The Shipwreck of the "Silver Spray" rests a stone's throw from Hyde Park's 49th street beach in Chicago.

On July 15, 1914 -- almost exactly a year before the SS Eastland disaster -- the Silver Spray, a 109-foot-long ferry, set sail to pick up 200 University of Chicago students and take them to Gary, Indiana, to tour the steel mills.

Unfortunately the trip never came to pass as the Silver Spray ran aground on Lake Michigan's Morgan Shoal, a massive underwater rock formation that was formed millions of years ago by glacial activity. 

Morgan Shoal is a million square foot dolomite shelf left over from glacial action millions of years ago near what would eventually be Lake Shore Drive at 49th Street. The wave action at this unique spot along the shoreline creates the city’s only pebble beach and a tricky navigational spot for boats.

Once it was apparent that the ship was doomed, the captain and the seven-man crew decided to remain with their ship, not even halting the preparation of the evening's stew.

Three days later, after various vessels attempted to pull the Silver Spray free of the limestone reef, the crew was taken ashore. Attempts to salvage the ship only caused it to slam against the rocks, and the wooden steamship quickly broke in two.

A Chicago Examiner comic from July 16, 1914, the day after the Silver Spray hit Morgan Shoal and two days before waves finally broke the ship apart.

In addition, the boiler had been left on and the ship caught fire as it sank, making for quite the spectacle. Groups of spectators on shore began collecting the wooden debris as it floated in and burnt them in large bonfires. It must have been a delightful time.

The remains of the Silver Spray can still be seen peeking out of the waters of Lake Michigan. While most of the wooden structure is long since gone, the ship's metal boiler still juts out of the water.

The boiler of the Silver Spray.

The Silver Spray is the closest shipwreck to the shoreline of Chicago and is thus a popular diving spot, along with Morgan Shoals in general.

Some swimmers even paddle out to the wreck and sunbathe on its exposed angle. For better or worse, the Silver Spray seems to be bringing more joy to people in its death than it ever did during its operation.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Kate Sturges Buckingham was one of the great women in Chicago's history.

Kate Buckingham died in her home at 2450 North Lakeview Avenue on December 12, 1937, at 79. She was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Zanesville, Ohio alongside her parents, brother and sister.

Kate Sturges Buckingham

In announcing Miss Kate Sturges Buckingham's passing, the Chicago Tribune noted, "She was godmother to the Art institute; the collections for which it's most famous were her gifts. She was godmother to the opera; at the time of her death she was a guarantor. She was godmother to some 200 or more music and art students. She was a heavy donor to the Field Museum, numerous Chicago charities, and many nameless Chicagoans."

Despite being one of the wealthiest women in the United States and one of the most generous individuals in a city blessed with a long procession of altruistic citizens, Miss Buckingham preferred that no credit come to her for the many contributions she made. Later in life she ordered that her name be removed from the Social Register and severely limited her circle of friends.

Miss Buckingham was born on August 3, 1858, the eldest daughter of Ebenezer and Lucy Buckingham, in Zanesville, Ohio. Her mother's father, Solomon Sturges, was responsible for bringing the family to Chicago in the 1850s. At that time the Sturges and Buckingham families controlled a string of grain elevators in Ohio, Pennsylvania and along the Erie Canal. It was sound business sense to move to Chicago and in 1850 Miss Buckingham's great uncle, Alvah Buckingham, constructed the first grain elevator in the city.

Everything that the Buckingham and Sturges families owned was obliterated in the Great Fire of 1871, their homes on the north side of the city, their grain elevators along the river, the first of many tragedies that would become a motif that ran through Miss Buckingham's life.

A second Chicago Fire in 1874 gave rise to one of the earliest examples of Miss Buckingham's generosity. After that second conflagration, the 15-year-old Kate launched a drive to raise funds for a Christmas party to bring some measure of joy to children in the Cook County hospital.

The Tribune describes the effort... "On Christmas eve the Christmas tree, heavily laden with gifts, was set up in the children's ward, and its many candles were lighted. Tragedy swiftly followed. Through some mishap the burning candles started a fire, and the tree and all its Christmas largesse burned down. Bur young Miss Buckingham, nothing deterred, set forth to raise anew money enough for gifts for each child. And did."

