Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts

Sunday, October 11, 2020

October 11, 1969 -- S.D.S. March through Loop, 105 Arrested


October 11, 1969 – A march through the Loop by 300 members of the Students for a Democratic Society breaks bad as police face off against “demonstrators, using tire chains, clubs, railroad flares, and their fists smashed windows and fought a running battle … in the three-block area from La Salle street to State street.” [Chicago Tribune, October 12, 1969] When things finally wind down 105 demonstrators are under arrest, 27 police officers have been injured and two corporation counsels are hurt with one of them, Richard Elrod, suffering permanent paralysis when he attempts to tackle a demonstrator fleeing police. The march is supposed to proceed down La Salle Street to Jackson Boulevard, but it breaks apart a half-mile north at Madison Street and marchers head east, smashing windows in 15 buildings as they run.  After the Loop is cleared, Governor Richard Ogilvie calls 300 Illinois national guardsmen into the area, but by 7:00 p.m., concluding that the trouble is at an end, he releases all 2,600 guardsmen on alert in the city since they had been summoned earlier in the week. 

pubs.usgs.gov
October 11, 1954 – The rain finally stops.  On October 9, 1954 rain begins to move into the Chicagoland area, and from that Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, the storms continue, bringing 6.21 inches of rain, surpassing a record that has stood for nearly 70 years.  The Chicago Sanitary District orders the locks at the mouth of the river opened at 6:25 p.m. on October 10 and “A gigantic swell of water roared into the lake as the river for a time returned to the original direction of its flow before it had been reversed by canals to the Illinois waterway." [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 12, 1954] Water flows into the counterweight pits of most of the downtown bridges, immobilizing them, and traffic on the river is halted.  The new Edens Highway is closed, and the Racine Avenue pumping station is put out of commission with four feet of water on its main floor.  Before the locks are opened, the Chicago River rises five feet, overflowing in several locations, including the area around Union Station where stormwater pours into the basement of the main post office, where it short-circuits pumps that could have helped keep the water level lower.  Flowing through drains, the floods enter two sub-basements of the Chicago Daily News building, today’s Two Riverside Plaza, where 42 feet of water eventually collects, destroying paper stock valued at a quarter million dollars and shorting out electrical circuits to the paper’s pressroom.  The Chicago Tribune prints seven editions of the Chicago Daily News while fire boats and several fire engines pump the water out of the basements.  the above photo shows the railroad yard near Van Buren Street under water that has also flooded the counterweight pits of the bridge.


October 11, 1926 – Machine guns spread a wave of death across the street from Holy Name Cathedral as two mobsters are killed and three others are wounded.  The sniper targets his victims from the front room of a second-floor apartment at 740 North State Street, a building next door to William F. Schofield’s florist shop, about which you can find more information in this entry at Connecting the Windy City.  One of the men killed is Earl “Hymie” Weiss, a member of the North Side Gang that controlled bootlegging and other illegal activity on the north side of the city, a rival to a gang controlled by Al Capone.  Also killed is Patrick Murray, a known bootlegger.  Weiss holds in his pocket a list of all the men called for jury duty in the trial of Joe Sallis, a south side gang leader who is charged with the murder of another mob captain.  Weiss also has $5,300 in walking-around money on his person.  This is the fifth in a series of gang-related murders in the space of two years, beginning with the murder of mob boss Dean O’Banion in the florist shop on Sate Street.  Police search the rented room from which the shots were fired and find 35 empty .45 caliber shells near the window and “a hundred or more” cigarette butts, “indicating a long period of watchful waiting.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 13, 1926] The Chicago Chief of Police says, “We knew it was coming sooner or later.  And it isn’t over.  I fully expect that there will be a reprisal, then a counter reprisal and so on. These beer feuds go in an eternal vicious cycle. I don’t want to encourage the business, but if somebody has to be killed, it’s a good thing the gangsters are murdering themselves off.  It saves trouble for the police.”


