Saturday, August 12, 2017

Green Oaks Kiddyland, 95th Street and Crawford Avenue (now Pulaski Road), Oak Lawn, IL. (1946-1971)

Green Oaks Kiddyland (yes... it's spelled correctly), was an amusement park that was located on the southwest corner of 95th Street and Crawford Avenue (now Pulaski Road), was a major family entertainment site for the Oak Lawn area for nearly 25 years. It was also known as Green Oaks Playland. 
Created by Mike "Mickey" Doolin in 1946, he began with only three portable carnival-style rides that sat on twenty-one acres, when it opened just in time for the season.
Mickey Doolin, Owner of Green Oaks Kiddyland.
In 1955 the rides included; Airplanes, Army Tanks, Autos, Boats, Ferris wheel, Fire Engine, Hand Cars, Hobby Horse, Horse & Buggy, Merry-Go-Round, Roller Coaster, Sky Fighter, Train and the Whip.
Green Oaks Kiddyland was the largest entertainment venue in the Oak Lawn area at one time. It was closed in 1971 with 15 rides, when it was sold, torn down, and replaced by a Venture store (now a K-Mart).

NOTE: These photographs were near impossible to find.
The fire truck was used to pick up kids for private parties, at their house, and drive them to Kiddyland. The rest of the time, it was used as a ride in the park.
Identified as Mary Munson by Granddaughter Marci M. Harvey-Utes.
Identified as Clarence Munson by Granddaughter Marci M. Harvey-Utes.
A 1956 Kodachrome Photograph from Susanne Houfek.
Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Communities of Chicago - Swede Town Neighborhood.

Later: Little Sicily "Little Hell" Neighborhood.
Later Still: Cabrini-Green Neighborhood.

Chicago's first Swedish settlement emerged in 1846, when immigrants destined for the Swedish religious colony in Bishop Hill, Illinois, decided instead to settle in Chicago. The boundaries indicated for the oldest Swedish district seem very narrow. The examination of the census lists and city directories indicates that nearly all of the 27 Swedish families which, in the summer of 1850 when the census was made, had their homes in the 7th ward on the city's north side, lived within an area near the river bounded by Erie street on the north and Franklin street ("the east part of the river branch") on the east.
Chicago Swedish Family
Swedish settlers in the river area were given notice of eviction by the real estate owners in 1853 or 1854. It has not been verified, but it seems credible in view of the industrial and commercial development of Chicago at that time. The areas along the river banks became quite important because of the city's growing industries, particularly after the opening of the Illinois-Michigan Canal, and of the first railroad, Galena-Chicago Union, in 1848.

Many of these earliest settlers came to work on the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Although the Swedish settlement remained small for the next two decades, reaching 816 people in 1860 and 6,154 in 1870, it represented the largest single cluster of Swedes in the United States. During the 1870s, the Swedish population in the city doubled, outnumbered only by the German, Irish, and British immigrant groups.

As the Swedish settlement moved, the area north of the Chicago River on the Near North Side became known as "Swede Town." It was bounded by La Salle Street on the east, Division Street on the North, Chicago Avenue on the South, and the Chicago River to the west. A second, smaller Swedish area developed on the South Side in Douglas and Armour Square. The third grew on the West Side in North Lawndale. Smaller settlements also emerged in West Town and the Near West Side.

Swedes began leaving "Swede Town" after the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The process accelerated in the 1880s as more and more folks left these initial neighborhoods of settlement for less dense surroundings as the community became increasingly prosperous and worked its way up to Chicago's economic ladder. By 1920 Swedes dominated North Side neighborhoods such as Andersonville (also sometimes referred to as "Swede Town"), Lakeview as well as areas such as Grand Crossing and Englewood to the south. The nickname would reemerge in these new Swedish-dominated districts as the original "Swede Town" became Little Sicily also known as "Little Hell" and later still the Cabrini-Green Neighborhood.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Communities of Chicago - Little Sicily "Little Hell" Neighborhood

Earlier: Swede Town Neighborhood.
Later: Cabrini-Green Neighborhood.

The name “Little Hell” was derived from the large gas house that was located at Crosby and Hobbie streets, whose nighttime flames lit the skies at night. The roaring thunder of the furnaces could be heard for blocks as coal was poured into the ovens and moistened with water from the Chicago River to create gas that was used for heating, cooking and lighting. Enormous tanks stored the gas during the day.
The Little Hell neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago was bounded by La Salle Street on the east, Division Street on the North, Chicago Avenue on the South and the Chicago River to the west. Between the 1880s and 1930, Chicagoans referred to the heart of the Little Hell slum as “Death Corner,” a wholly understandable moniker given that the intersection of West Oak Street and Milton Avenue (Milton Avenue changed names to Cleveland Avenue in 1909) was the scene of well over 100 unsolved murders. 
The North Side's first great gangster, Dion O'Banion, was a product of this district. Since most of the vice districts in Chicago were on the South and West sides of the city, this area was more or less ignored for many years in the city's fight against crime. It is said that, in the first 51 days of 1906, the police made over 900 arrests.

