WBEZ | History

Casualties of history: What notable buildings has Chicago lost?

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:31:00 -0500

University of Chicago student Alice Ye couldn’t help but follow up on the flap over Prentice Women’s Hospital, a building that embroiled a major university, Chicago’s City Hall and preservationists over the past year.

If you haven’t paid much attention to the fate of Bertrand Goldberg’s paean to brutalism, here’s the skinny. Northwestern University has long maintained it needed to tear down the Prentice building to make way for a top-of-the-line medical research facility. Last year, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks declined to give the building landmark status, but only after it had granted preliminary landmark status during the same meeting. The strange about-face happened days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave his blessing to Northwestern.

Alice (who, incidentally, is answering a Curious City question as well) thought there should be some kind of accounting, so she asked:

Like Prentice Hospital, what are other historic Chicago buildings that have been demolished and why?

It just so happens that WBEZ’s architecture blogger Lee Bey says he’s got time to help out, and will give us a tour of other noteworthy Chicago demolitions during next Wednesday’s broadcast of the Afternoon Shift. But the conversation should start here and now: If you know of a notable (in your opinion or others’) building that has been lost to history, please name and describe that building in the comment section.

Here’s one entry to get us started.

The Chicago Stock Exchange: the grandaddy of controversial demolitions

The original Chicago Stock Exchange has been gone for over 40 years, but chances are you have seen its remnants. Its arched entrance lives on the corner of Columbus and Monroe outside the Art Institute; the original trading room is tucked into the museum’s interior. Designed by Louis Sullivan, along with his partner Dankmar Adler, the exchange, which showcased Sullivan’s flare for ornamentation, was completed in 1894 and torn down less than 100 years later. Mayor Richard J. Daley’s plans to demolish the building in the 1960s sparked a bitter struggle, at a time when little emphasis was placed on architectural preservation. No one did more to trumpet the preservationist cause than photographer Richard Nickel, a Sullivan enthusiast who gained local recognition for traveling the country documenting the Chicago architect’s body of work. Nickel died in 1972 while photographing the Stock Exchange’s destruction.

Becky Vlamis is a WBEZ producer. Follow her @bvlamis

Chicago diners, side of extra crispy stories

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:12:00 -0500

The Slinger. The Jumpball. The Garbage Plate. The Deuces Wild RIP.

If you’re a regular at Chicago-area diners, you may know that these are the names of some legendary signature specials. And if you don’t yet, you’re in for a treat because Curious Citizen Rachel Kimura asked us:

"Where are the area's oldest diners and what are their stories?"

Rachel elaborated: "I love going to diners where it is evident that the waitresses and cooks have been around forever and probably have many stories to tell. I love that diners are a place where families, blue-collar workers, elderly couples, and hung-over twenty somethings can eat together."

Me too, Rachel. When Curious City creator and producer Jennifer Brandel asked if I’d investigate the question, I said (paraphrasing), Heck yeah.

I wrote, “I'm a lifelong fan of diners, thanks to the only grandfather I ever knew, the late, great Frank Hugh. I remember three of his diners vividly. One was an actual old railroad dining car parked just west of my great-grandfather's laundry on Grand Avenue.”

OK, so back to Rachel’s question(s): Old? Check. Thanks to domu’s terrific list of vintage Chicago restaurants.

But how do we define a diner? As I wrote previously, our friends at Chicagoist happened to have listed their favorite diners recently. With all due respect, not all their favorites are diners — at least not in my book.

After a Waffle Combo Meal with two eggs over easy, ham, hash browns and coffee at Cozy Corner Restaurant and Pancake House in Chicago (the Kelvyn Park location, not the 1977 original Logan Square location) I came to a decision. How will we define a diner?

I know it when I see it.

A detour, for the sake of comparison

But first, I had to go off to Asia for work, which actually helped further define our diner parameters.

In Shanghai, I went on a futile search for the Four Heavenly Kings: dabing (Chinese pancake), youtiao (Chinese fry bread), steamed sticky rice ball and soy milk. This was once the most common breakfast order on land first settled in the 5th century, in the most populous city in the world. But, I was told repeatedly, it’s old fashioned street food that they didn’t have. Would I like tea or caffè latte instead?

In Singapore I made my way to the original 1919 location of Killiney Kopitiam, the oldest coffee shop in the Southeast Asian city-state-island country. Their specialty is a thick crust version of the national breakfast: kaya toast with soft cooked eggs, and coffee.

So after a global diner race against a ticking clock, I further refined our diner parameters: They would be diners on an endangered species list. And perhaps they could represent us on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. Some are more “endangered” than others, and one is, in fact, extinct.

1920s to 1950s Pullman Rail Journeys

But before we tell some of the stories of the area’s oldest diners, we need to visit the origin story. Luckily history had pulled into the station. At Chicago’s Amtrak yard we visited some of the original Pullman train cars, which date between the ‘20s and ‘50s. There, we spoke with executive chef Daniel Traynor and head steward Jason Makor as they prepared to depart for New Orleans. George Pullman established his eponymous company in 1862. Traynor has researched Pullman culinary history and explained that every line had a signature French toast. Pullman bread, the dense, crumbed white bread still baked in a lidded metal pan, was invented to fit in tight train galleys. Makor to this day recreates the meticulous table settings; in particular, he uses doilies for every compartmentalized dish, as Pullman himself dictated until his death in 1897. Traynor explained that dining cars once connected farmers, local food producers, diners, and chefs. These dining cars also contributed to a long-term trend; the cars were self-contained, meaning they could operate as free-standing restaurants. So when dining cars went out of commission, some became the diners we know today.

1926 Franks Diner in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Husband and wife owners Julie Rittmiller and Kevin Ervin clarified a common misconception about Franks: It is not, in fact, a repurposed railroad diner car. In 1926 Greek immigrant Anthony Franks bought the brand new restaurant from Jerry O'Mahony Inc., "Lunch Car Builders," in Bayonne, N.J. It was shipped on rail flat car (hence its design), and it was filled with dishware and flatware, too. Julie showed us the original bread box which will be refurbished and displayed. She said the diner is haunted by an unknown female ghost who — late one night — blew open a storeroom door. This, it turned out, was helpful, mostly because Julie’s hands happened to be full at the time. Franks special: the Garbage Plate.

