The Plan of Chicago, Pt. 3: Streets, Circles & the Central Vision

One thing Daniel Burnham didn’t shy away from was criticism. He knew that Chicago had too much potential that was withering away. Before he even sat down to write the “Streets” section of his 1909 plan, Chicago’s City Council had spent decades trying to rename, renumber, and reimagine the city streets.

Show notes here! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Part four of our uh month long book report. Oh, part three. Sorry, y'all. We gonna get it. Play in Chicago. Let's go. Uh, uh, uh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

You know what? It is a beautiful day today.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Yeah, buddy.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

It's finally warm.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Man, finally. Finally warm.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

I'm not putting out my summer clothes just yet because I don't want to jinx it.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

But we did put away the winter jackets. Yeah, the winter jackets, yeah. So a little bit different.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Manifesting that piece. Welcome back to 77 Flavors of Chicago. If you're new here, every week we dive into a piece of Chicago history that is uh changing the country and the world. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Um, we are here to prove to you that Chicago's the best city.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yep. And and and this, you know, take away that damn stereotype of Chicago's so dangerous, this, that, and the other. Boy, y'all stop it.

SPEAKER_03 0:55

Uh, if this is not your first time here, thank you so much for coming back. We uh love to have you. We see you uh coming back every week. And we're so excited. This is part three of the plan of Chicago. But before we dive in, um, if you have been enjoying this new format of our episodes, we've changed them up a little bit. They're a little more professional, yeah, a little more curated. A little more coins, a little more less than a little more, a little more uh structured, if you may. If you like this new format, please let us know. Give us a little rating, a little comment. Uh, you can uh if you're listening on Spotify, I believe you can leave us a comment live. Yeah, like we can we can see you can send us mail, you know, virtual mail through our website.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Um, there's a plenty of ways for you to reach out. Some people have reached out and said that they like this new format. Yeah. So we're really excited to hear that because you know, sometimes you put things out there and you're like, I hope people resonate with this. So anytime we get positive feedback, um, even negative, we'll we'll take it. We take it. We're we're here to receive feedback. We want this uh to be a place where you're enjoying your time. So thank you so much for that. Um, if uh you do have not yet, please follow us on Instagram. Every week, along with these episodes, uh, we do release a bunch of content around it. Uh Dario's out in the neighborhoods, we're doing itineraries, all different kinds of stuff um that kind of just elevate this experience more. Uh if you're, you know, it's a Tuesday and you're like, or Wednesday or Thursday, and you're like, man, I need a little more Chicago history. We got you there.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Um and if you have not yet, if you don't uh want to click the little button that says show notes here, uh, you can get those in your inbox every Monday morning at 6 30 a.m. for free. And uh through our Substack, all you have to do is just sign up for the Substack 100% free. It has all this information, it has really cool pictures, uh, links for more stuff if you want to learn more, some uh all of the recommendations that we make through the episode. Uh and soon there will be like a Chicago events section where uh we will talk about some upcoming things that are happening. So you don't want to miss that, any tours, anything like that. So we'd love to have you there. Um, it takes no time. You can do it while you're listening to this uh next 10 minutes of shenanigans.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah, that's that uh the um Substack is gonna evolve too.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

So you go see some other contributors. So it won't just be me. Right now it's just me as we're you know, you know, kind of getting our footing in, but uh we'll have other contributors uh video too.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah. You know, we play we talked about going live.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Going live on there. Uh if we have guests, we're gonna have guests uh, you know, guests write their own pieces for the substack. So it'll be uh it'll be a fun time there. We're just getting started. So uh having you there helps us build up the uh platform.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So you don't excited. One thing I will add about uh the new format of the podcast. I do want, if you're new here, um I know this may be a history page to you, history uh podcast, and it is a history podcast and culture podcast. However, we tell it, we do tell it differently. So we do have our fun on here, you know what I mean? I just wanna just want to preface that by saying, um, not preface, I guess, after the fact, just say, hey, look, we do have our fun on here now, y'all. This ain't the typical WBEZ.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

You said this. Don't don't call that W B E Z.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

I mean, no, no, no, no. I mean, but you know what I mean, like like student time, monotone professional, and it is not that, you know what I'm saying? It's not ain't nothing wrong with that. They know who they are, NPR and shit like that. It's not that. What I'm saying is, you know, we we uh are a couple who are you know residents of Chicago, and I'm a Southsider, you're Jordanian, you know what I'm saying? It is what it is. I'm just saying, keep that in mind when we doing this stuff, all right? So we professional, but also I ain't go to Yale, I ain't go to Harper, you know what I'm saying? Like not saying I'm not educated, nothing like that. I'm just saying, just keep that in mind when you're listening to this. Also, go back to the beginning. You we changed a lot. We we changed a whole bunch.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Yeah. I mean, yeah, we've grown.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah, we have grown.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

Um, but this week was a packed week for us. We had a lot of fun. We did some really cool Chicago things now as spring and summer come into effect. There's so many cool, uh, a lot of free events that are happening around the city. And one that I would put on your radar that is 100% free. It's at the uh auditorium of the Dreehouse Museum. They're having a an artist, uh choreographer that came in there and commissioned a piece along with uh a composer. So it's a it's it's for it's a soundtrack kind of thing for um or a score for the Murphy Auditorium. Uh his name is Brendan Fernandez, and it's called In the Round, and it's a group of dancers that are going to be dancing in the round in a circle, basically. And it's 100% free. You can go in there and you watch them. It's on select days between April, April, and November, I believe. Uh, it was really interesting. It was an interesting way to experience that space because they it was closed for renovations for a few months, yeah, and now it opened back up.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah. And yeah, it's uh it's nice. It's a it's a dope art experience too. I would say it's an art experience. It's not like your typical don't touch the RPC. You can't touch the RPs. Yeah, no. But I mean, like you can't. You can walk up to them as they're dancing. They're dancing, you can walk around. And I think you when we were there, a lot of people were sitting down, and then I saw, I was like, wait a minute. The art is in the round. You know what I mean? Like, you have to get up and move. They said it too. They say you can move around the space, but I think you know, it's so different to people. We were like, we don't want to get in their way.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

