Monday, September 2, 2013

the library or how i lose hours of my life doing research

i used to work at the ALA. that's the american library association for you greenhorns. i have always loved my local library. i have had a library card since i was 7. but i finally understood the lengths to which libraries go to to ensure everyone has their resources at their fingertips.

let's take the Chicago Public Library. one of the first things i did was get a library card from the Lincoln Park branch. but i didn't realize that it afforded me more than books. when you sign into the CPL website, you have access to several databases; listed here are a few (that you usually have to pay for):

Ancestry Library Edition
Ancestry Library Edition contains U.S. and U.K. Census images and indexes, the Social Security Death Index, World War I draft registration cards, Civil War service records, immigration records and many more sources for genealogical research.

Chicago Tribune Historical Archive
This database allows one to search the entire text of the Chicago Tribune, including classified and display advertisements, from 1849 to 1988.

MEDLINE
Search short descriptions of articles in the biomedical research literature. Primarily aimed at doctors and medical researchers, MEDLINE allows users to identify articles by subject in over 5,000 journals in medicine and related fields.

WorldCat
WorldCat is a catalog of items held by libraries across the United States and around the world. Each item description links to a list of “Libraries Worldwide” that own the item. Use this database to discover print, audiovisual and electronic resources beyond the Chicago Public Library collection.

Illinois Sanborn Maps
Illinois Sanborn Maps offers digitized versions of a huge number of fire insurance maps for the state of Illinois, including over a hundred volumes for the city of Chicago.

here's the catch: you need to have a valid, up-to-date library card with no fines in order to get into these databases. and i frequently have fines on my card. i tried to use my husband's card, but his needs to be renewed. sigh. the ironing is delicious.

anyway, because i can't do any real research on this, here is an article from today's chicago tribune about a missing street.

The circuitous search for Chicago's on-again, off-again 29th Street

JON HILKEVITCH

As a young boy growing up on Chicago's Southwest Side, Tony Broz sometimes wondered about the streets in his neighborhood and why one of them — 29th Street — was missing.

Where did 29th Street go? Broz asked your Getting Around reporter, who didn't know the answer either.

"I lived on the 2800 block of Kolin Avenue, and every north and south street between Kenton on the west to California on the east is missing a 2900 block," said Broz, now 77 and living in Round Lake.

"Just take a ride southbound on, say, Pulaski Road, starting on 26th Street," he said. "The next east and west street will be 27th Street, then 28th Street, then 30th Street, 31st Street, etc. Now take a ride to the Bridgeport neighborhood where Mayor (Richard J.) Daley lived and, yes, there is a 29th Street and blocks that carry addresses such as 2900 S. Damen Ave."

So I took a ride, starting at the eastern end of 29th, on Lake Park Avenue just west of the Illinois Central Railroad tracks. I followed its zigzags and abrupt dead-ends in some stretches to the point where 29th stops at Throop Street, west of Halsted Street near the Stevenson Expressway (Interstate 55). That's all she wrote, until 29th picks up again briefly in the town of Cicero.

It was an enjoyable odyssey. I pulled over the car to talk to people playing board games in parks and sitting on folding chairs in front of four-flats on a hot summer day. I stopped again and again, to admire spectacular leaded-glass windows and stylistic masonry touches on early 20th-century bungalows and to buy Italian ice and "elote," or Mexican-style corn on the cob, from pushcart vendors.

At McGuane Park, 29th and South Poplar Avenue, I asked postal carrier Barbara Reynolds why she thought 29th is missing in action from large swaths of the logically laid-out Chicago street grid system of eight blocks to the mile. She offered a simple but incomplete answer.

"There is an exception to every rule," Reynolds, 53, said with a laugh. I would later learn she was exactly right.

Next, I contacted Peter Alter, Chicago History Museum archivist.

"Some streets do disappear over time, based on the construction of expressways and so forth," Alter said. "I wonder if at some point the western portion of 29th by the Chicago River was actually some other street and really never, ever stretched beyond, say, Damen or maybe California avenues.

"I'm sorry I don't have a magical, 'Oh, this is what happened to 29th Street' answer for you," he said. "I have to say its lack of existence is a little bit of a stumper."

Alter suggested that I look at Chicago maps in the museum's collection. He recommended starting with 1910, which is one year after the Brennan numbering system (named after Edward Brennan) was adopted. It rationalized the city's chaotic pre-1909 street-numbering systems by making State (zero west-east) and Madison (zero north-south) streets the baseline. The numbers increase uniformly with distance from the State-Madison intersection.

Alter said checking Chicago maps every 10 or 20 years after 1910 "could bear some possible fruit as to the mystery surrounding 29th Street," but he warned that "it can be time-consuming and somewhat of a rabbit hole."

When I arrived last week at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., veteran reference librarian Lesley Martin was ready for me with tables full of large maps, and a magnifying glass. Martin had already done some sleuthing, figuring out that the path to take was to go back in time to the 19th century, not forward, because by about 1895, 29th was the way it still is today.

