Connecting the Windy City

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

May 6, 1957 -- Lower Wacker Drive Opened to Traffic

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May 6, 1957 – The lower level of Wacker Drive is opened to traffic as Mayor Richard J. Daley and other officials take part in ceremonies.  A year earlier the upper deck of Wacker, running along the west side of the Loop, was opened after the expenditure of $11 million on the project.  The upper level had no direct connection, though, to the new Congress Expressway, which is still under construction.  Traffic on that level of Wacker has to pass under Congress and turn right on Harrison Street, then right onto Wells and right again onto Congress.  The lower level will use ramps to take traffic on and off the new expressway.  There will be no way to head east on Congress from either upper or lower Wacker Drive.   Engineers estimate that of the 90,000 automobiles passing through the Congress plaza daily, 20,000 are expected to use the ramps to or from lower Wacker Drive.

May 6,1942 – Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Chick Evans, and Tommy Armour tee it up at the Edgewater Golf Club with the admission fees from the 3,500 spectators going to benefit the Fort Sheridan Athletic and Recreation Fund.  The team of Crosby and Evans win the match, 2 up, both men shooting 36, one over par. Armour cards a 37 and Hope a 38. The round ends after nine holes as overzealous fans “crowded [the players] at every step, seeking autographs or at least a walking proximity to the two stars. Small boys scale the Edgewater fences by the hundreds to follow Bing and Bob.” [Chicago Tribune, May 7, 1942] As a side note the 94-acre Edgewater Golf Club is now a part of the city’s Warren Park at 6601 N. Western Avenue. When the old golf course was re-zoned in 1968 to allow real estate development on the property, a grassroots effort to save the land as open space ensued. A third of the property became the first urban state park when Illinois purchased it for $8 million in 1969. The Chicago Park District condemned another 32 acres in 1972 and a new park, complete with a nine-hole golf course was opened in 1980. The golf course is dedicated to Robert A. Black, Chief Engineer at the Chicago Park District for more than 30 years. The layout of the old golf course is pictured above.  A look at what Warren Park looks like today is shown beneath it.  An awesome history of the course and the politics involved in its transformation can be found here.

May 6, 1929 –The South Park Board approves the lakefront ordinance, offering hope that the three-year dispute between the board and the Illinois Central Railroad is moving toward a conclusion.  Among other things the ordinance contains provisions for construction of the Randolph Street viaduct and an Illinois Central suburban train station in Grant Park. The station was originally intended to be completed by February 20, 1927, but disagreements between the park board and the railroad delayed the plan.  At the meeting of the South Park board two amendments are added to the ordinance. One holds the I. C. liable for any damage to viaducts resulting from the operation of trains.  The second assures the South Park board of complete control of the Roosevelt Road viaduct “with particular reference to the granting of franchises to public utilities companies to provide transportation to the municipal bathing beach and other attractions on the lake front.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1929] The above photo shows Grant Park in 1929.

May 6, 1909 – At a hearing before Major Thomas Rees, the Chief Engineer of the Department of the Lakes, representatives of river and commercial interests present their evaluation of conditions on the Chicago River, testimony which appears to strike “the death knell of the Lake street bridge and other center pier structures which have obstructed traffic in the Chicago river for years.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1909]   Attorney Edward Cahill, representing river interests, testifies that the old style bridges are “menaces to traffic.”  Captain Rardon, a mariner who was in charge of the first vessel to leave the Chicago harbor on October 9, 1871, leaving a burnt-out city behind him, said that “center pier bridges obstruct the flow of water, create a disastrous current in the river and otherwise make navigation dangerous.”  The only argument in favor of the swing bridges comes from the president of the Lake Street elevated who expresses his doubts that the federal government could interfere with his company’s contract with the city to run its trains over the bridge at Lake Street, a contract that has an expiration date of 1940.  The city generally agrees with the testimony while pleading for more time.  Alderman Charles M. Foell, speaking on behalf of the city, says, “The council agrees that these center pier bridges are a menace to river commerce, but we also assert that the city has no funds provided for the work of changing the bridges at present … we are anxious to cooperate with the government in this work, and urge that we be granted time to obtain the necessary funding.” The Lake Street elevated line, today's Green Line, is pictured above in 1909. 

