Wednesday, December 19, 2018

December 19, 1972 -- Art Institute Unveils Plans for Expansion

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December 19, 1972 –The Art Institute of Chicago unveils a $46.4 million building and remodeling plan that will fill, in a phased sequence of development, the block bounded by Jackson Boulevard, Michigan Avenue, Columbus Drive and Monroe Street.  Children on field trips will be provided with a special entrance, and a 3,000-car parking lot that is connected to the museum by pedestrian tunnels is planned.  On the north side of Monroe Street atop the proposed underground parking lot, the museum contemplates the placement of Louis Sullivan’s entrance arch from the demolished Stock Exchange building.  The plans are disclosed at a regular board meeting of the Chicago Park District at which the museum asks permission to assume control over a parking lot between Monroe Street and Jackson Boulevard, a site on which the museum hopes to build a four-level school for the institution’s 12,000 students. Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill estimates the first phase of the project will cost $11 million, the exact sum the museum has already collected from private donations as a part of its centennial fund drive.  Once the school and an auditorium are completed, the Art Institute hopes to construct two galleries, a sculpture court and a service area on air rights over the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad right of way.  The addition was completed in 1976, the first building of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that was free of the museum itself.  The Louis Sullivan entrance arch, pictured above, actually ended up south of Monroe and west of Columbus Drive where it provides a stunning counterpoint to the Modern Wing.


December 19, 1871 – The Chicago Tribune prints a letter from an “Old Citizen” [Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1871] who relates in detail, right down to the names on storefronts and households, what the city looked like in 1846.  The writer arrived in September,1846, having “decided to take my chances for life and fortune here.”  South of Fort Dearborn, located at the river and what is today Michigan Avenue, everything was “an everlasting stretch of prairie and little sand-hills along the lake-shore. At the corner of Clark and Washington Streets stood the Methodist and Second Presbyterian Churches.  Everything east of Clark Street and south of Madison Street was “open prairie [and] … large numbers of family cows.”  A “country tavern,” the Southern Hotel, stood at the corner of State Street and Twelfth Street, near “Widow Clark’s fine residence … near Eighteenth street, near Michigan avenue.” Five bucks a week was the rate for “good board, furnished room, fuel, and lights, for gentleman and wife.” The monthly rent for a “good office” was four dollars.  The rent of a “nice house, modern appointments” was $125.00 to $175.00 a year, paid in quarterly installments.  The image above shows the city as it may have looked in the mid-1840's.


December 19, 1948 – Chauncey McCormick, the executor of the estate of Kate Sturges Buckingham, announces that with the war won and materials once again available, movement is being made on following Buckingham’s wish to construct a great memorial to Alexander Hamilton.  McCormick says that about 20 possible locations for the memorial were surveyed in 1947, and the number of sites has since been narrowed down to about seven.  Trustees of the memorial fund are especially interested in the site of the United States Courthouse in the block bounded by Adams and Jackson on the north and south and Dearborn and Clark on the east and west.  (Imagine a nine-foot statue of the founding father fighting for attention with Alexander Calder’s “Flamingo”!)  Buckingham established the memorial fund for the tribute to Hamilton in 1928, and when she died in 1937 her will specified that if the memorial had not been started by December 14, 1947 the million dollars set aside for it would go to the Art Institute to use as it wished; in 1947, therefore, the memorial trustees went to court and obtained an order delaying the date for completion to January 1, 1953.  The story of Buckingham’s desire for the memorial to Hamilton is a long one and, to some, a tale with a less than a satisfactory ending.  You can read more about it here.  The photo above shows the state of the memorial today after a re-gilding effort in 2016 and 2017.  
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Tuesday, December 18, 2018

