Thursday, June 7, 2018

June 7, 1889 -- Newberry Library Buys Lands for New Home



June 7, 1889 –Negotiations end as the trustees of the Newberry Library agree to purchase the entire block bound by Washington Park on the south, Clark and Dearborn Streets on the west and east and Oak Street on the north from Mr. Alfred Cowles for $175,000.  Architect Henry Ives Cobb has already been brought on to design the new building, which is expected to cost between $500,000 and $750,000. A prominent city realtor says of the decision, “The price at which the transfer was made is at least $25,000 below the market.  It is a fine piece of property … and is unquestionably the most accessible piece of property of its size on the North Side.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 8, 1889]According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, “The library was made possible by a bequest form the estate of Walter Loomis Newberry, an early Chicago pioneer involved in banking, shipping, real estate and other commercial ventures.  Following his widow’s death in 1885, Newberry estate trustees William H. Bradley and Eliphalet W. Blatchford established the library in 1887 on Chicago’s Near North Side and hired its first librarian, William Frederick Poole.”  Today the Newberry is a non-circulating library, open to the public, that welcomes researchers to its reading rooms and offers exhibitions, lectures, a host of adult education seminars and other programming.


June 7, 1924 – President Calvin Coolidge signs 105 Acts of Congress, including an act that will permit Chicago to construct a new channel for the south branch of the river between West Polk Street and West Nineteenth Street, straightening the river so that it will meet the demands of the city’s future transportation plans.  This is a huge project that will finally get rolling in September of 1928. A May, 1929 article in Popular Mechanics Magazine evaluated the massive project in this way, “Railroad yards on one side of the river had to be sold to rival railroads on the other side, as they changed locations when the stream was moved.  The readjustment also took a kink out of all the railroads entering two big terminals, the LaSalle and Grand Central depots.”  It took just 15 months for the huge project to be completed.  For more information on the straightening of the river, you can turn to this section of the blog.

June 7, 2000 – The Chicago Tribune reports that as the Coe mansion awaits the wreckers on Dearborn Street, the Daley administration proposes landmark district status to protect buildings along a half-mile stretch of Dearborn, all of which were built in the 1870’s and 1880’s in the decade or so after the Chicago fire.  The proposal would grant the structures preliminary landmark status, triggering a year-long process of public hearings if new construction or alterations are proposed.  “Once a demolition permit is granted, our hands are tied,” says a spokesman for the city’s Planning Department, Becky Carroll.  “Getting these buildings on the docket gives the city the ability to save them.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 7, 2000]  The threat to the Coe Mansion, which housed a popular Renalli’s Restaurant and which actually did end up being torn down, generated a new unity among various preservation groups.  Out of the struggle to save the building Preservation Chicago was born.
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Wednesday, June 6, 2018

June 6, 1899 -- Chicago River Catches Fire .... Again



June 6, 1899 –For the second time in two months the Chicago River catches fire as “an oily scum” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 7, 1899]ignites near Blackhawk Street.  The river is covered with flames that spread to docks and a stack of lumber on its west side.  Firefighters say that if the wind had been stronger, things would have become far more serious.  The area of the river fire, shown above, is now part of an ambitious city initiative, the North Branch Framework Plan, designed to develop 760 acres on the North Branch of the river.


June 6, 1928 – President Edward J. Kelly of the South Park Board announces that a gift of $500,000 from the former vice-president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., Max Adler, will be used for construction of a planetarium on an island east of the Field Museum.  “In giving the planetarium to Chicago,” Adler says, “I have a three-fold conception:  Scientific, popular and philosophical.  One is to further the progress of science.  The second is to enable the people to observe the action of the heavenly bodies as heretofore only astronomers have been able to do.  The third is to emphasize that all mankind, rich and poor, powerful and weak, as well as all nations, here and abroad, constitute part of one universe, and that under the great celestial firmament there is no division or cleavage, but rather interdependence and unity.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 7, 1928]


June 6, 2001 – “Soldier Field:  Perfuming the Pig,” is the headline atop a Chicago Tribune editorial that begins, “Now even the most self-interested backers of the plan to desecrate Soldier Field realize what a failure their design is.” [Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2001] After yet another model is unveiled for the renovation of the field, the Tribune expresses its dissatisfaction, “… critics of the design are correct:  This grotesquerie would overwhelm everything around it and ruin part of a fragile, supposedly protected lakefront.  By acknowledging flaws in the oafish design, Daley signals the obvious:  He holds the power to twist arms and protect the public’s interest.”  The editorial concludes, “Daley has clearly become aware of the problem.  He needs only the will to make this deal a winner.  His legacy is in nobody’s hands but his … this city only erects a football stadium every 80 or so years.  Having admitted the obvious, let’s do the job right.”
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Tuesday, June 5, 2018

June 5, 1944 -- White Sox Fall to Fort Sheridan


Fort Sheridan Main Gate, 1944
Town of Fort Sheridan Main Entrance, 2018
June 5, 1944 –There are probably better times to bring this up … but … it is on this day in 1944 that the Fort Sheridan baseball team beats the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game, 8 to 6.  The Sox have a 6 to 1 lead after the team’s half of the fifth inning, but the Army team scores three runs on two hits, an error and two walks in the sixth, adding an insurance run in the seventh, and going on to score three more times in the eighth inning.  Left fielder Guy Curtright and first baseman Ed Carnett are the only regular Sox players to take the field while pitcher Joe Haynes, making his second appearance of the season, holds the Fort Sheridan nine to one hit through the sixth inning. Three thousand soldiers and guests watch the game.

