Connecting the Windy City

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

February 5, 2009 -- Fort Sheridan Golf Course ... What to Do?

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February 5, 2009 --  The Chicago Tribune reports that controversy continues to surround the golf course at Fort Sheridan as Lake County Forest Preserve District officials are searching for cheaper ways to refurbish the course as residents of the Town of Fort Sheridan claim the District “has a legal and moral obligation to restore the 18-hole Army golf course that closed in 2003.”  [Chicago Tribune, February 5, 2009]  A third group, composed of opponents to the project, maintain that the golf course, running along the bluffs above Lake Michigan, should become a nature sanctuary.  When the military base closed in 1998, about 250 acres at the north end of the fort were given to Lake County.  It is estimated that a rebuilt golf course would take up about two-thirds of that space.  Estimates place the cost of the project at between $17 and $25 million, a sum that would require greens fees to range from $140 to $170 a round.  Seeing that figure, District commissioners asked planners to find ways to bring the cost of the project down.   With 39 golf courses in the immediate area, some feel that the course will not be economically viable, no matter what it costs.  Many residents of the town, however, feel that an agreement with the Army when the base was turned over to developers requires the redevelopment of the course.  Looking at Facebook on can see that the debate still goes on, but on June 5, 2012 in a letter to Highwood mayor Charlie Pecaro the Army formally stated that it “… does not have the authority to compel the Lake County Forest Preserve to develop and operate a golf course.”  Lake County got its walking trails and nature preserve as can be seen in the above photo.

February 5, 1998 -- The Canadian National Railroad Co. announces that it is in negotiations to acquire the Illinois Central Railroad, the "Main Line of Mid-America," a railroad that began in 1849 when Senator Stephen Douglas secured a federal land grant for the start-up, the first such grant ever awarded to a railroad. Douglas was also instrumental in a deal that allowed the I. C. to purchase a 200-foot right of way through the South Side for $21,310. Later, the line built a trestle in the lake opposite the center of the city that carried trains to a freight yard on the river. The fill that was over the years placed between that trestle and the edge of the city is now Grant Park. Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot on an Illinois Central boat that connected the railroad to the south. A young engineer named John Luther "Casey" Jones began his career operating trains that carried passengers form the Loop to the 1893 fair in Hyde Park. With Canadian National's announcement a love-hate relationship between Chicago and the Illinois Central that has lasted for close to 150 years is nearly at an end.

February 5, 1923 – Buck and Beauty gallop out of the fire station at 10 East Hubbard Street, on this day, responding to a false alarm at Chicago Avenue and State Street.  It turns out that the alarm has been pulled purposely as part of a celebration of the retirement of horse-drawn firefighting equipment in Chicago.  With the retirement of the Hubbard Street horses, the city becomes the first city in the country with more than 500,000 residents to claim a completely motorized fire department.  In April of 1921 there were still 350 horses pulling fire equipment in the city.  That was when the fire department’s business manager, John F. Cullerton, led a city council subcommittee through a dozen cities to see if motorized fire equipment was workable.  The answer was clear.  Cullerton estimated that the changeover would save the city a half-million dollars in maintenance fees alone since each horse cost the city an average of $3,621 a year to maintain while motorized vehicles cost $1,000. [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1983]  Buck and Beauty were sold to a country pastor.  No one knows what happened to Dan, but Teddy ended up pulling a milk wagon. While on that job he was hit by an auto at Forty-Seventh and Michigan, and was thrown to the ground with his hip and leg smashed.  As the Chicago Daily Tribune reported, “… Ted lay still as a police patrol wagon sped to the scene.  As the wagon approached – its bell clanging – Ted, conditioned to the fire bell, responded.  He rose to three legs, plunged ahead a few feet, and then toppled.  A veterinarian, tears in his eyes, ended Ted’s misery with a bullet.  In the above photographer a Tribune cameraman captures the last run for a horse-drawn rig as an era comes to an end.

February 5, 1921 – Formal action is taken on this date to obtain a state charter for the Chicago Zoological Society which plans to build a zoo and gardens on 300 acres of land that Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick has donated to the forest preserve.  The president of the county board and the head of the forest preserve commissioners, Peter Reinberg, who is also one of the incorporators of the society, writes, “Though only in its tentative stage, the prevalent idea is that the organization shall follow closely that which has brought the Art Institute of Chicago to its acknowledged high standard.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 6, 1921] Commissioners of the new society will include:  Frank J. Wilson; William Hector MacLean; George A. Miller; Charles L. Hutchinson, president of the Art Institute of Chicago; Charles H. Wacker, chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission; and Judson F. Stone, manager of the McCormick family realty interests.  The location of the anticipated zoo is between Thirty-First Street and Thirty-Fifth Streets and is bordered by the Des Plaines River and Salt Creek.  It is anticipated that Pershing Road will lead to the grounds and that the Chicago Plan Commission will “lend its aid toward beautifying the approach to the gardens.”  The story explains why the street that runs past the south lot of Brookfield Zoo is Rockefeller Avenue.

