DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED
AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1986

HEARINGS

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

NINETY-NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION

D. NEAL SIGMON, Kathleen R. JOHNSON, JOCELYN HUNN, and ROBERT S. KRIPOWICZ,

FREDERICK G. MOHRMAN, Clerk and Staff Director

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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1986

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1985.

CHICAGO'S NAVY PIER

CITY OF CHICAGO WITNESSES

HON. HAROLD WASHINGTON, MAYOR OF CHICAGO

ROBERT NEWMAN, CHAIRMAN, MAYOR'S TASK FORCE ON NAVY PIER
HON. JOHN MERLO, FORMER STATE SENATOR OF ILLINOIS

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE WITNESSES

CHARLES ODEGAARD, MIDWEST REGIONAL DIRECTOR

ROBERT MCINTOSH, SUPERINTENDENT, GATEWAY NATIONAL RECREATION AREA OF NEW YORK

BRIAN O'NEILL, GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL RECREATION AREA IN CALIFORNIA

MICHAEL GORDON, ASSISTANT REGIONAL DIRECTOR FOR RECREATIONAL PROGRAMS IN PHILADELPHIA

CHRYSANDRA WALTER, SUPERINTENDENT, LOWELL NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK

COMMUNITY WITNESSES

JOHN DAVID MOONEY, ARTIST AND URBAN PLANNER

SHIRLEY MADIGAN, ILLINOIS ARTS COUNCIL

MARILYN D. CLANCY, MEMBER OF MAYOR'S TASK FORCE ON NAVY PIER MARY DECKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, METROPOLITAN PLANNING COUNCIL

JOHN VINCI, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS

JOHN A. HOLABIRD, JR., F.A.I.A., PARTNER, HOLABIRD AND ROOT, ARCHITECTS

WALTER NETSCH, F.A.I.A.

HOWARD MCKEE, ASSOCIATE PARTNER, SKIDMORE, OWINGS AND MER-
RILL

KEVIN SARRING, MEMBER MAYOR'S TASK FORCE ON NAVY PIER
JOHN D. WILSON, PRESIDENT, THE LAKESIDE GROUP

STANLEY TIGERMAN, DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF ARCHITECT, UNIVERSITY
OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO

Mr. YATES. This is a hearing by the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of the Interior and Related Agencies of the House of Representatives, convening to assist the National Park Service in carrying out the mandate of Congress to prepare a study of the feasibility of establishing a Navy Pier as a national cultural and recreational center. Congress approved $250,000 for the purpose.

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The Navy Pier is a unique structure. In his article, "Chicago's Pier" which was published in the Spring of 1976 by the Chicago Historical Society, Bernard Kogan writes, and he says this:

"In 1923, at the end of his second consecutive term as mayor of Chicago, William Hale Thompson "Big Bill the Builder" published "Eight Years of Progress," a brochure which loudly proclaimed the completion and administration of the Municipal Pier, a steel, concrete and glass structure extending more than three thousand feet into Lake Michigan from the foot of Grand Avenue."

Mayor Thompson's booklet extravagantly tagged the pier, “a modern Sans Souci-a veritable palace without a care-where fresh air, sunshine, free concerts and entertainments under ideal conditions were gratuitously dispensed." How it eventually housed a navy training center and then a university known to its students as "Harvard on the Rocks," all these matters belong to the story of an authentic bit of Chicagoana, a landmark almost as well known as the Water Tower.

And Mr. Kogan continued by saying, "The Pier's golden age extended roughly from 1918 to 1930, and during the summer seasons, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the recreation pier was open from 8:00 a.m. in the morning until midnight. The Drama League and the Junior Drama League presented plays and pageants in the Concert Hall [or Auditorium] where our friend, Mayor Washington, was sworn in two years ago. The two names were used interchangeably. Concerts of serious, popular, and military band music were given, .

"A small children's playground was equipped with slides, teetertotters, and sand boxes. And for the entire family, there was a merry go-round, a Ferris wheel, a 'whip', penny arcades, weightguessers, photographers.'

Most memorable of all were the small launches which carried passengers from the docks at the east end to Lincoln and Jackson parks. The fares were 25 cents one way, 35 cents for the round trip.

The Roof Garden moved Mayor Thompson's publicity staff to lyric prose, and he said, "From this point, a truly Venetian scene presents itself as the rays of the sun lose themselves in a gorgeous sunset over the boats and piers in the distance. It is a fine place to go if you wish to forget your cares and worries and look at the brighter side of things.'

