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The Raising of Chicago
- rayiner 13y agoChicago didn't fuck around when it came to ambitious 19th century engineering: http://99percentinvisible.org/post/57747785222/episode-86-reversal-of-fortune http://99percentinvisible.org/post/57747785222/episode-86-re... (reversing the Chicago river--this has a lot of great old pictures). Although, see: http://chicagoist.com/2013/04/19/photos_what_re-reversing_the_chicag.php#photo-1 http://chicagoist.com/2013/04/19/photos_what_re-reversing_th... (reversing it back temporarily this year to account for flooding). In school we used to say "aerospace engineers make bombs; civil engineers make targets." But in fact civil engineering is really cool, especially in terms of what they were able to do before modern technology: http://www.colorcoat-online.com/blog/index.php/2011/05/engineering-the-history-12-projects-that-changed-the-world http://www.colorcoat-online.com/blog/index.php/2011/05/engin....
- lifeformed 13y agoWhaaat. I never realized this sort of thing happened. Elevating cities, reversing rivers. I didn't know civil engineering was so cool. It seems like science fiction, like terraforming, but there it is, happening a hundred years ago.
- swamp40 13y agoThey also dug (by hand) underneath Lake Michigan 2 miles out, to bring fresh water into the city. Amazing.
- js2 13y agoSee also the 1893 World's Fair - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition (One of my favorite books in the last few years is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City)
- timjahn 13y agoAmazing book! Hope they finally make it into a movie sometime soon.
- twelvechairs 13y agowow. never knew of this book but I'm an architect with a good understanding of the pioneering work and complex relationships of Burnham and root, Adler and Sullivan and mckim mead and white. there are cracking stories to be told here. I'm going to have to pick up the book now to see if it is done justice.
- dworin 13y agoIt wasn't just infrastructure, it's in the attitude of the city. Someone once told me "in New York they build skyscrapers because they have to, in Chicago they build skyscrapers because they can."
- rayiner 13y agoYes, I've always found that attitude amazing. Illinois is pretty flat. Chicago could grow outward pretty much unimpeded in at least 180 degrees. Yet, it has a dense downtown core full of skyscrapers.
- HNLogInShit 13y agoThen a few years later, Chicago burned down and was rebuilt speedily. Contrast that to the pathetic state of our country today, where we couldn't rebuild TWO BUILDINGS and restore the New York skyline in over a DECADE. And we still haven't, and never will.
- ggchappell 13y agoThat 99percentinvisible article is great reading. OTOH, the site puts some kind of idiotic music player at the bottom of my window. I wouldn't mind so much, except that it covers up the bottom of the FF scroll bar. Icky design. :-(
- RyanMcGreal 13y agoNorth American cities used to be enormously ambitious (see also, for example, Boston's Back Bay). Contrast the fear, trepidation and status-quo obstructionism that characterizes municipal affairs today.
- kasey_junk 13y agoYou can take a cynical view of it if you want to, but you also have to remember the economic aspects in play. At the time the US was experiencing unprecedented growth. There was abundant amount of capital to throw around. That just isn't the case today. Contrast that to Southern China. Lots of insanely ambitious city projects, driven once again by tons of growth.
- polskibus 13y agoThere's even more capital these days, it's just locked in securities and traded on exchanges instead of directly invested in enterprises.
- cynicalkane 13y agoIt's common knowledge in the financial world that returns are expected to be very low in the near future. With that and the recession both financiers and economists (real economists, not random op-ed writers) are aware that the market and macro situation for government projects is ideal. But it so happens that government projects today are very often financial disasters, particularly when backed by bonds or tax increases. There's no law of the market that says this should happen either, but it seems to be a feature of ossified political systems.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y agoIn times of rapid economic change, the risk of doing nothing is often far worse than a grand project that is merely less than fully successful. Chicago feared it would become a big flat toilet, for many good reasons. When things work pretty well, it can be more difficult to allocated resources for bigger projects, I suppose.
- speedracr 13y agoDefinitely listen to the Freakonomics podcast on Chicago's quintessential role in developing the US as a country and economic giant - well worth the 30min or so, and based on a book by Thomas Dyja: http://freakonomics.com/2013/08/15/the-middle-of-everywhere-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ http://freakonomics.com/2013/08/15/the-middle-of-everywhere-...
- graupel 13y agoLiving here in Chicago it's neat to see the vestiges of this still around - like 'vaulted sidewalks', where the current sidewalk sits over 5 feet of air, and then the old sidewalk is down below: http://gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/city_streets_how_chicago_raised_itself_out_of_the_mud_and_astonished_the_world/ http://gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/city_streets_how_chi...
- jusben1369 13y agoPictures or it isn't true!
- joezydeco 13y agoHere's my grandmother's old neighborhood in the near southwest part of the city (Pilsen): http://goo.gl/maps/OlFm7 http://goo.gl/maps/OlFm7 You can see where the sidewalks enter on the second floor of these flats and the original ground level entrance is now below street level. We had lots of fun goofing around in the "cave" down on the first floor.
- selectodude 13y agoIt's very bizarre seeing a street view from a block away from where I live on HN.
- joezydeco 13y agoSorry, that's where GMaps put the center of Pilsen. I can update the link if you want... =) (ObGmapsWeirdThing: My wife and kids were outside on the driveway when the google cameras went by. Now I can see them all the time, staring back at me with their blurred faces...)
- fumar 13y agoIt is random. I lived about two blocks away on 18th place.
- slyn 13y ago
- mortenjorck 13y agoThis is totally fascinating, but I'm still not sure I get the infrastructural context. Were traditional storm sewers impractical for Chicago at the time specifically because of the city's elevation?
