Wednesday, August 15, 2018

August 15, 1893 -- Grant Park Workers' Mass Meeting


August 15, 1893 –A mass-meeting of unemployed workers is held at 2:30 p.m. at the Columbus Statue in the Lake-Front Park, today’s Grant Park.  The gathering, organized by the Allied Woodworkers’ Trades Council, is made up of delegates of various trades, among them cabinet makers, piano varnishers and finishers, upholsterers, carvers, box makers, and sash, door and blind makers. The call to the meeting suggests it will deal with the questions: (1) Why are we idle and how can we be furnished employment; (2) Is it men or conditions we have to deal with; and (3) Shall we warn the unemployed of other cities, towns and States to stay away from Chicago or shall we let them come? [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 15, 1893] The Depression to which the workers are responding could possibly have been the worst in the country’s history. Even as the great World’s Columbian Exposition was drawing millions to Chicago, the nation’s gold reserves fell steeply, touching off a financial panic that closed four thousand banks by the end of the year.  Some fifty railroads failed in the crisis, a fact that hit Chicago, the railroad capital of the nation, particularly hard.  Unemployment climbed to 20 percent, and Chicago police were stationed at railroad stations to keep the unemployed from coming into the city. It would not be until 1897 that things would begin to improve. 


August 15, 1860 – The Chicago Press and Tribune provides its annual review of the city’s fire department, introducing its inventory with a homage to “the gallant wearers of red shirts and fire hats, that on the occasion of a jingling of wild bells in an alarm of fire, used to start up from all corners and nooks, and come dashing up areas and round corners …”  [Chicago Press and Tribune, August 14, 1860] The fire department took a leap forward in 1858 when it purchased the first steam-powered fire engine, dubbed the “Long John” after the nickname of the mayor, “Long John” Wentworth.  In the two years that followed, “… hand machines have been sold to other cities, costly hose carts have sought the rural districts to be the wonder of the smaller communities, the steam machines with a few hand engines and hose carts located in different remote sections of the city …” constitute the fire department, manned by paid professionals.  With just a few strokes of a bell, the paper reports, “… in less than two minutes steam engines with attendant hose carriages … all drawn by over thirty powerful horses are in the streets moving at a hard gallop toward the scene of conflagration.”  A partial inventory of the department includes: (1) The Long John, drawn by four horses and housed on LaSalle Street near Washington.  The engine has a force of eleven men, including an engineer, a fireman, two drivers, five pipemen, and an engine house watchman.  (2) The Enterprise, a Seneca Falls machine housed on State Street near Harrison, drawn by four horses with the same complement of personnel as the Long John.  (3) The Atlantic, a Seneca Falls machine housed on Michigan Avenue near the river with four horses and a force of eleven.  (4) The Island Queen, a third Seneca Falls machine, housed on West Lake Street with four horses and a crew of eleven.  (5) The U. P. Harris, a Philadelphia machine, housed on Jackson Street near Clinton on the west side with four horses and eleven crew members.  (6) The Little Giant, a moskeag machine, housed on Dearborn Street near Washington with two horses and eleven crew members.  The Long John, with forty pounds of steam pressure, could produce four streams of water through 100 feet of hose horizontally 150 feet; with sixty pounds of steam pressure two streams of water could be thrown 160 feet horizontally. The machine weighed five tons and cost about $5,000.  The Long John is shown in the above photo.


