
Raising of Chicago - virmundi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
======
jasode
On a related note for anyone who has walked around both Manhattan and downtown
Chicago...

Ever notice how downtown Chicago has much less noise of honking cars than
downtown New York City? A friend pointed out it's because of Chicago's lower-
level streets[0] that a lot of service vehicles use for loading/unloading.
That's in contrast to Manhattan where everybody has to share the same street
level. E.g. a brown UPS truck that stops for a mere 20 seconds is enough for
the yellow cab driver that's stuck behind him to smash on the horn with
impatience.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago)

~~~
marzell
I just returned from my first trip to Chicago, and noticed some related things
when comparing to other large cities I'm familiar with.

Related to honking and street noise, another factor I noticed is a high number
of curbs where parking is simply not allowed. This streamlines traffic in some
ways, as people aren't fighting over spaces or waiting for someone to back in
slowly. Although, there was a lot of "hazard parking" where people just
stopped where they weren't supposed to. A lot of the honking I witnessed was
due to freight/waste vehicles blocking an entire street (2-4 lanes) so they
could back into a dock or service area in the middle of a block.

Downtown at night seemed eerily quiet, although there were a good number of
people. I think several factors applied here, when compared with SF... Chicago
has been built to handle the vast crowds from events and conventions that
swarm the city. When that isn't happening, there is comparatively more room
for people, so it's wide sidewalks aren't as crowded. Also, being built to
withstand harsh winters, I imagine there is better thermal insulation that
also acts as decent audio insulation (plus a lot is happening under the street
level!). I was right outside blues and jazz clubs where you couldn't actually
hear that anything was going on inside (this makes me laugh when compared to
visiting Nashville for the first time earlier in the year).

It also seemed that the contention between drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians
is more severe even than SF, where I saw several interactions that seemed more
like a macho game of "chicken".

~~~
monksy
It's quiet after 7pm because most people don't live in the loop. After 6pm the
neighborhoods become a lot busier. Also, a lot of the people in the loop
during the workday come from the suburbs.

~~~
wenc
Right.

Also, many new visitors mistake the Loop for downtown, but the Loop is really
just one part of downtown. Downtown encompasses River North, West Loop and a
bunch of adjacent neighborhoods where it's fairly lively. Parts of the Loop
can be pretty lively at night too, especially off State St where the theaters
are (I just saw Hello Dolly last night).

I mention this because there are many midwestern cities (like St Louis) whose
downtowns are completely deserted after 5 which gives rise to safety concerns.
Chicago's downtown isn't like that at all. It's still comparatively
residential. It's somewhat similar to downtown Toronto in that the core
business district clears out after 7 and the surrounding areas become more
lively.

~~~
hibikir
St Louis' downtown feels deserted before 5 too, as large chunks of downtown
are designed to have nothing to do for pedestrians. Look at your favorite
satellite images around Market and 10th: You see nice parks surrounded by
buildings that are not designed to have stores. The area is full of government
buildings, office buildings and parking lots that will get no use after 5, and
few people even walk the streets at lunch time: The west loop of Chicago at
9pm is busier than This area at noon. Busch stadium is nearby, but look at the
activity nearby: There's Ballpark village and a couple of other bars to the
west, but most of those nearby buildings are still empty, and the area is all
a sea of surface parking lots.

Architecture and urbanism generate pedestrian activity, and many midwestern
towns are not designed for it, but for people to come from the suburbs and
park near their office. You can use zoning to build lively neighborhoods,
soulless collections of office buildings, or anything else in between. The
many municipalities around St Louis, and their planning, also engineer world-
leading levels of segregation, both by race and social class. It's no wonder
St Louisians ask each other where they went to high school. The way the metro
area is designed, it'd be a miracle if it didn't provide a lot of information.

------
azhenley
How many cities have been raised like this?

I was shocked when I found out Seattle's streets were raised, but not the
buildings, which led to the Seattle Underground [1]. If you tour it, you can
see the original first floor of buildings while you're under the roads.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground)

~~~
rpeden
Galveston is another well known instance of this. After much of the city was
destroyed by a hurricane storm surge in 1900, it was raised quite
significantly. There's a good read about it here:

[https://texashillcountry.com/raising-galveston-
storm-1900/](https://texashillcountry.com/raising-galveston-storm-1900/)

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jefflinwood
You can learn more about the history of the Chicago River at this small museum
right along the river:

[http://www.bridgehousemuseum.org/](http://www.bridgehousemuseum.org/)

Chicago has really done an impressive job making the Riverwalk accessible. You
can also take one of the many river cruises that go back and forth if you're
interested.

~~~
weberc2
The riverwalk is great; they're expanding it more and more every year. I
believe the intent is to extend it along the south branch of the river
(currently it covers just the east branch to the lake) all the way to Ping Tom
park (Chinatown).

------
influxed
This happened later than the dates in Wikipedia for some of the outer
neighborhoods of the time. A visible legacy today in those neighborhoods is
vaulted sidewalks and entries, making houses appear shorter than they actually
are.

plug for an article I wrote a few years ago about some houses with vaulted
entryways: [http://chicagopatterns.com/colorful-front-gabled-
italianate-...](http://chicagopatterns.com/colorful-front-gabled-italianate-
homes-damen-33rd/)

~~~
enobrev
Thanks for this note. I always wondered why places in Pilsen and Little
Village were below the sidewalk.

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ocdtrekkie
This is one of my favorite fun facts about our city. The other one, which I
didn't realize until recently, is that our rivers are also separated from Lake
Michigan by locks, we have a lower water level within the city. Between these
two things, there's a significant height for boats to pass under bridges all
throughout Chicago.

