chicago Tribune, September 23, 1990].  Today the 625 North Michigan Avenue building stands on the site, a 28-floor building constructed in 1970 according to a design by architectural firm Meister and Volpe.  The restaurant of the original building is shown in the top photo.  625 North Michigan, the building that replaced Italian Court, is shown in the second photo.


September 4, 1967 – It is a day that ends another season at Riverview Park, a final Labor Day fling at a park that has delighted visitors for 64 seasons, ever since auto dealer George Schmidt started the amusement park in order to attract visitors to his dealership on the east side of Western Avenue.  There is the Star Time Frolics Parade with its floats, elephants, marching bands, and dancers to ring down the curtain on another year at the gritty carnival that sits on the Chicago River just south of Belmont Avenue.  This weekend is a time for end-of-summer fun, but this will be it for Riverview.  Less than a month later, the property will be gone for good, sold to the La Salle Street Investment Group for an estimated 6.5 million dollars.


September 4, 1918 – Four people are killed and more than 30 are injured when a bomb explodes in the Adams Street entrance of the Federal building at 3:11 p.m.  The Chicago police and the United States Secret Service theorize that the explosion was the work of sympathizers with the International Workers of the World in an attempt to avenge the conviction of 93 of the group’s members in the courthouse. Hundreds of people are in the long corridor that leads away from Adams Street and toward the great rotunda beneath the dome eight floors above it. Dozens are thrown to the ground when the explosions occur.  Afterward they walk around dazed and blackened, covered with dust and debris. Officials find evidence that the bomb was actually planned to explode two days earlier as the Labor Day parade passed the reviewing stand on the Jackson Boulevard side of the building.  Nearly every window in the lower five stories of the Edison and Marquette buildings across Adams Street is blown in.  Buildings as far away as State Street also report damage.  Hundreds of customers rush from the Fair Store in a panic only to enter a torrent of broken glass falling from windows above them.  A horse hitched to a delivery wagon on Adams Street dies in the street as a result of the shower of glass shards.  William D. Haywood, the head of the I.W.W. is in the Federal Building at the time of the blast and denies that the group had anything to do with the explosion.  Police take him to the county jail, fearing that the crowd might attack him.  Members of the American Protective League, 2,500 strong, fan out to scour the city for suspects.  Fifty sailors from the Municipal Pier surround the Federal Building with fixed bayonets, and former Chicago alderman John Scully says, “It was evidently close against the back wall and spent its force backward and downward.  Had it been against one of the main walls it would have torn it out. The terrific power in the bomb is shown by the windows in the office buildings opposite.  They were not merely broken but were shattered into fine bits, right down to the sashes.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 4, 1918] Subsequently, the police round up almost 100 members of the I.W.W. with all but a few released within a few days.  No convictions are ever secured, and no final determination is ever made as to the perpetrator of or the motive for the crime.  As a footnote one of the many postal workers in the building at the time of the explosion was a substitute letter carrier by the name of Walt Disney. [postalmuseum.si.edu] 



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Saturday, August 15, 2020

August 15, 1911-- Grant Park Aero Meet Sees Two Aviators Die


August 15, 1911 – As 50,000 watch the third day of the Aero Meet being held in Grant Park, two accidents take the lives of aviators and silence the crowds.  Mike Badger of Pittsburgh, flying a Baldwin biplane, dies as he executes a low-level flyover of Grant Park, ending with a dramatic climb that tears his plane apart.  The plane falls 50 feet and the wealthy daredevil dies at St. Luke’s Hospital.  St. Croix Johnstone, flying a Moisant monoplane, dies as his plane falls into Lake Michigan a little after 6:00 p.m. about a mile off shore, opposite Twelfth Street.  He is attempting to do a corkscrew maneuver when 800 feet above the lake the “spidery monoplane tipped a bit, shot downward with a sickening swoop, overturning just before it splashed In the water.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 16, 1911]   Before he goes up hat day, Badger holds a wide-ranging interview with a Tribune reporter, saying, “That’s the nuttiest idea people have about aviators.  They think they don’t mind death at all.  Why, I set just as much store by my life as you do.  I love life.  They think we go out of our way to invite death.  They say we don’t take ordinary precautions.  I don’t consider that I take one chance in 10,000 with my life . . . You must be sure of your machine.  I am sure of mine.  You must be sure of your good muscle and your clear brain.  I am sure of mine.”


