Showing posts with label Highways. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Highways. Show all posts

Thursday, September 10, 2020

September 10, 1925 -- Chicago Plan Commission Urges "Immediate" Start to Outer Drive

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September 10, 1925 – Engineers for  the Chicago Plan Commission make a presentation to the executive committee, urging that an immediate start be made on the outer drive from the Field Museum through Grant Park, over the Illinois Central tracks and through the warehouse section north of the river, all the way to Chicago Avenue.   It is expected that the project will cost in excess of $9,500,000  (over $140,000,000 in today’s dollars).  Present at the meeting is a “Who’s Who” of Chicago citizens, including James Simpson of Marshall Field and Company, Julius Rosenwald, Joy Morton, Charles H. Wacker, Frank I. Bennett, Harry A Wheeler, Colonel William Nelson Pelouze, John V. Farwell, Edward B. Butler, and Michael Zimmer.  Simpson reads from the report, including one passage that states, “If the improvement is made in the near future, it can be done at the least possible expense.  If it is delayed every year that passes will add greatly to the cost.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 11, 1925]  The report also underscores the importance of the huge project, stating, “The development of this large territory is inevitable in the future.  We advise the improvement to hasten this development – a territory whose progress now is retarded, because of its inaccessibility.”  Change takes time, and the plan did not approach its completion until the bridge that carried the Outer Drive, today’s Lake Shore Drive, across the Chicago River was opened in 1937.  The above photo shows the bridge under construction in 1936.

September 10, 1954 – The state civil defense director, Robert M. Woodward, graces Chicago with some upbeat news when he announces that a hydrogen bomb dropped at Madison Street and Kedzie Avenues between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. would cause 3,030,096 deaths and 1,382,421 injuries.  With an evacuation window of 15 minutes there would still be 1,876,227 deaths and 844,013 injuries.  For those wondering why we folks in our sixties and seventies sometimes act so strangely, it might be good to remember that we grew up with regular updates like this instead of the latest updates on Pokémon Go.

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September 10, 1953 – The Greater North Michigan Avenue Association presents a general plan for redeveloping and preserving the Near North Side, from the Chicago River on the south and west to North Avenue on the north and the lake on the east.  The ambitious plan has a number of long-range objectives.  First up is the rehabilitation and conservation of three industrial districts, the first of which is roughly bounded by Chicago Avenue, Wells Street and the North Branch of the river.  The second area is located at the river, North Avenue and Halsted Street while a third, smaller location, is at the southwest corner of Division Street and Larrabee Street.  The second major recommendation of the plan is the rehabilitation and conservation of an area east of Wells Street and south of Chicago Avenue, through which Ohio and Ontario Streets run.  Another component of the proposal is the conservation of the neighborhoods west of La Salle Street and north of Division Street through the adoption of a minimum standard of housing and zoning laws.  The proposal recommends the widening of State Street from the river north to Chicago Avenue, a project that has been in the city’s plans for two decades, along with the widening of Clark Street from the river north to North Avenue. Also recommended is the development of Orleans Street and Clybourn Avenue as a “semi-superhighway.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 11, 1953]  Also recommended is work on Ohio and Ontario Streets to make them ready to accommodate traffic flowing to and from the proposed highway to be built west of the north branch of the river.  Commuter service by the Chicago and North Western Railroad to a new terminal near Michigan Avenue and the river is recommended as well.   The chairman of the association, Newton C. Farr, says that the program as outlined would take at least a decade to carry out.


September 10, 1948 – Mayor Martin H. Kennelly gives approval to a proposal submitted to the city council, requiring that city officials and employees be required to sign non-Communist affidavits or face dismissal.  The proposal, sponsored by Forty-Fourth Ward alderman John C. Burmeister, also mandates a “loyalty committee” of three to five aldermen appointed by the mayor.  The mayor says, “I think it’s all right. We don’t know who we have working for us.”  The mayor is pictured in the above photo.


