The 13 colonies` 1783 claim to the Northwest Territory (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin) arose from George Rogers Clark`s successful and daring raids into the area during the Revolutionary War. The territory was passed to the new United States by the Treaty of Paris with England. In 1791, the United States sent an expedition under Gen. Arthur St. Clair to wrest control of this territory from the Indians. He was defeated in battle. Two years later, Gen. ”Mad Anthony” Wayne led a larger, better-prepared and more-organized army. The defeated Indians were forced to sign the 1795 Treaty of Fallen Timbers. One provision called for a fort at the mouth of the Chicago River. A subsequent treaty in 1816 drew lines 10 miles on each side of the Chicago River and running parallel to it, allowing the eventual opening up of the Illinois and Michigan canal. The northern line starts at the lake and cuts southwest through Rogers Park. The southern line starts at the mouth of the Calumet and runs south- southwest toward Blue Island. The cession focused sharply on the future of Chicago as the gateway to the Mississippi Valley and the West.
INDIANS
When the first settlers moved into the area, the native Indians who lived in and around Chicago were the Potawatomies, Ottawas and Kickapoos. The Illinois Indians had been driven from the area by other Indians because of their alleged involvement in the betrayal of Pontiac, the great Ottawa chief, who forged a confederation to fight the white men. Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief, at the time of the first Fort Dearborn (1803-1812), had worked to build a larger but looser confederation. In the War of 1812 he aligned his forces with the British. One tragic battle was the Fort Dearborn Massacre on Aug. 15, 1812, in which 86 persons, including 12 children, were killed.. Two decades later, in 1833, the Indians were forced to sign the Treaty of Chicago, which moved them farther west in return for goods, money and promises of future government allotments. Greedy traders wrested much of the Indians` new-found wealth from them before the ink of the Xs had dried on the agreement.
JOE PUDZIEWALKIEM
This Polish phrase translates literally ”Joe under the sidewalk.” It was used for generations in Polish neighborhoods. Because Chicago had been built on swampland, the water table was too high to permit basements or sewer pipes. This problem was solved by raising the grade–building the streets up from six to eight feet. Lawns of houses built before this grade-raising today seem sunken. The area under the raised sidewalks was used in the early 1900s for coal storage and as the family outhouse. Polish Chicagoans answering the call of nature would say they were going to see Joe ”under the sidewalk.”
Older Poles in Chicago recall the phrase, often with a smile.
JOLIET LIMESTONE
The color of 100-year-old Chicago stone two- and three-flats is not the brownstone of New York, but a nondescript gray. Most of it is Joliet limestone, the material used to build the Water Tower. The town of Joliet had a small mountain of limestone until the majority was quarried and then shipped by rail and canal to Chicago to construct residences and commercial buildings. Chicago later stopped moving mountains and dug quarries in the southwest suburban area for the face it showed to the world. The town of Joliet, while named for Louis Jolliet, chose to use one less ”l” in its name than the explorer did.
THE LEVEE
In 1890s Chicago, the ”old” Levee was a red light district along Clark Street between Polk Street and 12th Street (now Roosevelt Road). It was lined with gaming houses, shot-and-a-beer taverns, and, above all, brothels. The Levee competed for customers with other Chicago vice districts such as Little Cheyenne and the Bad Lands. In ”Lords of the Levee,” Herman Kogan and Lloyd Wendt described what developed next: ”When the old Levee on the southern edge of the Loop was outgrown, a newer section, more elaborate and infinitely more vile, sprang up in the choice areas around Clark Street, Wabash Avenue, 18th and 22nd streets (now Cermak Road), its vicious tendrils still extending into other parts of the town. Here was the new Levee, the notorious Levee, the internationally famous home of sin and evil. Here were the brothels and peep shows and dime burlesque houses, the cheap saloons and smelly cribs.” This Levee was home to aristocratic Everleigh Club brothel, Big Jim Colosimo`s brothels, and Al Capone`s Four Deuces, at 2222 S. Wabash Ave. Other brothels here were Bed Bug Row, the House of All Nations, the Why Not?, the Bucket of Blood and the Library. Among madams who ran these brothels were Carrie Watson, Lizzie Allen, Vic Shaw, Zoe Mallard, French Emma Duval and Aimee Leslie. Infamous Levee pimps and white-slavers who plied their evil trade included Harry Guzick, Roy Jones, Ed and Louis Weiss and ”King of the Brothels” Ike Bloom. Many Chicago gangsters who came to power in the 1920s got their start here, while new-to-the-city young women were trapped into the Levee`s degrading life of white slavery. By the first decade of this century, efforts to end the Levee`s commercialized prostitution increased. In 1909, reformer Gypsy Smith led a march on the Levee. The Vice Commission of 1911, a coalition of civic leaders, started the final drive to close it down. By the end of the 1920s, the Levee red-light district was no more.
THE LIONS (ART INSTITUTE)
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The much-beloved sculptures of two lions standing proudly on the steps of the Michigan Avenue entrance to the Art Institute were cast for the World`s Columbian Exposition of 1893. They were exhibited separately during the fair. As the result of a donation by Henry Field`s wife, Annie, they were brought together and installed in front of the newly built Art Institute. Their creator was Edward Kemeys (1843-1907), a self-taught sculptor who was the most famous of the 19th-Century American school of animal sculptors. He achieved realism by studying lions in the wild. The mouth of the south lion is tightly closed and the north one is eagerly open. Kemeys was a democratic sculptor who said, ”I never doubted the judgment of the people.” He shunned sculpture that needed ”a college professor to explain it.”