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February 5, 1888 –The Chicago Daily Tribune publishes a letter from A. D. Field, in which he describes the hamlet of Chicago in 1836, the year that his family moved into a small one-room house on the northwest corner of Clark and Madison Streets.  Field notes that on the east side of Clark Street “there were buildings form Madison street to the river … scattered along on the separate lots.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 5, 1888] On the west side of the street there were woods with no building on the west side of Clark Street south of Madison Street.  Later that year the family moved to a one-room log house on what would become the corner of Kinzie and Canal Streets. Field writes, “As it was open prairie it is difficult to tell just where the house stood.”  His father was transporting brick from F. C. Sherman’s brick yard on the North Branch of the river to the town, and the move made for easier access to the business.  Field says that there were “a few scattered houses along West Lake street and down along the river as far as Washington street.”  In June, 1843 Field went to live with his brother, who built a house at Halsted and Madison Streets.  Field writes, “We began on the open prairie, where there was not a ditch or a furrow.” Between Washington and Randolph Streets there was “a small frame house.”  East of Halsted on Monroe Street “there were a few scattered dwellings and one or two on Desplaines street.”  Charles Cleaver’s soap factory was on Jefferson Street, east of Halsted.  West of the Field’s new house “there was no house for ten miles.”  In 1843 lots in the vicinity sold for $50 apiece.  A little over 20 years later, Field observes, his nephew sold a “bare lot” for $40,000.  In the whole summer of 1843, Field writes, “I do not remember seeing a single human being out our way.  We were too far out of town!”  In 1844 Field moved to the corner of Clark and Kinzie Streets.  The house stood on a lot on which “the stumps of the forest trees were so plenty it was difficult making a garden.”  There were buildings on the west side of Clark Street as far as Illinois Street.  Beyond that there was open country all the way to Lincoln Park.  Field recollects wandering along Rush Street in October of 1848 toward the water- works through land that was “nothing but wooded sand hills … It was so far out of town even the adventurous boy had never ventured so far.” Field remembers that the North Side had “one lone church in 1849, one grocery, not a hotel, perhaps a few liquor holes, Lill’s brewery, a slaughterhouse – and this was the sole business then of the North Side.  The South Side had won, and the North and West Sides were deserted by business.” It was a rough, rugged frontier town … Field concludes his letter, “There was not enough people of the sort needed in the whole city to keep up one stylish house.”

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Labels: 2009, Chicago Places, Fort Sheridan, Military

Thursday, November 21, 2019

November 21, 1904 -- Lake Bluff Site Offered for Naval Base

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November 21, 1904 – An agent acting on behalf of the Commercial Club, the Merchants’ Club and the Chicago Commercial Association “[throws] a bomb into the camp of the representatives of states contending for a naval training station on the great lakes” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 22, 1904] when he offers the government a site of 172 acres at Lake Bluff at no cost.  Contending with the offer is another bid from representatives from Muskegon Michigan, which promises the government 300 acres of land at no cost.  The offers are made at the Navy Department before a commission that President Theodore Roosevelt has appointed to select a site for a Great Lakes naval station.   Most of those present at the hearing acknowledge that Illinois Representative George Edmund Foss makes the best presentation in his advocating the Lake Bluff site, declaring that “if the station should be located at Lake Bluff it would be the center of a population possessed of strategical and geographical advantages, as it was near Chicago, the terminal of thirty-two railroads, all of which could be used by means of a belt line which would transport the men going to the station without the necessity of having them pass through the city.”  Foss also notes that the season for navigation is longer at the southern end of Lake Michigan, and that the Lake Bluff site is accessible from the Atlantic coast.  In addition, Foss touts the “naval atmosphere” in Chicago, saying, “Many citizens of Chicago had graduated from the naval academy, and they would take great interest in the institution.  Illinois has the strongest naval militia of any state in the union, numbering 700.  During the Spanish war the Illinois naval reserve did not insist on preserving its state identity, as did similar organizations of other states, but they enlisted in the navy and served with credit throughout the war on the battleships of the navy.”  Of course, the Lake Bluff site was ultimately selected, and construction began in 1905 with the base officially opening in 1911.  Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt designed the 39 buildings on the base constructed between those two dates.  All 39 are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  The above photo shows the 1911 dedication ceremony in front of the administration building. 

