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| Chicago's Grant Park (JWB, 2011) |
In March of 1901
between 300 and 500 wagonloads of rubbish were being carried to the east end of
Van Buren Street and dumped in the lake.
Anything that citizens wanted to get rid of – rubbish, broken bricks,
cinders, ashes – went into the water.
The process had been going on for three years, and in that time 40 acres
of new land had been reclaimed from lake water that was six to fifteen feet
deep.
If you’re taking
a walkabout in the 319 acres of Grant Park today, you’re walking on the great
dump that was begun before the twentieth century began.
The other day I
accidentally bumped into a fascinating article in The Chicago Tribune from March of 1901, a piece that was especially
informative because it was written at a time when the work was still in
progress and the history that led up to it was relatively recent.
The whole thing
began on September 24, 1888 when the Circuit Court of the United States for the
Northern District of Illinois issued a decree in favor of the City of
Chicago. It was a complicated case, to
say the least, and it’s tough to simplify and even tougher to underestimate the
importance of its ultimate effect on the city.
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| Looking south toward Illinois Central Station with landfill ongoing, 1907 (Chicago Daily News Photo Archives) |
In effect, the
decision found against the Illinois Central Railroad, which had for some years
had a trestle and extensive trackage along the lakefront all the way to the
Chicago River. The city was granted
“among other powers, the power to establish, construct, erect and keep in
repair on said lake front east of said premises, in such manner as may be
consistent with law, public landing places, wharves, docks and levees . . .” [Report
of the Submerged Shore Lands Legislative Investigating Committee. Illinois
State Journal Printers: 1911] More
importantly the riparian rights – or the rights to the land beneath the water
were awarded to the State of Illinois, and through it, the city.
The effect of
this decision was slow to take form, but in 1895 during the two-year term of
Mayor George Bell Swift arbitration between the city and the railroad was
completed. The Illinois Central was to
receive “a triangular piece of the basin at Randolph street, which it was to
fill in, for certain necessary switch tracks.
In return for this it agreed to depress its tracks between Randolph
street and Park Row [roughly an area within today’s park just north of
Roosevelt Road]; build two retaining walls twenty-seven feet high, in which the
fourteen tracks of the company were to lie, with all further riparian claims
relinquished; it was to put 200,000 cubic yards of earth from the drainage
canal on the surface of the old park laying between the tracks and Michigan
avenue; and 1,200 feet east of the outer railroad wall it was to build a sea
wall of piles, filled with stone, which had to rest in fifteen feet of water
and which was more than 8,000 feet long.”
[Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1901]
The exquisite
downtown lakefront that we fortunate Chicagoans take for granted began with
this decision, carried out at a cost of $1,500,000, most of that sum borne by
the railroad. The South Park
Commissioners must surely have been overjoyed at the good fortune but “There was
no intent upon the part of the South Park Commissioners to spend good money for
filling in this basin.”
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| Looking north toward the river, 1907 -- note proximity of lake to the Art Institute (Chicago Daily New Photo Archives) |
According to The Tribune the bulk of the dumping that
was responsible for filling the space east of the railroad’s tracks was
undertaken by the city’s “Street Cleaning department to wrecking companies
tearing down old buildings or tearing up the debris from those burned, to ash
collectors, and to every one who had had non-perishable refuse to dump from the
First Ward.”
Interesting. “Hinky Dink” Kenna (“Chicago ain’t no sissy
town.”) and “Bathhouse” John Coughlin, the “Lords of the Levee” ruled the First
Ward for over two decades. During that
time there was more than enough “non-perishable” refuse to dump from the First
Ward. As the South Loop Historical
Society puts it, “By the early years of the 20th Century, the Levee had become
a haven for brothels and taverns, and the First Ward’s amoral fiefdom had
crossed the line into a veritable pageant of political corruption.”
It is an
interesting to exercise to examine the connecting points of history – to
realize how many disparate parts must come together, some purposely and others
by accident, for a wonder such as Grant Park to be revealed. Would there have been enough public pressure,
for example, to develop the lakefront, irrespective of the legalities, if the
city had not held the great World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, two years
before the Illinois Central finally agreed to the work described above.
The Tribune described what people saw when they came to
the end of Van Buren Street and approached the railroad station to take the
train to the fair. “The Van Buren street
station was a tumble-down, unsightly structure.
Barb wire kept pedestrians off the Illinois Central’s right of way. Beyond were ugly temporary docks at which
every kind of boat tied up and around which “barkers” roared and challenged one
another and occasionally fought for passengers.”
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| Creation of a new park just south of the Art Institute, 1907 (Chicago Daily News Photo Archives) |
Plans for the
developing “Lake Front Park” were still vague, but there were high hopes for
it, despite the South Park Commission’s unwillingness to do much more than
watch the dumping continue. The Art
Institute of Chicago already stood west of the railroad tracks. Plans were for the Crear Library to stand next
to it. The library got built, but at the
northwest corner of Randolph and Michigan.
It now is part of the Science library at the University of Chicago.
“That the
permanent building for the Field Columbian Museum finally shall be built in the
new park is pretty generally accepted,” The
Tribune assuredly stated. Well, that
obviously didn’t happen either, thanks to the tireless efforts of A. Montgomery
Ward.
An armory
“capable of housing all the militia regiments of the city” was also proposed
for the new lakefront land. And they
complained about a Children’s Museum!
The Tribune felt that “If property-owners along
Michigan avenue are willing to concede place to the new Crear Library, it has
been advanced that the Art Institute and the library will be the means of
proving to these property-holders that such a class of buildings as proposed
will be of only the slightest obstruction, that they will add to the general
building effect of the avenue, and that in many other ways their influence will
be to lend materially to the value of property as an investment.”
With the recent past
in mind, filled with noisy smoky steam engines running at street level across
the land that separated the city from the lake and with the knowledge that just
the other side of Michigan Avenue lay the notorious First Ward, The Tribune snidely concluded, “When the
Lake Front Park finally is completed it will require a new stretch of the
imagination of the average Chicago man for him to realize that one of the
good-sized parks of Chicago is lying just off the First Ward.”
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| Note that the retaining wall just the other side of the tracks has been completed, 1907 (Chicago Daily News Photo Archives) |
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