Showing posts with label Madison Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Madison Street. Show all posts

Sunday, October 11, 2020

October 11, 1969 -- S.D.S. March through Loop, 105 Arrested


October 11, 1969 – A march through the Loop by 300 members of the Students for a Democratic Society breaks bad as police face off against “demonstrators, using tire chains, clubs, railroad flares, and their fists smashed windows and fought a running battle … in the three-block area from La Salle street to State street.” [Chicago Tribune, October 12, 1969] When things finally wind down 105 demonstrators are under arrest, 27 police officers have been injured and two corporation counsels are hurt with one of them, Richard Elrod, suffering permanent paralysis when he attempts to tackle a demonstrator fleeing police. The march is supposed to proceed down La Salle Street to Jackson Boulevard, but it breaks apart a half-mile north at Madison Street and marchers head east, smashing windows in 15 buildings as they run.  After the Loop is cleared, Governor Richard Ogilvie calls 300 Illinois national guardsmen into the area, but by 7:00 p.m., concluding that the trouble is at an end, he releases all 2,600 guardsmen on alert in the city since they had been summoned earlier in the week. 

pubs.usgs.gov
October 11, 1954 – The rain finally stops.  On October 9, 1954 rain begins to move into the Chicagoland area, and from that Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, the storms continue, bringing 6.21 inches of rain, surpassing a record that has stood for nearly 70 years.  The Chicago Sanitary District orders the locks at the mouth of the river opened at 6:25 p.m. on October 10 and “A gigantic swell of water roared into the lake as the river for a time returned to the original direction of its flow before it had been reversed by canals to the Illinois waterway." [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 12, 1954] Water flows into the counterweight pits of most of the downtown bridges, immobilizing them, and traffic on the river is halted.  The new Edens Highway is closed, and the Racine Avenue pumping station is put out of commission with four feet of water on its main floor.  Before the locks are opened, the Chicago River rises five feet, overflowing in several locations, including the area around Union Station where stormwater pours into the basement of the main post office, where it short-circuits pumps that could have helped keep the water level lower.  Flowing through drains, the floods enter two sub-basements of the Chicago Daily News building, today’s Two Riverside Plaza, where 42 feet of water eventually collects, destroying paper stock valued at a quarter million dollars and shorting out electrical circuits to the paper’s pressroom.  The Chicago Tribune prints seven editions of the Chicago Daily News while fire boats and several fire engines pump the water out of the basements.  the above photo shows the railroad yard near Van Buren Street under water that has also flooded the counterweight pits of the bridge.


October 11, 1926 – Machine guns spread a wave of death across the street from Holy Name Cathedral as two mobsters are killed and three others are wounded.  The sniper targets his victims from the front room of a second-floor apartment at 740 North State Street, a building next door to William F. Schofield’s florist shop, about which you can find more information in this entry at Connecting the Windy City.  One of the men killed is Earl “Hymie” Weiss, a member of the North Side Gang that controlled bootlegging and other illegal activity on the north side of the city, a rival to a gang controlled by Al Capone.  Also killed is Patrick Murray, a known bootlegger.  Weiss holds in his pocket a list of all the men called for jury duty in the trial of Joe Sallis, a south side gang leader who is charged with the murder of another mob captain.  Weiss also has $5,300 in walking-around money on his person.  This is the fifth in a series of gang-related murders in the space of two years, beginning with the murder of mob boss Dean O’Banion in the florist shop on Sate Street.  Police search the rented room from which the shots were fired and find 35 empty .45 caliber shells near the window and “a hundred or more” cigarette butts, “indicating a long period of watchful waiting.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 13, 1926] The Chicago Chief of Police says, “We knew it was coming sooner or later.  And it isn’t over.  I fully expect that there will be a reprisal, then a counter reprisal and so on. These beer feuds go in an eternal vicious cycle. I don’t want to encourage the business, but if somebody has to be killed, it’s a good thing the gangsters are murdering themselves off.  It saves trouble for the police.”