November 21, 1893 – An interesting anecdote appears in the Chicago Daily Tribune on this day, giving a brief glimpse of what day-to-day life on the river must have been like in the late nineteenth century. At about 3:00 a.m. the steam barge Colin Campbell enters the river, proceeding up the main branch without delay until the Captain comes to the Clark Street bridge.  At Dearborn Street he signals the bridge tender at Clark Street, the next bridge to the west, with “three long blasts” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 21, 1893] to swing his bridge.  There is no response.  “Again the whistle is blown, but still no signs of life appear about the bridge. The engines are stopped and the boat slowly drifts down toward the bridge with the whistle blowing a continuous blast.”  A few folks gather in the darkness “to see how the affair would terminate” as the boat, laden with lumber, drifts close enough to the bridge so that the engines have to be reversed.  At this point the captain appears from the pilot house “and addressed the crowd on the peculiarities of bridge tenders.”  The report notes, “the Captain is nearing the apoplectic point” when suddenly “a figure clad in a heavy ulster came tearing down Clark street and grasping the bell rope gave it a couple of spasmodic jerks and rushed to the starting lever.”  As the bridge begins to turn “and the Captain cooled down” someone shouts, “What are you doing?  Hold on there!”  A horse-drawn cab is scooting across the bridge, hoping to make to the north side of the river before the bridge is turned.  All ends well as the bridge is stopped in time “long enough for the reckless cabby to get across … Then with a final growl, the Captain of the Campbell went on.” The report does not say, but it is fun to wonder where the bridge tender could have been on Clark Street in the middle of the night.  The Clark Street bridge is at the very top of the illustration.

November 21, 1885 – The Chicago Daily Tribune runs a fascinating piece on the development of grain elevators in the city, innovations that began to handle grain in large quantities in 1851.  The transition from shipment of grain in sacks to elevators changed an entire economic system and gave birth to the futures market, and the whole thing happened right here in Chicago.  Early elevators were horse-powered, the power furnished by a “sweep” on the roof of the elevator, which a melancholy horse dragged around from morning till night,” setting in motion an “endless chain and buckets that elevated the grain.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 21, 1885] The first steam powered elevator stood on the south bank of the river about 80 feet east of what is today Clark Street and was completed in 1858.  By 1868 there were 17 elevators in the city with a storage capacity of 10,680,000 bushels. By the time the Tribune article appeared, there were 28 elevators with a total storage capacity of between 26,000,000 and 28,000,000 bushels of grain.  The system of grading the quality of grain was gradually perfected and by 1858 a committee of the Chicago Board of Trade created a system that eliminated complaints about inferior grain being mixed into a shipment at the elevator.  The largest elevator in Chicago in 1885 belonged to Armour, Dole and Company. Its Elevator D was 300 feet long, 100 feet wide and stood 115 feet high.  Its main driving belt was said to be the largest belt of its kind in the world and was run by an 800 horse-power engine.  On one remarkable fall day in the early 1880’s the elevator delivered 160,000 bushels of grain into the holds of the ships Boston, Scotia and New York between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m.  Another remarkable day came when the elevator loaded 410 railroad cars in nine hours. In 1838 the city handled 78 bushels of grain.  When the Illinois and Michigan Canal was opened in 1848, 2,160,800 bushels of wheat came through Chicago, all of it handled in sacks.  By 1891 the city was moving 38,990,168 bushels of wheat through its elevators, along with 66,578,300 bushels of corn, 68,771,644 bushels of oats and close to 20,000,000 bushels of rye, barley and flower.  [Chicago and Its Resources Twenty Years After, 1871-1891:  A commercial History Showing the Progress and Growth of Two Decades from the Great Fire to the Present Time.  Chicago:  Chicago Times Company, 1891] Armour Elevator "D" is shown in the above photo.

November 21, 1875 – Holy Name Cathedral at the corner of Superior and State Streets is dedicated.  William Ogden and Walter Loomis Newberry donated the site on which the cathedral stands in 1846 and a small church was built in 1848.  In 1853 a more impressive building was begun, but it was still unfinished when it was consumed in the 1871 fire.  The new cathedral was begun in 1873 while the congregation worshipped at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Cass Street.  One noteworthy aspect of the dedication pertains to the music chosen that was heralded as something that would begin “a revolution in Catholic church-music in Chicago . . . the first fair illustration in this city of the new school of music . . . [to] prohibit operatic and dramatic music in the church . . . to assist, instead of distracting, devotion.” The choir includes only 25 voices and the orchestra only 25 instruments. The Rt.-Rev. P. J. Ryan, Coadjutor Bishop of St. Louis, preaches the Dedication Day sermon before a 3,000 congregants.

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Labels: 1904, Chicago Events, Military