August 15, 1893 – A mass-meeting of unemployed workers is held at 2:30 p.m. at the Columbus Statue in the Lake-Front Park, today’s Grant Park.  The gathering, organized by the Allied Woodworkers’ Trades Council, is made up of delegates of various trades, among them cabinet makers, piano varnishers and finishers, upholsterers, carvers, box makers, and sash, door and blind makers. The call to the meeting suggests it will deal with the questions: (1) Why are we idle and how can we be furnished employment; (2) Is it men or conditions we have to deal with; and (3) Shall we warn the unemployed of other cities, towns and States to stay away from Chicago or shall we let them come? [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 15, 1893] The Depression to which the workers are responding could possibly have been the worst in the country’s history. Even as the great World’s Columbian Exposition was drawing millions to Chicago, the nation’s gold reserves fell steeply, touching off a financial panic that closed four thousand banks by the end of the year.  Some fifty railroads failed in the crisis, a fact that hit Chicago, the railroad capital of the nation, particularly hard.  Unemployment climbed to 20 percent, and Chicago police were stationed at railroad stations to keep the unemployed from coming into the city. It would not be until 1897 that things would begin to improve. 

graphicwitness.org
August 15, 1873 – A letter to the editor of the Chicago Daily Tribune points out one of the many perils of living in the city – the difficulty of obtaining unadulterated milk.  “I was engaged in the milk-business three years, and gave it up in disgust,” the writer begins, “inasmuch as I could not sell pure milk and compete with other milkmen.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 15, 1873].  The writer points out that fixed costs for milk dealers include not just the milk, but the “wear and tear of wagons, harness, and horses, the wages of men … the cost of ice, etc. etc.”  Placing much of the blame on customers who refuse to pay what the product is worth, “Old Milkman” writes, “When a milkman finds his customers are not willing to pay a reasonable price for good milk, he naturally concludes he must make the milk to suit their price.”  To accomplish this, a dealer may, for example, skim the milk, “… taking from two to four quarts of cream from every eight-gallon can.”  To mask the missing cream the dealer adds a tablespoon of burnt sugar to each can and “restores the rich, creamy color to such an extent that the most experienced dairy-woman would be deceived.”  The writer does offer a number of suggestions on how to change the situation, beginning with paying milk dealers a fair price and then appointing a milk inspector “whose duty it will be to inspect, at intervals, all the milk that enters the city.”  Publishing the names of all dealers who adulterate their product as well as those who sell a “good product,” the writer believes “will soon find a complete revolution in the trade, and will also find that very few of the farmers are guilty of watering their milk.”  Adulteration of milk was just one problem citizens faced; another more dangerous aspect of milk distribution can be found here in Connecting the Windy City.  


August 15, 1860 – The Chicago Press and Tribune provides its annual review of the city’s fire department, introducing its inventory with a homage to “the gallant wearers of red shirts and fire hats, that on the occasion of a jingling of wild bells in an alarm of fire, used to start up from all corners and nooks, and come dashing up areas and round corners …”  [Chicago Press and Tribune, August 14, 1860] The fire department took a leap forward in 1858 when it purchased the first steam-powered fire engine, dubbed the “Long John” after the nickname of the mayor, “Long John” Wentworth.  In the two years that followed, “… hand machines have been sold to other cities, costly hose carts have sought the rural districts to be the wonder of the smaller communities, the steam machines with a few hand engines and hose carts located in different remote sections of the city …” constitute the fire department, manned by paid professionals.  With just a few strokes of a bell, the paper reports, “… in less than two minutes steam engines with attendant hose carriages … all drawn by over thirty powerful horses are in the streets moving at a hard gallop toward the scene of conflagration.”  A partial inventory of the department includes: (1) The Long John, drawn by four horses and housed on La Salle Street near Washington.  The engine has a force of eleven men, including an engineer, a fireman, two drivers, five pipemen, and an engine house watchman.  (2) The Enterprise, a Seneca Falls machine housed on State Street near Harrison, drawn by four horses with the same complement of personnel as the Long John.  (3) The Atlantic, a Seneca Falls machine housed on Michigan Avenue near the river with four horses and a force of eleven.  (4) The Island Queen, a third Seneca Falls machine, housed on West Lake Street with four horses and a crew of eleven.  (5) The U. P. Harris, a Philadelphia machine, housed on Jackson Street near Clinton on the west side with four horses and eleven crew members.  (6) The Little Giant, a moskeag machine, housed on Dearborn Street near Washington with two horses and eleven crew members.  The Long John, with forty pounds of steam pressure, could produce four streams of water through 100 feet of hose horizontally 150 feet; with sixty pounds of steam pressure two streams of water could be thrown 160 feet horizontally. The machine weighed five tons and cost about $5,000.  The Long John is shown in the above photo.
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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

