Building the Canal to Save Chicago

Building the Canal to Save Chicago PDF Author: Richard Lanyon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781469145815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
To accomplish the reversing of the flow of a river wouldn’t be possible today. But to Chicago near the end of the 19th Century it became a matter of survival. It is an unlikely place for a large city, with flat topography, poor drainage, next to a lake and near to a river into the continent. Those conditions in the 1800s appealed to westward expansion pioneers who traveled by water. A city was born, the railroads replaced water transport, population surged, and the lake was both water supply and toilet. The river became overwhelmed with the commerce of a port city and with sewage. It stank at times. Flooding from the interior tore through the city to get to the lake. What to do? Without sewage treatment it was decided to breach a sub continental divide, send the sewage away and save the lake. It received legislative blessing with the promise of a navigable canal. Chicago’s own shoulder-to-the-wheel determination made it work. The river was transformed into a canal flowing the other way.

Building the Canal to Save Chicago

Building the Canal to Save Chicago PDF Author: Richard Lanyon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781469145815
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
To accomplish the reversing of the flow of a river wouldn’t be possible today. But to Chicago near the end of the 19th Century it became a matter of survival. It is an unlikely place for a large city, with flat topography, poor drainage, next to a lake and near to a river into the continent. Those conditions in the 1800s appealed to westward expansion pioneers who traveled by water. A city was born, the railroads replaced water transport, population surged, and the lake was both water supply and toilet. The river became overwhelmed with the commerce of a port city and with sewage. It stank at times. Flooding from the interior tore through the city to get to the lake. What to do? Without sewage treatment it was decided to breach a sub continental divide, send the sewage away and save the lake. It received legislative blessing with the promise of a navigable canal. Chicago’s own shoulder-to-the-wheel determination made it work. The river was transformed into a canal flowing the other way.

Chicago Transformed

Chicago Transformed PDF Author: Joseph Gustaitis
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809334984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
14. "Taking New Heart": Organized Labor and the Postwar Strikes -- 15. "Eyes to the Future": Chicago in 1919 -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author -- Back Cover

Chicago

Chicago PDF Author: Daniel R. Block
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442227273
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Chicago began as a frontier town on the edge of white settlement and as the product of removal of culturally rich and diverse indigenous populations. The town grew into a place of speculation with the planned building of the Illinois and Michigan canal, a boomtown, and finally a mature city of immigrants from both overseas and elsewhere in the US. In this environment, cultures mixed, first at the taverns around Wolf Point, where the forks of the Chicago River join, and later at the jazz and other clubs along the “Stroll” in the black belt, and in the storefront ethnic restaurants of today. Chicago was the place where the transcontinental railroads from the West and the “trunk” roads from the East met. Many downtown restaurants catered specifically to passengers transferring from train to train between one of the five major downtown railroad stations. This also led to “destination” restaurants, where Hollywood stars and their onlookers would dine during overnight layovers between trains. At the same time, Chicago became the candy capital of the US and a leading city for national conventions, catering to the many participants looking for a great steak and atmosphere. Beyond hosting conventions and commerce, Chicagoans also simply needed to eat—safely and relatively cheaply. Chicago grew amazingly fast, becoming the second largest city in the US in 1890. Chicago itself and its immediate surrounding area was also the site of agriculture, both producing food for the city and for shipment elsewhere. Within the city, industrial food manufacturers prospered, highlighted by the meat processors at the Chicago stockyards, but also including candy makers such as Brach’s and Curtiss, and companies such as Kraft Foods. At the same time, large markets for local consumption emerged. The food biography of Chicago is a story of not just culture, economics, and innovation, but also a history of regulation and regulators, as they protected Chicago’s food supply and built Chicago into a city where people not only come to eat, but where locals rely on the availability of safe food and water. With vivid details and stories of local restaurants and food, Block and Rosing reveal Chicago to be one of the foremost eating destinations in the country.

Passage to Chicago

Passage to Chicago PDF Author: Tom Willcockson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692788622
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Passage to Chicago: A journey on the Illinois & Michigan Canal in the Year 1860 takes the reader on a special kind of journey: an in-depth, illustrated look at life on a fictional canal boat, the Prairie Star, as it travels to Chicago just before the Civil War. You will experience the daily lives of those who lived and worked on the canal boats, as well as in the towns they traveled through. Hop on board with the canalers, mule boys, lock tenders and their families, miners, quarrymen, shopkeepers, and others, to witness their world of more than 150 years ago.