June 5, 1893 – The Chicago Daily Tribune features a short article that summarizes the recollections of James Whistler Wood of Marshall, Michigan regarding the first sailing vessel to reach what would become the Port of Chicago.  According to Wood the first vessel to drop anchor at the mouth of the Chicago River was the schooner Tracy in the year 1803.  The ship was either “owned or chartered by the government, and conveyed Capt. John Whistler, U. S. A., and his command, together with supplies and material for the construction of a fort at the mouth of the Chicago River.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1893] The first steamships to arrive in Chicago, according to Wood, were the Sheldon Thompson and the William Penn that “stirred the waters of Chicago harbor and arrived there together on July 8, 1831, having on board Gen. Winfield Scott and soldiers for the Black Hawk war.” When these two ships arrived, the small hamlet could still “boast of only five houses, and three of those were built of logs.”  The portrait above is of Captain John Whistler, who was born in Ulster in 1756, ran away from home and fought with the British Army in the Revolutionary War, then settled in Hagerstown, Maryland before joining the United States Army.  Severely wounded in 1791 in the Indian Wars, he commanded the military settlement at Fort Dearborn when it was established in 1803.


June 5, 1942 – The United States Naval Training station at Great Lakes opens its doors for the first time to African-American recruits bound for active duty as apprentice seamen and firemen aboard warships. The first of the recruits, Doreston Luke Carmen, Jr., a 19-year-old, one of nine children from a Galveston, Texas family, is sworn in on this day after his first train trip. “I like the Navy fine already,” he says. “Last night I slept in a hammock for the first time and didn’t fall out.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 6, 1942] The commandant of the station, Lieutenant Commander Daniel W. Armstrong, says that he will wait until all 50 recruits have arrived before issuing them regulation uniforms and sending them through the classification office. The Navy opened all ratings to African-American sailors from the time of the Civil War until 1922, but from that date until 1936 the Navy ended the policy. In 1936 that policy was reversed, but African-American sailors were only posted as mess attendants.

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Monday, June 4, 2018

June 4, 1977 -- FALN Lays Claim to County Building Bomb


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.


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.
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Sunday, June 3, 2018

June 3, 1921 -- Marie Curie Visits Chicago


June 3, 1921–Marie Curie, on her first trip to the United States, visits Chicago for two hours and is “besieged by newspaper men and women anxious to get her ideas on the fashions, the war, radium, woman suffrage, the political situation.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 4, 1921]All Curie, the winner of two Nobel Prizes in Physics, wants to discuss, though, is Lake Michigan.  The Tribune reports, “To her the engineering feat of reversing the flow of the Chicago river to dispose of the city’s sewage was a problem far more interesting than a comparison of American styles with French creations.”  By nightfall she is off to Colorado with a topographical map of the western states in hand, a gift of Mrs. W. Lee Lewis of Northwestern University.



June 3, 1933 – A receiver is appointed to collect the income from the White City amusement park at Sixty-Third Street and South Park Avenue, until delinquent taxes of $75,535 are paid in full.  This is the end for the great fun fair that began in 1905 in what is now the Greater Grand Crossing area of the city’s south side.  Only the roller rink remains at the end of 1933, and that closes in 1949.  Today’s Parkway Gardens stands where the park once attracted patrons from all over the city, lured by its bright lights and promise of fun-filled evenings.  There were at least two dozen amusement parks in the United States that carried the “White City” label, a name that comes directly from the great White City of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  The photos show the original amusement park and Parkway Gardens that stands in its place today.


June 3, 1950 – Foundation work begins for a 1.5 million dollar church that will stand on Madison Street on the former site of the La Salle Theater. The new church and friary of the Franciscan Fathers will replace the 1875 St. Peter’s Church that stood at 816 North Clark Street. The new church, designed by Vitzthum and Burns, will have seating for 1,550 in the main section with two chapels providing 500 more seats. An Arvid Strauss sculpture of Christ and the cross will grace the Madison Street entrance 50 feet above the street.
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Saturday, June 2, 2018

June 2, 2010 -- Feds Say River Should be Safe for Swimming


June 2, 2010 –The Chicago Tribune reports that the Obama administration, in a letter to an Illinois legislative panel, is calling for the Chicago River to be made safe enough for swimming.  The paper reports, “Though it doesn’t outright order the changes needed to make the river safe enough for swimmers, it notes that the federal Clean Water Act requires all waterways to eventually be clean enough for ‘recreation in and on the water.’” [Chicago Tribune, June 2, 2010] Linda Holst, head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s regional water quality branch, says, “We might not be able to attain these standards now, but we need to look toward the future and what is possible.”  Reaction is swift.  Louis Kollias, director of monitoring and research for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, says, “We think the river is clean enough for how it is used today.  Why should we be spending millions of dollars to do this?”


