Showing posts with label Lake Michigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lake Michigan. Show all posts

Sunday, September 6, 2020

September 6, 1970 -- Chicago Beach Hotel Gone, But Not Forgotten

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September 6, 1970 – The Chicago Tribune reports that construction crews have moved to a site at East Fiftieth Street and South Shore Drive where once stood the exclusive Chicago Beach Hotel, “a symbol of Gay Nineties and Roaring Twenties affluence.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 6, 1970]  Warren Leland, who came from a family of hoteliers and made his way to Chicago in the 1880’s, built the original Chicago Beach Hotel in 1892 to serve the huge crowds that came to the city to visit the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.  It had 450 rooms with 175 bathrooms with frontage on Lake Michigan. The beach was lost in the 1920’s when landfill moved the shoreline eastward to make room for the southern portion of what would become Lake Shore Drive.  In 1921 a 12-story addition was built on the eastern side of the property, and the original hotel was demolished.  Today the Algonquin Apartments, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, completed in 1950, stand on the site of the original hotel.  Like many other properties in the city, the hotel became a victim of the Depression, and in 1930 a receiver was appointed to oversee the payment of $615,000 in delinquent real estate taxes.  In 1942 a federal court turned the hotel over to the United States Army, and in just three months it was converted into Gardiner General Hospital, serving military personnel wounded during World War II.  After the war the Army converted the hospital to an office building and based Fifth Army Headquarters there until 1963 when the headquarters was moved to Fort Sheridan on the North Shore.  This is where my father, a career officer in the Army, went to work in the early 60's.  I still remember the tremendous holiday party thrown each year for those of us kids who were military dependents.  The original hotel, demolished in the early 1920's, is shown in the top photo.  Its replacement is shown in the second photo. 


September 6, 1939 – The fiftieth anniversary of Jane Addams’ founding of Hull House is celebrated as several thousand of the men and women who came to the settlement house as children fill Grant Park for a two-hour tribute to Addams who died four years earlier.  The principal speaker is Judge Florence E. Allen of the United States Court of Appeals who says, “And this should be her memorial, not that we repeat her name, but that we write upon our hearts her principles, that we carry them into concrete action.  For this woman opened to Americans new paths of spiritual life.  She lived her faith that all blessings must be made universal if they are to be made permanent.”



September 6, 1926 –The Chicago Real Estate Board submits its views on the air right development of the Illinois Central property north of Randolph street to the members of the City Council’s Railway Terminal Committee.  The report attempts to answer a series of aldermanic questions concerning the development of the extensive site between the Chicago River on the North, Randolph Street on the south, and Michigan Avenue on the west.  Looking at a portion of the questions and answers provides an interesting look at the foresight given to a project that would take another half-century to put into motion.

Q: How long in your opinion will it take to obtain a substantial air development in this territory?
A:  Not less than twenty years.

Q: Is the I. C. property as well located as the so-called Streeter district?
A:  Potentially better.

Q:  What, in your opinion, is the highest and best use of this I. C. property?
A:  Hotels and office buildings.

Q: Approximately how much frontage has this property on the Chicago river? On the yacht harbor? On Grant park?
A:  Frontage on the Chicago river, 2,800 feet; on the yacht harbor, 1,200 feet, and on Grant park, 1,750 feet.

Q:  Do you recommend one or two north and south boulevards through the Illinois Central property?
A:  One.

Q:  Should all of the east and west streets north of Randolph be extended eastward?
A:  Yes.

Q:  Is there a necessity for restricting the height of buildings on the I. C. property which obtains in the loop?
A:  Yes

The above photos show the area as it looked then and as it looks now.