For two decades, Chicago police remained “hampered at every turn by the silence of the Italian colony” — a reference to the large Italian-American population in the neighborhood. 

Typically, as one newspaper story put it, victims would be “murdered before an audience that vanished with the last pistol flash, much as a loon dives beneath the sheltering water just at the moment the hunter’s gun spits out its flame and shot.” Death Corner, as the district’s “central gathering place,” had gained the “international reputation of being the site of more murders than any other territory of equal area in the world.” 
By the early 1920s, murders in Little Hell continued at the rate of more than 30 per year — more than one-third of the city’s total, although Italians made up only five percent of the population. By this point, many Death Corner victims were casualties of the Prohibition-era “alcohol rivalries” between the bootlegging gangs of Giuseppe “Joe” Aiello and the infamous  Al Capone “Scarface,” leader of Chicago’s most powerful mob. As notorious as Cabrini-Green would become, the violence of Little Hell may well have been worse.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Towns of Illinois - New Philadelphia, Illinois.

New Philadelphia, Illinois was located near the city of Barry, in Pike County. Founded in 1836, it was the first town in the United States platted and registered by a Negro before the American Civil War. The founder Free Frank McWorter was a former slave who was able to save money from work and his own business to purchase the freedom of his wife, himself and 13 members of his family in Kentucky.
The story of Frank McWorter and New Philadelphia is one of daring, hard work, luck, and shrewd family leadership.

Born a slave in South Carolina in 1777, Frank McWorter moved to Kentucky with his owner in 1795. He married Lucy, a slave from a nearby farm, in 1799. Later allowed to hire out his own time, McWorter engaged in a number of enterprises, notably a saltpeter works, that enabled him to buy his wife’s freedom in 1817 and his own in 1819.

Frank and Lucy McWorter and four of their children left Kentucky for Illinois in 1830, the year the Thomas Lincoln family, with son Abraham, moved to Illinois from Indiana. McWorter bought a farm in Pike County’s Hadley Township and platted the town of New Philadelphia in 1836. The original town plan consisted of 144 lots in a 12 x 12 square, including 22 crisscrossing named streets. McWorter sold the lots.
The plat for the streets and town lots as laid out by Frank McWorter in the Pike County Deed records in 1836.
The town was integrated, albeit with some typical 19th-century segregated facilities, such as cemeteries. There was one integrated public school.

McWorter promoted New Philadelphia strenuously, and engaged in other enterprises, managing to buy the freedom of at least sixteen family members from Kentucky. The town itself became a racially integrated community long before the Civil War, the 1850 and subsequent U.S. Census data showing black and white families living there. 

Frank McWorter lived there for the remainder of his life in New Philadelphia, dying in 1854. A son, Solomon, assumed family leadership. Before the Civil War, New Philadelphia had become one of the stations along the Underground Railroad for shepherding escaped slaves to Canada. With emancipation, more settlers arrived in New Philadelphia. Its population peaked at close to 160 shortly after 1865.

In 1869, the Hannibal and Naples Railroad was built. It bypassed the town on the north; a station was built in nearby Barry, soon to be followed by transit and commerce. New Philadelphia rapidly declined in population thereafter. A small number of residents turned to farming a portion of the former town site. Such changes and abandonment were not unusual for U.S. small towns in the late 19th century, especially those bypassed by changing transportation facilities.

In 1885 a portion of the town was legally dissolved. It reverted to farmland. Modern archaeological studies have indicated the area was inhabited through the 1920s. By the late 20th century, all vestiges of New Philadelphia had vanished save fragments of glass and pottery, and traces of the town's gravel streets.

The town site was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on August 11, 2005; subsequently, New Philadelphia Town Site was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009 because of the significance of its history and archaeology.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Note: Philadelphia, Illinois is an unincorporated community in Cass County and is located on Illinois Route 125, southeast of Virginia, Illinois. It is about 50 miles north east for where New Philadelphia, Illinois was located in Pike County.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Galena Illinois' Old Stockade used during the Black Hawk War 1832.

To have a background for this story of Galena's oldest landmark, "The Old Stockade," you will visualize it more clearly if the era leading up to its building and its use as a refuge, during the uprising of the Sac Tribe under the leadership of Black Hawk in 1832, is given.
So we turn back the pages of Galena's early days; when the first American mining development began; the story of the glittering lead that came from the rocky hills in the distant section, of the North-west, started the trek of adventurers seeking wealth by extracting the mineral from the ground that was filled with the precious ore.

