Showing posts with label 1904. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1904. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

August 18, 1904 -- Lake Bluff Protests Navy Proposal for North Shore Base


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August 18, 1904 --  The president of the village board of Lake Bluff calls for a meeting at which objections will be made to the U. S. government’s plan to establish a naval training station in the North Shore suburb.  The principal objection appears to be that Lake Bluff, along with several other suburbs, would end up in the unenviable position of being bookended between the new base, if it is built as proposed, and Fort Sheridan to the south.  A letter of protest is circulated, the text of which reads:

 

“The residents of the north shore suburbs object to having the new naval training station located at Lake Bluff.  They find, through the secretary of the navy that this is not a naval college, as was supposed, but a naval recruiting station, where the government will enlist 6,000 men and boys each year.  After keeping them for a few months it will select 2,000 of the best and send them to the east, where they will be put on vessels, the other 4,000, known as culls, being turned loose.

 

“The residents of this beautiful north shore district are horrified at the thought of this scum of humanity being released in their midst.  Many of these people, after being attracted to this station to get plenty to eat and drink for a few months, will be turned free to become a menace to the safety of the community.

 

“These people are at a loss to understand why the government should ever consider the idea of locating a naval station along this shore, where there is nothing but high bluff without any inland body of water or chance of ever making one, and with scarcely a possibility of constructing an outer harbor.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1904]

 

Opened in 1911, Naval Station Great Lakes is the Navy’s largest training facility and home of the service’s only Boot Camp.  It is located on 1,600 acres overlooking Lake Michigan with 39 of its 1,153 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  [https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/installations]


The above photo shows sailors marching past the base administration building in November of 1913, two years after the base opened.



August 18, 1969 – The Chicago Plan Commission approves a zoning ordinance for the 80-acre air rights site of the Illinois Central Railroad south of the river and east of Randolph Street.  Lewis Hill, the Commissioner of Development and Planning, says, “Successful planned development here will greatly affect the future of the whole central area and much of the city and metropolitan area.  It is in both the public and private interest that this development proceed beyond a mere meeting of minimal standards to the achievement of an environment of high quality.”  [Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1969]   Illinois Center today occupies the upper left section of the railroad yard below the river in the above photo.
August 18, 1960 – James F. Tobin, president of Wieboldt Stores, Inc., announces that the firm will take over full control of Mandel’s stores at State and Madison Streets as well as in Lincoln Village Shopping Center at 4041 Milwaukee Avenue.  “Wieboldt’s will bring to State street the same high standard of merchandise and customer service policies which has spearheaded the Wieboldt progress and steady growth in the Chicagoland area for the past 77 years,” says Tobin. [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1960] Werner A. Wieboldt, the chairman of Wieboldt says, “I have great personal admiration for State street and for the many reputable merchants who have made it great.  We are dedicated to add to its strength of attraction and hope to make it an even greater retail center.” 



August 18, 1935 –A double bill of “Cavalleria Rusticana” and “Pagliacci” opens at 8:15 p.m. in the auditorium at Navy Pier.  This will start an eight-week series of opera at the pier with performances being offered at a cost of 50 cents and a dollar.  Part of the program is underwritten by the city council through an appropriation of $2,500.  Prior to the evening’s program an announcement is made that opera-goers will be admitted in their shirt sleeves and that patrons will “enjoy the advantages of the natural cooling system provided by Lake Michigan.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 18, 1935] The above photo shows the pier in 1936 in a view taken from Oak Street.



Posted by Chicago Old and New at 12:30 AM 1 comments
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Wednesday, January 15, 2020

January 15, 1904 -- Grant Park Given to South Park District

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January 15, 1904 – The commissioners of the South Park District accept an ordinance that the City Council passed on July 20, 1903, “granting consent to the commissioners to take possession of that part of Grant park lying west of the Illinois Central railroad’s right of way, north of Jackson boulevard and south of Randolph street.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 16, 1904]  With this move the park district controls the entirety of what is today Grant Park and, according to the Tribune, “it is promised that what is now partly a rubbish heap shall be transformed into the finest park contiguous to the business district in any city in the world.”  South Park District president Henry G. Foreman says, "We hope to rush this park to completion within three years, and do within that time what would ordinarily take about thirty years to accomplish.  It will be the finest city park contiguous to a business district in any city in the world.”  The above panoramic photo shows the park, on the lake side of the railroad yard, beginning to take shape as fill is slowly added to expand the park.


