Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Nov. 21, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 72 degrees (1913)
- Low temperature: 1 degree (1880)
- Precipitation: 1.49 inches (1906)
- Snowfall: 7 inches (2015)
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Holy Name Cathedral’s 150th anniversary
1875: The Cathedral of the Holy Name, at the corner of Superior and State streets, was dedicated with Bishop Thomas Foley presiding. The $200,000 building (more than $6 million in today’s dollars) was designed by Patrick Keely of Brooklyn.
The Tribune had one criticism of the church’s interior design: “The decorator deserves whatever censure is bestowed. He appears to have aimed at two objects — light and softness — and to have missed both in the artistic sense.”
The William Green Homes public housing project at Division Street and Ogden Avenue was dedicated on Nov. 21, 1961. (Chicago Tribune)
1961: The 1,099 apartments of the William Green Homes — a $17 million project named for the former American Federation of Labor president — were dedicated just north and west of the Cabrini extension towers.
Cabrini-Green timeline: From ‘war workers’ to ‘Good Times,’ Jane Byrne and demolition
Nicknamed the “Whites” for their white concrete exterior, the William Green housing complex consisted of eight buildings that were each 15 or 16 stories tall. The development, as a whole, became known as Cabrini-Green.
Ald. Wallace Davis Jr. was indicted on Nov. 21, 1986, as part of Operation Incubator, an undercover investigation into alleged City Hall corruption. (Chicago Tribune)
1986: Seven were indicted — including Chicago Aldermen Wallace Davis Jr., 27th, and Clifford P. Kelley, 20th, — by the FBI as part of its 2½-year undercover investigation into alleged City Hall corruption known as Operation Incubator.
Davis Jr. was convicted in 1987 of accepting a $5,000 bribe from an FBI informant, forcing his niece to pay $11,000 in kickbacks from her salary as his ward secretary and extorting $3,000 from the owners of a restaurant in his ward. He was sentenced to 8½ years in prison by a federal judge who accused Davis of committing perjury at his trial and castigated him for his lack of remorse after a jury convicted him.
Kelley pleaded guilty in June 1987 to charges he accepted $6,500 from Waste Management Inc., the world’s biggest trash hauler, and $30,000 from a New York bill-collection agency vying for lucrative city work. A flamboyant 16-year Chicago City Council veteran, Kelley was sentenced to one year in prison and served nine months in a minimum-security prison in Duluth, Minnesota.
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