1933 Moon’s Sandwich Shop, Chicago

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Moon’s opened in 1933 and was named for its former moonshiner owners. In its current building since 1947, you may notice most everyone in the room — in front of the counter, as well as behind it — is African-American. Except perhaps for a few longtime regulars and owner Jim Radek, who’s a cross between Bruce Willis and Al Pacino. Radek, a former regular due to his work as a neighborhood police officer, told us the harrowing tale of one rough day. Nearly two dozen locals chased a guy into Moon’s, or rather to its threshold. Radek told them they couldn’t continue the pursuit because Moon’s was a sanctuary. Like church. And so it was and remains to this day. Moon’s special: the Jumpball.

1937 Diner Grill, Chicago

Open 24 hours a day since 1937 (“March 15 8AM,” to be precise, according to the original framed black and white photo behind the counter). Managers Ricardo Hernandez (days) and Kenny Coster (nights) have been working the grill for 12 and 11 years, respectively. The restaurant is an old trolley car and sits at the end of its former trolley line. The busiest hours are between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Ricardo once worked the night shift himself and says he doesn’t know how Kenny still does it. Kenny says he’s had to talk would-be pole dancers down during their night of revelry. While passing out is not encouraged, they do let diners sleep it off, presumably if they can stay perched on the stools. Diner Grill’s special: the Slinger.

1960 Ohio House Coffee Shop, Chicago

While the coffee shop dated back 53 years, owner Cathy Roquemore was there about 30. Cathy served the last Deuces Wild on Sunday, April 28, 2013. After more than three decades behind the counter, she was given 30 days to vacate. Cathy started out as an employee — the only employee, actually. The former owner, a drinking buddy of her husband’s, came to her house and said, “Cathy, I need you!” She bought the place herself when her husband died. She said she was going to take a two-week break then decide what to do next. Regulars can find Cathy, former waitress Kim Jurgensen, and each other on their Facebook page, Save the Ohio House Coffee Shop. Ohio House Coffee Shop special: Deuces Wild RIP.

A big thanks to Chicago’s most notable diner owners and managers who also took the time to chat:

1923 Lou Mitchell’s manager Heleen Thanas
1938 Palace Grill owner George Lemperis
1939 White Palace Grill owner George Liakopoulos
1947 Silver Palm owner David Gevercer

When I started investigating Rachel’s diner question, I’d written, “I will be carrying my own personal bottle of real maple syrup, and my own thermally insulated whipped cream.”

I didn’t. Because that wouldn’t have been nice. And one of the rules at diners: Be nice or leave. Pass me the pancake syrup, because I’d like to stay and hear some more stories.

Follow Louisa Chu @louisachu.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the company that Anthony Franks bought his restaurant from. The company's name is Jerry O'Mahony Inc., "Lunch Car Builders," of Bayonne, N.J.

David Misch: A History of Comedy

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:35:00 -0500

David Misch discusses his new book Funny: The Book — Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Comedy. Ripped from the pages of his award-eligible book Misch presents The History of Ha! a some-holds-barred survey of absolutely everything funny that's ever happened. From ancient Tricksters to Modern Family, Mr. Misch looks at what comedy is, where it comes from and where it's going (oddly enough, Philadelphia).

Among David Misch's TV and movie credits are the Emmy-nominated Mork and Mindy, the Emmy-losing Duckman, the Emmy-besotted Saturday Night Live, and the Emmy-ineligible The Muppets Take Manhattan. He's also a playwright, songwriter, blogger, teacher and recovered stand-up comic.

Recorded live Monday, May 13, 2013 at the Harold Washington Library Center.

Mayor Richard M. Daley: An Appraisal

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:21:00 -0500

Keith Koeneman writes about Chicago history, politics and culture. His recently released book on the retired mayor of Chicago, "First Son: The Biography of Richard M. Daley," was built on unprecedented access to the key players in the long-running Daley administration. The book tells the story of a complicated leader—sensitive and tough, impatient and persistent—who as mayor not only ran but also embodied Chicago.

In First Son: The Biography of Richard M. Daley, Koeneman chronicles the complex and often contradictory life of an American political legend. Through more than 100 interviews, he tells an up-close, insider story of political triumph and personal evolution, highlighting Daley’s achievements and mistakes.

Koeneman also demonstrates how Daley’s influence expanded beyond his beloved city, especially after protégés Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, as well as his confidant and brother Bill Daley, became major players under President Obama.

Recorded live Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at Elmhurst College.

The story of Dunning, a 'tomb for the living'

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:35:00 -0500

For a long time, Chicagoans were scared of Dunning. The very name “Dunning” gave them chills. People were afraid they would end up in that place.

Today, the Chicago neighborhood, out on the city’s Far Northwest Side, looks like a middle-class suburb. “If peace and quiet are what you seek, look no further than Dunning,” the Chicago Tribune wrote in 2009. Some of the area’s younger residents have no idea what used to be there: an insane asylum, a home for the city’s poorest people, and cemeteries where the poor were buried.

“I grew up in this area,” says Michael Dotson, who is 29. “I’ve passed by this vicinity a hundred times, and never knew anything about it.” Dotson recently stumbled across a website that mentioned the old Dunning asylum. And then he saw a headline claiming that 38,000 bodies might be lying underneath the old Dunning grounds, their burial places unmarked.

That prompted Dotson to pose this question to Curious City:

What’s the history behind Cook County’s former Dunning Insane Asylum and the people buried near there?

It’s a long history with many dark chapters. Curious City can’t detail the entire history, so we focused on finding out who lived at Dunning — and who is still lying in Dunning’s unmarked graves. In both life and death, the people who ended up at Dunning were some of Chicago’s least fortunate residents.

Here’s how historian Perry Duis describes Dunning’s reputation in his 1998 book “Challenging Chicago”:

For many generations of Chicago children, bad behavior came to a halt with a stern warning: “Be careful, or you’re going to Dunning.” The prospect sent shivers down the spines of youngsters, who regarded it as the most dreaded place imaginable.

Chicago resident Steven Hill, who is 60, recalls: “It was a term used in the ’50s and ’60s — ‘If you and your brothers and sisters don’t behave, we’ll send you to Dunning.’ And that used to scare kids, because they knew that it was a mental institution.”

Mundelein resident Ross Goodrich, who is 81, heard a similar expression growing up on the West Side in the 1930s and ’40s. “Whenever anyone would act a little nutsy, any of the kids, we’d say, ‘Oh, gotta send them to Dunning.’ It was a pretty common expression,” he says.