The Chicago River

The Chicago River PDF Author: Libby Hill
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 080933707X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
In this social and ecological account of the Chicago River, Libby Hill tells the story of how a sluggish waterway emptying into Lake Michigan became central to the creation of Chicago as a major metropolis and transportation hub. This widely acclaimed volume weaves the perspectives of science, engineering, commerce, politics, economics, and the natural world into a chronicle of the river from its earliest geologic history through its repeated adaptations to the city that grew up around it. While explaining the river’s role in massive public works, such as drainage and straightening, designed to address the infrastructure needs of a growing population, Hill focuses on the synergy between the river and the people of greater Chicago, whether they be the tribal cultures that occupied the land after glacial retreat, the first European inhabitants, or more recent residents. In the first edition, Hill brought together years of original research and the contributions of dozens of experts to tell the Chicago River’s story up until 2000. This revised edition features discussions of disinfection, Asian carp, green strategies, the evolution of the Chicago Riverwalk, and the river’s rejuvenation. It also explores how earlier solutions to problems challenge today’s engineers, architects, environmentalists, and public policy agencies as they address contemporary issues. Revealing the river to be a microcosm of the uneasy relationship between nature and civilization, The Chicago River offers the tools and knowledge for the city’s residents to be champions on the river’s behalf.

City of Lake and Prairie

City of Lake and Prairie PDF Author: Kathleen A. Brosnan
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987724
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Known as the Windy City and the Hog Butcher to the World, Chicago has earned a more apt sobriquet—City of Lake and Prairie—with this compelling, innovative, and deeply researched environmental history. Sitting at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan, one of the largest freshwater bodies in the world, and on the eastern edge of the tallgrass prairies that fill much of the North American interior, early residents in the land that Chicago now occupies enjoyed natural advantages, economic opportunities, and global connections over centuries, from the Native Americans who first inhabited the region to the urban dwellers who built a metropolis in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As one millennium ended and a new one began, these same features sparked a distinctive Midwestern environmentalism aimed at preserving local ecosystems. Drawing on its contributors’ interdisciplinary talents, this volume reveals a rich but often troubled landscape shaped by communities of color, workers, and activists as well as complex human relations with industry, waterways, animals, and disease.

Parting the Desert

Parting the Desert PDF Author: Zachary Karabell
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307566072
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Award-winning historian Zachary Karabell tells the epic story of the greatest engineering feat of the nineteenth century--the building of the Suez Canal-- and shows how it changed the world. The dream was a waterway that would unite the East and the West, and the ambitious, energetic French diplomat and entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps was the mastermind behind the project. Lesseps saw the project through fifteen years of financial challenges, technical obstacles, and political intrigues. He convinced ordinary French citizens to invest their money, and he won the backing of Napoleon III and of Egypt's prince Muhammad Said. But the triumph was far from perfect: the construction relied heavily on forced labor and technical and diplomatic obstacles constantly threatened completion. The inauguration in 1869 captured the imagination of the world. The Suez Canal was heralded as a symbol of progress that would unite nations, but its legacy is mixed. Parting the Desert is both a transporting narrative and a meditation on the origins of the modern Middle East.

Constructing Chicago

Constructing Chicago PDF Author: Daniel M. Bluestone
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300057508
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Traces the architectural history of nineteenth century Chicago, looks at Chicago's parks, churches, offices, and civic buildings, and looks at the image of Chicago they created

Reports of Army Engineers Upon the Proposed Canals Connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River and with Lake Michigan

Reports of Army Engineers Upon the Proposed Canals Connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River and with Lake Michigan PDF Author: United States. Army. Corps of Engineers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lake Erie and Ohio River ship canal
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description


Chicago's Historic Hyde Park

Chicago's Historic Hyde Park PDF Author: Susan O'Connor Davis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226925196
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
Stretching south from 47th Street to the Midway Plaisance and east from Washington Park to the lake’s shore, the historic neighborhood of Hyde Park—Kenwood covers nearly two square miles of Chicago’s south side. At one time a wealthy township outside of the city, this neighborhood has been home to Chicago’s elite for more than one hundred and fifty years, counting among its residents presidents and politicians, scholars, athletes, and fiery religious leaders. Known today for the grand mansions, stately row houses, and elegant apartments that these notables called home, Hyde Park—Kenwood is still one of Chicago’s most prominent locales. Physically shaped by the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and by the efforts of some of the greatest architects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—including Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe—this area hosts some of the city’s most spectacular architecture amid lush green space. Tree-lined streets give way to the impressive neogothic buildings that mark the campus of the University of Chicago, and some of the Jazz Age’s swankiest high-rises offer spectacular views of the water and distant downtown skyline. In Chicago’s Historic Hyde Park, Susan O’Connor Davis offers readers a biography of this distinguished neighborhood, from house to home, and from architect to resident. Along the way, she weaves a fascinating tapestry, describing Hyde Park—Kenwood’s most celebrated structures from the time of Lincoln through the racial upheaval and destructive urban renewal of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s into the preservationist movement of the last thirty-five years. Coupled with hundreds of historical photographs, drawings, and current views, Davis recounts the life stories of these gorgeous buildings—and of the astounding talents that built them. This is architectural history at its best.