Tuesday, October 6, 2020

October 6, 1939 -- Cardinal Mundelein Laid to Rest

Chicago Tribune photo

October 6, 1939 – Chicagoans turn out to say their final good-byes to the Most Reverend George Mundelein, who had served as the third Archbishop of Chicago from 1915 until his death on October 2, 1939 at the age of 67.  The funeral service is celebrated at Holy Name Cathedral by the papal delegate to the United States, the Most Reverend Archbishop Amleto Giovanni Cicognani of Washington, D. C. A public address system delivers the liturgy and music of the service to those who are outside Holy Name, with nearby rooftops crowded with mourners and the top of Holy Name School at the corner of Wabash and Chicago Avenues, “thronged with black-robed sisters in the warm October sunshine.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 7, 1939]  Cardinal Mundelein lies, dressed in purple vestments with a white mitre on his head and purple shoes and stockings on his feet.  Red gloves cover his hands which hold a crucifix.  The Most Reverend John J. Cantwell, the Archbishop of Los Angeles is the eulogist, and in his remarks he names the accomplishments of Mundelein … the dedication of 205 new churches, the erection of the $20,000,000 St. Mary of the Lake seminary and the Quigley seminary, the founding of the Lewis Holy Name Technical School in Lockport, the construction of Lewis Memorial Hospital, and the doubling of the enrollment of the parochial school system in the city.  After the service, the funeral cortége leaves the cathedral and heads east to Michigan Avenue “lined by thousands who realized that a notable builder had become a tradition deeply graven in a city’s life.”  The American Federation of Musicians’ band plays Chopin’s “Marche Funebre” and the death march from Beethoven’s “Saul,” and the 750,000 onlookers are so quiet that only the footsteps of the procession rise above the solemn music.  After the procession Mundelein’s bronze coffin is taken to the seminary in Mundelein where he is interred in the Immaculate Conception chapel.  His crypt will rest six steps beneath the high altar of the chapel under a half-ton slab of black Belgian marble, chosen by the Cardinal himself, inscribed with words, translated from the Latin, “George William Cardinal Mundelein.  Third archbishop of Chicago.  Born July 2, 1872.  Died October 2, 1939.  I shall await God my Savior.”  The photo shows the funeral procession turning onto Monroe Street from Michigan Avenue.  From there it would head up the Outer Drive and onto St. Mary of the Lake.



October 6, 1981 –The fireboat Fred A. Busse makes its way down the Chicago River for the last time, headed for a south side dry dock where it will be retired. When the boat came to Chicago in 1937 from Bay City, Michigan where it was built, it was hailed as the largest fireboat in existence.  The boat, 92-feet long and weighing 157 tons, continually proved itself over the years. Just two years after the Fred A. Busse came to the city, its crew pumped 32.5 million gallons of river water for over 50 hours as it fought the four-million-dollar fire at the Rosenbaum-Norris grain elevator on the South Branch. The Fred A. Busse still exists. In fact, you can actually ride the boat. After a stint in Door County, Wisconsin the Fred A. Busse returned to Chicago this summer, where you can book yourself a nice cocktail cruise on an authentic part of Chicago history.  The top photo shows the fireboat at the Rosenbaum-Norris fire.  Below that is the Fred A. Busse in its latest incarnation.


October 6, 1977 – Four city groups – the Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council, Friends of the Parks, the Open Lands Project, and the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects – come together to propose a large park, featuring a 10,000-seat outdoor music venue, to be located in a new 20-acre lot east of Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Monroe Streets.  Part of the park, it is anticipated, will be built over the Illinois Central commuter tracks with another section over the extension of Columbus Drive under construction at the time.  The proposal for this “Lakefront Gardens for the Performing Arts” contradicts a proposal that the Chicago Park District has made for a new performance space in Butler Field to replace the existing Petrillo band shell.  The photo above shows Grant Park in 1979 close to where Jaume Plenza's Crown Fountain stands today.

