How Chicago Lifted Itself Out of the Mud

Every few minutes a train rattles along the elevated tracks above Lake Street in the heart of Chicago. The pavement is flat, the doors open straight onto the street, and nothing looks unusual. But this is not the ground the city was built on. In the 1850s Chicago was the fastest-growing city in America, standing on flat, wet clay only a few feet above Lake Michigan. Streets turned to mud, waste had nowhere to go, and cholera killed 678 people in 1849 alone, with well over a thousand more deaths in the outbreaks of 1852 and 1854. The answer from engineer Ellis S. Chesbrough was bold: lay a new sewer system on the surface and build the streets up on top of it, by several feet and in places ten or more, in the central business district. This is a Story of Chicago Mud. That left thousands of buildings below the new street level. Owners could give up the ground floor, rebuild, or lift the building on iron jackscrews. In January 1858 contractor James Brown raised a four-storey brick building at Randolph and Dearborn. In the spring of 1860 about 600 men and some 6,000 screws lifted a block of shops on Lake Street, almost an acre of brick and stone, in less than a week, while the shops stayed open. A year later the six-storey Tremont House went up by several feet with the hotel still running. The work went on for about two decades, and it started a chain reaction: the sewers poisoned the lake, which led to a tunnel two miles out under Lake Michigan and, in 1900, to the reversal of the Chicago River. In this episode: Why Chicago sat in mud, and how cholera forced a decision Chesbrough's plan to raise the streets, and the hunt for a way to raise whole buildings Lake Street, 1860: 600 men, 6,000 screws, and shops that never closed George Pullman's real role (one contractor among several) and the Tremont House How the sewers poisoned the lake, the tunnel, and the river that was made to run backwards What the Great Fire of 1871 left, and where you can still see the old street level today Chapters: 0:00 The street under the street 2:03 A city on a swamp 4:41 Cholera and foul water 5:39 Chesbrough's plan: raise the streets 8:47 January 1858: the first big lift 10:30 Lake Street, 1860: 600 men, 6,000 screws 12:59 Did Pullman raise Chicago? 13:37 The Tremont House stays open 15:18 Houses on the move 17:31 The sewers poison the lake 18:24 The tunnel under Lake Michigan 19:51 Reversing the Chicago River 20:52 The Great Fire of 1871 22:11 What is left today 23:47 Final thoughts Some scenes of the past are AI reconstructions and are labeled on screen. Based on sources: Raising of Chicago, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising... Enjoy Illinois, "Raising Chicago": https://www.enjoyillinois.com/plan-yo... ASCE, Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough: https://www.asce.org/about-civil-engi... Ellis S. Chesbrough, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_S... Linda Hall Library, Ellis Chesbrough: https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/... WGN, "Chicago's sunken homes": https://wgntv.com/news/ask-wgn/chicag... Chicago Daily Tribune and Press and Tribune, 1854-1866; Putnam's Monthly, June 1856; David Macrae, The Americans at Home (1870); The Times (London), 3 Dec 1866 (newspaper transcriptions): https://nike-of-samothrace.net/csc.html History of public health in Chicago, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History... Finding Chicago, University of Chicago: https://voices.uchicago.edu/findingch... Chicago Lake Tunnel, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago... Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Oak Park River Forest Museum: https://oprfmuseum.org/chicago-sanita... #ChicagoHistory #RaisingOfChicago #ForgottenHistory #WhatTheCityForgot