Chicago The First 100 Years 1833-1933

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The Field Leitner Store,
later Marshall Field after

the fire.

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The Courthouse

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The Tribune Building

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Trinity Church

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Reconstruction

Within days of the Chicago Fire of 1871, William D. Kerfoot erected the first building in the burnt district at 89
Washington Street. An enterprising real estate agent, Kerfoot posted a sign proclaiming All gone but wife, chil-
dren, and energy
Realtor, W. D. Kerfoot’s Office
1872
Painted by W. J. Burton
.
Chicago will never be like the Carthage of old. Its glory will be of the past, not of the present; while its hopes, once so
bright and cloudless, will be to the end marred and blackened by the smoke of its fiery fate.
This was the typical gloating done by Chicago’s rivals after the devastation. It was quite obvious to anyone viewing the
remains that a city that had grown to 300,000 people in thirty years could never recover.
John Stephen Wright, one of the first citizens of Chicago, answered this constant pestimism about Chicago’s future with
these words, “Chicago will have more men, more money, more business, within five years than she would have had
without the fire.” He was often ridiculed for his fairyland vision of Chicago, but even his dreams were pale compared to
reality. By 1880, Chicago’s population reached over half a million.

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Boyce Block
Life Span: 1872-1899
Location: NE corner of N. State and
Madison streets (1-3 N. State)
The area around State and Madison
bounced back relatively quickly. Field
& Leiter rebuilt a block to the north, at
Washington Street, in 1873, and soon
the ornate Colonnade Building rose on
part of the site where Booksellers Row
had been

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Reconstruction

Rebuilding the city after the fire,
corner of Lake and LaSalle, 1873

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Chamber of Commerce II
Life Span: 1872-1889
Location: SE corner of N. LaSalle and W. Washington streets
Architect: Cochrane and Miller
Finishing the Roof of the Chamber of Commerce, 1872. T
he building was built to the same size and height as the original.

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Chicago Tribune Building II
Life Span: 1872-1901
Location: SE corner of Dearborn and Madison
Architect: Burling & Adler
Built on the same site as Tribune Building I, was
five stories high, with one basement, on spread
foundations. Burling and Adler were the archi-
tects. The frontage on S. Dearborn street was
72 feet. The Windsor Hotel, with a frontage of
120 feet on S. Dearborn street, had adjoined
Tribune Building II on the south.
Its building, erected after the great fire of 1871,
on the site of the former structure, was planned
and completed for the home of a great newspa-
per. There is no facility lacking. Its presses,
manufactured to order, combine the very latest
improvements, and have the speed necessary
to supply any demand that may arise.

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Windsor-Clifton Hotel
Life Span: 1872-1927
Location: NW corner of Wabash and Monroe streets
Architect: John M. Van Osdel
The Windsor-Clifton Hotel, at the northwest corner of Wabash Avenue and Monroe Street, was built in 1872 and razed
in 1927 to make way for the Men’s Store of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company. For many years it was one of Chicago’s
leading hotels. The old Chicago Club, afterwards De Jonghe’s Hotel and Restaurant, is seen west of the Windsor-
Clifton. It was originally called the Clifton House till 1909 when it was purchased by Samuel Gregsten (Windsor Euro-
pean)
After the great fire, Mr. Gregsten built the Windsor hotel on Dearborn street, between Monroe and Madison. This was
the first and for many years the only European hotel in Chicago and in it was never conducted a bar during the many
years Mr. Gregsten was the owner and proprietor. The Windsor had the reputation of being the home of people from
small towns and the country. It was preeminently respectable. No man was ever so strict and severe in the manage-
ment of a hotel as Sam Gregsten, who, upon finding anything wrong or suspicious did not hesitate to throw guests out
into the street at midnight and return to them their money.
He later purchased the Clifton Hotel, on the northwest corner of E. Monroe and S. Wabash streets, renaming it the Win-
dsor-Clifton. This hotel was an extremely well known “European” hotel of the time.