June 30, 1929 -- Grant Park, A Parking Lot?

Chicago Tribune Photo
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June 30, 1929 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints a photo essay, showing the amount of space in Grant Park given over to the parking of automobiles.  There was at the time a pay station for those who wanted to park in what is now primarily Maggie Daley Park, an area where between 5,000 and 7,500 cars were parked each day.  In the grainy Tribune photo above one can see the long lines of cars with the Illinois Central Railroad freight yard in the lower left corner of the photo.  The second photo shows another view of the parking lot.  The third photo shows what the area looks like today. 
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June 30, 1961 – The land on which the 100 North La Salle Street building stands is sold to the building’s owners for $1,750,000 or $200 a square foot.  The sum is believed to be the highest price paid for land in the downtown real estate market since 1929.  Vincent Curtis Baldwin, president of the consortium that owns the building, says that the price paid eclipses the previous high for a lot on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street which sold for $115 a square foot. The corporation that owns the building was reorganized in 1942 under federal bankruptcy law after having fallen behind in rent, taxes and bond interest during the 1930’s Depression. Acquiring the land will allow the building’s owners to free themselves of the annual lease on the property, which, on an annual basis, amounts to seven percent of the purchase price.  Several years ago an Atlanta-based firm, the Bridge Investment Group, purchased the 47-story tower for $113 million.

June 30, 1950 – The formal dedication of Merrill C. Meigs Field takes place on the lakefront.  Although the airport has been open since December 10, 1948, it carried no name.  Speaking from prepared notes, Meigs, who had served as the head of the city’s Aero Commission, said, “When my name was brought up last year before the city council, there were objections that no airport should be named for a living person.  I was honored at the original suggestion but felt that the sacrifice involved—in order to qualify—was too great a price, even for that glory.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1, 1950]   Special guests were drawn from 30 states—the Flying Farmers of Prairieland and the National Flying Farmers.  It is estimated that 890 of their planes, carrying 2,047 persons, landed at Chicago area airports.   

June 30, 1941 – Superior Court Judge Ulysses S. Schwartz awards $1,275 to A. F. Cuneo, the owner of two three-story buildings at 933 and 939 North State Street, an amount that covers the cost “of protecting the buildings against possible collapse as the result of subway excavation” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 31, 1943] related to the 8.75 mile subway we know today as the Red Line.  The case is seen as a precedent, impacting “millions of dollars” that are involved in the dispute between the city and property owners over damages incurred during the construction of the subway.  City officials plan on appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, but a clause in the Illinois Constitution does not appear to support their case.  It reads, “Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without compensation.”  Already 50 suits have stacked up, amounting to a million-and-a-half dollars, mostly costs associated with underpinning buildings to protect them from collapse as the subway tunnel is bored beneath them.  Construction of the State Street subway is shown in the photo above. 

June 30,1863 – The setting of the cornerstone of the Theological Seminary at the corner of Halsted Street and Fullerton Avenue takes place in a ceremony which opens with the assembled guests singing “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.” Reverend Dr. Matthews of Monmouth, Illinois then presents the past history of the Seminary, after which he lays the cornerstone. Today’s McCormick Theological Seminary is the descendant of this seminary which, according to the McCormick website, “was born in a log cabin” in Hanover, Indiana with a faculty of two and a “handful of students.”  Seeking a Presbyterian seminary in Chicago, Cyrus McCormick provided a $100,000 donation to endow four professorships, allowing the Seminary to move to 25 acres in today’s Lincoln Park.  In 1975 the seminary moved to Hyde Park, a move that allowed the school to share resources with the Jesuit School of Theology and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.  The above photo shows the Halsted Street entrances of McCormick Hall, built in 1883; Ewing Hall, built in 1863, and the seminary chapel, built in 1875.  
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Thursday, May 21, 2020