October 11, 1918 – A city commission passes a resolution that all public dancing must be stopped in order to check the influenza-pneumonia epidemic.  Dr. C. St. Clair Drake, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, says, “The order will take effect at once.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 12, 1913]  The commission also adopts a resolution that “attendance at all funerals, contagious disease or otherwise, shall be restricted to the immediate relatives, close friends and necessary attendants.”  In the 24 hours before the commission adopts its resolutions 124 people in the city have died of influenza and 89 from pneumonia.   The commission orders the cancelling of all dances as a necessary step “because of the close contact of the dancers, the exercise of the dance and the frequent chilling of the body that is apt to follow.”  The 1918 pandemic, believed to have begun in a French hospital processing soldiers wounded in the war, led to the deaths of between 50 and 100 million worldwide.  According to the digital encyclopedia at http://www.influenzaarchive.org  “Between the start of Chicago’s epidemic on September 21 and the removal of restrictions on November 16, the Windy City experienced a staggering 38,000 cases of influenza and 13,000 cases of pneumonia . . . Yet, despite these numbers, Chicago actually did fairly well for a city of its size.  In fact, with a population of 2.7 million, Chicago’s epidemic death rate for the period was only 373 out of 100,000, not much worse than its long-time rival St. Louis.”
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Saturday, October 10, 2020

October 10, 1977 -- Walter Mondale Cheered in Columbus Day Parade


October 10, 1977 – Thousands of Chicagoans stand in the sunshine along a ten-block parade route as Vice-President Walter Mondale marches down State Street with Mayor Michael Bilandic and other officials in the city’s annual Columbus Day parade.  Clearly, the Vice-President has an eye toward moving one office higher as “Three times during the parade he distressed his Secret Service contingent by plunging into crowds to shake hands, trade pleasantries, and pat children on the head.”  [Chicago Tribune, October 11, 1977]  Before the parade Mondale attends a mass celebrated by John Cardinal Cody in Our Lady of Pompeii at 1224 West Lexington Avenue.  After a reception at the church, Mondale and other officials walk two blocks west on Lexington to place a wreath at the statue of Christopher Columbus.  Most importantly, Mondale announces on his arrival in the city that a bill signed earlier in the week by President Jimmy Carter will increase federal money for community development in the city from $69 million to $134 million. 

Chicago Tribune photo
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October 10, 1975 – The Chicago Tribune editorializes favorably about a proposal, unveiled four days earlier, for a “Lakefront Gardens for the Arts” to be established where Millennium Park stands today.  On October 6, 1975 four civic organizations – the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council, Friends of the Parks, the Open Lands Project, and the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects – propose a 20-acre park that would replace a surface parking lot just east of Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Monroe Streets.  A portion of the park would be built over the Illinois Central Railroad’s commuter line while another section would bridge the extension of Columbus Drive, which was still under construction at the time.  Included in the project would be a 10,000-seat outdoor music bowl that would be surrounded by a grassy area that could seat an additional 20,000 people.  The plan is an alternative to a much more modest Chicago Park District plan that involves rehabilitating the dilapidated band shell in Butler Field east of the Art Institute.  The Tribune editorial clearly states the choice:  “A comparatively small but safe investment in the Butler Field band shell, which would put the Grant Park concerts on a stronger footing; or a bold attempt to make this orchestra a key to greater things, energizing Chicago’s cultural life, giving new life to the downtown area, turning an eyesore into a park, and giving the city the most sophisticated outdoor music facility of any urban area in the nation.”  [Chicago Tribune, October 10, 1975]  Despite the scale of the project the Tribune concludes, “… the dazzling opportunities offered by the Lakefront Gardens plan should be examined and exploited to the full.”  The plan clearly did not get a full examination.  Three days after the editorial is published the Chicago Plan Commission votes, 5-1, to approve the Butler Field band shell with bids to be submitted by November 15.  It would be 25 years before talk once again turned to the site proposed for the Gardens, but it was probably worth the wait as Millennium Park, when it opened in 2004, is as fine a plot of civic green space as one will find anywhere in the world.  The two photos show the way the area looked at the time of the 1975 proposal and the way it looks today.