Hill and Goodrich are interested in the history of Dunning because both of them had great-grandparents who died in the institution in the early 1900s.

The complex occupied 320 acres of land between Irving Park Road and Montrose Avenue, stretching west from Naragansett Avenue to Oak Park Avenue.

It was never actually named Dunning. But the property just south of it was owned by the Dunning family — so when the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway extended a line to the area in 1882, the stop was named Dunning Station. And then people started calling the institution “Dunning.” (In its early years, people sometimes called it “Jefferson,” since it’s part of Jefferson Township.)

When it opened in 1854, it wasn’t an insane asylum. The Cook County Infirmary was a “poor farm” and almshouse. County officials opened its doors to people who had fallen on hard times and found themselves unable to earn a living.

“They didn’t provide very many services,” says Joseph J. Mehr, a Springfield clinical psychologist who wrote about Dunning in his 2002 book, “An Illustrated History of Illinois Public Mental Health Services.”

“What they really provided were a place to sleep and food,” he says. “And that was pretty much the extent of it.”

But from the very beginning, many of the poor people who were sent to live at the almshouse had mental illnesses. “In some ways, it’s almost similar to what we have today,” Mehr says, “in that we have a lot of people who are homeless and living on the streets, and a significant portion of them are people who are mentally ill.”

So the county added an “Insane Department” at the almshouse. And then, in 1870, it built a separate Cook County Insane Asylum on the grounds.

“The feeling was it’s better to isolate the population of the mentally handicapped, the indigent, and keep them far away from the city proper,” Chicago historian Richard C. Lindberg says.

But Mehr sees another motivation behind the asylum’s location, far from downtown Chicago. “The idea was to get people who were disturbed out of stress-inducing situations,” he says. “Asylums were built out in the country, and they were really pastoral, bucolic places where people could relax.”

That was the idea, anyway. In reality, Dunning was chronically overcrowded, and patients were neglected and abused.

“You could think of this place as the prototypical evil dark asylum of literature,” Mehr says. “There wasn’t much treatment. People … weren’t fed well. The food was terrible — weevil-filled. … People didn’t get the kind of medical care that they ought to get. … For many, many years, it was really a terrible place.”

Abuse and corruption

In 1874, a Tribune reporter described Dunning’s poorhouse as “a shambling, helter-skelter series of wooden buildings” where dejected-looking people with matted hair and tattered clothing were “crowded and herded together like sheep in the shambles, or hogs in the slaughtering-pens.”

“The rooms swarm with vermin,” an attendant told the reporter. “The cots and bed-clothing are literally alive with them. We cannot keep the men clean, and we cannot drive the parasites away unless they are clean.”

The reporter couldn’t take the smell in the room, exclaiming: “For Heaven’s sake let us get out; this stench is unbearable.”

Political corruption was part of the problem at Dunning. County officials treated it as a patronage haven, hiring pals and cronies who had no expertise in handling mental patients. Employees got drunk on duty, partying and dancing late at night in the asylum. Some of the asylum’s top authorities used taxpayer money to decorate their offices and hold lavish parties while patients were suffering in squalor.

“Everybody was a political hiree,” says Al Opitz, a neighborhood historian. “So consequently, they had nobody to report to other than the political boss.”

In an 1889 court case, Cook County Judge Richard Prendergast described Dunning as “a tomb for the living.” He criticized the asylum for squeezing 1,000 patients into a space better suited for 500. “The presence of so many lunatics in a room irritates all,” Prendergast said. “Fighting among the patients at night is frequent.”

That same year, two attendants at the Dunning asylum were charged with murdering patient Robert Burns. They’d kicked him in the stomach and given him a gash on the head. A defense attorney claimed these “blows and kicks … were beneficial to the insane man, as they were a sort of stimulus or tonic,” according to the Tribune. Jurors acquitted the attendants, blaming Dunning’s overcrowding rather than the actions of individual employees.

Even under the best of conditions, doctors didn’t have many effective treatments for people suffering from mental illness. The only drugs they had at their disposal were sedatives. “If a person was terribly agitated, they might dose them with chloral hydrate, which would pretty much knock them out,” Mehr says. “That’s the ingredient in what used to be called a Mickey Finn in a bar.”

According to an 1886 state investigation, one of the sedatives used at Dunning was a mixture containing chloral hydrate as well as cannabis, hops and potash. The investigation also found that Dunning was serving two kegs of beer a day; patients as well as employees were apparently drinking the beer.

The same state probe harshly criticized the food Dunning served to its inmates. A lack of fruit and fresh vegetables had caused an epidemic of scurvy, with about 200 patients suffering from the illness. “The cooking, we are convinced, was bad,” the investigators said.

In spite of all their appalling discoveries, the investigators quoted one doctor who said “there were some attendants who were most excellent, who were conscientious, and endeavored to mitigate the sufferings of the insane in every way possible.” But these employees were in the minority, and they felt intimidated by Dunning’s irresponsible workers.

The situation inside the Dunning poorhouse seemed somewhat better by 1892. A journalist who visited that year didn’t encounter the same horrors others had witnessed in earlier times. But she reported that many of the poorhouse residents were “too old and infirm to do anything except sit about in joyless groups.” The superintendent told her that many people ended up in the poorhouse as a result of alcoholism. “Whisky brings the most of them,” he said, adding, “They’re foreigners mostly.”

Insanity cases in the news

In that era, Chicago newspapers often reported the stories of local people suffering from mental illness, openly describing their symptoms and sometimes publishing their names. In many of these stories, patients were taken first to the Cook County Detention Hospital (at the northwest corner of Polk and Wood streets), where judges ordered them committed at Dunning.