May 21, 1964 -- Michigan Avenue Breakwater from Early Days of Chicago Unearthed

Chicago Tribune Photo

May 21, 1964 – As construction continues on the Grant Park South garage, an interesting discovery is made when a 110-year-old breakwater is unearthed just east of Michigan Avenue, indicating that in the early years of the city the waters of Lake Michigan pushed waves right up to the street.  Officials surmise that the breakwater once stretched from Randolph Street to Roosevelt Road and was located about 30 feet east of Michigan Avenue.  The breakwater lay about ten feet below street grade and was about 25 feet high.  It is believed that it was built sometime between 1849 and 1851 and was covered in 1871 when the city allowed the Illinois Central Railroad to use debris from the Chicago fire to fill in a lagoon that separated Michigan Avenue from an I. C. trestle than ran on the other side of the lagoon from Roosevelt Road to Randolph Street.  Although of poor quality, the above image of the century-old breakwater gives a good idea of how close the waters of Lake Michigan came to  Michigan Avenue in the city's early days.

May 21, 1973 -- The Chicago Tribune prints a report on the full plan to revitalize the central area of the city, a plan for which the Chicago Central Area Committee paid Skidmore, Owings and Merrill nearly $400,000 to draft. Today it is interesting to note what parts of the plan “made it” and what recommendations did not. The stakes were high. As the Tribune observes, “If it bombs, downtown Chicago may bomb, too.” The report puts into words what “white leaders don’t know how to talk about . . . without sounding like bigots.” Whites running from the city to the suburbs, which are becoming increasingly independent of the city. A “growing schizophrenia [skyscrapers and stores bustling by day, with little action at night] . . . changing the Loop. Blacks “still crowded into housing projects like Cabrini-Green” and the potential of a “tipping point where whites start staying away” from the city.

 The 1973 SOM plan suggests "gradual modification" for projects such as Cabrini Green.
The above photo shows Cabrini Green as it sprawled across the northwest side of the city. 

Here are some of the recommendations that we can look on 43 years later and admire the prescience of the planners of the early 1970’s:

•  Meigs Airport will be scrapped and Northerly Island, on which it stands converted to park, beach and picnic use.

•  Navy Pier will be transformed into a lively recreational facility with restaurants, an auditorium, and exhibits.

•  No further private construction will be permitted east of Lake Shore Drive. 

•  A miniature supercity for 120,000 would be concentrated on 650 acres of largely unused railroad land, south of the Loop.

•  Means would be found to encourage major development of the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust property along the north side of the river between St. Clair Street and the lakefront.

•  Rehabilitation and stabilization – not clearance, or relocation – are stressed for the Pilsen and East Humboldt Park neighborhoods.

And here are a few that didn’t get done:

•  A giant sports arena will be built south of the Loop within easy distance of the lakefront if not actually on it.

•  Lake Shore Drive, where it runs along Grant Park, will be narrowed and left turns would be prohibited, forcing motorists heading for the central business district to park in new public lots on the Loop’s fringes and ride on a new subway or another form of public transportation.

•  The Loop elevated will be torn down and replaced with a subway.   Once free of the elevated’s shadow, the east side of Wabash Avenue will be converted to a pedestrian-oriented shopping street.

•  A personalized, automated rapid transit system might connect the “super blocks” of the South Loop to the center of the city over Illinois Central Gulf Railroad air rights.  A passenger would enter a small car, push a button on a map showing his destination, and zip away automatically.

And . . . a few that sort of got done:

•  Traffic on State Street will be narrowed to four lanes for buses and taxis only. Autos will be banned.   Widened sidewalks with trees and shrubs will form pleasant promenades.  (This one happened in an experiment that didn’t work and was reversed.)

•  Gradual modification of Cabrini Green is proposed.  (It got modified down to bare ground.)