October 10, 1975 –The federal office building at 230 North Dearborn Street is formally dedicated in a ceremony held in the Federal Center plaza at Dearborn and Adams Streets.  The building is named after John C. Kluczinski, who represented the Fifth District in the United States House of Representatives from 1951 until his death from a heart attack in 1975.  Four premier architecture firms in the city joined forces in the Federal Center design – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as chief designer; Schmidt, Garden and Erikson; C. F. Murphy Associates; and A. Epstein and Sons.  The 42-story office building is part of a complex of three buildings which are exquisitely unified.  According to the General Services Administration description of the plan, “The entire complex is organized on a 28-foot grid pattern subdivided into six 4-foot, 8-inch modules.  This pattern extends from the granite-paved plaza into the ground floor lobbies of the two towers, where the floors and elevator lobby walls are also granite.  The lines of the grid continue vertically up the buildings, integrating each component of the complex” [https://www.gsa.gov/historic-buildings/john-c-kluczynski-federal-building-chicago-il]


October 10, 1909 – Former United States Assistant Secretary of State John Callan O’Laughlin, a Chicago Daily Tribune reporter, writes of the vice he finds in the heart of the city.  “I have been through the red light districts of Chicago,” O’Laughlin begins, “and I am filled with a great loathing.  I have seen your dance halls, where temptation to sin is offered in the form of lights, and music, and drink.  I have seen saloons which are but the ante-rooms to iniquity.  I have visited your vice quarters, and have been astounded at the open traffic that exists therein.  I have learned of how ‘white slavery’ is conducted in Chicago.  I have been told of women imprisoned behind bars and forced to do the will of their keepers.  I have learned of police service to prevent the escape of unfortunates.  The condition that exists is at once heart-rending and disgusting.  It is a blot upon the fair name of Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 10, 1909] O’Laughlin urges the new police chief to get to work, saying, “It is about time for action.”  He rails at the courts for the dollar or five-dollar fines they dole out, calling the fines “a small commission received by the city from the earnings of vice.”  He suggests that the city take a lesson from Japan, saying, “It can forbid dance halls to sell liquor and to be a rendezvous at all hours for young men and girls.  It can forbid the sale of liquor in any house where women are allowed.  It can forbid the sale of liquor in houses of ill repute.  It can punish as a vagrant or otherwise every man who runs such a house or who has any connection with it or with inducing women to become inmates.  It can stop the youth of the city, including messenger boys, from entering the districts.”
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Monday, September 28, 2020

September 28, 1943 -- Marshall Field III Gets Richer

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September 28, 1943 – Marshall Field III grows a tad richer as on this day he comes into an inheritance of between 70 and 75 million dollars (in excess of one billion dollars in today’s dollars).  Almost immediately, Representative John E. Rankin, a Republican from Mississippi, assails him as “the Chicago playboy” who “is using millions of dollars, inherited free of taxes, to smear members of congress and stir up race trouble throughout the country.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 29, 1943]. “I have tried for months,” says Rankin, “to reach that estate through a bill which I have prepared and introduced, but have failed to get results.  It is not only escaping taxation entirely, but just think of the purpose for which it is being used.  It is being used to finance the publication and distribution of PM, that uptown edition of the Communist Daily Worker … This money is being used to finance this publication that is continually attacking and attempting to smear the members of congress of the United States and stirring up race trouble throughout the land, and is today encouraging the Negroes of Washington to storm the house restaurant in this capital.”  PM was a liberal newspaper published in New York City from June 1940 to June 1948.  Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss, published more than 400 cartoons on the paper’s editorial page.  At various times, writers included Erskine Caldwell, McGeorge Bundy, Heywood Hale Broun, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Malcolm Cowley, Tip O’Neill and Ben Hecht.  The paper’s run ended when Marshall Field III made the decision to support publication of the Chicago Sun, ending his silent partnership with PM.



September 28, 1924 – In a day that was “replete with fervent pulpit oratory, congratulations, stately music and solemn ritual” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 28, 1924] the Chicago Temple at Clark and Washington Streets is dedicated. Even though there are three services at the new church, throngs outside are still so great that two outdoor services are held in the morning and afternoon.  The president of the Temple’s board of trustees reads a letter from President Calvin Coolidge in which he writes, “I join heartily in the hope which moved its founders, that it may be the means of expanding and increasing the effectiveness of the great spiritual work to which it is devoted.  Unique in many ways as an ecclesiastical type of architecture, it will bring together the spiritual and lay activities of the church, giving from each a helpful inspiration to the other.”  The congregation is one of the oldest in Chicago, beginning in an 1834 building on the north side of the river.  In 1838 that building was floated across the river and rolled on logs to a location on the southeast corner of Washington and Clark, the same plot on which the First United Methodist Church of Chicago stands today.


September 28, 1920 –Here is a sad day in Chicago history … 180 barrels of "High Life" beer are poured into the Chicago River. It is the last part of a cargo from the ship Mineral City which was seized by government officials as it entered the city from Kenosha over a year earlier. The seized ship is shown above.  


