Saturday, July 7, 2018

July 7, 1994 -- Tiger Woods Debuts at Cog Hill


July 7, 1994 –Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, a “slender Cypress, Calif. Prodigy who has been hyped as a future ‘Michael Jordan’ of golf,” competes in the opening qualifying round of the week-long Western Junior Open.  Observing a Par 4 on the sixteenth hole at Cog Hill’s No. 2 course in which Woods flied the green, landed behind a small tree, bumped the ball from there to within 18 feet of the pin, and made the putt, his father, Earl Woods, says, “He does that all the time.  He gets deep in trouble and comes out with a par—sometimes a birdie.  I’ve told him, ‘You’re gonna give me a heart attack.’ He just laughs.” [Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1994]Woods goes on to bogey Number 17 and 18, finishing the day with a 72, four strokes behind leader David Griffith of Aurora, Ohio.  The score leaves him in good position to make the group of 32 qualifiers out of a field of 178 players who are 19 years-old or under.  After the round, Woods says to reporters, “The attention I receive has been a big hassle, a pain in the butt.  No matter how I play, the media ask questions about my golf. My father tries to tone this down, but the questions are always there.”  As the photo above shows, six weeks later Woods would take the championship trophy at the U. S. Amateur Championship at the Tournament Players Club in Ponte Vedra, Florida, after being five down with twelve holes to play.


July 7, 1994 – The Lake County board agrees to join Lake Forest, Highland Park and Highwood in a committee that will determine ways in which Ft. Sheridan can be used.  The county and the three towns agree to appoint representatives to the committee, which will be given the responsibility fordrawing up a comprehensive land-use plan for the closed Army base.  Lake Forest, Highland Park, and the County board will pay 30 percent of the committee’s costs while Highwood will contribute 10 percent.  Cook County board member Robert Buhai of Highland Park says that approval of the coalition at the county’s board meeting clears the way for the group to apply for federal grant money to help move the process along.


July 7, 1977 – The Chicago City Council sets up a special assessment district to collect revenue from State Street merchants for the cost and maintenance of the State Street pedestrian mall, scheduled for completion by March of 1979.  With suburban malls springing up as fast as they can be built and with many patrons who traditionally do their shopping on State Street moving to the suburbs, the thinking is that closing the street to all but bus and pedestrian traffic will make it more attractive to shoppers.  The idea comes a tad too late, and in the 17 years that the mall is open Wieboldt’s, Sear’s, Montgomery Ward, Goldblatt’s, Baskin’s, and the Bond store all go out of business.  There are as many reasons for the mall’s lack of success as there are people to share them.  Chicago’s Planning Commissioner in the 1980’s, Elizabeth Hollander, said, “The mall took the excitement out of State Street.”  Adrian Smith, the lead architect in putting the street back together again, said, “The buses would line up, one after another, like a herd, with their diesel fumes.”  Mayor Richard M. Daley, who hitched a ride on one of the machines that began breaking up the mall in 1996, said, “As Mayor I have found it difficult to find out whose idea this was in the first place.”  [New York Times, February 1, 1996]
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Friday, July 6, 2018

July 6,1915 -- Liberty Bell Special Stops in Chicago


July 6, 1915 –On its way to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, the Liberty Bell Special makes a stop at the LaSalle Street station on a rainy evening.  Three hundred police officers are stationed around the station as “modern patriots by the thousands – grown patriots and patriots of the public schools, war patriots and peace patriots, Republican, and Democrat, and Socialist patriots – stormed the station.”[Chicago Daily Tribune, July 7, 1915]Some were fortunate to gain entrance to the station, but “tens of thousands” had to remain outside in a downpour. When the train arrives, over an hour behind schedule, three Army buglers, “trim and ramrod straight” signal its entrance. Then the line of people that stretches from Van Buren to Monroe Streets begins an orderly entrance to view the Liberty Bell, which stands on a specially constructed flat car, suspended in a wooden frame. A special guest is 10-year-old Margaret Cummins of 1102 Wellington Avenue, whose great-great-great grandfather, Jacob Mauger, took the bell to his farm and buried it when he learned that British soldiers were coming to seize it.  The bell remains in the city until midnight when it begins the next leg of its coast-to-coast trip to Peoria.  This is the second trip that the Liberty Bell has made to the city ... the first visit was a much longer stay at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition as the above photo shows.



