Connecting the Windy City

Monday, November 4, 2019

November 4, 2013 -- Obama Honors BlackHawks for Second Time

denverpost.com

November 4, 2013 – President Barack Obama hosts the 2013 Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks during a seven-minute ceremony in the East Room of the White House, the second time in three years that the team has made the visit.  “Since I took office,” the President observes, “we’ve hosted a lot of championship teams, from Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and Miami, but since I’ve been president only one team has brought a world championship to my hometown of Chicago and now the Blackhawks have done it twice. Twice!”  [Chicago Tribune, November 5, 2013]  Blackhawks chairman Rocky Wirtz and President John McDonough present Obama with a white Hawks sweater with “Obama” and the number 13 on the back after which Coach Joe Quenneville says, “To me, this is the one moment when you really can reflect back and say, ‘Wow, it was a heck of a year we had,’ and we got to share it with one another.  We’ll walk that together forever.  It’s great to be a part of the history that’s in this building and sharing it with the president is a special moment.”  With the Stanley Cup displayed next to him, the President concludes the ceremony, saying, “To the Bulls, Bears, Cubs, White Sox, I am term-limited, so you guys have to get moving.  I need to see you here soon.  Championships belong in Chicago.  So, to the Blackhawks, thank you for brining it back home.  Thanks for bringing the Stanley Cup.”

November 4, 2014 – The first Shake Shack in Chicago opens at 11 a.m. in the former Harley-Davidson gift store in River North.  A line stretches out the door with people waiting for an hour or more, the wait becoming longer as lunchtime nears.  The chain of burger restaurants war born in a summer hot dog cart in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, just across the street from the Flatiron Building.  In a Chicago Tribune review Kevin Pang writes, “… everything we tried was solid and serviceable, though nothing would justify waiting more than 20 minutes in line.” [Chicago Tribune, November 5, 2014] Today there are three Shake Shacks in the city in addition to the original restaurant at Rush and Ohio.  One is in the Chicago Athletic Association building at 12 South Michigan Avenue while the other is in the West Loop at 185 North Morgan.  The third is at 3519 North Clark Street.  There is also a Shake Shack in Skokie in the Westfield Old Orchard shopping center.

November 4, 2008 – Before a crowd of 240,000 people jamming Grant Park, newly elected President Barack Obama delivers his victory speech.  Before he steps onto the stage Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” fills the great park on the lakefront, followed by “Only in America” by Brooks and Dunn and “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” the Jackie Wilson standard.  Obama takes the stage with Joe Biden as the families of the two men join them.  When the networks placed Virginia in the Democratic column at 11:00 p.m., a crowd that waited all day erupted, and now here he was -- the new president, who did not disappoint the folks who had waited much of the day to witness history. He begins with this declaration, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer … it’s been a long time, coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.” Nearly 22 minutes later Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” ends the program after Chicago’s hometown hero finishes his victory speech with this thought, “This is our moment.  This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:  Yes We Can.  Thank you.  God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.”

November 4, 1929 – The Chicago Opera Company, eight years old, takes up residence in its new home on Wacker Drive.  On the bill for opening night is Aida with Rosa Raisa in the title role.  There is little fanfare involved in the dedication of the new house although the lights are brought up before the performance begins and the 3,471 people in attendance stand as The Star Spangled Banner is played.  The crowd begins to arrive over an hour before the opera begins, and in the foyer Samuel Insull greets each person.  He is “the man without whose planning and ciphering and propagandizing and dragooning and bludgeoning the dream of civic opera on a solid foundation of Bedford stone never would have come true.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 5, 1929]  Insull is undoubtedly smiling as subscription sales of seats in the opera’s new quarters have already exceeded sales of seats in its former home in the Auditorium Theater by more than a quarter million dollars.  The speedy construction of the building really is a marvel as old buildings stood, waiting to be razed, on the site in February of 1928, and in June of that year the Chicago Civic Opera Company gave a concert in the excavation that had been dug for the building.  It is a joyous evening, perhaps one of the last joyous evenings for many of those in attendance as just six days earlier panicked sellers traded nearly 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange, starting a string of bad news that would last for another 15 years.  But all was joyous on this night as the paper reported, “The memory of the night will abide.  It will linger upon many a radiant detail, but in the long recollection it will center upon that foyer where the leaders of a great commercial capital met to survey their task, and looking up at the columns of gray travertine and the grills of golden bronze and the panels of rose and gold, found that art for art’s sake was a master worth working for.”  The above photo shows the Civic Opera Building under construction in late spring of 1929.

