History in Tri-Taylor

In 1938, a first-generation Italian-American named Albert Ferrerri opened an outdoor stand at the corner of Laflin and Harrison Streets and began serving Italian beef and sausages cooked over a charcoal grill.  It was largely just a front for a horse racing and baseball bookmaking business, but after the cops busted up the gambling ring, the sandwich-making operations continued unabated.  In 1963, Albert and his brother-in-law Christopher Pacelli split the business in two and opened their own separate "Al's Barbeque" restaurants in the neighorhood.  Pacelli's joint opened at 1079 West Taylor Street in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, and in the 1980's it was renamed "Al's No. 1 Italian Beef."  Meanwhile, Albert Ferrerri, who remained a gambler and a hustler his whole life, passed away in 2001 at the age of 90.

West Side Park (also known as the “second” West Side Park or the West Side Grounds, Bounded by Taylor, Polk and Wood streets and Wolcott Avenue) served as home field for the modern day Chicago Cubs from 1893 through 1915.  From 1893 through 1897, the team was known as the Chicago Colts.  In 1898 the team became the Chicago Orphans, perhaps due to the departure of Cap Anson.  In 1902, the team took the name Chicago Cubs.  Located on the block bounded by Taylor, Wood, Polk, and Lincoln (now Wolcott), the dimensions were 340 feet down the foul lines and 560 feet to dead center.  The Cubs won the pennant four times between 1906 and 1910, though they lost to the Chicago White Sox (the famed "hitless wonders") in the 1906 World Series, the only cross-town Chicago World Series in history.  The Cubs rebounded with consecutive World Series titles in 1907 and 1908. Since then, nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Total futility, and we at domu feel the pain as much as anyone.  Certainly more than the players.  In late 1915, following the collapse of the rival Federal League, Charles Weeghman was permitted to purchase a substantial interest in the Cubs, and he moved the team to Weeghman Park in time to start the 1916 season.  Today, Weeghman Park is known as Wrigley Field.

(thanks to Wayne Rutkowski for fact-checking this entry.)

In 1937, Dr. Bernard Fantus, Director of Therapeutics at the Cook County Hospital, established at 1900 West Polk Street the first laboratory in the United States that could preserve and store human blood.  The first blood bank in the world opened five years earlier in Leningrad, Russia.