The Clover Leaf Train Depot and the Illinois Central Depot at Glen Carbon, Illinois.

Glen Carbon boasted two railroad depots that served the passenger trains: one off of Old Meridian Road on the Nickel Plate tracks (sometimes called the Clover Leaf) and one off of Collinsville Avenue on the Illinois Central. At its peak, as many as twenty-two passenger trains served the depots. It was very common to travel to St. Louis and come back the same day.

CLOVER LEAF TRAIN DEPOT, GLEN CARBON, ILLINOIS

Clover Leaf Train Depot right after it was moved to Glen Carbon, Illinois. The name is not painted on the station yet. Madison Coal Corporation Mine № 1 is in the background. The man in the photo is J. F. Dickman the railroad agent. (Jan. 26, 1900)

Clover Leaf Train Depot was located east of Meridian Road between the tracks just north of Miner Park. Meridian road is on the far left. The Clover Leaf Railroad later became the Nickel Plate Railroad. J. F. Dickman was still the railroad agent. Coal mine № 1 is at the far right. A brick structure of the mine is now occupied as a residence.

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ILLINOIS CENTRAL DEPOT, GLEN CARBON, ILLINOIS
In October 1893, John Tolocker bought the first ticket sold from Glen Carbon to St. Louis at the handsome new Illinois Central Depot at Collinsville Street. The Illinois Central (IC) was the last of the three railroads directly serving old Glen Carbon to be developed, and for most of its history was owned an operated by the IC. It was always operated as a standard gauge line, and was also the only one of the three "steam" railroads to build outward from Glen Carbon, rather than into Glen Carbon from another point. IC's predecessor, the St. Louis & Eastern, built east toward Marine from Glen Carbon in 1889.

There was a particularly close relationship between the IC and the Madison Coal Corporation, which had two mines on the IC. The railroad company had sidings for each mine near the mine tipple, where coal could be loaded directly into open-top cars.


As important and interesting as passenger service was for Glen Carbon and every other community, it was always freight that was almost any railroad's bread and butter. The several mines which gave Glen Carbon its origins were also the most important source of revenue for local railroads.

Passenger traffic was heavy at the Illinois Central Deport on Collinsville Avenue in the early 1900s. It was very common to travel to St. Louis and back in the same day for shopping or entertainment.

The Story of Chicago's Haymarket Square Riot on May 4, 1886.

To understand what happened during the Haymarket Square riot (aka Haymarket Massacre or Haymarket Affair), it is necessary to go back to the summer of 1884. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, the predecessor of the American Federation of Labor, declared May 1, 1886, to be the beginning of a nationwide movement for the eight-hour workday.

This wasn't a radical idea since Illinois workers and federal employees were supposed to have been covered by an eight-hour day law since 1867. The problem was that the federal government failed to enforce its own law, and in Illinois, employers forced workers to sign waivers of the law as a condition of employment.

With two years to plan, the organized labor movement in Chicago and throughout Illinois sent questionnaires to employers to see how they felt about shorter hours and other issues, including child labor. Slogans and songs were written like "The Eight Hour Day" everywhere, and slogans were heard like "Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!" or "Shortening the Hours Increase the Pay."

Although a simplistic solution to unemployment and low wages, the Eight-Hour Day Movement caught the imagination of workers across the country. With its strong labor movement, Chicago had the nation's largest demonstration on Saturday, May 1, 1886, when reportedly 80,000 workers marched up Michigan Avenue arm-in-arm carrying their union banners.

The unions most strongly represented were the building trades. This solidarity shocked some employers, who feared a workers' revolution, while others quickly signed agreements for shorter hours at the same pay.

Two of the organizers of these demonstrations were Lucy Ella Gonzales Parsons and her husband, Albert Parsons. 

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Lucy Ella Gonzales Parsons was described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters."

Lucy had been born a slave in Texas in about 1853. Her heritage was African-American, Native American, and Mexican. She worked for the Freedman's Bureau after the Civil War. After marrying Albert, they moved to Chicago, where she turned her attention to writing and organizing women's sewing workers. Albert was a printer, a member of the Knights of Labor, editor of the labor paper The Alarm, and one of the founders of the Chicago Trades and Labor Assembly.