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Labels: 2013, Chicago Sports, Politics

Sunday, November 3, 2019

November 3, 1863 -- Rush Street Bridge Tender Breaks Bridge in Half

November 3, 1863 – While the regular bridge tender at Rush Street is away “peddling copperhead tickets in the Sixteenth Ward,” his replacement manages to break the bridge in two in one of the stranger incidents ever to take place on the river.  At 5:00 p.m. a hundred head of cattle are driven onto the bridge which was already occupied by “J. H. Dole, esq., with a horse and buggy, a teamster with a horse and wagon belonging to Mr. C. H. McCormick, a drover, and a young girl, a sister of the drover”. [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 4, 1863] At this point a tug whistles for the bridge to swing on its turntable to allow passage and “the reckless substitute of the tender swung the bridge” away from the banks of the river.  Almost immediately the north end of the bridge lifts 20 feet and “there was a snapping of iron, a cracking and crashing of timbers, a shriek of horror from the bystanders, and Rush street bridge, breaking in two across the centre pier, fell into the river, a total ruin.” The young girl was given up for lost after a search that lasted into the evening; everyone else was rescued.  About two-thirds of the cattle were either drowned or crushed to death by the falling bridge.  The paper’s account of the event ends with a question: “Hasn’t the city had about enough of Mayor Sherman’s bridge tenders … Cannot men be found, even amongst the Copperheads, who are competent to perform the simple duty of managing a turn bridge? Three years ago, there was no trouble at the bridges. Men were appointed then because they were honest, faithful and competent.  Since Mayor Sherman’s advent, how different has been the policy.”  The above photo shows the Rush Street bridge in 1860.

November 3, 1897 –A crowd of horrified spectators looking on from the Randolph Street viaduct and the Lake Front Park watch as Stuart Young, perched helplessly on the trapeze of his hot air balloon, rides it to his death in Lake Michigan.  Young, “the Dauntless King of the Air,” begins his ascent from Hubbard Court and Wabash Avenue at 2:05 p.m. as a large crowd looks on.  Clad in a suit of pink tights, he swings himself on the bar of the balloon’s trapeze and waves.  The crowd follows the balloon as it drifts toward the lakefront. Young has a parachute in the event the balloon drifts too far over open water, but he makes no attempt to leave the airship, and “the crowd in the park and on the viaduct shouted with horror as they saw the balloon swoop down into the lake and the figure in pink tights dragging through the waves” off Randolph Street. [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 4, 1897] A boat is immediately launched from the Life Saving Station at the mouth of the river and the tug W. J. McCarty cuts loose its tow and heads to the scene, but there is no sign of the aeronaut.  Young had begun making balloon ascensions ten years earlier and a week earlier had begun making ascensions from the scene of his last lift-off.  On the previous ride he landed safely on the Twelfth Street viaduct. As he prepared for what would be his final ride his manager cautioned him about letting the balloon get too near the lake, “but the balloonist laughed and said: ‘Never worry about me. I’ll always come down right.’” 

November 3, 1933 – Good news arrives in the city as the Federal Public Works Administration sends an $8,000,000 check to the Chicago Sanitary District as a down payment on the work that must be done in order to meet a U. S. Supreme Court mandate that the city cut its diversion of Lake Michigan water from 10,000 cubic feet per second to 1,500.  Another $130,000,000 for the project remains pending.  The contract accompanying the allotment runs to 33 pages and will ultimately lead to the employment of more that 3,000 men in the completion of sewer work, primarily on the south and west sides of the city, necessary to make the system ready for the impending drastic reduction in lake water running through the river, the primary system for more than three decades for cleansing the channel.  Begun in 1922 the Calumet Sewage Treatment Works, pictured above, was expanded significantly with the money that came from the Federal Public Works Administration.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 2 comments

