Historic Chicago

Chicago 1770-1857

Happy Birthday, Chicago – a postcard from 1820

State & Madison after the fire.

1871 The Great Chicago Fire

The Tribune Building

The traditional account of the origin of the fire is that it was started by a cow kicking over a lantern in the barn owned by the O'Leary’s. In 1893, Michael Ahern, the Chicago Republican reporter who wrote the O'Leary account, admitted he had made it up as colorful copy. The barn was the first building to be consumed by the fire, but the official report could not determine the exact cause.

The fire started at about 9:00 pm on Sunday, October 8, in or around a small barn that bordered the alley behind 137 DeKoven Street. It burned for 2 days, killing hundreds and destroying about 3.3 square miles. Though the fire was one of the largest U.S. disasters of the 19th century, the rebuilding that began helped develop Chicago as one of the most populous and economically important American cities.

The Columbian Exposition, 1893It celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New

World in 1492. The iconic centerpiece of the Fair, the large water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the New World.

The pool, surrounded by the White City

The Court of Honor

Palace of Mechanic Arts

Electricity Building

The exposition was located in Jackson Park and on the Midway Plaisance on 630 acres in the neighborhoods of South Shore, Jackson Park Highlands, Hyde Park and Woodlawn. Most of the buildings were based on classical architecture.

The Ferris WheelThe chief wonder of the fair was the work of George Washington Gale Ferris, a man born

west of Chicago.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the Columbian Exposition

The spurning of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show proved a serious financial mistake. Buffalo Bill set up his highly popular show next door to the fair and brought in a great deal of revenue that he did not have to share with the developers.

Note: Architecture & MurderFor a terrific book on the design and building of the Fair and a serial killer who was operating at the same time, read The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson.

HeroicStatueOf the

Republic

The brand new Art Institute 1893

Art Institute was built in 1893 as part of the Columbian

Exposition.

To the right is a 1941 photo

Building the “L” in 1895

The “L” Tracks in 1936

Chicago Stockyards in 1905“Hog Butcher for the World”

State Street - That Great Street!

The corner of State & Madison StreetsOnce called “the busiest intersection in the world.”

State & Madison 1905

1907

The Chicago Theatre on State Street

in 1930

& in 2011

The Iconic Marshall Fields Store on State Street

1907

Window shopping in 1910

It’s now a Macy’s Store

Hull House in 1904

Hull House was was originally the mansion of real estate magnate Charles J. Hull. It was opened as a settlement house in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. By 1911, Hull House had grown to 13 buildings. On June 12, 1974, the Hull House building was designated a Chicago Landmark. On June 23, 1965, it was designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark

Hull House - 1856

Carson Pirie Scott store - 1871Designed by the great Louis Sullivan, was initially developed because of the Chicago Great Fire of 1871. Sullivan designed the corner entry to be seen from both State and Madison, and that

the ornamentation, situated above the entrance, would be literally attractive, which would give the store an elegant unique persona important to the competitiveness of the neighboring stores.

The building is one of the classic structures of the Chicago school. (A Target Store is opened here in 2012)

The Studebaker Building shown here in 1920

(The Rookery Building, built in 1888, is a historic landmark located at 209 South LaSalle Street. Completed by John Wellborn Root and Daniel Burnham of Burnham and Root in 1888, it is considered one of their masterpiece buildings, and was once the location of their office. The building is twelve stories tall and is considered the oldest standing high-rise in Chicago

The Rookery in 1905

The ten-story Fine Arts Building, built in 1884-5, is also known as the Studebaker Building. It is located at 410 South Michigan Avenue. It was built for the Studebaker company and was extensively remodeled in 1898. It houses the Studebaker Theatre, also known as Studebaker Hall, dedicated in 1898. The venue housed some of the earliest television shows including DuMont's Cavalcade of Stars hosted by comedian Jack Carter.

The Auditorium Theatre - circa 1890It is one of the best-known designs of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. Completed in 1889, the building was built at the northwest corner of South Michigan Avenue and Congress Street. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in1970 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Since 1947, the Auditorium Building has been the home of Roosevelt University.

