Remembrance of things past?/ Remember Kodak and Polaroid?/ Remember the Walkman?/ Remember Phone Booths and the Rotary Phone?/Remember the VCR?/BOB ANGONEon September 18, 2020 at 2:21 pm

JUST SAYIN

Remembrance of things past?/ Remember Kodak and Polaroid?/ Remember the Walkman?/ Remember Phone Booths and the Rotary Phone?/Remember the VCR?/

Remembrance of things past?/ Remember Kodak and Polaroid?/ Remember the Walkman?/ Remember Phone Booths and the Rotary Phone?/Remember the VCR?/BOB ANGONEon September 18, 2020 at 2:21 pm Read More »

City knew of youth baseball field contamination a year ago but didn’t tell residentsBrett Chaseon September 18, 2020 at 12:01 am

City officials detected high levels of the brain-damaging metal manganese in the dirt of a Southeast Side youth baseball field a year ago but didn’t tell league organizers or families of players.

Instead, the city shared its findings with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which this summer confirmed the city’s early soil testing results that high levels of manganese are present in dirt on a section of Babe Ruth Field in Hegewisch. The manganese levels are high enough the contaminated soil needs to be removed, the EPA says.

The city deferred to EPA, asking the agency to do further testing and notify youth league officials. Saying they “followed standard protocol,” city health officials referred the matter to EPA earlier this year “to ensure the field was appropriately characterized before notifying the public and the league,” according to a City Hall statement.

The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the 2020 season for Hegewisch Babe Ruth, a league for players 13 to 18, and no games were played in the spring. But a few games were played at the field at 12600 S. Carondolet Ave. in July, said league treasurer Jim Laskowiecki. Adult players also played ball on the field recently, he said.

State: Safe to play with precautions

Despite the EPA’s findings, state health officials told the league board in a July letter that the field was safe for play even with the presence of manganese.

In fact, Brian Koch, of the Division of Environmental Health, said in the letter that teens and adults can play at Babe Ruth as long as grass is covering the contaminated area. Koch said players and spectators can minimize exposure by “cleaning clothing and equipment of dust or loose dirt prior to leaving the field” and washing hands after playing. The letter also suggested removing shoes when going inside homes, using door mats and vacuuming frequently. And Koch recommended eating a balanced diet with vitamins and minerals.

However, younger kids should stay away from the field, the letter stated.

“Children younger than 6 years of age who play daily in this soil may be at risk of experiencing manganese-related health effects, including learning and behavioral changes and other nervous system effects such as slowed hand movements and incoordination,” it said.

Neighbors remain wary

Despite the state assurances, the contamination at Babe Ruth and the recent cleanup of lead and arsenic at nearby Hegewisch Little League field, also on Carondolet, has shaken confidence of some area families who say government officials at all levels haven’t given them straight answers.

Bernard Ralich’s now adult son Daniel played at both the Little League and Babe Ruth fields as a teenager. His grandson Gavin is a Hegewisch Little Leaguer where play at that nearby field resumed in recent weeks following the EPA cleanup.

After noticing a sign at a site near the Little League field warning of toxic material, Ralich said he contacted EPA and other government officials multiple times in 2019 prior to any public warnings about contamination. He’s concerned about the handling of cleanups at both youth fields and called the city’s failure to notify residents of its findings “bull- – – -.”

“What about the kids? Do we have to get them checked? We don’t get no answers,” he said.

Hegewisch resident Oscar Sanchez, a community activist whose brothers played at Babe Ruth in the past, called the government responses and lack of openness with the residents frustrating.

“It’s not only the pollution, it’s also individuals not understanding the health risks,” Sanchez said. City and other government officials need to better communicate these environmental risks, he added.

The Hegewisch Babe Ruth Field at 12600 S. Carondolet Ave.

Years of tension

The contaminated youth ball fields are just the latest in years-long tensions between government agencies and neighbors concerned about the cumulative effects of polluting industries on the Southeast Side. A number of residents are fighting the planned move of scrap iron shredder General Iron to the Southeast Side.

“We don’t need any more pollution,” Ralich said of General Iron.

EPA says it’s still trying to determine the source of the manganese contamination but the agency’s website groups the Babe Ruth soil contamination with other environmental testing around the nearby Watco Terminal site on East 126th Street, which handles bulk solid materials such as manganese-bearing alloys.

EPA said it’s working with the city “to determine what next steps will be taken” related to cleanup at Babe Ruth. City health officials said they hope to have the field remediated by spring.

The agency recently completed remediation of the Hegewisch Little League field after determining it was contaminated. The agency said it removed almost 1,200 tons of lead and arsenic contaminated soil and replaced it with clean dirt. The EPA determined that Watco was not the source of those contaminants found at the Little League ballpark.

Brett Chase’s reporting on the environment and public health is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.

City knew of youth baseball field contamination a year ago but didn’t tell residentsBrett Chaseon September 18, 2020 at 12:01 am Read More »

Under fire for blowing deadlines, COPA chief concedes agency has ‘faced challenges in the release of video material’Tom Schubaon September 18, 2020 at 2:29 am

Two days after Chicago’s inspector general detailed the Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s repeated failure to meet the 60-day deadline to release video, audio and documents related to incidents involving officers’ use of force, the agency’s top official conceded Thursday that the agency has “faced challenges in the release of video material.”

During the monthly Chicago Police Board meeting, COPA Chief Administrator Sydney Roberts claimed her agency is “overcoming” the issues outlined in Tuesday’s report by Deborah Witzburg, the city’s newly appointed deputy inspector general for public safety. After reviewing 122 cases over a three-year period, Witzburg found 33 instances where the 60-day policy was violated.

