A Brief History of Navy Pier, 1914-1944

Inspired by Daniel Burnham’s Plan for Chicago, Municipal Pier No. 2 was built beginning from 1914 until 1916 when it opened to the public. The 293-foot wide steel and cement structure extended 5/8 mile from Grand Avenue into Lake Michigan and was designed to serve as a freight terminal to encourage lake shipping. 

On either side of the pier were two double-decked buildings that housed launches for ships and warehouse space. A roadway that ran the length of the Pier separated the two buildings. On the shore end of the Pier, planners set up an open-air promenade where Chicagoans attended carnivals or even free lectures given by the City’s Health Department. On the lake end of the Pier, the city built a concert hall which accommodated more than 3,000 people.

Burnham’s plan called for building five piers, however lake shipping never became as important as city leaders hoped due to manufacturer's preference for the railroad. Also, the cost of building and maintaining this singular pier meant that the additional piers were never completed. 

In 1927, to honor those who served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, Chicago changed the name of Municipal Pier No. 2 to Navy Pier. The facility went through several phases of use. During World War I, the federal government used it as a detention camp for draft resisters. In the years after, entrepreneurs set up honky-tonks and conventions in unused warehouse space, and local shippers and sightseers commandeered its mooring stations.

“Not until World War II,” as a supporter later wrote, “was the Pier restored to respectability.” In 1941, just months before America entered the war, the U.S. Navy transformed the Pier into a Naval Training School, building classrooms, laboratories, gymnasiums, a drill hall, and an aircraft hangar. The school, which featured instruction in diesel mechanics, aviation motor mechanics, radio, and advanced electronics, was the largest of its kind in the country.

Up to 12,000 sailors at a time were housed at the Pier, stacked in triple bunks. In all, about 60,000 men received their training on the Pier. The school also provided support for two aircraft carriers that had been converted from paddlewheel passenger cruisers, the USS Wolverine and USS Sable, which the Navy used for training aircraft carrier pilots. Flying from Glenview Naval Air Station, pilots would meet the carriers out on Lake Michigan for landing and takeoff practice. Among those who trained on these ships was President George H.W. Bush. The Pier functioned as a Naval Training School until 1946, when the Navy turned control of the Pier over to the City of Chicago and the University of Illinois.
 

The G.I. Bill, 1944

To help veterans from World War II cope with the difficulties of returning to civilian life, Congress passed the “Servicemen’s Readjustment Act” in 1944. Better known as the G.I. Bill, this program offered subsidies for home purchases, business startup costs, hospitalization, and education. Most people expected that it would be used primarily to provide housing for veterans -– President Franklin D. Roosevelt estimated that only a few hundred thousand servicemen would use the laws’ education benefit. By the fall of 1946, however, just one year after the war ended, almost a million veterans were enrolled in college classes across the nation. At the University of Illinois, more than 23,000 students hoped to register. This represented an 80 percent increase in enrollment from the previous year and 8,000 more than the Urbana campus could accommodate. A committee examining student admissions reported:

These facts (the anticipated enrollment at Urbana) describe the most serious situation which has ever been faced by the University of Illinois….The problem is not temporary….After the last war the demand for higher education was increased by more than 40 percent.  A further increase came after the Great Depression….This is both an emergency and a permanent problem of supreme importance.

State and U of I officials scoured the region for housing for these new students. They found 75 ready-built houses in Indiana and moved these to Urbana, setting them up in nice, neat rows in a field near campus. The University also agreed to build additional classrooms and residence facilities, including installing dormitories in Memorial Stadium. It quickly became clear, however, that even these efforts would not be sufficient. Lawmakers subsequently offered their solutions to the enrollment crisis. State Senator Everett R. Peters proposed legislation to set up a statewide public junior (community) college system which would offer schooling for freshmen and sophomores near their homes (Senate Bill No. 153, 1945).  Others, including then State Senator Richard J. Daley, introduced legislation calling for the creation of a new branch of the University in Chicago (Senate Bill No. 388, 1945). Neither bill passed the General Assembly.

The University decided instead to create two temporary campuses that would provide the first two years of training at Galesburg in western Illinois and in Chicago. The curriculum at these campuses was to be based on Urbana lower division work so these schools would not be junior colleges but rather full branches of the U of I system. Students could take required courses at one of these campuses before completing their studies in Urbana. At Galesburg, the University took over the wartime Mayo Hospital complex made up of about 120 red brick buildings connected to one another by more than 1¼ miles of covered corridors. It was described as a “college under one roof.” Enrollment at the campus never reached capacity, however, and it was closed after three years. In Chicago, University officials recommended using the city-owned facilities on Navy Pier.