USA > Illinois > Cook County > Growth of Cook County; a history of the large lake-shore county that includes Chicago, Vol. I > Part 9
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States. It contained 12,000,000 cubic feet of space, 14 acres of floor space, and a mile of corridors. If erected under present- day costs, the county side of the building alone would cost many times the original price, as also would the city hall.
The corner-stone laying, itself, was an elaborate affair, with band music, military parade, and speeches by Charles W. Fairbanks, vice-president of the United States; Charles S. Deneen, governor of Illinois; Edward F. Dunne, mayor of Chicago; and Edward J. Brundage, president of the county board.
Sealed into the corner-stone were the following articles:
Letters of regret for not being present from President Theodore Roosevelt and Chief Justice Fuller.
Chicago directories for 1844 and 1906.
Relief in clay of the first Fort Dearborn, 1803, modeled by Helen L. Bowman.
Stereoscopic views of Chicago in ruins following the 1871 fire Map of Cook and DuPage counties.
Photographic views of Cook county's courthouses from 1835 to 1906.
Reports of courthouse committees and copies of all contracts for new courthouse.
Proceedings of county board, 1905-1906.
"Advance of Chicago as a Commercial Center to Close of the XIX Century."
Chicago Historical Society's Year Book, 1905-1906.
Chicago Historical Society's Handbook, 1906.
Views of Chicago Historical Society Building.
First dirt excavated from the Drainage Canal.
Copies of Chicago's evening and morning newspapers.
"Chicago in Picture and Poetry," by Horace Spencer Fiske.
Annual message of Mayor Dunne, autographed.
Cook county charity service report, 1905.
Photographs of President Brundage and other members of the county board.
Program of ceremonies for the laying of the corner-stone.
Certificates of membership of Chicago Board of Trade, Illinois Manufacturers' Association, Union League Club, Lincoln Club, Iroquois Club, Hamilton Club, Press Club of Chicago, Merchants' Club, Chicago Commercial Association, Chicago Real Estate Board, Chicago Bar Association, Lawyers' Association of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, Marquette Club, Standard Club, In- dustrial Club of Chicago, and others.
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Much talking has been done during the past 25 or 30 years on how to relieve the overcrowded conditions in the county building, but aside from the renting of additional space for courts and offices, nothing concrete has come of it.
Consideration has been given to the construction of addi- tional floors atop the combined county building and city hall, but the existing structures would have to be reinforced, includ- ing the setting of additional caissons beneath them.
Various privately-owned buildings in the vicinity have been offered for sale to the county.
The county board went so far in 1954, when Commissioner William N. Erickson was president, as to have its architect, the late Raymond F. Houlihan, draft a design for a Cook county administration building that would house county offices ex- clusive of the courts.
The building proposed by Hou- lihan would have been 22 stories tall and contained 17.7 acres of floor space, estimated to be suffi- cient for these specific purposes until 1975.
A suggestion was that the county purchase land and locate such a structure on the west half of the block bounded on the west by Clark street, on the south by Washington street, on the east JAMES F. ASHENDEN County Commissioner by Dearborn street, and on the north by Randolph street. It would be directly across the street from the Clark-street side of the present county building and would be connected with the older structure by passage-ways both beneath and above. Clark street.
Since that time there has been much agitation, principally
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Pictured are models of proposed new civic center (1959) as seen from Randolph street, with Dearborn street on left, Clark street in center, and LaSalle street on right. Tall building in background is 21-story courts building; in fore- ground (left) is 21-story office building for county and city hall use. At right is present county building and city hall, with exterior remodeled to conform with new architecture. In center is landscaped plaza, one story below street level.
on the part of various civic interests, to have Cook county join with other governing agencies in erecting a combination governmental center, to be known as the Fort Dearborn Square.
This would cost an estimated $165,000,000 and would accommodate the county, city, state, and federal offices and courts, altho the present city hall-county building would be retained entirely for the exclusive use of courts.
Such a government square would constitute but a portion of the visionary Fort Dearborn Project, designed to occupy 151 acres on the north side of the Chicago river in the near- north side of the city.