On May 4, two substitute speakers ran over to Haymarket Square at the last minute. They had been attending a meeting of sewing workers organized by Lucy Parsons and her fellow labor organizer, Lizzie Holmes of Geneva, Illinois. These last-minute speakers were Albert Parsons, who had just returned from Ohio, and Samuel Fielden, an English-born Methodist lay preacher who worked in the labor movement.

But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to "throttle" the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered people to disperse. Then someone threw the first dynamite bomb ever used in the peacetime history of the United States at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police, carrying Winchester repeater rifles, drew their guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.

Mayor Harrison quickly banned meetings and processions. Police made picketing impossible and suppressed the radical press. Chicago newspapers publicized unsubstantiated police theories of anarchist conspiracies, and they published attacks on the foreign-born and calls for revenge, matching the anarchists in inflammatory language. The violence demoralized strikers, and only a few well-organized strikes continued. Police arrested hundreds of people but never determined the identity of the bomb-thrower. 

Eventually, seven policemen died, and only one was directly accountable for the bomb. Four workers were also killed, but few textbooks mention this fact.

The next day, martial law was declared in Chicago and throughout the nation. Anti-labor governments worldwide used the Chicago incident to crush local union movements. In Chicago, labor leaders were rounded up, houses were entered without search warrants, and union newspapers were closed.

Amidst public clamor for revenge, however, eight anarchists, including prominent speakers and writers, were tried for murder. Fielden, Parsons, and a young carpenter named Louis Lingg were accused of throwing the bomb. The partisan Judge Joseph E. Gary conducted the trial, and all 12 jurors acknowledged prejudice against the defendants. Lacking credible evidence that the defendants threw the bomb or organized the bomb-throwing, prosecutors focused on their writings and speeches. 

Lingg had witnesses to prove he was over a mile away at the time. The two-month-long trial ranks as one of the most notorious in American history. The Chicago Tribune even offered to pay money to the jury if it found the eight men guilty. The jury, instructed to adopt a conspiracy theory without legal precedent, convicted all eight. On August 20, 1886, the jury reported its guilty verdict with the death penalty by hanging for seven of the Haymarket Eight and 15 years of hard labor for Oscar Neebe[1].

On November 10, the day before the execution, Samuel Gompers came from Washington to appeal to Governor Oglesby for the last time. The national and worldwide pressure finally forced the Governor to change the sentences of Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab to imprisonment for life. Although 5 of the 8 were still to be hanged the next day, on the morning of November 10, Louis Lingg was found in his cell, his head half blown away by a dynamite cap. The event was most mysterious since Lingg hoped to receive a pardon that very day. Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Albert Parsons and August Spies were hanged on November 11, 1887.

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"The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today." - August Spies' last words, shouted from the gallows.

Despite protests worldwide, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Albert Parsons and August Spies were hanged on November 11, 1887. As they were marched to the gallows, the men sang the Marseillaise (French National Anthem). The law was vindicated. Four of the Chicago anarchists pay the penalty for their crimes. Illustration in the Cook County jail at the moment before execution.

In June of 1893, Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned the 3 men still alive and condemned the entire judicial system that had allowed this injustice.

Anti-labor governments worldwide used the Chicago incident to crush local union movements.

The real issues of the Haymarket Affair were freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to free assembly, the right to a fair trial by a jury of peers, and the right of workers to organize and fight for things like the eight-hour workday.

While textbooks tell about the bomb, they fail to mention the reason for the meeting or what happened afterward. Some books even fail to say that many of those who were tried were not even at the Haymarket meeting but were arrested simply because there were union organizers. Sadly, these rights have been abridged many times in American history. During the civil rights marches of the 1960s, the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and the 1968 Democratic National Convention, we saw similar violations of citizens' constitutional rights.

