Monday, December 9, 2013

Illinois Toll Roads, Getting Started -- December 9, 1953

I-294 today, 60 years after it was first proposed (Illinoistollway.com)
Life began to change for Illinois drivers 60 years ago on this date as Governor William Stratton, the youngest governor in the country at the time, endorsed the concept of Illinois toll road construction in a speech before the 47th annual convention of the Associated General Contractors of Illinois.

“Toll roads for Illinois are no longer a speculation,” the governor stated.  “They are an imminent development long overdue.  They are an urgent necessity.  There are the key to important highways of the near future for Illinois and for all America.”

In some ways the job of Illinois was made easier because of its tardiness in getting started.  The Ohio turnpike was already under construction at the time, and Michigan was in the advanced planning stages for a turnpike from Detroit to Benton Harbor, swinging south from there to Chicago.  Iowa was also planning its east-west route, and Missouri had two turnpikes in the planning stages, both reaching Illinois at St. Louis.

It seemed that all the Land of Lincoln had to do was connect the dots.

Governor Stratton (Illinoisancestors.org)
“Illinois is the center of this development and will have to furnish the links across tis state . . . the most critical problem is the Chicago area,” Governor Stratton said.  “To avoid the expense of building in Chicago we might go around the city . . . We can make three or four surveys simultaneously.  While engaging some engineering consultants on the Chicagoland feasibility studies, others can look into the possibilities of U. S. 66 as a toll project from Mount Olive into East St. Louis.”

The Illinois Toll Highway Authority was created in 1941, but things didn’t really begin to move along until the governor made his address in 1953 since World War Ii and a shortage of materials after the war made any construction effort impossible.  It was in 1953 that the Illinois State Toll Highway Commission was established and began its planning.


Within five years, by 1958, the surveys were completed, the land purchased, and three toll roads had been.  We know them today as the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway (I-90), the Tri-State Tollway (I-94), and the Ronald Reagan Tollway (I-88).  From that endorsement of Governor Stratton back on this date in 1953 came today’s present system of four toll roads covering 286 miles in 12 northern Illinois counties.
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 3:40 PM 2 comments
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Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Player with Railroads -- Then and Now

C & NW Wells Street Station, about 1900 
Yesterday I wrote about the horrific explosion that wrecked the Chicago and Northwestern powerhouse back in 1900, killing nine people and throwing the evening commute for 10,000 passengers into chaos.  That station stood on Wells Street with the Chicago River to the west and south, Kinzie Street just to the north, and La Salle Street a block to the east, and it stood there from 1881 until 1911 when the C & NW moved to its new marble palace on Madison Street, just west of the river.  That one is gone now, too.

The very first railroad to serve Chicago was the Galena and Chicago Union, which built a station at Kinzie Street on the west side of the river in 1848.  Its first run used the only available steam engine, a dozen years old and already hopelessly past its useful life, to make a run all the way out to Oak Park, hauling a load of wheat.  When former mayor William B. Ogden and several other investors tried to raise the $365,000 they needed to make a going of the new road, the generous citizens of Chicago were so singularly unimpressed that they coughed up twenty grand.  [Chicago Tribune].

From that inauspicious beginning things took off.  Within seven years Chicago was the largest train center on the planet.  By 1860, as war blackened the horizon, ten railroads called Chicago their home with trackage in excess of 4,000 miles.

A lot of that track led to the landlocked Wells Street Station where the powerful Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, a line that had absorbed Mr. Ogden’s Galena and Chicago Union in 1864, tried to squeeze its immense bulk.
It was little wonder that at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century the road decided to build a half-dozen blocks to the south and on the west side of the river.

Still, the trackage that crossed at Kinzie Street and filtered through the warehouse district on the north side was impressive.  Here is what it looked like toward the end of the 1930’s . . .

Note that the tracks across the river at Kinzie Street reached almost to the Wrigley Building 
The Merchandise Mart didn't get all that loot into the largest building in the world by osmosis
You know what remains?  Walk up Canal Street, past Fulton House and you’ll find this ribbon of track, running beneath a chain link fence, stopping at the river with the old Kinzie Street railroad bridge giving it the finger from the east side.   Time moves on . . .

Coming Untracked (JWB Photo)

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 6:13 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Powerhouse Explosion at the C & NW -- December 3, 1900

The Chicago & Northwestern Depot on Wells Street, early 1900's
Rush hour is always a hassle, but it became REALLY unnerving on this date in 1900 when the explosion of a boiler in the power plant of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad killed nine people outright and injured a number of others.  The plant at Erie and Kingsbury served the passenger and freight depot for the railroad that was located on Wells Street.  Its four boilers provided electricity for lighting the railroad yards, depot and office buildings, steam for heating the buildings, and compressed air for operating the switches on the tracks. [Western Electrician, December 8, 1900]

The aftermath (Western Electrician)
At 5:00 p.m. on a Monday the terminal was packed with commuters on their way home.  The explosion blew out the south wall of the two-story powerhouse building and propelled the boiler through that wall, the flight of the huge piece of machinery mowing down three section hands at work near the building and continuing on through the parlor car of a departing train headed for Milwaukee.  Five passengers, including two newly married couples returning from their honeymoons, were seriously injured, and one of the women subsequently died.

