Showing posts with label Public Transportation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public Transportation. Show all posts

Monday, September 14, 2020

September 14, 1950 -- Loop Elevated Line's End Is Near, Mayor Says

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September 14, 1950 – Mayor Martin Kennelly observes that the old Wabash Avenue elevated tracks may be torn down sooner than people think, adding that the new Dearborn-Milwaukee subway will siphon off substantial amounts of traffic from the line.  Chicago Transit Authority officials concur, estimating that the eastern half of the Loop elevated structure, running form Van Buren Street to Wabash Avenue and from there to Wells Street, may be removed within four years.  The executive secretary of the Wabash Avenue Association, George W. Swanson, says, “The sooner the better.  Then we can put up new street lights and outshine State Street.”  [Chicago Daily tribune, September 15, 1950].  Not so fast … not only is the Loop elevated still very much in use, on August 31, 2017 a brand-new Washington/Wabash station replaced century-old stations at Randolph and Madison Street with new elevators, a street to mezzanine escalator, wider platforms, real-time train tracker displays, 100% LED lighting, security cameras, and a gleaming modern canopy.  [transitchicago.com]. With that expenditure of $75 million it appears that the elevated will be around for a long time to come.  The new station is pictured above. 



September 14, 1939 – The Chicago Housing Authority is notified that its application for $7,719,000 of Public Works administration funding for the construction of a public housing complex has been approved.  This will be the fifth federal housing project in the city, following the Jane Addams houses, Julia Lathrop homes, Trumbull Park apartments, and the Ida B. Wells project that is under construction at Vincennes Avenue and Pershing Road.  Although the location is not disclosed so as to forestall real estate speculation, it is most likely that the new project will be near the Jane Addams homes and will comprise the Robert Brooks Homes with 835 row houses.  Elizabeth Wood, executive secretary of the Chicago Housing authority, says, “We will definitely be in competition with the lowest slum area houses.  We particularly want to afford accommodations for those families who now live in $15 a month flats.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 15, 1939]  


September 14, 1934 – United States marshals seize the excursion boat Florida at its dock east of Michigan Avenue, pending a court hearing and settlement of the claims of 21 crew members for $2,000 in back pay. The Florida has a fascinating history, as it turns out.  As far as I have been able to determine the boat is still taking up space at the bottom of the river just east of Goose Island, opposite the north end of 600 West Chicago, the old Montgomery Ward's warehouse building.  What eventually became the S. S. Florida was originally the City of Mackinac, built in 1882 as a side-wheeled cruise boat on Lake Michigan.  The latter part of its service was spent providing lakefront excursions to the 1933 Century of Progress.  In the mid-1930's it was sold to a scrapper at which time its upper decks were removed, its engines stripped, part of a conversion into a barge.  The Columbia Yacht Club bought the vessel in 1937 to serve as its club house.  On Friday, May 13, 1955 a galley fire caused the ship to sink at its dock.  Members raised the funds and raised the ship, which was used until 1982 when the club acquired the former Canadian ferry, the Abegweit, as its new base of operations.  A trucking magnate, Joe Salon, bought the ship in 1985, renaming it the Showboat Sari-S II, using his daughter's name in its new appellation, and moved it to the river a few blocks north of Ontario Street, before selling it.  The Showboat Sari-S II might be confused with another paddle-wheel steamboat that Salon ran as a restaurant, beginning in 1962.  They are two different vessels.  The last reference to the boat that I can find is in the "Metropolitan" section of the Chicago Tribune on August 28, 1992.  This brief item reports, "The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has ordered the owner of a 215-foot boat that sank last month in a little-used part of the North Branch of the Chicago River to remove the vessel or face legal action . . . The owner of the vessel was ordered to install markers around the boat until it is removed.  The vessel sank in 16 feet of water on the east side of Goose Island just north of Chicago Avenue, said Lt. Col. David Reed, commander of the Corps District . . . Only the cabin portion is now above water, and the sunken craft obstructs about half of the navigational channel, Reed said."  Kind of a sad story of a once proud vessel that was very much a part of the city's history. The photo above shows the boat when she was the clubhouse for the Columbia Yacht Club.  

 

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September 14, 1908 – Work begins on the laying of trolley tracks in Garland Court on the west side of the Chicago Public Library. Elaborate preparations have been made for the project, which will ultimately allow the removal of the tracks of the City Railway on Michigan Avenue and on Madison Street..  The City Railway has agreed to pay the expenses for changes in the public library building that are required because of the railway that will pass adjacent to it.  These alterations to the building will be completed according to plans prepared by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the original architects of the structure. The top photo shows the tracks turning south off Randolph Street and ducking down Garland Court with a streetcar on Randolph making the turn onto Garland Court on the west side of the library, today's Chicago Cultural Center.  The second photo shows Randolph Street as it appears today.
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Monday, August 10, 2020

