Photo: Ed Wagner/Chicago Tribune January 26, 1986 Ditka, the Fridge, the Punky QB, Sweetness — their personalities were so big that they seemed lifted from a screenplay. Overnight, Da Bears became a cultural touchstone; they even had their own hit record. As for their bragging-rights-forever dominance on the field — a marauding 15–1 season culminating in a 46–10 blowout … Read more
Photo: Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune March 20, 2020 After revelers packed Wrigleyville bars on the Saturday before St. Patrick’s Day, the governor intoned, “This is not a joke.” Five days later, as Illinois COVID-19 cases neared 600, he drove the point home, becoming the second governor in the nation to order residents to shelter in place … Read more
Photo: Anne Cusack/Chicago Tribune April 12, 1983 “When I woke up the next morning, it seemed like the most beautiful day of my life.” Such was the post–Election Day sentiment of a South Side barber named Smitty, quoted in Dreams From My Father, the book by a certain future president who’d cited Washington’s historic victory … Read more
Photo: Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune May 25, 2010 Viewed from the street, the undulating white floor plates protruding here and there from the plane of the building’s glass façade create an effect so unexpected that you have to blink and look twice. The curvaceous patterns have been likened to pools or puddles, and the trick helped … Read more
Photo: Chicago Tribune July 30, 1971 For more than a century, the yards were the reeking, roiling heart of working Chicago, employing tens of thousands of packers and slaughterhouse workers. By 1924, the 475-acre site and its related packinghouses processed more meat than any other place in the world. “The closing of the stockyards was … Read more
Photo: PBS January 31, 1984 Today Steppenwolf is shorthand for Chicago’s dynamic, world-class theater scene, a talent incubator on a national scale. But it was hardly a household name when PBS viewers tuned in to American Playhouse on a Tuesday night to watch John Malkovich and Gary Sinise circle each other, fangs bared, in Sam … Read more
Photo: Armando Villa/Chicago Tribune October 4–6, 1979 More than 750,000 people lined his motorcade’s route from O’Hare, and a huge crowd came to Grant Park the next day for his outdoor Mass. For greater Chicago’s 2.4 million Catholics — and even more so for its 500,000 residents of Polish descent — the Poland-born pope’s visit felt like a homecoming, … Read more
Photo: Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune December 4, 2008 Rushed through the City Council with virtually no debate or public scrutiny, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s deal leased Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters to private investors for 75 years. The city got a one-time sugar rush of $1.2 billion, but the investors made back that money in 10 years, … Read more
Photo: John Irvine/Chicago Tribune April 3, 1979 “Nobody saw me coming. I was like a joke,” Byrne remembered years later in a Tribune interview. The former consumer sales commissioner beat the machine-backed Michael Bilandic by attracting a curious coalition of disgruntled Republicans and progressives, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, then won the general election with 82 … Read more
Photo: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune March 30, 2011 Cut off from the amenities of surrounding neighborhoods, its public spaces defaced and plagued by gang activity, the Cabrini high-rise complex had become the reigning symbol of a failed experiment in urban planning and a yearslong push by Richard J. Daley to contain and confine Black communities. When … Read more
