Chicago's Old Morton Salt Warehouse Becomes A Music Venue

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chicago has budgeted about 18 million dollars for salt for the winter 2022. And the city gets all that salt from one vendor: Morton Salt. Now, the company’s iconic warehouse is getting transformed into a multi-use development, including a music venue called “The Salt Shed.” In this episode historian Paul Durica traces the history of Chicago’s salt industry and tells us how some of that history will be preserved in the new concert space.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Curious City's Jason Mark.
0:04.9	Temperatures have been bouncing up and down lately in Chicago, but Mother Nature won't let us forget it's still winter.
0:12.2	Several inches of snow anticipated Thursday.
0:14.8	Which means plenty of salt is still needed to melt it.
0:17.9	I dot in Cook County Department of Transportation.
0:22.6	We'll have crews out tonight treating the roadways. The Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation is deploying more than 200 salt trucks starting
0:27.6	at midnight.
0:28.6	But all that salt doesn't come cheap.
0:30.6	For the winter of 2022, the city budgeted about $18 million for salt.
0:35.6	And it buys it all from one vendor. Morton Salt. Yeah, Morton Salt, like
0:42.9	the one you eat, the one with that big warehouse on Elston Avenue. You may have caught a
0:48.6	glimpse of its big white roof from the highway. You can't miss it with the oversized Morton
0:53.4	Salt name and the famed Morton Salt
0:56.1	Girl logo, you know, the girl with the umbrella. That warehouse is actually part of a complex
1:01.7	of buildings that was the headquarters of the Morton Salt Company for decades. Which brings us to this
1:07.6	week's question from Robert Feldman, who wanted to know what's happening to the old Morton Salt Complex, now that so much of the area around it is being redeveloped.
1:17.9	Well, it's being turned into a mixed-use development with a music venue as its focal point.
1:22.7	It's a very specific site. It kind of screams out to be an arts and music community playground.
1:29.2	We'll tell you all about that. Actually, historian Paul Derricka's going to tell you about that and
1:34.3	about Joy Morton, a civic leader who helped shape Chicago and a gilded age tycoon who created
1:41.2	a salt fortune. That's next.
1:52.0	If you're already a WBEZ member, thank you.
	...

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