As early as 1820, Julian Dubuque, a French trader, came up the river from "La Salle's Villages" to the locality of the mines. His first operations were on the west bank of the Mississippi River where the city of Dubuque is located. Seeking further ground for mining, he followed a small stream that flowed east for four miles from its junction with the ' 'Great River" that started in the far north and curved its mighty stream south until it reached the Gulf, making the highway for the future development of trade and transportation. Doubtless, Julian Dubuque knew of the tale carried back to France by a trader who gave a report that "Indians were digging lead from the hills on a small stream that flowed east from the 'Great River/ and this stream was called 'The River of Mines' by the early traders."

Reaching this location, Dubuque found a village of Winnebagos with their crude implements taking the ore from the earth and bartering it for corn, corn whiskey and trinkets of adornment that the traders gave them in exchange. He made friends with the tribe and taught them better methods of mining.

Tales of the fabulous wealth that was in this new found El Dorado was far flung, reaching not only to the new Republic, but over the sea. Spain, France, and the British Isles had eyes open for the North-west and its unbroken wilderness.

By 1822, the first American Klondike was in full swing. In New England, the story was heard by the sturdy men whose lives had been bounded by the narrow rocky farms that held a meager livelihood. Professional men and college graduates from the larger towns came with men for business enterprises, all having the call as well as the urban population and joined the caravan headed for the "Lead Mine District, "Virginia, Kentucky and the Louisiana country that had promoted the fur companies and traders "up the River," followed the newer adventure and cast their lot with the uncertain undertaking. The journey to this land of promise was filled with hardships; transportation by stage, team and boat; peril from Indian ambush and unbroken virgin forests to break through, locating a road that lead to the prospective wealth they hoped to find at the "End of the Trail."

The setting given this locality way back in the yesterdays of the ice and glacial period made one of the most beautiful landscapes in which to plant a home or found a city. It was surrounded by entrancing hills and bluffs, deep and fertile valleys between them, and lime stone rocks rising from the heights like sentinels or fortified castles guarding the steep incline that rose hundreds of feet above the level of their base.

In such surrounding beauty the first settlement in this locality was made. The early French traders had chosen a site on the top of the high bluff that rose from the "River of mines" (now the Galena River) to a height of several hundred feet. A log shack served as a post for barter and trade with travelers, Indians and miners. This location was called LaPoint.

In the spring of 1820 Thomas January and his wife emigrated from far off Kentucky. This brave pioneer woman was the first white wife to settle in this untamed wilderness. She must have had the spirit of endurance and courage to be willing to face Indian warfare and forego all life's comforts. Soon January Point became the center of the growing community. One by one log cabins were built near the post and on the river bank. For two years these pioneers were isolated from the outside world with only the natives, prospectors and settlers as the companions of January and his wife.

An intelligent Frenchman, named Francis Bouthillier, established a rude shack for trade down on the levy. He had an eye for future business. By 1822 steam boats began to make regular trips as far north as Fort Snelling. The first boat to land on the Galena River (that was three hundred fifty feet wide) was The Virginia, it came from New Orleans by way of St. Louis. So an active trade was started in the lower part of the village though January's Point was the real center of the increasing population.

By 1825 the settlement had spread out over the hillsides and along the river. It included the settlers, the miners, the Indians and travelling adventurers. About a thousand people lived in its outpost in temporary cabins, tepees and shelters of rude construction. The log houses were built from virgin timber of oak and walnut, devoid of comforts and conveniences, but able to withstand storms and Indian warfare. "The population of Januarys Point at this time was seven hundred souls." On December 27th, 1826 the importance of January's Point became significant enough to receive a new name and at the same time a post office. It was officially and most appropriately named "Galena" which is the scientific name for the valuable sulfide of lead ore found in the deposits deep in the earth of the age old hills on which the expected city was to be built.

In 1830 Galena was the center of interest in the state. It had made great advances in population, commerce and building. Young Chicago to the east was slowly awakening to be a city. It was the terminal of the Frink & Walker Stage Line from Galena with its relay stations for refreshing men and beast along its route.

In this historically minded day, many of these old taverns and inns have been preserved and marked, especially in the vicinity of the Black Hawk country. Local chapters of the Daughters of American Revolution, true to the tradition of preserving American history have placed these markers along the old stage route, showing to this generation the hard struggle that their ancestors endured to make our land the great republic that now stands for what all the world is fighting for today.

The population was ten thousand. Quite a town. It was incorporated and lots and building sites were sold. A motely gathering with all sorts and conditions of men and women made this population. Being located between Fort Armstrong to the south and Fort Crawford to the north, it was the center of gay social life. One eastern writer describing his visit to the mining district said, "The lead district is an island of white people surrounded by thousands of Indians, adventurers and miners." The gay dances, the open hospitality of the people, the friendly hand of friendship that was extended without formality or convention to all comers, gave this period the reputation that one pioneer lady described vividly, "A girl did not have to be beautiful or wealthy to be a belle, if she could ride, or dance a quadrille, sing a song, laugh and be merry, she was sought after. We were a happy-go-lucky lot of youngsters among the hills in that old Galena town."

