Monday, March 9, 2015

Inland Steel (The Big Announcement) -- March 9, 1955

Inland Steel from the north side with its exterior columns supporting
the massive two-story cantilevered entry (JWB Photo)
Sixty years ago today on March 9, 1955 The Chicago Tribune ran an article about a bold proposal for a new kind of building intended for the heart of Chicago’s Loop.  The article’s lead read, “Inland Steel Company disclosed yesterday that its new 6 million dollar, 19 story building at the northeast corner of Dearborn and Monroe strs. will be a steel and glass structure, with an adjoining 23 story high shaft housing the building’s service system.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1955]

In a news conference Joseph L. Block, Inland Steel’s president gave the public its first glimpse of the building, the first new skyscraper in Chicago’s Loop in over 20 years.  The paper described the model as a structure in which “Seven slender columns rising 19 stories from the sidewalk on Dearborn st., with seven matching columns on the opposite eastern side, will be the building’s most striking exterior feature.  With the columns on the outside, all floors will be clear of supports.”

Seven stainless-steel clad exterior columns on the east and west side
of the building support the structure -- pretty sexy engineering
(JWB Photo)
 The stainless steel, windowless shaft on the east side of the building, connected to the office tower by a short hallway, would contain all the heating, air conditioning, wiring and plumbing necessary to support the structure. 

Nathaniel Owings of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architects of the building, said the whole thing would occupy only 57 percent of the lot on which it would stand.  The rental agent for the building, Fred Kramer of Draper & Kramer, Inc. said that the new structure would give the Loop some needed “dash.”

Comin' in out of the shadows to hear the jazz go down . . . (JWB Photo)
Chicagoans walk by this building by the thousands every day, and most of us never give it a second look.  I must admit that I was one of those until about five years ago I was leading a private architectural tour for a group of architects from Philadelphia.  After circling the building and pausing at every side, one of them said, “Everything about this building – everything, from the stainless steel to the clear spans to the double-glazed tinted windows – had never been done before in one place on one project.”

From that moment I saw the building in a different light.

The Landmark Designation Report on Inland Steel, submitted to the Chicago Landmarks Commission said of the building, “The Inland Steel Building came out of the springtime of Chicago's postwar construction boom. In a steel-building city, it retains a lightness, serenity, and polished grace that continue to make it an influential emblem of modernism. In a city with a hundred-year history of distinguished architecture, the Inland Steel Building is an important monument to a particular period of that history and stands as a testament to an important Chicago manufacturing firm and as a major early work of one of the city’s major architectural firms.

The springtime of Chicago’s postwar construction boom . . . I like that.  As we enter the first warm weather in Chicago in months, it might not be a bad idea to walk past this gem on Dearborn and give it a once-over.

Definitely a bold leap ahead of the Bedford Shirt Company Building

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 6:04 PM 1 comments
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Monday, March 2, 2015

Jeanne Gang's Aqua and its Neighbor

Aqua and its Wacker Buddy (JWB Photo)
Five years ago an article in The New Yorker began with this description of Jeanne Gang’s Aqua . . .

She started with a fairly conventional rectangular glass slab, then transformed it by wrapping it on all four sides with wafer-thin, curving concrete balconies, describing a different shape on each floor.  Gang turned the façade into an undulating landscape of bending, flowing concrete, as if the wind were blowing ripples across the surface of the building.  You know the tower is huge and solid, but it feels malleable, its exterior pulsing with a gentle rhythm.  [The New Yorker, February 1, 2010]

Look up at Aqua the next time you are wandering along the river east of the Hyatt.  It’s a magnificent contrast – the “pulsing rhythms” of Aqua lapping against the strict triangular symmetry of Harry Weese’s Swissøtel. ‘

For 125 million bucks Weese gave the city the first high-rise building east of Michigan Avenue that actually acknowledged, reflected and amplified the meeting of river, lake and sky.  Aqua, certainly a presence in its own right, does nothing to diminish that. 
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 5:50 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, March 1, 2015

Fort Sheridan and the Lakota: Part Three -- March 1, 1891


The Grand Opera House (Ryerson-Burnham Archives
The place where in 1912 The Wizard of Oz would be seen for the first time
Come with us now as we resume the continuing saga of the Lakota Sioux at Fort Sheridan in 1891.  Two installments in the unfolding story have already been laid out.  You may find them here and here.

