Connecting the Windy City

Friday, April 10, 2020

April 10, 1865 -- Lee Surrenders; Chicago Celebrates

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April 10, 1865 – As a new day begins, the Dearborn Light Artillery fires a hundred guns … “their echoes waking up the sleepers who had not left their beds at the stroke of the bell.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 11, 1865]  The bell is sounded to wake citizens to the news that General Robert E. Lee has surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, and war is all but over.  The Tribune reports, “The halcyon of peace – victorious peace – hovered o’er the head and the angel of prosperity was seen approaching with a balm for the healing of the nation.”  As the sun begins to rise, the streets of the city are full with bonfires burning, gunfire echoing, and flags flying in all quarters.  Business is suspended for the day, and schools are dismissed at noon.  A meeting of the committees of the Board of Trade is held at the Tremont House, ending in a resolution that a salute of 200 guns be made at 4:00 p.m. and the court house bell would be rung.  A hastily assembled parade is formed before the appointed hour, and thousands march up Lake Street to Franklin, down Franklin to Washington, east on Washington to Clark, down Clark to Van Buren, east on Van Buren to Michigan Avenue, and up Michigan to the starting point on Lake Street.  At one point the procession stretches nearly four miles.  In the evening “fireworks by the thousand and candles by the million” are set off with “scarcely a dark window … seen in the central part of the city.”  Bonfires blaze on every corner of Clark Street from Lake Street to Van Buren in the central part of the city.  The Tribune ends its coverage of the day with these words of hope for the future, “May the sun of peace now rising never know setting more.”

April 10, 2017 – The Chicago Cubs open Wrigley Field Plaza for the first time as Crane Kenney, the club’s president of business operations, says, “Our vision was to create a neighborhood center where families, fans, and visitors can find entertainment, unique and local food options and daily attractions in an urban park setting.” [Chicago Tribune, April 10, 2017] As part of the festivities the team hoists its World Series Champion banner at 6:15 p.m. prior to a 7:00 p.m. start of the first home game of the season against the Los Angeles Dodgers.  The Park at Wrigley fills a triangular spot just to the west of the ballpark between Clark Street and Waveland Avenue.  It features a two-story flagship Cubs Store that sells team gear and memorabilia.  It also includes a fountain and an artificial turf mini-field on which kids can run around and adults can soak up the Wrigley Field ambiance.  Plans are to use the area as an ice skating rink during the winter months.

April 10, 1992 – The U. S. Steel Group’s South Works closes its doors, ending a run at this location that goes all the way back to 1882 when the company began as the Chicago Railway Mill Company, and the mill that once produced steel beams for most of Chicago’s skyscrapers and jobs for thousands of area residents” ends its run [http://forgottenchicago.com/articles/south-works/], leaving an uncertain future.  A U. S. Steel spokesman, Thomas R. Farrall, says, “We want to get value from the facilities.  The mill is one direction real estate and development is another direction.”  [Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1992] About 730 workers will lose their jobs with the closing.  Only 30 of those are eligible for pensions. Various development schemes have been hatched over the intervening years.  The latest one for the 420-acre site, released early in 2017 envisions a build-out in four phases, each phase contributing 3,000 low- and mid-rise buildings, built around a harbor and spread over 30 city blocks along the lake shore.  The area that the South Works covered is shown in the photo above.

April 10, 1955 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune editorializes about a $5,000,000 appropriation 

bill sponsored by State Representative William E. Pollack, a Republican from Chicago, to locate a four-year campus for the University of Illinois on the North branch of the Chicago River around California Avenue. "The university's budget requests have been cut drastically." states the editorial. "For the university to expand its operations and expenditures in Chicago when it can't get enough funds for the proper operation of the facilities that it now has would be the height of folly." [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 10, 1955] Ten days later Mayor Richard J. Daley would begin his first term as the Mayor of Chicago, and he would say toward the end of his career that helping to arrange for a branch of the University of Illinois in Chicago was his greatest achievement. The university's library is named for him. The photo below shows His Honor officially opening the new university on February 22, 1965, ten years after and over six miles south of Representative Pollack's proposal.

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April 10, 1937 – Fire breaks out at 4:00 a.m. at the South Shore depot that sits alongside the Illinois Central Railroad station just east of Randolph Street.  It doesn’t take long before “flames burst through the roof of the structure, lighting up Michigan avenue in the vicinity of the public library, and attracting hundreds of motorists and loopgoers to the scene.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 11, 1937]  The fire brings a large response from the Chicago Fire Department as fire fighters keep their distance battling the 2-11 fire while crowds on the Randolph Street viaduct watch the heroics.  The twelve-year-old structure was first used by the Illinois Central but was turned over to the South Shore in 1931.  This is the second time a fire has gutted the depot.  In a May, 1934 fire, five fire fighters were injured.  In the above photo the station stands just to the right of the peristyle, which was torn down in February, 1953.  Today this is the northwest corner of Millennium Park.

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

Labels: 1865, Chicago Event, Clark Street, Lake Street, Michigan Avenue, Washington Boulevard

Sunday, January 26, 2020

January 26, 1865 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Lectures in Chicago

January 26, 1865 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson gives a lecture, entitled "Education," at Unity Church, the second of six that he will give in Chicago. The Chicago Daily Tribune describes Emerson as "a plain unaffected gentleman, [who] speaks with marked emphasis and with the utmost propriety, without gesture, and looks more like an educated well to do farmer than the highly cultivated scholarly lecturer."

