WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Lincoln Park is Chicago’s outdoor Statuary Hall. There are monuments all over the grounds. It’s a good place to relearn your history, because some of the statues are dedicated to forgotten notables.

For instance, take a look at the man in the rumpled suit on a hill near 2700 North Cannon Drive: That’s Richard Oglesby.

Say, wasn’t he governor back in the 1960s?

No, you're thinking of Richard Ogilvie. The metal man gazing out at Diversey Harbor was one of our governors, but many years earlier.

Richard James Oglesby was born in Kentucky in 1824. Orphaned as a young boy, he came to Illinois to live with an uncle in Decatur.

Oglesby worked at a variety of jobs, studied law, and moved into Republican politics. In 1860 he was elected to the Illinois Senate. When the Civil War broke out, he was appointed a colonel of infantry volunteers.

Oglesby rose in the ranks to larger commands, eventually becoming a major general. He was wounded in battle, and was a genuine war hero. In 1864 he resigned his commission to run for Governor of Illinois.

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I live in Park Ridge, Ill. When visitors want to see the local sights, I’m usually asked to point out the house where Hillary Rodham Clinton grew up. You can easily find it yourself, at 235 North Wisner Street.

A number of sources – including the National Portrait Gallery – say that Hillary is a Park Ridge native. She was actually born in Chicago in 1947 and lived in the Edgewater neighborhood until she was three years old. The Rodham family then moved to Park Ridge.

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I learned the meaning of the word “incumbent” when I was 11 years old.

It was the evening of the 1959 mayoral primary. Grandpa was a Democrat precinct captain, and while he was off doing whatever he was doing, the rest of the family listened to the returns over the radio. Every fifteen minutes or so, I’d hear the announcer say something like, “Daley the incumbent, 244,978. Lar Daly, 302.”

So "incumbent" meant our current mayor, Richard J.

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Driving north on Ogden Avenue, just past Fry Street, you come upon a concrete railroad overpass, emblazoned with the name of your street and the year “1925.” You emerge on the other side, and Ogden abruptly ends. You have just discovered a classic example of urban planning gone wrong.

Ogden Avenue is named after Chicago’s first mayor, William B. Ogden. Like many of Chicago’s major diagonal streets, it follows the path of an old trail. The original starting point of the street was Union Park. From there it ran southwest to the city limits and beyond.

As early as the 1880s, plans were hatched to extend Ogden to the northeast. In 1903, Alderman William E. Dever unveiled an ambitious project to push Ogden through to Lincoln Park, while building another diagonal boulevard from Union Park southeast to the lakefront at 22^nd Street (Cermak).

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How well did you find your way around 1955 Chicago?

 

We are just east of Kedzie, in the Brighton Park community. The ribbon commercial development on a somewhat wide street is one clue to this being Archer Avenue.

 

The transit clue is the double overhead wires. Notice that the bus in the picture is not using those wires. Although Archer never had its own trolley bus line, about a mile of the street was used for moving trolley buses from other lines to the CTA barn at Archer and Rockwell.

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April 18, 1924 was a Friday. At 7:30 in the evening, a passerby noticed smoke coming from Curran Hall, a massive four-story brick building at 1363 South Blue Island Avenue. The man ran to the corner fire-alarm box and pulled the lever.

Two miles to the west, at Engine Company #107, fireman Francis Leavy was washing a window. The call came in and Leavy rushed out with the rest of the company. He told the captain he’d finish the window when they got back.

Five squads converged on Curran Hall. The blaze seemed to be minor. The firemen were getting it under control when one of the outer walls began buckling. Then it collapsed, trapping eight men.

The falling wall knocked out electrical power at the site. Portable lighting was brought in, while firemen combed the wreckage for their comrades. But all eight men had been killed. Among the dead was Francis Leavy.

It was later determined that Curran Hall had been deliberately torched for the insurance. The building owners were tried and convicted of the crime.

Now for the rest of the story . . .

The day after the fire, one of the men at Engine Company #107 noticed the window that Leavy had left half-washed.

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