Interesting side-note: Michelson's grandson was a professoor of mechanical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology when I went there in the mid-to-late 1970's. I had him for Statics and Dynamics. Difficult man...
Forum: General Discussion

matrix2004 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is this the same as the Reed Mental Health Center? Yes. Dunning became Chicago-Reed.
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

daveg Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thanks for the explanation Captain54. I recall > those tanks and assumed that the checkered pattern > was an aircraft beacon of some sort. > > BTW, were these the tanks that moved up and down > or am I thinking about something else? The open framework gas holders worked in a similar way, with the
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

murphman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Ive heard it was to be torn down. I drive it at > least three times a week and hope they leave it > alone. Traffic is bad enough over there, without > it it would be a disaster. They have razed the > United American Cab Co headquarters on Belmont and > Clybourn, and I heard maybe the 19th district &
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

Kchi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What is a team track? It's a siding that is open for use by anyone having the railroad delivering freight to it, usually picked up by a wagon hauled by a team of horses, hence the name "team track".
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

Kchi Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > At one time I thought I read that they were going > to knock down the elevated roadway at Western and > Belmont that was built so that through traffic > could bypass the entrance to the park. Was this > ever done? It was on CDOT's list of projects as of 2010, when I took early retirement, but the viadu
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

JimboS Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > In regards to the Jackson and Franklin sign on > ebay - I was going through the photos on > Chicagopast.com and came across a 1937 photo of > Wilson and Sheridan. The Street sign depicted > looks a lot like the Jackson one's construction, > so maybe it is a real Official Chicago sign. > http://farm
Forum: General Discussion

Oh, and a couple of other points: the tanks at the top of the picture were on the property that now sports a Home Depot. Also, off-camera and to the east was the big tank I mentioned earlier adjacent to the Ogden Avenue Viaduct. These tanks must have been all over the place!
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

JimboS Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > This is an ineresting photo on ebay claiming it's > from 1959. > http://www.ebay.com/itm/Chicago-Best-Political-Cus > h-Job-Dusting-City-Signs-Bill-Marszewski-1959-Phot > o-/260986693292?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item3cc40 > 4e6ac > I was under the impression these signs were not > installed
Forum: General Discussion

Make that 5: look closely at the tank in the lower part of the picture. You'll see two smaller, open-frame gas holders. There's another link to an aerial view of the Elston-Division site above, with a clearer view. The tanks are long-gone there, but Peoples Energy still uses it. Oh, and the other view shows two low tanks just south of the smaller gas holders, which were probably coal tar tanks, si
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

I'm going to have to look at some of the aerials for the SW side location to see if Peoples gas ever rebuilt the tank. The article about the crash stated that the alderman was trying to get them to relocate it. I also sent an email to Peoples Energy asking if they had any general information on the gas holders, but haven't heard back.
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

We used to go to the Marquette, at Kedzie and 63rd. There was also a theatre that we visited at Kedzie and 59th, but the name escapes me. The biggest thing was going downtown to a Cinerama showing of Bing Crosby's Russian Holiday, but the name of thattheatre escapes me as well.
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

Yow! That tank must have been the tallest structure in the area, even considering the war plants along Pulaski (future Ford City). I still don't understand why I never heard about this when I was growing up in Marquette Manor. It's the kind of thing that people would talk about for years afterwards.
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

After looking at the aerial view of the Peoples Gas installation on WBEZ's website, which is obviously at Elston and Division, I'm pretty sure that the big enclosed gas holder there is the one you see in both Call Northside 777 and M-Squad. Racine would have lined up pretty much with it, and since it was the biggest structure around at that time in the neighborhood, it would stand out in almost al
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

From the City website: City of Chicago: History of the Chicago Fire Department 1943 May 20, the largest gasholder tank located at 73rd near Central Park was destroyed when a B-25 aircraft crashed into it. Anyone know about any online resources with the Sun-Times or Tribune that might go back that far?
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

That tank east of the C&NW was probably the same tank in the M-Squad picture, as there is a Peoples Gas yard at Division and Elston. I'm betting that most, if not all former gas holder sites are still in use by Peoples Gas. I don't think I've ever heard of a gas holder explosion in real life, but I remember a scene from, of all things, a Mighty Mouse cartoon, that had a gas holder tank lit
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