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Sherman House III
Life Span: 1873-1910
Location: NW corner of N Clark & W Randolph streets
Architect:W. W. Boyington
The Sherman House was one of the “Big Four” of the post-fire hotels including the Palmer House, the Grand Pacific
and the Tremont House. It was the third Sherman House in Chicago on that location.
While the new hotel was being built, William Sherman rented the Gault House on Madison and Clinton streets. The
frontage ran 181 feet on Clark Street and 160 feet on Randolph Street. It was replaced in 1911 by 11 stories of the
fourth Sherman Hotel.
Bissell & Hulbert were the proprietors of the New Sherman House, which opened May 1873, Alvin Hulbert taking it
alone in a few years. Later the property was bought from the Sherman family by J. Irving Pearce, who conducted it for
several years until it was torn down and rebuilt in 1911.
The Sherman was a house for merchants and theatrical people. Here Long John Wentworth spent the last years of his
life. Guests included Lincoln, Douglas, Andrew Jackson, Grant, Weston the walker, Paropa Rosa, Booth, Caroline Rich-
ings and many others of note. The Sherman House is one of two great resorts of chess-players, the other being the
Tremont.

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Post Office and Government Building, 1889
Occupies a square bounded by Adams, Clark, Jackson, and Dearborn streets, but the building, standing in the center of
this plot of ground, has a width on Adams and Jackson of only 212| feet, and a length on Clark and Dearborn of but
305.2 feet. After the destruction of the old Post Office, at the northwest corner of Monroe and Dearborn, there was a
strenuous attempt to buy the whole of that square for the Federal Government, but the property was considered too
high-priced.
Its weight was too great for the soil, and there has always been an uneven settlement, destructive in character, and at
times dangerous to the occupants. To hold it together, heavy rods have been run through the upper walls. The material
entering into the construction of this fabric is of the best—Buena Vista sandstone, steel, cement, terra cotta, brick, and
marble. The heavy stone walls rise to a height, with their roof, of 102 feet, and there are 4 stories and basement. On the
three upper floors are 65 rooms, occupied by 8 divisions with 20 different departments of the Government service. On
the main floor, surrounded by a great lobby, is the Post Office. In the building are 3,500 employees, who use 1 freight,
10 mail, and 4 passenger elevators. Into this house, which never closes, it is estimated that 50,000 persons go every
day.

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Interstate Exposition Building
Life Span: 1872-1892
Location: S. Michigan and East Adama Streets
Architect: W. W. Boyington
The scheme of holding a permanent Exposition in Chicago first began to attract public attention in 1871. It was talked
up by J. Irving Pearce, V. F. Coolbaugh and Potter Palmer, and articles favoring the venture appeared from time to time
in the press. After approval, the first permanent building to house expositions in Chicago was built. It was constructed
by W. W. Boyington in 1872, the glass and metal building with ornamental domes was based on exposition buildings in
London and New York.
The Exposition was opened to the public in September, 1872, and the receipts from the sales of tickets, and other
sources, were $175,402.84. The total expenditures on account of building and running expenses were $345,927.84,
leaving a deficit of $36,452.29 for the first year. The promoters of the enterprise were not discouraged, however, and
proceeded to improve the building and prepare for an exposition the next year.

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Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Wells Street Station
c. 1900

The first station at Wells Street was built by the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, the first railroad in Chicago. When
the railroad opened in 1848 it operated out of a depot on the west side of the Chicago River, near the corner of Canal
and Kinzie Streets. In 1851 the railroad began to purchase the land needed to build a new station to the east of the
river, and construction of this station at Wells Street took place during 1852 and 1853.[1] On February 15, 1865 the Ga-
lena and Chicago Union Railroad merged with the Chicago and North Western Railway. The first Wells Street station
was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a temporary wooden structure replaced it until, in 1881 the Wells
Street Station opened in the same location.

The Wells Street Station was bounded by the Chicago River to the south and west, Kinzie Street to the north and Wells
Street to the east leaving no room for expansion; furthermore, as both rail and ship traffic increased, the movable bridge
over the river resulted in congestion.[2] In 1911 the new Chicago and North Western Terminalopened, with new elevated
approaches branching from the old ones west of the river. The station remained for freight, and when the Merchandise
Mart opened in 1930 (using air rights above the railroad), a new freight station served the Mart, and was connected
by elevators to the Chicago Tunnel Company.

The 1852 Galena & Chicago
Union Wells Street Station
that was destroyed in the
Chicago Fire.

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State Street from Madison St.
c. 1900

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State Street from Adam St.
c. 1903

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State Street
c. 1903

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State Street and Madison
c. 1907

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State St. looking south from Lake.—1907.
On the Left is the Masonic Temple and Marshall Fields.

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Randolph and Dearborn—1909.