On Aug. 24, 1954, the late Earl Kribben, director of the proposed Fort Dearborn Project, wrote then President Erickson about the matter, saying in part:
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"As we presently see it, Cook county has the most acute space need of any local government and is also in a financial position to provide for its needs."
Other civic groups, led by the Chicago Bar association, so late as 1956 were urging the construction of a centrally- located, down-town courthouse, some 30 stories high, that would house the Circuit, Superior, County, Probate, and Crimi- nal courts, as well as such offices as the clerks of the courts, the state's attorney, and the sheriff. This plan carried the endorsement of Richard W. Prendergast, county architect, and Circuit Court Judge Cornelius J. Harrington, then chief justice of the Criminal court.
Latest proposed plan for providing adequate office and court- room_space for county and city governments was announced on June 8, 1959 by the city's public building commission of which Mayor Richard J. Daley is chairman.
This program called for the construction of a 61 million dollar civic center in the square block immediately east of the county building and city hall. This is bounded by Randolph, Washington, Dearborn and Clark streets.
Within the area would be con- structed two buildings of 21 stories each and a plaza. (See illustra- tion.) One of the buildings, facing on Washington street, and ex- tending all the way from Dear- born to Clark, would contain 145 courtrooms for state and city courts.
The other building would be on the northeast corner of the block CHRIST A. JENSEN County Commissioner and would house county and city government offices. Tho contain- ing the same number of stories, this building would not be
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quite as tall as the courts building because courtrooms call for slightly higher ceilings.
First floors of both buildings would be rented out for use of restaurants and shops. Pedestrian tunnels and overhead walks would connect the structures with the present county building which faces on Clark street.
The landscaped plaza, on the northwest portion of the block, would be one story below street level, and would have a garage and truck loading space on a level beneath it.
The present county building and city hall would have their exteriors remodeled to conform with architecture of the new buildings, and their interiors also would be remodeled suitably for office space after the courts will have been moved out. Such remodeling, however, would not be paid by the public building commission and is not figured in the 61 million dollar cost.
The new civic center would be financed by revenue bonds issued by the commission. The bonds would be retired over a 20-year span thru rentals of space to the county and city, plus revenue from the privately-owned concessions and shops.
Net annual cost to the public agencies has been estimated at $5,897,000, or $6.85 a year per square foot, during the first 20 years. The private businesses would contribute an esti- mated $350,000 yearly in rentals.
The plan, drafted by the city planning department, does not include the Criminal court, located at 26th street and California avenue, altho further study was to be given by the commission to the desirability of bringing these courts to the new center.
The public building commission is a municipal corporation composed of 11 members, including elected officials and civic leaders. Its authority to issue revenue bonds for such purposes was granted by an act of the 1955 state legislature.
Concerning the plans, Daniel Ryan, president of the county
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board and a member of the public building commission, said:
"These buildings are a public necessity. They not only will give us the courtrooms we need to help clear up a big backlog of cases awaiting trial, but they also will free the county building of courtrooms, and permit us to use this space for many offices for which we now rent costly outside quarters."
In the meantime, the county board, hard-pressed for space, early in 1956 found it necessary to rent and remodel into ten new courtrooms, space at 69 West Washington street. These were dedicated and placed into use Jan. 30, 1956.
Chicago's City Hall
The corner-stone for the present city hall was laid on July 20, 1909, when Fred A. Busse was mayor. The building was completed within the next 18 months. The city offices, which had been widely scattered about the city during construction, moved into the new edifice during January and February of 1911, dedication ceremonies being held February 27 of that year.
In appearance and for all practical purposes the two build- ings are, in effect, but one building, a fact that often confuses individuals who seek a court room or office in one side or the other. Not all floors between the two buildings have cut-thrus. Separate banks of elevators are operated for each building.
Just how far wrong the builders could go in estimating the future adequacy of the city hall is reflected in a May 28, 1910 letter1 written by the building's architects, the firm of Holabird & Roche, which, it will be remembered, also had designed the county building.