September 28, 1911 – After Mayor Carter Harrison ventures forth with his brother, William Preston Harrison, and walks from the north side of the city as far south as Harrison Street “under the cover of darkness … to learn how his people conducted themselves,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 29, 1911] he informs his police chief, James McWeeny, that he has found State Street “rotten … a cheap imitation of a Midway show”.  In the letter to McWeeny he directs the chief to clean up the street, saying, “One of the last acts of my administration before leaving office in 1905 was to give orders looking to the cleaning up of the old time levee.  Today State street, south of Van Buren, while not so vile as it used to be, is a cheap imitation of a Midway show.  At 408 State street they advertise the ‘grizzly bear’ dance.  They have also suggestive pictures of women in costume.  They have a barker in front and regular Midway music.  This character of show has no place in a city.”
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Wednesday, September 9, 2020

September 9, 1968 -- Mayor Daley Blasts Protestors on National Television

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September 9, 1968 – The National Broadcasting Company carries a special report that airs the full televised news conference, held earlier in the day, in which Mayor Richard J. Daley speaks out “with vigorous, compelling words in a coast-to-coast newscast in support of tough action his administration and Chicago police took against the rioters who tried to tear the city apart during the Democratic national convention.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1968].  A reporter asks His Honor if he is satisfied with the conduct of the police department.  At first, Daley says no one is ever fully satisfied with any branch of government and that accounts of overzealous police work are being investigated.  But he is just getting warmed up as he continues, “If someone is throwing excrement in your faces, you newspapermen, and you were being called names …. I’d like to ask you what would you do under those circumstances, whether you’d be the calm, collected men you think you are … The confrontation was created by the people who charged the police.”  Another reporter asks if Daley is satisfied with the job police commanders did in commanding officers.  “Were you ever in one of these things,” Daley asks.  “Were you ever a policeman.  What IS effective control if someone hits one of the men alongside of you, knocks him down with a rock or a brick, and hits his eye and throws oven cleaner into his face and blinds him?  What would you do?”  A reporter asks the mayor about the future of the kinds of demonstrations such as the one that took place in Chicago.  Daley says he supports the right of peaceful protesters, continuing “The police department in this country should not have to be subjected to this kind of abuse and this kind of action.  What are we coming to as a society?  What are we coming to as a country if policemen are treated the way they have been treated, not only in Chicago but all over the country?” 

azahner.com
September 9. 2003 – Architect Frank Gehry visits Chicago, appraising the bandshell that he designed in Millennium Park, as both the bandshell and the park are still taking shape.  He leads a tour of the bandshell for “a well-dressed, well-heeled group of Millennium Park donors.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 11, 2003]  Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin describes the upbeat mood of the event, led by Gehry “with stand-up comic skill.”  Gehry pays particular attention to the bridge he designed that will weave sinuously across Columbus Drive, linking Millennium Park with the Daley Bicentennial Plaza, which today is Maggie Daley Park. He says that he sold Mayor Richard M. Daley on the idea for the bridge through the use of a dinner knife, saying that he didn’t threaten the mayor with it … rather, he turned it on an angle to show how the bridge with its sloping sides would look smaller than the mayor thought. Looking at the “trellis” of steel pipes that will rise above the 300 foot wide by 600 foot long great lawn in front of the bandshell, he quips that he told Cindy Pritzker, who contributed $15 million toward the $63 million bandshell that if it rains, “… you can always pull a shmata over the top and cover it,” using a Yiddish word that is sometimes used in reference to clothing.  Toward the end of the talk, someone in the audience asks the architect about the noise from Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street and how it would affect concerts in the new pavilion.  Gehry answers, “You ask the mayor to turn it off.”  The above photo shows the pavilion under construction, close to the time when the architect visited the site.


September 9, 1975 – The trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago announce that no new students will be admitted to the Goodman School of Drama and the final class will graduate in the spring of 1978.  The chairman of the Goodman Theater committee, Stanley M. Freehling, says that it costs the Art Institute $200,000 a year to maintain a school of 25 faculty members for students who pay an average annual tuition of $1,950.  It is stated that the decision concerning the school will not affect the professional theater at the Goodman or future seasons on its main stage.  The school moved to DePaul University in 1977, and the following year the Goodman Theater separated officially from the Art Institute and now functions as the nonprofit Chicago Theatre Group, Inc.


