Showing posts with label Lake Shore Drive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lake Shore Drive. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

September 22, 1959 -- Chicago River Properties Given Warning ... Clean It Up

Chicago Tribune Photo


September 22, 1959 – Chicago port officials and Mayor Richard J. Daley announce that they are sending letters of warning to 67 property owners, including the Illinois Central Railroad, in an effort to clean up and repair property along the Chicago River.  If owners ignore the letters, Daley says, the city will take them to court.  The mayor huffs, “I must add that the property owned by the Illinois Central that extends 1,900 feet east of Michigan Avenue, on the south side of the river bank, certainly cannot be called an encouraging sight.  I notice this area every time I walk across the Michigan Avenue bridge, and it is definitely not pleasing.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1959].  Illinois Central officials maintain that they have no responsibility to maintain the area in question since the company granted the city an easement for connecting Michigan Avenue to the Outer Drive, today’s Lake Shore Drive, in 1919.   Illinois Central president Wayne A. Johnson says, “The railroad’s position on this matter has not changed.  Our attorneys tell us that when we offered the easement the obligation became that of the city of Chicago, with reference to the shore upkeep.  The above photo shows the area in question seven years later when 19 honey locust trees are finally planted east of the Michigan Avenue bridge on July 26, 1966.  



September 22, 1981 – Two firefighters die and six others are injured while fighting an extra-alarm fire in the Willoughby Tower office building at 8 South Michigan Avenue.  Fire Commissioner William Blair says, “There was no chance … there was no way out for them.”  The two firefighters, Joseph Hitz, a snorkel truck driver with Hook and Ladder 1 and Craig McShane, a rookie with Engine 42, fall to their deaths down an open elevator shaft from the twenty-fifth floor to the roof of an elevator stopped at the ninth floor.  The fire on the floor from which they fell started in materials a cleaning crew had left in the elevator, and as a result the car fell until its brakes activated and stopped it on the ninth floor.  Six firefighters exit an elevator on the twenty-fifth floor to find the hallway filled with smoke.  Breathing through air masks, they find an open office through which they are able to reach a fire escape at which point they discover that one of their number, Hitz, is missing.  McShane, the only firefighter who still has air in his self-contained breathing apparatus, crawls back to check, and he falls through the same open elevator shaft into which Hitz had fallen earlier.  Mayor Jane Byrne, standing at the scene as the search for the two men is being conducted, says, “I am deeply sorrowed by the loss of the lives of these two brave firemen …I have conferred with Commissioner Blair and directed him to immediately procure, by the end of the week at the latest, two-way hand radios for every Chicago firemen in hopes that this would prevent a recurrence of such tragic accidents.”  Hitz and McShane are the first Chicago firemen killed on duty since 1978 and the first multiple deaths of Chicago firefighters since 1973. The plaque, pictured above, memorializing the two firefighters, can be seen at the firehouse at 419 South Wells Street, about a mile away from the tragic fire of 1981.


September 22, 1974 – The Chicago Tribune reports that Harry Weese and Associates has won the highest award of the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for an apartment building at the southwest corner of South Lake Park Avenue at East Forty-Seventh Street.  A.I.A jurors call the design a “good design at the highest level within the narrow constraints of publicly financed housing.”  The 26-story tower, Lake Shore East, features 38 angled, vertical planes of glass and brick which “give the building’s shape and its interplay of elements many different appearances as they are viewed from various perspectives.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1974]

 

September 22, 1935 – In the six hours that the Chicago Tribune opens the doors of the new home of its radio station, 4,368 people tour the facilities.  Over 500 visitors fill out forms for a chance to gain admission to the auditorium when performances begin.  The paper describes the new digs in this way, “The lighting effects, the sharp slant of the auditorium for purposes of better vision, the richly covered, deep cushioned seats and the sound proofed walls attracted appreciative comments.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1935]  The building just to the north of Tribune Tower is laid out or “squared off” with Polaris, the north star, as a sighting point, an innovative approach that allows a variance of about an eighth-inch along the building’s frontage on Michigan Avenue.  On October 5 the auditorium opens with two orchestras entertaining all of the workers who had labored on the building, along with their families.  Colonel Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of the paper, tells them, “This victory of peace has a sadness for me, for it means I must part from the men I have watched at this building for the last year and a half . . . You have piled stone on stone, color on color, and joined wire to wire.  You have built here, forever, something that your children will thank you for.  You leave me with emotion.  God bless you and be with you always.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 2, 1935]. Well, not quite forever ... the facility is undergoing significant alteration as it transitions into a new life as part of the Tribune Tower conversion from a commercial skyscraper to a residential tower.
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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.

chicagotribune
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, September 6, 2020

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

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chuckmanchicagonostalgia
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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Sunday, August 30, 2020

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

 

chicago tribune historical photo
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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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Monday, July 13, 2020

