Showing posts with label State Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label State Street. 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
google.com
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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Sunday, October 4, 2020

October 4, 1982 -- Sears Recommended for Landmark Status


October 4, 1982 – For the second time in four years, city planners recommend landmark status for the original Sears State Street store, finding that the structure, “adds to the State Street mall’s inviting pedestrian circulation.” [Chicago Tribune, October 5, 1982] The store, originally built for Levi Z. Leiter, an early Chicago merchant, was originally recommended for landmark status in 1979, but attorneys for Sears opposed the landmark designation for the building.  It is unknown how Sears will greet the new recommendation for the 1891 building.  William McClenahan, the director of the city’s Landmarks Commission, says that the building is “an important landmark in the city and an effort to have it so designated is worth another try.”  On January 14,1997 the store finally received landmark status and rightfully so.  As the city’s website on landmarks states, “Renowned as one of the nation’s most important early examples of skeletal-frame commercial architecture, this building is discussed in every major history of American architecture.”


October 4, 1969 – At the conclusion of a march sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society from Grant Park to the Federal Building and back in which 350 protestors demand the immediate withdrawal of all troops in Vietnam, two protestors, armed with guns, knives, and swords, are arrested in Old Town.  The cache is discovered in a camper from which the two men from California apparently are selling weapons to be used between October 8 and 11 at protests planned by the Weatherman faction of the S.D.S.  The occupants of the truck, Dennis Sleeth and Daniel Brucher, both from California, are arrested after police find a 20-gauge shotgun, 25 rounds of ammunition, a 22-caliber pistol with 58 rounds, five Samurai swords and 13 knives in sheaths.  At the same time the subversive unit of the police department raids the S.D.S. national headquarters at 1608 Madison Street and arrests Caroline Tanner of Pennsylvania for her involvement in the beating of four policemen in front of the Federal Building on September 24. 

circulatingnow.nim.nih.gov
October 4, 1918 – The Chicago Health Commissioner announces that any church building that is found to be poorly ventilated during Sunday services on the following day will be closed.  The action is taken “to put all Chicago on active guard against the epidemic of influenza and pneumonia.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 5, 1918]  Similar prohibitions have been issued to schools, theaters, restaurants, streetcar and elevated lines.  Police officials have been issued an order to “instruct all members of their command to visit all public places … where people congregate and request the proprietors to urge their patrons to aid in the work of mutual protection … also instruct your officers that when they see a person on the street or any other place sneezing or coughing without placing a handkerchief to his mouth, to ask him in a courteous manner to do so, explaining why the use of the handkerchief for that purpose is imperative.”  Although the epidemic has not yet impacted the city as much as it has downstate, there are still 916 cases reported in the preceding 24 hours with 81 deaths.  The entire Chicagoland area is on alert.  In Highland Park, for example, 56 women make a house-to-house search in automobiles to locate cases that have not received attention, finding 667 cases during their rounds.  Wilmette orders all schools, churches and theaters to be closed as town officials suggest that it may be necessary to call out the Illinois National Guard to patrol streets for a day or two “to aid in keeping the children on their own premises and prevent  the running about of those with colds and coughs.”  In the world-wide influenza outbreak of 1918 and 1919 more than one fifth of the world’s population contracted what was known as the “Spanish flu.”  More than 21,000,000 people died, including 600,000 in the United States with 8,500 Chicago residents losing their lives to the illness.  Between the start of Chicago’s epidemic on September 21 and the removal of restrictions on November 16, the city experienced 38,000 cases of influenza and 13,000 cases of pneumonia.  


October 4, 1909 – A good night’s sleep is a difficult thing to come by if you’re staying in a hotel along the lakefront, according to a report in the Chicago Daily Tribune on this date.  An investigation by the paper finds “engines puffing, wheezing, snorting, exhausting, and making every other kind of noise that a locomotive is capable of” just across Michigan Avenue. “Whistles were tooting, bells were ringing, and cars were bumping together with a crash that would awaken the soundest sleeper.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1909]  A reporter, who is keeping an eye on the railroad action along the lakefront from the Art Institute at Monroe Street to a point near where Congress Street runs today, encounters a clerk at one of the Michigan Avenue hotels, who says, “Many a night has some guest of the house who couldn’t sleep come down to the office and kept me company.  Guests who come here for the first time make a loud kick against the engines, and I don’t blame them … It is almost impossible for a nervous person to get any sleep between 2 and 7 o’clock.  Between those hours the engines are constantly pushing back and forth, and there isn’t one person in twenty who can sleep through the noises that come from the yard.”  The above photo shows the railroad tracks east of Michigan Avenue at Monroe Street.   


