Ferris Wheel Park at the 1200 block of N. Clark St. (today, 2600 block of N. Clark St.), in Chicago, Illinois. (1896-1903)

Click the picture for a full-size image.

Though the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition closed on November 1, 1893, the Observation [Ferris] Wheel stood idle on the Midway until April 29, 1894, when a new site was found. It took 86 days and cost $14,833 (today $445,000) to dismantle it.

In 1895, the Wheel's inventor, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., found a new site for the observation wheel on Chicago's North Side, in the Park West neighborhood of the Lincoln Park community and named it "Ferris Wheel Park." It was at Clark Street and Wrightwood Avenue, only 20 minutes by public transportation from the city's principal hotels and railway stations. There were very few motor vehicles during these early years.

The Directors sold bonds hoping to landscape the grounds, build a restaurant, a beer garden, a bandshell, a Vaudeville theater, and paint the wheel of its cars. Ferris' partner in the plan was Charles T. Yerkes, Jr. (whose involvement with the park is debatable), the transit magnate who owned streetcar lines adjacent to the site.

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The Duryea brothers created their first gasoline-powered "horseless carriage" in 1893. America's First Automobile Race took place in Chicago in 1895. 

Ferris chose the location of the “end of the line” and car barn (called the “Limits”) at Clark and Wrightwood exclusively to serve his proposed Ferris Wheel Amusement Park.

However, resistance to the project arose from the community and delayed but did not preclude its opening in the fall of that year. The community, nonetheless, could vote for the area closed to the sale of liquor, which doomed the planned beer garden.

Construction of the Ferris Wheel. The Second Church of Christ Scientist still stands at 2700 N Pine Grove Ave, Chicago.

An admission ticket for the ride confirms that a vaudeville program had been introduced as part of the attraction. Additionally, a photograph shows a sign advertising vaudeville shows. The address on the ticket, 1288 North Clark Street, is misleading on two counts regarding where the Wheel was actually located. 

In 1909, the city of Chicago undertook a street renaming and renumbering project. For instance, many of Hyde Park's streets obtained their modern names during this time. In this case, the street number "1288 North Clark" from the year 1896 translates to a location on the northeast side of the 2600 block of North Clark Street, near Wrightwood Avenue, after the renumbering process. 

Indeed, the whole strip of land from what is now 2619 to 2665 N. Clark was to be devoted to the enterprise.

FILM

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Amazing footage of the Ferris Wheel running in 1896 at Clark and Wrightwood in Lincoln Park, Chicago. The vantage point here is looking from the southwest corner of Wrightwood, northeast across Clark Street. Filmed by the Lumiere Brothers and is one of the first films ever shot in Chicago.

The ride, which some have jocularly claimed drew more complaints and lawsuits than patrons, experienced financial problems and was seized by the Cook County Sheriff in November 1896, just before 37-year-old George Washington Gale Ferris' death from tuberculosis in November. Ferris Wheel Park continued to remain open for business. 

As a result, the community of Lake View lost the opportunity to the Park West neighborhood of the Lincoln Park community. Shortly thereafter, and with vocal citizen opposition from a newly formed civic group called the Improvement and Protection Organization (IPO), the owners of the new park, which was in receivership, had to file for bankruptcy in 1900 due to a lack of local community support and general city patronage.

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One non-stop revolution at 2.5 mph took approximately 2 minutes.

The lack of support for the park was due to its location within a residential subdivision, and the residents of both communities of Lincoln Park and Lake View were not fans of the new owner of the park, Charles Tyson Yerkes, Jr., who owned the Chicago Electric Street Railway that owned and operated streetcars on Evanston Avenue (now Broadway) and Clark Street. 

For years, Mr. Yerkes tried to circumvent property owners by trying, through the city government, to acquire property for his company without due process. 

Imagine trying to locate a Six Flags amusement park in the middle of an urban residential street. 

The wheel remained until 1903 when it was dismantled and transported to the site of what would be its last hurrah. The Ferris wheel was brought to St. Louis, Missouri, for the 1904 World's Fair. "The Louisiana Purchase Exposition" at the St. Louis World's Fair was opened to the public on April 30, 1904. 

View looking northwest from the lakefront at Fullerton, Chicago. 1895

After the St. Louis Fair, the Ferris wheel was sold for scrap when a sale to Coney Island amusement park failed to materialize. It was destroyed with 100 pounds of dynamite (after several attempts), and the parts were taken away for salvage. Local legend says the Ferris Wheel's axle was buried with the rest of the fair's rubble in makeshift landfills in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri.

THE 1893 WORLD'S FAIR LIBRARY

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

A very rare set of four Pre-World's Columbian Exposition postal cards from 1892, Chicago.

Below is a very rare complete set of four unused pre-Columbian postal cards. Published by the American Lithographic Company, New York. 

This complete set of four postal cards, from my personal collection, was issued in mid-1892 to invite world leaders and VIPs to the dedication ceremonies (held on October 21, 1892, even though the fairgrounds were not completed), and welcome them to the opening day of the World's Fair on May 1, 1893.

The official World's Fair seal is not present on these
four postal cards which included 1¢ postage.