September 6, 1918 – The first mail between New York and Chicago to be delivered by airplane arrives in Grant Park at 7:04 p.m. as Max Miller of the United States aerial mail service lands his plane at the end of a trip that took 23 hours and 55 minutes.  Thousands of people are in Grant Park attending the “France and Allies Day,” at a war exposition commemorating the anniversary of the first battle of the Marne.  Pilot Miller hands over the mail sacks to Captain B. B. Lipsner, the superintendent of the United States aerial mail service, and less than 90 minutes after the plane lands, the editor of the Chicago Daily Tribune receives a letter from Henry Woodhouse, a member of the board of governors of the Aero Club of America. It reads, “This epoch making first trip of the New York-Cleveland-Chicago aerial mail line affords us a splendid opportunity to express our hearty appreciation of the energetic and patriotic efforts that you and THE TRIBUNE have been making on behalf of national preparedness and to develop the aerial service.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 7, 1918] Pilot Miller has never landed in the city before but makes a “perfect descent” and is “cheered by the crowds lining the field and by the people who packed the Monroe street viaduct.”  Regular air mail service between New York and Chicago will begin in October with letters mailed in New York scheduled to reach Chicago ten hours later with relays of flyers stationed 150 miles apart ferrying the mail between the two cities.  In the above photo Superintendent of the Air Mail Service Benjamin Lipsner, with American flag in hand, passes it to airmail pilot Max Miller prior to an airmail flight in November 1918.


 

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Wednesday, September 2, 2020

September 2, 1973 -- Marquette and Joliet Tricentennial Voyageurs Visit Chicago

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September 2, 1973 – Eight explorers in birchbark canoes paddle down the Chicago River, beaching their canoes at the mouth of the river where they are greeted by a lone Native American, White Beaver, of the Winnebago tribe.  The eight Illinoisans set out in the spring from St. Ignace, Michigan to commemorate the tricentennial of the voyage of Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, who embarked in 1673 on a 3,000-mile trip in search of a route to the Pacific Ocean.  The Reverend Charles J. McEnery plays the part of Father Marquette, leading the other seven from St. Ignace, across Lake Michigan to Green Bay, Wisconsin, following the Fox and Wisconsin River system to the Mississippi River.  The group paddled down the Mississippi to the Arkansas River, at which point they began their return, entering Illinois through the Illinois River and from there following the Des Plaines River, which led to the Chicago River.  At this point in the trek the group still has 500 miles left before the end of its journey.  All along the way the group has been welcomed into people’s homes, according to McEnery, where they have been housed and fed.  He says, “After this trip we really realize what courage it took for these men, who were terribly superstitious anyway, to make a 3,000-mile trip into an unknown land.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 3, 1973].  The group of voyagers is kept busy on this day.  Along with the greeting ceremony Cardinal Cody conducts a special outdoor mass in Pioneer Plaza close to where the seventeenth century voyageurs would have beached their canoes.  He urges a crowd of 300 people, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, to “admire the deeds of brave men while seeking to do equally brave and good deeds in the time that is ours.”  While all of the hoopla is taking place, four canoeists who had joined the eight voyagers for the day are kept busy with two river rescues.  A nine-year-old girl is pulled from the river, apparently after falling in while watching the ceremonies.  She is given artificial respiration and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where she is reported to be in good condition.  Minutes later screams are heard from the Michigan Avenue bridge as a 54-year-old woman hurtles into the river.  The canoeists pull her out, and she is taken to Henrotin Hospital where she is treated before being returned to Chicago State Hospital. 



September 2, 1981– Mayor Jane Byrne unveils a $3.3 billion, five-year public works plan that, if implemented, will bring major changes to the city.  In the plan’s 142 pages a half-billion dollars are allocated for projects in the Loop and at O‘Hare International Airport with $2 billion allocated to the rest of the city.  Byrne says, “This capital improvements program is indeed ambitious, but in that respect it is typical of Chicago.  It embodies not only the best hopes of Chicago citizens and my administration, but also our shared commitment to a better city in the years ahead.” [Chicago Tribune, September 3, 1981] Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of the plan is the $64.8 million proposal to eliminate the S-curve on Lake Shore Drive.  The plan also includes: the construction of the Columbus Drive bridge; the reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive from the Chicago River north to Huron Street; construction of a central public library in the block bounded by State and  Van Buren Streets, Plymouth Court and Congress Parkway;  and redevelopment of the six-square block area bounded by Washington, LaSalle, and State Streets and Wacker Drive.  Close to a half-billion dollars is allocated for improvements at O-Hare, including renovating and expanding terminals, upgrading parking facilities and the possible construction of a monorail system.  Midway is scheduled to see $50 million in improvements as well.  Elimination of the S-curve where Lake Shore Drive crossed the river, shown above, was one of the major projects outlined in the $3.3 billion plan.  