September 10, 1924 – A magic evening takes place on the lakefront as 3,000 children carrying lanterns march into the Grant Park stadium, today’s Soldier Field, in a “preliminary dedication”. [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 11, 1924] Despite a light rain the Pageant of Music and Light has spectators cheering “as the army of girls and boys marched into the arena and scattered about to form [a] sparkling wheel.”  A mixed mass chorus under the direction of William Boeppler rolls thorugh “The Heavens Declare,” following the song with a rendition of “Beautiful Savior” and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. A children’s choir of a thousand voices than takes over, led by Hans Biedermann.  The program concludes with the Civic Band of Chicago leading the crowd in “America.”  The official opening day for the massive stadium will occur a month later, on October 9, the Fifty-Third anniversary of the Chicago Fire. The first event held in the new sports arena will be a police track meet that features a thousand athletes from the police department, drawing 90,000 spectators.  At the urging of the city’s Gold Star Mothers the Municipal Grant Park Stadium is officially renamed Soldier Field on November 11, 1925.





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Sunday, August 30, 2020

August 30, 1937 -- Lake Shore Drive in Lincoln Park Opens

 

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August 30, 1937 – North bound traffic enters new pavement on Lake Shore Drive for the first time.  The former north bound lanes will be closed for the construction of pedestrian subways at North Avenue and Division Streets, work that will be completed before the second week of October.  After that, the west lanes of the three separate roadways will be given over to local traffic while the east lanes will be used for express traffic, headed to and from the new Lake Shore Drive bridge across the Chicago River.  The above photo shows the new road opening on August 30, 1937 as work continues on what will become the south bound express lanes of the new road.  The photo below that shows the area as it appears today.


August 30, 1911 – Chicago Building Commissioner Henry Ericsson says that the 16-story Unity building at 127 North Dearborn Street is leaning 30 inches out of plumb toward the south.  Ericsson says that it is a dangerous situation and that the building will eventually collapse if something is not done quickly.  Thirteen months earlier building department engineers found the building fifteen and three-eighths inches out of plumb at the fifteenth floor, but no action was taken.  The office tower, at one time the tallest building in the city, would be jacked back into place and would stand for another 78 years until destruction began in 1989 as part of the demolition of the structures that stood on Block 37.  It had quite a history.  In 1891 John Peter Altgeld took out a $400,000 loan from the Chicago National Bank, controlled by John R. Walsh, a tough rags-to-riches banker who controlled the Chicago City Council.  When Altgeld was elected governor in 1892, Walsh lobbied for control over the state’s patronage employees, but the scrupulously honest Altgeld refused. When a nation-wide Depression came in 1893, Altgeld lost $500,000 on the building, and it was sold into receivership. It was in Room 711 of the building that the first meeting was held to form the service club that would become Rotary International.

August 30, 1891 – The Chicago Daily Tribune greets news that a new art museum will be built on the lakefront with an editorial in its favor.  “The most important feature of the scheme, however, is the securing of a permanent art gallery for the city of sufficient dimensions to meet all demands for long years to come . . . It may be anticipated that the new structure will be as perfect as money and skill can make it, and as beautiful as artistic taste can suggest . . . something which will more clearly reflect the growth of enterprise, skill, and artistic taste in the World’s Fair City.”  The paper, and the city along with it, got its wish.  


August 30, 1867 – A forewarning of things to come is issued at 4:00 a.m. when a fire is discovered on the second floor of a five-story brick building situated at No. 20 State Street, the approximate location today of the Tortoise Club just north of Marina City.  The fire in a building that houses the David Henry wholesale liquor dealer and importers is well underway before it is discovered and destroys an entire block of businesses before it is brought under control.  The David Henry Co. values its stock at about $70,000 (about $1,225,000 in today's dollars) with only $17,500 covered by insurance.  Other adjoining businesses suffer as well … what fire doesn’t claim, water from the efforts of the fire brigade ruins.  A narrow alley runs along the south side of the David Henry building, and much of the water used to douse the fire runs into the rear of basements extending back from Lake Street, ruining much of the stock in buildings that are not affected by the flames.  It will be a little over four years later that a fire will destroy most of the city, but the fire on State Street on this day shows how quickly things could get out of hand in a city built principally of wood. The block that burned is shown as it appears today in the above photo.
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Wednesday, May 6, 2020