The family relocated their home to Prairie Avenue, the city's most select street, and the family business, J & E Buckingham, prospered beyond measure. In 1882 Miss Buckingham's father also built a grand home in Lake Forest, but despite its location on a bluff above Lake Michigan, the family continued to make its principal home in Chicago.

It was in the Prairie Avenue home that Kate and her sister, Lucy Maud, were educated. It was in this home that Lucy Buckingham died in 1889, and it was there that Kate's sister became increasingly incapacitated. From the house Clarence Buckingham, Kate's brother, and their father expanded the family's enterprises to include banking, insurance, steel manufacture, and real estate.

The family's affiliation with the Art Institute began in the 1890s when Clarence, impressed by the Japanese art exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, began collecting Japanese prints. Ebenezer died in 1911, Clarence died just over a year later, and Lucy Maud lingered on in increasingly poorer health until 1920. All the losses must have further isolated Kate, a woman left alone in a house that mother, father, sister and brother had shared for her whole adult life.

She continued to collect art, though, following her brother's lead. Clarence had been a governing member of the Art Institute of Chicago for three decades and a member of the Board of Trustees for a dozen. [Scultz & Hast] After the death of her sister, Kate Buckingham gave her entire collection of Japanese prints, etchings and engravings, Chinese pottery and porcelain, Persian miniatures, Chinese ritual bronzes, Italian silver and English lusterware to the institute. [The Frick Collection.]

She also furnished the Art Institute's Gothic room in the memory of her sister and finished the Jacobean Room at the museum in the name of her parents. In 1925 she also gave her brother's entire collection of fourteen hundred sheets of Japanese prints to the museum.

Miss Buckingham also wrote a check to the Art Institute that was to be used for a great monument to Alexander Hamilton. Of course, her most memorable contribution was the donation that allowed construction of the great [Buckingham] Fountain in Grant Park, dedicated to her brother, along with a $300,000 endowment to provide for its maintenance.

The Buckingham fountain was donated by Kate Buckingham in honor of her brother Clarence in 1927. The fountain was the largest in the world at the time it was built, and is still one of the largest. Edward H. Bennett designed the monument in collaboration with French sculptor Marcel Loyau and engineer Jacques H. Lambert.

The fountain was meant to represent Lake Michigan and the four states that touch the lake - being Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. The fountain is constructed of Georgia pink marble. To give a vision of just how large the fountain is - the bottom pool is 280 feet in diameter, the lower basin is 103 feet. the upper basin is 24 feet and the upper basin is 25 feet above the lower basin.

But here is something else that resulted from her generosity about which most people are unaware. On February 12, 1912 Kate Buckingham bought a property of 81 acres in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. It was not far from where a 55-room "cottage," which her father had built near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, stood until it burned to the ground in 1899.

On the new piece of land Kate Buckingham built Bald Hill Farm. After her death the farm, to which another 80 acres had been added, was sold to Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky. Mr. Koussevitzky was the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a man with a dream of one day creating a summer musical festival for the symphony. In 1978 after the death of the Koussevitzky, the organization purchased the property, and it now lies at the heart of the Tanglewood Music Festival.

When she died, Kate Buckingham left a half million dollars to friends and relatives. She left another $126,000 to her maid, chauffeur, children of her caretaker, her nurses, doormen and elevator men at the Lakeview cooperative building. In today's dollars, those gifts would total over nine million dollars. She left another $3.1 million for art and cultural organizations, including two million to the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Tribune article that conveyed the news of Kate Buckingham's death ended with "a well-authenticated anecdote" dealing with "one of her rare visits to the Continental Illinois National bank and Trust company, in which she was an important stockholder."

"On this occasion," the story went, "she stopped at the cashier's cage to get money. She had no identification papers with her, and the teller asked if anyone in the bank could identify her. She cast a brief, flashing glance around the nearby desks. 'They're all dead,' she snapped."

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Chicago's First Roller Skating Rink.

The first roller skating rink in Chicago was the "Chicago Roller Skating Rink" located at Congress and Michigan which is in the Chicago Loop area. It opened in November 1880.

