Dec 14, 2002
In 1882 a visitor in his late twenties stood with his head tilted back, near the northwest corner of Chicago's Grant Park, and surveyed the narrow structure thrusting skyward. A bemused sneer crept into his voice (it hadn't usually too far to travel) and he proclaimed it a "castellated monstrosity with pepper boxes stuck all over it." Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wilde had rendered his judgment. Perhaps the Irish visitor, author of the children's classic The Selfish Giant, might have found the structure of greater interest had he know of its reputed ghost. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Chicago had been jacked up out of the mud. Much of the fill used was gained by deepening the Chicago River, thus distancing citizens even further from the muck. Engineer Ellis Chesbrough had managed to make the drains empty properly, but the problem of waste disposal still remained. The city's water commissioners went for the cheapest solution (surprise, surprise) - just dump the raw sewage into the river. Much cheaper than dumping it into the lake, digging a sewage canal to flow the sludge to the Illinois River, or even, what sounds more like a 20th Century "green" plan, to pump it into reservoirs and turn it into manure. So off the odoriferous mess went, into Lake Michigan. Except for the portion that the city drew off of to provide its drinking water. And for making ice when the stockyards came along later on and added to the melange.
River water stank and could kill you, but off where the sun rose every morning was this huge lake. If you could get out past the floating slop hugging the shore you could find all the clean water you needed. In March of 1864, despite all those who said he couldn't pull it off, Chesbrough set out to bring potable (if not pure) water to thirsty citizens (nearly 110,000 of them in 1860). The first task was to build and sink a "crib" of iron and timber, two miles from shore, containing an iron cylinder that would be sunk 33 feet to the lake bottom and bore through another 31 feet into the lake bed. The upper portion was filled with stone ballast. Then other gangs of laborers and mules began tunneling toward the city, beneath the lake bed's surface. When they had finished Chicago had a two-mile long iron soda straw, five feet in diameter, lying on its side beneath its lake bed, one end at the crib out in the lake, the other end near Grant Park.
The final step was to build a pumphouse at the park end. Architect William W. Boyington designed a mock-Gothic structure to be built out of Joliet limestone. When completed it was topped by the 154-foot stone tower that so bemused Mr. Wilde. It contained a three-foot diameter iron pipe which, when partially filled with water, would act as a governor, modulating the water flow into the pumping station. Completed in 1869, Wilde's "monstrosity" and the building at its foot would be the only structures standing two years later when the O'Leary family stable - it i said - launched the Great Chicago Fire. Which brings us to our ghost.
Based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, the legend has it that one municipal employee stayed behind when everyone else fled the lethal heat. In the manner of Nellie Swinging From the Bell and Casey at the Throttle, this anonymous hero kept the pumps running until the last minute, for firemen that had already lost their battle, then did the only thing possible and hanged himself before the flames reached him. A number of tourists down through the years swear they've seen a hanging figure through an upper window. Guess you'll have to go and look for yourself.
Script 295
© 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte
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