August 15, 1911 – As 50,000 watch the third day of the Aero meet being held in Grant Park, two accidents take the lives of aviators and silence the crowds.  Mike Badger of Pittsburgh, flying a Baldwin biplane, dies as he executes a low-level flyover of Grant Park, ending with a dramatic climb that tears his plane apart.  The plane falls 50 feet and the wealthy daredevil dies at St. Luke’s Hospital.  St. Croix Johnstone, flying a Moisant monoplane, dies as his plane falls into Lake Michigan a little after 6:00 p.m. about a mile off shore opposite Twelfth Street.  He is attempting to do a corkscrew maneuver when 800 feet above the lake the “spidery monoplane tipped a bit, shot downward with a sickening swoop, overturning just before it splashed In the water.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 16, 1911]   Before he goes up on that day, Badger holds a wide-ranging interview with a Tribune reporter, saying, “That’s the nuttiest idea people have about aviators.  They think they don’t mind death at all.  Why, I set just as much store by my life as you do.  I love life.  They think we go out of our way to invite death.  They say we don’t take ordinary precautions.  I don’t consider that I take one chance in 10,000 with my life . . . You must be sure of your machine.  I am sure of mine.  You must be sure of your good muscle and your clear brain.  I am sure of mine.”
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Tuesday, August 14, 2018

August 14, 1936 -- Benjamin Marshall Home Sold to Nathan Goldblatt


August 14, 1936 –Nathan Goldblatt signs a contract for the purchase of the residence built by Benjamin Marshall in Wilmette on Sheridan Road opposite the Baha’i Temple. It is reported that Marshall, the architect who designed the Drake Hotel, the South Shore Country Club and the Blackstone Theater and a host of other impressive buildings, had reportedly spent over a million dollars on the home and its furnishings.  The Spanish-influenced home commanded a view of Lake Michigan … the Sheridan Shores Yacht Club used the home’s basement as its clubhouse. Marshall’s work studio had a space for 45 draftsmen.  The home had a 50-foot-high, 75-by-100-foot tropical garden with palm and banana trees. The home’s swimming pool was lined with turquoise tiles from Algiers. Goldblatt reportedly paid $60,000 for the home but did not stay there long, and in 1950 Wilmette had the home razed.  Only the wrought-iron gates remain on the property, which is today owned by the Baha’i Temple.



August 14, 1960 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a building at 739 North State Street has been raised, and the rubble is made up of the remains of the flower shop that Dion O’Banion ran, a place “where murders, boot-legging, and hi-jackings were planned amidst flowering plants and the scent of roses.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 14, 1960] Ironically, at the time “the same building that once served as the headquarters of a bloody band of killers during the guzzling decade of the twentieth century” was most recently used as a meeting place for the Young People’s club of Holy Name Cathedral.  In April of 2017 it was disclosed that JDL Development had agreed to pay $110 million to the Archdiocese of Chicago for the 90,000 square-foot property three blocks west of North Michigan Avenue.  On January 18, 2018 the Chicago Plan Commission approved a project to build two towers on the site, the taller of which will be the eighth Chicago "supernal" building at 1,011 feet. The killing of Dion O’Banion in the shop in 1924 touched off a gang war that lasted for five years, pitting the north side gang of O’Banion against Al Capone’s gang from the south side.  The photos above show the flower shop and the same area as it appears today.


August 14, 1933 – Joseph Hastings, a Chicago policeman married for only four months, is shot to death during a gun battle with two thieves who rob a city office on Navy Pier.  He is the eleventh policeman to die in the line of duty during 1933.  The money that is stolen was intended for men on emergency relief who were employed by the city to do work at the pier.  Thomas B. Rawls, an official of the West Englewood Currency exchange, used it to cash checks from the workers at a fee of 15 cents a check.  It is unclear why a representative of a private enterprise is cashing checks in an office of the city street department.  Hastings, hearing a shot fired, runs into a second floor office at the west end of the pier. One of the dozen clerks in the office, Charles Eddy, outlines the ensuing events, “Hastings came in the door with his revolver drawn . . . The man at the side wall opened fire.  The policeman fell to the floor and fired two shots in return.  The robbers ran to the door.  Hastings got up, and one of the robbers turned and shot him as he rose.  The robber then grabbed Hastings’ gun and ran out. . .” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 13, 1933]  Morris Cohen a barber, is captured 30 minutes later at 1331 North Clark Street.  His two companions remain on the lam.  The above photo depicts Navy Pier as it appeared in 1933.
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Monday, August 13, 2018

