If you told a Chicagoan a hundred years ago
that a tour of the Chicago River
would one day top every visitor's list,
you would have been laughed out of town.
But what was once a meandering
weed-choked stream
turned smelly industrial channel
is now lined with soaring skyscrapers
and jammed with tour boats
kayakers, and water taxis.
And today, the Chicago River is more popular than ever,
with a bustling riverwalk,
new architectural gems,
and even whole neighborhoods
rising along the river's edge.
I've had a pretty good view of it all.
I'm Geoffrey Baer and I've been giving boat tours
of the Chicago River since 1988
as a docent for the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
The most iconic downtown views
are from a boat in the river.
But there are many more miles to this story,
stretching south into the gritty Sanitary and Ship Canal
That's a low bridge coming up there.
What do you have to do?
- I'll have to drop the wheel house down.
- ...and winding north through the Chicago Botanic Garden
and Skokie Lagoons.
And there's more to the river than scenery.
- Railroad tracks went down into the river here.
And that's how they pulled the boats out.
- This story is loaded with river lore.
It's been re-engineered on a massive scale
It's had tragedies
and given us one-of-a-kind characters.
Today, people live, work, and play along the river
Yay, Salute!
and yes, even swim in it!
Jump!
Get set or a journey on the river
that gave birth to one of America's great cities,
Chicago.
It's the Chicago River Tour.
The story of the Chicago River
is really the story of Chicago
And to truly learn that story,
channel your inner tourist,
That's good.
For the first part of our voyage,
we board Chicago's First Lady,
the flagship of a fleet of modern tour boats
[HORN BLOWS]
inspired by 1920s wooden cruising yachts
like the former presidential vessel Sequoia.
We shove off from a dock
just east of Michigan Avenue Bridge.
This is a good place to start our tour
Hi, everyone!
because it's arguably the place where Chicago began.
Right over there, in the shadow of Tribune Tower,
is the place where Chicago's first
permanent resident,
Jean Baptiste Point DuSable,
built his frontier home,
not long after the American Revolution.
For many decades,
his importance in Chicago history
was really under appreciated
because he was black.
We know that DuSable was a successful trader and farmer
in frontier Chicago.
But his roots have been hotly debated.
Was he from Haiti?
Was he from Southern Illinois?
Was he the son of slaves?
Mixed race?
Sources disagree.
We might not know much about DuSable,
but it's obvious why he settled here.
Location, location, location.
Back in the 18th century,
this spot was just a few steps from the lakefront.
Today Lake Michigan is a good half-mile to the east,
but all that was added to the lakefront
over the course of a century
as the city grew.
So, it wasn't just the lakefront location
that made this place special and historic,
it was also a little weed choked stream
that meandered around a sand bar
before trickling into Lake Michigan.
The Native Americans called it Chicagoua ("chick-AH-geww"),
which was their word for the smelly wild onions
that perfumed the shores around here.
It's a good thing the city was named
Oh, how funny, I never heard that before.
Before long, the U.S. Government built
Fort Dearborn right across the river
from DuSable's home.
The hilltop garrison,
recreated here for the 1933 World's Fair,
was our young country's westernmost outpost.
If those early settlers and soldiers
could see this site today,
they wouldn't believe their eyes.
A 21st century trading post
stands on the very site of DuSable's home.
The Apple Store completed in 2017
is Chicago's first building
by acclaimed British architect Lord Norman Foster.
Foster's design also includes
a sweeping grand stairway
that opens up North Michigan Avenue to the riverfront.
The roof, perhaps not coincidentally,
is shaped like an iPad.
Michigan Avenue Bridge, completed in 1920,
opened up North Michigan Avenue
to become our Magnificent Mile.
Bronze markers near the bridge
show where Fort Dearborn stood.
Although, they're easy to miss in rush hour.
The bridge was officially named for DuSable in 2010.
Not long after it was completed
four great gateway buildings framed the bridge.
The earliest of the four is the Wrigley Building,
completed in 1921
by architects Graham, Anderson, Probst and White.
Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley was
a master of brand promotion.
So he had the building clad
in shiny white glazed terra cotta,
to make it stand out
in an otherwise industrial area north of the river.
The building was designed in an era
when classically-inspired architecture
was all the rage in the U.S.
It was called the city beautiful movement.
The clock tower was loosely modeled
on the 15th Century Cathedral of Seville's
Giralda Tower in Spain.
But the Wrigley Building is also famous
for what's in its basement.
Cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger.
No fries, chips.
No Pepsi, Coke.
Double cheese the best. Next
The Billy Goat restaurant.
Beloved as a hangout for reporters,
from Tribune Tower across the street
and the old Sun-Times building next door
what it meant to a young city news reporter.
columnists like Mike Royko made it famous
"I don't want a cheeseburger,
it's too early for a cheeseburger.
It's too early for a cheeseburger?
Look, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger
this skit from Saturday Night Live immortalized it,
and made its owner Sam Sianis
a Chicago legend.
Right across the river
from the Wrigley Building on Wacker Drive
is another neo-classical edifice,
the former London Guarantee building
from 1923 by architect Alfred Alschuler.
It's festooned with historic ornament
from the triumphal arch at the base,
to the classical temple on the roof.
This former office building
has been completely repurposed
as a fancy boutique hotel
called the London House.
The rooftop bar offers an irresistible view.
The hotel is named for the legendary jazz club
that once occupied the ground floor.
I saw piano legend Oscar Peterson perform there
with my high school prom date.
The third building framing the bridge
is Chicago's iconic Tribune Tower,
completed in 1925.
The design by architects Hood and Howells of New York
was the winning entry in one of the most famous
architectural design competitions
in American history.
In 1922 the Tribune's bombastic publisher,
Colonel Robert McCormick
offered $100,000 in prize money
to design nothing less than
the most beautiful office building in the world.
Entries poured in.
More than 250 of them from 23 countries
This one from Adolph Loos represented a newspaper column.
Others were startlingly modern,
like the submission from Walter Gropius
of Germany's famous Bauhaus design school.
But in the end it was a design inspired
by the medieval cathedrals of Europe that won.
Like the great cathedrals,
flying buttresses leap skyward
from a terrace that rings the 25th floor.
The exterior walls are embedded with fragments
of famous buildings from around the world,
procured on McCormick's orders
by Tribune foreign correspondents.
The Great Wall of China,
The Pyramids of Giza,
The Roman Coliseum,
and the Parthenon in Athens
and more recently, the Berlin Wall,
and the Twin Towers destroyed on 9/11.
The entry that came in second
in the Tribune Tower competition
was by the Finnish-born architect
Eliel Saarinen.
But he got quite a consolation prize.
Look over there,
Saarinen's entry inspired the design
of the skyscraper right across the river.
333 North Michigan Avenue.
This slender tower by Chicago architects
Holabird and Root
is a classic example of the sleek art deco style
of the late 1920s,
with its low relief ornament
and tapering profile to emphasize
the building's soaring height.
Like all of our downtown bridges,
the bridge at Michigan Avenue opens and closes
for boats that are too tall to fit underneath.
It's a legacy of the days
when the Chicago River was one
of the busiest ports in the world.
[warning bells ring]
Today the bridges are rarely opened
except in the spring and fall
for recreational sailboats
going to and from lakefront harbors.
[warning bells ring]
One of the historic Michigan Avenue Bridge houses
has been converted into a museum
of river history by the non-profit
Friends of the Chicago River.
And a part big part of that history is bridges.
The city's very first moveable bridge
was erected just west of here at Dearborn Street in 1834.
It got stuck so often
that citizens chopped it to pieces with axes.
Swing bridges were the state of the art
in the second half of the 1800s.
They pivoted around a post
in the middle of the river.
In 1863 a herd of cattle
crossing the swing bridge at Rush Street panicked
and ran to one end,
tipping the bridge and the entire herd
into the river.
We finally got it right
with a type of drawbridge invented in Chicago
called the trunnion bascule bridge.
Each leaf of these bridges
is like a giant asymmetrical teeter-totter
that rotates around an axle called a trunnion.
Visitors to the Bridgehouse Museum
can go into the gloomy subterranean realm
to see the mechanics of the bridge in action.
Many of the bridge houses along the river
are like little neo-classical temples.
They're part of a complete transformation
of the river's edge,
starting in the 1920s.
Up until then
the river was lined with a jumble of docks and wharves,
bustling with cargo and passenger ships.