September 9, 1935 – A proposal to extend Wacker Drive from where it ends at Michigan Avenue by building a road east to the point where it is expected to join the new outer drive bridge is brought up in the City Council.  The estimated cost of the project, which will allow traffic from the west side of the Loop to reach the outer drive, is $1,700,000.  When the ordinance is read, Twenty-Fifth Ward Alderman James B. Bowler asks that consideration also be given to the extension of Wacker Drive along the south branch of the river from its present end at Madison Street to Roosevelt or Cermak Roads “in order to provide a connecting link with whatever superhighways might be constructed in the future to serve the west side.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1935] As it turned out, the extension of Wacker Drive to Lake Shore Drive was not completed until 1975, 40 years after the city council considered the resolution in 1935.  Even in the City that Works change can take a long, long time.  The above photo shows the completion of work on the Wacker Drive extension in 1975.  At that time it linked up with the old "S" curve south of the Lake Shore Drive bridge across the river.


September 9, 1917 – The cornerstone of the Church of St. Clement at Deming Place and Orchard Street takes place at 3:30 p.m. in a ceremony at which Cardinal George Mundelein presides.  The Reverend John Webster Melody of St. Jariath’s church delivers the principal address of the afternoon, which stresses that in the national crisis brought on by the war in Europe “liberty and democracy mean greater national opportunity and are best served by spiritual means.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1917]  After the service a parade of 2,000 men and boys moves past a crowd of over 8,000 people, most of them members of the congregation. The church was designed by architect George D. Barnett in the Byzantine-Italian Romanesque Revival style, influenced by the architect’s design of the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.  [openhousechicago.org]  In 2018 a SMNG A project to develop a new entrance to the church and parish center rectory buildings was awarded a Chicago Small Project Award by the American Association of Architects.




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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

July 15, 1940 -- Democratic National Convention Kicks Off in Chicago Stadium

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July 15, 1940 – The Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago as the keynote speaker, William B. Bankhead, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, defends the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ending his speech by asserting that the administration “has turned out 153 fighting ships, tripled the size of the standing army, launched a great air program, and acted to wipe out the fifth column.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 16, 1940].   The convention, held at the Chicago Stadium, lasts four days, and it is unclear on this opening night whether Roosevelt intends to run for a third term.  However, Roosevelt’s team orchestrates an elaborate plan that involves the Chicago political machine.  The President sends a message to Kentucky Senator Alben Barkley, which Barkley reads over the public address system at the convention:  “The President has never had, and has not today, any desire or purpose to continue in the office of President, to be a candidate for that office, or to be nominated by the convention for that office.  He wishes in earnestness and sincerity to make it clear that all of the delegates in this convention are free to vote for any candidate.”  [en.wikipedia.org].  Somewhere in the bowels of the great arena on Madison Street the Superintendent of Chicago’s Department of Sanitation, Thomas D. Garry, grabs a live microphone and begins the chant, “We Want Roosevelt!  We want Roosevelt!”  Mayor Ed Kelly had posted.  Hundreds of city workers and precinct captains posted around the arena by Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly take up the cheer.  In a blink of an eye the convention turns from stunned silence at the moment when the President’s message is read to a thunderous, but hardly spontaneous, demonstration of support for Roosevelt, and when the convention is gaveled to a close, he has received close to 90 percent of the votes cast by delegates. 

July 15, 1934 – On a perfect summer day with an Italian-American program as the day’s highlight, 112,000 paid fair-goers attend the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront.  The highlight of the day is the unveiling of a marble column from the ancient Italian city of Ostia, a gift of Italian Premier Benito Mussolini to commemorate the visit of General Italo Balbo’s flight to Chicago a year earlier.  Balbo makes a speech via short wave radio to 3,000 persons at the Italian Pavilion, the speech being preceded by a parade of 150 Italian societies dressed in national costumes.