December 18, 1985 -- Operation Greylord Scoops Up 22 Individuals

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December 18, 1985 –A federal grand jury hands down indictments in the Operation Greylord investigation with two former judges and ten lawyers among the 22 individuals who are named.  Two former judges, James L. Oakey and John F. Reynolds, are accused of “accepting thousands of dollars in bribes to fix cases and to allow lawyers to solicit clients outside their courtrooms.” [Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1985] Seven Cook County deputy sheriffs, a Chicago police officer and a Circuit Court clerk are also named in indictments that allege more than 200 acts of bribery. In the course of the ongoing investigation, 22 people charged in Graylord have already been convicted with one person acquitted.  Five more individuals still await trials.  The indictment charges that some payoffs go back as far as 1969.  Part of the charges pertain to a “Hustlers’ Club” established some time in 1981.  In this scheme attorneys paid out $500 a month for “the exclusive right to hustle three courtrooms in police headquarters.”  Considered unethical, the practice of approaching prospective clients with offers to represent them was made to work by bribing deputies to overlook the practice and by making secret arrangements with judges to sign orders turning over defendants’ bond money to the lawyers.  The participating judges would then get part of the bond money and deputy sheriffs received 15 to 25 percent of the proceeds for steering clients to the lawyers.  Ultimately, by the time Operation Greylord wraps up, a total of 93 people are indicted, including 17 judges, 48 lawyers, ten deputy sheriffs, eight policemen, eight court officials, and a state legislator.  


December 18, 1913 – The Chicago White Sox defeat the New York Giants in Manila by a score of 7 to 4.  It couldn’t have been a lot of fun as the Chicago Daily Tribune reported, “The spectators presented the unusual spectacle of watching a baseball game from under a canopy of umbrellas, for it rained during the greater part of seven innings, after which the game was called.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 18, 1913] After a reception and banquet hosted by Army and Navy officers, the players board a ship for a two-week trip to Brisbane, Australia where it is hoped the team will arrive in time to play a game on New Year’s Day.  The "World Tour" by the White Sox and Giants has not been matched since as the two teams began playing against one another in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 18, 1913 and ended the tour 46 games later in Cairo, Egypt on February 2, 1914.  The tour was underwritten by Sox President Charles Comiskey and Giants Manager John McGraw without a single dollar of advertising funding the venture.  At the end of the global circuit the White Sox had won 24 games and lost 20 with two ties.


December 18, 1935 – Three side-wheel lake steamers, former “floating palaces,” that originally cost more than $700,000 are sold at a federal auction.  Highest bidder is the Woodmere Scrap and Metal Company of Detroit.  It will remove the engines from the liners and convert the remaining hulls into barges, effectively ending the careers of the “City” ships of the Goodrich Transit Company – the City of Holland, the City of Benton Harbor and the City of St. Joseph.  Although the plan is to save the City of Saugatauk she, too, will end up as a barge carrying pulpwood and petroleum products.  With the sale an era ends on Lake Michigan.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Michigan’s fast fruit industry was responsible for the former prosperity of the passenger line.  Old residents recall seeing the ‘city’ boats jammed with passengers and with fruit piled high on the decks, steaming out from the lake ports.  The big paddle wheels leaving mountains of foaming water behind the trim liners added much to the spectacle.  It was a rich trade until the development of motor trucks as freight carriers after the world war.  In five years the lake fruit service was a memory.  Passenger trade alone would not support these luxury liners, so they were tied up in the St. Joseph ship canal.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 19, 1935]   The photo above shows the City of Saugatauk early in her life when she carried the name City of Alpina.
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Monday, December 17, 2018