For the most part, they stay within that circle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

Uh they stay, they stay with but and they dance in a loop. So you're not like going to there and you're sitting and you're watching a show and then you're leaving. No, it's like just come in whenever you come in, watch them for a little bit, and then you can walk away and do whatever you were doing. The endurance to dance for for three hours is wild to me. Ain't no way. But it was really a cool way. First of all, the uh the kind of the not structure, but the thing they're dancing around is like a a circle made of mirrors, so it's reflecting the space in such a cool way. Like you see the ceiling, and you if you look at the mirrors where they're stepping on it and they're dancing on it, it's like you see them in the ceiling. Like it's just a really cool um little experience. And if you're planning to go to the dre house, stop in there before you make it inside.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Uh just a reminder, the dre house is free uh on Wednesdays after 4 p.m. So if you have uh plans to go, do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Do that. Go ahead, do that.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

We love the dread. Absolutely to go. I mean it's I love those smaller museums, you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, and the gilded, you know what's crazy is it's a museum kind of off the beaten path. Uh, I I would say, you know, um, it's not one that is like, you know, you when you say museum in Chicago, you think of artists and two, you think of the Shed Aquarium, you think of um the field museum, those things. Yeah, you know, you're not thinking of there's a ton of other. So many. The Mexican History Museum, the Puerto Rican Museum, the Polish Museum, the all the different music. So, so many.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Every neighborhood has like a few.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah, yeah. Like a bunch of, you know, Dusabo. You know what I mean? Like, there's so many different museums, and this is, you know, kind of like not an often talked about one. Yeah. But now I feel like, I feel like the last couple years, few years. Yeah, they've they've really kind of like But I will say that Richard Drehouse, his foundation does a lot around the city. So much. A lot around. So like out of I'm saying that, you know, like the Drehouse Museum is, you know, not often talked about, but like that, that's a slight kind of. I'm not saying it to be that way, but because he does so much, he's his foundation does so much. Man, it's they out here.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

Beautiful, it's one of my favorites, and it's perfect if you don't have like a whole day to spend at a museum, you know what I mean? Like sometimes you don't want to go and spend four hours, like you just want to go for an hour and come back. Yeah, um, so it's it's the perfect place for that. We also we're stopped at by Kendall College. We're doing a live podcast taping as part of their fundraiser next week. And so we stopped in to kind of tour the place and see what our you know, where we're gonna be sitting, what everything's gonna look like. So we're really excited. It's a uh only our second live podcast. The first one was for the 77th birthday.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

And uh, if you buy a ticket and you come to the live uh podcast, it is to support their set they're sending their students to Italy for uh two weeks, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

A lot of times it's that's their first time, too.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Yeah, and so um they're you know, they're raising money to help supplement the cost for the students. So it's a really important experience for them. It's for some of the students, it's their first time traveling out of the country. The teaching. So the tea, yeah. So it's um it's really exciting, and we're happy to be there. And we hope to bring a little bit of entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

So I you know, I just thought about right now. Next week's episode is talking about something that directly relates to where we will be.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, so um yeah, perfect. I just thought about it right now. Yeah, that's gonna be a perfect tie-in so that we can do this live podcast. Yeah. Be like a uh part three, part four B. You know, B.

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Yeah, that we'll we'll we're interviewing some people for that podcast. So if you aren't able to make it in person, uh you can listen to it. Uh it'll be like a bonus episode that releases during the week. So if you're interested in that, you can catch it there. You also don't have to come to the dinner. If you'd like to donate, you could just donate money to them, I believe. So um, we're we're excited for that. We uh also uh had a panel with Mayor Lightfoot and the uh Madame Clerk, the city clerk, and it was uh again really cool uh thing because the uh city council records from the 1970s to 2012 have become available to the public. And so for the first time, uh and it we were kind of discussing, it was you know, uh immediately after uh uh women's uh history month, and so um they planned it to to kind of go hand in hand with that of like what was the experience of women on on city council versus you know, how is it now? Uh and how is it just in general being in the public eye? And so we had three different perspectives from three different generations, two politicians, me just being a person that constantly puts myself on the internet. So it was and Dario uh moderated the panel. So it was a really fun conversation. We could-I mean, I could have talked for like four more hours.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah, we uh we definitely went over time. Uh but but because we had such a great conversation, it was really cool to be sitting there with uh Mayor Lightfoot and and and Madame Clerk. It was dope. That that's gonna be one of those moments, it's a core memory, like where you because you're like, Man, I did this in the city of Chicago. But the conversation, you know, after we were done, I was like, regardless of whatever you think about uh Mayor Lightfoot's time, hearing her speak, she's smart as hell, for one. And she is very dedicated to the people of Chicago. I'll say that. Yeah, and um, you know, again, regardless whatever you think, man. Look, she is.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

She shared some stories that were uh were kind of like hard to listen to if I'm being honest.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

I got respect for. Yeah. Lots for sure. Lots of respect for sure.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

I mean, yeah, whether you like what she did or not, that's irrelevant. Like at this point, she's you know, she's a civilian. So like you're listening, you it removes that like barrier of like, oh, this is a politician. Like she's just a human, and like the things she went through were different. Some stuff that an average person should not deal with.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah, no, yeah, you can't you can't deal with.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Yeah, it was it was uh very special.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

But after that, we saw some shows.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

We went to we went to a Shakespeare theater twice today this this week. Uh Mrs. Krishnan's party, which was Dario and I ended up on stage. Man, look, we are part of the show. This was not pre-planned. We did not know we were gonna be on stage. We truly ended up being like stirring the doll on stage. Uh it's a really cool premise. It's lentil. Uh, and so it was a really interesting experience because it was um like we were invited to the party.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

And so it was happening around us. It was it was very, very cool.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

The moment we sat down in the seats that we sat, because we said right that the whole place is like a stage for one, just to set that tone.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

