CURRENT PROGRESS:-Recent European Planning-Regional Plan of New York LEGAL NOTES :-Zoning in New Jersey ZONING ROUND TABLE:-What Is City Planning?—A New Kind of Garage 59 : BOOK REVIEWS AND BOOK LISTS - Reviews and New Pamphlets-Additional INSTITUTE NEWS: 61 67 Published Quarterly at 11 Oak Street, Augusta, Maine, by CARL RUST PARKER, Business Manager 75 cents a copy, $3.00 a year (Foreign $1.00 a copy, $3.50 a year) VOL. 2 C By CHARLES B. BALL Department of Public Health, Chicago Secretary, City Planning Division, American Society of Civil Engineers No. I ITY building is slow work. It is no task for impatient spirits. The vision and its commitment to a sketch, its exemplification in a plan which interprets ideals to others, its broadcast publication, the teaching of its benefits to the rising generation, followed by patient years of waiting for the youth to become men, all these are but steps to be taken before the community is ready for the later program of detail design, financing and actual construction. One who, an interested observer only, has seen vision develop into reality in the last two decades with a promise of continued unfolding in the future, wishes here to set down what he has witnessed in a few short years. THE BEGINNINGS OF CHICAGO: From a Fort to a City. 1803 to 1833. In order to rightfully understand the Chicago of today, comprehending two hundred and five square miles in its extent and numbering 3,000,000 souls, one must visualize its site as this existed one hundred and twenty-five years ago. At that time, one would have seen the low shore of the great lakes, the sluggish river, the vast flat plain, rising to an older lake margin a few miles from the waters edge. None of these, nor all of them together, held any disclosure of an incipient city. la That such an uninviting location was chosen by the early settlers as the place in which to live, instead of the high wooded shores a few miles to the north on which they might have settled, is explained by the portage. This crossing was well known to the Indian guides who brought the early French adventurers along the shores of the lake to behold the lowest point of division between the great watersheds of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence river basins. At high water, loaded boats could here pass from the headwaters of the Chicago River and through the swamps in which the Des Plaines has its rise, without unloading cargoes, while at periods of the lowest drought, it was only a distance of three or four miles, at the most, from one water system to the other. The summer of 1803 saw a body of United States soldiers erect on the sandy plain, at the mouth of the river, a wooden stockade enclosing a log fort within its walls, which they called Fort Dearborn, naming it after the Secretary of War. Three early events in land arrangement and involving the origin of the City are of interest to City Planners: the Treaty of Greenville, The Federal Land Survey, and the contract to lay out blocks and streets. The Treaty with the Indians made in Greenville (Ohio) Aug. 3rd, 1795, gave to white men, of fourteen areas described in that instrument, "One piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago River emptying into the southwest end of Lake Michigan, where a fort formerly stood." There seems no evidence that this land-grant was ever staked out on the ground. The strategic importance of this trading point was early recognized by the General Land Office which applied to the region in June, 1821, the formal method of land subdivision which fixes for all time the square mile as a permanent unit. The Canal Commissioners of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, appointed by the Legislature in 1829, were empowered "to locate the canal, lay out towns, to sell lots, etc." They employed James Thomp son to survey and plat the town of Chicago on Section 9, Twp. 39, Range 14. The completion of this survey and the filing of this plat Aug. 14, 1830, may be taken as the date of geographical location of the town, incorporated Aug. 12, 1833 (now the city) of Chicago. About 1820, the first notable civic improvement was effected by the soldiers from the fort, who dug a channel across the small bar in the lake directly opposite the river's mouth which prevented the passage of any but the smallest craft. This improvement, with the resources at hand, is quite comparable with the expenditure of $4,550,000 proposed in our day for straightening the Chicago River through the railroad district, and its value was proven by the fact that in 1834 Congress was prevailed upon to make an appropriation of $25,000, which was expended in enlarging this river mouth. The entrance of the sailing vessel "Illinois," in September, 1834, was celebrated by a joyful gathering of the inhabitants. INCREASE IN POPULATION AND IN AREA. THE GREAT FIRE. The City's growth since 1840, is shown below: This recital would be incomplete did it not mention the destruction wrought by the Great Fire of 1871. "Unparalleled" is correctly applied to the holocaust which on October 8th and 9th of that year caused a loss of 200 lives, the destruction of 13,500 buildings out of the 18,000 then existing, and the burning up of values amounting to more than $200,000.00. |