![]() ![]() (east-west) - see the red lines on the historic map below. Click on any rule to learn more, and for examples of what each one means (and how you might use it to navigate the city).īrennan's plan for Chicago's new numbering system effectively divided the city into quadrants, delineated by State St. That same Chicagoan, when asked to meet a friend at Kimbark plaza (53rd and Woodlawn) on a cold winter evening after a long day of studying in Harper, immediately recognizes that this would involve a seven block walk, that that's almost a mile, and that they don't want to do it in January. 59th St.) can be found on the north side of 59th Street, which should be an east-west road approximately 7 miles south of the city center (and therefore on the South Side). ![]() A grid-savvy Chicagoan immediately knows, for example, that Harper Library (1116 E. Learning the grid system requires some effort, but once you understand it, it will enable you to navigate Chicago with much more confidence. Eight years (and dozens of City Council meetings) later, Brennan's proposal was adopted by the city council, and the Chicago grid system was implemented. Brennan approached the city council with a solution: re-name and re-number nearly all city streets according to a new convention, wherein street numbers would locate properties relative to central X (east-west) and Y (north-south) axes, with an imaginary center point at the intersection of Madison (east-west) and State (north-south) streets, in the heart of the downtown business district. In 1901, Rogers Park resident (and private citizen) Edward P. Things got so bad that the postal service threatened to stop delivering mail to Chicago addresses. ![]() Although the 1830 city plan made provision for an orderly system of north-south and east-west streets, the annexation of surrounding communities (such as the Village of Hyde Park) had led to duplications of names, and even whole addresses, across the growing city. As the video above describes, Chicago's street system was a complicated mess well into the early 20th Century. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |