Newsletters 2000
Volume 21, Number 3 & 4, Winter 1999-2000
On Cable Cars and Lunch Rooms
EARLY STREETCARS IN HYDE PARK
Stephen A. Treffman
ContributingEditor
The articles that appeared in the Spring and Summer, 1997 issues of Hyde Park History on an earlier occupant of the building in which the
Hyde Park Historical Society's headquarters are now housed continue to attract attention. As you may remember, Alta Blakely reported on "Steve's Lunch," a small restaurant run by Greek immigrant Steve Megales that occupied these premises beginning around, it was thought, 1948. A very interesting letter has recently arrived that provides insights into an even earlier period in the history of the building.
The letter, which appears on page 10, is from the granddaughters of Turney Keller, the man who, they report, converted what was a cable car waiting room into other uses. Mary Belle Keller Johnson and Judy Keller Levatino tell us chat, from as early as 1898 until 1952, the building was operated as a short order restaurant by the Keller family. Prior to 1898, they say, the building was used as a warming room for "trolley personnel." When placed within the context of the development of Hyde Park's public transportation systems, this new information adds greatly to our knowledge of the history and uses of our building.
CHICAGO STREET TRANSPORTATION ORIGINS
In the early years of Chicago's history, travel about the city's streets was accomplished on foot, by horseback or by horse and carriage. The latter could be hired with driver by the day or by the mile in cabs called hackneys or hacks. Omni buses, large horse drawn or enclosed wagons with seating for multiple passengers, first appeared on Chicago streets on regular schedules in 1850. The introduction of street rail transportation in the city, however, began nearly 141 years ago when a horse drawn car line began operations on April 25, 1859. It was built by the privately owned Chicago City Railway Company
(CCR), which had been awarded the city's franchise for the South Side of the city. Two other companies held franchises for the city's north and west sides. The CCR cars ran on rails along State Street from Madison
Street to 12th Street (now Roosevelt Road). In the
months following, the company built an extension of the line first to 22nd Street (now Cermak Road), then eastward down 22nd Street to Cottage Grove Avenue and, finally, from Cottage Grove to 31st Street. The immediate goal of these extensions was to provide transportation to the Illinois State Fair, which, in the fall of 1859, was located on land along Cottage Grove. The major advantage of using rails (originally wooden beams wrapped in iron sheetmetal) for hauling wagons with passengers was that the rails provided smoother, more comfortable and faster transportation than could be obtained from wheels rolling over the irregular unpaved roads of the time. Basic street car fares of a nickel a ride were sec by city ordinance in 1859 and kept at that same level until 1919.
The demands and opportunities of population growth and commercial and industrial development in the city and its suburbs encouraged expansion of the CCR. The increase in the number of cars, horses and track owned and maintained by the CCR grew exponentially, as did ridership. In 1859, for example, the company consisted of only four cars and twenty five horses operating at twelve minute intervals on about three miles of track and carried many tens of thousands of passengers a year. Annual ridership rose to 3.5 million only three years later. By 1867 the CCR owned fifty-three cars and 375 horses, employed 198 men and operated over 12. 5 miles of track. The number of passengers that year totaled more than five million. Six years later, in 1873, the CCR was running seventy-five cars and 600 horses operating at four minute intervals on twenty-three miles of track and was transporting at least six million riders a year. Only seven years later, at the end of 1880, the system had more than doubled in size to 46.679 single track miles traversed by a fleet of 292 cars and 1,468 horses. In short, in that twenty year period, from 1859 to 1880, the company experienced growth that involved 15 .6 times more track, 58.7 times more horses, and 73 times more cars carrying many millions of passengers annually!
As the CCR expanded the length of its horse carlines to meet demand, problems of keeping its system coordinated and its costs under control grew apace. The cars and rails, once installed, had long lives and were relatively inexpensive to keep up. Aside from the investment in manpower and supervision, the key variable in the cost of operating the system was the care and feeding of the horses. Although perhaps one or two horses might draw one car, they could only work four or five hours a day. This meant chat shifts of fresh horses had to be kept on hand for each horsecar in order to maintain a twelve or sixteen hour a day schedule. An entire system of men and equipment had to be developed around simply sustaining the horses. Moreover, the horse was relatively slow, not always reliable, susceptible to disease, and, glaringly apparent co one and all, associated with a "residue" on the streets chat raised public health concerns. One horse could produce as much as twenty-two pounds of manure a day. Its required disposal, in fact, actually became an ancillary business undertaking. All in all, then, there were problems associated with a large-scale system of horse drawn passenger cars chat were well recognized fairly early. This didn't mean that the CCR stopped building horse lines, only that its management was open to the idea of finding alternative forms of power to pull its cars. As it happened, Hyde Park would become the focus of the CCR's attention.
HYDE PARK AND ITS STREETCARS
There is more co the early history of streetcars in Hyde Park than cable cars. After the Civil War, the city's horse car lines began to look beyond Chicago's borders for their growth. On March 5, 1867, the Chicago and Calumet Horse and Dummy Railroad Company (CCHDRC), an affiliate of the CCR, was incorporated under Illinois law to establish street rail lines for "cars drawn by horses or cars with engines attached, commonly called dummy engines, for the carrying of passengers." Its focus of service was to be the area of Cook County south of the city's border at 39th Street and ease of State Street, in short, virtually the entire area of the Village of Hyde Park. A year later, in 1868, the Board of Supervisors for the Village of Hyde Park authorized this new CCR affiliate to lay tracks from 39th Street extending south from the CCR's preexisting tracks in Chicago proper.