The dawn of the year 1832 brought fear to this peaceful settlement. To the south where the Rock River flows into the Mississippi, Black Hawk, the Sac chief, had his land and village that was faithfully guarded on a high rocky island. The fur traders who went up and down the river, the emigrants who travelled by ox team, or the enemy Indian tribes, did not escape the watchful eye of "Black Hawk" who held his land according to the sacred treaty made in 1804 in St. Louis. Black Hawk, chief of the Sacs, and Keokuck, of the Mesquakie (Fox) and four other chiefs were makers of the treaty that was signed under the direction of the President, Thomas Jefferson, and officers of the state and army. The treaty was signed by citizens of St. Louis who were Charles Gratiot, Francois Vigo, and Auguste and Pierre Chouteau; All attached their names to the treaty in the presence of Major Stoddard of the army.

By this treaty, the Indians gave up fifty million acres for white settlements east of the Mississippi River. However, Black Hawk, who was in complete sympathy with the British, was violently opposed to this disposal of the Indian's rights to the land of their fathers. Regularly, as years went by, he and Keokuck journeyed to St. Louis to consult Governor Clark in regard to their lands and their people, to the emigration, of the white man was day by day coming nearer to the border of the Indians' sacred hunting ground on the edge of Black Hawk's village. The government was making every effort to induce the tribes to move westward, but such policy stirred the wrath of Black Hawk, and he avowed in council that "The Sacs never sold their lands as Keokuck sold the land of the Foxes." General Gains, in command of Fort Armstrong at Rock Island, asked, "Who is Black Hawk? By what right does he speak?" The reply by the haughty chief warned the "Pale face" intruders who they had for a foe. He said, with dignity "I am a Sac. I am a warrior. Provoke our people to battle, and you will not ask who Black Hawk is."

In the early spring of 1832, he saw from his watch tower on the Rock River, a train of settlers moving near his island retreat. Calling his warriors and their women and children, he headed up the Mississippi, and Governor Reynolds dispatched the frightful news "Black Hawk has invaded Illinois," and Galena was in that state. So the people were warned that they must be prepared for an attack.

When the news of the uprising of the Sac and Fox Indians was confirmed and that they were headed for the Illinois country, Col. Henry Gratiot the government agent for the Winnebago Indians in the Lead mine District, was hurriedly sent to "Prophetstown" below Farmersburg with power to offer a treaty to Black Hawk, But it was most indignantly refused and at once the enraged warriors attempted to take Gratiot prisoner. The "Prophet Chief" interceded and took him into his wigwam, saying "He is good man; friend of Indian; he my friend. I keep him with me in my wigwam." Gratiot attempted to escape during the night in canoes up the river but the "Braves" gave him a frightful race for his life before he reached safety back in the Illinois lead district.

The Winnebagos in the district were friendly, and had no resentment to the white settlers and miners. Especially were they devoted to Col. Henry Gratiot, who, with understanding and friendship, had won their loyalty. However, some of them were drawn into sympathy with the Sacs.

Hurriedly the United States government erected two block houses in Galena, forts or stockades as they were called, on opposite hill tops. The most important was erected one hundred fifty feet above what is now Bench and Perry streets. It was commanded by Colonel Strode of the 27th Regiment of the Illinois Militia. The block house was garrisoned by one hundred fifty regular soldiers. From this vantage point the country for miles around could be seen, and the fort was supplied with cannons, guns and ammunition to fight the invader. Col. Strode proclaimed martial law for the district May 31st, 1832. Every able bodied man, regardless of occupation or position, was ordered to work on a run-way from the block house to the large underground room in Amos Farrar's log house, the logs placed upright according to the French plan of building. This room was excavated from the rock hillside. It was walled with limestone and upheld by giant oak timbers rudely cut from the virgin forests nearby. The man power of the settlement fell in line and worked day and night to build the run-way from the block house to the stockade in the Farrar place of refuge. This run-way was made by digging a deep trench and placing timbers upright in it. These timbers were from six to twelve feet in diameter and from ten to fifteen feet in height. They were cemented together after being placed in the trench with clay mud and in so doing formed a solid wall of wood with port holes on either side so that guns could be used by the people if they were attacked from the outside.

It was planned to fire the cannon at the block house when danger threatened the settlement. At this signal all were to flee to the stockade for safety. A large bell was kept and rung in the stockade simultaneously with the firing of the cannon. At midnight June 4th, the dreaded sound came and the cannon gave the alarm.

