Connecting the Windy City

Friday, August 14, 2020

August 14, 1972-- Bridgeview Disaster Narrowly Averted

Chicago Tribune photo

August 14, 1972 – During the evening rush hour, the temperature in the Chicago area drops quickly from 94 degrees to 71 as winds from the west at over 60 miles-per-hour kick up.  As the dark storm clouds move quickly toward the city, 800 people in Bridgeview are gathered in a circus tent, watching the elephant act of the Rudi Brothers Circus. Fortunately, officials at the site spot the storm moving toward them, and order the tent cleared before winds topple four 50-foot poles onto the empty bleachers, covering the area with torn and twisted canvas.  Bernard Mendelson, one of the managers of the circus, says, “When you’ve been around a circus as long as I have, you develop a sixth sense about these things.  I told [my partner] Rudy, ‘Get those people out now, right now.’”  [Chicago Tribune, August 15, 1972]  The ringmaster, Charles Cox, is alerted and announces, “Ladies and gentlemen there’s a little wind blowing up.  Would you please leave the tent by the front entrance because the elephants will be going out the other way.  Please walk, don’t run.”  As people file out, the musicians continue to play as the tent begins to shudder in the wind.  Circus performers spend most of the night, clearing the debris so that the circus, sponsored by the Confederation of Police as a fund-raiser for drug abuse information programs and a legal defense fund for its members, can go on the following day in an improvised setting.

August 14, 1960 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that a building at 739 North State Street has been raised, and the rubble is made up of the remains of the flower shop that Dion O’Banion ran, a place “where murders, boot-legging, and hi-jackings were planned amidst flowering plants and the scent of roses.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 14, 1960] Ironically, at the time “the same building that once served as the headquarters of a bloody band of killers during the guzzling decade of the twentieth century” was most recently used as a meeting place for the Young People’s club of Holy Name Cathedral.  In April of 2017 it was disclosed that JDL Development had agreed to pay $110 million to the Archdiocese of Chicago for the 90,000 square-foot property three blocks west of North Michigan Avenue.  On January 18, 2018 the Chicago Plan Commission approved a project to build two towers on the site, the taller of which will be the eighth Chicago "supertall" building at 1,011 feet. The killing of Dion O’Banion in the shop in 1924 touched off a gang war that lasted for five years, pitting the North Side gang of O’Banion against Al Capone’s gang from the South Side.  The black and white photo shows the flower shop.  The second photo shows the future of the site -- it will hold the sixth tallest building in the city, One Chicago Square.

August 14, 1936 –Nathan Goldblatt signs a contract for the purchase of the residence built by Benjamin Marshall in Wilmette on Sheridan Road opposite the Baha’i Temple. It is reported that Marshall, the architect who designed the Drake Hotel, the South Shore Country Club and the Blackstone Theater and a host of other impressive buildings, had reportedly spent over a million dollars on the home and its furnishings.  The Spanish-influenced home commanded a view of Lake Michigan … the Sheridan Shores Yacht Club used the home’s basement as its clubhouse. Marshall’s work studio had a space for 45 draftsmen.  The home had a 50-foot-high, 75-by-100-foot tropical garden with palm and banana trees. The home’s swimming pool was lined with turquoise tiles from Algiers. Goldblatt reportedly paid $60,000 for the home but did not stay there long, and in 1950 Wilmette had the home razed.  Only the wrought-iron gates remain on the property, which is today owned by the Baha’i Temple.

