Showing posts with label Monroe Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monroe Street. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

May 27, 1939 -- Monroe Street Viaduct Opens

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May 27, 1939 – The new $264,300 Monroe Street viaduct across the Illinois Central Railroad tracks east of Michigan avenue is opened to traffic at noon.  The viaduct carries six lanes on a 60-foot roadway, doubling the size of the viaduct that it replaces.  The new viaduct is part of a series of city improvements that come as a result of state legislation related to the construction of the new Union Station.  Other projects included in the initiative are:  connecting Canal and Orleans Streets, uniting the north and west parts of the city; widening and elevating Canal Street between Washington Street and Roosevelt Road to make a direct route to the new Illinois Central terminal; building a Congress Street viaduct; assisting the city in straightening the Chicago River’s South Branch, thereby relocating railroad tracks that strangled the south portion of the city east of the South Branch.  The black and white photo shows the construction of the viaduct in 1939.  The second Google Earth photo shows the corner of Monroe and Michigan as it appears today.


May 27, 1975 – After a City Council subcommittee approves $7.2 million for the rehabilitation of Navy Pier, a project that the Department of Public Works estimates may take closer to $34 million, the Chicago Tribune weighs in with its opinion. “Either it will be revived somehow,” the editorial states, “or it will be a big black eye on Chicago’s face as long as it remains. We hope a practical way can and will be found to make Navy Pier once again used, attractive, well served by public transportation from end to end as well as to it. The site is one of the most scenic and interesting urban sites in the country. Surely some time Chicago will find a means of turning Navy Pier’s unused potential into reality.”
J. Bartholomew Photo
May 27, 1933 – A creditors’ petition for reorganization is filed in the United States District court for the One La Salle Street building.  According to the suit the building’s owners are in default $5,250,000 on a first mortgage and have accrued taxes of $500,000.  The petition puts forward a plan to seek a new mortgage of $750,000 to pay off taxes and establish solvency to an operating fund while issuing 52,500 shares of stock to first mortgage holders.  The attorney for the building’s bondholders claims that the half-million in taxes have been paid and a cash surplus exists.  The attorney, Bernard Nath, says, “Eighty-nine percent of the bondholders and the owner of the building, the One La Salle Street Building corporation, have approved the reorganization plan.  We expect to go through with the reorganization foreclosure proceedings now under and bid in the property for the bondholders.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1933]. For 35 years this 49-story building, designed by the architecture firm of Vitzhum and Burns, was the tallest building in the city.  It was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. 



May 27, 1930 –The President of the 1933 Century of Progress, Rufus C. Dawes, pulls a lever on a steam shovel and scoops the first dirt from the site where the administration building will be erected for the Century of Progress World’s Fair, to be held along Chicago’s lakefront in the summers of 1933 and 1934,.   The Vice-President of the South Park commissioners, Philip S. Garver, addresses a gathering of fair directors and public officials, officially turning over the use of the park property to the fair’s trustees.  In accepting the site, Director Dawes says, “We pledge ourselves to the use of this land for the enjoyment, education, and entertainment of the people of the world.  The exposition will fittingly portray the history of Chicago and be worthy of the city’s proud position among the cities of the world.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1930] In the top photo President Dawes moves the first bucket of dirt, which will give way to the Art Deco Administration building shown in the second photo.