It was built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and was originally called The Palace of Fine Arts. For a time it was called The Field Museum of Natural History, until anothr building was erected to house that collection. It opened as the Museum of Science and Industry in 3 stages between 1933 and 1940. Pictured below in 1930

The Museum of Science & Industry

The Edgewater Beach Hotel - 1916Built in 1916 and owned by John Tobin Connery and James Patrick Connery, it was located between Sheridan Road and Lake Michigan at Berwyn Avenue. The complex had a private beach and offered seaplane service to downtown Chicago. During its lifetime, the hotel served many famous guests including Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin, Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, and Nat King Cole, and U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Tribune Tower - 1925

In 1922 the Chicago Tribune hosted an international design competition for its new headquarters, and offered $100,000 in prize money with a $50,000 1st prize for "the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world". The competition worked brilliantly for months as a publicity stunt, and the resulting entries still reveal a unique turning point in American architectural history. More than 260 entries were received. The winner was a neo-Gothic design by New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, with buttresses near the top.

1929The Palmolive Building

A 37-story Art Deco building at 919 N. Michigan Avenue. It was completed in 1929 and was home to the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet corporation. The Palmolive Building came to be known as the Playboy Building from 1965 to 1989, when it was home to Playboy magazine. It was designated a Chicago Landmark in 2000, and it was added to the federal National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Today, the building has been converted for residential use. The first two floors house upscale office and retail space. High-end condos make up the rest of the building.

Notable residents of the building include Vince Vaughn and Lou Piniella.[citation needed]

Opened in 1930, it was the largest building in the world with 4,000,000 square feet of floor space. Previously owned by the Marshall Field family, the Mart centralized Chicago's wholesale goods business by consolidating architectural and interior design vendors and trades under a single roof. It has since become home to several other enterprises, including the Shops at the Mart, the Chicago campus of the Illinois Institute of Art, and the offices of the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Mart at night

The Mart in 1930

The Merchandise Mart - 1930

He was a German-American architect. At the Illinois Institue of Chicago, he developed the Second Chicago School. He called his buildings "skin and bones" architecture. He sought a rational approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design, but he was always concerned with expressing the spirit of the modern era. He is often associated with his quotation of the aphorism, "less is more."

Mies designed a series of four middle-income high-rise apartment buildings on Lake Shore Drive which were built between 1949 and 1951. These towers were radical departures from the typical residential brick apartment buildings of the time.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1886 – 1969

S. R. Crown Hall is the home of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

A Mansion at 3254 South Michigan AvenueIt belonged to John Cudahy, a successful meatpacker at the end of the 19th century

(The photo was taken in 1947)

Lincoln Park The area now known as Lincoln Park in Chicago was primarily forest with stretches of grassland and occasional quicksand until the late 1820s when the Europeans arrived. In 1836 the area was considered remote, and a small pox hospital and the city cemetery were located in Lincoln Park until the 1860s. The township containing Lincoln Park was annexed to the city in 1889.

Lincoln Park in 1900

Sunday in Lincoln Park - 1900

Grant Monument 1901 Conservatory 1906

Zoo 1901 Lincoln Park Views

Lincoln Park Zoo Bear Pit - 1901

Washington Park Race Track 1903Garfield Park 1885

Jackson Park Conservatory 1900

Ice skating in Washington Park 1905

Grant Park in 1937

Grant Park & Buckingham Fountain in 1929

Buckingham Fountain in the 1950s

Buckingham Fountain at night in 1981

Oak Street Beach in 1916 Oak Street Beach in 1931

Rogers Park Lakefront 1920s

Manhattan Beach at 75th & Lake - 1910

76th Street Pier 1913

Chicago’s First Airmail Flight in Grant Park, 1918

Charles Lindbergh visited Chicago on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1927, to promote commercial air travel.

Riding with the Mayor Reception at Soldier Field

Reception at Midway Airport(from my mom’s photo album)

Chicagohad

someOpen-Air

BussesIn

1927

Maxwell Street

Chicago’s Lakefront in 1940

The 1932 World Series(The cheap seats)

Wrigley Field

It was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales. It was called Cubs Park between 1920 and 1926 before being renamed for then Cubs team owner and chewing gum magnate, William Wrigley, Jr..

1901: Entering their first season as a Major League franchise the White Sox were the defending champions of the Western League, and it was a clear that in the inaugural season of the American League the Chicago White Sox were the team to beat. It would only seem fitting, that the new league's best team plays in the first official game. The Sox would win that game 8-2 over the Cleveland Blues on April 22nd. With a team built around strong pitching the White Sox would go on to finish 83-53, witch was good enough for 1st place and the first ever American League Championship.

Chicago White Sox

1915: The White Sox purchase the contract of Shoeless Joe Jackson from the Cleveland Indians.

