Showing posts with label Chicago Parks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago Parks. Show all posts

Sunday, September 13, 2020

September 13, 1977 -- South Shore Country Club Recommended for Landmark Status

 

September 13, 1977 – The Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks sends a proposal to the Chicago Planning Commissioner, Lewis W. Hill, recommending that the South Shore Country Club be designated a landmark.  This is the best hope for saving the club, designed by Benjamin Marshall and Charles Fox and opened in 1905.  The club has been threatened since the Chicago Park District bought the property in late 1974 for $9,775,000 with plans to tear down the old clubhouse and replace it with a new cultural center.   At the same meeting the commission sets dates for similar hearings to determine whether or not landmark status will be recommended for the Old Colony Building, the Fisher Building, and the Manhattan Building, three buildings that stand next to each other on the east side of Dearborn Street. 

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September 13, 1963 – It is announced that the American Dental Association is completing plans for a 22-story office building on Chicago Avenue just east of Michigan Avenue.  The architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White will design the office building which will have 280,000 square feet of space and cost $5 million.  The association has 100,000 members and plans to use only part of the building, leasing the remainder.  The site, which has a frontage of 200 feet on Chicago Avenue and a depth of 135 feet contains two buildings which will be razed, along with a surface parking lot.  It was purchased from the American National Red Cross for $700,000.  The building still is holding its own at 211 East Chicago, right next door to the Lurie Children’s Hospital.


September 13, 1940 – Wendell L. Wilkie, the Republican candidate for President, tours nearly 50 miles through the city and its industrial areas, giving four speeches to Chicago workers.  The candidate says that “he had never been so thrilled in his life as when he stood before thousands of workers and urged them to forsake the New Deal and come into his crusade for a productive, united and strong America, one with real jobs instead of promises.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 14, 1940] Citizens line the curbs of many of the streets through which Wilkie’s motorcade passes, and La Salle Street is “thick with confetti and streamers.” The largest gatherings of the long day are at the Western Electric plant in Cicero and at a baseball park at Thirty-Ninth Street and Wentworth Avenue where 15,000 people crowd together to see him. The loudest applause comes when Wilkie promises “never to send American boys to fight in the trenches of Europe.” On his way back from his address in Cicero, Wilkie stops for a sandwich at a lunch counter at 4714 Cermak Road. At the end of the busy day he retires to the Stevens Hotel where he confers with political leaders.


September 13, 1908 – The Chicago Daily Tribune announces the intention of the Peoples Gaslight and Coke Company to build the “highest building of its kind” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 13, 1908] at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.  Fronting 196 feet on Michigan Avenue and 171 feet on Adams Street, the structure’s cost is anticipated to surpass $3 million with 1,500 offices located within the D. H. Burnham and Co. design.  The outer walls of the first three stories will be of granite.  Above that the walls will be of terra cotta “without the glossy effect, as in the Railway Exchange building.”  The new tower will be constructed in two sections, with the north section of the 20-story building finished first, followed by the section at the corner of Adams Street and Michigan Avenue.  The second half of the building is seen nearing completion in the above photo. 


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Thursday, August 13, 2020

August 13, 1946 -- Chicago Park District President Gives Nod to Northerly Island Airfield

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August 13, 1946 – The Chicago Park District’s newly elected president, James M. Gately, says that he and other commissioners favor “immediate action to create a first class auxiliary flight strip on Northerly Island.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 14, 1946].  Although no formal proposal has been made, it is clear that Gately’s statement gives momentum to the creation of an airfield convenient to the business district on 80 acres “of the now rubble strewn and neglected island.”  Although Northerly Island, a man-made island created for the Century of Progress World’s Fair in the summers of 1933 and 1934, is nearly a mile long, only 3,200 feet is needed for the landing strip.  Previous park district commissioners have opposed the creation of a landing field on the island, but Mayor Edward Kelly has gone on record as saying he believes the air strip to be essential.  Along with Chicago Aero Commission head Merrill Meigs, the mayor envisions the field as a means of providing air taxi service from the city to Douglas Airport (now O’Hare International Airport) as well as a place from which privately-owned or company-owned aircraft can land and take off.  Construction begins on the new field almost immediately, and on December 10, 1948 it is officially opened.  On June 30, 1950 the airport is named after Meigs, the publisher of the Chicago Herald and Examiner and one of its early boosters.  One the night of March 30, 2003 Mayor Richard M. Daley ordered city crews to render the runway unusable with bulldozers carving huge X-shapes along the length of the strip.   For more information on the field, you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City.  The above photo, taken in 1947, shows the field under construction.  The second photo shows Northerly Island as it appears today. 