July 15, 1925 – A fireworks display in Grant Park caps a celebration that sees thousands of flower-decked automobiles and trucks pass through Grant Park to the Monroe Street viaduct to Michigan Avenue and then south to the new Twenty-Third Street viaduct, where a ribbon is cut and the new Outer Drive is officially opened. Good feelings run high as officials rhapsodize about the future of the city that night at a banquet at the Congress Hotel attended by more than 1,000 people.  South Park Board President Edward J. Kelly is optimistic that the new link bridge over the Chicago River, connecting the south and north drives, will be started in the coming year.  Illinois Central Railroad President Charles H. Markham predicts that the electrification of the railroad along the lakefront should be finished within the year, six months ahead of schedule. Chicago Mayor William Deever touts a new project to straighten the South Branch of the river so that streets may be extended into the southern portion of the Loop east of the river. Illinois Senator Charles S. Deneen continues the optimism, saying, “It is a hopeful sign when we realize that all our problems that we are discussing are problems of construction. We can’t have too many boulevards. They are crowded the moment they are opened. The Lincoln park system, too, is doing a great work in reclaiming land from the lake. Eventually this filling will be carried out to Evanston, perhaps, even to Waukegan.  There must be traffic routes for the travel that will follow.” [Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1925] The above photo shows the Outer Drive looking south from Thirty-Ninth Street in May, 1930.

July 15, 1916 – The $4,000,000 Municipal Pier is dedicated with between 50,000 and 100,000 people in attendance and a thousand automobiles parked between the long freight sheds on the pier.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “In spite of the heat thousands walked to the pier and walked the full length of it, through the freight sheds, to the launch landing.  Launches and steamers took limit loads of passengers on moonlight trips.  The most popular spots with the younger couples proved to be the two towers.  A continual procession climbed up the dozen or more flights of the spiral stairs, as well, to the utmost balcony.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 16, 1916]  There were no formal dedication ceremonies.


 July 15, 1889 – Lake View is officially annexed to Chicago although the former mayor of the town hands over the reins of the city to Chicago Mayor DeWitt Clinton Cregier under protest “in case there should be a contest of the validity of the vote and that the contest should be decided against the City of Chicago.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1889].   According to the Edgewater Historical Society the City of Lake View included today’s communities of Lakeview, Uptown, Ravenswood and Edgewater with its boundaries fixed at Devon on the north, Diversey on the south, the lake on the east and Western Avenue on the west.  Chicago’s annexation of the area came about as a result of a popular vote in both Chicago and in each of the areas affected by the proposal.  The argument that sold the deal was the promise that being a part of Chicago would improve police and fire protection, the quality of water and education with less of a tax hit than residents would face under home rule. Emotions ran deep … In fact, after the vote came down in favor of annexation in 1887 “Lake View mayor William Boldenweck seized his suburb’s records and funds and barricaded himself in his town hall office until he was forced to back down by the Illinois Supreme Court.”  [Butler, Patrick.  Hidden History of Ravenswood and Lake View].  The photo shows the Lake View Hotel, which opened in the early 1850’s on a cliff along the lakefront between what is today Grace Street and Irving Park Road.  It is from this watering hole that Lake View took its name.
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Sunday, July 12, 2020

July 12, 1975 -- Chicago State University Awards Honorary Degree to Gerald Ford

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July 12, 1975 – President Gerald R. Ford is awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at Chicago State University as he speaks during the university’s commencement exercises at McCormick Place.  Ford appears, as he indicates in his address, as a result of a petition signed by 5,000 students and hand-delivered to Washington, asking him to speak at the ceremony.  He says, “I was so moved … that nothing could have kept me away.  I was impressed not only by the great number of signatures, but also by the Chicago State University success story.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1975]. In his speech the President praises the graduates as well as the university, saying, “You have shown how white and black hands can unite to build a multiracial institution. You have shown academic achievement, and you have responded to the real needs of the community you serve.” During his address Ford mentions his own college experience, including his job in a cafeteria, adding that even though he had to work his way through college, he “was not a victim of racial prejudice nor of a deprived environment.”  He praises “the greatest fraternity of them all, the college graduates who learned something about life by dirtying their hands.”  The occasion was not without controversy as 200 people across from McCormick Place call for a halt to United States aid to Turkey and an end to C.I.A. involvement in Cyprus.  The protest, sponsored by Chicago’s Greek Cultural Association, could not dampen the reception inside the hall where Ford’s speech was interrupted more than a half-dozen times by applause.

