Showing posts with label Robert McCormick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert McCormick. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Ballpark Bricks Placed on Chicago's Tribune Tower-- Part 4: Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field

There are now pieces of the destroyed World Trade Center and Sydney Opera House.

The placement of the ballpark bricks coincides with the Cubs-White Sox "Crosstown Classic" series.  This is the big baseball event in Chicago since neither team usually gets to the playoffs or World Series.  The Cubs took two of three at Comiskey Park this past weekend and the final tally for all six games (three were previously played at Wrigley Field) is 3-3.

It is so much better than the "Crosstown Series" before interleague play began when minor league players were brought up, now we get to see the regulars playing.

"Fittingly, given the locations of Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park (which was replaced in 1991 by what is now called U.S. Cellular Field), the Wrigley brick will go on the north side of the arched entrance to Tribune Tower and the old Comiskey brick will occupy the south side."  I quoted this as I do not use the new Comiskey Park name.  It is still Comiskey Park to me and always will be.

It is said the space between will keep the fans of the two teams apart.  Of interest, both parks were designed by the same architect, Zachary Taylor Davis.

I'll touch the Comiskey brick.  I won't say what I'll do with the Wrigley one.

Da Sox All da Time.  --DaSoxCoot


Ballpark Bricks Placed on Chicago's Tribune Tower-- Part 3: Get It However You Must

Some reporters were taken aback by the directive, but best that you not cross the boss, Robert McCormick.  A Paris correspondent in France went to Rouen to get a piece of the Gothic Cathedral which served as a model for the Tribune Tower.only to find the local paper had gotten word and banner headline said that he was there to steal it.  Tribune records show he obtained it legally.

But, there was plenty cloak-and-dagger items.  A Finnish diplomat smuggled Kremlin bricks out of Moscow

In 1946, Tribune reporters started gathering fragments from every state.  A Tribune staffer asked a Nebraska newspaper editor to have someone knock a piece off famed pioneer Chimney Rock as "large as your two fists."

Robert McCormick died 60 years ago, but the collection continues to grow, but considerably slower.

A Piece of My House?  --Cooter

Monday, August 17, 2015

Ballpark Bricks Placed on Chicago's Tribune Tower-- Part 2: Six Inches Square

Some other famous stones are from the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the Alamo.  There are stones from all 50 states.

Then, Blair Kamin goes on to explain how the Tribune got the stones.  There are those that raise eyebrows as to whether they were obtained legally.

Robert R. McCormick stood 6-foot, 4-inches and joined the Army where he earned the title "The Colonel" in World War I.  One of his idiosyncrasies was to order his correspondents to combine reporting and rock collection.  But, his reporters had to come by the rocks "by honorable means."

In 1923, a year after a great architecture competition took place that led to the Tribune Tower.  Apparently, McCormick was considering what to put on the outside walls.  he sent a memo to his people, instructing: "If you can get stones about six inches square from such buildings as the Law Courts of Dublin, the Parthenon of Athens, St. Sophia Cathedral, or any other famous cathedral or palace or ruin-- perhaps a piece of one of the pyramids-- send them in."

--DaCoot