Connecting the Windy City

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.  

images.chicagohistory.org

August 20, 1990 – William Gruber, the business columnist for the Chicago Tribune, reports on what will be done with the expensive Italian marble that is being removed from the Standard Oil building on Randolph Street.  Five hundred tons of the Carrara marble will be headed to Lashcon Inc. of Barry, Illinois, which will employ men and women with disabilities “to make awards, specialty products and decorative items using the stone.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1990].  Lashcon, which has already received its first shipment of the stone, has entered into a two-year contract with the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services to undertake the project.  Another 1,000 tons of the marble, with each piece one and a-quarter to one and a-half inches thick and four feet square, is headed to Governors State University where the stone will be crushed and used for decorative ground cover around the University Park Campus.  The remaining 4,500 tons will end up at Amoco’s oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana where it will be crushed and used as ornamental rock at the company’s facilities.  The company received more than 200 requests for the marble after its discovery that all of the exterior stone on its 83-story tower would have to be replaced with Mount Airy granite from North Carolina after a number of the original slabs warped and began to disintegrate.  The above photo shows the building under construction in 1973 with the Carrara marble that would become such a nightmare streaming up its face.

 

August 20, 1980 – Things become heated at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Dearborn Street as Judge Marvin Aspen sends 14 sweaty jurors downstairs to the offices of the General Services Administration to complain about conditions in the “sweltering courtroom.”  “Maybe they’ll listen to you,” the judge says.  “They certainly ought to, because you’re paying their salary.”  The Chicago Tribune reports that the assistant building engineer, Michael O’Connell, tells the jurors, “Don’t expect it any lower than 80,” as he explains President Carter’s energy guidelines, which call for the cooling of public buildings to no less than 80 degrees.  The real problem, though, seems to be with the engineering of the building.  According to the Tribune, “In recent years, some Dirksen Building courtrooms have been so hot or so cold that a number of judges have said they cannot conduct business and have threatened to cite the GSA for contempt of court for obstruction of justice.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1980]   

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June 29, 1981 -- Marshall Field and Company announces the sale of its annex building on the southwest corner of Washington Street and Wabash Avenue to Bond Industries of New York. The Store for Men housed in the annex as well as corporate offices will move into the company’s flagship store on State street.  A month earlier the company’s president, Angelo R. Arena, said that the firm was looking toward “strategies for using our real estate to potentially reduce our short-term debt and interest levels.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 30, 1981]. It is estimated that the sale of the annex building will yield $10 million which will be used to reduce $50.61 million in short-term debt.   The chairman of Fields’ Chicago operation, George P. Kelly, looks at the movement of the Store for Men to the main building as a positive act, saying, “Our studies show that women do most of the shopping for men.  When we move those departments into State Street we’ll get more women in here and more business.”



June 29, 1954 -- Field Enterprises, Inc., the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, completes the purchase of a six-story building on the southwest corner of Rush Street and East North Water Street for $300,000, adding the property to a site already owned by the company.  The building will be razed as soon as practical, and the 15,000 square foot lot added to the 45,000 square feet that the company already owns, a site that extends westward to Wabash Avenue on the north side of the river.  The Chicago firm of Naess and Murphy is already drawing architectural plans for a multi-level building that will cover the entire site and provide offices and printing facilities for the Sun-Times.  The building got built, stood for forty years and then gave way to today’s Trump International Hotel and Tower.  Additional information about the Sun Times building can be found in this entry in Connecting the WindyCity.  The new home for the Sun Times is shown under construction in the photo above.