Labels: 1863, Chicago Bridges, Chicago RIver, Rush Street

Saturday, November 2, 2019

November 2, 1867 -- State Street Bridge Tenders in Bloody Battle

November 2, 1867 – Mayhem breaks out at the State Street Bridge as two assistant bridge-tenders, John Gannon and Edward Williams, nearly kill one another in an early morning battle.  The Chicago Tribune describes in detail what happened on the river that night, “Gannon, it appears, was off duty during the early part of the night, and returned about midnight somewhat the worse for the liquor he had imbibed during his vacation.  When he made appearance at the bridge-house, Williams, his fellow-assistant, who had also imbibed somewhat freely, began to upbraid him in terms more forcible than elegant, for returning in a condition that would prevent him from attending to his duties . . . From words they soon resorted to blows, and a desperate struggle ensued in the little bridge-house about which a number of persons now began to collect. . . . Williams, being evidently the soberest of the two, had the advantage from the beginning, and during the struggle succeeded in laying hold of a club, with which he felled his adversary to the floor.  However, he was down only for a moment, and the struggle was continued with redoubled fury.  Williams now sprang for an axe, standing in a corner of the little hut, and with this he dealt a crushing blow on his adversary’s skull.  This more than suffered to bring Gannon down.  However, not satisfied with the punishment inflicted, Williams was about to repeat the blow, and already was the axe descending, when Mr. Lewis [the head bridge-tender] and a young man sprang into the hut, and, after a desperate struggle, wrung the weapon out of the hands of the would-be murderer . . . The little shanty, after the struggle, presented a fearful scene.  The walls, the floor, the bed, and everything about the place was thickly covered with blood, while the prostrate body of Gannon was covered with gore from his head to his feet . . . Altogether, the two constitute an exemplary pair of bridge-tenders, who ought to receive promotion.  Their case will receive proper attention at the Police Court this morning.”  The State Street Bridge, the scene of the messy fracas, is seen in the above photo.

November 2, 1892 – The biggest step to date in solving the crisis posed by the horribly polluted Chicago River is taken as the Drainage Board adopts the Illinois and Michigan Canal as the route of its main drainage channel between Ashland Avenue and Summit, the first leg of a 28-mile canal that will ultimately lead to the reversal of the river.  Six separate routes were proposed, and the board saw the route of the 44-year-old canal as the best choice with three factors cited in support of the decision.  First, the cost would be lower since the former canal already exists with 250 acres in reserve that will cost the district nothing to put into use.  Claims of property owners along the route would also be significantly less than if a new channel was created at another location.  Secondly, the commissioners felt it “a grave mistake to cut the western part of the city with another open channel.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 1892] Finally, the board’s chief engineer felt that no relief from the river’s pollution would be possible “until the entire channel was constructed if any other route is adopted.  If there were no other reasons which could be urged in favor of this line the question of temporary relief itself would be of sufficient importance to recommend the adoption of the canal route.”

November 2, 1906 –Tragedy is averted when the bridge tender at the Wells Street bridge halts the swinging of the bridge just in time to prevent a street car from plunging into the river.  As bridge tender Ernst Brosius is opening the bridge to allow a dredge to pass, the operator of a streetcar, speeding north on Wells Street (Fifth Avenue at the time), ignores warning signals at the bridge as well as a police officer’s warning shouts, and heads for the river. Brosius checks the bridge just in time, but not before the street car strikes the side of the structure, “hurling its ten passengers in a heap at the front end of the conveyance.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 3, 1906]If the approaching dredge had not managed to pull up just a few feet from the bridge, the situation would have been even worse since a collision would almost have certainly destroyed the partially open swing bridge. Brosius says, “The motorman was at fault.  Apparently he was trying to cross before the bridge was swung, despite the fact that a warning had been sounded.  Realizing that an accident was inevitable I did what I thought was best.  The fact that the car crashed into the structure is almost enough to tell that unless some barrier was in the way it would have gone into the river.”  Traffic is delayed on Wells Street for nearly an hour as the mess is cleaned up.  The 1906 Wells Street bridge, complete with a streetcar moving across it, is shown above.  The building at the left in the background is the first depot for the Chicago and North Western Railroad, north of the river on Wells Street.