May 27, 1917 – Seven weeks after the United States Congress approves a declaration of war on Germany, the Chicago Conference Committee on Terms of Peace holds a rally at the Auditorium Theater in which protestors rail against the country’s entanglement in the war an ocean away.  Two thousand people are turned away from the packed Auditorium, and they instigate what the Chicago Daily Tribune calls the city’s first “war riot.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 28, 1917] The paper reports, “The scene was Grant park, just across from the Auditorium hotel.  Michigan avenue’s thousands of Sunday promenaders came to an amazed halt.  A steady flowing stream of automobiles pulled up short, blockading the boulevard for many blocks in each direction … Then a huge, bearded and mop headed Russian thrust himself above the heads of the others … ‘Why should American workmen fight the workmen of Germany for any _______   _________ in the White House?’ he bawled.”  It took an hour to put down the riot as “The air was filled with clubs, that cracked down upon the heads of the rioters.  The members of the meeting shrieked imprecations, women bit and scratched the police, bull throated malcontents bawled threats and ‘Down with the government!’ “Free speech!’ and 'No war.’”  At first 40 officers show up, followed by 35 detectives.  In ten minutes there are another 400 policemen trying to maintain order.  The Tribune reports, “’Free speech!’ screamed the women. ‘We want free speech!’ ‘You’ll get it,’ bellowed back a square shouldered policeman as he whacked another disturber over the head.”  The Reverend Irwin St. John Tucker, chairman of the peace terms conference, issues a statement in which he separates the meeting in the Auditorium from the disturbances across Michigan Avenue.  It reads, “The Chicago permanent conference on terms of peace is responsible only for the mass meeting held in the Auditorium and for the resolutions officially presented therein … The conference is determined, while exercising all our rights under the law, strictly to observe all our obligations under the same.”

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Saturday, May 23, 2020

May 23, 1969 -- First National Bank of Chicago Makes a Move

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May 23, 1969 – Brink’s armed guards move all of the money and securities in the First National Bank of Chicago through a temporary underground tunnel and into the hands of waiting tellers in the bank’s new building on Monroe Street, between Dearborn and Clark. The whole operation takes less than 30 minutes. At the close of business on this Friday tellers are told to move to their spaces in the new building just to the east, where they find workers still installing bullet proof windows at their counters. The following Monday the new bank will open, and the process of tearing down the old one will begin.


May 23, 1959 – With a royal visit from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth coming on July 6, city officials are working feverishly to tidy up the city for Her Majesty.  This day brings news that an area one thousand feet south of the Chicago River and just east of Lake Shore Drive which has for more than 30 years been used to load thousands of tons of garbage onto railroad cars will be cleaned up.  “When the wind is right,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “odors are wafted over Lake Shore drive and into Grant park, where the queen will enter Chicago” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 23, 1959] The shut-down of the operation on the lakefront is made possible by the completion of a new incineration plant at One-Hundred Third and Doty Avenue and a new system in which large trailer trucks are used to haul refuse to Lake Calumet.  The area shown in the photograph isn't far away from where Studio Gang's Vista Tower is being constructed today.



May 23, 1913 – In another of a series of articles dealing with the “new slogan” for the city [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 23, 1913], “Where ‘We Will’ There’s a Way,” the Chicago Daily Tribune discusses the impact that the railroads have had upon the city.  Leading with a description of the business district, an area circumscribed by Chicago Avenue on the north, Sixteenth Street on the south, Halsted Street on the west, and the lake, the paper states, “Of this 2,140 acres the railroads own approximately 50 per cent, one-half of all downtown Chicago.  Something like 1,000 acres in the heart of the city are given up to railroad terminals and rights of way.” Taking one portion of that area, the paper veers toward the unimaginable, the development of the huge railroad freight yards south of the river, east of Michigan Avenue, and north of Randolph Street.  “By way of violent and impossible supposition,” the article states, “imagine that the eighty acres now occupied by the freight yards and houses could be thrown open to office and business buildings.  There would be plenty of sites out there on the lake shore which would offer almost unequaled opportunities for fresh air, sunlight, ventilation, and unobstructed views.” Of course, that development eventually did occur – over 60 years later in what is now Illinois Center and Lakeshore East.  The article also traces the impact the railroads have had on getting from place to place within the city.  Because of the blockade of railroad tracks, the article asserts, there are only four streets left, running form the center of the city to the west side, “on which any sort of retail business can be expected to develop as it overflows from the east side of the river.”  It is even worse on the south side of the city … “Running to the south from the business center there are only three streets possible for retail business and one of these, Michigan avenue, is already almost solidly filled with the salesrooms of a single line of trade [the automobile].”  The top photo shows the extent to which the rail yards dominated the South Loop in 1929 when the river's course was changed in a massive construction project.  The photo below that shows how dramatically things have changed since that time, a change that continues with the development of land east of the river, south of Van Buren Street and all the way to Roosevelt Road today.