In 1909 city planners Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett
proposed replacing all of that
with the elegant, double-decked Wacker Drive,
as part of their sweeping
"Plan of Chicago."
The upper level is loaded
with city beautiful trimmings
like balustrades and obelisk-shaped light fixtures.
Heading west on the main stem
we'll focus on buildings to our right
on the north bank.
Later when we return to the main stem
we'll talk about buildings across the river,
and our new riverwalk.
In a city famous for politics,
it's safe to say that there has maybe never been
a building more political
than Trump International Hotel and Tower.
The 92-story tower
is the second tallest in Chicago.
It's by architect Adrian Smith,
of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
And contains more than 800 condos
and hotel suites.
It was completed nearly a decade
before its owner became
President of the United States.
The building was praised
for its blue glass facade
and tapering profile
that respects the scale of neighboring buildings.
But 5 years after it was completed,
Donald Trump squandered that good will
by attaching his name
to the side of the building
in 20-foot-tall letters.
The sign elicited a firestorm of criticism
led by Pulitzer Prize-winning
Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin.
This sign is grotesquely over-scaled.
Why did this sign have to go up?
Everybody already knows its Trump Tower.
Trump hit back with the kind of Tweet
that later became a fixture
of our daily news cycle,
calling Kamin a third-rate critic.
City council quickly passed an ordinance
banning such signs in the future.
If Trump Tower is about self-promotion,
the building right next door
is a model of understatement.
It's AMA Plaza,
originally the IBM building
by an architect who was famously fond
of the "Less is More" philosophy.
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
had been director of the avant-garde
Bauhaus School in Germany,
but came to America
as the Nazis were taking power
and headed the architecture department
at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
He became one of the most influential architects
of the 20th century.
His designs stripped away the ornamentation
leaving only steel and glass.
Now it might look devoid of decoration,
but Mies Van Der Rohe had a trick up his sleeve.
The thin vertical I-beams between the windows
make the walls of the building
appear to change from all glass
to almost solid metal
as we move around the building.
Mies liked to place his simple,
dark buildings on wide open plazas,
like works of minimalist sculpture.
If Mies loved rigid glass and steel,
the architect of the building right next door
loved curvy concrete.
I wonder if he also loved corn on the cob.
Bertrand Goldberg
who had studied at the Bauhaus
and admired Mies,
worried that boxy modernist buildings
weren't good for the human spirit.
He called them psychological slums.
This is Marina City.
One of the tallest concrete structures in the world."
I love Marina City
because it was a quarter century
ahead of its time.
It was conceived as a city within the city
including the cylindrical apartment towers, shopping,
a movie theatre, bowling alley, skating rink,
and an office building.
There was ample parking
and of course, a marina.
But when it was built in the early-1960s
people were fleeing cities
for the sprawling post-war suburbs.
And even if you remained in the city
the last place you'd want to live
was along what was then
the smelly, industrial Chicago River.
The building was commissioned by the Janitors' Union
in part to stop the exodus
and save their jobs.
Marina City was intended
as glamorous modern housing
that average Chicagoans could afford.
The apartments were converted to condos in 1977
over the objections of many tenants.
Goldberg later lamented
that this undid the business model.
By 1988 Marina City's commercial property
had begun a six year bankruptcy saga
and deferred maintenance was taking its toll.
The Chicago Tribune described the complex
as a "seedy, crumbling wreck."
Finally in 1996
developer John L. Marks bought
the commercial property for $3.35 million
and the rebirth of Marina City began.
The old movie theater building was given a makeover
as the House of Blues.
And the former office building
was converted into a hotel.
Today Marina City stands proudly
along a vibrant river
in the heart of a 24-hour downtown.
And we can imagine Bertrand Goldberg,
who died in 1997 saying,
"I told you so!"
Alright, which commercial building in Chicago
was touted as the largest in the world
when it was completed?
Merchandise Mart, yeah.
Right over there, good.
The art deco style Merchandise Mart,
all 4 million square feet of it
opened in 1930.
Marshall Field built it as a wholesale operation,
but the Great Depression took its toll
on that business.
In 1945, Joseph Kennedy bought the building
for $13 million
about a third of the original cost.
The current owner claims it's still
the nation's largest
privately-held commercial building.
Today the Mart is home
to manufacturer's showrooms
for high end home design and stylish décor.
Today and tomorrow, we'll be really aggressive,
in terms of reaching out,
But it's also evolved into a 21st century
technology and startup hub,
including the tech incubator 1871.
Crossing under the last bridge, on the river's main stem
we come to the place
where the three branches of the river meet
A Y-shaped intersection,
known since Chicago's frontier days
as Wolf Point.
Have you ever noticed a "Y" shape
in municipal logos around town?
Well it represents the confluence
of the three branches at Wolf Point.
Look around.
You'll spot the symbol in familiar and surprising places.
So, Wolf Point was the social hub
of frontier Chicago.
There was a tavern on each bank.
And then there was a ferry boat,
so you could bar hop.
The most famous and historically important of the three
was the Sauganash Hotel,
It stood where this modern green glass tower is located today.
333 West Wacker Drive from 1983,
by New York architects Kohn Pederson and Fox.
The innkeeper Mark Beaubien used to say,
"I plays de fiddle like de debble
and I keeps hotel like hell".
But he did something else well,
he had 23 children by two wives.
In those days,
Chicago was a rowdy fur-trading town
with a mix of French Canadians,
Yankees, and Native Americans.
The early settlers aren't the only ones
who'd be amazed by Wolf Point today.
I think we're all amazed
by the tall towers that have sprouted here.
On the north bank, this glassy apartment tower from 2016
by Chicago's bKL architects
is the first of a three-building development
master planned by the renowned Connecticut firm
Pelli, Clark, Pelli,
on a prime piece of land
that for decades was just a parking lot.
There's a lovely landscaped walkway at the base.
That's because since 1999
most new developments along the river
have to provide public access
to the river's edge.
This is just part of a whole set of city guidelines
designed to reshape the riverfront
from an industrial eyesore
to an asset for everyone to enjoy.
On Wolf Point's west bank
the 52-story River Point office tower
was completed in 2017.
Here architects Pickard Chilton
set the building on a two-and-a-half-acre park.
It sits high above the river,
over railroad tracks that line the west bank.
These holes contain fans to vent exhaust
from the train engines.
Those tracks continue south of Lake Street
for blocks hidden beneath
the buildings on the west bank.
This is a boon for the railroads
because they also own the air above their tracks.
The first building we pass on the South Branch
found a gravity-defying solution
to deal with those railroad tracks.
It's 150 North Riverside,
a 53-story office building
completed in 2017.
Architects Goettsch Partners
and their structural engineering wizards
Magnusson Clemencic Associates concocted a
design that anchors the tower
on a narrow plot between
the tracks and the river,
and then widens out dramatically
to provide much larger floors above.
Wind tunnel tests on a model
of this top heavy building
showed that it would sway in the breeze.
So, engineers minimize this
with giant tanks near the top of the building
filled with 200,000 gallons of water.
When the wind pushes the building one way,
the water sloshes the other way.
It's called a tuned mass damper.
Under the Boeing Building
completed in 1990
there are so many tracks
that there was nowhere to put a column
to support the building's southwest corner.
So that corner literally hangs
from these giant trusses on top of the building.
Architect Ralph Johnson left the trusses exposed
it sort of celebrates the steel construction
that makes Chicago buildings possible,
and also the iron works of our beautiful bridges
At the end of the roaring 20s,
Chicago utilities baron Samuel Insull
built a spectacular opera house for the city,
and put an office tower on top
to help subsidize it.
As a young man, Samuel Insull worked
as a secretary to his hero, Thomas Edison.
He was a fast learner.
Insull eventually became president
of Commonwealth Edison
and made electricity affordable to the masses.
But the Depression ruined Samuel Insull,
along with thousands of his small investors.
He fled the country,
but was arrested and tried on securities fraud.
Despite being acquitted
his reputation was destroyed.
He moved to Paris where he died
on a subway platform in 1938.
Insull's glistening Opera House
by architects Graham, Anderson, Probst and White
opened in 1929
just days before the stock market crashed.
But the design gave no hint
of the gloomy times to come.
It has a four-story lobby
seating for more than 3,500
and a fire curtain designed
by the famous artist Jules Guerin.
The theatre once used water from the river for
the hydraulic pumps
that raised and lowered the stage!
(women singing opera)
The opera house has been home to the internationally-acclaimed
Lyric Opera of Chicago since 1954.
When viewed from a distance
the building looks like a giant throne.