May 21, 1919 – Jewish workers throughout the city, some 25,000 people in all, “in response to the notice carried throughout the Jewish resident and factory districts by word and handbill” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 21, 1919] gather at Twelfth and Robey Streets to form a column of marchers that will demonstrate against the treatment of Jews in Europe.  A speaker at the event, Clarence Darrow, says, “There should be more freedom over the world for the Jews.  The question of persecution of the Jews is an old one … We are forming a number of new nations; it should be written into their constitutions that they will enforce equal rights for all people.”  The protests focus especially on Poland, a country that the United States sees as a counterbalance to the influence of Russia in the period after World War I. In June of 1919 President Theodore Roosevelt will send a delegation to Poland headed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. to investigate the reports of atrocities.  The report of the delegation comes in October of 1919 and provides details of eight major incidents in 1918 and 1919 in which violence occurs against Polish Jews.

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May 21, 1895 – For more than an hour the Rush Street Bridge is out of commission, tying up river traffic so that “the whistles of steamers caught in the blockade were being continually sounded, and a pandemonium was kept up during the time.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 22, 1895].  Around 7:00 p.m. two ships, the Seneca and the Arthur Orr, each being maneuvered by a tug boat, enter the river at almost the same time. The captain on each ship apparently knows the destination of his counterpart – the Burlington docks at Sixteenth Street.  It is clear from the time the two ships enter the mouth of the river that the vessel that reaches the dock first will have the chance to tie up, leaving the other vessel to figure out a way to lay up for the night.  The vessels whistle for the Rush Street bridge to be rotated and the bridgetender on duty refuses to swing the bridge.  The ships cannot be stopped, and the Arthur Orr strikes the bridge in the south draw while the Seneca strikes the bridge in the north draw, the effect being that the bridge is prevented from turning until the boats can be backed out.  The captain of the Arthur Orr, in violation of marine laws that inbound vessels must take the north draw, refuses to back his ship from its position.  The captain of the Seneca, claiming the right-of-way, also refuses to reverse his vessel.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “A war of words resulted between the seamen and bridgtender, and there was considerable bad language used.”  To make matters worse, several heavy horse-drawn wagons and “many pedestrians” are on the bridge and are thrown one way as the Arthur Orr swings the bridge three feet out of position, then thrown in the opposite direction as the Seneca slams into the bridge, moving it back to its original position. The police show up to find Rush Street on both sides of the bridge blocked with vehicles and a dozen boats sounding their shrill steam whistles for the bridge to open.  The boats begin to pile up, one of them colliding with the Arthur Orr, which once again sends the ship into the bridge, once again moving it several feet.  The William H. Woolf and the Mable Bradshaw, approaching from the west come close to the opposite side of the bridge before they can be stopped, in effect blockading the bridge from the west.  The city’s Harbormaster is unable to convince the original two ships to move and even the deckhands start going after one another … “They called each other names and threats were made.”  Finally, at 8:20 p.m. the Seneca gives way and backs away from the bridge, and the chaos begins to lighten.  Fortunately, the bridge is not seriously damaged.  Just another day, a very noisy day, on a river that sees over 25,000 ships a year sailing in and out of its docks.  As the above photo, taken five years later, shows ... the bridge at Rush Street was an obstacle to be conquered.  Michigan Avenue, by the way, is the street on the left of the photo.  


May 21 1863 – Item right after “Disgraceful” (“men and boys, by scores, violate not only the laws of decency and the ordinance of the city, but desecrate the Sabbath, by collecting in large numbers, and bathing in the Lake, on the Sabbath, all along the shore from the Light House to Huron street, thus making an indecent exposure of their persons to residents in the vicinity …”) [Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1863] and “A Ferocious Dog” (Yesterday morning, a demented lad, named James Small, aged about fourteen, was attacked by a large and savage dog, belonging to a butcher named John Lownzre, on Madison street at the foot of Franklin street”) … there it is: “Theatre—J. Wilkes Booth”.  The Tribune provides a glowing appraisal of the young actor’s skills, noting the improvement he has made since his Chicago debut a year earlier.  “In every part he plays,” the review states, “the auditor will perceive the marks of the student, and this being so, errors of judgment must be eradicated with time and experience.  Since his advent in Chicago, some eighteen months ago, no one who has attended his performances, can fail to see an improvement, and we predict ere he has attained his thirtieth year ... no one will ever regret having witnessed him in any of his characters.”  The first McVicker’s Theatre, on Madison Street between Dearborn and State, where John Wilkes Booth appeared, is pictured above.
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 0 comments
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