THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph of drawing by Kauf mann & Fabry Co. 

 OLD FORT DFARBORN, WITH SURROUNDINGS, IN 1856: CHICAGO 



one who discovered its site. He looked 

 down through the years and saw in the 

 vista of the future a world-city, while 

 they built only for their day and time. 

 So Chicago, like Topsy, "jes' growed"; 

 and instead of being one great, well- 

 planned, carefully laid out city, for a 

 long time it was only a series of loose- 

 jointed villages, in none of which was 

 any effort made to anticipate the future, 

 and in all of which the people had too 

 many concerns of the moment to give 

 thought to those of years ahead. 



A RING OF WATFR AND A LOOP OF STF.FX 



The result was that Chicago grew up 

 hampered and crowded. The Chicago 

 River, as reversed by the drainage canal, 

 elbows its way through the city, flowing 

 west for some nine blocks, and then south 

 and southeast for many more, before 

 finally turning westward again. Thus the 

 river drew a fluid line around two sides 

 of the business district, while the lake 

 confined it on a third side and the rail- 

 roads dammed it back on the fourth. 



As if this were not enough, the ele- 



vated railways supplemented the ring of 

 water with a loop of steel, and presently 

 the great metropolis found itself with 

 residential districts as wide as the 

 prairies, but with a business district so 

 cramped and so much a menace to the 

 city's future growth and prosperity that 

 there arose a universal cry for relief 

 from the conditions that threatened the 

 strangulation of its development. 



That cry brought its answer in the 

 shape of what is at once one of the most 

 ambitious and yet the most conservative 

 city plan ever worked out. That plan 

 takes cognizance alike of the immediate 

 needs and the future requirements of the 

 city. It is laid out in units suited to the 

 necessities of the hour and the financial 

 abilities of the moment ; at the same time 

 it has been so developed that each com- 

 pleted unit is a step toward the ideal 

 urban community, and the sum of them 

 a symmetrical development that will pro- 

 vide for double the present population 

 and, it is hoped, afford proper founda- 

 tions for the expansions of a century. 



