Showing posts with label 1924. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1924. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

September 1, 1924 -- Loop Draws 1,252,096 Daily

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September 1, 1924 – The city issues a report that estimate an average of over 1,252,096 people enter the business district every twenty-four hours.  More than 182,000 are pedestrians, 233,309 enter in passenger vehicles, and 34,184 are carried in commercial vehicles while 700,000 enter the business district on surface and elevated lines, steam railroads, and bus lines.  The figures come from an extensive survey conducted during the first six months of 1924.  Of all the ways into the Loop the Madison Street bridge seems to be the leader with 25,539 pedestrians crossing the bridge each day.  South State Street saw 22,511 pedestrians enter the Loop while 13,402 individuals entered by way of South Wabash Avenue.  A large number of passenger vehicles – 16,822 – drove into the Loop over the new Michigan Avenue bridge while 24,124 vehicles came by way of South Michigan Avenue.  The lower level of the Michigan Avenue bridge was used by 2,513 commercial vehicles, followed by the bridges at Lake Street and Franklin Street.  An average of 103,693 passenger vehicles entered the Loop each day while 31,077 commercial vehicles entered.  Each passenger vehicle carried an average of 2.25 passengers.  The above photo, taken in November of 1924, shows traffic heading north on Michigan Avenue ... 360 North Michigan, today's London House Hotel, is on the left.  At the time it was a year old.



September 1, 1977 – Employees at the Oriental Theatre, the second largest theater in the Loop, are told that the venue will close its doors at the end of the month unless a new tenant is found. Mickey Gold, the theater’s manager, says, “There is no panic.  Different people have lost leases on this and other theaters in the past, and we hope it will stay open.”  The Oriental opened in 1926 with an ornate design by the firm of Rapp and Rapp. It was built on the same site on which the Iroquois Theater stood, the theater in which over 600 people lost their lives in a 1903 fire.  In its best days, the most famous performers in the country graced the Oriental's stage, but in the 1970’s the theater mirrored the general decline of the Loop.  A 1971 experiment to bring live entertainment to the Oriental with such acts as Gladys Knight and the Pips and Stevie Wonder lost promoters $115,000.  The story ends happily as on January 10, 1996 a Canadian theatrical company purchased the property with a promise to renovate it, a plan that would be helped along with a $13.5 million grant from the city.  Although the company declared bankruptcy in 1998, the project was completed and on October 18, 1998 the theater reopened with a seating capacity of 2,253. In the restoration, architect Daniel P. Coffey came up with a plan that increased the theater’s backstage area by expanding into the adjacent Oliver Building.  Today the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre is one of the downtown palaces that hosts touring Broadway shows. 


September 1, 1949 – At the end of August the Chicago Daily Tribune carried a report on the death of noted landscape architect, Jens Jensen.  Oops.  Wrong guy.  It turns out that a 65-year-old Door Country, Wisconsin resident with a similar name was the guy who rode the Great Skyway and not Mr. Jensen, who is alive and well in his home in Ellison Bay.  Taking advantage of the error, the paper publishes a flattering piece on the contributions of Jensen, who came to the United States from Denmark in the early 1890’s and began work as a laborer in the west parks system of Chicago, going on to become one of the premier landscape architects of the twentieth century.  “Jens Jensen had a simple set of precepts,” the paper observes, “which he clung to stubbornly in the face of both politicians and millionaire clients, and defended with the rage of an inspired Viking when aroused.  He believed in the beauty of nature.  He detested formal gardens.  He taught the middle west the value of its native trees and plants in landscaping.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1949] The article continued, “To him, parks were placed where city people should find the comfort of natural beauty.  They were not for batting baseballs.  Neither were they automobile speedways.  In his judgment, 15 miles an hour was fast enough for people entering the parks to enjoy the lawns, the crab apple blooms, and the hawthorns.  In a day when efforts are made to encroach on the parks for almost every other public use, a revival of the Jensen principles would be a healthy thing for Chicago.”  Perhaps Jens Jensen's greatest work in Chicago is Columbus Park, shown in the photo above.



