99% Invisible - 86- Reversal of Fortune

Episode Date: August 9, 2013

Chicago’s biggest design achievement probably isn’t one of its amazing skyscrapers, but the Chicago River, a waterway disguised as a remnant of the natural landscape. But it isn’t natural, not really. It’s hard to tell when you see the river, … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. I fell in love with architecture on the Chicago River. You can endlessly argue about which city has the greatest architecture, but one thing that puts Chicago near the top for me is that the Chicago River provides a beautiful vantage point to take in all the marvelous skyscrapers. Rather than being crammed in on the sidewalk between looming towers, trying and probably failing to take it all in, the river pushes the building to part and gives you the opportunity to coast by on the roof of a ferry, with glass, steel, and concrete wonders presented in their full glory everywhere you turn.

But probably the city's biggest design achievement isn't a building at all. It's that river itself, a waterway disguised as a remnant of the natural landscape. But it really isn't. It's hard to tell when you see the river, but it's going the wrong way. It should flow into Lake Michigan, but instead, fresh water from Lake Michigan flows backwards into the city. The Chicago River is, in a large part, a carefully designed extension of the city's sewer system, even calling it a river, maybe off base.

It's not really a river, in Chicago, it's really the Chicago Canal. There's not an inch, I don't think, of the Chicago River that is natural in Chicago. That's Richard K. Han. He's a journalist and historian in Chicago. And in 2012, he co-wrote and published a book called The Lost Panoramas, when Chicago changed just river and the land beyond. And it's filled with these gorgeous pictures from before

and mostly after one of the biggest urban design projects ever, the reversal and the complete transformation of the Chicago River. And that is Dan Weissman, a journalist, lover of triangular buildings, and a lifelong diehard, Chicago. And reversing the river was actually the third in the series of epic design projects,

spanning almost 50 years. Three projects that amounted to 19th century engineers just taking it to the laws of nature, with a kind of moxie that just seems to be folded into the DNA of 19th century engineers. And with just the first two, we're talking about two decades of massive, ridiculous achievements, stuff that changed people's ideas of how far you could go to make a city work, and those two have been so obscured by time that the dude who did them, and yeah, it was basically one guy

who proposed and executed, not one, but two of these incredible projects. He's basically unknown today. Ellis Chesbro. If you've never heard of Ellis Chesbro, you're not alone. In fact, as I record this, he doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. But you can bet Richard K. Han knows who he is. So he was a star, and his house is just north of downtown, and there's a little plaque

in front of the house. I once parked my car in front of it. Oh, he's read the plaque. And it says House of Ellis, Chesbro, and I'm sure I'm the only person that ever was very excited about seeing it. Oh, but back in the 1800s, Chesbro was the man, and no one has ever worked harder to save Chicago from its own poop. Poop. The thing that has brought cities to their knees for millennia. Now here's the setup, it's 1854. The city of Chicago had been growing like crazy for a couple of decades.

Out of nothing, huge boomtown, more than doubling its population every few years and then wham. Colour epidemic. Weped out 6% of the city, 6%. That summer, one account had Colour killing 60 people a day in a town of 70,000. One of them was ever put it this way. The death cart was constantly in the street. And not to be gross, but cholera, it is a super nasty way to go. It's sudden, painful and well gross, vomiting, diarrhea, horrible cramps, and you're dead in less than a day,

but it is a really, really unpleasant day. So people were freaking out, Inter-Chezbro, who made a name with Wariky Dunn in Boston. What you people need, he told Chicago, is a sewer system, which was actually a new-ish idea at the time in the U.S. No other city here had one. Sewers yes, systems not so much. And Chicago didn't seem like the town you'd pick to go first. Not if you thought topography meant anything. I mean, Chicago was built on a swamp. Street level, water level?

