Raising Chicago's Street Level to add Sewers

(Update: Neil Gale's blog, EnjoyIllinois)

On the same day that Facebook had a posting about Raising Chicago, it was also the subject of the Chicago Tribune's Sunday Flashback Column. (Update: another article) 

Edward Mendel - Chicago Historical Society, 1857, Public Domain

A different exposure:

Paul Petraitis posted
Christopher N. Kaufmann: Crazy the amount of work involved kn raising all these buikdings on Lake Street in tge 1860s, only to all be destroyed a few years later in the Great Chicago Fire.

Chicago Historical Society, 1857 or 66, Public Domain

After a couple of decades of growth, the problem of building a city on shallow land became obvious, the roads were mud because they could not install a sewer system. And recurring epidemics of cholera motivated the city government to do something. The problem was that any sewer pipes laid beneath the streets would be below the river/lake level. So the Chicago Board of Sewerage Commissioners decided to lay the pipes on the existing streets and bring in fill to create new streets that were anywhere from six to fourteen feet higher than the existing streets. New buildings were built with their entrance floor at the new height. But what about the existing buildings? Beginning in 1855, contractors would raise buildings by placing hundreds, even thousands, of jackscrews under a building, or even a block of buildings,

Photo by Johnalden
CC BY-SA

This illustration of a jackscrew is fully extended. Note the bar on the ground that is put in one of the holes at the top to turn the screw.

Excerpt from above photo

This detail from the raising of the Briggs Hotel shows the man-sized jacks that were used and that each one had a man to operate it. That was the key. Each jack was turned the same amount at the same time so that the building maintained uniform stresses across the foundation. The Briggs Hotel remained in operation while it was being raised! This was typical of most buildings. George Pullman's first company was raising buildings. His contracts specified that he would not disturb a guest or break a pane of glass. Other contractors used hydraulic jacks.

Paul Petraitis posted
Nice collection of frame buildings near LaSalle and Randolph, 1858, Hesler photo.

Dennis DeBruler It looks like the streets have yet to be raised in this area.Paul PetraitisPaul manages the membership, moderators, settings, and posts for 1844 Chicago. I agree
Joe Falco Look at all of those wood ballon-frame structures.

Hidden History posted  (source)

Chicago raised its city several feet higher during the late 1800s!

As Americans moved from the rural areas to cities during the mid-1800s, many cities began to grow. Chicago, which was built right along Lake Michigan, often found itself flooded and sewage was often filling the streets. As the town grew, this problem amplified until 1855, when the city began the process of raising the city. Because the city was only a few feet above Lake Michigan sewage wouldn’t properly drain, and the Chicago Board of Sewerage Commissioners determined the best way to end the problem was to raise the city by 4ft.-14ft. based on the location.

During the two decades that the city took to raise itself, city drainage pipes were installed, and dirt and new foundations were placed under buildings. Many businesses and hotels were raised inch by inch, while still being open to visitors and guests, and once part of a block, weighing roughly 35,000 tons, was even raised using 6,000 jackscrews and hundreds of men. One man even recorded that he saw a building being raised every day by this strenuous work. This process was possible because modern skyscrapers and building materials like iron weren’t commonly used and most buildings were heavy and well built.

George Pullman was one of the masterminds behind the project and would later make his fortune in building sleeping cars. Today such a feat would be nearly impossible, yet in the late 1800s, Chicago raised its city higher to be able to continue to grow spurring the town to new growth during the turn of the century. The photos from the Chicago Historical Society show a street and a hotel being raised while people go by as if nothing is happening.

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Hidden History posted again
[The comments indicate that Seattle and Sacramento also raised their streets.]
Dyadya Abdul ...and this is how George Pullman made his initial fortune that he then investing in founding the Pullman Car Company.

Carey Wintergreen posted

SUNKEN...not SINKING..!!

Still there...though mostly hidden from Google Street View by a thicket of shrubbery and trees..!!

1478 W Webster St | Lincoln Park | 1988

Robert W Krueger | Conrad Sulzer Regional Library

Carey Wintergreen shared
https://wgntv.com/.../chicagos-sunken-homes-are.../amp/

 

Aaron Nowak commented on Carey's share
[They opened up the attic to raise the front of the building.]

Original Chicago posted

What television show is this line from and who said it? Why was Dearborn Station referenced?

"I’ve eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish. I’ve eaten so much fish, I’m ready to grow gills. I’ve eaten so much liver, I can only make love if I’m smothered in bacon & onions."

Dearborn Station as it appeared before the fire in 1922. Glass plate negative. They decided against rebuilding the tower during it's reconstruction.

Dennis DeBruler shared

The answer to the question according to some comments is Hawkeye Pierce on M.A.S.H. The episode was about the bureaucratic difficulty of ordering ribs from a fictional Adam's Rib that was close to Dearborn Station.

But my reason for sharing is that this is another view of the station roofs before the 1922 fire. And it is a reminder that the freight house west of the station was owned by the Wabash Railroad. It also shows that horses were still used for some freight but cars were making a significant impact on passenger travel. And streetcars were still running.

Lawrence Smith: why is the street under the streetcar elevated?

Deanna Stark: That is a nice historic scene showing vaulted sidewalks that were placed after buildings were already in place and the street was raised quite a bit. The buildings, for what looks like several blocks, were torn down, exposing the space under the sidewalks. The street has limestone walls at the curb line and the centers were filled in with sand from Indiana before the turn of the century, and then sidewalks were laid either on I-beams crossing from these walls and embedded into the buildings, or concrete posts were erected right next to the buildings. The spaces were often as high as 9 feet. Once the buildings were torn down, the vacant lots were filled in, as shown in process in this pic, to raise that level to the same height as the modern street level! That stupid Geraldo Rivera show about CAPONE’S vault was the result of the vault on the Michigan street side of the old Lexington Hotel caving in, and the void was filled in with urban debris and a ew sidewalk laid over that. This was a common occurrence with these vaults downtown! I went in the old hotel many times and saw this, and the vault on the 22nd Street side of the hotel was still intact! You could stand under it and hear people walking by on the sidewalk above! That sidewalk was actually giant flagstone limestone slabs laid right on those beams!…….Al’s Vault my ass!!! They should have talked to me!! I knew just what they’d find when they dug into the cemented window and door openings of what was once the actual first floor of that hotel before they raised the streets and built the vaults in 1898!!! That first floor became the basement!! I can’t believe they did not understand Chicago history enough to know why that cement was in the basement to begin with!! What a joke!!!

Jeff Nichols posted on Facebook from Kansas Historical Society of The Chief leaving Dearborn

 

One problem with the business of raising buildings is that after the last building was raised, you are out of business. But this provided Pullman the seed money he needed to create his sleeper car business.

One thing that struck me when looking at the pictures was how big Chicago had grown in just a couple of decades.

Update: Another article on the raising of the streets from an Andy Mueller posting. The next time I go north of Goose Island to check out the abandoned tracks and industries, I need to also go west into Bucktown because it is supposed to have some of the homes where they just built a new entrance into the second floor.

A posting of an article that has some interesting photos. The project was a real boon for the company that made jackscrews. 600 men used 6,000 jack screws to raise an entire city block of buildings.

HOW CHICAGO LIFTED ITSELF OUT OF THE SWAMP AND BECAME A MODERN METROPOLIS Actually, only a couple of paragraphs over half way down the article talk about raising the streets so that sewers could be installed. (Smithsonian.com has the same article.)