December 17, 1938 -- Subway Construction Kicks Off

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December 17, 1938 –The first dirt is turned in the $40 million project to bring a subway to the city, a project that has been in the discussion stages for over 50 years.  Thousands of citizens on the sidewalks of LaSalle Street follow a parade of local officials and city leaders to just south of Chicago Avenue where the ceremonies convene on State Street.  In 24-degree weather Public Works Administrator Harold L. Ickes delivers a 3,000-word speech, saying, “Today we are able to come together to inaugurate the most portentous civic undertaking since this city shook off the ashes of the great fire and started hopefully and determinedly to build again for the future … The subway that we inaugurate today will be only a beginning. As the city is able to extend it, this will be done, until Chicago will have as complete an underground traction system as any city in the world.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 18, 1938]  Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly says, “Chicago digs its first spadeful of pay dirt today … Day and night during the coming months the barometer of business in Chicago will respond to this mighty stimulus of money and men in overalls … We did not want to wind up with a makeshift transportation system.  We are achieving modern transportation in step with the times.  Yes, it has taken almost half a century to get under way, but Chicago has got what it wants – and without additional taxes or special assessments.”  The plan is to run the subway from Congress Avenue north to Lake Street, west under Lake Street to Canal Street, then northwest under Milwaukee Avenue to meet the Logan-Humboldt elevated lines.  The line opened in October of 1943.  A second subway project was suspended during World War II and was opened in February of 1951.  The above photo shows subway construction in progress on State Street, looking north from Madison Street.


December 17, 1905 – Looking back over the preceding year, the Chicago Daily Tribune reports that in 1904 the city erected “the equivalent of over forty-seven solid miles of buildings, single frontage, costing approximately $62,000,000.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 17, 1905] Additionally, the real estate transactions for the year totaled approximately $140,000,000.  The construction of apartment houses was double that of 1904, and “despite all these new buildings, builders and agents having them in charge report that they are being filled as soon as completed.”  The southern portions of the city lead the building boom which, the article points out, “simply goes to show what must be accepted as a great sociological fact, that the foreign elements of Chicago’s population, which predominate in the northwest division of the city, are greater home builders and are more attached to the individual home than the more well to do native born element which predominates n the south division.”  Leading the city as far as factory and warehouse construction is the new Sears, Roebuck and Co. plant on Harvard Street on the city’s west side.  In the central business district there were 71 real estate transactions, 30 more than in 1904 and “there is no doubt that they have strengthened greatly, especially in the choicest section of the business district,” where Joseph Leiter refused a $60,000-a-year rental of a small lot at the southeast corner of State Street and Jackson Boulevard which “at the present time … is a trifle startling, to say the least.”  The above photo shows the Sears complex on the west side, designed by Nimmons and Fellows, and begun in 1905.


December 17, 1936 – The Chicago Park District announces a project that will hopefully streamline the traffic flowing through Lincoln Park while providing a new bathing beach and bathhouse for the area as well.  A $1,100,000 grant from the Works Progress Administration is still needed to get the plan going, but when fully funded the project will carry Lake Shore Drive past North Avenue for another half-mile while La Salle Street will be extended from its terminus at Stockton Drive to meet the new section of Lake Shore Drive.  Additionally, a breakwater will be built 1,500 feet from the shoreline at North Avenue, and sand will be used to fill the space between the new breakwater and the shore, creating a new beach.  It is hoped that the new plan will reduce the congestion that has plagued the two lanes of Stockton Drive as it winds through the park, carrying rush hour traffic from both LaSalle Street and Lake Shore Drive south of North Avenue.  The 1934 photo above shows Stockton Drive to the left, winding north past the statue of Abraham Lincoln that today stands below and south of the La Salle Street extension.
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Sunday, December 16, 2018

December 16, 1980 -- Chicago Cultural Center Controversy

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December 16, 1980 – Mayor Jane Byrne defends a proposed city ordinance that she submitted to the City Council in the preceding week that would take control of the city’s Cultural Center from the Chicago Public Library Board, transferring it to a “small arts agency run by one of her appointees.” [Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1980]  Under the proposal the “supervision, care, and custody” of the Cultural Center, which has attracted 1.2 million annual visitors since its restoration in 1977, will be transferred to the Council on Fine Arts. Upon hearing of the proposal, Library Board member Stanley Balzekas says, “I’m in a state of shock over this … Where is this going to stop?  Are they going to take the branch libraries away from us next?  The board has never been contacted about any of this.  We learn about it in the papers.”  This brouhaha comes on the heels of the mayor’s attempt to fire and then deny a pay raise to the deputy library commissioner, a cousin of State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley.  Today the former central library for the city is overseen by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.  It presents “hundreds of free international, national, regional and local artists, musicians and performers, providing a showcase where the public can enjoy and learn about the arts.”  [cityofchicago.org]