The scrambling of the inhabitants to reach the shelter was vividly described by Dr. Horatio Newhall, a pioneer physician, writing to his brother in Lynn, Massachusetts. He said, "On Monday we had the alarm that the attack was imminent, for the Indians were close at hand. All the men, women and children fled to the stockade. Within fifteen minutes after the alarm was sounded there must have been seven hundred in the shelter, some with dresses put on back to front, men putting on their trousers, some with only night clothes on. All were wildly screaming and shouting to each other. Three babies were born during this mad scramble for safety."

When the grand stampede into the shelter of the stockade at the midnight hour came, the following pioneers must have been a part of that excited group for they are listed in an old diary as some of the inhabitants at that time - June 1832: Major Campbell, Dr. Muir and Indian wife, Miss Emily Billon, Mr. Moses Meeker, the Nicholas Dowlings, James Johnson, the Chetlains, the Soulards, the Gears, the Stahls, the Gratiots, the Hempsteads, the Harris', the Hunts and the Newhalls.

The Indians were met by the Militia west of the village, but hurried away on their ponies with their leader to a point on Horse Shoe Mound. When they saw the fort with its cannons and gun on the high hill, and its block house, they made a wild dash overland to the north, where, seven miles from Galena, they were met by Colonel Henry Gratiot and Thomas Wylley, a scout for the inhabitants of the district. Black Hawk was in a mood to call his war ended. The council was filled with understanding, and the chief gave his word that the Illinois country would no longer be molested. This council was held in the yard of the Branton House, under a large white oak tree. It was a hot summer day and the Indians were weary of their war fare, feeling that the superior military tactics of the well-trained militia was too great for them to try and conquer. However, the treaty was only a matter affecting the Illinois Lead Mining District. The "war hawk" had other places and other settlements that he planned to destroy when he could get help from other tribes.

The location of the Branton Tavern was on the highway where the Frink and Walker Stage Line, making its forty-eight hour trip from Chicago to Galena, passed. The hotel was used for a relay for the horses and a rest for the weary travelers. After the treaty, the location was called the "Hill of Council," later the shorter name of Council Hill was used.

After this pipe of peace the Indians dashed off to the West. There were only four hundred of their braves left and they had the burden of caring for their squaws and children, and the aged men. A sad caravan of worn men, they left the Mississippi River, crossing it at the mouth of the Bad Axe River in the state of Wisconsin. There they were met by General Armstrong, with his army of trained men, amounting to one thousand, and the poor red man had no chance of victory against such skilled soldiers. This battle of Bad Axe is called one of the bloodiest and most disgraceful battles in the history of American Indian warfare.

Colonel Jefferson Davis, who was the commandant of Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien) in the name of the United States, took "Black Hawk" prisoner; and in chains he was carried down the River to St. Louis and incarcerated in Jefferson Barracks, much to the sorrow of Governor Clark, who interceded with President Jackson for his release. This was granted and Black Hawk was invited to visit Washington as a guest and honored citizen of the United States.

He passed into the Indians Happy Hunting ground Oct. 3, 1838 and his burial place is in sight of his beloved river and island home. Like a Sac chief he was buried sitting upright, clad in a military uniform.

And now we come to the story of the old historic site which is in Galena as we of this generation have known it. Before the Indian uprising, a group of log houses were built on the hillside going up to Elk and Prospect streets. They were the homes of some of Galena's most enterprising citizens, and this section might well be called "exclusive."

The locality in which the stockade and cabins were built at the time of the Black Hawk war were those of Colonel Strode, Dr. Hancock, Amos Farrar and Nicholas Dowling, his was a stone house, the first substantial structure to be built in Galena. Across the narrow cobblestone street, he built a stone store which was -used as a trading post and early court house, with a public hall over the entire building. Colonel Amos Farrar's log cabin had a large, under-ground room that was to be used for protection if the Indians ever attacked the town. It had seats and benches around the wall where people could rest. Reflecting mirrors were placed to the north, south, east and west so that an invader could be seen if they approached the stockade. It had high timbered boards around the enclosure to the south of the cabin.

Colonel Farrar was one of the important men of the settlement, being the factor of the local American Fur Company. From his name, he doubtless was of Scotch ancestry, and, like many pioneers who came into the wilderness, he married an Indian woman, who, with their three children, died during the Small Pox epidemic. Later, he married Miss Sophia Gear, daughter of Captain Gear, who was a leader and a progressive man on the range. His daughter was an educated and refined lady, with an ambition that led her to establish a school in her home, the second one in the district.

