Chicago History Today

In 1969 the city was vacating the section of Ogden Avenue north of North Avenue. I took the photo below then. A few years later, in 1973, I snapped a photo of an ancient Evanston Express ‘L’ train on the overpass crossing the Ogden, just south of North Avenue. During the 1990s, Ogden was further […]

1908–Calumet Avenue @ 51st Street, view north 2026–the same location In 1908 we see a collection of three-story apartment buildings along Calumet Avenue, taking advantage of proximity to the 51st Street ‘L’ station, a half-block away. The ‘L’ still stops at 51st Street in 2026, but many of those apartments are gone. What will the […]

He was back.  Before an ecstatic crowd of 15,000 people at the Chicago Coliseum, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt declared himself a candidate for President of the United States. The occasion was the first convention of the Progressive Party.  Roosevelt had served two terms as president, then engineered the election of his friend William Howard Taft in […]

Today Chicago police launched its lake patrol. Two officers were sent out in the department’s new speedboat. Noisy boats had become a nuisance, and the cops were going to stop it. The city’s jurisdiction extended three miles out into Lake Michigan. Crafts with loud outboard motors would be ordered to move out past the boundary, […]

1937–Winthrop Avenue @ Sheridan Road, view north 2026–the same location We are at 1100-west, on a section of Sheridan Road that runs east-west along the line of Devon Avenue. The 1937 photo shows what was then the southern boundary of Loyola University’s campus. Thirty years later, I was a Loyola undergrad and knew this location […]