WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Chicago has never seen another political fundraiser like the annual First Ward Ball. The last one, in 1908, was the gaudiest.

The city's wards then had two aldermen each. The First Ward incumbents were a pair of colorful characters, "Bathhouse" John Coughlin and Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna. Their domain took in the Loop and the Near South Side down to 26th Street. That included the red-light district known as the Levee.

Coughlin & Kenna had held their first fundraising ball in an armory in 1896. Word on the street was that anyone who wanted a favor from the aldermen should buy a ticket--or better still, a book of fifty tickets. The Levee turned out in full force, and the sponsors cleared $25,000 (about $700,000 in today's money).

From there the First Ward Ball grew. The raffish crew of locals was joined by people from all parts of the city and all walks of life. Even the Gold Coast was represented--it was so thrilling to rub shoulders with the lowlifes, the gamblers and pickpockets and prostitutes! Coughlin & Kenna finally had to move their party to the Coliseum, the city's largest hall.

By 1908 the ball was drawing 20,000 people.

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The dignified old building hulking over Hubbard Street at Dearborn was once the Cook County Criminal Court. It also contained the county jail, and that's the setting for our story.

Tommy O'Connor was a young punk who specialized in armed robbery in the Maxwell Street area. In the spring of 1921 he killed a policeman who was trying to arrest him. O'Connor was caught, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to hang. The execution was set for December 15.

O'Connor was housed in the jail's fourth-floor cell block. Things were quiet there on Sunday, December 11. At 9:30 that morning the cells were open, and the prisoners were taking their exercise in the common area. A single guard was on duty.

Suddenly, O'Connor produced a gun. He took the guard's keys, bound and gagged the man, and locked him in a cell. Then O'Connor opened the gate to the cell block.

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We take most of our old buildings for granted. Today the Auditorium is known as the home of Roosevelt University. But when it was dedicated on this date in 1889, the Auditorium was the largest building in the country. And the President of the United States came to Chicago to perform the ceremony.

In 1886 arts patron Ferdinand Peck organized a syndicate of like-minded rich men to give Chicago a grand opera hall. Since opera usually operated in the red, the idea was to locate the hall in a larger commercial building. That way, profits from the building would balance out the money lost by the opera.

The firm of Adler & Sullivan was hired to construct the Auditorium. They planned a ten-story masonry building on Congress Street, stretching from Michigan to Wabash, with a tower at the west end. In the center was the 4200-seat opera hall. The rest of the building would include stores, offices, and a hotel.

Many technical problems had to be solved. Construction stretched on over three years. In the summer of 1888 the Republican National Convention met in the half-finished building, with Benjamin Harrison nominated for president.

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Chicago was warm on December 7, 1941--warm for December, with a high of 39 degrees. It was Sunday. With the stores closed, people had a chance to take the day off from Christmas shopping. Maybe they were headed out to Comiskey Park to watch the Cardinals battle the Bears.

The news hit the city shortly after noon. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor--where's that? And Chicagoans searched their maps, and found it was in Hawaii, and realized that their country was now at war.

Little more than a year ago, 40,000 people had gathered in Grant Park to hear Charles Lindbergh tell them that the U.S. must stay out of foreign wars. The Tribune had been sounding the same message. But things were different now. We had been attacked. We would stand together as Americans.

Suddenly, all Chicago was in motion. Sunday afternoon looked like Friday evening rush hour. Municipal Airport and the city's six railroad terminals were jammed with travelers whose plans had abruptly changed--soldiers and sailors returning to their units, politicians on their way to Washington, private citizens just wanting to get back home.

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The house at 2156 N. Tripp Avenue looks unremarkable, yet it is part of history. Walt Disney was born here on December 5, 1901--110 years ago today.

Elias and Flora Disney, Walt's parents, arrived in Chicago from Florida in 1890. The World's Fair was coming, and Elias hoped to find work as a carpenter. The family first lived near the fair site on the South Side.

In 1893 the Disneys purchased a plot of land in the Hermosa district on the city's Northwest Side. The area was sparsely settled, with dirt streets and few houses. Elias built a two-story frame cottage with his own hands on the southwest corner of Tripp and Palmer. The original address number was 1249 Tripp.

Elias did well in Hermosa. He got other carpentry jobs, then used his earnings to buy two more lots, build two more cottages, and sell them. He also became a trustee in the local Congregational church.

Walter Elias Disney was the family's fourth son. The story that he was named after the church pastor is probably not true.

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The story begins with a letter from Albert Einstein to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. The celebrated physicist warned the president that Nazi Germany was developing the makings of an atomic bomb.

Roosevelt knew what would happen if Hitler got such a weapon. The president ordered a massive secret project to make sure the U.S. beat him to it. Scientists from all over the country were enlisted in the effort.

Early in 1942 Enrico Fermi and a team of physicists gathered at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory. Their goal was to develop a self-sustaining nuclear pile. This was the first step needed to produce the bomb.

Put simply, the scientists would arrange graphite blocks and uranium pellets in a certain way. Since nobody knew what would happen when the pile was finished, control rods were inserted as a safety measure.

A new lab for the project was being built in suburban Argonne. Then the construction workers went on strike. Fermi decided to push ahead without delay, using a room under the stands of Stagg Field, the university's unused football stadium.

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Feminism was in the news on November 30, 1923. Five hundred women came to Chicago for a conference of the National Women's Rights Party. They met at 675 N. Rush Street, the mansion home of Ganna Walska.

Walska was one of those people who were famous for being famous. Born in Poland in 1887, she was currently married to her fourth husband, Chicago industrialist Harold McCormick. McCormick's money was financing her dubious career as an opera singer--a scenario Orson Welles admitted copying in Citizen Kane.

At the meeting a number of NWRP speakers outlined the discrimination that women suffered in America. The laws of practically every state treated them as inferior to men.

Ohio was one example. Women in that state could not become taxi drivers or railway crossing guards. Nor could they find employment in bowling alleys, bars, or Turkish baths. They weren't even allowed to shine shoes.

If anything, the problems became worse when a woman married. Under the tradition of English common law, a husband and wife became one person. That "one person" was the husband. He then had control of the wife's earnings.

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