Colonel Farrar died suddenly during the summer of the Black Hawk war and it was then that Colonel Henry Gratiot, the government Indian agent, became the commander of the stockade. With two brothers he had made the treacherous overland journey from St. Louis in the spring of 1826 and was appointed by the government for care and supervision of the Indians in the district. The early solution of the Indian problem needed men like Colonel Gratiot to befriend them and understand their problems. He had experience in those earlier days in St. Louis, being a brother-in-law of Manual Lisa whose history with the Indians and development of the west is part of history. He was also the direct descendant of Laclede, the founder of St. Louis, and related to the fur trading Chouteau Brothers. In the history of the Indian wars of Wisconsin, Mr. Moses Strong said, "There never was a white man in his time or any other time that had so much influence over the Indians of the Northwest as Colonel Gratiot." The knowledge of the Indian character was obtained by him from his contact with these very pioneer spirits, who were his ancestors. To obtain confidence and influence with the Indians he knew it was necessary for him to deal with them with kindness and good faith and never practice deceit. He obtained an almost unbounded control and influence over the Winnebago Tribe, which in his time claimed all the country which is now southwest Wisconsin and Northwest Illinois.

Mrs. Sophia Gear Farrar lived in her stockade home until her death. There being no heirs it was sold at auction and was bought by Mrs. Mary E. Gardner, February 16th, 1884. She and her daughter, Margaret A. Gardner, beloved teacher in Galena, guarded this old heirloom home with most patriotic zeal. This remarkable teacher held a place in the educational life of Galena that few women are privileged to attain. She started teaching before she completed her college education and continued it in Galena for over half a century. Her life as a teacher was devoted to three generations of Galenians who passed under her guidance and inspiration.

After her public school service was over, she could not give up her desire to have youth about her and unfold to them, in her own splendid methods, the constructive elemental education of the child mind. So, for several years, she had a kindergarten in her own home, and proudly told of having as a pupil the five-year old great, great grandson of Colonel Gratiot, Meade McKinlay Morris, Jr., whose grandparents, the William Grant Bales, lived in the Dowling mansion across the street that was built in 1845 by James Dowling, the son of Nicholas Dowling. In addition to her educational part in Galena's life, she was an accomplished musician, being organist for many years in Grace Episcopal Church, although she was a member of "St. Michael's" parish, founded by the Italian missionary priest, Father Samuel Mazzuchelli. The organ in Grace church is over one hundred years old, brought to Galena from New York City via New Orleans and the Mississippi River in 1840.

On June 14th, 1932 the City of Galena, with Priscilla Mullins Chapter, D. A. R., the city council, and city school board celebrated the building of the one hundred year old stockade, and paying tribute to Margaret Gardner, who was devoted to its preservation. Doubtless the one historic and necessary place of refuge would have been obliterated had not her interest kept the treasured beams, walls and entrance intact; that we who survive that passing generation can venerate these ardent pioneers who built for the future. A member of Priscilla Mullins, Daughters of the American Revolution gave the following tribute to Galena's Margaret Gardner, "The Daughters of the American Revolution are vitally interested in the preservation of historic spots all over the United States, and the local chapter has marked the site of the blockhouse and the old stockade. We are grateful to Miss Gardner for her cooperation and her patriotic devotion to Galena's early history.

"The ancient Talmud has a proverb, 'Yesterday is a dream, tomorrow a vision, today is a reality.' After today may some of the coming generation catch the vision of the future and keep the old stockade as a memorial of the pioneers of an early day.

The D. A. R., committee consisting of Miss Jessie Spensley and Miss Helen Boevers, communicated with as many of the pupils of Miss Gardner as could be contacted and invited them for a "homecoming" picnic in Grant Park thus celebrating her 62 years of her school year with a picnic and thus celebrating her 62 years of teaching in Galena with a fitting "dismissal of school."
Galena's Old Stockade on the Cobblestone Street.
The old stockade was restored and modernized home that has the underground room for its foundation. From the window, one can look up the steep hillside to the site of the old blockhouse and visualize those stirring events on the spot that the run-way to the old stockade was built.

On May 29, 1941 Margaret Gardner passed on in her venerated home and the place became the property of her nephew James Marcellus Rouse and his sister May Belle Rouse.
The oldest home in Galena Illinois, the Nicholas Dowling stone house, built in 1826.
They have carried on the tradition of the old building and treasure it as did their aunt; being a friend of man in time of war and peace, they have "The May Belle Tea Room" in it. Hundreds of interested guests desire the history of the century old building, and with deep reverence for its part in Galena's pioneer days and for its "Keeper of the Stockade" Margaret Gardner.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Raising Chicago Streets Out of the Mud in 1858. The feat of an era.

During the 19th century, the elevation of the Chicago area was not much higher than the shorelines of Lake Michigan, so for many years, there was little or no naturally occurring drainage from the city's surface. The lack of drainage caused unpleasant living conditions, and standing water harbored pathogens that caused numerous epidemics. Epidemics, including typhoid fever and dysentery, blighted Chicago six years in a row culminating in the 1854 outbreak of cholera that killed six percent of the city's population.