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May 23, 1897 --  Mayor Carter Harrison leads over 6,000 city cyclists, 3,200 of them representing 34 riding clubs, over the streets of the city.  Before him, clearing the way, are “a dozen husky policemen, who felt the awful responsibility that rested upon them riding with the eye of the Executive upon them.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 24, 1897].  The grand tour starts at Thirty-Fifth Street and Grand Boulevard, finally rolling to a stop at the Thistle Cycling Club House at Washington and Paulina Streets.  The only glitch comes when the keeper of the Rush Street Bridge turns the bridge just as the Delaware Club comes to the river … “So the Delawares stopped and said things to the bridge man, and spent their money for pink pop and other things, until they finally found their way across, and went pounding over to the West Side like a suburban fire company responding to a four-eleven.”  The mayor wears a suit of “somber brown,” with a Red Cross emblem on his arm as he rides with the Red Cross corps attired “in blue suits and wearing the red emblem,” attracting “the eyes of every one that had not been hypnotized by the fierce glances of the fat policemen in front.”  The tour starts at 11 minutes before 11:00, and the procession proceeds down Michigan Avenue “at a lively clip,” touring the North Side before heading back south with contingents still heading north passing riders heading south at Ohio and Rush Streets.  In an hour and 45 minutes it is over and at Union Park “several thousand people were going in several thousand directions, and everybody apparently trying to beat the best record, whatever it is, of a hungry man riding to a dinner.”   In 1896 the Chicago Daily Tribune observed, “Chicago is the bicycle center of the United States.” [Chicago Tribune, May 3, 2014]  In the half-dozen years from the early 1890's Chicago’s bicycle manufacturing had grown from four companies to 25.  The average cost of a bicycle was $75 (That would be $2,000 today}.  The manufacturers in the city were cranking out 250,000 bicycles a year.  Mayor Harrison even had a campaign picture taken on a bicycle in 1897, observing that in a city with 50 cycling clubs with 10,000 members the photograph “would carry weight with the vast army of Chicago Wheelmen.” Whether the photo helped or not, this would be the first of his five mayoral wins.  The above photo shows the Lakeview Cycling Club in the 1890’s in front of their clubhouse on Orchard Street.

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Saturday, May 16, 2020

May 16, 2009 -- Nichols Bridgeway Opens Between Millennium Park and Art Institute


May 16, 2009 –The Nichols Bridgeway, a 625-foot pedestrian bridge connecting Millennium Park to the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, opens.  Designed by the Pritzker prize-winning architect of the Modern Wing of the museum, Renzo Piano, it gradually rises from the Great Lawn southwest of the Pritzker Pavilion to a height of 60 feet as it meets up with the Bluhm Family Terrace on the third level of the Modern Wing.  As walkers move along the 450 tons of steel that make up the bridge, they are treated to spectacular views, west down Monroe Street toward the South Branch of the river, east to the open space of Grant Park and Lake Michigan, south to the spectacular new addition to the museum (and the railroad tracks that once occupied the entire area), and, north to Millennium Park and its lush Lurie Garden.  The bridge, built by Industrial Steel, Construction, Inc., is named after its benefactors, John D. and Alexandra Nichols.  

May 16, 2000 – The Chicago Tribune editorializes about cost overruns at Millennium Park. “Private-sector corporations generally prefer the design-build method of contracting for new facilities,” the editorial observes. “They hire a unified team of architects and builders that can deliver an agreed-to building for an agreed-to price. Then there’s the method Mayor Richard Daley is using on the Millennium Project . . . you might call it the design-as-you-build method.” At issue is a Frank Gehry-design that, as originally proposed, was supposed to cost 150 million dollars and which had by this time risen to $270 million. “And crews are still building the support structure,” the editorial sniped. “What happens when they start adding the fancy stuff?” In a stinging conclusion, the editorial asks, “And one last question for the planners: After you’ve made your last change and gotten your elegant little culture park just the way you like, where are the hoi polloi going to go for the Blues, Jazz, Gospel and Taste concerts that are too big for Millennium Park? Or is that just another small, hanging detail?” A space of over 17 years is probably time enough to judge whether the “little culture park” was worth the investment. Judging from the crowds at what is now the most popular tourist destination in the midwest, it feels as if the “small, hanging details” worked out. The photo above shows the park as it started to take shape in 2001.
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May 16, 1930 – Charles B. Pike, the president of the Chicago Historical Society, presides over a ceremony at which a monument is unveiled on the bank of Portage Creek near Stickney, the site at which Father Marquette and Louis Joliet came into the vicinity of the Des Plaines River. In the 1670's Portage Creek would have been to the west of Mud Lake, through which the two French explorers had to carry their canoes and provisions after leaving the Chicago River   In his remarks Pike credits two Chicagoans, Dr. Lucius Zeuch and Robert Knight, whose research led to the establishment of the historical site. The Reverend Joseph Reiner, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University, provides a narrative of the development of Chicago, a process that begins with Marquette’s and Joliet’s discovery of the possibility that a route might exist between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River by way of the modest Chicago River and the interior waters of Illinois.  Bertha Lerman, secretary of the Junior Citizens’ Club, pulls a canvas covering from a granite boulder that was set by the Chicago Historical Society on the old trail.  Today there is a much more elaborate work of art at the site. Located in the Chicago Portage National Historic Site in Lyons, it is on the west side of Harlem Avenue on a line with Forty-Eighth Street.  The sculpture at the site, shown above, is by Guido Rebechini.

May 16, 1910 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that James A. Pugh, the largest stockholder in the Chicago Canal and Dock Company, has confirmed that the company will build piers into the lake at the mouth of the river without permission of the city – if the United States War Department renews the permit that it granted the company 18 months earlier.  A member of the City Council’s committee on harbors, wharves, and bridges says, “If Pugh gets his permit and goes ahead without a city franchise to build his piers he will get into a fight.  We’ll tie the thing up in the courts, if necessary, until we can get a bill through the legislature.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1910] Good luck, Mr. City Council Guy.  The terminal got built – it’s the long light-colored structure to the left of Ogden Slip, extending toward the brand new Lake Point Tower, nearing completion in 1968.  
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Wednesday, April 29, 2020

April 29, 2001 -- Art Institute of Chicago Announces Modern Wing Plans

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April 29, 2001 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the Art Institute of Chicago has announced plans for a $200 million addition that will “create a major new entrance to the museum facing Lakefront Millennium Park and its parking garage, supply much-needed gallery and education space, and set the stage for one of the most dramatic internal reorganizations since the museum opened its doors in 1893.” [Chicago Tribune, April 29, 2001]   In order to make room for the new wing, the Goodman Theatre, sited mostly underground on the northeast corner of the museum, will be demolished.  The new building’s architect, Renzo Piano, says, “If you leave that building [the Goodman] there, you can’t do anything.”  The addition will add close to 300,000 square feet to the existing building’s 950,000 square feet of space.  Piano will also design a steel bridge that will connect the addition to Millennium Park to the north across Monroe Street.  The design for the new building, the first addition to the museum since the completion of the Rice Building in 1988, will feature a five-level structure with “three stories above ground and two below.  The top two floors will be for galleries.  The bottom two floors, both below ground, will be devoted to art storage and other ‘back of the house’ functions, such as a new loading dock that will replace the one along Monroe.  The ground floor, meanwhile, will house a visitors’ lobby, museum shop, resource facility for teachers and orientation areas for school children.”  Most striking, perhaps, will be the roof of the addition which Piano says represents his attempt “to strike up a dialogue with the football-field-size steel trellis" that [architect Frank] Gehry has designed just to the south of his band shell.  “Poetically speaking, it’s like a flying sculpture, a flying carpet,” Piano says.  Although optimistic projections called for the Modern Wing to be open by 2005, it actually opened in mid-2009, making the Art Institute of Chicago the second-largest art museum in the United States.  The Art Institute describes the Modern Wing in this way, “The building houses the museum’s world-renowned collections of modern European painting and sculpture, contemporary art, architecture and design, and photography.  The extraordinary scope and quality of these collections are a revelation, each displayed more comprehensively than ever before.  The Modern Wing allows the Art Institute to take its rightful place as one of the world’s great collections of modern and contemporary art.”  [archive.artic.edu/modernwing/overview/]  The above photo shows Renzo Piano's "flying carpet," the roof atop the Modern Wing with the entry arch from Louis Sullivan's Chicago Stock Exchange building in the foreground.