August 13, 2009 – Bank of America initiates a suit against Shelbourne Development Group Inc., the developer that began construction of the 150-floor Chicago Spire, construction that was subsequently halted after foundation work was completed.  Bank of America claims that the developer has defaulted on its loan.  The bank says that it is filing a suit in United States District Court in Chicago, seeking $4.9 million in principal and interest from Shelbourne and its chairman, Garrett Kelleher. The complaint alleges that the firm has failed to obtain an “irrevocable construction loan commitment” from a lender, leading the Bank of America to declare a default. [Chicago Tribune, August 14,2009] The photo above shows the remains of the project as they look today.


August 13, 1969 –The chairman of Illinois Central Industries, Inc., William B. Johnson, announces the formation of Illinois Center Plaza Venture, the corporation that will develop the 83-acre site east of Michigan Avenue, between Randolph Street and the Chicago River.  Jupiter Corporation, Metropolitan, Inc., and the Illinois Central Corporation will be equal partners in the plan, which will see the new company purchasing the property from the Illinois Central Railroad for a base price of $83,625,000 with an escalation rider over a 15-year development period.  The site on which the proposed Standard Oil building will be constructed as well as the site of the 111 East Wacker Drive building, which is under construction, along with two adjacent sites, are excluded from the sale. The Prudential building and the Outer Drive East apartments were constructed on air rights in which the Illinois Central did not share in the profits of the buildings.


August 13, 1928 – Construction begins on the Merchandise Mart on the site of the old Chicago and North Western station on the north bank of the Chicago River between Wells Street and Orleans.  A force of 5,700 workers will speed the construction, using cement brought from Wisconsin by boat, and by May 1,1930 the first 200 tenants will begin moving into the 4,000,000 square foot building.

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August 13, 1883 – On this day Ivan Mestrovic is born in Slovania, an eastern section of what is today Croatia, the son of a sheep-breeder.  At the age of 16 he began working under the guidance of a master stonemason in Split, and by 1905, after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he offered his first exhibit of sculpture.  By 1908 he had developed an international reputation. Auguste Rodin hailed him as “a phenomenon among sculptors.”  [sniteartmuseum.nd.edu].  Between 1925 and 1928 he was invited to stage exhibitions at 18 different museums in the United States and Canada, a time during which he also oversaw the installation of his Native American equestrian figures at the Congress Street entrance to Grant Park.  In 1955, at the age of 62, Mestrovic came to Notre Dame University from Syracuse University in New York, where he had taught wince 1947.  He lived in South Bend with his wife, Olga, until his death in 1962. At one point in his life Mestrovic observed, “Throughout my life I carried with me an incomparable inheritance: poverty; poverty of my family and my nation.  The first helped me to never be afraid of material difficulties, for I could never have less than at the beginning.  The second drove me to persevere in my work, so that at least in my own field my nation’s poverty would be diminished.”
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Monday, July 27, 2020