The Haymarket Affair took on a worldwide dimension in July 1889, when a delegate from the American Federation of Labor recommended at a labor conference in Paris that May 1 be set aside as International Labor Day in memory of Haymarket martyrs and the injustice of the Haymarket Affair. Today, in almost every major industrial nation, May Day is Labor Day. Even Great Britain and Israel have passed legislation declaring this date a national holiday in recent years.

For years, half of the American Labor movement observed May 1 as Labor Day, while the other half followed the first Monday in September. After the Russian Revolution, the May 1 date was mistakenly associated with communism, and in a protest against Soviet policy, May 1 was first proclaimed Law Day in the 1960s.

The Haymarket Martyrs Monument was dedicated at Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, to honor the anarchists framed and executed for the bombing at Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. 

A monument commemorating the "Haymarket martyrs" was erected in Chicago's Waldheim Cemetery in 1893. In 1889, a statue honoring the dead police was erected in the Haymarket. Toppled by student radicals in 1969 and 1970, it was moved to the Chicago Police Academy. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] Oscar Neebe, who is reported to have said: "So I am only sorry, your honor — that is if you can stop it or help it — I will ask you to do it — that is, to hang me, too; for I think it is more honorable to die suddenly than to be killed by inches. I have a family and children; if they know their father is dead, they will bury him. They can go to the grave and kneel by the side of it, but they can't go to the penitentiary and see their father, who was convicted for a crime that he hasn't had anything to do with. That is all I have got to say. Your honor, I am sorry I will not be hung with the rest of the men."

The Chicago Coal Famine of 1903.

In the winter months of 1903 there was a severe coal shortage in Chicago, Illinois.

It all began on May 12, 1902 when John Mitchell, who in 1898, at the age of 28, had become president of the United Mine Workers of America, pulled the miners in the anthracite fields of eastern Pennsylvania off the job. Firemen, engineers, and pump men followed on June 2nd, and within two weeks 147,000 workers had left the mines. Of these 30,000 abandoned the fields for good with 8,000 to 10,000 returning to Europe.

The strike finally ended on October 23, 1902 in a precedent-setting agreement, it being the first significant labor dispute in which the United States government intervened. It was such a significant event that toward the end of his career Samuel Gompers wrote, “Several times I have been asked what in my opinion was the most important single incident in the labor movement in the United States and I have invariably replied: the strike of the anthracite miners in Pennsylvania...from then on the miners became not merely human machines to produce coal but men and citizens.”

All that is significant today, but back in late 1902 all that mattered was that no hard coal was being mined for nearly a half-year at the time when cities should have been building up stockpiles in preparation for the long winter. Conditions deteriorated quickly once cold weather set in.

In Detroit on December 31st Mrs. W. T. Richardson, a boarding house keeper, entered the office of Stanley B. Smith & Co., a coal dealer, and pointed a revolver at the clerk on duty along with $7.50 and demanded a ton of coal after her son had failed to get the order earlier in the day. According to the Chicago Tribune the clerk “gazed down the blue barrel of the weapon and promptly produced the order.”

In early January the combination of a shortage of coal and a local teamsters’ strike forced officials at the Lincoln Park zoo to reduce heat in the animal and plant houses to save precious fuel. By January 4th less than a day’s supply remained. “After that,” The Tribune reported, “it is either coal or chills for the elephant, lions and other captives from the tropics.” The next day park workers were put to work cutting down dead trees in the park and stacking up the wood next to the zoo’s power house in case it became necessary to move from coal to wood.

By January 6th the Western Steel Car and Foundry Company in Hegewisch shut down, throwing 3,700 men out of work, because there was not enough coal to keep the machinery running.

On that same day Mrs. Margaret Perry and her three daughters died in a fire at the Hotel Somerset at Wabash and Twelfth Street. The Tribune began its coverage of the tragedy, “Had it not been for the high price and scarcity of fuel, Mrs. Margaret Perry and her three children, whose lives were sacrificed, would not have been in the hotel, as they left their home at 2535 Indiana avenue some time ago because they thought it would be cheaper to board than to attempt to heat their own apartments during the winter.” 