May 6, 1883 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the excavation for the nine-story headquarters of the Pullman Palace-Car Company on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street has begun.  As the Home Insurance Building on La Salle Street is nearing completion – arguably the first metal-framed commercial skyscraper in history – the Pullman building will be “perfectly fireproof from cellar to garret – fireproof tile and iron beams being used throughout.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1883] The structure will have a dual purpose.  The Pullman headquarters will have an entrance on Adams Street while a number of apartments in the building will be entered through the Michigan Avenue entrance.  Company offices will occupy the first four floors of the building, and speculation is that the fifth floor will be given to the offices of General Phillip Sheridan.  The five upper floors will be devoted to apartments of from seven to ten rooms and a number of bachelors’ suites from two to four rooms.  The ninth floor will have a restaurant overlooking the lake with “a large covered promenade … making it a delightful resort in warm weather.”  The half-million-dollar building will have its boilers located in a separate structure, given “the prejudice against living in a building with large steam boilers in the basement.”  The Tribune assessment of the building concludes, “One of the objects sought by Mr. Pullman … was the furnishing to those employés of the company who desired them living apartments of superior character more convenient to their business than those in which many of them now abide … Mr. Pullman has expressed a wish that such a structure might be erected for their benefit.”

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 1 comments

Labels: 1957, Chicago Politics, Congress Street, Highways, Transportation, Wacker Drive

Tuesday, May 5, 2020

May 5, 1958 -- Kennedy Expressway (Northwest Expressway) Progress Monitored

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May 5, 1958 --  A reporter for the Chicago Daily Tribune rides with officials of the Illinois and Cook County highway departments as they take a ride on the Chicago and North Western railroad from the city to Jefferson Park.  “With maps and office memoranda on their knees” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, 1958]  they monitor the progress of the construction on the Northwest expressway, today’s Kennedy Expressway.  One of the engineers, Roger Nusbaum, observes, “If we are lucky and the program is based on this hope, we’ll have this thing open by midsummer 1960.”  This conclusion contradicts Mayor Richard J. Daley’s optimistic view that the expressway will be finished by 1959.  The engineers on the train see four obstacles to an early completion of the project.  The most daunting of these obstacles is the construction of a subway for the expressway under railroad tracks between Hubbard and Kinzie Streets, a project for which contracts have only been recently award.  You understand the complexity of this project when you realize that this would become the Hubbard Tunnel, known popularly today as “Hubbard’s Cave.”  The second obstacle involves moving the Chicago and North Western railroad embankment about 150 feet southwest between North Avenue and Division Street so that the expressway can run west of the railroad.  As part of this project Saint Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church will need to be moved, “moved” being a polite way of saying “torn down”.  (The church was saved when the expressway was rerouted.)  The third obstacle involves building a subway for the expressway under the C and NW near Addison Street, a project for which contracts have still not been awarded.  This is the point where the railroad and the expressway will change places with the expressway moving from the west side of the railroad to the east side.  Finally, $7 million will have to be spent in demolishing the Jefferson Park railroad station near Montrose Avenue and construction of a new one.  Some may remember that a gigantic pair of flashing Magikist lips graced this area for years.  Chicago kissed them good-bye in 2004. Contracts on this part of the project will not be awarded for another month.  It turns out that Mayor Daley did not get his wish ... the 18-mile-long expressway opened on November 5, 1960.  The Chicago City Council unanimously voted on November 29, 1963 to name the highway after John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated a week earlier.

Chicago Tribune Photo

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May 5, 1954 – Twenty-three men and three women, the crew of the Norwegian ship Oris, unload 200 tons of granite on the banks of the Chicago River.  The stone will be used in facing the first floor of the new Prudential building.  Ultimately, 525 tons of Stern silver-white granite will be cut into 3.5-inch slabs for facing the building.  Louis Olson a partner in the Bevel Granite Company at 11849 South Kedzie Avenue says that the granite, quarried at Larvik, 100 miles west of Oslo, “is the whitest granite in the world.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1954]  The black and white Tribune photo above shows the Oris docked at what today is the embarkation point for First Lady Tour's Chicago Architecture Center River Tours.  One can barely make out the Prudential building rising in the center of the background.  Below that is a photo of the quarry at Larvik, Norway.

May 5, 1930 – The Marshall Field and Co. wholesale house moves into its new headquarters at the Merchandise Mart at Wells and Kinzie Streets.  The move is completed over a weekend in order to avoid any interruption in the firm’s schedule.  The company’s new home will be located in a south portion of the new building, the largest building of its kind in the world.  Each display room, three to a floor, will cover over a block of space.  The silk section will even have a stage, making it possible to host fashion shows.  Consider how amazing this is ... the first shovel of dirt for this massive project was dug on August 12, 1928.

