The Plan of Chicago, Pt. 1: Make No Little Plans

The Burnham Plan of Chicago stands as a clear example of an era when wealthy power players used their influence to shape the city, believing, at least in part, that their vision would serve the public good. Were they always right? Not necessarily. But given the choice, I’ll take an ambitious parks system over another phallic rocket launched into space any day.

Read the show notes here! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Y'all, this is our first ever four-part series of a podcast. Of the podcast. Y'all ready for it? 77 Flex.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Ready or not, here we come.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

I don't think Sarah's ready. She's ready. Not ready. You're not trying to answer questions today? What's going on?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

I was taking a sip on my drink.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Non-sponsored drink, by the way. Uh, look at you. Trying to get your mic set up.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I was just trying to lift it up a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Here we go.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Uh, what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Uh welcome back to another episode of 77 Flavors. If you're new here, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Mm-hmm. Let me go ahead. Let me go ahead and give you your coin real quick.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Thank you. Uh, we do this every week. Just Darry likes to give out coins for no reason. Um, and we cover different topics about Chicago, a lot of Chicago history. It's a fun time. We have fun.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Where the hell y'all been at? If you ain't heard of I'm not not ego, but just saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

If you're not new here, welcome back. We're so happy you're here. Um if you're, you know, whether you're new or this is your first time, I uh implore you to uh leave a review, you know, hit that plus sign, you know, do all the things that you're supposed to do. Subscribe uh if you're watching on YouTube. It helps push our uh content into the algorithm and more people can find us. So you don't have to text people links if you don't want to, which is fine. I don't want to text people links either sometimes. I mean so just you know, like and uh leave a leave a little review so that people can find us. Absolutely. But we're happy you're here.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Uh if you want to learn more about what we do, check out our website, 77flavors.org.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Up and running, baby.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

That's a beautiful website, too. Yeah. We've been getting really compliments on that bad boy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, tens of thousands. Better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Better look good.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Designers did a great job.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

So did shout out to Kansas D.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Sierra.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Sierra. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Um, how was your week?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Uh, good. It was a great week. Um, very look at me as I look and be like, what the hell did I do?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

What did I do this week? Um stuff going on. We we uh one of our friends, his name is Matt. He has a Substack um that we were featured on this week. Yeah I will I link it in our in the show notes. Oh, also, if you listen to this podcast on Apple or uh Spotify, you're not seeing the show notes that I'm talking about unless you click the show notes link.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

You can subscribe to our substack, it's completely free. And it's a deep dive into what we talk about, basically, all of our sources, more pictures, like all the cool stuff that you if you want to see more.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Uh and if you want to hear from me, I write it every single week and it's kind of like my my insight into what's happening. Sometimes I do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Nice little summary if you like reading to.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Right. And uh there's more information in there sometimes that we couldn't get to in the episode. So uh you can subscribe to it through our Substack. And I will link the Substack in the actual show notes feed that you're looking at if you're on Spotify or Apple. But Matt, um, and if you go to our Substack, I've re-stacked that uh uh article. It was so fun. We're talking, we talked about uh food and uh Chicago food and food in in general, um how it connects, yeah, and what we've learned through traveling uh through the 77 community areas and about Chicago and Chicago food and history and all how all those things intertwine. So it's a really nice uh I mean we're so glad that he reached out. It was so generous of him to like let us uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

It's always good the yeah. We that's what we do. That's what we we love it. It's our favorite thing. Yeah, yeah, we've got the yap a lot today. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Uh also coming up, if you uh are looking to come see, which we don't do these uh, but often maybe we will.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Yeah, we should.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

We are doing a live podcast recording for uh for Kendall College. They are um hosting a fundraiser to send their students uh abroad to learn more about cooking.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

And we're gonna be there kind of interviewing the chefs that have prepared the meal, uh kind of entertaining you, dinner and a show, if you may.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Uh and we're the show. Yeah. So if you're uh it's not necessarily all gonna be Chicago history, there's there'll be like a trivia portion, but it's really fun.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Um live feed is gonna be fun, man.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah, it's gonna be really cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Something fun, interacting with people. Like, you know, normally I ask a question, How you doing?

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

And I don't get no response except for you, you know what I mean? But I'm talking to the people.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Now they're right there in front of me. I always like that. And it's just fun to like, you know. It's so fun. Engage.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Um, and yeah, you can, you know, you can buy the tickets to the tickets.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Open to everybody.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

It is open to everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tickets are limited, so if you do want to come and support them, yeah, um, please do.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yes, yes. What else we do? What else we got?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

We did a solidarity shopping day in Chinatown with the city clerk.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yeah, man. I would travel with that for the whole day. Yeah, yeah. You know, those have to leave because we did the long day. Long day. But uh, those are always fun because and it's growing. That's what it's like to that's what I like to see. A lot of people are coming out to these things more and over. This is probably our fourth, fourth or fifth one. I think we've been to three of the five or or so. Um, but uh next one's in Pilsen. Yeah, and it's cool because you are really a little stimulus, a little shot in our visibility, more importantly, right, uh, to the businesses that's out there in the neighborhoods.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

We went to Chinatown and uh and we're basically giving, you know, putting money back into the community, yeah, and specifically communities that are targeted uh by ice or communities that are seeing like a drop in business because of ice and fear of being outside. So we're we're always happy to spend our money.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

What was cool with this one is uh, you know, one of the uh leaders on the walk was uh an older woman. Um Chinatown. Uh and now we talked about her dad as you know, Chinatown used to have what's uh deemed like the mayor of Chinatown, kind of like what Bronzeville did. The unofficial mayor. Unofficial mayor, but the mayor, the person that is most looked up to in the community. And uh we talked about him in the podcast a long time ago when we did uh um Chinatown. Chinatown, you know, when we did that. And it's so crazy.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

She was like She was like, oh, her dad was the unofficial mayor of Chinatown.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