July 12, 1970 – The Chicago Tribune reports on a challenge against the Public Building Commission of the city, involving the right to reproduce the image of the Picasso sculpture.  In its suit, filed before Federal Judge Alexander J. Napoli, The Letter Edged in Black Press, maintains that Pablo Picasso gave the work of art to the people of Chicago, not to the building commission.  The suit uses statements of Mayor Richard J. Daley and architect William H. Hartmann at the dedication ceremonies for the sculpture in 1967, in which both men talked of the artist’s gift “to the people of Chicago,” to support its assertion. The building commission responds that much was done to secure the rights for reproduction, including “securing from Chicago a written deed of gift which gave them the right to secure a copyright, affixing the copyright notice to the rear of the sculpture’s metal base, registering and securing a copyright claim, and notifying the public of its licensing policies.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1970]  The commission further maintains that the deed of gift which Picasso signed, giving the commission the right to reproduce the sculpture is the same as a copyright.  Incidentally, the official website of the CIty of Chicago proclaims to this day that "Picasso gave the sculpture as a gift to the people of Chicago."  The photo above was taken when the sculpture was dedicated on August 15, 1967.
J. Bartholomew Photo
July 12, 1955 – The architect of the city’s Bureau of Engineering, M. J. Glicken, says that a sculpture of “a woman with other ornamentation” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 13, 1955] is being readied for placement on a city parking garage at Wacker Drive and State Street.  The bronze sculpture, which is 12 feet high and 14 feet wide and weighs three tons, is the work of sculptor Milton Horn, whom Mayor Richard J. Daley personally asked to create the monumental work that would show Chicago’s important place in the country and the world.  Controversial from the beginning, the sculpture was taken to the city’s bridge repair shops at Thirty-First Street and Sacramento Avenue when the garage was torn down in 1983.  Ignored for nearly 15 years it was restored for ten times the amount that the original commission brought Horn.  Today the sculpture hangs from the northwest portal of the Columbus Drive Bridge.  More about the sculpture and its creator can be found in Connecting the Windy City here.

July 12, 1933 – The Attorneys General for Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin appear before the United States Supreme Court, opposing a hearing requested by Illinois in cases pertaining to the Chicago Sanitary District.  The four Midwestern states that border the Great Lakes system object to a petition for a rehearing of a case in which a ruling went against Illinois involving “the right of Illinois, as a sovereign state, to divert water from Lake Michigan.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 12, 1933] The court rules that Illinois can divert water from Lake Michigan through the Chicago River at the rate of 1,500 cubic feet per second after 1938 in addition to 1,700 cubic feet per second for domestic purposes.  The four states claim that the amount diverted will be excessive, and “that Chicago has refused to meter the water diverted for domestic and industrial purposes.” Ultimately, the Supreme Court’s original 1930 ruling will stand, and by 1938 Chicago will have built three major sewage treatment plants along with a lock that separates Lake Michigan from the Chicago River.  The Chicago River lock, finished in 1938, is shown above. 
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Wednesday, July 8, 2020

July 8, 1980 -- Marina City Resident Sues C.H.A. Chairman Swibel


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July 8, 1980 – A class action lawsuit is filed in federal court, charging real estate developer Charles Swibel with improprieties in the conversion of Marina City to condominiums.  Also named in the suit are Tenth Ward Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak, the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, and Leonard R. Garmisa, “the beneficiary of a land trust created by Vrdolyak to acquire title to 50 units at Marina City.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1980].  The suit charges that a City Council ordinance which Vrdolyak proposed was passed “in record time,” allowing Swibel to amass a windfall in profits.  The suit further charges that Swibel sold the 50 units to Vrdolyak and four partners at the preferred tenant rate, rather than the rate offered to the general public, allowing the Vrdolyak group to save at least $200,000 over prices charged to the those who were not tenants.  The suit asks that the profits from those sales be returned to the city treasurer.  At the time Swibel also served as the chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority, a position he would hold until he was forced out under federal pressure in 1982. 