Implementing this resolution launched the robust
expansion of the CCR in succeeding decades.
HORSE DRAWN CARS
Hyde Park's streetcar system apparently went through two phases prior to the introduction of the cable cars. The first of these, an unexpected finding, was that horse drawn streetcars seem to have run on rails down 55th Street in Hyde Park. A map that dates from chat period (Wright: 1870) specifically identifies a horse car line running down Cottage Grove from 39th Street and then swinging around to 55th Street east to what is now Lake Park Avenue.
This is, however, the only then contemporary source found so far chat suggests that a horse-drawn streetcar rail line ever existed along 55th Street. This line would have been pare of the expansion arising from that 1868 authorizing resolution. The CCR built tracks in Chicago further south primarily along Scace Street and Cottage Grove Avenue to then unstated terminal points. In ensuing years, lines were built on ocher streets both ease and west of Cottage Grove with 47th and 63rd Streets becoming the major ease/west routes to southwest Chicago. All of these new CCR streetcar lines were powered solely by horses. Thus was established the early outlines of the course public transportation would ultimately cake on the South Side of Chicago.
THE STEAM DUMMY
The reference to steam driven rail cars on city streets in the CCHDRC incorporation papers indicate chat replacing horse drawn street cars with an alternative system of motive power was already a possibility in the minds of the CCR's management at least as early as 1867. The usefulness of steam driven technology in manufacturing and, especially, in interurban rail transport was already well established throughout the country. In fact, a steam driven streetcar is said to have operated along Broadway on Chicago's north side as early as 1864. Ac some point after 1867 the CCR and its affiliate decided to introduce them in their system, not in the city itself but in and around Hyde Park. Assuming that a horse drawn line initially ran along Cottage and down 55th Street, this steam dummy would have been the second phase in the development of public streetcar transportation in the community.
While there is no question that steam driven streetcars chugged down Cottage Grove and 55th Street, there remains much that is unclear about their actual history. No picture of one, for example, has yet surfaced. The Hyde Park-Kenwood National Bank published a booklet in 1929 with a photograph purportedly that of Hyde Park's steam dummy.
Research, however, has revealed that the photograph is actually of an engine from an entirely different Chicago streetcar company. While the exact dimensions of the Cottage Grove/Hyde Park steam dummy are not known, information about similar vehicles from that period suggests what the one used in Hyde Park probably was like.
Commonly, to minimize terrorizing horses along the street, these small locomotives were built within frames chat resembled a shortened version of a regular horse drawn trailer. The car would have run on four wheels with probably no more than seven feet from the middle of the front wheels to the middle of the ones in the rear. Likely, it was operated by a two-cycle engine powered by steam from a vertical boiler heated by burning anthracite coal or coke to minimize smoke and soot. The engine carriage was designed ostensibly to muffle the noise of escaping steam and engine operation by means of shielding and roof top steam condensers. It was this latter characteristic, the reduction of noise, as well as the horse car appearance, that provided the underlying meaning to the name "dummy engine," that is, silent or "dumb," as in "unable to speak." These small locomotives pulled no more than one or two passenger trailers along the three miles of stronger steel track installed on Cottage Grove from 39th Street to 55th Street and east to Lake Park Avenue. When not in use, these engines and their trailers were probably stored in a car barn at 38th Street and Cottage, adjacent to the stables where the horses were kept. It is not known how many steam dummies operated on the Hyde Park
line nor how their return runs were accomplished, that is, by reversing gears or being turned on a platform.
Also in question is the date when steam dummies were actually introduced into Hyde Park. Block (1977) offers the date of 1869 for that event and cites as her source Pierce (1940). Pierce, in tutn, makes reference only to the governing legal authorizations and to Weber (1936). Weber, however, fudges on the date by noting those 1868 actions by the Village Board permitting the building of street rails in Hyde Park but not when the actual construction took place. As was earlier suggested, operating on that Cottage Grove/5 5th Street line in 1869 may have been a horse line rather than a steam dummy, two very different forms of power. At another extreme is a photograph from a 1943 collection at the Chicago Historical Society with a caption stating that a steam driven street car began running in Hyde Park in 1881. Indeed, a map dated 1881 in Bluestone (1991) clearly denotes a steam line running down Cottage Grove and turning east at 55th Street to Lake Park but this does not preclude the possibility that steam dummies were running there before 1881. Moreover, this would have been precisely the time that CCR officials were already planning to replace horse cars and steam dummies with cable cars. A more persuasive date emerges from an unpublished street transportation chronology developed in 193 3 now in the collection of the Chicago Transit Authority. It places the introduction of the Hyde Park steam dummy in the year 1874.
This date seems in reasonable accord with the state of Hyde Park's development and the known history of the CCR. It would also fit with the presumption that a horse car line preceded the steam dummy in time. Uncovering more substantial corroborating information in support of any one of these dates remains a challenge.