And then we run into the mom just randomly on the street, her mom, you know, on the street. It was it was so crazy because we were like, damn, we talked about your dad on our podcast. We've been doing we've been doing this for a long time. Like, we've been at this for a minute.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Where we could run into people, it's still man, it's crazy. So yeah, but that's fun.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah, that same night we went to the Chicago Chefs Cook uh fundraiser gala.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Same night? That's why it's a long day. Man, I'm getting tired of thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Um, which that was also really funny. It was 30 chefs that came and kind of cooked throughout the night. It was really uh special. It's their second one that they've done. That was only the second one?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Well, they grew hand over hand. Yeah. Uh hand over fist from last year to this year.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Whoa. What does where does hand over fist come from? I mean, what is that?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

But what does that hand over fist? You close it up like this that's it. You know what I mean? Like that's the moniker of it, you know? Hand over fist. Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yeah. Hand over fist. Yeah. You stopping the fist. Um, but yeah, they they had a lot. I think they oversold the tickets too.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yeah, it was a good it was a good one. Oversold. And then uh Dario went to the Dodd camera expo. Yeah, buddy.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Tell us about that. It was cool. Uh what was really cool is that I did um uh some some pre-work for them where I, you know, talked about trying to get people there, right? But I tied it in to Chicago History from 77 page, and um That was like your dream.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Yeah, it was my dream.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Are you still in frame?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Okay, just making sure your head ain't cut off because I framed it up based on how you were sitting, just just I set the same spot. Oh, no, no, no. I mean like height-wise. I know you still have it.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

I set the same spot.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Um, but yeah, but there, they were it was busy. I mean, they had everybody in there. Like it was everybody there. Then they had a guest speaker, uh, one person from YouTube that I've been like uh kind of following uh for a little while now. He was there, and uh all the vendors got to talk to Ken and of course and try to stuff and meet people. Besties. Yeah, it was it was really fun. Uh but what's cool to me personally is you know, they keep giving me recognition. I don't know if I deserve the recognition, but like, you know, as helping them out, push it. I mean, you know, look, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

If they're giving it to you, why would you say no?

SPEAKER_01 8:20

I'm not saying no. I'm just saying I don't know if I deserve it. I didn't say nah. I didn't say that. Oh, guy. No, no, no. I say at back. But you know, yeah, um, no, it was cool. But because when I was there, it was a lot of people, it was crazy to be recognized from the Dodd video. People coming to me, like, I see you from the uh video. But people probably saw the video, like yeah, yeah. But like, nope, normally I get it. Oh, you the guy from the history. It was like, man, I saw you on Dodd. So I was like, that's that's uh that's wild, man. Like I love that store. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

That's like that's like your home goods.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Yeah, it is my home goods. Like home goods. It's my like toys, ours. That's oh head. I got you gotta relate to me a little bit better than that.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Home goods on the I'm relating you to me.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Anyway, um, we did something fun last week that I kind of want to do again.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

We did a hot take for last.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

We do it every Tuesday on our Instagram if you uh are follow us on socials. But do you have a hot take for this week?

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Do I have a hot take for this week?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

I did my hot take last week.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

I mean, me too. I did my hot take too.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

What was your hot take?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Uh the people that sneeze, but then the pothole, the pothole one too. You forgot. I did the pothole. I say the 18th Street potholes. You know, it's the worst street, it's the worst street in the that was that was the hot take.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Do you have one for this week?

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Let me see. Uh do I I had I had some hot takes. Um I need to write these down because I can't remember. You you go ahead if you got one before me, because I can't remember, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

You have you have so many opinions, I'm shocked.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

I know, that's why I'm like, I can't remember this stuff. Like, you get put on the spot this hard.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Uh I think ice cream is okay in every season. I don't think ice cream should be exclusively a summer flavor. I think if you own an ice cream shop, you should be making winter flavors.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Um, it's a winter flavor.

unknown 10:03

Me?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Turnip.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Ain't nobody eating no turnip as uh uh. Here's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

That's not for me to figure out. Jenny's, they got it. They can figure out Jenny's got turnip ice cream. No, they just got ice cream. Like they make these one of my favorites is like a cherry goat cheese ice cream. They make some good combos of flavors, so they can figure out a winter flavor. I mean, but like don't give me peppermint. I think peppermint is like the uh second hot take. Peppermint is the worst dessert flavor. I don't know, man. Peppermint peppermint is disgusting. Anything with mint and dessert, disgusting. I agree on the mint. I agree on the mint. I'll take mint, fresh mint, on like a lemon sherbet. But like, don't I don't want to taste I don't want peppermint bark, I don't want peppermint chocolate, I don't want peppermint anything.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

It's so weird. Yeah. Peppermint, peppermint is it is weird. I don't like it. But the worst though.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Oh god, it's so bad. What's what's worse than peppermint?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Licorice.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

No, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

I like peppermint trash. Oh my god, licorice is.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

It ain't good either. No, it's it's it's good. I like I like licorice.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

What's good about licorice?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

It's just so like odd. But I like I like weird, I like odd flavors. You do peppermint and dessert speci like I don't mind mint and peppermint. Like, don't get me wrong, I like mint. Yeah, but I think mint and dessert, yeah, and specifically with white chocolate, yeah, shoot me.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

You don't mint white chocolate is like my two least favorite. White chocolate stop calling white chocolate chocolate. Step one.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

What is it?