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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

September 15, 1971 -- Apollo Astronauts Spend Two Days as Chicago Celebrates

Chicago Tribune photo


September 15, 1971 – Chicago fetes the Apollo 15 astronauts as 200,000 people turn out to greet David R. Scott, Alfred M. Worden, Jr. and James B. Irwin at a noon parade through the Loop.  Irwin, who was the lunar module pilot on the 12-day mission that took place from July 26 to August 7, was appreciative of the greeting, telling a packed City Council meeting, “I would like to thank all of Chicago for giving us such a warm welcome.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1971]. This is the city’s eighth astronaut welcome, and Colonel Scott says, “In all honesty I am not surprised.  I’ve traveled quite a little lately, and, believe me, the word is out … everybody knows about Chicago.  I can assure you the three of us will tell the rest of the country about this city.”  The parade, which travels down State Street to Adams Street and then north on La Salle, ends at the entrance to City Hall, where at a special meeting of the City Council the men are presented with honorary citizenship medals.  After the applause dies down, the honors continue at the Bismarck Hotel, where a civic luncheon is held.  As Air Force violinists serenade the throng, the astronauts present Daley with a large color photograph of the moon and an American flag they carried with them on the longest lunar mission of the Apollo program.  Then the three astronauts move over to the Sherman House where they conduct a briefing for Chicago and suburban high school students.  Their stay in Chicago ends on the following day when they visit Children’s Memorial Hospital.  The Apollo XV mission was the fourth mission to land on the moon.  It was the first to use a lunar roving vehicle, and is memorable for Commander Scott’s use of a hammer and feather to illustrate Galileo’s theory that without air resistance, objects drop at the same rate due to gravity.  In the above photo the three astronauts receive medals making them honorary citizens of Chicago as Mayor Richard J. Daley applauds.

 

September 15, 1976 – Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Walter Mondale, speaking to reporters at Midway Airport, says that President Gerald Ford’s record “belies and puts a falsehood to everything he says he’s now for.” [Chicago Tribune, September 16, 1976] Using notes that he had jotted down during his flight to Chicago, Mondale attacks Ford on four fronts.  In the area of health care, Mondale says that the President has made no proposal for a health-care program affordable for most Americans.  In education he asserts that the federal oversight of education under Ford “is the worst in 40 years.” Mondale finds that “The record is absolutely miserable,” showing that 2.5 million Americans have lost their jobs since Ford took office. He also finds that the Ford administration is responsible for high interest rates that make affordable housing difficult to find.  “Their record couldn’t be worse on all of their objectives,” the Democratic candidate states.  “I think it’s clear that on the issues he has raised, he has a miserable performance record. And if trust must be earned, he doesn’t deserve the trust of the American people.” The election went down to the wire, but the Carter-Mondale ticket pulled out a narrow victory.  If 3,687 votes  in Hawaii and 5,559 votes in Ohio had been switched from Carter to Ford, the incumbent would have been victorious.


September 15, 1966 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reveals a plan to target downtown stores in Chicago in an effort to create jobs for African Americans in the city.  Speaking to a rally of 500 in the Greater Mount Hope Baptist Church at 6034 Princeton Avenue, Dr. King says, “I’m going to march straight up Michigan avenue and straight up State street and organize every store in the city.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 16, 1966] The next day, he reveals, pickets will demonstrate in front of the Saks Fifth Avenue store on Michigan Avenue.  In his address Dr. King also criticizes Senator Everett Dirksen for his opposition to the civil rights bill.