October 11, 1918 – A city commission passes a resolution that all public dancing must be stopped in order to check the influenza-pneumonia epidemic.  Dr. C. St. Clair Drake, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, says, “The order will take effect at once.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, October 12, 1913]  The commission also adopts a resolution that “attendance at all funerals, contagious disease or otherwise, shall be restricted to the immediate relatives, close friends and necessary attendants.”  In the 24 hours before the commission adopts its resolutions 124 people in the city have died of influenza and 89 from pneumonia.   The commission orders the cancelling of all dances as a necessary step “because of the close contact of the dancers, the exercise of the dance and the frequent chilling of the body that is apt to follow.”  The 1918 pandemic, believed to have begun in a French hospital processing soldiers wounded in the war, led to the deaths of between 50 and 100 million worldwide.  According to the digital encyclopedia at http://www.influenzaarchive.org  “Between the start of Chicago’s epidemic on September 21 and the removal of restrictions on November 16, the Windy City experienced a staggering 38,000 cases of influenza and 13,000 cases of pneumonia . . . Yet, despite these numbers, Chicago actually did fairly well for a city of its size.  In fact, with a population of 2.7 million, Chicago’s epidemic death rate for the period was only 373 out of 100,000, not much worse than its long-time rival St. Louis.”
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Monday, September 14, 2020

September 14, 1950 -- Loop Elevated Line's End Is Near, Mayor Says

transitchicago.com

September 14, 1950 – Mayor Martin Kennelly observes that the old Wabash Avenue elevated tracks may be torn down sooner than people think, adding that the new Dearborn-Milwaukee subway will siphon off substantial amounts of traffic from the line.  Chicago Transit Authority officials concur, estimating that the eastern half of the Loop elevated structure, running form Van Buren Street to Wabash Avenue and from there to Wells Street, may be removed within four years.  The executive secretary of the Wabash Avenue Association, George W. Swanson, says, “The sooner the better.  Then we can put up new street lights and outshine State Street.”  [Chicago Daily tribune, September 15, 1950].  Not so fast … not only is the Loop elevated still very much in use, on August 31, 2017 a brand-new Washington/Wabash station replaced century-old stations at Randolph and Madison Street with new elevators, a street to mezzanine escalator, wider platforms, real-time train tracker displays, 100% LED lighting, security cameras, and a gleaming modern canopy.  [transitchicago.com]. With that expenditure of $75 million it appears that the elevated will be around for a long time to come.  The new station is pictured above. 



September 14, 1939 – The Chicago Housing Authority is notified that its application for $7,719,000 of Public Works administration funding for the construction of a public housing complex has been approved.  This will be the fifth federal housing project in the city, following the Jane Addams houses, Julia Lathrop homes, Trumbull Park apartments, and the Ida B. Wells project that is under construction at Vincennes Avenue and Pershing Road.  Although the location is not disclosed so as to forestall real estate speculation, it is most likely that the new project will be near the Jane Addams homes and will comprise the Robert Brooks Homes with 835 row houses.  Elizabeth Wood, executive secretary of the Chicago Housing authority, says, “We will definitely be in competition with the lowest slum area houses.  We particularly want to afford accommodations for those families who now live in $15 a month flats.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, September 15, 1939]  


September 14, 1934 – United States marshals seize the excursion boat Florida at its dock east of Michigan Avenue, pending a court hearing and settlement of the claims of 21 crew members for $2,000 in back pay. The Florida has a fascinating history, as it turns out.  As far as I have been able to determine the boat is still taking up space at the bottom of the river just east of Goose Island, opposite the north end of 600 West Chicago, the old Montgomery Ward's warehouse building.  What eventually became the S. S. Florida was originally the City of Mackinac, built in 1882 as a side-wheeled cruise boat on Lake Michigan.  The latter part of its service was spent providing lakefront excursions to the 1933 Century of Progress.  In the mid-1930's it was sold to a scrapper at which time its upper decks were removed, its engines stripped, part of a conversion into a barge.  The Columbia Yacht Club bought the vessel in 1937 to serve as its club house.  On Friday, May 13, 1955 a galley fire caused the ship to sink at its dock.  Members raised the funds and raised the ship, which was used until 1982 when the club acquired the former Canadian ferry, the Abegweit, as its new base of operations.  A trucking magnate, Joe Salon, bought the ship in 1985, renaming it the Showboat Sari-S II, using his daughter's name in its new appellation, and moved it to the river a few blocks north of Ontario Street, before selling it.  The Showboat Sari-S II might be confused with another paddle-wheel steamboat that Salon ran as a restaurant, beginning in 1962.  They are two different vessels.  The last reference to the boat that I can find is in the "Metropolitan" section of the Chicago Tribune on August 28, 1992.  This brief item reports, "The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has ordered the owner of a 215-foot boat that sank last month in a little-used part of the North Branch of the Chicago River to remove the vessel or face legal action . . . The owner of the vessel was ordered to install markers around the boat until it is removed.  The vessel sank in 16 feet of water on the east side of Goose Island just north of Chicago Avenue, said Lt. Col. David Reed, commander of the Corps District . . . Only the cabin portion is now above water, and the sunken craft obstructs about half of the navigational channel, Reed said."  Kind of a sad story of a once proud vessel that was very much a part of the city's history. The photo above shows the boat when she was the clubhouse for the Columbia Yacht Club.  

 

google.com
September 14, 1908 – Work begins on the laying of trolley tracks in Garland Court on the west side of the Chicago Public Library. Elaborate preparations have been made for the project, which will ultimately allow the removal of the tracks of the City Railway on Michigan Avenue and on Madison Street..  The City Railway has agreed to pay the expenses for changes in the public library building that are required because of the railway that will pass adjacent to it.  These alterations to the building will be completed according to plans prepared by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, the original architects of the structure. The top photo shows the tracks turning south off Randolph Street and ducking down Garland Court with a streetcar on Randolph making the turn onto Garland Court on the west side of the library, today's Chicago Cultural Center.  The second photo shows Randolph Street as it appears today.
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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

July 15, 1940 -- Democratic National Convention Kicks Off in Chicago Stadium

historycentral.com
July 15, 1940 – The Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago as the keynote speaker, William B. Bankhead, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, defends the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ending his speech by asserting that the administration “has turned out 153 fighting ships, tripled the size of the standing army, launched a great air program, and acted to wipe out the fifth column.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 16, 1940].   The convention, held at the Chicago Stadium, lasts four days, and it is unclear on this opening night whether Roosevelt intends to run for a third term.  However, Roosevelt’s team orchestrates an elaborate plan that involves the Chicago political machine.  The President sends a message to Kentucky Senator Alben Barkley, which Barkley reads over the public address system at the convention:  “The President has never had, and has not today, any desire or purpose to continue in the office of President, to be a candidate for that office, or to be nominated by the convention for that office.  He wishes in earnestness and sincerity to make it clear that all of the delegates in this convention are free to vote for any candidate.”  [en.wikipedia.org].  Somewhere in the bowels of the great arena on Madison Street the Superintendent of Chicago’s Department of Sanitation, Thomas D. Garry, grabs a live microphone and begins the chant, “We Want Roosevelt!  We want Roosevelt!”  Mayor Ed Kelly had posted.  Hundreds of city workers and precinct captains posted around the arena by Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly take up the cheer.  In a blink of an eye the convention turns from stunned silence at the moment when the President’s message is read to a thunderous, but hardly spontaneous, demonstration of support for Roosevelt, and when the convention is gaveled to a close, he has received close to 90 percent of the votes cast by delegates. 

July 15, 1934 – On a perfect summer day with an Italian-American program as the day’s highlight, 112,000 paid fair-goers attend the Century of Progress World’s Fair on the lakefront.  The highlight of the day is the unveiling of a marble column from the ancient Italian city of Ostia, a gift of Italian Premier Benito Mussolini to commemorate the visit of General Italo Balbo’s flight to Chicago a year earlier.  Balbo makes a speech via short wave radio to 3,000 persons at the Italian Pavilion, the speech being preceded by a parade of 150 Italian societies dressed in national costumes.

July 15, 1925 – A fireworks display in Grant Park caps a celebration that sees thousands of flower-decked automobiles and trucks pass through Grant Park to the Monroe Street viaduct to Michigan Avenue and then south to the new Twenty-Third Street viaduct, where a ribbon is cut and the new Outer Drive is officially opened. Good feelings run high as officials rhapsodize about the future of the city that night at a banquet at the Congress Hotel attended by more than 1,000 people.  South Park Board President Edward J. Kelly is optimistic that the new link bridge over the Chicago River, connecting the south and north drives, will be started in the coming year.  Illinois Central Railroad President Charles H. Markham predicts that the electrification of the railroad along the lakefront should be finished within the year, six months ahead of schedule. Chicago Mayor William Deever touts a new project to straighten the South Branch of the river so that streets may be extended into the southern portion of the Loop east of the river. Illinois Senator Charles S. Deneen continues the optimism, saying, “It is a hopeful sign when we realize that all our problems that we are discussing are problems of construction. We can’t have too many boulevards. They are crowded the moment they are opened. The Lincoln park system, too, is doing a great work in reclaiming land from the lake. Eventually this filling will be carried out to Evanston, perhaps, even to Waukegan.  There must be traffic routes for the travel that will follow.” [Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1925] The above photo shows the Outer Drive looking south from Thirty-Ninth Street in May, 1930.

July 15, 1916 – The $4,000,000 Municipal Pier is dedicated with between 50,000 and 100,000 people in attendance and a thousand automobiles parked between the long freight sheds on the pier.  The Chicago Daily Tribune reports, “In spite of the heat thousands walked to the pier and walked the full length of it, through the freight sheds, to the launch landing.  Launches and steamers took limit loads of passengers on moonlight trips.  The most popular spots with the younger couples proved to be the two towers.  A continual procession climbed up the dozen or more flights of the spiral stairs, as well, to the utmost balcony.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 16, 1916]  There were no formal dedication ceremonies.


 July 15, 1889 – Lake View is officially annexed to Chicago although the former mayor of the town hands over the reins of the city to Chicago Mayor DeWitt Clinton Cregier under protest “in case there should be a contest of the validity of the vote and that the contest should be decided against the City of Chicago.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1889].   According to the Edgewater Historical Society the City of Lake View included today’s communities of Lakeview, Uptown, Ravenswood and Edgewater with its boundaries fixed at Devon on the north, Diversey on the south, the lake on the east and Western Avenue on the west.  Chicago’s annexation of the area came about as a result of a popular vote in both Chicago and in each of the areas affected by the proposal.  The argument that sold the deal was the promise that being a part of Chicago would improve police and fire protection, the quality of water and education with less of a tax hit than residents would face under home rule. Emotions ran deep … In fact, after the vote came down in favor of annexation in 1887 “Lake View mayor William Boldenweck seized his suburb’s records and funds and barricaded himself in his town hall office until he was forced to back down by the Illinois Supreme Court.”  [Butler, Patrick.  Hidden History of Ravenswood and Lake View].  The photo shows the Lake View Hotel, which opened in the early 1850’s on a cliff along the lakefront between what is today Grace Street and Irving Park Road.  It is from this watering hole that Lake View took its name.
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Monday, June 29, 2020

June 29, 1965 -- Civil Rights Protests Continue over School Superintendent Willis

images.chicagohistory.org
June 29, 1965 – Twelve civil rights demonstrators are arrested after they lay down in Michigan Avenue near Madison Street during a march from Buckingham Fountain to City Hall.  The remaining 60 or 70 marchers continue their walk, using the sidewalks, to City Hall where they form a single file and march around the building.  The march begins in late afternoon after civil rights leaders emerge from a meeting with the members of the Board of Education.  The march follows a demonstration two days earlier in which 75 people were arrested after they sat down at La Salle and Randolph Streets near City Hall.  The protests are a continuation of dissatisfaction with the tenure of Chicago School Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis, who has held his position for a dozen years.  For three years, beginning in 1963, civil rights leaders and Black students have angrily demonstrated, accusing Willis of actively fostering segregation in the city’s schools.  The most visible symbol of that was the collection of 625 mobile classrooms Willis placed on the city’s South Side to alleviate overcrowding at mostly Black schools.  In the heated opposition to Willis, they came to be known as “Willis Wagons”.  Willis continued in his position into 1966 when he retired four months before his contract was up.  The above photo shows a protest that was held against Willis on June 10, 1965.  At that time a boycott of schools was ongoing with some schools reporting as much as fifty percent of the student body absent from class.  This was nearly a half-century ago ... not hard to figure out why people are just a little bit impatient.

pintarest.com
June 29, 1981 -- Marshall Field and Company announces the sale of its annex building on the southwest corner of Washington Street and Wabash Avenue to Bond Industries of New York. The Store for Men housed in the annex as well as corporate offices will move into the company’s flagship store on State street.  A month earlier the company’s president, Angelo R. Arena, said that the firm was looking toward “strategies for using our real estate to potentially reduce our short-term debt and interest levels.”  [Chicago Tribune, June 30, 1981]. It is estimated that the sale of the annex building will yield $10 million which will be used to reduce $50.61 million in short-term debt.   The chairman of Fields’ Chicago operation, George P. Kelly, looks at the movement of the Store for Men to the main building as a positive act, saying, “Our studies show that women do most of the shopping for men.  When we move those departments into State Street we’ll get more women in here and more business.”

June 29, 1954 -- Field Enterprises, Inc., the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, completes the purchase of a six-story building on the southwest corner of Rush Street and East North Water Street for $300,000, adding the property to a site already owned by the company.  The building will be razed as soon as practical, and the 15,000 square foot lot added to the 45,000 square feet that the company already owns, a site that extends westward to Wabash Avenue on the north side of the river.  The Chicago firm of Naess and Murphy is already drawing architectural plans for a multi-level building that will cover the entire site and provide offices and printing facilities for the Sun-Times.  The building got built, stood for forty years and then gave way to today’s Trump International Hotel and Tower.  Additional information about the Sun Times building can be found in this entry in Connecting the WindyCity.  The new home for the Sun Times is shown under construction in the photo above.

June 29, 1926 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that William J. Lynch, the city’s Harbor Master, has reported the statistics for the opening and closing of bridges in 1925.  “The bridge operating section functioned without interruption during the year,” the report observes. “Forty-eight bridges were operated twenty-four hours daily … Three hundred and thirty-nine bridge tenders were employed, which includes forty men used during the three summer months on vacation related work.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 29, 1926] The total number of openings for 1925 was 94,684 with the average time for each opening estimated at 3.5 minutes.  All told, bridges were closed to street traffic for 5,689 hours during the year.  The report finds the movement of most excursion boats to the Municipal Pier helpful in the bridge opening problem, but the Tribune reports, “… the opening of bridges for sand scows, tug boats, dredges, and commercial craft of all kinds … will continue until the city adopts a permanent bridge policy.”
June 29, 1891 – Chicago’s Health Department files six suits against the establishment of Benzo and Pieper, a livestock fattening concern located at the intersection of Addison Street and the north branch of the river.  Benzo and Pieper, situated on nine acres, is typical of many such enterprises located all along the river.  The Chicago Daily Tribune describes the grounds, “In a long, low shambling shed there are now kept eighty head of steers, though as many as 250 are at times fattened in this one building . . . rows of fattening bullocks, standing ankle deep in filth, bloated through overeating until they can hardly stand, and chained to one spot for five months without being able to take exercise.”  One thing that made this particular company noteworthy was that it held a contract for removing the garbage from “all the principal hotels” in the city with six teamed wagons collecting refuse from the alleys of those establishments.  In front of the cattle shed described earlier stood a building with nine tanks, each holding 45 barrels.  Again from the Tribune’s copy, “The garbage wagons drive alongside these tanks and empty their contents into them.  Water from the river is pumped into the tanks until the mass reaches the required consistency when fires are started underneath and the swill is kept boiling for some ten hours . . . And this is the stuff which goes to put flesh on the lean bones of scraggy steers . .  “  The article points out the incredible fattening qualities of this concoction by describing one of those scraggy steers, “ . . . so fat, in fact, that its legs could not support its body for any length of time, and in consequence it lay down nearly the whole time, this proving no interference to its eating, as the troughs are so low that they can be reached by the cattle without getting up.”  Such a bull would gain 100 pounds a month during the time it was confined.  August Benzo, one of the owners, “a good-natured German who owns a saloon at Clybourn place and Elston avenue” says that he will fight the cases in court.  The photo above shows the same area as it appears today.