Why?
Well as skyscrapers were growing taller and taller
in the early 20th century
city leaders worried that downtown streets
would become dark, airless canyons.
So they passed an ordinance in 1923
Requiring buildings taller than 263 feet,
to step back from the street.
And this throne shape was a popular
response to that rule.
There's another giant throne
directly across the river!
This is the old Chicago Daily News Building
from 1929 by architects Holabird and Root.
The arms of this throne embrace something
unheard of back then, a riverfront plaza.
Amid all the architectural treasures
on the south branch,
is a building from 1971
that we used to cruise right by
without a second look.
But today it's a 36-story tall
testament to how differently we view the river.
When the building was constructed
the river was considered a back alley,
so the architects put a gigantic
blank concrete wall on that side
So in 2014, the new owners of the building realized
that people like us,
thousands of people everyday,
were passing this bare wall.
So they decided to give us all something
a little nicer to look at.
The mural by ESI Design
is a map of the river.
The building is represented by a shiny red
"you are here" rectangle.
This curious little structure
right at the river's edge
is an ice factory.
Here Enwave Chicago
makes five thousand tons of ice
each night while electric rates are low.
During the day the ice melts,
creating chilled water
that's pumped to buildings throughout the Loop
for air conditioning.
Chicago architect Walter Eckenhoff
designed the building.
This mammoth art deco style edifice
by architects Graham, Anderson, Probst and White
is probably best known for the fact
that you drive right through it
when entering or leaving downtown Chicago
on the Congress Expressway.
This was said to be the largest post office in the world
when it opened in 1921.
But by 1996 modern mail
sorting technology had made
the gargantuan facility obsolete.
That's the year a new,
highly automated post office opened a block south,
designed by Knight Architects.
It contains enough linear feet of conveyors
to stretch to St. Louis,
according to the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
So what happened to the old Post Office?
It was vacated and purchased at auction
by a reclusive British developer
with outlandish plans for the site,
that never got off the ground
After more than 20 years
a new owner began a $600 million
renovation in 2016
to create a vast office building with amenities
that include a 3-acre park on the roof
with a running trail through landscaped meadows.
So, why did Chicago build the world's
biggest post office anyway?
Well decades before Amazon dot com,
Chicago was the home of America's mail order
mega-companies
Montgomery Wards,
Speigel,
and...Sears.
In 1974 Sears built the world's
tallest skyscraper in Chicago.
The 110-story building tops out at 1,451 feet.
Sears moved out in 1995
and the building was renamed Willis Tower in 2009.
The architect, Bruce Graham
of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
famously used a fistful of cigarettes
to illustrate his idea
for the building's staggered profile.
He was meeting with his engineering partner,
Fazler Kahn, at the Chicago Club
and there was a jar of cigarettes on the table.
Graham used them to build a little model of the tower.
Essentially a series of slender tubes
that bundled together
would stiffen the building against wind forces.
This building long ago lost its world's tallest title
as countries in Asia and the Middle East
build ever taller declaring
their importance to the world,
just as Chicago did in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
But whether you call it Willis Tower or Sears,
whether you're a tourist or a local,
it still reigns supreme in Chicago.
It offers spectacular views
of our iconic downtown,
and vast swaths of the city to the north,
west
and south.
And it also offers something for thrill seekers!
Are you brave enough to step out here
on the Ledge?
These four retractable glass boxes
allow visitors to step four feet
outside the walls of the building.
They were installed on the side of the building
that has no setbacks,
So the view under your feet
goes all the way down, 103 stories,
straight to the sidewalk.
You can also see something else from here
way down the south branch of the river
almost over the horizon
An ancient portage.
It was the key to Chicago's very existence.
And it's where we're headed next!
Now here's something that most Chicagoans have never seen.
But this monument depicts maybe
the most important event in the city's history,
an event that led to the birth of Chicago!
It's Hidden in a forest preserve off
of Harlem Avenue on Chicago's
far southwest side,
On this spot in 1673 native Americans
supposedly showed the explorers
Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet
a soggy portage between the Des Plaines River
and the Chicago River's South Branch.
It was affectionately known as Mud Lake.
So why was this portage such a big deal?
Well the explorers figured out right away,
this, was the only missing link
in what could one day be the most important
trade route on the whole continent.
You see, if a canal were built across that portage,
it would connect the waters of the Great Lakes
with the Mississippi over a continental divide.
This would create an uninterrupted waterway
from the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico!
And a city built at the mouth of that canal
would be poised for greatness.
Flash forward 150 years to the 1830s.
Construction finally began
and the land boom was on.
Property values soared.
And the little frontier village of Chicago,
became the fastest growing city in the world.
A newspaper reporter wrote,
"every man who owned a garden patch
stood on his head
and imagined himself a millionaire".
The Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848,
after years of financial delays
and the deaths of many immigrant workers.
The canal saw heavy use in its early years,
but eventually the railroads put it out of business.
Much of it's been filled in,
and the Stevenson Expressway runs
right on top of parts of it.
In 1900 a much larger canal opened
right next to that older one.
It's the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
And here comes my ride.
Hello, gentlemen.
Do I have to wear one of those?
I do? Alright.
We'll follow this waterway
through Chicago's south side
aboard the tugboat Chicago Trader.
It's part of the American Commercial Barge Lines fleet.
So this actually goes up and down?
- Yes, sir.
- Are we doing-- Oh, man, there we go!
(alarm buzzes)
Look at that!
That unsettling moment for me
is routine for tugboats on the Illinois Waterway
because today instead of bridges going up,
the wheelhouses go down,
while business as usual proceeds overhead.
You'll see plenty of barges and tugs on this canal.
But the waterway was built
for an even more important reason
-- to save the population of Chicago
from the ravages of typhoid and cholera.
How?
Well, it reversed the flow of the Chicago River.
Before this canal was built,
the Chicago River carried the city's sewage
out into Lake Michigan.
The lake was the source of our drinking water back then,
just as it is today.
So, as the booming city grew,
there were more and more outbreaks
of waterborne diseases.
Yuck.
By the 1890s, the city said enough was enough.
[explosion]
The newly-formed Chicago Sanitary District
began digging this massive new canal
across the continental divide.
The plan was to drain enough water
from the river to make it lower than the lake.
This would cause the lake to flow into the river,
reversing it,
and sending our wastewater down the Mississippi.
A taste of Chicago.
Of course that didn't sit very well
with towns downstream, like St. Louis.
As the canal neared completion,
the trustees worried Missouri would file an injunction
to prevent it from opening.
So without any fanfare or ceremony
on the morning of January 2nd, 1900
they gathered to break open the temporary dam
at Kedzie Avenue as a few unauthorized reporters watched.
The dam was frozen solid
and after even dynamite failed to breech it,
the trustees themselves attacked it
with their ceremonial shovels until quote,
"perspiration streamed down their brows"
in the words of one reporter.
Finally a trickle of water started flowing
into the new canal.
Once it started, the trustees reasoned,
no court would stop it.
The American Society of Civil Engineers
named the river reversal
one of the seven engineering wonders of the U.S.
And by the way, the U.S. Supreme Court
eventually decided in Chicago's favor.
Thankfully, since the 1930s,
treatment plants have been built to clean
Chicago's wastewater before it's released
into the river system.
I can smell one right now.
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District
or MWRD
says this one along the canal
in southwest suburban Stickney
is the world's largest.
It can handle nearly a billion-and-a-half gallons
of wastewater daily.
It's not like a tiller on a sailboat, is it?
I'm driving a boat!
Ha-ha, take your time.
Safety.
With my less-than-able assistance,
Captain Derrick has piloted us across
the continental divide
and past Damen Avenue following the old portage route.
Could you imagine setting up
a campsite right here?
Father Marquette did just that
when he returned in 1674,
a year after his first visit.
He was hoping to continue across the portage.
But with his health failing,
he was forced to spend the winter at this spot.
150 years after Marquette camped here,
this is right where workers started
digging the Illinois and Michigan Canal.
They were poor and unskilled,
mostly immigrants, many from Ireland.
They basically dug a 96-mile ditch
with picks and shovels
-- and more than a little blasting powder.
They were paid a dollar a day
for up to 15 hours of backbreaking work.
And that sum was often paid
in a nearly worthless kind of promissory note
called Canal scrip.
Their only other compensation
was a quarter-pint of whiskey daily
called a gill.
Many died of malaria and waterborne diseases
channeling through the swampy lowlands.
Still others were killed or maimed
in work-related accidents.
