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dissertation entitled

CONNECTING A NATION, DIVIDING A CITY: HOW
RAILROADS SHAPED THE PUBLIC SPACES AND SOCIAL
UNDERSTAI

TED RO

has been at
of the

PhD. degree in

 

 

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CONNECTING A NATION, DIVIDING A CITY: HOW RAILROADS SHAPED THE
PUBLIC SPACES AND SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING OF CHICAGO

By

Ted Robert Mitchell

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
History

2009

ABSTRACT

CONNECTING A NATION, DIVIDING A CITY: HOW RAILROADS SHAPED THE
BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING OF CHICAGO

By

Ted Robert Mitchell

Railroad development helped turn Chicago from a frontier town into a booming
commercial and industrial entrep6t soon after the ﬁrst train rolled through the city in
1848. The railroads brought the business and people that turned the city into a major
metropolis, but they also brought new hazards to urban life. Railroads were often given
the right by local government to build tracks in public streets. People thus had to deal on
a regular basis with railroad encroachment and the threat of injury or death. Trains also
created trafﬁc congestion and atomized neighborhoods. In other words, they had a
signiﬁcant effect on the built environment of the city. As such, railroads restricted the
movement of people and circmnscribed human agency. The Common Council realized
the negative social consequences of railroad development in the city early on and enacted
railroad safety legislation, but it was ineffective in enforcement, and it retained economic
priorities over ones that focused on shaping Chicago into a more livable city. This was
the case until the 18608, at which time the city of Chicago received new city charters that
gave local government a form that could much more effectively deal with the spatial

consequences of railroads.

for Rachel

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I’d like to thank my advisor and committee chair, Maureen Flanagan. It
was her social history seminar my ﬁrst year in the graduate program that initially pushed
me to think spatially about history, and she has continued to challenge me during the
various stages of this project to make this the best dissertation possible. Thanks in large
part to Prof. Flanagan, I view the city as a place of political, social, and economic
conﬂict, in which structures matter. This is, no doubt, the best way to think about urban
history, and it will continue to shape my future scholarship.

I also want to thank Tom Summerhill. He showed me the richness of early
American history, and taught me to think across the nineteenth century and not just stop
all analysis at the Civil War. Also, our discussions over contested historical terms and
language helped clarify and focus my analysis. Profs. Flanagan and Summerhill, along
with my other committee members, Prof. Ann Durkin Keating and Prof. Ed Murphy,
helped me transform my research into this dissertation.

I am also grateful to the history department at Michigan State University for its
ﬁnancial support. Also, fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Newberry
Library, the Lexington Group in Transportation History, and the Graduate School helped
me successfully complete this project. I’d also like to thank my friends and family for all
the support—both academic and emotional—especially my parents, Ted and Gladys
Mitchell, who have encouraged and supported all my endeavors. Finally, I’d like to
thank my dogs, Hannah and Lexi, for always being fantastic companions, and, especially,
my wife, Dr. Rachel Kelly, who has dealt with the pressures of medical school and

residency all while giving me the love and support needed to get through this process.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................... vi

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 1

The Railroads Come to Chicago, 1848-1852 ............................................ 18

CHAPTER 2

The Spatial Consequences of Railroad Development, 1852-1871 ................... 67
CHAPTER 3

The Illusion ofRegulation, 1852-1861118
CHAPTER 4

Towards a More Livable City, 1861-1871 ............................................. 161
CONCLUSION ............................................................................ 205
APPENDIX 1 .............................................................................. 216
APPENDIX 2 .............................................................................. 219
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................... 220

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1

The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad ................................................... 29
FIGURE 2

The Illinois Central Railroad, from the river to Twelfth Street ........................ 64
FIGURE 3

The area where Ann Turrell and Catharine Mack were killed .......................... 90
FIGURE 4

The Wabansia Addition, 1863 ............................................................ 111
FIGURE 5

The Wabansia Addition, 1888 ............................................................ 112
FIGURE 6

South Clark Street, between Twelfth and Sixteenth Streets .......................... 143
FIGURE 7 '

The Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad Tunnels ........................... 198
FIGURE 8

Design of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad viaduct at Halsted Street..200
FIGURE 9

The Chicago Fire ........................................................................... 214

vi

INTRODUCTION

The story of Chicago in the nineteenth century is the story of the rise of industrial
America. When Chicago was ﬁrst organized as a town in 1833, it was a muddy frontier
settlement of a few hundred people. By 1871 , the year the Great Fire burned down a
third of the city, well over 300,000 people lived in a Chicago composed of factories,
stockyards, and railroad tracks. Even before the ﬁre, the city had made the transition
from a frontier settlement to an industrial city.

This dissertation maps that transition by focusing on something that both
represented and catalyzed industrial growth: railroad development. I argue that railroad
development in Chicago—a city that became North America’s railroad hub by the mid-
18508, only a handful of years after the ﬁrst train rolled through the city in 1848—
signiﬁcantly shaped the public spaces of the city. It created hazards and inconveniences
that helped deﬁne the industrial era by circumscribing people’s movement through a city,
thus limiting human agency. In other words, industrial America was deﬁned not only
economically and demographically by trends such as the integration of markets, the
growth of the industrial working class, and the growth of cities, but also spatially, due to
the conﬂuence of these trends.

Railroad development in Chicago did not just “happen,” though. It occurred and
shaped the public spaces of the city as it did because of deliberate decisions made by
people in positions of power. These decisions, furthermore, were shaped within the
limits of the political system. In other words, the city’s physical infrastructure was
formed within the boundaries of the city’s political structure, boundaries that changed

dramatically from the 18405 to the 18703. (The exceptions to this assertion were

episodes of corruption, which were few and far between until the late 18605.) The
members of Chicago’s Common Council were the gatekeepers for railroad development
in the city: they had the ultimate power to decide whether or not a railroad was allowed to
build in the city and on what terms. They also controlled the use of the city’s public
spaces, the most important of which for railroad development were the streets. The
railroads, too, generally had both economic and political clout that helped get them into
the city, as did pro-railroad business interests such as the Board of Trade. Small business
owners and Chicago residents who lived near the railroads held little power, though their
persistent opposition to railroad development and its attendant hazards paid off after
Chicago’s government changed with the new city charters of the early 18605. The role of
the Illinois state govemment—the body that deﬁned the powers of the city of Chicago—
in shaping Chicago’s government and, ultimately, shaping Chicago’s railroad
infrastructure, cannot, therefore, be overstated. Railroads shaped Chicago’s built
environment through decisions that came from a combination of political, business, and
public interests. The reaction by Chicago’s Common Council to railroad encroachment
into public spaces and the hazards that came with it shows a distinct change from the
18405 to the 18705: the booster Council of the 18405 and early 18505 transformed into a
body that looked out for the public interest by changing the shape of the new industrial
city and protecting the public from the dangers inherent to industrial society. In other
words, whereas the Council’s early focus regarding railroads was on making the city

proﬁtable, the Council from the 18605 began to focus on making it livable.

Railroads provided the transportation infrastructure to connect the regions and
markets of the vast North American continent. This infrastructure centered on Chicago,
which helped make it an ideal manufacturing and distribution center. Businesses came,
as did people seeking jobs and economic opportunity. And when they arrived in
Chicago, people quickly realized that railroads were more than simply conveyances that
connected America and facilitated economic growth; they were large, powerful pieces of
technology that were not transient in nature. The tracks on which trains ran—not to
mention the depots, stations, warehouses, rail yards, and other ancillary railroad
structures—were ﬁxed, which meant that railroads became an important part of
Chicago’s built environment.

