Wednesday, August 8, 2018

August 8, 1959 -- Pan-American Games Hyped in Huge Parade


August 8, 1959 –More than 100,000 people line Michigan Avenue as 50 floats and marching units usher the Pan-American games into the city.  The parade, proclaimed the Chicago Daily Tribune, “had everything … ‘the aye-yi-yi’ of Mexican singers, accompanied by mellow guitars.  There was a Mayan temple and an ancient warrior from Guatemala.  There was a platoon of youngsters in full bull fight regalia.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 8, 1959]There was even a reluctant donkey, part of the Jamaican entry, that refused to budge at Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue, causing his minder to tie him to a light pole and walk away.  The police were having none of that and ordered the four-legged parade entrant to keep it moving. The Pan Am Games ran from August 27 to September 7.  It would be the first time in the history of the event that the United States sent an Olympic-caliber team.  The games were a demonstration of the city’s ability to pull off a major event on short notice … Chicago had just 18 months to prepare for the Pan Am Games after the original host city, Cleveland, pulled out of its commitment, citing financial problems. There were some glitches to be expected after throwing an international event such as this together on such short notice. Peru’s rifle team had its rifles confiscated when it arrived at the airport.  The 17 members of the women’s basketball team from Chile were crammed into to two hotel rooms.  The soccer team from Brazil was sent to a swimming pool to practice while the Brazil swimming team was delivered to a soccer field.  A Brazilian rower ended up dead, shot through the heart on the campus of North Central College.  And prior to the steeplechase event at the track and field competition some prankster stocked the water obstacles with live fish, delaying the event for an hour while the fish were pulled.  But it came off.  The City that Works made it all work.


August 8, 1933 -- Women’s Court hosts Sally Rand, “whose widely publicized nudity is keeping her busy putting on half a dozen shows daily in a loop theater and at the World’s Fair.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 9, 1933] Listening to a police officer say that her fan dance “made his pulse beat more quickly … [Rand] looked on … with apparent satisfaction.”  At the conclusion of the court case the dancer is fined $25 for staging an indecent performance in the Chicago Theater.  Judge Erwin J. Hasten, the jurist on the bench, says to Rand, whom he calls Sally, “The purpose of this judgment is not in a vindictive, punitive sense.  I’m merely trying to gain this end: that Sally, if she is to continue dancing in Chicago, put on some clothes.”  Rand appears in her own defense.  When the Assistant States Attorney “with a display of nervousness” asks Rand if she could not dance just as well with “the essential parts of her body covered,” she replies, “I cawn’t answer that, because I don’t know what the ‘essential’ parts of my body are …The reason I wear nothing but the fans in my dance is because the feathers catch in my clothing if I wear any, preventing me from using my fans in the way I wish to use them.” 


August 8, 1932:  After a dedication address by United States Senator from Illinois Otis F. Glenn, a 20-foot by 30-foot flag of the United States is raised for the first time to the top of the new 90-foot flagpole atop Tribune Tower in a dedication held on the thirty-fifth floor of the building.  In his dedication speech Senator Glenn says, “History has been made where this flag shall henceforth fly.  The first founders of Chicago settled on the land where the Tribune Tower now stands.  Fort Dearborn was here – almost within a stone’s throw Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency.  Here from a great swamp has grown a great, strenuous, vital city, teeming with four million vigorous, progressive Americans.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 9, 1932]  The proceedings are broadcast over W.G.N. radio and from ten loudspeakers around Tribune Tower to the street below.

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Tuesday, August 7, 2018

August 7, 1978 -- Columbus Plaza construction Begins


August 7, 1978 –Construction begins on Columbus Plaza, the first residential building to go up on the Illinois Central Railroad property between Randolph and Wacker Drive on the south and north and Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive on the west and east.  The 47-story building will contain 552 studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments. Five buildings have already been erected on the 83-acre site since development began in 1969, but they are all commercial or hotel buildings.  Two residential buildings have been completed east of Lake Shore Drive in this time period, the Outer Drive East condominium and Harbor Point; today they can be found to the west of the reconstructed Lake Shore Drive.  The tower is the product of the architectural firm of Fujikawa Conterato Lohan and Associates.