The letter, addressed to F. A. Eastman, then city statistician and municipal librarian, said, in part:
"We are in receipt of your favor of May 25 requesting an estimate of the natural or probable life of the Chicago city
1. Published in Chicago City Manual, 1910, p 12.
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hall or the time it is likely to suffice for the city's executive and administrative departments.
"Our estimate of the probable life of the building, from a structural standpoint, is 100 to 150 years.
"From the standpoint of its adequacy for the city executive and administrative departments we would say that it would be fully adequate for 50 to 75 years."
The "adequacy" of the city hall was short-lived. In less than ten years, even prior to 1920, the city was having to rent outside space for the engineering departments of its city council committees on railway terminals and local transportation.
To partially offset its space shortage, however, the city now has purchased additional buildings, including the one at 54 West Hubbard street, occupied by the board of health, and the even larger one at 321 North LaSalle street, now known as the Central Office building.
The large council chamber on the second and third floors of the present city hall-Randolph street side of the building -was gutted by fire on the evening of March 21, 1957. Also damaged were adjoining rooms on these floors.
Restoration, costing a half-million dollars, was completed and the new chambers dedicated on March 4, 1958. (This date was chosen by Mayor Richard J. Daley to correspond with the March 4, 1837 date on which Chicago was incor- porated as a city. )
During this period that the chamber was being restored, the council held its meetings in the cramped quarters of the cor- poration counsel's office on the fifth floor.
A commentary upon future growth of Chicago and Cook county appeared in the Chicago City Manual of 1910 (pages 14 and 15) in which the following speculation was stated, in part:
"The figures that represent our present population (2,000,000) may be multiplied by three, and yet the result
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would not equal the total of souls that reasonably may be expected to be present in 1985.
"It is, therefore, probable that in 75 years from now the whole county will be populated with urbanites? That there will be no suburbs within the county?
"Yes, that is very probable, but still there is room for the hope that, in that coming time, a respectable number of large areas inside the greater city will be exempt from residential settlement.
"Many years before then let all good people hope and pray, some park commission, or some forest preserve association- the universal public interest assisting-will have saved the forest tracts which still magnificently enrich the landscape in Glencoe, and at intervals all down the border of the Des Plaines river, and have dedicated them in perpetuity as pleasure grounds that shall equal or exceed in attractiveness, for multi- tudes of nature lovers, the elaborately cultivated parks."
The identity of the writer is not clear. The frontispiece states the manual was "prepared" by F. A. Eastman, then statistician and municipal librarian. Working as his assistant was Frederick Rex who later became the librarian and who, himself, has done much writing along these lines.
Regardless of authorship, the prognosticator appears a half- century later to have been surprisingly accurate.
His six-million population figure for all of Cook county by 1985 may be too low, but he was correct in stating that Cook county would be filling rapidly with homes, that it often would be difficult to tell where one suburb leaves off and another begins, and he "nailed squarely on the head" the wonderful Cook County Forest Preserve District.
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CHAPTER 8
A CHICAGO FIRE AFTERMATH
HEN the great fire of Oct. 8 and 9, 1871, roared demon- like across Chicago, consuming 15,000 homes and 2,450 build- ings in the central business district of the burgeoning young city, the loss was incalculable.
Loss of life, always the most important factor in any disaster, has been roughly estimated at 250. That was large, of course, but it is a wonder the figure wasn't even greater. Many disasters have taken more lives. The Peshtigo (Wis.) fire the following day (Oct. 9, 1871) claimed 1,152 lives.
One might think that a reasonably accurate figure of the number of dead in the Chicago fire could be ascertained, but there were factors that made this difficult. Altho only 120 bodies were actually recovered, many persons were known to have burned to unrecoverable ashes in the fiery holocaust that melted steel rails and crumbled building stones to dust. Nor could too much be determined by counting the number of missing persons. Some fled the city, never to return and never to make an accounting of themselves.
Determination of the value of destroyed property was equally
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difficult. Some have reckoned it as low as 196 million dollars, others as high as 400 million. And remember, back in those pre-inflation days, when a dollar a day was considered a fair wage, any figure in the hundreds of millions was staggering. It still is.
