Connecting the Windy City

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…

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Labels: 1904, Chicago Development, Chicago Gardens, Chicago Park District, Chicago Parks, Chicago Places, Grant Park

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

July 17, 1941 -- Blighted Areas Identified for Renewal

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July 17, 1941 – The executive director of the Chicago Plan Commission, T. T. McCrosky, designates three additional areas of the city as “blight districts” suitable for redevelopment by a private corporation.  The first area is on the North Side in an area bounded by Chicago Avenue, the alley between Rush Street and Michigan Avenue, Grand Avenue, and the alley west of Wells Street.  The second area is on the West Side in an area bounded by Congress Street, Racine Avenue, Roosevelt Road, Canal Street from Roosevelt north to Polk street, Polk Street west to a line with Union Avenue, and north to Congress Street.  The final area is on the South Side, an area bounded by Federal Street, Thirty-First Street, Lake Park Avenue, and Twenty-Sixth Street. McCrosky says, “All three of the districts I have designated would be suitable for apartment houses.  The one on the north side should be for the benefit of middle salaried white collar workers … The west side district which also would permit the worker to walk to the loop, would provide for the start of a general west side improvement.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 18, 1941]  McCrosky’s announcement comes a week after Illinois Governor Dwight H. Green signs the Neighborhood Redevelopment Corporation Act, which permits private corporations to condemn property for slum clearance … but only after the corporation has obtained 60 percent of the land needed for the project and has received approval from a municipal redevelopment commission. 

July 17, 1933 – A parade to honor General Italo Balbo and the aviators who accompanied him from Italy to Chicago begins at the Stevens Hotel on Michigan Avenue at 2:30 p.m. and proceeds north to the bridge across the Chicago River.  The Italians ride in United States Army cars and are escorted by cavalry troops from Camp Whistler on the grounds of the Century of Progress Exposition.  At the bridge the troops “present sabers and leave the flyers to an escort of army officers, who will take them to Fort Sheridan.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1933] At the fort the flyers review the troops at 3:30 p.m. and watch “an aerial demonstration by Army planes from Selfridge Field, Michigan, exhibition jumping by army riders and a polo game.” The afternoon ends with a reception at the Officer’s Club. This will be the last official act in honor of the Italian airmen.  On the following day, they will fire up their 24 Savola-Marcinetti seaplanes and head on the thousand-mile trip to New York City.  For more on the flight of Balbo and his men you can turn to Connecting the Windy City for this blog entry and this one.

July 17, 1977 – Paul Gapp, the architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, evaluates the new Apparel Mart at 350 North Orleans Street, observing that once the Joseph P. Kennedy family bought the land where the new building stands on Wolf Point, family members “began a leisurely study of what to do with it.”  Gapp continues, “After all this high-powered cerebration, one might have expected an imposing structure to rise on a precious patch of 7.5 acres.  Instead, we got the Apparel Mart, a disappointing, $56 million architectural performance that succeeds mostly in saving money … The Mart, inside and out, has that hard-edged crowd control look that speaks of hustling retailers racing up in taxis and airline limos; sprinting from showroom to showroom to buy brassieres and bush jackets; having a late dinner, then flopping into bed for a few hours before arising to catch an early plane back to Cleveland, Omaha, or Sarasota, Fla.”  Gapp seems willing to forgive the buildings “windowlessness” because it “does not intrude into an elegant environment, and thus is not as blatantly offensive as [Water Tower Place] the marble monstrosity on North Michigan Avenue.”  In the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill design Gapp sees “a watch-every-nickel structure of little distinction and absolutely no elegance, done by a first-rate firm.”  Gapp ends his assessment with a remarkably accurate prediction, by way of Skidmore architect Bruce Graham, whose assertion that the Apparel Mart buildings are “’background buildings’ that someday may be dwarfed into nothingness.  “The Mart must stand on its own demerits, even if Graham is right when he says that a skyscraper approaching the size of the Standard Oil Building may be built on the very tip of Wolf Point,” writes Gapp.  A 48-story apartment building, Wolf Point West, a bKL architecture design, opened last summer.  A 60-story commercial building is currently just coming up out of the ground.  And the tallest building on Wolf Point will almost completely obscure the Apparel Mart when it rises in the next few years.  The conceptual photo of the completed Wolf Point development project, shown above, seems to validate Graham's belief that the Apparel Mart would one day become a "background building."

July 17, 1881 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints the report of William H. Genung, the chief tenement house inspector, who provides figures on the work of his department during the preceding week.  The report gives some idea of the size of the problem with which the city is faced as 180 houses are inspected, containing 2,086 rooms, inhabited by 559 families, consisting of 2,550 people.  Small pox will claim the lives of 1,181 people in the last months of this year, and the city is hard at work to eliminate the conditions that foster the disease.  In the Second Ward that today encompasses the east side of the Loop, part of the Gold Coast, and Streeterville, tenement houses such as the one Genung’s department inspected were places in which people lived in cramped circumstances in deplorable sanitary conditions.