When the fair opened in 1893, a set of 10 postal cards, 2 more were quickly added, for a 12-card set, which was the first commercially produced postcards to be sold to the general public in the United States.

Courtesy of my "Chicago Postcard Museum." 

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - U.S. Naval Exhibit

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - Fisheries Building

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - Woman's Building

About the S.C. Skipton Stamp. Mr. Skipton was the first Editor of the Philatelic Journal of Great Britain. He was a rabid collector of postage stamps from around the world. Mr. Skipton always had a fondness for British stamps. During the last ten years of his life, he accumulated what may be considered the finest collection of the world's rarest postcards, in Great Britain, numbering over fifteen thousand specimens. Mr. Skipton used the ink stamp above to press on one of the postcards in each set he owned.

Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 - Agricultural Building

The Back of the Pre-World's Columbian Exposition 1893 Postal Cards

Copyright © Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Women of Influence - Babette Mandel (1842-1945), Shaping Chicago History.

Babette Mandel around the
time of her wedding, 1871.

Babette Mandel, Great-niece of Michael Reese and wife of one of the founder of Mandel Brothers department store, came to Chicago at the age of four and grew up to become one of the foremost woman philanthropists of Chicago.

Her parents, Emanuel Frank and Elise Reese Frank, left Aufhausen in Bavaria in the summer of 1846, drawn by hopes of greater prosperity.

Michael Reese, an uncle then living in California, encouraged them to come to America and set aside funds for their support. After a journey by ship and stagecoach that took several weeks, the Franks and their ten children arrived in Chicago on Yom Kippur.

The family settled in a house on Clark Street north of Madison. Sadly, in 1855 Emanuel Frank was killed in an accident, and though she excelled at school, Babette was forced to spend much of her childhood helping to maintain the household.

On April 18, 1871, when she was 29, Babette married Emanuel Mandel. Emanuel’s brothers, Leon and Simon, had founded a dry goods store with Leon Klein in 1855. The business was reorganized as the Mandel Brothers store when Klein retired and Emanuel was brought in as a third partner.

The Mandel Brothers store was then located near Clark and Van Buren Streets. When the Chicago Fire destroyed the building in October 1871, just six months after Emanuel and Babette were married, the Mandels re-established their store on the South Side. 

In 1875 they moved to the Colonnade Building on State and Madison, owned by Marshall Field. Intent on building up State Street, Field persuaded the Mandels to stay by means of a generous, long-term lease, and soon the business was flourishing again. 

The Mandels were active members of Sinai Temple, and in 1888, at a meeting held at Sinai, Leon and Emanuel were among those who pledged money to found the Jewish Manual Training School (later the Jewish Training School). The idea behind the School was to give immigrants manual skills that would enable them to support themselves, while also promoting Americanization. Located on the West Side, the School taught cooking, sewing, woodworking, English and citizenship to Eastern European immigrants.

Babette Mandel was prominent among those who organized the School, at first serving as a director, and then as its president. The Jewish Training School closed in 1912; the inrush of immigrants that had made it so essential was largely over by then.

Chicago Lying-In Hospital and Dispensary was founded in 1895 with the help of Babette Mandel. She also served on its board. This was a maternity clinic at first housed in four rooms on Maxwell Street. It was later renamed the Chicago Maternity Center.

Inspired by the success of Hull House, Mrs. Mandel and others established the Maxwell Street Settlement in 1893 as a cultural center for newlyarrived Jewish immigrants. 

Babette Mandel was a leader in many other organizations as well: Chicago Women’s Aid, Sarah Greenebaum Lodge (United Order of True Sisters), the Chicago Section of the [National] Council of Jewish Women, and others. 

The achievement she is best known for, however, is the establishment of the West Side Dispensary in 1903. Originally opened in 1899 at Clinton and Judd Streets, this building was inadequate, and Babette Mandel gave $10,000 to reestablish it at Maxwell and Morgan Streets. Most of the patients were Russian or East European immigrants from the West Side. In 1910, she again gave a large sum of money to establish the Dispensary in new quartersand at this time, the Dispensary was dedicated to the memory of her husband, Emanuel Mandel, who had died in an accident in 1908. Mrs. Mandel continued to support the clinic with large gifts over the years, and in 1928 it was incorporated into Michael Reese Hospital as the Emanuel and Babette Mandel Clinic. 

Most of Babette Mandel’s charity work was carried out while she raised their three children: Frank, Edwin, and Rose. When she died on March 12, 1945, she left $50,000 to the Jewish Charities of Chicago and $25,000 each to Michael Reese Hospital and the Chicago Maternity Center, among other bequests. 

Her son Edwin became president of Mandel Brothers department store and was also president of Michael Reese Hospital. In 1960, Mandel Brothers was sold to the Weiboldt Corporation, which closed the store in the late 1970s or early 80s.

At a time when women were not expected to work outside the home, Babette Mandel, like many women of her generation, found a vocation and purpose that allowed her to extend her role as mother beyond the confines of the home. Her significance lies in the way she used her position of wealth and privilege to help the Jewish community at a time when immigrants were in desperate need.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.