October 6, 1906 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that W. A. Gardner, the Vice-President of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, has announced the company will build a new railroad station between Madison, Lake, Canal and Clinton Streets.  The paper says that the new station “will take its place among the great transportation centers of the world.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 6, 1906] With two-thirds of the property for the new station already in hand and the remainder in negotiation, it is anticipated that construction will begin in spring of 1907.  The railroad has spent $2,000,000 (close to $58,000,000 in today's dollars) on the property, in one of the oldest sections in the city with many structures dating from just after the Chicago fire in 1871.  Another $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 will still be spent on the remainder of the property with between $12,000,000 and $15,000,000 (between $350,000,000 and $430,000,000 today) needed to build the great station itself.  The plans, drawn up by the architectural office of Frost and Granger, will “bring to the patrons of the railroad the conveniences and the facilities which they have been without and always would be without on the present Wells Street site.”  The station on Wells Street north of the river was built in 1882 when the railroad had only four dozen or so trains arriving in or leaving the city, carrying about 4,000 people a day.  In 1906 the road carried 45,000 passengers a day or 24,000,000 people a year.  A singular advantage of the new station will be its location on the west side of the river, which means that trains will no longer be delayed by the raising of bridges and passengers will be able to access the station from five different streets, rather than having Wells Street and the bridge across the river as the only path to the trains.


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Monday, October 5, 2020

October 5, 1929 -- Merchandise Mart Provides First Exhibit of Air Rights Taxation


October 5, 1929 -- The Chicago Board of Assessors agrees on a tax assessment against the Merchandise Mart that rises above the Chicago and North Western Railroad tracks north of the Chicago River and west of Wells Street, the first time in the history of the city that taxes have been assessed against "air rights".  The rule the board applies is "the value of the air rights is the size of the entire fee under the building, less the added cost of constructing a building on air rights over a railroad, and less the loss in value owing to the loss of rentable space."  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 6, 1929].  In the case of the Merchandise Mart the formula determines that the total area covered by the structure is 267,775 feet, resulting in a taxable value of $2,677,750.  The cost of constructing the building over the railroad tracks, determined by examining the books of the architects, Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, is fixed at $200,000.  That sum is subtracted from the total price.  An additional debit from the building's total cost is estimated for the loss of rentable office space that cannot be used because of the existence of the railroad tracks.  That sum is estimated at $104,164.  Another $67,267 is subtracted because of delays in finalizing the agreement between the building's owners and the railroad.  The final figure is 86.12% of the building, the sum on which the massive building will be taxed.  The photo shows the tracks of the Chicago and North Western Railroad running from west to east beneath the Merchandise Mart just after the Mart was completed.


October 5, 1964 – The tunnel at Oak Street, costing $5 million and designed to move northbound traffic on Michigan Avenue onto a ramp providing access to Lake Shore Drive, opens for its first rush hour.  The tunnel eliminates a bottleneck that has plagued Lake Shore Drive at Oak Street for years. The top photo shows the junction of Michigan Avenue, Oak Street and Lake Shore Drive before the tunnel was constructed.  The lower photo shows the area today with the tunnel peeking out in the lower left corner of the photo.


October 5, 1938 – Red Ruffing, pitching for the New York Yankees, goes up against the Chicago Cubs 22-game winner, Bill Lee, in the first game of the 1938 World Series, played in Chicago.  The Yankees go up, 2-0, in the second inning after Lou Gehrig walks and moves to third on a single by Bill Dickey. An error by Cubs second baseman Billy Herman allows Gehrig to score, and Joe Gordon brings Dickey home with another single.  The Cubs get a run back in the third inning, but the Yankees add another run in the sixth inning to end the scoring in a game in which Ruffing gives up nine hits and beats the home team, 3-1, before 43,642 spectators in a game that takes less than two hours to complete.  The men from the Bronx go on to defeat the Cubs in a four-game sweep.
Chicago Tribune photo

October 5, 1937 – A new day dawns in the city as the long awaited link between the north and south sections of the city, the bridge over the Chicago River at Lake Shore Drive, is dedicated in front of nearly 10,000 spectators.  The highlight of the ceremony is the appearance of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, who speaks very few words concerning the bridge.  Instead he uses the opportunity to make a major address concerning the responsibility of the United States in joining like-minded nations in opposing countries that would wage war to achieve domination.  “And mark this well,” Roosevelt says, “When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.  War is contagion whether it is declared or undeclared.  It can engulf states and people remote from the original scene of hostilities.  Yes, we are determined to keep out of war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the dangers of involvement.”  [Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1937] The dedication of the bridge is shown in the photo above.
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Sunday, October 4, 2020