May 6, 1957 -- Lower Wacker Drive Opened to Traffic

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May 6, 1957 – The lower level of Wacker Drive is opened to traffic as Mayor Richard J. Daley and other officials take part in ceremonies.  A year earlier the upper deck of Wacker, running along the west side of the Loop, was opened after the expenditure of $11 million on the project.  The upper level had no direct connection, though, to the new Congress Expressway, which is still under construction.  Traffic on that level of Wacker has to pass under Congress and turn right on Harrison Street, then right onto Wells and right again onto Congress.  The lower level will use ramps to take traffic on and off the new expressway.  There will be no way to head east on Congress from either upper or lower Wacker Drive.   Engineers estimate that of the 90,000 automobiles passing through the Congress plaza daily, 20,000 are expected to use the ramps to or from lower Wacker Drive.

May 6,1942 – Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Chick Evans, and Tommy Armour tee it up at the Edgewater Golf Club with the admission fees from the 3,500 spectators going to benefit the Fort Sheridan Athletic and Recreation Fund.  The team of Crosby and Evans win the match, 2 up, both men shooting 36, one over par. Armour cards a 37 and Hope a 38. The round ends after nine holes as overzealous fans “crowded [the players] at every step, seeking autographs or at least a walking proximity to the two stars. Small boys scale the Edgewater fences by the hundreds to follow Bing and Bob.” [Chicago Tribune, May 7, 1942] As a side note the 94-acre Edgewater Golf Club is now a part of the city’s Warren Park at 6601 N. Western Avenue. When the old golf course was re-zoned in 1968 to allow real estate development on the property, a grassroots effort to save the land as open space ensued. A third of the property became the first urban state park when Illinois purchased it for $8 million in 1969. The Chicago Park District condemned another 32 acres in 1972 and a new park, complete with a nine-hole golf course was opened in 1980. The golf course is dedicated to Robert A. Black, Chief Engineer at the Chicago Park District for more than 30 years. The layout of the old golf course is pictured above.  A look at what Warren Park looks like today is shown beneath it.  An awesome history of the course and the politics involved in its transformation can be found here.


May 6, 1929 –The South Park Board approves the lakefront ordinance, offering hope that the three-year dispute between the board and the Illinois Central Railroad is moving toward a conclusion.  Among other things the ordinance contains provisions for construction of the Randolph Street viaduct and an Illinois Central suburban train station in Grant Park. The station was originally intended to be completed by February 20, 1927, but disagreements between the park board and the railroad delayed the plan.  At the meeting of the South Park board two amendments are added to the ordinance. One holds the I. C. liable for any damage to viaducts resulting from the operation of trains.  The second assures the South Park board of complete control of the Roosevelt Road viaduct “with particular reference to the granting of franchises to public utilities companies to provide transportation to the municipal bathing beach and other attractions on the lake front.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1929] The above photo shows Grant Park in 1929.


May 6, 1909 – At a hearing before Major Thomas Rees, the Chief Engineer of the Department of the Lakes, representatives of river and commercial interests present their evaluation of conditions on the Chicago River, testimony which appears to strike “the death knell of the Lake street bridge and other center pier structures which have obstructed traffic in the Chicago river for years.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1909]   Attorney Edward Cahill, representing river interests, testifies that the old style bridges are “menaces to traffic.”  Captain Rardon, a mariner who was in charge of the first vessel to leave the Chicago harbor on October 9, 1871, leaving a burnt-out city behind him, said that “center pier bridges obstruct the flow of water, create a disastrous current in the river and otherwise make navigation dangerous.”  The only argument in favor of the swing bridges comes from the president of the Lake Street elevated who expresses his doubts that the federal government could interfere with his company’s contract with the city to run its trains over the bridge at Lake Street, a contract that has an expiration date of 1940.  The city generally agrees with the testimony while pleading for more time.  Alderman Charles M. Foell, speaking on behalf of the city, says, “The council agrees that these center pier bridges are a menace to river commerce, but we also assert that the city has no funds provided for the work of changing the bridges at present … we are anxious to cooperate with the government in this work, and urge that we be granted time to obtain the necessary funding.” The Lake Street elevated line, today's Green Line, is pictured above in 1909. 