The crisis forced the city's engineers and aldermen to take the drainage problem seriously, and after many heated discussions — and following at least one false start — a solution eventually materialized. In 1856, engineer Ellis S. Chesbrough drafted a plan to install a city-wide sewerage system and submitted it to the Common Council, which adopted the project.

Workers then laid drains, covered and refinished roads and sidewalks with several feet of soil, and raised most buildings to the new grade with hydraulic jacks.
The Briggs House, corner Randolph Street and Fifth Avenue (today Wells Street).
The work was funded by private property owners and public funds.

The first masonry building in Chicago was raised in January 1858. It was a four-story, 70-foot long, 750-ton brick structure situated at the northeast corner of Randolph and Dearborn Streets. It was lifted on two hundred jackscrews to its new grade, 6 feet 2 inches higher than before, "without the slightest injury to the building." This was the first of more than fifty similar-sized buildings raised that year.

By 1860, confidence was sufficiently high that a consortium of no fewer than six engineers, James Brown, James Hollingsworth, and George Pullman. They took on one of the most unique locations in the city and hoisted it entirely up to grade in one go. They lifted half a city block on Lake Street, between Clark Street and LaSalle Street, a solid masonry row of shops, offices, printer shops, etc., 320 feet long, comprising of 4 and 5-story brick and stone buildings. The footprint took up almost one acre. The estimated all-in weight, including sidewalks, was 35,000 tons.
It was business as usual while the buildings were being raised. People worked and shopped in them as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

In five days, the entire assembly was elevated 4 feet 8 inches in the air by a team of 600 men using 6,000 jackscrews. The next step is to build a new foundation. The spectacle drew crowds of thousands, and people were permitted to walk under the lifted buildings among the jackscrews on the final day.

The following year a team led by Ely, Smith, and Pullman raised the Tremont House hotel on the southeast corner of Lake Street and Dearborn Street. This building was luxuriously appointed, was of brick construction, was six stories high, and had a footprint of over 1 acre. Once again, business as usual was maintained as this vast hotel parted from the ground it was standing on. Indeed some of the guests staying there at the time, among whose number were several VIPs and a US Senator, were utterly oblivious to the feat as the five hundred men operating their five thousand jackscrews worked under covered trenches. 
The street level looks like it was raised by about 8 feet.
One patron was puzzled to note that the front steps leading from the street into the hotel were becoming steeper every day and that when he checked out, the windows were several feet above his head, whereas before, they had been at eye level. This huge hotel, which until just the previous year had been the tallest building in Chicago, was, in fact, raised fully 6 feet without a hitch. Property owners found creative uses for the empty spaces beneath the vaulted sidewalks, from outhouses to storage for businesses.

Another notable feat was raising the Robbins Building, an iron building 150 feet long, 80 feet wide, and five stories high, located at the corner of South Water Street and Wells Street. This was a big building; its ornate iron frame, twelve-inch thick masonry wall-filling, and "floors filled with heavy goods" made for a weight estimated at 27,000 tons, a large load to raise over a relatively small area. Hollingsworth and Coughlin took the contract and, in November 1865, lifted not only the building but also the 230 feet of stone sidewalk outside it. The total mass of iron and masonry was raised 27.5 inches, "without the slightest crack or damage. 

There is evidence in primary document sources that at least one building in Chicago, the Franklin House on Franklin Street, was raised hydraulically by the engineer John C. Lane of the Lane and Stratton partnership. These gentlemen had been using this method of lifting buildings in San Francisco since 1853.

Many of central Chicago's hurriedly erected wooden frame buildings were now considered wholly inappropriate to the burgeoning and increasingly wealthy city. Rather than raise them several feet, proprietors often preferred to relocate these old frame buildings, replacing them with new masonry blocks built to the latest grade. Consequently, the practice of putting the old multi-story, intact and furnished wooden buildings, sometimes entire rows of them all at the same time — on rollers and moving them to the outskirts of town or to the suburbs was so common as to be considered nothing more than routine traffic. 
The raising of Chicago became the talk of the nation. Still, for the people of Chicago, the enormous undertaking solved a problem and testified to the young city's character. "Nothing," noted an early historian, "better illustrates the energy and determination with which the makers of Chicago set about a task when once they had made up their minds than the speed and thoroughness with which they solved the problem of the city's drainage and sewage."
It still stands at 1478 West Webster Avenue, Lincoln Park, Chicago, 1988.







Raised this house to new street level.


Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of 19th & 20th Century Vault Lights (prism glass used in sidewalks) used in Illinois Towns and Cities.