On January 8th the Salvation Army began offering coal to the poor of the city at the rate of five cents for a 20-pound basket. The next day the situation in Toledo, Ohio had reached the point where a physician’s certificate authenticating the fact that there was illness in a home and that coal was necessary to safeguard the patient was required in order to buy a ton of coal.

As the middle of January approached the head of the Dunning Institution, home of the Cook County Insane Asylum, said that he would not be able to keep the buildings warm after 2 am on January 12th. 

Even though a coal relief fund established by Mayor Carter Harrison had reached $2,976, casualties began to mount. Mrs. Esther Everett, 65, was found frozen to death in her bed at 3232 LaSalle Street. A six-month old baby died from exposure in an unheated home at 1341 S. Western Avenue. An unidentified man, between 65 and 70, was killed by a Lake Shore train while he was picking up coal on the tracks at Wood Street.

On January 10, 1903, Three hundred citizens of Arcola, Illinois stopped an Illinois Central train carrying 16 cars of coal to Chicago. An offer was made to buy the coal, but officials refused to sell it. At that point the mob, led by the pastor of the Presbyterian and Free Methodist churches, the presidents of both of the town’s banks, and a town policeman, confiscated the cars and the coal.

By January 19th things in Chicago had reached the point where the city council appropriated $25,000 to be used to distribute coal to the needy, asking the corporation counsel to investigate the legality of establishing a municipal coal yard.

Three days later 16-year-old William Stohmeyer went to the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad’s freight yard, carrying a sack to pick up coal that had fallen on the tracks. Martin J. Ward, a railway employee, fired at the boy, wounding him mortally. A crowd of 500 people soon gathered, and Ward ran to the yard office where he locked himself in the building. Police dispersed the crowd and freed Ward, who was then booked on suspicion of murder.

On February 2nd the Chicago began to sell coal from city yards in half-ton lots with orders being taken at the city’s pumping stations. A disgruntled coal dealer observed, “Amateurish mistakes have confused the mayor’s coal committee in its administration of the municipal coal yards... Instead of using simple methods the authorities started the most complex tactics imaginable, and now they are surprised to find themselves in a muddle.”

Less than two weeks later the city got out of the coal business. “The contractors have refused to send us any more coal to sell,” a Central Park station engineer explained.

Finally, a combination of warmer weather, an increasing supply, and more expeditious transportation ended the “coal famine” of 1903. Wherever the blame was placed, it did not hide the fact that real human beings suffered during that long winter of 1903. 

In a February 3rd editorial, the Tribune observed philosophically that one day everyone would be short of coal because there would be no more left to mine. “Then nature will step in,” the opinion piece observed, “Nature is always ready for contingencies, and, supplemented by man’s ingenuity and skill, life probably will be as easy without coal or wood as it is with them, and certainly cleaner and healthier. ‘Star eyed science’ will not ‘waft us home the message of despair.’ It will find agencies in the sun, in the sea, and in the winds; and in the earth and in the atmosphere it will find unending supplies of that marvelous electric fluid of whose properties as a power in nature we still know but little.”

Chicago Tribune Article, January 12, 1903. - DEATHS CHARGED TO COAL FAMINE 

Madison [County] Coal Corporation, Mine № 4, Glen Carbon, Illinois.

A strike went into effect on March of 1906. It was reported that over half a million workmen and their families were affected by a cessation of work. Locally it meant that 10 or 15 foreign-born citizens who worked in the mines made extended visits back to their homelands. 

Madison Coal Corporation, Mine № 4, Glen Carbon, Illinois.

Since the strike appeared to be lengthy, the Madison Coal Corporation took 52 mules out of № 2 and № 4 mines. Since the mules had not been out of the mines for several years, citizens were amused to see the antics of the animals as they kicked up their heels in the enjoyment of the warm sunlight. Mining operations were abandoned at № 1 Mine around the turn of the century because of water seepage problems and Mine № 4 ceased operating in 1913.

Mine № 4 produced 3,577,993 tons of coal from 1893-1913. 