August C. Beck, returning with his wife, Anna, from their honeymoon, said at the Coroner’s Inquest, “When the train pulled out I was chatting with my wife.  We had gone only a few hundred yards when suddenly there was a terrific report, followed by a roar.  The light went out and there was a show of flying glass, ashes, and cinders.  The side of the car where we were sitting was broken in before I realized what had happened.”  [Chicago Tribune, December 21, 1900] Mrs. Beck was killed in the blast.

It must have been chaos.  When the powerhouse exploded, all of the lights in the terminal went out, plunging 10,000 commuters on their way home into darkness.  Railroad employees worked in the dark, manually throwing switches to keep the trains running since the compressed air lines that serviced that equipment were severed as well.

Clean-up on December 4, 1901
(Western Electrician)
On January 11, 1901 the members of the Coroner’s jury reached a verdict in their consideration of the accident, finding that “the boilers at said powerhouse were not of sufficient capacity to furnish steam for the power required at said powerhouse and we, the jury, are of the opinion that all steam boilers in the City of Chicago should be inspected at least twice in one year, and recommend that the City Council pass an ordinance to that effect.”  [Chicago Tribune, January 12, 1901]


Assistant Engineer John Butterworth, on duty on the night of the explosion, was hospitalized for over a month as a result of the injuries he sustained.  Although he was released before the finding of the Coroner’s jury, he did not testify.  Although he was believed to be the only man who could speak conclusively of what went wrong that night, physicians said that as a result of his ordeal “his mental condition was such that were he to testify he might become permanently insane.” [Tribune, January 12, 1901]
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:25 PM 0 comments
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Monday, December 2, 2013

Diversey, Clark & Broadway -- Across the Years

Chicago's Clark, Diversey & Broadway Intersection -- 1925 (Google Image)

Clark, Diversey & Broadway -- 1950's (IDOT Chicago Traffic Photograph)


Clark, Diversey & Broadway -- December 2, 2013 (JWB Photo)

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Sunday, December 1, 2013

Self Reliance

Reliance Building, 1 West Washington Street, Chicago (JWB Photo)

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Friday, November 29, 2013

River Point -- A Progress Report

In my last post I wrote about the incredible 14-month project to straighten the south branch of the river, move a tangle of railroad tracks from one side to the other, and open up three new Chicago through-streets.

My guess is that the great majority of Chicagoans living in 1929 paid little attention to the project and an equally large number never personally saw any of it happening.

This summer a project began that, although not as massive an undertaking as that 1929 effort, certainly has matched it as far as the efficiency with which it has been carried out.

I first posted photos of the River Point project, the 45-story Pickard Chilton design at 444 West Lake Street, dead center at the point where the main channel of the Chicago River splits to the north and south. 

I grabbed a few shots back in June as the work barge was tied up at the site and preliminary excavation was under way.  I returned toward the end of August, and it was clear how much progress had been made in a couple of months.  A little over a week ago, I made my third visit, and at that time the progress was, to me, even more impressive . . . so much so that the relationship of the busy work site today and the rendering of the finished park and river walk as they were first proposed are undeniable.


See what you think . . . 


River Side -- June 23, 2013 (JWB Photo)
River Side -- August 28, 2013 (JWB Photo)
River Side -- November 21, 2013 (JWB Photo)
Railroad Tracks -- June 23, 2013 (JWB Photo)
Railroad Tracks -- August 28, 2013 (JWB Photo)
Railroad tracks, underneath a new park -- November 21, 2013 (JWB Photo)

Looking south from Canal Street -- June 23, 2013
Looking north toward Canal Street -- August 28, 2013

Looking south from Canal Street -- November 21, 2013 (JWB Photo)









Posted by Chicago Old and New at 1:13 PM 0 comments
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Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Straightening of the Chicago River Completed -- November 27, 1929

River Straightening in Progress, 1929 (Google Image)
Big doings in the city on this date back in 1929 as “water gushed through a cut made by a steam shovel in the thin earth barrier which separated the two dredge sections of the new channel between Polk and Eighteenth streets.  Steam whistles roared and a small group of city officials and city planners watched as the major operation on the river became virtually complete.”  [Chicago Tribune, November 28, 1929]

The “major operation” that had been completed was the straightening of well over a mile of river, accompanied by the large-scale movement of railroad right-of-way.  And the amazing thing about the whole project was that it required just over a year to pull off.  For an in-depth look at what was involved, check out the description of this massive project here.

On September 21, 1928 a crowd of 200 spectators watched as “a parade of steamers, and a half dozen dredges, scows and tugs with flags flying and whistles shrieking” [Chicago Tribune, September 21, 1928] got the project off to a roaring start as the mayor and other dignitaries officiated.

On December 15 of 1929 the first vessel, the freighter McFarland, steamed through the unkinked section of river.


For me, this is just one more example of the larger-than-life projects that shaped this great city during the 1920’s.  You can bet with some assurance that such a project would require more than 14 months to complete today.

In a 14-month project the south branch of the river was changed forever (Chicago Daily News Archives)

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