The Chicago Home for the Friendless.

Chicago Home for the Friendless, 51st Street and Vincennes Avenue.

When the population of Chicago grew dramatically, it increased the need for social services to poor and destitute women and children. The Chicago Home for the Friendless, founded on March 18, 1858, responded to that need.

Eventually, the organization served as an orphanage, a shelter for women and children, and also cared for older people in need. From August of 1897 to 1938, the home was located near East 51st Street and South Vincennes Avenue in the Washington Park community area. In 1980, the agency changed its name to Family Care Services of Metropolitan Chicago.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Home for Self Supporting Women, Chicago, Illinois.

The original Home for Self Supporting Women was located at 275-277 East Indiana Street.

The Chicago Woman's Club managed a lodging house, costing $2.50 per week, for temporarily stranded women, and, for at least a few years, the Home for Self Supporting Women ran the Provident Laundry (established in 1889) which provided temporary employment for unemployed women.

The Home for Self Supporting Women moved to this building at 12 E. Grand Avenue in Chicago in 1908 when construction was completed.

Provident Laundry - Objective:
"To provide a new channel of work for able-bodied women out of employment and desirous to become self-supporting; to maintain a training school where superior work is taught, and an Employment bureau where permanent situations are securied for those desiring them."

The laundry was conducted in the read of the home at 275-277 East Indiana Street, overtaxing its accommodations. An average of 20 women find employment daily. A large number of these women become proficient enough to take permanent position in families.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Ryerson Building, 16-20 E. Randolph Street, Chicago

Adler and Sullivan's "Ryerson Building," at 16-20 East Randolph Street, Chicago was built in 1884-85. The building was a 68'x169', six-story masonry and cast-iron loft that cost $152,127 ($4,212,238 today).

Orginally occupied by Gray, Kingman & Collins Store, a wholesale grocery business, then by the Charles H. Slack wholesale and retail grocer & winery. The building was demolished in 1939.

The Hotel Grace at Jackson and Clark Streets, Chicago.

The Hotel Grace, 1889-abt 1990, a European hotel at 75 West Jackson Street, on the southwest corner of Clark Street.

It had 8 stories, 4 stores, 140 rooms, 1 elevator; 120 feet on Jackson, and 50 on Clark, 100 feet high; hotel office upstairs. It was erected in 1887, and cost $200,000 ($5,537,800 today). The hotel, opened in 1889, was known for exquisite meals and a very handsome banquet hall. The records of John M. Van Osdel, the architect, show that a story was added in 1890. 

The 28-story Ralph H. Metcalfe Federal Building, built in 1991 occupies the site today.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of Marine Hospital of Chicago.

The First Marine Hospital of Chicago. (1852-1871)
The first Marine Hospital of Chicago was built upon the old parade ground of the Fort Dearborn reservation, the ground being set apart for this purpose about the year 1848, the building and enclosure being completed March 15, 1852, and first occupied in May of that year.

The boundaries of the old hospital lot were Michigan Avenue on the west, the Illinois Central Railroad on the east, a part of the Government reservation on the south, and the river and dockway on the north. Work on the building was delayed in the summer of 1849, owing to the prevalence of the cholera, but the basement was finished in the fall of that year. 

Up to the fiscal year ending June 30, 1861, the total amount paid on account of the hospital was $57,712, and during war-time, the rule was that none but sailors should be received there, was impinged, for patriotic purposes, by the admission and treatment of soldiers.

J. D. Webster, the harbor engineer, was the disbursing agent, and John H. Kinzie acted as banker for the Government.

The old hospital building, at the site of the Old Fort Dearborn, was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. 

The Second Marine Hospital of Chicago. (1872-1969)
Work on a new hospital, at 4141 North Clarendon, began in 1869 and was completed in 1872 at a cost of $452,000. 

The building, four-stories plus a basement, occupied a 12-acre tranquil site near Buena Park and Lake Michigan in Lake View Township (in 1889 Lake View Township was annexed into Chicago), now the Uptown Community on the North Side of Chicago. The entire building was built of Joliet-Lemont limestone sporting handsome stone porches which graced the various fronts. The main building, which measured 350×60 feet containing the offices, executive departments, dispensary, and administrative department. The wings each contain three wards, accomodating twenty patients to each thirty-foot ward. The building was refitted in 1879 under the supervision of Dr. Truman W. Willer.”

The hosptial served beneficiary seamen including those who were navigating rivers and inland waters. During the life of the hospital, over seven thousand patients were treated.

The hospital fund, from which the expenses of the various marine hospitals were paid, is derived from a tax of forty cents per month levied upon all seamen employed ”on board registered steamers and other vessels belonging to the United States, engaged in foreign trade; and all steamers, and other vessels, including boats, rafts and flats, licensed to carry on the coasting trade, except canal-boats without masts or steam power.”

An issue of American Architect from December 1900 reported the later addition of a boiler house, isolation ward, and laundry, all designed by James K. Taylor.

The Marine Hospital, the 1965 HABS report concluded, was in “good condition” but adjacent to a “slowly deteriorating neighborhood.” Several state and city agencies competed for the site. Plans for the reuse of the building included a junior college and a comprehensive outpatient clinic. In 1969, the public building commission approved to acquire the site of the Marine Hospital for a magnet elementary school, the first magnet school in Chicago. It was demolished in 1969

Today, the Disney Magnet School occupies the site where the Marine Hospital once stood.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.