July 27, 2000 -- Water Tower Park Re-Dedicated

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July 27, 2000 – Mayor Richard M. Daley leads a contingent of “men in crisp, white linen suits and women sporting designer sunglasses and well-groomed miniature terriers” [Chicago Tribune, July 27, 2000] at the dedication of the renovated Water Tower Park at Chicago and Michigan Avenues. Work began on refreshing the 26,400-square-foot park in 1998 and included the planting of 500 velvet green boxwoods, 18,000 English ivy plants, along with locust and elm trees.  The green space is framed by 18-inch-high stone walls topped with decorative iron fencing.  Daley says, “It’s not just a place for new fountains, trees and flowers, but a wonderful addition to Chicago’s already vast collection of public art.”  The new fountain is a design by Marvin Schienberg, who has designed dozens of city fountains at city locations ranging from the Art Institute of Chicago to Garfield Park.  Landscape architect Scott Byron is the principal designer of the gardens in the renovated park.  Of the approximately $600,000 spent on the redesign of the park, the city kicked in $150,000 with a large sum donated by Marshall Field and Company.


July 27, 1970 – Returning to police headquarters at Eleventh and State Streets, patrolman John Keane says, “I wouldn’t go back there unless I was in a tank.” The place to which the officer is referring is Grant park where a concert featuring Sly and the Family Stone, scheduled to go off at 4:00 p.m. turns violent as impatient attendees, fueled by rumors that the headliner wasn’t going to show, end up on a rampage.  One opening act, Fat Water, runs through its set, but when the second group, the Flying Burrito Brothers, gets ready to perform, the crowd hurls a wave of bottles, cans, stones and broken pieces of park benches at the stage.  The headliners, who had scheduled the free concert in the first place to make up for three shows the band had cancelled in Chicago earlier in the year, cancelled this one, too, asserting that it was too dangerous to go onstage.  The crowd courses through the park, some people acting violently, some just watching.  A police car and a driving instructor’s car are overturned and set on fire, and the violence spills into the Loop where windows of the Brooks Brothers and Fanny May Candy stores are broken, and some looting occurs.  The violence doesn’t die down until past 10:00 p.m. as 162 people are injured, 126 of them police officers, and 160 are arrested.  For the reaction to the violence you can turn to this entry in Connecting the Windy City.

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July 27, 1970 – Sears, Roebuck and Company, the largest retailer in the world, announces its plans to build the world’s tallest building on South Wacker Drive between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard.  With 4.4 million square feet of interior space, the $100-million-dollar building will be the largest privately-owned office building in the world.  Gordon Metcalf, the chairman and chief executive officer of Sears, says that the building’s 1,451 feet is as high as the Federal Aviation Administration will permit.  About 16,000 workers are expected to work in Sears Tower with Sears initially occupying less than two million square feet, leasing the remainder of the building.  Mayor Daley greets the news enthusiastically, saying, “On behalf of the people of Chicago, I want to thank Sears for the confidence they are showing in the future, in planning and designing the building which will adorn the west side.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1970].  Sears Tower will rise on a two-block piece of land that has been assembled by private developers over a five-year period, beginning in 1964.  A total of 15 “grime blackened” buildings, purchased from 100 owners, will be torn down to make way for the project.  Sears will also pay the city $2.7 million to vacate Quincy Street between Franklin Street and Wacker Drive.  The architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill will design the tower with Bruce Graham acting as lead designer on the project.  These are heady times for the company as sales in 1969 reached $8.9 billion with net income totaling more than $440 million. Metcalf says that the company expects to increase sales by a billion dollars in 1970.  It is expected that the project will increase the redevelopment of the south branch of the river, where momentum for change has gained headway with the development of the Gateway Center on the opposite where two 20-story buildings are already complete and a 35-story tower is under construction.  The above photo shows Sears Tower in 1973 as it begins to come out of the ground.

July 27, 1919:  Sparks from the smoke stack of the lake freighter Senator start a fire that destroys the coal sheds of the Peoples Gaslight and Coke Company on the east side of the north branch of the Chicago River at Hobbie Street.  The freighter had run aground as it moved past Goose Island, and the tug Racine was assisting it.  The sparks from the ships set the roof of the coal sheds on fire, which then spread to two buildings at 1145 Larabee Street, prompting a 4-11 alarm, another day at work on the North Branch. The Senator didn't catch a whole lot of breaks.  On October 31, 1929 she was rammed amidships by the steamer Marquette and went to the bottom, taking seven crew members and a load of 241 brand new Nash Ramblers with her.