July 6, 1935 – The razing of the old Coast Guard station at the mouth of the Chicago River begins, work that is expected to take three weeks to complete.  Dedicated in 1903, the station’s days became numbered when part of it was destroyed by fire in 1933.  As soon as the demolition is complete, work will begin on a new station with work expected to wind up by late fall.  The old station had responded to 8,454 calls for assistance.   The old station with flag still flying proudly is shown above, along with the photo showing the station today.


July 6, 1964 – The 35-story Equitable building, now 401 North Michigan Avenue, is topped out in a light rain as a 35-foot white beam with the names of 6,000 Chicagoans written on it is hoisted into place at the top of the tower.  Also on the beam is the number 192,113,484, corresponding to the population of the United States at this time.  The building, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in the mid-century modern style, is already 75 percent rented.  At a luncheon for about 200 civic and business leaders at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel, James F. Coates, the chairman of the Equitable Life Assurance Company of the United States, says that the landscaped area to be built south of Tribune Tower and in front of the Equitable building will be “the most beautiful in the world.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 7, 1964]  Today the trees that have stood in that area for 44 years have all been cut down and the area to the southwest of the tower is the site of the Michigan Avenue Apple store, which opened in the Fall of 2017.  In the above photo 401 North Michigan rises to the behind J. Seward Johnson's sculpture, Return Visit.
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Thursday, July 5, 2018

July 5, 1938 -- Deerpath Inn Severely Damaged by Fire


July 5, 1938 –The Deerpath Inn in Lake Forest is swept by a fire that does $250,000 damage, most of which is covered by insurance.  Although the walls of the hotel are still standing, the top floor is destroyed with much of the rest of the structure damaged by smoke and water.  The dormitories of Ferry Hall at Lake Forest College are opened for hotel guests who “just had time to snatch their jewelry and clothes before the fire swept their rooms.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 6, 1938]Fire departments from North Chicago, Fort Sheridan and the Great Lakes Naval Training Station are needed to help the Lake Forest firefighters. The first Deerpath Inn was located on Deerpath Road and was converted from a private residence. In 1928 the hotel moved to a new with 102 room in a three-story structure. The second Deerpath Inn was designed by architect William C. Jones who based his design on a Manor House in Chiddingstone, Kent, England. [LFLB History.org]Today the inn, now called the Deer Path Inn, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a member of the Historic Hotels of America.  The inn has a special place in this writer's heart. When I was a sophomore in high school the Army transferred my father to Fort Sheridan, and arriving in a frozen Chicago in November of 1965 after nearly four years in Hawaii, this was the first place we stayed.


July 5, 1911 – An unabated heat wave in the opening days of July reaches a high of 101.5 degrees at 2:00 p.m. on July 5 with devastating results.  In the first five days of the month 125 infants have died from heat-related causes.  The fear is that a far greater number is to come.  Dr. C. St. Clair Drake of the Bureau of Vital Statistics says, “The soured milk fed the children in these hot days has started intestinal disorders which are rapidly growing worse.”  On this day 44 men and women die with one man, “crazed by the high temperature” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 6, 1911] hanging himself.  Ice companies are having tremendous difficulty in transporting ice to the outlying sections of the city since so much of the shipment melts before it reaches its destination.  Shrinkage is usually about ten per cent; ice companies are losing close to 80 per cent of their shipments in trying to get it delivered. As a result, fresh milk, fruit and other food items are in short supply in some parts of the city. Companies are also having difficulty in keeping their horses up and working.  Forty horses have died on city streets and over 200 have been affected so much that they cannot work.  The Humane Society has received 300 emergency calls since July 3.  On this one day alone over 300 horses are felled near the Loop with just one fountain for teamsters to water their horses in the area, that in front of the Y.W.C.A. on South Michigan Avenue.  Cooling temperatures and a slight chance of rain is predicted for July 6.