August 7, 1973 – Following the third murder of a woman in Grant Park in less than a year, the Chicago Tribune editorializes about “Our Unsafe City.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1973] “That women should be killed in the front yard of downtown Chicago,” the editorial states, “is shocking and shameful.  That the murders remain unsolved compounds the shame.”  The Tribune offers three areas that should be considered immediately.  “The facts call for more than hand wringing.  They call for more rigorous police work in the future than in the past,” the editorial states.  Along with that, “The facts call also for constant concern on the part of everyone for the safety of both oneself and of others.  Public awareness of risk needs to be heightened, tho of course short of panic or neurosis.” And, finally, “… prudence suggests staying away from wooded areas without sight lines to passers-by, even when those areas are in heavily used public parks … Broad daylight is not sufficient protection.”  The editorial concludes, “It is shameful that, more and more, people have reason to become wary like antelopes among predators.  The harsh fact is that vicious crime in public places is an ever present possibility in cities, including Chicago.  Heightened vigilance by both police and public offers the best—tho an imperfect—defense.”


August 7, 1910:  The Chicago Daily Tribune once again editorializes about the evil of the Illinois Central Railroad, writing, “Yesterday was a perfect day in Chicago.  The sky was cloudless and the lake a blue turquoise, save along the eastern edge of the south side.  There the vile smoke from a hundred coughing locomotives of the Illinois Central railroad made it seem the gateway to the inferno.  All along one-half of what should be the most magnificent city water front of the world went the disfiguring trains drawn by engines, the stacks of which belched forth clouds of smoke and showers of embers.  The public library, the Art institute, the hotels, the business blocks, and miles and miles of private residences are all begrimed and polluted by this nuisance.  Books, pictures, and furniture are discolored by it, health is endangered, and a property loss of millions constantly increased.” The paper presents only one viable alternative:  electrification.  Yet, it is pessimistic about such a remedy ever occurring.  “A corporation like the Illinois Central never improves its service until the balance goes against it,” the editorial ends.  “Or until a municipality takes it by the back of its corporate neck and squeezes it into compliance with a popular and imperative demand.”  At this point the Illinois Central operated over 300 steam trains into and out of Chicago.  It would take 16 more years before the commuter tracks were electrified from downtown to Matteson.
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Monday, August 6, 2018

August 6, 1946 -- Roosevelt College Reveals Plans for Auditorium Building


August 6, 1946 –Edward J. Sparling, the president of Roosevelt College, tells of the school’s plans to restore the newly purchased Auditorium building to its original beauty.  Sparling says that “old paintings will be restored, remodeling of the hotel into classrooms and offices will follow the original structure as nearly as possible, and the theater will be operated by the college or leased to someone who wants to bring back music and theatrical productions to the 57 year old stage.”  Mrs. Julius Weil, the daughter of architect Dankmar Adler, the architect of the Auditorium building along with Louis Sullivan, says that General Sherman’s march to the sea in the Civil War was instrumental in her father’s plans for the auditorium.  “In every house that was looted,” says Mrs. Weil, “my father eagerly searched for books on architecture.  When he returned to Chicago he cooperated with Theodore Thomas in working out arches and types of construction for better acoustics.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 7, 1946]Sparling says that the renovated building will allow the college to serve 2,000 more veterans. The $400,000 purchase price of the building, he reveals, is the result of “loans by friends, gifts, efficient administration, and profit from the sale of the building at 231 South Wells Street.”


August 6, 1971 – The largest crowd in the history of Ravinia Park comes to the outdoor venue on the North Shore to see Jesus Christ Superstar.  The crowd of 18,718 people breaks the previous record, set by Judy Collins, of 18,491, a week earlier.  More than 150 police officers are on duty, dispatched from five suburbs to patrol a mellow crowd.  “Despite the religious theme of last night’s event,” the Chicago Tribune reported, “The thousands of young listeners looked and acted little differently than at more mundane outdoor rock concerts.  Botttles of wine were passed freely, along with the ever-present marijuana cigarets.” [Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1971] The performance company that provided the show had previously performed in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Toronto.  The Ravinia show attracted at least 5,000 more people than any of the troupe’s previous performances.


August 6, 1974:  The Queen of Andersonville, a tour boat operated by Wendella Sightseeing Boats, sinks just south of the Coast Guard station at the Chicago lock where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan.  Hero of the Day is Bob Agra, the captain of a Mercury sightseeing boat, who maneuvers his boat, loaded with about 70 people, alongside the stricken Wendella craft and helps evacuate all 23 passengers, many of them wearing life jackets.  “Some of the rescued people were a little shook up,” Agra states.  “But they weren’t hysterical.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1974]  Agra attaches the foundering boat to his own with three lines and tows it to an area behind the breakwater, southwest of the lock.  All three lines eventually break, and the Queen of Andersonville sinks before the hoist at the Coast Guard station can be lowered to secure the vessel.  Agra's son, Bob, who was on board that day as a deck hand, is shown above.  Today he is head of Chicago's First Lady, partners with the Chicago Architecture Foundation's premier architectural tour on the Chicago River.
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Sunday, August 5, 2018

