Connecting the Windy City

Monday, June 11, 2018

June 11, 1863 -- First Brick Building in Chicago Successfully Moved

June 11, 1863 – The Chicago Tribune reports that Mr. John McAuley has successfully moved the first brick building, a two-story structure that will become the New York Dye House.  Safe in its new location at 208 Clark Street, the building is “now in a s good condition as before it was moved,” reports the Tribune.  In a rapidly growing city with lots and lots of room to build, house movers perfected their craft quickly. The Encyclopedia of Chicago notes that the industry had become so common in the middle of the nineteenth century that the Chicago City Council passed ordinances prohibiting more than one building at a time to stand in the streets or for any one building to stand in the streets for more than three days.  Over a period of a few years Chicago building movers became, perhaps, the best in the world, mostly because of the city’s attempt, beginning in 1855, to raise itself out of its own sewage by jacking up a significant number of buildings anywhere from four to fourteen feet.  By 1890 1,710 permits were issued for the movement of structures throughout the city.  That was the year that 33,992 linear feet, or 6.4 miles, of building frontage changed locations within the city.  For more on the ability of Chicago to move its buildings around you can turn to this blog entry in Connecting the Windy City.  The above photo shows the raising of the Robbins Building in 1855, a building 150 feet long, 80 feet wide and five stories high, located at the corner of South Water Street and Wells Street. 

 

June 11, 1892 – A curious coincidence is noted in the Chicago Daily Tribune, “remarked upon by numerous people in marine circles ...” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 11, 1892] On the previous day in Chicago as Benjamin Harrison was being nominated for re-election as President of the United States at the Republican convention in Minneapolis, “the schooner Benjamin Harrison was passing through Harrison street bridge in Chicago, the Protection towing her and the Union astern, with the barge Sunshine following in tow of the Satisfaction.” 

June 11, 1861 – An editorial in the Chicago Tribune once again screams at the foulness of the Chicago River . . . “Cross the river at nightfall and see what an odor of nastiness prevails there.  It will breed a pestilence, this huge, filthy ditch, which reeks with the garbage of distilleries and slaughter houses, sewers, and cesspools, and the odorous refuse of the Gas Company.  We do not remember to have ever before seen it as abominably unclean as now.  The hot season is at hand.  What shall be done?  The question is an easy one to answer.  Set the big pumps at Bridgeport at work, and in twenty-four hours time, fresh, pure water from the lake will take the place of this infamous broth concocted of all uncleanness and pent under the very nostrils of our citizens.  Let the river be pumped out; it is high time.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1861]  It would be another 39 years before the river would be “pumped out” with the opening of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, but this piece does show that the idea for reversing the river had been under consideration for decades before the 1900 completion of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

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Labels: 1863, Clark Street, Down They Forgot as Up They Grew

Sunday, June 10, 2018

June 10, 1946 -- Louis Pasteur Monument Re-Dedicated

June 10, 1946 – A monument to Louis Pasteur, originally dedicated in a 1928 Grant Park ceremony, is rededicated at a new site in a park near Cook County Hospital at 1800 West Harrison Street.  Dr. R. B. Allen, the Dean of the University of Illinois Chicago colleges in the medical district, makes the presentation with the principal address given by Dr. Edwin P. Jordan, the Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The monument is officially handed over to Cook County during the ceremony, and the president of the Cook County Board, Clayton F. Smith, makes the acceptance speech.  The monument was originally erected as a result of a collaboration of civic leaders in 1926, led by Dr. Frank Billings, who had studied under Pasteur.  The park just to the north of the old Cook County Hospital is an appropriate setting for the county’s monument; its creator, Leon Hermant, who was awarded the French Légion d’honneur for the work, was also responsible for much of the architectural sculpture on the Cook County building on Clark Street between Washington Boulevard and Randolph Street.  On the rear of the sculpture’s base, a bronze plaque reads, “One doesn’t ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says, You suffer. This is enough for me. You belong to me and I shall help you. – Louis Pasteur”  When the sculpture was dedicated on October 27, 1928 the ceremony was so important that United States Vice-President Charles Dawes and the French Ambassador to the United States Paul Claudel. were present.  You would not guess that today, as the monument sits largely ignored and deteriorating in a small plot of green space, surrounded by expressway noise and sirens, with a helicopter landing pad between it and the old hospital. The top photo shows the statue at its dedication just west of the Field Museum in 1926.  The photo below that shows the monument as it exists today.