But railroads were not just buildings. The hazards and inconveniences attendant
with railroad development in Chicago came in large part because, in the late 18405 and
early 18505, railroads were treated as a privileged form of transportation by the Chicago
Common Council. The Council had the power to decide how public spaces such as
streets and alleys were to be used, and it wanted to attract railroads and the possibility of
economic growth that came with them. Thus the Council gave railroads generous rights-
of-way in public spaces, often in and across streets. It seemed logical that the Council
would give the railroads rights-of-way through the streets of Chicago: streets were used
primarily for travel, and trains were conveyances. Also, rights-of-way in streets
precluded delays to railroad development that would be brought on by property owners
who were unwilling to sell to the railroads. Finally, the fact that locomotives would share
streets with the public did not, early on, bother the Council or Chicago’s residents since

most of the streets in which the tracks were laid were in industrial neighborhoods.

The possible problems that came with the convergence of streets and railroads,
however, became manifest within a short time. Large numbers of people moved to the
city, oﬁen on the passenger cars of trains. Many of these people were working-class
individuals who hoped to get a job with one of the many industrial and manufacturing
ﬁrms in the city. Upon moving to the city, they tried to obtain housing in inexpensive
areas that were close to their jobs. Thus, areas that were purely industrial transformed
into mixed industrial—residential neighborhoods. The issue of railroad hazards and
inconveniences quickly became an issue.

Hazards and inconveniences caused by the railroads varied in magnitude, and
working-class people were disproportionately affected by them since they lived near the
railroads more frequently than middle-class and wealthy people did. Nevertheless,
railroad development was so thorough in the city by the late 18505 that no one—poor or
wealthy, visitor or resident—could avoid the delays and dangers that the railroads
brought. The wood- and coal-burning locomotives blew black smoke into the air that
choked the lungs and coated Chicago with black soot. The same steam engines that
polluted the air and produced for the city a coal—black patina also generated hot coals that
created ﬁre hazards for wooden carriages and roof shingles that hung near the tracks.
The “iron horse” was also formidable in size and sound, enough so to scare actual horses
moving about the city.

But the most serious hazards came as a result of the railroads’ encroachment into
public spaces, primarily streets. Men, women, and children shared the streets with trains,
and accidents occurred. Grade crossings—places where railroad tracks crossed streets—

were points of particular danger. Protruding tracks and ill-maintained crossings made the

crossings dangerous, while passing trains made them deadly. The fact that people were
not used to the speed and size of trains in the early industrial era made tragic
misjudgments of train speed at grade crossings all too frequent occurrences. This,
coupled with a paucity of safety precautions and neglect by railroads of safety statutes,
led to a large number of accidents. Chicago’s quickly growing and ever more dense
population further exacerbated this issue. Yet grade crossings were not just points of
danger to life and limb; they were frequently points of trafﬁc congestion. Trains blocked
streets in a city that did not need more trafﬁc issues: the three branches of the Chicago
River made travel across the city challenging enough.

These issues and the ever-present fear of property devaluation sparked opposition
to railroad development in Chicago’s public spaces. The Council received numerous
petitions and remonstrances, and Chicago newspapers printed plenty of complaints, all of
which were against railroad encroachment in the city’s neighborhoods. Despite this, the
Council’s support of railroad construction continued through the 18505, though it
generally was not as strong as it was during its period of unabashed boosterism in the late
18405 and early 18505. It still gave a number of railroads generous rights-of-way on and
across streets through the 18505 and into the 18605, yet the Council began to take safety
and convenience issues into consideration. It enacted ordinances that, for example,
established both a speed limit and a maximum amount of time trains could block grade
crossings. It also began to include maintenance provisions in right-of-way ordinances:
railroads that built tracks in the streets were required to pave and maintain the section of

street on which they ran; they also had to maintain safe, usable crossings.

Despite the Council’s increased attention to the problems attendant with railroad
development in public space, the problems persisted. Railroads would openly violate the
new safety regulations and maintenance provisions because they knew that the Council
was unable to effectively enforce the legislation. Aldermen often ignored the numerous
petitions that complained of railroad safety violations. On the occasions during which
they tried to enforce their statutes, they usually had no effective recourse against the
railroads. The police force was small and underfunded, and issues regarding streets and
railroads often dissipated in an array of aldermanic committees. Enforcement usually
resulted in nothing more than the drafting of an order that reiterated the requirements of
the original ordinance. Chicago was a large industrial city, but the form and function of
its government was that of a J acksonian-era frontier town.