One of the landmarks along the route we used to take to visit my grandparents at Halsted & Roscoe was one of the gas tanks on Goose Island, at the kink in the Ogden Avenue viaduct. I remember it was light green, with the red & white checkerboard around the top, looking like the picture from that M-Squad screen capture. It was torn down in the late 60's or early 70's, as I remember the side
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

SJMR asked: When did they change the street signs from black letters on yellow back ground? My neighbor gave me a street sign that has our street name as a street not an avenue. Was that when they made the change? What year was that? It was mostly in the 1970's, to comply with the Federal Manual On Uniform Traffic Control Devices (you can Google it, and D/L copies of the manual, BTW). It is
Forum: General Discussion

I remember that, and the other science exhibits, that were there. It was a free mini-museum/advertisement for Borg-Warner products. There was a small write-up about it in Popular Science in the mid-1960's. I was disappointed when it closed, and don't know what happened to the theatre or the other exhibits.
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

FYI, the Park District turned over responsibility for the boulevards to the City in 1959. There were quite a few people who went to work for the City in the old Bureau of Street Traffic from the CPD. I knew the last one, Charles Muris, when I started with the sucessor Bureau of Traffic Engineering and Operations in 1983. He retired sometime in the mid-1980's. The City uses the white-on-brown si
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

In the late 1980's, there was a project to rebuild the Dan Ryan expressway, and one of the local off-system routes were Michigan and Indiana. The City contemplated rebuilding the ramps, but the concrete was in such bad shape, it was decided that they would come down, which happened about the early 1990's. The City did accept Federal funding to modernize the traffic signals, and I was responsible f
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

The building wasn't torn down, but rebuilt as a private residence. We moved into the neighborhood in 1989, and it still had some store accoutrements in it, but had been closed for some time. About 5 or 6 years later the building had been rebuilt as a single-family residence, and you wouldn't know it had been a grocery store.
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

We had one behind my grandparent's 4-flat at 65th and Mozart. AFAIK nobody used them as incinerators, and when the City decided they would no longer allow us to use them for garbage, a Streets & Sanitation crew came through the neighborhood, busted them up, and hauled away the pieces. After that it was only 55 gal. drums for the garbage, until the City provided carts.
Forum: Forgotten Chicago Sightings

When I was working for the Dept. of Public Works, I got a call from a citizen who wanted to know if the City would sell him the tank. That was about the time we were redoing the geometric at Western and Grand, and the island would not have been large enough after widening to accommodate the base and the tank. He said he was a member of the group that supplied the military vehicles for The Blues Br
Forum: General Discussion

Jarek's Drugstore,SW corner of California and 63rd, was one of my boyhood haunts. Candy, gum, and comic books, and when I was very young, they still had their soda fountain counter. That got removed for cosmetics. And they had a tube tester, which my father dispatched me to for testing radio and tv tubes, which he then replaced at Olson Electronics on 95th, since Jarek's stopped selling tubes late
Forum: General Discussion

I remember the Bizarre Bazar on Wells. All sorts of tie-dyed stuff, borosilicate bongs that looked like they had been made from lab glasware, and all sorts of footware. I bought a pair of Japenese-style thongs, and later a pair of Kork Ease knock-offs, both in men's sizes, in the mid-70's. Wish I'd held onto them.
Forum: General Discussion

The Jewel at Pulaski and Belmont was closed after a shooting there. We used to live not too far away on Springfield and shopped there. There was also an A&P right next to our building, at Springfield and Milwaukee: it closed in the mid-80's. Speaking of Hillman's, I remember their little shop in the basement of the old State St. Sears store. My mother would stop there for a few things after
Forum: General Discussion

My mother used to frequent a High Low on 63rd, between Western and California.
Forum: General Discussion

You may find some older City manholes and handholes with lids lettered for the "Bureau of Electricity and Gas". Our apartment on the SW side had a Servel refrigerator. Quiet, but a pain to defrost.
Forum: General Discussion

Never got a chance to ride the North Shore, but prior to 1963, I remember their trains laying over south of Roosevelt on the elevated structure, as we were heading into the south portal of the State Street Subway. Lived for a few years in Waukegan, where many people fondly remembered the CNS&M, and always wondered what it would take to rebuild it. The railroad started out there as the Bluff
Forum: General Discussion