June 10, 1949 – John T. McCutcheon, 79, a cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, dies at his home at 1272 Green Bay Road in Lake Forest. McCutcheon began his career as a newspaper artist at the Chicago Record, later the Chicago Morning News, in 1889.  He worked in various iterations of that paper until he moved to the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1903.  The Online Comics Journal summarizes the jobs of newspaper artists such as McCutcheon at the turn of the century in this way, “Newspaper artists furnished all the illustrative material for the papers of the day.  The halftone engraving process for reproducing photographs had been perfected in 1886, but it was not adapted successfully to the big rotary presses until the New York Tribune did it in 1897.  Until the turn of the century, newspaper sketch artists were graphic reporters, covering all the events that photographers were to cover later.  McCutcheon drew pictures of everything.  He illustrated major news events, often working from sketches made on-the-spot. A typical day might include a trial in the morning, a sporting event or crime scene or a local catastrophe in the afternoon, and an art show opening or a flood or fire in the evening … he was more illustrator than cartoonist, and he also wrote occasional feature pieces and newsstories [sic].”  Without a doubt the most famous of the thousands and thousands of illustrations and cartoons that McCutcheon produced is “Injun Summer,” first published on September 20, 1907, in which a small boy and an older gentleman look over an Indiana corn field as shocks of corn turn into an Indian campground.

June 10, 1923 – The Chicago Tribune prints the following announcement, “On this June morning, which brings its diamond jubilee day, The Chicago Tribune takes the first step toward the creation of a monument which shall commemorate three-quarters of a century of achievement and shall be to this community and this newspaper an inspiration for the future.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1943]  With prizes totaling $100,000 the paper opens “to the architects of all countries’ an opportunity to design “the most beautiful building in the modern world” to be constructed on North Michigan Avenue just west of the paper’s existing printing plant.  For a reasonably concise explanation of the competition and how it came out, you can head to this entry in Connecting the Windy City. 

The goals of the contest are four in number.  They include:

1.  The erection of a structure of enduring beauty which shall be at once a glory to journalism and to the city, and a model of practicality.  The Tribune seeks, in short, artistic nobility and business effectiveness.

2.  The providing of new quarters for the rapidly extending demands of a newspaper which, though it looks back this morning on 75 fruitful years, lives in an unparalleled present.

3.  The offering of financial encouragement so emphatic and so prompt that it will give fresh impetus to the great cause of commercial architecture in America.  Whether this encouragement will discover and develop new talent, or give added recognition to men whose fame is already established, the result of this competition will show.

4.  The addition to the assured architectural splendors of the new North Michigan boulevard of a building which will give the tone and tendency to a thoroughfare that soon will be the most impressive street in the western world.

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Labels: 1946, Chicago Statues

Saturday, June 9, 2018

June 9, 1884 -- Chicago Bridge Opening Ordinance Proposed

June 9, 1884 –The Committee on Harbors and Bridges introduces an ordinance at the City Council meeting, requiring that bridges remain closed for at least 20 minutes after being opened with the time that they are open restricted to ten minutes. The problem of balancing the needs of over a half-million people with river commerce that had 11,203 vessels entering the port in the preceding year is becoming more and more clear.  One alderman expresses the opinion that “citizens were entitled to as much consideration as the river interests … Business in the city should not give way for business on the river” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1884]Another alderman warns against “Shutting off the shipping facilities by guarding the river too closely and subjecting the vessels to too many regulations.” A third says that the problem could be greatly improved if “the bridgetenders were more attentive to their duties.” Still another alderman observes that such an ordinance “would be a great detriment to the lake interests and drive the business to Milwaukee.” The council approves the report of the committee and places the ordinance on file.  The subject would come up over and over again, but it would be close to a hundred and ten years before any meaningful restrictions were placed on the opening of bridges on the river.  The above photo shows the swing bridge at Kenzie Street, the predecessor to today's perpetually raised bascule bridge.

June 9, 1884 – The Chicago Harbor Master issues orders to stop a gang of men attempting to fill in a portion of the Chicago River at the Kirk Brothers Soap Factory, a river front operation that sprawled from approximately where today’s Wrigley Building stands to the east side of the lot where 401 North Michigan Avenue and the new Apple Store stand.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Work has been going on for several weeks, and in plain sight of the city officials engaged in building the bridge at Rush street.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1884] When Harbor Master McCarthy investigates the situation, he finds a row of pilings extending 250 feet along the river and a dozen feet beyond the property line of the factory.  The management of the company says the work is for a coffer-dam to protect the foundation of an addition to the factory, but they admit they have no permit.  They also reply that the “coffer-dam” will not be removed when the work is complete.  They are ordered to stop the construction and a police officer is posted at the site to make sure the order is obeyed.  At the time of the incident James S. Kirk and Co. is one of the world’s largest soap factories with a workforce of 250; by the time the century ends it will employ 600 workers and produce about 100 million pounds of soap each year.  The business ended in 1929. 

June 9, 1894 – The bronze statue “A Signal of Peace” is unveiled in Lincoln Park before 2,000 people.  The statue is a gift from Judge Lambert Tree, a prominent judge of the Cook County Circuit Court who also served as the United States ambassador to Belgium and Russia.  During the ceremony Lincoln Park Board President Crawford reads a letter from Tree in which the judge states, “I fear the time is not distant when our descendants will only know through the chisel and brush of the artist these simple, untutored children of nature who were, little more than a century ago, the only human occupants and proprietors of the vast northwestern empire of which Chicago is now the proud metropolis.  Pilfered by the advance guards of the whites, oppressed by government agents, deprived of their land by the government itself, with only scant compensation; shot down by soldiery in wars fomented for the purpose of plundering and destroying their race, and finally drowned by the ever westward tide of population, it is evident there is no future for them, except as they may exist as a memory in the sculptor’s bronze or stone and the painter’s canvas.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1894]  President Crawford then accepts the gift and the sculptor, C. E. Dallin, contributes brief remarks before he pulls a rope that reveals his work, which rests atop a pedestal northwest of the great equestrian statue of General Grant.  For more on Judge Lambert Tree and his gifts to Chicago you may refer to two pieces in Connecting the Windy City, here and here.  

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Labels: 1884, Chicago Bridges, Chicago RIver, Politics

Friday, June 8, 2018

June 8, 1916 -- Fort Dearborn's Last Surviving Settler Dies

June 8, 1916 –The last surviving white child born in Fort Dearborn, Captain Asiel Z. Blodgett, dies in Waukegan at the age of 84.  In 1858 Blodgett was made a station agent of the Chicago and North Western railroad in Waukegan.  His time there was interrupted when he “with the cooperation of leading citizens and business men, undertook the work of enrolling a sufficient number of men to form a Company.” [http://lakecountyhistory.blogspot.com] In the Battle of Chickamauga, on September 18, 1863, he was shot in the right shoulder.  He stayed with his command and led his men for two more days until a tree branch, blown down by artillery fire, finally felled him.  Returning to civilian life, he resumed his career with the railroad while running a stock farm outside of Waukegan where he bred Clydesdale horses and cattle.  Blodgett also served as the Mayor of Waukegan for two terms.

June 8, 1933 – Sometimes what DOESN”T get done in a city is way more interesting than what DOES.  Alderman Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna long ago observed that “Chicago ain’t no sissy town,” and with this city’s particular form of politics and the constant grappling between commercial, cultural, and environmental factions, a lot of projects that get proposed die before they get very far.  So it was back in 1933 when on this date followers of Dr. Arne L. Suominen, a “nature cure specialist,” submit a petition signed by 10,000 people to the Lincoln Park Board, requesting a space for nude sun bathing.  The reaction of Board President Alfred D. Plamondon?  “I doubt that a fence could be built high enough.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 8, 1933]  It only takes two days for the board to come to a decision, and the explanation for refusing to act on the petition is a perfectly logical one.  Plamondon said, “The exact reason we turned down the petition was the cost of the stockade.  It would have had to be of lumber absolutely free from knotholes, the most expensive grade.  Furthermore, to prevent an epidemic of peeping Toms on the skyscraper apartments bordering the park the stockade itself would have had to be a skyline affair.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1933]  Another member of the board observed, “I’m against it on esthetic grounds, especially now that everybody is drinking 3.2 beer.  Now you take some of these 200 pound papas with aldermanic fronts.  Start parading them around in their birthday clothes and you’ll make the bull mandrill over here in the zoo blush with shame.” 

June 8, 1948 – As the city’s second major airport nears completion, the Chicago Daily Tribune uses its editorial page to suggest a new name for Douglas Field.  “… it would be fitting if Chicago would honor one of its greatest naval air heroes by renaming the terminal for the late Cmdr. Edward H. (Butch) O”Hare,” the editorial suggests.  On February 20, 1942 O’Hare’s plane was the only American plane in the path of a Japanese formation of nine bombers on their way to attack the U. S. S. Lexington off New Britain.  He won the congressional Medal of Honor for shooting down five of the enemy planes and scoring hits on three others. On the night of November 26, 1943 O’Hare and two other pilots took off from the U. S. S. Enterprise to intercept a group of Japanese bombers harassing a U. S. Navy task group northeast of Tarawa.  At about 7:30 p.m. a Japanese fighter opened fire on O’Hare’s Hellcat, and it was last seen fading into the night.  He was presented posthumously with the Navy Cross for which the citation read in part, “Lieutenant Commander O’Hare’s outstanding courage, daring airmanship and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.  He gallantly gave his life for his country.”

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Labels: 1916, Chicago Events