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Washington Park Club
Life Span: 1884-1905
Location: East 61st Street & South Cottage Grove Ave
Architect: TBD

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1904

Washington Park Club (The)

The Chicago Clubs Illustrated, 1888

The objects of the organization called the Washington Park Club, which was incorporated in 1883, are to promote good fellowship among its members by providing a club house and pleasure grounds for their entertainment where at all times they may meet for social intercourse, and to encourage, by providing the proper facilities, raising, improving, breeding, training and exhibiting horses, at meetings to be held at stated times in each year. The Club House at Sixty-first Street and South Park Avenue is a low, long, rambling two story building, with broad piazzas on all sides of the house. From its situation, within easy driving distance from the centre of the city, and with its beautiful grounds, the Washington Park offers all the advantages of a country club, such as have become so popular of late in the leading eastern cities. The race course, with all its appurtenances, is one of the finest in the country.

The racing meetings have been pre-eminently successful, and the Club, by its energy and wisdom, has done much to improve and elevate the sport. Aside from this, the Club offers many attractions in its handsome house and the excellence of its service and cuisine. The initiation fee is one hundred and fifty dollars, from the payment of which, however, subscribers for one thousand dollars or more of the original capital stock of the organization, are exempt. The dues are forty dollars a year. The families of the various members, with the exception of sons who have attained the age of twenty-one years, are entitled to all the privileges of the Club.

Owing to the death of General Philip H. Sheridan, the office of President is at present vacant. The Vice-Presidents are Messrs. Samuel W. Allerton, Albert S. Gage, Charles Schwartz and Columbus R. Cummings; Treasurer, John K. Walsh; Secretary, John E. Brewster; Messrs. Norman B. Eeam, James W. Oakley, Charles J. Barnes, J. Henry Norton, Samuel H. Sweet, George H. Wheeler, Charles J. Singer, John E. Brewster, Wirt D. Walker, John B. Carson, James Van Inwagen, Charles D. Hamill, John Dupee (Jr.), John H. McAvoy, Thomas Cratty, Charles Schwartz, Nathaniel K. Fail-bank, Samuel W. Allerton, Columbus K. Cummings, John E. Walsh, Albert S. Gage, Henry J. Macfarland, and Thomar: Murdoch, comprise the Board of Directors.

Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1883

WASHINGTON PARK CLUB.
A certificate of the Washington Park Club was filed for record yesterday. The object is to establish a gentlemen’s driving-park where running and other meetings may be held. The capital stock is $100,000, 1,000 shares at $100 each. The license was issued to N. K. Fairbank, H. J. MacFarland, J. W. Doane, and John Dupee Jr. The subscribers of the above stock include many prominent citizens. Their names were given last week.

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Chicago Tribune, June 8, 1884

WASHINGTON PARK CLUB.
The New Club House Thrown Open And Inspected By 3,000 Guests.
The Washington Park Club threw open the doors of its elegant club-house yesterday for the first time to invited guests, and 3,000 persons availed themselves of the opportunity of inspecting what is to be the finest race-course in the world. The occasion was an informal reception. Cards had been issued by the members of the club to their friends to a lunch at the club-house and a private view of the grounds. About 3 o’clock the carriages containing the guests began to arrive. Entering the grounds at the main gate the carriages drove to the portcochere of the club-house, where numerous grooms stood in readiness to take charge of the vehicles. The guests, upon alighting, ascended to the broad veranda that commands a view of the approach to the park, where were stationed the members of the club who composed the reception committee. Upon the lawn that extends from the club-house to the track an orchestra was stationed. It was interesting to watch the arrival of the guests. From the club-house, out the grounds, and and away along the drive as far as could be seen, came carriage after carriage. Bugle calls announced the approach Mr. Charles Schwarts and party in his coach and four. Mr. Dickey and party were similarly accompanied, and Capt. Kenworthy Brown drove four in hand. Down the road came a dog-cart and tandem, two male exquisites driving, and a conventional footman behind. At one time the carriages arrived more rapidly than they could be disposed of, and quite a blockade was formed, the line of vehicles extending a quarter of a mile from the gates. At 4 o’clock an elegant lunch was served in the main dining-hall.

The club-house is complete in its appointments, and received flattering commendation from all. The first object one sees upon coming within view of the park is a Gothic structure of three stories which presents, an attractive pile of gables, dormer windows, balconies, and verandas. The structure is of the rural English style, and was planned by G. G. Beeman. Entering the building from the portcochere and broad balcony that surround the ground floor one comes into a spacious hall, which extends through the building, opening upon the balcony at the other side. Another hall traverses the first floor in an opposite direction, intersecting the former. In reality the ground floor is an immense hall off from which are numerous other apartments. The hall is finished in hardwoods, and the highly-polished floor is covered in places by Turkish rugs of handsome designs. The chandeliers are brass finished in bronze, and the arrangement is a number of jets branching from a centre. To the left as one enters is the office; opposite is the ladies’ retiring room. Down the hall to the left is the café, 75 by 33 feet, the billiard-parlor, Directors’ parlors, ladies’ reception-room, retiring-room, and five dining-rooms. One reaches the floor above by a broad oak stairway, guarded by a balustrade that is richly carved in open designs. Half way up is a capacious landing where are spread Turkish rugs, and the stairs take an opposite direction from this point. The second story has a grand dining-room of the same dimensions as the café. There are ladies’ parlors, toilet and retiring-rooms, serving-rooms, and seven private dining-rooms. In the third story are the living apartments of the Superintendent of the hotel, sleeping-rooms for members, and servants’ rooms. Balconies are sixteen feet wide surrounding the house on both stories. The entire club-house is 125×80 feet. The building will be devoted to the members of the club and their families, and the freedom of the house will also be extended to members of the press during the racing seasons. The public will not be admitted to the club-house.

Off to the left of the club-house is the grand stand, 504 feet in length, fifty-five feet wide, and three stories high. A broad walk, from which a lawn stretches away to either side, extends from the club-house to the grand stand. At the end of the latter nearest the club-house is the saddling paddock. Here, in plain view of the club-house balconies and lawns, the jockeys saddle, mount, and exercise their horses before going on the track. The grand stand is a model of such structures. It sits back from the track and upon an elevation of five and one-half feet. Greensward slopes to the tracks, and from no position in the stand or from the lawn in front will not the horses be visible from any point on the track. The line of vision is simply perfect. Ten thousand people will be accommodated here. Not on benches or in fixed chairs, but each will have an ordinary chair and there will be no crowding and jamming. Along the front railing and separated from the other seats by a high railing is a row of seventy-two boxes, each of which will accommodate four persons. These will be rented at $10 per day or $60 for the season. One feature of the arrangement is to have the judges’ stand on the same side of the track as the grand stand, so that the judges and the public will have the same baseline as to which is the winning horse. In the basement of the grandstand is a room 200×55 feet, where all the book-making and betting is to be done. In no other part of the ground will it be permitted. Access to the second story of the grand stand is gained by five flights of stairs, and on top of the building is a promenade extending the entire length. From here can be obtained a magnificent view of the surrounding country. A feature of the appointments of the grand stand is the café on the ground floor, where the public can obtain refreshments the same as at the club-house. There also private dining-rooms, and the arrangement is for the benefit of those who have not the privileges of the club-house.

The stables are said to be the finest in the world. Four hundred stalls are already completed, and more are being finished. In the eighty and one-half acres which are embraced in the grounds there are twelve miles of tile drainage. The space inside the tracks is diversified by two miniature lakes with high sloping banks of greensward and cobble-stone margins. Before the formal opening of the par, June 28, there will be steam-cart transportation to the gates of the grounds.

About 6 o’clock the guests began to depart for the city, though many remained till evening to drive home in the moonlight.

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Chicago Herald Building II

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Chicago Herald

Chicago Herald Building II
Life Span: 1891-1936
Location: 154, 156 and 158 Washington street, Between Wells and LaSalle Streets
Architect: Burnham & Root

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1899

Chicago Times Herald,

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1911
The Chicago Record-Herald, 163 W. Washington

The Inland Printer, January, 1892

GREAT newspaper office building, the completion of which may be said to have marked an epoch in American journalism , particularly in western journalism , is a structure of so much importance that a description of it must concern the public generally, and be of especial interest to the readers of The Inland Printer. Such a building is the recently completed home of the Chicago Herald , which is undoubtedly the most elegant and completely fitted newspaper office in the West, if, indeed, it is not the finest in the country. Solidity of construction , elegance of interior appointments, practical devices for the facility of business and complete sanitary arrangements are features that are strongly emphasized throughout the edifice. The building, which is located at numbers 154, 156 and 158 Washington street, fronts toward the north and is about in the middle of the block bounded on the east by La Salle street and on the west by Fifth avenue . The dimensions of the ground are 61 feet front on Washington street and Calhoun place, running 181 feet from the former to the latter. The height of the building to the pinnacle of the roof is 124 feet, divided into seven stories , of which the ground floor is 18 feet high, the second floor, 11½; third, 11; fourth, 15½ ; fifth, 16; sixth, 17, and the attic, 12 feet.

Though massive in construction, the facade of the building is graceful in outline, and, technically speaking, may be termed Norman Renaissance with Gothic details, the base being of red Monticello granite and the eleva tion of terra cotta . The ground floor front is marked by three deeply recessed arches of massive blocks of red granite, the center one of which serves as the entrance, while windows containing panes of plate glass of quite unusual dimensions occupy the other two. On either side of the door space are round columns four feet in diameter almost without ornamentation, a simple acanthus leaf marking the terminals of the archivolt. Every detail tends to increase the impression of strength and solidity. The wedge-like stones of the arches are of a solid, undecorated character, while the faces of the squared stones of the walls are regular but with broken joints. The name of the newspaper and the building, the Herald, is made known to the world in words formed of large, plain roman capitals carved above the central arching, on each side of which is an electrolier of wrought iron supporting an arc light. Above the granite stone squares which constitute the façade to a height of 23 feet, the front is faced with terra cotta of a deep rich brown hue, the usual heavy dull color resulting when terra cotta is used in place of stone ashlars having been obviated by adding a metallic oxide in pulverized form to the alumin ous clay. The Gothic character of the second story and the picturesque recessing of the third and fourth stories are the distinguishing features of the centralmass of the exterior front.

The upper mass of the façade comprises the fifth story and the great gable, including the attic. The arrangement of breaking the windows into three separate spaces corresponding with those of the ground floor is here abandoned. The windows lighting the fifth floor are united in an arcade or gallery form, their sills resting on a neat molding, while the arching above them is continuous and but slightly indicated. Above this, and in the center of the façade from side to side, is a semicircular balcony, making a projection of about two feet from the face wall, from which rises a short symmetrical column, with a heavy circular capital char acteristic of this period of Renaissance. This capital forms the base for the principal decorative feature of the façade the bronze statue of a herald of the medieval ages. The herald, which is ten feet six inches high, is represented as blowing the official trumpet, which he holds in his right hand, and in his left he clutches the baton of his office, before which every wrongdoer had to stand rebuked, no matter how eminent by his talents or commanding by his wealth and position. The picturesque costume worn toward the termination of the fifteenth century clothes the figure, and above his other garments is the tabard, one of the insignia of his office. In olden times this was distinguished by the cognizance of the nation, city, or prince whom the herald served. The herald whose figure adorns the façade of the Herald’s home has for his cognizance the armorial bearings of the city of Chicago traced on the bronze tabard with the words “Urbs in Horto ” A monogram formed by interlacing the letters “C” and “H” adorns the wings. The ornamental flagstaff of the building, which is made a constructional decoration, and is clamped at intervals to the face wall with bronze rings, rises behind the herald and goes through the apex of the gable, extending above it to a considerable height. Encircling the flag staff about thirty feet above the top of the gable is a coro nal electrolier comprising a ring of six powerful arc lights, which throw upon the figure of the herald a brilliant illu mination. Besides these and the two electroliers at the entrance of the building are two more arc lights in the lanterns of the minarets. These minarets are finials of engaged columns on each side of the building and the coping of the gable joins them midway down, thus leaving a haunch below the leaning roof at each end, so deeply incised that the effect produced is like perforated ornamentati on. Four more arc lights form a line with the fourth floor windows so as to furnish a brilliant illumination for the symbolic medallions. These commingled side, front and upper lights, 300 on the front alone, flood the façade of the building with electric radiance. The exterior of the building as a whole is distinguished by its solidity and by marked superiority of The decoration and is a revival of the fifteenth and sixteenth century style of architectural design.

Nowhere more than in the finishings of the business office is the progressive and liberal spirit of the management that animated the whole plan of the structure made evident; the happiest effects to be derived in the combinations of marble, iron and glass are here seen ; here the marble work, wrought iron ornamenta tion, glistening of glass fronts, and the rich illumination, form an ensemble of beauty to be found in few places in Chicago. The whole front of the ground floor, which is occupied by the publication offices, is open, with the exception of the counter room on the east side of the spac ious apartment. The swinging doors opening to the street are of bronze, covering wooden cores giving admis sion to an octagonal vestibule, highly decorated. The floor is of Italian mosaic, showing in five-eighths inch tessaire, fleur de lis in red, laurel leaves in green, with connecting red ribbons upon the gray, tesselated ground. Beyond this the space is open. From the mosaic floor, of the same design as that in the vestibule except that the latter contains the title “The Herald” in the center—rises a wainscoting of Sienna marble, shaded and veined in old gold and ivory colors, above a base of Belgian black marble. The latter material, highly polished, is used also for the counters of the business office and the counters for the public on the east and west walls. This material is susceptible of so high a polish that each counter top is one great mirror.

The columns that support the arched ceilings in the office are covered with Sienna marble, the seams of the octagonal columns being knit with iron scroll work, which also caps the wainscoting. Fleur de lis hewn out of the solid marble and forming a fine artistic contrast with the pink color, ornament the capitals of the columns. This beautiful work is done by hand in patient execution of an effectual design. These capitals are of pink Ten nessee marble, which material has been profusely applied throughout the entire build ing, in toilet rooms and washstands.

The arched ceiling of the business office is in itself a work of art. There is scarcely a square foot in the wide area of ceiling and walls which is not hand embossed in the highest style of art. The gold and crown ara besque work on the walls harmonizes beautifully with the Sienna marble of the wainscoting, and above it all arches the ceiling finished in ivory and gold colors.

The ceiling is divided into twenty panels, by five longitudinal and four transverse beams. In the center piece of the ceiling, surrounded by arabesque work in gold relief, is a cluster of in candescent lights, shaded by opalescent globes which mel low the radiance of the lights into a bluish green tint that completes the harmoniou s planning of colors. Not less than two hundred incandescent lamps and thirty arc lights are employed in illuminating the ground floor. An attractive feature of the business office is the ironwork of the counters, all hand wrought in highly ornamental design, and set in cast-iron frames. The sets on the tops of the counters are in panels, each of which is a floral design and Renaissance combination. This work is a production of recent date, and of Chicago workmen; the peculiar finish is technically known as “bower-barffed,” and has a surface which will never rust or tarnish, and which is therefore highly superior to any polish that could be applied. This ironwork sets off the polished marble to the best advantage.