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Labels: 1941, Chicago Gardens, Chicago Neighborhoods, Chicago Places, Michigan Avenue, Rush Street, Wells Street

Sunday, July 7, 2019

July 7, 1954 -- Lake Meadows to be Completed

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July 7, 1954 – The vice-president of the New York Life Insurance Company, Otto Nelson, announces that the company will embark on the construction of the final 1,040 housing units needed to complete the 1,640-unit Lake Meadows housing project on the south side. Moving forward on the completion of the project was contingent on the city’s commitment to build a new school on two acres of ground near Thirty-First Street and the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, land that the insurance company would provide. Although the board of education, represented by the Superintendent of Schools, Benjamin Willis, could not give that commitment because its funds for 1954 and 1955 had already been allocated, assurance was provided that a school would be ready by the time the housing project iss completed.  The John J. Pershing School for the Humanities is the school that currently stands at that location.  Lake Meadows is shown in the above photo -- the glassy towers marching south in the right third of the photo.  Toward the right corner is the Pershing School, sitting just west of the railroad tracks.

July 7, 1994 –Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, a “slender Cypress, Calif. Prodigy who has been hyped as a future ‘Michael Jordan’ of golf,” competes in the opening qualifying round of the week-long Western Junior Open.  Observing a Par 4 on the sixteenth hole at Cog Hill’s No. 2 course in which Woods flied the green, landed behind a small tree, bumped the ball from there to within 18 feet of the pin, and made the putt, his father, Earl Woods, says, “He does that all the time.  He gets deep in trouble and comes out with a par—sometimes a birdie.  I’ve told him, ‘You’re gonna give me a heart attack.’ He just laughs.” [Chicago Tribune, July 8, 1994] Woods goes on to bogey Number 17 and 18, finishing the day with a 72, four strokes behind leader David Griffith of Aurora, Ohio.  The score leaves him in good position to make the group of 32 qualifiers out of a field of 178 players who are 19 years-old or under.  After the round, Woods says to reporters, “The attention I receive has been a big hassle, a pain in the butt.  No matter how I play, the media ask questions about my golf. My father tries to tone this down, but the questions are always there.”  As the photo above shows, six weeks later Woods would take the championship trophy at the U. S. Amateur Championship at the Tournament Players Club in Ponte Vedra, Florida, after being five down with twelve holes to play.

July 7, 1994 – The Lake County board agrees to join Lake Forest, Highland Park and Highwood in a committee that will determine ways in which Ft. Sheridan can be used.  The county and the three towns agree to appoint representatives to the committee, which will be given the responsibility fordrawing up a comprehensive land-use plan for the closed Army base.  Lake Forest, Highland Park, and the County board will pay 30 percent of the committee’s costs while Highwood will contribute 10 percent.  Cook County board member Robert Buhai of Highland Park says that approval of the coalition at the county’s board meeting clears the way for the group to apply for federal grant money to help move the process along.

July 7, 1977 – The Chicago City Council sets up a special assessment district to collect revenue from State Street merchants for the cost and maintenance of the State Street pedestrian mall, scheduled for completion by March of 1979.  With suburban malls springing up as fast as they can be built and with many patrons who traditionally do their shopping on State Street moving to the suburbs, the thinking is that closing the street to all but bus and pedestrian traffic will make it more attractive to shoppers.  The idea comes a tad too late, and in the 17 years that the mall is open Wieboldt’s, Sear’s, Montgomery Ward, Goldblatt’s, Baskin’s, and the Bond store all go out of business.  There are as many reasons for the mall’s lack of success as there are people to share them.  Chicago’s Planning Commissioner in the 1980’s, Elizabeth Hollander, said, “The mall took the excitement out of State Street.”  Adrian Smith, the lead architect in putting the street back together again, said, “The buses would line up, one after another, like a herd, with their diesel fumes.”  Mayor Richard M. Daley, who hitched a ride on one of the machines that began breaking up the mall in 1996, said, “As Mayor I have found it difficult to find out whose idea this was in the first place.”  [New York Times, February 1, 1996]

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Labels: 1954, Chicago Events, Chicago Gardens, Illinois Central

Monday, November 6, 2017

November 6, 1925 -- Chicago Plan Commission Sets Lakefront Goals

November 6, 1925 – In its fifteenth annual report the Chicago Plan Commission sets a goal for “parks along twenty-six miles of the lake front, with boulevards, bathing beaches, lagoons, golf courses, athletic fields and playgrounds, yacht harbors and public buildings.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 6, 1925] In the fifteen years since the establishment of the commission Cook County has obtained 30,000 acres of wooded land around the city, the beginning of a system of forest preserves that surrounds the city with a buffer of green space.  In 1926 the commission forecasts the completion of most of the Grant Park landscaping “with the Field museum, the Shedd aquarium, Soldiers’ field, the Art institute and the several statues and fountains that will be erected in the park, it will be one of the most impressive and beautiful public improvements in the world.”

November 6, 1886 – A simple note in the “Of Interest to the Art World” section of the Chicago Daily Tribune announces, “The will of Mr. Samuel Johnston contained an appropriation of $10,000 for a statue of Shakespeare to be erected in Lincoln Park.  The executors are John DeKoven and Wiliam Elliot Furness.”   Eight years later the statue is unveiled in Lincoln Park after the sculptor, William Ordway Partridge, travels to Stratford and London in an effort to come to some reckoning with what the Bard may have actually looked like.  The statue sits today in Grandmother’s Garden to the west of the Lincoln Park Zoo.  For more information on the statue and its benefactor, please head here.

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Labels: 1925, Chicago Gardens, Lakefront, Museums