August 13, 1969 -- Illinois Center Development Begins with Development Announcement


August 13, 1969 –The chairman of Illinois Central Industries, Inc., William B. Johnson, announces the formation of Illinois Center Plaza Venture, the corporation that will develop the 83-acre site east of Michigan Avenue, between Randolph Street and the Chicago River.  Jupiter Corporation, Metropolitan, Inc., and the Illinois Central Corporation will be equal partners in the plan, which will see the new company purchasing the property from the Illinois Central Railroad for a base price of $83,625,000 with an escalation rider over a 15-year development period.  The site on which the proposed Standard Oil building will be constructed as well as the site of the 111 East Wacker Drive building, which is under construction, along with two adjacent sites, are excluded from the sale. The Prudential building and the Outer Drive East apartments were constructed on air rights in which the Illinois Central did not share in the profits of the buildings.


August 13, 2009 – Bank of America initiates a suit against Shelbourne Development Group Inc., the developer that began construction of the 150-floor Chicago Spire, construction that was subsequently halted after foundation work was completed.  Bank of America claims that the developer has defaulted on its loan.  The bank says that it is filing a suit in United States District Court in Chicago, seeking $4.9 million in principal and interest from Shelbourne and its chairman, Garrett Kelleher. The complaint alleges that the firm has failed to obtain an “irrevocable construction loan commitment” from a lender, leading the Bank of America to declare a default. [Chicago Tribune, August 14,2009] The photo above shows the remains of the project as they look today.


August 13, 1928 – Construction begins on the Merchandise Mart on the site of the old Chicago and North Western station on the north bank of the Chicago River between Wells Street and Orleans.  A force of 5,700 workers will speed the construction, using cement brought from Wisconsin by boat, and by May 1,1930 the first 200 tenants will begin moving into the 4,000,000 square foot building.
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Sunday, August 12, 2018

August 12, 1900 -- Boulevard System Is Complete


August 12, 1900 –A few carriages are seen making the entire circuit of Chicago’s boulevard system after the bridge on Diversey Boulevard is completed and the boulevard project is finished.  There are only two breaks in the 30-mile “ring of parks” that runs around the city on three sides – one between Humboldt Boulevard and Humboldt Park and the other south of Douglas Park leading to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.  The latter is particularly notable … “a drive of more than a mile over rough cedar pavements, car tracks, through unpaved streets filled with mudholes and through a big ditch near the drainage channel would almost dispel the favorable impressions gained.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 13, 1900]Lake Shore Drive in Lincoln Park is the least impressive part of the completed system, a route on which “A carriage lurches along through holes that are half a foot deep, wheelmen dodge in and out to avoid them.  Water from sprinkling collects in the holes and splashes carriages and riders.”  There are only ten railroad crossings in the entire 30-mile system.  Although there are rough patches along the way, the Tribuneconcludes, “A trip over the system now that it is made possible serves to show most of all at what a comparatively slight expenditure the whole thing might be put in shape … When it is finished Chicago will have the longest boulevard drive in the world.”


August 12, 1999 – A power failure leaves the city’s Greek Town neighborhood and 30 square blocks of the Loop from the center of downtown southward in the dark, sends workers tumbling from high rise office buildings and busses packed with people trying to get home moving slowly through intersections where the traffic lights are not working.  Mayor Richard M. Daley says, “I firmly believe this company better get down to ground zero.  Someone should tell [utility executives] about that infrastructure.  Infrastructure is the key.  They’ve neglected it for too long and it’s come home to roost.”  [CNN.com, August 13, 1999] The Board of Trade stops trading because of the service disruption.  Banks in the heart of the city lose power, and the downtown police headquarters operates on emergency generators.  Weather is not involved in the blackout.  Three of four transformers at a downtown substation go offline.  One had been undergoing repairs in the preceding week, and another two shut down while, at the same time, two high voltage cables also fail.  This problem comes less than two weeks after a power failure on July 30 that left 100,000 people in the city without power on the hottest day of the year as temperatures climbed to 104 degrees.  Commonwealth Edison spokesman Keith Bromery engages in an epic feat of understatement when he says, “Basically, we know that we have a reliability problem.” [Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1999] The substation at 868 South Jefferson, shown above, is the area in the south Loop at which three out of four transformers failed.