SPEAKER_00 11:42

It's just like cream. Cream. There's no there's zero chocolate in white chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

No, like actually, there's no cocoa, like nothing.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

I I don't really like white chocolate like that. No one should like white chocolate. Yeah, nobody. You know, you know what? As you were thinking, we talk about food, it's one of my hot takes. Man, I have so many hot takes. Yeah, it's just it's just one that just look. I think I brought this up before, but if you got an egg on your sandwich, on your on your on your burger, I know. You're doing too much. Your burger your burger can't hold his own. That's my thing. An egg on a burger.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

I don't necessarily love an egg on a burger.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

It don't need to be on there.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

An egg on a burger is Especially an over-easy. Here's the thing. As a person that orders my eggs always, either sunny side up or over easy, I think a runny egg on a sandwich is disastrous.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Just it's doing way too much. The burger don't. If you need to do that to like all that theatrics for a burger, man, that burger.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

It's just like it ruins the experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Well, here's the here's the difference between an egg on a burger and like, you know, other wild stuff on a burger. The other wild stuff knows wild.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

These eggs on burgers now is like a gore-made thing. Like, it ain't like that. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Who's the first person to do that?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Why did the first person do that? Is the better question. What were you that bored and you were like, you know what? They didn't put an egg on here. Let's go ahead and throw an egg on this bad boy.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

You know, like an over-easy egg.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

It get worse and worse the more you keep talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

And it just goes everywhere. It's just horrible. You're not having a scrambled egg on the bigger bigger.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

No. Because then it ain't even about the burger. The the egg then became the main character. Trash.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

It's true.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

I'm sorry. That that's my hot take. It's my random one. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 13:21

But like very, very fierce, too.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

It is, because it's it gets on my goddamn nerves.

Main Topic Beginning

unknown 13:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Any anyway, uh, let's just go ahead and jump into today's topic. I I can't wait, man. Yeah. That that is actually a good reset, low-key. Yeah. That's the good reset. I take a deep breath. I'd be like gathering my thoughts, like, okay, we about to lock in. Lock in and tell this history. Strap in, strap on. Strap up. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Any kind of strap.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

No. No, no. No, no, no. That's crazy. Uh, y'all, we talk about the plan of Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

I'm so excited for this one.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yes, me too.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Uh, let me tell you our plan for the plan of Chicago. Okay. It's the four-part uh episode, not episode, four-part series that we're gonna do on the planet Chicago because there's a lot. And I really I want to do it justice. Uh also, this is our show. We could do whatever we want. But other than that, I want you to get all of the information. No, no, no. And I'm doing this for you. I want you to get all this information. Yeah. You know what I mean? I don't want to condense it and like, because we got time.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah, we got time. Nothing but time.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah. We went to all 77.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah, yeah. You know? We can do whatever we want now. You know what? Hot take. I'm tired of people not knowing that we started out as a uh as a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

I mean one more person that's like. When did you make the transition? Oh my goodness. Don't piss me off.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Stop it. We always been doing anyway. Yeah, continue.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

I'm sorry. Um, that was so unrelated.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

It was unrelated.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah, because it happened like twice this week.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

That's that's why. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Um, but just to give you an idea of like what is the plan of Chicago, if you're not familiar with what we're talking about, we're talking about the 1909 Burnham Plan of Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Bad boy right here.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Uh this plan came about uh uh with Burnham as Daniel Burnham as kind of like the main architect, and he brought along Edward Bennett uh in 1906. Um it covered a lot of things. It covered, which we will dig into all of these as the episodes go on, but uh improving the lakefront, uh creating a highway system, uh improving the railway terminals, um, kind of creating the park system, uh, arranging the streets and the grid of the city, and developing centers that were kind of uh, you know, about intellectual life, arts, culture, that kind of stuff. Um, it was presented in 1909, right? So let's talk about I I kind of wanted to, before we even get to the plan, I kind of wanted to talk about how does a plan like this come about?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, uh well, I do want to say too, we went to the Newberry Library and we had the original copy of the uh Plan of Chicago, too.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

The original like published.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

They only made 1600 of them. We had like 687.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Something like that, yeah. Something like that. It was it was like a bound published book at that point, as the plan of Chicago that was published in 19 June of 1900.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah, so this one right here is just a an obviously centennial report.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

If you're if you're not watching, uh Dari was pointing at the book that is the Plan of Chicago. It was this we the copy we have is the Centennial edition.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Um and Centennial, 100 years, yeah. Yes. Uh it it so yeah. 2009. It has it has the origin the same original content, obviously. Yeah. Just a new format. You know how you know how you know our editions work. I don't need to explain that to you. Um, but the when I was looking at like where does this idea come from, it really starts in that like late 1800s into the early 1900s with something called the City Beautiful Movement. Okay. And it was really interesting because Daniel Burnham was at the forefront of this movement. It was during that life, yeah. It was uh during the progressive era, which is the 1890s to the 1920s, and it it started out with because the population of the country quickly moved from rural uh and agriculture to urban and industrial. Uh I think it was like by 1910, something like 45-46 percent of the population lived in what was at the time considered an urban environment where like 2500 or more people lived in the same area. So like it wasn't like your closest neighbor was like three miles away anymore.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Right? Like you lived in a town.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And at the time that's considered like more urban than it is like rural, right? Because you had these, um, you know, obviously we have like the railway systems coming about, and uh it's just a huge boom. And with that huge boom came the separation of the classes because you had people like um investors in railways that suddenly became even more wealthy than they ever were. And as the industrial uh revolution came about and people became wealthier, that gap just became wider.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Keep on getting bigger.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Yeah, exactly. Um, and uh Daniel Burnham was, you know, he was he was credited with the City Beautiful movement. Um, and it was uh this is a quote, it was a reform of the landscape that would complement the burgoing reforms of other areas of society, which basically means that his idea was that if we make places beautiful, people are going to behave differently. So if you if you live in a city that's run down, you're going to continue behaving like a peasant. Yeah, right. Like truly, that's what he that's kind of and that's what happens. And basically what he was saying is that um it was him and like all the rich white men that wanted like better cities because they were living in these cities.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

