Connecting the Windy City

Friday, September 27, 2019

September 27, 1991 -- Fourth United States Army Placed on Inactive Status

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September 27, 1991 – In a ceremony at Fort Sheridan the Fourth United States Army is placed on inactive status.  Deactivating the Fourth Army is part of a five-year plan, conceived under the direction of U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, that will provide for “a gradual transition to a smaller, more capable military force.” [Chicago Tribune, September 27, 1991]  Only 119 active Army positions and 216 civilian positions are affected by the deactivation, and many of these individuals will be transferred to other positions.  The Fourth Army was responsible for Army Reserve units in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.  That command will now fall to the First U.S. Army, based in Fort Meade, Maryland. This move has no effect on the decision to close Fort Sheridan, scheduled to shut down in 1994; it will ultimately close as a military installation on May 28, 1993.

September 27, 1911 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that Chicagoan George J. Lawton has bought the Auditorium office building, hotel and theater for $48,680 at a county tax sale. Lawton says, “I am going to make a test case and see if I can get possession of this property.  I can get a deed, and as soon as I get that I’m going to try to get a title. If I can get that, I will begin legal proceedings to oust the present owners.  It will take two years to fight it out, but I think it’s worth trying.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 27, 1911] The owners of the property in question failed to pay taxes on May 1, and six weeks later the County Treasurer advertises the property for sale.  The property is sold at public auction on September 22, and Lawton wrests the valuable property away from a consortium made up of the Studebakers of South Bend, Ind.; Ambrose Cramer of Lake Forest; and the Peck estate of Chicago.  It is estimated that the property and the building together are worth close to $4,000,000.  Seven years earlier the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had left the building for digs on Michigan Avenue.  The hotel had lost prestige as more modern buildings opened up, and the offices in the structure were left to compete with the new skyscrapers springing up in the Loop, most of them not looking out at the noisy elevated tracks.  It is probable that the building would have been torn down, had it not been for the fact that the razing of the structure would have cost more than the land on which it stood was worth.

September 27, 1991 – The largest public works deal in the history of the city is awarded to a team of firms led by real estate developer Richard Stein as a $675 million contract for the design and construction of an exhibition hall and galleria west of the current McCormick Place.  The contract is signed just two days after Illinois Governor Jim Edgar signs into law a $987 million expansion program that the General Assembly had approved in July.  Edgar says, “This expansion will allow shows to stay in Chicago and allow millions of dollars to come into our economy.  This legislation is a plus for all the people of Illinois.” [Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1991] Work on the new complex is expected to begin in February of 1993 with completion by August of 1996. Stein’s group, known as Mc3D, is the only one of the three proposals submitted that puts all the exhibition space in the new building on one floor. The group also will be responsible for constructing an 80-foot galleria that will connect the new south building with the north building and the original east building.  The whole package of nearly a billion dollars of work also includes a modest $60 million-dollar plan that will dramatically enhance the lakefront – the rerouting of the northbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive to the west of Soldier Field, creating a beautiful swath of green space and a campus for the three great cultural attractions on the lakefront, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum of Natural History and the Adler Planetarium.

September 27, 1910 – As 200,000 people look on, Walter L. Brookins circles his Wright biplane 2,500 feet above the city for a sustained flight of 20 minutes.  Taking off from Grant Park, which was “black with humanity,” [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 28, 1910] the aviator thrills the crowd as he soars south to Twelfth Street, over the Loop to the Federal Building on Dearborn Street, and back over the lake.  “Chicago looks for all the world like the picture on a postal card when you are 2,000 feet above it,” Brookins says at the end of the flight.  “I could look down between my legs and see everything, but of course could recognize only a few of the buildings.  I knew the federal building as soon as I saw it and I stopped my westward flight as I looked directly beneath me.”  The next day Brookins would attempt a sustained trip from Chicago to Springfield in an attempt to outrun an Illinois Central passenger train.

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Labels: 1991, Chicago Events, Chicago Suburbs, Fort Sheridan

Thursday, September 26, 2019

September 26, 1953 -- BrookField Zoo Begins Work on Roosevelt Fountain

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September 26, 1953 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that work has begun on the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fountain at Brookfield Zoo.  It will be located at the intersection of the zoo’s east-west and north-south pedestrian malls and is expected to be completed by May of 1954.  The fountain will shoot water over 60 feet into the air, and it will fall into a pool that is 215 feet in diameter.  Mrs. Clay Judson of Highland Park, the wife of the president of the Zoological society which operates the zoo, will sculpt four animals’ heads that will sit atop six-foot columns around the fountain, donating her services free of charge. The sculptures will celebrate Roosevelt’s achievements as a statesman, naturalist, hunter, and soldier.  The architectural firm of Olsen and Urbain and Russell Read design the fountain’s layout and mechanical systems.  The same firm will also design the Seven Seas Panorama at the zoo, which will open seven years later.  The cost of the fountain will come from a memorial fund in the name of the late president that is administered by the Ferguson Fund at the Art Institute of Chicago. The fountain was dedicated on May 14, 1954.