Usually overlooked in the few references to this steam car is that of the almost 46 miles of Chicago City Railway Company track existing in 1881, only those three miles of track along Cottage and 55th, the Hyde Park line, were used for steam driven streetcars. These steam dummies may have been an attempt by the CCR to compete directly with the Illinois Central's steam locomotives chat ran along the lake. The one-way nickel fare for a streetcar ride was half chat for a commute downtown from 55th Street on the Illinois Central but it was a much slower trip. In addition, these engines may have been considered somewhat more fitting, modern and substantial for
the prestigious community they served. Hyde Park's Trustees, recognizing the mess that accompanied horse drawn streetcars, may even have insisted on steam power. It was also on this portion of the line that the streets were paved with granite to support the heavier rails and engines required by the steam dummy. As a result, these were among the better-paved roads in the city and its suburbs.
Unfortunately, street locomotives produced a good deal more noise than advertised, frightening horses and annoying pedestrians. Worse, for a variety of reasons, street car companies found chat these steam dummy cars proved to be no less expensive to operate than had been the horse cars. CCR managers were spurred to look at another alternative, one being developed in California. The days of the Hyde Park steam dummy engines were numbered. The last one to run its route did so early in 1887.
THE CABLE CAR
In the early 1870s Andrew S. Halladie, a wire manufacturer in California, developed a system wherein passenger cars ran up and down the hilly streets of downtown San Francisco on rails by means of a moving cable buried under the streets. It began operations in 1873 and its success spurred further expansion there throughout the '70s. Chicago City Railway officers, alerted to that success, traveled to San Francisco in 1880 to study its cable system.
Realizing that if a system like that could operate on such variable terrain, it would probably work especially well upon the gentler topography of Chicago. They returned home and Charles B. Holmes, CCR's president, quickly obtained approval of the company's board and Chicago's city council to begin establishing cable car transport along many of the same Chicago streets on which they had run their horse cars.
Construction began in June, 1881 and by January, 1882, the CCR formally introduced cable cars into Chicago's public transportation system, the second such system in the United States. The first trains, usually consisting of a grip car and one or two trailers, ran on the State Street line; a second line was established on Wabash Avenue. These downtown cable cars traveled over a turnaround that went from State Street to Wabash Avenue via Lake Street and
Madison Street, a layout that Hilton (1954) and others have insisted first gave the "Loop" its name not, as is often assumed, the elevated train loop which came later.
The Wabash/Cottage Grove horse car line was converted in 1882 to cable car use from Madison Street to 39th Street. In 1887, the Cottage Grove line was extended from 39th to 67th Street and 55th Street was converted to cable use. In 1890, after the annexation of Hyde Park, the Cottage Grove cable car system was extended south to 71st Street, the building. In fact, there may have been no thought the Midway. The Hyde even given to constructing such a building in the first Park/5 5th Street line was place. It was only after 1890 when it was clear to all renamed the "Jackson that the Columbian Exposition would actually Park." The extended
cakeplaceinJacksonParkchatplansforthe ,lengthoftheCable
building likely were begun. The Court loop proved a
building itself was almost certainly \ • boon in loading and
built, probably by the Illinois '. #>• unloading passengers. On
Central Railroad itself, \ Chicago Day, October 9, during the year prior 1893, the day of the Fair's highest
to the Fair, that is, attendance, crowds of some 500,000
1892-93, when the people practically overwhelmed the system.
embankment and Many young men, dressed in suits, their heads viaducts elevating the topped by bowler hats, happily climbed up on the
railroad's tracks were roofs of the cable cars to make the trip to Jackson Park. being constructed. As a Cable cars and their associated equipment were on result there was a physical prominent display at the World's Fair but the year
separation of the waiting 1893 also marked the moment when electricity had
rooms and ticket selling sites already been recognized as a more efficient and flexible
for IC commuters and cable car form of power for street railways. Despite appearances, passengers. The great old 12th Street IC depot, now cable was on its way out. The initial introduction of demolished, was built at the same time and the red electricity to power Chicago's streetcars in 1893 led to brick and scone used in its construction may have been a progressive dismantling of the cable car system chat similar to chat used in building our headquarters. The finally ended in 1906. The 55th Street/Jackson Park main point here is simply chat the cable loop was not cable line was among the lase to go having served the a result of the opening of the Fair, but the building community for nearly twenty years. Overhead electric itself was. lines were installed and the cables and gears were
Probably the most vulnerable point in the cable car removed. The cable car era ended and the era of the system was the cable itself. The CCR cable consisted trolley car line began in Hyde Park. (The "trolley" is of a hemp core, surrounded by 96 steel wires wound the pulley attached co the pole chat touches and rolls into six strands of 16 wires each. The 1 1/4-inch chick along the electric wire strung above the street.) Cable line, however, was subject to wear and breakage from Court kept its name and electric streetcars and trolley use, age or accident. For example, the approximate life buses followed its loop well into the present century. It of the 10,856 feet long cable line along 55th Street finally was dismantled during the urban renewal era. was 167 days. If the grip were applied incorrectly it It should be noted that the emergence of each
could slice or dangerously damage the cable. When a succeeding street rail technology did not immediately major problem developed in one segment of the cable, preclude the existence of the ones preceding. By 1892, the entire system of which it was a part ground to an for instance, the year before the Fair, the CCR had abrupt hale while repairs were made. Cables were fixed 2,611 horses, almost double the number it had in
by splices made on site or replaced entirely by splicing 1880. Only one-third of the CCR revenues, however, a new line into the existing line, running it was derived from the horse car lines, the remainder completely through the entire system and then coming largely from its cable operations. Electric splicing together the two ends of the new line. lines, as well, were just being introduced. By 1895,
The impact of the cable car line on the economy of Chicago's streets, particularly in the downtown area, Hyde Park was immediate. The Economist (Chicago) for were filled with a melange of streetcars, some powered December 8, 1888 reported: "The development for by horses, others by cables, and still others by business purposes of Fifty-Fifth Streec... has been electricity. Steam also powered trains on the suburban largely due to the cable car line... The prices for commuter lines and, for several years during the mid- property on Fifty-Fifth have risen from $50 to $100 a 1890s, the city's elevated rail lines. This mixture was foot, and over twenty stores are in process of erection finally resolved in favor of electricity as the
on the street." The street's commercial past was set for predominant power source for streetcars by 1906 and the next sixty-five years. the Illinois Central commuter line, by 1926.