Here’s a sample of several cases reported in 1897:

Frank Johnson was committed to Dunning after he cut off his right hand in a fit of religious mania. “I think he will grow again,” he told a judge.
John E.N., 28, believed he was Jesus Christ.
Timothy O’B. became “a raving maniac” after a policeman struck him in the head.
William Mitchell, 43, an extremely emaciated African-American man, said he was hearing “the voices of spirits” and believed that people were “after him for murderous purposes.”
Theresa K., 35, was sent to Dunning after she refused to eat, declaring that her food was poisoned.
Catherine T., 56, “was something like a wild cat.” Maggie Mc., who may have fractured her skull five years earlier, was described as “silly, helpless, Irish, very poor, and 28 years of age.”
Fredericka W., 35, who was unkempt with a weather-beaten complexion, was sent to Dunning after a policeman found her sitting in a park. She said she “was searching for a prince, who had promised her marriage.”
William L., 45, was arrested when a policeman found him “wandering about the boulevards ogling women and girls.” After hearing the details of the case, a judge declared, “Dunning.” As the bailiff quickly hustled William L. toward the door, the patient turned around and shouted, “It doesn’t take long to do up a man here!”

Patients like these were sent by train from the Cook County Detention Hospital to Dunning. “It was a hospital car, and they had a doctor aboard and a couple of nurses,” Opitz says. “The train was called the ‘crazy train.’ … There was a guard on both ends so people couldn’t get out.”

About half of Dunning’s patients suffered from “chronic mania,” according to the asylum’s annual report for 1890. Other patients had conditions described as melancholia, impulsive insanity, monomania and circular insanity. The doctors listed masturbation as one of the most common “exciting causes” of insanity among Dunning’s male patients. According to the report, other patients had become insane as a result of religious excitement, domestic trouble, spiritualism, sunstrokes, disappointment in love, alcohol, abortion, narcotics, puberty and overwork.

Dunning’s unmarked graves

Throughout its early history, Dunning also included cemeteries — not only for poorhouse residents and asylum inmates who died, but also for anyone who died in Cook County and whose family couldn’t afford to pay for a burial. Some bodies were moved to Dunning from the Chicago City Cemetery, which was underneath what is now Lincoln Park. The people buried at Dunning include 117 victims of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and Civil War veterans — including Thomas Hamilton McCray, a Confederate brigadier general who moved to Chicago after the war and died in 1891.

One of the most notorious people buried at Dunning was Johann Hoch, a bigamist who was believed to have married 30 women and murdered at least 10 of them. After he was hanged at Cook County Jail in 1906, other cemeteries refused to accept his body. “In that little box that they had made at the jail, the remains of Hoch were buried anonymously somewhere on the grounds at Irving and Naragansett,” says Lindberg, who told the story in his 2011 book “Heartland Serial Killers.”

The same fate befell George Gorciak, a Hungarian immigrant who died penniless in 1895, succumbing to typhoid. His family took his body to Graceland Cemetery, apparently unaware that they needed to pay for a plot there. By the end of the day, they’d hauled his coffin out to Dunning, where burials were free in the potter’s field.

The burials at Dunning included many orphans and infants — and adults whose identities were a mystery. In 1912, an “Unknown Man” who’d apparently stabbed himself to death was placed in the ground at Dunning.

Scandals sometimes erupted over bodies being stolen from Dunning’s cemetery by people who wanted them for anatomy demonstrations. In one 1897 case, four bodies were taken as they were being prepared for burial. Henry Ullrich, a watchman who worked at Dunning, was convicted of selling the corpses to Dr. William Smith, a medical professor in Missouri.

The professor claimed that the watchman had offered to kill a “freak” and sell him the body. Smith recalled telling Ullrich, “I only want the dead ones.” Ullrich supposedly replied, “That’s all right, Doc … he’s in the ‘killer ward’ and they’d just think he’d wandered off. They’re always doing that, you know.”

County officials denied the existence of a “killer ward.”

State takes control

In 1910, Dunning’s poorhouse residents were moved to a new infirmary in Oak Forest. And in 1912, the state took over the Dunning asylum from Cook County, changing the official name to Chicago State Hospital.

Conditions had already been improving at Dunning over the previous decade, Mehr says. One reason was the construction of smaller buildings to house patients. And a civil service law passed in 1895 had decreased the problems with patronage. After the state took control, Mehr says, “It ended the scandals around the issue of graft and corruption.” But incidents of patients being abused still made news from time to time, he says.

Ross Goodrich says his great-grandmother, an immigrant from Prague named Fannie Hrdlicka (pronounced Herliska), was placed in Dunning when she became depressed after one her children died.

According to the family story, he says, “When the baby died, my great-grandmother rocked the baby for a couple of days, and wouldn’t let it out of her arms. And then she was placed in Dunning because they thought she was a little crazy. But we suspect it could have been a case of postpartum depression. … If she was having mental difficulties of any kind, I’m not sure that there were any other places available in those days for her to go.”

Hrdlicka was released from Dunning and then readmitted. She died there in 1918.

Steven Hill says he doesn’t know why his great-grandfather, John Ohlenbusch, was living at Dunning when he died in 1910. But the death certificate says he had dementia, so Hill suspects Ohlenbusch may have had what later became known as Alzheimer’s disease. Hill says his grandmother never discussed her father’s death at Dunning.

“People did not talk about the rough lifestyles they had and how poor they were,” Hill says. “But I do know they had a very, very tough life.”

Goodrich and Hill would like to find out more about what happened to their ancestors at Dunning, but documents are not easy to find. The Illinois State Archives in Springfield has Chicago State Hospital’s admission and discharge records from 1920 to 1951, but you need a court order to see them. Some early Cook County records, showing patients who were sent to Dunning between 1877 and 1887, are available for anyone to see in the state archives branch at Northeastern Illinois University.

Changing mental health treatments

In the first half of the 20th century, Chicago State Hospital used several different treatments for mental illness. Hydrotherapy used hot or cold water to soothe people who were depressed or agitated. Fever treatments induced high temperatures to kill off bacteria in the brains of patients with syphilis.

Lobotomies were not performed at Chicago State Hospital, but Mehr says the hospital did send some of its patients elsewhere for the treatment, which cuts the brain’s frontal lobe. “That’s like shooting someone in the head with a shotgun,” he says.

For a time, some patients at Dunning and other Illinois hospitals were given electroshock therapy “once a day, every day for years, which is just an absolute abomination,” Mehr says. “That was a terrible thing to do.”

A new era of psychiatric treatment began in 1954, with the discovery Thorazine, the first in a new wave of drugs that directly affected the symptoms of mental illness.

Mehr, 71, worked for a year at Chicago State Hospital, during an internship from 1964 to 1965. He says the conditions he witnessed were vastly superior to the travesties of Dunning’s early history. “My impressions weren’t all that bad,” he says. And yet, he adds, “The problem … was that these state hospitals were overcrowded.”

