Latest news with #Eastland
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- Sport
- NZ Herald
Hawke's Bay vets dominate interprovincial badminton ties in Gisborne
The Eastland Super Veterans badminton team who competed against Hawke's Bay and Bay of Plenty (2) in North Island Division 3 ties in Gisborne were (back from left) Alan Ledger, Ron Prebble, Kevin Lee, Darryl Miller, Paul Roia, (front from left) Ra Leach, Sheree Gray, Ruth Ledger and Linda White. Hawke's Bay dominated the opening ties of the North Island Inter-Association Super Veterans (60 years and over) badminton series in Gisborne recently. They beat Eastland 7 matches to 2 and Bay of Plenty (2) 9-0 to kick off their Division 3 campaign in style. Eastland also lost 6-3
Axios
2 days ago
- Business
- Axios
What happened to Columbus' directional malls
The mall, once a crucial part of American life, has struggled and evolved for years. Flashback: Our shopping scene was dominated by a quartet of directional malls and a bustling downtown shopping center, all of which have disappeared. ⬆️ Northland, Central Ohio's first major mall, opened at Morse and Karl roads in 1964 with a Lazarus and a Sears, drawing a reported crowd of 50,000, and was enclosed in 1975. The mall faded over time, and closed completely in 2002. The site has since been redeveloped for a variety of uses, including the Franklin County Dog Shelter and Adoption Center. ➡️ Eastland followed that success by opening at Hamilton and Refugee roads in 1968 as Columbus' first enclosed shopping mall. By 2022, Eastland was declared a public nuisance. Columbus now plans a massive redevelopment project for the site. ⬅️ Westland opened in 1969 on West Broad Street with a similar mix of department stores, and enclosed its mall in 1982. It shuttered in 2012, with a remaining Sears store closing in 2017. The mall was finally demolished in 2023 and is now subject to redevelopment plans that include apartments. ⬇️ Southland opened in 1977 on South High Street, featuring a Gold Circle department store and its main draw, a Loews movie theater. The site later became the headquarters for the controversial and defunct Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, space now used by Columbus City Schools. 🏙️ City Center: Once the crown jewel of Columbus malls, the three-story City Center opened downtown on 3rd Street in 1989, anchored by Lazarus and Marshall Field's.
Chicago Tribune
6 days ago
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Eastland disaster and its aftermath
On this day 110 years ago, a ship in the Chicago River between LaSalle Drive and Clark Street was loaded with more than 2,500 passengers — many of them Western Electric Co. employees and their families — ready to embark on a day trip to Michigan City, Indiana. The SS Eastland had been known as the 'Greyhound of the Great Lakes.' The vessel, however, was built to serve as a freighter — not an excursion vessel. 'It was owned by a couple of rich guys who had no business being in the boat business,' Tribune columnist Rick Kogan wrote in 2019. 'It was a disaster waiting to happen.' Here's a look back at what's become known as the Eastland Disaster and its aftermath. When the Eastland swayed then suddenly rolled onto its side, hundreds of passengers became trapped inside the vessel — just feet from the dock — as water poured in. George Halas was supposed to be on the SS Eastland the day it capsized in the Chicago River, killing 844 peopleA total of 844 people died, making it one of the worst maritime events in United States history and the deadliest single day event in the city's history (about 300 died in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and 602 were died in a fire at the Iroquois Theatre in 1903). Bodies of the dead were taken to the 2nd Regiment Armory, which later became the site of Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios. Bodies were laid out in rows of 85, and after seven days, all had been identified. Photographers with the city's eight daily newspapers raced to the scene on that summer Saturday morning as word of the Eastland quickly spread to newsrooms. Lyman Atwell of the Herald, Robert Hollihan Sr. of the American and Godfrey Lundberg and Fred C. Eckhardt of the Tribune also took photos that day. Another photographer was Jun Fujita, a 25-year-old Japanese immigrant who had been taking pictures in Chicago for about a year. Fujita ended up capturing one of the iconic photos of the day, a picture of a firefighter with an anguished look on his face holding a dead boy. Fujita also took photos of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and the city's 1919 race riots, before he took to writing poetry. The