August 5, 1935 -- Leo Burnett Agency Formed


August 5, 1935 –The announcement is made that a new advertising agency, known as the Burnett Company, Inc. with offices at 360 North Michigan Avenue, has been formed.  The founder, Leo Noble Burnett, was born in St. Johns, Michigan where he resided until his graduation from the University of Michigan in 1914. He came to Illinois, working briefly as a reporter for the Peoria Journalbefore moving on to edit the company magazine for the Cadillac Motor Car Company.  Burnett served a stint in the United States Navy during World War I before becoming vice-president of the Lafayette Motor Company and later, vice-president of the Homer McKee Advertising Agency in Indianapolis.  In 1930 he joined Erwin, Wasey & Company where he oversaw the account of the Minnesota Canning Company, a marketer of Niblets and Green Giant canned vegetables.  On August 1, 1935 Burnett resigned and four days later began the new firm with three accounts: Minnesota Canning, Hoover, and Realsilk Hosiery.  The motto of the new agency became “Reach for the Stars.”  AdAgesaid of the man, “Although a short, somewhat stout man with little physical charisma or pretense, Burnett became a central figure in the Chicago advertising scene as his agency grew competitive with the major New York shops. In 1953, the shop Leo Burnett Company moved onto the list of the top 10 American agencies with billings of $46.4 million.  The following year it won Philip Morris Cos.’ Marlboro account; Burnett took a personal role in repositioning the brand from a women’s cigarette to a men’s with the introduction of the ‘Marlboro Man’ campaign.”  Burnett died at his home in Lake Zurich on June 7, 1971 after putting in a full day at the office.  In 1999 Advertising Agenamed him as the third most important advertising person of the century.  The same publication named the agency’s Marlboro Man, Jolly Green Giant, Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger among the top ten advertising icons of the century.  No other agency in the country had more than one in the list.


 August 5, 1912 – As the new National Progressive Party with Theodore Roosevelt at its head is at the beginning of its rise, suffragettes parade through Chicago in recognition of the fact that the new party will carry a plank in its platform that advocates giving women the right to vote.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, “A crowd of many hundreds, flaunting banners and headed by a band, formed in front of the Art Institute and marched to the Coliseum.  It included women of every age and many stations in life.  There were gray haired grandmothers and young girls still with their schooling unfinished; mothers of families and old maids.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 5, 1912] So many women showed up for the parade that it was difficult to get the march organized.  At one point the main group of marchers was asked to move back about six feet.  Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, responding to the request, said, “What!  Retreat?  We never retreat!”  A squad of mounted police leads the procession, followed by a marching band, the band followed by a group of young women from the University of Chicago. The lead automobile carried Miss Jane Addams, Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth and Mrs. Isabella Blaney, a delegate from California.  Other cars follow, but the most impressive portion of the procession is made up of the ranks of women, many of whom have never been in a public march before.  One Methodist deaconess, Miss Estella Manley, says, “We are progressives and believe in suffrage because we see the necessity of a progressive movement in our work against the traffic in women.  No one realizes how ineffective a law can be and how much a community is in need of progressive lawmakers until one has done some uplift work in a community.”


 August 5, 1970:  With 200 police officers gathered from seven other suburbs on hand, Highland Park’s Ravinia Park gives its stage to Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band.  The Chicago Tribune describes the scene as a mob consisting of “20,000 clapping screaming youths listening to the Full Tilt Boogie band . . . Highland Park Police Chief Michael Bonamarte waiting for a riot.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1970]  “In her satin hooker clothes,” Tribune music critic Linda Winer writes, “no less than a full fall of purple feathers sitting atop her tangled hair, foot stamping, bottom waving, Southern Comfort swigging Miss Joplin could almost convince you to just watch her sing all night.”  Eight days after the concert at Ravinia Joplin gives her final public concert at Harvard Stadium.  On October 4, in the middle of recording her album Pearl, she fails to show up at the studio, and at the age of 27 she is found, dead of an overdose at Hollywood’s Landmark Hotel.
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Saturday, August 4, 2018

August 4, 1902 -- Chicago Subway Recommended after East Coast Fact-Finding Tour


August 4, 1902 –The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the conclusions that members of the city council’s local transportation committee have generated as a result of their inspection of transportation systems in Manhattan, Boston and Brooklyn.  Alderman Milton J. Foreman says, “… a system of subways for street cars, at least in the congested districts, is an essential if Chicago is to have good, comfortable, and rapid transportation.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 4, 1902] Out of the trip comes a series of recommendations that include: (1) Chicago’s transportation condition cannot be improved until a subway is built and duplicated tracks and terminals are done away with; (2) the best service will be obtained when all lines – underground, surface, and elevated – are operated by one company; and (3) a subway can be built without significant damage to property since the Boston subway “passes through the same character of earth that would be met with in Chicago” and damages to buildings during construction amounted to less than $10,000.  It would be 41 years before the recommendations made in 1902 resulted in the city’s first subway.