Vault Lights, also known as Sidewalk Lights (or Pavement Lights in the UK), are those old glass prisms set into sidewalks to let light into vaults and basements below. Prisms were used instead of flat glass to disperse the light, diffusing it over a large area; plain flat glass would simply form a bright spot on the floor below, not providing much useful general lighting. 
Cross-cut of Basement using Vault Lights.
Invented in 1845 by Thaddeus Hyatt, sidewalk vault lights started being used in urban areas beginning around the 1850s and continued to be popular into the 1920s. The first vault lights were engineered to have glass blocks placed into a cast-iron framework.
Later, with the introduction of Portland cement, setting them into reinforced concrete panels was more common.

These “glass blocks” provided a way to get light into the useful basement and void areas under the sidewalks. This also made the space rentable in some cases. The first attempts at vault lights proved unfruitful because the design basically allowed a single shaft of light to shine straight down into the space below.
Marshall Field Vault Lights on State Street, Chicago.


With Hyatt’s invention, the design incorporated a prism shape (“saw-tooth”) on the underside while the surface above remained smooth to walk across.
This provided a way for the light to be directed over a broader area in the dark underground.
 
The idea caught on; by the late 19th century they were common in larger cities downtown areas, especially cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Their use declined as electric light became cheaper and better, and by the 1930s they were not considered in construction any longer. 

Now, they are now endangered architectural relics.

Vault lights on the second floor of the atrium of The Rookery Building, Chicago.
Chicago locations where prism glass installations were known to exist (via Google Map).

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.  

Glass Blocks; a Chicago Invention for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Glass block, or glass brick, has an interesting history and connection to Chicago via two Chicago World's Fairs and multiple Chicago-based companies.

Gustave Falconnier
Glass Designer
The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition is known for introducing many things to the United States. One lesser-known first at the World's Fair showed the United States the first glass bricks made by Gustave Falconnier. 

Falconnier, an architect, Chicago city council member, prefect of Nyon, France, and a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, held many patents in the 1880s for various types of glass blocks of interesting geometric shapes.

At the Columbian Exposition, Falconnier exhibited his glass in buildings outside the Horticultural Building, showing their potential uses in architecture and horticulture. Falconnier was awarded by the fair commission for "a new departure in glass buildings."

Despite being shown in the horticultural pavilion, the fair commission gave him a somewhat backhanded compliment, saying, "Their adaptability for conservatories intended for plant cultivation has not yet been fully demonstrated, but for conservatory vestibules and other rural effects, they are well adapted." And finally, "In the construction of surgical, photographic, and other experimental laboratories, where extra subdued light is required, they possess great merit."
The Northern Pavillion of the Horticultural Building and Exhibit of Hot-Houses and Summer Houses.
Falconnier's glass block had a flaw that prevented it from taking hold in America. Because they were blown glass, the blocks needed a hole. Even a tiny hole eventually plugged up, leading to fogging. Once fogged, the bricks would need to be replaced. A tall order indeed for something that is meant to be permanently put into a wall.

Glass Block would get a second chance at Chicago's Century of Progress International Exposition in 1933 before it took hold in US architecture. However, other types of architectural glass that would be formative to the glass block's future were taking shape in Chicago.

The popularization of Art Deco glass block walls came via the crowd-pleasing thirteen houses of the future displayed at the 1933–34 Chicago World's Fair. Glass block walls gave builders an avant-garde 20th-Century sensibility that people really liked.

At the time, the Chicago World's Fair buildings were considered the height of American modernity and influenced United States architectural design for many years. The Century of Progress, planned before the crash of 1929, opened in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis. Despite that fact, or perhaps because of it, the Century of Progress resolutely focused on an optimistic vision of the United States yet to come, a premise that proved to be a wise move as it attracted so many visitors that organizers kept the fair open for a second year.
Owens-Illinois exhibit at the Chicago Century of Progress International Exposition, 1933-34.
Keck's design, which the Fair billed as the "House of Tomorrow," made the June 1933 cover of Popular Mechanics.


One of the Fair's most popular exhibits featured thirteen futuristic houses clustered together on the shores of Lake Michigan. Those houses, built from innovative construction materials and with several examples clearly paying homage to the European "International Style" or the colloquial "Streamline Moderne," turned out to be a crowd-pleaser. 

Few fairgoers actually contemplated living in homes like George Fred Keck's Glass House, a three-story, glass-clad, polygonal tower suspended from a central pole that clearly owed a lot to Le Corbusier's idea of the house as a "machine for living," but most attendees marveled at the technology displayed within and without. 

Keck's house controlled its own climate via central systems and sealed windows. It included a garage for the car and a hanger for the family plane. Keck's design, which the Fair billed as the "House of Tomorrow," made the June 1933 cover of Popular Mechanics. The idea of an "automatic" house that heated and cooled itself, rotated to face the sun and opened its own Venetian blinds caught the fancy of fairgoers. It likewise influenced architects throughout the United States in the subsequent years before World War II. Bits and pieces of the Fair's dramatic architecture appeared on the cultural periphery. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.