August 12, 1952 – Ground is broken for the 35-million dollar Prudential building on Randolph Street, east of Michigan Avenue.  Mayor Martin Kennelly and Valentine Howell, the executive vice-president of the Prudential Insurance Company of America scoop up the first shovels of earth for one of the 260 caissons that will support the 41-story building as Holman D. Pettibone, president of the Chicago Title and Trust Company, officiates at the ceremonies.  For an in-depth look at the origins of the Prudential building and what it take to get the thing built, you can turn to this blog entry from 2012.  The above photo shows the area east of Michigan Avenue before Prudential was begun.  It would stand just about where the Pabst Blue Ribbon sign is located.
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Saturday, August 11, 2018

August 11, 1985 -- Old Town's Cobbler's Square Praised


August 11, 1985 –Paul Gapp, the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, pens a column in praise of the Cobbler Square development in Old Town in which “a conglomeration of some 30 old interconnected factory and warehouse structures” have been converted into 297 rental apartments, an exercise Gapp calls “one of the most extraordinary new housing complexes in Chicago.” [Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1985]  The buildings are in the area bounded by Wells and Schiller Streets and Evergreen and North Park Avenues with the oldest buildings occupied originally by the Western Wheel Works, a bicycle manufacturer. Dr. William Scholl rented space in the bicycle factory and while he “parlayed a line of shoes and foot care products into a corporation grossing more than $250 million a year … sporadically built a hodgepodge of additions to it.”  The company Scholl founded left Chicago for Tennessee in 1981 and developer Richard Perlman commissioned architect Kenneth A. Schroeder to create a residential community out of the three- and five-story buildings that remained. Gapp writes of the plan, “The new façade facing Wells Street is a crisp and clean essay in brick and limestone, evocative of both Gold Coast images a few blocks to the east and the storefronts of Wells Street itself.”  The plan includes three courtyards, each larger than the one before it that “planted with locusts, are oases that can almost make you forget you’re in the center of the city – and in a somewhat fringy neighborhood, to boot.” The plan took the 30 original buildings that were part of the complex and reduced them to five, cleverly combining many of them in a scheme that is “the kind of place where youngish or young-thinking men and women pay a lot of attention to what they call their lifestyles and … don’t mind climbing tiny staircases to reach the sleeping platforms supporting their futons.”  In summing up the new community, Gapp views Cobbler Square as an indication that the former tawdry area around Wells Street is, itself, beginning to make its way back to respectability with “Cobbler Square … among the best additions to the neighborhood in recent years – a vehicle of gentrification, actually … obviously an architectural success with considerable fringe benefits.”  


August 11, 1977 – The Chicago Plan Commission votes down a proposed four billion-dollar development proposed for land in the south Loop along the east side of the Chicago River.  The project, a Bertrand Goldberg design for six 72-story towers and 6,000 apartments, is proposed for a 45-acre site bounded by Harrison Street, Roosevelt Road, the Chicago River and Wells Street.  Lewis J. Hill, the city commissioner of development and planning, asserts that city guidelines recommend 1,750 units on the site, and the Goldberg plan far exceeds those guidelines.  “In short,” Hill says, “the River City plan proposes development that is three to five times more intense than that recommended in the guidelines.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 12, 1977] Hill also says that the huge project would also stand in the way of the proposed Franklin Street Connector that is planned to link the Dan Ryan Expressway with Wacker Drive.  Forty years later River Line, a project involving ten high-rise residential buildings lining the banks of the river, is underway, with Perkins and Will responsible for siting the massive project to the north of the current River City, a 1986 community of about 440 units, the scaled-down design that eventually came out of Bertrand Goldberg’s 1970’s proposal.