This changed in the 18605. The attention of Chicago’s residents was turned to the
Civil War during the ﬁrst half of the decade. The city experienced an economic boom
due to the production and shipment of war supplies, and the Council paid no heed to the
enforcement of railroad safety and street maintenance legislation in order to let the
railroads carry out their important role in the Union cause. But while all eyes were
focused on the war, the Illinois General Assembly produced legislation that had major
implications for how Chicago’s city government was to deal with the hazards and
inconveniences wrought by the railroads. It passed new city charters for Chicago in 1861
and 1863 that changed the city’s ward map and altered the form of local government by
creating independent boards of police and public works. Aldermen were more
accountable to their constituents, and the professionally run police force and Board of

Public Works (BPW) enforced railroad ordinances much more effectively than had their

predecessors. The BPW was especially important in making Chicago a more livable
railroad city. Not only did it execute the maintenance of streets and crossings, it worked
with railroads to get rid of dangerous grade crossings by building viaducts over railroad
tracks. This decade marked a distinct turn in Chicago’s local government to issues
regarding railroad development. The Council was able to act in the public interest by not
only enacting laws that dealt with railroad problems, but by enforcing those laws and

making spatial changes that resulted in a more livable industrial city.

Railroads were both a symbol and catalyst of the industrial era, and they were
especially important to the rise of Chicago. Yet relatively few works have critically
analyzed the role railroads played in shaping Chicago. One of the ﬁrst to do so was
William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West.1 Cronon’s
environmental history showed that Chicago’s proximity to the natural resources of its
hinterlands—timber to the north and northeast, grain to the west, livestock to the south
and west—and the city’s railroad infrastructure combined to make the city a continental
processing and distribution center in a relatively short amount of time. Books from
historian Ann Durkin Keating, geographer Harold Mayer and historian Richard Wade,
and geographer Robert Lewis have a narrower geographical focus than that of Cronon.2

Whereas Nature’s Metropolis focused on the connection between the city and the

regional periphery, Keating, Mayer and Wade, and Lewis showed that railroads played a

 

1 William Cronon, Nature ’5 Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,
1991)

2 Ann Durkin Keating, Building Chicago: Suburban Developers and the Creation of a Divided Metropolis
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988, 2002) and Chicagoland: City and Suburbs in the Railroad Age
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Harold Mayer and Richard Wade, Chicago: Growth of a
Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); and Robert Lewis, Chicago Made: Factory
Networks in the Industrial Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

7

key role in not only facilitating the growth of suburbs and fringe metropolitan areas, but
also in maintaining the economic and social connections between the center city and its
residential, farm, and industrial suburbs. All of these aforementioned works focus on the

railroads primarily as a conveyance that facilitated economic intercourse and suburban

development.3 This study narrows the geographical focus even more to examine the role
of the railroads and all of their physical manifestations—locomotives, rolling stock,

tracks, rail yards, sheds, stations, etc.—as part of the built environment of America’s

Second City, which happened to be the “First City of Railroads.”4

David Stowell’s Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike 0/1877 is the single

work of American history that focuses on railroad encroachment, in city streets.5
Railroads were allowed to build track in and across busy streets in Buffalo and Albany,
and the public in those cities spoke out with anger against railroads that caused a number
of accidents and disrupted small businesses. The hazards and inconveniences faced by
the upstate New Yorkers were similar to those faced by residents in Chicago, but the
purpose and form of Stowell’s study differs considerably from this dissertation. Streets,
Railroads, and the Great Strike of I 8 77 is similar in form to the classic monographs of

the British Marxist historians of the 19605 such as Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, and,

 

3 Ann Durkin Keating and Robert Lewis view railroads as an important part of the built environment, but
railroads are viewed more by their ends than by their means.