September 1, 1925 – Two days after the South Water Street market closes for business, the Chicago Daily Tribune rails against the street that will replace it, specifically the fact that the new road along the river will be named after Charles H. Wacker, the head of the Chicago Plan Commission.  “It is small town stuff at its worst,” the paper proclaims, “to rename South Water street because it is double decked and remade . . . We certainly acknowledge Mr. Charles Wacker’s civic spirit and his useful service in the protection and realization of the city plan . . . But to give his name to the chief thoroughfare of the city, after Michigan boulevard, is not only crude vandalism, but without fitness of proportion.  Mr. Wacker has been a useful citizen, but his service in the city does not tower above that of all other citizens . . . what of Daniel Burnham, who was the creator of the city plan, one of the most famous and gifted of our citizens? If we give Mr. Wacker’s name to our second greatest street, how are we going to honor Burnham with any respect for proportion?
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Tuesday, January 14, 2020

January 14, 1924 -- Chicago Fire Station Ignites after Stolen Cab Rams It

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January 14, 1924 – Quite a surprise for the firemen of Engine Company 24 at 2447 Warren Avenue when a stolen Yellow cab with an unconscious carjacker at the wheel crashes through the fire station’s doors, overturns two coal stoves, and sets the building on fire.  The cab comes to a stop when it rams the brass sliding post that leads up to the second floor.  The driver, who is pronounced dead at Bridewell Hospital, had been shot during a “wild chase of several miles”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 15, 1924]  by a West Park police officer, Fred Tosch, who witnessed the cab speeding on Washington Boulevard near Oakley Avenue.  Commandeering a civilian’s car, Tosh chases the cab to a vacant lot near Campbell Avenue.  As he approaches the cab on foot, the driver accelerates in an attempt to run the officer down.  Tosch shoots twice, hitting the driver once in the left side.  Although wounded, the driver speeds to Warren Avenue where he turns west.  As the car nears the firehouse, the driver slumps across the wheel, and the cab smashes into the station, crushing a row of chairs on which three firemen had been sitting before the splintering station doors caused them to flee for safety.  Firemen asleep on the second floor, led by Captain Michael Kerrins, are awakened by the ruckus and extinguish the fire inside the station before it does much damage.   Although it didn't burn down that day, Engine Company 24 is long gone.  As can be seen in the above photo of 2447 Warren Avenue, there is nothing left.

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January 14, 1969 – An interesting article in the Chicago Tribune fifty years ago makes predictions about what Chicago’s Loop will look like in the century that is to come.  Noting that “Confidence in the Loop’s future already has been expressed by public and private investors,” [Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1969] the article begins with a look at downtown transportation.  “A new subway system will speed and extend public transportation thruout the downtown area … Only historical markers will remain to mark the elevated structure that once defined the Loop and gave it its name,” the article states.  State Street will be “a curious combination of past and present,” with the Carson Pirie Scott building “proudly standing among newer, taller neighbors.”  The street will still be “the retail king,” but once the elevated structure is removed on Wabash Avenue that street will also become “a shopper’s delight.”  Shoppers will browse in “huge commercial concourses … along the two levels of the new subway system” which will feature “moving sidewalks, and, perhaps, electric trains.” The article gets this one right – “West Madison street, fortified by new skyscrapers, will shed its skid row past and become the western heart of the new Loop,” bolstering the claim with a statement from the president of the Mid-City National Bank, E. M. Bakwin, who says, “I can see Madison-Canal expanding north and south as a major complex. I can see it as a new Rockefeller center.”  The Tribune predicts accurately that development of the Illinois Center area will “extend over nearly 50 acres along the Chicago river between Michigan avenue and the lakefront.  It will provide working quarters for thousands and homes for 35,000 apartment dwellers.”  Not quite accurate is the prediction that in this area “Autos will be barred from the surface to underground levels where workers and residents will find transit service … As the Loop enters the twenty-first Century and its complex public transit system of subways, moving sidewalks, and walk-ways is completed, the last private auto will leave the Loop and be banished forever.”  As the above photo shows much in the Loop -- and beyond -- has changed, but the el is still rattling along.