- jofer 13y agoYep. You need a slope to get water to flow. The city is effectively at lake level. Having a storm sewer doesn't do you much good if the water can't go anywhere.
- arethuza 13y agoAnother city with similar problems is Berlin, I was there recently and I was puzzled by the crazy pipes all through the centre of the city. Turns out that the ground water level in Berlin is really high so all construction sites (and there are huge number of these in Berlin) need to pump out the water from excavations which explains the pipes everywhere. http://robertherrmann.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/the-fancy-tubes-of-berlin/ http://robertherrmann.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/the-fancy-tub...
- officemonkey 13y agoThe city _was_ effectively at lake level. Between the raising of Chicago, the Chicago fire (which made sufficient debris to create Grant Park) and additional raising of the street grade, some buildings "ground floors" are three stories above the ground.
- rayiner 13y agoThe city was too low to dig traditional storm sewers that were angled enough to move waste water by gravity.
- badman_ting 13y agoI took a tour of Seattle, and the guides discussed Seattle going through a similar transition. Essentially the whole city was raised by one story. But the roads were done first, creating a sort of "waffle-like" city, where crossing the street as a pedestrian meant climbing a ladder, crossing the street, and descending the ladder on the other side. People were sometimes injured or killed by falling down the ladder, someone else falling down the ladder, or things falling onto them from street level. After the sidewalks were raised to match the streets, the underground sidewalks were kept open for a time, until (predictably) problems started with drugs and prostitution, etc. They were closed in the early 20th century but you can tour them today.
- fennecfoxen 13y agoSee also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle
- drivers99 13y agoFor completeness, here's the article about the raising of Pioneer Square that the parent post was referring to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
- sp332 13y agoChicago was recently used as an example of a city that is so paved over it can't drain properly. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/way-we-build-cities-making-them-flood/5590/ http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/way-w... I wonder if that's a valid interpretation, given its natural drainage problems?
- pdovy 13y agoInteresting! One of the slightly counter-intuitive solutions the city has implemented in recent years are flow restrictors in catch basins that service street storm drains. The rationale is that the sewer system can't handle the combined volume of rainwater from the street and from peoples homes (mainly runoff from gutters or sump pumps), so they opt to let the streets flood instead of people's basements. Oddly though flooding in the city proper where there building density is high is generally not a problem. This past year when we had very heavy rains, it was the northern suburbs that had real get out your boat type flooding.
- joezydeco 13y agoCurious why that article didn't mention Deep Tunnel. It's our 50-year project to dig massive drainage systems and underground reservoirs to hold the emergency storm runoff. We're..hmm..15 years away from being done! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan
- onedognight 13y agoAnyone know why Venice, Italy hasn't undertaken a similar plan?
- samatman 13y agoVenice is built largely on wood pylons. They are in many cases over a thousand years old.
- eCa 13y agoThere have been plans/proposals to refill the aquifer under Venice [1]. The construction of the Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (or MOSE) that is meant to be raised in times of high water started back in 2003 [2]. [1] http://www.geotimes.org/mar04/geophen.html http://www.geotimes.org/mar04/geophen.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project
- blahedo 13y agoNevermind Venice, which is at least still above sea level (barely)---what about New Orleans?
- dspeyer 13y agoSo Undertown does exist?
- vxNsr 13y agoHmm... I always thought it was hanging out with that sixth borough
- dkuntz2 13y agoKinda. While Butcher fictionalizes is, and expands on the truth, there are many tunnels throughout the city, and it's possible to traverse most of the loop underground. Plus there's good ole Wacker drive...
- jgroszko 13y agoAnd it's always exciting when those tunnels flood... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood
- Moto7451 13y agoWhile visiting Chicago earlier this year I found that a ton of great bars exist under on the lower level. Definitely worth visiting/seeing.
- cfesta9 13y agoHere are a few great Chicago resources. Archive of photos here: http://chicagopast.com/ http://chicagopast.com/ Video Archives here: http://mediaburn.org/ http://mediaburn.org/ This is a personal favorite: Chicago Culture "sitting on the front stoop" enjoy! http://mediaburn.org/video/ben-hollis-stoop-talk-1-for-weekend-tv/ http://mediaburn.org/video/ben-hollis-stoop-talk-1-for-weeke...
- lettergram 13y agoYou missed the reversing of the Chicago river...
- malandrew 13y agoWhere are the technical details on how this was accomplished? The wikipedia article said what was done, but didn't go into how. All the references appear to be just newspaper articles or some layman's explanation. Are there any meaty technical discussions of these accomplishments, especially the raising on an entire city block.
- swamp40 13y agoI just saw a great picture of this from 1885: http://calumet412.com/post/58699298036/street-grade-elevation-work-at-an-undisclosed http://calumet412.com/post/58699298036/street-grade-elevatio...
- phon 13y agoThis practice was not unique to the City of Chicago. The city of Naples was rebuilt at great expense after the a terrible cholera epidemic in 1884 carried off a large number of victims. In response the government funded major effort to raise the city's streets as proscribed by the then current Miasmatic Theory of Disease. The thinking was along of the lines of low lying 'bad air' caused illnesses and thus the raising of the city's infrastructure would improve the general health. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory_of_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miasma_theory_of_disease
- chrismealy 13y agoPeople interested in economics, history, Chicago, or the midwest in general should definitely check out "Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West" by William Cronon.
- mapt 13y agoGalveston underwent a similar transition of two stories after the catastrophic damage of a hurricane in the year 1900, in order that it would never be vulnerable again† †Unless the city expanded outside the elevated seawall, which it did... for a time. Predictably, another hurricane has corrected this oversight recently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston,_Texas#Hurricane_of_1900_and_recovery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston,_Texas#Hurricane_of_1...