The business office is so arranged that five advertising clerks confront the visitor who enters it from the street. In the corner office next to the advertising clerks, the counter cashier is located; pneumatic tubes convey “copy” from his desk almost as quick as thought up to the composing room, and speaking tubes lead to every department of the paper. The clerk in charge of the mailing department and out-of-town subscriptions has his counter next to that of the counter cashier. Next follows an information bureau for the accommodation of the patrons of the Herald; and the rest of the room in front of the large vault and the luxuriously appointed private office of the business manager is occupied by the cashier and his bookkeepers. In the room thus partitioned off from the public part of the ground floor the clerical force of the Herald is located. Four telephone boxes required for the business office are at the east wall. All the woodwork of this department is of polished quarter sawed white oak—office furniture and Mooring to match. Through this part of the office visitors are conducted to a gallery looking down upon the basement floor and upon the line of ten presses employed to do the printing of the paper. This visitors’ gallery—which is open to the public at all times—affords an opportunity to all interested to view this important part of the work , here done with the greatest degree of excellence.

The publisher’s apartments of the Herald are on the fourth floor, and are in keeping with the rest of the finishings of the structure. Broad windows open upon the wide, light court, which is one of the most useful and striking features of the building. Leading from the hall, the door opens into an anteroom where the private secretary and clerical help of the publisher are stationed, and where a long-distance telephone assures ready communication with places within a radius of fifty miles and more from Chicago. The anteroom is wide and commodious, with the woodwork in oak finish and the furniture to match. The publisher’s private office is a marvel of elegance and taste. The wood work in this department is mahogany of a rich, glowing color, with the exception of the floor which is cherry; the latter, however, is very largely concealed by fine Persian rugs whose brilliant hues form a pleasing contrast with the dark color of the mahogany. The seven-foot wainscoting and the solid beams of the ceiling, as well as other pieces of office furniture in the room, are of this beautiful wood. The wainscoting is paneled up to the finely chiseled cap of egg and-dart border, and the doors of the room, as well as those in the wainscoting leading to the closet, are paneled to match. There is no wall paper above the high wainscoting, but the face decoration of the walls consists of matrixes from the stereotype room, which are fastened to the walls and varnished, producing a very light yellow color, and their relief gives a unique effect, as if the entire walls had been embossed in the most minute designs. Solid old silver enters into the chandeliers and their ornaments, the handles of the large bookcase and electric light brackets. The telegraph instrument for the publisher’s personal use assures direct communication with every part of the civilized world. In the anteroom electrical annunciators and tubes connect with every part of the Herald—from the pressroom in the basement to the composing room on the sixth floor. In decorative as well as in practical appointments, the publisher’s office is in accord with the newspaper and its home.

The editorial rooms, which are finely furnished , and supplied with every time-saving appointment, are located on the fifth floor. The sills of the windows of this floor rest on a neat molding running a little above the arched recesses of the windows of the floor below, in which are three carvings, the work of the sculptor, Johannes Gelert, and which are among the most artistic and attractive external features of the building. The architectural con ditions of the arches , the length of each of which is 12 feet and the greatest height in the center about 4 feet, necessarily domi nates the form of the bas-reliefs. The sculptor arranged the first group in three medallions, connected by a framing in keeping with the bold and pleasing but simple architecture of the building. The central medallion shows a group of four monks in Benedictine robes seated at a double writing desk. Two are writing and two are acolytes who are studying the methods of the writings. Behind the desk is St. Benedict standing erect and speaking. One of the writers has stopped his work and listens to him with an eager, ardent look upon his face. The other pair are absorbed in their toil. The medallion on the left represents a monk grinding colors, and that on the right another monk illuminating a manuscript. Below the central medallion is the date 543, which is the recorded time of St. Benedict’s death. In the spaces between the medallions above are an antique lamp and an open roll of manu script. The aim of the sculptor was to present in the most concentrated form an epitome of the ages prior to the discovery of printing, and he chose the most picturesque epoch, both from the art standpoint and from the historical point of view, in selecting the time when all those things preserved by the printing press were most pertinaciously menaced. The second medallion over the center group of windows gives the printing press of the time of Gutenberg, with the date, 1455, when his Bible was published. The group as realistically modeled by the artist is the familiar one with the great ungainly wooden press of the wooden ages. The third medallion represents the mechanical and literary outfit of the modern newspaper, with the press of today in the center. The sculpt or had not an easy task in model ing the perfecting press, for its form is not what one would call picturesque, nor does it lend itself with any pliancy to the sculptor’s modification, but the artist has shown even in this hard and realistic subject his rare talent. The frontage on Washington street is for the entire width taken up with the offices of the managing editor and his assistants, city editor, copy-readers, and the large room for the reporters. Doors of communication and electric annunciators connect the entire suite, in front of which is the library and a reception room, the latter opening upon the elevator landing, which is a broad corridor running through to Calhoun place—more popularly known as “newsboys’ alley.”

Adjoining the library, and fronting on the large light court, which is 30 by 60 feet cut out, as it were, from the lots upon which the Herald building is erected are the apartments of the literary and exchange editors. Clustered around the court are the offices for the editorial writers, the night editor, telegraph readers and operators, foreign editor, world’s fair department, reporting, finance, commercial and real estate editors, office for the dramatic and musical critics, a separate room for special writers, and a reserved room for reporters eighteen separate offices in all——besides the library, reception room and art departments, which occupy the remainder of the floor; so that here, in close proximity to each other, are all the departments which furnish editorial, telegraph and local matter, and the illustrations for the Herald. The court runs down to the pressroom , above which is a roof of glass and steel, affording ample daylight even to the basement, the effect of light by means of the court is greatly heightened by the facing of the walls, which are English white enameled brick. In the news department of the Herald there are innovations of a time-saving character, the question of minutes being one of the most important conditions in the matter of newspaper work. The general arrangement of the room facilitates easy communication between the various departments. The city editor may call any one of the large staff of reporters by means of an electrical annunciator on his desk, which communicates with every one of the thirty reporters’ desks in the big local room; a simple touch on any one of the buttons of the annunciator notifies the particular reporter whose desk number corresponds with the one on the button that his presence is wanted. The telegraph room, which joins that of the night editor and the telegraph readers, is provided with the most improved operators’ desks, technically called the “quartette tables.” There are seats and instruments for twelve operators, eight of these being so arranged that typewriter instruments are fitted in the top of each , and which are closed when the in struments are not in use. There are four other tables without typewriter attachments. Special wires connect the telegraph room directly with New York, Washington and all other news centers. From the room of these telegraph readers the “copy boxes” containing the prepared manuscript lead up into the copy-cutter’s office in the composing room above, and pneumatic tubes connect the room with the business office as well as with the composing room. Through out the entire floor devoted to editorial depart ment the woodwork is of oak, highly polished, so that the greatest cleanliness and least amount of dust is assured. Every department has its indi vidual wardrobes and lavatories. The large toilet room is fitted up in marble tiling and polished metal. In front of the city editor’s room, and adjoining the library, is a nicely fitted up reception room where a clerk receives callers; who enter the room directly from the elevator land ing. This useful arrangement saves visitors end less trouble in looking for any particular department or person, and precludes the possibility of writers being disturbed by the intrusion of visitors. The entire editorial department is a model of completeness.

The composing room of the Herald occupies the entire sixth floor, with the exception of that portion taken up by the stereotyping department, which is located in the extreme southeast wing of the building. This department, where the type is set and the pages made ready for the presses, is considered the most interesting feature of a newspaper’s equipment. The dimensions of the composing room are as follows: Newsroom, at the north end of the building, on Washington street, is 57 by 59 feet; the proof room and “make-up” department, located in the long hall connecting the newsroom with the “ad” room, is 34 by 60 feet, and the “ad” room, in the south and rear, 43 by 34 feet, the whole having a superficial area of about seven thousand square feet. The ceiling is 17½ feet in height, and is partially supported by ten square columns of enameled brick, placed at regular intervals through the several departments of the room. Light in abundance pours through the windows at the front and rear and from those opening upon the court which is finished in imported white enameled brick, giving a brilliant reflection of light to the room. Four large skylights over the newsroom and two over the “ad” room also con tribute their light to this floor. The interior walls of this composing room are finished in English enameled brick, of pure white, like those of the inner court. The effect when the room is lighted at night is most brilliant. Two systems of electricity—the Edison incandescent and the Thomson-Houston arc light—are employed, and the arrangement for lighting the entire room is most excellent, and consists of twelve arc lights for general lighting and an incandescent light over each pair of cases used by the compositors. The “stands” which support the cases are quadruple, and are constructed throughout of cast and wrought iron, from designs furnished by the foreman of the Herald. The legs or supports, instead of standing straight from the floor, are made to recede about twelve inches from the top of the frame, far enough back to admit the light freely to the floor, and to be entirely out of the way when the case is occupied by the compositor, besides being a further advantage in giving additional space to the “alleys,” which are five feet six inches in width throughout the composing-room . These quadruple stands are forty in number, and two pairs of cases can be “racked” in the upper portion, just above where the supports recede toward the bank. They are arranged at the top to hold four pairs of cases—two on each side. The ends of these handsome frames bear the monogram “C. H.” near the top in bronze, and are also provided with stationary walnut stand-galleys, placed be tween the two pairs of cases and 13 arranged in four compartments for leads, rules, etc., besides a metal leader box, which fits into a compartment. Each pair of cases is provided with its own electric light and a large shade of special design, the electric wires being concealed in iron pipes which come up from the floor through the center of the stands. In addition to the above, there are also ten wrought-iron double stands, which are also provided with electric lights and shades, and electric annunciators. The head-letter and italic cases are upon a wroug ht iron stand, holding six cases on each side. A unique feature is the solid brass, double, stationary galley, extending the entire length of the stand, along the center and top, on both sides, provided with compartments for “phat” or standing heads, rules, leads, etc., just where they are wanted when the compositor is setting head lines. This stand also contains “racks” for two-line letter used in “adlets,” and between the legs spaces are reserved for “form” trucks. A box arranged in two compart ments for leads is close at hand, with numerous cases for space rule, slugs, etc. The Herald is liberally supplied with body type, the fonts used consisting of 8,000 pounds of agate, 9,000 pounds of nonpareil and 4,500 pounds of minion . Large wicker baskets and brown rubber spittoons are plentifully provided throughout the floor, and every compositor is provided with an oak stool by the management.

The foreman’s office, which is a most striking innovation, is an apartment 10 by 12 feet, elevated about ten feet above the main floor, and surrounded by an ornamental iron railing, and is reached by a spiral iron stairway from the copy-cutter’s room , directly beneath. From its elevation an uninterrupted view of the entire composing room is obtainable. It is handsomely furnished with heavy oak office desks, table and chairs, the latter being upholstered in dark leather, while rich Turkish rugs cover the floor. Speaking tubes, pneumatic tubes and electric annunciators communicate with all departments in the building, and running from the room and connecting with the proof and advertising rooms is an automatic delivery basket, used for conveying copy, proofs, cuts, etc., to the several departments. In the copy-cutter’s finely furnished quarters, located beneath the foreman’s room , is a device which dispenses with the old time slate used to register the “slugs” or numbers of compositors when “live” or urgent copy was exhausted and “time” copy was running. This is a handsomely finished mahogany perforated board, placed against the outside wall of the copy room, containing the same number of holes and numbered pegs to fit them that there are slugs used in the office . An electric annunciator is placed in the center of each of the double stands at the top and is marked with a number corresponding with the slug of the compositor occupying the same. A connection is made with the keyboard placed inside the room of the copy-cutter. When a compositor runs out of “live” copy he slips a peg bearing the number of his slug into the first vacant hole of the perforated board, beginning at the upper left-hand corner. When “live” copy is at hand and desired to be given out the copy-cutter glances at the number of the first peg, touches the button of the corresponding annunciator, when a slight buzzing sound notifies the compositor at the frame, and he comes forward, receives his copy and drops the peg back into the receptacle provided for it beneath the perforated board . A table, to be used in “pasting dupes,” is swung to the outside wall of the copy-cutter’s room . The use of patent combination individual brass slugs, made in two parts, one part representing the compositor’s number and the other part the number of the “take” or portion of an article he places on the galley, dispenses with the employment of paper markers to distinguish the work of each compositor, and also lessens confusion and prevents the congregation of compositors at the emptying “dump.”

There are two of these “dumps,” or wrought-iron, brass-mounted stands, where compositors place the type after the completion of “takes”—one, the general dump” twenty feet in length, with the brass top arranged in compartments for the galleys, and the other for the classified advertisements, nine and a half feet in length, and constructed and equipped similarly to the larger one, with the exception that spaces are provided beneath the brass top for two “form” trucks. A special feature of the classified “ad dump” is the numbered compartments, and the corresponding numbered movable hooks for copy, which accompany the proofs to the proofroom . Near the dumps are the copy boards, copy hooks, proof presses, ink blocks and the like, and near by are four stands for the use of the “ring” men or correctors of office proofs, and also the marble top galley banks for uncorrected type. The bulletin and black board of the chapel are placed near the landing of the elevators, as is also the oaken, silver-mounted water cooler, equipped with a Pasteur germ proof filter and a solid silver cup. mail chute leads from this locality to the counting-room. There are numerous steam registers placed judiciously about the entire composing room, whereby the temperature is easily controlled and main tained at a uniform degree day and night. The compositors’ lava tory and retiring-rooms, 10 by 21 feet in dimensions, are luxurious in their appointments. They are finished in Sienna marble, with silver mountings. Even the half-dozen towel racks are of silver, and everything is provided that could conduce to the comfort and elegance of such an apartment. A wrought iron stairway leads up to a visitors’ balcony extending down the west side of the room. It is finished in hand -wrought iron of exquisite workmanship, and contains a long row of heavy oak clothes closets, very neat in appearance and sufficient in number to accommodate one hundred and fifty men. Very consistently, the compositors employ the luxuriantly appointed front elevators to reach their elegant apartments. To the fraternity that is accustomed to climbing the dark back stairs to the dingy top floor, this is an innovation almost as wonderful as the building itself.

The proofroom, on the east side of the “make-up” room, is separated from that department by an oak partition containing large panes of frosted glass. It is furnished with heavy oak chairs and stools, proof desks and tables of the latest design, slanting proof boards and handsome combination bookcase and table with compartments for copy and proofs below. This room will accommodate fourteen proofreaders, and contains a library replete with works of reference, dictionaries and encyclopedias. In this apartment is a large electric clock similar to one in the composing room. In the “make-up” room, which is directly opposite, are five white marble imposing stones, set on oak frames placed upon heavy rollers. A large table contains slides for chases and sidesticks. Over each table and imposing stone is an adjustable electric light. Numerous large brass standing galleys are placed about conveniently, and a specially designed large oak galley cabinet, which is inclosed, is also an interesting feature. Its doors consist of wooden roller curtains, after the style used on office desks, which, when open, disclose six compartments, with an entire capacity of eighty-four galleys of type. In an alcove off the “make-up” department are the standing galleys that contain the “dead type for distribution. Near these galleys is a marble topped table three feet square, with grooves leading from each of the four corners to a hole cut in the center of the marble, through which water may escape to a bucket beneath. This is the first stone for such a purpose ever placed in a printing office, and is known as a “pounding stone.” The trouble ordinarily experienced by printers in separating types that have been stereotyped is entirely overcome by this innovation a special “pounding stone”—in consequence of its novelty, quite a curiosity, even to printers, who have heretofore availed themselves of the regular imposing stones, boards, walls of the building, or anything else that was convenient for the purpose of separation. The grooves mentioned carry off the water to a bucket suppled for the purpose, and thus all untidiness is prevented.