And so they wanted just nicer things, they wanted parks, they wanted art, they wanted culture, they did not want um what was like mostly like Chicago pre-fire, if I'm being honest. Like it was a lot of like very, very, very much and it was just super rapid growth that was almost like there was no structure, everything was arbitrary. They were just building so that they can accommodate the population boom, but there was no actual uh kind of plan for how things were going to look. And so um they they they split into two things. You had the the beautiful, the city beautiful movement, and at the same time, you had the uh kind of civic reform movement, which was like the Jane Addams, the Hull House, the you know, they were they were building these uh kind of like societal infrastructure where you can uh improve the civic life of people, giving people rights, teaching them about, you know, giving women rights, all that kind of stuff. Those happened hand in hand, slightly different groups of people, obviously, specifically economically. Yeah, but they were still within the wealthy. They were like the you know, the movements came within the wealthy. And this all was a result or kind of like um a response to a ton of um pushback from the the like the bottom I don't I would say like 80%, not low class, they were lower, like the the people that were not uh we're not talking about like specifically class division here, we're talking about people that like economically were not uh able to survive basically in the city. So because we had the Haymarket riots in 1886, we had the Pullman strike in 1893, the homestead strike in 1892, and the general labor unrest, which was 1893 to 1897. So as a pushback to that, um the wealthy white men were like, let's make the city prettier so people can behave better. And it was kind of funny is I was thinking of um I was at a Home Depot and I was like, Why do they play classical music out here? And I looked it up and it was because they believe that if they play classical music in the parking lot, it deters kind of like crime, yeah, or like people acting like you know, doing doing stuff in the parking lot that they don't want them to be there.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Um so the main people that were like these city beautiful leaders, uh, it was let's see, I wrote down the list of names because uh I could I mean I I could guess who the people were just by the um the work that was being done. But it was Pullman, Marshall Fields. Like those were the people that were involved. Um the merchants. Yeah. The people that were making money. They were the ones that wanted it. And they they started the merchant club, which later merged to the commercial club of Chicago in in 1907. The commercial club of Chicago was started in 1877. And um it started as a response or a reaction to the labor strikes. And the members, yeah, Pullman Marshall, uh, Cyrus McCormick, George Armour, just to name a few.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yeah, just random names.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yeah, just just random, random people.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Boy, man, I could imagine the egos in that room. Yeah, they was probably all kudo.

unknown 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Except for Gl when Glessner came around.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

They didn't, he was not on the list.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Pullman didn't like his ass.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Ugly ass house.

unknown 22:45

Yeah, for real.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Uh the first time this was expressed, this idea of a city beautiful movement was expressed in the US was at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. So these ideas were already happening in Britain, in France, and it was, and I will butcher this, but damn, I wrote it down. And it's like the school of booze uh okay, B A U X arts. I don't know. That's the name of the that's the name of the like architecture style, art style. Uh it was already happening in France and Britain, and Burnham was like, we could bring this to the US. And so when he was designing the World's Fair, he basically had that in mind. He was like, I am going to build them a city and show them what Chicago could look like. And so people, it kind of made like the the World's Columbian Exposition became the trend for like the next 15 years. People started to recreate what the white city looked like, quote unquote. Um, and this uh later kind of infiltrated interior design. You started seeing this happening in interior design. One specific example that I will include pictures of is the Hull House. And you can see inside the Hull House kind of Jane Addams took on um this idea, not took on, but like inside the Hull House, it's credited where the arts and crafts movement was born, which really uh kind of pushed for you know high craftsmanship, uh, believing that like industrial capitalism is kind of like ruining life or the spirit of human as they as they would call it. And so they would train people in woodwork, they would train people in weaving and ceramics and bookbinding, so like to preserve these arts that are considered um were going to add to like the value of human life. Yeah, so it was all happening at the same time. People were rioting because they could not buy food, they couldn't buy anything, and the reaction of the rich was like, what if we just make it prettier and maybe they'll chill?

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

And maybe they'll start acting to up to up to par with the city they're living in, kind of thing. Did that really happen? We're gonna find out.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

But uh that's that's kind of like where the tension was, and that's how um started.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, and so uh I I'm just gonna add on and then transition to like the what what how did it all come together and how did it go down, right? This first part. And the reason why we're doing this in parts is because the plan was written in parts, yeah. Uh, and how they broke down certain things was written in parts. Uh, so this part, believe it or not, I I I really wouldn't have thought of this plan like this as uh and and you know, we had this book for a little while and we seen we seen it, but like we ain't really pay attention to it. I I'll be honest with you. Um, in all our studies and everything like that. But like it really started with the uh the city and the garden idea.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Like actually coming to fruition.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

And that's that's like what when they looked at Paris, it was like a lot of that.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna get to it.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Uh I know you're gonna get to it.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

I'm just yeah, I know that's key. That's that's that's a key point. Uh so the population in Chicago from the uh the really it was like 3,000 from if we want to go to first quarter of the uh 19th century to on uh on on out to the 20th, it was about 3,000. But the better back half of it was about 30,000 people in Chicago grew to 2 million. So obviously the boom is on, right? You know, you got a 50 50-year boom where you went from peanuts to like everything, uh everybody uh all at once. Uh and so they understood this need, like Sarah was saying. Um, Chicago was also referred to the Middle West. And so this was also like a we understood still is Midwest.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Right. We just say mid instead of middle, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Right. They they they knew where Chicago stood economically and strategically to a lot of different things in the United States, specifically with the rail system, yes, and so um they we were like, hey, look, we're gonna we we need to use this to our advantage, basically, is what it is. And after the World's Fair, you know, during the World's Fair, you really see that this could work. You know what I mean? Like, that's where all this came together. It was like, okay, you know, we done put up all these plastic buildings, we done, we we got 27 million people come through here, we done set the day record of 750,000 people come into one place. So you see all these things, you made a lot of money. You paid off the World's Fair in cash. You paid it off.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah, so you're like, we could do this, and it was like that main area where everyone would enter. Yes. That was like the main kind of blueprint for what they wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Yes. Uh, right after the World's Fair, uh '94, right, 1894, uh, is when they really started this process. It really started to actually wheels moving now. Yeah. And the reason why that was is another key player here was the South uh Commission's park, which was Jackson Park, Washington Park, all the parks uh down south. And after the World Fair, they said, hey, look, we got a way to we should improve the lake. And by improve the lake, we mean we want to go from uh Jackson Park to Grant Park, and we want to create a greenway that connects it. And that was their plan, right? And and the I'll get to lagoons and things like that because that's kind of interesting. But you know, to Sarah's point, this is where Burnham is like, okay, all that work that I did do overseas, and or what I saw overseas, I can do it. And this was actually a very key thing, too, because the Chicago played out, I think we've been told over history, you know, like Chicago was modeled after Paris, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, it that's just a tip of the iceberg. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Like it's it was modeled after a lot of ancient cities, cities, like they really studied it wasn't it wasn't like just Paris, it's like they studied all of these cities, yeah, and they took the best of each one, yes, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