May 5, 1914 –The Chicago Daily Tribune profiles South Water Street, a place that is “busy before most of inhabitants have left their beds.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, 1914] At 5:00 a.m. the city is quiet … “the air is cool and fresh, free from the midday fragrance of burned gasoline, soot, and coal smoke.  The water running into the lake under the State street bridge is clear and blue, not yet tainted with the burden of sewage and waste.”  This is not the case on South Water Street, though.  There are “at least 20 roosters, crowing their loudest on each of the street’s four blocks to greet the belated city sun.”  There are 400 Italians and three times as many Greeks, “Black eyes flashing hands waving, singing classic odes to the returning springtime and hurling defiance at the robbers who hold the morning’s strawberries.” Loaded trucks and wagons are “lined up solidly on either side of the four blocks and other teamsters trying to ease between the lines, addressing people who got in their way with that altogether friendly and fearful profanity which is elsewhere current only in the far west.”  The sidewalks are lined with crates, barrels and boxes as tall as a man.  There is an endless procession of pushcarts and hundreds of salesmen in long white coats vying with grocers and market men buying the day’s supplies.  In building basements bananas ripen.  The second and third floors of the businesses are given over to “South Water Street’s hospitals, where first aid to injured vegetables is applied.”  By 7:00 a.m. the day’s run of fresh strawberries – 18 carloads from Louisiana – arrives and “lids are pried off, samples tasted, the freshness tested, prices asked.” Peddlers leave with thousands of cases of produce with most of the Greeks selling from wagons; the Italians, most of them, “still cling to their baskets.”  By 8:00 a.m. the residential streets of the city are “vocal with their cries.”

May 5, 1912 – Chief of Police John McWeeney gets down to business and tells his lieutenants to apply “drastic measures” to striking pressmen in the newspaper strike that began with workers striking against Hearst publications in Chicago on April 30, an action that has now spread to all of the other newspapers in the city. “The tactics of the strikers have been a disgrace to civilization,” says the Chief. His feeling is that 528 patrolmen are “none too many . . . in view of the unexpected brutality resorted to by the strikers.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1912] A female news vender was attacked at the Fifty-First Street station of the “Alley ‘L’”. A newsboy at Thirty-Ninth Street was also beaten with a blackjack. Another newsboy was attacked at Clark and North Avenue, and a reporter for the Chicago Examiner was roughed up at Madison and Halsted. It will be a long time before the violence dies down; the strike finally ends in November. Above the Chicago police make a show of force as the strike continues.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 1 comments

Labels: 1958, Chicago Development, Chicago Politics, Highways, Transportation

Monday, May 4, 2020

May 4, 1977 -- Chicago City Council Approves Self-Service Gas Stations

pintarest.com May 4, 1977 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the Chicago City Council has approved an ordinance that will lift the city’s prohibition on self-service gas stations with a caveat that gas at self-service pumps must be sold at a ten percent discount.  The city’s Consumer Sales Commissioner, Jane Byrne, says that any station that has passed fire inspections can begin operating self-service pumps immediately. Although the ordinance passes with a vote of 45-0, there are some objections to the way it is conducted.  In a departure from normal protocol, Mayor Michael Bilandic introduces the bill himself, council rules are suspended, and immediate passage of the bill takes place.  Noting that no council member had received a copy of the proposal before it was introduced, Alderman Martin Oberman says, “With 50 members of this council and 18 committees, we should not have to deal this way with an ordinance that deals with the safety of the people of Chicago.”  [Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1977]  In the wink of an eye, the guy with the grease under his fingernails, asking “Check your oil,” is sent back into the service bays forever.

J. Bartholomew Photo

May 4, 1992 – University of Chicago trustees announce that the school has selected a site east of Michigan Avenue and north of the river, as home for its downtown Graduate School of Business. “This project reflects the university’s commitment to maintaining a substantial presence downtown, while also providing a state-of-the-art facility in which to train tomorrow’s business leaders,” says Hanna H. Gray, the U. of C. president. [Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1992] Lohan Associates, a Chicago architectural firm, will design the center, and McHugh Construction Company will be the general contractor. If you are on the river sometime, notice what an understated example the Gleacher Center is of contextual design. The tier of windows on the western third of the building’s south face relate beautifully to the Mid-Century Modern style of the 1965 structure at 401 North Michigan, Gleacher’s next door neighbor to the west. The tier of windows on the eastern two-thirds of the building relate equally well to the SOM’s 1989 Post-Modernist Art-Deco throwback NBC tower just to the east. Anyone not looking for it might well miss it, but this is contextual design that shines.

May 4, 1945 – John Augur Holabird dies at St. Luke’s Hospital on his Fifty-Ninth birthday.  The famed architect’s résumé includes some of the greatest Chicago buildings, including the 333 North Michigan Avenue building, the Board of Trade, the Palmolive building, today’s Chicago Hilton and Towers, formerly the Stevens Hotel, Passavant Hospital, the Chicago Daily News Building, and Patton Gymnasium at Northwestern University.  The son of a pioneer in the design of steel-framed tall buildings, William Holabird, John Holabird’s education was completed at West Point.  Graduating as a Second Lieutenant, he quickly rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the field artillery, commanding the Twelfth Field Artillery, Second Division in the St. Mihiel, Blanc Mont and Meuse-Argonne offensives.  He was awarded the Distinguished Service medal and the Croix de Guerre.  His attention turned to architecture, and he began his study in 1910, graduating in 1913 from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  Holabird was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a member of the Chicago Plan Commission and of the Commission of Fine Arts and a member of the Chicago, University, Commercial, Tavern, Union League, Glen View Golf and Saddle and Cycle Clubs. [https://www.westpointaog.org/memorials]