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January 15, 1964 –Mayor Richard J. Daley announces that he has asked city planners to begin a study that examines the future of Navy Pier after the University of Illinois departs in late 1965. Daley says that thought should be given to using the pier as a recreation center, tying it into a new park that will be built just to the west and adjacent to the filtration plant to the north.  The mayor also says that a 920-foot observation tower that was proposed in October, 1963 as a tourist attraction cannot be built at the pier because its height would interfere with airplanes approaching Meigs Field to the south.  The above photo from the early 1960's with ships from all over the world lined up shows that at this time Navy Pier was still an important port of entry and a significant source of revenue for the city.

January 15, 1882 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the Archbishop of Chicago has sold the entire lot on Lake Shore Drive between Burton Place and Schiller Street to Potter Palmer for $90,695.  The paper reports, “A concerted effort will now be made by Mr. Palmer and the other property owners to fill up all the depressions between State street and the Lake-Shore drive and lift this property into its rightful place as the choicest kind of residence property, not surpassed by any in the city.”  Palmer’s faith in the area which “is almost virgin ground, and is almost entirely free from objectionable buildings and improvements” is ample evidence that the part of the north side “which lies between the Water-Works and Lincoln Park, and is east of Dearborn street, is rapidly rising in public favor.”  The mansion of Potter and Bertha Palmer, which has been gone now for 70 years, would be built on the corner of Banks Street and Lake Shore Drive.  Designed by Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Frost, it would be the largest private residence in the city when finished in 1885.  Today 1350 and 1360 Lake Shore Drive stand on the lot.  The mansion and the residential buildings are shown above.


 January 15, 1916 – The “Foolkiller,” a submarine that has been embedded in the mud at the bottom of the Chicago River at Wells Street yields a grisly find upon its being raised – the skull of a dog and the bones of a man.  The small submersible was originally built in the early 1870’s but had not been seen in a quarter-century. A diver for the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company, William Deneau, discovers the craft somewhat earlier while working in the effort to locate bodies from the ill-fated Eastland, the steamer that had capsized six months earlier.  The identity of the victim found aboard the submarine was never discovered, and there is even some conjecture that the bones might have been planted aboard as part of a scheme to place the whole tableau on public exhibition.  That happened shortly thereafter as customers could pay a dime to see the exhibit at 208 South State Street, a display that was moved at least twice – to Oelwein, Iowa where it was  billed “The Submarine or Fool Killer, the first submarine ever built,” It shared the exhibit space among other top draws, including “The Electric Girl, The Vegetable King, [and] Snooks, the smallest monkey in the world” [mysteriouschicago.com]  The Fool Killer was last heard of when it appeared at Chicago’s Riverview Park where it sat forlornly while the “Last Days of Pompeii,” a “gorgeous fireworks spectacle” with 600 performers was staged alongside the river at Western and Belmont.


 January 15, 1954 -- The Chicago city council authorizes the purchase of the Reid-Murdoch building at 325 N. State Street in order to consolidate traffic courts and the police traffic division. The matter had been pending since November 3 when voters authorized a 4 million dollar bond issue for acquiring the building and remodeling it. More on the history of the Reid-Murdoch building can be found here: http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/…/reid-murdoch-buildi… and here: http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/…/reid-murdoch-buildi…


Posted by Chicago Old and New at 2:30 AM 3 comments
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Wednesday, January 8, 2020