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April 29, 1982 – An announcement is made that the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust has signed a contract to exchange the land under Lake Point Tower at 505 North Lake Shore Drive for a property to be named later in the year.  American Ivsco Corp. retains ownership of the residential tower with a ground lease that will continue until about 2045.  The president of Chicago Dock, Charles Gardner, does not disclose the future owner of the land.  It is believed that the transaction is the result of the conversion of the building from rental apartments to condominiums.  Such a conversion could not legally take place unless the building and the land are held in common ownership.  Chicago Dock had owned the 3-acre parcel of land since the 1850’s and leased it to the developers of Lake Point Tower in 1965.  On June 1, 1983 Chicago Dock announced the property that it had acquired in the swap with Lake Point Tower.  Gardner disclosed that the company had acquired a 60 percent interest in the Playboy Building at 919 North Michigan Avenue, plus an undisclosed amount of cash.  It is speculated that Continental National Bank and Trust Company will be the majority owner of Lake Point Tower and the land beneath it.  



April 29, 1963 – Mayor Richard J. Daley announces plans to build an 80-story apartment building west of the Merchandise Mart on Wolf Point.  The building will be the tallest building in the Midwest and the fourth tallest in the world, rising 782 feet with a 571-foot antenna at its top.  It is projected to hold 1,300 apartments and a 320-room hotel with a plaza that rises two floors above the bridge at Orleans Street.  The cost of the project, which will occupy 5.76 acres of land, is $45 million.  Studio apartments will rent from $120 to $200 a month; the 512 one-bedroom units will go for between $180 and $280 a month; 256 two-bedroom units will rent for between $270 and $370; and 128 three-bedroom units will top out at $420.  Each apartment will have glass from floor to ceiling with seven-foot balconies extending the width of the unit.  The first tier of apartments will not begin until the building reaches the 120-foot mark with four restaurants and a theater, along with shops making up the first floors.  There will be two levels of parking below ground that will hold 800 cars.  The architect for the project is Chalres Booher Gunther, who founded PACE Associates, an engineering firm that worked on early drawings of Marina City.  One can see the similarities to the two Marina City towers on the river six blocks to the east.  The project actually got a permit from the Federal Aeronautics Administration for the antenna, but that is as far as it ever went. The top photo gives some idea of the look of the colossus.  Below that is a Chicago Tribune rendering of the space that it was projected to fill at Wolf Point.  The bottom photo shows what Wolf Point will look like when the last of the three towers is topped out in the next few years.  Probably a good thing the original plan got shelved, right?



April 29, 1928 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the Gage Structural Steel Company, with offices at 3123-41 South Hoyne Avenue, has set a record for placement of steel in a tall building.  According to R. H. Gage, vice-president and engineer of the company, a record of 36 working days was established in the steelwork of the 100 North La Salle building. Gage says, “The first delivery of structural steel was made on Feb. 24, 1928, and the final delivery on April 13, 1928, and the erection of same was completed shortly thereafter in the record time of seven weeks, or thirty-six working days.  Three days were deducted for inclement weather, when the steel erectors could not work, and Saturdays were figured as half days, owing to the fact that the steel erectors quit at noon.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 29, 1928] The 25-story building at the corner of La Salle Street and Washington required 1,958 tons of structural steel.


April 29, 1862 -- Report in the Chicago DailyTribune for this date: "A drunken man named Gates, who resides on Wells street, became suddenly sobered Saturday night, as follows: He was walking along the river dock between Randolph and Lake streets, when, by some means unexplained, he got into deep water. He howled lustily for help, and was rescued by two men, just as he was sinking for the last time. Never was a pickled article more suddenly or completely freshened than was Gates. He was taken in charge by the police and furnished with lodgings in the Hotel de Turtle, West Market station." Poor pickled Gates nearly met his doom just beyond the nearest bridge at Randolph Street, pictured above.