Yeah, you're sitting on stage.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

You're on stage with them. And the moment we set where we set, I was like, Oh, we're about to be in a show. I know it. And and that's the only thing I prepare for, is like, if any, I'm always ready, y'all. I'm always ready. If it, if it's go to, I'm always ready at all times.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

Everyone came up to him afterwards. Like, are you an actor? Are you an actor?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

And he's like, Like, no. No, no, man. Look, but what's crazy is, you know, as I'm getting on the elevator, because I the I always take my camera with me. This time I couldn't bring my camera. Um, they they she stopped me at the door. And so I took it back to the car. And as I'm getting off the elevator, uh, coming back into the theater, um, one of the directors there in the the management was like, Hey, um, where do I know you from? You know, you know, I'm like, I'm always maybe 77. She's like, I don't know. And I was like, okay. No, but I didn't heard of that. They just never heard of that. But then she goes, Um, it seemed like I seen you run here. I'm like, oh, I'm always at these shows. I'm always here. She's like, Are you an actor? And I said, No, I'm not an actor at all. I act up. We laughing joke, ha ha. And that was it. You went inside the theater and acted up. I know for a fact, she's probably like, This dude was an actor. And I'm like, No, no, I wasn't, I swear. But it was fun.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

It was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

I got us in some shenanigans. That's what that's what caused it.

SPEAKER_03 14:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Mind about a marriage.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

It was so funny. Then the next day we went back for Merry Wives of Windsor, which was also uh a really cool show.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

So yeah, I mean, a fun packed week. They're gonna be they're continue good, they're gonna continue to be packed. Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Y'all go see both of them shows. Yeah, dying later.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Highly recommend.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah, they was lit. They was lit. Um, but you ready to talk about today's stuff? Ready. Oh man, let's get it. All right, y'all. So we talked about everything. We we all, you know, infrastructures, but we still kind of on that theme. Gardens, transportation. Now the actual streets. And you might think that we're talking about like the street numbers and names. That did happen this year, that the 1909 is where we are. Um, that did happen this year, lasted to 1911-ish. And uh that's not what we're talking about. The actual planning of the streets and how we came to be where we are. Um, so I I do want to say uh Chicago, and we haven't, I didn't even say it this phrase, but I said it was centered around a um circular and radial type situation, right? Well, here's something that's really cool that um you should know. Chicago's reason why I was in a circle is uh they wanted it like that. But the circle started at um kind of like where the water is. If you were standing at the um uh Buckingham Fountain, if where right now, and you walk directly east from the Buckingham Fountain into the water, a little bit into that water is where what's called the grand axis. Oh, so that is the center of the proverbial circle that Chicago worked with. Okay, so keep that in mind, y'all. So uh we're basing all of our streets. The reason why I say that is because the streets and everything that we talked about has been planned around this grand axis. Gotcha. Uh a circular axis, okay? So keep that in mind. Now um the city planned the mix of radial streets and grid streets at the same time. This was this is where the the plan of that really happened, okay? And it was divided into three different parts streets, parks, pedestrian parkways, right? That kind of situation, right? Um, streets, avenue, and boulevards is what I meant to say. Um, I wrote something else down here. Um, now the street was the general type of artery, so they say. Um, it was the a street. You know, that is what it was. The avenue was where the travel and the traffic was going to be the heavy part, the heavy lift into that. And the boulevard was the combination of parks and driveways. So that's kind of where I was going with the streets, parks, and pedestrian walkways, that kind of thing. Um, now there's a huge map uh that I want to put up here that shows um the black lines are where the streets that are already existing are. And then the orange, reddish looking lines here, probably what you see, is are the new Pro streets.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

So for anyone that's not watching, can you kind of describe what this map?

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Yeah. So this map shows you the radial, um, the radial shape of Chicago with the Grand Axis. Um and you see a little bit of the uh circuits that we talked about in the previous episode. Um, but this one is really cool. The reason why I wanted to highlight this one is that you see some notable streets here, and this will give you a frame of mind, so to say. Um, you see Archer, Congress, Halsted. Lakeshore Drive is not where Lakeshore Drive is now, which is very interesting to me. And then South Park Avenue. Uh, and then you'll see all of the the other streets, you know. One example, one street proposed at the very bottom of the map there. That's where Lakeshore Drive is now. But where you see Lakeshore Drive, and this is it's cool because uh we're showing you what's in the book that they have written. This, I mean, like that's already there. So it ain't us making nothing up. This is this is what it was.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

To be clear, we never make anything up.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

No, right, we we never make anything up, but you know, it'd be people on the internet be like, ah, they don't know that Lake Show wasn't right. It's right there. I'm showing you the picture. Okay. Uh now the reason why I showed I want to show you that again is because like keep those angled streets in mind. Arch Avenue, we talked about that during street names, and I've, you know, we that's got a very interesting situation going on there. That was uh literally uh two almost two decades prior to the um Route 66 being happen uh happening, but it had everything to do with um the IM Canal and Chicago, that being a uh uh a major way, waterway. But it's it's kind of cool to see that map, and it'll play a part. Now, I wrote down some things how they planned out these streets, and this is really cool because they planned the streets out to AT and how they wanted it to work, and uh uh with these things.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

This was a mess up until this point. I mean I'm gonna I'm gonna dive into like when we in our next section, I'll dive into a little bit of the you know, before this plan. Yeah, but it was a mess.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

I mean, and in the book, Daniel Burnham is not afraid to let you know this is some trash. This is trash. Yeah, like like y'all, this is trash. So the street conditions um in for a retail district uh was they were supposed to be 80 to 100 feet wide, divided equally between sidewalk and roadway, pavement smooth and noiseless, frequent islands of safety for pedestrian crossing, and occasional subway crossings and other things uh that they they talked about. They talked about lighting and how the lighting would work.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