October 4, 1982 -- Sears Recommended for Landmark Status


October 4, 1982 – For the second time in four years, city planners recommend landmark status for the original Sears State Street store, finding that the structure, “adds to the State Street mall’s inviting pedestrian circulation.” [Chicago Tribune, October 5, 1982] The store, originally built for Levi Z. Leiter, an early Chicago merchant, was originally recommended for landmark status in 1979, but attorneys for Sears opposed the landmark designation for the building.  It is unknown how Sears will greet the new recommendation for the 1891 building.  William McClenahan, the director of the city’s Landmarks Commission, says that the building is “an important landmark in the city and an effort to have it so designated is worth another try.”  On January 14,1997 the store finally received landmark status and rightfully so.  As the city’s website on landmarks states, “Renowned as one of the nation’s most important early examples of skeletal-frame commercial architecture, this building is discussed in every major history of American architecture.”


October 4, 1969 – At the conclusion of a march sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society from Grant Park to the Federal Building and back in which 350 protestors demand the immediate withdrawal of all troops in Vietnam, two protestors, armed with guns, knives, and swords, are arrested in Old Town.  The cache is discovered in a camper from which the two men from California apparently are selling weapons to be used between October 8 and 11 at protests planned by the Weatherman faction of the S.D.S.  The occupants of the truck, Dennis Sleeth and Daniel Brucher, both from California, are arrested after police find a 20-gauge shotgun, 25 rounds of ammunition, a 22-caliber pistol with 58 rounds, five Samurai swords and 13 knives in sheaths.  At the same time the subversive unit of the police department raids the S.D.S. national headquarters at 1608 Madison Street and arrests Caroline Tanner of Pennsylvania for her involvement in the beating of four policemen in front of the Federal Building on September 24. 

circulatingnow.nim.nih.gov
October 4, 1918 – The Chicago Health Commissioner announces that any church building that is found to be poorly ventilated during Sunday services on the following day will be closed.  The action is taken “to put all Chicago on active guard against the epidemic of influenza and pneumonia.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 5, 1918]  Similar prohibitions have been issued to schools, theaters, restaurants, streetcar and elevated lines.  Police officials have been issued an order to “instruct all members of their command to visit all public places … where people congregate and request the proprietors to urge their patrons to aid in the work of mutual protection … also instruct your officers that when they see a person on the street or any other place sneezing or coughing without placing a handkerchief to his mouth, to ask him in a courteous manner to do so, explaining why the use of the handkerchief for that purpose is imperative.”  Although the epidemic has not yet impacted the city as much as it has downstate, there are still 916 cases reported in the preceding 24 hours with 81 deaths.  The entire Chicagoland area is on alert.  In Highland Park, for example, 56 women make a house-to-house search in automobiles to locate cases that have not received attention, finding 667 cases during their rounds.  Wilmette orders all schools, churches and theaters to be closed as town officials suggest that it may be necessary to call out the Illinois National Guard to patrol streets for a day or two “to aid in keeping the children on their own premises and prevent  the running about of those with colds and coughs.”  In the world-wide influenza outbreak of 1918 and 1919 more than one fifth of the world’s population contracted what was known as the “Spanish flu.”  More than 21,000,000 people died, including 600,000 in the United States with 8,500 Chicago residents losing their lives to the illness.  Between the start of Chicago’s epidemic on September 21 and the removal of restrictions on November 16, the city experienced 38,000 cases of influenza and 13,000 cases of pneumonia.  


October 4, 1909 – A good night’s sleep is a difficult thing to come by if you’re staying in a hotel along the lakefront, according to a report in the Chicago Daily Tribune on this date.  An investigation by the paper finds “engines puffing, wheezing, snorting, exhausting, and making every other kind of noise that a locomotive is capable of” just across Michigan Avenue. “Whistles were tooting, bells were ringing, and cars were bumping together with a crash that would awaken the soundest sleeper.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1909]  A reporter, who is keeping an eye on the railroad action along the lakefront from the Art Institute at Monroe Street to a point near where Congress Street runs today, encounters a clerk at one of the Michigan Avenue hotels, who says, “Many a night has some guest of the house who couldn’t sleep come down to the office and kept me company.  Guests who come here for the first time make a loud kick against the engines, and I don’t blame them … It is almost impossible for a nervous person to get any sleep between 2 and 7 o’clock.  Between those hours the engines are constantly pushing back and forth, and there isn’t one person in twenty who can sleep through the noises that come from the yard.”  The above photo shows the railroad tracks east of Michigan Avenue at Monroe Street.   


