WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

This past July Chicago recorded 9.81 inches of precipitation--the wettest July ever, and the 9th-wettest month in the city's history. But if you were here on this August 31st in 1987, you were just finishing monsoon month, the all-time record-holder. Let's turn back the clock 24 years. What was it like? How would you cope?

July 1987 had been very hot and very dry. When the rains came in the opening days of August, Chicago was relieved. At last it was cooling off.

But the rains continued . . . and continued . . . and continued. The Des Plaines River overflowed. Water backed up into basements. As the water receded swarms of mosquitoes appeared.

And then the rains returned. People joked about building an ark. But what was a "cubit" anyway?

So what did you do for relief in 1987? The parks and forest preserves were all mud. Spectator sports were not a happy solution--the Cubs and the Sox were floundering, and the Bears' pre-season was not going well.

TV was all summer reruns. If you were one of the fortunate few who had cable, there were plenty of black-and-white 1950s sitcoms to choose from. Too bad your VCR was in the shop getting fixed again.

The internet--what was that? Something to do with your computer?

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Chicago has hosted more national political conventions than any other city. One of the most memorable opened on this date in 1968.

America was deeply divided that year. The war in Vietnam had become unpopular. Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert Kennedy had both been assassinated. Riots had broken out in many cities.

As the Democrats gathered at the International Amphitheatre, thousands of advocates for various causes poured into the city. Mayor Richard J. Daley was determined to ensure orderly demonstrations. The Chicago police and the Illinois National Guard were ready.

The Republicans had already named Richard Nixon as their candidate. The Democrats had two main contenders: Sen. Eugene McCarthy was the anti-war candidate who'd forced President Johnson to retire; Vice President Hubert Humphrey was supported by the party's old guard.

Humphrey didn't inspire much enthusiasm, but he had a majority of the delegates behind him. On the convention's third night he was nominated. Tensions between protesters and cops had been smoldering. Now they ignited.

TV cameras showed violent scenes in Grant Park, where police chased and beat civilians.

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There are plans to build a 3280-foot skyscraper in Saudi Arabia. It will be the tallest structure in the world, 500 feet higher than anything else.

But on this date in 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright announced plans for an even grander Chicago structure. His building would top off at 5280 feet--a mile high.

Wright was 89 years old, the dean of American architects. He'd never liked skyscrapers or what they represented. Now he'd changed his mind. "If we're going to have centralization, why not quit fooling around and have it," he said.

Wright insisted the mile-high building was no joke; it was "thoroughly scientific." He said that several prominent Chicagoans were already interested in the project. He had even picked out a lakefront site near the Adler Planetarium.

Most of the tower's 500-plus floors would be office space for city, county, and state government. Wright said that 100,000 people might be accommodated. The top nine floors would be TV studios, topped off by a 330-foot antenna used for coast-to-coast broadcasts.

Of course, the building would cost a bundle. But the total floor area was over 18 million square feet. On that basis, the price tag would be cheap.

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He might be the most famous Chicago judge ever. And he was certainly the only one named after a mountain.

Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born in small-town Ohio in 1866, and grew up in small-town Indiana. His unique name came from the place in Georgia where his father lost a leg in a Civil War battle.

Our man Landis never finished high school, but managed to earn a law degree--scholastic requirements were looser then. In 1891, he opened a corporate practice in Chicago.

Time marched on. Landis married, started raising a family, made some money and made some connections in Republican politics. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt named him to the federal bench.

The new judge saw himself as a progressive reformer of the Roosevelt school. So when Standard Oil was found guilty of shady practices, Landis hit the company with a $29 million fine--the equivalent of $600 million today. The fine was later tossed out.

The Standard Oil case neatly sums up Landis as a judge. He didn't always follow accepted procedures, and was often over-ruled. At the same time, he made a lot of noise and got a lot of publicity.

He could be completely arbitrary. On one occasion, Landis freed an 18-year-old messenger who'd stolen $750,000 in bonds.

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The United States was at war. In a Chicago courtroom, 101 people had been on trial for opposing the war. And on this August 17, the jury announced its verdict.

The year was 1918. The war was World War I.

In April 1917, the U.S. had declared war on Germany and Congress passed the Espionage Act shortly thereafter. The law and its later amendments made it a crime to interfere with the war effort, which included "disloyal speech."

The Industrial Workers of the World--nicknamed the Wobblies--was a radical industrial union headquartered in Chicago. The IWW had opposed U.S. entry into the war. In September 1917, the Justice Department raided several IWW offices throughout the country, seized union documents and took 165 Wobblies into custody.

When the trial began in April 1918, 101 people had been charged, the largest number ever in a federal court. The presiding judge was Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

The prosecution argued that the IWW was trying to undermine the war, accusing the union of such things as resisting the draft, advocating industrial sabotage, and conspiring with the enemy.

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A crowd of 50,000 people jammed the Civic Center Plaza at noon on August 15, 1967. Chicago was unveiling its newest piece of public art: a gift to the city from the celebrated Pablo Picasso.

Covered with blue sheeting, the giant sculpture loomed over the plaza. Then Mayor Richard J. Daley pulled a cord. The cover dropped away and revealed . . . what?

That's the question people have been asking for the last 44 years. What is it?

The firm building the Civic Center had wanted something special to decorate the plaza. Picasso was the world's most famous artist, so they approached him.

At first Picasso declined. He'd never been to Chicago; he had never even been to the United States. But after much cajoling, he accepted. Maybe he was persuaded by a gift the Chicagoans brought him--a Sox jacket.

Picasso produced a 42-inch-high model that combined some of his previous designs. The final sculpture stands 50 feet high and weighs 162 tons. It is made of Cor-Ten steel, the same material used on the building behind it. The bulk of the $350,000 cost was paid for by private foundations. The artist himself refused a fee.

But still - what is it? The sculpture had no title. Was it a woman, or a bird, or a space alien, or something else?

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Like any great city, Chicago is always changing. Familiar landmarks are destroyed. Lost Chicago, by David Lowe, is the classic book on our vanished local heritage.

But what about those well-remembered Chicago oddities that never made the guidebooks, even when they were around? Anyone who's lived here awhile can come up with several.

For instance, take this picture from 1975.

This structure was located at 6650 West Grand Avenue. A curved driveway, supported on concrete pillars 40 feet above the ground, with no ramps. For most of the thousands who passed it everyday, it was an intriguing mystery. A Northwest Side prototype for the Skyway, perhaps?

The Grand Avenue whatsis was actually a relic of World War II. Built by Western Electric in 1943, it was a track used for testing mobile radar equipment. The location at the top of a ridge made it higher than any buildings for miles around.

Originally a wooden ramp connected the track to the ground. The mobile radar units would drive up to the top, then planes from Glenview Naval Air Station flew over. The data collected was used to determine the efficiency of radar, which was then a new invention.

The track remained in use through 1953 and the Korean War.

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