Pretty much the same thing. So you put sewers under the street. There's no way for the material in them to, you know, run down hill into anything. So here it comes, round one. The first of these three projects that proved Chicago was ready to try anything. Jasper said,

Okay, let's jack street level up 10 feet. It was a time when engineers were really seen as a savior. And so when he said first off that we're going to build a sewer system, and he said we're going to raise Chicago up 10 feet so that we can put in sores. Everyone's sure, that's great, great idea. Let's do it. Yeah, and there was a reason they went for it. People were making tons of money.

Chicago's location was perfect, connecting the west to the east, through railroads and the great lakes. And that's why the city was growing so fast to start with. Actually, they didn't jack up the streets themselves. They just piled dirt on top of the old streets to make them higher. And some of that dirt came from the river bottom,

which they had dredged to make room for all of the old streets to make them higher. And some of that dirt came from the river bottom, which they had dredged to make room for all of the stuff that they were about to dump in there. But they did jack up the buildings. Literally, they put the buildings on jackskrurs, a lot of jackskrurs, and started cranking. There's this great picture from 1857. It shows a massive hotel, big as a city block, at least three or four stories tall,

with dozens and dozens of guys cranking away in perfect sync. Ready, met? Turn! You can also see hotel guests and top hats standing on the balcony as a couple flights up. They're looking out, watching their view get better and better, a quarter inch at a time. And this kind of thing happened over and over again, with businesses staying open while they were getting cranked up, just for kicks. Another fancy hotel had 1200 guys cranking away all at once. Meanwhile, apparently there were teams of mason's laying bricks for a new foundation at

top speed, literally working around the guys with the jackskirts. There's another great picture of a huge downtown block of stores and offices getting hoisted up. All 35,000 tons of it. Jacking up the streets and buildings took like 20 years to finish, but by that time Project No. 2 was already done. Because it didn't take too long after the sewers went in. For Chicago to realize that there was a big question that they hadn't given enough thought to on the first go-round. Where did the sewers take all this output? Into the river and where the river go, into the lake and where

was the drinking water coming from? Oops. So, okay, said Chasbro, how about this? We'll build water intakes two miles out from shore, way past where the river dumps our muck into the lake. And that'll mean digging the biggest, deepest, longest tunnel ever up to this point. What do you think?

They all said fine and they did it and it was amazing. Again, the city is growing, people are making money, and everybody agrees. They'll do whatever it takes to keep this thing rolling. So it's on round two, digging the tunnels. In 1864, Chesbro's guys start digging the tunnel out from the city, 60 feet down from street level. Year after that, they install a giant structure two miles out in the lake. They call them cribs and start digging a tunnel in from under that, back towards shore. The work went on around the clock from both sides. One crew dug by hand for 16 hours a day. Then a crew of brick layers took the graveyard shift, showing up the area that had just been

dug out. In November 1865, the two sets of crews met in the middle, just about dead on, centered. You know, this is just all by side. Everybody agreed, Cheshire was a genius and a half. Except they hadn't really solved the problem. The city was still growing like crazy, maybe 200,000 people by 1865, and they were dumping more of their business into the river than ever, which stank. And before the water from the new intakes even started flowing,

the Union stockyards opened on the river's south branch and up the ante. We're talking 320 acres of slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants, all of them dumping whatever they couldn't use and just imagine what that would be into the river. Well, they estimated that the stockyards were the equivalent of a million people's discharges. And there weren't even a million people in the city then.

Yeah, that's true. That bit of the South Fork still goes by the name it got then bubbly creek. All the discarded animal stuff would rot at the bottom of the river and eventually give off methane, which would bubble up to the surface and burst. Also, sometimes it could fire. And sometimes the sewage got swept more than two miles out and found the water in takes.

Later they dig these even further out, there's one called the four mile crib. And meanwhile the city kept growing. By 1880, we're talking half a million people and producing more excrement. The stockyards grew too. A lot. One engineer would say Chicago produces more filth per capita than any other city. And now typhoid, what's getting to be a problem?

So Chicago started pushing for a new state law to help undertake the biggest, baddest, craziest idea ever. They decided to dig a gigantic new canal that would reverse the river entirely. Reversing the river would bring in fresh water from the lake, and keep Chicago's muck from polluting the drinking water pulled from that same lake, and flush all the sewage down to the Illinois River, which would then take it out to the Mississippi. It took a few years to get the new law approved, the town of Juliet, so a river of crap coming

its way and tried to nix it, and then it took a few more years to get plans laid out and contracts issued. And then it was shovel day, September 3rd, 1892. More than a thousand people came out to watch, and official took one cut with a nickel-plated shovel, and then an engineer detonated two massive loads of dynamite. Dynamite was their preferred weapon against the environment. And it was on round three in the epic struggle against Chicago's own excreta reversing the river. 28 miles of canal price tag 31 million and change in today's money almost 23 billion dollars. As many as 8700 guys working at a time with work work going on year round, tons, and tons

of dynamite, you can hear the blasts downtown when the wind was right. An enormous machine, some invented special for the project, including a 640 foot wide monster conveyor, which broke after less than a year. But still, during the 1893 World's Fair, tourists by the thousands day tripped out to the construction zone. They would take boats and trains out to the site to see the work. And people were coming to Chicago and they were like, you got to see this. You know, this town is amazing and they'll do anything to survive.

Even after the fair closed, train companies ran morning special so local sites seers could check out the big machines and those ever popular dynamite blasts. This was an amazing project. So many people know about the Panama Canal, but it was really in building this canal that they figured out everything, engineering wise and the equipment and a lot of the engineers went to Panama. And then, very late in the game, St. Louis got pissed. We're talking 1899, all the major digging has been done for years, and the fine-tuning

stuff is getting wrapped up all the construction of bridges and extra digging in the rivers downstream that is going to carry Chicago's water toward the Mississippi and whatnot. And that stuff is very, very close to finished. And this is when St. Louis figures out that all that water carrying who knows what it was headed down the Mississippi Upriver of St. Louis which depends on the river for it's drinking water and for brewing but was your beer The city authorizes its attorney to prepare a lawsuit asking the US Supreme Court for an injunction that would stop the Sanitary District of Chicago from opening up the dams and letting that water go of Chicago from opening up the dams and letting that water go. Thing is, it takes a while to get a lawsuit ready.

A few months, say, and Chicago starts humping it to get the dams ready to open before St. Louis can get an injunction. So, New Year's Day, 1900, the sanitary district trustees decide the major work is done. The next day, January 2, they head out to a spot on the city's southwest side where there's this one little temporary dam holding back the river from this massive 28 mile canal that's waiting for all that water. The trustees arrive at dawn. One of them bring shovels.

Most of these projects have these beautiful gold shovels, but one of the trustees just stopped at a high-ware store and bought these kind of tinny old, you know, work shovels. It's like stopping at home depot. Hey, it's five in the morning. I had an awful time getting these shovels this time of day, he says, and he lays them out. There's a couple of reporters there taking notes. And the Trusses dig in, at least they try to.

First off, you should note that it was in January in Chicago, so, you know, you don't shovel anything by hand. The ground was absolutely frozen, and they were going absolutely nowhere. So they bring in a dredge, which also goes nowhere. So they go get some dynamite. Good old dynamite. Which is a dud.

It doesn't look very promising. There was a lot of profanity. Number one, the trustees can show it out and then the dynamite is not working and then the shovels aren't working. And you know, this was like an insult to the kind of masculinity that we can't even you know open this thing up. A couple hours later it's like 10 in the morning now and maybe a hundred people have gathered and the dredge gets to where I can just get one good scoop and it grabs it.