The advertising department is located in the south end of the building, and has commodious quarters for forty-one men. The advertising cabinets of a new design peculiar to the Herald, contain 252 fonts of different faces of type, are marvels of utility combined with beauty, and are constructed of steel, the outside finish being of oxidized copper and bronze, highly ornamented. The tops are laid off in two inclined sections, one side containing stationary galleys of polished brass for “ad” cuts, rules, leads, etc., and the other side is a space for case when in use. These cabinets, twenty in number, of somewhat differing style and size, bear the monogram “C. H.” in silver letters, and each case therein bears a brass slot holding a card with a printed label of the type within, besides shield-shaped German silver plates numbered for further identification, and each case is further ornamented with a handle of bronze. There are also two elegant combination oak cabinets, two large cabinets for cuts, and another for figures and “sorts.” There are also fourteen wrought iron double stands, a “galley case,” proof press, etc., in the department, which, like the news department, is excellently equipped with material—rules, leads, sticks, etc.

The artists employed on the Herald have a large and commodious room with two wide windows fronting on the light court and having north exposure—the light so much desired by all artists. Adjoining this is the engraving department, occupying the southeast corner of the fifth floor, having also two large windows fronting south. The process of engraving employed is known as “zinc etching”; which method is a complicated one and difficult to describe. In a general way it may be said that the drawings for the illustrations are made with india ink upon white bristol board, then photographed upon sheet zinc; the latter is submitted to an immersion in acid, which has the effect of leaving the lines of the drawing fixed by the photograph standing in relief, while the white spaces around them are eaten away by the acid. This furnishes the plate which is fastened to a block of metal of the height of the types used in composition, together with which the cut is placed in the form for stereotyping. Thus three distinct branches enter into the process—the photographing, the etching and the blocking—each requiring its own peculiar apparatus and machinery. All the appliances are of the latest style and of the most recent invention. The furniture, shelving, etching tubs and benches in the engraving depart ment are of antique oak; the tables have tops of Tennessee marble. The camera, also of oak, is of extra large size, and is capable of producing a negative the size of a full seven column newspaper page. Instead of suspending the camera from a swing, as is usually done in newspaper establishments, it here rests upon a table which runs on rails upon a track fastened to the hardwood flooring, the “copy” being placed upon an easel in front of the lens. The foundation of the building is so solid that there is no vibration to mar the sharpness of the negative. The light for photographing is furnished by two powerful arc lights, made especially for this purpose. Elegance is combined with practicality throughout the furnishings of this department. In the dark room the splash boards around the sink are of marble; the rest of the interior finish is of oak. The etching tubs are run automatically by machinery, admitting of an absolutely even distribution of the acid—an important detail that could never be satisfactorily achieved by hand. The tubs are lined with transparent composition , which, while preserving the beautiful finish of the oak, is impervious to acid. A gas stove of special construction heats a large surface with great intensity. A device has been adopted for cooling the zinc plates after they have been heated on the gas stove, consisting of a box supplied with running water, in which a flat stone is placed; over this a tiny stream of water is constantly pouring in even flow. A hot plate placed upon this stone becomes evenly cooled in a few seconds, without moistening the exposed surface. The machinery for blocking consists of a router and a combination saw and trimmer, driven by a three-horse power electric motor.

The stereotyping room adjoins the composing room , and is connected with it by sliding doors . This department, which looks like a machine-shop full of complete appliances, is one of the most interesting features of the work of making the newspaper. The process of molding a metal form from a paper matrix is a complicated one, yet it must be performed with a rapidity that is truly remarkable. The room devoted to this is large, lighted by windows on two sides, and is lined with enameled brick as is the composing room. The floor is covered with closely joined boiler iron, so that no spark from the two huge melting pots can by any possibility start a fire.

The first step in making thematrix is taken at the molding machine, which does away with the hard hand work of the brushes, by which, formerly, the molding material was hammered into the interstices of the types. This work with the brush used to occupy from four to six minutes for each form, while the molding machine completes it in twenty-five seconds. Having received the impression from the form, the matrix goes into the steam table—of which there are three in the room; these tables dry the matrix in three minutes, while formerly from five to eight minutes were required, and for pages with big display advertisements, commonly from fifteen to sixteen minutes. Next the matrix is trimmed, and is then finally dried com pletely in a cylindrical roaster, expressly constructed for the Herald. Two big pots—one with a capacity of two tons of stereotype metal, the other holding 1,800 pounds are used for molding. From these the fluid metal is conveyed to the casting boxes—of which there are three—which are righted by a lever, instead of screws, usually employed. Water for cooling is connected with the casting boxes directly, instead of using the old fashioned can. The tail cutter removes the superfluous metal at the edges of the now semi-cylindrical form, which next goes to the shaving machine, where it is cut down to the required thickness, and is then placed on the cylinders of the press. A fifteen-horse power engine runs all the machinery in the stereotype room.

Adjoining this department are the necessary elevator facilities for conveying stereotypers and the forms to the pressroom in the basement. The laboratory and toilet room contains three shower baths, and every facility is provided for comfort and cleanliness.

The pressroom of the Herald occupies a large portion of the mammoth basement of the building. The elevators descend to this most important and interesting department for the accommodation of the more curious sightseers and those who wish to make a closer inspection of the battle-line of ten Potter web-perfecting presses than is afforded by a glance from the visitor’s gallery above. The majority of the visitors, however, are satisfied with a view from the gallery, which in itself is no slight affair, neither in dimensions nor the elegant manner in which it is constructed . It has a base of corruscated glass prisms protected by shining brass rails, and is forty feet long with a width of eight feet. At night, when all the presses are at work, their polished metal parts glistening in the radiance of electric light, which is thrown back in refulgent reflex from the enamel of the brick walls, the prospect of the animated scene below is one which the beholder will long remember. Here the rythmic movements of the line of powerful presses, the rolling of cylinders, the strange, life-like shifting to and fro of subtle mechanism , change as if by magic the fluttering streams of the huge endless rolls of paper into the perfectly printed and folded sheets.

The pressroom of the Herald contains and operates ten presses of C. Potter, Jr’s, make, all driven by one huge shaft concealed beneath the floor, thus doing away with all unsightly and frequently dangerous belting overhead . No battalion of the best drilled soldiers could succeed in keeping as perfect an alignment as this formidable battery of presses, which turns out 120,000 eight-page papers every single hour they are at work .

One need not be a professional newspaper man or machinist to delight in the unique and impressive spectacle presented by the long line of presses. So exact is the alignment that if one takes a position at one end while the machinery is at rest and looks along the line of brass paper roll supporters on top it is like a look through a gun barrel, not a hair’s breadth marring the perfect line. It is a sight to be seen in few other printing offices in the world. A two-page folding attachment in the front of the pressroom is also a marvelous piece of machinery, having a capacity of 40,000 papers an hour. The driving shaft in the pit below the presses is so constructed that, by the simple pulling of a lever, each press can be operated or not, or its speed adjusted at will. The foundation of the great building and each single foundation for engines and presses is absolutely solid. It is so perfect and fixed that if all the engines with their three hundred and twenty-five horse-power are at work, and if every one of the presses rattles away at full speed, not the slightest jar in the flooring of the pressroom in the midst of all the bustling machinery can be felt. Signal lights are attached to each press so as to admit of immediate stoppage case of accident, and each press has its complete ma chinery equipment, including roller stands manufactured especially for the Herald presses. These roller stands are a novelty in the important particular that they are so arranged as to admit of a thorough cleaning of the rollers from accumulations of paper dust after long runs without removal of the rollers. The walls of the pressroom are faced with white enameled brick, the floor is of hardwood, and above the central part is a roof of glass and steel which furnishes the base for the great light court. This makes it one of the best lighted pressrooms in this country. There is space for a workshop, 14 by 36 feet, which extends under the side walk, and at the other end of the basement are the boiler rooms and the magnificent Corliss engine. Side, by side with the dynamo chamber are ink rooms, waste – paper rooms and the great pump room for the elevator power. The power plant was designed to give the most economical results obtainable by modern steam engineering, and at the same time have an artistic finish and effect, so as to correspond in character with that of all the other departments of the paper. Three Corliss engines, one for the presswork proper, and two for the electric plant, have a combined capacity of 325-horse power. The pair of engines driving two Thomson-Houston arc light dynamos and two Edison incandescent dynamos have a combined capacity of 200-horse power. For driving these dynamos the manufacturers provided a new style of friction drive, which was never before introduced. It has the advantage of placing a number of dynamos in a limited space. The engines, as well as the driving mechanism, are handsomely decorated, in perfect keeping with the ensemble of the entire structure. Another large single Corliss engine, of 125-horse power, is in use for the printing machinery. There are three boilers of 150-horse power each which furnish the steam for this model printing house. These boilers are of the sectional safety Wharton Harrison type, made of spherical globes united, delivering super-heated steam, produced with high economy, pronounced the strongest and safest boilers made. The boilers are of cast metal, and, as evidence of their strength, under 990 degrees Fahrenheit steel of60,000 pounds tensile strength at that heat becomes reduced to 32,000, while the Bessemer metal, of which these boilers are made, under same heat shows 32,500 pounds tensile strength. The general superiority of the Herald’s palatial home over the ordinary metropolitan newspaper establishment, is in no other of its departments more strikingly apparent than in its scrupulously neat, brilliantly lighted and completely appointed pressroom.

The mailing and circulating departments of the Herald are connected with the business office by a wide hall, up to which from the latter leads a flight of eight wide marble steps. To the left, when entering this hall from the counting room, is the circulator’s private office, separated from the carriers’ department by broad swinging doors. Behind these a long, broad counter with a steel top resting on a cast-iron skeleton runs along the mailing depart ment, over which papers to the newsboys and carriers are served. Boys and carriers have their separate spaces allotted, but the part reserved for the boys connects only with the entrance and exit doors opening on Calhoun place. Obstinate as newsboys are, they cannot quarrel with these doors, for the entrances open only inward, yielding to a slight push, while the exits open only outward, being similarly compliant. A wonderful piece of mechanism is a paper carrier having eight steel baskets hinged on two link chains, which revolve between the pressroom and the mailing room. The papers—automatically counted by the presses in lots of twenty-five or fifty, as the circumstances may require—are placed in the baskets in the pressroom, carried up to the mailing room by the link belts, and are then automatically dumped upon a steel table prepared for that purpose. The papers flow out into the world by three channels—carriers, newsboys and mailing wagons. To facilitate handling bundles for the latter a platform has been constructed on Calhoun place, covered by an enormous hood and bright as day from the reflex of four big arc lights. In the stormiest weather not a bundle for the mailing wagons will be damaged. Perhaps the most important, while most useful arrangement in the mailing room is a peculiar structure of wire netting, looking very much like a huge cage, with divisions of the samematerial. This arrangement is very simple yet very effective, and, perhaps, the only means that could be devised to keep the obstreperous and jostling arabs of the street in line. It is for the sole use and benefit of the newsboys. As they enter the second door west on Calhoun place they step into the first aisle of the cage, which is just wide enough to accommodate one boy with a bundle at one time. Up this aisle, down another, up a third they march, being kept perfectly in line by the wire netting. At the top of the fourth aisle they pass the box of the two cashiers in the mailing depart ment, where each of the boys buys as many papers as his patronage warrants. He receives a check for his papers, and then he passes down the fourth aisle to another clerk, where he receives the number of papers called for by his check. Then he passes out of another door which opens into the alley only. By this means there can be no crowding, no jostling and no browbeating of the weaker boys by the stronger, for each has of necessity to wait till his turn comes. The necessity and usefulness of such an arrange mentwill be understood when it is considered that between 1,000 and 1,200 newsboys clamor every morning at the Herald circulating department for papers. Of the carriers having regular delivery routes there are about two hundred, many of them carrying away truckloads of papers. For the use of the carriers long steel tables are fastened to the walls in the L -shaped space not occupied by the cage, around the latter and in the longitudinal and vertical part of the L. The carriers have their separate door, and in the cashier’s box is a separate window for the purchase of checks, as there are separate clerks to deliver the papers to the carriers. The best possible means are employed for the rapid delivery of papers to the news-stands and the mails. In a brief review, like the present, of a structure concerning which a volume might be written, many important features have been hastily glanced at or overlooked entirely. In every part of the Herald’s home innovations have been introduced . Not the least of these is the department devoted to the double purpose of lunch-room and reading-room, with dimensions 19 by 57 feet, located on the upper floor and directly over the composing-room. In the lunch-room , which will seat fifty persons, are found all the apparatus and implements of a thoroughly equipped kitchen—gas range, provision closet, porcelain-lined sink, cooler, tables, etc. At one end of this apartment is the reading-room, where the men of this establishment can pleasurably while away the time when otherwise unemployed. This is but one of many similar evidences of the thoughtfulness of the management for the comfort and convenience of employés. On the fourth floor of the Herald building are the western headquarters of the United Press, the great news-gathering association that has always been closely allied to the Herald, and has grown with the newspaper. Many thousands of miles of telegraph wires radiating to all parts of the globe and connecting over seven hundred newspaper offices center here. James W. Scott, publisher of the Herald, is president of the United Press. Adjoining the quarters of the United Press are handsome and commodious offices, occupied by Henry M. Hunt’s Chicago News Bureau, which furnishes the United Press, together with nearly one hundred leading papers, with special lines of news.

A charm apparent in every part of the Herald building is its brightness. High, broad windows and the immense court flood it with light by day and 2,300 incandescent and fifty arc lights, furnished by the Herald’s own plant, make it brilliant by night. The system of heating and ventilating is perfect, every part of the building having a constant supply of pure air of the temperature desired. All in all the Herald building is a matter of pride not only to the newspaper fraternity, but to the city it so notably adorns.

Chicago Herald, February 20, 1895

The undersigned takes pleasure in announcing the purchase by himself of the controlling interest in the Chicago Herald and the Chicago Evening Post, owned for nearly twelve years by Mr. John R. Walsh.

In addition to the business, printing plants, franchises, and good will of the newspapers mentioned, the transfer includes the Herald (No. 158 Washington street) and the Evening Post (No. 166 Washington street) buildings, both of them admirably adapted to newspaper publication.

Under the new ownership the Herald will continue to be a leading exponent of the principles of the Democratic party, pledged to the suppor of honest government, honest money, and honest taxation.

In all that is calculated to promote the progress of Chicago and advance the interests of the West the Herald will be found watchful and zealous.

The high character of the Herald as a newspaper will be maintained, and, if possible, strengthened, and an effort will be made to make it more than ever a welcome visitor in every household.

The retirement of Mr. Walsh from the newspaper business is a notable event, and one which furnishes an opportunity for me to say that the growth and prosperity of the Herald have been largely due to the noble manner in which he supported the enterprise in its earlier days. In separating from him it is gratifying to me and I am sure it will also be to the readers and patrons of the Herald to know that his best wishes go with the new proprietor and with the journals which he did so much to establish.

JAMES W. SCOTT.

Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1895

After next week the Evening Post will be published from the Times-Herald Building. Mr. Kohlsaat has decided that there is plenty of room in the Herald Building for the Evening Post, and that one plant can get out both papers. This move has caused somewhat a flurry among those who are thinking of providing Chicago with a Democratic paper. Up to this time the only available newspaper building was the old Times structure, and prospective editors have not been falling over one another in their anxiety to acquire the property. Mr. Kohlsaat himself appears not to care greatly whether a newspaper takes the Post Building or not.

Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1919

By Al Chase.
Following ion the heels of the transformation of the old Inter Ocean building into a film shop comes the announcement that another one time home of a morning newspaper, the Herald building at 163-69 West Washington street, has been sold and is to be remodeled into an office structure. Andrews & Co., stocks and bonds, now occupying the fourth floor of the Temple, 108 South La Salle street, have purchased its leasehold and six story building for a reported price of approximately $300,000, and will spend around $200,000 in remodeling it for office purposes. The new owners will occupy the entire first floor, renting the upper floors.

The Herald building site has a frontage of 61 feet and a depth of 180 feet, being originally owned by John R. Walsh, who leased it to the Herald company for ninety years from July 1, 1889, at an annual rental of $12,000. The lease subsequently was sold to George Patton, who conveyed it to the Chicago Title and Trust company for the benefit of the Evanston hospital, to whom he prevented it.

The Herald building was designed by Burnham & Root and cost about $600,000. It has housed the original Chicago Herald; the combination of the Herald and Chicago Times, known as the Times-Herald; the combination of the Record and the Times-Herald; which was called the Record-Herald, and still later the Chicago Herald, which was a merger of the Record-Herald and the Inter Ocean, made by James Keeley. The Herald occupied the building until its sale to the Examiner. Since then the building has had no permanent tenants. It was offered to the city of Chicago early this year at a slightly smaller figure than the present sale and the purchase of it was to for use as police headquarters was approved by the city council, but vetoed by Mayor Thompson.

Benjamin H. Rosenberg represented the Herald company and Edwin J. Bowes Jr. & Co. the buyers. The structure will be called the Andrews building.

Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1936

BY AL CHASE.
Wreckers will start razing the old Chicago Herald building at 163 West Washington street on April 1. High taxes and obsolescence are given as the reasons for its demolition by Williaqm O. Melcher and Judson F. Stone, owners.

When cleared the site will be used by Parking Stations, Inc., who yesterday leased it for ten years at an undisclosed rental. According to Arthur Rubloff & Co., who negotiated the deal, $25,000 will be spent in improving the property for its new use.

Built in 1890 from plans by Burnham & Root, the six-story Herald building was regarded as one of the finest newspaper plants of its day.

“Taxes are so high the income doesn’t justify our operating it,” said Melcher. The W.J. Newman Wrecking company has the contract to raze it.

Chicago Eagle, March 31, 1936

Tearing down of the Herald Building on Washington street brings back fond memories of the Fourth Estate. In this once beautiful building was housed the Chicago Herald, afterwards, the Times-Herald, then the Record-Herald and later the Herald again. Next to it was housed the Evening Post, alongside of which was the Journal and next to the latter the Chronicle. Around the corner on Fifth avenue, now Wells street, was the Daily News. Newsboys’ alley, situated between Washington and Madison streets, was then a throbbing sector of downtown Chicago.

Rand McNally & Co.’s Guide to Chicago, 1893

⑤ The Herald Building
At 154-158 Washington Street, is faithfully shown, its gabled front rendering it conspicuous. It is 61 feet wide, 181 feet deep, and 124 feet high, in 7 stories and basement. The construction is of steel, granite, brick, tile, and terra cotta, and the newspaper establishment which it shelters is described elsewhere. The scene on entering the counting-room is beautiful. Erected in 1891.

CHRONOLOGY OF CHICAGO HERALD AMERICAN

Chicago Herald, 1881 – 1918 (merged with Chicago Examiner)
Chicago Examiner, 1902 – 1918 (merged with Chicago Herald)
Chicago Herald-Examiner, 1918 – 1939 (became Herald-American)
Chicago Record, 1881 – 1901 (merged with Chicago Morning Herald)
Chicago Morning Herald, 1893 – 1901 (merged with Chicago Record)
Chicago Record Herald, 1901 – 1914
Chicago American, 1900 – 1939, (became Chicago Herald-American)
Chicago Herald-American, 1939 – 1958 (became Chicago’s American)
Chicago’s American, 1958 – 1969 (became Chicago Today)

Grain Elevators

Chicago Harbor

The designing and construction of grain storage buildings, commonly known as ‘elevators,’ is now undergoing a change as radical as that which created the modern ‘sky-scraper’ a few years ago, and for precisely the same reason, that something more durable and efficient is desired.
—Jas. MacDonald, MWSE. “Fireproof Grain Elevator Construction.” Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, January, 1902.

Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1861

Our Grain Elevators.

To a city of recent growth, like Chicago, belong comparatively few things that invite the attention of mere sight-seers. The stranger and the tourist can “do” in a morning’s ride nearly everything that comes under the class of “lions.” A look from the top of the Court House, a sight at our not numerous, but very creditable public buildings, and all is seen that we had to offer, since Fort Dearborn was palled down and the last of our old original structures fell before the march of business blocks.

There is, however, one especial class of objects of interest, that never fail to elicit from our visitors from abroad, wonder and admiration our—Grain Elevators.

Recently the very ample and complete annual tables of the Tribune, gave an exhibit of the extent of our business as a Grain Market, for the year 1860, and showed that an aggregate of over twenty-eight millions of bushels of cereals were here received and shipped in that period. A glance at our great granaries and their mechanical appliances for fellitating labor answers the question how this immense amount of grain was handled.

Let us first suppose it to be done in the two bushel gunny bags familiar to the levées of our western rivers. The above amount of grain if so bagged and piled and allowing a fair stowage for each bag, would give is a wall sixteen feet high and seven hundred miles long, a very fair Chinese wall against famine in the Northwest, and a very considerable portion of the world’s bulwark, against starvation else where.

But with the economical handling of such an immense bulk of grain, or rather with handling it all, must come into operation vast labor-saving appliances, steam-driven; and between buyer and seller has been created a middle class of operations involving large outlay cf capital, and performing work of receiving and shipping with a speed and method that as we have hinted, have caused our Grain Elevators to be a never failing object of interest to visitors.

We have chosen to couple a detailed reference to these great structures, with the above aggregate footing of what they have done the past year’s business of our grain mart, in the handling of nearly nineteen million dollars worth of the great staples of the Northwest, with a rich reward to the warehousemen themselves in the bountiful year 1860.

From their size, looking large among the lesser structures about them, like the dromedary among the shepherd’s flocks, our grain elevators constitute prominent objects to any one approaching the city from whatever direction. They stand along the river and its branches, each reached by canal boats and lake craft upon the water side, and upon the other by railroad tracks, and while their large proportions, and in the busy season the bustle that pervades their vicinity, constitute a feature peculiar to our city. And one should see and pass through them at such time to fully appreciate their utility.

The vast interior is honey-combed into bins whose capacily is reckoned by thousands of thousands of bushels. A powerfal steam engine drives the machinery by which the grain is elevated, or, to the eye, sucked up from the canal boats, and from the cars, and at will poured into the holds of lake raft, or deposit ed in bins for storage.

Let us look at a list of these great elevators and their capacity.

We reproduce the following table given in our recent Annual Review before referred to,

Besides these, two immense warehouses, of a capacity equal to the largest above mamed, are in process of erection on the South Branch, near the C., B. & Q. R. R. bridge, both to be ready for the next season’s business. One of these is for Messrs. Munger, Armour & Dole, the other for Messrs. Sturgis & Co. On the North branch, at the foot of Illinois street, a first-class warehouse is to be built for Hon. Wm. B. Ogden, It is to be 350 feet long by 80 feet wide, 110 feet high, and is to cost $90,000. It is to be commenced early the coming spring.

The capital invested in these Grain Elevators shows an aggregate outlay of nearly two millions of dollars, exclusive of the valuable real estate occupied by the same.

Chicago Grain Elevator

Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1863

FLINT & THOMPSON’s ELEVATOR.-This immense Grain Elevator, which has a storage capacity of 1,250,000 bushels, and of delivering 100,000 bushels per day, was opened Saturday to public inspection, and the hundreds of visitors were entertained in good style. There were used in constructing this Elevator, 3,000,000 feet of lumber, 650 cords of stone, 132 tons of iron, and 2,000 kegs of nails. The roofing required 316 squares. The elevating is performed by 2,750 buckets, holding one-third of a bushel eveh. The tin work was all done by A. Knisely, 58 State street, who has furnished buckets for the principal elevators.

The Elevator is in operation, and will be thrown open to those in attendance at the Convention this week.

Chicago Illustrated, March, 1866

It is impossible to put into any one picture any very comprehensive view of the Chicago river and its branches; therefore from time to time views of portions of it from the mouth to the junction of the North and South branches, and of the more important points along the latter, will be given. The river with its mills, elevators, warehouses, and shipping, would furnish itself thirty-five views, representing one of the great departments of the commerce of the city. The illustrations of this part of the city, with figures showing the tonnage that the business in this port, will be continued in subsequent number of this work.

James W. Sheehan, Esq.,
March 1866

Land Owner, February, 1873

OUR GREAT GRAIN INTERESTS. – WAREHOUSE LEGISLATION – VINCENT, NELSON & CO.’S NEW NATIONAL ELEVATOR.
In the January issue of The Land Owner was published a very important article, together with a map, showing the route of the projected Huron and Ontario Ship Canal to tide water, which has created considerable interest throughout the country, and which article has been commented on largely by the press, especially by The Chicago Tribune¹, which found the subject first agitated by this journal, of sufficient importance to justify the engraving of a facsimilie of our map, and a re-publication of the entire article. We therefore continue the subject this month by presenting, on our first page, an illustration of the new National Elevator, erected since the fire, by Messrs. Vincent, Nelson & Co., and by a resume of the warehousing business in this city, as well as the legislation in relation to the same.

The National Elevator.
This new warehouse is located on the Chicago & Alton Railroad, and the south branch of the Chicago river, at the corner of Archer avenue and Ogden slip, accessible from the city by the Archer avenue horse cars. It is constructed entirely fire-proof, of brick and iron, with all the modern improvements, and has a storage capacity of 1,000,000 bushes with ample facilities for the loading and unloading cars at the same time. It stands alone, with the river on two sides, and the street and vacant ground on the other sides, presenting solid brick walls for the main story, or bin covering, and hollow-tile fire-clay walls, cupolas or upper story, with solid cast-iron cornice. The roof throughout, the window frames and sash are of the same material, and not a particle of wood is used or exposed in the outside walls or covering. The openings are all closed with heavy iron doors or shutters.

This massive and imposing structure is 250 feet in length by 87 feet wide. Its cost, with the ground, was $400,000; without the ground, $300,000; and it is the largest warehouse with which the Chicago & Alton Railroad is connected. The iron elevator legs, scale hoppers, receivers, and canal leg were made by W. A. Case, of Buffalo, N. Y., and are complete and perfect in every particular. The engine, a most marvelous piece of mechanism, was constructed by R. L. Howard & Son, of Buffalo, together with the shafting, which runs smoothly and almost noiselessly. The engine is an upright condenser of three hundred horse power, and stands in a room admirably adapted to its use, and perfectly arranged, so that the monster can be seen in full operation. The ordinary plank bins are used, laid solid for strength; but above these the entire construction, including scales, hoppers, receivers, crane spouts and spouting, are all of iron. This, with the elevator legs (or cases), being iron from top to bottom, starting from iron tanks, on the lower concrete pavement (instead of the usual pine floor), reduces the risk by fire to a nominal one, and enables the holders of grain to insure themselves. In addition, there are all the known resources and means for fighting fire. Water is carried the entire length of each floor in three inch iron pipes, with full sized hose couplings, and hose couplings, and hose attached every fifty feet, through which, with a powerful force pump, water can be thrown to the highest point, or for a block in either direction, and steam for this purpose is carried night and day, with a competent engineer constantly on duty. The supply of water is taken both from the river and the
city mains.

Twenty-four smaller bins are also provided for separate small lots of grain to be stored separately and sold on its merits or by sample, if desired, and the firm can at all times furnish special bins for yellow or white corn. With these larger facilities the owners hope to see or hear favorably from their old patrons, and as many new ones as they can make room for, promising to use all their best efforts and energy in the safe keeping and care of all property entrusted to them. For their ability to do this fairly, they refer, with confidence to the business of the old National for five years before the fire, and their associations and connections in grain trade from Chicago to New York since 1856. The firm is composed of B. B. Vincent, Murry Nelson and E. B. Stevens.

The Warehouse Business.
So much for this new warehouse, one of the finest and best constructed of the class in the world. But in this connection it may be well to say a word about the business of warehousing, which has for several years been growing daily into disrepute in the minds of the general public, owing, mainly, to their false knowledge and misunderstanding of the subject, and the mischievous teachings of the provincial newspaper press. Up to the year 1867 the elevator business in this city was run entirely by close corporations, and was in every sense a strong monopoly. In every instance there was a wheel within a wheel, the warehouses being controlled or owned by the railroads, and the business transacted entirely in their inter-ests. Under this state of things, grain was delivered to such an elevator as the railroad men chose to carry it to, without consulting the consignee or consignor. There was no redress whatever from this arbitrary system, and it was submitted to with ill grace by both the grain producer and the commission men. The Board of Trade tried repeatedly, as a body, to remedy the evil and break the monopoly, but it was too strong for them, and their efforts failing only gave the monopolists a stronger grip, until the efforts for relief became a forlorn hope.

At the time when this state of things was in full force, and the public were suffering meekly an evil with which they had never really grappled, Vincent, Nelson & Co. built the old National elevator, which was destroyed in the fire, and connected its tracks with the Chicago and Alton road, requesting them to deliver there grain consigned to them, which the road declined to do. The elevator firm then commenced a suit to enforce such delivery, which was carried to the Supreme Court, and resulted in a verdict against the railroad. This suit attracted great attention at the time, as upon it hinged the whole matter at issue, and it was ably argued on both sides, every effort being used to maintain the old order of things through the courts.

This decision marked a new era in the warehouse business. The grain was delivered
to the old National elevator, since which the grain trade on this important road, tapping, as it does, one of the richest cereal-producing sections of the State, has been open to competition to whoever desired to enter into it.

This decision, coming timely as it did, made it possible for anybody to build an elevator and get grain to it, and competition was opened to all the world. The fact was demonstrated that the then existing warehouse law, and the common law as well, furnished a complete and ample remedy for the grievances complained of, if put in force, and to men who knew their rights and dared maintain them, seemed the requirement of the time, rather than further legislation; and the public who so meekly endured what was so easily cured, might have at least stopped grumbling or cursing, or invoked the remedy so plainly laid down by our Supreme Court.

Warehouse Legislation.
Notwithstanding the fact that the railroads at this time controlled the elevators, with the solitary exception of the National, the public hastened to condemn, not the railroads, but the warehousemen, and the legislature on April 25, 1871, passed the “Warehouse act,” conceded to be imperfect in some of its details. The end sought by the act was a proper one; but the act as a whole rests too much upon the notion that the only reinedy needed to correct an evil is an act of the legislature. The warehouse act contains many excellent and well matured provisions for the protection of the grain trade; it defines many acts which formerly were classed as frauds, and provides for their punishment as crimes. It generally provides the means by which the respective parties doing business through warehouses may invoke legal protection against frauds, and enforce rights which are denied. To this extent the law is unobjectionable, and is not opposed to any person. But the act goes further, and provides that no person engaged in the warehouse business shall receive anything in store without first obtaining a license therefor. This requirement, if it were provision for revenue, might not be objected to; but this requirement is coupled with another, that before he shall receive such license he must give bond to comply with all the provisions of “the laws of this State in relation thereto.” By the fifteen section of the same law, the charges for storage and handling of grain are estab-lished. As no license can be issued without the filing of the bond, and as the bond is conditioned that the party shall not ask or receive any more for storage than the statute permits, the person taking out a license must bind himself to accept the statutory compensation for his services. The same law provides that, for any violation of the law, the Court, upon complaint, and by summary proceeding, may revoke the license, and refuse to issue another to the same for one year.