August 14, 1933 – Joseph Hastings, a Chicago policeman married for only four months, is shot to death during a gun battle with two thieves who rob a city office on Navy Pier.  He is the eleventh policeman to die in the line of duty during 1933.  The money that is stolen was intended for men on emergency relief who were employed by the city to do work at the pier.  Thomas B. Rawls, an official of the West Englewood Currency exchange, used it to cash checks from the workers at a fee of 15 cents a check.  It is unclear why a representative of a private enterprise is cashing checks in an office of the city street department.  Hastings, hearing a shot fired, runs into a second floor office at the west end of the pier. One of the dozen clerks in the office, Charles Eddy, outlines the ensuing events, “Hastings came in the door with his revolver drawn . . . The man at the side wall opened fire.  The policeman fell to the floor and fired two shots in return.  The robbers ran to the door.  Hastings got up, and one of the robbers turned and shot him as he rose.  The robber then grabbed Hastings’ gun and ran out. . .” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 13, 1933]  Morris Cohen a barber, is captured 30 minutes later at 1331 North Clark Street.  His two companions remain on the lam.  The above photo depicts Navy Pier as it appeared in 1933.

Posted by Chicago Old and New at 12:30 AM 2 comments

Labels: 1972, Chicago Event, Weather Events

Sunday, August 9, 2020

August 9, 1972 -- Columbus Drive Bridge to Make Traffic "Nearly Intolerable"

August 9, 1972:  A traffic study is released that concludes “Traffic conditions in the Near North Michigan Avenue area will be ‘nearly intolerable’ if the city constructs a bridge over the Chicago River at Columbus Drive.”  The report, prepared for the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association by R. W. Booker and Associates, partially validates a report issued earlier in the week by the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.  The report observes that the city has not planned well in proposing a bridge that will connect Fairbanks Court north of the river with Columbus Drive and the developing Illinois Center property to the south.  Taking a special hit is the massive traffic jam that is anticipated during the lengthy reconstruction of the dogleg on Lake Shore Drive north of Randolph Street.  The report makes six recommendations to relieve problems in the River North area if the bridge is built.  They include:  (1) employing rapid transit or people mover systems in the area; (2) widening Fairbanks Court and making it one way south, in the area north of Ontario Street; (3) better enforcement of peak traffic rules and parking regulations in the area; (4) eliminating on-street parking in the area and creating new off-street parking areas; (5) making Ontario and Ohio Streets one way between Fairbanks and Lake Shore Drive and developing grade separation of these two streets with Lake Shore Drive; and (6) making thoro (sic) studies of alternate methods of handling traffic during the reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive, including staged construction to permit continued, limited use of the Drive.  [Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1972]  The bridge was finished in 1982 for a cost of $33,000,000, bringing almost instantaneous development of the area north of the river and east of Columbus Drive.

August 9, 1964 –Naval reservists participate in the second day of training in Lake Michigan aboard the 312-foot USS. Rauner.  Six ships of the “Corn Belt Fleet” and aircraft from the Glenview Naval Air Station join in the exercises as reservists practice anti-submarine maneuvers off Chicago.  After the exercises are concluded, the submarine is tied up east of the Michigan Avenue bridge for public viewing.  The USS Rauner, Hull Number SS-476, was a diesel-powered attack submarine launched on October 14, 1944. Her first war patrol was off Honshu, Japan where she sank an enemy minesweeper.  By the time the Rauner made it to her second patrol, Japan had declared defeat.  The Rauner entered Tokyo Bay, and with ten other United States submarines, represented the submarine service at the signing of the peace treaty. The summer of 1964 was the only time she worked in coordination with the Great Lakes Naval Training Center although after service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean she was towed to Great Lakes after decommissioning at the Boston Naval Shipyard on January 15, 1969. There she served as a Naval Reserve Training vessel until she was stricken from the Navy list on December 15, 1971.

chicagotribune

August 9, 1945 – The federal government’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation announces that the huge aircraft engine plant operated by the Studebaker Corporation at 5555 Archer Avenue has been put up for sale.  The main building contains 782,988 square feet and sits on a 50-acre site just west of Midway Airport.  Every B-17 Flying Fortress produced after January, 1944 came equipped with Studebaker-built R-1820 engines.  Engine components were fabricated and manufactured in the Chicago area plant and shipped to South Bend, Indiana for final assembly at a 1,500,000 square foot plant that sat on 318 acres.  During World War II Studebaker built 63,789 engines, each composed of nearly 8,000 finished parts.  The above photo shows another engine coming off the assembly line at the Studebaker plant.