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Saturday, October 3, 2020

October 3, 1949 -- David Adler ... Spontaneity, Grace and Elegance




October 3, 1949 –The Chicago Daily Tribune praises the life and work of David Adler, who died on September 27.  Adler was born in Milwaukee in 1882, studied at Princeton University, and, after a time in Europe, joined the office of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw in 1911. He failed the architect’s exam in 1918, and it wasn’t until 1928 that he was awarded an honorary license.  At that point he had over 30 commissions to his name, all of them authenticated by architects who had a background in structural engineering.  During the 1920’s, though, Adler designed some stunning residential homes, many of them on the North
Shore.  The Tribune observes, “Somebody once said that Adler’s houses had the quality of Mozart’s music and, indeed, they have Mozartean spontaneity, grace, and elegance in line and decoration.  They are always fresh but never eccentric or startling.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 3, 1949]  The paper points out a set of row houses near the Elks’ memorial in Lincoln Park as a particular achievement, pointing out that they “display his genius for dealing freshly with established styles and conventional forms.”  The row houses are landmarked and have a fascinating history as can be seen in Chicago’s historic preservation report that can be found at the city site here.  Adler designed them with a partner, Henry Corwith Dangler. In the past couple of years they have seen an impressive renovation effort, resulting in two city homes at Adler on the Park.  According to the @properties website one unit, at 2700 North Lakeview, is listed at $6,600,000. The three photos above show the row houses as they looked in 1922 when they were completed, a few years back when they were serving as what appeared to be a halfway house, and as Adler on the Park.

Chicago Tribune photo

October 3, 1933 – The Illinois Commission to A Century of Progress and the Dante Alighieri Society host a luncheon to honor the Marchese and Marchessa Guglielmo Marconi.  After the luncheon and a visit to the Hall of Science, today’s Museum of Science and Industry, the Marconis are given a reception in the Italian pavilion at the World’s Fair site, which is closed to the public where Marconi, Italian Consul Castruccio and David Sarnoff, all make speeches that are broadcast to Italy.  In the evening the president of the Century of Progress, Rufus C. Dawes, and his wife entertain 125 people at a dinner held in honor of the Marconi’s at the Federal building.  President Walter Dill Scott of Northwestern University presents the Italian inventor with an honorary Doctor of Science degree.  Although everyone in the entourage is exhausted, Marconi insists on traveling back to the fair grounds to visit the amateur radio station, W9USA.  In the darkened Travel and Transport Building of the closed fair, he finds two operators on duty who do not seem to know their visitor, complimenting the men on their transmitting equipment.  One responds, “But it was only built by an amateur,” to which the inventor replies, “Ah, but I am only an amateur myself.”  [rfcafe,com], quite a modest reply, considering he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 and is credited today as being the inventor of radio.  In the above Tribune photo Marconi and his wife meet with Cardinal George William Mundelein after attending services at Holy Name Cathedral during their stay in Chicago.


October 3, 1906 – The Chicago Daily Tribune decrees in its lead on this date, “Chicago is the baseball center of the earth.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1906] “Since last night a combination pennant pole, marking the site of Chicago has served as the earth’s axis, and around it something less than 2,000,000 maddened baseball fans are dancing a carmagnole of victory, while in every other city in the American and National leagues there is woe.”  After the New York Yankees lose to the Philadelphia Athletics, the city realizes that the magic number has been reached, and the White Sox have clinched the American League pennant.  In one week the team will meet its crosstown rival, the Chicago Cubs, in the World Series.  At the end of July the White Sox were mired in sixth place.   The paper observes that, despite the hopelessness of the situation, “People who cannot understand how the White Sox can win pennants should have visited the American league park and seen Comiskey and Jones working with their bunch of mediocre material, trying to make them into a pennant winning team.  Now Comiskey has a theory that team play will beat individual ability.  He was teaching his team the points.”  After finishing the season with a team batting average of .230, the worst in the American League, the White Sox defeat the Cubs in the World Series in six games.