Tribune printed five pages of obituaries about the Eastland's known victims. Campaigns were started to reimburse victims' families. The Red Cross distributed a total of $170,000 (or roughly $5.4 million in today's dollars) to families in the form of 540 checks. After settling into several feet of mud, the ship was lifted to an angle of 70 degrees, and finally righted by the Favorite, a tug boat. William 'Frenchy' Deneau had been considered a hero for recovering hundreds of victims' bodies following the disaster. The experienced diver was back in the river months later laying cable when he hit metal. Deneau believed he had found a submarine owned by Peter Nissen, an adventurer who garnered front-page headlines for his successful navigation of Niagara River rapids along the U.S.-Canada border. He worked with the federal government to secure ownership of the vessel and raise it. Starting in February 1916, visitors to the Rector Building on State Street could tour the 'tragic and historic relic.' Deneau, now calling himself a captain, placed a full-page advertisement in the Tribune for 'the most intensely interesting exhibit ever shown in Chicago.' The Tribune had no further mention of Deneau's prized artifact. The boat's connection to Nissen is confounding and its whereabouts today are unknown. Six men had been indicted for operating an unsafe ship and for criminal negligence. They were: A trial was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that featured famed attorney Clarence Darrow, who represented Erickson. A judge ruled the prosecution failed to make a case against the men. The Eastland was salvaged and sold to the U.S. Navy. Many Chicagoans gathered to boo the vessel as it left the Chicago River to undergo restorations and some modifications, that would convert it into a gunboat. Its name changed to the USS Wilmette, and it functioned mostly as a training ship on the Great Lakes. The Wilmette riddled a German submarine with cannon fire in 1921, sending it to the bottom of Lake Michigan about 20 miles east of Highland Park. After World War II, the Wilmette was sold for scrap. Students at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora had researched the tragedy and were shocked to find no details about it in school textbooks. That's why they worked to erect a plaque at Clark Street and Wacker Drive. Eastland survivor Libby Hruby told those assembled for the dedication of the marker that she was plucked from the water by her sister. After it disappeared in 2000, the plaque was replaced and rededicated in 2003. A collection of nearly 100 black-and-white glass-plate negatives — many of them never published — were discovered in the basement of Tribune Tower. The images from the Tribune archives were found inside two cardboard boxes in the newspaper's dimly lit, temperature-controlled basement archives five floors below Michigan Avenue. Marianne Mather, a photo editor at the Tribune, discovered the Eastland images as she searched for other images. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Our Top 4 most unexpected finds in the Chicago Tribune's archivesThe photographs capture the aftermath of one of Chicago's worst disasters: rows of sheet-covered bodies inside a temporary morgue, two women crying while clutching a baby in a blanket, a Coast Guard crew hauling a woman out of the river, the Eastland flopped over in the water like a plastic toy in a bathtub, dozens of people atop its side, awaiting rescue. Several hundred people gathered on the Chicago Riverwalk — many of them descendants of the Eastland's victims and survivors — to mark a century after the tragic event. Others visited Bohemian National Cemetery at Pulaski Road and Foster Avenue on the Northwest Side, which has 143 Eastland victims buried in its plots — the most of any cemetery in the Chicago area. Of the 22 families wiped out by the disaster, four are buried at Bohemian. Some, including those of Czech ancestry, include a short line — 'obet Eastlandu,' or 'victim of the Eastland.' Flashback: Touring the Bohemian National Cemetery grounds with 'Cemetery Lady' Helen SclairA memorial was unveiled just prior to the major anniversary. It features a black plaque that describes the disaster on one side and gives details of the Eastland gravesites on the other. A granite slab with a steamship's steering wheel juts out of a granite slab with carved ripples that represent the sinking of the ship and its raising following the incident. Thanks for reading! Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
Chicago Tribune
6 days ago
- Climate
- Chicago Tribune
Michael Peregrine: The SS Eastland tragedy shocked Chicagoans 110 years ago. Its relevance endures.