May 6, 1883 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the excavation for the nine-story headquarters of the Pullman Palace-Car Company on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street has begun.  As the Home Insurance Building on La Salle Street is nearing completion – arguably the first metal-framed commercial skyscraper in history – the Pullman building will be “perfectly fireproof from cellar to garret – fireproof tile and iron beams being used throughout.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1883] The structure will have a dual purpose.  The Pullman headquarters will have an entrance on Adams Street while a number of apartments in the building will be entered through the Michigan Avenue entrance.  Company offices will occupy the first four floors of the building, and speculation is that the fifth floor will be given to the offices of General Phillip Sheridan.  The five upper floors will be devoted to apartments of from seven to ten rooms and a number of bachelors’ suites from two to four rooms.  The ninth floor will have a restaurant overlooking the lake with “a large covered promenade … making it a delightful resort in warm weather.”  The half-million-dollar building will have its boilers located in a separate structure, given “the prejudice against living in a building with large steam boilers in the basement.”  The Tribune assessment of the building concludes, “One of the objects sought by Mr. Pullman … was the furnishing to those employés of the company who desired them living apartments of superior character more convenient to their business than those in which many of them now abide … Mr. Pullman has expressed a wish that such a structure might be erected for their benefit.”
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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

May 5, 1958 -- Kennedy Expressway (Northwest Expressway) Progress Monitored

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May 5, 1958 --  A reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribune rides with officials of the Illinois and Cook County highway departments as they take a ride on the Chicago and North Western railroad from the city to Jefferson Park.  “With maps and office memoranda on their knees” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, 1958]  they monitor the progress of the construction on the Northwest expressway, today’s Kennedy Expressway.  One of the engineers, Roger Nusbaum, observes, “If we are lucky and the program is based on this hope, we’ll have this thing open by midsummer 1960.”  This conclusion contradicts Mayor Richard J. Daley’s optimistic view that the expressway will be finished by 1959.  The engineers on the train see four obstacles to an early completion of the project.  The most daunting of these obstacles is the construction of a subway for the expressway under railroad tracks between Hubbard and Kinzie Streets, a project for which contracts have only been recently award.  You understand the complexity of this project when you realize that this would become the Hubbard Tunnel, known popularly today as “Hubbard’s Cave.”  The second obstacle involves moving the Chicago and North Western railroad embankment about 150 feet southwest between North Avenue and Division Street so that the expressway can run west of the railroad.  As part of this project Saint Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church will need to be moved, “moved” being a polite way of saying “torn down”.  (The church was saved when the expressway was rerouted.)  The third obstacle involves building a subway for the expressway under the C and NW near Addison Street, a project for which contracts have still not been awarded.  This is the point where the railroad and the expressway will change places with the expressway moving from the west side of the railroad to the east side.  Finally, $7 million will have to be spent in demolishing the Jefferson Park railroad station near Montrose Avenue and construction of a new one.  Some may remember that a gigantic pair of flashing Magikist lips graced this area for years.  Chicago kissed them good-bye in 2004. Contracts on this part of the project will not be awarded for another month.  It turns out that Mayor Daley did not get his wish ... the 18-mile-long expressway opened on November 5, 1960.  The Chicago City Council unanimously voted on November 29, 1963 to name the highway after John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated a week earlier.

