Connecting the Windy City

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

July 21, 1986 -- Page Brothers Building, Loops Oldest, Undergoing Renovation

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July 21, 1986 -- The Page Brothers building on the southeast corner of State and Lake Streets, a project that is being done in conjunction with the renovation of the Chicago Theater just to the south, a structure that wraps around the Page Brothers building on two sides.  The idea is to redevelop the Page Brothers building so that it can help subsidize the expense of operating the theater.  The commercial building was designed just after the Chicago fire of 1871 by John Mills Van Osdel as a tannery and warehouse.  It is one of only two buildings in the Loop to have a cast-iron front, which faces Lake Street, harkening back to a time when Lake Street, and not State Street, was the prominent high-end business address in the Loop.  Unfortunately, over a century after it was built, it is in bad shape.  The basement had an earthen floor, which conducted water into the theater next door.  Floors were sagging, timber framing was rotting, and years of neglect gave rehabilitation architect Coffey and Associates a real challenge.  The architects came up with a plan with 20,000 square feet of retail space on the first and second floors and 44,000 square feet of offices above, including 7,200 square feet in a penthouse to be constructed on the roof and set back so that it is not visible from the street.  If you are in mind to gaze at what is arguably the oldest building in the Loop, stand on the corner of Lake and State Streets and look up as the elevated trains go screeching and rattling past.  That cast iron façade is quite a thing.  The black and white photo above shows the Page Brothers building when it was relatively new. The second photo shows the building as it appears today.

July 21, 1963 – In a pictorial essay, the Chicago Tribune highlights the “building boom” that is under way in the city, highlighting five big projects: (1) Carl Sandburg Village on North La Salle Street; (2) the Outer Drive East apartment on Randolph Street near the lakefront; (3) the new federal office building (now the Dirksen Federal Courthouse) on Dearborn Street between Adams and Jackson; (4) the new Midwest headquarters of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States on Michigan Avenue between the river and Tribune Tower, and (5) the Civic Center (now the Richard J. Daley Center) just beginning to rise east of the City-County building on Clark Street.  These were heady days in the city, as bold new structures rose throughout the decade in the city that worked.  The model for Sandburg Village, minus the brick walls that hide everything from view, is shown in the above photo.

July 21, 1919 – The Chicago City Council passes two huge ordinances that will, together, have an immense impact on the future of the city.  One is the lake front development ordinance, adopted by a vote of 66 to 2.  This decision ratifies an agreement between the city, the South Park Commission, and the Illinois Central Railroad, restricting development on the lakefront from the Chicago River all the way to Forty-Seventh Street.  The other act submits bond issues for street improvements totaling $28,600,000 that will be on the ballot for approval in November.  Charles H. Wacker, head of the Chicago Plan Commission, says, “This is the greatest day, barring none, in Chicago’s history. It means more to the growth, development, and greatness of the city than anything which has heretofore happened . . . When these improvements are completed this city will have passed from the provincial town class to a real metropolitan city.”  The photo above shows the lake front five years later in 1924.

July 21, 1919 – The lead in today’s Chicago Daily Tribune packs a powerful punch, “Not since the disastrous fire of ’71 has the city council at any one meeting considered improvement ordinances of such far reaching effect.”  This is the day that the City Council votes on a budget package that will potentially lead to more than $195,000,000 in city improvements, including the completion of a bridge across the river at Michigan Avenue.  There is apparently no opposition to the plans.  “So anxious are the large majority of the aldermen to make Chicago go ahead that it is proposed now that plans be considered at once for initiation of improvements next year,” the Tribune reports.  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 21,1919]  Bond issues will lead to the widening of Ogden, Ashland, Western, Robey (now Damen), and South Water Streets.  Two million dollars will cover the cost of finishing Michigan Avenue.  Up to $30,000,000 will cover “reclaiming and improving submerged lands between Grant and Jackson parks.”  Aside from the money involved, the council will ask for an investigation of civic improvements in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Paul because “Charles H. Wacker of the Chicago plan commission has repeatedly stated that these cities are attempting to become real rivals to Chicago in trade, commerce, manufacturing and municipal improvements.”  The above photo shows the proposal of the Chicago Plan Commission for eliminating the South Water Street markets and improving the area just south of the river.

industrial scenery.blogspot.com

July 21, 1861 – The longest train ever to enter the city arrives on the Illinois Central Railroad as 80 cars, stretching over a half-mile, bring nearly 900 tons of wheat to the Chicago market.  It would be three more years before the Chicago Board of Trade is organized as a means to establish standardized futures contracts in a setting where buyers and sellers could exchange commodities.  Given the size of the train that arrived on this day in 1861, and, considering the fact that over 180 more cars arrived during the two days that followed, it is not difficult to understand how quickly the power of the Board of Trade grew once it was established.  The above illustration shows the lakefront and the Illinois Central operation in the 1860's, looking north from what is today Roosevelt Road.