The result involved in the matter of taking out licenses for grain warehouses, there-fore, is, that by so doing the warehousemen must accept the rates fixed by law; and the reason for which these warehousemen have refused to take out such licenses is, that they deny that the legislature of the State can prescribe the compensation which men shall charge and receive for carrying on a legal business that does not concern the public health, or the safety and good order of society, and is in no sense a franchise.

The same act contains special provisions which render it impossible that warehousing shall be either a legal franchise or an actual monopoly. Any person may select a ware-house, and railroads must deliver grain to the warehouse to which it is consigned. Warehousing, then, has no special privileges any more than any other business which is open to any other person. Nor is there any pretence that it is a business in any way affecting the public health, or that it operates to the injury of social order and decorum, or to violations of the peace. It presents no feature, either in its general conduct or special management, which can bring it within the restraining authority of the police power of the State. The police power rests upon the inviolability of the maxim that all the rights of individuals are to be held and enjoyed subject to the condition that they do not invade, impair or destroy the legal rights of others. It cannot be pretended that, in carrying on the business of warehousing, the charging of a certain rate per week for storage can in the remotest manner be an invasion, destruction, or interference with the legal rights of any citizen. So far as the act of 1871 does exercise the great inherent police power of the State for the protection of individual or public rights, its authority is undisputed.

The great question which at this time is widely diseussed among the people, and is in one form or another before the courts of nearly every State in the Union, as to the authority of the State to dictate to corporations holding charters, in the matter of rates for the transportation of passengers and freight, does not have any bearing upon the controversy between the warehousemen and the State of Illinois. These warehousemen are not public corporations; they do not derive their right to carry on business from the State any more than does the man who cultivates grain; and while they admit the power and duty of the State to compel them to act honestly in their dealings with other men, they deny that the State can fix the price they shall charge for storing and handling the grain, any more than it can fix the price at which the grain shall be sold by the producer, or the price per barrel at which the flour made from such grain shall be sold.

The law declares these warehouses public, to the extent that they must receive all grain offered them. It is not optional, therefore, for these warehousemen to receive grain or not at the prices fixed by the State; nor can they, by contract with the owner of grain, receive a higher compensation than is fixed by law. They must either do business at the statutory rates, or close their warehouses. This latter resort is not an easy one. The grain warehouse is a costly institution; it cannot be adapted for other purposes; to close it involves a total loss, and to carry on the business at less than paying rates is but adding to the inevitable sacrifice. This business of warehousing was lawful long before the State took cognizance of it; it was regulated by common law, and the rates of compensation were controlled by competition or agreement between the warehouseman and his customers. It stood on the same footing as all other private business where one charged another for labor performed. But this act of 1871 makes this business unlawful unless performed for certain rates prescribed by law. The want of justice in the exercise of any such power is shown in the fact that if the legislature may fix a maximum rate of storage beyond which it is unlawful to re-ceive, even by contract, it may also establish a minimum rate, below which it shall be equally unlawful for warehousemen, even by contract, to store grain. The legislature of 1871 fixed one rate; the legislature of 1873 may prescribe, if the power exist at all, another rate, or a minimum rate for storage, and compel the producers of grain to pay that rate, even though elevators would readily store grain for less. Once admit the power of the State to prescribe the rates of wages for labor; the wages of storing grain; the compensation of lawyers or doctors; the price of bricks or lumber, and then there must follow a scale of prices for corn, oats, wheat, flour and bread; the price of drawing teeth; for making a man’s coat and a woman’s dress; for boots and shoes, and so on, until the reward of labor, industry, and production of the country shall be taken out of the hands of the people, and be regulated by statute. There have been demagogues in all ages and in all countries that have sought temporary applause by laws regulating the prices and compensation of products and labor, but in no instance have such laws survived the panic in which they were enacted, and they stand condemned by the universal judgment of mankind. No one in this State would advocate a general regulation of prices and wages by statute; no one will claim that the State has any power to prescribe such regulation; and no class would more earnestly oppose such a regulation than the producers of grain. It is not surprising; therefore, that the warehousemen object to being singled out from the multitude of private occupations, trades and business, and have their compensation arbitrarily fixed by law, and forbidden, even by contract with their customers, to receive any other price.

There are other considerations upon which this provision of the act of 1871 is opposed, such as that private business or property shall not be injured or damaged; that one man’s property cannot be taken and given to another. But we have stated enough to show that the refusal to take out licenses by the warehousemen is founded upon strong reasons of justice and private right, which cannot be surrendered until the law is sustained by the highest tribunal of the State.

Vincent, Nelson & Co. comply with all the provisions of this questionable law except one-they dispute the authority of the legislature to fix their tariff of prices.

Looking to a more complete understanding between the warehousemen, the railroads and the people, a commission should be appointed, composed of good men of talent and capacity, capable of coping with railroad presidents, superintendents or attorneys. These men should be paid a salary in accordance with their abilities. This commission should aid the people in securing their rights, and it should be their duty to enforce all laws and regulations to prevent fraud, extortion and all unfair discrimination, all of which could be done through the courts, but not through the legislature, where corruption and bribery long ago subverted the people’s rights. Appropriate means to enable such a commission to employ counsel, and cope on an equal footing with the monied corporations, should be provided. Some such steps should be taken, if the people would maintain their just rights in this all-important matter.

Chicago Tribune July 14, 1895

To the man who looks casually over the floor of the Board of Trade It appears that the business in grain is absurdly out of proportion to the trade in the actual article. He sees the wheat pit filled to overflowing with a struggling, shouting, and gesticulating crowd, the principal evidences of a cash business are a few at one side of the room. He may know in a way that Chicago is the greatest grain market in the world; he may remember that the receipts and shipments annually are calculated in nine-figure totals, and he doubtless has an indefinite idea that the grain trade has to a gloater possibly than anything else to the importance of Chicago as a metropolis. He has no definite conception of the volume of the trade in cereals or of the vast amount of warehouse room for storing and properly caring for the number of of grain received at and distributed from Chicago.

The evolution of the grain trade in Chicago has been as remarkable as that of any other line of business, From the the first shipment of seventy-eight bushels of wheat was made by lake in 1838 from the little trading post at the mouth of the Chicago River the of business has increased until Chicago has become the leading grain mart of the world, and a year’s receipts of corn, wheat, oats, and rye have been over 200,000,000 bushels. The elevator business has developed in direct ratio to the, grain business. The first official record of the capacity of warehouses in Chicago is given in the first annual of the Board of Trade for the year 1858. This was prior to the passage of an act of the Legislature for regular warehouses and all elevators then were private houses, operated by their owners without the interference of the State authorities. The total warehouse capacity of the city was placed at 4,095,000 bushels, or much less than last year’s increase in the grain storage capacity of Chicago. The elevators listed in the report of the board were owned by ten companies, and the largest house on the list had a capacity of only 700,000 bushels, while one house holding only 60,000 was included. Two modern elevators wouid hold all the grain that could have bean loaded into all warehouses in Chicago in 1858 and would still not be crowded. Ten years later the total warehouse capacity of the city was placed at 10,080,000 bushels. Another decade added 50 per cent to this capacity. In 1888 the total capacity was 30,000,000 bushels. The last report of the Board of Trade for 1894 places the total capacity of public warehouses here at 34.000.000 bushels and the private at 12,500,000 bushels, making a total of 4,600,000 bushels, which will be brought well up to the 50,000,000 by the new houses in course of construction or contemplated.

If the long drawn out competition between the proprietors of grain elevators in Chicago and the Board of Trade serves no other purpose than to direct the public attention to the phenomenal development of the grain commission and warehousing business of this city it may not have been entirely in vain. The public has not interested itself to any great extent in the ins and outs of the fight made against the warehousemen by the representatives of local grain receivers. The controversy dates back to the time when the grain trade assumed such proportions that it became practicable to recognize the warehousing of grain as separate and distinct from the business of receiving and shipping. It has been on almost every imaginable point from storage rates to the details of apparatus for elevating and distributing grain in houses. Most of the time it has been in a dormant condition, but on various occasions has broken out with sufficient violence to attract the attention of the general public. One of these violent periods which has been of more than ordinary duration is now being rounded out.

Like most arguments of similar nature the elevator question has two well defined sides. It has been accepted as a safe proposition that the grain trade of the city needed the warehousing facilities furnished by the elevator men as much as the warehousemen needed the support of the grain trade. Neither branch of the business could be carried on to the best advantage without the co-operation, voluntary or involuntary, of the other. So much capital is now represented in the warehousing business that the disciplining of the elevator proprietors has become a difficult task for the Board of Trade to undertake. Under such conditions the only settlement which appears to be in prospect is a compromise in some form is what the general trade looks for. Every year the public warehousemen come before the directory of the Board of Trade, file bonds, and make application to have their licenses to operate public warehouses under the control of the board renewed. This season applications were fled for licenses to operate houses of an aggregate capacity of 35,000,000 bushels.

There is more warehouse room for grain in Chicago in regular houses alone than there is in any other city in the country where regular and irregular storage houses are classed together. Beside this storage room termed regular from the fact that it is operated subject both to the supervision of the State authorities and the Board of Trade, there is a large amount of supplementary storage room in private warehouses of the city. The amount of money invested in buildings alone would run away up into the millions as the cost of building a house is figured at ail the way from nine cents a bushel for ordinary cribroom to $1 a bushel for a finely equipped cleaning-house.

The houses vary in size, but if all the storage room of the city were distributed in houses of 2,500,000 bushels capacity, and as little ground occupied by each as is occupied by one of the modern North Side houses, the elevators of Chicago, without allowance for auxiliary structures, would cover a space equal to ten down-town city blocks. When it is remembered that the buildings will rival many of the down-town sky-scrapers in height it can be easily imagined that if the Chicago grain warehouses were massed together they would make an imposing showing. It is safe enough to estimate that the public and private grain elevators with auxiliary power plants and similar buildings cover a ground space equal to that bounded by State street on the east, Lake street on the north, La Salle street on the west, and Jackson street on the south. The warehouse room of the city is not full at the present time, the quantity of the four principal cereals in store, with no allowance for seeds and minor cereals, being figured at 30,000,000 bushels.

On a basis of 700 bushels to a car the contents of a train of grain cars 500 miles long. or extending from Chicago tn Omaha, could be accommodated in store at Chicago.

Warehouse room could be provided in Chicago in regular houses alone for the entire yield of wheat last year in Illinois, or for one-twelfth at the biggest crop the United States ever raised, in public and private houses. Over a quarter of last year’s bumper corn crop raised in Illinois could be stored away in local grain warehouses and enough vacant room left to make the proprietors nervous about storage earnings.

There is no effort made to stamp individuality on elevators as there is, for example, in the construction of office buildings. The groups of houses are on the South Branch of the river at Twenty-second and Sixteenth streets; at the fork of the main river; on Goose island; at the mouth of the Chicago River; and at South Chicago on the Calumet River. There has been no display of imagina. ton in selection of names for the different warehouses. Such titles as “Rock Island B” and “Armour E” do not lend any individuality to the elevators, and are prosaic in the extreme.

A fair idea of the elevator facilities of the city may be gained from an examination of the group of warehouses on Goose Island operated by the Armour Elevator company. There are three elevators, the “Armour A and B,” the “B Annex,” and the Minnesota. The warehouse known as “Armour A and B.” until the erection of the “B Annex” two years ago, had the distinction of being the largest grain elevator under a single roof. The “B Annex” was the house which was built under the stress of the Cudahy wheat corner two years ago in a remarkably short space of forty-two days. These two houses are regular public warehouses, while the Minnesota is by distinction a private warehouse. It contains all sorts of machinery for tho cleaning and improving grades of grain and for clipping oats. Under the laws of this State a public warehouse can contain none of this class of machinery and must not be connected directly with the cleaning house. While the two large public warehouses are connected and are operated together the Minnesota is a separate and distinct house and grain moved by car or vessel from it to the regular houses.

There is a similarity in the construction of all grain warehouses. First comes the ground floor story with tunnels through which run the railroad tracks on which ears of grain are received. Then there is the main portion of the building running up fifty to seventy-five feet, unbroken by windows, and surmounting this is the narrower portion in which from four to five stories are defined by rows of windows. The “Armour A and B house” is termed the active house of the group. It is on the river front and all the loading of regular grain from the “B Annex” as well as from the main house is from it. Although not built so recently as a number of other houses, and possibly scarce. ly so well equipped with modern appliances for fire protection, it is a typical Chicago elevator. So far as the handling of grain is concerned it is a single house 550 feet long, 115 feet wide, and 156 feet high. For insurance purposes it is really two houses, being divided by a fire wall of brick twenty inches thick at the base and with openings protected by fire doors and rolling iron screens. The first floor is twenty feet high, giving head room for cars. Above this extend the bins for sixty-five feet. This part of the building resembles a huge honeycomb. It is built without framing, planks being laid flatwise upon each other and spiked together to form the outer walls and bin divisions.

This form of structure gives immense strength and power to resist lateral pressure. The bins run from top to bottom and are from twelve to sixteen feet long and from sixteen to twenty feet wide. They open above into the cupola portion of the elevator and terminate in hoppers above the first floor. They are simply square wells formed with plank sides and having no interior equipment except an iron ladder extending up one corner. The walls between bins are six inches wide, while the sides of the building are built of 2×8 spruce planks. A modern elevator built in this style with planks laid flat is an immense lumber pile. The main house, for example, contains something over 8,000,000 feet of lumber, whole in the “B Annex” there something like 11,000,000 feet. For fireproofing purposes the houses are either veneered with brick or covered with sheet iron. The cupola of the main house contains five floors. The one immediately over the bins is known as the bin floor, the next the spout floor, the third the scale floor, while the two top floors are called machinery floors. The whole structure is placed on a pile foundation, which on account of the immense weight sustained has to be laid even more carefully than the foundations of the down-town sky-scrapers.

The margin in handling grain has become so small by competition that the problem is to handle the maximum amount of grain with the minimum amount of labor. The man with the scoop shove is scarcely in evidence. The greater part of the grain received here is by car, although there is still considerable received by canal. The cars are received and switched directly into the elevator building. Right from that point the labor-saving machinery begins to get in its work. Two men with what look much like old-fashioned road scrapers, operated by steam winch and cable, go into the cars and drag the grain out into iron hoppers which are below the level of the elevator floor. From these hoppers or tanks the grain is taken up through elevators or legs, as they are termed, to the top floor. These are simply large pipes running up through the building, in which run wide belts with cups twenty inches long and six inches wide. The “Armour A and B” house is equipped with twenty-eight of these elevators or legs, any one of which can handle 7,000 bushels an hour, and a marine leg which ig capable of taking 12,000 bushels an hour out of the hold of a canal boat or lake barge.

The grain which is taken up through the elevators goes directly to the top cupola floor. On the next two floors are the “receivers” and “shippers,” as they are termed. If the grain being run up in the ears is to be at once loaded into vessels it is emptied into what is called a garner on the second machinery floor. This is simply a bin to accumulate the grain to the extent of 1,000 bushels or more over a scale hopper on the next floor below. If the grain is to go into one of the bins of the house for storage it is discharged directly into the scale hopper of une of the receivers. The weighing, done one floor and is all is managed exactly the same whether the grain goes to store or is loaded out into vessels. The house has sixteen shipping bins and garners with sixteen shipping scales and as many spouts leading directly out to the river front. The capacity of the house is such that 400 cars of grain can be unloaded in one day and its equivalent reloaded into vessels. The grain which goes into store runs from the scale hopper into a rather ingenious arrangement on the spout floor by which it can be directed into any one of thirty-five bins. When grain is loaded out of store the process is exactly the same as it is when grain is received directly by rail. The bins open above the first floor and are emptied into the iron receiving tanks, taken up to the top of the building, discharged into the shipping bin and spouted out into the vessel. The grain is all weighed as it comes in and again weighed as it goes out. The arrangements to load cars is similar to the spout used in loading vessels, only that at the outlet is a bifurcated spout which directs grain to the ends of the car and does away with any shoveling. A 700-bushel car car by this means be loaded in a minute and a half.

In getting grain to and from a house three methods of transmission are used. It is elevated by cups on belts and gravity takes care of its return to the ground floor. The methods in use in transferring it horizontally in the building are rather more interesting. In some cases the old-fashioned screw conveyer, which is an immense endless screw running in an inclosed space, is used to transfer grain from one place to another on the same level. The belt conveyer, however, does most of this work. This is simply a wide belt running over pulleys on which the grain is poured. The arrangement by which the grain is placed On the belt is called a concentrator. It turns up the edges of the belt slightly and deposits the grain on it. The belt flattens out, travels along, at a rapid rate, and still nothing is thrown off the edges. A form of centripetal force keeps the grain in the center and the edges of the belt absolutely clean. On a forty inch belt the grain at the center may be one foot high while there is not a particle of it for four to six inches from each edge. There is an immense system of belts of this kind on the different working floors of all the Goose Island elevators, but the largest conveyors are those which connect the main house with the “B Annex.”

The two houses are operated from the same steam plant by rope transmission of power. The annex is not on the river front, and any unloading from it to the river is done through the main house, while any grain loaded into it from the river has to go back over the same route. There are two belt conveyers between the houses with belts forty inches wide. The grain is placed on these belts by concentrators and taken off by trippers. These concentrators and trippers are movable, and so while the belts are run from end to end of the building, grain can be loaded on to them or taken off from them at any point. The belts between the two houses are so arranged that both the upper and lower portions of each can be used at the same time and have a capacity of 15,000 bushels an hour each way. It is possible to so run them that during a single hour 30,000 bushels of corn can be taken from the “A and B house” to the annex, while on the lower section of the same belt and at the same time 30,000 bushels of wheat are moved back from the annex to the main house. The system of elevators and belt conveyors is such that grain can be taken up through the marine leg at the river front to the top of the main house and moved something like a quarter of a mile to a bin in the annex, every bit of the work being done by machinery.

The work of handling the grain by no means ends with the depositing of it in bins or even with the loading of it out into vessels. It is constantly being turned over and handled. One of the largest elevator concerns in te city makes the boast that it has never had a bushel of contract grain, grain grading as high as No. 2, get out of condition. All winter wheat is supposed to contain a germ of weevil and if allowed to stand and become at all warm this develops with great rapidity. With the first zero weather in the winter the elevator men run over all their wheat, spouting the bins down into the hoppers and running the grain back into other bins. This is done slowly enough to get out what is termed the summer heat and lower the temperature of the grain to freezing point. The ice-house construction of the bins is such that the grain run over will maintain this new temperature and the weevil will be rendered harmless. This is done with grain of high grade received in good condition, but is not a circumstance to the work needed in handling off grades or grain received slightly out of condition. It has to be turned over and over, and even then it is considered almost impossible to prevent weevil making its appearance in some of the numerous bins. Corn in the germinating season of the spring is especially troublesome, and there is corn in some of the elevators now which is being turned over on an average once every three or four days. Oats received in the fall, before they have gone through the sweat properly, also make the warehousemen trouble and keep his fore. man and Superintendent in hot water.

The construction of the annex does not vary materially from that of the other house. It is more of a storage house, however, and the bins are 75 feet deep. The building is 300x 250 feet in dimensions and 140 feet high. The cupola portion, which is only four stories high, is 36 feet wide and extends all along one side of the building. The bin construction is slightly different, the bottoms of the bins terminating on a level with the ground floor instead of at the ceiling of the tirst story. The same method of unloading cars into tanks is employed, but from there on the grain is transported by two systems of twelve belt conveyors, one in tunnels 300 feet long and xtending below the floor, and the second set on the top or bin floor.

The most interesting thing in connection with this elevator are conditions which surrounded its construction. Two years ago the Cudahy wheat corner was engineered and Armour & Co. were caught with wheat bought in the Northwest, but which on account of the congested condition of elevators here could not be delivered. All previous records were broken for rapid construction when it was decided to build the new house. Ground was broken and excavation commenced March 23. The immense pile foundation was put in in thirteen days and in the next twenty-nine days the house, with a capacity of nearly 3,500,000 bushels, was completed ready for the receipt of grain and the May corner failed to corner.

The difliculties in the way of building were multiplied by the fact that the World’s Fair construction in all lines was testing the market for labor and building material. It would have been out of the guestion for any contractor to have even figured on such a contract and the work was taken up and pushed by the elevator company direct. Mr. Armour spent a good share of his time, during the construction of the house, on Goose Island. The work was carried on night and day with the aid of electric lights and when practicable from 700 to 900 men were employed. Ordinary carpenters under the pressure were able in some cases to make $14 and $15 a day. The machinery for loading grain into the house was all put in position during the forty-two days and the only part not completed was the machinery and equipment necessary for unloading grain from the house. All that was necessary, however, to checkmate the corner was to have the grain in store, and the remainder of the work was completed under much less tension. The equipment of the house is such that 300,000 bushels a day can be moved to or from the main house.

The first grain warehouse which had facilities for loading and unloading grain entitling it to the style of an elevator was that built by Newberry & Dole (right) on the north side of the river at a point just east of the present Rush street bridge. Grain was loaded into it by block and tackle operated by hand, and the second shipment of Chicago grain was made from it in 1839. The next advance was in the use of horse power. Bags of grain were drawn up by a rope first, and later a treadmill arrangement working an endless chain with buckets was used. In 1842 the big house of the city was only 40×100 feet in dimensions. The first elevator to be operated by steam was built in 1848 by R. C. Bristol.

In 1855 Sturges & Buckingham, by arrangement with the Illinois Central railroad company, built an 800,000-bushel warehouse, and this was referred to as a mammoth building at the time. At that time it is estimated that there was not to exceed 750,000 bushels of storage room in Chicago.

Some idea of the development of the grain business of Chicago may be gained by comparing the elevator room here with that of other cities. In other cities the proportion of private houses to public is by no means so large as here. The State law of Illinois makes it impracticable to carry on the elevator business without a large number of private houses to supplement the regular storage room. In Duluth and Minneapolis, for example, elevator proprietors are allowed to clean grain in regular houses and to raise its grade, the advance in grade of course giving a profit to the elevator men.

The theory of a public warehouse here is that grain must go in and come out exactly the same grade. Every bushel of grain that is loaded in or out of a public warehouse is done under the supervision of the State authorities, and issuance of receipts against grain in store is under the same supervision. Any cleaning, miring, and grading of grain has to be done in private houses and the grain from them is loaded into cars and if transferred to a public house passes the same inspection as that given grain received directly from the country. The contention of the people who insist that the public warehousemen as custodians of grain placed with them for storage shall not buy and sell grain is that the present system gives the elevator man an opportunity to select grain, and, as it is termed in the trade, “skin” grades.

The elevator men claim, however, that the present system by which they are enabled to go out into the country and force grain which might go to other markets to core here is the only one that is at all practicable and insist that the combination of public and private warehouses is necessary and that the State inspection gives an outside holder of grain all the protection possible or necessary. In other cities the private storage room is so small that it may be all classed with the room in public warehouses. Against the 50,000,000 bushels capacity here, Duluth has elevators with a capacity of 27,000,000 bushels, Minneapolis 26,000,000 bushels, New York 29,000,000 bushels. Buffalo 15,000,000 bushels, St. Louis 13,000,000 bushels, and Toledo but 7,000,000 bushels.

In the contention of the elevator men and grain receivers, which has been going on for a number of years, and which really arises out of the question of control of the receiving business, both sides have grounds for claiming the business. Away back when the grain business of the city began to grow the elevator men were about the only commission men, or rather perhaps all the commission-men had elevators. With the development of the agricultural territory tributary to Chicago and the building of railroads the golden age of the grain business began. It grew so rapidly that it naturally divided into two branches, the warehousing business and the commission business. The grain trade simply had nowhere else to go and poured into Chicago. The commission men had all the business they could do and did it at commission percentages which would make the average commission man of today turn green with envy. With all the grain business headed to Chicago the elevator men had no trouble in keeping their warehouses filled and no occasion to encroach on the business of the commission men.

The change came gradually twelve or fifteen years ago, and there has been a gradual re-adjustment of methods ever since. Other grain markets became prominent; Kansas City sprang up; better communications between St. Louis and the gulf were provided, and it became a bidder for Chicago’s grain business. The big warehouses in the Northwest were erected, and by a combination with certain railroads a pull was made for the spring wheat trade. Newport News was opened as a grain port and shipments made to it from St. Louis, Kansas City, and Peoria direct. With the building of new railroads and belt lines the tendency was to ship grain around Chicago. Outside junction points were favored. The system of through billing of grain to Eastern points did as much to change the methods of handling grain in Chicago as anything else. The elevator men found that the grain was going to other points and had difficulty in keeping their houses full and earning storage. The commission men were not inclined to cut their commissions or to make as vigorous a campaign for trade as the elevator men would have liked. Charles Counselman is credited with having made the first move toward the baying of grain in the country.

The new methods necessary were such that many of the old elevator men were inclined to drop out of the business, and there was a general transfer of elevator property. All of the present companies buy grain either directly or indirectly through auxiliary companies. At the time when American securities were readily marketed in England the corporation which has since been reorganized into the Chicago Terminal company with a capital of $2,730,000 was formed. It took over the property operated by P. B. Weare and his associates, originally owned by Munger, Wheeler & Co. The capitalization was so large that only one dividend Las been paid, and that recently. Some of the companies operating elevators in Chicago own their own houses, while others have leases with the railroad companies, which built and own the elevators. The Central Elevator company, operated by Carrington, Hannah & Co., has a lease of the Illinois Central houses, which, it is said, is at a rental scaled to the amount of grain handled through the houses. The Chicago. and Pacific Elevator company, of which W. J. Harper is the manager, owns its houses. George Senverns owns the houses operated by him, as does Murry Nelson, out of whose contentions with the board a great deal of board legislation has grown. The Armour Elevator company owns the North Side houses on Goose Island, located on the Northwestern road, while it leases the South Side houses on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad.

Methods of handling grain are constantly changing and old time elevator men have worked out of the business. Of the prominent warehouse men of today Murry Nelson, George Seaverns, and P. B. Weare serve as a sort of connecting link between the old system and the new. The Armour Elevator company practically succeeded Dole & Co. The Chicago Elevator company, of which Lloyd Smith is manager, controls houses formerly owned by George Dunlap & Co. Carrington, Hannah & Co. operate the houses formerly controlled by J. & E. Buckingham. The business of Flint, Odel & Co. descended to Charles Counseltan & Co. and A. C. Davis & Co., while the Munger & Wheeler houses were absorbed by the English syndicate and are managed by P. B. Weare.

Elevators have been rebuilt time and agaia and only a few of what might be termed old-time houses are in existence in anything like their original form. The “Rock Island B” elevator was built in 1862, construction hav. ing been under way for nearly three years. This is one of the oldest houses in operation at the present time, and is operated today with the same engine, with the same bins, and same grain scales that were put in when it was constructed. The old Rock Island A house was built in the 50s, but lost its identity in being rebuilt in 1892.

Down at these houses may be seen one of the old carts which was used in unloading grain from the elevator. The old method of handling grain was to elevate it into the warehouse by horse-power, and run it out on an inclined plane to the hold of the vessel in carts. Mr. Thompson of Flint, Thompson & Co. was in the habit of running one of the unloading carts himself, and another of the old-time elevator proprietors tells of carrying bags of grain from his house out to the vessel. The first elevators were along the main part of the Chicago River, many of them extending out on to South Water street. They were operated without any particular inspection or supervision, and later on, after the formation of the Board of Trade, were under its inspection. There was no State law regarding the delivery of warehouse receipts. and there was a great deal of irregularity in the issuance of these receipts.

The Munn & Scott frauds, late in the sixties, were really what led to the enactment of the present State law regarding warehouse inspection. They built false bottoms in the bins of their warehouse and covered these bottoms with a car load or so of grain. They showed to the trade what purported to be full bins, which were not over 10 to 15 per cent full, and on the strength of such a showing made an over issue of receipts. The Board of Trade went to Springfield and asked for legislation on the matter and possibly got more than it expected, as the entire inspection was assumed by the State, and the present system of State supervision of grain and grain receipts adopted. Before this system adopted the methods of recording the receipts and withdrawal of grain from houses was= similar to the checking and depositing on a current bank account. The owner of grain was given a book which showed his deposits and withdrawals of goods from the warehouse. The procedure is now more as it is in the issuance of certificates of deposit by a bank. Grain is inspected in by carlots in the elevator and a record kept of its grade, the weight, and car nurber and initial of the car in which it was received. This is checked over at the office of the elevator company and a receipt issued. If the receipt was issued against several carloads received an indorsement is made on the back of these separate carlots. This receipt is taken to the State Registration Office and registered to see if the grain shown tallies with that shown by the record of the Registrar. In making a shipment the owner of the receipt brings it in, indorses it for shipment, and it he has a portion of the grain remaining, he is given a new receipt.

The insurance of the property represented in warehouses and their contents is of course an immense business, and some of the larger houses are never fully covered, as the underwriting facilities of the city are exhausted before the house is covered. The tendency of late has been to build fire walls to divide large houses into small areas and to devise new means of protection from fire. So far, as fire protection is concerned the model elevator of the city is that recently built at South Chicago by Charles Counselman. Besides the ordinary equipment of sprinklers and fire buckets it has around it several Niagara pumps, which command the entire outside of the building. One of them is arranged to throw a four.inch stream over the highest point on the building.

Murry Nelson is the oldest in the service of all the elevator proprietors. He has also gained the reputation of being the fighting member of the outfit. He has had several tussles with the railways and the Board of Trade, and has usually come out on top of the heap. During the summer of 1894 the board made an amendment to the rules, the elevator concerns all having signed an agreement to abide by the rule when passed. The National Elevator company, of which Mr. Nelson is President, signed by its Secretary, Mr. Nelson being out of town at the time. Afterwards Mr. Nelson made the claim that the Secretary was not authorized to sign the agreement and refused to indorse it. The board judged Mr. Nelson guilty of dishonorable conduct and suspended him indefinitely. Last April by a peremptory writ of the Appellate Court he was restored to privileges of the board.