September 15, 1961 – Three carpenters fall 43 stories to their deaths as a scaffold on which they are being lifted separates from the hoisting hook inside the core of the east tower of Marina City, under construction north of the river on State Street.  Mike Einsele, a worker inside the core, says, "We were raising forms inside the core and I was about five feet above them.  They were standing on the scaffolding, and I guess a cable slipped.  I heard a loud noise and I turned around to look.  The bodies bounced crazily, hitting one obstruction after another, until they hit the bottom.  I heard the thuds when they hit and I got sick.  I got out of there then.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 16, 1961]  Another worker, Will Bridges, who was working ten stories below the scaffold and who had just stepped out of the way to get a drink of water, says “Everyone inside the core heard them fall.”  Speculation about the cause suggests that the heavy forms on the scaffold that were being hoisted for the next phase of concrete work jammed against the wall of the core and twisted the hoisting hook enough so that the scaffold fell away.


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Tuesday, September 1, 2020

September 1, 1924 -- Loop Draws 1,252,096 Daily

images.chicagohistory.org


September 1, 1924 – The city issues a report that estimate an average of over 1,252,096 people enter the business district every twenty-four hours.  More than 182,000 are pedestrians, 233,309 enter in passenger vehicles, and 34,184 are carried in commercial vehicles while 700,000 enter the business district on surface and elevated lines, steam railroads, and bus lines.  The figures come from an extensive survey conducted during the first six months of 1924.  Of all the ways into the Loop the Madison Street bridge seems to be the leader with 25,539 pedestrians crossing the bridge each day.  South State Street saw 22,511 pedestrians enter the Loop while 13,402 individuals entered by way of South Wabash Avenue.  A large number of passenger vehicles – 16,822 – drove into the Loop over the new Michigan Avenue bridge while 24,124 vehicles came by way of South Michigan Avenue.  The lower level of the Michigan Avenue bridge was used by 2,513 commercial vehicles, followed by the bridges at Lake Street and Franklin Street.  An average of 103,693 passenger vehicles entered the Loop each day while 31,077 commercial vehicles entered.  Each passenger vehicle carried an average of 2.25 passengers.  The above photo, taken in November of 1924, shows traffic heading north on Michigan Avenue ... 360 North Michigan, today's London House Hotel, is on the left.  At the time it was a year old.



September 1, 1977 – Employees at the Oriental Theatre, the second largest theater in the Loop, are told that the venue will close its doors at the end of the month unless a new tenant is found. Mickey Gold, the theater’s manager, says, “There is no panic.  Different people have lost leases on this and other theaters in the past, and we hope it will stay open.”  The Oriental opened in 1926 with an ornate design by the firm of Rapp and Rapp. It was built on the same site on which the Iroquois Theater stood, the theater in which over 600 people lost their lives in a 1903 fire.  In its best days, the most famous performers in the country graced the Oriental's stage, but in the 1970’s the theater mirrored the general decline of the Loop.  A 1971 experiment to bring live entertainment to the Oriental with such acts as Gladys Knight and the Pips and Stevie Wonder lost promoters $115,000.  The story ends happily as on January 10, 1996 a Canadian theatrical company purchased the property with a promise to renovate it, a plan that would be helped along with a $13.5 million grant from the city.  Although the company declared bankruptcy in 1998, the project was completed and on October 18, 1998 the theater reopened with a seating capacity of 2,253. In the restoration, architect Daniel P. Coffey came up with a plan that increased the theater’s backstage area by expanding into the adjacent Oliver Building.  Today the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre is one of the downtown palaces that hosts touring Broadway shows. 


September 1, 1949 – At the end of August the Chicago Daily Tribune carried a report on the death of noted landscape architect, Jens Jensen.  Oops.  Wrong guy.  It turns out that a 65-year-old Door Country, Wisconsin resident with a similar name was the guy who rode the Great Skyway and not Mr. Jensen, who is alive and well in his home in Ellison Bay.  Taking advantage of the error, the paper publishes a flattering piece on the contributions of Jensen, who came to the United States from Denmark in the early 1890’s and began work as a laborer in the west parks system of Chicago, going on to become one of the premier landscape architects of the twentieth century.  “Jens Jensen had a simple set of precepts,” the paper observes, “which he clung to stubbornly in the face of both politicians and millionaire clients, and defended with the rage of an inspired Viking when aroused.  He believed in the beauty of nature.  He detested formal gardens.  He taught the middle west the value of its native trees and plants in landscaping.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1949] The article continued, “To him, parks were placed where city people should find the comfort of natural beauty.  They were not for batting baseballs.  Neither were they automobile speedways.  In his judgment, 15 miles an hour was fast enough for people entering the parks to enjoy the lawns, the crab apple blooms, and the hawthorns.  In a day when efforts are made to encroach on the parks for almost every other public use, a revival of the Jensen principles would be a healthy thing for Chicago.”  Perhaps Jens Jensen's greatest work in Chicago is Columbus Park, shown in the photo above.