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Marshall Fields.—1907

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1890’s Chicago Police Wagon
1909 Chicago Horse Drawn

Police Wagon

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2 of Chicago’s 3 Police Cars in 1910.
They were first motorized as of 1907

1914 Motorized Chicago Police Wagon

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California delegates on stagecoach at
the 1912 Republican National Conven-
tion held at the Chicago Coliseum,
Chicago, Illinois, June 18-22, 1912

The Coliseum in 1910

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The Dearborn Station
Steam Power—1938

The Dearborn Station—1910

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1915 Eastland Disaster

The S.S. Eastland, known as the "Speed Queen of the
Great Lakes," was part of a fleet of five excursion
boats assigned to take Western Electric employees,
families and friends across Lake Michigan to Michigan
City, Indiana, for a day of fun and fellowship. But the
festivities were short-lived and quickly turned tragic.

The Eastland, docked at the Clark Street Bridge,
never left the Chicago River. Tragedy struck as the
ship rolled over into the river at the wharf's edge. More
than 2,500 passengers and crew members were on
board that day – and 844 people lost their lives, in-
cluding 22 entire families.

Advertisement in the Chicago Daily Tribune, (Chicago, Illinois) 23 Jul 1915,
Fri • Page 12, the day before the disaster.

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Northwest corner of Randolph and
Dearborn. Woods Theatre.- 1917.

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1920s. State St. Looking North from Madison. Chicago Theater and State-Lake in the distance

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1893 Columbian Exposition

The World's Columbian Exposition (the official shortened name for the World's Fair: Columbian Exposition, also known as The Chi-
cago World's Fair) was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in
the New World in 1492. The iconic centerpiece of the Fair, the large water pool, represented the long voyage Columbus took to the
New World. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St. Louis for the honor of hosting the fair. The Exposition was an
influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on architecture, sanitation, the arts, Chicago's self-image, and Ameri-
can industrial optimism. The Chicago Columbian Exposition was, in large part, designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olm-
sted. It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux
Arts principles of design, namely French neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor.

The exposition covered more than 600 acres (2.4 km2), featuring nearly 200 new (but purposely temporary) buildings of predomi-
nantly neoclassical architecture, canals and lagoons, and people and cultures from 46 countries.[2] More than 27 million people at-
tended the exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world fairs, and it became a symbol of
the emerging American Exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United
Kingdom.

Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21, 1892, but the fairgrounds were not actually opened to the public until
May 1, 1893. The fair continued until October 30, 1893. In addition to recognizing the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New
World by Europeans, the fair also served to show the world that Chicago had risen from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, which
had destroyed much of the city in 1871.[2]On October 9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the fair set a world record for
outdoor event attendance, drawing 716,881 people to the fair

Columbian Exposition fire engine while the
exposition was under construction.

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Columbian Exposition dedication Parade

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One of two Columbian
Exposition Buildings still

standing, the Field
Museum of Natural
History. (Shown here
when brand new, in 1893)

The 600 acre Columbian Exposition of 1893 covered over 600 acres taking in Jackson Park and the Midway.
The fair opened in May and ran through October 30, 1893. Forty-six nations participated in the fair (it was the
first world's fair to have national pavilions[7]), constructing exhibits and pavilions and naming national
"delegates" (for example, Haiti selected Frederick Douglass to be its delegate).[8] The Exposition drew nearly
26 million visitors.

Almost all of the fair's structures were designed to be temporary; of the more than 200 buildings erected for
the fair, the only two which still stand in place are the Palace of Fine Arts and the World's Congress Auxiliary
Building. From the time the fair closed until 1920, the Palace of Fine Arts housed the Field Columbian Museum
(now the Field Museum of Natural History, since relocated); in 1933, the Palace building re-opened as
the Museum of Science and Industry.[16] The second building, the World's Congress Building, was one of the
few buildings not built in Jackson Park, instead it was built downtown in Grant Park. The cost of construction of
the World's Congress Building was shared with the Art Institute of Chicago, which, as planned, moved into the
building (the museum's current home) after the close of the fair.

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The Art Institute of Chicago,
shown here in the early
1900’s , was built as part of the
Columbian Exposition, origi-
nally the Worlds Congress
Building

Jackson Park today, in 2015

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Captive Balloon and the Original Ferris Wheel at the 1893

Columbian Exposition.