September 2, 1954 – Ten thousand people watch as the captured German submarine U-505 is hauled across Lake Shore Drive at Fifty-Seventh Street on its way to a permanent place at the Science Museum. The drive is closed to traffic at 7:00 p.m. and opened again at 7:00 a.m. the following day as the submarine is moved on rails for a distance of 300 feet across the highway  Directing the move is Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery who commanded the task force that captured the vessel off the coast of West French Africa in 1944, taking control of the first submarine ever commandeered in naval combat.  Workmen of the La Plant-Adair Company, a house moving company from Indianapolis, are in charge of jacking up the submarine and transporting it safely to its final resting place at the museum.  The above photo shows the U-505 sitting on the beach at Jackson Park after being rolled off the floating dry dock preparatory to being hauled across Lake Shore Drive to the Science Museum, today's Museum of Science and Industry. 

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September 2, 1945 – Over 20,000 people visit the LST-412, a 328-foot tank landing ship tied up in the Chicago River west of the Michigan Avenue bridge on the first day that the ship is open to the public.  In the afternoon a unit of U. S. Marines stage a demonstration of invasion tactics at the Foster Avenue Beach with 40 Navy planes leading the “invasion” in a mock 20-minute bombardment of the beach.  The LST, or “Landing Ship, Tank” was developed after the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk in the early stages of World War II.  One of the lessons learned in the evacuation was that there was no vessel capable of loading or unloading artillery or vehicles from a beachhead.  By November of 1942 the United States had developed the LST, a vessel capable of reasonable stability in the open sea with a bottom flat enough to make a beach landing practical. By the end of World War II more than 1,000 of these vessels would be built.  The LST-142 was one of 113 ships delivered to the Royal Navy under the Lend-Lease Act.  She was laid down in September 1942 at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland and launched just seven weeks later.  Sailing with a British crew, In September 1943 she saw her first action, supporting the Allied landings at Salerno and Anzio.  In June 1944 LST-142 supported the Allied invasion at Normandy, making seven trips to the beach, carrying tanks, trucks and artillery in one direction and evacuating wounded troops in the other.  At the end of the war the United States reclaimed the ship, and she barely made it to the Azores “with her welds cracking and the whole ship threatening to break up.”  [ww2db.com]   Not one of the LST-412’s 10 officers and 60 crewmen were lost in some of the heaviest fighting of the war.  After a tour of the Great Lakes, LST-412 was struck from the Navy list of ships on March 20, 1946, and on December 19, 1946 she was sold to the Northern Metals Company and scrapped.  LST-412 is pictured above offloading material in Sierra Leone in 1943.



September 2, 1914 – Federal officials begin an investigation to determine the cause of a fire that rips through the passenger ship City of Chicago, which lies beached at the life saving station at the entrance to the Chicago River.  The one big question about the wreck is how a fire could have gained such force if all members of the crew were on duty.  The boat sits with its hull resting on the bottom of the lake in about twelve feet of water with a load of Michigan grapes, cantaloupes and peaches still aboard.  The official report of the Coast Guard describes the event, “When within 5 miles of the end of her run in the early morning of September 1, 1914, the 1,439-ton passenger steamer City of Chicago, bound from St. Joseph, Mich., to Chicago, with 94 passengers, a crew of 56, and a full cargo of fruit, was discovered by her master to be on fire amidships.  To avoid panic no alarm was sounded, and the presence of the fire was kept secret on board until the master was able to lay his vessel, head-on, upon the breakwater protecting Chicago Harbor.  As the steamer rested upon the barrier referred to she lay within a few feet of the old Chicago Coast Guard Station.  The station lookout had observed smoke rising from her before she struck, and keeper and crew lost no time in beginning the work of extinguishing the fire.  The women and children on board were carried down ladders set against the steamer’s side.  With everybody safely landed, the Coast Guard crew devoted their entire attention to subduing the fire, and succeeded, with the help of a fire tug, in putting it out after three hours’ effort.”  The captain of the City of Chicago, Oscar Bjork, says, “There isn’t much to say about it.  You can see where the boat is, and you can bet I didn’t put her there for nothing.  I don’t think it would have been possible to save her anyhow – but I wasn’t figuring on saving her.  It was the passengers I was worried about.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 2, 1914]
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Monday, August 31, 2020