Yeah, so you know, if and and we kind of talked a little bit last time about like the widening of the streets and how expensive that was, and probably why it was really hard to do outside of Roosevelt and Michigan. Those were the main two streets that they kind of widened. But yeah, other than that, there was a lot of pushback.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Yeah, lot I mean, ridiculous pushback, which is it's expensive. It's like it was expensive, but the people that were on the board. You know what I mean? But the people that were on the board, and I'm I'm I'm gonna get to it because I like I looked, I went back and looked at this after all this, because I know you saw it too, but like they talk about like the expense. This they he kept on saying, Ain't no expense too big. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Like you said, we have Palmer, right? We have Marshall Fields, we got the Pullman, like all of them wanted to do this.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah, man, we got the money. So this is what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

I don't I'm I'm curious when we get to the episode about the legality of it, because like is it okay for them to fund it, or does this have to be funded, like at the time, did this have to be funded from tax money, or could it have been funded by private people? Because then, like, what is the owner? You know what I mean? Like, I'm sure there's a bit of like you know, pushback because of that, because the city's like, we are not spending money widening streets. Why would we do like you know what I mean? So I mean I'm interested about that.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

In this section, I didn't write it down, but I saw that he said when it came to lighting, you know, how the streets will be lit. Yeah, you know, that he was saying that that tax should be on the building. He said that it's he Daniel Burnham. The more and more I read this, the more I'm like, Daniel Burnham was a real dude. He would have been a billionaire that was actually for the people. Like he would have been a multi-million. I don't know if he was quite a billionaire, but I feel like he was for the people. Which is I don't know. I've got growing suspicion. Um with the streets condition with the retail district, I did put note uh here that when we went to Barcelona, this description is really, really reminiscent of like the boulevards that they have in there. Because remember, we went, we went and we were like, bro, this is a whole park in the middle of a street.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

And it's like their their center median is larger than the street. The street is split up into two lanes, but each lane is on each side of the median. So you didn't have two-way streets in those pedestrian areas. Yep. In the you know what I mean? Like they were they were kind of flanked by this uh park.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

And those are bigger than what he said. Like think about it way bigger. 80 80 to 100 feet is what he was proposing. Those are 200 feet. Yeah, probably. And and and they weren't he said here divided equally. So like if you had 40 feet of uh street, you had 40 feet of uh parkway. Parkway. You know, so it's not like that over there, but like the concept, yeah, yeah. It just blew our mind when we went for the first time. We were like, oh my god, this looks nice.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

But again, it's like not the entirety of the city, but it's a nice chunk.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Yeah, nice chunk. Um now the streets carrying heavy tonnage, their width was going to be 70 to 90 feet with a roadway of a little more than one half of the entire space. Uh, and here the pavements should be most enduring of character, regardless of noise. Yeah. So basically, he said, we want more uh more street than uh than half, right? More than half of that is street with little parkway for pedestrian, but also we're gonna make it with the best quality that we care. Who cares about the noise? This is for traffic, right? This is for big trucks and things like that to go down. Now, the residence streets, um, the area devoted to pavement may well be lessened uh to from 20 to 36 feet according to the amount of traffic that's crazy. So, like when it residential, big trucks and stuff ain't going down there. Like, you know what I mean? Like we this is not for that. Yeah, this ain't for that. And you can see that Southside is big on that, you know, south side, north side, parts of the north side, actually, most parts of the city, neighborhood-wise, streets are small. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like, so this is kind of that's kind of his plan. Uh, but there was here's the part where um I was kind of like, mm, it didn't work out really. Cool shade, parks uh sm for small children to play. All this was supposed to be catered to kids. I didn't write it down, but it was also uh light and everything. Lighting, this is where I saw the tax part. You know, we're gonna get into the how this how this plan fell apart because disinvestment and corruption and all that kind of stuff happened, redlining, and you know, Chicago just got too crazy. Because this thing keeps mind uh 1909. This is we just a few years from the great northern migration where they put a I'm sure that put a damper on shit.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

Like I mean, people have started kind of move, like yeah, probably kind of moving.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Yeah, I mean a little bit, but not really. You know what I mean? Like it ain't really kick off, right? You know. Um, now they designed the traffic to flow on a grid pattern with the diagonal streets to alleviate the stress of uh the traffic that's moving southwest to northeast and north southeast to northwest. So diagonal, right? In in all directions. They said the diagonal streets that were already there, the archers of the world, the this, that, and the other, those are supposed to be um use. We're gonna use those to our advantage to help with the uh the radial type idea that we're talking about, to alleviate the the grid pattern that we have. Yep, you can get in and out that way. If that part is so it's like little pockets of detail that you gotta read in this and be like, oh, I get it. Like they were granular about why they did it. And like, I mean, yeah, I mean, it was it's when you think about it, you're like, oh, they just made a play. No, they no, they were they were detailed, calculated with this. And a lot of stuff I'm not saying is crazy. Now, Chicago already had these diagonal streets, like they they highlighted Blue Island and Milwaukee were already a big deal and big use, but what they were gonna do is widen and and elongate like Ogden, Archer, and other things like that. They wanted, I think it was uh, I think it was either Archer or Ogden. One of them, I man, I should have, I should have written that one down.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Yeah, didn't I write a lot of things down this episode?