During the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, Horses, moreover, remained a factor on Chicago's cable cars were a major source of transportation for streets. There were an estimated 120,000 horses in millions of visitors. Cable cars offered close access to Chicago in 1895. Though fading rapidly from use
the Fair'sentrancesat57thStreetand,onCottage,ataftertheturnofthecenturyaspowerforcity streetcars and fire engines, they remained important in the city's private transportation system well into the present century for recreational use and for hauling delivery wagons. Some of our readers may still remember the horse drawn wagons in Hyde Park that delivered ice and fresh vegetables to people's homes. A painting at our headquarters portrays an old horse drawn milk wagon that once operated in Hyde Park. The wagon stood abandoned for many years east of the IC tracks at 57ch Street.
IN CLOSING
While the street cable car today is often viewed merely as a quaint relic of the past, the scuff of charm bracelets, toys, advertising gimmicks and assorted other memorabilia usually associated with San Francisco, it has a quite legitimate and notable role in American, Chicago and, certainly, Hyde Park history. The story of the cable car in Chicago is most obviously tied to the evolution of public transportation and residential, industrial and commercial development in the city, in general, and to Hyde Park and its nearby suburban neighbors, in particular, both before and after annexation. Moreover, it provided the public access to the South Park system and may well have been a factor in establishing some of its boundaries. In essence, the horse-drawn and later the cable car performed the same function for these areas that the Illinois Central Railroad commuter line had played initially in the emergence of Hyde Park. Indeed, together the two spurred the growth of Hyde Park
and the South Side generally throughout that century and beyond.
Chicago has often been referred to as a city of neighborhoods. In earlier periods in Chicago's history, one of the things that helped define chose neighborhoods was the streetcar lines. The unintended effect, however, was, to a certain degree, their influence on the emergence and reinforcement of artificial social, ethnic and racial boundaries. The "other" side of the tracks was given a new, big city twist that could evoke social conflict, at times bitter or even violent. On the ocher hand, the elaboration of the public transportation system opened up to Chicagoans new opportunities not only for better physical mobility but also for enhanced residential, investment, employment and recreational choices as well.
The extension of public street and rail transportation in and around Hyde Park had an impact on the question of the annexation of Hyde Park to Chicago. It had the effect of drawing Hyde Park and its population closer to Chicago, both in a temporal and economic sense, while at the same time enabling the emergence of multiple centers of political, social and economic interests outside of Hyde Park Center. Each new line established, each new set of tracks laid, was yet another direct link between the city and villagers of Greater Hyde Park.
The political power that had been wielded by the pioneers in Hyde Park Center (who opposed annexation) was diluted in the face of population increases and the emergence of new and powerful economic and political interests elsewhere in the suburb. As a result, annexation proponents would claim that the old style of governance was outmoded and simply inadequate to the new situation. One may also speculate that the concentration of more advanced street transport in che northern section of Hyde Park contributed to a sense of deprivation expressed by citizens in the southern portions of the village. It is no surprise that when the annexation question was put to the voters of Hyde Park Village in 1887 and 1889, the voting majority chat decided the issue in favor of annexation came largely from the wards outside the old center of Hyde Park.
The cable car waiting room on Lake Park apparently directly served the transit system for less than a decade, perhaps as few as five years, if our correspondents' date for its conversion into a lunch room, 1898, is correct. The months of the Fair, then, would have been the peak period of its connections to the cable cars. In that sense, the building is a genuine artifact of both the Columbian Exposition and of the Cable Car era.
The building was located near the Illinois Central stops at 55th and 57th Streets, the Cable Court streetcars and the hotels and small shops along Lake Park and 55th and 57th Streets, all of which generated considerable sidewalk traffic. This location provided the logic for its more than half-century of existence as a lunch room. It became a working man's cafe that served large portions to customers at a reasonable price. The demise of the building's use as a lunch room probably was as much a function of residential and commercial changes occurring in Hyde Park as it was sheer obsolescence of the facility as an eatery.