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of Lustron homes - many are still standing in Illinois. (1947-1950)

America won World War II — only to be confronted by a battle on the home front — the fight for housing. Soldiers and their stateside sweethearts had endured the war by dreaming idyllic dreams of postwar life, with happy families tucked in new houses nestled in a newly-built suburb. Instead of white picket fences and handsome new homes, they had a profound housing crisis — the demand for housing outstripped the supply. 

Their feeling of betrayal clouded the country's future. At the same time, the government had another problem: giant factories stood vacant, no longer needed for military production. So, how about retooling the factories to manufacture housing?

Lustron to the Rescue.
A factory-built house? The Lustron Corporation, a division of the Chicago Vitreous Enamel Corporation, was one of the first to make this connection. The grand scale of the company's plans was awe-inspiring, and its product innovative: a thoroughly modern house with walls and a roof of porcelain-enamel steel panels.

But First, a Brief History of Prefabrication.
While a steel house was novel, the idea of mass-producing buildings was not. In 1801, British manufacturers began prefabricating cast-iron structural systems for industrial buildings. Within a few decades, factory-produced cast-iron storefronts became popular in American cities. By the early twentieth century, Sears, Roebuck and Company, Aladdin Homes, Harris Brothers Homes, and other merchants were selling kits for wood-frame houses out of catalogs.

As the century progressed, prefab entrepreneurs pushed the design envelope. By the mid-1930s, homebuyers could choose from nearly three dozen manufacturers featuring a dizzying array of materials: steel, precast concrete, asbestos cement, gypsum, and plywood. By the end of the decade, though, steel had fallen from favor because of problems with corrosion, condensation, insulation, and, most of all, the cost of the machines and facilities to fabricate the metal. The Lustron Corporation was to tackle these hurdles head-on.

First, though, World War II erupted, and the steel surpluses of the 1930s quickly became shortages as steel and other materials were dedicated to the war effort. Domestic housing construction virtually stopped, but the military forged ahead on the prefabrication frontier, developing structures that could be erected quickly without skilled tradesmen. While this effort led to technological advances, prefabrication emerged from the war with an image problem. "Whereas the prewar prefabricated house may have been suspect as an interesting freak," a Bemis Foundation study noted, "the postwar product was often stereotyped in the public mind as a dreary shack." Lustron's snappy porcelain-enamel panels helped dispel that image.

As well as a Brief History of Porcelain Enamel.
It was the use of this material, rather than the material itself, that was innovative. The process of enameling metal sheets had been developed in Germany and Austria in the mid-1800s. Because porcelain enamel was tough, did not fade, and was easy to clean, it was quickly adopted by manufacturers of signs, appliances, and bathroom and kitchen fixtures. By the end of the nineteenth century, metal enameling was being done on an industrial scale in the United States. Iron was initially used for the base metal; sheets of low-carbon steel became available in the early twentieth century. A technological breakthrough during World War II used lower heat for the enameling process-which allowed manufacturers to use lighter-gage metal, lowering the price of the panels.

Chicago Vitreous Enamel Company.
Porcelain enamel became popular for style as well as substance. It perfectly suited the design sensibilities of the era, giving a sleek, streamlined look to gas stations, hamburger stands (most famously White Castle), and other utilitarian structures.

A leading manufacturer of coated panels was the Porcelain Products Company, a subsidiary of the Chicago Vitreous Enamel Products Company. Founded in 1919, "Chicago Vit" contributed to World War II by producing tank armor for turrets and commander domes.

The company hired Carl Strandlund, a Swedish-born engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, to retool and run the plant for the war effort. His innovations dramatically sped up production, raising the national profile of the company and himself. He was soon promoted to executive vice President and general manager.

A Panel is Born.
Towards the end of the war, Strandlund devised an architectural panel that was awarded patent number 2,416,240: "The present invention relates generally to architectural porcelain enamel panels, but more particularly to a novel and improved construction and an arrangement of interlocking and sealing adjacent porcelain enamel panels, units, or adjoining connecting parts of the exterior or interior walls of a building or structure of any type or design." Strandlund's seemingly unsexy panel was to be the building block of the Lustron house.