It began like so many other summer Saturdays in Chicago. Workers from around the city began gathering for their employer's traditional annual family picnic. On this July 24, 1915, the employer, Western Electric, and the picnic location, the Indiana Dunes, were grand. Over 5,000 people were expected to participate. But before the morning ended, over 840 people would perish in what remains the greatest tragedy, in terms of death, in Chicago history. More than the Great Chicago Fire, more than the 1995 heat wave, more than the Our Lady of Angels School fire and more than the crash of American Airlines Flight 191. And it had collateral implications for three Chicago historical figures. To get its employees to and from the Dunes, Western Electric hired a small fleet of excursion boats, including the SS Eastland. Somewhat unpublicized was the Eastland's troubled history with instability, dating to its initial launching and to several subsequent listing incidents. Additional federal-mandated lifeboats, prompted by the Titanic disaster, created additional stability issues. On July 24, the Eastland began loading passengers about 6:30 a.m. from the south side of the Chicago River between Clark and LaSalle streets. Among those scheduled to board was a young George Halas, who was working a summer job at Western Electric. The weather was clear and the river calm. A timeline prepared by the Eastland Disaster Historical Society describes the unbelievable terror of the subsequent, tragic minutes. As quickly as 10 minutes after boarding started, the ship listed starboard to the dock. The ship then listed to port (north) before slowly righting after the crew took countermeasures. At 7 a.m., the list to port returned as 1,000 passengers boarded. Boarding closed at 7:10 a.m. when the ship reached a maximum capacity of about 2,500 passengers. Over the next 15 minutes, the ship vacillated between stability and a list to port, with water accumulating on the port deck. By 7:27 a.m., the list increased to 25 to 30 degrees, and the engine room crew abandoned its station. Minutes later, the list reached an unrecoverable 45 degrees; the ship slowly and silently sank, its starboard side resting on the river bottom. Rescue efforts began immediately but were frustrated by rapid internal flooding and a lack of emergency access. The dead and suffering were transported to a triage station in the Reid, Murdoch & Co. warehouse. The victims included 22 families. Many of the victims were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, a circumstance that moved Carl Sandburg to pen the angry poem 'The Eastland.' Halas arrived too late for the boarding process — but not too late to witness the disaster. His friend, future Bears general manager Ralph Brizzolara, escaped by being pulled through a porthole. Ultimately six men, including senior executives of Eastland's owner, as well as its captain and chief engineer, were indicted by a federal grand jury for various crimes. Famed Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow represented the chief engineer. All of the defendants were found not guilty, basically for want of evidence that they had failed to take proper precautions to prevent the tragedy. A parallel civil case took almost 18 years to resolve, and while it found the chief engineer to have been negligent, the damages were limited to the scrap value of the ship and were paid over to the creditors, with none to the victims' families. The Eastland was later raised, repaired, sold to the Illinois Naval Reserve and converted to a gunboat, which served as a training vessel on the Great Lakes during the two World Wars, as the USS Wilmette. One of the Wilmette's most notable assignments was to carry President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key aides Adm. William Leahy, James Byrnes and Harry Hopkins on a 1943 cruise. Most of us have seen the grainy black-and-white photos and films of the partially capsized Eastland, its grimy hull protruding above the river waters. And most of us have passed it off as the product of another time, another setting, another milieu. That it was all so primitive and it couldn't happen again. Indeed, one would hope and expect that human nature, technology and regulation have all advanced over the last 110 years to prevent future Eastland-like tragedies. That investment in public safety has been exponentially increased and maintained. That responsible officials — government and corporate — as well as consumers and other stakeholders are now so attentive to warning signs that they are willing to intervene, especially when those signs have accrued over time. Have the right lessons truly been learned? Probably. But just in case, pause a bit the next time you're on Wacker Drive, between Clark and LaSalle. When you're looking across the river at the beautifully restored Reid, Murdoch & Co. building. And when you are looking straight down where the Riverwalk meets the waters, where the Eastland once lay. And then think about your answer to that question and where it might take you. Michael Peregrine is a Chicago lawyer and a graduate of Oak Park High.
