Quite unexpectedly Chicago lost, yesterday, one of its best and most favored German citizens, namely, Mr. J. G. Gindele. He was born on January 30, 1814, in Ravenburg, Wurttemburg. After a good deal of schooling he went, still an adolescent, to Lindau, near Lake Constance, then to Munich where he worked hard during the Summer, both to support his mother, brothers, and sisters and to save his money in order to attend during the Winter the Polytechnic and other schools. With an iron will he trained himself as an architect and civil engineer. In his twenty-first year he had already made such progress in his profession that he was charged with the construction of a colonnaded hall (the Kurbans) in Kissingen and a bridge at the same place.

In 1839, he became public building commissioner in Schweinfurth, Bavaria; he remained there eleven years and left lasting memorials to his name- especially a cotton mill, the municipal hospital, and his generally admired water works and water power development on the Main river.

Because he participated in the movement of 1848-49, so much trouble was made for him that he had to leave Germany. Yet it must be said in honor to his Schweinfurth fellow citizens that they showed long afterwards their close friendship for their Building Commissioner Gindele. In the sixties while he was overcrowded with work as president of the Chicago Board of Public Works, the City of Schweinfurth consulted him officially about various water works, and he elaborated a detailed plan for it.

In the United States, we find him first in 1850 in Milwaukee. Not finding anything there he went to Port Washington, Wisconsin, sharing with others in a steam mill. In a conflagration he lost everything he possessed.

In 1852 he was a stone-cutter in Milwaukee, but again had no success. So, finally, after six months he moved to Chicago. Here he became first a common laborer in the Illinois Stone Dressing Company; soon, however, he rose to become superintendent of this firm. And, by and by, he also won an enviable reputation as an architect.

So it happened that in 1861 he was elected to the Board of Public Works. And as he was reelected after four years, he belonged to it altogether almost eight years (up to his resignation in 1868), and for four or five years he was its president.

Among the greater buildings in which he participated is the first part of Chicago University in Cottage Grove. This important building was not touched by the Chicago Fire. As president of the Board of Public Works he was one of the supervisors of the construction of the tunnel under Lake Michigan - that by-now world famed water system that provides Chicago with the best drinking water. Entirely according to his plan was built the first tunnel under the Chicago River. It was the tunnel of Washington street that was to form a closer connection between the West and South Sides; and the newer tunnel of La Salle street, to connect the South and North Sides has followed the model.

In 1869, we find Gindele as one of the Canal Commissioners nominated by the governor, hard at work on planning the correction of the Illinois River in order to clean up the Chicago River, Gindele developed an ingenious plan that since has become a reality.

In the Fall of 1869 he was elected County Clerk, an office he held up to his death, and ceased his brilliant technical activity. However, he took it up again, in spite of his official duties, after the Great Fire, and took over the leadership of the stone-cutting firm of his four sons. He participated in the reconstruction of the big building of the Chicago Tribune as well as of the McCormick business buildings.

During the Civil War he shared with passion in the political activities of the Chicago Germans. Later he became on of the founders and early presidents of the singing society, Concordia. He also presided for a while over the Sharpshooters.

He leaves four sons, a daughter, and a widow. His first wife preceded him in death by four years.

(Footnote: The Chicago Tribune on the same day has a rather better written and fuller obituary, without, however, mentioning its own, or the Harvester Company's connection with Gindele.)