July 13, 1973 -- Medusa Challenger Continues the Curse

Chicago Tribune photo
July 13, 1973 – The curse of the Medusa Challenger continues as the Lake Shore Drive bridge across the Chicago River refuses to open to allow the bulk cement carrier to squeeze through.  After waiting three hours off Navy Pier for tugboats to arrive, the 562-foot ship with 42,000 barrels of bulk cement aboard, squeezes through the river lock on her own.  Then Captain John Bradley brings the ship to a halt as the first bridge on the river cannot be opened as a result of an electric failure that prevents the traffic gates from being lowered.  It takes nearly 20 minutes to correct the situation.  Finally, the gates are cranked down by hand, and the bridge is raised.  The Medusa Challenger faced a challenge nearly every time she visited Chicago.  This day she makes it to Goose Island to offload her cargo without further incident … good work, considering the date is Friday the Thirteenth.  More information on the Medusa Challenger can be found in these Connecting the Windy City posts, here and here.

July 13, 1980 – Paul Gapp, the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, opens a piece on the State Street mall with these words, “The State Street mall is an esthetic failure, and that comes as a particularly harsh disappointment in a city that has produced so many triumphs of urban design in this century.”  The article lists a number of weaknesses in the mall, summarizing the experiment that began in 1979 as “a collection of neutral, ambiguous design elements that are mostly boring, ugly, or both.”  Gapp points to the protective shelters built above the entrances to the State Street subway “destroying any feeling of openness, and blocking formerly unimpeded views.”  He sees the hexagonal asphalt blocks used for paving the pedestrian areas as “unspeakably depressing,” and the bus shelters as “absurd . . . with no walls to soften the bite of winter winds and ward off wind-blown rain.”  The only seating is “on the narrow, often earth-soiled rims of tree planters . . . because city officials have long rejected comfortable downtown benches on the theory that they attract unsavory loafers.”  Ending the article, Gapp writes, “Constraints notwithstanding, we could have had a handsome mall on State Street.  Instead, we have a civic embarrassment.” [Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1980]   

July 13, 1966 – After spending the day drinking in taverns near his rooming house on the south side of the city, Richard Speck breaks into an apartment building near South Chicago Community Hospital.  Overnight he rounds up nine nurses, and, one-by-one, takes them to another room where he kills eight.  Only one of the nurses, Corazon Amurao, survives after hiding all night under a bed, emerging on the following morning to find the bloody scene. The nation is shocked by the horrendous crime, what some call the first mass murder of the twentieth century. Speck is caught after attempting suicide by cutting his wrists in a flop house three days later and is sentenced to death in a 1967 trial, a sentence that is later reduced to life in prison. The accused mass murderer dies in 1991.  The above photo shows Corazon Amurao, the lone survivor of that unspeakable night, leaving the courthouse in Peoria, Illinois on April 6, 1967. 
J. Bartholomew Photo
July 13, 1955 – Alderman Weber of the Forty-Fifty Ward announces that he will use the day’s meeting of the City Council to protest a $25,000 sculpture that is to be placed on the exterior of a municipal parking garage at State Street and Wacker Drive. The three-ton sculpture, “Chicago Rising from the Lake,” by sculptor Milton Horn, gets a rise out of the alderman as he states, “These things should be examined more closely.  We don’t have money to clean our streets properly, yet we can buy statues.  That bird cage [the garage] already is losing money, and now we’re spending money to provide a place for the birds to roost.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1955].  The city’s public works commissioner, says that the sculpture was included in the original design of the garage, designed by the architectural firm of Shaw, Metz and Dolio.  Weber responds, “A 3 ton embellishment!”  The piece did end up gracing the garage until the structure was destroyed in 1983, the sculpture was removed, and over the years shuttled to increasingly more remote back-lot facilities in the city’s maintenance underworld.  Horn died in April 1995, thinking that the sculpture was irretrievably lost.  A Chicago firefighter discovered the work in 1997, and after $60,000 in repairs, it was placed on the northwest abutment of the Columbus Drive bridge.  For more about “Chicago Rising from the Lake,” you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City.


 July 13, 1903 – The Committee on Streets and Alleys recommends passage of an ordinance that turns over control of the city’s portion of Grant Park to the South Park Board.  The land involved is that part of the park west of the Illinois Central right-of-way and north of Jackson Boulevard.  The ordinance also reserves the rights of the Art Institute as well as the trustees of the Crerar Library in their desire to build in the area. Thrown into the mix is the possibility of locating a new city hall in the area.  The area in question is shown in the photo of the park shown below, a photo taken in 1911.
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Sunday, June 21, 2020

