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
Judge Richard LeFevour was sentenced to twelve years in prison for his role in the Greylord scandal, which revealed corruption within Cook County’s court system. He was convicted of taking thousands of dollars in bribes to fix traffic cases. Photo: Frank Hanes/Chicago Tribune August 5, 1983 The FBI probe into corruption in the Cook County … Read more
Photo: Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune October 26, 2005 Some saw the team’s 88-year world-championship hiatus as divine punishment for 1919, when Sox players threw the World Series. When the South Siders finally claimed the crown with a four-game sweep of the Astros, long-suffering fans ecstatically sang “Na Na Hey Hey.” “The Sox have been the stepchild … Read more
Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune August 25, 1976 Conceived half a century ago and not scheduled for completion until 2029, it’s one of the biggest civil engineering projects ever undertaken. Engineers called this superhighway of sewers and reservoirs a “storm bottle,” designed to solve one of the most intractable problems of our low-lying waterfront city: street … Read more
Photo: Library of Congress September 4, 1975 Filmed inside a WTTW studio, the local monthly show Opening Soon at a Theater Near You — which later morphed into Sneak Previews and then At the Movies — would make two Chicago newspapermen into the nation’s most recognizable film critics. Their weird chemistry, at turns chummy and openly acrimonious, was “not … Read more
Photo: Frank Hanes/Chicago Tribune August 8, 1988 “We believe that baseball is a day time sport and will continue to play it in the sunshine as long as we can,” owner Philip K. Wrigley declared in 1945. His team held out another 43 years, making his namesake park the last in the major league to … Read more