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Well, a lot of it is like, you know, monoton little monotonous like little details. It's like 30 pages of four-hour podcast. Um, but the key to one of them, they wanted it to go 30 miles.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Like, think about like well, there was, you know, there was the streets that they wanted to reach all the way to Milwaukee also that was kind of wild.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

That's where we got the uh no little plans uh uh that he gave. Uh now a lot of this influence, and there's maps here that I put on screen again. A lot of the maps Sheridan that wanted to go to Milwaukee. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the maps here are um of Paris, and they used a lot of inspiration from Paris. And I, you know, I look at this, maybe this is why people are like, oh, Paris. Chicago should have looked like Paris. Because in this particular chapter, that's all they really use. They use they used a lot of Paris uh examples. And when you look at Paris, damn, like it really is like that. It was it was nice, and like Chicago, you could see some of the ideas of what Chicago wanted to have. And so I don't know, it's it's very wild how serious we were about like, no, they're doing it like this, we should do it like this. But Chicago was such a better situated place, and I got it now, I got a the quote I was telling you about, I got a dope quote. Um, now this uh mentions that Chicago didn't have any, and this is a quote, buildings possessing either historical or uh picturesque value, which must be sacrifices in order to make uh to carry out the plans. So basically they were like, Chicago ain't hash it. So reason why we need to do this, we ain't got nothing to lose.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

Yeah, everything was new, everything new.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Y'all burned it.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

So we can we can get rid of it and make it better. So like there's no fear of like toy tearing down historical buildings, which is crazy because like at this point, some buildings could have been 40 years old.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah, right. You know what I mean? At this point, yeah, but at the same time, he's looking at like we ain't got no Arc de Triumph, we ain't got no uh shonsalise, uh we don't have uh that's a throwback, y'all. That was an inside joke. Sorry. Uh we we we don't have none of that old castles and stuff like that that we had to preserve.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

So to his point, was like it's okay to tear things down and start over. Just go ahead and do it. I don't know. I don't know if I agree with that piece, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

I don't think it was necessarily teared. I mean I mean that's kind of what he's saying.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

Yeah, that's kind of what he's saying. You know, because he's like, none of it is historic, so that shouldn't be an argument. Yeah. Next question.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Yeah, like not that's not a good look. And and the reason why I has I stopped myself is because I did skip ahead and I looked at the uh the legalities part and they use eminent domain in there. Yeah, remember we were doing the streets uh and we were talking about like there's only a few instances in history where eminent domain was used. Because it's horrifying. I think we're about to get to one of those moments. Yeah. The first moment.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

I know we will.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah, I think we're about to get to that. Um now here was an interesting part about how they talked about trains coming through a neighborhood, how they looked at this. And man, this is didn't end up like this, but uh trains in a neighborhood, um, they were if they were to come to a neighborhood, they wanted to know. They they were like, that's bad planning. Danny Burns was like, that's bad planning because house property would go down, property value would go down if a if somebody bought a house and then all of a sudden we built a train. Right. He was like, this plan is going to be where we have it already figured out. This is where the houses are gonna go, and this is how the trains are gonna go around them. Yeah, and this is a foolproof plan.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

That's so funny because I don't know if you remember, but I think we just did uh we did an episode on it a couple of years ago, maybe. It was the that candy company that's in Lincoln Park that is no longer in Lincoln Park. But if you live in Lincoln Park and you walk down the Wrightwood neighborhood, there are tracks that go nowhere, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

And there's a ton of them in that area. And when we did that episode, the reason we did that episode is because I was like, what are these tracks? So I started digging, and it was this candy company uh that used these tracks to deliver product into and out of their factory. So the factory was in the neighborhood, and there was a dedicated train that just moved their stuff. It wasn't like a streetcar, it was an actual, it was actual train tracks.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:15

Um they're still there. You can walk, I think it's like Lincoln Wood or something, like one of those side streets. Like literally, we used to live in that neighborhood, and I would walk Campbell, uh, our dog, and I would be like, What are these traits? Like, they're going into they go into a gated community. Like they they go nowhere. Um, and it was just so fascinating. And there's actually a little garden that is dedicated to the candy uh company in that neighborhood. Really? Yeah, because it it stands on the site of where the building used to be that they tore down. That's amazing. And it was a white building, uh, and they they tore down the white building. I'll link the episode if you're interested in that. If you want to learn more about it.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Um what did I how did I miss that?

SPEAKER_03 31:55

We did it a couple weeks a couple years ago, probably.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Yeah, yeah, at the time I shouldn't know. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, that's uh even even hearing it again sounds good to me. You know, that's that's dope.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

It's just fascinating that he thought that was bad planning, but that happened a lot, especially like uh on the south side and the southwest southwest side. A lot of a lot of like heavy manufacturing happened in the neighborhood. People lived in back of the yards because it was close to where they worked, and so there was always train traffic.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

He literally was like, This is how it should be.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Poor people behavior.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Yeah, well, right. Basically, basically, it was called an a rich people because it was like, if y'all don't plan, if y'all don't plan. It's gonna look like ruckus. Yeah, it's gonna be stupid. Yeah, now uh it's gonna be stupid. Read the book, like y'all read the book.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

He wanted he wanted everyone in this, he wanted the city to be like made for the wealthy. He wanted everything to exude that like very wealthy luxury experience. And so he was like, we have to plan in a way where all of this like extra, like the shipping and uh the you know, we talked about it last time when we talked about um you know transportation. Is that he was really particular about where he wanted things placed because it needed to happen around the city from the outside, yeah, so that the inside was kind of like this where you it was like parks and lakes and like ponds, and you know, none of you didn't see any of the like grimy industrial parts inside the city. Yeah, but also there's probably little foresight here because the city grew, it didn't, you know, it annexed a bunch more, and like how how what were you gonna do? Move the tracks further out, like what so it's it's an interesting thought at the time, but it I feel like there could have been more foresight and also where do the people go that like work on these train tracks? Where does you know I mean, like is the is the solution then like a town like Pullman where it was like you're indebted indefinitely to the to the company and you're just like living basically like maybe maybe uh so like it again, it's uh uh you see you know, we say like you know, he he he wanted what's best for the people, but it was like a very select group of people that he cared about. And you gotta well, he yeah, because he put this plan would have pushed out a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

True, but in the book he does say whether we know it or not, it says verbatim though that um this is this is for the people of Chicago and for people to come back to want to be here. So yeah, but also you gotta think about this 1909. Uh the plan fell apart quick, you know what I mean? Like it fell apart extremely fast. Yeah, like it was expensive and timely and time consuming. Yeah, you know, yeah. I mean, that's the problem. Now, he did bring up the notion of you know gathering spaces, and the reason why I wrote this down is because we got a couple spaces here in Chicago that are exactly like this. Um, and he he noted other places like Boston, Massachusetts with the 4th of July and other spaces around you know the world, you know, they had gathering spaces. So what happens when you know people come out to the streets to celebrate?