January 14, 1924 – The commissioners of the South Park Board convene in a special session to accept the donation of a fountain for Grant Park from Miss Kate Buckingham, the fountain to be built in honor of her brother, Clarence Buckingham.  Miss Buckingham contributes $250,000 (close to $4 million in today's dollars) for the construction of the fountain with another $135,000 set aside in a trust fund for its maintenance.  The fund will be administered by the Art Institute of Chicago.  The fountain opened to the public on May 26, 1927.  The Chicago Park District’s description of the fountain, the centerpiece of Grant Park, the city’s “front yard,” includes the following: “An important Chicago art patron and philanthropist, Kate Sturges Buckingham (1858 – 1937) was the last member of the Buckingham family.  Originally from Zanesville, Ohio, the Buckingham family made its fortune in grain elevators, real estate and steel.  Kate and her brother Clarence Buckingham (1854 – 1913) were both avid art collectors and benefactors who donated valuable prints, paintings, sculptures, and objects to the Art Institute of Chicago… Architect Edward H. Bennett of the firm Bennett, Parsons and Frost, designed the fountain and French artist Marcel Loyau produced the sculptural elements.  Architects Jacques Lambert and Clarence W. Farrier served as associates on the project.  The fountain is composed of pink Georgia marble, with some granite elements, and bronze sculptures. During the planning phases, Kate Buckingham expressed a wish that the fountain’s lighting should emulate ‘soft moonlight.’ According to an early Chicago Park District brochure, ‘though advanced in years,’ Miss Buckingham ‘worked night after night with technicians, trying out various colors of glass and adjusting the control of electric current’ to produce ‘blends… that pleased her— and indeed, there is a mystical aura around the lighted fountain suggesting moonlight— in fairyland.’”  The above photo shows the fountain under construction in 1925. 

January 14, 1898 – Another chapter in the continuing story of Aron Montgomery Ward and the area we today know as Grant Park unfolds as Ward reacts strongly to a plan that would see a great exposition hall built in the park, a project that would receive city abatement of ground fees, taxes and assessments.  Ward minces no words, saying, “To erect a large building [in the park] would be doing an injustice to those who have spent millions in erecting fine buildings and halls throughout the city … They have paid their fair and full proportion of taxes and assessments for years, and their investments in assembly halls have not paid them 2 per cent.  Now they can see their way, with the increased population and the evident return of prosperity to the country, to make simply the interest on their investments … Why should this great octopus be given land with no ground rent to pay and free from taxes and assessment? … It is one of the biggest schemes ever sprung on the citizens and taxpayers of Chicago.  All others pale before it.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 15, 1898]  One day maybe someone will gather the funds to erect a statue to Ward in the park on the lakefront.  In his continuing battle to protect the property, he did more than anyone else to keep it open, clear and free so that we might enjoy its many benefits today.  The area under consideration for the new exposition hall is pictured above.   

January 14, 1927 -- The report of George M. Wisner's testimony before Charles Evans Hughes, special master of the United States Supreme Court, is printed. Eisner, the consulting engineer for the Chicago sanitary district, attempted to answer the demands of Wisconsin and five other Great Lakes states seeking an injunction that stopped water diversion from Lake Michigan into the Chicago River. Eisner recounted what life in Chicago was like before the river was flushed with lake water. He said, "The Chicago river was a pest hole of typhoid and intestinal disease germs . . . It was a big septic tank festering on the bottom and sending upwards dangerous poisonous gases. The crust of filth sometimes became so thick that a chicken could walk across the river. At other times the crust caught fire." To avoid a return to those days, Wisner asserted that a maximum of 10,000 cubic feet of lake water per second was needed to cleanse the river. Chicago lost the battle when the Supreme Court decreed on April 21, 1930 that the diversion of lake water be gradually reduced to 1,500 cubic feet per second by December 31, 1938. The photo above pictures the river as it looked about the time Wisner offered his testimony.
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Saturday, May 11, 2019

May 11, 1924 -- Cardinal Mudnelein Returns from Rome

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May 11, 1924 – Cardinal George William Mundelein returns to Chicago, making Chicago the first city west of the Allegheny Mountains to have a cardinal as the head of the Catholic Church.  At Holy Name Cathedral he dedicates his first hour in the city to the young men of the church.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “Quietly, intimately, and rapidly Chicago’s first cardinal gave his blessing to the little boys, youths, and young men who jammed the transepts, filled up the nave, and spilled over into the spaces in fornt of the altar …” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 12, 1924]. Mundelein says, “On returning from a long, long journey, it is but fitting that the first to welcome the first cardinal of the west should be the little ones … Your cardinal needs you; he needs the young men.  With your help and enthusiasm, the church can go still further forward.”  Mundelein was named the city’s archbishop in 1916 and spent little time in letting people know that he was a different prelate than those who had preceded him.  He avoided tragedy by skipping the soup at a University Club banquet in his honor and worked to break down the barriers in the various Polish, German, Bohemian, and Irish parishes in the city.  When he returned as a cardinal on this day in 1924 a million Chicagoans lined the streets to hail his return.  Before his death in 1939, a reporter asked him if he had ever considered returning to the city of New York, where he grew up on its Lower East Side.  He replied, “You and I live in the greatest city in the world. The only way they will get me to leave Chicago is feet first.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 20, 2014]  The crowds outside Holy Name Cathedral are shown in the above photo on May 11, 1924.


