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.
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.
- 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...
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