Chicago State Hospital’s buildings closed after it merged in 1970 with the nearby Charles F. Read Zone Center, which had opened on the west side of Oak Park Avenue in 1965. Since 1970, it has been known as Chicago-Read Mental Health Center. Today, for better or worse, fewer people with mental illnesses stay for prolonged periods of time in hospitals.

Bodies discovered in 1989

In the years after Chicago State Hospital closed, the state sold much of the property. Today, the land includes the Dunning Square shopping center, which is anchored by a Jewel store; the campus of Wright College; the Maryville Center for Children; and houses and condominiums.

State officials apparently didn’t realize that human bodies were buried underneath a section of the Dunning land when they sold it to Pontarelli Builders, which began work putting up houses. In 1989, a backhoe operator working on the project found a corpse. The state had recently passed a law requiring archaeological assessments before construction is allowed on any property where human remains have been found, so archaeologist David Keene was hired to examine the site. Keene was on the faculty at Loyola University at the time, and now he runs his own company, Archaeological Research.

“The area was just littered with human remains, with human bone all over the place, where they had disturbed things,” he says.

Keene has a vivid recollection of that corpse found by the backhoe. It appeared to be a Civil War veteran. Much of the body was still intact, probably because it had been embalmed with arsenic, a common treatment at the time, which would kill any organisms that would try to consume the flesh.

“He was cut in half at the waist by the backhoe,” Keene says. “His skin was in relatively good condition … I mean, you could see his face. But there was considerable deterioration on the face. You could see the mustache. You could see his hair. He had red hair, but it was patchy. The other distinguishing features of the face were no longer there. And he had a jacket on … it was obviously a military jacket. We only saw it briefly. We didn’t spend a lot of time with it — mostly because the odor was unbelievable, to say the least.”

Keene guided a careful excavation of the land around this gruesome discovery — stopping the digging whenever a coffin or human remains were revealed. He determined that a five-acre cemetery was hidden, just northwest of the current-day corner of Belle Plaine and Neenah avenues. As a result of Keene’s findings, that property was set aside as the Read-Dunning Memorial Park, which was dedicated in 2002. Construction was allowed on the land south of it.

This was just the second-oldest of three cemeteries on the Dunning grounds. The earliest cemetery was near the original poorhouse, just west of Naragansett Avenue and north of Belle Plaine. County officials had supposedly moved the bodies out of that cemetery into the second graveyard, but Keene says bodies did turn up there during another construction project. “We found a little over 30 individuals there, and we were able to remove them so (the developer) could build his building there,” Keene says.

And when Wright College was under construction on the former asylum grounds in the early 1990s, scattered human remains surfaced there, too, Keene says.

“A femur would pop up,” he says. “And it wasn’t associated with a grave of any sort. It was just mixed in with the soil from previous construction and removal of buildings in the past. In this area, you can walk into any one of these yards and dig in the flowerbeds and come up with human remains. They’re part of the scattered remains from construction activity that took place in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. Every time they built a building, human remains would go flying.”

As Keene explains, state officials constructed hospital buildings between 1912 and the 1960s on this land without any regard to whether people had been buried there.

“The state came in and — as far as we can tell, from the archaeological evidence — removed any surface evidence of burials in the entire area,” Keene says. “They actually built right on top of graves.”

The third Dunning cemetery was located farther west — underneath what is now Oak Park Avenue near Chicago-Read Mental Health Center. While Keene was conducting his investigation in 1989, some workers walked over and told him they’d found human remains while they were working on a broken water main at Chicago-Read’s entrance.

“So we just walked over there,” Keene recalls. “And sure enough, there were human remains everywhere. And so we began doing some research there to figure out what the boundaries were.”

Keene says it’s obvious that someone must have known about the existence of those graves when the road was put on top of them. “It’s pretty clear,” he says. “When we were there — and this is just the plumbers trying to get to the leak — they were cutting right through coffins. So somebody had to cut through some of those coffins in order to put the original lines in.”

In 1989, genealogist Barry Fleig studied the available records about Dunning and documented that more than 15,000 people had been buried in the graveyards there. But the records are incomplete, and Fleig extrapolated that the total is closer to 38,000.

Opitz says the county’s record keeping was slipshod. “So consequently, the number of cadavers or people that were buried here is somewhat nebulous,” he says.

The exact figure is unknown, but Keene says 38,000 is a reasonable estimate. For Keene, the lesson of the Dunning graveyards is that burial places are not as permanent as many people think they will be.

Neighborhood resident Silvija Klavins-Barshney, 50, says she was shocked when she found out about Dunning’s graveyards a couple of years ago. She serves as the vice president of the church board of the Latvian Lutheran Zion Church, which is located inside a building that was part of Chicago State Hospital. After learning about the Dunning cemeteries, she created a Facebook page called “38,000 Souls Forgotten: The Read-Dunning Memorial Project.” She hopes she can persuade city or state officials to improve the Read-Dunning Memorial Park, such as adding landscaping or a more substantial monument.

The Illinois Department of Central Management Services owns and maintains the park.

“The more research I did, the more I felt that the story needs to get out,” she says, “because most of the people … who were buried here are people that were forgotten in life. They were just left. Or disposed of. Or hidden. And if that’s how they lived their lives, how dare we allow them to live their afterlife like that? … How can 38,000 people be buried and then forgotten?”

Michael Dotson — who posed the question about Dunning for Curious City — visited the Read-Dunning Memorial Park with WBEZ in April. “When you look around the vicinity, you see apartments and condos and houses and a college and construction going on in the background,” he said. “It’s really hard to … realize what was here. But if you can kind of separate yourself from all of that, there’s just that slight feeling of fear and dread and a little bit of sadness and also fascination. … It’s crazy to think what was here and what’s here now and that we’ve completely lost sight of that.”

Robert Loerzel is a freelance journalist and the author of “Alchemy of Bones: Chicago’s Luetgert Murder Case of 1897.” Follow him at @robertloerzel.

Whatever, NYC. Here’s a letter to Chicago we can get behind

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 06:00:00 -0500

Rachel Shteir got you down? If you haven’t already, check out Neil Steinberg’s response (and his cabbie’s) to the drubbing he and the city of Chicago received in the review Shteir did for the New York Times Sunday Book Review last week. Or, you might want to consider this self-described “love letter” to Chicago from another writer, Michael Hainey.