May 4, 1933 – At 1:10 p.m. an American Airways twin-engine Curtiss Condor takes off from what is now Chicago’s Midway Airport, inaugurating direct airline service between Chicago and New York City.  The plane lands at the Newark, New Jersey airport at 7:59 p.m. after a flight of five hours and 26 minutes, carrying 15 passengers, a flight attendant, two pilots and 200 pounds of express mail. Stops are made at Detroit and Buffalo.  “This is different from the old planes, when if you stood up in the aisle the pilot gave you a dirty look and began winding up his stabilizer to fix the trim of his ship,” says one passenger as he heads to the rear of the plane to watch the sun set over the Catskill Mountains. 

waterworks history.usIL

May 4, 1853 – The Chicago Daily Tribune publishes the text of an injunction issued against the Illinois Central Railroad Company by the Master in Chancery of Cook County, the decision coming in a case brought against the railroad by the Chicago Hydraulic Company.  The injunction restrains the defendants “from entering upon or taking possession of, or otherwise affecting by any act whatever, the lands, structures, pipes and reservoirs of the complainants.  And also from molesting or interrupting the complainants in the enjoyment of their riparian rights, proprietary interest, and corporate franchises, by the sinking or erecting any pier, or other obstruction whatever, between the water front of the complainants premises and the navigable waters of Lake Michigan, until the defendants shall have acquired the right so to do, by voluntary transfer from the complainants, or by ascertaining and making compensation to the complainants, for the property to be taken, or injuriously affected by the acts of the defendants, in the manner authorized and required by law, the statute in such case made and provided.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 4, 1853]  The Chicago Hydraulic Company was incorporated in 1836 and by 1840 had erected a large two-story building with a pier, along with a reservoir, at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Lake Street.  It was the first company in the city’s history to attempt the distribution of Lake Michigan water to city residents by means of wooden pipes no greater than six inches in diameter.  In 1841 the Chicago Common Council contracted with the company to supply the city with water for use in extinguishing fires.  Still, by 1850 it was estimated that less than one-fifth of the city was receiving water from the company’s supply pipes.  The great majority of residents got their water from wells or by purchasing barrels of lake water from water carts.  The poor, who could not afford those alternatives, got their water from the festering river.  In 1853 the company was purchased by the commissioners of the City Hydraulic Company, which completed a building and tower at the foot of Chicago Avenue at which a supply of water to the city began in February, 1854.  This water works stood on the lakefront, which is a good indication of how much land the city has added since that time.  Today this is the site of the present water tower, completed in 1869.  The original waterworks of the City Hydraulic Company are pictured above.

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Labels: 1977, Chicago Event, Chicago Politics

Sunday, May 3, 2020

May 3, 1966 -- Dick Gregory Sentenced to Five Months

May 3, 1966 – Comedian Dick Gregory is fined $1,500 and sentenced to five months in the Cook County jail on charges related to a march through Grant Park a year earlier. Five police officers testify during the trial that Gregory “kicked and hit arresting officers and had to be carried to a squadrol.”[Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1966] No witnesses are called to rebut the testimony. Gregory’s lawyer, Mrs. Jean Williams, says that the length of the jail sentence stems from the fact that “it would be expedient to have him [Gregory] out of circulation in the forthcoming election.” In addition to his civil rights activism Gregory was also running for mayor of Chicago. Four years later, on March 10, 1970, the United States Supreme Court struck down disorderly conduct sentences against Gregory and others who were involved in peaceful demonstrations in the city.

May 3, 1932 – Al Capone leaves Chicago aboard the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad’s  Dixie Flyer “in a blaze of photographers’ flashlights and surging crowds.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 4, 1932]  “You’d think Mussolini was passin’ through,” says Capone. In Drawing Room A on Pullman car 48 Capone talks freely to reporters before he goes to bed as the train heads for the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.  “What do I think about it all? Well, I’m on my way to do eleven years … I’m not sore at anybody but I hope Chicago will be better off and the public clamor will be satisfied,”  he says. Conversation is interrupted when the train stops two miles south of Watseka to take on coal and water.  When three hoboes are discovered on the engine, guards hustle to the door of Capone’s car, but “the hoboes, having no machine guns or other murderous weapons, convinced the detectives they were not planning to free Capone.” As the evening wears on Capone dons “glove silk blue pajamas” and, shackled to a two-bit auto thief named Vito Morici, climbs into an upper berth with Morici following. Capone had been in the Cook County jail since October 24, 1931 when Federal Judge James H. Wilkerson sentenced him to an 11-year prison term for income tax evasion.  He will arrive in Atlanta in bad shape – overweight and ridden with syphilis and gonorrhea with withdrawal symptoms from a cocaine habit. In June of 1936 Capone is transferred to the prison on Alcatraz Island, from which he is paroled on January 6, 1939. He serves another six months at Terminal Island for a contempt of court charge, and then goes into hospital treatment for his late-stage syphilitic condition and related neuropsychiatric disorder.  After treatment he retires to his home on Palm Island, Florida where he dies in 1947.  He is buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

silentfilmstillarchive

May 3, 1915 – Fans of the moving pictures turn out to view the “most costly American moving picture production ever made” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 4, 1915] as “The Diamond from the Sky,” a “three-reel masterpiece” opens at 16 theaters in the city.  Lines are long as movie fans are drawn by the film and by the chance to win a prize of $10,000 for the best idea for a sequel.  Entrants in the contest are directed to submit a treatment of no more than 1,000 words to the Tribune.  The highlights of the film – a real meteor streaking across the sky and the drop of the film’s hero, Arthur Stanley, over a cliff in an automobile make the film “a startling sensation, with unexpected thrills for every minute.”  The silent film stars Lottie Pickford, Irving Cummings and William Russell.  No known copies of the film exist today.  The plot clearly invites a sequel, hence the $10,000 gimmick promotion.  A priceless diamond is found inside a meteorite and becomes the property of the Stanley family who call the gem The Diamond from the Sky. Wealthy Virginians Colonel Arthur Stanley and Judge Lamar Stanley battle over ownership of the diamond with a gypsy, a stolen baby, a yacht, a hunchback and “a half-drunk cowboy”  [www.silentfilmstillarchive.com] all a part of the mix.

May 3, 1894 – Under the “Things Could Have Been a Lot Different” category … on this date the Chicago Daily Tribune carries news that the Chicago architectural firm of Hill and Woltersdorf has completed designs for a three-story post office building that will rise between Randolph and Madison Streets with a 700-foot frontage on Michigan Avenue.  Complementing the new home of the Art Institute a block to the south, the building’s first story will be six feet above street level with terraced steps leading to the entrance in the center of the building, which will face Washington Street.  That main entrance will be “flanked with abutments crowned with sculptured groups emblematic of the postal service.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1894] The entire building will have a steel frame, be fire-proof and cost somewhere between $2,000,000 and $2,500,000.  As pictured above, there apparently was a post office building that stood at this location from 1896 to 1905, but when contrasted with the original two million dollar plan depicted in the sketch, the actual building seems to have been far more modest and far more utilitarian with virtually all of the classical touches eliminated.

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Labels: 1966, Chicago Politics, Grant Park

Saturday, May 2, 2020

May 2, 1936 -- Lathrop Homes Plans Made Public

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May 2, 1936 – Plans for the $6,000,000 million Julia C. Lathrop Homes at Diversey Parkway and the Chicago River are made public for the first time on the same day that the plans are submitted to the Washington, D. C. offices of the Public Works Administration.  The project will cover 35.3 acres with 975 apartments covering just 17 percent of the site.  Another 17 percent will be set aside for streets with 66 percent of the area to be used for playgrounds, small parks, and green space.  There will be seven recreation rooms opening off outdoor recreation areas, each with about 1,000 square feet of space.  Adults will have seven social areas of about 600 square feet containing club rooms and kitchens.  There will be 30 buildings altogether with a dozen two-story row houses along Damen Avenue in the north corner of the project and 18 three-story apartment buildings scattered throughout the site.  Apartments will range from two to five rooms.  Robert S. De Golyer will be the chief architect, supervising an all-star team of architects that includes Hugh M. G. Garden, Thomas E. Talmadge, Charles White and Hubert Burnham. Jens Jensen will supervise the landscaping of the grounds.  In the early part of the 2000's the Lathrop homes came perilously close to demolition, but a long-delayed plan to renovate a large share of the buildings, creating a mix of affordable, Chicago Housing Authority, and market rate apartments, saw its culmination in the fall of 2018 when the first phase of the renovation was completed and residents began to move in.  Related Midwest, the developer partnering in the renovation, writes on its website, “… many of Lathrop’s existing structures will be historically preserved and restored.  The apartments will feature thoughtfully redesigned floor plans with brand new finished and contemporary conveniences.  In addition, the lush green and open space … will be fully restored by Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates, including the iconic Great Lawn.” [www.related Midwest.com]  Lathrop then and now can be seen contrasted in the photos above.

