14 ms·
Raising of Chicago
- dang 8y agoDiscussed in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6295279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6295279
- twtw 8y agoHave you considered automating this? Something like a "previous discussions" link?
- calabin 8y agohaha I know what I'm doing this weekend.
- bsmith 8y agoI like this idea a lot. How many reposts don't end up getting a comment like this because no one remembers the original submission? It would be interesting to see a history of every time an article was submitted.
- CPLX 8y agoPerhaps you haven't noticed the "past" link that's underneath each original post?
- icebraining 8y agoThe problem with the "past" link is that it appears regardless, so it's barely better than copying the link and pasting it in the search box. The advantage of these posts is the lack of friction, they're just there.
- asadlionpk 8y agoI think dang himself clicks on 'past' and then refers those links here. What would be great is a (sticky) comment for all past discussions sorted by year.
- dasmoth 8y agoThat’s pretty much what the “past” link gives you. I like the human touch of someone consciously deciding whether there’s value in highlighting previous posts.
- jasode 8y agoOn a related note for anyone who has walked around both Manhattan and downtown Chicago... Ever notice how downtown Chicago has much less noise of honking cars than downtown New York City? A friend pointed out it's because of Chicago's lower-level streets[0] that a lot of service vehicles use for loading/unloading. That's in contrast to Manhattan where everybody has to share the same street level. E.g. a brown UPS truck that stops for a mere 20 seconds is enough for the yellow cab driver that's stuck behind him to smash on the horn with impatience. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago
- brootstrap 8y agolower wacker is a life saver yall . Know it and love it!
- larrywright 8y agoFun story: once, while using Apple Maps to navigate to a hotel in Chicago, it got confused and directed me on to Lower Wacker. It kept giving me directions as if I was on Upper Wacker. “Turn right here”, it said, as if there wasn’t a brick wall there. GPS is great in two dimensions, less great in three dimensions.
- ja1215 8y agoAs far as I can tell, all GPS devices get whacky on Lower Wacker.
- joezydeco 8y agoWaze and SpotHero pitched in to install BTLE beacons down there and help the novice Uber drivers find their way back to street level. https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/9/7/17786634/waze-beacons-wacker-drive-chicago-signal https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/9/7/17786634/waze-beacons-wa...
- 8y ago
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThis is one of my favorite fun facts about our city. The other one, which I didn't realize until recently, is that our rivers are also separated from Lake Michigan by locks, we have a lower water level within the city. Between these two things, there's a significant height for boats to pass under bridges all throughout Chicago.
- wenc 8y agoChicago accomplished quite a number of engineering feats in its time. The big one was the reversing the flow of the Chicago river [1] through a system of canals and locks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_flow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl...
- jazzyjackson 8y agoWonderful 99 percent invisible (radioshow) on the subject https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-86-reversal-of-fortune/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-86-reversal-o...
- yborg 8y agoMany people also don't realize how much of the current lakefront is built on fill - Grant Park is largely built atop fill from debris from the Chicago Fire that was dumped into the Lake.
- wglb 8y agoNorthwestern University doubled its campus size by filling in lake. The Edgewater Beach Hotel was at water's edge, but now is quite some distance from the lake.
- OldHand2018 8y ago> the current lakefront is built on fill If you'd like to take home a piece as a souvenir, head over to 12th Street Beach (immediately south of the Adler Planetarium). The stuff piles up on the south end of the beach every time there is a storm on the lake. Lots of pieces of bricks, terra cotta, porcelain, etc. Tons and tons of beautiful colored glass that has been tumbled smooth by the waves. Go in the morning and you'll see treasure hunters picking out the best stuff. Rumor has it there every once in a few years someone finds a diamond - it is definitely true that the Great Lakes have plenty of diamonds from northern Canada that were deposited by glaciers in the last ice age.
- Isamu 8y agoThis is what I would expect to happen in Manhattan, for instance, as a response to sea level rise, rather than the dystopian abandonment you see in movies like A.I. Not that you would necessarily raise skyscrapers, but that you would raise the street level, and change the street level entrance of the building. Smaller buildings could be raised though. It's not an outrageous idea. More outrageous I think is the idea of abandonment. Maybe people think of sea level rise as happening overnight.
- bluthru 8y agoA sea wall is more likely: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-flooding-manhattan-coastal-barriers-2018-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-flooding-manha...
- azhenley 8y agoHow many cities have been raised like this? I was shocked when I found out Seattle's streets were raised, but not the buildings, which led to the Seattle Underground [1]. If you tour it, you can see the original first floor of buildings while you're under the roads. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
- rpeden 8y agoGalveston is another well known instance of this. After much of the city was destroyed by a hurricane storm surge in 1900, it was raised quite significantly. There's a good read about it here: https://texashillcountry.com/raising-galveston-storm-1900/ https://texashillcountry.com/raising-galveston-storm-1900/
- djsumdog 8y agoChattanooga was too. I have a feeling this was pretty common in response to river flooding and implementing sewage lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Chattanooga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Chattanooga Although in Chattanooga, I don't think any buildings there were raised. I think they just covered up their first floors. If you work in a building with an underground connector to another build, you'll still see old bricked up door frames to where the streets use to be and halves of windows on the floor.