On this day, March 1, back in 1891 Lieutenant Maxwell, the same guy who picked up the job of transporting the Native Americans to two separate social events in Evanston on            February 14, accompanied the party to the Grand Opera House on Clark Street in Chicago where the contingent enjoyed entertainment given by Cleveland’s minstrels.

The party included Kicking Bear, Coming Grant, Knows His Horse’s Voice, White Beaver, One Bull, Horn Eagle, Run Along Side Of, Sorrel Horse and Hard to Hit.  The Tribune reported, “Interpreter John Shandreau sat with the Indians to translate Luke Schoolcraft’s and Hughey Dougherty’s jokes.  General Miles with his aide, Capt. Maus, sat humbly in the dress-circle while the conquered reds had plush easy chairs and silk curtains in private boxes.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1891]



The show was evidently a hit.  One performer emerged in silk tights and sang in a high soprano voice, after which “the curtain rose and the black faces of the end-men were disclosed.”  At the sight Hard to Hit turned to One Bull and said, “Buffaloes,” thinking that a portion of the Ninth Cavalry, the “Flying North” had been ordered from its station near Pine Ridge to sing and dance in its late enemies’ honor.


Chicago in 1891 must have been quite a town, right?  The City Council is passing the ordinance that will allow a new Art Institute to be built on the lakefront.  The tallest building in the world to be constructed on load bearing walls is being finished on Jackson Boulevard.  And a couple blocks away, survivors of Pine Ridge sit with their military guards, watching men with faces smeared with burnt cork sing in falsetto voices.

You can't make this stuff up.
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 5:12 PM 0 comments
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Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Kosciusko Statue Rejected -- February 25, 1903

The original Chudzinski Whoopsie (Chicago Tribune, February 26, 1903)
On this date, February 25, in 1903 the Chicago Tribune announced that “the heavy hand of criticism has laid hold of the statue of Kosciusko, the Polish patriot, and yesterday the west park board was informed that the statue would not be a fitting monument to Chicago’s parks.”  [Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1903]

West Parks Commissioner Graham had no idea why the Municipal Art League had turned “thumbs down” on the statue.  “I have no idea what the fault is with the statue,” he said.  “I have not seen the model and, besides, the commissioners are not expected to be experts in art.”

Chicago sculptor Lorado Taft was less than generous in his appraisal of the sculpture by Kasimir Chudzinski, “You cannot begin to criticize it,” he said.  “The whole thing is a weak, cheap effort.  If you start with the horse you will never reach the rider.  It is the effort, apparently, of a man who has made no study of the advancement of art.  It is badly patterned after the snorting charger of fifty years ago.  You entertain such fears that the horse will fall off the pedestal that your eyes do not rise to the man at all.  There isn’t a city in the United States that would allow that stature in its parks.”  [Chicago Tribune, February 26, 1903]

Properly chastened, sculptor Chudzinski went back to work and came up with a new vision of the Polish national hero who fought in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s battle with Russia and Prussia before coming to the United States and fighting for the Colonists in the Revolutionary War.  Among other things General George Washington asked Kosciusko to secure and defend West Point against the British. 

A little more heroic, don't you think?  (JWB Photo)
As you can see the second try was far more effective than the first.

On September 12, 1904 a crowd of 50,000 gathered in Humboldt Park as a chorus of one thousand voices sang “Look Down Upon Us from Heaven, Kosciusko” at the statue’s dedication ceremony. 

Mr. M. A. La Buy, president of the Kosciusko Monument association that collected the $30,000 for the statue, spoke, observing that “The Kosciusko Monument association, in handing down the figure of the general to future ages. desires to teach our children and our grandchildren that their patriotism and love for America should soar high above their ambition.  Let us illustrate our beautiful history of the United States by building monuments to its patriots.  As the European oppression, despotism, and tyranny increase day by day, so our love and esteem for our American heroes should increase daily.”  [Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1904]

The plaque on Solidarity Drive (JWB Photo)
Seventy years later violence and arson had risen to epidemic levels in Humboldt Park.  In 1979 the Tribune headlined one article on the community by calling the area a “Community without Dreams.”  It was in that year that the Chicago Park District, aided by the Polish Roman Catholic Union, the Polish Women’s Alliance, and the Polish National Alliance, restored the statue and moved it to its present location on Solidarity Drive, about halfway between Lake Shore Drive and the Shedd Aquarium.