July 5, 1915 – The South Park Commission places plans for the improvement of Grant Park on exhibit in Blackwell Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The exhibit includes a model of the peristyle, designed by Edward H. Bennett, that will stand in the northwest corner of the park at the corner of Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue.  Other plans include a pair of pylons sixty feet tall to mark the entrance to the park and a line of trees from Randolph Street to Twelfth Street with a gravel walk 30 feet wide beside them.  J. F. Foster, Superintendent of the South Park Commissioners, says that when the work is completed Grant Park “will be a beauty spot unsurpassed by any of the formal gardens in the United States and equaled only by the public gardens of Italy.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1915] One of the great pylons, part of the 1915 plan, that today greets visitors to the park is pictured above.  Note the "Y" symbol in its center panel.
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Wednesday, July 4, 2018

July 4, 1883 -- Lake-Front Park, a "Tramps' Paradise"


July 4, 1883 –A reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribunesets out for a stroll through the Lake-Front park, today’s Grant Park, as “a deliciously cool breeze fanned his perspiring brow.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 4, 1883]He discovers that nearly every bench had one or two occupants, concluding that “as a tramps’ paradise the park was an eminent success.  Deep, raspy snores, indicative of a tranquil slumber, floated up from various quarters of the park, and here and there could be dimly seen a recumbent figure, flat on its back, its arms and legs ungracefully distributed about it, a coat serving as a pillow and darkness as a cove.” Encountering a police officer on his way out of the park, the reporter asks if the situation is normal and if anything is being done about it. “Yes, sometimes we pull ‘em in,” responds the officer. “but not often. It’s only when they’re drunk and come down here disturbing the quiet sleepers.  They’re not all bums that sleeps here.  Some of ‘em are pretty well-to-do, but put on their old clothes, leave their valuables at home, and come down here to sleep.  It’s cooler, you know, than sleeping in a close room.  Come down and try it some night, and I’ll see that you ain’t arrested.” The above photo shows the park as the decade comes to an end.


July 4, 1974 – The Chicago Tribune reports that an attorney for the owner of the Marquette Building on the northwest corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets has labeled a city proposal for saving the building as “premature and not pertinent.” [Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1974]  The city’s proposal had been put forth on June 10 when the city Commissioner of Development and Planning, Lewis H. Hill, suggested that the building could be saved if the owner, Romanek-Golub and Co., was given “lucrative zoning bonuses” that would allow it to raze the buildings in the block bounded by Adams, Dearborn, Clark and Monroe Streets while allowing the Marquette to remain.  The position of Romanek-Golub is that it cannot “earn a fair income on operation of the Marquette under any circumstances” and that landmark status for the building “stigmatizes any building in the eyes of lending agencies and others.”  A position paper in which the Department of Architecture at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle assesses the worth of the building states, “The preservation of the great works of architecture, which are this city’s unique, valuable, and ongoing contribution to the culture and civilization of the twentieth century, must be seen as a positive force that will enhance the quality and thus the life of the city.”


July 4, 1902 – 10,000 people gather in Independence Square at Douglas Park and Garfield Boulevard as Illinois Governor Richard Yates unveils a great fountain as a band plays, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean and 700 school children sing along.  In his speech the governor says, “You may go around the world, and into every port, and you will find no flag so dear to the seekers for freedom as the stars and stripes that wave over there.  It represents an unequaled, a sublime, and unprecedented citizenship.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 5, 1902]  The sculpture by Charles J. Mulligan stands on top of a 15-foot base in the shape of the Liberty Bell.  The children in the sculpture hold Roman candles that once served as fountainheads.  The also carry a flag, bugle and drum in the celebration of an old-fashioned Fourth of July.  Today the fountain basin is dry, surrounded by a ten-foot high fence as the above photo shows.
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Tuesday, July 3, 2018