May 2, 1923 – The announcement is made that the American Furniture Mart building, currently under construction on Lake Shore Drive between Erie and Huron, will be the largest building in the world when it is completed. Lawrence Whiting of Whiting and Co., the agents for the property, discloses that a careful check has revealed that the Mart’s 1,500,000 square feet will exceed its nearest rival, the recently completed General Motors building in Detroit, which supports 1,321,000 square feet. Between 1979 and 1984 the massive building became one of the first great old buildings in the city to complete a successful program of adaptive reuse. Today it has 415 condominiums divided between three separate condominium associations and 420,000 square feet of office space, dedicated primarily to medical offices associated with the extensive Northwestern medical facilities that form a large part of the neighborhood to the west.

May 2, 1909 – The Chicago Daily Tribune extensively reports on “a wonderful temple” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1909] to be built in suburban Wilmette on a plot of land at Ridge and Linden Avenues, near Lake Michigan.  According to the paper the grounds will support “in one corner a home for cripples; in another a school for orphans; in a third a college of higher sciences and in the fourth a hospice for the entertainment of visiting believers.  In the center of the lot “the dome of the nine walled house of worship” will rise.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1909] The project will be undertaken by members of the Bahá’í faith and the buildings will be “a unique combination of western and oriental ideas in architecture, thus emphasizing the universal nature of the Bahá’í revelation.”  The announcement of the grand achievement may have been a bit premature.  Louis Bourgeois, the temple’s architect, who had become a Bahá’í in New York City in 1907, did not begin his work on the project until 1920 when he moved to a building across the street from the chosen site.  According to the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s summary of the plan of Bourgeois, “The building combines neoclassical symmetry, Gothic ribbing, a Renaissance dome, a Romanesque clerestory and Islamic arabesque tracery with the suggestion of minarets.  The carvings on the nine exterior pillars reference various world religions with symbols like the Star of David, crucifixes and the Islamic star and crescent.  The gardens contain both rectangular approaches and circular gardens, reflecting Eastern and Western influences.’ [www.archictecture.org] Completion of the temple took five decades and was made possible by contributions from Bahá’ís from around the world.  Although the cornerstone was placed in 1912, the temple was finally dedicated before 3,500 people on May 2, 1953.  It is the oldest surviving house of worship of the Bahá’í faith in the world. An interesting architectural sidelight related to the Bahá’í Temple is that the George A. Fuller construction company was responsible for erecting the superstructure of the magnificent building.  That company also built some of the great buildings of the early era of skyscrapers in Chicago and New York City.  The Rookery building, the Monadnock building, and the demolished Rand McNally building, the first building in the world to be supported by an all-steel frame, were Fuller projects, as was the Flatiron building off Madison Square Park in New York City.  More on the Fuller Company can be found in this Connecting the Windy City blog.

May 2, 1865 – The body of President Abraham Lincoln leaves Chicago, bound for Springfield. The city has grieved for two days as the fallen president’s remains lay in state at the Court House, allowing 125,000 people to pay their final respects.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “The appearance of the body had not sensibly changed.  There was the same holy, calm expression, and the same placid smile resting upon those marble features.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1865] At 7:30 p.m. 15 “young ladies, each dressed in white waists and black skirts, with black scarfs thrown over their left shoulders” throw white roses over the lid of Lincoln’s coffin.  An honor guard than lifts the coffin and carries it to a funeral car drawn by twin black horses furnished by the American and United Express Companies.  The procession proceeds down Washington Street to Market Street, then to Madison and along Canal Street to the terminal of the St. Louis and Chicago Railroad where the coffin is placed in a railroad car as a choir sings solemn music. As the funeral procession passes the corner of Washington and Market about 20 feet of the sidewalk gives way under the weight of spectators and a number of mourners are thrown seven or eight feet to the earth below.  A few minutes later another sidewalk at Madison and Market gives way, and over a hundred mourners are thrown down with “nearly everyone who stood on the broken sidewalk … more or less injured, some quite seriously.”  Frequent enough for the paper to note the problem was the rush for “relics” of the event.  The Tribune reported, “Ladies eagerly picked up the leaves of flowers which had been strewn on the coffin, and put them carefully in paper for preservation.  Scissors were pulled out to clip pieces from the drapery, and positive roughness had to be used in many cases to prevent the complete demolition of everything that had been used in the funeral obsequies.”  At 9:30 p.m. Train No. 58 leaves the station with the Master Mechanic of the St. Louis Railroad, J. Jackman, in the engineer’s seat.  An engine precedes the funeral train by ten minutes taking “every precaution … to avoid accidents.”  It had been a deeply moving 48 hours, as the Tribune solemnly reported, “Our father, our friend, our deliverer, is dead; the first outthrust of grief, great, overwhelming, though it were, was yet broken by the excitement of the occasion, and our subsequent wailings even have not been without sad interest.  But now that the form is forever departed, naught save the memory of the man remains, now comes the rank desolation and sorrow, which though not so demonstrative, is more affective.  The head of the nation, of the race, is gone from among us – even his form has departed.  We mourn him now as indeed gone; the place which knew him so long, shall know him no more forever.”  Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession as it arrived in Chicago is pictured above as it begins at Twelfth Street and the lakefront.