Value of the contents of buildings, in some instances, could be determined with a degree of accuracy, especially if the operator of a grain elevator knew how many bushels of wheat or corn he had stored. Large department stores had fairly re- liable inventories. The cost of a new building, such as a theater, a hotel, or church could be had.
The value of many buildings, however, had increased since their construction. Nor were replacement costs much of a guide because most structures, even homes, were rebuilt in more elaborate and sturdier fashion.
Loss of earnings thru business interruption was difficult to determine. Average receipts of the past years before the fire might not be a proper criterion, for with an expanding economy, and with business booming in the lusty young metropolis, profits often grew by leaps and bounds.
But aside from business losses, and losses due to temporary unemployment, let us consider a few of the other losses that affected the individuals of the community.
What is the value of the contents of a home? What are the intangible values of a carefully-kept, family record Bible, of a family heirloom, of a beautiful painting, of a little girl's China doll.
What is the value of the original copy of Lincoln's Emanci- pation Proclamation? (The copy went up in flames, together with all other contents of the Chicago Historical Society building. )
What is the value of a box of records that includes the deed to one's home, and other vital papers?
In answer to the last question, one might say: "Possibly
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not too much because the home owner could go to the re- corder's office and obtain a certified copy of his recorded deed."
Such a statement, however, would be 100 per cent false in the case of the Chicago fire. The Cook county courthouse went up in flames, and with it went all county records, including those of the recorder's office, the courts, the county clerk, the county board, and the other county offices housed within the building.
All that was saved from the county courthouse were the lives of some 100 prisoners incarcerated in basement cells. At the last possible minute, all prisoners were set free, with the exception of a half-dozen who were charged with murder. These latter were led away in chains so they could take their court chances of eventually meeting the hangman.
It is not our intent here to delve deeply into all details of the fire. They have been told by many, and exceedingly well by our once fellow newspaper reporter, Robert Cromie, in his recent book, The Great Chicago Fire.
Toward the end of this chapter, however, we shall quote some descriptive phrases of the fire as related over a television program by the late Prof. Wohl of the University of Chicago.
Burned Records
Meanwhile, let us consider the subject of burned records, the heretofore little-known story of their eventual restoration, and what Cook county now is doing to prevent such an event from ever happening again.
The county recorder, as most people know, is charged by law with recording, for a fee, almost any sort of document brought before him, the few exceptions being that he cannot record currency, bonds, and naturalization papers.
He records deeds to property, leases, liens, wills, charters, and a host of other things. The recording consists of making a copy of the document and keeping it on file in the office. In the long ago, the copying was done in longhand, then
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came the typewriter, and now the photostat.
The recorder also maintains a complete set of tract books. That is, he keeps large volumes in which are listed by legal description each parcel of real estate in all of Cook county. In 1959 the parcels numbered around one and one-quarter million-the figure grows by leaps as large acreages of farm- lands are subdivided for residential and other uses.
When a transfer of title is filed, when a lien on a property is filed, or when a court enters any sort of judgment affecting a property, the recorder's staff not only takes a photostatic copy of the document, but also enters on the tract book a notation of the happening. By glancing at the tract book, anyone can see the name of the property owner (unless held in trust, in which case the trust holder is named), the date of purchase, the date of recording, and any other pertinent information that applies to the property.
Recorded deeds and tract books complement one another, and any layman, including a youngster, can understand that these are vital records by which one can prove to the world, if necessary, that he owns a certain piece of property. These records are doubly important should the owner lose by fire, theft, or otherwise the deed which he is keeping in a dresser drawer or in any other place of storage.
So now one can imagine the horrible state of affairs into which proof of property ownership was thrown when the Chicago fire not only destroyed most of the deeds kept in 15,000 homes and nearly 2,500 places of business, but all of the recorder's records as well.
Moreover, it should be remembered, the recorder's destroyed records not only involved those properties swept by fire, but every parcel of real estate within all of Cook county, including suburbs and farm lands.
A property owner, after the ashes had cooled (the fire even burned the wooden blocks with which a portion of the
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streets were paved), might pick his pathetic way back to a pile of smelly rubble and say: "This must be my lot."