Speaking of his experience in the elevator business Mr. Nelson said:

Right there the trouble began. The Board of Trade sympathized with me, but had no disposition to fight the railroads. I accepted that burden and began suit against the Alton to get the grain delivered where it was con-signed. That case became a leading case known as the Vincent case, Mr. Vincent being my partner. The Supreme Court decided that the contracts between the railways and the elevators were void. I had little trouble on that score after that, although recently I had a little tussle with the Illinois Central with a similar victory.

In the ’60s I had a drying-house in connection with my elevator and used to kiln-dry corn, bringing it up to contract grade by so doing, so as to sell it for future delivery. The board broke in upon me by changing its rules, making kiln-dried corn a grade by itself, not deliverable on contracts. I insisted that the corn was deliverable on contracts made before the passage of the rule, and the board made an attempt to suspend me. I enjoined them from suspending me, and the injunction was never disturbed.

One of the prominent pioneers in the elevator business is Ebenezer Buckingham. He became gray and incidentally rich in the service, retiring in 1891 to devote his entire time to the Presidency of the Northwestern National Bank. Mr. Buckingham said:

There have been great changes in the system of business since 1856. We used to think that we were making up a big. cargo when we put 15,000 or 18,000 bushels of grain into a boat. I remember well when the schooner Great West first came here to load. It was capable of holding a cargo of 32,000 bushels of oats and was considered a veritable famine producer to elevators.. We used to send out all grain by vessels and had no facilities for loading to cars from the store-houses. Chicago from the first was a natural market for grain and we heard nothing in the early days of warehousemen buying grain in the country. ‘The elevators were full all the time.

To show how guileless the primitive days were it may be said that the elevator proprietors were allowed to issue receipts at pleasure, and sometimes more receipts were put out for a given elevator than there was grain in the house, when there happened to bea rise in the market, the receipts being passed just as if the grain was there and bought back when the market declined.

To use the slang of the street, it was a great snap for the elevator people, and business-men might be inclined to smile at such loose methods nowadays. Some earnest spirits finally became imbued with the idea that it was a baneful practice, and the Legislature was called upon to make some laws on the subject.

Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1897

CHICAGO’S SEVEN WONDERS OF THE CITY
Wonder The Third-The Great Grain Elevators.
Chicago handles the bulk of the grain trade of the United States—everybody knows that. Naturally and necessarily, its elevators are the largest and most wonderful in the world. One of these. Armour Annex B, has a capacity of 3,500.000 bushels of wheat, which—barring Armour’s Elevator D and annex, 3,000,000 bushels capacity, and Armour’s Elevator A and B, 2,500,000 bushels-will hold twice as much grain as any other two elevators in the world.

There stand in Chicago today a chain of elevators capable of storing 41,350,000 bushels of grain. These are the public elevators known as class “A.” under the inspection of the State Railroad and Warehouse commission. Aside there are many smaller elevators that are outside the jurisdiction of the commission.

But all grain coming into the open market and bought and sold upon the floor of the Board of Trade must be housed in one of the great “A” class elevators, where it is inspected and from which it is delivered.

An idea of the vast volume of the grain trade of Chicago may be conveyed by citing the fact that last year 120,449 carloads of grain were received at the public warehouses of Chicago. There were in addition 306,445 carloads inspected on track, which did not go into the elevators.

Last year the amount of wheat handled by the warehouses was 100,116,207 bushels. Of this 92,572,153 bushels was reshipped, the difference going into home consumption. Last year more grain was handled In Chicago than during any preceding year except 1892, when about 9,000,000 more bushels came here. This year will beat the record.

There are thirty-two great class “A’ elevators in this city, counting annexes as separate elevators.

Chicago has developed the highest type of grain elevator, a type adopted by the Russian government. As the best example of its class, it may be interesting to know that in spite of the mammoth proportions of Armour “Annex B,’ it was constructed in forty days, is practically fireproof, and can take in grain at the rate of 58,000 bushels an hour.

1901 Sanborn Fire Insurance Elevators Maps

②-Gen. View of Goose Island Elevators.

③-Armour’s “A,” “B” and “B” Annex.

④-Minnesota & Annex, Armour Elevator Co.

⑤-St. Paul and Fulton Annex, Armour Elevator Co.

⑥-Galena Elevators.

⑩—McReynold’s “B” (Wisconsin).

⑪—Gen. View of South Branch, Between 12th and 16th Streets.

⑫—City, The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑬-Iowa Elevator, The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑭-Union Elevator, The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑮-Armour’s “E,” The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑯-Armour’s “F,” The Chicago Ry. Ter, Elev. Co.

⑰-Rock Island “A,” C. Counselman & Co.

⑱-Rock Island “B,” C. Counselman & Co.

⑲-Gen. View of South Branch, Between 18th & Wallace Sts.

⑳-Indiana, The American Cereal Co.

㉑-Alton “A,” Geo. A. Seaverns.

㉒-Alton “B,” Geo. A. Seaverns.

㉓-Nebraska City Pack. Co.’s Elevators.

㉔-Gen. View of South Branch, West of Halsted, Between 22nd St. and Archer Ave.

㉕-Chicago & St. Louis Elevator & Annex.

㉖-Armour’s “C.”.

㉗-Armour’s “D.”.

㉚-Danville, Carrington, Hannah & Co.

㉛-Santa Fe, D. Richardson & Co.

㉜-Mabbatt “A” & “B,” Geo. A. Seaverns.

㉝-Wabash.

㊳-H. Mueller & Co.

Inter Ocean, July 21, 1906

Santa Fe Elevator.
The new Santa Fe elevator being erected by the Santa Fe road at Robey and Twenty-Seventh streets will be a model up to date house, with a brick and frame working house, having a capacity of 400,000 bu., with a car shed and marine tower and a re-enforced concrete storage capacity of 1,000,000 bu. Drying, cleaning, bleaching, and clipping machinery will be put into the house, and it will be operated by the Santa Fe road, so that its cars of grain can be unloaded as fast as they arrive. The house will have five shipping and five receiving legs, and is 225 feet long and 56 feet wide. The storage annex has thirty-five cylindrical concrete bins, each twenty-three feet deep, inside diameter, and twenty-four interspace bins. It can unload eighty cars at a time, having four raised tracks, the grain going into hopper scales. The yards are so arranged that the cars leave the elevator by a gravity track. For loading boats there are eight spouts. It is the intention of the Santa Fe management to do a transfer, cleaning. and general elevator business, but not to deal in grain. It has not been decided whether free storage for ten days will be granted when the house is opened, although the Santa Fe railroad at its houses at Kansas City gives free storage on grain that originates on its system, but charges ¾ c per bushel for transferring and storing and handling the grain sent there that originates on other lines. The Great Western road does the same thing at Kansas City, and a majority of the railroads do. The grain trade here will be benefited by the granting of free storage for ten days, and the question is being agitated by other roads.

John S. Metcalf, Elevator for the Santa Fe Railroad

Chicago Tribune, October 23, 2023

If the Damen Avenue Silos are demolished, they will take with them some of the final remains of Carl Sandburg’s poetic salute to Chicago: “Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat.”

The stockyards closed more than a half-century ago. About the only trace of Chicago’s manufacturing glory is the forest of balconies tacked onto repurposed factories. Now the Silos owner, Michael Tadin Jr., wants to level the massive industrial complex in the 2800 block of South Damen Avenue.

Tadin bought them from the state of Illinois in 2022. Reportedly, he wants to replace them with a trucking facility, a corporate headquarters or both. The demolition plans are on hold pending a review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

When the Santa Fe Railroad built the Damen Silos in 1906, Chicago ruled the wheat market, having transformed American agriculture.

“Let the golden grain come. We can take care of it all, a Chicago newspaper proclaimed half a century earlier. The Chicago Board of Trade was nicknamed “the Altar of Ceres,” the ancient goddess of grain.

That history is lost in the vague misnomer “silos.”

Inland Architect magazine in (October) 1896 called the towering silos the first skyscrapers. One of the silos is 15 stories tall. It dwarfs buildings of the time with their human occupants. In fact, it and its companions are parts of a grain elevator.

The other components are a mechanism that lifts grain to a platform where it would be routed to one or another ofits vertical storage bins. Those are the silos, and each has a spigot toward the bottom. When it was opened, gravity would send the wheat down to whatever vehicle would take it away.

Noting that Chicago’s grain elevators stood between the West—where wheat was grown—and Eastern cities that needed it, the Illinois Supreme Court, writing in a rate regulation case, said they “take toll of all who pass.”

Invented elsewhere, the grain elevator was perfected in Chicago. Its ungainly progeny can be seen in the towns and hamlets of Middle America and beyond.

“An elevator is as ugly a monster as has yet been produced,” said the British author Anthony Trollope while touring America in 1861. “In uncouthness of form it out does those obsolete old brutes that used to roam the semi-aqueous world, and live a most uncomfortable life with their great hungering stomachs and unsatisfied maws.”

The Tribune seconded Trollope’s judgment “Immensely ponderous, high-towering, dreary-look-ing structures, whose vast sides are scarce ever found pierced by windows, and whose general monotony of outline is seldom relieved by so much as the slightest ornamentation,” the paper observed of Chicago’s massive grain elevators in 1892.

Today the Damen Avenue Silos, out of use since the late 1970s except for occasional movie shoots, look even sorrier.

But then grain elevators were never intended to be attractive. They were an engineer’s response to an accountant’s innovation.

In 1857, the Tribune reported that the Board of Trade had established a system for grading wheat, while noting some quibbling over the details. Those disputes continued for years, but from its inception, the wheat grading system was a game-changer.

Formerly, a farmer had to shovel his harvest into individual gunnysacks, a laborious job. Now he could pitchfork it into a wagon or truck and get it to a public warehouse, as a grain elevator is legally defined.

“The theory of a public warehouse here is that grain must go in and out at the same grade, the Tribune noted in an 1895 explanation of the wheat trade.

To grasp how the theory works in practice, consider the analogue of a bank. The dollar bills someone gets when making a withdrawal are not the same ones he deposited. But they have the exact same value.

Similarly, the grain a farmer withdraws from an elevator isn’t the grain he brought there. It couldn’t be. His harvest has merged with that of other farmers who brought the same grade of wheat to the elevator. What a farmer has is a receipt showing the amount of wheat he is entitled to withdraw.

The Damen Silos complex on Chicago’s Lower West Side is shown Aug. 22. When the Santa Fe Railroad built the Damen Silos in 1906, Chicago ruled the wheat market.

That is the hidden beauty of those dreary elevators. A farmer doesn’t have to hustle to bring his grain to market when wheat commands the price he wants. He just sends the elevator operator a sell order.

Collectively, all the wheat in various elevators enables the market to respond to changes in demand, yet those who play it see only the tip of an iceberg.

“There is many a member of the Board of Trade who makes and loses a dozen small fortunes a month in grain deals who couldn’t describe the general plan of the average grain elevator to do so,” the Tribune observed in 1892.

On the trading floor, a visitor would be befuddled by what novelist Frank Norris called “the trampling and shoutings in the Pit.”

Norris’ novel “The Pit” (as the trading floor was called) is the story of a millionaire trader bankrupted by a failed attempt to corner the wheat market.

Much the same happened in real life. The thought of all the wheat in grain elevators tempted some traders to dream of controlling so much flour that merchants would have to pay a trader’s jacked-up price or forgo filling bakers’ orders.

Among them was Ira Munn, who pioneered the grain elevator in Chicago. He became fabulously rich and president of the Board of Trade. Then he tried cornering the market. As the Tribune reported, a rumor spread that “all was not right with Munn and Scotts elevator receipts.’ More wheat had been sold than the firm owned. In 1872, Munn was expelled from the Board of Trade. He ended up running a boardinghouse in a Colorado gold-mining town.

In addition to being subject to unscrupulous speculators, Chicago’s 100 or so grain elevators were vulnerable to fire. Wheat isn’t usually very combustible. But a grain elevator houses a flammable mixture poised to explode: large amounts of grain dust in a confined space and suspended in air; the oxygen of that air; and heat supplied by static electric-ity. Other factors might include a sticking conveyor belt or even a carelessly discarded cigarette.

Grain explosions regularly occurred on the site of the Damen Silos. Operators of fallen elevators didn’t move on because of Chicago’s topography.

Ideally an elevator should be bordered by water on one side, railroad tracks on the other. To accommodate that, Chicago held an advantage over St. Louis, where the broad and shallow expanse of the Mississippi River was unsuitable for such a setup. The slow-moving and steady Chicago River, along with its solid banks, proved more amenable, and the Damen Silos were built between the water’s edge and railroad tracks.

Much of that accompanying infrastructure disappeared after the Damen Silos were abandoned in 1977 following a massive explosion. But the Silos 15-story centerpiece still visually testifies to wheat’s role in Chicago’s growth from a frontier settlement to a metropolis.

The tower is disfigured by generations of graffiti. Bruised and battered, it has the look of a boxer still on his feet at the final bell, anxiously awaiting the judges’ decision.

NOTES:

¹The Chicago Tribune, January 3, 1873.

1890—Grossdale

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Chicago’s Suburbs

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1887

Gross Samuel E & Co.

Lakeside Business Directory of the City of Chicago, 1899
Gross Samuel E real estate and loans 602, 603, 604, 605 and 606 Masonic Temple tel Main-2733

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1900
Gross Samuel E real estate and loans 602, 603, 604, 605 and 606 Masonic Temple tel Main-2733

Samuel E. Gross, the prominent real estate promoter of this city, with main office at S. E. Cor. Dearborn and Randolph sts., is a native of the Keystone State, having been born at the mansion farm, Dauphin, Dauphin Co., Pa., November 11, 1843. In the autumn of 1866, he graduated from the Union Law College at Chicago, and was shortly afterward admitted to practice by the Supreme Conrt. About this period he made some real estate purchases and in 1867 built quite a number of houses. In 1868-69 he took an active part in the location and establishment of the park and boulevard system of this city.

In 1880, he laid out several subdivisions, southwest of the city limits. Two years later he laid out Gross Park now a city of over 2,000 inhabitants and in the following year (1883) built and sold over 300 houses. In 1884-85 he built and sold over 2,000 houses in different parts of the city.

In the spring of 1886 he located the present suburban town of Brookdale and a year later founded the thriving suburban towns of Calumet Heights and Dauphin Park and also much improved and developed a tract of forty acres, corner Ashland ave. and Forty-seventh St., and upon which he built a number of handsome and commodious houses. In 1888 “Under the Linden” was established. In this year he also built up and developed a large territory in the vicinity of Humboldt Park, in addition building over 200 houses in the neighborhood of Archer ave. and Thirty-fifth st. In the following year he located and built the suburban town of “Grossdale” on the C., B.&Q. R. R. one mile west of Riverside, without a-doubt the finest suburban city on this railroad, possessing as it does a $5,000 brick and stone depot, a theatre and store building costing over $15,000, a large number of villa residences and ornamental streets, lined with immense elm trees, a grand boulevard eighty feet wide and over ¼ miles long, improved with brick sewers and macadamized roads, while having in addition a handsomely laid out park, ornamented with over 25,000 flowering plants and shrubs, with all the latest improvements of a thorough and ornamental description. Over 800 lots were sold during the first thirty days the property was in the market. During the past ten years Mr. Gross has sold over 40,000 lots, while he has built and sold over 7,000 houses, and located and built sixteen towns and cities.