August 4, 1928 – Plans for the 47-story One North LaSalle Street are announced, a building in the art deco style to be built at the northeast corner of LaSalle and Madison Streets.  It will replace the Tacoma building.  Work is expected to begin on May 1, according to K. M. Vitzhum and Co., the architects of the building.  Speculation is that the building will be seven feet shorter than the Pittsfield building on Washington Boulevard and six feet shorter than the First United Methodist Church of Chicago building on Washington and Clark, the two tallest buildings in the city.  The first eight floors of the building will be “artificially ventilated” to “reduce the ear strain caused by wailing taxicab brakes and the miscellaneous street uproar which supposedly blends into a soothing medley of sounds by the time it reaches the ninth floor.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 5, 1928] The Tacoma building, which will be razed, was completed in 1887, following the plans of Holabird and Roche, a tower that some claim to be the first metal-framed skeleton building in the world.  Below One North LaSalle above is a photo of the Tacoma Building as it stood at the corner of LaSalle and Madison.


August 4, 1903:  President Foreman of the South Park Board receives a letter from Marshall Field in which the merchant and real estate baron shares his desire to move forward with his offer to pay for the Field Columbian Museum as soon as the lakefront ground is ready for the site.  In the letter Field writes, “I am ready to go forward with the building whenever materials and labor are at reasonable figures, which probably will be as soon as the ground is ready for building.  Regarding the exact location, I think that can be safely left to your board.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 5, 1903]  The site the park board ultimately chooses for the museum is exactly the location of today’s Buckingham Fountain, east of the railroad tracks and at the foot of Congress Street, extending north and south from Van Buren to Harrison.  Foreman responds to the offer, saying, “The Field museum will be the central gem in the greater Grant Park.  It will stand on a slight elevation, will be visible from all directions, and will present an especially imposing view.  The building, I am sure, will be the finest of its kind in the world.  Mr. Field is not in the habit of doing things half way or half-heartedly.”  Field would die in 1906, and it would be another 15 years after his death before his namesake museum would be opened after a decade of acrimony and lawsuits contesting the choice of the original site in Grant Park.   
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Thursday, August 2, 2018

August 2, 1978 -- American Society of Civil Engineers Commemorates Chicago River Reversal


August 2, 1978 –The American Society of Civil Engineers unveils a plaque at the Michigan Avenue bridge that celebrates the reversal of the Chicago River as a national engineering landmark. David Novick, the president of the society, says, “This monumental engineering feat contributed to the health and growth of Chicago, enabling it to develop into the great metropolitan area it is today.” [Chicago Tribune, August 3, 1978]Both Novick and Nicholas J. Melas, the president of the Metropolitan Sanitary District, accept the plaque on behalf of the district and the city. The ceremony takes place on the Ninety-Third anniversary of a rain storm that forced the sewage borne by the river far out into the lake, threatening the city’s fresh water intake cribs. 


August 2, 1891 – The Chicago Daily Tribune provides an update on the improvements that are ongoing at the new United States Army base at Fort Sheridan. The new barracks east of the water tower are being constructed in order to house two companies of the Fifteenth Regiment of infantry along with two companies of cavalry and two of artillery.  The cost of the new quarters will be $200,000, about $5,170,000 in today’s dollars.  Two “magnificent stables” are being built at a cost of $22,000 apiece or $569,000 in 2017 dollars.  Each stable will house 80 horses.  A main dining hall is also being built with room for 1,000 soldiers.  The cost of the building will be $48,000 or $1,242,000 in today’s dollars.  Four captains’ homes will be built near the lake at a cost of $9,000 or $235,000 for each in today’s dollars.  Finally, a 300-yard long Officers’ Club will be erected with separate quarters for a dozen officers.  This will cost $70,000 or $1,812,250 in 2017 dollars.  The land for the new garrison was purchased in 1887, and the Chicago architectural firm of Holabird and Roche selected to design the buildings.  One of the stables at the fort is shown in the above photo, these days a re-purposed residential building.