- mlinksva 8y agoSacramento, after 1861-2 floods.
- js2 8y agoThere’s an underground shopping district in Atlanta but it’s history is a bit different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Atlanta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Atlanta
- solarkraft 8y agoGeneral raising of streets is not that rare. Churches that are lower than the surroundings are good indicators in Europe.
- jefflinwood 8y agoYou can learn more about the history of the Chicago River at this small museum right along the river: http://www.bridgehousemuseum.org/ http://www.bridgehousemuseum.org/ Chicago has really done an impressive job making the Riverwalk accessible. You can also take one of the many river cruises that go back and forth if you're interested.
- weberc2 8y agoThe riverwalk is great; they're expanding it more and more every year. I believe the intent is to extend it along the south branch of the river (currently it covers just the east branch to the lake) all the way to Ping Tom park (Chinatown).
- telesilla 8y agoI only just watched this a few days ago, shows how it was done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHN7OJuVgXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHN7OJuVgXA I used to wander around Chicago before I knew why the houses in some areas were below street level and just wondered, why would so many many build in a flood zone!
- larrywright 8y agoIf you’re interested in this sort of thing, check out Steven B. Johnson’s “How We Got To Now”, which discussed this. https://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-now/ https://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-now/ It’s only six episodes, and quite fascinating.
- twtw 8y agoThere's also a book version, which is also quite good.
- influxed 8y agoThis happened later than the dates in Wikipedia for some of the outer neighborhoods of the time. A visible legacy today in those neighborhoods is vaulted sidewalks and entries, making houses appear shorter than they actually are. plug for an article I wrote a few years ago about some houses with vaulted entryways: http://chicagopatterns.com/colorful-front-gabled-italianate-homes-damen-33rd/ http://chicagopatterns.com/colorful-front-gabled-italianate-...
- enobrev 8y agoThanks for this note. I always wondered why places in Pilsen and Little Village were below the sidewalk.
- wtfrmyinitials 8y agoLooks like somebody listened to Ungeniused this week
- nkrisc 8y agoIn some neighborhoods you can see where the street was raised but building weren't. There's a gap of a few feet between the sidewalk and the building where you can see down to the level of the original street and the former street level floor of the building now looks like a basement. Off the top of my head you can see some buildings like this in the blocks North of Division between Ashland and the Kennedy. Here's an example from that area: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9042461,-87.6638461,3a,75y,263.04h,80.27t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgU-158489cSwgOBI7fCHGA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9042461,-87.6638461,3a,75y,2...
- thinkpad20 8y agoI'm not 100%, but I don't think that's an example of the effects of the raising of the city. For one thing, the address is quite removed from the downtown area, but beyond that you can find these kinds of buildings all over the city, so I've always figured they were just built that way. Here's an example of a clearly recently-built building which has a similar design, in Wicker Park: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9092286,-87.6725628,3a,34.8y,88.23h,93.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEdNJIDhuAyYaAPv-_uCJkA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9092286,-87.6725628,3a,34.8y...
- btkramer9 8y agoThere's buildings all over london like this too. I'm curious why they do this. https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5154577,-0.1600232,3a,75y,187.85h,62.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_nJ-AbNfjc4h0Tpe-CO5Gg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5154577,-0.1600232,3a,75y,18...
- ksrm 8y agoSo you can have an extra floor (basement), with natural light.
- nkrisc 8y agoI can only guess but that could have been built that way to simply stylistically fit in with other building in the area, even if it wasn't necessary. Also, building it the way they did gives more light and access to the lower level and probably required less work. Likewise I believe that many of the buildings in that area date to around the beginning of the 20th century, if not older which would put them in the right ballpark. It is also not that far from downtown and very well within incorporated Chicago in 1900 (I'll have to look for earlier maps later).
- njarboe 8y ago"the 1854 outbreak of cholera that killed six percent of the city’s population." A pretty good motivation to make some changes. I wonder when the last time a US city had over 5% of its population die in a year. The 1906 SF earthquake/fire was about 1%.
- isostatic 8y ago3-6% of the world's population died from Spanish Flu in 1918/1919
- bdz 8y agoAlso from Chicago: permanently reversing the flow of the river https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_flow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl...
- patal 8y agoNow I understand Monty Python's sketch from the Meaning of Life, where old financials pirate a multi-story building and sail it off out of town. The wikipedia article mentions that in the chapter "relocated buildings". Before I never really got the joke of that sketch.
- sanket5 8y agoGo to Europe and enjoy your stroll through the public streets of cities that were designed for walking. A pleasure :) https://www.moneysavingwallet.com/ https://www.moneysavingwallet.com/
- theklub 8y agoInterestingly, in CT there was a large number of homes build on bad foundations, driving around my neighborhood its common to see otherwise very nice houses raised up to have there foundations completely replaced. Still an interesting site to see.
- userbinator 8y agoBusinesses operating out of these premises were not closed down for the lifting; as the buildings were being raised, people came, went, shopped and worked in them as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. 150 years ago, there was no widespread utility services (water, electricity, gas), so buildings essentially just rested on their foundations and could be raised with far less disruption. The lax safety regulations of the time probably also contributed --- today, if such a thing were done, the building would likely be completely vacated and emptied first.