August 9, 1937 – The rarest of real estate deals occurs when two of the city’s skyscrapers are swapped with no brokers involved in the transaction and with no commission fees paid.  The Marshall Field estate trades the 19-story Times building at 211 West Wacker Drive for the sixteen-story Central Life Insurance Company building at the southwest corner of North Michigan Avenue and East Superior Street.  A representative of the Field estate says that through the acquisition of the Central Life building it now owns the entire block bounded by Michigan, Huron, Rush and Superior.  Through the swap the insurance company will be able to consolidate all of its operations, scattered in various leased spaces in the area, in the Wacker Drive building.  The property on Wacker Drive, shown above, a Holabird and Root design, is still making money.  Saks Fifth Avenue now occupies the corner of Superior and Michigan where the Central Life building used to stand.

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Labels: 1972, Chicago Bridges, Chicago Development, Chicago RIver

Saturday, April 25, 2020

April 25, 1972 -- Hyatt Hotels Breaks Ground for Hotel on the River

April 25, 1972 – More than a hundred businessmen and city officials gather to celebrate the ground-breaking for the new 1,000 room convention hotel developed by Hyatt Corporation, the Prudential Insurance Company of America, Metropolitan Structures, and Illinois Center Corporation, a subsidiary of Illinois Central Industries, Inc.  Mayor Richard J. Daley lauds the project as “a great asset for Chicagoans who want to work, live and play in the city.” [Chicago Tribune, April 26, 1972] Sited on Wacker Drive just to the east of Michigan Avenue on the south side of the Chicago River, the 36-story hotel is one of the first buildings in a massive project to develop the 82-acre site of Illinois Center, formerly a railroad yard.  The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of I. C. Industries, William B. Johnson, says the Illinois Center project “will be a blend of buildings, of river, and of lake with open, green space, creating an altogether new and highly livable environment.”  The hotel is shown under construction in the photo above.  The photo below that shows approximately the same view today.  The Hyatt Regency Chicago is the reddish-brown tower to the left just beyond the Columbus Drive bridge.

decidedlygrim.net

April 25, 1946 – In the early afternoon tragedy comes to Naperville, at the time a town of about 5,000 residents, as two Burlington passenger trains come together at Loomis Street.  The first train of nine cars, carrying about 150 people, leaves Chicago and heads for Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska about two minutes before the second Oakland-bound train which carries 175 passengers in 11 assorted coach and sleeping cars.  Somewhere near Naperville a crew member of the first train observes something shooting out from the train’s undercarriage, and the engineer stops his train so that it can be inspected for damage.  The unexpected stop triggers signals behind the train that should have warned the second passenger train’s engineer of the blocked track ahead.  A flagman from the first train also is dispatched up the line as an additional means of warning the approaching train.  The engineer of that second train, 68-year-old W. W. Blaine, brings his train through a yellow caution signal and a red stop signal and past the flagman and just 90 seconds after the first train had rolled to a stop, Blaine’s train rips into the stopped train at a speed estimated to be about 45 miles-per-hour. Blaine later says that he put his train into emergency braking as it was traveling at 80 miles-per-hour, but there was not enough time to bring the speeding train to a stop.  The front truck of Blaine’s EMD ES-A locomotive is sheared off on impact, and the engine travels through three-quarters of the rear car of the stopped train, killing most of its passengers.  The locomotive continues forward for 205 feet, bending a light-weight dining car like a crushed aluminum can, causing more deaths.  The fireman on the second train dies instantly as he jumps from the cab a split second before the impact.  Immediately adjacent to the tracks is the Kroehler Furniture Factory and within minutes 800 employees respond to the disaster, along with 60 students from Naperville’s North Central College.  There is no hospital in rural Naperville at the time, and rescuers work throughout the day to free the injured and the dead from the mangled wreckage of the two trains.  The railroad dispatches a special train to the scene with doctors and nurses, but it is more than eight hours before the last car is opened with acetylene torches.  It would be 27 hours before trains began to roll through Naperville once again. Altogether, 47 people die in the wreck and another 125 are injured.  Subsequent investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission and a DuPage County grand jury culminate in no action being taken against the crews of either train or the Burlington Railroad.  In April, 2014 a sculpture, “Tragedy to Triumph,” was dedicated as a memorial to those who died on that spring day in 1946.  