But Roberts also sought to clarify some of the findings of Witzburg’s report and insisted that “COPA has never intentionally withheld the release of a mandated transparency material.”

Roberts explained that 14 of the cases were delayed by a single day. She noted that in some instances the videos have been released 60 days after the agency was notified of an incident involving an officers’ use of force, not 60 days after it actually happened.

“Incidents can occur in the last hour of the night. However, COPA may not receive notification from CPD until the midnight hour has elapsed. And thus, the following day,” added Roberts, who said the issue “has been corrected.”

In 12 other cases, Roberts said the release of video, audio and police documents was delayed because COPA needed to first confirm that “great bodily harm occurred.”

“In these 12 instances, COPA released the transparency materials 60 days after confirming that the complaint was eligible for release,” added Roberts, who said she takes “full responsibility” for the delays.

She did not discuss the remaining seven cases.

Though Roberts said she has modified COPA’s processes to incorporate Witzburg’s recommendations, she didn’t address another recent inspector general’s report that found her agency has improperly ended some inquiries.

No Police Board members posed any questions or raised any concerns.

Under fire for blowing deadlines, COPA chief concedes agency has ‘faced challenges in the release of video material’Tom Schubaon September 18, 2020 at 2:29 am Read More »

The modern homeDeanna Isaacson September 16, 2020 at 9:40 pm

Chicago’s skyscraper modernism–the Hancock, Marina City, Sears/Willis–is the city’s treasured calling card. What’s less known and much less appreciated is our area’s parallel cache of modernist residential architecture. Modern in the Middle, a new book by historian and preservationist Susan S. Benjamin and IIT professor Michelangelo Sabatino, sets out to fix that.

Published this month by the Monacelli Press, it offers a portfolio of 53 modern houses built in the city and suburbs between 1929 and 1975, along with the story behind each house, more than 300 stunning period photos (many of them from the Chicago History Museum’s Hedrich-Blessing archive), and essays by the authors that provide broader context.

Modern in the Middle originated with Benjamin, the co-author of two previous books on Chicago architecture and the researcher-writer responsible for numerous national and local landmark nominations. She says she’s been thinking about writing it since she worked on an exhibition on the same subject in 1976. Co-author Sabatino is an architect, preservationist, and historian.

The word “middle” in the book’s title, with its potentially sleepy connotations, was a deliberate choice according to the authors, locating this architecture smack in the middle of the century, middle of the country, and middle class.

At a time when great urban centers were considered the hubs for everything serious and sophisticated, “What we tried to show is that these clients were perfectly fine with living in the suburbs,” Sabatino said in a phone interview last week. “And that, even for those who could afford more, there was a sense of being frugal, but elegant.”

“We’re not talking lifestyles of the rich and famous here,” he said. “This is cosmopolitan informality.”

The title also points to a middle ground between the opposing philosophies of the two towering figures of Chicago modernism, Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic approach to design and Mies van der Rohe’s more abstract focus on structure. The authors say that despite their differences, the two shared an appreciation of nature: while Wright used natural materials and designed buildings that melded into the landscape, it’s Mies’s massive expanses of glass that bring the outside in.

“If you lie down on the bed in the Farnsworth House,” Sabatino told me, “the architecture disappears, and you’re basically in nature.”

Many of these houses will be a revelation. While a few, like Farnsworth and the Mies house that’s now a part of the Elmhurst Art Museum, are open to the public, and a number of others are familiar–the glass box garage from the John Hughes film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Adlai Stevenson’s country house–most are functioning private homes scattered anonymously through suburbs from Flossmoor to Waukegan, and even further afield.

A smaller number are in the city, where vacant land was sparse, but they include the only house in the book by a Black architect–the compact Miesian home John W. Moutoussamy (who studied with Mies at IIT) designed for his own family in the Chatham neighborhood, before he went on to bigger projects, including the Johnson Publications Company headquarters.

There is also only one house by a woman architect in the book–Jean Wiersema Wehrheim–another reflection of the fact that the profession was, for so long, notoriously short of opportunity for anyone but white men, Benjamin told me. On a more positive note, while the houses those white male architects built have traditionally been identified by the names of their male owners, every home in this book that was commissioned by a couple is labeled with the names of both partners.

Modern in the Middle ends in 1975, when high modernism began to wane and people were moving from the suburbs back into the city. Now, both authors think that trend may be reversing. “Even when this pandemic disappears, people have learned that they can actually work from home,” Sabatino says. “I’m imagining that there’s going to be increased interest in having access to nature and in this kind of elegant but informal space.”

That could help preserve Chicago’s stock of these midcentury modern residences. It’s the authors’ hope that this book will, too. The front cover bears an interior photo of the long, low, flat-roofed, open-plan Highland Park home designed by Keck & Keck for Maxine Weil and Sigmund Kunstadter and built in 1952. It was demolished and replaced with a larger house in 2003–a fate too many midcentury modern homes met when the land they stood on became more valuable to the marketplace than the house itself. “We really hope this book serves as a catalyst,” Sabatino says. “We hope the positive examples of preservation will encourage folks that might want to take a project like this on.”

The book closes with a glimpse at the authors’ own homes–suburban houses in the modernist mode, built in 1939 and 1941. It’s an impressive scholarly work, but also, clearly, a labor of love. v

The modern homeDeanna Isaacson September 16, 2020 at 9:40 pm Read More »