Ownership of the building remained with the Illinois Central Railroad until it was sold to our Society in 1977.
There is something wonderfully resonant, perhaps
even ironic, that this working man's building has become the home of an historical society for a community driven by issues and conflicts generated both by elitist aspirations and social diversity. This same transaction, however, has practical consequences in the present as our Society seeks to respond effectively to the reality and complexity of our community's history.
Finally, assembly lines were offshoots of cable car technology as are ski lifts. A less obvious connection can be drawn between cable cars and another then contemporaneous technological development: the elevator. They had similar components such as cables, pulleys, gears, and rails and, originally, both were run by steam powered engines. The cable car operated horizontally while the elevator ran vertically.
Although cable driven street cars disappeared as a major urban transportation system, the related technology embodied by the elevator continued to power and be shaped by the emergence of new techniques for the construction of taller buildings for offices, commerce and residential living. The skyscraper, in general, and, particularly in HydePark, the large apartment hotel, were two of its results... but that is another story.
Steve Treffman is our Society's archivist and is preparing another exhibition on Hyde Park's hotels for display at 01,r headquarters later this year.
Thanks to the staff from the Chicago Transit Authority for its assistance.
Selected Sources:
Jean Block, Hyde Park Houses, (Chicago, 1977). Daniel
M. Bluestone, Constructing Chicago, (New Haven, 1991). George W. Hilton, "Cable Railways of Chicago," Bulletin Number 10, (Chicago: Electric Railway Historical Society, 1954). George W. Hilton, The Cable Car in America, (San Diego, 1982). James D. Johnson, A Century of Chicago Streetcars, 1858-1958, (Wheaton, Illinois, 1964). Alan R. Lind, Chicago Surface Lines: An Illmtrated History, 3rd edition, (Park Forest, Illinois, 1986). Milo Roy Maltbie, ed. The Street Railways of Chicago, (Chicago, 1901). John A. Miller, Fares Please/, (New York, 1941). Samuel W. Norton, Chicago Traction: A History Legislative and Political, (Chicago, 1907). Bessie Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago, Vol. 2, (New York, 1940). Frank Rowsome, Jr., Trolley Car Treasury, (New York, 1956). Harry Perkins Weber, comp., Outline History of Chicago Traction, (Chicago, 1936). John H. White, Jr., "Steam in the Streets: The Grice and Long Dummy," Technology and Cttlture Vol. 27 (1986), pp. 106-9. John
S. Wright, Chicago: Past, Present, Future, (Chicago: Board of Trade: 1868, Second edition, 1870).
Letter to the Editor
To Whom It May Concern:
In 1898, our grandfather, Turney Keller, opened the "Lunchroom" at 5529 Lake Avenue, which is now the Hyde Park Historical Society. (Ed. note: Lake Avenue was renamed Lake Park Avenue on April 14, 1913.) With the help of his two sons, Hosey (Harvey) and Charles Keller, the restaurant was continuously in operation until 1952. (Ed. note: One of the interviewees for the earlier articles thought that the restaurant had changed hands in 1948.)
Our grandfather with the help of his sons, leased the building for the entire time. We have no idea how much money was involved. He did have an accident on a trolley losing one arm, not two legs. (Ed. note: One of our correspondents in our earlier article had speculated that the IC had leased the building to Mr. Keller at no cost because he had lost two legs in a railroad accident.)
Before 1898, the building was used as a warming house for trolley personnel. The men gathered around the old pot belly stove and, we're sure, told some great stories. The notion that some food could be served came to our grandfather in 1898.
When our grandfather died in 1922, the boys, known as the Keller Brothers, took over the "Lunchroom." Their wives, Louetta and Marsha, also worked in the restaurant.
At the crack of dawn, breakfast was served. We can still remember the many aromas of home cooking.
Bacon and eggs and oatmeal in the morning and if you looked at the wall one could see the specials for lunch, such as vegetable soup and meat loaf. There were no printed menus. The clientele was an integrated mixture of working males in Hyde Park. The counter was in two sections seating about twelve.
Our families spent many long hours making the "Lunchroom" very successful. The information above is correct according to documented papers from this time period. We have included various pictures for a visual remembrance of the times.
Sincerely,
Mary Bell Keller Johnson and Judy Keller Levantino
Ms. Johnson, the daughter of Harvey Ketler, in a phone interview, told us that the lunch room was closed evenings and on Sundays. She herself was born at her family's residence on the 54th block of Harper Avenue. Turney's family was Christian Scientist and probably was a member of the 10th Church of Christ Scientist at 57th and Blackstone, now the vacant St. Stephen's Church. Ms. Levantino, her cousin, is the daughter of Charles Ketler. -S.A.T.
PROPRIETORS OF THE "LUNCH ROOM" AT 5529 S. LAKE PARK AVENUE
Postcard view c.1915 from the Keller family collection.
From left: Turney Keller and his two sons Charles, and Hosey (Harvey), the eldest of the two. Note the wooden plank sidewalk in front of the building. Turney lost his left arm in a trolley accident. Members of the family are buried in Oakwoods Cemetery.
This Newsletter is published by the Hyde Park Historical Society, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1975 to record, preserve, and promote public interest in the history of Hyde Park. Its headquarters, located in an 1893 restored cable car station at 5529 South Lake Park Avenue, houses local exhibits. It is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays from 2 until 4pm.
