December 5, 1892 – There are four stars on the flag of Chicago, each star
corresponding to a key event in the city’s history. If there were to be a fifth star – and it was
not assigned to the 2016 World Series victory of the Cubs – it might very well
be given to a case decided in the United States Supreme Court, the results of
which were published on this date in 1892.
The case pitted the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago against
the Illinois Central Railroad in an effort to “obtain a judicial determination
of the title of certain lands on the east or Lake-Front of the City of Chicago,
situated between the Chicago River and Sixteenth street, which have been
reclaimed from the waters of the lake and are occupied by the tracks, depots,
warehouses, piers, and other structures used by the railroad company in its
business, and also of the title claimed by the company to the submerged lands
constituting the bed of the lake, lying east of the tracks, within the
corporate limits of the city for a distance of a mile, and between the south
line of the south pier near Chicago River extended eastwardly, and a line
extended in the same direction from the south line of Lot 21, near the
company’s round-house and machine shops.”
In a lengthy explanation the court found that the city was not deprived
of its riparian rights by a previous decision to allow the Illinois Central to
construct tracks and a breakwater along the lakefront between Randolph Street
and Park Row. The court said, “With this
reservation of the right of the railroad company to use the tracts on ground
reclaimed by it and the continuance of the breakwater, the city possesses the
same right of riparian ownership, and is at full liberty to exercise it, which
it ever did.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1892] Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen J.
Field stated, “It is the settled law of this country that the ownership of and
dominion and sovereignty over lands covered by the waters, within the limits of
the several states, belong to the respective states within which they are
found, with the consequent right to use or dispose of any portion thereof, when
that can be done without substantial impairment of the interest of the public
in the waters, and subject always to the paramount right of congress to control
that navigation so far as may be necessary for the regulation of commerce with
foreign nations and among the states.”
The case has tremendous implications for the future of the city’s
lakefront, which up to this point, had been expanded through landfill with
parcels from north to south being claimed by property owners claiming that
because they owned land adjoining the lake, they also owned the riparian rights
and therefore could expand their property as far as they desired. In short, the city would look far different
today if the case in 1892 had turned in a different direction. The photo above shows the lakefront just north of today's Art Institute probably in 1891 or early 1892. The portion of the lake that we can see, which is west of today's Columbus Drive, is part of the property included in the suit before the Supreme Court.
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