Chicago Tribune Photo
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May 5, 1954 – Twenty-three men and three women, the crew of the Norwegian ship Oris, unload 200 tons of granite on the banks of the Chicago River.  The stone will be used in facing the first floor of the new Prudential building.  Ultimately, 525 tons of Stern silver-white granite will be cut into 3.5-inch slabs for facing the building.  Louis Olson a partner in the Bevel Granite Company at 11849 South Kedzie Avenue says that the granite, quarried at Larvik, 100 miles west of Oslo, “is the whitest granite in the world.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1954]  The black and white Tribune photo above shows the Oris docked at what today is the embarkation point for First Lady Tour's Chicago Architecture Center River Tours.  One can barely make out the Prudential building rising in the center of the background.  Below that is a photo of the quarry at Larvik, Norway.


May 5, 1930 – The Marshall Field and Co. wholesale house moves into its new headquarters at the Merchandise Mart at Wells and Kinzie Streets.  The move is completed over a weekend in order to avoid any interruption in the firm’s schedule.  The company’s new home will be located in a south portion of the new building, the largest building of its kind in the world.  Each display room, three to a floor, will cover over a block of space.  The silk section will even have a stage, making it possible to host fashion shows.  Consider how amazing this is ... the first shovel of dirt for this massive project was dug on August 12, 1928.


May 5, 1914 –The Chicago Daily Tribune profiles South Water Street, a place that is “busy before most of inhabitants have left their beds.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, 1914] At 5:00 a.m. the city is quiet … “the air is cool and fresh, free from the midday fragrance of burned gasoline, soot, and coal smoke.  The water running into the lake under the State street bridge is clear and blue, not yet tainted with the burden of sewage and waste.”  This is not the case on South Water Street, though.  There are “at least 20 roosters, crowing their loudest on each of the street’s four blocks to greet the belated city sun.”  There are 400 Italians and three times as many Greeks, “Black eyes flashing hands waving, singing classic odes to the returning springtime and hurling defiance at the robbers who hold the morning’s strawberries.” Loaded trucks and wagons are “lined up solidly on either side of the four blocks and other teamsters trying to ease between the lines, addressing people who got in their way with that altogether friendly and fearful profanity which is elsewhere current only in the far west.”  The sidewalks are lined with crates, barrels and boxes as tall as a man.  There is an endless procession of pushcarts and hundreds of salesmen in long white coats vying with grocers and market men buying the day’s supplies.  In building basements bananas ripen.  The second and third floors of the businesses are given over to “South Water Street’s hospitals, where first aid to injured vegetables is applied.”  By 7:00 a.m. the day’s run of fresh strawberries – 18 carloads from Louisiana – arrives and “lids are pried off, samples tasted, the freshness tested, prices asked.” Peddlers leave with thousands of cases of produce with most of the Greeks selling from wagons; the Italians, most of them, “still cling to their baskets.”  By 8:00 a.m. the residential streets of the city are “vocal with their cries.”

May 5, 1912 – Chief of Police John McWeeney gets down to business and tells his lieutenants to apply “drastic measures” to striking pressmen in the newspaper strike that began with workers striking against Hearst publications in Chicago on April 30, an action that has now spread to all of the other newspapers in the city. “The tactics of the strikers have been a disgrace to civilization,” says the Chief. His feeling is that 528 patrolmen are “none too many . . . in view of the unexpected brutality resorted to by the strikers.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1912] A female news vender was attacked at the Fifty-First Street station of the “Alley ‘L’”. A newsboy at Thirty-Ninth Street was also beaten with a blackjack. Another newsboy was attacked at Clark and North Avenue, and a reporter for the Chicago Examiner was roughed up at Madison and Halsted. It will be a long time before the violence dies down; the strike finally ends in November. Above the Chicago police make a show of force as the strike continues.