And so we're talking Rome, Paris, Venice, Venice, uh, you know, when you talk about the World's Fair, it was directly exactly like that. Uh, Egypt, NYC, and and things like that. So um, what they saw at that World's Fair, and the reason why they said this is they saw the the spirit of Chicago. Now that's key because that's what's in the book.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Spirit of Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

And not just It was mentioned so many times.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

It was, and not just uh, you know, you don't want to write something down and like pitch something to somebody that's lofty, but they literally tried to like say, hey, there was something about the city. Obviously, we already told you about the I will spirit of Chicago. You know what I mean? Like that spirit must have resonated like crazy down there. Yeah, you know what I mean during that time. And so that was one of the things, and then obviously the ability to grow and thrive. I want to read you a direct quote from uh the book here, and because this is this is like, man, is on page eight of the book here. The spirit, this it says, the spirit, the spirit of Chicago is over uh is our greatest essay. It is not merely civic pride, it is rather the consistent, steady determination uh to bring about the very best conditions of the city life for all people, with the full knowledge that we as a people decide to do in public interest we can uh what we can and surely will bring to pass. So they were saying, hey, look, we betting on ourselves. That's what that was. We this next step, we we're doing it. We're doing it, and it's because of this is where Chicago's ego started from. Right. Chicago's ego started right here. And and we we've been new, but like this is this was literally it. Now, I said the Chicago parks were key. I mean majorly key here, y'all. And that's why this episode is about the Chicago parks, really. Uh, so the herbs and orto mentality, as we know, was just a model that was given to Chicago, and we really didn't do nothing about it. We really didn't do nothing about it in the plan of Chicago. They actually say that. They say, now you say herbs and orto, but like nothing been done to do that. Matter of fact, I think it was 1839. It's in the book here, but in 1839, uh, right where the um the uh cultural center is now, according to this book that was the public uh public library, there was one park across at Michigan Avenue.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

That one park. It wasn't until '69 when they added Jackson Park, Washington Park, all them other parks. Think about that. That's crazy that all those other parks took three decades to get there.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

And I mean, so did the plan. Like it took it, it wasn't like we are doing this in 1909, we'll be done in 1970. Yeah, right. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Like, so we're still doing the plans. We're still doing plans. Um, so so yeah, 18 in 1894, South Park Commission said, hey, what we want to make a new, make a new plan, right? Yeah. Uh the plan was to connect the two parks. This plan was presented at a dinner given by the commercial club. Yeah. Now remember, at this point, commercial club uh and the merchant club, two different things. Uh, the businessman thought immediately they were like, yo, this is a good plan. Yeah. This is a great plan. We want to do it. And the reason why they wanted to do it, they saw it was enormous value to Chicago and that it would uh it should be adopted and carried into execution. So they were like, let's do this.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Yeah. So they had the money.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

They had the money.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Bring back rich people that want to do something infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

That want to do something good.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

I don't want any. I'm not gonna talk about AI. I don't want any more rockets going in the space. Build a library.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Forget the rockets, man. I'm tired of AI taking up all these chips for these memory cards here. You know, we can't buy a damn memory card under a thousand dollars now.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Or have drinking water.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

That's crazy. That's out of control, that's out of control. So from uh after 1894, the next three to four years were planning and presenting the plan to do this. Okay, y'all. It was like it was it was big maps, big things. Everybody's saying, all right, look, this is how we're gonna go about it. And they met at the woman's club. Yeah, we just talked about the women's club. Now, this is uh what 19, uh 1897, eight, you know. So not quite 1918, so it wasn't at the building we were talking about, but it was probably at Bertha Palmer's uh at the at the Palmer House. It was probably at the Palmer House or Grand Pacific Hotel. I didn't even say that last episode. I remember I watched back, I was like, damn, I never even mentioned they were at the Grand Pacific Hotel. But it was probably at one of those two places. So uh, and not only the women's club, but the art institute. Remember, the art institute was brand new, and it had just moved to Michigan Avenue now, uh, to that new building. And this dinner was uh presented with the merchant club.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

The merchant club was a little bit different than uh the big commercial, but really same damn thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean they merged. Yeah, the the merchants were you know the people that sold and the the commercial were the people that did the big big things, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 34:22

And eventually the commercial was like Camere. Yeah, come here, come here. Well, commercial actually merged a bunch of different clubs. They did.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Yeah, yeah. That dinner where this meeting was held at was held at the Chicago Auditorium, y'all.