August 11, 1966 – The Beatles arrive in Chicago in the middle of a swirling controversy, and John Lennon, in a press conference at the Astor Towers Hotel, apologizes for his part in creating the furor that developed after his casual remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.  “I wasn’t saying whatever they say I was saying,” says Lennon, described by the Tribune as a “Shaggy-haired Liverpool performer.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1966] “I‘m sorry I said it really.  I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing.  I apologize if that will make you happy.  I still don’t know quite what I’ve done.  I’ve tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry.”  For a personal essay on the event and how it has stayed with me for fifty years, you may want to look up this blog entry from 2009.  Information concerning Astor Towers, where the press conference took place, may be found here.
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Friday, August 10, 2018

August 10, 1940 -- First Regiment Armory Property Sells


August 10, 1940 –The land beneath the First Regiment Armory at the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and East Sixteenth Street is sold by the Estate of Marshall Field to the Standard Realty and Mortgage Company for an estimated $40,000. The sale is subject to a 99-year lease that Marshall Field made in 1890 with the First Infantry Armory Association at an annual ground rental of $4,000.  The first armory was built on the property in 1893, but it burned down less than a year after it opened.  It was replaced in 1894 at a cost of a half-million dollars, raised by popular subscription.  After two decades of labor unrest, culminating with the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886 in which people were killed when a bomb was thrown into the crowd, the wealthy residents of Chicago, many of whom lived south of Sixteenth Street on Indiana, Prairie and Calumet Avenues, began to take matters into their own hands.  They opened their pocketbooks and forked over the cash to protect their homes.  In 1886, just months after the Haymarket riot, land convenient to a direct rail line into the city on the North Shore was purchased, and Fort Sheridan was begun.  It is interesting to note that the First Regiment Armory with its thick stone walls, rounded turrets, and rifle embrasures, stood as a massive sentinel north of those wealthy homes. It is even more interesting to note that Marshall Field, himself, held a 99-year lease on the property.  And you can bet with a fair amount of assurance on who stepped up for the majority of those subscriptions to build the armory.  The subscriptions probably sold pretty darned quickly … the Pullman strike that idled 250,000 workers in 27 states and brought violence to Chicago had just concluded.


August 10, 1882:  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the city’s Health Office has reported 53 deaths during the preceding day, 30 of those being children under the age of five, 24 of that number being infants less than a year old.  Of the two dozen babies who died, 16 of them succumbed to a disease known at the time as cholera infantum, a particularly pernicious disease that attacked infants primarily during the warm weather months, especially in large urban areas.  Beginning around 1893 infant mortality, thankfully, began a sharp downward trend, most probably brought about by two important initiatives.  First, the four-mile crib off Monroe Harbor was opened in 1891 and shoreline water intake was permanently ended.  Research shows that the act of safeguarding the city’s drinking water lowered the city’s mortality rate between 1870 and 1925 somewhere between 35 and 56 percent.  Secondly, the responsibility for monitoring milk distribution in the city was transferred from an independent body to the health department. Also in 1880 the Chicago City Council approved an ordinance that granted the city’s Health Department the right to inspect and regulate sanitary conditions in the work place and in tenement dwellings, an initiative that began to eliminate the unsanitary and unhealthful conditions in poorer areas of the city.