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Labels: 1867, Chicago Bridges, Chicago RIver, State Street

Friday, November 1, 2019

November 1, 1946 -- W.G.N. Receives Federal Permission to Begin Television Operations

chicagotribune.com

November 1, 1946 -- The general manger of W.G.N. announces that the Federal Communications Commission has granted the company a construction permit for a television station.  Construction of the station, operating on a frequency of 186-192 megacycles on Channel 9, is expected to begin in May of 1947.  Frank P. Schreiber, the station’s general manager, says, “W.G.N. now enters the television field.  As in all previous radio operations, we will be a leader in television.  We will be in the television programming field as soon as necessary equipment, which is now on order, can be obtained.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 2, 1946]  This will be the third commercial television station in Chicago.  Balaban and Katz operates WBKB on Channel 4, and the Zenith Radio Corporation began operating three months earlier on station WTZR.  W.G.N.’s television antenna will be erected on top of Tribune Tower, 505 feet above street level.  The first post-war television sets will be placed at 75 R.C.A. dealers in the following week with several thousand sets expected to be in homes by Christmas.  The first sets will be table models with larger units scheduled to arrive in the city after the first of the year.  The above photo shows W.G.N. newsreel photographers shooting film in the Loop on March 22, 1948.  W.G.N. television would begin transmitting the following day.

November 1, 1981 –The Chicago Tribune reports that the Sunglas Reflective Architectural Glass Division of the Ford Motor Company has secured a $1.2 million order for the production of more than six acres of glass that will sheathe the new office tower at 333 West Wacker Drive.  In order to keep cooling costs down in warm weather, the glass will be coated on the inside with a reflective, metallic oxide film that will block up to 65 per cent of the sun’s heat.  Four types of glass will be used in the building.  There will be 27 tempered spandrel panels that are designed “to get the worst blasts on Chicago’s notoriously windy days.” [Chicago Tribune, November 1, 1981] Additionally, there will be 4,735 panels of heat-strengthened spandrel glass and 4,216 inside-annealed double pane insulated vision glass panels.  A dozen double-pane insulated vision glass panels that have been heat-strengthened with a half-inch of air between two quarter-inch thick sheets of glass will also be used in areas expected to receive high winds. Quarter-inch thick glass will be used for spandrels covering the building’s structural elements and the area between floors.  

November 1, 1925 – As “agitation for a great terminal on Randolph street” heats up, the Chicago Daily Tribune publishes an Eliel Saarinen sketch that depicts a soaring office building and railroad terminal for the Illinois Central Railroad on Randolph Street.  Saarinen, who won second place in the paper’s $100,000 design competition for its new office building, had completed the sketch two years earlier as a “project for developing the lake front with a giant hotel and terminal for the Illinois Central and other roads at the end of Grant park, instead of having them on Roosevelt road a mile south of Madison street.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 1, 1925] Of course, the project never took off, and it would be 30 years before the Prudential building is finally built on the site.

November 1, 1893 – Remaining tenants of the Honoré block at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets are notified to leave the building immediately as demolition work begins.  Leases expire on this date, and after repeated warnings tenants finally must get out as 50 workmen have the roof off the building before darkness falls.  “All night,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “there were busy scenes about the corner, and a dozen or more tenants were hard at work in removing their goods from the building.  Two or three first-floor rooms and the corner basement are occupied by saloons which were still doing business at a late hour last night, the proprietors declaring that they would continue to hold forth till the walls came down, but were somewhat disconcerted when told that gas and water would be shut off today.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 2, 1893]  Within 60 days the building will be completely gone, and in its place will rise one of the gems of the Chicago School of Architecture, the Marquette Building of William Holabird and Martin Roche.  The Honoré block with its Venetian facade fronting Adams Street is shown in the above photo.

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Labels: 1946, Chicago Events