SPEAKER_03 34:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

It was, yeah, it was that's crazy. And you all these things we've been talking about, we just talked about this year, starting this year. Not just starting, but relatively recent, so you can go back and listen. Um, this plan was a hit, y'all. This plan was one of those things that people were like, yeah, we want to do this. Let's all I'm sure I don't think it was unanimous.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

I'm sure they had pushback, but there was pushback from different groups. Of course, but internally, all of these like 10 rich men reading.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

When the people with money say this gonna happen, this gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

It's almost like the opinions of other people did not matter. Didn't matter. They were good, they were, you know, headstrong.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Uh the newspapers, uh, the newspapers and uh magazines all wrote about it. They were like, man, this is this is the this is the bomb. Now the plan, the plan was get this, y'all. This is this is crazy. It says direct quote. The plan was to formulate a metropolitan park system, including an outer belt of parks and parkways, y'all. We talked about the Emerald Necklace. We talked about the Emerald Necklace. This is 1909 that this is written in there. Uh, and they kind of backdating what they what they were talking about, right? Uh, this plan ultimately started in 1903. Right. It's when the holistic plan really came to be. All the talking is done, all the meetings of plan uh are over with. Uh, the South Park Commissions and the Special Parks Commission that was created in 1899 uh by the Cook County Club uh uh center, they um were like, all right, let's do this, let's start doing it. Now in 1906, the merchant club prepped for uh a fully thought-out plan, like that's that would be that should be proposed. Uh, this was held. I I got chills just thinking about like reading this. This was held on the newly built rooms located on the rooftop of the railway exchange building, y'all. Yeah, like we all the stuff we talk about, like, and we know the history of it, but like reading it, it's like they had just built these things 1906, 1907. Yeah, they just built it and they said, All right, let's get this plan under control. 1907, like you said, uh merchant club, commercial club became uh one commercial club, and commercial club, if y'all don't know, uh commercial club is the people that put out this book. Yeah, they were the one funders for this book. Yeah, um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Also, if you don't know what the railway building is, it's that like the Motorola.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Old Santa Fe, old Santa Fe for those old heads.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Motorola for the current people. You know, it's crazy that most people, when you say Motorola, be like, ah, when you say the Santa Fe building, right? Old heads be like, oh, I know what that is. Um now, another quote. I want to read you another quote here, uh, because this is um very, very key. Parks, gardens, commons, and public squares have been happily compared to the lungs of the city. And if the health and general welfare of a city depends upon the normal and sound function of its respiratory organs, ancient Rome, in this respect, must be considered as the healthiest city which has ever existed on earth. And the reason why I wrote that quote down is just to show you, they were locked into this ancient ancient city. Chicago in there, I didn't write this down. They wanted to make Chicago literally the best of the best. Take every bit of people. You had you gotta imagine that these people with money thought they could make a city so great.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

It would rival ancient Rome.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

It just you we got all the plans, but I'm not mad at that. I mean, like if you if you gonna imagine if people came together now to make a good city.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

They are coming together to make a anyway, make their version of I do think that if I'm being honest, like I do think Chicago is very it's one of like the best planned out of the city cities. Are there areas where we can improve? Yeah, duh, because like we're it's human beings at the end of the day. Um, but it's just like the perfect combo of like lake, nature, parks, infrastructure, downtown, neighborhoods, like all that, all that kind of stuff. I'm not mad at it.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I'm not mad. And I'm glad you said that because like I want to take this next couple minutes and talk about like so now we know that the gardens, like they like the the That was their main thing. That was their main thing. That was point A. Literally, this is how we're gonna start because they thought that Chicago only is gonna get better with you know uh uh parks and with public space and with um uh the ability to like stretch our arms out. We talked about this with Reese Park, yeah, you know, yeah uh you know he damn it stood up straight. That's crazy. I wish we caught that on camera. That's wow, I wish we did too. Um, but uh, so we talked about Reese, you know, who was the I was just I was just gonna say that. He was the man, he was the one. He said, hey, look, people need a place to stretch out. And the way they did went about this when they were playing it, Cook County was a big part of this.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

In in the plan, they verbatimly said they wanted to make, they feel Chicago could be the largest city in the world. And when you look at the plan, because this thing got all kinds of maps and stuff in it, it's got everything in there, like old diagrams of what it looked like, what they thought things were gonna look like, the plan, and you know, they're supposed to be centered around a central civic center, which is downtown Chicago, that was supposed to be like a little circle that branched off from Grant Park. Grant Park was actually the center, was supposed to be the centerpiece. Uh, and they that you see that they said this is gonna fan out. They were buying up parks like crazy all the way to like we talking Kenosha. Um, they wanted to go over that as far as that looking at getting land over there. They were talking it all the way down by towards Kankakee and all that area. So yeah, they were trying to make Chicago big, and it all stemmed from the lungs of the city being the parks. Now, back to like Reese and like and what how they strongly they felt about parks. Another quote here the average, and this is a quote, but this is more so uh um numbers that they were presenting, because that's all this book was was presenting facts. The average for the entire city as of 1909 is 500 and 590 persons to each acre of park. Now think about it. So every acre of park that's 590 people, 590 people is is right around is close by that for the health and good order. There should be one acre of park for each 100 people. So think about how big that think about that. One acre per 100. That's mild. They they wanted Chicago to be massive, like absolutely massive city. And it wasn't like the plan was going, y'all. Like we're we're you know, it's 1909 here. We've been talking from 19 uh 1894 on on through. When they started this shit, yeah, night 1894, they were already like, all right, right, we're about to make this uh, you know, parkways, uh uh going, you know, connecting different things. And and that's another thing I want to get to. So the gardens and things like that were they met these lagoons, specifically one lagoon that was made was the one in Jackson Park. And we all know those lagoons in the docks and piers. The Marquette Park, Marquette Park, Washington Park, like all those. All those, all those were made Columbus, yeah, I think, all right. Yeah, all those were made to be intentional. Yeah, uh, and so y'all go party there. We go party, we not y'all, we all hang out.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

I love those parks. I love those lagoons. I think one of one of my favorite ones is Marquette Park. And if you exit the uh the uh um building, like the park building, if you go through the back door, it literally feels like you just stepped outside of the city. Like people are fishing, it's a whole different place. It's so peaceful. You don't hear any any city noise whatsoever. Like it's just fascinating to me how these how these uh parks work. It's incredible. And I think what's really interesting is at the same time that all of this was happening, obviously people were struggling, like we said, but also New York was talking about how Chicago is like full of crime. You know what I mean? Like, like this was a response to like, you know, sh you know, as urban areas grew, more people, more cut condensed people. Yeah, obviously there's gonna be more crime. But um, it was just f fascinating seeing different people's perspective of what the city was like, you know, they were optimistic, they they were like ready to plan the best city.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