July 3, 1946 -- Museum of Science and Industry Opens Its Farm Exhibit


July 3, 1946 –The International Harvester Company opens an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, providing “a complete Midwestern agricultural exhibit with mooing cows, cawing crows, and the latest in farm equipment.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1946]The exhibit includes a modern farm home, “lifelike” barnyard animals and natural sound effects.  Part of the exhibit is a historical timeline of the development of farm machinery since the invention of the reaper by Cyrus McCormick in 1831.  Mr. John L. McCaffrey, the International Harvester president, speaks at the dedication, saying that the model farm will illustrate “the close mechanical tie between urban and rural life.”  Dr. George D. Sotddard, the new president of the University of Illinois, also speaks.  The photo above shows workers readying the exhibit for the public in 1946.


July 3, 1912 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a new record for inheritance taxes in Illinois has been set with a tax of $329,131 assessed on the estimated $17,000,000 estate of the late R. T. Crane.  Payment of the tax by July 8, 1912 will save the heirs of the estate more than $16,000 because of a five per cent allowance for prompt payment.  The estate of Marshall Field had set the previous record, with a tax on his estate of $125,000.  The Field estate, however, sheltered nearly a half-million dollars in tax liability by insuring that property in the estate did not pass on to heirs at the time of Field’s death.  Richard T. Crane had the singular fortune of being born the nephew of Chicago lumber baron Martin Ryerson.  At the age of 23, the young man moved to Chicago and began a partnership with his brother.  Crane’s timing could not have been better.  He had established himself as an astute businessman in the city for a years before the 1871 fire.  After the fire his mill met the appetite of the city, supplying it with pipe, steam engines and even elevators as architecture moved from four- or five-story buildings to soaring towers.  The company’s manufacture of enameled cast iron bathroom fixtures also synced up nicely with the demand for luxurious indoor sanitary facilities.  In 1910 the Crane company factories in Chicago employed over 5,000 men.  For more information on the Crane company and the son of its founder you can turn to this section of Connecting the Windy City.


July 3, 1976 – The Chicago Tribune reports that artist Marc Chagall has donated a set of windows, entitled “The American Windows,” to the Art Institute of Chicago as a Bicentennial gift.  The windows will measure eight by thirty feet and will be installed in an area overlooking McKinlock Court, a space illuminated by natural light.  Chagall holds the city in warm regard as a result of the experiences he had in 1973 and 1974 in the creation and dedication of his mosaic The Four Seasons, installed on the east side of the plaza of the First National Bank of Chicago, now Exelon Plaza.

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Monday, July 2, 2018

July 2, 1894 -- Pullman Strikers Issued an Injunction at Blue Island


July 2, 1894 –A United States Marshal reads an injunction to 2,000 strikers in Blue Island, an order restraining them from interfering with the operation of the Rock Island and 20 other railroads after which the assembled men “howled defiance at the Marshal and his deputies and promptly violated the injunction by throwing a box car across the tracks and stopping all traffic for the night.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1894]The injunction comes over a month after 3,000 workers go on strike at the Pullman Palace Car Company on Chicago’s South Side.  By the end of June, the strike had spread to 27 states, forcing the United States Attorney General to issue the order, which is read in Blue Island on this night. The local and state police forces are outmanned, and call for help from the federal government as stranded railroad passengers are refused food and water by local merchants.  President Grover Cleveland is forced to order federal troops from Fort Sheridan to restore order and clear the way for mail, passengers and inter-state freight to begin rolling again.


