In 1978, in north-west Canada’s Yukon territory, construction on a new recreation center was under way in a small rural settlement called Dawson City. As bulldozers tore up the ground where the previous sports hall had stood, a remarkable discovery came to light: hundreds of reels of ancient nitrate film.
Five hundred and thirty three (533) silent films were recovered, including newsreels and features of all types, dating from the 1910s and 20s. Most were previously unknown to film scholars or thought to be totally lost. But for 49 years the inhospitable cold of the Yukon landscape had safely protected the films – which had been found at the bottom of an old swimming pool.
1919 Chicago White Sox team photograph.
This film is an excerpt from the British Canadian Pathé News showing various baseball games between the Chicago Black White Sox[1] and Cincinnati Reds in the infamous 1919 World Series.
Film clips of 1919 White Sox World Series.
This silent film shows some age damage. runtime: [04:30:00]
[1] The Black Sox Scandal; was a Major League Baseball match-fixing incident in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of intentionally losing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein.
The fallout from the scandal resulted in the appointment of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first Commissioner of Baseball, granting him absolute control over the sport in order to restore its integrity. Despite acquittals in a public trial in 1921, Judge Landis permanently banned all eight men from professional baseball. The punishment was eventually defined to also include banishment from post-career honors such as consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Despite requests for reinstatement in the decades that followed (particularly in the case of Shoeless Joe Jackson), the ban remains in force. Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
On September 11, 1886, the Windsor Theatre, on the north side, opened for its first season at 468 North Clark Street (post-1909: 1225 North Clark Street), which extended over a period of 40 weeks. This new playhouse is intended exclusively for the use of stars and traveling companies, and will hold much the same relation to the other Chicago theatres that the Windsor of New York sustains to the playhouses of the metropolis.
The Windsor is included in a new block of substantial brick stores on Clark street, near Division, and is about a mile and a half from the City Hall. With the exception of the Criterion theatre, on Sedgwick street, the theatre Is further north than any similar place of amusement in the city. It is reached through a corridor 52 feet long. the main entrance being on Clark street. At the end of the corridor is a reception room, and beyond that a series of ornamental arches, extending to the lobby of the house. The main floor is divided into a parquet and parquet circle, the former corresponding to the orchestra chairs in a New York theatre. The floor of the parquet inclines gradually from the stage, and that of the circle rises more rapidly, so that every seat commands a good view. of the stage. There is but one tier above the parquet, and this is divided into two sections, the front portion consisting of a line of boxes extending its entire length. Each compartment is separate, so that It can be used for private parties if desired, but single seats will be sold when required. In the rear of this balcony circle and raised to an altitude of five feet, with a separating rail, is the gallery proper. The seating capacity of the theatre is 2,000. The design and decoration of the auditorium is mosque and the fresco work, upholstery, carpets, and furniture are in harmony with the general architectural style.
The building will be illuminated with the incandescent electric light. The stage is 78 feet wide and 48 feet deep, and the dressing rooms are in the rear of the prompt entrance. The accommodations for chorus, singers, ballet dancers, and minstrels are underneath the stage. The furniture of the stage consists of 20 complete sets of stock scenery and the usual working bridges, spring, vampire, star, and other traps. The new theatre will be under the management of Philip A. Lehnen, of the Welting Opera. House, Syracuse. Adelina Patti, famed singer of the nineteenth century, once occupied a box at the Windsor when a young singer who was her protege was making her debut. A canopy was stretched from the doorway to the curb, and the carpet under it was strewn with roses for Patti’s entrance. The theater name was changed from Windsor to Lincoln in 1894, then back to Windsor when the new theater opened in 1914.
The Windsor Theater in 1936
The Windsor Theatre was opened as part of the Lubliner & Trinz circuit on May 9, 1914. It was one of the earliest projects from the firm of Rapp & Rapp. The theater was later run by the H & E Balaban chain. The theater was remodeled by the firm of Pereira & Pereira in 1936. The Windsor operated into the late-1950s, and was razed by 1961. Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
As Chicago's reconstruction after the Great Fire of 1871 progressed and residential districts extended further from the downtown area, it became apparent to the library's directors that the Chicago Public Library needed to make its services available to people nearer to their homes.
In April 1884, the Library Board appointed a Special Committee on Delivery Stations. Four stations, two on the West Side, one on the North Side, and one on the South Side, were established. In June 1884, the Board agreed to pay Mr. Morris Rosenstock $18.00 per week to manage the delivery of materials to the four stations by horse-drawn carriage. Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
The Kadish Natatorium was a private venture. In the early 1900s, Chicago Park Commissions began building natatoria, facilities with showers, indoor swimming pools, and gyms, to provide public bathing and recreational opportunities to the city's increasingly crowded neighborhoods.
The Kadish Natatorium at Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard in Chicago.
