A contestant in Chicago’s first official International Aviation Meet, August, 1911.

With NASCAR racing in Grant Park earlier this summer and Chicago’s annual Air + Water Show warming up over the lake, this seems an appropriate time to point out that Chicago has a long history of racing and aviation in its otherwise pastoral ‘front yard.’

My current research project is a history of Chicago’s airports. Many of the same factors that shaped the city’s skyscrapers–rapidly advancing technology, new commercial imperatives, political friction within and outside the city limits, etc.–were also manifest in the city’s efforts to take advantage of its geographical position. First, as the country’s center of population migrated westward, Chicago was a natural hub for the developing network of air mail routes in the 1920s and for passenger travel in the ensuing decades. As jet aircraft made international travel commonplace in the 1950s and 60s, the city found itself at a natural position on great circle routes to Europe and Asia, spurring the development of O’Hare Airport.

That story’s beginnings take place at the most unlikely of “airports.” In 1910, a failed effort to stage a cross-country aviation race from Chicago to New York made Cicero Field, a half-mile square of turf at Cicero Ave. and 22nd Street, the epicenter of aviation for a summer. Would-be contestants gathered there to assemble their fragile planes and to fly them for paying spectators at nearby Hawthorne Race Track. Cicero Field was owned by Harold McCormick, a scion of the family that had earned its fortune with the original McCormick Reaper and would go on to own the Chicago Tribune. Harold’s fascination with Aviation led to his founding and funding the Aero Club of Illinois, which ran Cicero Field and sponsored local competitions and exhibitions designed to increase public awareness while advancing aviation technology.¹

Most of the flying done at Cicero Field was of the “grass mowing” type–short, low-altitude hops in amateur craft, but the influx of national and international aircraft in 1910 led McCormick to propose a larger, more formal exhibition in 1911. That took place in August, turning the newly-completed Grant Park into a hive of flying activity for nine days. McCormick cleverly based prize money on both accomplishments–altitude, speed, and duration, among them–and on total flying time, encouraging participants to keep their machines in the air as much as possible. The 1.3-mile course, laid out from Randolph Street to 12th Street, was a narrow oval lined with seating for 70,000 that allowed spectators to view a constant parade of machinery with the lake as a backdrop in the afternoon sun.²

The meet was an extraordinary success, spurring plans for a second event, held in 1912. But even as it highlighted the rapid progress that had been made in American aviation, it also revealed the problems confronting aircraft builders and pilots; one contestant was killed when the wings of his aircraft collapsed during a high-speed turn in front of the grandstand, and another drowned when his plane crashed a mile offshore.³ After 1912, exhibitions like the Grant Park event faded in favor of more ambitious cross-country races as aircraft became more reliable and their appearance less remarkable.

With five international aircraft and their pilots competing, Grant Park can make a claim as Chicago’s first international airport. It would continue to serve as a landing strip for recreational craft and, for a short time, for air mail when that service began in 1918.

A final note. The 1911 and 1912 events took place after a boom in skyscraper construction in the city, and a couple of press accounts that related the aviation meets to the city’s high rises stand out. The first is the entertainment trade journal The Billboard, which reported on aviation mostly in terms of the crowds these exhibitions drew. Chicago, it reported in 1911, was a ready-made arena for such displays:

“There is not another city in America, if indeed in the world, that possesses such a remarkable aviation field right at its doors, as does Chicago in Grant Park, the 160-acre park on the downtown lakefront. where the meet takes place….with the sightseeing space afforded by the skyscraping hotels and commercial buildings along Michigan Avenue, as well as the standing space for the multitude outside the pylons and west of the Illinois Central tracks, over a million people will be able to witness the event.”⁴

And, marking the turn in public fascination from buildings that appeared to climb skyward to machines that actually did, the Tribune offered some intriguing comparisons⁵ in reporting on the record altitude achieved by aviator Oscar Brindley during the meet:

1. Howard Lee Scamehorn, “Balloons to Jets: A Century of Aeronautics in Illinois, 1855-1955.” (Chicago: Regnery, 1957). 53, 81. ↩︎
2. “Advertisement: International Aviation Meet.” Town & Country, suppl.The Air-Scout, vol. 66, no. 22, Aug. 12, 1911, pp. 2. ↩︎
3. “AVIATORS BADGER AND JOHNSTONE DROP TO DEATH: 50,000 LOOK ON.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 16, 1911, pp. 1. ↩︎
4. “INTERNATIONAL AVIATION MEET IN CHICAGO.” The Billboard, vol. 23, no. 33, Aug. 19, 1911, pp. 4-4, 55. ↩︎
5. “WORLD RECORD BROKEN; FLIES UP 11,726 FEET: B.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 19, 1911, pp. 1. ↩︎