American Pharaoh (51 page)

The 1962 elections turned out fairly well for Daley. Yates did lose to Dirksen, in large part because of the drubbing he received
down-state, but the loss was of little consequence to the machine. Within Cook County, the Democrats swept all but one of
the major offices. On closer inspection, however, the returns contained some troubling signs for the machine. The Democratic
candidate for assessor won, but his margin of victory was less than half of what it had been in the 1958 Democratic landslide
four years earlier. The machine’s candidate for Cook County board president won by only 150,000, compared to 446,000 four
years earlier. Daley himself was up for reelection in six months, and this erosion of support for the machine was an indication
of the trouble Daley himself would encounter.
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Architectural Forum
devoted its entire May 1962 issue to the boom times in Chicago. The city had been transformed, the magazine declared, since
Daley took over. Most notably, “that most glamorous structure, the office building, is sprouting again, in the Loop and on
its fringes.” Technically speaking, the Loop revival began slightly before Daley became mayor. The Prudential Building, the
first new Loop skyscraper since the 1930s, opened in 1955, the year of Daley’s election, but ground had been broken for it
three years earlier. Still, there was no denying that the pace of downtown development had picked up considerably during the
Daley years. Since the Prudential went up, another 3 million square feet of office space had been built in the Loop. The Inland
Steel Building opened in 1957, part of a wave that would go on for decades, culminating in the Sears Tower, the world’s tallest
building, in 1974. With the new boom in downtown construction, the city’s downtown business district began to expand beyond
its traditional boundaries. On June 20, 1963, Daley presided over groundbreaking ceremonies for the $30 million, thirty-five-story
Equitable Life Assurance Society Building. The Equitable Building, located on the northern bank of the Chicago River, was
part of a northward migration of the business district that would in time turn North Michigan Avenue into an impressive array
of upscale office buildings and luxury stores. In 1965, Gateway Center I opened, marking an important step in the Loop’s drive
westward, onto the western bank of the curving Chicago River. And in the late 1960s, an underdeveloped eighty-three-acre parcel
east of Michigan Avenue was developed as the sprawling mixed-use Illinois Center, pushing the downtown business district eastward.
The hodgepodge of buildings, including the Mies van der Rohe steel-and-glass skyscrapers at One and Two Illinois Center, anchored
a previously underdeveloped area tucked between the Chicago River and the north end of Grant Park.
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In addition to the boom in office construction, the Loop also saw a dramatic increase in government buildings. Daley used
his influence with Washington to see that Chicago got more than its share of federal construction dollars. Starting in the
late 1950s, work began on a new complex of Mies van der Rohe federal buildings for the east Loop: the thirty-story Everett
McKinley Dirksen federal court building; the forty-two-story John C. Kluczynski Building; and a one-story U.S. Post Office,
Loop Station. These three buildings, all of which face a central plaza, form what is perhaps the most imposing federal complex
in any downtown outside Washington, D.C. Daley could also claim substantial credit for construction of Mc-Cormick Place, the
world’s largest exposition hall, which opened South of the Loop on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1960. Mc-Cormick Place,
named after the late
Chicago Tribune
publisher Colonel Robert McCormick, arose out of negotiations Daley had with Governor Stratton. They agreed on a bipartisan
bill, passed by the legislature in June 1957, to create a public authority that was authorized to issue bonds to finance its
construction. The location was controversial: some Chicagoans were troubled that it violated Burnham’s dictum that the lakefront
should remain “forever open, clear and free.” But from a commercial standpoint McCormick Place, with its 300,000 square feet
of exhibition space, was a great success, putting Chicago in a far better position than it had been to lure conventions and
trade shows.
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Along with the corporate and government construction, Daley’s plan for Loop construction emphasized using residential buildings
to redevelop the Loop. Downtown business leaders were eager to see new housing go up to attract upper-income — and, there
was no denying it, white — residents to the central business district. The business community believed that if pedestrian
traffic in the Loop became too black, a “tipping point” would be reached, and whites would cease to shop there. “I’ll tell
you what’s wrong with the Loop,” developer Arthur Rubloff told the
Chicago Daily News
. “It’s people’s conception of it. And the conception they have about it is one word — black. B-L-A-C-K. Black. We have a
racial problem we haven’t been able to solve. The ghetto areas have nothing but rotten slum buildings, nothing at all, and
businessmen are afraid to move in, so the blacks come downtown for stores and restaurants.” The Central Area Committee saw
luxury apartment buildings as the solution. It was an idea as old as the 1958 plan, and by the early 1960s it finally started
coming to pass. The most dramatic example was the $36 million Marina City, twin sixty-story corncob-shaped residential and
office towers. Marina City was an upscale world on the banks of the Chicago River, with restaurants, built-in parking lots,
movie theaters, a health club, and its own 700-boat marina. The complex’s 900 apartments, an immediate hit with the public,
were fully rented before the buildings opened in 1965. As it happened, Marina City was put together by two men who were extremely
close to Daley: janitors union president William McFetridge and CHA board chairman Charles Swibel. Swibel managed to obtain
an option on the riverfront property at well below market value, and McFetridge pulled together money from the Janitors International
Union and several locals to underwrite initial work on the project. Swibel then made the rounds of Chicago and New York banks
to put together the rest of the financing. Swibel ended up doing very well as a result of his role in Marina City. His management
company was awarded a lucrative contract to run the complex. And later, when the buildings’ apartments were converted to condominiums,
Swibel would make more than $6 million by legally buying up apartments at insider prices and flipping them.
