Chicago then and now : a pictorial history of the citys development and a reprint of the first city directory published in Chicago by J.W. Norris in 1844, Part 11

Author: Butt, Ernest; Norris, James Wellington, 1815?-1882
Publication date: 1933
Publisher: Chicago : Aurora, Finch & McCullouch
Number of Pages: 222


USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Chicago then and now : a pictorial history of the citys development and a reprint of the first city directory published in Chicago by J.W. Norris in 1844 > Part 11


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


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The incorporation of Chicago as a town was a curious affair judged by present-day standards. The state law pro- vided that any community of a hundred and fifty or more


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persons could, by taking formal action, incorporate. A meeting of the voters was called, thirteen men met, and twelve of the thirteen voted to incorporate. The thirteenth protested that the community did not have the required number of bona fide citizens. Evidently he was over-ruled or his conscience satisfied, because a short time later an election of town trustees was held and every one of the twenty-eight legal voters responded. Of these twenty-eight electors no fewer than thirteen were candidates for the five


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They called this "The Forks", where the Lake street bridge now opens to vessels from everywhere. In 1833 Elijah Wentworth's Wolf's Tavern, to the left, was the center of traffic, where one could obtain a room and take the bath in the river.


trusteeships, proving that even then political office dangled Golconda before the man in the street. With the election of the five-Beaubien, Dole, Kimberly, Miller, and Owen- did Chicago officially become a corporate unit with a future.


With the birth of Chicago Town came rising land val- ues. Prior to incorporation, land sold at $125 an acre. In '33, school land was sacrificed at less than $65 an acre, fol- lowed by wild speculation that brought the price of lots to $100 each. Then just prior to the panic of '37, a sort of practice depression for the debacle of 1929, a quarter-acre at the corner of State and Madison streets sold for $25,000. However, Chicago's first economic upset engulfed that figure in a wave of pessimism and the same quarter-acre sold for less than $3,000 in '38. Just to show how beautifully Chi- cago shook off that and succeeding slumps, the same parcel of land sold for $45,000 in the 50's, a quarter of a million after the Civil War, a million after the Fair of '93, more than three millions in 1926, and is worth about two millions today. A good imagination is needed to gauge its worth a century hence. Chicago possesses no hills, but there's gold aplenty in them thar canyons.


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Still, the sale of land at $125 an acre wasn't Chicago's first real estate transaction. In 1773, Wm. Murray, an English fur trader, negotiated with the Indians for two tracts of land east of the Mississippi, one north of the Illi- nois River and extending beyond the present site of Chicago, the other running south of the river about as far as present- day Kankakee. A consideration of five shillings and "cer- tain goods and merchandise," including, perhaps, iron pots, tobacco, and whiskey were conveyed to the not-so-wily red- skins in return. That Murray failed to keep his title to the land for any length of time is beside the point. The point is, he had it-a goodly slice of Chicagoland for some- thing less than five dollars! The value of that land today is beyond human computation.


After it became a corporate entity, Chicago's growth was as rapid as it was sure. Bridges displaced ferries over the river. When one of the bridges was washed away by a flood in 1837, the sum of $150 was assigned by the Common Council to replace it. Sloughs were drained. The first public school was founded in a church at Clark and Lake streets with twenty pupils. Churches lifted crosses to the heavens. Chicago, in short, looked up, tightened its belt, and gave rein to that "I Will" spirit; of which more anon. It's the Chicago theme song.


An early and difficult problem facing the corporate fathers was that of pulling the young town out of the mud. The land on which the community was built consisted of a soft, oozy silt rising gruel-like only a foot or two above the level of the lake. Streets were trochas of mud between rows


After the Massacre of 1812 Fort Dearborn remained a ruin until 1816, when it was rebuilt. In 1857 it was demolished. The ferry saw service until the same year, when a bridge replaced it.


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Chicago's first street: South Water, now Wacker Drive, from Siate to Dearborn, about two years after the Town was incorpor- ated. Structures shown include residences, a school, a commis- sion house, and one end of the first bridge over the river.


of log cabins. To get safely across the back yard to an out- house was an adventure. Ladies rashly crossing the streets unescorted lost their shoes, with few Sir Walter Raleighs around and about willing to lend aid. Stage coaches became mired and were abandoned for days until civic pride and a brace of sturdy oxen came to the rescue. With uncanny foresight and a minimum of oratory the town trustees gal- lantly performed their duty and employed a surveyor to grade the streets. Corner crossings were quickly provided with sluices of plank that turned the water into rude gut- ters and ran it back into the river. "I Will" became "I Did."


