THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



19 



Illinois Central Railroad, the value of the 

 ground thus reclaimed will' be forty-six 

 million dollars. 



But it will cost the city nothing! All 

 that Chicago will have to do is to con- 

 struct the necessary retaining walls, with 

 the consent of the Federal Government, 

 and then collect $3,000,000 — more than 

 enough to reimburse the city for these 

 walls — from the people who need a 

 dumping ground. 



When this ground has been reclaimed, 

 and Grant Park connected with Lincoln 

 Park, there will be a lakeside playground 

 some fourteen miles long. The people of 

 every section of the city will be brought 

 within a you - don't - have - to - transfer 

 street-car trip to the Lake Front play- 

 ground; and Chicago, indeed, will be its 

 own Atlantic City. One need only ride 

 along the Lake Shore Drive and Sheridan 

 Road to see how beautiful such reclaimed 

 ground can be made. 



Chicago's mail pouch 



Another element in the transformation 

 of the Chicago of yesterday into the Chi- 

 cago of tomorrow is the question of an 

 adequate post-office. A vast proportion 

 of the nation's mail between the East and 

 the West passes through Chicago, mak- 

 ing it of national as well as of local con- 

 cern that adequate facilities be provided. 



Heretofore the federal authorities have 

 never been able to look far enough ahead, 

 with the result that before a new post- 

 office was completed the city had already 

 outgrown it. In the early eighties a 

 building was erected on the site of the 

 present post-office, and had to be torn 

 down ten years later because of its in- 

 adequacy. Then the present structure 

 was erected, and for ten years, while it 

 was building, the city had to get along 

 with a makeshift. The present structure 

 is not yet two decades old, but everybody 

 realizes its utter inadequacy. 



So Chicago induced the railroads plan- 

 ning to build a new Union Station to 

 move their site two blocks further south 

 than they had intended, leaving two mag- 

 nificent squares between that station and 

 the Northwestern Station. Nearly two- 

 thirds of the mail handled in and through 

 Chicago passes between the railroads 

 usinsr these two terminals. 



The volume of the postal business of 

 the city reaches almost unbelievable pro- 

 portions. Two billion pieces of mail are 

 handled annually, and the receipts are 

 greater than those of any other post- 

 office in the world. The business done 

 at this one office is eight times as great as 

 that of the entire postal system of Nor- 

 way and four times as great as that of 

 the Kingdom of Holland. The parcel- 

 post business exceeds that of any other 

 five cities in the United States. 



The site and building of the present 

 post-office cost the government one mil- 

 lion dollars. Such has been the enhance- 

 ment of realty values that it is estimated 

 to be worth twelve million dollars to- 

 day — the enhancement of value alone 

 being sufficient to take care of the con- 

 struction of the proposed new two-block 

 post-office. Since the present building 

 was completed the postal business of the 

 city has quintupled. 



Having seen the results of a pinch- 

 penny policy in the past, Chicago is now 

 asking the government to put up an ade- 

 quate post-office outside of the Loop 

 District. 



THE AMAZING LOOP DISTRICT 



That district, not more than a quarter 

 of a square mile in area, has only nine- 

 teen streets in it, with street-cars on all 

 but four of them. It is entered daily by 

 twenty-odd thousand street-cars and 

 more than 130,000 vehicles. A million 

 and a half people traverse its streets 

 every day, and a quarter of a million 

 work there. To get the post-office out- 

 side of this jammed district is agreed by 

 all to be one of the prime requirements 

 of the Chicago Plan. 



Undertaking improvements that in the 

 end will cost some two hundred million 

 dollars, improvements that will make the 

 city one of greater wealth and better 

 health, improvements that will make it 

 compare with any other city on earth in 

 the development of the esthetic side of 

 the life of the community, improvements 

 that will serve as an inspiration and as a 

 model for urban development for all 

 communities, the people of Chicago ask 

 the nation to help them only by giving 

 them an adequate post-office, for which 

 they pay many times over, and to recog- 