1916: In his first full season with the White Sox Shoeless Joe Jackson bats an impressive .341, and becomes an instant hit with Chicago fans. Along the way Jackson hits a league high 21 triples, and makes the Sox contenders again, as they finish with an 86-65 record, would fall just 5 games short of the pennant.

Shoeless Joe Jackson

The 1919 Chicago “Black” Sox

“Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

The Chicago Cardinals – 1920-1959Played As: Racine Cardinals 1920-1921

Chicago Cardinals 1922-1943Card-Pitt 1944*

Chicago Cardinals 1945-1959The Cardinals roots stretch back to 1898 when a neighborhood group that gathered to play football in a predominantly Irish area of Chicago's South Side, playing under the name Morgan Athletic Club. Chris O'Brien acquired the team and soon its playing site changed to nearby Normal Field, prompting the new name Normals.

The Normal Athletic Club football team

In 1901, the team gained longstanding identification when O'Brien, finding a bargain, bought used jerseys from the nearby University of Chicago. The jerseys were faded maroon in color, prompting O'Brien to declare, "That's not maroon, it's Cardinal red!" The club's permanent nickname had been born!

Here is the Chicago Cardinals Logo from 1920 to 1934

In 1922, the Cardinals moved their home games to Comiskey Park, and officially & became the Chicago Cardinals, so as not to confuse themselves with a new team in the league from Racine, Wisconsin. Comiskey Park would be the Cardinals nest for the next 37 years. Here is a team picture from 1921:

The Chicago BearsThe organization that eventually became the Chicago Bears, the Decatur Staleys, was originally conceived by the A. E. Staley food starch company of Decatur, Illinois, in 1919 as a company team. The company hired George Halas and Edward "Dutch" Sternaman in 1920 to run the team, and turned over full control of the team to them in 1921.

The Staleys moved to Chicago from Decatur, IL in 1921. Halas, who was given the team and $5000 by Staley to keep the name Staleys for another year, made the move. In the 1921 season, the Chicago Staleys finished first in the league and captured their first league championship. In 1922, Halas changed the team name to the Bears to reflect baseball's Chicago Cubs, the team's host at Wrigley Field.

Bears Vs. Packers - 1921During the teams’ very first meeting in 1921, Chicago’s John (Tarzan) Taylor threw a sucker punch that broke the nose of Packers tackle Howard Buck. It set the tone for all Packers-Bears matchups for years to come.

Bears playing at Wrigley Field

1924 Bears game at Soldier FieldDick Butkus

The Chicago Bulls The Chicago Bulls are the third NBA franchise in Chicago, after the Packers–Zephyrs (now the Washington Wizards) and the Stags (1946–50). The Bulls' founder, Dick Klein, was the only owner to ever play professional basketball (for the Chicago Gears). He served as the Bulls' president and general manager in their first years. The team started in the 1966–67 NBA season, and posted the best record by an expansion team in NBA history. Coached by Chicagoan and former NBA star Johnny "Red" Kerr, and led by former NBA assist leader Guy Rodgers and forward Bob Boozer, the Bulls qualified for the playoffs.

The BlackhawksThe Chicago Black Hawks joined the NHL in 1926 as part of the league's first wave of expansion into the United States. Most of the Hawks' original players came from the Portland Rosebuds of the Western Hockey League (Canada), which had folded the previous season. The team's first owner was coffee tycoon Frederic McLaughlin. He had been a commander with a Machine Gun Battalion in WWII that was nicknamed the "Blackhawk Division," after a Native American of the Sauk nation, Black Hawk, who was a prominent figure in the history of Illinois. McLaughlin evidently named the hockey team in honor of the military unit. For many years, the name was spelled "Black Hawks." This ambiguity was finally settled in the summer of 1986 when the club officially decided on the one-word version based on the spelling found in the original franchise documents.

Chicago Board of Trade in 1933

The Chicago River

The River in 1930

The River in 1936

Union StationIn

1948

A Century of Progress – World’s Fair 1933 & 1934It was an international showpiece set on Chicago's Lakefront that transcended the Great Depression. The 1933 International Exposition not only provided entertainment to millions, it paid for itself and made a profit.

Scenes from the Fair

(including Sally Rand)

TheSilverFlash

The Bobs

TheParachute

Ride

Aladdin's Castle at Riverview

Trying towalk through

The Barrelin

Aladdin's Castle

Riverview’s Merry-Go-Roundis now at Six Flags in Atlanta

Shoot The Chutes

The best day of the summer was the daywe visited Riverview!

A Beautiful City!