August 10, 1945 -- La Salle Street Tunnel Closed

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August 10, 1945 – City workers complete the pouring of 150 feet of concrete on La Salle Street north of Randolph Street, a job which effectively closes the streetcar tunnel under the river, removing a traffic obstacle from one of the main north-south streets in the central city.  The tunnel, with a design by W. W. Boyington, opened on July 4, 1871 with one lane for pedestrians and two lanes for horse-drawn traffic.  In 1888 the North Chicago Street Railroad leased the tunnel for a nominal fee with the promise to make other local improvements.  Cable cars ran through the tunnel until 1906 when it was closed so that it could be lowered … the federal government had labeled it as a hazard to navigation in 1904.  The deeper tunnel was opened to streetcars in 1912 and was used until 1939 when it was closed for the construction of a subway station to service the new Milwuakee-Dearborn-Congress subway. One can still get an idea of how it impeded La Salle Street traffic on both sides of the river by finding what remains of the north portal a half-block or so north of the river on La Salle.  The above photo shows the entrance to the tunnel at Randolph Street on March 25, 1939.


August 10, 1940 –The land beneath the First Regiment Armory at the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and East Sixteenth Street is sold by the Estate of Marshall Field to the Standard Realty and Mortgage Company for an estimated $40,000. The sale is subject to a 99-year lease that Marshall Field made in 1890 with the First Infantry Armory Association at an annual ground rental of $4,000.  The first armory was built on the property in 1893, but it burned down less than a year after it opened.  It was replaced in 1894 at a cost of a half-million dollars, raised by popular subscription.  After two decades of labor unrest, culminating with the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886 in which seven people were killed when a bomb was thrown into the crowd, the wealthy residents of Chicago, many of whom lived south of Sixteenth Street on Indiana, Prairie and Calumet Avenues, began to take matters into their own hands.  They opened their pocketbooks and forked over the cash to protect their homes.  In 1886, just months after the Haymarket riot, land convenient to a direct rail line into the city on the North Shore was purchased, and Fort Sheridan was begun.  It is interesting to note that the First Regiment Armory with its thick stone walls, rounded turrets, and rifle embrasures, stood as a massive sentinel north of those wealthy homes. It is even more interesting to note that Marshall Field, himself, held a 99-year lease on the property.  And you can bet with a fair amount of assurance on some of the names that were on the majority of those subscriptions to build the armory.  The subscriptions probably sold pretty darned quickly … the Pullman strike that idled 250,000 workers in 27 states and brought violence to Chicago had just concluded.


August 10, 1918 --  It is difficult to believe today, but for years – for nearly two decades – a swimming race was held that had athletes navigating a course in the lake before heading west up the river to Wells Street.  On this day in 1918 Perry McGillivray of the Great Lakes training station wins the tenth annual river swim of the Illinois Athletic Club, establishing a new record for the two-mile course of 33:44.  Miss Rebecca Wells of the Walton Athletic Club is allowed to participate, but she is not eligible for any of prizes because women are officially barred from the event.  In the 1912 Olympics McGillivray was a member of the American 4 X 200 meter freestyle relay team that won a silver medal.  In 1920 he earned a gold medal as a member of the United States 4 X 200 meter relay team, also participating in the country’s water polo team that earned a fourth-place finish.  The old Chicago Daily News photo above shows the crowds lining the river as the 1909 race approaches Wells Street.  

August 10, 1882:  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the city’s Health Office has reported 53 deaths during the preceding day, 30 of those being children under the age of five, 24 of that number being infants less than a year old.  Of the two dozen babies who died, 16 of them succumbed to a disease known at the time as cholera infantum, a particularly pernicious disease that attacked infants primarily during the warm weather months, especially in large urban areas.  Beginning around 1893 infant mortality, thankfully, began a sharp downward trend, most probably brought about by two important initiatives.  First, the four-mile crib off Monroe Harbor was opened in 1891 and shoreline water intake was permanently ended.  Research shows that the act of safeguarding the city’s drinking water lowered the city’s mortality rate between 1870 and 1925 somewhere between 35 and 56 percent.  Secondly, the responsibility for monitoring milk distribution in the city was transferred from an independent body to the health department. Also in 1880 the Chicago City Council approved an ordinance that granted the city’s Health Department the right to inspect and regulate sanitary conditions in the work place and in tenement dwellings, an initiative that began to eliminate the unsanitary and unhealthful conditions in poorer areas of the city.
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Thursday, August 6, 2020

August 6, 1911 -- La Salle Street Tunnel Creating Havoc

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August 6, 1911 -- With the work of deepening the La Salle Street streetcar tunnel ongoing, the Chicago Daily Tribune discloses that at least a dozen buildings near the tunnel have settled from four to eighteen inches.  Two of those structures have cracked from wall to wall, and on both sides of the river La Salle Street sidewalks and streets have sunk four inches.  The Oakley building, a seven-story structure at the southwest corner of La Salle Street and Michigan Street is held together by 380 jackscrews, six iron braces and tons of wooden scaffolding.  It has settled 16 inches, and in the northeast corner a crack, in some places more than an inch wide, runs from the ground to the roof of the building.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Wooden braces are keeping the windows from collapsing.  Plastering is dropping from the inside walls, and, except for the careful reinforcements which have gone on, the warehouse long since would have collapsed.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 6, 1911]. The headquarters of the Armour Steamship Line is close to collapsing into the river after settling four inches in a 24-hour period a week earlier.  Five hundred jackscrews have barely kept it upright.  Its outer walls have been torn open in at least a half-dozen places.  Nearly all of the streets that intersect La Salle Street on both sides of the river have settled a minimum of two inches and “sidewalks have erupted in peaks and angles or slipped half way into the excavation for the tunnel approach.”  The president of the company that is building the tunnel, Michael H. McGovern, says, “We are not responsible for damage done to nearby buildings.  Property owners were notified before the work started to take the necessary precautions, and as long as our excavations do not go outside the curb line we are immune from suit.  It is my understanding that the company will assume the cost for the repair of street damages.”  The above photo shows the location of the north portal of the tunnel, used today as the entrance to parking garages at 300 North La Salle Street and the Reid Murdoch Building.