January 26, 1923 – A Chicago Daily Tribune editorial strongly supports replacement of movable bridges in the city with permanent “fixed” bridges.  “So long as we allow dredges, tugs, freighters, and other craft to steam through the heart of the city,” the editorial begins, “blocking main streams of traffic at every street which they cross, we will allow an unnecessary handicap to be imposed upon our growth, prosperity, and comfort.  That is not wise city building.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 26, 1923] Replacing the movable bridges could be devastating to owners of elevators, lumber yards, and other freight concerns with valuable property along the river, the editorial concedes, but for the benefit of the entire city, the editorial goes on to add, it would be worth it to condemn the property in question and pay for the owners a fair rate.  “The general welfare of the city is more important than any fancied rights, based upon custom, of these property owners,” the editorial states.  “Probably it would not only pay the city through stimulation of growth and easier circulation of traffic but would return cash dividends through greatly reduced expenditures for bridge construction, operation, and maintenance.”  The editorial concludes, “Fixed bridges are a logical development of a greater Chicago.  We may as well begin to make up our minds to that development and prepare for it.”  The city is still preparing … every bridge on the main stem of the river and the south branch still swings open – although on a far less intrusive and far more regulated schedule than was the case in 1923.

January 26, 1953 – Chief city bridge tender Edward Scott brings news that an era on the Chicago River may be passing, saying that 16 of the city’s bridge tenders averaged less than one bridge opening a week during 1952.  The bridges on the north branch of the river at Cortland Street, Webster Avenue, Ashland Avenue, Fullerton Avenue, Damen Avenue, Diversey Parkway, Western Avenue and Belmont Avenue opened for a total of only 800 “swings” during the entire year, an average of only 50 bridge openings per man for Scott’s crew.  Since the preceding February these bridges have been left unmanned, and when passage up or down the river was required, bridge tenders moved from bridge to bridge in city cars.  The city seems to be moving in the direction of erecting fixed bridges in these locations because of the scarcity of traffic on the once busy north branch.  In a related development the Great Lakes division and Chicago district army engineers have offered the opinion that the dredging of the river north of North Avenue from 9 feet to 18 feet is unnecessary, a move that the city itself once supported but is now against.  The oldest trunnion bascule bridge in the city at Cortland Street is shown in the above photo.

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January 26, 1993 – Mayor Richard M. Daley announces a $30 million plan for State Street that would reopen it for traffic, an acknowledgement that turning the street into a pedestrian mall 14 years earlier was an ill-conceived idea.  A 100-page report that spells out the way in which future development will take place on the street has a central idea at its core, “State Street is making a comeback as the heart of a mixed-use district, with cultural and educational institutions, entertainment and educational institutions, entertainment center and office buildings complementing the retail core.” [Chicago Tribune, January 26, 1993]  At a time when suburban malls beckoned shoppers with acres of parking space and North Michigan Avenue blossomed into an upscale shopping destination, the State Street mall had the effect of “isolating State Street from the rest of the Loop,” as Daley says at a meeting of the Greater State Street Council. Therefore, the idea is to recognize the changes that have taken place and to build on the southern anchor of State Street – the new Harold Washington Library and the expansion of DePaul University into the former Goldblatt’s department store.  Traffic will be brought back to the street, curbs will be straightened, sidewalks narrowed to 36 feet or less, new streetlights installed and trees and shrubs planted.  There is even talk of a light-rail system running along the street. Today State Street has indeed come back.. It’s a far different place than it was 25 years ago, but a mix of college students, residents in new and re-purposed high-rises, and office workers has ensured that State Street is still that Great Street.  The above photo shows the opening of the State Street Mall on October 29, 1979.

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

Labels: 1865, Chicago Event

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

May 2, 1865 -- Lincoln's Funeral Train Leaves for Springfield

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.

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 & 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.

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Labels: 1865, Chicago Events, Michigan Avenue

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

December 27, 1865 -- Union Stockyards Receives First Hogs

December 27, 1865 – The first shipment of hogs arrives at the Union Stockyards, opened officially just two days earlier.  The vast facility that would come to occupy land bordered by Pershing Avenue, Halsted Street, Forty-Seventh Street, and Ashland Avenue, got its start in 1864 when nine railroad companies purchased 320 acres of swampland on the southwest side of the city.  [www.chicagohs.org]   Fifteen miles of railroad track brought the critters to the stockyards, and 500,000 gallons of water from the river were pumped into the yards each day, with waste water dumped into a channel flowing back into the river, that channel now known as “Bubbly Creek”.  From the 320 acres in 1865 the stockyards grew to 475 acres by 1900 and contained 50 miles of roads with 130 miles of railroad track at its perimeter. 16 million animals a year were processed in the stockyards during the peak years of World War I, an average of nine million pounds of meat every single day.  The above photo shows the Union Stockyards in 1867.

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Labels: 1865, Chicago Events, Stockyards

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

January 26, 1865 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Lectures on Education in Chicago

January 26, 1865 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson gives a lecture, entitled "Education," at Unity Church, the second of six that he will give in Chicago. The Chicago Daily Tribune described Emerson as "a plain unaffected gentleman, [who] speaks with marked emphasis and with the utmost propriety, without gesture, and looks more like an educated well to do farmer than the highly cultivated scholarly lecturer."

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: 1865, Chicago Events