A volunteer hook and ladder company was formed in 1835, the trustees investing in an engine, four ladders, four saws, and four axes. Seven years later the first public water system was built at a cost of $24,000 . . . with a pumping capacity of 25 barrels a minute. The water was conveyed to homes through a system of wooden underground pipes. Even now sections of those ancient pipes are unearthed by workmen digging foundations for skyscrapers. And in as good condition as when they were laid down. They built for posterity plus in those days.


Newspapers sprang to life. The Chicago Democrat was first, its initial issue appearing November 26, 1833, a weekly four-page, six-column affair hot for the policies of Andrew Jackson. Two years later the Chicago American, another weekly, burst upon the news stands, if any, of that period.


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It took the other side of public questions, either pointing with pride or viewing with alarm, as the case may be. Any- way, with two papers functioning at seeming odds with one another, there was created the perfect balance of public opinion so essential to a smooth running democracy.


Much of Chicago's affluence is due to its newspapers. For the most part the publishers and editors have been men of substance, possessing extraordinary vision coupled with sensible aims and ideals for the city and its citizens, as well as the knack of bringing them home to roost by endless re- iteration in oceans of printer's ink. They, in no small mea- sure, have been responsible for the municipality's rapid growth, the development of its resources, the acquisition and spread of its culture. True, the growth of their papers and emoluments have kept pace with the community. For in- stance, the American became a daily in 1839, the first of its kind in the city's history. In 1836 "Long John" Went- worth, of sainted memory in the annals of Chicago and one of the most powerful personalities of his generation, obtained control of the Democrat. Next year, two months after the city was chartered, the council made Wentworth's opus the official publication of the city. Three years later-1840-he began to feel his power in shaping public opinion and like- wise turned the Democrat into a daily. The Journal came into existence in 1844, the Tribune in 1847, and the News in 1876. Others were started in other years and collapsed under the weight of quixotic ideals and obsolete printing presses. Only the fit survived. But as a whole, Chicago al-


DAILY TRIBUNE


BUIL


POST OFFICE


This is Newspaper Row in the early 50's, with a Post Ofice too small to handle the business of the growing city. The influence of Medill's Tribune, upstairs, was beginning to be felt, slowly displacing earlier papers with first with the latest.


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ways has had just reason to be proud of its splendid groups of newspapers. Each has done its bit in disseminating the doc- trine of "I Will" to the ends of the earth and back again. Soon after the Town's incorporation a rushing tide of immigration set in, causing an immediate reaction. The hum of industry was heard athwart the young community in constantly increasing volume. Saw mills dotted the landscape. A shingle mill was installed, likewise a blacksmith shop . . . horses, too had a habit of losing their shoes in the mud. Then in 1833, with people demanding better building mater- ials, a kiln and brickyard was opened by Tyler Blodgett on the river near Clark street. The proprietor promptly dem- onstrated the quality and utility of his merchandise by building the first brick house in Chicago as his private resi- dence on the river opposite his place of business.


The first iron foundry was built on the west side at Polk street and the river, turning out the first lot of cast- ings in 1835. What would those pioneers think were they to see the South Chicago and Gary of today, where Chicago- land has wrenched the sceptre of supremacy in iron and steel manufacture from the doughty east? "I Will" ever has thrived upon competition steeped in complacency.


The year the Town was incorporated saw the birth of one of Chicago's major industries : the manufacture of agri- cultural implements. The town blacksmith, Asahel Pierce, turned out the first "breaking" plow in his little shop at Lake and Canal streets. It was as crude as it was heavy and awkward, but it became the ancestor of all the plows and reapers and cultivators and wagons and buggies for which Chicago is still the hub. McCormick carried on after Pierce to be sure, but a visit to the Agricultural Group at A Century of Progress will demonstrate that Mr. Pierce surely started something.