July 27, 1890 – With all of the news today focusing on the effects of global warming and rising seas, it is interesting to look back on a feature in the Chicago Daily Tribune 127 years ago, an article that dealt with the changing nature of the city’s shoreline and how the forces of erosion and addition affected the Chicago River over the years.  Originally the “little block-house fort” at Fort Dearborn on what is now the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive stood where the Chicago River bent “more than 90° and finally emptied into the lake at or south of Madison Street.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 27, 1890] The sharp bend to the south was formed because the mouth of the river was blocked by a sandbar that prevented all but barges and flat-bottomed boats from entering. In 1835 the United States government cut a channel through the sandbar on a line with the channel to the west, building piers on the north and south sides of the new channel at the same time.  The pier on the north side drastically changed the natural flow of sand along the lake shore that resulted from the erosion of lakeside bluffs on the north shore.  As a result, the shore between the new mouth of the river and the area around today’s Chicago Avenue expanded so that by 1872 a new shoreline that extended 1,500 feet into the lake had accumulated just north of the river gradually diminishing to about 500 feet at Chicago Avenue.  In the preceding years the Illinois Central Railroad and various private property owners had been busy filling in the lake for freight yards opposite the ends of South Water, Lake and Randolph Streets.  In 1871 this process was increased as “debris from hundreds of acres of burnt buildings had to be disposed of, and in addition a place of deposit had to be found for hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of earth dug from the cellars of the new buildings which were being built.”  With the article the paper prints a map, showing the difference in the shoreline over three-and-a-half miles between 1839 and 1890.  Between Indiana Avenue and Randolph street, the shoreline had been extended nearly a half-mile into the lake..  The newly created land between North Avenue and the river had increased by 180 acres.  The amount of ground added to the city between Monroe Street and today’s Congress Avenue was about 32 acres.  Awaiting adjudication was the issue of entitlement to this newly made land.  It would be years of court cases, suits and counter-suits before the issue would be resolved.  Still pertinent today is the conclusion of the article, “Lake Michigan is the one grand topographical feature of the city, distinguishing it from other cities, tempering its climate, and causing the health-giving breezes which remove atmospheric impurities … We need the water more than we need the land … The filling of the lake for park purposes may be a necessity of the present public exigency, but not a foot more should be allowed to be converted to private or corporate uses.”
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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

June 30, 1929 -- Grant Park, A Parking Lot?

Chicago Tribune Photo
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June 30, 1929 – The Chicago Daily Tribune prints a photo essay, showing the amount of space in Grant Park given over to the parking of automobiles.  There was at the time a pay station for those who wanted to park in what is now primarily Maggie Daley Park, an area where between 5,000 and 7,500 cars were parked each day.  In the grainy Tribune photo above one can see the long lines of cars with the Illinois Central Railroad freight yard in the lower left corner of the photo.  The second photo shows another view of the parking lot.  The third photo shows what the area looks like today. 
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June 30, 1961 – The land on which the 100 North La Salle Street building stands is sold to the building’s owners for $1,750,000 or $200 a square foot.  The sum is believed to be the highest price paid for land in the downtown real estate market since 1929.  Vincent Curtis Baldwin, president of the consortium that owns the building, says that the price paid eclipses the previous high for a lot on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street which sold for $115 a square foot. The corporation that owns the building was reorganized in 1942 under federal bankruptcy law after having fallen behind in rent, taxes and bond interest during the 1930’s Depression. Acquiring the land will allow the building’s owners to free themselves of the annual lease on the property, which, on an annual basis, amounts to seven percent of the purchase price.  Several years ago an Atlanta-based firm, the Bridge Investment Group, purchased the 47-story tower for $113 million.