Chicago Tribune
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Vintage Chicago Tribune: 6 activities people used to do in the city during the summer
There are activities we can't wait to experience here each summer — catching a concert in a park; watching Buckingham Fountain's majestic water display explode 150 feet into the air; taking a dip to cool off in Lake Michigan; swaying with thousands of others to the sounds of the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field; or just playing tourist in our hometown. Yet Chicagoans of another era had their own ways of celebrating warm weather that we just don't do today. Here's a look back at six of them. The first match in the sport of kings took place in Chicago, according to the U.S. Polo Association, at Lincoln Park in October 1879. 'For the benefit of the ignorant, polo may be described as shinney (pick-up game of hockey) on horseback, or, rather, ponyback,' the Tribune reported at the time. Onwentsia Club in Lake Forest, which fielded its first polo team in 1896, hosted an epic championship series that pitted the best players in the United States — one team from the East Coast and the other from the West — against each other in August 1933. The best-of-three tourney with spectator seating for 20,000 people was the brainchild of Chicago Blackhawks team founder and U.S. Polo Association executive committee member Maj. Frederic McLaughlin. West won the national championship 12-6. A smaller, faster form of the game called arena polo was played indoors for years at the Chicago Avenue Armory. Oak Brook Polo Club, which was founded by Paul Butler in 1922, and closed earlier this year, is considered one of the oldest of its kind in the U.S. It hosted the U.S. Open Polo Championship for 24 seasons. Prince (now King) Charles was part of a memorable match there on Sept. 5, 1986, when he and England's star player Andrew Seavill were both laid out on the ground after a collision. After a five-minute pause, both the player and the prince appeared to be OK. 'I liked the part when he fell, the best,' said Chicago-based political satirist Aaron Freeman. 'It's not often you see people who won the genetic lottery embarrassing themselves in public.' Before highways were plentiful and car ownership was common, Chicagoans headed to the city's docks to board steamships destined for Milwaukee; Mackinac Island, Michigan; or a variety of other lakeside communities. One such ship was the SS Eastland, which was chartered by Western Electric Co. on July 24, 1915, to transport about 2,500 employees and their families across Lake Michigan to a company picnic at 'the Coney Island of the Midwest' Michigan City, Indiana. Rare Eastland disaster photos discovered in Tribune basementAs people boarded the ship that morning at the Chicago River between LaSalle Drive and Clark Street, however, the Eastland began to list to its side. The ship overturned and within minutes 844 people — including 22 entire families and four members of the Eastland's crew — were dead. Chicago Bears owner George Halas was supposed to be aboard the ship. It was the deadliest day ever in Chicago and the greatest peacetime inland waterways disaster in American history. Several hundred performers — including Goliath the sea elephant — arrived in August 1931, to perform as part of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which became a fixture of summer in Soldier Field's parking lot for decades. Successive open-air 'floating hospitals' in Lincoln Park were built between the 1870s and the 1900s and offered excursions from the piers on Lake Michigan. In 1914, the Chicago Daily News offered to fund a more permanent sanitarium building. Opened in 1921, the impressive Prairie-style structure was one of several Lincoln Park buildings designed by Dwight H. Perkins of the firm Perkins, Fellows, and Hamilton. Perkins, an important Chicago social reformer and Prairie School architect, designed buildings including Café Brauer, the Lion House in the Lincoln Park Zoo and the North Pond Cafe. Vintage Chicago Tribune: Unexpected finds in Chicago parksThe impressive Chicago Daily News Fresh Air Sanitarium building was constructed in brick with a steel arched pavilion with 250 basket baby cribs, nurseries and rooms for older children. The breezes through the shelter were believed to cure babies suffering from tuberculosis and other diseases. Free health services, milk and lunches were provided to more