August 31, 1902 -- Lake Michigan Melee


August 31, 1902 – It is a wild night aboard the City of Milwaukee, sailing from St. Joseph, Michigan to Chicago as a spat between Clarence Bloss and his wife, both passengers on the paddlewheel steamer, turns into a near-riot.  Midway between Michigan and Chicago the couple begin to quarrel, and Mr. Bloss tries to get his wife down to their stateroom, a move which she resists.  The fracas draws the attention of the ship’s assistant purser, Sinclair Bastar, who attempts to separate the two, only to have Mrs. Bloss bite him in the arm.  It takes a number of crew members to take Mrs. Bloss to her cabin where she is held for the remainder of the trip.  In Chicago members of the Bloss family call the police, and seven crew members are arrested and taken to the central district station.  Mr. Bloss levels a charge of assault against Bastar, saying that Bastar attacked him and his wife, “striking him in the face and after disabling him [keeping] his wife in a stateroom contrary to her wishes.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1902] The other six crew members are released, and the return trip of the City of Milwaukee is delayed by a half-hour.  Mrs. Bloss, in the meantime, is taken to the West Side Hospital. 



August 31, 1994 – After 137 years Continental Bank at 231 South La Salle Street, the oldest financial institution in the city to operate as an independent bank, becomes part of BankAmerica Corp., the holding company for Bank of America.  With $187 billion in assets Bank of America scoops up Continental and its $22 billion in assets for a reputed $2 billion. Continental Bank was formed in 1857 as Merchants’ Savings, Loan and Trust Co. with founders such as Cyrus McCormick, George Armour and the city’s first mayor, William Butler Ogden.  In 1924 the bank moved into an impressive new building on the southeast corner of Jackson Boulevard and La Salle Street.  Standing across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago the impressive headquarters had a spacious Grand Banking Hall and a second-floor chairman’s office paneled in oak taken from a sixteenth-century English mansion. [Chicago Tribune, August 31, 1994] In the 1960’s and 1970’s the bank pulled ahead of its chief local rival, the First National Bank of Chicago, and was the first local bank to open a branch in a foreign country.  By 1981 it was the nation’s sixth largest bank.  Things soured in the 1980’s, however.  In 1982 the failure of Penn Square Bank of Oklahoma City forced Continental to write off $326 million in Penn Square loans. Two years later rumors that the bank would be sold started a world-wide run on the bank that caused the United States government to step in with a restructuring plan that included a $4.5 billion commitment by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.


August 31, 1925 – The first one-eighth mile of the new Wacker Drive, running east and west along the south side of the river is opened, a project that is expected “to take 41 per cent of the traffic congestion out of the loop.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 31, 1925] All day motorists are attracted “into that broad one-eighth of double decked esplanade like bees to a posy.” The “smooth upper level roadbed” is 72 feet wide and is bordered on one side by a 24-foot sidewalk and on the other by an 18-foot sidewalk which overlooks the Chicago River, 15 feet below.  The paper reports that United States Vice-President Charles G. Dawes has recently conducted a tour of the project for General Geroge Goethals, the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, finished 11 years earlier.  Goethals reportedly remarked, “There isn’t anything equal to this at home or abroad.” Reports the Tribune, “From the finished one-eighth he could visualize the finished stretch of concrete quays, lower level street, upper level street, circling stairways, balustrades, pylons, lamps, pilasters, pedestals and arches which will sweep gracefully along the river’s south bank for three-quarters of a mile from North Michigan boulevard to the junction of Lake and Market streets”. In the above photo the east end of Wacker Drive begins to take shape where the barges are docked across the river from the Wrigley Building.


August 31, 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.

 
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Sunday, August 23, 2020

August 23, 1985 -- Navy Pier's Slow Disintegration Lamented

 

August 23, 1985 – Under the headline “Tattered Navy Pier Finds Dance Card Empty,” the Chicago Tribune describes the sorry condition of the municipal pier at the end of Illinois Street and Grand Avenue, finished in 1916 for $4 million.  According to the paper, “…the unique 3,000-foot pier has deteriorated to the point that its sewer system has been plugged up and its roofs are sieves.  The upper walkways are too dangerous, and the floors of lower storage rooms can barely support their own weight.”  The pier has no adequate fire protection system, so that any event held there must keep a fire engine standing by.  With one exception, a major event has not been held at the pier since the inauguration of Mayor Harold Washington two years earlier.  Joe Wilson of the Department of Public Works says, “I don’t think $60 million would give you much more than the basic structure, but it depends on what you want.”  Wilson says that an average of 20 people visit the pier on weekdays and about 75 on weekends.” The above photo shows the east end of the pier in the 1980's.