June 30, 1950 – The formal dedication of Merrill C. Meigs Field takes place on the lakefront.  Although the airport has been open since December 10, 1948, it carried no name.  Speaking from prepared notes, Meigs, who had served as the head of the city’s Aero Commission, said, “When my name was brought up last year before the city council, there were objections that no airport should be named for a living person.  I was honored at the original suggestion but felt that the sacrifice involved—in order to qualify—was too great a price, even for that glory.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1, 1950]   Special guests were drawn from 30 states—the Flying Farmers of Prairieland and the National Flying Farmers.  It is estimated that 890 of their planes, carrying 2,047 persons, landed at Chicago area airports.   

June 30, 1941 – Superior Court Judge Ulysses S. Schwartz awards $1,275 to A. F. Cuneo, the owner of two three-story buildings at 933 and 939 North State Street, an amount that covers the cost “of protecting the buildings against possible collapse as the result of subway excavation” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 31, 1943] related to the 8.75 mile subway we know today as the Red Line.  The case is seen as a precedent, impacting “millions of dollars” that are involved in the dispute between the city and property owners over damages incurred during the construction of the subway.  City officials plan on appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, but a clause in the Illinois Constitution does not appear to support their case.  It reads, “Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without compensation.”  Already 50 suits have stacked up, amounting to a million-and-a-half dollars, mostly costs associated with underpinning buildings to protect them from collapse as the subway tunnel is bored beneath them.  Construction of the State Street subway is shown in the photo above. 

June 30,1863 – The setting of the cornerstone of the Theological Seminary at the corner of Halsted Street and Fullerton Avenue takes place in a ceremony which opens with the assembled guests singing “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.” Reverend Dr. Matthews of Monmouth, Illinois then presents the past history of the Seminary, after which he lays the cornerstone. Today’s McCormick Theological Seminary is the descendant of this seminary which, according to the McCormick website, “was born in a log cabin” in Hanover, Indiana with a faculty of two and a “handful of students.”  Seeking a Presbyterian seminary in Chicago, Cyrus McCormick provided a $100,000 donation to endow four professorships, allowing the Seminary to move to 25 acres in today’s Lincoln Park.  In 1975 the seminary moved to Hyde Park, a move that allowed the school to share resources with the Jesuit School of Theology and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.  The above photo shows the Halsted Street entrances of McCormick Hall, built in 1883; Ewing Hall, built in 1863, and the seminary chapel, built in 1875.  
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Monday, March 2, 2020

March 2, 1872 -- Chicago Tribune Editorial: Let the Railroads Have the Lakefront

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March 2, 1872 – In an editorial the Chicago Tribune proclaims that a resolution put forth by the Committee of the Judiciary of the Common Council “in favor of letting the three railroads have the three lake-front squares lying east of Michigan avenue and north of Monroe street for depot purposes” is “the unanimous wish of the people of the city.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1872]  The editorial points out that since Michigan Avenue south of Monroe Street “is to be inevitably devoted to business purposes” the railroad’s acquisition of the three city blocks from Randolph to Monroe “will increase, by a large percentage, the value of all the lake-front property in the vicinity.”  The appropriate disposition of the area has been tied up in federal court in a dispute over the rightful ownership of the property.  The area was originally part of land that the federal government set aside for the purpose of building a canal from Lake Michigan to the interior waters of the state and was designated as an area to be kept open, clear and free of buildings.  In the 1870’s, though, it was a mess, with an Illinois Central Railroad trestle running north and south and a heavily polluted body of water lying between the trestle and Michigan Avenue.  There was no thought of it ever amounting to much of anything … certainly no thought that it would become the world-renowned urban park that it is today.  At the time of the editorial, in fact, the city was seriously entertaining the idea of selling the three blocks to the railroad for $800,000 (about $18,000,000 in 2020 dollars).  Fortunately, that scheme fell through in the mid-1870’s, but the feeling in the city was captured in the final section of the editorial, which stated, “It is exceedingly desirable that the muddle which has existed in regard to the title to these squares should be thus finally disposed of, and that the squares themselves should be applied to a purpose as advantageous to the people of the city, and to the interests of commerce, as to railroads.”  The above photo shows Michigan Avenue in the 1870's from approximately the location of today's Congress Street.  Note the railroad trestle, running diagonally across the top right corner of the photo and the body of water covering what today is the Art Institute, Grant Park and Millennium Park between Michigan Avenue and the trestle.