Ernest A. Grunsfeld, Jr.
December 16, 1941 – Just nine days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Palmer House hosts a meeting of 550 architects at which 339 members of the American Institute of Architects agree to do full time work in support of the war effort with 241 members saying that they would be willing to go wherever they are assigned.  Ernest A. Grunsfeld, Jr., a member of the Institute’s executive committee, says, “The idea had its beginning at a meeting called to discuss air raid shelters.  We recalled that in the last war technical men rushed about in an effort to aid, and many ended by accepting any job to get in the swim rather than fitting in a position where they would do the most good.  So we set out to find what jobs the government needed done and what men were available to do them.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 17, 1941] Participants at the meeting also decide to open an office in the city to place architects where they can do the most good. 


December 16, 1942 – It is interesting to note how many things that we take for granted today begin as strange, curious, or contested, often taking years before they find acceptance.  One such item went to court on this date in 1942 as the City of Chicago, upon failing to get a permanent injunction against milk sold in paper cartons from Circuit Court Judge Benjamin P. Epstein, went immediately to the Illinois Supreme Court with its suit.  The case hinged on an interpretation of a 1935 city ordinance requiring that milk be sold in “standard” containers.  The United States Supreme Court had already sent the case back to Illinois, saying that it was a matter for the state courts to decide.  The case involved milk sold in single-serving containers, and in a 19-page opinion Judge Epstein ruled that the state legislature’s milk pasteurization law, passed on July 24, 1939, took precedence over the city’s law and permitted milk to be sold in the cartons.  “While the state legislature desired to preserve in the city the right to regulation,” Epstein wrote, “it did not intend to give to the city the right to prohibit that which the state permitted.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 11, 1942]  Interesting case . . . a mystery today why city officials would initiate a case, follow it through the local court, the Illinois Supreme Court, the U. S. Supreme Court, back to the local court and again to the state’s Supreme Court over a milk carton, all of this in the middle of wartime.
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Saturday, December 15, 2018

December 15, 1936 -- Chicago Surface Lines Ordered to Remove L.S.D. Tracks

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December 15, 1936 – The Illinois Commerce Commission orders the Chicago Surface Lines to tear up tracks that cross Lake Shore Drive at Chicago Avenue and which run parallel to the drive between Chicago and Grand Avenues.  The commission gives the transit agency 60 days to implement the order.  This ends a fight that has gone on for a dozen years, ever since the tracks were first laid on park district property in 1921 under a temporary order.  The removal of the tracks will facilitate the movement of traffic along the drive once the bridge across the river is completed sometime during the following year. Otherwise, the tracks would virtually nullify the gains brought on by the bridge that connects the north and south sides of the city negated by the obstacle caused by the tracks. The commission’s decision runs to 23 pages and concludes, “that the Chicago avenue tracks east of Lake Shore drive are unnecessary and that these tracks do not now serve any public convenience or necessity and should be removed.”  The tracks were laid down in May of 1921 to serve a temporary event at Navy Pier, the Pageant of Progress.  Three years later the Lincoln Park Board filed a petition to have the extension removed.  Thus, began a decade-long fight which culminated in October of 1936 after five months of testimony that led to a transcript of 6,000 pages that included 176 technical exhibits.  The above photo looks south on Lake Shore Drive toward Chicago Avenue from Oak Street in the mid-1930's.



