On one of those horrifyingly hot days this week, few people were out and about around the corner of Dearborn and Kinzie streets. Four restaurants sit on this corner and one of them is very old and very popular and when I ask the man who runs it “how’s business?” Grant DePorter smiled a thin smile, shrugged and said, “Well, we are operating at 25% capacity.”
It is tough all over but DePorter, the CEO of Harry Caray’s Restaurant Group, oversees the operation of seven restaurants. On this day he was standing in Harry Caray’s, 33 W. Kinzie, in a small room on the building’s fourth and highest floor and showing me a fascinating item and talking about the past, a healthy excursion in a world so currently troubled and with a future so uncertain.
“This,” he says, picking up a thick book comprised of brittle pages filled with florid longhand writing (a bit faded by still quite legible), “is my Rosetta Stone.”
What he means is that this book charts the lengthy history of this piece of land, which was designated the city’s first block in 1830, seven years before it was incorporated as a city. The original owner was a man named Alexander Wolcott Jr., who had arrived here by canoe and became the area’s first doctor. He married Ellen Kinzie, the first non-Native American born here, daughter of settlers John and Eleanor Kinzie.
More firsts? John Kinzie committed the first murder here in 1812 when he stabbed to death an unfortunate fellow named Jean La Lime. The Wolcott-Kinzie union was the first marriage in Chicago. The property was later purchased by William B. Ogden, the city’s first mayor and owner of the city’s first brewery. The building there later housed the law offices of lawyer Grant Goodrich, who practiced with Abraham Lincoln, co-founded Northwestern University and was an ardent advocate for the temperance movement.
The “modern” history of the property begins in 1892 when the land was purchased by the Chicago Varnish Company, which hired architect H.I. Cobb to design the Dutch Renaissance building that was finished in 1895 and still stands
I like to think I know a great deal about the history of this place, in part because my father, Herman, was a newspaperman who wrote many books about the city’s raucous past. DePorter credits his father, Donald, the late Hyatt Hotels executive and one-time chairman of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, with instilling in him an affection for the city.
“He was so engaged in the civic life and the people of Chicago,” he said.
Of course, the Kinzie-Dearborn building is filled with visual tributes to its namesake, that charming broadcasting legend who died in 1998. It also is liberally decorated with photos and other memorabilia of sports figures and celebrities. The place has long been a magnet for such folks, and for the tourists and locals who pile in for the food and drinks and star-studded ambiance.
DePorter has been so energetic and inventive about promoting his restaurants that he might rightly carry the title of showman. He has co-authored a 2008 book, “Hoodoo: Unraveling the 100 Year Mystery of the Chicago Cubs” (Rare Air Limited), written with Elliott Harris and Mark Vancil. He stages all manner (and a countless number) of special events. Late in 2003, he paid $113,824.16 for what was known as the “Bartman Ball,” which was exploded early in 2004 in a nationally televised event from the restaurant, with money raised going to charity.
That’s all fine and admirable, but on a deeper level DePorter is also a passionate historian and the ancient building’s walls are filled with thousands of documents (newspaper clippings, photos and more) that make it — if you’re be wise enough to wander about and look and read — something of an artful and accessible history museum. Wildly entertaining too.
Much of this material is from a checkered past, when the building was a speakeasy and was later owned by Frank Nitti and his wife. Nitti, often obscured by the scar-faced shadow of his associate Al Capone, is an under-appreciated gangster, who ran the Chicago Outfit from 1932 until his death in 1943. His third wife, Annette, was also a formidable presence and owned the building until 1969. (Read more about this interesting couple in next Tuesday’s baiduhai.)
In 1971 the building began its eatery life, first as the Kinzie Steakhouse and then Miller’s Kinzie Steakhouse, before becoming Harry Caray’s in 1987. It was an immediate hit and over the decades has been the scene of many discoveries: a large safe found inside a wall; a secret room uncovered by an electrician drilling holes for wiring; a personal phone book found hidden in a wall, found by a carpenter; and in 2018 another safe, belonging to Frank Nitti, discovered behind a bricked-up doorway.
That latter event led to considerable TV news coverage and compelled members of the Nitti family to contact DePorter. He has so far met 18 members of that brood, including three grandchildren, many of whom have shared photos, memorabilia and, most arrestingly, that “Rosetta Stone” that contains all the title documents. DePorter has hosted some of the Nittis for dinners and has grown very fond of them. “Some of their stories, which they are eager to share, are just fascinating,” he says.
He then delightedly shows me a video he shot while wandering though some of the still unexplored spaces inside the 34,000-square-foot building. It looks like some clip from a PBS documentary of an archaeologist searching for a tomb inside a pyramid, all rubble and dust. “I do think there may be more to discover in this building,” he says. “Oh, I don’t know. … Maybe a million dollars, maybe a long dead body.”
The pandemic has allowed DePorter to devote time to his historical research and it has been time well spent. He has added more photos and newspaper articles to the walls and, thanks to materials provided by and conversation with the Nitti family, he has new stories to tell.
Business may not be what it once was, but DePorter, who lives nearby with his wife, talks optimistically about very soon expanding his restaurant’s outdoor seating into what had been a shuttered Bar Louie space to the south.
Friday marks the 200th anniversary of Dr. Wolcott moving onto the property. No party is planned. DePorter will be alone in his office in the building which used to be, of course, part of Frank Nitti’s apartment.