Calhoun’s Block

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Calhoun’s Block
Life Span: 1859-1871
Location: East side of Clark, bet. Washington and Madison.
Architect:

Halpin & Bailey’s City Directory for the Year 1863

Calhoun Block

Marcus Adolph

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1869
Calhoun’s Block—East side of Clark, bet. Washington and Madison.

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1870
Calhoun Block—East side of Clark street, between Washington and Madison.
Kern Charles, cigars and tobacco, and wines and liquors, whol. and ret. 117 Clark, r. 776 Wabash av.

Edwards’ Annual Directory in the City of Chicago, for 1871
Calhoun’s Block—East side of Clark, bet. Washington and Madison.
Kern Charles, wines and liquors, 117 Clark, and saloon, 776 Wabash av.

Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1859

MILLENERY MATTERS.-The Misses Norris finding their millenery rooms under the Tremont too small for the accommodation of their increasing customers, have opened another establishment in Calhoun’s Block, 119 South Clark street, where every variety of rich and fashionable millinery goods are offered for sale. The Misses Norris feel assured that with their increased facilities for doing a larger business-exhibiting a more varied assortment of goods. and in employing skillful workwomen-they cannot fail to suit the ladies generally. They elso keep employed an experienced cap and head-dress maker, and particularly wish ladies desiring anything in that line to give them a call. The branch establishment on Lake street will be kept open until Spring.

Chicago Tribune, February 22, 1859

Died.
In this city, on Sunday morning, the 20th last., at 3 o’clock. of a severe and lingering illness of nine weeks duration, which he bore with Christian fortitude and resignation, John Calhoun, Esq., one of the oldest residents of this city, and the first editor of a Chicago paper, in the 51st year of his age.

The funeral of Mr. Calhoun will take place from the Unitarian Church, street, at 10 o’clock, Wednesday morning. The friends and acquaintances of the family are respectfully invited to attend.

Mr. Calhoun was born in Watertown, Jefferson county, New York, on the 14th day of April, 1808. His father, Chauncy Calhoun, was an old resident of Watertown, who removed to that place from Litchfield, Conn., at a very early day, and wha died but two since at Watertown, at the advanced ago of 81 years. Mr. Calhoun’s mother is yet living, and is in her 76th year. Mr. C. served an apprenticeship to the printing business in his native town, and subsequently united with his employer in the publication of the Watertown Freeman. He afterwards, himself. published a paper called the Watertown Eagle, also in his native town. Hearing much of the desirableness of the west as a place of residence for a young man of enterprise, he visited Chicago in September 1833, bringing with him a printing press and materials for a newspaper and job office. The trip occupied two weeks. On Tuesday the 26th day of November, he published the first newspaper that ever made its appearance la this city, the Chicago Democrat, now issued by Hon. Jobn Wentworth. Mr. Calhoun edited and published the Democrat until November 11, 1836, and then disposed of his interest in it to Horatio hill, Esq., brother of Hon. Issac Hill, late Governor of New Hampshire. Mr. Hill failing to pay for the paper, as per agreement, Mr. Calhoun disposed of it to Mr. Wentworth.

Mr. Calhoun held several important and responsible offices in this city and county, such as Assessor, Treasurer, Collector, Alderman, for several years, &c., &c.. The duties of all these offices he discharged with promptness and fidelity, and no man can ever say that he wronged either his native State or city, or one of his fellow citizens to the amount of one penny. Mr. Calhoun’s politics were those of the Jeffersonian Democracy: but in 1848 he left the Democratic party and united himself to the Free Soldiers, and continued faithful to the politics of the Republican party to the day of his death.

In this hasty sketch it would be impossible to enumerate the various public and private virtues of Mr. Calhoun. Suffice it to say. that he was always forward in the various public and private benevolent enterprises of the day to the extent of his means, and in private was a man universally respected and admired for his honesty, truthfulness and open-hearted frankness, which almost amounted to the simplicity and guilelessness of the child. As a husband, a relative and a friend, he was one of the best pf men, possessing a most affectionate disposition and mild and subtle temper.

