The Raising of Chicago: Why Some Sidewalks Are Still Hollow

The raising of Chicago lifted the city's streets four to eight feet out of the mud in the 1850s and 1860s, and left hollow vaulted sidewalks, sunken front doors and the 1847 zero line still under the city today. Under the Grid documents the cities beneath the cities: sealed rooms, buried infrastructure, and places most people walk past. 📌 Chapters 00:00 Chicago's Hollow Sidewalks 00:47 Vaulted Sidewalks and Sunken Front Doors 02:21 Chicago in the 1850s: A City in the Mud 03:31 The 1854 Cholera Epidemic in Chicago 04:55 Ellis Chesbrough's Sewer Plan, 1855 06:34 The 1857 High Grade: The Height of the Mayor 08:43 Moving Houses in 1850s Chicago 10:17 Raising Brick Buildings: Randolph and Dearborn, 1858 12:35 Lake Street, 1860: Raising Half a Block 14:06 The Tremont House and the Briggs House 16:18 Chicago's First Sewers: 53 Miles by 1860 17:40 The Great Chicago Fire and the Raised City 18:25 Chicago's Vaulted Sidewalks Today 20:12 Sunken Houses in Pilsen and Bridgeport 22:06 Chicago City Datum at LaSalle and Monroe 23:09 Why Chicago Still Has Hollow Sidewalks 24:19 Is Your Front Door Below the Sidewalk? 📚 This episode After cholera killed 1,424 people in 1854, engineer Ellis S. Chesbrough's sewer plan (Dec. 31, 1855) laid the pipes near the surface and raised the streets over them; contractors including Brown & Hollingsworth and George Pullman jacked up brick blocks and hotels such as the Tremont House (1861) and the Briggs House (1866). The space left between the old ground and the new sidewalks became Chicago's vaulted sidewalks, more than 2,000 of them by CDOT's 2009 count. 🔔 New long-form documentaries twice a week. Subscribe for the next one. 💬 Does your block in Pilsen, Bridgeport, Wicker Park or Bucktown have a front door below the sidewalk or a sidewalk that sounds hollow? Which street? Sources: E. S. Chesbrough, Report and Plan of Sewerage (1855); Board of Sewerage Commissioners report (1860); A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (1884–85); Chicago Tribune and Press & Tribune (1854–1865); Putnam's Monthly (1856); David Macrae, The Americans at Home (1870); Encyclopedia of Chicago; S. Khudeira, ASCE Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction (2009); CDOT Streetscape Design Guidelines; WTTW (2013, 2024); WGN; Chicago Sun-Times (2025). Images: Newberry Library, Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons (public domain); Chicago City Datum photo by Cosmo1976 (CC BY 3.0); Bridgeport photos by Warren LeMay (CC BY-SA 4.0); Chesbrough grave by Nick Number (CC BY 4.0); sidewalk prism photo by Prismlights (CC BY-SA 4.0); pavement light, Geneva NY, by B137 (CC0). Mendel lithograph dated 1857 by the Chicago History Museum. Maps and cross-sections are schematic, not to scale. Archival film: Prelinger Archives / Internet Archive (public domain). Illustrations: Pearson Scott Foresman (public domain). Thumbnail and two illustrative scenes: AI-generated illustrations. Contact: remindmeinfo1@gmail.com #ForgottenHistory #LocalHistory #ChicagoHistory