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Sunday, June 7, 2020

June 8, 1943 -- Chicago River Taxi Service Proposed


tripsavvy.com
June 8, 1943 – On this date the owner of a sightseeing boat service, Arthur Agra, announces his plans to ask the Chicago City Council for the authority to run a river taxi service between the Chicago and North Western terminal and the bridge at Michigan Avenue.  The plan is to use the 100-passenger Wendella to make a series of trips during the morning and afternoon rush hours.  During the remainder of the day the Wendella would be used for the usual sightseeing tours along the lakefront.  Agra has already received the permission of the United States Coast Guard to operate on the river and to use a Michigan Avenue dock for the sightseeing concession.  To implement the river taxi service, permission is still required to use the Madison Avenue dock on the South Branch of the river.  The proposed fare for one-way ride is 25 cents with a 12-ride ticket retailing for two bucks.  Seventy-seven years later the Wendella has given way to the Agra family’s First Lady cruises with a half-dozen boats in the water, three of which can seat up to 250 people.  First Lady cruises is the home of the Chicago Architecture Center’s River Tour, the premier architecture tour on the river.

June 8, 1948 – As the city’s second major airport nears completion, the Chicago Daily Tribune uses its editorial page to suggest a new name for Douglas Field.  “… it would be fitting if Chicago would honor one of its greatest naval air heroes by renaming the terminal for the late Cmdr. Edward H. (Butch) O”Hare,” the editorial suggests.  On February 20, 1942 O’Hare’s plane was the only American plane in the path of a Japanese formation of nine bombers on their way to attack the U. S. S. Lexington off New Britain.  He won the congressional Medal of Honor for shooting down five of the enemy planes and scoring hits on three others. On the night of November 26, 1943 O’Hare and two other pilots took off from the U. S. S. Enterprise to intercept a group of Japanese bombers harassing a U. S. Navy task force northeast of Tarawa.  At about 7:30 p.m. a Japanese fighter opened fire on O’Hare’s Hellcat, and it was last seen fading into the night.  He was presented posthumously with the Navy Cross for which the citation read in part, “Lieutenant Commander O’Hare’s outstanding courage, daring airmanship and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.  He gallantly gave his life for his country.” 

June 8, 1933 – Sometimes what DOESN”T get done in a city is way more interesting than what DOES.  Alderman Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna long ago observed that “Chicago ain’t no sissy town,” and with this city’s particular form of politics and the constant grappling between commercial, cultural, and environmental factions, a lot of projects that get proposed die before they get very far.  So it was back in 1933 when on this date followers of Dr. Arne L. Suominen, a “nature cure specialist,” submit a petition signed by 10,000 people to the Lincoln Park Board, requesting a space for nude sun bathing.  The reaction of Board President Alfred D. Plamondon?  “I doubt that a fence could be built high enough.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 8, 1933]  It only takes two days for the board to come to a decision, and the explanation for refusing to act on the petition is a perfectly logical one.  Plamondon says, “The exact reason we turned down the petition was the cost of the stockade.  It would have had to be of lumber absolutely free from knotholes, the most expensive grade.  Furthermore, to prevent an epidemic of peeping Toms on the skyscraper apartments bordering the park the stockade itself would have had to be a skyline affair.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 10, 1933]  Another member of the board observes, “I’m against it on esthetic grounds, especially now that everybody is drinking 3.2 beer.  Now you take some of these 200 pound papas with aldermanic fronts.  Start parading them around in their birthday clothes and you’ll make the bull mandrill over here in the zoo blush with shame.”
www.luc.edu
June 8, 1930 --  The beginning of the sixtieth annual commencement week at Loyola University gets off to an impressive start as the school’s $300,000 library building is dedicated.  It is the gift of Edward A. Cudahy in honor of his wife, who is present at the ceremony, watching as her husband unveils the bronze plaque at the new building. During the ceremony, held in the school’s gymnasium, an announcement is made that Cudahy has pledged an additional $100,000 that will be used to maintain and endow the library.  The Elizabeth M. Cudahy Memorial Library was designed by Chicago architect Andrew N. Rebori in the art deco style.  Its main reading room is 101 feet long by 44 feet wide with a ceiling height of 40 feet.  When the new library moved from its old quarters to the new building at 1032 Sheridan Road, it held 150,000 volumes. Today 681,320 volumes are housed there. [www.luc.edu]. Two additions have increased space in the original building, in 1969 a $3 million addition increased book capacity by 170 percent, and in 2008 the Klarcheck Information Commons opened.