April 25, 1914 -- In a conflict that began with a relatively minor incident in which neither Mexican authorities or United States sailors could speak one another's language, hostilities loom between the two countries, and young men head for the nearest recruiting posts, volunteering for the military. On this date the Chicago Daily Tribune reports that 1,000 applicants have made their way to the city, including Harold Witherspoon from Whiting, Indiana. The 17-year-old walks all the way from his home to enlist -- a distance of 23 miles. Within a block of the naval recruiting station at 205 Fifth Avenue (today's Wells Street) a packing case falls off the back of a truck and crushes his foot. He is accepted conditionally and sent to Lake Bluff to recover. If he fails to regain full health, he will go back to Whiting ... but not on foot. Of the thousand men who show up less than a hundred are accepted.

April 25, 1875 – With memories of the city’s destruction four years earlier, Chicagoans understandably love their beer, especially with a large share of the milk watered down and the drinking water suspect.  On this date the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a feature on the principal beer manufacturers in the city.  They include:  

Conrad Seipp – located east of Cottage Grove Avenue at the foot of Twenty-Sixth Street with a main plant “probably the largest used for the manufacture of lager beer in the United States.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, April 25, 1872] Seipp founded the brewery in 1856 and admitted a partner, Fred Lehman, in 1858.  Lehman died in 1872 after being thrown from a buggy.  The firm employs 100 men with 60 horses “constantly in use and 16 teams delivering beer in the city and suburbs.  The establishment consumes 300,000 bushels of malt and 300,000 bushels of hops each year, producing “the enormous amount of 100,000 barrels of beer.”  The above photo shows the scale of the concern.

Downer and Bemis Brewing Company – located on South Park Avenue, overlooking the lake between Twenty-Third and Twenty-Fourth Streets and founded in 1861.  The brewery makes only lager beer and in 1871 sold 65,000 barrels.

Busch and Brand Brewery Company – located on Cedar Street near the lake and founded in 1851, “one of the first firms to make lager-beer in this city.”  Although it was destroyed in the fire of 1871 it was rebuilt within three months and produces 40,000 barrels annually with room in storehouses and ice houses for another 20,000 barrels.  

Chicago Union Brewing Company – located on Twenty-Seventh Street and Johnson Avenues, just east of Cottage Grove Avenue, the brewery was founded in 1869 for the manufacture of ale “since which time their products have achieved a reputation that places them first in the estimation of all.”  The company supplies “almost exclusively … all first-class saloons in the city” as well as the Palmer House and the Grand Pacific Hotel “and in fact every first-class hotel in the city.”

Doyle and Co., Brewers -- located at 423 North State Street (1243 North State today), producing only ales and porter.  The firm produces 24,000 barrels of ale and porter annually and “keeps four teams delivering and several others hauling.”

Fortune Brothers – located on West Van Buren Street near Halsted, founded in 1866, and producing ale and porter.  The brewery produces 80 barrels of ale a day with “a large corps of skilled workmen and keeps four delivery teams constantly going”.  

T. D. Stuver – the agent for Porter’s Joliet Ales and Porter, located on Randolph Street, an agent for “the celebrated Joliet malt liquors … begun at Joliet by Mr. Ed. Porter some twenty years ago, and, though first-class at first, have improved in excellence as in quantity these many years, until now they fairly rival the more costly English stocks of Bass and Burton and are acknowledged to be ahead of any other body ales in the United States.”  Four wagons deliver pale stock ale, “one of the healthiest and most palatable beverages, ever used or invented to refresh thirsty humanity.”