MERCHANDISE MART HALL OF FAME
Along the edge of the Chicago River in front of the Merchandise Mart stand a series of oversize bronze busts on marble columns honoring eight of the greatest merchants in American history. They are: Marshall Field
(1834-1906), the early owner of Marshall Field & Co.; George Huntington Hartford (1833-1917), founder of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co.; John R. Wanamaker (1838-1922), founder of John Wanamaker, Inc.; Frank Winfield Woolworth (1852-1919), founder of the F. W. Woolworth Co.; Edward A. Filene
(1860-1937), president of William Filene and Sons; Julius Rosenwald
(1862-1932), president and chairman of the board of Sears, Roebuck & Co.;
Gen. Robert E. F. Wood (1879-1970), president and chairman of the board of Sears, Roebuck & Co.; and Aaron Montgomery Ward (1843-1913), founder of Montgomery Ward and Co.
TOMMY GUN
The Thompson submachine gun, popularly called the Tommy Gun, was developed to be a ”trench broom” by Brig. Gen. John T. Thompson, director of arsenals in World War I. It was not perfected until 1920. Because the gun did not violate concealed-weapon regulations in the early 1920s, it was sold openly in hardware and sporting-goods stores. Advertisements for the Tommy Gun claimed it was excellent for ”protecting large estates and ranches.” In 1923, the price was $175 and it came with a 20-cartridge magazine. A 50-cartridge magazine cost an additional $21. In the hands of an unskilled person, some said, 50 shots by the gun might not be sufficient to hit a target.. The Saltis-McErlane gang was first to use the Tommy Gun. The gun was hard to handle and posed a greater threat to bystanders than to gangsters. Al Capone quickly recognized the Tommy Gun`s potential. He used it to murder Jim Doherty, Tom ”Red” Duffy and Asst. State`s Atty. William McSwiggen. Later work Capone left to Vincent De Mora, alias ”Machine Gun” McGurn, or the gang that handled the St. Valentine`s Day Massacre.
TUNNELS UNDER THE LOOP
Forty feet below street level, the Loop and surrounding blocks are laced with tunnels that once carried supplies and coal to buildings. Electric locomotives pulled 3,304 cars through 59 miles of tunnels. The tunnels measure six by seven feet. Most still exist. Construction, begun in 1899, was completed in 1909. Jurgis Rudkus, the major character in ”The Jungle,” digs these tunnels. The last tunnel was dug in 1954 for the Prudential Building but was never used. By 1959 the general shift away from the use of coal for heating caused the demise of the tunnel system. A few tunnels are still partly used to carry heating pipes and other conduits. The Tribune used one of these tunnels to deliver large rolls of paper from a dock on the river to a sub-basement of Tribune Tower until its printing operations were moved in the early 1980s to the Freedom Center plant at Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street. TUNNELS UNDER THE CHICAGO RIVER
In the 1860s, Chicago was controlled by bridge tenders who created traffic jams on city streets by raising bridges over the river. The bridge tenders were issued guns, presumably to protect themnselves from irate travelers who were delayed. Part of the problem was solved on Jan. 1, 1869, when a tunnel beneath Washington Street was completed and then on July 4, 1871, when a LaSalle Street tunnel was opened. Three months later, this tunnel saved many lives during the Chicago Fire. Both tunnels are now blocked off, although the LaSalle Street tunnel remained open until 1939 and the Washington Street tunnel until 1953.
WIGWAM
In 1860 a building popularly called the Wigwam was erected on the southeast corner of Market (now Wacker Drive) and Lake streets to house the Republican National Convention. This was the first national political event held in Chicago. Temporary structures in this era were commonly called wigwams. Built at a cost of $5,000, this wigwam was the scene of well-orchestrated gallery packing and raucous demonstrations for the Illinois favorite, dark horse candidate Abraham Lincoln. On May 18, after the third ballot, Lincoln had 231 1/2 of the required 233 votes. After the Ohio delegations swung several votes in his favor, Lincoln won the nomination of the Republican Party for president.
WINDY CITY
The nickname ”Windy City” for Chicago dates to 1890. Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun and former editor of the Chicago Republican, coined the phrase in reference to Chicago`s promises in the competition to host the World`s Columbian Exposition. Dana said, ”Pay no attention to the claims ofthe Windy City.” In 1906, would-be reformer Grant Eugene Stevens wrote that the real name for Chicago should be the ”Wicked City.” The actual wind velocity in Chicago is not unusually high.
WOLF POINT
Wolf Point, the land cornered by the main and north branches of the Chicago River, retains some semblance of its natural state before civilization found Chicago. Wild ducks swim in the water in front of it and tall plants
–the last vestige of the prairie–reach out from its banks. Wolves no longer visit the point as they were said to do in the early 1830s. The old Chicago and North Western Railroad terminal that for generations occupied the site has been demolished. As it has for more than 50 years, the Merchandise Mart squats on Wolf Point, joined in the 1970s by its neighbor, the Apparel Mart. Some historians argue that Wolf Point was actually the name for the land cornered on the south side of the river, but tradition over the years continues to say otherwise.