At the dedication ceremony back in 1904 Senator Albert G. Hopkins said, “When [Kosciusko] was born there was not one free government in Europe.  Across the seas the American colonies were fighting for something that Europe had yearned for during centuries.  It was Kosciusko’s chance, and he accepted it.”

 And Chicago, fortunately, chose to honor the Polish national hero despite the initial false start.
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 6:14 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, February 22, 2015

Chicago Stockyards and Women -- February 22, 1902

In the middle of February, 1902 Adolph Strasser, who had been one of the five men to organize the convention of 1886 that would lead to the formation of the American Federation of Labor, made the mistake of pointing out that women were taking the jobs of men in the making of cigars.  “Women are entering the shops and factories from every side and taking the places of men,” he said.  “They have no conception of the trials they are bringing on their brothers and fathers by their willingness to accept positions of all kinds.”  [Chicago Tribune, February 21, 1902]

Mary McDowell
On February 20 Miss Mary McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement made her res[pmse in an address before the Woman’s Union Label league at the Masonic Temple building.  She pointed out that on the city’s southwest side women were taking the places of men at the great stockyards of the city.  “They are entering the packing-houses by the score, and with each who enters a man is forced out.  They are doing everything except the killing.  Strange as it may seem, they are wielding the knife, and with great dexterity.”

On the following day he Chicago Tribune verified that assertion.  “Between 5,000 and 6,000 women and girls are on the pay rolls of the various Stock-Yards houses,” the Tribune reported.  “They form 75 percent of the employees of the canning factories.”

In a trip through the packing plant of Libby, McNeill & Libby females were found who were more than willing to respond to the brouhaha.  “Jennie Laughan said, “Like my work?  Sure I do.  The pay beats that of my sister down on State street all hollow.  Why, I was off two days of last week and still made $9.  Don’t think for a minute that I am going to give up this job to any man.  Cutting him out?  Sure I am, but what’s the dif’?  I would like to tell Miss McDowell a few things.”   [Chicago Tribune, February 22, 1902]

In Laughan’s family her father made $15.00 a week, her brother $12.00, her sister $6.00 and young Jennie made $10.00, almost a quarter of the family’s income.  “Suppose my sister and me were to live at home and not make a cent?  We would be loose in the pocket $16 a week, and that goes a big ways,” she said.  “My father’s in the yards, and so is my brother.  I ain’t cut them out of no job.”

Women at Libby, McNeill & Libby trimming sausage meat, 1902
Chicago Tribune Photo
The Treasurer of the Libby, McNeill & Libby, Edward Tilden, was effusive in his praise for the girls and women working for the company.  “Such work is better done by girls than by men, and we always have had them do it.  We are proud of our plant and proud of our girls.  They are all contented and draw good wages.  They dress well and have money, and you will not be able to find one that agrees with Miss McDowell.”

The source of disagreement with Miss McDowell’s remarks came about as a reaction against her assertion that before long women and girls would be working jobs that were actually involved with the slaughter of the animals themselves.


An official at Swift’s vehemently denied the assertion.  “Nonsense!  This is a packing-house and we employ girls.  We have them handle our sewing machines.  They pack butterine and they are in the sausage department.  They draw good wages and do well.  One has but to see the slaughter pen to realize that Miss McDowell is wrong.  Even the killing of chickens will never be in the hands of women.”

The source of disagreement with Miss McDowell’s remarks was a reaction against her assertion that before long women and girls would be working jobs that were actually involved with the slaughter of the animals themselves.

A
Stockyard Workers in 1918
Chicago Daily News Photo Archives
n official at Swift’s vehemently denied the assertion.  “Nonsense!  This is a packing-house and we employ girls.  We have them handle our sewing machines.  They pack butterine and they are in the sausage department.  They draw good wages and do well.  One has but to see the slaughter pen to realize that Miss McDowell is wrong.  Even the killing of chickens will never be in the hands of women.”
Posted by Chicago Old and New at 6:30 PM 7 comments
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