WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

You know Eisenhower and Kennedy. You might have heard of Stevenson. But who was Dan Ryan?

Glad you asked. This is who Dan Ryan was. . .

He was born Daniel Ryan Jr. in 1894. Daniel Ryan Sr. was a Democrat office-holder who followed the Chicago political tradition of naming his son after himself. The elder Ryan eventually became President of the Cook County Board. Dan Ryan Woods, at 87^th Street and Western Avenue, is named after him.

Our Dan Ryan grew up on the South Side. He served in the Navy during World War I, then earned a law degree from Chicago-Kent. When Dan Ryan Sr. died in 1923, Democrat leaders followed another local tradition. They appointed his son to the vacancy on the County Board.

After finishing out his father’s term, Young Dan ran the family insurance business for a while. In 1930 he became a candidate for the County Board in his own right, and was elected.

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The year was 1833. Chicago had just been incorporated as a town. There were already 300 people living here. On this November 26, we got our first newspaper.

Our 21st Century media like to portray themselves as unbiased and non-partisan. Sometimes they are. But in 1833, newspapers let you know their agenda right up front. That first local paper was a weekly named the Chicago Democrat.

The man behind it was John Calhoun. He’d run a succession of unsuccessful papers in New York, most recently in Watertown. After hearing travelers’ tales about the boomtown on Lake Michigan, the young editor headed west.

Calhoun set up shop in a building on Clark Street just south of the river. Like anyone who owned a printing press in 1833, he depended on job-lot printing orders to make his living. The newspaper was more of a sideline, a vehicle to publicize his personal views.

(Hmmm. Sounds like a blog.)

Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, was president. The opposition party was called the Whigs. Yet the feature story in the first issue of the Chicago Democrat was not a political manifesto.

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If you know your Chicago trivia, you know that Western Avenue is the city’s longest street. From Howard Street to 119th Street, it runs in a straight line for 23.5 miles. But what is Chicago’s shortest street?

The answer used to be Ziegfeld Court. Named for showman Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. — a Chicago native — this mini-street was actually an alley, 76.4 feet long and ten feet wide. Ziegfeld Court was located next to the Ziegfeld Theater, on the north side of Van Buren, just east of Wabash.

In 1970 the city sold Ziegfeld Court to Continental Assurance for $151,300. At $198 per square foot, it was reported to be the highest price ever received by the city for a public thoroughfare. The CNA Center now occupies the site.

Some people didn’t seem to get the news. For many years afterward, various sources still claimed that Ziegfeld Court was Chicago’s shortest street. In 2008, Forgotten Chicago attempted to correct that misinformation.

“Tiny Streets” is an interesting, very detailed article by Serhii Chrucky.

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My e-mails tell me you are having fun with the old Chicago photos. Many of the places are greatly changed, but someone is always able to identify the location.

I recently came across the two pictures below. They're both from 1914, and show a major street within the Chicago city limits, on the Southwest Side.

I started driving a car in 1968, so I got the job of being my Grandma Price's chauffeur. Every so often, we'd drive down a street and she'd shake her head in amazement. Then she'd tell me about how she remembered when it had been a "cowpath."

Grandma grew up on the Northwest Side. She probably wasn't familiar with the sites in the pictures. They were taken on Western Avenue, at a time when the streetcars went only as far south at 79th Street.

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When I was young, I went to a Catholic grade school. And like all good Catholic kids in the 1950s, I gave up something for Lent — usually ice cream.

Then Easter would finally come. Lent was over. To celebrate, my parents would take me to The Buffalo.

The Buffalo Ice Cream Parlor was located at 4000 West Irving Park Road (or 4000 North Pulaski Road — the address happened to work out that way). The place had leaded glass windows, dark walnut booths, a marble soda counter and murals with dancing cherubs. It smelled of sweet chocolate. As background noise, there was the comforting whirr of 20 malted milk mixers.

The awning over the main entrance said “Established 1902.” Actually, the 1902 date was when The Buffalo was founded at its original location, Division and Sedgwick. The business had moved to Irving Park in 1918.

After six weeks of ice cream withdrawal, a frozen turnip might have satisfied my ten-year-old palate. But I knew that The Buffalo’s home-made product was something special, since my dad and I would sometimes stop in for a quick one before going to the Commodore Theater across the street.

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