WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

In case you hadn't noticed, the Chicago River flows backwards. It's been doing this for over a hundred years.

Like any normal river, the Chicago River used to flow into a larger body of water--namely, Lake Michigan. This became a problem in the middle of the 19th Century. As Chicago grew into a major city, the raw sewage of civilization was dumped into the river and flushed through to the lake. And the lake was where Chicagoans got their drinking water.

Besides being gross, this was dangerous. All those germs in the drinking water produced outbreaks of cholera or typhoid or other diseases.

You'll often hear the story of the Great Chicago Plague. It's said that cholera wiped out 70,000 people in a single year, about 20% of the city's population. Don't believe it. Someone cooked up the tale to make a point.

In any case, the solution to the pollution was simple. Just reverse the flow of the river so that it didn't empty into the lake.

Build a barrier at the east end of the Chicago River to block it off from the lake. At the same time, connect the west end to the Des Plaines River.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

The Great Chicago Fire destroyed over four square miles of the city and killed 250 people. On this date in 1903, more than twice that number died from a fire in a single building.

The Iroquois Theatre opened in the fall of 1903. Located on Randolph Street just west of State, it had more than 1,700 seats and was a state-of-the-art playhouse. Ads claimed that it was "absolutely fireproof."

On this Wednesday afternoon, the Iroquois was featuring the musical comedy "Mr. Blue Beard," starring Eddie Foy. Every seat was filled - school was out for Christmas vacation, and the audience was mostly women and children. About 200 more people were standing in the aisles and in the rear.

Midway through the second act, a defective lamp set a backstage curtain on fire. The flames quickly spread to props and scenery which were stored nearby. The audience didn't realize anything was wrong. They thought the glow coming from behind the stage was part of the show.

Then the truth began to sink in. The audience grew restless. From the stage, Eddie Foy asked for calm. He ordered the asbestos fire curtain lowered. The curtain stuck halfway down. A piece of burning debris fell on stage.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Chicago always was a newspaper town. At any one time the city had as many as 11 daily papers. Each one of them was fiercely competitive. If you were in the news game, you were ready to do anything to top your rivals--anything fair or foul, or even funny.

Melville Stone started publishing the Chicago Daily News in 1876. His father was a Methodist minister, and Melville himself had the look of a clergyman. But he knew how to run a newspaper. And he liked to win.

One of Stone's competitors was the Chicago Post & Mail, owned by two brothers named MacMullen. When their paper began losing ground, the MacMullens began stealing stories from the Daily News.

The first edition of the Daily News came out at noon. Within two hours the Post & Mail was on the street with much the same copy. Most of the time the MacMullens didn't bother to change a word.

Then one day, Stone's paper landed a major, exclusive story--a "scoop." There was famine in Serbia.

The Daily News printed a long, lurid account of the suffering Serbs.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Not so long ago, Chicago had more than a hundred bowling alleys. Now there are fewer than twenty. The most historic of these lost landmarks was Archer-35th Recreation, the home of the annual Petersen Classic.

In 1919 Louis Petersen opened his alleys on the second floor of a commercial building at 2057 W. 35th Street. Two years later he staged a tournament. The Petersen Classic paid $1,000 to the bowler who rolled the highest total for eight games. That was big money for a sporting event in 1921--the same year, first prize in the U.S. Open golf tournament was only $500.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

I first stumbled on her in 1965, the night of my Senior Prom. The prom was at a downtown hotel. Afterward my date and I, along with two other couples, decided to go for a drive south on Lake Shore Drive.

We got to Jackson Park and turned down a side road, preparing to head back north. And there, in front of us in the darkness, illuminated by floodlights, was a towering golden statue of a Greek goddess. "What the hell is that?" we gasped.

If we'd been South Siders, we might have known. The statue is called The Republic, and is a souvenir of the 1893 World's Fair.

The 24-foot tall statue in the park is a replica. The original was nearly three times larger, a 65-foot colossa atop a 35-foot base. That version was made of plaster covered in gold leaf. Daniel Chester French, today best-known for his seated Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, was the designer.

When the Fair was over, The Republic was scrapped. A smaller plaster model was retained.

The story resumes in 1918, the centennial year of Illinois statehood. By coincidence it was also the 25th anniversary of the Fair. Someone got the idea of restoring The Republic in Jackson Park.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

When Chicagoans want to show off the beauty of our town, we take visitors to the lakefront. Most cities don't have such a spectacular front yard. That makes December 21st an important date.

Back in 1836 Chicago was still a village. The commissioners who were building the nearby Illinois & Michigan Canal used their authority to make the lakefront public land. They ruled that it would be "a common to remain forever open, clear, and free of any buildings, or other obstruction whatever."

The lake came almost up to Michigan Avenue then. The order applied to the area east of the avenue, between Randolph and 12th Street (Roosevelt Road). In 1856 the Illinois Central Railroad built a trestle over the open water to a terminal at Randolph and Michigan.

After the 1871 fire, the city started dumping debris into the space between Michigan Avenue and the railroad trestle. This created a landfill known as Lake Park. Squatters' shacks sprang up, while the garbage mounds kept growing. For a few years the city's National League baseball team played their games on a corner the site.

By 1890 Lake Park was an eyesore. Mail-order tycoon Montgomery Ward had his office directly across from the park.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

"Once upon a time there were two brothers. One of them went to sea, and the other became Vice President of the United States. Neither of them was ever heard of again."

That's an old vaudeville joke, and it always got a laugh. It was true enough. Charles Gates Dawes was our 30th vice president, and he lived right here in Illinois. But unless you're from Evanston, you probably never heard of the guy.

Dawes was born in Ohio in 1865, became a lawyer, and practiced in Nebraska for a while. Then he got into banking and Republican politics. In 1909 he moved into the house at 225 Greenwood Street in Evanston.

During World War I, Dawes was a brigadier general in charge of procurement. He was called before a congressional committee investigating waste. The questions became heated, and he finally exploded. "Hell and Maria, we weren't keeping a set of books!" he yelled. "We were trying to win the war!" The newspapers loved it, and he became known as Hell-and-Maria Dawes.

(We will pause here to ponder what Dawes meant by "Hell and Maria." Does anybody cuss like that today?)

After the war Dawes went to work in the Harding Administration.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet