by Christopher Hinton

Once upon a time there was a soggy piece of marshland divided by a great river which drained into a lake so wide you could not see across to the other shoreline. It was a muddy and humid place with scalding summers and bone-chilling winters, and there was always the smell of onions the air; This is why the first people of this land called it "Chicago," which in their language means "wild onion."

In 1833, a village of European businessmen, soldiers and laborers had been founded on the mouth of that great river. It was not a pleasant or picturesque village--there were plenty of whiskey taverns and prostitution houses, and it was populated by many unscrupulous characters. It was a place for rough pioneers beginning their trek westward, and few people stayed for very long. However, in 1836 the role of this squalid little village, and the great river they had settled upon, would greatly change.

Americans were rapidly moving westward, and the politicians on the East coast desperately wished to connect the new western territories to the East via a northern waterway. They envisioned a water route which one could sail from the Gulf of Mexico into the Mississippi River, traveling northward past St. Louis, and then by canal to the Chicago River, into the Great Lakes and the Hudson River Valley, and finally into the Atlantic Ocean and back to the Gulf of Mexico.

So in 1836, construction began on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which would link the Chicago River to the Mississippi River. By 1837, the Chicago village of a few hundred people became a city of 4,000. And by the time the canal was completed in 1848, the population of Chicago was well over 50,000.

The rapid growth of Chicago, its sudden association of its name with opportunity and wealth, can be fully credited to that great river it has been founded on. The Chicago River has been more then just an avenue for transportation, its been the commercial fuel-line preceding the city's arrival onto the world stage as a major economic center.

But the river was never thought of as being important to the quality of life. It may have been seen as a cheap way to ship agricultural goods, but in Chicago it was somewhat obscured by the dockyards, casinos, whorehouses and saloons assembled along the river's shoreline. Chicago's wealth remained further south, and unless you were a longshoreman, the river was not a place to spend any time around. Furthermore, the river was also used as the city's toilet. This was an unfortunate laxity because the river drained into Lake Michigan, the source of Chicago's drinking water, and the consequence was a city burdened with epidemics of typhoid and cholera.

But the Great Fire of 1871 changed all of that. The fire burnt through 2,000 acres, destroyed over 18,000 buildings, killed 300 people and left 90,000 people homeless. It was so traumatic that many residents felt they had just witnessed the apocalypse itself, and many writers felt they could never accurately describe the devastation. Yet very soon afterwards the people of Chicago began to rise above the ashes to focus on building a city of the future.

"It will be made a better city than it ever could have become but for this fire," wrote a columnist for Harper's Weekly on November 4, 1871. "A better building system, a more shapely development, a spirit of enterprise and determination, literally tried by fire, will bring all of these results."

Chicago's reincarnation focused on two things. The first was the use of architecture's latest innovation, the "elevator building," which would be later known as the skyscraper. Though it is arguable as to which city was actually to be the first to build a skyscraper (defined at the time by seven floors), Chicago was certainly the first city to begin building them widely. The fire had cleared out so many old buildings, that the newer "elevator buildings" had plenty of opportunities to carve out their own urban niche. People in Chicago preferred the newer buildings because they allowed more business and financial activities to occur in a smaller geographical area.

The second focus, particularly after the typhoid epidemic of 1885 in which thousands of Chicagoans died, was the river. The Great Fire had done little to dissuade trade through Chicago, and by the 1880s there were so many barges and ships using the river that one could easily "cross the river by merely hopping from boat to boat." However, besides from the epidemics, silt from river continually needed to be dredged from the delta, all of which was an expensive task for the city.

In 1889, the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Greater Chicago was formed to begin building the Sanitary and Ship Canal. In its own way, this was a stroke of genius for the city. By building a canal off of the Chicago River, the river's flow would be reversed inland to the Calumet River. This took care of both problems: silt no longer collected at the mouth of the river which greatly reduced the need for dredging. And Chicago's sewage no longer flowed into Lake Michigan, Chicago's water supply (though it did end up in plenty of smaller towns south of Chicago).

Around this same time, the World's Fair of 1893 arrived to Chicago, for which the city built the Columbian Exposition: a pavilion dedicated not only to the new world, but also to Chicago's perseverance, with the symbol of the phoenix used liberally. Tried by fire, Chicago now hailed itself as a rising urban utopia. The pavilion's neo-classical structures were designed in relation to the river (which bordered the pavilion on the south), and were built to express the city's commercial, industrial, educational and scientific wealth. Also incorporated into the structure were marinas for Chicago's first recreational boating.

The Colombian Pavilion was designed by Daniel Burnham, a visionary in love with architecture, waterways and Chicago. In 1909, along with another architect, Edward Bennett, Burnham published the "Plan of Chicago," which proposed straightening the Chicago River, building a bridge (at this time the north side of the river was still divided from the south side), regulating design, and protecting the waterway for recreation. By developing the riverfront with neo-classical architecture, marinas, and city parks, Burnham envisioned Chicago becoming a "Paris of the Midwest."

The bridge Burnham proposed was completed 11 years later. The Michigan Avenue Bridge was opened in 1920, and was the world's first double-decker trunnion bridge, allowing traffic to move across the river on two levels. Soon afterwards, the Wrigley Company built the Wrigley Tower on the north side of the river just next to the Michigan Avenue Bridge. A year later, the Chicago Tribune Newspaper Company built the Tribune Tower across the street.

The Tribune Tower particularly, with its cathedral-like facade, flying buttresses, and an adjoining terrace overlooking the river, epitomized what Burnham imagined the 1909 Plan to implement. The Tribune not only took into careful consideration its architectural design, but how the building itself related to developing city parks, the river, and the quality of life for Chicago's citizens. Nothing spoke more boldly of the Gilded Age, Chicago's rise to prominence, or for that matter, the power and sanctity of the press.

With the economic prosperity in post-war America, Chicago saw terrific growth along its riverfront. Merchandise Mart (still the world's largest building in square footage) was built in 1928, the Jeweler's Building in 1926, and the Civic Opera House in 1929. After a thirty-year lull during the Great Depression and the Second World War, Chicago began building again, with prominence still placed on development around a Chicago River whose importance had become recreational as well as commercial.

In 1964, the infamous Marina City was built (known locally as the "Corn Cob Towers"), which did away with the last of Chicago's neo-classic design traditions along the riverfront. The twin towers were built to appear like stacked conical shells, and in addition to living space they also housed restaurants which faced the river, as well as a marina, so residents could enjoy boating during their free time.

The Sears Tower was completed in 1974, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Center was finished in 1987, and what these designs continue to hold in common with their predecessors is that their primary concern when being developed is how they will relate to the Chicago River. Today the river is lined with parks, walkways, restaurants, boat-tour operators, and some of Chicago's most important corporations. Here, at the beginning of the new century, Chicago continues to build with a focus on the river and its weighty role within the history of our city.

Chicago, like many cities, has gone through periods of destruction which, instead of incubating feelings of ruin, have revived and motivated the community into action, redevelopment, and improvement. It is safe to say that the modern city of Chicago would not exist without the 1909 Plan of Chicago, influenced by the Columbia Exposition Pavilion, and conceived from the flames of the Great Fire of 1871.

And its river, once sublime and meditative, then polluted and presumed, has taken its rightful place at the heart of Chicago.

Christopher Hinton