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In transforming a dying downtown into one of the nation’s most dynamic, Daley benefited from fortunate timing. “It was the
best of times for being mayor,” notes Continental Bank president John Perkins, who worked with Daley on downtown development.
“I don’t mean to debunk the mayor or anything, [but] postwar prosperity was really starting to move Chicago.” Still, Daley
should get credit for a good part of the turnaround. His 1958 plan laid the groundwork for many of the downtown improvements
that followed. And Daley made things easier for projects that fit in with his plans for downtown. Developers’ first step was
often to meet with a department head like Lewis Hill, Daley’s commissioner of urban renewal. “If you got a good reception
Hill would probably say, ‘Let me talk to the mayor about it,’” says Daley aide Edward Marciniak. “Then there might be a meeting
with the mayor. The mayor liked this because his job was not to say no, but to say yes.” Once the mayor was on a developer’s
side, says mayoral aide Tom Donovan, he “could move through the bureaucracy.” Projects with Daley’s approval proceeded on
a special track. Daley waived zoning requirements, extended water and sewer lines, and built and closed streets in order to
see that buildings he wanted were built. Daley’s critics conceded that much good was being done downtown, but they were concerned
that Loop development was being overemphasized. “You have to say that a cardinal point of his policy, perhaps
the
cardinal point, has been the subsidy and encouragement of the central area — the Loop and the Near North Side,” said Independent
alderman Leon Despres. “They have been nourished, caressed, assisted, encouraged and dealt with in every way to produce the
maximum development.” City Hall was not doing anything for Chicago’s declining residential neighborhoods, which also needed
help to stave off decline. The problem, critics said, was that Daley answered only to power: the Central Area Committee had
it, and the residents of poor and working-class neighborhoods did not.
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Even before Daley announced for reelection in 1963, major endorsements started to pour in. Chicago’s business community was
not only backing Daley, it was lobbying him to make sure he would run for a third term. Fairfax Cone of the advertising firm
Foote, Cone & Belding, who had been a mainstay of Daley’s previous nonpartisan business committees, announced that he would
organize another Non-Partisan Committee to Re-Elect Mayor Daley. Within days, a long list of business leaders, including many
of the same ones who backed him in 1959, had publicly come out for Daley. At the same time, organized labor remained firmly
in Daley’s camp. On December 4, 1962, the Chicago Federation of Labor once again backed Daley, in a resolution introduced
by Daley’s friend and civil service commissioner, William Lee. As these influential forces lined up behind Daley, he professed
to be uncertain about whether to seek reelection. “Running for a third term is something you don’t make your mind up about
overnight,” he said. Daley’s indecision did not last long. On December 14, 1962, he finally made his intentions known to a
closed meeting of Democratic ward committeemen, who gave him their unanimous support.
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The campaign started out on a sour note for Daley. Even before the Republicans had a candidate, they had their first issue.
Charges about the machine’s links to the syndicate, which had plagued Daley since his first race for mayor, resurfaced just
days after his announcement. John D’Arco, the 1st Ward alderman, was stepping down in favor of state senator Anthony De Tolve.
The word on the street was that syndicate boss Sam Giancana had personally ordered the change after meeting with his fellow
mobsters in a Loop hotel. “I’m shocked at the arrogance of the Syndicate in attempting to move their man into the city council,”
Republican alderman John Hoellen declared. “Doesn’t Mayor Daley have courage enough to run the Syndicate out of Chicago ...?
What unseen power holds the mayor back?” Daley challenged the accusers to come up with more support for their allegations.
“Is there any proof or evidence of this?” Daley asked. “Is relationship with anyone the basis for condemnation?” At the same
time, he said there was nothing he could do about what was occurring in the 1st Ward. “I do not interfere with any campaign
for alderman in any ward,” Daley said. “I have been told by Mrs. D’Arco that he has refused to run because of his health.”
His defense was patently false, of course, since he had frequently forced out officeholders who crossed him or threatened
his power.
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Things only got worse for Daley when the Republicans settled on their candidate, his old antagonist Benjamin Adamowski. Adamowski
was a proven vote-getter, who had carried Chicago when he was elected state’s attorney in 1956. He had narrowly lost his position
in 1960, but he still attributed that defeat to the vote theft by the machine. As a Polish-American, Adamowski also began
with a built-in base among the city’s 600,000-strong Polish community, a critical part of the machine’s white ethnic base.
Most important, Adamowski was smart and articulate, and his past investigations — including the Traffic Court and Summerdale
police scandals — had done real damage to the machine’s reputation. During the election, Adamowski would have fresh scandals
to exploit. The Sanitary District was being buffeted by charges of kickbacks, bribes, and fraudulent civil-service examination
results. And reminiscent of Summerdale, the Chicago Fire Department was being accused of looting fire victims’ homes. A fire
victim named John Nesbitt, who worked as a public information director for the National Safety Council, charged that his home
and another in his building had been robbed by a fireman who responded to a fire call. Daley responded that Nesbitt was on
a witch-hunt, and he demanded that he take a lie detector test.
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Adamowski was also fortunate to be running at a time when the voters were unhappy with the city’s high spending, as they
had demonstrated by voting down Daley’s $66 million in bonds a year earlier. He made clear from the outset that he would challenge
Daley on taxes and question how much of the money raised was going to machine patronage and waste. “We’ll talk about his record
— and the cost of it all to the taxpayers,” Adamowski promised. “I think the big issue is the size of the tax bills.”
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