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Labels: 1936, Chicago Development, Public Housing

Friday, May 1, 2020

May 1, 1894 -- March on Washington Begins

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May 1, 1894 – Economic disaster overtook the United States just months before the glories of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition wound down.  A four-year depression that began in January of 1893 with the failure of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad led to a panic that saw 500 banks shut their doors, 15,000 businesses close, and hundreds of farmers lose their land.  In Pennsylvania the unemployment rate rose to 25%.  It stood at 35% in New York and a staggering 43% in Michigan.   On March 25, 1894 an Ohio businessman by the name of Jacob S. Coxey led a group of 100 men out of Massillon, Ohio, and, on foot, headed for Washington, D. C.  It was Coxey’s intent to gather members as the contingent passed through towns and cities along the way in an effort to persuade Congress to authorize a public works bill that would provide jobs for the unemployed.  Other groups from around the country joined in, but they lost members along the way, rather than gaining them.  One such group left Chicago that year on this date with 433 men following Dr. J. H. Randall.  They left from the North Side and made it to Hyde Park this first day where they camped on the grounds of the closed World’s Fair.  The march to Washington, D. C. was not an easy trip.  Spring rains made progress miserable, and some towns along the way were even less forgiving than the Spring rains.  The police met the group on the outskirts of La Porte, Indiana, and Randall was thrown in jail.  Towns were naturally suspicious of the ragged band, and rumors that preceded it carried alarming warnings that the group was infested with smallpox.  After 30 days on the road, the group reached Mansfield, Ohio.  The city did not open its arms to the ragged band.  Instead of allowing the men to camp at the fairgrounds, the marchers were directed to the local stockyard.  In the evening Randall went to the town square to deliver a speech, something that he had done at many other towns along the way.  Thousands of people had congregated in anticipation.  The sheriff ordered him off the courthouse steps and, after he had made a second attempt to speak from the bandstand, the sheriff blocked his way.  A local defense committee was organized to defend Randall.  Some of the working men of the town formed a bodyguard to protect the leader of the ragtag army.  The town council relented, and on a Saturday night Randall was allowed to speak.  In a town of 14,473, seven thousand people stood in the town square.  The Commonweal Army, as it was called, still had 411 miles to go before it reached Washington, D. C., which the men entered on July 16.  [https://richlandsource.com/area history.com]  The Chicago contingent was just one of several such groups headed toward the nation’s capital.  Ultimately, the men did not get the results on which they had set their sights.  It was, however, the first such mass march on the nation’s capital … kind of cool that Chicago was a part of it!  The above photo shows the marchers' entrance into Mansfield, Ohio.

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May 1, 1970 -- Chicago rolls out the red carpet for the astronauts of Apollo 13, and a half-million people come to cheer James A. Lovell, Jr. and John L. Swigert, despite 25 m.p.h. winds that gust to 47 m.p.h. Astronaut Fred W. Haise, Jr. is unable to attend because of a kidney ailment. The celebration starts at Michigan and Ohio where the parade kicks off. At the Michigan Avenue bridge a Chicago fire boat sends up a display of water and fireworks are sent skyward. There is a half-hour ceremony at the Daley Center at which Governor Ogilvie, Senator Charles Percy, and Senator Ralph Tyler Smith speak. Following the public reception, an official luncheon is held at the Palmer House, attended by 800 city officials. From there Lovell and Swigert report to Orchestra Hall for a question-and-answer session with 2,500 high school students. As they leave for O'Hare, Lovell observes, "Chicago has always been a very friendly, warm, open city, and the welcome we received today was typical. Today really typified Chicago -- a big, friendly, windy city."

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May 1, 1918 – This isn’t particularly surprising news these days, but back in the early part of the twentieth century a newspaper going out of business was a big deal.  It was on this date in 1918 that the Chicago Herald printed its last edition after a run of only four years.  It began publication in 1914 when two different newspapers, the Record-Herald and the Inter Ocean were consolidated.  William Randolph Hearst is the new owner of the paper, which will be combined with the Chicago Examiner, a paper he already owns, to create the Chicago Herald-Examiner.  The Herald actually dates back to 1881 when it started up as an independent newspaper.  In 1895 it was combined with the Chicago Times to form the Times-Herald.  Then in 1901 another merger took place and the Record-Herald was created.  Its merger with the Inter Ocean in 1914 was underwritten by some substantial city benefactors.  John G. Shedd, the president of Marshall Field and Company; Julius Rosenwald, the head of Sears, Roebuck and Company; Samuel Insull, the president of Commonwealth Edison; James Patten, a wealthy grain dealer; and LaVerne W. Noyes, the leading manufacturer of windmills in the United States all pitched in to bring solvency to a paper that had been a losing proposition.