August 23, 1933 – A stone from San Antonio’s Alamo is dedicated at 11:00 a.m. in a ceremony held at Tribune Tower to coincide with Texas Day of the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront.  The stone is presented to the Chicago Tribune by Miss Emma Kyle Burleson, whose brother was the Postmaster General in President Woodrow Wilson’s administration and whose grandfather, General Edward Burleson, served as the third Vice-President of the Republic of Texas. Mayor Edward Kelly serves as the master of ceremony with a prominent Texas newspaper editor, Peter Molyneaux, offering thoughts on the stone that will join stones from other historic structures from around the world in the tower on Michigan Avenue.  There are a total of 149 rocks embedded in the exterior of the tower, down from 150 after NASA reclaimed a rock from the moon.




August 23, 1914 – Henry Korthagen, an unemployed painter, pays the 25-cent admission to the observatory of the Masonic Temple Building on State Street, crawls through a window to the northwest corner of the building and then jumps.  His body strikes the crowded sidewalk on State Street at noon on a Saturday.  A dentist on the twelfth floor of the building, Dr. A. Jay Blakie, sees the body fly past his window, with a black derby hat following 20 feet behind.  “From my position above,” Blakie says, “the sidewalk looked like the surface of water after a stone has been thrown in.  A circle of humanity just eddied back from the crumpled object in the middle of it.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 24, 1914]  Korthagen had visited the Painters and Decorators District Council at 300 West Madison Street earlier, seeking to pay back dues and gain reinstatement to the union.  Those at the union headquarters describe him as cheerful at the time.  The observatory at the Masonic Temple is pictured above, all the way up there at the top of the building.

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August 23, 1890 – The South Park Commissioners offer the Midway Plaisance to the World’s Fair directors, giving the planners of the fair 600 acres of land with the Plaisance at its center, a tract that is 600-feet wide and one-mile long with a roadway in the middle.  With that action the location of the World’s Columbian Exposition appears to come down to two sites, one on the south side and the other in the Buena Park area on the north side.  Landscape architect Charles Law Olmstead has surveyed both sites and found them equally capable of hosting the fair, although Olmstead finds the Jackson Park site as “being especially adapted for some of the principal buildings.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 23, 1890].  The directors of the fair adopt a resolution that allows them to “proceed on the basis of comparison and select the site that can register the greatest number of good points.  It reads:

WHEREAS, It is necessary that this committee shall have full information of the physical features of the sites offered for the Columbian Exposition, the approximate cost of preparing them for occupancy, their susceptibility of proper drainage, the approximate cost of suitably adorning them and of erecting the Exposition buildings thereon, and the hygienic conditions accompanying them,

RESOLVED, That competent engineers be employed to report as soon as possible upon the physical features of each site and the approximate cost of preparing in each case an area of 400 acres suitably diversified in land and water; and that competent drainage and sanitary engineers be employed if necessary in addition to the foregoing to suggest plans and estimate the approximate cost of drainage and water supply and the disposition to be made of the sewage; that a board of three responsible and well-known physicians, one from each division of the city, be selected to report upon the hygienic conditions of the grounds proposed as sites and of their surroundings, with a view to determining the probable healthfulness of each if occupied during the summer of 1893 by from 40,000 to 50,000 exhibitants and assistants, beside 100,000 to 200,000 visitors daily; that the consulting architect be required to report a general plan for and an approximate cost of constructing buildings suitable for the Exposition and covering an area of, say, 100 acres, it being understood by this committee that said estimates may be based upon the Philadelphia and Paris Expositions, due consideration being given to changes in prices of labor and materials.”

The photos above show the Midway Plaisance as it appeared during the 1893 fair and as it appears today, running through the campus of the University of Chicago.
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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. 