June 21, 1956 -- Lake Shore Drive to Lose the "S" Curve




June 21, 1956 – The Chicago Plan Commission approves a 15 million-dollar plan that will eliminate the two 90-degree turns on the south approach to the Lake Shore Drive bridge over the Chicago River.  Engineering consultant Ralph Burke was commissioned in 1955 to undertake the engineering studies that would allow the project to move forward.  The main features of the plan he recommends include:  (1) filling in a portion of the lake about 200 feet from the shoreline so that a system of ramps will move traffic from Michigan Avenue at Oak Street onto Lake Shore Drive without an intersection; (2) Ramps will also be created for both Ohio and Ontario Streets at Lake Shore Drive, again through the use of Lake Michigan fill between the shore and the proposed water filtration plant north of Navy Pier with Ohio and Ontario becoming one-way streets east of Michigan Avenue; (3) Wacker Drive east of Michigan Avenue will be extended and double-decked between Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive; (4) On and off ramps will be created to replace the intersections of Lake Shore Drive at Monroe, Jackson and Balbo; and (5) a “trestle structure” [Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1956] will be built to carry Lake Shore Drive to the east of the Naval armory, a building and dock space just to the southeast of Randolph Street.  In the black and white photo above the old Naval armory building is outlined in red.  The recent photo shows the roads as they got built with the site of the old Naval Armory in red. The old “T-intersections” at Ohio, Ontario, Randolph, Jackson and Balbo all remain.

June 21, 1926 – The City Council Committee on Railway Terminals receives the official estimate for the cost of straightening the Chicago River between Eighteenth Street and Polk.  The total comes to $9,852,062.  Close to $8,000,000 of that sum will be paid by the railroads.  This will be a huge project, but once the finances are in place the entire operation will take just one year to complete.  Seven railroads are involved, with property being sold between the railroads so that their yards might be consolidated and aligned with the street grid, a movement that will open up acres of property for development in the south Loop east of the river.  The above photo gives a good idea of the massive nature of the project.  For more information on this massive project you can go to this feature in Connecting the Windy City.   
chicagology.com
June 21, 1906 – The city’s official chemist, Hugo Jone, issues a warning about the explosive power of gasoline that is illegally stored in garages along “automobile row” on South Michigan Avenue, noting that a gallon of gasoline carries the explosive power of a pound of dynamite.  According to Jone, there is enough gasoline stored beneath public land along automobile row “to blow up every building, including residences, in the street.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 22, 1906].  He is specific about the threat.  The Pardee-Ullman Company at 1218 Michigan Avenue has an illegal 280-gallon tank.  The William Herrick Company at 1841 Michigan Avenue has an 800-gallon tank.  The Bennett-Bird Company at 1470 Michigan Avenue has a 250-gallon tank.  The Oldsmobile Company at 1828 Michigan Avenue has a 500-gallon tank.  He goes on to name many other companies in violation of the law. A great majority of the firms have placed their tanks beneath adjacent sidewalks and streets on public property. Particularly perilous is the Walton Auto garage at 285 North State Street, which has a 260-gallon tank at a business that is surrounded on all sides by residential buildings.  The Tribune observes, “The strange failure of all sorts of city inspectors to see these tanks when they were being placed is still one of the mysteries of the city hall.”  An order is immediately rolled out that demands that all such establishments remove gasoline from their storage tanks by noon on June 22.  If such action is not taken, the city will pump out the gasoline and confiscate it.  The above photo shows Motor Row as it appeared along South Michigan Avenue in 1910.
Joseph Medill
June 21, 1894 – At a meeting of the Civic Federation, held at the Auditorium building, Joseph Medill, former Mayor of Chicago and owner of the Chicago Daily Tribune, addresses the group on a variety of topics.  Medill offers six “reforms” that he believes need to be instituted to “eventuate in valuable reforms of the municipal government and conduce to the welfare and happiness of the citizens.”  They are: (1) Make the Mayor ineligible to reelection at the expiration of his term.  A term, and out a term; (2) Establish a municipal service system on the lines of the Federal civil service system; (3) The police should be completely divorced from partisan politics. To insure this the police officers would be taken from both parties as nearly equal as practicable to start the system … No policeman should be dismissed from the force except for good cause.  His political leanings ought not to be considered … A partisan police force is only half a force.  It may be likened to a nuisance – an abomination; (4) The same rules for selection and qualification should be observed in appointing members of the Fire Department; (5) All clerks and accountants also should be selected by competitive examination on qualifications; the tests to be similar to those of the United States civil service; (6) All inspectors of work, of machines, and of material should be chosen for their expert knowledge, honesty, and capability, and be dismissed for lack of them in discharging their duties.”  Of the six reforms, Medill considers the first to be the most important.  “The Mayor must be freed from the reelection temptation,” he states. “He must be emancipated from the control of the ward politicians and scheming contracts and men with ‘pulls’. He must be protected from the malign influence of the ‘walking delegates’ of bummer politics and placed in a position where he can serve the people courageously and faithfully and let his future reputation rest on the excellence of the discharge of his duties as Mayor.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 22, 1894]
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