The earliest city map in the collection that Martin showed me, dated 1855, contained a street called Hardin Place that later became 29th. Hardin ran from the Illinois Central tracks to State. Family farms occupied the land west of State.

South Side streets were numbered beginning in 1861. Martin showed me a Chicago map dated 1868, and indeed 29th was the primary designation, and Hardin was listed in parentheses. The street now extended to Wentworth Avenue, and the map clearly showed residential development beginning to replace farms.

An 1876 Chicago map depicts 29th extending west of Wentworth, but with a break, to Dashiel Street, which later became Union Avenue to reflect the pro-Union fervor of most Chicagoans in the years leading up to the Civil War. Union Avenue remains today.

On an 1886 city map, 49 years after Chicago was incorporated, 29th stretched as far west as Halsted Street. A diagonal section west of Halsted, first known as Stearns Street, was renamed 29th in the early 1890s and makes up the last leg of 29th to where it ends today at Throop, records indicate.

My final stop on the 29th Street mystery tour was to contact mapmaker Dennis McClendon, who frankly couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.

"I don't think there's any great mystery about the missing 29th Street," said McClendon, owner of Chicago CartoGraphics.

"It's just that when the South Side streets were given numbers in March 1861, they were numbered pretty much as they existed on the ground, rather than in accordance with a theoretical scheme," he said. "So Hardin Place became 29th Street merely because it was the 17th street south of 12th Street, where the numbers commenced."

In 1909, when the city began unrolling the Brennan numbering system with its theoretical scheme of 800 house numbers to the mile, it would have been too much of a burden to renumber the streets between 12th and 39th streets, McClendon said, "giving us the exceptions to the rule that every Chicagoan knows."

So 29th got short shrift.

But McClendon noted: "At least 29th got onto the map in some places, unlike poor 10th Street." There is no 10th Street in Chicago. It was skipped because 9th and 11th streets are exactly one block apart.

McClendon said it is surprising there aren't more exceptions.

"But what seems to baffle most laypeople is that the grid didn't come first and the city got built to it," he said. "The city got built, and then this numerical grid system got retrofitted onto that."

Sunday, April 14, 2013

the cubs

we all know the cubs are the worst team in baseball. there are fair-weather fans who are embarrassed to live in a town that houses such a crappy team. well, i say suck it up. i have enjoyed the cubs since i moved here in 1999. honestly, i care less about the team than the history behind it. of course. ;)

in 1870, people were bored after the Civil War. so a team called The White Stockings started playing baseball in Chicago for the heck of it. most of the baseball teams at that time were in the east, New York mostly, the Philadelphia Athletics being the non-NY team. the White Stockings were part of the pro-am league called the National Association of Base Ball Players. and you know what? they actually won that first championship, although the New York Mutuals will dispute that fact.

that first year, they played at Dexter Park, down by the Stock Yards, and at Ogden Park, which was at Ontario and Michigan Ave. Since the Stockings weren't a professional team yet, they didn't have a ball field to call their own.

in 1871, they joined the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players and built the Union Base-Ball Grounds at Michigan Ave. and Randolph. but d'oh! in October, the whole city burned to the ground, and took the next two years of Chicago baseball with it.

from 1874 to 1877, the White Stockings played at the 23rd Grounds at 23rd and Cermak. in 1876, the White Stockings started the National League. because they totally rule. in 1878, they moved to yet another ball park, the Lakefront Park, which was in the same place as Union Grounds. in 1883, they renovated the park to double the capacity from 4,000 to 8,000. in 1883, the city reclaimed the land the park was on and Chicago became a traveling team until West Side Park was completed in 1885.

West Side Park was located at Congress, Loomis, Harrison and Throop Streets. it could hold 16,000 people. they won the National League Pennant in 1885 and 1886.

in 1891, they split their time between West Side Park and South Side Park. i guess this is what it's like when you don't have corporate sponsorship. so, the South Side Park was built in 1890, with a capacity of 15,000.


this is the South Side Park that the Stockings played at. i thought that was IIT in the background, but the building shape doesn't match. boo.

in 1893 they moved the team to West Side Park, Part Deux. this new park was at Polk and Wood streets. they actually stayed at this park until Weeghman Park was built in 1916. and this park is where all of the magic happened.


the White Stockings won six National League pennants between 1876 and 1886. the team then changed their name to the Chicago Colts. Cap Anson was a player and their manager at the time, so they were sometimes referred to as Anson's Colts. this guy was the sammy sosa of his time. i mean, c'mon. 6 pennants in 10 years? but in 1897, the Stockings did poorly and Anson was released from the team. after that, they were referred to as the "Chicago Orphans."

an aside: Cap Anson, while an amazing player, he was a bigoted jerk. On July 20, 1884 Anson again refused to take the field against Toledo, calling their two black players – Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday – "chocolate-covered coons." you stay classy, Anson.