May 11, 1894 –The Pullman Car Works closes until further notice at 6:00 p.m. after 2,000 employees walk out with “no excitement and no demonstration.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 12, 1894] A meeting of the Grievance Committee convenes on May 10 at the Dewdrop Saloon in Kensington that lasts until 4:30 a.m. at which point the 46 members of the committee vote unanimously to strike.  At 7:00 p.m. On May 11 American Railway Union Vice-President George Washington Howard begins to address a packed Turner Hall in Kensington.  He urges the men against violence, “Now, men, you have work before you and you must do it like American citizens.  Use no threats, no intimidation, no force toward any one who gets into the works.  It must be distinctly understood that there will be no violation of the law … My advice to you is let liquor of all kinds entirely alone.  If you drink at all you are liable to lose your senses, and if you lose your senses God knows what will happen … keep sober and straight, and every laboring man in the country will be with you.”  Then Howard turns the crowd’s attention to the path ahead.  “In the past,” he begins, “corporations used to divide men who are on strike, but they can’t do it now … I heard Mr. Pullman say the other day that you men owed his company $70,000 for rent which you could not pay.  If that is so how long will it be before he owns you soul and body … I am under the opinion that it is so long since he has done any work that he has forgotten what ill-usage means, and does not know that kind words and courteous demeanor are becoming even to the President of a great corporation.  If he had taken the trouble to come down here two days ago, as he should have done, and had listened to the men’s grievances from the men, the strike would never have occurred.”  George Pullman claims he is totally surprised by the work stoppage, going into detail about how he has tried to take care of his employees.  “[The strike] not only surprised but pained me,” Pullman says., “for I had taken a great interest in keeping the men employed … I did and was doing all in my power to keep the men at Pullman supplied with work … We also spent $160,000 for improvements at the works and in the town during the last few months that we would not have made for several years had we not wanted to give the men work.  I had this done because I was exceedingly anxious for the welfare of the men.”  The strike idled the Pullman works with no end in sight when, on June 26, 1894, American Railway Union President Eugene V. Debs called for a boycott of all Pullman cars on American railroads, an action which eventually led to a walk-out of 250,000 workers in 27 states.  U. S. President Grover Cleveland ordered 12,000 federal troops to end the strikes that idled the entire western portion of the country’s transportation system. Over the course of the trouble, 30 strikers were killed and property damage exceeded $80 million.  Ultimately, Debs and Howard both went to federal prison, the American Railway Union was broken up, and Illinois ordered Pullman to sell off its residential holdings.  Strikers gather outside the Pullman Arcade Building in the above photo.



May 11, 1894 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on a mystery solved at Fort Sheridan.  The tale begins with “uncanny noises” being heard at “unearthly hours” in the big drill hall just southwest of the fort’s tower.  The noise was compounded by the sound of “a body falling heavily on the floor,” followed by “the crash of steel and strange cries from an excited voice.”  Some believed that a ghost had haunted the drill hall … such stories had been prevalent since the end of 1893 when three separate sentries saw the ghost of a murdered officer, one the sentries even swearing that the ghost had knocked his hat off his head.  So it is that the officer of the guard organizes a raiding party and with “fixed bayonets and forty rounds of ammunition to each man the guard moved on the big room prepared for ghosts or anything else above or under ground.”  Entering the huge hall, the men find their commandant, Colonel R. E. A. Crofton, pictured above, lying on the floor, tangled up in a bicycle.  For the time being, the mystery is solved. 