Many canal builders lived on the site
of an old shantytown called Hardscrabble.
Today we know it as Bridgeport.
Bridgeport was once looked down upon
as a "river ward."
Historically only the poorest and lowest
on the ladder would live near the river.
But patronage jobs made them loyal voters,
and the neighborhood became a power base
for Chicago's democratic machine.
Vote Democratic, vote for Chicago.
Five Chicago mayors came from Bridgeport,
including both Daleys.
The Irish have not been a majority
in Bridgeport for decades,
as other European immigrants settled there,
and more recently, Mexicans and Chinese.
For a century,
this little tributary flowing out of Bridgeport
was infamous for its frothy surface,
not to mention the smell.
That's because it flowed from the Union Stockyards,
and was essentially an open sewer
for slaughterhouse waste.
The decomposing animal matter
released gasses that foamed and bubbled,
so people took to calling it Bubbly Creek.
Upton Sinclair immortalized it in his
novel "the Jungle".
In his words,
"Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid,
and the creek looks like a bed of lava;
chickens walk about on it,
and many times an unwary stranger
has started to stroll across and vanished
temporarily."
"Hog butcher to the world,
now closed forever."
Even though the Stockyards closed
way back in 1971,
the creek is still bubbling!
Look at that, look at that, right there.
Look!
It's disgusting.
Upton Sinclair might write a totally different story
about Bubbly Creek today.
Bridgeport is attracting artists and hipsters.
Two enormous warehouses
have been converted into art centers,
offering space for artists to practice their craft
and exhibit their work.
Maria's Packaged Goods and Community Bar
captures both the burgeoning alternative art
and nightlife scene
and what the Chicago Tribune called
Bridgeport's "South Side, tough-guy attitude."
At the mouth of Bubbly Creek
a boathouse opened in 2016
designed by one of Chicago's leading architects
Jeanne Gang.
The Eleanor Boathouse
is one of several built by the park district
to encourage the sport of rowing on the Chicago River.
It's a base for several rowing groups
that range from competitive high school
and college teams,
to a non-profit for underserved youth,
and another for women diagnosed with breast cancer.
Across the river to the north of Bridgeport
is a well-known Mexican-American community, Pilsen.
The name actually comes from Bohemian immigrants
who settled here in the 1870s.
Mexicans began moving into the neighborhood
in the 1950s and 60s.
On the streets,
murals celebrate Mexican heritage
and advocate for workers' and immigrants' rights.
The National Museum of Mexican Art
has one of the largest collections
of its kind in the country.
It expresses the spirit of a neighborhood
known for activism and a focus on social services.
As far back as the 1970s
East Pilsen has been home to an artist's colony.
While Pilsen's Mexican-American identity
is as strong as ever,
it's also now famous for its breweries,
trendy restaurants
and music venues like Thalia Hall,
an 1892 Bohemian community hall
beautifully restored in 2013.
Pilsen's riverfront,
not exactly scenic,
unless you're into industrial archaeology.
The area was once heavily industrialized
and you can still see remnants
like giant boat slips where barges used to tie up.
And two ghostly coal-fired power plants.
They were shuttered in 2012
after years of complaints from residents of Pilsen
and the neighboring Latin American community of
Little Village.
The bridge just ahead at Cermak Road
is one of a kind.
It's Chicago's last surviving rolling lift bridge.
A type invented here in 1893 by William Scherzer.
Instead of pivoting on an axle, as bascule bridges do,
these leaves roll back on runners
like a giant rocking chair!
Lawrence's Fisheries at Canal St.
is a relic from the days when commercial fishing
flourished on Lake Michigan.
Fishing boats used to bring their daily catch of chub,
perch, and other fish
from Lake Michigan here to be smoked and sold.
It was one of several commercial fishing operations
on the river.
- There you go, have a good day.
- The last one closed in the late 1990s.
I've been coming here 50 years.
I love it, I love it.
Lawrence's restaurant is still going strong.
- Can I see some I.D. please?
- Oh, I.D.
But one look at the menu
tells you the fare no longer comes
from Lake Michigan.
Today's lunch,
shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico,
and ocean perch!
Just ahead is yet another type of movable bridge
And it's my favorite.
It's a vertical lift bridge dating from 1915.
That's a 272-foot-long span,
it weighs 1,500 tons,
and it rides up and down
on these 20-story-tall towers.
Just past the bridge is Chinatown.
It looks, feels
and definitely tastes like China.
Chinese began migrating here
in the early 20th century
from an earlier Chinatown in the Loop.
They built this exuberant community center in 1928.
Today, it's called Pui Tak Center.
For all its convincing Chinese design,
the architects were Norwegian-Americans
because there were no Chinese architects
in Chicago back then.
The neighborhood's famous gateway was built in 1975.
And a lovely new library
designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
opened in 2015.
Its rounded shape derives in part
from ancient Chinese design principles of Feng Shui.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Here in Chinatown,
you'll find one of the earliest examples of the evolution--
really the revolution--
in how we think of and use the river:
Ping Tom Park.
It showed how old industrial land
could be transformed when it opened in 1999,
on the site of a former railroad yard.
Chinatown had been desperate for open space
since expressway construction obliterated
the only parks in the neighborhood.
In the words of the Chicago Park District,
"Two full generations of children in Chinatown
grew up without access to a neighborhood park
or any recreational area."
Chinatown business leader Ping Tom
was the driving force behind creating the park,
but he died in 1995
before it became a reality.
The prominent Chicago landscape architects
Site Design headed by Ernie Wong
sculpted the terrain and added native plants.
The centerpiece is a pagoda-shaped pavilion.
The park has been such a huge hit
that beginning in 2002
it was expanded to the north under 18th Street bridge
on more vacant land.
Site Design created a winding boardwalk
in bright Chinese red
that extends out over a new river edge wetland.
It leads to a boathouse
designed with a Chinese flair
by Johnson and Lee Architects of Chicago.
The boathouse is for canoes and kayaks.
But once a year a much more exotic flotilla
appears in Chinatown for
the Dragon Boat Race for Literacy.
Businesses and other groups from around Chicago
field teams,
often made up of novice rowers
who get a same-day crash course
in how to paddle a huge dragon boat.
When it's not overrun with dragon boat racers,
this pier is a frequent stop
for Chicago water taxis.
Let's hop aboard one and head north
toward downtown Chicago.
This is Sunliner , built in 1962.
I bet I rode on this very boat back in the sixties
on a second grade field trip I remember to this day.
It's the oldest vessel in the Wendella fleet
of tour boats and water taxis.
All that vacant land,
extended south of what we now call the South Loop
was once filled with railroad lines.
Why?
Well, if you think about it,
it was the only real way
for the railroads to get into the city,
which is otherwise surrounded on three sides
by water.
In the heyday of intercity passenger rail,
this place must have felt like
O'Hare Airport does today.
Nearly a hundred trains
arrived and departed daily
at magnificent terminals
that lined the south edge of the Loop
including Grand Central,
LaSalle Street,
Dearborn,
and Central Station on the lakefront.
Intercity rail travel began a steep decline
in the late 1950s.
Today, most of this land is vacant.
In 2017, the high-profile developer
Related Midwest bought the land
south of Roosevelt
and began planning a vast development
that could take a decade or more to complete.
Just past Roosevelt Road
is River City,
it pioneered the redevelopment
of this old railroad land
when it was built, way back in 1986.
If it reminds you a little
of the corncob-shaped Marina City towers
that we saw on the main branch
it's no wonder.
They were both designed by the same architect.
Just like Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City,
River City stands on stilts above a marina.
The lower floors are commercial space,
topped by apartments.
The residential units are accessed
from an inner atrium
that the architect likened to a winding street.
But not everyone lives inside.
Most people just think were nuts.
Some boat owners actually live on their boats
in the marina year round.
They call themselves "River Rats."
We'll have some friends over
and we'll just take an hour cruise up the river.
We love doing stuff like that.
The water is aerated to prevent freezing
so these boat owners can live
off the land all winter long.
We like simplifying our life,
having a very finite amount of space.
And you really learn pretty quickly
what actually matters in your life.
Just north of River City
ground was broken in 2016
on another stretch of old railroad land.
It's a development called Riverline.
The master plan by architects
Perkins and Will
and landscape architects Hoerr Shaudt
includes a naturalized river edge
and a half-mile-long riverwalk
alongside 3600 residential units
and street-level retail in 10 buildings.