 March 2, 2014 – Joining a crowd of several thousand at the edge of an icy Lake Michigan to raise money for Special Olympics Chicago, Jimmy Fallon, clad in a suit and tie, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, wearing a Chicago Public Library tee-shirt and shorts, take to the water in the annual Polar Plunge.  An hour before the event the temperature stands at ten degrees, and Chicago firefighters in wetsuits head into the lake to clear ice from the area before the event begins.  During the preceding summer the Mayor had promised that if the city’s children read two million books as part of the Chicago Public Library program called “Rahm’s Readers,” he would participate in the plunge.  When he heard that Fallon wanted him to appear on the show that the late-night host had taken over from Jay Leno in February, Emanuel made his appearance part of a deal that required Fallon to head for the lake as well.  “If you hear a scream like a little girl’s … know that Jimmy Fallon is swimming in Lake Michigan,” the comedian tells the crowd before running into the icy water. [talkingpointsmemo.com] The dip doesn’t last long; it was in and out for Fallon who emerges from the 32-degree water to the sound of cheers and music from a group of bagpipers, standing calf-deep in the water in yellow boots and kilts.

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March 2, 1971 – About 1,500 students at Lane Technical High School walk out of classes and march over seven miles to the Loop to protest the school’s plans to admit girls in the next school year.  At Board of Education headquarters at 228 North La Salle Street the young men ask for a meeting with school board members and, while waiting for an answer, chant “We Don’t Want No Girls at Lane”. [Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1971]  A spokesman for Lane Tech says that the students “… don’t want their physical education program interfered with by girls who will take over one of the school’s three gyms – and the newest one, at that.  New showers will have to be installed, as well as hair dryers, and the boys are having a fit.”  A thousand students walk out of the buildings when the first period of the day concludes at 9:00 a.m.  A fire alarm is pulled two minutes later, and the remainder of the students leave the building.  The majority of the 5,500 students return to class once the fire department determines the alarm to be false, but a significant number begin their trek along Addison Street to Clark on the way downtown.  Nine representatives of the group do manage to meet with the assistant to the deputy superintendent of schools, Robert Zamzow, who says "It was a good meeting.  There will be no difficulties.  These are gentlemen.”


Alderman Archibald Carey
March 2, 1949 – Mayor Martin H. Kennelly reads an eight-page statement to the city council in which he rips a proposed ordinance that would ban racial and religious discrimination in the selection of tenants for proposed public housing projects. The projects are scheduled to be developed by a land clearance commission that would “acquire and clear slum areas and resell the land at a loss to private investors for housing development.”  [Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1949] “Let those people speak who live in the slums,” Kennelly says.  “Those are the people I am trying to benefit and to help, and I feel that they will be helped if we can provide decent, comfortable homes instead of the slums where they are now forced to live.”   The ordinance, introduced by Third Ward Alderman Archibald Carey, proposes that all housing built on land that the Chicago Housing Authority or the Chicago Land Clearance Commission conveyed to private interests will be made available for ownership or occupancy without discrimination or segregation of any kind.  Detractors, including the mayor, decry the ordinance, suggesting that it will dissuade private interests from participating in the project.   After Kennelly finishes his address, the City Council goes on to defeat the Carey ordinance by a vote of 31 to 13.  Alderman Carey is the subject of the above photo.


 March 2, 1900 -- Just two months after the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the massive project that was to solve all of the city's sewage problems is opened, marine insurance men and the managers of the city's tug boat lines make a trip up the river, concluding that unless something radical is done the river will not be navigable if any current is running in it. One participant observed, "With a current I do not see how traffic of big boats can be carried on it at all. The boats will be driven away from Chicago. It is not a discrimination against marine men, for they have plenty to do elsewhere, but it will injure shipping interests." As if to prove the point the schooner Armenia grounds itself on the Washington Street tunnel that afternoon.

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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…


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