September 26, 1979 – The Interstate Commerce Commission rules that the bankrupt Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad will be taken over and operated by a management group selected from 14 other railroads.  Following the decision, a federal judge denies a request by the railroad to delay action on the commission’s decision.  Vice-President Walter Mondale announces the ICC decision, saying that restoration of service on the strike-bound Rock Island is critical to Midwest farmers who are in the middle of bringing in the annual soybean and corn crops.  The members of the striking United Transportation Union agree to go back to work after the ICC announces that they will be paid “prevailing industry wage rates”. [Chicago Tribune, September 27, 1979]  The ruling of the ICC marks the first time in U. S. history that the federal government has ordered a major railroad taken over because it is failing.  It is estimated that the federal government will be paying $80 to $90 million to operate the Rock Island for the ensuing eight months.  The railroad traces its history back all the way to 1847 when a charter was granted to its predecessor, the Rock Island and LaSalle Railroad Company. At the height of its operation the railroad extended as far west as New Mexico, as far north as Minnesota and as far south as Louisiana and Texas.  Chicago was its eastern point of origin.  The railroad was ultimately liquidated in 1980 although most of The Rock’s principal routes still exist today under the control of other lines.

September 26, 1925 – Three construction workers die and two others are seriously injured as a steel concrete scoop breaks away from the fourteenth floor of the Metropolitan Building at Randolph and LaSalle Streets.  The three men who die are all working on scaffolds below the scoop.  Two of three workers on the highest of the two scaffolds manage to hang on and survive as the scoop kills the third man on the platform, suspended 25 feet below it.  The crash occurs when hundreds of workers are flooding the Loop on their way to work. The intersections are jammed with people, and police reserves are summoned to clear enough room to permit the dead and the injured to be removed from the area.  The Metropolitan Building as it appears today is shown above.

September 26, 1949 – Chicago learns that the architectural firm of Vitzhum and Burns has won a competition for the design of a church and Franciscan friary to be located at 108-116 West Madison Avenue, the site of the La Salle Theater.  The church, St. Peter’s, will replace one that has stood at 816 South Clark Street since just four years after the Great Fire in 1871.  The Franciscan Fathers made some darned good deals in the process of arranging for their new place of worship.  In 1942 the order bought the ten-story Woods Theater building from the Marshall Field estate for $600,000, property that it sold in June of 1949 for $1,200,000.  At the same time the order bought the site for the new church from the Marshall Field estate for $515,000.  The plans for the new building include a 1,600-seat auditorium, a chapel above the main auditorium that will seat 300, with the two upper floors serving as the friary.  Some heavy hitters participated in the competition, including Edo J. Belli, Nairne W. Fischer, Hermann J. Gaul, Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, Rapp and Rapp, and Shaw, Metz and Dolio.  Due to the scarcity of building materials in the post-war years it took awhile to finish the new St. Peter’s, but the church finally opened in 1955.

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Labels: 1953, Chicago Places, Chicago Sculpture, Chicago Suburbs

Friday, January 25, 2019

January 25, 1906 -- Great Lakes Is Born

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January 25, 1906 – Plans are presented to the United States Secretary of War Charles Joseph Bonaparte for “the finest naval station in the world … to be erected at Lake Bluff.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 26, 1906]  Total cost of the new base, including the land on which it will be built, is expected to be $2,500,000.  Plans include an administration building, an instruction building, four dormitories, a mess hall, guardhouses, a powerhouse, detention barracks, officers’ quarters, a general storehouse, marine barracks and a hospital.  A railroad spur from North Chicago will run into the base, for which the Chicago and North Western Railroad will pay $14,000.  Plans are for the initial phase of construction to accommodate 1,000 recruits.  Captain Albert Ross, who will oversee construction of the new naval base, says, “We depart from old notions, with the idea that in bringing the youngster in he should not be allowed to pollute the body politic, and so the first step is detention in barracks.  He enters the front door, turns to his right, is taken up by the officer of the day to see that the papers given him are all right and that he has been enlisted properly. He then goes into the barber shop, where he is shaven and shorn, and from there into the disrobing room – all valuables are stored in lockers for that purpose – and he removes his clothes. He then goes into the bathroom where he is scrubbed; from there he is taken to the surgeons’ room, where he is examined, then to the paymaster’s issuing room where he is clothed in uniform. He comes in as a civilian and goes out as a naval recruit … we have five units to cover the training scheme – the detention, messing, sleeping, drilling, and instructing – each one under a different roof and surrounded by the best sanitary and fireproof building attainable.  No other nation in the world has gone so far in this business.”  Between 1909 and 1911, 39 buildings would be built at what is today Naval Station Great Lakes.  All of them would be designed by architect Jarvis Hunt, working from his offices in Chicago’s Monadnock building.  On July 3, 1911 Joseph Gregg of Terre Haute, Indiana was the first recruit to arrive at the base, officially opened two days earlier.  The above photo shows Building One and a parade of recruits in 1913.

William E. Hartmann\ January 25, 1961 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that architect William E. Hartmann, a managing partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, has delivered an address at the annual meeting of the State Street council in which he urges a “sweeping downtown building plan.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 25, 1961] Hartmann says, “I suggest a ‘City of Water.’ The idea of Lake Michigan, the Chicago river, and Buckingham fountain should be extended into further water exhibitions in the center area.  The federal and civic center might enlarge on this theme.” He goes farther, asserting that 30 percent of the downtown area should be given over to housing.  An all-weather sport stadium for 60,000 people should be located close to downtown and children should have “a Tivoli, sort of Disneyland or Freedomland, perhaps on an island in the lake.”  Hartman proposes a center for the performing arts as well with a symphony hall, opera house, and theaters.  The focus on art should continue with “public art as focal points – public sculpture, plazas and fountains.”  Finally, the architect suggests that “the iron girdle of the Loop” be replaced with an improved transit system.  With the exception of the performing arts center and the massive sports complex, it is amazing today to see how many of Hartmann’s ideas are on display in today’s Chicago – fountains, public art and sculpture, Maggie Daley and Millennium Parks, and on and on.

January 25, 1955 – The Chicago Daily Tribune goes to press with the following headline on Page One:  Halas to Quit as Bears Coach After ’55.  George H. Halas, the coach of the Bears for three decades, will continue as president of the club that he organized in Decatur, Illinois in 1920 and brought to Chicago the following year.  Says Halas, “I decided to step down two years ago.  When we began rebuilding, I made up my mind that as soon as were a strong contender again, so I could turn the club over under the most favorable circumstances, I’d move out.  I figured it would be about 1956.  Fortunately, everything went according to schedule.  We’re contenders now, we’ll be better next fall and by 1956 I won’t have to ask anybody to take over a loser.”  Halas kept his word, leaving the team in the 1956 and 1957 campaigns, but he was back again in 1958 and coached the team for another decade, winning his last championship with the club in 1963.

January 25, 1925 -- The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that because the roads through Lincoln Park are the only practical way of getting from the Loop to the residential sections of the city north of North Avenue, the park, originally designed for leisurely carriage rides, is dealing with 5,000 cars per hour passing through it. That volume comes at a cost. In 1924 there are 1,420 cars damaged in accidents with 499 people injured. The photo above shows Lake Shore Drive in the 1920's, looking north from Oak Street. At the end of the road is Lincoln Park, where things got really congested at North Avenue.

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Labels: 1906, Chicago Architecture, Chicago Events, Chicago Suburbs

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

November 6, 1953 -- Park Forest to Grown by 546 Homes

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November 6, 1953 –It is announced that the area’s fastest growing suburb, Park Forest, is planning for a $9 million, 546-home expansion program in the coming year.  The new homes are projected to bring the town’s population to 22,000. Eight design schemes will make up the new homes in the expansion program.  Each will have three bedrooms and will be priced between $14,850 and $17,200. Lot sizes will average 60 by 125 feet with most lots being more than 125 feet in depth.  Every kitchen will come outfitted with cabinets, double sinks and a garbage disposal.  All floors will be covered with asphalt tile, except for the utility room, and each house will have a carport that sits on a concrete driveway.  The expansion will bring the number of single-family homes in the suburb to 3,146.  With another 3,022 rental units there will be 6,168 families living in Park Forest in early 1954.  It was on October 28, 1946 that developers Nathan Manilow, Caroll F. Sweet and Philip M. Klutznick announced the idea for the new suburb at a press conference in the Palmer House.  According to the Park Forest website, “It was the first post-war planned community and its innovative design has been recognized and used as a model for towns throughout the world.” [villageofparkforest.com] Conceived as a plan to provide housing for servicemen returning from World War II, the master plan included a commercial center, a “child-safe curvilinear street system,” a business park and space set aside for parks and schools.  It was one of the few communities of its era without restrictive covenants, and during its first decade adopted a Fair Housing ordinance, this at a time when the trend was headed in the opposite direction. In 2014 the town was ranked third in the nation in affordable housing by Business Insider.

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: 1953, Chicago Suburbs