His utter dejection gradually would be replaced with new- born hope and determination, however, and he would decide to build again. But he probably would have to borrow the necessary money, and would have to mortgage the property to secure the loan. How, tho, could he legally prove that he even owned the lot? He couldn't. Not at that time, nor for several months thereafter. And in some instances legal en- tanglements caused by the fire were to crop up in the courts for the next three-quarters of a century.
Before we explain the straightening out of this tangle, let us go back a step to the Sunday night of Oct. 8, 1871.
Background Of The Fire
As most school kids know, the fire started sometime around 9 p. m. in the cow barn at the rear of the home of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, 137 DeKoven Street. (This now is 558 DeKoven, the city's street numbering system having been changed in 1910.)
Mrs. O'Leary supplemented the family's meager earnings (Pat was a laborer ) by keeping five cows and selling milk in the neighborhood. At the time, her livestock holdings also included a calf and a horse.
Whether or not one of Mrs. O'Leary's cows actually kicked over a "coal oil" lamp to start the blaze is a moot (or should we say "moo"?) question. It is something akin to asking whether Babe Ruth, in 1932, actually pointed to the Wrigley Field wall over which he was to knock Charley Root's next pitch and give the Yanks another win in. their four-game world series sweep over the Cubs. The safest answer to that is: If Babe didn't call his shot, he could have-he was that great.
Fanned by a strong southwest wind, the fire, out of control from the beginning, swept northeasterly. By 1:25 o'clock Mon-
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Fullerton
Ave
Lincoln
Clark
Burned area of Chicago Fire shown unshaded
Center
St.
(Armitage)
Ave
St.
St.
North
Ave.
St
H
Division
St
C
Larabee
Chicago
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Lake
M I
Indiana
Ave.
(Grand)
Lock
Wacker
Dr.)
Water
St.
Holsted
Ave.
E
Madison
St.
K
La Salle
Michigan
A
Harrison
St.
St.
L
Clinton
De Koven
St.
12th
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(Roosevelt
Rd.)
C. C. H.
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A
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Present
Jefferson St.
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The O'Leary residence at 558 DeKoven street. Cow barn, in which fire started, stood at rear. Strangely, the house escaped the fire that destroyed most of Chicago. Courtesy Chicago Historical Society
day morning, some four and one-half hours after its begin- ning, it had reached and was licking the exteriors of the court- house, and surrounding buildings.
The courthouse of that day (see accompanying pictures of all Cook county courthouses) was on the same site as the present combination county courthouse (often called county building) and city hall. The land, owned entirely by the county, is bounded on the north by Randolph st., on the east by Clark st., on the south by Washington st. and on the west by LaSalle st.
The courthouse that was burned had been constructed in 1853, enlarged in 1858, and again enlarged in 1870. The offices of the mayor of Chicago and other city officials, then, as now, occupied the west portion.
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The building, valued at about $2,000,000, had four full floors, the lower one of which was slightly below ground level and might be termed a basement. On top of this structure was a two-story tower that contained a four-faced clock and a five and one-half ton bell.
By 1:30 o'clock the tower was aflame, by 1:50 the prisoners were being released from their basement cells, by 2:00 the building was a mass of flames, at which time the 66-year-old Mayor Roswell B. Mason fled northward in Clark street, his only remaining route of escape; at 2:15 the bell crashed thru
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GREATER CHICAGO
Chicaga
MRS. O'LEARYSAD
This float, depicting the Chicago Fire story, won a first prize for Chicago in the 1960 Tournament of Roses parade at Pasadena, Calif. (AP Wirephoto)
to the basement, and minutes later the entire courthouse, the pride of the populace, was a complete ruin.
Why were not the records in at least the recorder's office removed? The answer now appears quite simple. They weighed tons and there was not sufficient time for their removal after
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Utterly devastated in great fire of 1871 was Chicago's business district. Picture, taken from Chicago river bridge, looks eastward down Randolph street. In back- ground stands shell of Cook county's once proud courthouse.
Courtesy Chicago Historical Society
it became apparent that the "fireproof" courthouse was doomed for almost immediate destruction.
Yet there always is an element within society that would look for a scapegoat to blame.
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