Just west of here once stood a barn
in an small Irish shantytown
that forever changed Chicago's history.
October 8th, 1871 was unseasonably hot.
That day's edition of the Chicago Tribune
carried this ominous warning.
"The absence of rain for three weeks
had left everything in so dry
and inflammable a condition
that a spark might set a fire
which would sweep from end to end of the city."
Within hours,
just such a spark set fire to the O'Leary family's barn
and the dire prophecy was fulfilled.
Fanned by fierce winds from the southwest,
the fire jumped the river's south branch
and wiped out the entire downtown
including city hall and almost all city records.
Then it jumped the main stem
devouring neighborhoods as far north as Fullerton Avenue.
More than 17,000 buildings were destroyed.
Some 250 people were killed
and nearly a hundred thousand were left homeless,
thirty percent of the population.
More than a century later,
Chicago City Council exonerated the woman
and the cow
long blamed for starting the fire.
Catherine O'Leary had claimed all along
that she was in bed when the fire started.
But in a city of anti-immigrant
and anti-Catholic sentiment
she made a good scapegoat.
The hearing that lead to Mrs. O'Leary's pardon
was held here at the Chicago Fire Academy in 1997.
It stands on the very site
of the O'Leary family barn where the fire began.
But the story we so often hear about the fire
isn't about the destruction.
It's about the amazing rebuilding of the aftermath.
Before the ashes had even cooled,
Chicago vowed to rebuild.
Within days burned out merchants
were establishing makeshift stores
in the still-smoldering rubble.
In a matter of weeks
more than 5,000 temporary buildings
had gone up.
So, in the aftermath of the fire,
one of the co-owners of the Chicago Tribune,
a guy named William Bross, heads to New York
to try to drum up support for the ravaged city.
And according to this historian Donald Miller,
he gets up on a soapbox and proclaims,
"Go to Chicago now!
Young men, hurry there!
Old men, send your sons!
Women, send your husbands!
You will never again have a better chance to make money!"
Architects drawn to Chicago
by the opportunity to rebuild
invented an entirely new kind of city.
A city of skyscrapers.
These revolutionary buildings
were supported not by their exterior walls,
but by metal skeletons.
In the decades that followed
Chicago became the nation's leader
in architectural innovation.
And today the riverbanks downtown
are lined with skyscrapers.
But would you believe that parts
of the Chicago River look like this?
I can.
Because that's where I grew up!
Welcome to north suburban Deerfield.
This was my childhood home.
Mom and Dad have aged gracefully
And as for me...
I haven't changed a bit.
I can remember you were talking
probably at the age of six months
and I think you haven't stopped since.
when we heard a train go by,
you didn't say just train
Oh didn't I correct somebody?
Didn't they say, "That's a choo-choo,"
and I said "No, that's a commuter train."
Ha-ha, I know.
You thought you were watching a show
about the Chicago River.
So why are we here?
Follow me...
Just a half a block from our house
was Trail Tree Park,
or as we called it "the Woods."
And in the "woods,"
we had "the path,"
which lead to
- well, it's the reason I'm bringing you here.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Chicago River.
We just called it "the creek."
We had no idea this flowed
all the way down into Chicago and beyond.
Here in the north suburbs,
the Chicago River is actually
three separate streams or forks.
They rise from wetlands and meander south
through parks, forest preserves, and golf courses
in suburbs like Northbrook, Glenview, and Niles,
eventually joining up to form
the Chicago River's North Branch.
The East Fork is probably
the most well-known of the three,
because it flows through a North Shore icon,
the Chicago Botanic Garden.
It's a manmade Eden
that opened in 1972.
And has been growing ever since.
It's a gorgeous place to visit,
with 27 gardens and four natural areas.
But just as important is what goes on
behind the scenes.
Dozens of scientists work to save
the planet by saving plants
at the Plant Conservation Science Center
and nearly a hundred low-income teens
each year learn skills at urban farms
the garden operates in the city and suburbs.
Continuing south from the Botanic Garden,
the East Fork
which is also known as the Skokie River
flows through the Skokie Lagoons.
You're going to push me?
Full service.
I've asked the most avid paddler I know
to explore them me.
My longtime WTTW colleague
and sometime doppelganger,
Jay Shefsky.
You know, I think in all the years we've worked together,
this is the first time we've ever appeared
on camera together.
You know, the truth can finally be told.
We are not the same person.
Skokie is a Native American word
meaning "big marsh,"
that's exactly what was here
before the Civilian Conservation Corps
drained the land
and dammed the Skokie River in the 1930s.
During the Cold War, there was a Nike missile base
on the shore of the lagoon.
It was part of a system that ringed Chicago
and other U.S. cities
to defend against Soviet aircraft attacks.
When I was a kid
we would be driving down the Eden's expressway
and every now and then,
the missiles would be up and pointing at the sky.
Well I can't convince Jay to play hookie
from WTTW any longer
so let's head downstream a few miles
to the Chicago northwest side neighborhood
of Edgebrook.
The three forks have joined into one now
and we've come to a large piece of property
that once belonged to Billy Caldwell.
His Native American name was Sauganash.
The U.S. government gave him 1600 acres here
in exchange for his help
in negotiating treaties with his fellow Native Americans.
Today in this area, you'll find Caldwell Avenue,
Caldwell Woods forest preserve,
Caldwell Golf Course
and a Chicago neighborhood called Sauganash.
Continuing south,
the river passes under the Edens Expressway
and then, through several prairies, parks,
and wetland restoration areas.
And then, winds alongside Bohemian National Cemetery,
final resting place of many
who died in the sinking of the steamship Eastland
in the Chicago River in 1915.
I'll tell you that sad tale
when we get back to the main branch downtown.
Also interred here is Mayor Anton Cermak.
He was killed in 1933 by an assassin's bullet
intended for President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt
His tomb bears his supposed last words
to Roosevelt after the shooting,
"I'm glad it was me instead of you."
A little farther south,
the river passes Von Steuben High School,
and the campus of North Park University
established in 1910,
by Swedish Covenant church for a college and seminary.
And finally we come to what looks like
a waterfall in the Chicago River.
It's actually just a low dam.
Rapids in the Chicago River?
Well actually, there's just been a lot of rain lately
so the river is really high.
So that's the north branch
that we've been following for the last little while,
and this is the confluence
where the north branch meets up
with the man-made north shore channel over there,
and all that water comes together
and heads right down into the heart of the city.
In a minute we'll continue down the North Branch.
But first a quick look up the North Shore Channel
which opened in 1910.
The Chicago Sanitary District
built it to divert North Shore sewage away from
Lake Michigan.
On the banks of the channel in Skokie
is a 2-mile long sculpture park,
set along a bike path.
whoo hoo!
The Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park
was started in 1988
to improve the banks of this neglected channel.
It's like a slalom course
made of abstract art.
It's lined with more than 60 sculptures
on loan from the artists.
Like most of the Chicago River system,
the North Shore channel serves a function
we don't like to talk about,
but we can't live without.
It's a wastewater channel.
The O'Brien treatment plant
on the Chicago-Evanston border
zaps waste water with ultra-violet light
to disinfect it before releasing it into the river.
The process reduces,
but doesn't eliminate pathogens in the Chicago river.
Another process recovers phosphorus pollutants
which are sold as fertilizer
to make a little money for MWRD.
A little upstream,
the channel takes an eastward bend,
slicing through Evanston,
and ends at a beautiful harbor
on the lakefront in Wilmette.
Overlooking the harbor
is a legendary North Shore landmark,
the Baha'i House of Worship.
One of only nine in the world.
The founder of the faith
was the Persian prophet Baha'u'llah.
He preached the oneness of the world's religions and people.
The building was designed by Louis Bourgeois in 1909.
But it wasn't finished until 1953!
Sadly the architect didn't live to see it.
He died in 1930.
Today, worshipers of every faith
come to marvel at the temple's beauty.
We're back at the confluence of the North Branch
and the North Shore Channel
and ready to make our way south
into the heart of the city.
We'll travel aboard the historic wooden yacht
Lady Grebe, built in 1961.
At the helm is Captain Bob Agra.
His grandfather started the company in 1935.
There was us, Agras, Wendella, and Borstroms,
and then, there was the Martin-Collopy family
out on the lakefront.
Those families are Chicago tour boat royalty.
And the competition between them
hasn't always been friendly.
Decades ago, family patriarchs
would stand on opposite sides of Michigan Avenue bridge
with megaphones,
trying to out-shout each other for customers.