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Like a big a big celebration. You can't stop that. And it and what what happens with the traffic? He said, well, um, they thought of creating uh uh open spaces for people which the which appropriately may be adorned by the statue of men of achievement or may be ornamented with fountains and memorials of various kinds.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Now so he was like, so in case of that, around these areas, what we'll do is we'll make open spaces where people can just come out of their homes and play. And this is where the parks come in. One place that I wrote a couple places that I wrote down was obviously Grant Park.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

Uh, and then Logan Square. Yeah. So Logan Square, obviously they're re they're remodeling. And the reason why I wrote down Logan Square is because the picture that is in the book that I have on the screen is directly like how it looks in Logan Square. What is is it the roundabout area? With the centennial with the centennial. Yeah. And I was like, hmm, I wonder how much thought goes into these planes.

SPEAKER_03 36:13

I think of think of like where they have like your farmers' markets and stuff like that. Like I think of uh, for example, in Austin, the Austin farmers market that actually starts next month in May. They hold it in front of the town hall, yeah, which is isn't it like the building meant to mimic like the Philadelphia town hall? Again, this is like an intentional space for people to come and gather. And uh, I think of like the Lincoln Park farmers market in the huge park in Lincoln Park. Uh there's a farmers market that is in um uh on Southport that is under the train tracks. That area could have been nothing, but they put up art, they put up benches, they paved it, it's now a gathering space. Um, so yeah, I feel like uh Chicago's big on these like gathering spaces, and I feel like sometimes even if the city isn't making them, the communities are making are putting them up.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Yeah, and I mean we'll get into this plan not working on it, but I like I absolutely like the way the vision was. Yeah, I mean the vision was the vision would have again Chicago would have been the it would have looked really cool. Chicago would have been by far, hand over fist, best by far the best planned city. I think it's still up there in the ranks, too. I agree, you know, by a lot of people are saying that is one of the most planned city, best planned city.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Pretty intentional.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

I mean, it was very, very well done for what we have too. Granted, this went a little bit better, but but what we got is I mean, definitely not bad. Um, I do want to know one more very interesting piece to the streets and how they work around, so to say. So, y'all know the Chicago wine where the three branches of the river uh meet up, uh, north, south, and central, main branch. Well, right there, they were thinking about having bridges and stuff that connect in a round, so that was a circular section. So you would go over the water and the river in three different parts in circle, and it the traffic went around that. Now, here's the crazy part about that.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

In that same section, I mean we kind of have that. We we kind of do, not not between the north and the uh but that's what I'm about to get.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Let me get at it because because he said exactly the way Chicago is right now, he absolutely lit that shit up in the book. He was like, he was like, We got he got we got bridges of all sorts all over the place, and it doesn't make basically it don't make no sense.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

He says that in the book, yours like arbitrary, and then someone was like, I need to cross at this point in front of a bridge.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

And he was like, keep falling down, yeah. And basically, he was like, he was like, This is not, it don't make sense. So, this section, this is how we're gonna do this section. I was like, Well, Mr. Burnham, if you were alive now, sir, I'm sorry, we failed you on that part. I I like the bridges that go over the bridges, yeah. Me too now, but but like see what his when you look at the picture. Are they kind of in a circle?

SPEAKER_03 38:55

I'm trying to think.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

No, it ain't no circle. There's no circle. Hell no. Well look, the circle he's talking about is an actual like circle. I put it on, it's on page 95.

SPEAKER_03 39:05

The north and the main branch and the south branch, there's a circle. Why would you need that?

SPEAKER_00 39:11

He was gonna put a circle there, like make that a circle. So look, like look right here.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

I see. I mean you kinda have that.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

You kind of don't, not that close.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

Those those two, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Yeah, you yeah, you yeah, we ain't got that. That would have been cool. And here's the crazy part. Even if we wanted to go back to that, we couldn't do it. Yeah, no, it's too late. It's built as there. It's buildings there, yeah. It's there's no way to go over there. Um, but uh, you know, that part is crazy because he literally was like, I think we got enough bridges.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think we need any more bridges.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Uh to clean to conclude my little my little uh speech right here. I want to hit you with this quote uh because this to me I think is an all-timer. I don't know why. I just I love this this one. Tell us to me, it's up there with uh uh make no little plans. Yeah, I mean, and the rest of that speech is dope too. We don't we never finish off. He said make make big plans. Uh if Chicago were to be relocated today, it would still be placed at the same spot where it is now. And if the streets were again mapped, the same general system would be adopted. He said, Look, if we did this over again in another universe, in another lifetime, we doing the same thing we do right now. He was confident in this plan. He was like, This is fail-proof. It was fail-proof.

SPEAKER_03 40:26

Except it failed.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Wasn't his fault? I mean, might have been we'll get into it. Might have been his fault when he died. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:34

So I I kind of wanted to, I, you know, I don't want to spend too much time talking about the streets per se, but I did want to give an idea of what the uh 10 years, you know, a couple decades before actually looked like. Okay. Because like we established it was chaos. Yeah, it was absolutely chaotic. And um it was just really interesting because up until 1918 is when like people were like, okay, we made a mess. Uh it's a little messy. A little messy. Let's uh let's lock in. Um, and I I I wrote some some things down. I I wrote a lot because I was really interested in it, and maybe I'll dive deeper into it in the uh in the show notes, but just to kind of give you an idea. So the actual uh street ordinance passed uh what went into effect um in 1909, but it was passed on by city council in 1908, and this was the first time that uh into or like it was into effect that the uh street grid is now state in Madison. We know it right now. But there was a lot that happened leading up to it, and it started in 18. I'm gonna go back as to 1879. So December 1st, 1879 was when City Council had uh decided to renum that they needed to renumber the streets. It was a first time, yes, because here's the thing we had a huge annexation that happened, right? And so each township that you annexed, each, you know what I mean, had their own system. That's a good SP. And so nothing was cohesive, everything was its own little thing. Um and so they decided, all right, let's renumber the streets north-south uh uh is going the streets between north-south Roosevelt Road and uh east of the river. That's that's the section that they decided to renumber. Uh this was to kind of like So Hyde Park. Yes, because they had just taken over town uh township, Lake Township, and so they were like, let's match the rest of Hyde Park, basically. So that that section, 12th Street or Roosevelt, today's Roosevelt Road is very like huge in the history of the street. Yeah, uh massive, actually. Yeah, because every it was like the main split that they were like, okay, north-south. Um and so the north-south from Roosevelt street numbers started at 1200, north-southwest of the river, um, but crossed to the east, used the new numbers, but only after they crossed the river. So if you were living on the other side of the river, the west side, you had the you had the old numbers. But if you were across the river, you had the new numbers.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