Hainey’s story is in some ways the opposite of Shteir’s. While Shteir bemoaned her exile from New York to Chicago, Hainey, a hometown boy, settled in New York as an adult but never lost his connection to Chicago. He’s now a deputy editor at GQ, but his most recent book takes a deeply personal look back at the city of his birth, from the smell of boiling cabbage wafting through the doorways of every house on his block, to the sight of fall leaves blowing through the alleys.

“Even as a kid I felt these roots here,” Hainey said in a recent interview with Bill Savage, a professor of literature, history and culture at Northwestern. (Savage, by the way, also had words for Shteir.) In After Visiting Friends, Hainey refers to Chicago as “my old country,” a place that he “would always be pining for.”

Of course, loving Chicago and pining for it doesn’t mean you can’t also see its faults. His descriptions are as intimate as they’re grittily realistic.

Hainey’s had his own experience with the city’s sometimes disturbing underbelly. His father, Bob, was a rising star reporter at the Sun-Times in the ‘60s. But he turned up dead one night when Michael was just six, leaving a stunned and fractured family behind. Obituaries said the elder Hainey, just 35 then, died “after visiting friends,” but it was never clear to Michael what really happened. So he spent 10 years investigating his father’s death, and in the process, came to a new understanding of the city he loved.

Hainey’s been tight-lipped about what mysteries he solved in the process of his reporting – you’ll have to buy the book to find out what really happened to his dad. But in the audio above, you can hear him explain to Savage how – in the tradition of great Chicago memoirists before him – the city became a character in his book.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Michael Hainey and Bill Savage spoke at an event presented by Chicago Public Library in February of 2013. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Robin Amer is a producer on WBEZ’s digital team. Follow her on Twitter @rsamer.

Did a WWII nuclear experiment make the U of C radioactive?

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:12:00 -0500

In 1942 Enrico Fermi and a team of physicists at the University of Chicago built a nuclear reactor in a squash court under the South Side university’s football field. Their successful experiment was a key step toward the creation of the first atomic bomb and, eventually, nuclear power. Impressive, but numerous accounts say the primitive test reactor was constructed with little shielding to protect the outside world from radiation. The story led Mark Eifert, a Chicago native now living in Germany, to wonder:

The first ever self-sustained nuclear reaction was conducted under the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field. Is that site still radioactive?

Mark suggested we find someone with a Geiger counter to take a measurement, so we took him up on it.

But who has a Geiger counter? Meet James Marsicek, the radiation safety officer at the University of Chicago. And yes, Marsicek explained, every major university has a radiation safety officer, because “in a clinical setting, many faculty use radioactive material for either diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.”

I joined Marsicek in the Administration Building, about a block away from where Stagg Field used to sit, and we took a control reading there. As Marsicek fired up his Geiger counter, he explained that “there’s radiation all around us, naturally occurring.” This “background radiation,” he said, will usually measure anywhere from about .02 to .03 millirems per hour on a Geiger counter, and indeed, when we looked at the Geiger counter’s needle, that’s where it landed.

From the Administration Building we walked about a block north, stopping near a bronze sculpture designed by Henry Moore that commemorates the first self-sustained nuclear reaction. This spot is close to what used to be Stagg Field, so Marsicek took another reading. The needle again registered .02, the equivalent of normal background radiation. We walked about fifty yards away in the direction of a library building and took another measurement. Same thing.

As we left the memorial and the site of the former reactor, we passed a student giving a tour. “Over here was where the first sustained nuclear reaction took place,” he explained. Before long, he added, “Don’t’ worry, it isn’t dangerous.” Apparently, Mark’s question is on others’ minds, too — seven decades after the experiment ran.

With the help of technology we can breathe a sigh of relief; there’s no undue danger in this corner of the campus, at least not from radiation. But, like I said, the nuclear reactor in question was primitive. So ... were the safety precautions from that time primitive, too? And, why would Fermi risk the chance of any nuclear mishap at a Chicago university in the first place?

The inner workings of Chicago Pile 1

For several weeks in the winter of 1942 Fermi’s scientists and laborers toiled in the unheated squash court underneath the University of Chicago’s abandoned football field, building what was named “Chicago Pile 1.” They called it a “pile” because that’s what it was: a pile of uranium pellets and graphite bricks, stacked ever-so-precisely. It was so cold most days that technicians and scientists could see their breath. They tried building fires in trash cans, but the room filled with smoke. The pile, which would eventually grow into a spherical shape, was built in meticulous layers, and the men (and one woman) worked in twelve-hour shifts, day and night. Directing the whole operation – his lab coat black with graphite dust – was a physicist named Enrico Fermi.

Just three years earlier, some of Fermi’s contemporaries, including Albert Einstein, had urged President Franklin Roosevelt to commit the United States to building an atomic bomb before Germany could. Physicists believed that by splitting uranium atoms they could create a chain reaction and release immense amounts of energy, the likes of which had never been seen.

Top-secret research projects were started around the country, including the one at the University of Chicago led by physicist Arthur Compton. Fermi directed the experiment.

When Fermi began his work at the university, physicists had never witnessed a self-sustained chain reaction. They had crunched the numbers, of course, but no successful experiment had proved what the math had only suggested. Fermi, who had escaped from his native Italy with his Jewish wife, was known as a hands-on physicist — just the person for testing this theory in a real-world experiment.

Fermi’s pile was remarkable for its crude simplicity; it had neither mechanical parts nor wires. Instead, the pile consisted of alternating layers of uranium and graphite. Basically, it was just a stage to let the uranium do its thing: emit neutrons that would occasionally strike the nuclei of other uranium atoms, thus splitting off even more neutrons. The graphite served as a moderator, which would slow down the neutrons and make them more likely to strike additional uranium nuclei.

The pile was to become a giant beehive of neutrons buzzing with atomic life, but scientists could quash this activity by manipulating the pile’s only moving parts: cadmium rods. The element cadmium naturally absorbs neutrons, so when the rods were in place, the nuclear reaction would almost stop. To get the reaction going, scientists could pull the rods out of the pile and let stray neutrons buzz freely, striking more and more uranium nuclei. The team was aiming for criticality, the point at which, if you removed the cadmium rods and let the pile go, the chain reaction would continue exponentially on its own.