than 30,000 children each summer until 1939, when the sanitarium closed. Major reconstruction of Lake Shore Drive led to the demolition of the building's front entrance. During World War II, the structure became an official recreation center for the United Service Organization. The Chicago Park District converted the building to Theatre on the Lake in the early 1950s. Today it's a lakefront restaurant and venue that hosts concerts and theater events. The rodeo originated in the Southwest as a way for ranchers to celebrate the annual cattle roundup. Promoters brought it to Chicago and other northern cites to capitalize on Americans' nostalgic fascination with the Wild West. From 1925 to 1929, Tex Austin presented rodeos first at Soldier Field and then indoors at Chicago Stadium — though rodeo competitions didn't end in Chicago after Austin's contest packed up and left for good. In 1927, Soldier Field hosted World Championship Rodeo. The sights and thrills of Austin's rodeos had a wide appeal. Women were half of the 35,000 spectators in Soldier Field on the opening day of the 1925 rodeo, the Tribune's society columnist reported. 'The shouts of approval that hit against the sides of the Field Museum and bounced back again were just as soprano as they were deep bass.' Rodeo competition also was open to women as well as Black people and Native Americans, when other professional sports were segregated or off-limits to them. Austin carried the rodeo far afield. He mounted shows in Madison Square Garden, Hollywood and London. His promotions went belly up in the Great Depression, and he opened a restaurant in Santa Fe. But going blind in 1938, he committed suicide. He left a note asking his wife's forgiveness and, on their coach, a stack of photographs of his rodeo days, a time when 'he appeared every inch at home.' Starting 75 years before Lollapalooza took up residence in Grant Park, the Chicagoland Music Festival claimed gaudy attendance numbers at the annual Soldier Field events, figures no longer possible in the renovated stadium. Like the College All-Star Game, Golden Gloves boxing, the Silver Skates Derby and numerous other events, including airplane and horse races, fashion and kite-flying shows, bowling tournaments and wrestling matches, the music festival was organized and sponsored by the Chicago Tribune. The newspaper wasn't shy about promoting its own events in its news pages — especially once longtime publisher Col. Robert McCormick took a liking to it. It's hard to say how much the Tribune's glowing coverage helped the festival thrive, but even accounting for some exaggeration and boosterism, and assuming the reporter was ordered to don his rose-colored glasses, that first Chicagoland Music Festival was a spectacle. Unlike most events, the Chicagoland Music Festival didn't start small and grow. It started big and became huge. About 150,000 — with thousands more unable to get in the stadium — watched the inaugural show Aug. 23, 1930. There were so many people, in fact, that spectators sitting on the sidelines impeded the drum corps' movements. The thrill — and the showmanship — started with the public address announcement: 'You are sitting now in the glow of 392,000 watts of light, and in order that you may have a standard of comparison, I will add that that is three times as large a volume of light as at any baseball game that ever was played at night. Friends, it is the greatest artificial illumination of a single arena in the world's history.' To which the Tribune reported: 'The people rapturously applaud these words. They are rising to the fact that they have come to a big show.' Before that first night was out, the crowd saw 21 marching bands and 16 drum corps, which entered the arena in one bombastic burst. They heard the festival band play the John Philip Sousa marches 'The Washington Post,' 'Stars and Stripes Forever' and 'U.S. Field Artillery.' Another highlight of the night was a 1,000-member African American choir singing the spiritual 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.' The climax of that first evening was the 'Hallelujah' chorus from Handel's 'Messiah,' performed by a combined 3,000-voice choir. While numerous famous singers and musicians played at the festival over the decades, including Louis Armstrong, Frankie Avalon and Mahalia Jackson, for many Chicagoans and their beaming parents, the highlight of the show was no doubt their own children. Thanks for reading!