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Labels: 1972, Chicago Event, Chicago RIver, Illinois Center, Illinois Central

Saturday, March 7, 2020

March 7, 1972 -- Chicago Stock Exchange Won't Go without a Fight

March 7, 1972 -- Eleven persons are hurt when a 150-foot metal scaffold falls from the top of the Old Stock Exchange Building at 30 North La Salle Street, carrying bricks and pieces of wood with it. Two cars are buried as debris are scattered over a 200-foot stretch of La Salle Street between Madison and Washington. Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn blames the falling debris on strong wind gusts that caught part of the tarpaulin at the top of the building and blew the scaffolding and bricks off the east wall, which had been demolished to the ninth floor. "It was a miracle that the whole wall didn't go down," Quinn said. "That tarpaulin acted just like a sail in the wind." The building's demolition, which comes after a protracted battle to make it a city landmark, removes what was arguably the greatest achievement of architect Louis Sullivan. Its death cry on this day in March of 1972 was heard, and a new attitude toward preservation was born and is alive and well today. The photo above shows the building not long after the accident occurred.

harvardmuseums.org

canvas.northwestern.edu

March 7, 1929 – Cook County’s new $7,500,000 courthouse and jail at Twenty-Sixth Street and California Avenue is opened for public inspection as more than 600 business people and members of civic organizations sit down to lunch in the building’s dining room, an event sponsored by the Association of Commerce and the Chicago Advertising Council.  The jail, intended primarily for the use of prisoners awaiting trial, is a state-of-the art facility.  Each of the 1,302 jail cells will have running water and mattresses that are three inches thick.  It is estimated that 2,000 people inspect the cells and the new courthouse, which contains 14 courtrooms, a grand jury room, a jury summons and waiting room, an arraignment court, a law library, and officers for sheriffs, clerks, the state’s attorney, and a social service department.  The facility is scheduled to open on April 1.  Today, with an occupancy of over 10,000 inmates, the jail is the largest single-site prison in the United States. It stands on the site of the former John Worthy Reform School.  The former reform school and today's courthouse are pictured above.

March 7, 1919 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that the Grand Pacific Hotel, at the corner of Jackson Boulevard and Clark Street, will be demolished and “that a modern office building will replace the present building is the ‘best guess’ of men versed in loop real estate.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 7, 1919] The Grand Pacific Hotel was completed in 1873, just two years after the Chicago Fire, according to a design by architect W. W. Boyington.  It became one of the two most prominent hotels in the city, rivalling the Palmer House in its luxury.  It was a massive and ornate edifice.  It was composed of 7,00,000 bricks and 52,000 cubic feet of limestone and sandstone. The hotel had 1,070 doors. Nearly an acre of glass was used in its 930 windows. There were 420 chandeliers with 1,518 gas burners and another 880 sconces with 1,280 burners. 38 miles of wire went into the building's electrical systems. [Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1873] The west half of the building was demolished in 1895 to provide a space for the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, and the east side of the structure was remodeled according to a design by architectural firm Jenney and Mundie.  It was in the Grand Pacific that the Standard Time system was adopted on October 11, 1883.  The remaining structure was demolished in 1921 to make way for the Continental Illinois Bank.  The above photos show the original Grand Pacific Hotel, the truncated version, and the bank, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, that occupies the corner today. 

March 7, 1903 – A Chicago Daily Tribune editorial condemns the practice of dumping dredgings from the river at Bridgeport into the lake a short distance from the shore between Fourteenth Street and Hyde Park.  The editorial urges South Park Board President D. F. Crilly “now in Florida, where, presumably, he is breathing pure air, drinking pure water, and rejoicing at his immunity from mud, soot, smoke and garbage,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, March 7, 1903] to do something.  Singled out for particular criticism are the commissioners of the district who “would not pay the contractors an exorbitant extra price to dump it [the dredgings from the river] in Grant Park.”  The editorial puts a question in the absent Mr. Crilly’s mouth, “What is the use of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on intercepting sewers if we allow the sewage to be taken back and intermingled with our water supply?”  The question is followed up with this lament, “With an ample supply of the best water in the world at our door, why should we not have water that is fit for use?  Why should a few contractors year after year be allowed to poison that water?”