The team built the pile slowly; with each new layer Fermi would withdraw the cadmium rods and take a count of neutrons before placing the control rods back in the pile. As the workers and scientists milled more and more graphite, their faces grew black as coal miners’. Neighbors complained about the noise, not just from tools, but from the men singing to distract themselves from the monotonous work. The pile grew into a black igloo, 25 feet across at its equator and 20 feet tall from pole to pole. After 17 days of adding layers, Fermi knew the pile was big enough to reach criticality.

Couldn’t they do this in the woods?

Chicago Pile 1 was never meant to be under the University of Chicago’s former football field. Project managers originally wanted the full experiment to run in the Red Gate Woods, southwest of the city. But builders at Red Gate went on strike, so Compton and Fermi faced a decision: abandon the experiment, or move it. Fermi told Compton he felt confident that the pile could be built safely and effectively in the squash court under Stagg field.

“We did not see how a true nuclear explosion, such as that of an atomic bomb, could possibly occur,” Compton writes in his memoir. “But the amount of potentially radioactive material present in the pile would be enormous.”

The physicists I consulted about the 1942 experiment assured me that this was, in fact, a very low-risk experiment and that university physicists today routinely work with higher levels of radiation. This crude reactor could never have exploded like a bomb, which would require highly-enriched uranium. The worst-case scenario for the Chicago experiment? A primitive meltdown, with the pile catching fire and the uranium spewing more radiation.

Compton trusted Fermi, enough so that he chose to move forward with the experiment at Stagg Field without telling the University’s president. “The only answer he could have given would have been no, and this answer would have been wrong, so I assumed the responsibility myself,” said Compton in his memoirs.

On Dec. 2, 1942, Fermi ordered the last cadmium control rod removed from the pile, took a measurement, and declared the pile to be self-sustaining. And then, for a nerve-wracking 15 minutes, he let the reaction run its course while the neutron counters beeped out of control.

There are several accounts of this, one of the best being in Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which includes this eyewitness account from Herbert Anderson: “First you could hear the sound of the neutron counter, the clickety clack, clickety clack. Then the clicks came more and more rapidly and after a while they began to merge into a roar.”

Fermi and his team celebrated the achievement with muted enthusiasm. One of the scientists had brought a bottle of Chianti and they passed it around, drinking out of paper cups. According to Rhodes’ account, no one made a toast. No one said much of anything at all.

Eugene Wigner, another physicist on the project, recalls his realization of the far-reaching consequences of the event.

“Even though we had anticipated the success of the experiment, its accomplishment had a deep impact on us,” he wrote in an account detailed by Rhodes. “For some time we had known that we were about to unlock a giant; still, we could not escape an eerie feeling when we knew we had actually done it.”

The giant is buried

The following year Chicago Pile 1 was moved out to Red Gate woods, where it was intended to be in the first place. There, scientists reshaped it as a cube and renamed it Chicago Pile 2. When its physicist guardians felt they had learned all they could from the pile, they buried it in the woods. This burial site is on public land and even has a gravestone to befuddle unsuspecting hikers and other passersby. It reads:

The world's first nuclear reactor was rebuilt at this site in 1943 after initial operation at the University of Chicago. This reactor (CP-2) and the first heavy-water moderated reactor (CP-3) were major facilities around which developed the Argonne national laboratory. This site was released by the laboratory in 1956 and the US atomic energy commission then buried the reactors here.

The grave isn’t easy to find – Google Maps will lead you only to an unmarked trail-head and, after you arrive, you’ll find no sign saying “Nuclear reactor this way.” (This map below will help you on your adventure.) But if you're a little weak-kneed about visiting or you feel uncomfortable hitting up the stray jogger or hiker about the pile’s ultimate demise, you can find details and a museum-like tour at the nearby Argonne National Laboratory.

The burial site for Chicago Pile 1

Maid’s memoir gives glimpse at real life ‘Downton Abbey’

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 08:00:00 -0500

You may have heard of Anna and Mr. Bates, O’Brien and Thomas, but have you heard of Margaret Powell? Her 1968 memoir about servants’ life below the stairs of a stately English house was a direct inspiration for Downton Abbey and its popular predecessor, Upstairs, Downstairs.

Powell, born Margaret Langley in 1907, grew up in Sussex extremely poor. Her father, a house painter, and her mother, a charwoman or house cleaner, could barely support Margaret and her six siblings.

“I remember when we hadn’t anything left to use for warmth and no money to get coal,” she wrote in Below Stairs. “I said to Mum, ‘Get all the wood down. Let’s have a fire with wood.’ She took every single shelf there was in the rooms and she even took the banisters from the stairs. Things like this make you hard.”

Perhaps predicting her future success as a writer, Margaret won a scholarship to grammar school at age 13. But her parents couldn’t spare her, and sent her to work in a laundry by the time she was 15.

A year later Margaret found work as a kitchen maid in a stately Regency-style mansion in the posh Adelaide Crescent section of Hove, a town on England’s south coast. She recalled the first time she set foot in the house, which was home to a minister and his family:

“When my mother and I arrived at this house for the interview we went to the front door. In all the time I worked there, that was the only time I ever went in the front door. . . We were ushered into the hall and I thought it was the last word in opulence. There was a lovely carpet on the floor, and tremendously wide stairs carpeted right across, not like the tiny little bit of lino in the middle we had on our stairs. There was a great mahogany table in the hall and a mahogany hall stand, and huge mirrors with gilt frames. The whole thing breathed an aura or wealth to me. I thought they must be millionaires. I’d never seen anything like it.”

Powell died in 1984, but her legacy has been preserved – and not just through her memoir or shows like Downton. Chicago historian and actress Leslie Goddard has developed something of a specialty inhabiting the lives of famous women of yore. In an appearance in February, she took on the role of Powell, performing an adaptation of Below Stairs as the author herself.

In the audio above, you can hear Goddard perform as Powell. She describes the astonishing workload typical of a pre-war kitchen maid, and explains how the stark contrast between Powell’s impoverished upbringing and her newly lush surroundings eventually radicalized her politics.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Leslie Goddard performed at an event presented by Chicago Culinary Historians in February of 2013. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Robin Amer is a producer on WBEZ’s digital team. Follow her on Twitter @rsamer.

Dunning's dark past

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:37:00 -0500

Curious City is a news-gathering experiment designed to satisfy the public's curiosity. People submit questions, vote for their favorites, and WBEZ reports out the winning questions in real time, on Facebook, Twitter and the timeline above.