May 1, 1893 – The World’s Columbian Exposition is opened a few minutes after noon when the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, activates a switch that sends electricity to every powered object at the fair. Before the President brings the fair to life, the blind Chaplain of the United States, Rev. Dr. W. H. Milburn, is led to the dais by his adopted daughter. He begins a lengthy prayer thusly, “All glory be to Thee, Lord God of Hosts, that Thou has moved the hearts of all kindred tongues, people and nations to keep a feast of tabernacles in this place, in commemoration of the most momentous of all voyages, by which Columbus lifted the veil that hid the new world from the old and opened the gateway of the future for mankind!  Thy servants have builded these more than imperial palaces, many chambered and many galleried, in which to store and show man’s victories over air, earth, fire and flood, engines of use, treasures of beauty and promise of the years that are to be, in illustration of the world’s advance within these four hundred years.  Woman, too, the shackles falling from her hands and estate, throbbing with the pulse of the new time, joyously treading the paths of larger freedom, responsibility and self-help opening before her; woman, nearer to God by the intuitions of the heart and the grandeur of her self-sacrifice, brings the inspiration of her genius, the product of her hand, brain and sensibility to shed a grace and loveliness upon the place, thus making the house beautiful.”  W. A. Croffut, a Washington, D. C. journalist, follows, reading a poem, entitled “The Prophecy.”    As the orchestra plays a Wagner overture, the Director of the fair, George R. Davis, rises to speak.  He concludes his remarks with these words, “And now this central city of this great Republic on the continent discovered by Columbus, whose distinguished descendants are present as the guests of the Nation, it only remains for you, Mr. President, if in your opinion the Exposition here presented is commensurate in dignity with what the world should expect of our great country, to direct that it shall be opened to the public, and when you touch this magic key the ponderous machinery will start in its revolutions and the activities of the Exposition will begin.”  At this point President Cleveland delivers the shortest remarks of the afternoon, concluding with his wish that as the fair comes to life it will help “our hopes and aspirations awaken forces which in all time to come shall influence the welfare, the integrity, the freedom of mankind.” With that he moves to the table to his left, where he finds a golden telegraph key, sitting atop a pedestal upholstered in navy blue and golden plush, on the side of which are two dates, 1492 and 1893.  He depresses the key and “the electric pulsation which by that simple act was sent around the World’s Fair, setting in motion its mighty engine, causing the mammoth fountains to flow, and constituting the signal for the unveiling of the typical statue and the unfurling of many hundreds of flags to the breeze, was announced, immediately afterwards by the beating of drums and the blowing of steam whistles, this being quickly responded to by a salvo of distant artillery.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1893]  

May 1, 1893 – What a day this must have been!  The President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, pushes one button at a few minutes after noon at the site of the World’s Columbian Exposition, “setting in motion its mighty engines, causing the mammoth fountains to flow, and constituting the signal for the unveiling of the typical statue and the unfurling of many hundreds of flags to the breeze.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1893] Drums beat, distant cannons fires, and a band begins to play “America,” the second verse of which the Director-General of the fair, Colonel George R. Davis, invites the assembled masses to sing.  The paper reaches to the classical age of Greece for its superlatives, reporting, “That one little movement by President Cleveland actualized more than the wildest day dreams of old time thinkers in all the ages.  It called into activity and animated, as with the breath of life, a greater mass and variety of organization than was ever supposed to be affected by a fiat from Olympus or controlled by the decrees of Fate thought to be worked out by the three sisters.  Compare the most important products form the forge of Vulcan with the mammoth engines in Machinery Hall… Contrast the electric incandescence there with the fire fabled to have been brought down from heaven by Prometheus … Measure the products of human brain power and muscular energy there displayed against the reported results of the twelve labors of the far-famed Hercules, the magnificence of the array at Jackson Park with the splendor of the palace built by the genii for Aladdin, and the feasts of the swift-winged messenger of the gods with what was accomplished yesterday by the mere tapping of a telegraph key … Nor could the sculptors and painters of classic times around the shores of the Mediterranean avoid turning green with envy if allowed to revisit the pale glimpses of the moon and see the wealth of art production that is grouped on a few acres of land near the head of Lake Michigan.”  The Tribune concludes its glowing assessment with the prediction that the opening of the great fair will be a special day for the citizens of Chicago, people who “are intimately identified with its progress from the nothingness of little more than half a century ago to the position of second city in the greatest country of the New World, the discovery of which is celebrated by the holding of the Fair in our midst.”  The Machinery Hall that rivaled the wonders of ancient Greece is pictured above.

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Labels: 1894, Chicago Event, Politics, Protests, World's Columbian Exposition