January 8, 1904 -- Blackstone Library Presented to City by Isabella Blackstone


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January 8, 1904 – Mrs. Isabella Blackstone presents the city with the first branch of the Chicago Public Library in Hyde Park in a short ceremony.  The classically designed building is given in honor of her husband, Timothy Beach Blackstone, the former president of the Chicago and Alton Railway, the city’s first railroad.  He was also the first president of the Union Stockyards and Transit Company.  The dedication was not open to the public and was held in the library’s reading room.  Mrs. Blackstone is given an autograph book with the signatures of 237 residents of Hyde Park along with messages of gratitude for her family's  generosity.  In 1891 T. B. Blackstone’s donated the James Blackstone Memorial Library in his father’s memory to Branford, Connecticut, the town in which he was born.  When he died in 1900, he included a provision in his will for a library to be built on land which he owned in Hyde Park.  Designed by architect Solon S. Beman, who designed the Connecticut library and the company town of Pullman, the building is modeled after the Merchant Tailors building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which, in turn, was modeled after the Erechtheion, a temple on the Acropolis in Athens.  Artwork in the rotunda was executed by Chicago artist Oliver Dennett Grover and displays themes of literature, science, labor and art.  The building also features an upper-level glass floor, stained-glass ceilings, carved marble, mosaic tile floors and mahogany wainscoting.  [webapps1.chicago.gov/landmarks/web]  Especially impressive is the library’s central Tiffany dome.  The Merchant Tailors' Building, the Blackstone Library in Connecticut and the Blackstone Library in Chicago are all pictured above.
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January 8, 1934 – The night sky lights up as the automobile parts warehouse of
Warshawsky and Co. at 1915 South State Street explodes in flames.  A 5-11 alarm fire brings a third of the city’s fire equipment to the scene as more than 400 fire fighters battle the blaze.  A store that is part of the operation is open when the blaze is discovered, and more than 35 employees and a number of customers are inside. Two of the employees are burned. One, a scrubwoman, is dragged unconscious from the structure after fire fighters burn away steel bars from an alley window with acetylene torches to get to her.  The first call comes in at 8:01 p.m., followed by a second alarm as soon as Company No. 8, only a block away, reaches the scene.  Subsequent alarms are sounded every two minutes until 64 pieces of equipment are on the scene 52 minutes after the first alarm is received.  Burning debris is carried on a west wind as far as Michigan Avenue, starting small fires in several places.  Several thousand people gather to watch the inferno while patrons evacuate the Wabash Theater at 1838 South Wabash Avenue as smoke fills the auditorium.  Damages are estimated to exceed a million dollars in a blaze that Fire Marshal Michael J. Corrigan categorizes as incendiary in origin.  The black and white photo shows the Warshawsky headquarters before the fire.  The photo below that is what this section of South State Street looks like today.

 January 8, 1917 – The Chicago Police Chief, Charles C. Healey, is arrested at his home by representatives of Cook County State’s Attorney Maclay Hoyne and accused of leading a ring of corruption that may have brought in “thousands of dollars yearly.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 8, 1917] Judge Sheridan E. Fry fixes Healey’s bond at $100,000 as Healey is charged with conspiracy, extortion and bribery.  Hoyne states, “We began with the reports that patrolmen were being advanced to sergeants for a fee.  We discovered that a patrolman who came across with $500 would be promoted … The same rule applied to officers.  The price for the promotion of a sergeant to lieutenant was sometimes as high as $1,000.” The graft did not end there.  Every Monday four men, including Lieutenant Martin White, the commander of the Lake Street police station, would meet in room 1209 at 109 North Dearborn Street “to divide the collections … They didn’t trust each other, and it was decided to be safest for all to be on hand, so that the others might know how much had been collected and just what the division would be.”  When investigators raided the room, a notebook was found on White, the notebook containing “a complete list of all shady hotels, disorderly houses, and gambling resorts” and the amounts each joint paid for protection.  Healy is sitting down to dinner in the family’s third floor apartment when investigators break up the meal even though they have no warrants for his arrest.  Healy orders them out and calls the Woodlawn station to secure some protection, quickly obtaining several “big, powerful men” who eject the investigators “with more speed than dignity.”  Within 15 minutes the warrants are obtained, and the Chief of Police finds himself under arrest.  The Chief Is pictured above.

 January 8, 1954 – Another big sale of real estate in the Loop occurs, this one the Cable Building, a ten-story Holabird and Roche design at 57 East Jackson.  B. B. Provus, the vice-president of American Glass Company is the trustee whose name is on the transaction, one made for the Provus estate.  Provus said that the estate plans to remodel the building into shops.  That worked for a time.  By 1962, though, a new mid-century modern skyscraper designed by C. F. Murphy replaces the building.  The Cable building was a beautiful piece of architecture.  Fortunately, the building that replaced it is an impressive design as well.


 January 8, 1980 - It is reported that the Illinois Appellate Court in Chicago has upheld the city's acquisition of the Sherman House Hotel under eminent domain rights. Citing the argument that only eight percent of the building's commercial space was being utilized, the court found that the city's intent "to rid the Loop of a blighted area" was valid. The city had previously agreed to pay the Teamsters' Union Pension Fund $11.2 million for the property. Chicago subsequently gave the block on which the hotel stood to the state, and the James Thompson Center was competed on the site five years later. For a history of the Sherman House see http://www.connectingthewindycity.com/…/down-they-forgot-as…
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