So they just that really that corner, literally the Hyde Park area, like that, just so they were using the lake and the river.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

The lake and the river and 12th Street as the main boundaries. Boundary, as the main numbering uh kind of like baseline. That's interesting. Right. And so they the Chicago itself had three um separate kind of systems. And it was the Chicago Directory Company that kind of in 1909 was like, all right, we're responsible for here's your new house number, basically. But what's really interesting is that um the three grand divisions, which were the north, which its main artery was North Clark, and the South, which was State, and the West Division Division, which was Madison, Randolph, and Lake, right? And this is at this point where uh in 1891.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Man, so that we had two different, several different numbers. Oh my god, so many. It's such a number of so many.

SPEAKER_03 44:24

I wouldn't even put them in a list because I would be sitting here for 20 minutes naming the different systems.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

The the Roosevelt to the Lake one is makes no sense to me. That's such a small area. Oh yeah, it had its own naming systems. Because even then the river was much closer. So you it was like a sliver. Correct.

SPEAKER_03 44:40

And it was so bad that uh you had things like Lake Street, and also you had Lake Avenue. You had Park Avenue on the west side and South Park Avenue, which was miles away from Park Avenue. Okay. This is we're at 1891 now, all right? Um, and so there was no distinction between streets or avenues or boulevards or roads. It was all just whatever you wanted to name it.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

So that makes sense why he was like, let's break them down to three different things. Let's be strict. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Uh in 1901, this is a Tribune article from uh June 16th, 1901, the city council was meeting to discuss the street numbers and uh, you know, renaming the streets. And so the main issue is that they were you still using the river and the lake as the baseline. And it is hard because this as we logically know, the river isn't straight. So there's no like east-west, north-south. Like, you know what I mean? Like it goes diagonal, like it's just a weird, um, a weird kind of thing. And so at by 1901, they had already been talking about it for like over 10 years. And so there was a little piece in the article that said renumbering the houses, which is at this point was tens of thousands of houses, which now is probably more, yeah, would have cost uh between a dollar and two a house. So they were like, it's too expensive. We cannot do it. It was gonna cost tens of thousands of dollars to renumber these houses. We cannot do it. Bottom Palmer, you got it. George Porter, you got it. That's so funny. But again, is that legal for them to do it? Right. Well, ooh, that's a good thing. That's what I'm saying. Like, can they use that their money as private people to pay for that?

SPEAKER_00 46:22

So in the city can't take donations. Boy, I cannot wait till we get to uh this part. I know. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 46:28

I know. Uh the Chicago Record Herald in uh 1901, uh June 26, 1901. Edward P. Brennan suggested um the arrangement of altering street names and numbers. Okay. Okay. And this was the first time that we hear of this 1901, the first time that we hear of the state and Madison cross section. Oh. Okay. So this is what he said. This is a direct quote from his press release. He says, uh the baselines are State Street North and South, and Madison Street east and west. Their function is the center from which all distances are measured. There's no use disturbing the central downtown district, as the commercial interests would be all up in all up in arms against change. So he said, we will use state and Madison, but we won't want to disturb the central business district, which was later the loop. Yeah. So he's like, this will apply to anything outside of the loop. Between 12th Street and beyond the river's arms, the reform would be easily put into practice. So outside of 12th Street and the river, again, 12th Street and the river, anything outside of that area, we will use state and Madison as the center. But anything inside, we're just not going to bother them because they're businesses, it's too much. They don't want to change. Okay. And he suggested that streets become anything that's running east-west. Avenues run north-south. Anything that's running diagonal cutting north is a road, like Milwaukee Avenue. Uh, anything diagonal cutting south is called a way, like ways. Uh smaller streets east and west are court, smaller street north-south is place.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Yeah, that wouldn't work, Mama. Yeah. Numbers across we had to change there.

SPEAKER_03 48:14

Numbers across the river and at 12th street would start as 1000. That block would be block 1000. Okay. So we're at 12th Street, block at 1000. On the south side, he said it would start as blocked at 1000 because 12th Street from State and Madison is technically 10th Street. We're not gonna rename it 10th street, but we will start it as block 1000. What street? 12th Roosevelt. 10 blocks from Madison and State.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

So that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 48:47

Like, we'll start the block as if it's 10th Street, so we'll start number 1000, but we won't rename it 1000. We'll just keep it as 12th. What's crazy is it's still like the the number system is still what it's still 11th, and then Roosevelt. Yeah, yeah, it's still technically 12th, but it actually is 10th, is what he's saying.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

I know. And then and then there's 13, 14, and then it continues. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:11

So city council meets, takes this advisement into uh into kind of you know consideration. By July of 1909, the Tribune puts out a really, really facetious article saying this is the title of the article schemes that are as plain as the Chinese language suggested to simplify Chicago's street numbers. They said these aldermen at the time, obviously, are meeting trying to give us ways to renumber the streets. None of it makes sense. And I read the the suggestion by these aldermen. I don't want to bore you because it's long and it makes no sense, but it is actually probably if it went into effect, it probably would have been one of the worst things I've ever um read in my life. And it was it was the first the first section of it was was pretty bad. Uh it was you know amended a bunch of times. Like I said, in 1908, they it passed city council. In 1909, it was amended again. It went into effect um September of 1909. It was amended again in 1910 to actually include the loop this time.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

And in 1911, uh they gave the loop these new addresses. And I have so many cool pictures that I'm gonna put in the uh show notes about uh what it was like for people to read because people were responsible for renumbering their own houses. And so some of these houses had their numbers in stone, yeah. And you had to come up with new numbers for your houses. So now, like, what do you do?

