Chicago Tribune - Chicago Flashback: The People and Events That Shaped a City’s History

Copyright 2017 by the Chicago Tribune

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the publisher.

Chicago Tribune:R. Bruce Dold, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief; Peter Kendall, Managing Editor; Colin McMahon, Associate Editor; Amy Carr, Associate Managing Editor/Features; Marianne Mather, Photo Editor; Kathleen OMalley, Copy Editor.

Chicago Flashback

ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-57284-807-8

First printing: November 2017

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Midway Books is an imprint of Agate Publishing. Agate books are available in bulk at discount prices. For more information, visit agatepublishing.com .

Contents

Photo on title page: Looking north from the bottom left of the midway are the famous Travel and Transport Building, the Chrysler Motors Building and Northerly Island at top right, where the Sky Ride can be faintly seen.

Table of Contents

W HEN visitors come to Chicago, they gape at the architecture, frolic on the lakefront, marvel in the museums, explore the diverse neighborhoodsand devour the food. They declare Chicago a world-class city and rightly so. Yet to understand what makes this metropolis tick, how it grew into the city it has become, you have to hear its stories.

Here are 100 of those stories. Curated from the Chicago Tribunes Flashback featurewhich mined the newspapers vast story, photo and news page archivesthe tales told here breathe new life into well-known historical events by reporting how everyday Chicagoans heard the often-terrible news and how they reacted. In flipping through 170 years of newspapers and tens of thousands of photographs, we also rediscovered events and slices of city life that surely would have been lost to history.

As conceived by then-Editor Gerould Kern, Chicago Flashback was launched in June 2011 to bring context to current events by connecting the news of the day to the citys past. The very first installment, coming in the middle of the Rod Blagojevich scandal, reminded readers about Len Small, the worst governor ever, who was accused of embezzling millions in the 1920sand got away with it.

The second added depth to decades-long efforts to clean up the Chicago River and unearthed the remarkable story of a robbery victim in May 1911 who was beaten and thrown unconscious over the side of a bridge. As luck would have it, he landed in Bubbly Creek, a filthy arm of the Chicago River near the stockyards that was so clogged with grease and animal parts that the man didnt sink, but came to hours later to realize he was on the soft, yielding bosom of Bubbly Creek.

Compiled here, these stories and others spanning more than two centuries paint a vibrant picture of what city life was like when pedestrians waded through swampy streets, broad-shouldered immigrants stoked steel mills or butchered cattle and the newly wealthy strolled down leafy lakeside paths.

Telling Chicagos story was a labor of love. Tribune reporter Ron Grossman, the newsrooms de facto historian and a natural-born storyteller, not only wrote most of the installments but also provided keen insights and creative energy.

Some of the most entertaining stories arose from the research efforts of Tribune photo editor Marianne Mather. Two prime examples: Hollywood legends stopping in Chicago to change trains and the crazy Depression-era fad of marathon tree-sitting.

Finally, Flashback was made immeasurably better by the thoughtful comments of Tribune readers, who shared personal memories and family stories, suggested insightful installments and were quick to note inaccuracies when they arose.

And they often asked when the book was coming out. So for those readers and anybody else interested in how Chicago got from then to now, this book is for you.

STEPHAN BENZKOFER

Chicago Flashback editor, 20112015

A NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHY: Many of the historical photos in this book have deteriorated over time, so youll see images that are scratched, broken, faded or painted on by long-ago newspaper retouchers.