alright, lets get back to it. On August 5, 1894, during its first full season as home to the Colts, West Side Park suffered severe damage from fire during a game against the Cincinnati Reds. As the fire spread through the first-base side stands, panicked fans trying to escape pressed up against the barbed wire fence separating them from the playing field

in 1900, the Western League changed its name to the American League. It was still officially a minor league, subject to the governing National Agreement and an underling of the National League. but this development gave birth to the Goddamn White Sox and the Cross-Town Classics that all of us locals know and love. (not. don't even think about parking within a 10 block radius of the place on those days.) The NL actually gave permission to the AL to put a team in Chicago, provided they not use the city name in the team's branding. so they became the White Stockings. (how original. get yer own damn name, ya jerks.)

in 1902, the Colts finally became the Chicago Cubs. huzzah. West Side Park was the park at which the Cubs won their two only World Series games in 1907 and 1908.

alright, we're almost there.

because having two baseball leagues wasn't enough, someone decided to start the Federal League in 1914. this club had eight teams, including the Chicago Whales (also known as the Chicago Federals), owned by Charles Weeghman. in the two years that the Federal League was around, the Whales won a championship in 1915, the last year of the league. the Whales left behind one amazing legacy to the Federal League: Wrigley Field, built in 1914.

there's a cool bit of history, huh? wrigley field, one of the oldest and coolest parks was built for a team that played for a league that was only around for two years. take that, Yankees!

OK, so Weeghman obtained the Cubs through a business partnership with Albert Lakser, who horded Cubs stock like it was ammo during Armageddon. because Weeghman had this awesome ball park, the paint not even dry, just sitting at addison and clark streets, they picked up the Cubs and moved them to the north side. they said "thank you" by winning the pennant in 1918, a season shortened by the war. in 1920, Bill Wrigley became majority owner changed the name to Wrigley Field in 1926.

Lights were scheduled to be added in 1942. However, after Pearl Harbor, Mr. Wrigley donated the materials to the war effort. the were added in August of 1988


Dexter Park by the Union Stock Yards. must have smelled extra nice to watch them play there, huh?


new seats being built in 1926. which is strange, since there aren't actual seats here now.


aerial view in 1938.


Weeghman Park in 1914. Hey, there, Whales


West Side Park during the World Series. They didn't win this one.


this is where ivy comes from. :)


Weeghman Park. I'm not sure when, but some time between 1914 and 1920.


Sanborn map from 1894.


these buildings are shown in the map above. Eliza Hall, the building in the middle of block on Waveland, was the dormitory for the Seminary. pretty cool, huh? The seminary continued to function on the North Side of Chicago until 1910, when the Addison St. property was sold.


i found this on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America website. you can see some of these buildings in the early pictures of Wrigley.


Sanborn map from 1923.


Sanborn map from 1944.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

pearce memorial

for those of you who live in the city, you know about Rosehill Cemetery. and you probably know about the Pearce Memorial. or rather, the woman in the box. she was originally buried in Lincoln Park Cemetery in the late 1850s. when the city got tired of having its dead being buried in the city century, they dug everyone up and moved them. Rosehill was the newest acquisition of the city to put people. and that's where Ms. Pearce and her 10-month-old daughter was moved.

from find a grave:
Birth: Jul., 1853
Death: May, 1854

Ten-month-old daughter of Frances Minette Pearce and H.O. Stone. She is buried with her mother, and is portrayed cuddled up to her in the white marble statue by Charles B. Ives on top of the tomb.


here is a picture of the memorial as it is today at Rosehill.


here is a picture of the same memorial as it was right after it was placed in Lincoln Park Cemetery, before the glass was placed around it.

Friday, April 12, 2013

track marks


train tracks at Lakewood and Schubert.

i used to live on fullerton and green view. every day, i would walk to the train at Sheffield. around Wayne, i would pass the Lakeshore Athletic Club and cross over these ancient tracks in the road. i also used to drive over them all the damn time. every once and a while, there would be a sign out at the club saying that you can't park on this side of the parking lot because it's Train Day. wtf? do those tracks actually work?

enter the invention of Google maps.


i think it used to be a freighter line from Goose Island to Wilson Yard. how cool is that???


tracks through the fence. there are two sets of tracks.


train tracks end in a parking lot at Wrightwood and Lakewood.


this is the exact parking lot from which i took the above picture. this was taken 23 August 2008 by Chicago Switching.


i think this is the same ride as above, but taken by a different photographer. click on the link and go to this guy's flickr page. the comments are full of information.


from flickr, jatherton's photostream. these are the signs the athletic club used to post. i never knew what they meant.


taken by Mark 2400 on flickr in 1999.


this is what i remember from my running route around the 'hood. the black train car, which i guess is full of corn syrup or some such goodness.


here is the syrup car. :)
from Mark LLanuza's photostream. again, look at the comments section for cool info.

Freight information from Chicago-l.org

chicago-l.org info on Wilson Yard

Wilson Yard with more pictures

the old wilson yard building that was demo'd in 2009.