Yeah. Uh one more thing before I finish, uh, because I want to I'm not done talking about the lagoons and shit like that, because it's is like pretty big. Where uh museum science industry is right now, that was the Venice inspiration of Chicago.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

That part right there was literally supposed to stay. Yeah, that was supposed to still be Yeah, that was like the entryway, yeah. That was supposed to be like one of Chicago's ways. The mid in the midway place. Plaissants, the reason why it's it is that long strip is book in Washington Park is because those were supposed to be parts that you can like of the greenery that people can hang out and park on. And so you could see this plan, uh you can see this plan in in now, today's time, actually be what it is. Like, and so I don't think we talk we, I'm talking about 77. We talk about the history, but like knowing this now, I have such a bigger appreciation of things that are historic because that Jackson Park area, Washington Park, midway place play ons, play-on park, that's that's that's how the plan was starting. And then somewhere along the line, we follow off. That's part two of this episode. That's part two. Somewhere along the line, it got missed, it got scrambled up. Some money, money couldn't, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Like, midway, you know, we hit yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

A lot of shit starts changing right right around cars. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? So like Chicago was supposed to be one big park with people living in it, and houses in the central part of the city was supposed to be, you know, downtown. And and for the most part, it is, you know what I'm saying? It it is. We got we still got it.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

It's not as connected as it sh it was planned to be.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

No, no, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Yeah, I will give this. The boulevards are, I think, are like the biggest connect the greenery, because like you can go from Logan Square all the way down to the south side through the boulevards, but they're not as connected as the plan now participated.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Here's uh a a part that is a little controversial, but it ain't controversial because it's written in a book here. The south side is where the parks really, really kicked off. Yeah. Like if we're talking about like what really kicked off, uh the so we know that the the North Um Lincoln Park was North Park. Yeah, it wasn't called Lincoln Park, it was North Park. That was changed after uh in night in 1867 or after the assassination, whenever that was. Um, and then the other parks, they were already doing their thing. But when it came time to, all right, let's connect all these, because they say let's let's connect these dots back before the plan, well before the plan, they started with we got to connect all these. Yeah, it wasn't until the plan when they were like, no, no, no, these have to be connected to together. Like we have to make this happen. The emerald necklace be a necklace. Yeah, because Chicago, because Chicago, to them, Chicago's gonna fail. Health, crime, poverty, yeah, people are just gonna be angry. Yeah, you know, and and so you know, we ain't talking about the other key players, you know, um uh Reese uh who created who helped create it, um Jensen, who helped create uh you know what I mean? Like we're not talking about that.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

All these are people that were solicited by Daniel Burnham to create to to kind of spell create the parts of the plan that they specialized in.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Yeah, and every bit of this of Chicago parks that you see today is actually was the plan.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

From the from the boat houses to the fill houses to the bathrooms to the everything. So when we talk about, you know, when you go to Garfield Park, when you go to Washington Park, when you go to all these parks, that was intentional. Lincoln Park, including Lincoln Park. Yeah, for sure. I can have to.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

When you when you go to old it's so funny, like one of my when we used to live in Lincoln Park, one of my favorite places to go to was North Pond.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Which if you live in the neighborhood, you're very familiar, but like it's not a very well-known part of Lincoln Park. When we were looking at these like 1907, 1906, 1908 uh maps of Chicago, it was listed as like North Lake. Yeah, and it's there. It's there, it's always been like it was manufactured. Obviously, it's not like a natural lake.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

What's cool is we were, I was pointing that out. Like that, there's a little little rock, a couple rocks uh by by that park in Lincoln Park that shows you where the shoreline used to be. Yeah, that is crazy to see that in real life and then look at it on the map and be like, damn, we added because like where it is now, you look at that and be like, the lake all the way over there. Yeah, the lake all the way over there. How the hell did the what did we build all that? Yeah, and it's it's just so to me, it was like Mason doing this first part. And I'll be honest, man, I think you we we both agree. Had no idea how central the parks were to Chicago being created the way it is.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know how central it was to the specific plan of Chicago. Like we talked about. Yeah, right, we talked about it when we talked about like the the City and Garden episode. Yeah, yeah, but I didn't know that it was like such a crucial part of the plan of 1909, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:40

Did I like like when you think about like a plan, you think about like that was the first thing they talked about. That's the first thing they talked about. Like they were like, you know, after they did the research and presented the facts of hey, look, here's all the ancient cities, here's where we're gonna start.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

And like that's crazy. I will say that like some of that still rings true. I think uh, you know, people always look for like a third place, like a place where you can go where you don't have to spend money, you could just go and hang out and like build community, right?

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:05

And I I I feel like over the last like couple years, I the more I've learned about the city, the more I've like taken advantage of those resources, like the library, the parks, that all that kind of stuff. And I feel like the parks is probably like people go to um millennium to like do the movies in the park, it's like packed in there, but every single one of your neighborhood parks has programming for free. Yeah, like if you have kids, there's a ton of neighborhood programming for free. Um, and they like all year round, not just during the summer. If there's if there's a field house, there is programming in the field house. Yeah, sometimes it costs money, sometimes it's completely free. You can go and sit there for hours. Yeah, and you're like at a beautiful park. You can go. I mean, I go and I like sit at the field house for whatever reason. Like I took, I've taken art classes, I've taken ceramic classes, I've taken, I've met people there. I went to read books, I sat in front of the lake, like all of it for zero money, most of it for zero money, not all of it. You don't but and I feel like that was part of the plan is to create these resources for for people to like be able to go and like you know what I mean? Like just like take take a breath. Like everywhere though. Yeah, like in your neighbor, you don't have to go far. You should be able to walk to your park.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

There's a uh a bunch of illustrations in this uh book, but one of the illustrations shows you the greenery and how they anticipated Michigan Avenue from 12th Street Ashland. Wild. Man, honestly, I rem you know we were looking at it and I was like, no, we know this that plan was never gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Yeah, we could have got close. Like cars didn't exist in the city. Yeah, cars didn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