June 8, 1916 –The last surviving white child born in Fort Dearborn, Captain Asiel Z. Blodgett, dies in Waukegan at the age of 84.  In 1858 Blodgett was made a station agent of the Chicago and North Western railroad in Waukegan.  His time there was interrupted when he “with the cooperation of leading citizens and business men, undertook the work of enrolling a sufficient number of men to form a Company.” [http://lakecountyhistory.blogspot.com] In the Battle of Chickamauga, on September 18, 1863, he was shot in the right shoulder.  He stayed with his command and led his men for two more days until a tree branch, blown down by artillery fire, finally felled him.  Returning to civilian life, he resumed his career with the railroad while running a stock farm outside of Waukegan where he bred Clydesdale horses and cattle.  Blodgett also served as the Mayor of Waukegan for two terms.
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Friday, June 5, 2020

June 5, 1946 -- La Salle Hotel Fire

station-pride.com
June 5, 1946 --  Just after midnight fire breaks out at the La Salle Hotel at the intersection of La Salle and Madison Street.  Before morning 61 people will be dead, including Battalion Chief Eugene T. Freemon of the Chicago Fire Department’s First Battalion.  Thirty more people are hospitalized and over 200 others sustain injuries.   Although the exact cause of the fire will never be identified, it originates behind the walls or above the false ceiling of the Silver Grill Cocktail Lounge just off the hotel lobby.  There is a delay in summoning the fire department as hotel employees attempt to put down the flames with seltzer water and sand.  The fire, feeding on the varnished wood paneling of the lounge, quickly spreads to the two-story hotel lobby, and the second-floor balcony that overlooks it.  The fire department receives its first call at 12:35 a.m., and within minutes of the first units arriving  the fire is upgraded to a 5-11 alarm, summoning more than 300 firefighters to the hotel.  At this point the fire had moved through two open staircases to the third, fourth and fifth floors, and smoke had begun to fill the entire 22-story building.  Doors planned for these stairways had never been installed, and the stairways become chimneys, sucking smoke into the upper floors.  Firefighters save guests on lower floors with ladders while guests on the upper floors have to move in the dark down fire escapes.  Most guests are asleep when the fire breaks out, and the majority of those who lose their lives probably die of smoke inhalation in the early stages of the disaster.  During that time the night manager tells the hotel’s switchboard operator, Julia C. Berry, to leave the building, but she refuses and dies at her post after alerting scores of guests.  The devastating event prompts the Chicago City Council to enact new hotel building codes and fire-fighting procedures, including the installation of automatic alarm systems and instructions of fire safety inside hotel rooms.  The hotel underwent a $2 million renovation after the fire and continued to operate until it was razed in July of 1976, making way for what is today the Two North La Salle building.


June 5, 1944 –There are probably better times to bring this up … but … it is on this day in 1944 that the Fort Sheridan baseball team beats the Chicago White Sox in an exhibition game, 8 to 6.  The Sox have a 6 to 1 lead after the team’s half of the fifth inning, but the Army team scores three runs on two hits, an error and two walks in the sixth, adding an insurance run in the seventh, going on to score three more times in the eighth inning.  Left fielder Guy Curtright and first baseman Ed Carnett are the only regular Sox players to take the field while pitcher Joe Haynes, making his second appearance of the season, holds the Fort Sheridan nine to one hit through the sixth inning. Three thousand soldiers and guests watch the game.  The above photos show the entrance to the fort at the time of the game and as it appears today -- as the Town of Fort Sheridan.

June 5, 1942 – The United States Naval Training station at Great Lakes opens its doors for the first time to African-American recruits bound for active duty as apprentice seamen and firemen aboard warships. The first of the recruits, Doreston Luke Carmen, Jr., a 19-year-old, one of nine children from a Galveston, Texas family, is sworn in on this day after his first train trip. “I like the Navy fine already,” he says. “Last night I slept in a hammock for the first time and didn’t fall out.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 6, 1942] The commandant of the station, Lieutenant Commander Daniel W. Armstrong, says that he will wait until all 50 recruits have arrived before issuing them regulation uniforms and sending them through the classification office. The Navy opened all ratings to African-American sailors from the time of the Civil War until 1922, but from that date until 1936 the Navy ended the policy. In 1936 that policy was reversed, but African-American sailors were only posted as mess attendants.

June 5, 1897 – A “mud scow” being towed by the tug Andrew Green explodes by the Rush Street bridge at 2:00 a.m., killing the lone crewman on board.  Thousands of windows along the river are broken with damage reaching as far as the Newberry Library, which has nearly all of its plate glass windows shattered.  The ship belonged to the A. H. Green Dredging Company and had been working on dredging the South Branch near the Bridgeport Gas Works.  One theory is that dynamite being used in hardpan during dredging operations may have found its way into the hold of the boat and exploded without warning.  Hundreds of people, roused from sleep by the tremendous blast, head to the docks and streets along the river near the scene.  Many of them rush to the scene on bicycles, only to see their tires flattened by the glass.  The wheelman for the steamer City of Traverse, moored directly opposite the scene of the explosion, says that “a bluish flame shot up for at least a distance of fifteen feet and was followed loosely by the explosion.  The scow heaved forward and then split from stem to stern and went to the bottom.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 4, 1897]. The direction of the explosion was toward the north, and the concussion caves in part of the walls of the warehouse of the Western Transit Company, where 300 dock laborers are at work, with many of them blown over by the explosion.  The report travels as far north as Lincoln Park where glass fragments cover the sidewalks.  It is even heard clearly in South Chicago where the men in the town's police station run out of the building, thinking that a powder factory across the state line in Indiana had exploded.  All of the broken windows offer an easy target for thieves, and police flood the area to guard against looting.  The lone crewman on the stricken vessel, August Komerika, disappears beneath the water and is feared lost.  Miraculously, with all of the traffic near the busiest bridge on the river, no one else is killed although a crew from the life saving station rescues one man from the river.  The above post card shows the vicinity of the Rush Street bridge at the time ... one can only imagine the carnage that would have resulted if the scow had exploded during the daylight hours.


June 5, 1893 – The Chicago Daily Tribune features a short article that summarizes the recollections of James Whistler Wood of Marshall, Michigan regarding the first sailing vessel to reach what would become the Port of Chicago.  According to Wood the first vessel to drop anchor at the mouth of the Chicago River was the schooner Tracy in the year 1803.  The ship was either “owned or chartered by the government, and conveyed Capt. John Whistler, U. S. A., and his command, together with supplies and material for the construction of a fort at the mouth of the Chicago River.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 5, 1893] The first steamships to arrive in Chicago, according to Wood, were the Sheldon Thompson and the William Penn that “stirred the waters of Chicago harbor and arrived there together on July 8, 1831, having on board Gen. Winfield Scott and soldiers for the Black Hawk war.” When these two ships arrived, the small hamlet could still “boast of only five houses, and three of those were built of logs.”  The portrait above is of Captain John Whistler, who was born in Ulster in 1756, ran away from home and fought with the British Army in the Revolutionary War, then settled in Hagerstown, Maryland before joining the United States Army.  Severely wounded in 1791 in the Indian Wars, he commanded the military settlement at Fort Dearborn when it was established in 1803.

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