Court House

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Courthouse Square; Louis Kurz for Jevne & Almini, Lithograph, 1866-67 (ichi-62080)

Courthouse Square; Louis Kurz for Jevne & Almini, Lithograph, 1866-67 (ichi-62080)

Chicagoans built their first court house (the two words are sometimes either hyphenated or combined into one word) in 1835 at the southwest corner of Clark and Randolph streets.  They replaced it in 1848 with a second court house, located at the northwest corner of Clark and Washington.  Like the first, this building was one story atop a basement that was built above ground.  Municipal and county affairs were also conducted in other nearby buildings.

Pictured here is the city’s first combined Court House and City Hall, originally constructed in 1853.  The view is from the northwest corner of LaSalle and Randolph Streets.  Just south of the Court House, on the southeast corner of LaSalle and Washington streets, is the Chamber of Commerce. 

The Court House occupied, as the Chicago City Hall and Cook County Building do now, the entire downtown block formed by Randolph, Clark, Washington, and LaSalle streets, though its footprint was small enough to allow the block to include a good deal of landscaping, which gave what was called Court House Square the appearance of a park.  

The designer of the 1853 structure was John M. Van Osdel, who also built the previous court house.  Van Osdel was born in Baltimore in 1811 and moved to Chicago in 1836 at the behest of the enterprising William Ogden, who became the first mayor the following year, when Chicago was incorporated as a city. Van Osdel and William W. Boyington, who arrived in 1853, were the leading pre-fire architects of both commercial enterprises and private homes.

Never an aesthetic triumph, this building grew clumsily along with Chicago.  It was originally two stories and an above-ground basement.  With the raising of the surrounding grade in the mid-1850s, the city added five feet of fill to Court House Square, partly burying the basement.  It soon added a third floor and the cupola, with a spiral staircase leading to an observatory balcony 120 feet high, which served as a fire watchman’s walk.

Note the street car.  According to the 1871 city directory, at the time of the fire the West Division railway ran its cars east and west along Randolph at five-minute intervals between State Street and both Robey Street (now Damen Avenue) and the city limits, which were at what is now Pulaski Avenue.

 

 

The Court House Shortly Before the Fire; Lovejoy & Foster, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-64281)

The Court House Shortly Before the Fire; Lovejoy & Foster, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-64281)

By the time of the fire the Court House had also added east and west wings, a brand-new clock, and a 10,849-pound bronze bell that for over five hours would ring out the alarm until it fell through the collapsing building.  It housed virtually all city and country offices, from the jail in its basement to the mayor’s quarters, the debtors’ prison, the city council, the board of public works, and the courtrooms on the upper floors.

The Court House after the Fire; Lovejoy & Foster, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-64282)

The Court House after the Fire; Lovejoy & Foster, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-64282)

The proud building in ruins.

Ruins of the Court House after the Fire of 1871; Jex Bardwell, Photograph, 1871 (ichi-38923)

Ruins of the Court House after the Fire of 1871; Jex Bardwell, Photograph, 1871 (ichi-38923)

The vertical wall fragment on the left, the pile of rubble in front, and the damage to the photograph itself all emphasize the extent of the devastation.  Note that the finials on top of the building have survived largely intact.  Several of these were salvaged, and one, now located just inside Lincoln Park north of Armitage, is another Landmark in this collection.

View of the Courthouse Bell after the Fire; Shaw Photographer, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-64280)

View of the Courthouse Bell after the Fire; Shaw Photographer, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-64280)

The odd pose of the figures in the image, including a policeman (zoom to see his badge), who seem to have little to do with each other, contributes to the disconcerting quality of this image.  The bell rang out the general alarm until it fell through the collapsing building and lodged in what had been the basement.

Among the Ruins in Chicago: Court House Seen Through Ruins of East Side of Clark Street; G. N. Barnard, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-21546)

Among the Ruins in Chicago: Court House Seen Through Ruins of East Side of Clark Street; G. N. Barnard, Stereograph, 1871 (ichi-21546)

It did not take long for photographers to move from simply recording what had happened to aestheticizing the scene of destruction in carefully framed images like this.

West Entrance to the Court House after the Fire; Copelin & Hine, Photograph, 1871 (ichi-02384)

West Entrance to the Court House after the Fire; Copelin & Hine, Photograph, 1871 (ichi-02384)

A man stands amidst the rubble outside the remains of the LaSalle Street entrance on the City Hall side of the Court House.  Note the Relief and Aid Society broadside attached to the wall of what remains of the building.  Its text can be read by zooming the image.

Chicago City Hall and Cook County Courthouse; Barnes-Crosby, Photograph, ca. 1906

Chicago City Hall and Cook County Courthouse; Barnes-Crosby, Photograph, ca. 1906

 

After the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the Court House, the city administration established temporary quarters for a brief time in the First Congregational Church at Washington Street and Ann (now Racine) streets in the West Division before moving in 1872 to a building erected at the southeast corner of LaSalle and Adams street.  It would occupy these “temporary” quarters until 1885, when the monumental new City Hall and Cook County Courthouse seen here was completed in the same block as the one that had fallen before the flames.

The city and county sponsored an architectural competition in the early 1870s that attracted forty-nine entries.  Architectural historian Daniel Bluestone observes that most were contemporary variations on classical styles intended to “evoke permanence, success, a flourishing civilized life, a proper use for accumulated commercial wealth, and a confidence in the future.”  The Chicago City Council overruled its own building committee, Bluestone explains, in favor of architect J. J. Egan’s massive Second Empire design, which was overloaded with architectural detail and adorned with allegorical statuary.  When it was finally completed more than a decade later, this version of the Court House was more of a monument to the Gilded Age corruption and an uncertain economy than to the lofty values it was supposed to proclaim.  As the 1893 Rand, McNally Bird’s-Eye Views and Guide to Chicago commented, “Many political scandals and some litigation attended its construction.”

The building filled the entire block, eliminating the park-like setting that surrounded its predecessor.  It was for several years the home of the Chicago Public Library until that institution moved in 1897 to its own first permanent building, now the Chicago Cultural Center, a few blocks directly to the east on Michigan Avenue.   

Laying the Cornerstone of the New Cook County Courthouse and City Hall, September 21st, 1906--Vice President Fairbanks Leading the Parade; Barnes-Crosby, Photograph (ichi-19264)

Laying the Cornerstone of the New Cook County Courthouse and City Hall, September 21st, 1906--Vice President Fairbanks Leading the Parade; Barnes-Crosby, Photograph (ichi-19264)

This parade was part of the ceremonies attending the start of construction of the current City Hall and Cook County Building, which was completed in 1911.  Charles W. Fairbanks, formerly United States Senator from Indiana, served as Vice President under Theodore Roosevelt.