December 15, 1895 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on the progress being made in “transforming the present unsightly vacant space on the Lake-Front into a handsome park.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 14, 1895] At both ends of the proposed new park – at Randolph Street and at Park Row, about where today’s Roosevelt Road runs south of the park – the greatest work has been done.  About 700 feet of a new sea wall that will help to create a new harbor has been run south of Randolph Street.  The Illinois Central Railroad is creating the south end of the sea wall, using two pile-drivers.  On the west side of the tracks, 500 feet of foundation have been laid for a retaining wall with work halted during the winter season.  Railroad spurs have been laid at the south end of the park on which hundreds of loads of dirt have been dumped into the lake to create new land although this section of the new park “presents the appearance of the outskirts of a brick-yard.”  The top photo shows the lake park, today's Grant Park, in 1893 before work started on its improvement.  The 1907 photo below that shows all of the land that has been added to the east of the Illinois Central tracks as the development of the new park continues.


December 15, 1940 – Newly elected Congressman Charles S. Dewey calls upon all Chicagoans to begin backing a plan to place an airport in the heart of the city, a project that would extend from the lake a mile west to the New York Central Railroad tracks and from Sixteenth Street north to the south end of Soldier Field.  Dewey’s plan would raise the airport above the Outer Drive and the Illinois Central tracks just to the west of that roadway.  The congressman lists four distinct advantages of his plan:  (1) the city could recoup the cost of construction through fees charged to the airlines; (2) the project would provide a huge market for unskilled labor; (3) the location of the new airport would be a huge improvement in air service to the city and a boon for all city businesses; and (4) at least a square mile of “blighted area” would be removed from the near south side.  Dewey says, “It is fantastic to put the main airport out at the edge of the city.  The cheapest land, actually, is that in the blighted areas near the center of Chicago.”  Meeting objections that an already noisy city will become even noisier with an airport in its center, Dewey says, “A city is practically built upon noise.  Listen to that street traffic noise 20 floors below my office.  Noise means activity.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 16, 1940]   Dewey served one term as a representative from the Ninth Congressional District of Illinois, was defeated in his bid for re-election in 1945 and went back to the banking business as a vice-president of Chase National Bank.  
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Friday, December 14, 2018

December 14, 1910 -- Grant Park Takes Shape with Construction Debris

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December 14, 1910 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on “one of the most remarkable features of the construction of buildings in downtown Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 14, 1910] As more and more tall buildings are erected in the city, engineers have found a unique way of moving the thousands of tons of material created by digging foundations. When a new foundation is begun or an old building is razed to make way for a new one, a shaft is sunk from the curb line down to the tunnel system that runs beneath the central section of the city.  The refuse is dumped down this shaft, where it pours directly into open cars below the chute.  The article indicates that a large part of Grant Park has been made with debris carried 60 feet below the city streets to Polk Street and Michigan Avenue where a crane lifts the cars and dumps them.  The system works, both to reuse the debris as landfill and to keep busy Loop streets free of hundreds of wagons, hauling construction waste.  The above photo shows Grant Park taking shape on the other side of the Illinois Central Railroad tracks in 1907.


December 14, 1953 – Mayor Martin Kennelly receives authorization from General Service Administrator Edmund F. Mansure to begin running the Congress Street expressway through the post office building and across adjoining railroad tracks to the Chicago River.  On the same day, the Public Works Commissioner Virgil E. Gunlock obtains authority from the Civil Aeronautics Administration to revise development plans for O’Hare Airport in order to prepare the field for civilian passenger operations by the summer.  Kennelly and Gunlock consider the authority to build the highway from the post office to the Chicago River a major victory.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Gunlock said some of the city’s leading lawyers had told him he never would be able to get the necessary authority to build the super-highway over this short stretch of land.  He said the mayor and he considered their success in this more important than getting authority to put the super-highway thru the post-office building.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 14, 1953] Projections peg the cost of pushing the road through the post office building at $1,176,200 of which the city will pay $600,000 and the federal government $576,000.   The photo above shows the east side of the post office on August 11, 1954, complete with holes punched through it to make room for the expressway, a road that one can see under construction on the other side of the building.


