Est. 1915 · Primary temporary morgue for 1915 SS Eastland disaster — 844 dead, deadliest incident in Chicago history · Later Harpo Studios — Oprah Winfrey Show (1990–2011) · Demolished 2016; McDonald's HQ on site since 2018
The Second Regiment Armory occupied a city block at 1058 W. Washington Boulevard in Chicago's West Loop. Before the armory's later notoriety, it served a straightforward military purpose — drill hall and equipment storage for the Illinois National Guard's Second Regiment.
On the morning of July 24, 1915, the SS Eastland, a passenger steamship carrying Western Electric employees and their families on an excursion to Michigan City, rolled over at its Clark Street dock in the Chicago River. The vessel was in just 20 feet of water; 844 people drowned or were crushed, making it the single deadliest incident in Chicago history — more deaths than the Great Chicago Fire and the Iroquois Theatre fire combined. Many of the dead were women and children from immigrant working-class families on the city's west side.
City authorities needed an immediate location large enough to receive, lay out, and identify hundreds of bodies. The Second Regiment Armory, one of the largest covered spaces in the neighborhood, was pressed into service. Approximately 600 of the 844 victims were brought there for identification. For days, survivors, family members, and the morbidly curious filed through the armory while identification proceeded. The event was extensively documented by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago American, and wire service photographs that circulated nationally.
The building later converted to commercial use. Harpo Productions — Oprah Winfrey's production company — moved its Chicago operations to the former armory in 1990. The Oprah Winfrey Show taped there until the program ended in 2011. Harpo Inc. sold the property to developer Sterling Bay in 2014. Demolition of the armory campus took place in 2016. McDonald's Corporation relocated its corporate headquarters to the new building on the site in 2018, signing a 15-year lease for approximately 80 percent of the 600,000-square-foot structure.
Sources
- https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/chicago-hauntings-ghosts-eastland-disaster/
- https://mysteriouschicago.com/the-hauntings-of-harpo-studios/
- https://www.wbez.org/stories/whats-that-building-harpo-studios/2d425bc5-fef7-4029-bf4f-d3f2d216c364
- https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160728/west-loop/with-harpo-studios-demolition-chicagos-oprah-era-officially-ends/
Children's laughter in empty corridorsWoman sobbing in restroomSecurity camera image of figure in grey dressUnexplained crashing sounds reported by night security
The accounts from Harpo Studios are specific and come from named, credible sources. Winfrey herself acknowledged the phenomena publicly: staff reported hearing children's voices running through the building's corridors when no children were present. A women's restroom produced recurring sounds of a woman sobbing — heard independently by multiple employees at different times. A night security guard reported loud crashing sounds that repeated investigations could not attribute to any physical cause.
The most documented account involves a security camera image. A figure dressed in what witnesses described as a long grey dress was captured on the building's closed-circuit system. Winfrey referred to the figure publicly as the 'grey lady.' Mysteriouschicago.com, a documented Chicago history blog run by author Adam Selzer, notes the investigative limits on that claim — Selzer himself writes that he never located a witness who had personally seen the grey lady — but records the account as circulating among former Harpo staff.
Winfrey's response was to connect the building's unexplained activity to its documented history: she dedicated multiple episodes of her show to the Eastland disaster, investigating what it meant that her production company had spent two decades working in the building that held 600 of those bodies. The institutional act of doing journalism about the disaster — rather than simply performing for the haunting — distinguishes Harpo's engagement with the site from most ghost-lore tourism.
The Second Regiment Armory was demolished in 2016. The physical site no longer carries any architectural trace of the building. The address remains meaningful to Chicago dark history precisely because the history it represents — 844 dead on a summer morning — is fully documented.
Notable Entities
The Grey Lady
Media Appearances
- The Oprah Winfrey Show — Eastland Disaster episodes (television, 2000)