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Labels: 1972, Chicago Architecture, La Salle Street

Thursday, March 5, 2020

March 5, 1972 -- Amtrak Ends Intercity Runs into Roosevelt Road Station

chicagohistorymuseum.tumblr.com

March 5, 1972 – The end of the line is reached for intercity passenger trains using Central Station at Roosevelt Road and Michigan Avenue.   Switching to Union Station will be the overnight Panama Limited to and from New Orleans; the Shawnee, serving mostly the universities at Champaign-Urbana and Carbondale; and the George Washington-James Whitcomb Riley, serving Cincinnati and Washington, D. C.  Central Station opened on April 17, 1893, just in time for the May 1 opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition.  It was designed by New York architect Bradford Gilbert in a Romanesque style, using red brick and sandstone.  It was, perhaps, the grandest of the great train stations that served the city in the heyday of passenger trains.  When it opened, the terminal’s train shed was the world’s largest, measuring 610 feet long by 140 feet wide.  Passengers waited for their trains in a waiting room that was three stories high.  There was a balcony that allowed them to look out over Lake Michigan and a 225-foot clock tower that along “with its arched windows, rounded support columns, red-tile pitched roof, and spiral peaks” made the building resemble “a Medieval Europe castle one might see in ancient France, Spain, or England.”  [American-rails.com]  The Illinois Central Railroad continued to use the building until 1974 when it completed its new headquarters at 233 North Michigan Avenue.  By the end of that year the entire complex was razed.

J. Bartholomew Photo

March 5, 1970 – U. S. Representative Melvin Price, the chairman of a House Armed Services Committee sub-committee, announces that the defense department has notified him of the closing or transfer of military installations in the state, including the transfer of Fifth Army Headquarters from Ft. Sheridan to Fort Sam Houston, Texas where it will be combined with the Fourth Army.  U. S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird says that 371 different cost-cutting actions will be taken in the near future, leading to a saving of $914 million.  Laird estimates that 35,300 military personnel and 58,000 civilians will be affected.  Plans call for the movement of Fifth Army headquarters to be completed within a year although few details are available for what the status of tFort Sheridan will be in the future.  The fort, which the U. S. government established in 1887, would continue on for almost a quarter-century, celebrating its last birthday On July 24, 1992. Today its 230-acre historic district is composed of 94 preserved buildings, most of them dating from 1890 to 1905, that have been transformed into private residences.  With abundant green space, it is a hidden gem on the North Shore lakefront.

March 5, 1962 – The largest public housing project in the country opens with Mayor Richard J. Daley presenting the keys to the first tenant.  The Robert R. Taylor homes will provide 4,415 apartments as subsidized units on a 35-acre site between State Street and the Rock Island Railroad tracks, extending from Thirty-Ninth to Fifty-Fourth Street.  The development is named after Robert R. Taylor, a civic leader and former chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.  Designed by Shaw, Metz and Associates, the development consists of 28 16-story buildings, most of them clustered in groups of three. The Robert Taylor homes will add to the 26,739 apartments that the C.H.A. already operates.  The housing authority also has 1,860 more apartments under construction at 32 different sites with another 2,767 apartments in the land acquisition or planning stage.  The best of intentions cannot salvage a bad idea, and the Robert Taylor homes, marooned in a two-mile stretch of commercial and retail desert, became a cautionary tale in how not to provide subsidized housing.  Originally intended to shelter 11,000 residents, the development at its peak held 27,000 people, 95 percent of whom were unemployed.  The decision was made in 1993 to replace the entire project with a mixed-income community of low-rise buildings, and the last building of the Robert Taylor homes was demolished almost exactly 45 years after the project opened.

March 5, 1901 – In 1889 John Chippewa Crerar, a wealthy Chicago industrialist died and left approximately 2.6 million dollars to fund a library in the city. In 1894 that library was legally incorporated and by 1901 the board of directors had hatched a plan to erect a building for the library in Grant Park at the foot of Washington Street.  On this date in 1901 the Chicago Daily Tribune endorsed the plan in an editorial, stating, “If built as planned the structure will be one of which the city will be proud.  It will be an ornament to the lake front, against which the property-owners cannot make a reasonable objection.”  The only possible drawback to the plan, according to the paper, was “the smoke nuisance form the adjacent railroad tracks.”  The editorial concluded, though, that “if the smoke nuisance were always to be considered there would be no building at all in Chicago.”  There followed a long dispute over erecting the building in Grant Park, followed by a lengthy delay caused by the First World War.  Groundbreaking did not take place for the Holabird and Roche designed building until 1919 when it was begun on the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street.  It was torn down in the early 1980’s and the collection moved to the University of Chicago.    

March 5, 1862 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune editorializes about the nearly intolerable condition of the Chicago River, observing that "A walk across Rush street, Madison street or Polk street bridges will work conviction of the trouble upon the happy possessor of the obtusest of noses." The paper finds that between Fullerton and Chicago Avenues over 4,000 head of cattle are being "stall-fattened," and that "The entire drainage of these sheds . . . pours directly into the river." In the three miles from Bridgeport to Madison Street the paper found "no less than seventeen packing houses . . . the aggregate number of animals slaughtered on or near the river's banks whose blood swells the crimson tide, is not less than five thousand per day." In conclusion, the editorial states, "There have been, since October last, poured into the river the blood and entrails of more than eighty thousand head of fat cattle and of four hundred thousand hogs, besides the sewage and the winter's refuse of a hundred and twenty thousand well fed people. Let us not wonder, when this conduit of corruption is leaking out its contents into the lake, that when the wind is right, the water is abominable. Rather let us account it a mercy that it is no worse."

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Labels: 1972, Chicago Architecture, Down They Forgot as Up They Grew, Illinois Central, Michigan Avenue, Transportation

Sunday, August 25, 2019

August 25, 1972 -- Supreme Court Declines to Block I. C. and G., M. and O. Merger

August 25, 1972 – Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackman refuses to block the merger of the Illinois Central Railroad and the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad.  The Missouri Pacific Railroad had claimed that the proposed merger would create a near-monopoly that would cripple it.  The merger, which had occurred on August 10 gives the new Illinois Central Gulf Railroad control of 13,532 miles of track.

August 25, 1955 – John J. Mack, the owner of a five-story building at the southwest corner of State and Monroe Streets, announces that the building will be torn down to make way for a new structure.  The building to be razed was built in 1872 by E. S. Pike and called the Pike Block.  It later assumed the name of the Ayer Block, and over the years it had been remodeled at least six times.  The loss of the building is significant because the Art Institute of Chicago called the building home when the Academy of Fine Arts, as the Art Institute of Chicago was known at the time, when it was established in 1886.  The corner today is seeing yet another transformation as New York-based Tishman and an investment partner paid $35 million for the 60-year-old property in March, 2015 in order to carve 70,000 square feet of retail and office space out of it and an adjoining structure.  The rendering of the new space is shown above.

August 25, 1983 – Another great idea that didn’t fly … On this day the developers of the Gateway IV building on the Chicago River ask the Chicago Plan Commission to approve a private rooftop heliport.  Alan Goldboro, the president of Tishman Midwest Management Corporation, the developer of the four Gateway buildings near Union Station, asserts that the other necessary approvals are all in place for what will be the first such rooftop flight deck since the city toughened safety regulations 21 years earlier. Goldboro emphasizes that the heliport will be used only by office tenants and police and fire helicopters with no common-carrier service to O’Hare or Midway Airports. One hurdle that has been cleared is the approval of the Friends of the River, a group that managed to shut down a plan for a commercial heliport at Wolf Point in 1980.  The coordinator of the group says of the Gateway plan, “From street level it shouldn’t make as much noise as a passing bus. From the drawings we’ve seen, the pad won’t even be visible from the street.  It’s completely different from Wolf Point.  

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Labels: 1972, Illinois Central