October 3, 1885 – On this date the Chicago Daily Tribune reports on a letter that the Chief Librarian of the city has sent to the Chairman of the Council Committee on Buildings.  The letter provides detail about the location of the city’s first library, housed in a converted water tank on Dearborn Street, just east of today's Rookery Building.  Mr. Poole, the librarian, urges the temporary removal of the library to the new City Hall, just up the street on Washington Boulevard, citing the grave risk of the city’s entire collection of books being destroyed by fire.  The present location of the library is "overcrowded already, many valuable books being in consequence stored in out-of-the-way corners for want of a place to put them.”  The library has four floors and no elevator.  On the fourth floor is a newspaper reading room of 3,292 square feet, a periodical reading room with 2,307 square feet, and a room for patent books and documents continuing 2,503 square feet.  The floor below contains the main collection in 16,324 square feet of space.  Since the collection of the library is increasing by 10,000 volumes a year and the threat of fire can not be ignored in a city that burned to the ground just 14 years earlier, Librarian Poole is a bit distressed that he has not received an answer from Alderman Mahony, to whom he had directed the letter.  The book room of the "water tank library" can be seen in the engraving above.
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Friday, October 2, 2020

October 2, 2009 -- Olympics Turn-Down Shocks Chicago

 

October 2, 2009 – Expecting to revel in the news that the city had been awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics, thousands of Chicagoans pack the Daley Center plaza.  It is not to be.  After a three-year effort in which thousands of volunteers participated and into which 72 million dollars in donations had been poured, the news that Chicago is out of the running is delivered by 10:15 a.m.  Chicago does not even make it to the second round of voting despite a last-minute plea from President Barack Obama and lobbying of the members of the International Olympic Committee by Oprah Winfrey.  Mayor Richard M. Daley, who had worked as hard as anyone to make Chicago the Olympic city, said, “We’ve come on a long journey, but the city is better for it . . . Sure, you have tears, you get disappointed – you’re human like anyone else.”  So . . . it was on to Rio in 2016.  Rio without tears.

britannica.com

October 2, 1939 – At the Arts Club of Chicago “Guernica,” the large mural by Pablo Picasso, is placed on public view.  Eleanor Jewett, in a review for the Chicago Daily Tribune, writes of the large piece, “The ‘Guernica’ came to us as a distinct disappointment.  It is like a huge, unfinished cartoon, the product of a juvenile brain sick from an overdose of fairy stories in which ogres and dragons have played too conspicuous a part.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 3, 1939]  The oil painting, measuring over 11 feet high and 25 feet wide, depicts the bombing of Guernica, a town in northern Spain by Nazi Germany on April 26, 1937.  Because the majority of the Basque town’s male population was away fighting in the resistance movement, most of the victims of the two-hour bombing were women and children.  Estimates placed the number of dead between 200 and 1,700 with 900 more injured.  Jewett observes that “Out of that overwhelming disaster he [Picasso] has salvaged in his fantasy nothing that suggests sheer horror, nothing that conveys terror, death, or anguish.  His picture has as much relation to tragedy as would the action of a man, who, stepping out to lead a throng of weeping survivors of an earthquake in prayer, suddenly squatted and spun a penny.  This penny spinning of Picasso’s may have dignity in your eyes; if it has I do not know whether to envy you or sympathize with you.”  The painting first went on display at the Paris International Exposition of 1937, for which Picasso received the commission from the Spanish Republic.  Following the close of the Paris Expo, the painting was taken on a tour of Europe in an effort to raise funds for Spanish refugees who had fled the country after the Republic collapsed and Francisco Franco took power.  Then, between 1939 and 1952 the painting traveled to art institutions in the United States, Chicago being one of those stops.  It ended up in New York in 1958 and remained there until 1981, when it was returned to Spain, where it can be found today at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.  Over the years its stature has increased as it has come to symbolize the horror of all wars, a reputation far from Jewett’s assessment back in 1939.