June 2, 2011 – With the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District poised to drop its opposition to tougher water quality standards for the Chicago River, the Chicago Tribune runs an editorial urging the decision forward.  “A cleaner Chicago River,” the editorial observes, “what a gift that would be to Chicagoans.  That wouldn’t just be a boon just for boaters or the tourists who stroll the river’s banks.  It would be a bonanza for the businesses sprouting at water’s edge and the homeowners who have helped fuel an amazing river resurgence.”  The piece continues, “This effort has the support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Mark Kirk.  They know the stakes, and they recall the late Mayor Richard J. Daley’s dream of a Chicago River clean enough for fishing and swimming … Come on, commissioners.  Lead on this.  Clean up the Chicago River.”




June 2, 1960 – Mayor Richard J. Daley orders a suit filed against the Illinois Central Railroad to force it to repair the docks along its property on the south branch of the Chicago River between Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. The stand-off between the city and the I. C. results from a long-standing agreement between the two parties that provided the city with an easement along the river when it was planning an extension of Wacker Drive to Lake Shore Drive. The city contends that maintenance is up to the railroad because the easement was never used, pointing out that the I. C. has erected signs that forbid the mooring of boats in the area unless permission is obtained from the railroad. The whole mess started during the preceding summer when a series of newspaper articles created a stir about the conditions found on railroad property all along the river. The photo above shows this section of the river approximately where the cloud of steam is showing on the left of the photo. Note the cores of Marina City rising on the north side of the river in the background.  The second photo shows the same section of the river as it appears today.
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Friday, June 1, 2018

June 1, 1910 -- Cliff Dwellers President Calls Chicago "Ugliest City on God's Earth"




June 1, 1910 –Hamlin Garden, president of Chicago’s Cliff Dwellers, calls Chicago the “ugliest city on God’s earth” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 1910] at a meeting of the society.  He goes on to add that his hope is that in twenty-five years the city will be “as beautiful as it is huge.” At the same meeting sculptor Lorado Taft explains his plan to implement a “Midway Beautiful” plan in Hyde Park and appeals to his audience and Chicagoans in general to get the plan underway, suggesting that if this could be accomplished, other parts of the city would follow in creating a “Chicago beautiful.”  The top photo shows Madison Street at about the time of Garden's talk, looking east from Clark Street.  The photo below that shows the same scene today.


June 1, 1932 – The city celebrates World’s Fair Day as it looks forward to the Century of Progress World’s Fair, still a year away.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Factory whistles and bells were sounded at noon, to be supplanted in the afternoon by the first demonstration of the 25 chime carillon on the tower of the hall of science.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 1932] The culmination of the day is the dedication of the Hall of Science, held on the south end of the terrace that is formed by the two wings of the building as it extends to the east.  More than 1,500 people attend.  The president of the Century of Progress, Rufus C. Dawes, uses the dedication of the hall to speak of the appropriateness of the fair’s theme.  “This is especially appropriate,” Dawes says, “because this period [the preceding one hundred years] represents also the great period of development of the physical sciences and their application to the services of man.”  Dr. Frank B. Jewett, the vice-president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, also speaks, his remarks underscoring the mission of the Hall of Science.  Jewett says that science, more than any other aspect of society, has influenced life over the past century, but “we have lagged egregiously in the development of our understanding and exercise of the social factors which these new things have introduced into human living … No amount of such understanding can even remotely touch the elements of human greed, avarice and misuse of public trust, but real understanding of the underlying forces will greatly simplify the solution of many problems.” The above photo shows the dedication of the Hall.


June 1, 1912 – Daniel Burnham dies in Heidelberg, Germany at the age of 66 while traveling with his wife, his son, Hubert, his daughter, Mrs. A. B. Wells, and her husband. At the final concert of the North Shore festival the orchestra plays the funeral march from Die Göterdämmerung while the A Cappella choir of Northwestern University offers a song of praise. U. S. President William Howard Taft offers these thoughts, “Mr. Burnham was one of the foremost architects of the world, but he had more than mere professional skill. He had breadth of view as to artistic subjects that permitted him to lead in every movement for the education of the public in art or the development of art in every branch of our busy life.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 2, 1912] The Chicago we know today and other cities throughout the country and the world would be far different places, were it not for the genius of Burnham, who did more than anyone to create the concept of urban planning. "Make big plans," he wrote, "aim high in hope and work, knowing that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die."
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