chuckmanchicagonostalgia
architecture.org
August 6, 1978 – The Chicago Tribune reports that even though developers promised to landscape the shore line of Wolf Point in the original deal for special zoning status made with the city to build the Apparel Center, the area “remains a tangle of high weeds and unpruned trees several years after owners promised to landscape the area.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1978].  Architectural renderings show a 25-foot wide park with a paved pathway winding around the quarter-mile of riverfront property to the south of the Apparel Center, which was completed in 1976.  James Bidwill, the spokesman for the developers, the descendants of the late Joseph P. Kennedy, says, “There are several alternative aspects of planning that will result in beautification of the park in the near future.”  There is good news along much of the river, though.  The 1974 “Riverside Plan of Chicago” is beginning to reap benefits as four small parks with a row of linden trees and park benches have been established on the south side of the Main Stem.  Two of these small parks, between Wabash and Dearborn, have been created with $139 million that the IBM Corporation gave the city for trees, lighting, granite paving, and concrete walls to block out the noise of lower Wacker Drive from the firm's 1971 headquarters building across the river.  Still to come is a long strip of green space between Michigan Avenue and the lake, a strip of land which the developers of Illinois Center gave to the city.  Development there must wait until the Columbus Drive bridge is completed and infrastructure work for the Deep Tunnel project is wrapped up.  The top photo shows the area around Lake Street -- note the elevated train crossing the river -- in the 1970's.  The second photo shows the same area, looking at it from the opposite direction.  Things have changed ... for the better ... although it's hard not to miss the Wild Turkey signboard.



August 6, 1974:  The Queen of Andersonville, a tour boat operated by Wendella Sightseeing Boats, sinks just south of the Coast Guard station at the Chicago lock where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan.  Hero of the Day is Bob Agra, the captain of a Mercury sightseeing boat, who maneuvers his boat, loaded with about 70 people, alongside the stricken Wendella craft and helps evacuate all 23 passengers, many of them wearing life jackets.  “Some of the rescued people were a little shook up,” Agra states.  “But they weren’t hysterical.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1974]  Agra attaches the foundering boat to his own with three lines and tows it to an area behind the breakwater, southwest of the lock.  All three lines eventually break, and the Queen of Andersonville sinks before the hoist at the Coast Guard station can be lowered to secure the vessel.  Agra's son, Bob, who was on board that day as a deck hand, is shown above.  Today he is head of Chicago's First Lady, partners with the Chicago Architecture Center's premier architectural tour on the Chicago River.



August 6, 1971 – The largest crowd in the history of Ravinia Park comes to the outdoor venue on the North Shore to see Jesus Christ Superstar.  The crowd of 18,718 people breaks the previous record, set by Judy Collins, of 18,491, a week earlier.  More than 150 police officers are on duty, dispatched from five suburbs to patrol a mellow crowd.  “Despite the religious theme of last night’s event,” the Chicago Tribune reported, “The thousands of young listeners looked and acted little differently than at more mundane outdoor rock concerts.  Botttles of wine were passed freely, along with the ever-present marijuana cigarets.” [Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1971] The performance company that provided the show had previously performed in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Toronto.  The Ravinia show attracted at least 5,000 more people than any of the troupe’s previous performances.



August 6, 1946 – Edward J. Sparling, the president of Roosevelt College, tells of the school’s plans to restore the newly purchased Auditorium building to its original beauty.  Sparling says that “old paintings will be restored, remodeling of the hotel into classrooms and offices will follow the original structure as nearly as possible, and the theater will be operated by the college or leased to someone who wants to bring back music and theatrical productions to the 57 year old stage.”  Mrs. Julius Weil, the daughter of architect Dankmar Adler, the architect of the Auditorium building along with Louis Sullivan, says that General Sherman’s march to the sea in the Civil War was instrumental in her father’s plans for the auditorium.  “In every house that was looted,” says Mrs. Weil, “my father eagerly searched for books on architecture.  When he returned to Chicago he cooperated with Theodore Thomas in working out arches and types of construction for better acoustics.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 7, 1946] Sparling says that the renovated building will allow the college to serve 2,000 more veterans. The $400,000 purchase price of the building, he reveals, is the result of “loans by friends, gifts, efficient administration, and profit from the sale of the building at 231 South Wells Street.”



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