And then Lustron.
Right after the war, though, his first priority was manufacturing porcelain-enameled panels for gas stations until the bureaucracy in Washington denied him an allocation of steel. Informed that housing was a higher priority, he soon returned with a concept for an all-metal house, capturing the imagination of federal housing policy-makers. Lustron Houses were the idea of Illinois' businessman and inventor Carl Strandlund. In 1947, Strandlund established the Lustron Corporation and accepted the first of several multimillion-dollar loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to get the production of Lustron houses underway.

"We believe that our technology has advanced to the point where a basic commodity as necessary as a home no longer should be handmade," Strandlund said. "We think it has advanced to the rank of the automobile-that it can be mass-produced, handled by local dealers, transported to a new locality if desired, even traded in on a larger model." He added: "The Lustron home isn't a cheap house by any means. It isn't a substitute for a house similar to those we are used to now. What Lustron offered was a new way of life."

A Home for Lustron.
Strandlund was allocated a former warplane manufacturing plant in Columbus, Ohio, for the Lustron factory. Containing over 1 million square feet of floor space, the area of 22 football fields. The massive plant held some $15 million worth of special machinery and other industrial equipment, including 163 presses; the most colossal one could punch a bathtub from a sheet of steel in a single operation. The huge scale required huge capital investment, including a total of $37.5 million loaned by the RFC.

The first Lustron house was built in Columbus, Ohio, and it was unveiled to the public on October 16, 1948.

Demonstration Houses.
By April 1949, Lustron had over 100 "demonstration" houses strategically positioned in almost every major city east of the Rockies. Lustrons were sold through a network of builder dealers who covered a specific geographical area. In addition to erecting the house, builder-dealers were responsible for site preparation and the foundation slab, which were not included in the factory purchase price.

The erection process for the first Lustrons took up to 1,500 man-hours; later, the average was reduced to 350 hours, taking two weeks from start to finish. There were around 230 dealers in 35 states in Lustron's heyday, and the houses even made it as far as the Territory of Alaska and Venezuela.

You can usually spot a Lustron house by its distinctive roofs — which resemble the ones that came in Lincoln Log sets — and their luminous pastel exteriors: pink, surf blue, maize yellow, dove gray, and desert tan.

600 North 74th Street, Belleville, Illinois. Photo: September 9, 2013.

A Model Corporation.
Lustron ultimately offered eight models commercially, which varied in the number of bedrooms (two or three), size, and amenities. Color options for the semi-matte-finish exterior panels were surf blue, maize yellow, desert tan, and dove gray. Lustron "accessories" included screen doors, a storm-door insert, a combination storm-screen door, and storm windows, all in aluminum; steel Venetian blinds in ivory; a picture hanger kit; and an attic fan. The company encouraged homeowners to personalize their homes by screening in porches and adding breezeways. By 1949, Lustron was also selling garage panel packages. Unlike the house panels, which were part of a self-supporting structure, the garage panels had to be attached to a traditional wood-frame structure.

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White Castles, incorporated in 1924, earliest restaurants were built using white brick and had nothing to do with Chicago's Water Tower. They were just supposed to look like a castle, but after the chain came to Chicago in 1928, Walter Anderson and Billy Ingram based the design of their first Chicago store on Chicago’s Water Tower, mimicking its crenellations and turrets in steel panels covered in white porcelain enamel tiles making it easy to clean and maintain.

They designed a small, prefabricated steel building so that the chain could pack up and move a building after a property lease was up. The first White Castle in Chicago, № 35, was a steel castle built at 2501 East 79th Street. Anderson & Ingram's design built more than 300 White Castle restaurants throughout the 1920s. Only a few of the steel buildings are still standing, and none are White Castles anymore.

The Dream's Demise.
Lustron's demise was brought on by overly optimistic promises, poor decision-making, and political chicanery. Strandlund's estimates of the plant's production levels proved far higher than was initially feasible. Not all of the factory's marvels turned out to be so marvelous: to be economical, for example, Lustron needed to sell about two-thirds of the output of the bathtub press to other companies. The tub, however, was a nonstandard size, making it virtually unmarketable.