Yeah baby, a few more and a few more and bam everyone's shouting it is open, it is open! Water starts dropping into the canal 24 24 feet straight down, and away it goes. It is the Niagara of Chicago, one of the trustee says. Almost there. But there's still one last dam to open, a bit down the river, which needed the governor's okay. It's a gate that's already been made, so it's just a matter of turning the wheels and control the gate. And once the gate was open, the water could not be stopped all the way down to New Orleans. Meanwhile, St. Louis is still gearing up its lawsuit.

There were always worry about St. Louis actually finding a lawsuit that would stop, that would enjoy them from actually opening the floodgates. And to this day, I can't figure out why St. Louis didn't do that. Or why they were so slow about it. Chicago still had to jam a few last pieces into place to get the governor's okay, took two weeks. St. Louis could have filed any day. And then January 17th, the trustees took one more early morning trek to lower the dam. They turned the crank, posed for a picture in their fancy coats and top hats, then beat it back to Chicago for a big lunch. While they were eating, they got word that St. Louis had indeed filed for an injunction that day.

Too late. They brought a knife to a gunfight. No, they brought a little piece of paper to a torrent of f***ing fight. Late I might add. They waited until just after the fight gates were open. I can't understand that. Legal philosophy. The story made the New York Times, with the headline, The Water in the Chicago River Now Resembles Liquid. St. Louis pushed their case to the US Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes noted that, it is a question of the first magnitude, whether the destiny of the great rivers is to be the sewers of the cities along their banks. Which is an important philosophical question, but to paraphrase the way Justice Holmes finished that opinion, whatever man, settling a question that big, it wasn't really the court's job, especially since Missouri allowed St. Louis and other towns to dump sewage into the Mississippi and send it straight to Memphis. So in a very real sense, there was no stopping it.

The Canal and River reversal was later called a civil engineering monument of the millennium. It was a functional monument to our dominion over the natural world. Or so we thought, fast forward a hundred years to write about now, and the forces of nature are looking for another go-around. There have been some big efforts to clean up the river itself in the last two decades, and by 2015, the treated sewages actually supposed to get disinfected. And when Rich K-Hann and I visited Bubbly Creek looking for bubbles, we may have seen signs of life there instead.

I see bubbles. Look. I could go with bubbles too. Yeah. I think that's a fish, isn't it? See that? Right down there. I definitely think it's some kind of living thing right there.

Yes. Yes, like a guppy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh no, that was a bubble. No, those are bubbles right there. Look at that. But now we're living in a time when the big 19th century interventions in nature seem

poised of boomerang back at us. Water levels in Lake Michigan have fallen, but at least for now, to the point where gravity may stop pulling lake water into the river, potentially re-reversing the river, if there weren't, you know, engineering interventions. In terms of washing in which Chicago's waste

is mostly a symbolic issue, there are other ways to keep the water and treated sewage flowing away towards the Mississippi. But falling lake levels, I mean, this is most of the fresh water in North America. And a lot of people link this kind of falling lake levels to climate change and the whole catalog of horrors that comes with it. And it all seems like kind of a karmic payback for exactly the kinds of projects that reverse the Chicago River stood for. Yet either we can just do whatever we want to the planet, get away with it.

And I think that's a completely valid lesson you could take from this. But the inherent hubris involved in reversing a river, or manipulating the environment to suit our needs is exactly what is wrong with us as stewards of this planet. But taking another view. You could also see this as a lesson in the lengths we will go to survive. If we harness that 19th century moxie, the kind of moxie that makes you think that you could and should reverse a river, and we add to that the knowledge we've gained since then. We could guide our best and brightest to engineer the impossible no matter what it takes and we would take day trips

out to the far edge and cheer them on as they save us from getting buried in our own sh**. Or we could produce less sh**, that'd be okay too. ["Fantastic Song"] 99% Invisible was produced as week by Dan Weissman, Sam Greenspan, and me, Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 local public radio, K-A-L-W, in San Francisco, and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. I tweet at Roman Mars right now. Oh man, pictures of the Chicago River being reversed. It's amazing. At 99% invisible. invisible. Daughter.