Living along the river is a new trend downtown,
but here in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood
it's an age old tradition!
Many of these property owners
have private docks in their back yards,
even though the edge of the river
is not their property.
During the Great Depression,
a lot of people lived right on the river
just a little south of here
around Irving Park Road.
That stretch was lined with makeshift houseboats.
It was a floating squatters camp for people
who lost their homes--
or just didn't want to pay real estate taxes.
Just north of Belmont Avenue
we come to the birthplace of this very boat!
This was once the site of Grebe and Company Boat Yard.
Grebe's built many private yachts,
but was better known for military vessels,
especially minesweepers.
They turned out more than one a month during WWII.
The company built its last boat in 1970.
Now right across the river here,
If you're a Chicagoan of a certain age,
is a patch of land that holds
some of your favorite childhood memories
at Belmont and Western.
This was the home of Riverview Park
from 1904 to 1967.
Legendary for its roller coasters,
especially the Bobs,
the funhouse called Aladdin's Castle
and the heart-stopping parachute ride.
I always wondered kinda,
where did they get that water from?
Like, did it come from the river?
- I don't know,
because the river wasn't that good back then.
- I know, I'm saying!
The park closed for the season in 1967
and with no explanation,
it never re-opened.
At Diversey, we come to the Julia C. Lathrop Homes,
one of the nation's first public housing projects.
It was built in the 1930s
when the riverfront was not exactly considered
a desirable place to live.
Preservationists saved the historic complex
from the wrecking ball in 2006.
But it was mostly vacant and boarded up by 2016.
That's when Related Midwest and partners
began a redevelopment
which includes 60 percent public and subsidized
housing.
The complex will be re-orientated
to embrace the river.
The river passes next
through the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Here, multi-million dollar homes
have replaced most of the cottages
built for the workers who labored in the factories nearby.
In the 1860s and 70s, the North Branch was home
to Chicago's first steel mills,
long before the industry moved to Gary, Indiana.
The last steel mill on the north branch, Finkl Steel,
closed in 2014.
You know that car you traded in a few years ago,
that refrigerator you got rid of?
Passing under North Avenue bridge,
we come to Goose Island.
And like so much of the river we know today,
this island is manmade.
Chicago's first mayor, William B. Ogden,
created it between 1853 and 1873.
Over the generations, many different immigrant groups
came to work in the steel mills
and other factories near here.
The overcrowded area around Goose Island
became known as "Little Hell."
During WWII,
the Chicago Housing Authority
bulldozed the rundown neighborhood
and began building the Cabrini-Green housing project
After a trouble-plagued half century,
Cabrini-Green itself was demolished
as the area gentrified.
Here at the north end of Goose Island
is an industrial relic called
a bobtail swing bridge.
It rotates around a post that's on shore
instead of in the river.
Or I guess I should say, "rotated".
It hasn't operated in years.
Today, it's used as a bike path
that connects with a trail along the manmade channel
on Goose Island's east side,
where lots of gentrification is happening.
Goose Island and other industrial zones are changing,
after the city rewrote zoning laws
to allow commercial and even residential
construction
on land that was once reserved for industry.
At the southern tip of Goose Island
is a huge complex of buildings
built as the headquarters of the catalog giant,
Montgomery Wards.
Aaron Montgomery Ward invented modern mail order.
To help win over skeptical customers,
he offered an unheard of money back guarantee.
By 1908 his business had grown so big
that he built what was then
the largest reinforced concrete building in the world
to serve as his warehouse,
here along the river at Chicago Avenue.
It was designed with Prairie Style flourishes
by architects Schmidt, Garden and Martin.
The floors were so vast
it was said workers used roller skates to get around.
Ward died in 1913.
But the company lasted 129 years.
It finally went out of business in 2001
And developers jumped
on the coveted riverfront site.
Years of paint were removed
from the old warehouse to reveal
how the architects made reference
to the flowing river
in the long horizontal red brick stripes.
The building's huge floors
are now home to Groupon
and other 21st Century tech companies.
Right next door
is another former Montgomery Wards building.
An art deco style tower
by Willis McCauly completed in 1930
as the company headquarters.
It's been converted to residential.
Developers preserved my favorite feature of the building,
a statue perched on one foot,
atop a beautiful ziggurat shaped tower.
She's called The Spirit of Progress.
As we approach the heart of downtown
south of Goose Island
we pass through trendy River North,
once a grimy industrial area nicknamed Smokey Hollow.
In the 1970s
artists looking for cheap and sunny square footage
moved into some of the dilapidated old warehouses.
Within ten years,
River North was Chicago's hottest gallery district.
Today it's home to high end art dealers,
designer furniture showrooms,
popular restaurants,
and nightclubs.
But as the neighborhood changed,
a lot of historic buildings were bulldozed
for huge condos towers perched atop
multi-story parking garages
that did a lot to kill street life
and led then-mayor Richard M. Daley to declare,
"No more ugly buildings!"
This is the East Bank Club,
one of Chicago's swankiest health clubs.
The club opened right on the river in 1980.
But back then the river was seen
as a liability,
so the architects put up a giant windowless concrete wall
up against it.
How much have things changed since then?
Look right across the river!
These townhomes were built in 2002
and they open up right onto the river.
Unimaginable when their neighbor across the river
was built just two decades earlier.
To its credit, the East Bank Club long ago
embraced its river edge site.
In fact, the club now has a dock.
Here we bid farewell to Bob Agra and Lady Grebe--
There's our next ride--
and switch to kayaks from Water Riders,
a company run by my buddy, Charlie Portis.
- Always be aware of your surroundings.
This is one of the busiest stretches of commercial
waterways in the U.S..
- Oh, no!
People always ask, does the Chicago River smell?
Well, around here, a lot of times it smells like chocolate.
Back in industrial days,
about the only pleasant smell in this area
came from the Blommer Chocolate factory nearby,
which still perfumes the air here today.
This family-owned business founded in 1939,
sells chocolate wholesale
to major confectionaries worldwide.
They won't disclose their clients.
But it's safe to say that when you snack
on popular candy bars,
you're indulging in Blommers chocolate.
On the south branch
we saw the starting place for the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Up here on the north branch
is the place where the Great Chicago Flood of 1992 began.
A crew was pounding pilings into the riverbed,
when they fractured an all-but-forgotten
network of defunct freight tunnels
that ran 40 feet below
almost every major downtown street.
A torrent of river water surged in,
flooding basements throughout the loop.
It took days to plug the leak,
and weeks to drain the buildings.
Damage was estimated at more than $1 billion.
Today, the tunnels are back in use
for utility and telecommunications lines.
But wherever they pass beneath the river
they're tightly sealed.
One of the things I love about the Chicago River
is when you happen upon
the archaeological remains of the old industrial town.
This huge steel bridge from 1908
once served the railroads
that lined the north bank of the main branch.
Below the bridge,
are four nautically-themed river cottages
from 1988 by architect Harry Weese,
who loved sailing.
We've all seen how popular it is to live
along the Chicago River today.
But back when the river cottages were built,
you had to be a real urban pioneer
to want to live along the smelly, dirty,
Chicago River.
Those urban pioneers must have really loved them
because none of the original owners
sold one until nearly 30 years
after they were built.
It went for $2.25 million.
Next-door is another Harry Weese project.
It's a relic from industrial days,
a old cold storage warehouse from 1898
that Harry Weese converted to condominiums in 1981.
The 4-foot thick walls were
insulated with cork and horsehair.
It took six months to thaw out the building
before it could be converted.
So here we are coming up to
the beautiful Wolf Point,
where the three branches of the river come together.
We'll follow the main branch
all the way out to the lake now,
and we'll start with the biggest
river improvement project since Wacker Drive in 1920s.
It's the Riverwalk,
completed in 2016.
Whooo!
It has literally brought the river edge to life.
It's lined with restaurants,
family-friendly attractions,
native plants and wildlife habitat
and even places to dock pleasure boats.
The Riverwalk allows people to stroll at river level
beneath the bridges
all the way from Wolf Point to the Lakefront.
Something that was impossible before.
You see lovely double-deck Wacker Drive
was always a beautiful boulevard,
but its way up there,
high above the river.
Anybody that wanted to stroll along the river
for more than a block down here at river level,
couldn't do it.
There was no way to get underneath the bridges
because of the giant bridgehouse foundations.
The solution was to build these
so-called under-bridge passages
designed by prominent Chicago architect
Carol Ross Barney.
But it required an act of Congress.