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Labels: 1986, Chicago Architecture, Merchants and Merchandising, Theaters

Thursday, July 9, 2020

July 9,1905 -- Chicago Imports Nearly 100,000 Railroad Cars of Sand and Dirt Each Year

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July 9, 1905 – The Chicago Daily Tribune runs an article on the amount of sand, dirt and gravel that Chicago imports each year, estimating that the cost for the commodities is over a million dollars (about $29 million in today's dollars).  In the preceding year 10,000 railroad cars of “fine building sand” were hauled into the city from the Indiana dunes.  Twice that number came from Illinois and Wisconsin, carrying “torpedo sand” (sand used in concrete mixes) and gravel.  Another 50,000 cars of common dirt and black soil were brought into the city.  Interestingly, at this time anyone building a home in the area from the lake to Halsted Street could probably find enough usable sand for concrete and mortar just by excavating the basement.  The dunes of Indiana along the southern edge of Lake Michigan supplied the rest.  Sand companies laid railroad tracks into the dunes and used steam shovels to “eat away at the hills” that were made up of “the finest building sand to be found in the world”.  The industry only operated during the building season with sand moved directly from the dunes to the building site where it was needed.  One would expect to pay $1.00 to $1.25 a cubic yard for sand delivered by horse and wagon to the building.  Forty percent of that price was for the cost of the delivery with a typical load of two to three yards averaging 3,000 pounds a cubic yard.  The best grade of torpedo sand came from the hills of Illinois and Wisconsin over fifty miles away.  A company typically would buy a sand hill from its owner and set up a refining plant next to it, separating the raw material into five grades, two of gravel, two of coarse stone and one of crushed stone.  The Tribune observes that “When the sand company gets through with a hill ‘there ain’t no hill there ‘tall.’  Sometimes in its place there is a big, shallow hole in the ground.  The operation of mining a hill for sand runs several years “and the company always gets back the money put into the plant, with good, substantial interest.”  As soon as the temperature falls below freezing, operations cease, a schedule that aligns with the building and construction industries, meaning that a businessman engaged in the business has little need for a storage yard as “He takes it from the hill, delivers it where it is contracted for, and turns it into cash in short order.”  Sand mining is still a big business in Wisconsin, especially, but these days the sand is used to fracture rock in the process of drilling for oil and natural gas.  One such Wisconsin operation is shown above.

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July 9, 1981 – The Chicago Tribune reports that the Art Institute of Chicago has acquired Geroges Braque’s “Landscape at La Ciotat.”  The painting was purchased from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Leigh B. Block at an auction that took place on May 22 at Sotheby Parke Bernet in New York. Art Institute curator A. James Speyer says of the work, “We have always wished to acquire a fine work of this period by Georges Braque, and the new painting embodies the very essence of Fauvism at its most brilliant.  [Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1981]. La Ciotat is a small Mediterranean resort just east of Marseilles.. Braque’s work at La Ciotat in 1906 and 1907 occurred during a time when he shared bright, bold colors with a loosely affiliated group of artists who adopted the name “Fauves” – “wild beasts” – taken from a review of an unkindly critic.  It appears that the painting that the Art Institute acquired is actually “Landscape at L’Estaque,” the painting that is currently on display in Gallery 391.  The date of its acquisition, the gallery at which it was sold, as well as the date of the sale and the Block collection from which it came all seem to match up.  That painting is pictured above.  “Landscape at La Ciotat” hangs in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

July 9, 1974 – For the first time a woman sits behind the wheel of a Chicago Transit Authority bus as Ms. Mary Wallace pilots the State Street bus on the 36A route, starting at the C.T.A. garage at Seventy-Seventh and Vincennes Avenue.  Ms. Wallace says that the training took her 15 days during which time she says “it rained a lot.”  She added further that she applied for the job and was “in it for the money.”  [Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1974] Ms. Wallace is pictured in the photo above with former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.

