WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Remember when gerrymander was a dirty word? The new Chicago ward map is a mess. But it seems to satisy legal requirements and political realities, so the City Council adopted it by a lopsided vote.

Let's take a look back at some ward maps from simpler times, courtesy of the annual Chicago Daily News Almanac.

The first map is from 1911. Chicago was slightly smaller in size and in population then. The city was divided into 35 wards, with two aldermen each. The Republicans had a strong presence in the council, and the city often elected Republican mayors.

Notice that most of the ward boundaries are geometrically regular and compact. The south end of the 1st Ward does have some wandering borders. I suspect they were drawn that way to accommodate some scheme of the two aldermen, Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky-Dink Kenna.

The next map is from 1921. Chicago has grown larger in land area, and the 2.7 million population is comparable to today. We now have the familiar 50 wards, with one alderman each.

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Today's film was produced in 1925 by the CTA's predecessor, Chicago Surface Lines. CSL wanted to educate the public on traffic safety, and was willing to smash a lot of cars to do so. As a result, much of the film is unintentionally hilarious.

What's interesting to the historian is the street scenes from nearly 90 years ago. The downtown sites are easy to identify.  But the film also goes out into the neighborhoods. I've been able to place a few of these outlying locations (see below). If anyone recognizes other sites, let me know in the comments section.

1:50--Archer Ave at RR just east of Cicero. Conductor is flagging the streetcar across the tracks.

2:10--Cicero Ave at 22nd St (Cermak Rd). The old Western Electric complex is clearly visible. Notice that CSL ran two-car trains on some of the busier routes.

3:15--Cicero Ave at Erie. The Lucille Theater was at 653 N. Cicero Ave.

7:00--Possibly North Avenue. The center-of-the-street trolley poles are a clue.

8:14--Traffic signals were new in 1925, and the public was still getting used to them

9:20--Either Broadway or Clark Street. The streetcar is signed for Route 1.

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The news in Chicago in January 1923 was about vampires. No, not that kind.

The problem was "vampire autos."

Cars were just beginning to crowd the city then. Traffic laws were primitive, and drivers were usually careless. At the same time, pedestrians were still pretty casual about wandering into the street whenever they felt like it.

A person would be walking along, minding his own business. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an auto would appear, run him down, and speed away while the victim lay bleeding on the pavement. The auto was like a vampire--attacking without warning and sucking the blood out of innocent people.

Vampire autos killed four people on January 17. The next day they snuffed out three more lives. Hundreds of Chicagoans were being injured. The city council and concerned citizens were looking for ways to combat the growing menace. Would our streets ever again be safe?

Then there was the "auto vamp." The phrase derived from actress Theda Bara, known as The Vamp. In her films, Bara's character operated like Dracula.

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Crime was on the minds of Chicagoans on this January 16th in 1925.

The city was earning a reputation as the wildest metropolis in the world. In the past five years robberies had gone up 35%, while the numbers of rapes, bombings, and arson cases were rising at an alarming rate. In just the last two years, murders had more than doubled.

Many experts blamed the crime problem on the Prohibition act. Alcoholic beverages had been banned, and bootlegger gangs now controlled the liquor trade. Violence was part of their business. Everyday citizens were losing respect for the law, too.

Still, Prohibition wasn't going to be junked any time soon. So what could be done about Chicago's crime? A visiting priest had one answer.

Abbe Ernest Dimnet was the canon of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He was a respected French author whose books were becoming popular in English translation. The abbe was stopping in Chicago on a lecture tour.

Mayor Lewis Shank of Indianapolis was also in town to give a speech to a business breakfast. Shank had said the way to fix Chicago crime was to hire smarter policemen.

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We've had the first real snowfall of the season. Today we remember the blizzard of January 13, 1979. It was Saturday the Thirteenth that year. But the storm proved unlucky for one Chicago mayor.

The snow came down all that Saturday. When it stopped on Sunday morning, 20.3 inches had fallen.

The Blizzard of 1967 had dumped 23 inches of snow in a 24-hour period. The new storm didn't break that record. However, in 1979 there was already 9 inches sitting on the ground, making the snow cover nearly 30 inches.

And on January 14, the wind kicked up and the bottom fell out of the thermometer. The low temperature was 14-below-zero. The wind chill dropped to 49-below. Those were records for that particular date.

Still, Chicago was lucky in two ways. Unlike 1967, the storm had come on a weekend. Monday was also a holiday, Martin Luther King Day. The city would have plenty of time to clean things up.

Michael Bilandic was the mayor. He was running for re-election. As soon as the snow began falling, he was all over TV, talking about the wonderful job his administration was doing in this weather emergency.

Trouble was, the snow was not getting cleared. Days went by. A week went by.

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If you've read Huckleberry Finn, you know about the King and the Duke. They're the two con men who latch onto Huck and Jim, claiming to be European nobility.

About the same time Huck and his companions were going down the Mississippi, the young city of Chicago had its own version of the King and the Duke. His name was David Kennison. He said he was the last survivor of the Boston Tea Party.

David Kennison spelled his name various ways--"Kinniston" is just one of the variations. He was a veteran of the War of 1812. He came to Chicago about 1845.

Those are the facts historians accept. Now for Kennison's version.

He said he was born in 1736. Besides taking part in the Boston Tea Party, Kennison claimed to have been a dispatch runner for George Washington, and to have been present at most of the important events of the Revolutionary War--the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Surrender of Cornwallis, and so on. He'd even been "near West Point" when Benedict Arnold's betrayal was discovered.

Chicago welcomed Kennison with great joy. Nobody seems to have questioned his stories.

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The protesters were angry and vocal in the fall of 1909. Their target was one heartless Chicago capitalist named Clarence Knight. He was trying to end smoking on the 'L' trains.

Knight was president of the Chicago & Oak Park Elevated Railroad (today's Lake Street Green Line). His trains always ran at least one smoking car. So did Chicago's other privately-owned 'L' companies. Since about 80% of adult males smoked at least one cigar a day, this was understandable.

But few women smoked in 1909. In the middle of the day, when most of the passengers were female, the smoking cars were running empty and losing money. Knight knew that other cities banned smoking on transit vehicles. He announced that all his trains would go smokeless on November 1.

There was no trouble at first. The smokers simply went on smoking. A few conductors tried to enforce the new rule, but gave up in the face of the mass civil disobedience.

On November 5 the excrement hit the fan. That day "L" security guards removed two smokers from a train at the 44th Avenue (Kostner) station.

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