You see, the Chicago River is a federally regulated waterway,
so inserting these walkways
underneath the bridges required
permission from the Washington
to narrow the shipping channel.
Barney covered the passages
with shiny canopies.
They shield pedestrians from falling debris above.
And reflect the rippling water below.
The sections of the Riverwalk
between each bridge are conceived
as separate rooms,
each with its own theme.
We'll explore these new urban spaces
in the heart of downtown.
And the skyscrapers that line the river's south bank,
as we make our way to the lakefront
for a grand finale.
Alright, everybody, here we go!
Back aboard Chicago's First Lady
in the River's main stem.
The transformation of our old industrial waterway
into a dazzling new waterfront
is on full display.
Alright, it's the home stretch of our tour.
As we head east from here towards the lake,
we'll explore not only the towers that soar
above the south bank,
but also each of the so-called rooms of the Riverwalk.
starting with a stretch called the Jetty
between Franklin and Wells Streets.
Here floating wetlands rise and fall
with the river level.
The plantings are meant to give fish
places to feed and spawn.
Aquatic life in the Chicago River?
Yes!
Just like people,
more and more fish are moving
into the neighborhood.
In fact some 70 species of fish
now live in the river,
up from just 10 in the 1970s
thanks to improvements in water quality and habitat.
Mayor Richard J. Daley boasted
one day office workers would catch their lunches
in the river.
Ah, the people of Chicago
can be assured that our water supply
is the best, probably,
of anywhere in the country.
Today, people are indeed fishing in the river,
though we don't know if they're eating what they catch.
One group that's been working for decades
to upgrade the river is called
Friends of the Chicago River.
Each year the organization leads an army of volunteers
for a big spring cleaning called River Rescue Day
You found worms? - I found four worms.
- Are they grossing you out?
My own daughters lent a hand,
planting flowers and picking up trash.
Just like at home, right?
Friends of the Chicago River
was founded in 1979 in response
to an article that ran in Chicago Magazine
called "Our Friendless River."
The group also lobbies for river protection laws,
helps restore natural riverbanks,
I'm going to put mulch in every row.
creates walking trails,
and even stocks the river with fish
and tracks their survival.
Will the river someday be clean enough to swim in?
Friends and other water quality stewards
like MWRD have made that their goal.
And to prove it...
- Jump!
- ...leaders and local politicians
took the plunge into the South Branch in 2017.
The water, actually, was amazingly warm.
1,2,3.
They caution that swimming in the river
is still not recommended.
But the water is now much cleaner
than it's been in more than a century.
It's awesome!
Amazingly, even when the river was much filthier,
dozens of swimmers every year,
competed in something called
the annual Chicago River Swimming Marathon,
while as many as a hundred thousand spectators
lined the banks to watch.
The 3-mile event was held every July
from 1908 until the 1930s.
Hollywood Tarzan and Olympic champ
Johnny Weissmuller won several of them
in the late 1920s
Passing under the Wells Street bridge,
we enter the next "room" in the riverwalk,
the Water Plaza.
Here children and families can get wet--
no, not with Chicago River water.
It's a zero depth fountain and splash pad.
One bridge ahead, we come to the site
of the deadliest disaster in Chicago history.
More than 800 people lost their lives on this ship,
the S.S. Eastland on July 24th, 1915.
Making it the worst shipwreck ever
on the Great Lakes.
And It happened less than 20 feet
from shore in the Chicago River.
That morning, 2,500 Western Electric employees
boarded the Eastland for a company picnic
in Michigan City, Indiana.
Many were young Czech immigrants.
The Eastland had a longtime reputation
as an unstable ship.
It had been remodeled several times
to accommodate more passengers.
And then in the wake of the Titanic disaster
tons of lifeboats were added.
Each of these things
made the ship more top heavy.
Just moments before the Eastland
was scheduled to leave the dock,
the huge vessel rolled over
on its side in the Chicago River.
Some top deck passengers scrambled
onto the slippery metal hull
and awaited rescue.
But many ended up in the river.
Some drowned,
others clung to floating objects thrown by passersby.
Rescuers cut holes to try to save passengers
trapped below decks
but many of them drowned or suffocated.
Lawsuits dragged on for 20 years,
but in the end,
not a dime was ever paid out in damages.
The Eastland lived on.
It was righted and converted
into a Navy training vessel.
It was finally scrapped in 1947.
This is my favorite section of the Riverwalk.
It's called the River Theater.
It opens up this entire block of Wacker Drive
to the river with this cascade of steps.
The steps double as bleacher seats
where people can watch waterborne spectacles,
or just enjoy the theater of life.
A wheelchair accessible ramp
cleverly zigzags through
this grand stairway,
with lights that create a beautiful pattern at night.
Soaring above the River Theatre,
111 West Wacker Drive is a building
with a secret hidden deep within its walls.
This tower is built on
the partially completed skeleton
of what was supposed to be an ultra-luxury 90-story hotel
and condo tower.
Only about 25 floors
of that building's concrete frame
were finished before the developer went belly up.
Finally, in 2012, a new developer,
Related Midwest resumed construction.
Their architect, Gary Handel,
cleverly used the existing frame
to support an entirely different design.
The 60-story rental apartment tower
features a recessed ribbon
that winds around the building
representing the Chicago River.
The Greek temple on steroids next door,
by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill,
is an example of post-modernism,
a playful style that emerged
as a sort of antidote to
the austere modernism of the 1960s.
This section of the Riverwalk
has bars and restaurants,
and also a place for boats to tie up in the river,
which was impossible before the river walk was built.
The Cove and The Marina are quickly becoming
the most popular rooms on the Riverwalk.
- Yay, salud! - Cheers!
- Crowds gather for drinks,
for dinner,
That's actually very good.
- Geoffrey, we're big fans.
- And for celebrity photo ops!
Thank you!
Oh, that's a good shot.
Towering above the Marina, this building
by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche,
is the birthplace of Tony, the Tiger,
the Pillsbury Doughboy,
and the Marlboro Man
because it's the home of the advertising agency
Leo Burnett.
Listen to that roar!
But the Leo Burnett building itself
became a celebrity in 2014
when high wire legend Nik Wallenda
used its roof as the end of
a nationally-televised tightrope walk
across the river from Marina City.
Most people know about
the famous Vietnam Veterans Memorial
in Washington, D.C.
But did you know we also have one in Chicago?
It's the next section of the Riverwalk.
It was dedicated on Veterans Day 2005,
more than a decade before the rest
of the Riverwalk was completed.
The memorial wall honors
2,900 Illinois service members
killed or missing in Vietnam.
Above this stretch of the Riverwalk,
is the ornate domed Jewelers building from 1926.
The architects Giaver & Dinkelberg
included elevators for cars.
Must have been a great amenity
for jeweler tenants who carried
valuable merchandise in their automobiles.
There was a restaurant below the dome
called the Stratosphere Lounge
that was rumored to be a speakeasy
during Prohibition.
Look at all that life along the river's edge.
Love it!
A little bubbly, anyone?
The Carbide and Carbon building
from 1929 by the Burnham Brothers
clad in lovely dark green terra cotta,
features a gold leaf crown
that the architects said was inspired
by the cork in a champagne bottle.
The Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist
from 1968 is a low-rise modern architectural gem
surrounded by soaring towers
on a very prominent site.
It was designed by architect Harry Weese.
Heavy concrete walls
create a serene skylit space,
amid the hustle and bustle of the city.
We're back at Michigan Avenue,
and if we were taking this tour,
say 250 years ago,
this is where we would end.
Because remember, this was the lakefront.
So now, as we continue east,
all of the land on both sides of the boat
is man-made land.
The process of adding land to our lakefront
began in the early 1800s,
when soldiers from Fort Dearborn
cut a channel through the sandbar
that blocked the mouth of the river.
But the channel quickly began
filling up with sand again.
So, to keep it open,
they extended a pier into the lake.
Prevailing winds and currents
piled up sand against the pier,
forming a new parcel of land.
It didn't appear on maps,
so it quickly became a lawless squatters camp
and vice district known as
"the Sands."
Enter a Chicago character
you could not make up, even if you tried.
He was a circus promoter,
a hapless boat captain,
and all-around ne'er-do-well named,
George Wellington Streeter.
In 1886, Streeter ran his leaky steamboat aground
on "the Sands," near the spot
where the John Hancock Building stands today.
He decided to live right there
and opened an unofficial city landfill around his boat.
Within a few years,
he was sitting on 186-acres
of newly created land,
which he claimed for himself.