Rumor has it that the Chicago Roller Skating Rink was the roller skating venue during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition because there was no rink on the fairgrounds.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

A Manual 'Ferris' Wheel at the Old Catlin Illinois Fairgrounds Kills a Young Girl in 1876.

The Ferris wheel[1] originally called 'Ups and Downs,' among other names, was without power and was operated by men who manually pushed the cars around as they came to them. The directors of the fair were afraid the “contraption,” as they termed it, was unsafe and refused to give the owner permission to operate it on the fairgrounds.

The man who had charge of the wheel placed it just outside the fence which enclosed the fairground and on the first day an attempt was made to operate it — it collapsed.

An 'Ups and Downs' ride at an unknown location. The arms extend a couple of
feet beyond the carriages served as handles for manually turning the ride.

One person, a young girl, was killed and several other people were injured. The owner escaped by mounting a horse and riding swiftly away. He was never apprehended and escaped facing a charge of manslaughter.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[NOTE] The first Catlin Fair was a one-day event organized in 1850 and held on the site of the First Presbyterian Church. It was moved for the third year to Butler’s Point [2], and continued there for 40 more years without profit. 

[1] Although this article is about 1876, I use the term "Ferris wheel" (aka Observation Wheel) which was 1st coined at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, is used for the benefit of the readers visualization. 

[2] Butler's Point - James Butler settled on land which lay just to the west of Catlin in 1819 and the area became known as Butler's Point. When a railway station was built where Catlin is now located, trade and residences drifted to better facilities, and Butler's Point was lost in Catlin. This village was named Catlin on account of that being the name of one of the officers of the Wabash railroad. 

A downtown Chicago museum no one seems to know about, and, you can just walk-in!

The Chicago Cultural Center at 78 East Washington Street opened in 1897 as Chicago's first central public library. 

The Main Chicago Public Library. Circa 1898

The building is a Chicago Landmark that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park. It was converted in 1977 to an arts and culture center at the instigation of Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg.

The city's central library is now housed across the Loop in the spacious, post-modernist Harold Washington Library Center at 400 South State Street which opened in 1991.

The Harold Washington Library Center.

As the nation's first free municipal cultural center, the Chicago Cultural Center is considered one of the most comprehensive arts showcases in the United States. Each year, the Chicago Cultural Center features more than 1,000 programs and exhibitions covering a wide range of the performing, visual and literary arts. It also serves as headquarters for the Chicago Children's Choir.

The stunning landmark building is home to two magnificent stained-glass domes, as well as free music, dance and theater events, films, lectures, art exhibitions and family events. Completed in 1897 as Chicago’s central public library, the building was designed to impress and to prove that Chicago had grown into a sophisticated metropolis. The country’s top architects and craftsmen used the most sumptuous materials, such as rare imported marbles, polished brass, fine hardwoods, and mosaics of Favrile glass, mother-of-pearl and colored stone, to create an architectural showplace.

Located on the south side of the building, the world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome ― 38 feet in diameter with some 30,000 pieces of glass ― was restored to its original splendor in 2008.

On the northside of the building is a 40-foot-diameter dome with some 50,000 pieces of glass in an intricate Renaissance pattern, designed by Healy & Millet.

FURTHER READING: The History of the Main Chicago Public Library.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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PHOTO GALLERY

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On a personal note: 

In the late 1960s I visited the Main Chicago Library to complete a grammar school assignment. For those who remember, there were two hallways running north-south from entrance to entrance. In those hallways were displays of cultural arts; sometimes paintings, sometimes display cabinets lined both hallways with collections of "stuff." I was lucky enough to be there during the exhibit of Cracker Jack (1896) toys thru time. I was a vast collection, over 2,000 toys, and took all the cabinets in both long hallways. 

Pot Metal Toys

Cracker Jack originally included a small "mystery" novelty item referred to as a "Toy Surprise" in each box. The tagline for Cracker Jack was originally "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize." Prizes were included in every box of Cracker Jack beginning in 1912. Early "toy surprises" included rings, plastic figurines, booklets, stickers, temporary tattoos, and decoder rings.

1960s-70s Plastic Toys

The prizes attained pop-culture status with the catch-phrase "came in a Cracker Jack box," particularly when applied sarcastically to engagement and wedding rings of dubious investment value.