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Sunday, March 22, 2020

March 22, 1955 -- Auditorium Building to be Arcaded for Expressway


March 22, 1955 -- The federal government awards a $507,765 contract for reconstructing the Congress Street arcade through the Chicago post office in a move that will permit extension of the west side expressway through the building and across the river on a new bridge by the fall of 1956. Pathman Construction Company is the successful bidder. The city will pick up another $600,000 of the project. Since 1952 the federal government has spent another eight million dollars altering the post office building so that it can accommodate the new expressway, The post office can barely be seen in the center of the photo above as the area east of the building waits for the construction of what today is the Congress Expressway.
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March 22, 1946 – With World War II concluded, the city begins to look toward the future, and Randall Cooper, the executive secretary of the State Street council, says that merchants’ plans include landing platforms on the roofs of Loop department stores that will handle helicopter taxi service to State Street department stores.  “We have known for years that Chicago’s world famous shopping street is the number one attraction for women visitors who have only an hour or two in the city,” says Cooper.  “We have hoped for a long time that some means could be provided to bring people held at the airport between planes into the city, and much of the talk has been about using helicopters.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 24, 1946]  He continues, “It would be an exciting experience for people bound over at the airport for two or three hours to be flown quickly into the heart of the shopping district.  It is something we have definitely in mind.”
  

 March 22, 1932 – The Illinois Department of Public Works announces that $400,000 of gasoline tax revenue will be allocated for a one-mile extension of Lake Shore Drive from Montrose Avenue to Foster Avenue.  Although the land has not been created for the section north of Wilson Avenue, the half-mile section between Montrose and Wilson can begin as soon as weather permits.  Plans call for two 40-foot wide roadways with enough land on either side to allow them to be widened to 60 feet.  Grade separations will also be built at Montrose with future grade separations at Lawrence and Foster Avenues.  This is just one part of a highway program that will see $2,000,000 spent on improving roads across the city in 1932.  The above photo shows the new road in 1938 at Wilson Avenue with the completed grade separation.

March 22, 1902 – Members of the Western Society of Engineers inspect the cofferdam being prepared for the foundation of the new bridge at Randolph Street.  In doing so they examine “the first American test of steel sheet piling, which, it is contended will work a revolution in dock and bridge construction.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 23, 1902] Tryggve Larssen, a government surveyor in Bremen, Germany, seems to have come up with the idea for the rolled steel piles with a channel-shaped cross section. [www.chinasteel-piling.com].  The first installation of the new supporting members was in a waterfront structure in Bremen where the piles are still serving their original purpose today.  Impressive, isn’t it, that engineers in Chicago picked up on the idea so quickly, and foundries responded with a similar amount of speed?  In the case of Chicago with its high water table and sandy soil, it was thought that the new Larssen pilings could save at least a month in constructing cofferdams.  As can be seen in the above photo, the cofferdams created for the extension of the city's River Walk were formed with basically the same engineering as they were back in 1902.
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Sunday, February 2, 2020

February 2, 1927 -- Lake Shore Drive Closed by Massive Snowstorm, 900 Cars Abandoned


February 2, 2011 -- It's hard to believe that it has been nine years! On this day in 2011 Chicagoans were watching the end of the world as it unfolded. Beginning during rush hour the evening before, a brutal winter storm brought 70 m.p.h winds to the lakefront, along with thunder, lightning, and massive waves. Some snow drifts reached ten feet. Schools were cancelled for the first time in 12 years, and Lake Shore Drive was completely shut down with at least 900 cars and buses stuck there overnight and hundreds of motorists and bus riders afraid to abandon their vehicles in near white-out conditions. In excess of 19 inches of snow fell from late January 31 through February 2, the third largest storm in the city's recorded weather history.

February 2, 1954 – Here is something Daniel Burnham and William H. Bennett did not have in mind when they completed the Chicago Plan of 1909 for the Commercial Club of Chicago.  On this date in 1954 the Cook County Board approves plans to build a rocket storage depot on a 20-acre plot that would be set aside as part of a 600-acre forest preserve purchase on the western edge of Busse Woods.  The 20 acres of farmland are located south of Higgins Road and west of Salt Creek.  The general superintendent of the forest preserve system, Charles G. Sauers, says that there is only one farmhouse in the area, and that it will be vacated since U. S. Air Force requirements dictate that there must be no human habitation within 2,100 feet of the proposed depot.  Colonel Harry Woodbury of the Army Corps of Engineers says that there is little danger of an explosion at the site since the rockets will not receive fuses until they are brought to O’Hare.