They you know, looking at the plan, yeah, cars really weren't a big they weren't betting on cars the way cars played out.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

But like, wait until we start talking about like Whacker and we start talking about the highways like when we get to that part of the plan, I feel like that's going to yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Yeah, they they had to compensate for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:00

I just think it's uh it's really fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

Well, well, part two is uh coming up uh next episode. So weeks to week.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

We're so excited. All right, this was hard to come up with books for this because there's so many.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 51:21

And most are nonfiction. So like a lot of like heavy research books, not heavy, but like research books, like you know, nonfiction, which I I try to sprinkle in some fiction in there because as someone that is like a huge fan of historical fiction, you like that. Um, I do like to sprinkle that in. But I I have I'm gonna mention a few here, but then I'm gonna include an even longer list um that's from uh Cambridge. So they have two big lists uh that have to do with specifically the uh you know the um city beauty movement, right? A lot of that time period, 1890s to 1920s, that that time frame. Uh first one, the one fiction, kind of fiction, no, non-fiction, uh Devil in the White City, obviously. If you want to learn more, yeah. You know, if you want to kind of if you want to imagine what the world's fairgrounds looked like, uh that's probably your closest bet.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

You know what's funny is like we say kind of because it is kind of fiction, kind more a little more reality. Yeah, and the reality part over there, we know for a fact is that uh we held the pictures that they use for the white city. That's uh kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Uh there's a book by Jacob Brees. It's called How the Other Half Lives. This is based on New York, but it also gives a really good insight into kind of the uh the class disparities that were happening, disparages that were happening between uh people of different economic classes and and uh how you know some it was kind of like people were turning a blind eye to um to the working class. He's like, we need more parks because it is. Uh there's a book called The City Beautiful Movement by William H. Wilson. Uh that's probably like a really good it touches on Chicago a lot. So it's a it's a great one. Obviously, it talks a lot about Burnham. Uh The Working Man's Reward, Chicago's Early Suburbs and Roots of an American Sprawl by Elaine Lewiner. Lewiner. Lee Winner. L-E-W-I-N-N-E-R. Um again really kind of talks about the growth of the city and how it moved uh to like how it you know annexed and grew. It's it's an interesting one. Um and building the south side urban space and civic culture in Chicago 1890 to 1919 by Robert Robin F.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Bachin.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

Backen. Uh yeah, I uh that's that's a really interesting one.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Uh yeah, because I was gonna say a little bit earlier, uh man, you could make the case that the plan of Chicago started on the South Side. I mean I mean, you can make that case. You can make a strong case too. We can make a strong case. Yeah, like all you all you gotta do is read the book. Anybody can make the case, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Yeah, I mean that's where the world's fair was set. So it kind of it's kind of where they did the blueprint.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

Yeah. So it would that's wow. Yeah. They just, I'm still mind-blown over this first part. Like, honestly, I'm just like that to me, it might it blows my mind because like you don't think that damn the the city in the garden? We really wasn't the city in the garden. They called them out too. They were like, Y'all wear, y'all ain't using the city's city in the garden. Also, there's a point in there where they were like, Chicago had this, this, and that. We were number two. Uh, guess what? We dropped a number seven after all these people because like y'all ain't did nothing with basically. I'm I'm paraphrasing, but that's the energy. When you're reading, they like you ain't do none of this stuff that you said you were gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

Here we are.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Here we are.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

Yeah, so yeah, it's yeah. I can't wait to keep on going with this. Y'all me too.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

I'm I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_01 54:40

Think about it. We're reading you the whole book.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

Yeah. Like basically with other resources.

SPEAKER_01 54:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

Um, if you want to learn more before we head into the next next week's episode, there's a whole episode that we did on Burnham specifically about his life, where he lived, his house in Evanston. We went and took a tour uh of uh his neighborhood, all of that stuff. It's called uh, I mean not, it's called it aired uh February 19th, 2024. So go listen to that. I will also link it. I will link it in the show notes. Uh you can also listen to the railways episode that we did a January 6th, 2025. That one dives deep into how the city kind of like grew in that time period and the population boom. Uh and if you want to learn more about the park systems and how Chicago Parks came about, because it wasn't always you know Chicago Parks. Uh it listen to City and a Garden, which aired uh March 20th, 2023. And that was a really good one. We went to a bunch of different parks. There's a whole YouTube YouTube video on there that where we're out in the parks. So good visual too.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

That was very fun. Yeah. I mean, we were all over city that day.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

Uh I was tired by the end of we ended Douglas, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Uh Columbus. Columbus, Columbus. Yeah, Columbus.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

We ended in Columbus, yes.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

And we made that really cool video where we transitioned from one park to the other.

SPEAKER_01 55:59

Almost fell in a uh damn uh slip there, slipped in a lagoon. It was like a little creek. Creek, yeah. I was at that point, I was tired. It was hot snow.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

No, it was snow.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Yeah, it was snowy. I had to use the bathroom. It was March 20th. I had to use the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 56:12

Guildhouse was closed. Closed it was like a Sunday or something. Oh my god. Saturday afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Oh my god. Yeah, it was by the end of that. I was like, you know. It was a great episode. Great episode. A lot of history. Yeah. And and you know, doing all three sides of the major sides. Right.

SPEAKER_00 56:28

And one yeah, because we had to tell the entire story of the world.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Lincoln Park down to Washington, over to the west side, and then back home to Lincoln Park. We just we did a circle, so yeah. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

That's all we have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this one. This is a little bit longer, but uh it was really fun. I can't wait for next week's episode.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

Uh do your homework, listen to the three episodes, and come back with uh ready for that. Yeah. Uh if you enjoyed this episode, please send us money love. If you did not enjoy this episode, that's all right. Come back next week and give us another chance. We still here. We'll see you then. Peace.