4 Joshua Salzmann’s recent dissertation, “Safe Harbor: Chicago’s Waterfront and the Political Economy of

the Built Environment, 1847-1918” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2008), does not

focus speciﬁcally on railroads, but he discusses the Illinois Central Railroad’s signiﬁcant lakeshore

presence in Chapter III, “Mann v. Illinois and Illinois Central v. Illinois, 1851-1892.” As the title of his

dissertation alludes, he argues that businessmen, politicians, the federal government, and urban planners

made Chicago’s waterfront “a safe harbor for capitalism,” a space that was built for the facilitation of
roﬁt-making.

David Stowell, Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of I 8 77 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1999)

especially, George Rude.6 It follows a teleology in which the revolutionary moment was
crowd action during the Great Strike of 1877. Stowell argued, quite convincingly, that
the crowd actions during the strike in Albany and Buffalo came because of discontent
with railroad encroachment in the streets. Stowell challenges previous interpretations of
the strike by claiming that the crowds were not just composed of disenchanted railroad
workers and working-class supporters of the strikers who felt a sense of class solidarity;
they were regular people who were directly lashing out at the railroads.

Stowell’s primary intention was to offer an alternative interpretation of the 1877
nationwide railroad strike — the so-called Great Strike — that put the strike in the context
of urban history; railroad encroachment on the streets gave Stowell the means to that end.
Though his work used similar documents to those employed by this study—city council
proceedings and newspapers are his chief sources—Streets, Railroads, and the Great
Strike of 1877 remains purely a work of social history “from below.” The battle over
public spaces and the social consequences of railroad encroachment form a central part of
this dissertation, though I move beyond social history to investigate the role of political
decisions at the local, state, and federal levels and demonstrate how those decisions were
paramount in shaping Chicago’s railroad space.

An underlying theme in this dissertation is the importance of structures in shaping
society. I am not a deterrninist, but I believe historians often give short shrift to
structures while overvaluing the power of human agency. I show that political, physical,

and social structures all played extremely signiﬁcant roles in determining the urban

 

6 Exemplary monographs from these historians include Christopher Hill, The English Revolution I 640
(London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1940); accessed at http://www.marxists.or2/archive/hill-
christopher/english-revolution/ on 20 November 2009; Eric Hobsbawm and George Rude, Captain Swing
(London: Phoenix Press, 1999, 2001); and George Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (London:
Oxford University Press, 1959).

experience in nineteenth-century Chicago. In sum, railroads in streets limited how, when,
and where people could move through the city; the railroads were given permission to lay
track in public spaces by city politicians whose right to do so was prescribed by the state
of Illinois; and working-class people who lived near the railroads were affected more by
the negative consequences of railroad development than were wealthier individuals who
could afford to live elsewhere. The transition to the industrial era in a city provides an
opportunity to underscore the limits on human agency. Historian Barbara Young Welke

is in accord with this assertion in Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and
the Railroad Revolution, 1865-1920.7 She showed that the American concept of liberty
changed at the end of the nineteenth century. Before industrialization, liberty meant that

individuals, especially adult men, had the ability to act autonomously; after,

“[d]ependence, rather than autonomy, was the hallmark of modern life.”8 She
demonstrated that the new locomotive technology represented an extreme break with the
past—with the pre-industrial era. It was presumed to be a boon to society, yet its
imposing presence posed a constant threat to public health and safety. People were not
able to control the new industrial technologies, and thus human action became
circumscribed by the movement and actions of these technologies. Gender and race also
played key roles in deﬁning the new American liberty, but the technology marked the
change.

This dissertation tells the story of a transition of Chicago’s built environment

from a frontier town to an industrial city, and it does so by analyzing railroads. It is a

 

7 Barbara Young Welke, Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution,
1865-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