So the lumber, brick, and iron industries had their be- ginnings; likewise agricultural implements, vehicles, and the building trades. Chicago focussed its eyes on the stars. Better homes, better furniture, better transportation were demanded ... and provided. The children were taking up education seriously. A lady was able to cross the street in comfort and safety. People ate, drank, worked, made merry, loved, married and died in perfect contentment. But- ter was six cents a pound, flour three dollars a barrel, room and board at the best hotels in town the stupendous sum of seventy-five cents a day. Quite obviously life was less com-


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This was the first house in Chicago, erected in 1779 by de Sable, the community's first civilized resident, and later acquired by John Kinzie. The house in the background belonged to Antoine Ouilmette. They named a suburb after him.


plex in Chicago Town in those days than it is today. But growing pains were smiting the youthful community.


From a population of 150 necessary to incorporate, Chi- cago jumped to 4,170 when the City was chartered in 1837. On May 2 of that year, following the grant of a charter from the State Legislature, the first election was held and Wm. B. Ogden chosen Mayor, together with ten aldermen. One of these, Dr. J. C. Goodhue of the First Ward, created the city seal with the motto "Urbs in Horto", meaning "the city in a garden." That seal embellishes our civic docu- ments today. Did the good doctor visit the City of 1933 he would swell with pride at what his prognostication hath wrought! City in a garden, indeed. It's an empire set in a landscaped wonderland !


One of the first ordinances passed by the new Council, headed "For the Protection of Life and Limb," bears the date of May 12, 1837. It's a knockout! "No per- son shall ride or drive any horse or horses in any avenue, street, or lane within this city faster than a moderate trot." Today if you slow down to forty miles an hour on a boule- vard they hand you a ticket for obstructing traffic! “I Will" has picked up speed and eight-cylinder efficiency.


It took Chicago just four years to emerge from the chrysalis of a town into the bud of a city. Half a dozen years later the city had achieved the status of an entrepot.


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City courts were created and the Circuit Court did most of its business in Chicago. A board of health was es- tablished, functioning so well in fighting the battle against disease and death that to this day Chicago ranks high among cities of extremely low mortality of the world. Rush Medi- cal College was chartered the same year as the new city. Its fame, like Chicago's, girdles the earth. Here, dentists' japes proving ineffectual, it was that "laughing gas" was first administered, in 1847; and a year later chloroform first used. Progress, always progress. Chicago first, never second ; civic pride based solely on civic accomplishment. The "I Will" spirit percolating merrily and brewing progress.


With the emergence of the city from the throes of prim- itive agriculture and stage coach transportation into the glory of railroads and reapers, the people began to look to culture. In 1847 Rice's theatre, a frame building 40x80 feet at Dearborn and Randolph streets, bid for recognition with John Murdoch in "Hamlet", Edwin Forrest in "Othel- lo", and Junius Booth in other Shakespearian roles. 'The Journal of July 1st says, characteristically : "We notice the large number of ladies, the beauty and fashion of the city, in nightly attendance." The newspaper, of course, catered to the vanity of the women; but that didn't prevent the city council, alive to the possibilities of revenue by the "large nightly attendance," from slapping a licence fee of $25 a month on the Rice project. Rice's was destroyed by fire in 1850 and rebuilt in 1852. In 1857 McVickers theatre was built on the site, and its third successor is doing business there as a "picture" house today.


MYRICK


HOUSE


Myrick's Tavern stood at about Cottage Grove avenue and Twen- ty-ninth street in 1837. It was the site of the first established "yards". Myrick operated the first race track hereabouts, too.


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By this time-1847-the city boasted a population of more than 16,000. The city limits were extended to the north, the south, and the west. Telegraphic communication with New York was common. The Board of Trade held its first meeting in 1848, and during the next year contracted with the telegraph company for daily market reports. Another case of a city feeling its oats early.


The Chicago Lyceum with "an excellent library of over three hundred volumes," called to those with a flair for "intellectual and social enjoyment." The Mechanic's In- stitute began its long career in '37 "to diffuse knowledge and information throughout the mechanical classes; to create a library and museum ; to establish schools for mechanics and others; and to establish annual fairs." Could these pioneers but see A Century of Progress of today. They'd not only be proud ; they'd be speechless, boeotic with amazement.


Another step toward culture was the founding of the Young Men's Association in '41 for the purpose of estab- lishing a civic library. The first reading room was rented at Lake and Clark streets at a fee of $125 a year. Books were donated by public spirited citizens and lectures were frequent. Capacity attendance seldom lagged. "I Will" began looking itself up in the dictionary.