Telephone: HYJ-1893
President..... Alice Schlessinger
Editor......... Theresa McDermott
Designer..... Nickie Sage McDermott
Regular membership: $15 per year, contributor: $25, sponsor: $50, benefactor: $100
Volume 22, Number 1, Spring 2000
The Big Wheel
The Society is delighted to Present this wonderful description of the Life and Death of Chicago's great Ferris Wheel of 1893. It u'as written by Patrick Meehan in 1964 u'hile he was a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student at the University of British Columbia. His paper was published at that time in The UBC Engineer and u'as discoveredfor us by our late member and insightful writer, Jim Stronks.
We have recently tracked down Mr. Meehan u'ho writes from Vancouver:
"I had written the article as much to draw attention to the existence of engineering history as to fulfill a course requirement, and since I had been the Editor of the The UBC Engineer the Previous year, I had arranged that it would be published... What may interest you is the original of the profile and elevation of the Wheel; I drew that from scratch to scale—note the six foot man beside the tower leg!"
BY PATRICK MEEHAN
In 1890, the U.S. Congress decided that the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America should be centered in Chicago, and accordingly, on April 9, the State of Illinois licensed the corporation known as the World's Columbian Exposition to prepare this great event. The Corporation's directors, in October, 1890, appointed the rising architect, Daniel H. Burnham wanted. Something novel, original, daring and unique must be designed and built if American engineers were to retain their prestige and standing.
Seated in the audience was a tall, slight young engineer with a pale, resolute face. This was George Washington Gale Ferris, at that time the senior partner in a firm specializing in building steel bridges. Thirty-two years old, he had been educated at the California Military Academy and Rensseler Polytechnic Institute, where he received an engineering degree in 1881. For several years, he had worked on railroads and mining ventures and was one of the first to make a profession of testing materials and structures.
The popular story is that Ferris designed the wheel while at dinner with friends in a Chicago restaurant and that it was built without a change being made to this original sketch. There is some evidence, however, that he had designed the Wheel five or six years prior to the Exposition and it is possible that he chose a quiet moment after dinner to reveal these plans.
Ferris decided that this was the proper time and the opportunity he had been looking for to build his Great Wheel and he at once set about this monumental task.
Construction Chief, and delegated to him autocratic powers. Burnham, architect of the first 'skyscrapers", was a good bet to score a smashing success, both for the Exposition and for himself. At this early stage, he was chiefly concerned at the lack of participation by America's civil engineers.
Seeking to stir them into action, he arranged to speak before the "Saturday Afternoon Club," an informal group of architects and engineers who were interested in the Fair. Their gatherings had served as a sort of public opinion poll on many of the architectural and engineering structures of the Exposition.
Burnham's speech was cleverly contrived to produce immediate reaction: he asserted that the architects of America had covered themselves with glory and enduring fame by their artistic skill and original designs for mammoth buildings, while the civil engineers had contributed very little or nothing in the way of originating novel features or of demonstrating the possibilities of modern engineering practices in America. He called on them to provide some distinctive feature, something to fill the relative position in the World's Columbian Exposition that was filled by the 984 foot Eiffel Tower at the Paris Exposition in 1889. It was immediately proposed to build a feet higher than
Eiffel's, but since this would be playing second fiddle to Eiffel's genius, this idea was dismissed. Mere bigness was not what was a monumental task.
Getting the Concession
Designing the Wheel was no easy task, even for experienced engineers. Stresses for such a structure had never been determined ... so the theory of design had to be derived from first principles. Difficulties were also met in obtaining financing ... for in 1892, the country was in the midst of a severe depression... but Ferris's quiet yet enthusiastic manner inspired confidence and the Ferris Wheel Company was eventually capitalized at $600,000.
Armed with completed plans and guaranteed financing, Ferris approached the Columbian
Exposition's Ways and Means Committee in the spring of 1892. His ideas were treated as those of a lunatic... and he became known as "The Man with Wheels in his Head." The engineers and architects of the Saturday Afternoon Club believed he was making a fool of himself as they loudly proclaimed that his wheel could not be built or, if it could, it could not be operated. But Ferris persisted and after much effort, the Committee granted him a concession to build the Wheel, not in
Jackson Park, the main grounds, but in Central Avenue on the Midway. By the terms of this concession, granted December 16, 1892, The Ferris Wheel Company was to retain $300,000 received from the sale of// tickets, after which one-half of
// the gross receipts were to be paid to the Exposition.
Il. Building the Wheel
By the time the concession was granted it was midwinter—only four months until the opening of the Exposition. Since no single shop could begin to do all the work, contracts were let to several different firms, each chosen for its ability to do the particular job entrusted to it. Great precision was required as few of the parts could be assembled until they were on site. Ferris called on Luther Rice, also only thirty-two ( as was Ferris) and only three years out of Engineering School, to become Construction Chief of the project. The foundation work was proceeding slowly in the face of the most severe winter that Chicago had experienced in many years. The frost at the Wheel site was three feet deep and was underlain by twenty feet of saturated sand, which could, when disturbed by construction activities or vibration, suddenly behave
like the proverbial quicksand. Pumps were kept running day and night...live steam was piped in to thaw the frozen sand and later to keep the concrete from freezing before it had set. Piles were driven a further 32 feet... to hardpan and upon steel beams resting on these piles were placed the eight monolithic reinforced concrete and masonry piers —20 by 20 by 35 feet—which were to support the towers which in turn would support the axle.