May 11, 1925 – Ten thousand people jam Michigan Avenue as Ray Schalk, catcher for the Chicago White Sox, shows the crowd how to catch a ball thrown from the 560-foot top of Tribune Tower. Traffic is blocked on the Magnificent Mile for 20 minutes as Schalk makes three attempts to catch the ball. The first ball bounces off scaffolding and never makes it to the catcher’s glove. The second bounces off his glove, but he can’t make the grab. Using both hands on the third attempt, Schalk makes the catch. With the ball successfully in hand “ . . . the coppers on horseback were needed to get Ray back out of the throng so he could get to the ball park for the afternoon game.” [Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1925] The police could have taken it easy. Although their catcher caught the ball thrown from Tribune Tower, the Sox dropped the game to the Washington Senators, 9-0. Ray Schalk did not play. 
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Monday, September 10, 2018

September. 10, 1924 -- Soldier Field Opens with a Pageant of Festival and Light


September 10, 1924 –A magic evening takes place on the lakefront as 3,000 children carrying lanterns march into the Grant Park stadium, today’s Soldier Field, in a “preliminary dedication”. [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 11, 1924] Despite a light rain the Pageant of Music and Light has spectators cheering “as the army of girls and boys marched into the arena and scattered about to form [a] sparkling wheel.”  A mixed mass chorus under the direction of William Boeppler rolls thorugh “The Heavens Declare,” following the song with a rendition of “Beautiful Savior” and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. A children’s choir of a thousand voices than takes over, led by Hans Biedermann.  The program concludes with the Civic Band of Chicago leading the crowd in “America.”  The official opening day for the massive stadium would occur a month later, on October 9, the Fifty-Third anniversary of the Chicago Fire. The first event held in the new sports arena was a police track meet that featured a thousand athletes from the police department, drawing 90,000 spectators.  At the urging of the city’s Gold Star Mothers the Municipal Grant Park Stadium was officially renamed Soldier Field on November 11, 1925.


September 10, 1948 – Mayor Martin H. Kennelly gives approval to a proposal submitted to the city council, requiring that city officials and employees be required to sign non-Communist affidavits or face dismissal.  The proposal, sponsored by Forty-Fourth Ward alderman John C. Burmeister, also mandates a “loyalty committee” of three to five aldermen appointed by the mayor.  The mayor says, “I think it’s all right. We don’t know who we have working for us.”  The mayor is pictured in the above photo.


September 10, 1954 – The state civil defense director, Robert M. Woodward, graces Chicago with some upbeat news when he announces that a hydrogen bomb dropped at Madison Street and Kedzie Avenues between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. would cause 3,030,096 deaths and 1,382,421 injuries.  With an evacuation window of 15 minutes there would still be 1,876,227 deaths and 844,013 injuries.  For those wondering why we folks in our sixties and seventies sometimes act so strangely, it might be good to remember that we grew up with regular updates like this instead of the latest updates on Pokémon Go.
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Sunday, January 14, 2018

January 14, 1924 -- Buckingham Fountain Donation Accepted




January 14, 1924 – The commissioners of the South Park Board convene in a special session to accept the donation of a fountain for Grant Park from Miss Kate Buckingham, the fountain to be built in honor of her brother, Clarence Buckingham.  Miss Buckingham contributes $250,000 for the construction of the fountain with another $135,000 set aside in a trust fund for its maintenance.  The fund will be administered by the Art Institute of Chicago.  The fountain opened to the public on May 26, 1927.  The Chicago Park District’s description of the fountain, the centerpiece of Grant Park, the city’s “front yard,” includes the following: “An important Chicago art patron and philanthropist, Kate Sturges Buckingham (1858 – 1937) was the last member of the Buckingham family.  Originally from Zanesville, Ohio, the Buckingham family made its fortune in grain elevators, real estate and steel.  Kate and her brother Clarence Buckingham (1854 – 1913) were both avid art collectors and benefactors who donated valuable prints, paintings, sculptures, and objects to the Art Institute of Chicago… Architect Edward H. Bennett of the firm Bennett, Parsons and Frost, designed the fountain and French artist Marcel Loyau produced the sculptural elements.  Architects Jacques Lambert and Clarence W. Farrier served as associates on the project.  The fountain is composed of pink Georgia marble, with some granite elements, and bronze sculptures. During the planning phases, Kate Buckingham expressed that she wanted the fountain’s lighting to emulate ‘soft moonlight.’ According to an early Chicago Park District brochure, ‘though advanced in years,’ Miss Buckingham ‘worked night after night with technicians, trying out various colors of glass and adjusting the control of electric current’ to produce ‘blends… that pleased her— and indeed, there is a mystical aura around the lighted fountain suggesting moonlight— in fairyland.’”  The above photo shows the fountain under construction in 1925.