August 2, 1934:  Led by Chief Investigator John O’Donnell, a police squad raids six villages at the Century of Progress World’s Fair and closes down two performances judged to be risqué.  Gambling wheels are confiscated at the exhibitions of Paris, Tunis, Ireland, Mexico and Spain and in a section called the Bowery.  At the last site an exhibition called “The Red Light Girls” is closed and a fan dancer, Faith Bacon, is forced to put on pants for her final appearance.   The general manager of the fair, Major Lenox R. Lohr, unleashes the police on the concessions after giving them a warning to clean up their act.  After allowing the sale of liquor at lunch counters within the grounds, agreeing to more signage within the grounds promoting attractions, and reducing the charges for electricity and garbage removal at venues, Lohr warns the venders, “We’ll give you all the help within reason and more money will be spent by A Century of Progress during the month of August than has been spent in any month in 1934 or 1933 . . . but the lid is not off.”
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Wednesday, August 1, 2018

August 1, 1984 -- School of the Art Institute Gets the Playboy Mansion


August 1, 1984 –At a press conference at the Playboy Mansion, 1340 North State Parkway, Christie Hefner, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Playboy Enterprises, Inc., announces that the firm will lease and later donate its 72-room mansion to the School of the Art Institute for use as a dormitory.  Hefner says the four-story building will be leased to the school for ten dollars a year for a five-year period.  She addss, “It is our intent to make a permanent donation within that time.” [Chicago Tribune, August 2, 1984]Playboy also will sell the south addition of the building to the school for $500,000. Neil Hoffman, the president of the School of the Art Institute, says that the mansion will be renamed Hefner Hall and that it is hoped it will be in use as a dormitory by January, Plans are to house 50 students in the former mansion, two to a room with the school assuming the operating expenses of the new dormitory, which have been running close to $500,000 a year.  Nine years later the mansion was sold to developer Bruce Adams and converted into four luxury condominiums.


August 1, 1884 – The new bridge at Rush Street is having more than its share of adjustment problems.  Problems in aligning the south approach to the bridge with the bridge itself delayed the opening, but those difficulties were eventually worked out, and the bridge was opened earlier in the week.  It worked fine until 8:15 a.m. on August 1 when a crew shift took place and the new bridge tender gave the engineer on duty a signal to swing the bridge shut.  Unfortunately, “He obeyed so readily that a crash followed.  The pressure had been applied so suddenly that there was nothing left but for something to give way.  Accordingly a mouthful was taken out of the cogwheels by which the traveler is worked, the shafting was demoralized, and the bridge stopped short.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 2, 1884] A swing bridge such as the one at Rush Street sat on a turntable in the center of the river, and when such a bridge was rotated, pedestrians were not asked to leave the bridge.  On this day a dozen men and three women were on the bridge when it was swung open and “their consternation was great on being told that they stood a good chance to camp out on the bridge for several days if they preferred to wait till it swung shut again.”. The men chose to be transferred to the north side of the river in a dredge “half filled with water” but the women were reluctant to follow.  Several tugs passed the trio “but no attention was paid to the fluttering handkerchiefs and the feminine pleadings” until the captain of the tug Mentor came to the women’s assistance.  After “a number of advances and retreats had been made” and “some lively hopping to reach a plank that had been thrust out” the women were delivered to the State Street bridge just to the east where they once again found dry land.  Interestingly, the Schlitz warehouse just west of the Rush Street bridge in the above photo stood approximately where Trump International Hotel and Tower stands today.


August 1, 2001:  Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin reports on a “freewheeling interview” he has had with Donald Trump, a “brash New Yorker who would bring the world’s tallest building [to Chicago].”  Kamin concludes, “This is a man, who it became clear as we talked, gives the bottom line the top priority.”  One of the topics Kamin discusses with the developer concerns the possibility that Trump might build the tallest building in the world on the site of the former Sun-Times building.  Trump’s reacts by saying, “Would I like to do that?  The answer is yes.  Does it have marketing value?  I think the answer is yes.  But the fact is, it’s very costly.  Does the additional cost justify it?  That’s a determination I’ll have to make.”  Kamin bookends his reporting with observations from architect Stanley Tigerman who “almost hissing” says of Trump, “He’s Mr. Glitz.  He’s shown an utter incapacity for doing great buildings.  He has no taste . . . He’s a Gucci carpetbagger . . . You’ve got to have a great client to do a really good building.  You’re lucky if Trump doesn’t get financing.”
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