On March 18, 1893, the 89,320 pound axle, forged in Pittsburgh by the Bethlehem Iron Company, arrived in Chicago... the largest hollow forging in the world at the time, it was 45 1/2 feet long, 33 inches in diameter... Four and one-half feet from each end it carried two 16 foot diameter cast-iron spiders weighing 53,031 pounds. On March 2(), placing of the first tower post was completed... shortly after came the problem of raising the axle. In an amazingly short two hours, the immense axle assembly was hoisted to the top of the 140 feet high towers and placed neatly in its sturdy pillow blocks.
Next came the assembly of the actual wheel—a very involved process. Meanwhile, the power plant was being constructed over 700 feet away and completely outside the grounds. Ten inch steam pipes fed two I hp reversible engines—one to be used for driving the wheel and the second being held in readiness as an emergency reserve. A Westinghouse air brake was used to control the Wheel and to hold it motionless when desired.
The Columbian Exposition opened on May l , 1893, while the steelworkers barely paused to watch, high on the growing Wheel. By June 9, the Wheel, as yet without cars, was ready for a trial run. At six o'clock in the evening with trusted men stationed at various points, Rice ordered the steam turned on. Slowly, without a creak or groan and only the soft clink of the chain, the great wheel began to turn... in twenty minutes, it had completed one revolution. When he got the word, Ferris, who was in Pittsburgh at the time, immediately ordered the 36 cars hung.
Visitors and participants at the Exposition had viewed the Wheel as an enigma, but the sight of it moving slowly on that summer evening galvanized them into action... from all sides crowds formed, shouting , gesturing... On June 10, one car was hung; by June 13, twenty more had been added and the offices and loading platforms practically completed.
The cars were 24 feet long, 13 feet wide, and 10 feet high, and weighed 26,000 pounds. Each car carried fancy twisted wire chairs for 38 of the 60 passengers. The five large plate glass windows on each side were fitted with heavy screens and the doors at each end were provided with secure locks...firefighting equipment was carried as a safeguard...Six platforms were arranged to speed loading and unloading, with a guard at each to signal the operator when his car was filled and locked. Conductors rode in each car to answer patrons' questions or, if necessary, to calm their fears.
On June 11 , with six cars hung, Daniel Burnham arrived to take a trial trip and Margaret Ferris, who had often given words of encouragement to workers on the Wheel, also went along—the Wheel's first woman passenger. At six o'clock on June 13, Rice held a trial trip for the local press who were very enthusiastic in their praise... correspondents, particularly those from foreign countries, began making repeated requests for drawings and data, but Ferris appears to have been very reticent about releasing details. As a consequence,
no copies of the original plans or calculations have survived.
Ill. The Grand Opening and Successful Run
June 21st dawned clear and bright, and for a little while, it seemed to the men who had labored so tirelessly, that the sun rising over Lake Michigan was rotating around the axle of their Wheel. Important investors and various dignitaries dressed in their Sunday best, were gathered about. On the speakers' platform were the officers of the company and other important persons. The last speaker was Ferris. In this moment of triumph, his happily framed speech drew attention to the fact that he "had gotten the wheels out of his head and made them a living reality." The final success he attributed to his wife, Margaret, who had encouraged and comforted him in the most difficult times. In conclusion, he dedicated his work to the engineers of America. Mrs. Ferris handed him a golden whistle which he blew as the signal to start up the Wheel. The Iowa State Band struck up "America" and to the cheers of the assembled thousands, the Great Wheel slowly and majestically revolved, towering above them in its magnificence.
The Wheel was opened to the public and ran without the slightest difficulty until November 6, 1893. A trip consisted of one revolution, during which six stops were made for loading, followed by one nine-minute, nonstop revolution.
On a clear day, patrons could not only see the Fairgrounds and City, but miles out onto the lake and the surrounding states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan. Attendance on dark smoky days was nearly as heavy as on good days, so it seems the Wheel itself was more of an attraction than the unprecedented view it offered. 3000 of Edison's new incandescent light bulbs were mounted on the Wheel and made it a dazzling sight as they blinked on and off.
Of course, it attracted sensationalists, such as several couples who wished to be married in the highest car. Two couples went so far as to have their invitations printed, inviting their friends to see them married on the Ferris Wheel, but since the Company was not seeking notoriety, they were forced to be content with a
ceremony performed in the Company's offices.
False stories appeared in the newspapers too, such as that of the pug dog leaping to his death through an open window or the story that the Wheel was stopped for some hours with a number of people in the upper cars. The wheel experienced four months of trouble-free operation, accompanied only by the clink of the driving chain and an occasional exuberant whistle blast from the engine crew. The Wheel weighed 2,079,884 pounds and when carrying the maximum live load of 2,160 passengers weighing, say, 140 pounds each, the total weight in
Entrance to the cars (promotional booklet, 1893)
motion would have been 2,382, 244 pounds or 1,191 tons. The capacity of the Wheel was never taxed, even on Chicago Day, when there were 34,433 paid admissions... The supper hour was heaviest during the summer months but in the fall, as many people were carried in the early morning as in the late afternoon.