Mike Dotson from Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood is curious to know: "What’s the history behind Cook County’s former Dunning Insane Asylum and the people buried near there?" The site is now home to the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center. Freelance writer and photographer Robert Loerzel is digging into the history behind Dunning. Do you have family members or know anyone who was buried at Dunning or lived there? We'd love to speak with you. Comment below!

Wells Street Bridge construction then and now

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:00:00 -0500

Then: A Brown Line train rumbles over the Wells Street bridge in 1973, with the Merchandise Mart visible in the background. Now: The southern section of the bridge, now removed, rests on a floating barge. The northern section of the bridge will be replaced in April. (Collection of John R. Schmidt; WBEZ/Robin Amer)

Harried Brown Line commuters returned to their normal routine today, as “L” service resumed between the Merchandise Mart and the Loop. Service was suspended last week, giving the city time to replace half of the aging Wells Street Bridge, which carries the Brown Line across the Chicago River. Still, it’s a bit early to breathe a sigh of relief. In April the city will shut down the bridge again, in order to replace its northern half.

That lull should give you time to digest this incredible fact: The last time the city replaced the bridge in 1922, “L” service was suspended for just three days.

Backing up, the hulking burgundy section of bridge that workers shipped away on a barge this past week was not, in fact, the original Wells Street Bridge. That bridge – a floating one – was destroyed in a flood in 1849. Its replacement, a hand-operate wooden truss bridge, was incinerated by the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.

Wells Street got its first steel bridge the following year. It was a swing bridge, which was then replaced by a steam-powered swing bridge in 1888, which was then converted to run on electricity about a decade later. A second deck was added in 1896, giving the Wells Street Bridge its special burden: even today it’s just one of two bridges that carries elevated trains across the Chicago River.

This built history is laid out in a 1999 engineering survey conducted by preservationists at the National Park Service – who probably had no idea what commuting headaches they were foreshadowing when they wrote the following: “Because traffic on the elevated lines could not be diverted without great expense, replacement of double-decked bridges presented the engineers with the difficult task of maintaining elevated service during construction.”

Then: A train moves south across the Wells Street Bridge in 1928. It passes the clocktower of the Reid Murdoch Building, the 21-story Mather Tower, and the pagoda of the London Guarantee Building. Now: Pedestrians walk past the newly-installed southern half of the bridge. The Reid Murdoch clock tower, the tower of the River Hotel and Club Quarters at 75 E. Wacker Drive and the pagoda atop the Crain’s Communications building at 360 N. Michigan Ave. are still visible in the background. (Collection of John R. Schmidt; WBEZ/Robin Amer)

Sound familiar, Brown Line folks? The citizens of 1909 Chicago felt your pain: City engineers were faced with just such a task when the U.S. Department of War ordered Chicago to replace its swing bridges with ones that made river navigation easier that same year.

The city began with the bridge over Lake Street, and handed the reigns to Thomas G. Pihlfeldt.
The Norwegian-born engineer “admitted that the problem of replacing the bridge initially had him stumped,” according to the authors of the 1999 report. And here’s why: “In a twelve hour period, between seven in the morning and seven at night, 3,180 motorized vehicles, 1,000 elevated trains, 850 horse teams, and 7,000 pedestrians passed over the bridge.”

Those numbers sound quaint now, but the solution Pihlfeldt came up with is impressive even by today’s standards:

Essentially, they left the existing swing bridge in place as long as possible, and built the new bascule around it, in a fully vertical, elevated position. In this manner, elevated service was maintained across the old swing bridge and through the raised trusses of the new bridge under construction. As the replacement project neared completion, the old swing was cut away, and the leaves of the new bridge were lowered to the closed position so work could begin on the decking. Construction of the upper decking and elevated rails suspended rail service for only one week, and the project was hailed as a great success.

When plans began in 1916 to replace the Wells Street Bridge, “Pihlfeldt merely reapplied the formula that had worked so well at Lake Street.”

Of course, no one counted on World War I interrupting the city’s construction plans – and draining its coffers. It was another five years before the city could afford to tackle Wells Street.

When the city finally did move to replace the bridge in December of 1921, it did so under what the engineering study authors called a “tightly controlled construction process”:

At 7:00 p.m. Friday evening, the work crew closed the old bridge, and began to remove the elevated rails. Floodlights lit the construction site as darkness approached, and the flooring of the new bridge moved toward completion. Nearly round-the-clock work succeeded in cutting away the central portion of the swing bridge, installing new rails, removing approaches and adding new approaches in time to resume elevated service for the Monday morning rush hour.

Catch that? Elevated train service was interrupted for just three days (although pedestrians, cars and other vehicles weren’t allowed back on the bridge until February).

While playing the slideshow, push "X" for full screen. "Show info" displays captions.

Dan Burke, the Chicago Department of Transportation’s Deputy Commissioner and Chief Engineer, said he and his colleagues were very impressed by the last renovation of the Wells Street Bridge.

“What they did was ingenious. It was fantastic how they were able to build the new larger structure around the old one,” Burke said. “It set the bar pretty high.”

Unfortunately, conditions near the river were quite different in 2013, making it impossible to take the same approach. “The original swing bridge wasn't landlocked,” he said. “You didn’t have buildings abutting all four corners.”

“We found by taking a piece off, floating it away and installing the next piece, we were able to get it to a fairly tight closure window,” Burke said.

In the 1940s, city engineers calculated the lifespan of a moveable Chicago bridge at about 40 or 50 years. The Wells Street Bridge was in service for nearly twice that, and it’s hardly the only bridge that will need attention.

“A lot of those structures are going on 80, 90, 100 years old,” Burke said. “We currently have 40 movable bridges. . . to keep up with that pace you’re trying to do at least one a year.”

Luckily most of Chicago’s other bridges will be less complicated to renovate. Because they don’t carry “L” cars they can be shut down for longer periods of time. And because they’re historic structures they’ll likely be cared for in a more piecemeal way; Burke and his team can repair individual components rather than replace all the supporting trusses at once. “They’re iconic structures, and they’re still very serviceable,” he said. “In all likelihood we’ll maintain them in perpetuity.”

Next up, Burke has his eye on the bridges that cross LaSalle and Van Buren Streets. Here’s wishing him and his team speedy construction.