July 2, 1890:  Charles L. Hutchinson returns fro Europe, bringing with him a treasure trove of paintings destined ultimately to find their way to the Art Institute.  A year earlier Hutchinson, while in Florence, saw the collection of Prince Anatoly Nikolaievich Demidoff, a Russian industrialist and diplomat who had died shortly before.  It was Hutchinson’s original intention to make arrangements to have the prince’s collection displayed in Chicago and then returned to Florence, but upon arriving he discovered that Demidoff’s widow was looking to sell the paintings.  Hutchinson quickly arranged to meet Martin Ryerson, a wealthy Chicago steel tycoon, in Paris, and the two men get to work contacting money men back home, including Marshall Field and Phllip Armour.  For $200,000 the Chicago syndicate got thirteen paintings that Hutchinson describes in this way, “The collection is indeed superb.  It would be a worthy addition to the Louvre itself.  The names of the artists include Rembrandt, Hobbema, Van Ostade, Van Dyke, Johann Steen, Terburg, Teniers, Adrian Van der Velde, William Van der Velde, and Rubens.  With the exception of the Rembrandt there is nowhere in America anything to compare with these examples of the old Dutch artists.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3, 1890]  Jan Steen’s groovy “The Family Concert” of 1666 was part of the collection, given to the museum by Hutchinson in 1891.


July 2, 1952 – The final section of the $22,000,000 Edens expressway is opened to traffic.  The last section of the highway connects the highway north of Lake-Cook Road to Skokie Road in Highland Park.  The completed expressway is named after William G. Edens, a Chicago banker who was the sponsor of the state’s first highway bond issue 34 years earlier.  The above photo, taken in 1952, shows the beginning of the new highway passing over Cicero Avenue.
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Sunday, July 1, 2018

July 1, 1910 -- Comiskey Park Opens as Sox Lose


July 1, 1910 –Comiskey Park opens for its first game as 24,900 fans watch the Chicago White Sox lose to the St. Louis Browns, 2-0.  Despite the loss, the opening of the new park is a success that “crowned the tremendous efforts which have been put forth in the last few weeks to get the mammoth plant ready for its christening and it passed through its baptism as if to the manor born, while tens of thousands of the Old Roman’s friends cheered at every possible opportunity to show their appreciation of the gift he had prepared for them.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1910]A thousand people wait in line to purchase tickets when the gates at the new park open at 1:00.  A brass band greets entering fans, who cheer the Chicago team when it “emerged from its dressing rooms, clad in new coming out gowns of dazzling white, nattily trimmed with blue and designed by G. Harris White, dentist, pitcher, and outfielder as well.”  Cheers rise again as Charles Comiskey is presented a big banner at home plate as a band on the field plays “Hail to the Chief.” In January of 1909 Charles Comiskey, who had owned the club for ten years, bought a plot of land used by the city as landfill and commissions Zachary Taylor Davis, a graduate of the Armour Institute, to design a new ballpark for the White Sox.  On March 17,1910 the cornerstone for the new park is laid.  Less than four months later the park opens. The same architect designed Weeghman Field, today’s Wrigley Field, on the north side which opened four years later.


July 1, 1933 – The Museum of Science and Industry opens its doors for the first time at 10:00 a.m.  No formal ceremony is held.  Only the great Central Hall will open as many of the exhibits that will eventually be displayed are being shown at the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront a few miles to the north.  All of the exhibits at the museum will be free with the exception of the Coal Mine, for which there will be a twenty-five cent charge.  A feature of the museum will be its interactive displays, exhibits “capable of being operated by switches or levers, to demonstrate scores of processes or inventions.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 2, 1933]  The museum, originally the Palace of Fine Arts at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 housed the Field Museum of Natural History for a time, but then fell into decay.  In fact, the South Park Board voted to raze it in 1921.  Fortunately, that didn't happen.  The photo above shows the condition of the building before the effort to restore it began.


July 1, 1940 – The 440-foot nautical-themed beach house at North Avenue Beach opens.  The facility has 14 showers and 1,440 baskets that allow men and women to check personal effects while heading for the beach.  In order to give the “ship” a credible lake-worthy appearance the art deco structure is equipped with a crow’s nest, booms, yard arms, lanterns, portholes and flags.  The North Avenue Beach was completed as part of a $1,250,000 Works Progress Administration project, that wound up in 1939, an undertaking that added 875,000 square feet of new parkland extending north to Fullerton Avenue with a new overpass at that juncture.  The beach house is a design by architect Emanuel V. Buchsbaum.  It was replaced in 2000 by a new facility with 22,000 square feet of space. The above photo shows the beach house as it appears today.
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