By November 6th, paid admissions had been received with possibly a thousand or more free trips having been given to various important people. The gross earnings were $726,805, of which $513,403 was retained by the company, giving them a profit of $395,000.
IV. The Ferris Wheel Park Fiasco
Though the Exposition closed on November 1, 1893, the Wheel stood idle on the Midway until April 29, 1894, when a new site was found. It took 86 days and cost $14,833 to dismantle it. In July, 1895, re-erection was begun and the Wheel was ready for service by October. The new site, adjacent to Lincoln Park, was only 20 minutes from the city's principal hotels and railway stations and the Directors sold bonds hoping to landscape the grounds, build a restaurant, a band shell, a Vaudeville theater, to paint the Wheel and Cars.. It is doubtful if many of these improvements were made... the company began to lose money rapidly, as patrons failed to materialize.
Shortly after the bonds were placed on sale, George Washington Gale Ferris, age 37 years, died of tuberculosis on November 22, 1896.
On June 3, 1903, the Chicago Tribune reported:
FERRIS WHEEL LIVES ANEW
Though sold as junk it will revolve again
Brings $1800 at receiver's sale. Attorney
and then there are 2000 pounds of steel."
"Yes, but just think! It's going to cost us $30,000 to take the wheel down." replied Seligman.
"What wi l l we do with al l that $1800?" exclaimed Receiver Rice, whose grief was melting away in the humor of the situation.
"Well, I ' I l tell you, responded Attorney Seligman. " I ' l l call a stockholders' meeting, apply the sum on the indebtedness and declare a dividend." Then the party fi led out of the courtroom with Mr. Seligman in the lead.
Seligman representing buyers of Old Truck, being the successful bidder. V. The Last Days
Some months after the sale, crews of workmen began
Debts of $400,000 outstanding dismantling the Wheel for shipment to St. Louis for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. NinetyThere is an opening in Chicago f6r a bright five men spent 72 days building the falsework towers young executioner who will undertake to put the and taking down the wheel ...by July, 1904, the Ferris Wheel out of existence and dispose of the Wheel was in operation in St. Louis.
remains. Experience in the destruction of cars is Nothing is known about the profits made during considered requisite. the Exposition, but it is probable they were not as
For yesterday the Ferris wheel turned up with a great as they were expected to be. The company's new life—the ninth and last, it is declared, failure to remove the Wheel after the close of the fair though this is by no means certain. The wheel brought complaints from many who considered it to passed under the hammer for $ 1800, and be an eyesore. Again in neglect, the Wheel's end came thereby sank into the category of junk. on the morning of May I l, 1906.
Once the incarnation of a wondrous feat of engineering, the old World's Fair relic now seems From the Chicago Tribune: to be inevitably approaching the final dissolution which has threatened it periodically for ten years... FERRIS WHEEL IS BLOWN UP
A wrecking company has agreed to remove the Blown to pieces by a monster charge of structure. Immediately? O not they—in five dynam ite, the Ferris wheel came to an months. Sentimental persons who would drop a ignominious end yesterday at St. Louis, after a tear for the passing of the wheel, and other citizens varied career of thirteen years. At its ending it who have procrastinated the adventure of a run was unwept and unsung. The Wheel first was a about its axle may take heart. It is understood that treasure of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. rural excursionists in search of thrills may still be Then for a long period of monumental and accommodated if they can guarantee 30 cents in unprofitable inactivity, it towered in an receipts and wait for the engineer to get up steam. amusement park at North Clark Street and The auction was a touching scene, marked Wrightwood Avenue. It finally was removed to St. with the usual reminiscences of past glory. The Louis to form for the second time the huge chief mourner appeared in the person of Receiver mechanical marvel of a great exposition.
Rice. The judge called for a bid from anyone The old wheel, which had become St. Louis' present... a representative of the Chicago House white elephant died hard. It required 200 Wrecking Company, after glancing all about, pounds of dynamite to put it out of business. The offered $800, bidding in cautious tones as if first charge... wrecked its foundation and the awed by his own temerity. wheel dropped to the ground.. as it settled it There was another long silence and then a voice: slowly turned, and then, after tottering a moment "I'll bid $1800. "It was Attorney H. M. Seligman, like a huge giant in distress, it collapsed slowly. representing a junk firm... and the judge declared It did not fall to one side, as the wreckers had the wheel "going, going, once, twice—gone, and planned... it merely crumpled up slowly. Within a sold to the gentleman on the right." few minutes it was a tangled mass of steel and Receiver Rice drew a long face and exclaimed: iron thirty or forty feet high.
"It's a shame, a terrible shame! Why, that engine The huge axle, weighing 45 tons, dropped alone is worth $10,000, and the boilers $7000, slowly with the remnants of the wheel, crushing the smaller braces and steel framework. When the mass stopped settling it bore no resemblance to the wheel which was so familiar to Chicago and St. Louis and to 2,500,000 amusement seekers from all over the world, who, in the days when it was in operation, made the trip to the top.