September 1, 1925 – Two days after the South Water Street market closes for business, the Chicago Daily Tribune rails against the street that will replace it, specifically the fact that the new road along the river will be named after Charles H. Wacker, the head of the Chicago Plan Commission.  “It is small town stuff at its worst,” the paper proclaims, “to rename South Water street because it is double decked and remade . . . We certainly acknowledge Mr. Charles Wacker’s civic spirit and his useful service in the protection and realization of the city plan . . . But to give his name to the chief thoroughfare of the city, after Michigan boulevard, is not only crude vandalism, but without fitness of proportion.  Mr. Wacker has been a useful citizen, but his service in the city does not tower above that of all other citizens . . . what of Daniel Burnham, who was the creator of the city plan, one of the most famous and gifted of our citizens? If we give Mr. Wacker’s name to our second greatest street, how are we going to honor Burnham with any respect for proportion?
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Sunday, August 16, 2020

August 16, 1978 -- Loop Elevated Should Go ... Says Tribune Editorial



August 16, 1978 – In an editorial the Chicago Tribune states its opposition to a recommendation by the Chicago branch of the American Association of Architects that a way be found to preserve Chicago’s Loop elevated structure.  The paper asserts, “Anyone who finds a resemblance between Chicago’s elevated and San Francisco’s cable cars must have been standing at Lake and Wabash so long that the screeching has softened his brain.  No way can the “L” be considered charming, quaint, fun, or attractive to visitors . . . There is no good reason, either sensible or sentimental, to preserve the “L” one day longer than is economically unavoidable.  The noisy, dirty eyesore is of no architectural value and will interfere with the practical and esthetic pleasures and profitability of both the State Street mall and the North Loop renewal plan.”   

August 16, 1965 – United Air Lines Flight 389, carrying 24 passengers and a crew of six, disappears from radar screens only five minutes from its scheduled arrival at O’Hare International Airport.  Boats searching the lake about seven miles off Highland Park are hampered by darkness, but twisted pieces of wreckage are reported.  The last communication with the flight occurs at 9:18 p.m. as the O’Hare control tower gives directions for approach to the airport, receiving a “Roger” from the pilot.  Search planes and helicopters drop flares in an attempt to illuminate the search area, and by 1:00 a.m. more than 20 vessels are there, many of them private boats from yacht clubs along the North Shore.  A temporary morgue is also set up in the gymnasium of Highland Park High School. The plane had only been in service for three months at the time of the crash.  Three months later another Boeing 727 crashes on approach to Cincinnati, killing 62 of the 66 passengers on board.  Three days after that United Airlines Flight 227, another 727, crashes on landing at Salt Lake City International Airport, killing 43 of 91 on board.  There is widespread concern that the Boeing 727, first flown in 1963, is an accident waiting to happen.  Extensive review, however, reveals that the airplane is airworthy and properly certified. Those reviews also reveal that pilots, accustomed to flying DC-6’s and other propeller planes, were having trouble adjusting to the rapid descent of the new plane.  The Federal Aviation Agency subsequently required airlines to make changes in training procedures to emphasize the importance of stabilized approaches. The above Chicago Tribune photo shows the crowd gathered on a Highland Park beach, awaiting word from the search area.