He is the proprietor of and controls the sale of over 150 subdivisions, additions and suburban towns, located in all divisions of the city and containing in the whole 24,000 lots. He is thus undoubtedly the greatest real estate promoter in this country. The first to inaugurate the “easy payment” system (in this city), in connection with real estate, the success of same has been remarkable, while the confidence placed in him is such that he is enabled to sell out a city subdivision or suburban town in as many months as others would require years to accomplish. He is a director of the Chemical National Bank, and is a member of the Chicago, Union, Marquette, Iroquois, Washington Park clubs, and also of the Art Institute and Humane Society. He has traveled extensively, not only in this country, but in Europe also, and while he has often been offered large inducements to duplicate his building and real estate enterprises in London, Rome, Naples and Mexico, he prefers confining his interests to this country. In the spring of 1889 he was nominated by the United Workingmen’s societies of this city as their candidate for mayor; his time, however, being so fully occupied, he declined this honor. In January, 1874, Mr. Gross was married to Miss Emily Brown (of English parentage), and possesses a beautiful residence on the Lake Shore Drive, Cor. Division st. The architect of his own fortunes, there are few -who are more prominent in this city, and few more esteemed and respected than he.

gross

The Standard Guide to Chicago by John J. Flinn, 1893

Residents voted to incorporate as the village of Grossdale in 1893. The name was changed in 1905 after residents became displeased with Gross, whose personal life and fortune had floundered. A contest to choose a new name yielded “Brookfield” in respect for Salt Creek, which runs through the area.

In 1893 a New Yorker, John Reid, toiled as a pioneer-style teamster, hauling lead from Chicago to Galena in his wagon. On a return trip one day, he came to the creek as it was nearing flood stage with salt as his load instead of lead. Reid got stuck in the mud halfway across, and the creek ran high with brine for quite a spell afterwards. It has been called “Salt Creek” ever since.

Inter Ocean, June 9, 1889

1888—Amos J. Snell Murder

Back to Notorious Chicago

Chicago Tribune, February 9, 1888

Amos J. Snell, the West Side millionaire, was shot dead yesterday morning by burglars in his residence, at the northwest corner of Washington boulevard and Ada street. The murder was committed shortly after 2 o’clock in the morning, but was not discovered until nearly 7, when the coachman entered the house from his quarters over the stables and stumbled over his master’s dead body. The only clew to the murderers is a box of burglar’s tools which they left behind them. About an hour before the murder occupied Sergt. Hartnett arrested two suspicious characters who were hanging about the premises. These are believed to be the outside confederates of the burglars who robbed the safe in the office in the basement floor and murdered its owner. The booty is valueless to them, as it consists of $1,600 worth of county warrants and $5,000 in checks son indorsed that it has been possible to to stop payment on them. No money, jewelry, or plate was taken.

The murder is the most sensational ever committed in Chicago. The murdered man was active, powerful, and fearless. For years it had been his custom to seize a revolver, always kept within reach of his bed, and search the house alone in the dark whenever suspicious noises awakened him. So addicted was he to this habit that it was a standing family prophecy thatb he would meet the fate that overtook him yesterday morning. Appreciating his strength, agility, and fearlessness as they do, his friends say that had the aim of the burglars been less deadly one or both of them would probably have been captured or killed outright by the man they were endeavoring to rob.

The only occupants of the Snell residence besides its owner might before last were tow female servants and two young grandchildren. Mr. Snell occupied a room on the second floor; the children slept with the servants on the next floor above. The servants were awakened by a number of shots coming from somewhere below. They were too badly frightened to go down to see what was the matter, and ran to the window to give the alarm from there. The window was frozen fast, and they were unable to raise it. Across the street they noticed carriages being driven away from the entrance of a hall where a ball was in progress, and they knew it must have been midnight. By this time all was quiet below, and they crawled into bead shivering with fright, there to remain awake and trembling until the coachman should enter to build the fires.

At 6:30 Henry Winkelhook awoke as usual, dressed himself, and walked across the back yard between the stable and house toward the kitchen door. Before he reached the door he noticed footprints in the snow leading from the partition fence to the walk upon which he stood. It was ajar, and a few inches above the spring lock was a jagged hole the size of man’s hand made by boring a circle of holes with a half-inch bit and knocking out the centre, and through which it was perfectly easy to throw back both lock and bolt. The coachman’s fears were confirmed, and he ran hastily through the kitchen and hall to the millionaire’s office in the front part of the basement. Here everything was in confusion. The safe-door stood wide open, the drawers of the desk were drawn out, two trunks were turned bottom upwards, and the floor was littered with their contents. The now thoroughly-frightend coachman wasted no time in the office, but started up the stairs leading to the first floor, intent upon awakening his master and alarming the house. The stairs were dark, and he had to grope his way carefully. He reached the top step, and with his hand on the railing turned toward the front door. He took one step forward, when his foot struck something, and as he fell forward with his right hand on the railing his left touched the object against which he had stumbled and was smeared with clotted blood. He sprang to the half-open folding-doors separating the front parlor from the hall, and as the light streamed in through the parlor windows he saw the dead body of his master lying on its back in a pool of blood on the hall floor, the feet spread apart, two paces back from the parlor doors, and the head resting near the railing on the top step of the stairs leading from the basement. The left breast and side were covered an inch deep with clotted blood, and from a hole in the murdered man’s head blood was still oozing and adding size and depth to the sickening pool in which his head rested.

“Rosy! Ida!” called the coachman up the stairs. “Rosy! Ida! Get up, get up! Burglars have been here, and Mr. Snell is murdered!”

Then he dashed out at the front door and around to the opposite corner on Randolph street, to the residence of A. J. Stone, son-in-law to the murdered millionaire. He told Mr. Stone what had happened, and by his orders ran to the West Lake Street Station with the news. A quarter of an hour later Officers Benjamin Williams and John P. Hines and a dozen neighbors were on the scene of the murder. Officer Hines took charge of the premises and Williams secured the box of burglar’s tools and made a systematic search for further clews to the perpetrators of the crime.

Coroner Hertz was notified, and by 10 o’clock had arrived, accompanied by Drs. De Wolf, Moyer, Gray. So great was the general confusion and excitement that it was noon before the inquest could be held. At that hour, however, Mr. Hertz impaneled a jury consisting of Commissioner George B. Swift, Ald. J. J. Bademoch, T. F. Mitchell, Thomas Parker, De Witt Curtis, and M. J. Richards, all of whom were old friends and acquaintances of the murdered man, and had hastened to his residence immediately on hearing of the tragedy. The jury viewed the body and the inquest was adjourned until next Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the Coroner’s office.

When the first excitement occasioned by the murder had worn off the relatives of the dead man found themselves confronted by a delicate and difficult task. Mrs. Snell, wife of the murdered man, who was visiting friends in Milwaukee, was known to be suffering from heart-diseas, and Mrs. McCrea, his youngest daughter, was lying a few doors distant dangerously ill. The day before Mrs. Snell had been telegraphed that her daughter was much better. It was feared that any sudden shock would kill her. So a dispatch was sent which read simply:

Come home at once.

An hour later her reply came:

Meet me at the train, 1:30.

At 1 o’clock Dr. Moyer and an assistant had not yet finished their examination of the body. Undertaker Jordan was present and Volk the sculptor had just arrived for the purpose of taking a death mask. It was learned that if Mrs. Snell arrived with the house in such condition she would suspect the truth at once and that she would not survive the shock. Accordingly S. H. McCrea, the youngest daughter’s father-in-law, accompanied by Dr. Knox, the family physician, took a carriage and went to the depot with instructions to drive homeward as slowly as possible in order to enable the doctors to finish their work and the undertaker make the body presentable before the widow should arrive. But she insisted on knowing the truth before reaching the house, so it was broken to her gently. Her terror and anguish were pitiful, and it was hours before her daughters, Mrs. A. J. Stone, and Mrs. F. N. Collins, were able to calm her. Precautions were taken to prevent Mrs. McCrea from learning anything about the tragedy at present.

Mrs. A. J. Stone, eldest daughter of Mr. Snell, was, with her husband, at the house all day. Mrs. F. N. Coffin, another daughter, Mrs. W. S. McCrea, has been ill some time and was not informed of the murder. The sons-in-law, with the exception of Mr. Coffin, were present, and Albert J. Snell, the son. The last-named gentleman told Capt. Lyman Lewis yesterday that he should today offer a reward of $20,000 for the capture of the murderers.

There were a couple of stories of confessions of the Snell murder, which only The Inter Ocean covered. It is believed these stories were made up in order for the dying men to gain some immortality. They didn’t.

The Inter Ocean, November 12, 1899

The Inter Ocean, December 4, 1910

BY WALTER NOBLE BURNS.

JAMES GILLAN, a professional crook, confessed on his death-bed in the county hospital that he killed Amos J. Snell, while burglarizing the millionaire’s West Side home on the night of Feb. 8, 1888.

He declared William B. Tascott, who has been hunted for the murder to world’s ends, had nothing to do with the crime.

He said that another man was concerned with him in the burglawry. But he did not name his accomplice. With a thief’s honor, Gillan went to his grave without revealing a secret that might have hanged another man.

For twenty-two years the Snell murder has been the most impregnable myster in Chicago’s history of crime.

In the small hours of the night the retired and venerable capitalist was shot down in his home after a revolver duel in the dark. His body was found lying cold and stiff the next morning in his hallway. The parlor doors had been pierced by bullets. Holes made by bullets were in the walls. The safe in the basement had been rifled, after being unlocked by some one who apparently knew the combination. Business papers haqd been scattered about the floor. What was taken or whether anything was taken only the dead man and the thieves ever knew.

William B. Tascott, the black sheep of a wealthy family, suddenly disappeared. The Snell family offered a reward of $50,000 for his apprehension. From the day of his disappearance until today nothing has been found that would supply the faintest clew to the whereabouts of the fugitive. With the police of a continent searching for him with an alertness and persistency to which only the unprecedented reward could have spurred them, Tascott passed from sight as completely as if the grave had closed upon him.

This is the Snell case in a nutshell. Nothing has been added to it in all these years. It has been a stationary mystery. The police have guessed and theorized, speculated, and suspected,but they have been unable to get anywhere with the problem.

Gillan’s confession is the first ray of light on the utter and hopeless darkness that has wrapped the case. But while it clears a part of the mystery, it adds a mystery of its own.

Who was the other man?

The Chicago Police believe they know who Gillan’s accomplice was. The man they suspect is alive and residing in Chicago today. There is no proof against him. The police believe the crime never will be fastened on him unless—perhaps, when he, too, comes to die—he decides on his own accord to divulge it.

It is surprising how thoroughly the details of this old tragedy that once shook Chicago to its foundations have been forgotten. Most of the leading actors in the drama have died. It almost seems that fell Nemesis has pursued them, hastening to seal their lips in death, that the mystery of the might remain inviolable to the last. James B. Tascott, father of the young man charged with the crime, has passed away. His two other sons, Frank and Frederick, have joined him in the beyond. Of all the immediate Tascott family only Mrs. James B. Tascott, the fugitive’s step-mother, but no blood relation, remains alive—a white-haired, gentle old woman now of nearly three score years and ten.

Snell’s wife is dead. As if there were a curse upon the Snell millions, Albert Snell, his only son, having run through his patrimony, died a year ago in a 10 cent lodging house in Clark street. A. J. Stone, the son-in-law of the murdered capitalist, still lives, broken in health and in reduced circumstances. Grace Snell (pictured, right), the once beautiful daughter, has achieved national notoriety as the most frequently married woman in the United States. She has married husband after husband, divorced them and married them again in her continuous comedy of matrimony until she has acquired a list of names so long and involved that the memories of her intimate friends are taxed to recall them.

Of the policemen who worked night and day to unravel the enigma Chief George W. Hubbard, Insoector John Bonfield and Inspector Michael Schaack have gone to their reward these many, years ago and the lichen is gray upon the stone that marks the last resting place of State’s Attorney Joel M. Longenecjer.

So in attempting to feel one’s way about in the cryptic silence and darkness of this tragedy of yesterday one not only encounters many ghosts but realizes withe a sense of wonder how quickly and surely the busy world forgets the most atrocious of crimes.

Even the old Snell mansion at Ada street and Washington boulevard has shared the blight the murder seems to have cast upon the family fortunes. A boarding-house in a dingy region of boarding-houses, it stands gray, forlorn and weather-beaten, its tessellated floors, its long mirrors in their tarnished gilt frames, its high ceilings, with a touch of frescoing here and there, the only reminders of the magnificence of its prosperous days. Once pointed out as one of the most handsomest residences of the West Side, the dilapidated old house now attracts only the most casual attention. So surely has oblivion closed about it that its next door neighbors and even some of its inmates are not aware that its faded and gloomy halls are haunted by the memories of crime.

But in stirring the bones of the old Snell tragedy one fact particularly challenges attention. This is that the police theory regarding the murder is not the same as it was twenty-two years ago. The general public has gone on believing that Tascott killed Snell. The police once believed that. But today the officials of the police department are practically unanimous in thinking that Tascott had no hand in the crime. They believe that Tascott was a scapegoat either forced into the role or hired for the occasion. They are agreed that the Other Man of Gillan’s confession either killed Tascott or had him killed.

Gillan’s confession is given on the authority of Lieutenant Andrew Rohan, formerly one of the heads of the detective bureau, who retired from the police force Nov. 1 after thirty-six years of service. Lieutenant Rohan was told of Gillan’s confession by John Stanton, who heard it from the dying thief’s own lips. After listening in horror to the recital, Stanton drove a priest in a carriage to the county hospital at midnight, that, through the confessional, Gillan might relieve his soul of the secret of murder that weighed upon it and depart this life in peace.

Gillan died of consumption a year after Snell was murdered. Why such a confession in such a tragedy should not have been made public before will seem unaccountable at first blush. That this is strange is not to be denied. Perhaps it was a blunder on the part of the police. But at any rate the confession is a fact—the most important fact turned up in this famous mystery since Millionaire Snell fell dead in his home under the bullets of midnight assassins twenty-two years ago. This should suffice.

Lieutenant Rohan said:

I did not tell the newspapers of Gillan’s confession at the time because the police were working on the Snell case under orders of secrecy. I investigated the confession in every detail upon which investigation could be brought to bear and found it correct. After the police had ceased to work actively on the murder I neglected through mere thoughtlessness to tell the newspapers. Moreover, I could see nothing to be gained by having Gillan’s confession published. Snell was dead and Gillan, his murderer, was dead and the confession gave no information of any further working value to the police. So I kept quiet and the let the incident remain closed.

Gillan in his time had been a desperate and noted criminal. Gillan, Mike Crowley and James Colan hold the sinister honor, according to police, of being the first hold-up men who ever operated in Chicago—the earliest pioneers in that branch of crime that has since disgraced the city so abundantly. In 1878 the three desperados committed the first of Chicago’s highway robberies when they lay in wait for a messenger of the Illinois Central road, threw red pepper in his eyes and robbed him of $10,000. The crime was committed in what was known as Dearborn square, on the site of the present public library building.

Chicago Tribune, November 24, 1923

DISMANTLE FAMOUS MURDER MANSION