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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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Thursday, August 13, 2020

August 13, 1946 -- Chicago Park District President Gives Nod to Northerly Island Airfield

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August 13, 1946 – The Chicago Park District’s newly elected president, James M. Gately, says that he and other commissioners favor “immediate action to create a first class auxiliary flight strip on Northerly Island.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 14, 1946].  Although no formal proposal has been made, it is clear that Gately’s statement gives momentum to the creation of an airfield convenient to the business district on 80 acres “of the now rubble strewn and neglected island.”  Although Northerly Island, a man-made island created for the Century of Progress World’s Fair in the summers of 1933 and 1934, is nearly a mile long, only 3,200 feet is needed for the landing strip.  Previous park district commissioners have opposed the creation of a landing field on the island, but Mayor Edward Kelly has gone on record as saying he believes the air strip to be essential.  Along with Chicago Aero Commission head Merrill Meigs, the mayor envisions the field as a means of providing air taxi service from the city to Douglas Airport (now O’Hare International Airport) as well as a place from which privately-owned or company-owned aircraft can land and take off.  Construction begins on the new field almost immediately, and on December 10, 1948 it is officially opened.  On June 30, 1950 the airport is named after Meigs, the publisher of the Chicago Herald and Examiner and one of its early boosters.  One the night of March 30, 2003 Mayor Richard M. Daley ordered city crews to render the runway unusable with bulldozers carving huge X-shapes along the length of the strip.   For more information on the field, you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City.  The above photo, taken in 1947, shows the field under construction.  The second photo shows Northerly Island as it appears today. 



August 13, 2009 – Bank of America initiates a suit against Shelbourne Development Group Inc., the developer that began construction of the 150-floor Chicago Spire, construction that was subsequently halted after foundation work was completed.  Bank of America claims that the developer has defaulted on its loan.  The bank says that it is filing a suit in United States District Court in Chicago, seeking $4.9 million in principal and interest from Shelbourne and its chairman, Garrett Kelleher. The complaint alleges that the firm has failed to obtain an “irrevocable construction loan commitment” from a lender, leading the Bank of America to declare a default. [Chicago Tribune, August 14,2009] The photo above shows the remains of the project as they look today.


August 13, 1969 –The chairman of Illinois Central Industries, Inc., William B. Johnson, announces the formation of Illinois Center Plaza Venture, the corporation that will develop the 83-acre site east of Michigan Avenue, between Randolph Street and the Chicago River.  Jupiter Corporation, Metropolitan, Inc., and the Illinois Central Corporation will be equal partners in the plan, which will see the new company purchasing the property from the Illinois Central Railroad for a base price of $83,625,000 with an escalation rider over a 15-year development period.  The site on which the proposed Standard Oil building will be constructed as well as the site of the 111 East Wacker Drive building, which is under construction, along with two adjacent sites, are excluded from the sale. The Prudential building and the Outer Drive East apartments were constructed on air rights in which the Illinois Central did not share in the profits of the buildings.


August 13, 1928 – Construction begins on the Merchandise Mart on the site of the old Chicago and North Western station on the north bank of the Chicago River between Wells Street and Orleans.  A force of 5,700 workers will speed the construction, using cement brought from Wisconsin by boat, and by May 1,1930 the first 200 tenants will begin moving into the 4,000,000 square foot building.

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August 13, 1883 – On this day Ivan Mestrovic is born in Slovania, an eastern section of what is today Croatia, the son of a sheep-breeder.  At the age of 16 he began working under the guidance of a master stonemason in Split, and by 1905, after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he offered his first exhibit of sculpture.  By 1908 he had developed an international reputation. Auguste Rodin hailed him as “a phenomenon among sculptors.”  [sniteartmuseum.nd.edu].  Between 1925 and 1928 he was invited to stage exhibitions at 18 different museums in the United States and Canada, a time during which he also oversaw the installation of his Native American equestrian figures at the Congress Street entrance to Grant Park.  In 1955, at the age of 62, Mestrovic came to Notre Dame University from Syracuse University in New York, where he had taught wince 1947.  He lived in South Bend with his wife, Olga, until his death in 1962. At one point in his life Mestrovic observed, “Throughout my life I carried with me an incomparable inheritance: poverty; poverty of my family and my nation.  The first helped me to never be afraid of material difficulties, for I could never have less than at the beginning.  The second drove me to persevere in my work, so that at least in my own field my nation’s poverty would be diminished.”
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