July 9, 1934 – Eleanor Roosevelt has a full schedule of events as she visits Chicago for two days. At 9:30 a.m. the wife of President Franklin Roosevelt holds a press conference in the NBC studios at the Merchandise Mart.  At 10:15 a.m. she visits the Simmons exhibit at the Century of Progress and participates in a commercial broadcast for the company, the proceeds of which will be donated to charity.  At noon the First Lady takes lunch with the president of the fair and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Rufus C. Dawes, after which she requests to see the fair without an escort.  At 5:30 Mrs. Roosevelt is the guest at a reception given by the Women’s Trade Union League at 530 South Ashland Avenue.  Unbelievably, she arrives in Chicago on the night of July 8 from Madison, Indiana with no official escort.  She and two female companions make the 265-mile drive, taking turns at the wheel of a “low slung, sand colored automobile,” their arrival at the Blackstone Hotel “heralded by no fanfare, their path was cleared by no police escort and no committee of notables was waiting to greet them.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 9, 1934]

July 9, 1880 –The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on a conference in Lockport between the Canal Commissioners, Mayor Carter Harrison of Chicago, and a delegation of citizens from the city and towns along the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The particular issue is the establishment of the Bridgeport Pumping Works, for which the Chicago City Council has appropriated $100,000. The Mayor maintains that the Canal Commissioners must guarantee that the works will carry off a specific amount of water while the Commissioners are unwilling to make such a guarantee. Mayor Harrison and his delegation make the trip to Lockport “over the not placid bosom of the raging canal.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, July 9, 1880] The trip begins at the Adams Street bridge and although “in some places the water was black and turbid, in others of a clayey hue,” the delegation from Chicago finds the trip rather pleasant.  It is a different story in Lockport, though, as neither the mayor or the commissioners want to enter into an agreement that will put them in a corner.  Harrison wants the commissioners to say to the city, “From the necessity of the circumstances we are creating a nuisance along the line of the canal.  You are secondarily responsible because you make that water foul. You are the wolf that fouls the water, and these people down here on the canal are the lambs … We haven’t the means to purify it, but we propose that if you do that we will do our share, and say what that share is.”  A member of the Sanitary Commission states its position … that the commission was a creature of the State of Illinois and was charged with overseeing the function of the canal and could not go outside of the powers delegated to it by determining sanitary conditions.  Considerable give-and-take follows with the mayor maintaining that although the city contributes to the offensiveness of the canal, it is the Sanitary Commission’s responsibility to do something about it, the Commission arguing that it has no legal authority to do that.  At one point Mayor Harrison says to a commissioner, “You and I are giving a stench to the people on this river,” to which the commissioner replies, “I deny that. You are.” The meeting breaks up with little headway made.  The participants agree to communicate about the proposed pumping works at Bridgeport with Mayor Harrison saying, “I don’t want to buy a pig in a poke or put Chicago’s neck in a noose.”  The Commissioners agree “to support him in every undertaking to relieve the city where it had the authority of law to do so.” The above photo shows the lock that originally separated the Chicago River from the Illinois and Michigan canal.

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Labels: 1905, Chicago Development, Merchants and Merchandising

Friday, November 8, 2019

November 8, 1881 -- Carson, Pirie and Scott Moves to City Center

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November 8, 1881 – The Chicago Daily Tribune reports that Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company has completed a transaction that will allow the dry goods firm to open a store in the center of the city.  The firm will open a new establishment on the southwest corner of State and Monroe Streets in a five-story structure known as the Pike Block.  The paper observes, “A few years ago it would have been considered absurd to move so far south from the then business centre, but the steady progress of the retail dry-goods trade down State street indicates that Carson, Pirie, Scott and Co.’s new establishment will, before many months, be in the centre of the retail business section.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 8, 1881]  The firm plans to take possession of the building on May 1, 1882, paying an annual rental of $37,500.  Some businesses – a jeweler who occupies the ground floor, along with various “artists, physicians and others” have already found new accommodations for their businesses.  Carson’s will have to buy the remainder of the tenants out of their leases.  It would not be until 1904 that the firm would move into a new building a block to the north on the southeast corner of State and Madison Streets, today’s Sullivan Center, a structure opened by the retail firm Schlessinger and Mayer in 1899 and designed by genius architect Louis Sullivan.  The Pike Block is shown in the above photo.  Note the bottom right corner of the photo and the novel method of keeping the dust down in the streets at the city's center.