The biggest problems, though, came from politics on both local and national levels. Building inspectors did not embrace the unfamiliar structural system and, with the encouragement of unions fearful of losing jobs, forbade the erection of Lustrons in some cities, including Chicago. Even more troublesome was an investigation by a U.S. Senate banking subcommittee into the RFC loans. This led, in 1950, to the loans being recalled, forcing the Lustron Corporation into bankruptcy and bringing the production line to a permanent halt by May.

Architect and MIT professor Carl Koch, who had worked briefly for Lustron on a deluxe model that was never produced, later reflected: "When I leaf back through the records, brochures, contracts, the transcript of Congressional autopsies-I admit to the confusion of feelings between the way we regarded it then... and the way it turned out to be. Seldom has there occurred a like mixture of idealism, greed, efficiency, stupidity, potential social good, and political evil. Seldom, surely, has a good idea come so close to realization and been so decisively slugged."

Strandlund's dream ended, but the Lustron legacy lives on. Although some of the approximately 2,680 Lustrons manufactured have succumbed to environmental and economic forces, perhaps as many as 2,000 survive and are being embraced by a new generation of homeowners who appreciate the special qualities of these unique houses.

VIDEOS

Historic Lustron Home

The Thor washing machine/dishwasher combo!

The Lustron House Locator

BROCHURES

A Camera Tour of Lustron Homes - A New Standard of Living.

Things You Want to Know About the Lustron Home.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lake Park, Chicago, Illinois, later renamed to Grant Park.

Chicago's Lake Park was officially designated as a park on April 29, 1844. When the Illinois Central Railroad was built in Chicago in 1852, they were permitted to build a breakwater allowing the trains to enter along the lakefront on a causeway built offshore, just west of the breakwater.

Click to view a full-size image.

Lake Park (now Grant Park), Chicago, 1885

The resulting lagoon between the man-made breakwater and the shoreline became a stagnant pool with unruly garbage and waste. The stench was so bad that the lagoon was filled in 1871 with rubbish and debris from the Great Chicago Fire.

An 1868 Chicago Map showing the Illinois Central Railroad causeway.

In 1896 the city began extending Lake Park into the lake with additional landfill. 

On October 9, 1901, Lake Park was renamed Grant Park in honor of Galena, Illinois resident, American Civil War General and United States President, Ulysses S. Grant.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of Chicago's President Street Names.

Anyone familiar with downtown Chicago knows the "President Street" names. This naming scheme is an old Chicago tradition, as with numerous other towns and cities around the country.

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore. Those are the first 13 presidents, in order, and 12 of them have streets in or near downtown named after them. 

Because there were two presidents named Adams, Quincy Street honors John Quincy Adams, president № 6.

Of course, I've saved the story of why a president was shunned from this time-tested honor for later in the article. 

Jackson Boulevard is named after Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States. Franklin Street is named after Benjamin Franklin.

After Fillmore left office in 1853, the city seems to have abandoned the custom of automatically giving a president his own street. Then, Presidents had to earn this honor.

From 1853 to 1909, out of eleven men who served as President, only four made the cut; Lincoln Avenue, Grant Place, Garfield Boulevard, and Roosevelt Road. 

What about Pierce, Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland, and Harding? Those are Chicago Street names but not named for a former president.

When President Woodrow Wilson died in 1924, the city council decided he deserved a street. Chicago already had a Wilson Avenue, so the city council decided to change Western Avenue to "Woodrow Wilson Road." That lasted about a month until pressure from business owners brought back the old name in a hurry.

Since the Woodrow Wilson fiasco, Chicago has avoided the hassle of renaming streets to honor presidents. Eisenhower and Kennedy got expressways named after them. No address changes to worry about there! Except for the displaced residents and businesses.

William Howard Taft got an Avenue (access road) named after him in Franklin Park that goes into O'Hare Airport at the southernmost point (11600W-4200N-4400N). There are no buildings or structures on Taft Avenue.