August 10, 1918 --  It is difficult to believe today, but for years – over a decade – a swimming race was held that had athletes navigating a course in the lake before heading west up the river to Wells Street.  On this day in 1918 Perry McGillivray of the Great Lakes training station wins the tenth annual river swim of the Illinois Athletic Club, establishing a new record for the two-mile course of 33:44.  Miss Rebecca Wells of the Walton Athletic Club is allowed to participate, but she is not eligible for any of the prizes because women are officially barred from the event.  In the 1912 Olympics McGillivray was a member of the American 4 X 200 meter freestyle relay team that won a silver medal.  In 1920 he earned a gold medal as a member of the United States 4 X 200 meter relay team, also participating in the country’s water polo team as it earned a fourth-place finish.  The old Chicago Daily News photo above shows the crowds lining the river as the 1909 race approaches Wells Street.
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Thursday, August 9, 2018

August 9, 1964 -- Lake Michigan Hosts Submarine Training


August 9, 1964 –Naval reservists participate in the second day of training in Lake Michigan aboard the 312-foot USS. Rauner.  Six ships of the “Corn Belt Fleet” and aircraft from the Glenview Naval Air Station join in the exercises as reservists practice anti-submarine maneuvers off Chicago.  After the exercises are concluded, the submarine is tied up east of the Michigan Avenue bridge for public viewing.  The USS Rauner, Hull Number SS-476, was a diesel-powered attack submarine launched on October 14, 1944. Her first war patrol was off Honshu, Japan where she sank an enemy minesweeper.  By the time the Raunermade it to her second patrol, Japan had declared defeat.  The Raunerentered Tokyo Bay, and with ten other United States submarines, represented the submarine service at the signing of the peace treaty. The summer of 1964 was the only time she worked in coordination with the Great Lakes Naval Training Center although after service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean she was towed to Great Lakes after decommissioning at the Boston Naval Shipyard on January 15, 1969. There she served as a Naval Reserve Training vessel until she was stricken from the Navy list on December 15, 1971.


August 9, 1937 – The rarest of real estate deals occurs when two of the city’s skyscrapers are swapped with no brokers involved in the transaction and with no commission fees paid.  The Marshall Field estate trades the 19-story Times building at 211 West Wacker Drive for the sixteen-story Central Life Insurance Company building at the southwest corner of North Michigan Avenue and East Superior Street.  A representative of the Field estate says that through the acquisition of the Central Life building it now owns the entire block bounded by Michigan, Huron, Rush and Superior.  Through the swap the insurance company will be able to consolidate all of its operations, scattered in various leased spaces in the area, in the Wacker Drive building.  The property on Wacker Drive, shown above, a Holabird and Root design, is still making money.  Saks Fifth Avenue now occupies the corner of Superior and Michigan where the Central Life building used to stand.


August 9, 1972:  A traffic study is released that concludes “Traffic conditions in the Near North Michigan Avenue area will be ‘nearly intolerable’ if the city constructs a bridge over the Chicago River at Columbus Drive.”  The report, prepared for the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association by R. W. Booker and Associates, partially validates a report issued earlier in the week by the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  The report observes that the city has not planned well in proposing a bridge that will connect Fairbanks Court north of the river with Columbus Drive and the developing Illinois Center property to the south.  Taking a special hit is the massive traffic jam that is anticipated during the lengthy reconstruction of the dogleg on Lake Shore Drive north of Randolph Street.  The report makes six recommendations to relieve problems in the River North area if the bridge is built.  They include:  (1) employing rapid transit or people mover systems in the area; (2) widening Fairbanks Court and making it one way south, in the area north of Ontario Street; (3) better enforcement of peak traffic rules and parking regulations in the area; (4) eliminating on-street parking in the area and creating new off-street parking areas; (5) making Ontario and Ohio Streets one way between Fairbanks and Lake Shore Drive and developing grade separation of these two streets with Lake Shore Drive; and (6) making thoro (sic) studies of alternate methods of handling traffic during the reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive, including staged construction to permit continued, limited use of the Drive.  [Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1972]  The bridge was finished in 1982 for a cost of $33,000,000, bringing almost instantaneous development of the area north of the river and east of Columbus Drive.
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