Back in the mid-1800s, Chicago had a huge problem. The city sat barely above the lake, so water (and everything in it) didn’t go anywhere, turning streets into dirty puddles & causing sickness to spread fast. People were fed up. Rather than digging down to fix things, the city decided to lift everything up.
But how did it do this? And what were the consequences? Let’s find out.
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Key takeaways
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- What encouraged the city to do this
- The practical side of how crews did it
- Which parts of the city ended up below the new surface
- What traces of all this are still around today
The problem Chicago faced in the 1850s
Chicago was a city with no real drainage. Rain fell & streets flooded, meaning the waste just sat there, and Chicago’s low elevation made even a regular downpour a headache. Add cholera outbreaks to the mix, and it was no longer a mere inconvenience. It was dangerous.
City leaders eventually called in an engineer, Ellis Chesbrough, to come up with a proper sewer plan. His job was to figure out how to make water drain instead of hanging around.
Once Chesbrough laid out the sewer system, he realized there was an issue. Gravity only works if you’ve got a slope. Chicago didn’t have that. Instead, the fix they landed on was to build new streets higher than the old ones so water would finally drain. Some areas only needed a few feet. But with others, they needed to be anywhere from six to ten feet higher. It completely changed how entire blocks connected to the street.
How the city wrote it into law & paid for it
In late 1855, officials approved the sewer plan & they also passed a series of ordinances. Those set the new grades block by block, including details of the exact height difference in feet.
The financing was a mix of city spending & special assessments on nearby property owners. Any buildings that sat on one of those streets were part of the budget. Such a system gave the city a steady way to cover costs while construction moved from downtown into the surrounding neighborhoods.
How the work happened
Of course, this wasn’t a quick paving job. First came the sewer & then crews hauled in loads of earth to pile on top of the old roads, rebuilding sidewalks at the new level. Property owners had to figure out what to do about their buildings. A lot of them hired crews to lift the structures using screw jacks. Others chose to leave their buildings where they were. As such, this meant the “first floor” was now, technically, a basement.
Workers shaped the streets into a slight crown so water would run toward the new gutters. From there, it flowed down into the sewers & eventually out to the river. It may not seem like it, but the system itself was pretty advanced for its time. This is thanks to those combined sewers & manholes. It was all built on top of what was already there.
Lake Street and other downtown blocks
The plan rolled out across huge sections of the city, especially the South Side. Block after block got the same treatment. Before long, there were whole rows of buildings sitting below these freshly raised sidewalks. What used to be ground level had now become an in-between space.
Some of the earliest work happened downtown & Lake Street was a big one. In fact, crews raised the grade while shop owners either lifted their buildings or cut new entrances at the higher level. It was rather strange to see. Why? Because there were busy commercial streets with sidewalks several feet above the old storefronts.
But the old sidewalks didn’t just disappear when the street level rose. The city built vaulted sidewalks, which were arched spaces tucked underneath the new walkways, to fill the gap. These became underground rooms that stretched out in front of buildings.
A hotel that went up with the times
The Tremont House had already been through a few rebuilds by the time Chicago started changing its street levels. In 1861, during another renovation, the owners decided to bring the whole hotel up to match the new grade at Dearborn & Lake. Since it was a major structure, raising it was no small project.
Yet they managed to do so while keeping the hotel’s reputation intact. It stayed in prime shape at a moment when the city’s streets & sidewalks were changing rather quickly.
What’s still around to prove it
Since they did the work block by block, you could walk down one street & see a rather strange sight. Some buildings were perched at the new level, while others were far below. Later, they added stairs and cut new doors. The city slowly adjusted to its “new” height. Over time, those sunken floors became storage rooms or basements.
Bits of this 19th-century makeover are still hiding in plain sight. Many vaulted sidewalks are still down there & the city keeps close tabs on them because they’re literally hollow spaces under public walkways.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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