Mr. Calhoun leaves an affectionate and devoted wife to mourn his loss; a woman who clung to him with a devotion rarely equalled and never excelled; and who, during his long and painful illness, tended him with a most tender solicited that anticipated every want and shrunk from no fatigue. Indeed, so much was this the case, that Mrs. C. was also prostrated by sickness, and was compelled to be taken by friends to the bedside of her husband, to receive his last embrace, ere his spirit sought that higher and happier land “where the weary are at rest.”

Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1860

CALHOUN BUILDING.—We notice the fine marble structure on the corner of Calhoun place and South Clark street, has been called and conspicuously labelled, “Calhoun Building,” in honor of a late lamented citizen.

Chicago Tribune, December 21, 1870

All business men requiring lunch, should not fail to visit Kern’s, No. 117 South Clark street.

Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1871

Ward at Home.
After casting about for a long time for a place in which be could establish himself permanently, Ward has finally located at No. 117 Clark street, under Charlie Kern’s lunch room, where be is fitting up a perfect bijou of a barber shop. Everybody knows Ward, the champion barber of Chicago, who has more friends and customers than any other ten. He is henceforth to be a fixed fact at No.117.

Inter Ocean, November 26, 1883

A NEWSPAPER SEMI-CENTENNIAL.
Just fifty vears ago to-day the first Chicago newspaper was issued. One hundred and forty-seven copies were worked off, the editor being also printer and publisher all combined. Mr. John Calhoun was then the embodiment of the art of printing in all its ramifications, so far as this town was concerned. To-day there are more than 2,000 compositors in the city whose entire time is devoted to composition.

That one newspaper, the Democrat, has developed by a natural process of evolution into 275 regular publica-tions, dailies, weeklies, and all. If John Calhoun had been told that in the lifetime of his own wife Chicago would havo at least one journal for every sub-seriber to his first venture, he would have supposed the suggestion too preposterous for sane consideration. These publications represent almost every language of Europe. Nothing shows the cosmopolitan character of this city more strikingly than the journals here published. The miracle of Pentecost is constantly repeated, only with additional emphasis.

To form any idea of the development one must take into account the fact that the Democrat was a weekly. Fora period of seven days only 147 copies were issued from the press of Chicago. Compare, this with the exhibit made by one newspaper of to-day, namely, The Inter Ocean, the youngest of the great newspapers of this city. The Inter Ocean sends out every week more than 300,000 coples, reaching not less than 150,000 families. There is not in all the country another weekly newspaper with so large a circulation as this, a fact which testifies significantly to the importance of Chicago as a center of intelligence. Instead of working off an edition by the slow and novel process of the wife of the editor passing her flat-iron over the form, The Inter Ocean is produced upon three of the finest presses in the world, with a capacity of 50,000 copies an hour, each copy printed, folded, cut, and pasted by a single process.

These details give some idea of the growth of the city and the place occupied in the metropolitan life of to day by the press. It is quite impossible to form any conception of what another fifty years will bring forth in this direction. Already it is evident that Chicago will become before many years the chief newspaper eity of the continent. It is second now only to New York. It cannot fail to surpass even that one remaining rival, for it is in the center of a vast and growing population, and not upon the extreme edge of it. Imagine the Atlantic Ocean peopled the same as is the region west of New York, and you have some conception of the advantage Chicago has over that city. How long it will take to reach the foremost place cannot be esti-mated, but it is bound to come. The supremacy reached by The Weekly Inter Ocean is an assurance of what awaits daily journalism in Chicago, as compared with all other cities in the United States.

In one respect, book-making, Chicago is strangely slow of development. Ot course there are a great many useful books published here, professional text-books, subscription books, and the like. The general intelligence of the Northwest, and perhaps of the whole country, has been promoted very materially by Chicago publishers. The books sent out from this eity are many of them very excellent in their way, but what citizen of Chicago has ever won for himself place among the literati of English literature? Detroit has her Will Carleton, Cincinnati her T. Buchanan Read, and Milwaukee may, in the person of Ella Wheeler, gain representation in the ideal Westminster Abbey, but the nearest Chicago has come to it is in “The Songs of Yesterday,” by Benjamin F. Taylor, a former Chicagoan. Supposing every original Chicago book destroyed, that loss would not be felt in a complete library of English classics. While, therefore, John Calhoun’s little acorn has grown to a sturdy oak, It cannot be said that beneath its shadow has grown a single immortel.

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