Just when I thought I knew absolutely, positively everything about Chicago, I found out I had a few more things to learn....
Greg Borzo's book about Chicago history has a few things I never knew
Chicago history has always been my thing. I never could get enough. And I still can’t. Whenever I see a new book or a new tour or a new topic or a new exhibit about my hometown, I always check it out. There’s something compelling, driven and obsessive about it all.
When I read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair for school in the mid-60s, my dad took me (on demand) to the Chicago Stockyards to see where it all took place. When I heard about overcrowding in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood in the late 50s, my dad took me there, too, as a little girl on a hot summer night. I was fascinated by the incredible number of people crowded on the back porches of their apartment buildings—that were ultimately razed to make way for things like the Dan Ryan Expressway and expansion of Illinois Institute of Technology.
This past week, I went to an online talk sponsored by Glessner House, a Chicago Landmark. Greg Borzo was the featured speaker, talking about his book, A History Lover’s Guide to Chicago. Greg and I are fellow docents at the House and we live near each other in the South Loop and have volunteered for many of the same neighborhood organizations and activities together through the years. I’ve also written about previous books he’s written about Chicago history. And other topics.
I wanted to see if there could possibly be anything Greg (or anyone else) could tell me about Chicago history these days that I didn’t already know.
And there were a few things Greg talked about I never knew. I was surprised—but I was also glad that I learned a few new things.
For instance, I never knew what an enormous impact terra cotta had in the construction industry in post-fire Chicago. To retard fire. They actually used it to line the frame of the Auditorium Theatre building when it was under construction.
There is even a north side terra cotta neighborhood in Chicago on West Oakdale where the use of terra cotta was extraordinarily common because the makers of terra cotta lived there. I never heard of that before.
And though I knew about the mass burial of Confederate soldiers in Oakwoods Cemetery on the South Side, I never knew it was the largest mass grave in the Americas!
I also never knew the colors or design of Chicago’s first flag. (Notice it looks like terra cotta.)
Nor did I know of several ideas for adding new stars to our current Chicago flag—to signify new milestones in addition to our original four (Fort Dearborn, the two World’s fairs and the fire)—from the Cubs winning the World Series in 2016 to Harold Washington’s election as mayor in 1983 to our response to Covid 19 when it hit us in 2020.
I also didn’t realize that we still have one of the four original Nike defense missiles on display that once stood at the ready on the Chicago lakefront during the cold war. It’s at 129th Street.
And lastly, out of our very, very, very “grainy” past, I learned that we have only two grain elevators still standing in our fair city. I would have thought there’d be more.
Who knew?