Tribune Tower Tower Tribune
Tribune Tower, completed in 1925 on the north side of the Michigan Avenue bridge, reflects the desire of then-Tribune President, Col. Robert R. McCormick, that the newspaper be seen as important internationally. It is the product of an international design competition to create nothing less than “the most beautiful office building in the world,” according to the Chicago Architecture Center website (www.architecture.org). The Tribune announced the competition on its 75th anniversary in 1922, with $100,000 in prize money, including $50,000 to the winner. One of the largest and most important architectural competitions in American history, it drew 260 entries from 23 nations. Although some architects conjured artful designs ranging from a Doric column to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, winners Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells of New York delivered a design that filled the space with the maximum rentable office space. Their Gothic Revival design combined a lower office block contemporary to the period while the building’s crown imitated the Butter Tower of the 13th century medieval Rouen Cathedral in France. In what amounts to “a cathedral for journalism,” the building’s façade incorporates fragments from some of the world’s most historically important buildings (the Great Pyramid at Giza, Westminster Abbey, the Taj Mahal and more), brought home by the Tribune’s foreign correspondents at Col. McCormick’s request. The lobby features famous quotations on freedom of the press from Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Wrigley sponsored two other improvements to the river intersection: the Bedford stone commemorative sculptures on the bridge tenders’ houses on the north side of the river. James Earle Fraser’s “The Discoverers” depicts Father Jacques Marquette and explorer Louis Jolliet, the first Europeans to travel the Chicago River, as well as the Native Americans of the region; Fraser’s “The Pioneers” shows Chicago settlers. On the southern bridge tenders’ houses, the Ferguson Fund, established to provide public sculpture, paid for Henry Hering’s depictions of the rebuilding after the Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Battle of Fort Dearborn, which had been located at that spot. Wrigley was also a sportsman, who used bowling and semi-professional baseball to advertise his chewing gum. As an offshoot, he invested in the Chicago Cubs in 1916 and became majority stockholder four years later. In 1917, he was appointed to the Lincoln Park Commission in charge of Oak Street Beach, at the north end of what would become Michigan Avenue and the “Magnificent Mile.” Lincoln Park began in 1860 as a portion of the city cemetery designated as parkland: from what is now North Avenue to Diversey Parkway, with a provision to extend Lake Shore Drive south to Oak Street, according to the Chicago Park District website. In 1870, in response to storms and erosion, the commission had built a breakwater of pilings, stone and brush between Oak Street and North Avenue. However, this breakwater inadequately protected Lake Shore Drive, which had opened in 1875, so the Army Corps of Engineers built a breakwall between Fullerton and North Avenues in the late 1880s. Meanwhile, shoreline owners south of Lincoln Park asked the commission to extend Lake Shore Drive south from Oak Street to Ohio Street and they gave up their riparian, or shoreline land-use rights, to help pay for the landfill extension. The 1890s project included a 50-foot wide roadway, stone sidewalks, bicycle path, bridle path and a small sand beach at Oak Street. In 1899, the completion of the Chicago Drainage Canal meant that sewage was no longer dumped into Lake Michigan, which made it more attractive for swimmers. (The Chicago Drainage Canal, later renamed the Sanitary & Ship Canal, replaced the Illinois & Michigan Canal, see bridge story page 9). Oak Street Beach had become popular by 1910, despite its small size. Surrounding mansion owners complained about the large numbers of bathers and the Lincoln Park Com-
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