October 2, 1938 – A squad of police rescues Cubs manager Gabby Hartnett as he tries to find his family at the Illinois Central station as the team returns from St. Louis where it wrapped up the National League championship.  The police take Hartnett to a fire department car and spirit him away from the crowd. In the meantime, Cubs pitcher Dizzy Dean finds himself surrounded in a parking lot as he looks for friends who had promised to pick him up. The fire department again comes to the rescue, rushing Diz and his wife away in car.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Other Cubs got similar treatment.  But the scene was fresh out of rescuing fire marshals, so they had to fight their way to cabs which had been pushed back far from the loading pavement.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 3, 1938]  Railroad platforms are crowded all the way home from St. Louis, but the players are unprepared for the huge reception near midnight when they return to the city. The Tribune reports, “Most of the Cubs are small town boys and know that small town folks like to go down to the station on any pretext.  They never dreamed that Chicagoans would go down to a station to look at ball players they can see any one of seventy-seven days in the regular home season.  They really were surprised when they faced that mob last night.”  Perhaps there was a bit too much celebrating … the New York Yankees swept the Cubs in the World Series that followed.


October 2, 1906 – As a result of city council action regarding the regulation of cold storage companies adopted shortly before, 20,000 pounds of canned chicken at the North American Cold Storage company are condemned because they were “utterly bad.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 2, 1906] The company claims there is nothing wrong with the frozen birds, but city officials from the health department disagree, so “seven big policemen are now on guard to see to it that nothing goes in or out of the warehouse.”  As part of the tussle the warehouse’s manager, A. F. Denham, is taken to the Des Plaines Avenue police station in a patrol wagon.  The conflict begins a week earlier when the health department labels 50,000 pounds of canned chicken at the North American company and the A. Booth and Co. as suspicious.  The health commissioner does not take long to arrive at a conclusion, noting that when samples were thawed out the smell “was so nauseating it was necessary to drench them with formalin before they could be handled.”  A rendering company was called, and the Booth plant handed over 30,000 pounds of poultry without protest.  Things proved different at the North American warehouse on Canal Street.  From 10:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. Denham confers with health department officials and his lawyer, finally notifying the city that the lawyer has advised him to stand his ground.  Police are summoned and warehouse employees tell them to take the elevator to the top floor where the questionable poultry is stored. Someone apparently tampers with the elevator and it stops on the sixth floor, leaving the officers in the dark of the freezing warehouse.  They are forced to climb down six floors of ladders in order to make their way outside where “their feelings were ruffled.”  They find Manager Denham in his office beside a menacing bulldog.  Denham is arrested and booked on charges of resisting arrest.  All afternoon wagons arrive with goods to be stored in the warehouse, but the officers are resolute, “a trifle overzealous in the matter on account of the experience … on the sixth floor.”  The addition to the North American Cold Storage Warehouse, completed in 1908, is shown above in the 1910 photo.
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Thursday, October 1, 2020

October 1, 1919 -- World Series of 1919 Begins

chicagotribune.com


October 1, 1919 – The first game of the 1919 “Black Sox” World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds takes place in Cincinnati’s Redland Field with 30,511 fans in the stands.  In the bottom of the first inning White Sox pitcher Eddie Cicotte hits the Reds’ leadoff hitter, Morrie Rath, in the back with his second pitch in what we know now as a prearranged signal to mobster Arnold Rothstein that the fix is on.  [en.wikipedia.org]. Until the fourth inning the game remained close, but in the bottom of that inning Cicotte allows five runs, giving up a triple to the opposing pitcher, Walter Ruether.  Cincinnati ends up winning the game, 9-1.  In the series, which was played in a best-of-nine format, the Reds went on to win in eight games.  In August 1921 eight White Sox players were banned from organized baseball for life although they were acquitted of criminal charges.  An interesting feature of the series in Chicago was an effort by the Chicago Daily Tribune to “broadcast,” in the days before radio or television, the play-by-play of the game through electric scoreboards and a large group of women answering phones.  1,968 people paid 55 cents apiece to watch the scoreboard at Orchestra Hall while another 3,000 watched an open-air scoreboard on the roof of the Colonnade building at 724 South Michigan Avenue.  Seven operators at the offices of the Tribune handled 20,000 calls for updates on the first game.  


skyandtelescope.com
October 1, 2018 – The Yerkes Observatory closes after 121 years of operation.  The observatory, operated by the University of Chicago and located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, was named for Charles Tyson Yerkes, a storied Chicago traction magnate who subsidized the 20-ton telescope and the observatory which houses it.  Frederick Law Olmsted, the great landscape architect, designed the grounds on which the observatory is located.  The question of what will eventually happen to the site is complicated by a stipulation that Yerkes included in his original agreement with the university, a clause stating that the university would receive the gift “To have and to hold unto the said Trustees and their successors so long as they use the same for the purpose of astronomical investigation, but upon their failure to do so, the property hereby conveyed shall revert to the said Charles T. Yerkes or his heirs at law, the same as if the conveyance had never been made.” [chicagomaroon.com]  The story of how a observatory affiliated with the University of Chicago ended up in Williams Bay, Wisconsin is a fascinating one.  It can be found here in Connecting the Windy City.  