One of the enterprises completed in '48 that exercised a tremendous influence over the growth and prosperity of the young city was the Illinois and Michigan canal. Louis Joliet visioned it as far back as 1673, his idea being to con- nect French Canada and French Louisiana with an inland waterway from the lakes to the Chicago river, through a canal to the Desplaines, and thence down the Illinois river to the Mississippi.


After years of debate, legislation, and survey, actual dig- ging of the canal began July 4, 1836, alongside a wagon trail running from Chicago to Lockport, the famous Archer Road. More than seven millions of dollars were spent be- fore the job was completed in 1848, but the enthusiasm and will-to-victory spirit with which the men of Chicago car- ried it through in spite of panics and geologic setbacks offers one more reason why Chicago is the Chicago of today. That that spirit of "I Will" has been passed on to and acquired by succeeding generations is proved by the epic exposition that graces the lake front in 1933, bidding the world to share the glory of a great city.


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Although the Illinois and Michigan canal was not, offi- cially, a Chicago enterprise, it could hardly have been brought to completion without the aid, judgment, and de- termination of Chicago business men. The city at least fur- nished the motive power that drove it to success and proved that "I Will" is a statement of fact, and not a question of possibility or probability or ability to throw a "natural."


In 1847 the first railroad was surveyed and laid out, the Galena and Chicago Union railroad, forerunner of the vast Northwestern system of today. The first section of the road, from Chicago to the Desplaines river, a distance of ten miles, was completed in '48. The first railroad station in Chicago was the terminus of this line, situated at Canal and Kinzie streets. The progress of the road was so rapid that in 1851 the promoters bought a tract of land for a freight terminal bounded by Kinzie, North Water, Dearborn and State streets for $60,000. By 1865 the line bridged the Mississippi and had built up a snug, powerful system that later became known as the famous C & N W.


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In 1841 the Young Men's Association organized a cultural center for "library and reading room purposes." By 1866, bowing to the spread of culture, it had acquired a building of its own. Here it is, at La Salle and Randolph streets.


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The Lake Front in the early 60's, looking north from Park Row. Soldiers are doing a bit of drilling in what is now Grant Park, sailboats play up and down the basin, and to the extreme right are the Illinois Central tracks and the breakwater. It didn't. By 1852 Illinois Central and Michigan Central trains from New York came chugging into Chicago. The I. C. tracks were laid on a trestle out on the lake, and passengers coming in or going out of the city on windy days were given an involuntary shower bath. Even then the city was recog- nized as the railroad focus of the country. Its fame as a bathing center came later.


The packing industry, too, had its beginnings in those early days. Previously, in 1832, a herd of 152 animals were slaughtered "out on the prairie" at Madison street and Michigan avenue. By the time the city was chartered, slaughter houses and packing plants dotted the city as far out as Myrick's tavern, about two miles north of where the present "Yards" are located. In a few years even London was asking for beef "packed in Chicago" and doubtless pass- ing it off as the British product famed in song and story.


Grain shipments began pouring out of Chicago in 1838 with a consignment of 78 bushels by boat to Buffalo. Next year a load of 3,678 bushels was shipped after being stored in a warehouse on the north bank of the river. That ware- house was the great granddaddy of the modern grain ele- vator, another of Chicago's pillars of progress. By 1856 grain boats were clearing for Liverpool, England, the total grain export ran to thirty millions of bushels annually, and our harbor sprouted a forest of masts. The lake tonnage was enormous for those days, the number of ships entering Chicago harbor approximating a total greater than those


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utilizing the ports of New York, Boston, and Baltimore com- bined. "I Will" had taken to the water with a vengeance.


In 1838, at the corner of Michigan avenue and Wash- ington street, the city fathers set aside a tiny plot of ground to keep open "a breathing space and a beauty spot when the city should grow beyond it." At least the daring spirits of the day hoped it might. From that tiny plot, on which the Chicago Public Library stands today, has sprung what is universally conceded to be the finest and most comprehen- sive system of parks and connecting boulevards in the world.


Early in the 50's the cultural consciousness of the young city became so strong that world famous virtuosi condes- cended to visit. Adelina Patti, the songbird, and Ole Bull, the violinist, entertained at the Tremont Music Hall with "tickets at one and two dollars." But money was plentiful. Meat packing, railroading, grain trading, agricultural ma- chinery, and sundry other infant industries were pouring golden streams into the ample laps of the "first families."