~~~
yborg
Many people also don't realize how much of the current lakefront is built on
fill - Grant Park is largely built atop fill from debris from the Chicago Fire
that was dumped into the Lake.

~~~
wglb
Northwestern University doubled its campus size by filling in lake.

The Edgewater Beach Hotel was at water's edge, but now is quite some distance
from the lake.

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Isamu
This is what I would expect to happen in Manhattan, for instance, as a
response to sea level rise, rather than the dystopian abandonment you see in
movies like A.I.

Not that you would necessarily raise skyscrapers, but that you would raise the
street level, and change the street level entrance of the building. Smaller
buildings could be raised though.

It's not an outrageous idea. More outrageous I think is the idea of
abandonment. Maybe people think of sea level rise as happening overnight.

~~~
bluthru
A sea wall is more likely: [https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-
flooding-manha...](https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-flooding-
manhattan-coastal-barriers-2018-4)

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nkrisc
In some neighborhoods you can see where the street was raised but building
weren't. There's a gap of a few feet between the sidewalk and the building
where you can see down to the level of the original street and the former
street level floor of the building now looks like a basement.

Off the top of my head you can see some buildings like this in the blocks
North of Division between Ashland and the Kennedy.

Here's an example from that area:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9042461,-87.6638461,3a,75y,2...](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9042461,-87.6638461,3a,75y,263.04h,80.27t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgU-158489cSwgOBI7fCHGA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

~~~
thinkpad20
I'm not 100%, but I don't think that's an example of the effects of the
raising of the city. For one thing, the address is quite removed from the
downtown area, but beyond that you can find these kinds of buildings all over
the city, so I've always figured they were just built that way. Here's an
example of a clearly recently-built building which has a similar design, in
Wicker Park:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9092286,-87.6725628,3a,34.8y...](https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9092286,-87.6725628,3a,34.8y,88.23h,93.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEdNJIDhuAyYaAPv-
_uCJkA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

~~~
btkramer9
There's buildings all over london like this too. I'm curious why they do this.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5154577,-0.1600232,3a,75y,18...](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5154577,-0.1600232,3a,75y,187.85h,62.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_nJ-
AbNfjc4h0Tpe-CO5Gg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192)

~~~
ksrm
So you can have an extra floor (basement), with natural light.

------
wtfrmyinitials
Looks like somebody listened to Ungeniused this week

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userbinator
_Businesses operating out of these premises were not closed down for the
lifting; as the buildings were being raised, people came, went, shopped and
worked in them as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening._

150 years ago, there was no widespread utility services (water, electricity,
gas), so buildings essentially just rested on their foundations and could be
raised with far less disruption. The lax safety regulations of the time
probably also contributed --- today, if such a thing were done, the building
would likely be completely vacated and emptied first.

------
telesilla
I only just watched this a few days ago, shows how it was done.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHN7OJuVgXA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHN7OJuVgXA)

I used to wander around Chicago before I knew why the houses in some areas
were below street level and just wondered, why would so many many build in a
flood zone!

------
larrywright
If you’re interested in this sort of thing, check out Steven B. Johnson’s “How
We Got To Now”, which discussed this. [https://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-
now/](https://www.pbs.org/show/how-we-got-now/)

It’s only six episodes, and quite fascinating.

~~~
twtw
There's also a book version, which is also quite good.

------
patal
Now I understand Monty Python's sketch from the Meaning of Life, where old
financials pirate a multi-story building and sail it off out of town. The
wikipedia article mentions that in the chapter "relocated buildings". Before I
never really got the joke of that sketch.

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theklub
Interestingly, in CT there was a large number of homes build on bad
foundations, driving around my neighborhood its common to see otherwise very
nice houses raised up to have there foundations completely replaced. Still an
interesting site to see.

------
njarboe
"the 1854 outbreak of cholera that killed six percent of the city’s
population."

A pretty good motivation to make some changes. I wonder when the last time a
US city had over 5% of its population die in a year. The 1906 SF
earthquake/fire was about 1%.

~~~
isostatic
3-6% of the world's population died from Spanish Flu in 1918/1919

------
bdz
Also from Chicago: permanently reversing the flow of the river

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_fl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_River#Reversing_the_flow)

------
dang
Discussed in 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6295279](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6295279)

~~~
twtw
Have you considered automating this? Something like a "previous discussions"
link?

~~~
CPLX
Perhaps you haven't noticed the "past" link that's underneath each original
post?

~~~
asadlionpk
I think dang himself clicks on 'past' and then refers those links here.

What would be great is a (sticky) comment for all past discussions sorted by
year.

~~~
dasmoth
That’s pretty much what the “past” link gives you. I like the human touch of
someone consciously deciding whether there’s value in highlighting previous
posts.

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sanket5
Go to Europe and enjoy your stroll through the public streets of cities that
were designed for walking. A pleasure :)
[https://www.moneysavingwallet.com/](https://www.moneysavingwallet.com/)