October 1, 1994 – Several days after United States District Court Judge Stanley Harris issues a ruling against the city in its effort to curtail the raising of bridges to permit pleasure boaters to pass freely up and down the river, the Chicago Tribune responds with an editorial.  “Shed no tears for the pleasure-seekers,” the piece argues.  “It is the city’s convenience that matters and that of the thousands of pedestrians, cars, buses and emergency vehicles that daily move through the downtown and suffer frustrating, costly delay when the bridges are up . . . If eventually the city must work out new rules with the boaters and marina owners, they should remember that they are part of the city too, and bringing it to a halt for their convenience is no small privilege.” 


October 1, 1968 –The Chicago City College Board approves a proposal to buy property west of its Loop campus at 64 East Lake Street in order to build a new high-rise campus.  The school’s chancellor, Oscar Shabat, says that the school envisions a campus that will rise 25 to 30 stories. The property between 62 and 54 East Lake Street will provide 10,000 square feet of land with a frontage on Lake Street.  A key to getting the project started is still to come as the Illinois Junior College Board must approve the new building, and that body is waiting on $170 million that the Illinois Board of Education has recommended.  Nothing happens for years, and by the summer of 1974 a report prepared by the office of Mies van der Rohe states that the plan does not appear to be feasible for all kinds of reasons, the most of important of which is the “… deficiency of current plans to integrate the Loop College into the life of the Loop. The site does not offer any special potential to either act as a catalyst for area redevelopment and improvement or to become integrated into the city.” [Chicago Tribune, August 21, 1974] In 1975 a new site is selected for the college in a two-block area between Jackson Boulevard and Congress Street on the west side of State Street, the site on which the Harold Washington Library stands today.  The Chicago City Colleges board began buying land at that location, spending $494,750 for four parcels in the 400 block of South State Street.  Two months later Governor James Thompson vetoes a $7.5 million appropriation to buy any additional land for the college.  Things drag along until March, 1979 when the trustees of Chicago City Colleges approve a plan to buy an existing 25-story office building across the alley from the original location of the college at 64 East Lake Street. In July of that year Chicago City Colleges begins to move forward with the conversion of the office building at 65 East South Water Street.  In that same month the Public Building Commission approves a $14 million renovation of the South Water Street building.  The Chicago Tribune editorializes, “After years of frustration and of nursing plans too ambitious and too expensive to be realized, Loop College can at last expect to have soon a suitable physical plant.”[Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1979]  Not so fast.  Unable to agree on a price for the building on South Water Street, Chicago City Colleges turns to a condemnation proceeding which pegs the cost of the property at $4,454,818, a figure Shabat, still the head of the college, calls a little too rich for the college’s blood.  Finally, on June 13, 1980 ground is broken for an 11-story, $19.3 million college building at the original site that was purchased in 1968 with completion scheduled in 1982.  Shabat says, “I’ve waited 19 years for this day.  Now we can go forward.” [Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1980] Mayor Jane Byrne dedicates the new campus on November 13, 1982.  On December 1, 1987 the college, with 8,217 students, is renamed Harold Washington College in honor of the Chicago mayor who died in office a month earlier. 


October 1, 1930 – A thousand people listen to Frank Lloyd Wright discuss architectural trends in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, “Mr. Wright discussed the use of new materials, including glass and steel in the building of skyscraper homes,” emphasizing “that a home is not made up solely of roof and walls, but is toned and dominated by its interior.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 1, 1930] Wright brings an exhibit with him, “a model of a skyscraper built of glass and steel and dwellings of the same materials.”  As part of his remarks Wright says, “There must be no conflict between architecture and nature.  A building should conform to the contour of its surrounding.”  The Johnson Wax Company's headquarters tower in Racine, Wisconsin, shown above, was completed nine years after Wright gave his lecture on glass and steel skyscrapers.


Posted by Chicago Old and New at 12:30 AM 5 comments
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