The Original Ferris Wheel

The original Ferris Wheel, sometimes also referred to as the Chicago Wheel, was designed and constructed by George Washington
Gale Ferris, Jr..
With a height of 80.4 metres (264 ft) it was the largest attraction at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, where it
opened to the public on June 21, 1893.[11] It was intended to rival the 324-metre (1,063 ft) Eiffel Tower, the centerpiece of the 1889
Paris Exposition.
Ferris was a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bridge-builder. He began his career in the
railroad industry and then pursued an interest in bridge building. Ferris understood the growing need for structural steel and founded
G.W.G. Ferris & Co. in Pittsburgh, a firm that tested and inspected metals for railroads and bridge builders.
The wheel rotated on a 71-ton, 45.5-foot axle comprising what was at that time the world's largest hollow forging, manufactured in
Pittsburgh by the Bethlehem Iron Company and weighing 89,320 pounds, together with two 16-foot-diameter (4.9 m) cast-iron spiders
weighing 53,031 pounds.
There were 36 cars, each fitted with 40 revolving chairs and able to accommodate up to 60 people, giving a total capacity of 2,160.
The wheel carried some 38,000 passengers daily[1] and took 20 minutes to complete two revolutions, the first involving six stops to
allow passengers to exit and enter and the second a nine-minute non-stop rotation, for which the ticket holder paid 50 cents.
The Exposition ended in October 1893, and the wheel closed in April 1894 and was dismantled and stored until the following year. It
was then rebuilt on Chicago's North Side, near Lincoln Park, next to an exclusive neighborhood. This prompted William D. Boyce,

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1893 Columbian Exposition

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The Palace of Mechanic Arts by the Boston firm of Peabody and Stearns
View over Manufacturers Bldg

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The Administration Building

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View of the Transportation Building

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View of the Electricity Building

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1933 Century of Progress (Chicago World’s Fair)

A Century of Progress International Exposition was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of
Chicago. Its theme, as given in A Century of Progress Chicago International Exposition of 1933 Statement of its Plan and Purposes
and of the Relation of States and Foreign Governments to Them (Chicago, 1933). was to "attempt to demonstrate to an international
audience the nature and significance of scientific discoveries, the methods of achieving them, and the changes which their applica-
tion has wrought in industry and in living conditions." This was done through exhibits that appealed to the public in general, often with
miniaturized or replicated processes.

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The fair was held on 427 acres (much of it landfill) on Lake Michigan, immediately south of Chicago's downtown area, from 12th
Street to 39th Street (now Pershing Road). Today, Meigs Field and McCormick Place occupy this site. A Century of Progress offi-
cially opened on May 27, 1933 and closed on November 12 of that year. Although originally planned for the 1933, season only, it was
extended for another year, reopening on May 26, 1934, and closing on October 31, 1934.

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Chicago in 1933

By, 1933, Chicago grew from a cluster of a Over those 100 years, ground value grew
dozen log huts at the site where the Chicago from a few thousand dollars to more than
River meets Lake Michigan, to a booming $5 billion.
city of 211 square miles and a population of
almost 3.5 million.

Life in 1933

1933 was the worst year of the depression with unemployment peaking at 25.2% with (1 in 4
people unemployed) in 1933. Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany and opened the
first concentration camp at Dachau. 10's of thousands travelled the road and rail in America
looking for work , and the US banking system which was under great strain was propped up by
the US government ( US banking act of 1933 ) to try and stop the panic of people withdrawing
their money from the banks. The continuing drought in the Midwest made even more of the
land into dust bowls.

 Shirley Temple signs a contract with Fox when she was 5 years old
 The original King Kong Movie is shown
 The First ever Drive-in-Theatre is established in New Jersey
 The Chocolate chip cookie is invented
 The Board Game Monopoly is invented
 The 18th Amendment to the Constitution is repealed, ending Prohibition in the U.S.
 On January 5, Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began in San Francisco Bay.
 Mount Rushmore National Memorial is dedicated.
 On October 17, Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee from

Nazi Germany.

In 1933, - Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated the infamous quote:

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

How Much things cost in 1933?
 Average Cost of new house $5,750.00
 Average wages per year $1,550.00
 Cost of a gallon of Gas10 cents
 Average Cost for house rent $18.00 per month
 Vacuum Cleaner $17.75
 A loaf of Bread 7 cents
 Newport Boulevard Ladies Hat $1.69
 A LB of Hamburger Meat 11 cents
 Silk and Rayon Stockings 39 cents a Pair
 Plymouth 6 Car $445.00
 Health Building Tonic 89 cents
 Campbell’s Vegetable Soup 10 cents
 1933 Vintage Radio $52.00
 Average Laborers Wage $20.00 per week

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