February 2, 1914 – United States Secretary of War Lindley Miller Garrison approves the Mann Bill, allowing Chicago to carry out Daniel Burnham’s plan for the improvement of the lakefront.  Garrison says, “The bill appears to make such ample provision for protection of present and future navigation that I know of no objection to its favorable consideration by congress so far as those interests are concerned.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 3, 1914] Garrison issues one proviso with the approval – plans for developing the lakefront as parkland must not interfere with any potential the area has for supporting an outer harbor when the time comes to begin such a project, one that at this point in the city’s history seems a necessity.  Garrison states, “A lake front harbor to be of proper availability must be of large area, with good connections to all railroad lines entering the city, and with free and easy communication behind extensive breakwater protections for barge and tug travel to and from Chicago and Calumet rivers and adjoining waterways.”  As a result of this stipulation the park cannot be expanded by filling in the lake between Grant Park and Fifty-First Street and from Ninety-Fifth Street to the south of Calumet Park. Garrison’s approval concludes, “It is understood that the present bill is intended to safeguard fully, as is thought by this office not only desirable but necessary, the future interests of navigation, so that the area in question may be readily available for harbor purposes when the time of need arrives.  If this be done there seems to be no serious objection to the temporary use of the submerged area for other purposes.”  The above photo shows the lakefront in the first decade of the twentieth century from just south of the Chicago River to Twelfth Street.

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February 2, 1861 – Thomas B. Bryan, a wealthy Chicago businessman, along with other investors that include the city’s first mayor, Willliam B. Ogden, obtains the charter for a new cemetery to be developed by Bryan’s Graceland Cemetery Company.  Cathy Jean Maloney writes of Bryan’s choice for the 120-acre cemetery, “Graceland’s location was ideal: readily accessible from Green Bay Road (now Clark Street) and later the Chicago and Evanston Railroad, yet far enough removed from the city to avoid health and sanitation issues. The company chose the high ridge area along what is now Clark Street, which once was an old Indian trail.  The site offered good drainage with its strong drop-off to the east and slightly to the west.  In the sandy soil here, plants thrive better than in Chicago’s typical clay soil.”  [Maloney, Cathy Jean. Chicago Gardens:  The Early History.  University of Chicago Press, 2008]  Today Graceland is operated by the Trustees of the Graceland Cemetery Improvement Fund and is open to the public.  The Graceland Cemetery website states, "Graceland Cemetery is the final resting place to many prominent Chicago figures, including athletes, politicians, industrialists and many of the finest architects of the last century ... Graceland both serves as a glimpse into the past and a beautiful place for the future." [Gracelandcemetery.org]

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Friday, January 3, 2020

January 3, 1945 -- Illinois and Michigan Canal Expressway Planning Begins


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January 3, 1945 – The first bill introduced in the new session of the Illinois House of Representatives passes, legislation that creates a special commission to facilitate action on turning the abandoned Illinois and Michigan Canal into a super-highway into Chicago.  A similar bill, introduced in the Illinois Senate by Minority Leader Richard J. Daley, advances to a second reading.  It stipulates that “The commission shall make a study of the Illinois and Michigan canal with particular reference to obtaining information as to what national and state legislation and other steps would be necessary to change the physical properties of the canal so that they would serve a more useful purpose.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 4, 1945]  The two bills differ in the make-up of the committee and in the amount of money that is allocated for it to carry out its mandate.  Such a highway was first proposed in the Chicago Plan of 1909, and when the main post office building was finished in the early 1930’s, it was purposely built with a large hole in its middle to allow a highway to run through it.  In 1949 construction began on the highway that would eventually be named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it would continue until 1961, a project that cost $183 million and displace an estimated 13,000 people while shuttering more than 400 businesses.  The above photo shows the right-of-way for the new highway taking shape as it approaches downtown in a view taken from the main post office.