That was the Pier when it was first begun. And then-Mr. Kogan's article may go into the record, at this point. [Article by Mr. Kogan follows:]

In 1923, at the end of his second consecutive term as mayor of Chicago, William Hale "Big Bill the Builder" Thompson published Eight Years of Progress, a brochure which loudly proclaimed the completion and administration of Municipal Pier, a steel, concrete, and glass structrue extending more than three thousand feet into Lake Michigan from the foot of Grand Avenue. How what we now call Navy Pier

1 Bernard R. Kogan is professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and the brother of Herman Kogan.

came to be built in the first place; how it played its part in two world wars; how it almost became what Mayor Thompson's booklet extravagantly tagged it: "a modern Sans Souci-a veritable 'palace without a care'-where fresh air, sunshine, free concerts and entertainments under ideal conditions were gratuitously dispensed"; how it eventually housed a navy training center and then a university known to its students as "Harvard on the Rocks"-all these matters belong to the story of an authentic bit of Chicagoana, a landmark almost as well known as the Water Tower. The idea of enlarging Chicago's harbors and building municipal piers goes back at least to Major Fred Busse's term in the early 1900s, but nothing much resulted from the early plans. On February 7, 1912, Mayor Carter H. Harrison II's Harbor and Subway Commission submitted a detailed proposal for the improvement of Harbor District No. 1, which included the area near the mouth of the Chicago River. The plan was passed by the City Council, and Chicagoans approved a $5,000,000 bond issue for financing "initial harbor developments." After a few wrangles over the federal government's role in improving breakwaters designed to protect the projected piers, construction of "Outer Harbor Municipal Pier No. 2"-as Navy Pier was first known-began. The first of twenty thousand Oregon timber pilings was sunk into the lake floor in April 1914, and building operations were virtually completed when the Pier opened to the public on June 25, 1916.

Of five piers originally proposed, only one was built, at a cost of $4,500,000-by no means a piddling sum in 1916. The hypothetical Pier No. 1 would have been 2,500 feet long and located just south of Pier No. 2. Three other structures, of the same length, would have been spaced out north of Pier No. 2 extending to Chicago Avenue.

Pier No. 2 was planned for freight and passengers, as well as for summer recreation. The over-all purpose of the system of piers was, in the words of the builders, "not merely to restore Chicago's prestige as the chief terminal for water-borne traffic on the upper lakes, but... ultimately to fulfill its manifest destiny as the greatest inland seaport in the world." Another purpose was to divert water traffic from the Chicago River and thus eliminate costly and time-consuming raising and lowering of the river bridges.

The completed Pier consisted of the Head House at the west end; twin doubledecked Freight and Passenger buildings, each 100 feet wide, running 2,340 feet eastward from the Head House and separated by an 80-foot roadway; and a recreation pier, 660 feet long, at the extreme east end. The recreation area included a Terminal Building, a 3,500 seat Concert Hall, and a Shelter Building which linked the two. The Pier as a whole was 3,040 feet long and 292 feet wide.

The three-story Terminal Building contained a cafeteria, concession stands, an emergency hospital, and rest rooms. The Shelter Building, an open pavilion equipped with tables and chairs and providing convenient refuge from heat and rain, had two decks and a roof garden. On either side of the Concert Hall was a 165foot observation tower. The lower decks of the north and south transverse buildings were designed for freight handling, and the upper decks for passengers. The Grand Avenue streetcar proceeded up a ramp into an opening in the Head House and then in a loop around the inner court of the Pier at the level of the passenger deck. Excursionists could alight at particular spots along the five-eighth of a mile route where their ships were docked.

In 1916, the Pier was the largest structure of its kind in the world, a distinction it no longer holds. The 1975 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records identifies Southend Pier in Essex, England, as the world's longest "pleasure pier." Completed in 1929, it is 1.33 miles in length. The longest pier of any kind is the Damman Pier in El Hasa, Saudi Arabia, on the Persian Gulf. This 6.79-mile structure, completed in 1950, consists of a main pier, a steel trestle pier, and a rock-filled causeway.

Chicago's Navy Pier inevitably invites comparison with the famed piers of Atlantic City, New Jersey, designed exclusively for recreation. Steel Pier, the longest of these, is more than 500 feet shorter than Navy Pier. The Million Dollar Pier is next in size; 1,700 feet. Central Pier, once the longest, at 2,700 feet, has been damaged by fires and is now only one-third its original length. Steeplechase Pier, known for its amusement rides, is 1,500 feet long.

Navy Pier assumed its characteristic features by the end of World War I. Some freight and passenger service began operating early: the Northern Michigan steamship line ran excursion boats to lake ports in Michigan even before the Pier's formal opening. Some shipping continued during the war, and the public was admitted for the usual recreational fare as well as for patriotic plays, assemblies, and concerts. The Pier also housed several regiments of soldiers and a United States Naval Auxiliary Reserve school with an enrollment of 2,100, as well as Red Cross and "home defense" units.