He declared that local authorities
had no jurisdiction there.
He and his wife defended the property
with a shotgun and a meat cleaver.
Streeter sold lots cheap,
and welcomed squatters.
This horrified his wealthy
and influential neighbors in the Gold Coast.
They launched legal actions,
and staged police raids,
including several full-blown armed battles.
Streeter was jailed many times,
but held on for over 30 years,
until he was evicted for good in 1918
after being arrested
for selling liquor without a license.
Today, Streeterville is some
of the priciest real estate in Chicago.
While Streeter gets the credit
for creating a lot of this land
on the north bank of the river,
It was the Illinois Central railroad
that created this huge parcel of land to the south.
Their train line ran right up the lakefront
into downtown Chicago,
and then fanned out
into a giant railroad yard
and freight terminal
at the mouth of the bustling, industrial Chicago River.
Today, that industry is long gone here.
Replaced by a self-contained
city of modernist towers
connected by cold concourses
called Illinois Center,
master planned by Mies Van Der Rohe's office.
The 1960s concept in urban planning
was justifiably criticized
for its isolation from the surrounding city.
Vehicle traffic circulates underneath,
on multiple bewildering levels of roadways.
Thankfully, in recent years,
the complex has been opened up to the streets.
The Chicago Architecture Foundation
gave it a big vote of confidence,
by moving their offices and tour center here,
overlooking the Chicago's First Lady docks.
This landscaped path east of Michigan Avenue,
turned island party paradise,
was built years before the Riverwalk,
to mask the ugly elevated roadways of Illinois Center.
Across the river from Illinois Center,
the former Equitable Building from 1965,
is different from all those other boxy,
modernist towers, in one key way.
It was designed by a woman.
Natalie de Blois worked at Skidmore Owings and Merrill.
An SOM partner wrote that the firm's male architects
often got credit for her work.
You might think NBC Tower
is a 1920s 'art moderne' skyscraper,
with its vertical stripes of stone,
tapering profile,
and rooftop spire.
But it's actually an homage to that style from 1989,
by Adrian Smith
formerly of Skidmore Owings and Merrill.
On Columbus Drive bridge,
is a relief sculpture by Milton Horn,
that was resurrected from a scrap heap.
Horn created it in 1954
for a city parking garage.
When the garage was demolished in 1983,
the sculpture was ditched
in a dry park district swimming pool,
and later moved to a salvage yard.
It layed there forgotten,
until it was rediscovered in the 1990s.
It was restored and given
a new place of honor here in 1998.
Hey, environmentalists...
here's one way the Chicago River
has been going green for decades.
It's Chicago's one-of-a-kind
St. Patrick's Day ritual,
in which the plumbers' union dyes the river.
The head of the union got the idea in 1962
when he thought about the green dye
plumbers use to trace sources
of pollution in the river.
The Mayor, who was a friend of the union boss,
gave his approval.
That first year, they used a hundred pounds of dye
and the river stayed green for a week.
Since then, the crew has used forty pounds,
just enough to last a day.
Ahead of us, is a show that lasts more
than one day a year.
A giant arc of water
spouts out of a water cannon
for five minutes at the top of every hour.
Wait a minute!
What time is it right now?
It's part of the Nicholas J. Melas
Centennial Fountain
by architect Dirk Lohan.
It began spouting in 1989
to honor the hundredth birthday
of the organization that
reversed the flow of the Chicago River,
cleans our wastewater,
and controls flooding,
the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
Across the river, the Aqua tower by Jeanne Gang
became an instant icon
when it opened 2009.
It contains condos, townhomes,
and the swanky Radisson Blu Hotel.
Gang says the wavy balconies
were inspired in part
by limestone outcroppings around the Great Lakes.
Nearby, another Jeanne Gang skyline standout
broke ground in 2016.
In fact, Chicago's third tallest building,
Vista Tower.
The design includes high-priced condos
and a luxurious Chinese-owned
Wanda Hotel.
The 83rd floor originally slated
to be a pricey penthouse,
is instead empty
to allow wind to blow through the building
and reduce sway.
Vista and Wanda
are the highest-profile buildings
in a massive $4 billion development,
called Lakeshore East,
built on the former railyard
between Illinois Center and the Lakefront.
And it couldn't be more different from Illinois Center.
Instead of minimalist modernism,
it's full of human-scale variety,
from modern glass towers
to townhomes, stores and a private school,
all built around a six-acre park.
Across the river in Streeterville,
a forest of residential towers and hotels,
has risen on old industrial land since the 1980s.
Amidst all these new buildings
on the river's north bank
is one relic from industrial days.
This old shipping terminal,
built around 1900,
fronts on a manmade side channel to the river,
called Ogden Slip.
It once extended east
almost to the lakefront,
before it was chopped off,
to build Lake Shore Drive.
Today loft residences in this historic building,
offer one of the most intimate
waterfront settings downtown.
Ahead of us, the last bridge on our tour,
is this huge double-decker,
with beautiful art deco bridge houses.
It carries Lakeshore Drive across the river.
At the dedication of the bridge in 1937,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
gave his controversial "quarantine" speech.
"It seems to be unfortunately true,
that the epidemic of world lawlessness
is spreading."
In it, he proposed that the U.S. might give up isolationism,
as the threat of WWII intensified abroad.
For decades,
the bridge connected with Lakeshore Drive to the south
via a notorious S-Curve,
that went right through what is now Lakeshore East.
Thankfully that was straightened out in 1986.
Passing below Lake Shore Drive
we cross a sacred boundary.
As many Chicagoans know,
all the land along the lakefront,
belongs to all of us.
It can't be privately owned,
thanks to a notation on one of the city's first plat maps,
declaring that the lakefront should be public ground,
free of all buildings.
But there is one private building
east of Lake Shore Drive.
It's the curvaceous Lakepoint Tower,
once the tallest apartment building in the world,
from 1968 by George Schipporeit and John Heinrich.
So how did it end up here?
Well, land near the mouth of the river
was exempt from the ban on lakefront buildings,
to allow construction of harbor facilities.
That loophole was closed
after Lake Point Tower was completed.
Just ahead is the lock
that separates the river from the lake.
It was built in 1938
after the U.S. Supreme court
ordered Chicago to reduce the diversion of water,
from the lake into the river.
Other Great Lakes states were getting concerned
about the amount of water we were permanently
draining from Lake Michigan.
The lock reduces that flow
to a little over 3,000.
Beyond the lock, we see a living reminder of the days
when Chicago was a great port city.
The old Chicago Light
has been guiding sea captains into the harbor
since 1893.
Looking out towards the lake,
another tall structure grabs your attention.
A 20-story Ferris wheel.
It's the star player
in Chicago's biggest lakefront attraction,
Navy Pier.
The Ferris wheel was inspired
by the world's first Ferris wheel,
built in Chicago,
for the World's Fair of 1893.
Navy Pier was envisioned
in the 1909 Burnham Plan,
to alleviate overcrowding
in the bustling Chicago River.
It was designed by Charles Sumner Frost,
and opened in 1916.
It served as a naval training center during WWII.
And as the University of Illinois,
following the war.
After U of I moved out,
The city staged the legendary ChicagoFest
concerts there,
to keep the rotting pier alive.
It was reborn in the 1990s,
as a multi-million dollar
lakefront pleasure ground.
If you left Navy Pier to the tourists years ago,
you'll actually be very surprised
at the changes that have taken place
since the Pier's centenary in 2016.
Gone is the clutter and kitsch of the 1990s.
A major facelift has opened up views of the city,
and given us the swooping "wave wall,"
that doubles as seating
for lakefront attractions,
like the fireworks.
Let's give that skyline
a curtain call to end our tour.
(Passengers applaud)
It's hard to believe this postcard view
is the same river
as that rugged industrial channel to the south
and that little creek behind my childhood home
miles to the north.
As a kid, I had no idea
this river would play such a big role
in my life.
But in fact, it plays a huge role
in all of our lives.
It's the reason Chicago is here.
For more than a century, most of its important work
was behind the scenes
and much of it still is.
But more and more,
it's taking center stage.
And that evolution will continue
for generations to come.
Because although this river flows backwards,
it's always moving forward.
- Major funding for the Chicago River Tour
is provided by BMO Harris Bank.
Additional support is provided by
Judy and John McCarter,
the Susan and Stephen Baird Foundation,
AARP Chicago,
ITW.
Peoples Gas,
a proud funder of arts and culture in Chicago.
And by the following...
*