You missed the reversing of the Chicago river...
The Raising of Chicago
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pictures or it isn't true!
Here's my grandmother's old neighborhood in the near southwest part of the city (Pilsen): 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.
It's very bizarre seeing a street view from a block away from where I live on HN.
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#33North 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.
Here's a gif of the land reclaimed by Boston over time: http://wp.streetwise.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/filling_i... Can you imagine anything of this scale happening today?
Not with the EPA. That type of terraforming is verboten in the US. And I would actually agree that it had to have been terrible for the environment.
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#34Chicago didn't fuck around when it came to ambitious 19th century engineering: 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_th... (reversing it back temporarily this year to account for flooding). In school we used to say "aerospace engineers make bombs; civi…
Whaaat. 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.
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#35Where 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.
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#36Chicago didn't fuck around when it came to ambitious 19th century engineering: 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_th... (reversing it back temporarily this year to account for flooding). In school we used to say "aerospace engineers make bombs; civi…
See also the 1893 World's Fair -
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)
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's my grandmother's old neighborhood in the near southwest part of the city (Pilsen): 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.
It's very bizarre seeing a street view from a block away from where I live on HN.
Sorry, 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...)
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#38Living 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_chi...
Pictures or it isn't true!
Here's a thread with a bunch of pictures of Chicago excavations that have exposed vaulted sidewalks http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=143407
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#39Chicago didn't fuck around when it came to ambitious 19th century engineering: 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_th... (reversing it back temporarily this year to account for flooding). In school we used to say "aerospace engineers make bombs; civi…
See also the 1893 World's Fair - 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 )
Amazing book! Hope they finally make it into a movie sometime soon.
Re: The Raising of Chicago
#40Chicago didn't fuck around when it came to ambitious 19th century engineering: 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_th... (reversing it back temporarily this year to account for flooding). In school we used to say "aerospace engineers make bombs; civi…
Whaaat. 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.
They also dug (by hand) underneath Lake Michigan 2 miles out, to bring fresh water into the city. Amazing.