January 3, 1890 –  Mayor Dewitt Clinton Cregier, members of the City Council’s Finance Committee, two newly-elected Drainage Board commissioners, and the Secretary of the State Board of Health take a trip down the South Branch of the river.  Starting at 11:00 a.m. at La Salle Street, they head for the South Fork where they find “water … so thick that the tug had hard work to push through it.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 3, 1890]  “From glue factories and slaughter houses filth was coming out in great streams [with] a stench that was revolting.”  The tug lands its passengers at the Bridgeport pumping works “… after the party had stood it as long as it could.”  At the pumping works an impromptu conference is held in which it is agreed that something must be done about the condition of the South Branch of the river – that “with the river in its present state every time it rains three inches in twenty-four hours you are going to have this mass of awful filth swept out into the lake to pollute your water supply.”  One solution to which the officials turn is pumping water directly from the West Fork of the South Branch into the DesPlaines River through the Ogden Ditch, which in some places is only two feet deep.  This plan would require extensive dredging.  Eagerness at finding a solution is tempered when an official from Joliet enters the conversation, saying, “The people of this valley have a grievance against Chicago.  At times the whole valley is filled with the stench of your sewage.  People cannot raise the window of their homes at night because of the smell.  Can Chicago afford to continue this affliction if a way can be found to avert it?”  The day ends back at La Salle Street with little agreement – “… no two had the same scheme in mind to meet the protest of the State Board of Health.”  Mayor Cregier did little to tip his hand.  “I haven’t anything to say.  I am here as a listener,” he said.

January 3, 1945 – The Chicago Daily Tribune, noting the renewed effort of Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly to save the Auditorium Theatre, editorializes in favor of the effort.  “Its proportions are noble,” the paper writes. “Its acoustics are incomparably good.  Its loss would mean the loss to Chicago and the world of an authentic masterpiece of architecture.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 3, 1945] Opened in 1889 as a combination hotel, office building and performance space, back taxes threatened the complex although it is believed that the sale of the hotel and office building could at least pay off the debt.  The theater itself has no hope of doing that.  The Tribune gets behind a plan to have a not-for-profit entity assume control over the theater, giving it “the same kind of tax exemption that goes to the Art Institute, and the various universities and museums.” In 1946 Roosevelt University stepped up and assumed responsibility for the building.  The theater would remain shuttered for nearly two decades, though, until in 1963 Mrs. Beatrice Spachner founded the Auditorium Theatre Council which raised three million dollars to renovate the structure. Under the renovation genius of architect Harry Weese, the gem on Congress opened on October 31, 1967 with the New York City Ballet’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  The above photo shows the Auditorium in 1945, with its front rows and stage converted into a bowling alley as part of a Servicemen’s Center that provided a welcoming place for over 2.2 million servicemen during the war years.

January 3, 1928 --  Samuel Insull comes closer to his dream of helping the city build a new home for the Chicago Civic Opera, completing a transaction that gives him control of an entire block of the Loop, bounded by Madison Street on the south, the river on the west, Wacker Drive (Market Street at the time) on the east and Washington Boulevard on the north.  On this date the purchase of the southeast corner of the property, the piece necessary to complete the plan, is filed with the recorder of deeds.  Plans are to create an opera house that has about the same amount of space as the 1889 Auditorium Theater’s performance space with a modern office tower rising above it.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Plans for the building are being somewhat hampered … because of the difficulty of harmonizing the office building and the opera house into one beautiful building.  However, Architect Ernest R. Graham said he is confident of planning a structure at once sightly and with profitable renting space.”  Just 22 months later the new Civic Opera Building would open with Rosa Raisa playing the title role in Aida.  For more information on opening night, please follow this link.  The above photo shows the Civic Opera Building rising quickly in February of 1929.
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