July 8, 1965 –Mayor Richard J. Daley leads the opening ceremonies for the new 10.5-acre park at the filtration plant north of Navy Pier.  The mayor has just activated the five fountains in the park by pushing a button when seven kids, ranging in age from seven to ten years, barge into the ceremony and engage Daley in conversation.  “Mr. Mayor,” one little girl begins, “Why did you turn on that fountain?” [Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1965] “Well,” Daley answers, “it’s just like I was telling these fine people in the crowd here.  We want to show everybody in the country that Chicago is going to be the best city there is. That’s why we want to keep doing things that we think are important to the growth of our city.” Today the park is called Milton Lee Olive Park in honor of Milton L. Olive, III, a Chicago native who became the first African-American to receive the Medal of Honor during his service in Vietnam.  On October 22, 1965 Olive sacrificed himself by smothering a grenade with his body, saving the lives of three other soldiers.  The park was designed by Dan Kiley, who among other commissions, was the principal designer of the Chicago Botanic Garden, the South Garden of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Lincoln Center in New York City, and the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.  The park consists of five circular fountains of various circumferences, representing the five great lakes.  The fountains no longer work … the pipes that supply them have failed, and replacing them has a low priority.  To walk down the park’s central tree-lined pathway, though, is to find one of the great vantage points from which to view the city north of Grand Avenue.  The above photo shows the Fifth Army band performing at the dedication ceremony.

July 8, 1950 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on four apartment building projects taking place on the lakefront, buildings projected to house 1,126 families.  The largest of the buildings is being constructed on the site of the former Potter Palmer mansion at 1350 Lake Shore Drive.  The $8,663,000 building will hold 740 apartments with only 192 of that number being built as efficiency apartments.  Rents are expected to begin at just over $40.00 a month.  Two floors of concrete a week are being poured, and completion of the towers is expected by April 1, 1951.  In the 860 Lake Shore Drive building the steel has been erected up to the twelfth floor.  Herbert S. Greenwald, the developer of the building, says that unit prices will range from $13,500 to $27,000.  At 1350 Astor a 51-unit building is rising toward its ultimate 15-story height with unit prices between $14,900 and $27,000.  Within the month a 16-story cooperative building on the same street where it meets Banks Street is expected to be completed with apartments projected to start at $18,200.  The nine-room penthouse in the building has already sold for $65,000.  860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive rise in the photo above.

Earl Clark/Peter Ehrlich collections
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July 8, 1925 – Plans are announced for the extension of Roosevelt Road by way of a viaduct across the Illinois Central Railroad tracks on the south end of Grant Park.  South Parks Commission president Edward J. Kelly says that the viaduct will require the razing of a portion of the Illinois Central Railroad station that sits on the east side of the planned viaduct.  It is expected contracts for the $1,500,000 project will be ready for bids by the beginning of 1926.  Part of the cost will be borne by bus and trolley companies if their tracks use the viaduct.  The viaduct provided entry to the museum campus which had previously not existed.  Clearly, the tracks ended up a part of the project.  A far different place these days as can be seen by the contrast between the 1930's photo and the view looking east today.



July 8, 1858 – The police report in the Chicago Press and Tribune begins, “The docket at the Police Court was unusually light yesterday, whisky drinking having measurably subsided after the Glorious Fourth.”  Still, there was enough to keep the typesetters busy.  The following incidents are noted:

Timothy Conley, a drayman, got drunk and managed to run into every vehicle he met.  He also succeeded in inducing somebody to knock a hole in his head.  As he attributed all his misfortunes to the whisky he drank in honor of Independence Day, he was let off with a fine of $3.

George Dow was fined $3 for getting drunk and using insulting language to a woman.

James Jenkins, alias J. W. Hanneman, was brought up for getting beastly drunk.  The prisoner gave the following account of himself and his conduct:  He states that for a year past he has been lecturing about the country as a reformed drunkard, and that on the Fourth he met a friend and drank a glass of lemonade, which he now suspects had a chip in it; that some how or other he continued to imbibe lemonade with larger chips in them, until he got on a regular bender, and was found dead drunk in the streets . . . He started on his spree with $40, and had $15 left when arrested.  He was released on condition that he behaves better in the future.

Michael Connor, a drunken vagrant, was found sleeping on the sidewalk on the corner of Clark and Monroe streets.  He says he came from New York two days ago, and has no money or work.  He was fined $2 and sent to Bridewell to work it out.

E. Patrick Cagan was arrested upon complaint of one Ryan, who charged that Cagan had knocked him down.  As Ryan had hid to avoid giving testimony, Cagan was released.

Thomas Ready, brought up for being drunk, was not ready for trial, and his case was continued.

Jeremiah Nolan was fined $3 for a simple drunk.

Cornelius Casey went to visit his friend, James Dooley, when the latter got very drunk and made so much disturbance in the house that the police arrested them both.  Dooley was fined $5, and Casey was released.

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