December 14, 1937 – Kate Sturges Buckingham dies at her home at 2450 Lake View Avenue at the age of 79.  The Chicago Daily Tribune observes, “To tell the life story of Kate Buckingham would be to tell the story of Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 15, 1937]  Buckingham’s great uncle, Alvah Buckingham, built the first grain elevator in the city in 1850.  In 1855 her maternal grandfather, Solomon Sturges, founded the storage elevator business that lay at the heart of the family fortune.  That empire crashed to the ground in 1871 when the Great Fire destroyed the elevators on the river.  Rebuilding followed and in 1877 the family moved into a new home on Prairie Avenue, soon to become the most prestigious street in the city.  When Buckingham’s father died in 1911, he left an estate of over four million dollars.  Two years later Buckingham’s brother, Clarence, died, followed seven years later by her sister, Lucy Maud.  Kate Buckingham became involved in the Art Institute of Chicago partly as a result of her brother’s influence.  Clarence Buckingham had been a governing member of the institution for 30 years and a trustee for a dozen at the time of his death.  Lucy Maud Buckingham had also assembled a collection of over 400 pieces of Chinese art, which Kate Buckingham presented to the Art Institute in Lucy’s name.  She also gave a collection of medieval sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts to the AIC in 1924 in memory of her sister.  Her greatest gifts – Buckingham Fountain and the Alexander Hamilton monument – were given as a memorial without her name attached.  At the dedication of the Hamilton monument not far from her final home on Lake View Avenue, Chauncey McCormick said of Buckingham, that she had “a possessive love of Chicago, and she wanted to beautify the city for the people.”  [Schultz and Hast.  Women Building Chicago 1790-1990:  A Biographical Dictionary]  You can find additional information on Buckingham and her family here.
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Thursday, December 13, 2018

December 13, 2014 -- Maggie Daley Park Officially Opens

landscapearchitecturemagazine.org
December 13, 2014 –Although visitors will still be kept from walking on new sod and a section of the children’s play area won’t be finished until the spring of 2015, Maggie Daley Park opens at 11:30 a.m.  Replacing the Bicentennial Plaza east of Columbus Drive between Randolph and Monroe Streets, the park is named for the former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s wife, who died from breast cancer in 2011.  Under the guidance of landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, the 27-acre park takes two years to construct at a cost of $60 million.  The park features a one-quarter-mile ice skating ribbon, tennis courts, rock-climbing walls, and a Play Garden, along with the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Garden, as well as many other features.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel is especially impressed with the children’s playground, saying, “It will allow kids to challenge themselves and do things they didn’t know they could do.”  [Chicago Tribune, December 13, 2014]  


December 13, 1882 – The Chicago Daily Tribune publishes an editorial in which it protests strongly against an elevated railroad in the city, saying:  “The public should organize its protest against any scheme of this kind with a promptness and emphasis that shall leave the Council no doubt about the popular disapproval which unquestionably prevails.  There is neither necessity nor demand for elevated railways in Chicago.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 13, 1882] The editorial goes on to remind those behind the elevated scheme of a provision in the Illinois Constitution that “private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without just compensation ... such compensation, when not made by the State, shall be ascertained by a jury.”  Using this constitutional provision, the writers go on to say, “Probably the full significance of this constitutional provision has not occurred to the gentlemen who are so eager to supply Chicago with an elevated railway system which Chicago doesn’t want.  They may discover that their purses, long as they are, will not hold out to satisfy the owners of the property which they propose to destroy.”  It took another ten years of wrangling, but the elevated system’s first train left the station in June of 1892.


December 13, 1951 – Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II, Indiana Governor Henry Schricker and Cook County Board President William Erickson come together to dedicate the Calumet Expressway and its Tri-State Parkway extension, extending from U. S. Route 41 in Hammond to Doty Avenue and 130th Street in Chicago.  The new parkway allows motorists to bypass the industrial areas of northern Indiana and South Chicago in order to connect with a national toll road that will cross Indiana and Ohio and join the existing Pennsylvania turnpike. 

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