June 29, 1891 – Chicago’s Health Department files six suits against the establishment of Benzo and Pieper, a livestock fattening concern located at the intersection of Addison Street and the north branch of the river.  Benzo and Pieper, situated on nine acres, is typical of many such enterprises located all along the river.  The Chicago Daily Tribune describes the grounds, “In a long, low shambling shed there are now kept eighty head of steers, though as many as 250 are at times fattened in this one building . . . rows of fattening bullocks, standing ankle deep in filth, bloated through overeating until they can hardly stand, and chained to one spot for five months without being able to take exercise.”  One thing that made this particular company noteworthy was that it held a contract for removing the garbage from “all the principal hotels” in the city with six teamed wagons collecting refuse from the alleys of those establishments.  In front of the cattle shed described earlier stood a building with nine tanks, each holding 45 barrels.  Again from the Tribune’s copy, “The garbage wagons drive alongside these tanks and empty their contents into them.  Water from the river is pumped into the tanks until the mass reaches the required consistency when fires are started underneath and the swill is kept boiling for some ten hours . . . And this is the stuff which goes to put flesh on the lean bones of scraggy steers . .  “  The article points out the incredible fattening qualities of this concoction by describing one of those scraggy steers, “ . . . so fat, in fact, that its legs could not support its body for any length of time, and in consequence it lay down nearly the whole time, this proving no interference to its eating, as the troughs are so low that they can be reached by the cattle without getting up.”  Such a bull would gain 100 pounds a month during the time it was confined.  August Benzo, one of the owners, “a good-natured German who owns a saloon at Clybourn place and Elston avenue” says that he will fight the cases in court.  The photo above shows the same area as it appears today.

June 4, 1990 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the fate of the run-down Reliance Building at 32 North State Street looks bleak as an upcoming meeting between Manhattan-based AFS Intercultural Programs and city officials may be the last chance for saving the 1895 building. Preservationist Harvey Oppmann, who bought the land on which the Reliance stands for $250,000, says, ‘That building is a disgrace and it is a firetrap. Why it hasn’t been closed—I don’t know. I think it has the potential to harm people.” [Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1990] “Most of its cornice has been gone for decades,” the paper reports. “Its once-gleaming white terra cotta and glass façade, which anticipated by half a century the steel-and-glass high-rises designed by Chicago architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is encrusted with dirt.” The deal with AFS never made it past the discussion stages. Four years will pass before the city buys the property for 1.3 million dollars, and the McClier Corporation joins with the Baldwin Development Company to complete a 27.5 million dollar renovation of the building, opening it in 1999 as the Hotel Burnham. The photo above shows the brand new Reliance Building around 1900.



June 4, 1977 –An explosion rocks the fifth floor of the County Building shortly before the Puerto Rican Day parade is set to begin on State Street.  Although no one is injured by the bomb which explodes outside the offices of County Board President George Dunne, two custodians are trapped in an elevator as a result of the blast.  Shortly after the explosion the FALN, “a Puerto Rican terrorist group” [Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1977] calls United Press International and WBBM radio to claim responsibility for the bombing.  The male caller tells WBBM that several bombs are set to go off and demands the release of Puerto Rican prisoners.  Shortly after the bombing Police Superintendent James Rochford meets with top aides after which he takes time to “lash out at critics of police spying on political groups.”  



June 4, 1965 – Thomas B. O’Connor, the general manager of the Chicago Transit Authority, says that the city’s first ten air-conditioned buses will be placed in service within three days on the extra-fare Vincennes – One Hundred-Eleventh Street route.  O’Connor says, “The 10 buses represent an experiment to determine the effects on patronage of air-conditioning, as well as operating cost.  This information is essential to determine if more air-conditioned buses should be purchased in the future.”  Together the buses cost a total of $322,000 and come from two companies – General Motors Corporation and Flxible Company.  The air conditioning in the buses will turn on when the temperature rises above 70 degrees and will also maintain humidity within a bus at between 50 to 55 per cent.

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June 4, 1962 – Ground is broken for a 40-story apartment building on the northeast corner of Lake Shore Drive and Randolph Street, a $27-million complex that will sit on air rights over Illinois Central Railroad tracks.  Jerrold Wexler, the president of the Jupiter Corporation, the building's developer, says that the new building “will represent the first step in building a new city over the approximately 77 acres of air rights.”  He continues, “I doubt if anybody can envisage what is to be built in the area in the coming years.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 3, 1962]. The building will house 940 apartments with rents ranging from $150 to $370 a month.  The $20 million mortgage on the property is the largest ever made in the city, according to Stephen Cohn, president of Greenebaum Mortgage Company, the lender.  It is also the first mortgage granted by the Federal Housing Administration for building over air rights.  Known as Outer Drive East, the building was converted to condominiums in 1973.  Today it is the largest condominium building in Illinois with nearly 1,900 residents.  The above photos show the building under construction and its present appearance.

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May 14, 2011 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s board says that making the Chicago River safe enough for swimming would be a waste of money while increasing the chances of people drowning.  At a news conference Terrence O’Brien says, “In these difficult economic times when public agencies are facing budgetary shortfalls, people are losing their jobs and homes … it is important … that public funds are used wisely.”  [Chicago Tribune, May 14, 2011]  Earlier in the week the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency notified the District that it had failed to prove over the course of three years of hearings that cleaning up the river “would result in substantial and widespread social and economic impact.”  The E.P.A. ordered the District to implement more stringent standards for bacteria and other pollutants so that stretches of the Chicago River, the Cal-Sag Channel, and the Little Calumet River are made safe for recreation.  THAT was just eight short years ago – when virtually no one could have imagined the transformation of the river that has occurred during that time.  

Gardner Spring Chapin and James Jefferson Gore csoarchives.files.wordpress.com

May 8, 1882 – There’s a neat place at 63 West Adams Street that was constructed in 1904 to house the distilling company of Chapin and Gore.  Gardner Spring Chapin and James Jefferson Gore first met in the 1850’s and by 1865 had opened a grocery store on the corner of State and Monroe Streets.  At some point they added a liquor department and began selling a whiskey named “1867 Sour Mash”.  Urban legend has it that when the Chicago fire roared through the Loop on October 8, 1871 the enterprising partners hired workers to roll the whiskey barrels into the lake in order to protect the valuable stock.  Supposedly, the partners sold the recovered hooch after the fire, advertising that it was “as smooth as silk” and calling it “Lake Whiskey.” [pre-whiskeymen.blogspot]. The events of this day in 1882 deal with a different event – the effort of Chapin and Gore to gain control of a business property in what is today the 1400 block of West Madison Street.  A caterer by the name of Robert H. Fish had held a lease on the property for his business from Jacob Beidler, but sometime before May 1 Fish was notified that his rent would be raised from $50 per month to $60.  Fish did not object to the raise, but he did ask for a clause to be inserted into the rental contract “giving him the privilege of transferring the lease, should he at any time desire to do so.”  Beidler agreed, and that should have been the end of the matter.  When Fish showed up to sign the contract, though, he was notified that the building had been rented for $100 a month to Chapin and Gore for a saloon. By May 8 goons had thrown Fish out of the premises three times.  Fish responded to each assault by returning his possessions to the store and suing for $5,000 in damages in the Superior Court. On May 8 the process was repeated. Complicating the situation was the fact that Fish’s wife was an invalid “whose condition has been made much worse by the behavior of the mobs who invaded her husband’s premises.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 9, 1882].  Fish moved to stop the fourth effort at evicting him and grappled with one of the men at work in throwing his possessions into the street. Both men were arrested.  After posting bond, Fish returned to the establishment to find that his friends in the area had, for the fourth time, returned all of his possessions to their original places.  Although Chapin and Gore claimed they had no knowledge of the raids “it was stated positively that one of their wagons was down to the place while Mr. Fish’s effects were being thrown out, and that the wagon was loaded with saloon stock, but none of it was unloaded … the firm offered no explanation in the matter further than to say that Mr. Fish would have to go.”



May 8, 1861 – It all could have been worse, as a day later the Chicago Tribune reports under the headline “Whisky and Water” … “The watchman on Rush street bridge yesterday morning just before daybreak heard a cry of distress from the water near the south abutment, and going thither succeeded in saving the life of a gentleman from the rural districts, named Dun, who coming in on the cars got gloriously tight, and suddenly on his travels found himself diluting the whisky he had swallowed with the whole amount of water in the river.  He was saved, damp and damaged, and with a sprained ankle.  He is now in the Hospital.”  This would not be the last time someone from “the rural districts” found himself “gloriously tight” in the city. The photo above shows the bridge at Rush Street in 1860.