By 1915, Mayor Carter H. Harrison II and the Special Park Commission had hit upon the idea of building natatoria adjacent to city pumping stations to take advantage of excess steam generated there. Three were eventually built, one being shown in the artist rendering above, the Central Park Avenue (Jackson) natatorium. Another was called the Roseland (later Griffith, in Block Park) and the Springfield Avenue natatorium, later named the Beilfuss Natatorium. At the Beilfuss Natatorium, competitions and swim meets were covered by the newspapers. There were indeed rings that could be lowered and trapezes, and often they were lowered and we'd take turns running and jumping and swinging on them, or missing and splashing which was great fun anyways. The place was always very hot and you could hear the pumping station moaning when you were under the water. There was one older man who worked there and he would line up all the kids who couldn't swim and give them lessons, which basically consisted of him pushing them in the shallow water while all of the "good swimmers" watched out for them and yelled encouragement at the opposite end of the pool. NOTE: Swimming was not a co-ed activity in the Victorian era (or before) because boys and men swam naked. The men in this illustration are wearing trunks. I believe that the artist added swimming trunks to the illustration so it could be used in the newspapers.
CHICAGO'S STATE STREET PARK, aka: "THE ROLLER COASTER"
Illustration of Patent № 298,710 "Roller Coasting Device" granted on May 13, 1884.
Alason Wood's invention was noticed and imitated by several other Toledo Ohio inventors and businessmen, like Philo M. Stevens who traveled to Chicago to build a circular railway with a slightly modified design. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported on September 30, 1883 that his 22-foot-high, 140-foot-diameter circular railway was under construction at a cost of $800 on a large vacant lot at the corner of State and 22nd Street in today's South Loop community. The reporter misspelled his name as Philo M. Stevenson.
The grounds used to be called "State Street Grounds" aka: "23rd Street Grounds" which was a baseball park. In it, the Chicago White Stockings played baseball from 1872 to 1877, the first two years in the National Association and then in the National League.
23rd Street Park - The First Home of the Chicago White Stockings.
The park grounds was on the block bounded by 22nd Street (now Cermak Road), State Street, 23rd Street, and Armour Avenue (now Federal Street). The design, according to the patent he applied for on October 16, 1883, was nearly identical to Wood's, but had a constant slope down, and a constant slope up. The car, which stopped at the end of the uphill grade, was held in place by an anti-rollback pawl. The two-car trains could accommodate 6-9 passengers seated sideways in each car, and Stevens offered three short 15-18 second rides for a nickel. The newspaper article claimed that Stevens had already built two coasters in Toledo, and would built one shortly in New Orleans. His patent #298,710 Roller Coasting Device was granted on May 13, 1884, and assigned to the Roller Coaster of America Company; thus where the generic name roller coaster originated.
ABOUT THE CIRCULAR RAILWAY Alason Wood was the first to be granted a patent for a circular railway with series of undulating drops after the lift hill. This was a radical departure from the lineage of switchback railway design, but considering that Wood was unfamiliar with those convoluted designs, his approach was novel in that it returned its passengers to near its starting point without the need of a separate return track. Wood was a dirt poor carpenter, but a born tinkerer, who after watching children slide down hills on their slide boards, was inspired to design a railroad whose cars could travel both up and down hills. He envisioned a ride that would thrill its passengers with speed, rather than take them for a slow scenic ride. His innovation was to bend the rails into a circle, allow the passenger car to roll down the incline from a height, and use the ride's final uphill incline as a brake on the car's momentum, thus eliminating the need for friction brakes to bring it to a final stop. By logically tying the two ends of his tracks together into a continuous elliptical loop, he returned passengers to their starting point without the inconvenience of awaiting a return train or the interruption of a mildly exciting ride. His wood-framed ride had a height of 23 feet, diameter of 150 feet, and a circumference of 475 feet. A platform 13 feet above ground, where passengers debarked, had a seating capacity of 200 for those awaiting their turn. Passengers walked up the stairs to the loading platform, while pairs of cars each seating six sideways on a long bench were winched up a nine-foot-high incline. It was a short exhilarating downhill ride over a series of undulating hills, only ten to twelve seconds from start to finish, but passengers could ride it three times for their nickel. Wood's patent was quite detailed in the various slopes of his ride. The cars gained speed down a 15% grade, a drop of just 6 feet over 48 feet of track, then only dropped two additional feet along the next 167 feet before reaching the next 15% down-grade along 64 feet of track, then finally down to the bottom, a two foot drop along 53 feet of track. The car's speed was arrested as it climbed a 15% grade of 9 feet over a 72 foot distance, and then glided into the unloading station along 22 feet of level track. Wood sold half his pending patent to Joseph A. Cahoon, a businessman in Toledo for $17,000 plus royalties. Cahoon saw its potential as an amusement ride, and since he could recover the ride's construction cost of $600 within a several weeks at most, he and several associates began construction, first in Toledo and possibly Cleveland in 1883. They then built in Ponce de Leon Springs in Georgia as reported by the Augusta Chronicle, and Coney Island, NY in June 1884, and at Philadelphia's Fairmont Park in July 1884. Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