www.loc.gov/resource
August 16, 1963 – The Commission on Chicago Architectural Landmarks appoints a committee to draft an ordinance that will provide a framework for the city to preserve its important architectural and historical places.  At the meeting, held at the Art Institute of Chicago, the commission also designates Hull House an architectural landmark and initiates an inquiry into the status of the vacant Sullivan house at 4575 Lake Park Avenue.  Its last order of business is the decision to submit a request to the building department as well as the department of city planning, asking that the commission be notified if a proposal is made to demolish the Reliance building at 32 North State Street, a building that has already been designated a landmark.  It is too bad that the initiative was launched so late, after many historic city treasures had been lost and many more were soon to be gone.  The Sullivan home on Lake Park Avenue is an example.  Originally built for architect Louis Sullivan's mother, it was finished about the time of her death in 1892.  Sullivan, himself, lived in the home until 1896 when his brother, Albert, took up residence with his family.  Despite being designated a landmark in 1960, the home was razed in 1970.  It is pictured above.



August 16, 1893 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the Art Institute of Chicago and the Armour Institute have joined forces “for the purpose of establishing in Chicago a full and thorough course of study in architecture.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 16, 1893] W. M. R. French will direct the Art Institute coursework, and the Reverend F. W. Gunsaulus will handle the work for the Armour Institute.  The Art Institute library in 1893 had 1,300 books and 19,000 photographs with 200 books and 1,000 photographs relating directly to the subject of architecture.  The Armour Institute had 10,000 volumes in its library as well as physical and chemical laboratories and courses of study in electricity, mining, and mechanical engineering.  Director French says of the decision, “The Armour Institute, under the Presidency of the Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus, has laid out courses of technical study of the highest order. The departments of mechanical engineering, electricity, civil engineering, etc., are equal to those of the Institute of Technology of Boston, and the laboratories, shops, library, and appliances are in accord with the most approved and modern practice in technical schools.  There are already 500 applicants to enter the various departments upon the opening of the first school year, Sept. 14.”  William French is shown above at the easel. Reverend Gunsaulus is the man at the desk in the photo above that.


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Monday, August 3, 2020

August 3, 1978 -- State of Illinois Office Tower to Anchor Massive Redevelopment Project

Chicago Tribune Graphic
August 3, 1978 – The Chicago Tribune reports that Illinois governor James Thompson has approved $15 million in state funds to proceed with land acquisition and design of a new Chicago-based state office complex.  The new building, expected to replace an office facility at 160 North La Salle Street, will contain 1.3 million square feet of space and employ 4,000 state workers.  The governor also announces the formation of a committee that will advise the state on the best ways to finance the new structure.  On the same day that this announcement is made, developer Arthur Rubloff announces a two-block long project that will insert a shopping mall, hotel, apartments and a commercial tower in an area bounded by Wacker Drive on the north, State Street on the east, Washington Boulevard on the south, and Clark Street on the west.  Rubloff says, “This will be the foremost development ever undertaken in any city in the nation.  When completed in about five years, it will make the Loop the foremost downtown in the country.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1978]  According to Rubloff’s scheme every building except the 222 North Dearborn building and the Reliance building on State Street in a seven-block area will be demolished to make way for the new mixed-use complex.   Most of the area was eventually re-developed although it took decades for the process to unfold, and it ended up with a completely different vision, depicted in the above graphic, than Rubloff proposed in 1978. 


August 3, 1999 –Destruction of the Chicago Amphitheatre at 4220 South Halsted begins.  The huge exhibition arena opened in 1934 as a venue to exhibit and showcase the sheep, cattle and hogs that came through the Union Stock Yards.  The building was a miracle of construction.  When a disastrous fire, fed by 60-mile-per-hour winds, destroyed six square blocks around the stockyards on April 18, 1934, architect Abraham Epstein and his staff were asked to have another building in place by December 1 of the same year.  Using 11 solid steel arched trusses, at the time the largest in the world, the team had the building finished, complete with air conditioning and press and broadcast media facilities, just seven months after the disastrous fire. When the stockyards closed in 1971, the livestock shows moved south, and the aging building lost bookings to other, more modern – and far less pungent – facilities.  Over the years, though, events went far beyond livestock exhibitions.  The 1952 Republican National Convention chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower as its presidential nominee in the building.  That same year the Democratic Party chose Adlai Stevenson to oppose Eisenhower and repeated the decision in the Amphitheatre in 1956. The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus brought its act to the arena for 18 years.  Musical acts from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans to The Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead entertained crowds there.  The Beatles played at the arena on September 5, 1964 and returned to the big barn to perform before 13,000 fans on August 12, 1966. In May of 1999 the city announced that it had acquired the 12-acre-lot on which the building sits and would be using the space to expand the Stockyard Industrial Corridor, stretching from Ashland Avenue to Halsted Street and from Pershing Road to Forty-Seventh Street. The International Amphitheatre’s chief engineer for 31 years, 65-year-old Dutch Trentz, said, “I’ve had a lot of deaths in my family. But when they tear that place down, that one’s really going to hit me.  It’s history to you, but that’s life to me.” [Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1999]