The one President whose named street was quickly stripped from him is President № 10, John Tyler. When the first southern states seceded in 1861, Tyler led a compromise movement; failing, he worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862 a member of the Confederate House of Representatives. 

1868 Chicago Guide Map

Tyler street was renamed later to Congress Street (Congress Parkway today). 

The honorary street name program (brown signs) has been in place since 1964, when a stretch of LaSalle Street was designated "The Golden Mile" to honor the city's financial district.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Chicago's Western Avenue name was changed to Woodrow Wilson Road in 1924.

As any true Chicagoan knows, Western Avenue is the longest street in the city. Would you believe it was once named Woodrow Wilson Road?

Northeast Corner of Devon Avenue and Woodrow Wilson Road, Chicago, Illinois. circa 1925.

Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, died on February 3, 1924. He’d been an icon of the Progressive movement and led the country through the First World War. The Chicago City Council wanted a suitable way to honor him.

It is not unusual for the City of Chicago to have streets named after U.S. Presidents, as the Digital Research Library of Illinois History Journal™ article reports "The History of Chicago's President Street Names."

A few years after Theodore Roosevelt died, the aldermen changed 12th Street to Roosevelt Road. What was good for a dead Republican president should be good for a dead Democratic one. 

Since the city already had Wilson Avenue (named after John P. Wilson, lawyer, and donator to Children's Memorial Hospital), it was decided to use President Wilson’s full name on his street.

It’s not clear why the lawmakers chose Western Avenue for renaming. On April 25, 1924, they voted to re-designated the street as Woodrow Wilson Road.

On April 26, 1924, the Tribune dropped a bombshell on the people of Chicago, though the newspaper didn't play it as the 8-column banner lead nor even above the fold. In fact, the seven-line, one-paragraph item was hanging on to the bottom of the front page. 

Back in 1924, Chicagoans were just angry about the change. They protested the change, petitioning their aldermen with hundreds of signatures. The Tribune seemed to wage its own silent protest by not using the new name in articles: automobiles still crashed, banks were still robbed and famous people still interacted with the public on a roadway called Western Avenue.

Aldermen appeared to have repealed the Wilson name sometime in June, about the same time Wilson supporters offered the alternative solution of renaming Municipal Pier after the recently deceased 28th president. That didn't fly either, of course; that honor went to the Navy.

The 12th street-to-Roosevelt Road change had caused little controversy. But now the property owners along Western Avenue objected to the expense involved in renaming their street. Within a few weeks, they’d gathered over 10,000 signatures asking that the old name be restored.

The Tribune sent its inquiring reporter to the corner of “Washington Boulevard and Woodrow Wilson Road” to gauge public opinion. Most people said the change didn’t make any difference to them. One young lady did say she favored the new name because “it sounds lots nicer, and we see enough old things around here.”

The property owners prevailed. Less than a month after its original action, the council ordered the street to change back to Western Avenue. A proposal to rename Navy Pier after Wilson went nowhere.

In 1927 the council changed Robey Street to Damen Avenue, despite resident protests. When Crawford Avenue was renamed Pulaski Road in 1933, that set off a battle that lasted 19 years before Pulaski was legally accepted. More recently, a proposal to change part of Evergreen Avenue to Algren Street was abandoned in the face of local resistance. 

In the 1930s, the Chicago City College system came to the rescue with Woodrow Wilson Junior College. Even that didn't last: In 1969, the school was renamed Kennedy-King College after Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Wilson Avenue on the North and Northwest sides is named after a different Wilson.

The lesson seems to be that changing a street name will always rub some people the wrong way and is a high cost for changes to maps and for businesses. That’s why the city came up with the idea of honorary streets in 1964.

Chicago designated its first honorary street name in 1964, declaring the section of LaSalle Street between Wacker Drive and Jackson Boulevard the "Golden Mile" to honor the city's financial clout. Over the next nearly two decades, only two more signs were designated, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Looking West from the Top of the Willis (Sears) Tower, Chicago, Illinois.

Looking West from the Top of the Willis (Sears) Tower, Chicago, Illinois.