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Tuesday, February 11, 2020

February 11, 1936 -- Hollywood Stars Robbed after Terrorizing Loop Chase


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Chicago Tribune photo
February 11, 1936 – Hollywood stars Jackie Coogan and his finacée, Betty Grable, are waylaid and robbed of two diamond rings after dancing at the Congress Hotel.  As they drove toward their rooms at the Hotel Sherman on Randolph Street, two men forced Coogan to the curb at the corner of Monroe Street and Michigan Avenue.  Coogan is able to speed away from the trap and heads across the Michigan Avenue bridge to the turnaround at Tribune Tower where he reverses direction and heads south again with the pursuers close behind.  Back across the bridge the two cars head west on Wacker Drive to Wells Street, turning south on Wells to Adams Street, where the robbers pin Coogan’s car against a support for the Loop elevated line.  There the robbers take Grable’s diamond engagement ring, along with Coogan’s diamond ring and his wallet.  Police suspect the robbers are the same pair that robbed the wife of orchestra leader George Olson, Ethel Shutta, of $12,000 worth of furs and jewelry the week before.  Coogan and Grable are in town performing at the Oriental Theater.  The above Tribune photo shows Grable and Coogan having breakfast at the Hotel Sherman on the morning after the incident.
February 11, 2010 -- A 3.8-magnitude earthquake centered in a farm field near Hampshire shakes a wide area from Wisconsin to Tennessee. At first reported to be a 4.3-magnitude quake, the estimate is revised downward after data is more closely analyzed. Whatever it was, it shakes a lot of people in the area awake when it occurs at 3:59 in the morning.
February 11, 1963 – The first car to enter the garage at Marina City follows the serpentine pathway to a space on the nineteenth floor of the east tower.  Only black steel poles, about two feet high, spaced at six-foot intervals, separate the car from doom.  The garage will officially open in mid-March and will be operated by Marina City Garage and Parking Corporation.  It will accommodate 900 cars.  The rate for monthly parking is expected to be about $30.00.  Attendants will be able to access cars by way of a special elevator installed next to the core of the tower.

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February 11, 1962 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on a discovery by researchers for the Chicago Title and Trust Company – details of the last law case that Abraham Lincoln tried in the city, a case heard in March, 1860.  Lincoln, at the time a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, came to the city on March 22, 1860 in order to try a case involving about five acres of land on the lake that was created after the U. S. government built a pier north of the river’s mouth.  The dispute was between William S. Johnston and two men who claimed prior rights to the property, William Jones and Sylvester March.  Lincoln represented Jones, who was one of the city’s first real estate investors and also served as the superintendent of schools, and Marsh, a meat packer.  The case was tried before Judge Thomas Drummond in a building that stood at the northeast corner of Clark and Washington Streets.  It lasted for 11 days before a jury found in favor of Lincoln’s clients after a five-hour deliberation.  The case was another in a series of cases that would continue for decades as the courts grappled with the question of the ownership of submerged lands along the city's lakefront. The lawyer who went on to become the President of the United States is shown above as he would have appeared in 1860.

February 11, 1889 – Apparently, the good citizens of Joliet are angry and determined not to take any more abuse from Chicago.  At a meeting of a joint committee composed of members of the Joliet City Council and members of a city businessmen’s association, a resolution is adopted that reads, “Resolved, That the City Council be requested to use all honorable means to prevent Chicago from sending its sewage down the Desplaines Valley.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1889] Joliet Mayor J. D. Paige says, “When the works [the Chicago Water-Works] were built Chicago was to send down more water.  Instead it has given more sewage.  If we allow them to build a bigger ditch we will get more sewage.  Chicago has not complied with anything it has agreed to do.  The question is:  Is this sewage and do we want it here … The water is nastier here than it is in Chicago.  They have as much sewage there, but the putrefaction is well under way when it gets down here.  Down on Lake Joliet it is thick; you can’t force a boat through it.”  The conjecture is that the first practical step in pressing Joliet’s case will be supporting a $50,000 suit of Joliet resident Robert Mann Woods against the city of Chicago for damage to one of his buildings from the sewage in the canal.  Businesses and homes such as the one above in Lockport sat right next to the canal and were beneficiaries of whatever Chicago decided to send their way.


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