August 3, 1906:  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that at a recent meeting the trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago approved the purchase of El Greco’s “Assumption of the Virgin” for the price of $40,000.  The canvas, measuring 13 feet by two inches high and seven feet by six inches wide, will be the largest painting on display at the Art Institute.  It was commissioned by Don Diego de Castilla in 1577 as an altar piece for the convent church of San Domingo El Antiguo in Toledo, Spain.   The Art Institute today describes the priceless work in this way, “The artist’s use of flickering, high-keyed colors and broad brushwork further lend the work an ecstatic feeling sought after by Catholic Church patrons during the Counter-Reformation.  El Greco used such bold colors and figural arrangements to arouse a spiritual fervor in the viewer and impart the deep sense of faith he himself felt.”  The work may be found In Gallery 211 in the European Painting and Sculpture section.


August 3, 1884 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints a letter from a Professor J. H. Long in which he describes the results of an “elaborate examination” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1884] of the city’s drinking water.  “Our water is bad enough,” writes Professor Long, “but it might be a great deal worse.  Any one interested in the subject will find in Bridgeport eight large pumps at work night and day drawing water from the river and throwing it into the Illinois and Michigan Canal at the rate of 60,000 cubic feet per minute. By this means a current is created which carries the sewage of the south and main branches of the river away from the lake and into the canal running toward the Mississippi.”  The professor says that chemists usually consider three parts of “free” ammonia and five parts of “albuminoid” per hundred million parts of water “as limits beyond which the nitrogenous matter should not go” in water that is to be used for consumption.  At the State Street bridge a test found seven parts per million of free ammonia and seventy parts per million of albuminoid.  At the Bridgeport pumps there were found 200 parts per million of ammonia and 100 parts per million of albuminoid. The area that came to be known as Bubbly Creek yielded 500 parts per million of ammonia and 140 parts per million of alubuminoid. At this site the analysis revealed “a great variety of specimens of lower animal and vegetable life. The north side was not exempt. At the Fullerton Avenue bridge there were found 240 parts of free ammonia per million parts of water and 84 of albuminoid per million. “From whatever standpoint we take,” the professor writes, the North Branch appears to be an evil.” The conclusion of the study suggests that boiling and then filtration of water should be undertaken to ensure the health of the city’s populace.

doc.newberry.org
August 3, 1879 – The Chicago Daily Tribune provides details of the tremendous growth that is occurring in the area around the Union Stock-Yards, first opened 14 years earlier.  The paper calls the population that has gravitated to the area “the largest industrial population gathered in any single industry in any one square mile in the world.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 3, 1879]. The three major producers in the Stock-Yards – Armour, Hutchinson, and Fowler – each employ more than 2,000 people working at 32 packing houses.  As many as 20,000 workers are employed as laborers, clerks, bookkeepers, and managers at the sprawling facility, some of these workers traveling four miles to get to the job.  Two new streets have been opened up and sidewalks and water distribution lines have been added to Paulina, Laflin, Loomis, Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth Streets.  A new church has been built at the corner of Laflin and Loomis, and a new brick school is going up four blocks north of the church.  Houses can be purchased for around $500 … the area lies outside the fire zone established after the 1871 fire, so the new homes are built of wood and are designed to be inexpensive. Lots sell for between $150 and $170 with most of the property and homes built with a workers’ available cash, free from any loans.  “The development of this industrial army,” the Tribune reports, “is the growth of Chicago in only one direction, and for only thirteen years.”  The above photo shows a typical neighborhood near the stockyards at the time of the Tribune article.
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