SPEAKER_00 50:47

So what I'm looking up while you were doing that, because here in the uh in the book here, which just uh ripped the uh we we now have a vintage book. Oh so they have they list out who were who was a part of the commercial club and they break down uh the merchant club as it stood 1906 to 1907, it's listed in then from there, you know, it they changed to the commercial club. But the commercial club from 1908 to 1909, the general committee uh uh vice chairman was Charles H. Wacker. Yep Street name. You know what I mean? Like so big guy, big name on streets of the of this um the railway terminals. Guess who was the chairman? Joy Morton.

SPEAKER_03 51:34

Oh, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 51:35

Joy Morton was the chairman of the the railway terminals, and on the streets and boulevards, the um the chairman there was uh Clyde M. Carr. So what we need to do is look up Clyde M. Carr and uh do some research on him because he was head of the streets and boulevards, according to the the newly formed committee right here.

SPEAKER_03 51:56

With the last name like Carr, you have to be.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

Yeah, double R. Double R. Yeah. They were like, you're the guy. That's the one. That's the one. That's the one. Uh there was one more name that uh I thought was really cool on here. Um I can't, I don't want to take up no time, but uh oh, uh Edward B. Butler was the on the Lake Parks uh chairman. I wonder if that's the same Butler that over by the uh Soldier Phil, there's Butler Drive. Right. I wonder if that's named after him. I if if I'm logically thinking that's gotta be it because that's a lake and a parking lot.

SPEAKER_03 52:29

Let us know next episode.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

We will. I definitely will.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

Um but yeah, it was it was fascinating seeing that, and then going into like what?

SPEAKER_00 52:38

No, no, keep I was gonna say Charles Dawes. Oh yeah. Charles Dawes was on the finance. Y'all, and if you don't know Charles Dawes, uh Charles Dawes lived in Evanson with um uh Berno, Daniel Bernal.

SPEAKER_03 52:52

It's it's so funny. There's a little caricature from the I think it's from the Tribune, and it was like uh the first day Broad Broadway became Broadway, and it used to be called it used to be called Evanston Avenue, and it turned into Broadway, and it's this like cartoon of this woman asking the uh streetcar, do you go to Evanston Avenue? And he goes, No, I go to Broadway, or something like that, like something funny of like, you know, he knows the new name, she doesn't know the new name, like they're confused. There's a a ton of those, I'll make sure to include them uh in the show notes if you're interested.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

But it was it was really fun like looking at that, and like I mean, we could do an entire thing just on the streets, way more, and um because there's so much history there, and you know, I was gonna I was gonna say there's so much history, but like what's really cool is how the south side was really looked at, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, and how we fell apart for this, and honestly, I just can't wait to get to the you know, the you know, the aftermath, right? Like what where we are right now because we we got another big plan that's about to happen, right? 2045. And so, you know, just seeing how South Side was relied on heavily, and like they looked at going to the west sides and north side and equally, but here we are today, and it's so such a segregated city.

SPEAKER_03 54:08

Yeah. Uh there is an interesting episode from our past. If you want to listen to it, it's actually a YouTube video. Uh, it's the uh Uptown Buena Park uh video because it we talked a lot about the streets because that is a very unique neighborhood and how how it was laid out. And so it kind of gives you an insight of like how big the city was at the time and how the streets were laid out and how it was hard to change these streets because things were already like built and in effect, and as things got annexed, it was like harder and harder to keep it uniform. But I thought of that one as kind of an interesting. We've never done like an episode on streets, but that one we kind of touched on a little bit. Yeah, uh, some books that I found uh while doing the research is uh Streetwise Chicago, a history of Chicago Street Names, if you're interested in that. We also did a 30 uh names in 30 days for streets. Maybe we did that twice or just once.

SPEAKER_00 55:05

We just did that once.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

One one round.

SPEAKER_00 55:08

We only do another one once more.

SPEAKER_03 55:10

If you Google 77 Flavors, Street Names, it'll you'll probably get a bunch of those videos. But we just did it last year, so it's not too far back of a scroll. Um, we also I also found City of the Century, the epic uh the epic of Chicago and the Making of America. And it's a 1996 book by uh American historian Donald Miller. Uh it chronicles Chicago's rise from a frontier settlement to a modern metropolis and a cultural powerhouse, portraying the city as a microcosm of industrial age America. Um, and then the for movies, kind of hard to think of like a movie that specifically is about streets. I feel like the Blues Brothers is a is a cool one because they're in the streets a lot. It was everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Yeah, so Joliet.

SPEAKER_03 55:54

You get kind of like a look of what the street, I don't know, if you are unfamiliar with what Chicago looks like. Uh I honestly uh Ferris Bueller is a cool one because like they're driving down some some Chicago streets. That's a cool one. But there isn't anything specifically, it's hard, it's like a smaller topic. So um, it's hard to find anything, anything like it's like a movie um about that. But I hope those kind kind of like spark your interest. And if you're interested in learning about street naming and street numbers and that specifically and diving into that history, let us know. Uh you know, maybe we'll do it, do something later this year on that.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

I feel like it's uh later this year might be tied locked up though. We got some fun. We might we might not get to it this year, but uh we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

Yeah, we'll see. But uh yeah, that's all I have for today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope uh you enjoyed it. And um we're almost uh we're wrapping up Planet Chicago almost, probably like one or two more episodes, and two more. Uh we'll we'll jump into the next topic, which is World's Columbian Exposition. We're already underway on the filming and the research, so make sure you come back for that. Um, we'll see you next time. Peace.