About that time the rumblings of slavery were disturb- ing the peace of the nation. Chicago, of course, was anti- slavery in sentiment. Speakers with pro-slavery ideas fre- quently were mobbed and given the freedom of the country outside the city. Chicagoans believed in racial equality to such an extent that when 250 residents signed a petition for a law forbidding the vote to foreigners who had neglected to


ARMOUR & CO.


The name "Armour" is synonymous with Chicago's packing indus- try, meaning "tins of meat." Here's the birthplace of that huge company, " 'way out on Archer Road", about 1867.


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obtain papers of citizenship, their petition was sidetracked. Later, however, the law was enacted. Then in 1858 speeches preliminary to the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates thundered from the balcony of the Tremont House . .. speeches that changed the fate of the nation from disintegra- tion and chaos rivaling the contradictory Balkans to a closely knit federation of states.


True, the little city was crude . . . a sprawling mass of dwellings, saloons, churches, stores, shops, and factories . . . yet in embryo it held all the elements of the splendid metropolis it is today. Of course there were neither operas, art colony, nor university; few cultural centers; few places where aesthetics could flower. But there was a dawning consciousness of Chicago as an entity, a personality with duties and responsibilities and privileges in relation to the rest of the world of sufficient force to, later, lift the city to the stars. "I Will" was becoming subtle.


At the half-century-1850-Chicago tired of its tallow candles and kerosene lamps. Citizens went modern and sub- scribed some $80,000 for a gas plant. It was built at the edge of town, at Madison and Market streets, and 24,000 feet of gas mains promptly were laid in the downtown sec- tion. The city hall became the company's first customer with 36 lights. Soon there were 125 additional customers and 99 street lamps. Medill's Tribune remarked editorially at the time: "For the first time in the history of Chicago, sev- eral of the streets were illuminated in regular city style. Hereafter she will not hide her light under a bushel." As if anything could. Vide: the Lindbergh Beacon. Within five years the company had laid 78 miles of pipe and was servicing nearly 2,000 customers.


There is no more thrilling story with the scene laid in Chicago than the coming of the reaping machine. Cyrus McCormick, the son of a Virginia planter, had, in the early 1800's, spent much of his time trying to perfect a workable reaper. In the onrush of progress the ancient cradle scythe became too much of a drag. Finally he created a contrap- tion that did the trick, and for years he traveled about the Virginia countryside demonstrating his brain child. Suc- cess was varied. He exhibited at the World's Fair in London, with the conservative Britishers finally admitting its value, yet providing a scant market. At last, weary of the international "run around", he turned toward the Illi- nois prairies and built a plant in Chicago at North


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OPERA HOUSE


tallery.


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Crosby's Opera House at Washington and State streets marked the peak of Chicago's culture in 1865. It cost $600,000 to build, a fortune then as now, but returned little on its investment.


Water street and the river. It was there-in 1847-he commenced the manufacture of a reaper containing most of the essentials of the McCormick Harvester of today. The point emphasized here is that communities other than Chi- cago might have staged the scene of the ultimate McCor- mick triumph, but it was the aid of this city and its citizens that brought his invention to success. The city's leaders be- lieved in him, and their foresight in recognizing and aid- ing genius resulted in giving to later-day Chicago one of its outstanding dollar-filled industries. "I Will" was cashing in. With the '60's, Chicago became opera-conscious. Uranus H. Crosby, a local magnifico, built an ornate four-story tem- ple at Washington and Dearborn streets spelling the last word in architectural magnificence and costing $600,000. For that day the project paralleled the erection of our present Civic Opera building in 1928. The wealth of the city flock-


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ed to it. Artists were imported from New York and abroad. But the tragic death of President Lincoln spread a pall upon the city and the idea was abandoned temporarily. Then, af- ter some struggle with artistic temperament and box office inertia, the conviction was sustained that art on so splendid a scale could not be made to pay. But the Great Fire of '71 settled it. Crosby's grand structure was swept from the face of the earth and never rebuilt. Henceforth Chicago derived its musical culture from a city orchestra formed in 1857, a Musical Union organized in 1858, and an Ora- torio Society. All were fairly supported. "I Will" looked to other things than civic and commercial accomplishment. As a matter of fact, from the days when Mark Beaubien entertained guests at his Sauganash Tavern with the "hot- cha" melodies of the day on his fiddle to the present-day opera troupes, orchestras, and choral societies, Chicago has ever swayed to the influence of good music.




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