January 14, 1898 – Another chapter in the continuing story of Aron Montgomery Ward and the area we today know as Grant Park unfolds as Ward reacts strongly to a plan that would see a great exposition hall built in the park, a project that would receive city abatement of ground fees, taxes and assessments.  Ward minces no words, saying, “To erect a large building [in the park] would be doing an injustice to those who have spent millions in erecting fine buildings and halls throughout the city … They have paid their fair and full proportion of taxes and assessments for years, and their investments in assembly halls have not paid them 2 per cent.  Now they can see their way, with the increased population and the evident return of prosperity to the country, to make simply the interest on their investments … Why should this great octopus be given land with no ground rent to pay and free from taxes and assessment? … It is one of the biggest schemes ever sprung on the citizens and taxpayers of Chicago.  All others pale before it.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 15, 1898]  One day maybe someone will gather the funds to erect a statue to Ward in the park on the lakefront.  In his continuing battle to protect the property, he did more than anyone else to keep it open, clear and free so that we might enjoy its many benefits today.  The area under consideration for the new exposition hall is pictured above.


January 14, 1927 -- The report of George M. Wisner's testimony before Charles Evans Hughes, special master of the United States Supreme Court, is printed. Eisner, the consulting engineer for the Chicago sanitary district, attempted to answer the demands of Wisconsin and five other Great Lakes states seeking an injunction that stopped water diversion from Lake Michigan into the Chicago River. Eisner recounted what life in Chicago was like before the river was flushed with lake water. He said, "The Chicago river was a pest hole of typhoid and intestinal disease germs . . . It was a big septic tank festering on the bottom and sending upwards dangerous poisonous gases. The crust of filth sometimes became so thick that a chicken could walk across the river. At other times the crust caught fire." To avoid a return to those days, Wisner asserted that a maximum of 10,000 cubic feet of lake water per second was needed to cleanse the river. Chicago lost the battle when the Supreme Court decreed on April 21, 1930 that the diversion of lake water be gradually reduced to 1,500 cubic feet per second by December 31, 1938. The photo above pictures the river as it looked about the time Wisner offered his testimony.
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Monday, September 18, 2017

September 18, 1924 -- Bridge Proposal for Lake Shore Drive



September 18, 1924 – The president of the Illinois Society of Architects, Charles E. Fox, proposes in the monthly bulletin of the society “a half-mile long, permanent stone bridge, 160 feet high, over the mouth of the Chicago river”.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 19, 1924] The massive bridge would take the place of the lift bridge or the tunnel, plans that are under consideration as ways to connect Grant Park and the south side of the city with the north side of the river and Lake Shore Drive.  Says Fox, “It’s a reasonably safe bet that if the proposed tunnel is ever constructed, it’ll stand for a generation or two as a monument to bad judgment and then’ll be filled up … The war department already has shown its hand by refusing to have a lift bridge east of Michigan avenue … On the north a design of approach could be incorporated into the architectural treatment of the Municipal pier.  The bridge itself would be the monumental hub of the city.  A view from the crown of the arch would give to the passing stranger, as well as to the citizen of Chicago a magnificent birdseye view of Grant park and the lake shore both north and south.”  Imagine today what a difference it would make to have a massive stone bridge straight out of New York City plunked down at the entrance to the river … things would look a lot different.


September 18, 1925 – Alonzo C. Mather pays $500,000 or $7,692 a square foot for 65 feet of frontage on Wacker Drive, adding this property, owned by the Chicago Title & Trust Company, to Michigan Avenue property he already owns east of the Wacker Drive lot.  Born in Fairfield, New York in 1848, Mather came to Chicago in 1875, where he started a wholesale business.  At some point he found a way to wealth – by developing a new kind of railroad stock car that reduced the loss of life stock while in transit through the provision of feed and water.  The Herbert Hugh Riddle design for Mather Tower at 75 East Wacker Drive provided the headquarters for the Mather Stock Car Company when it opened in 1929.  The existing piece of property that Mather owned on Michigan Avenue was meant for another similar tower that would be connected its partner on Wacker Drive by a ground floor arcade.  The economic catastrophe of the Great Depression ended the plan for the second tower.
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