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November 8, 1896 – The Chicago Daily Tribune runs a feature on the men who tend the bridges in the city.  “The life is not lonely,” the article begins, and it is “colored at times by excitement.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, November 8, 1896]  There are “times when a ‘three-master’ rakes all its spars against the bridge and butts down a section of a viaduct … a runaway horse and an open draw makes a combination that is not good for the nerves.”  The bridge tender “… comes to know the river Captains as teachers know their scholars and he knows the tugs and steam barges by their whistles as the hunter knows his dogs … some claim to be able to tell a bridal party from a funeral, and the fire engine and the patrol wagon have their own distinctive sounds.”  At night the bridge tender sits 40 feet above the river and listens: “Tramp roosts are common along the wharfs and warm nights fights take place.  The noise is hushed up in a hurry and the next morning something ghastly floats down under the bridge and is fished out with a boat hook.”  A bridge tender “bases his record on the number of lives he has saved.”  Most troubling are the men and women who attempt suicide.  A bridge tender at the Lake Street bridge, Martin Casey, has saved the lives of 17 people who had “become tired of their own company” in the 34 years he has swung the bridge. It was also Casey who was at work at the Lake Street bridge on the night of October 9, 1871. He “took long odds on burning the city’s bridge to save the … half-dressed crowd that rushed down Lake Street.  In spite of repeated orders to ‘open draw’ he refused to do so until the last human being was across.  Along with 50 volunteers, he broke into a nearby hardware store, appropriated pails, ropes, axes, and crowbars and “drenched the bridge with water, tore up the plank approaches and dug wide trenches at either end,” saving the first pivot bridge in the city.  All in all, “Chicago bridgetender’s experiences are snap-shots of river life.  The tramp, the wharf rat, and the river pirate are his neighbors.  The ‘floater’ and the suicide are frequent visitors.  The longshoreman and the bridge policeman are often his allies against common enemies.”  

November 8, 1858 – Item in the Chicago Press and Tribune for this date: “Ald. Wahl, of a special committee, reported in favor of measures looking to the abandonment of the present cemetery for burial purposes, and the selection of another site at a distance from the city limits.  An order was passed instructing the Mayor to appoint a committee to report upon the subject at an early day.” [Chicago Press and Tribune, November 8, 1858] So this is a start … the wheels of time turn slowly.  Six years after this two-sentence beginning, an ordinance is published that ends burials in Lincoln Park with the exception of burials in plots that have already been purchased.  It isn’t until 1869 that the city council passes jurisdiction over the Lincoln Park cemetery grounds to the Lincoln Park district commissioners.  At that point, although the exact dates are unclear, thousands of bodies are disinterred from the old cemetery and moved to other locations.  As this project begins there are 25,000 bodies interred in the Potter’s graveyard alone.  Not every grave was found … as recently as 1998 when the Chicago History Museum dug up part of the area for a new parking facility, the remains of 81 individuals were discovered.  The map of the old cemetery is superimposed on the modern city in the above photo.

November 8, 1922 – Chicago Cubs President William Veeck announces that the team will completely renovate its north side ballpark in order to increase its size to accommodate 32,000 fans.  The work will make it the largest baseball venue in the country.  Zachary Taylor Davis, the architect who designed the original park as well as Comiskey Park on the south side, has drawn the plans for the upgraded field with work to begin immediately.  At a cost of $300,000 bleacher sections will be added to right and left fields.  According to the Chicago Daily Tribune the plan will be as follows, “The present stand will be cut into three parts . . . the right and left field wings will be separated from the part which circles behind the home plate.  The circular piece will be moved about sixty feet toward the intersection of Clark and Addison streets.  The right field wing will remain in the same spot, while the left field wing will be rolled back and out so that the further end touches Waveland Avenue.  Then the two gaps will be built in.”  The field will be lowered three feet, allowing several rows of boxes to be added in front of the previous set of boxes.  The renovation does not include the addition of an upper tier.  The distance from home plate to the front of the seats in right and left fields will be 354 feet.  It will be six years short of a century before the park welcomes a victorious World Series team.  The grainy photo above shows the process of expansion in the winter of 1922.

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Labels: 1881, Madison Street, Merchants and Merchandising, Monroe Street, State Street