8 Ibid., xi.

10

story of Chicago politics from the 18405 through the 18705, and, as such, Robin

Einhom’s Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872 must be

considered.9 Property Rules is currently the standard work on Chicago politics during
the period. Einhom’s impeccably researched book focused on the Chicago Common
Council proceedings ﬁles from 1833 to 1871. Einhorn was the ﬁrst historian to use the
ﬁles, which were discovered in a warehouse in 1984. (The proceedings ﬁles also form
the foundation of this study, though I focused speciﬁcally on ﬁles that touched on

railroad matters.) Property Rules argues that Chicago city government from “about 1845

to about 1865” operated through what Einhom terms a “segmented system.”10 The
Common Council made its political decisions within the segmented system, but its most
important decisions dealt with the construction and funding of public works projects.
Few projects were funded through general taxation at the time. If people wanted to pave
a street, for example, abutting property owners would have petitioned the Council, and, if
the paving was approved, each property owner along the section of street to be paved
would have been assessed a payment to fund the paving. These special assessments

formed the heart of the segmented system, a system that “limited urban citizenship to the

l 1
owners of real estate.”

The segmented system was “designed to prevent all political redistribution of
individual wealt ,” and, in so doing, it “depoliticized municipal government” by

“reduc[ing] political decision-making to an administrative process driven directly by

 

9 Robin Einhorn, Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, I 833-1872 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991, 2001).

'0 Ibid., 16.
” Ibid., 17.

11

‘interested’ property owners”!2 It was free of corruption, and represented a
decentralization of political decision-making that reﬂected “the same logic” as the
Jacksonian internal improvements debate. ‘3 The only people who exercised power in the
segmented system were the propertied classes; it was not democratic by any means. This
system, which was justiﬁed in terms of private interests, gave way to a Gilded Age
system based on a public interest in which special assessments were only used “as a
revenue expedient rather than a policy instrument.”14 The public interest was deﬁned by
Gilded Age millionaires instead of Jacksonian boosters, and was marked by the upward
redistribution of city resources. “The transition from segmented government to the new
public interest in Chicago was the transition from Jacksonian to Gilded Age politics in

the United States?” Though the shape of city government changed, “power barely

changed hands at all.”'6

Einhom’s analysis represented a challenge to urban historians’ prevailing story of
nineteenth-century American urban politics. This earlier paradigm asserted that the
neocorporate model (in the West, this was the “booster” model) of urban government was
transplanted to the American colonies by the British in the eighteenth century. 17 This

model of govemment—in which individuals with an economic stake in the city held all

 

'2 lbid., 18.
13 .
Ibrd., 25.
'4 Ibid., 229-30.
'5 Ibid., 241.
'6 Ibid., 243.

17 See Jon Teaford, The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650-
1825 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), for the best summary of American urban govemment’s
English roots. See also Richard Wade, The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati,
Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), for an explanation of
Western cities’ Eastern roots.

12

political power and focused on regulating urban commerce—gave way in the mid- to
late-nineteenth centuries to ward-based machine government—generally viewed by
historians either as a failure due to massive corruption, or as a victory for inclusive
democracy—which lasted until the Progressive era. The neocorporate/booster

government was centralized, whereas machine politics marked a decentralization of

urban government. ‘8 Einhom’s interpretation marks a break from the booster-to-machine
transition by maintaining that the segmented system represents a distinct political period
in Chicago between Jacksonian boosterism and the new public interest/machine politics
of the Gilded Age. It was extremely decentralized, while machine politics represented
political consolidation and centralization.

The importance of Einhorn’s work should not be understated. There is no
denying that special assessment played a signiﬁcant role in Chicago government and
helped mark a deﬁnitive transition from Jacksonian booster politics to the public interest
politics of the Gilded Age. This study is in accord with Einhom’s contention that the
period of Jacksonian boosterism was deﬁned by a decentralized political system in
Chicago. I maintain that this decentralization was represented not only by special
assessment, but also through a chartered municipal political form that gave disparate
aldermanic committees of the Common Council formidable decision-making power until
the new Chicago city charters of the early 18605, at which time decision-making was
centralized through professional boards such as the Board of Public Works.

Although this dissertation concurs with much of Einhom’s analysis, it disagrees

with Einhom’s chief argument. I contend that, though special assessment was an

 

'8 See Samuel P. Hays, “The Changing Political Structure of the City in Industrial America,” Journal of
Urban History 1:1 (November 1974), 6-38, especially pp. 6-16.

13

important administrative tool used by the Chicago Common Council, the segmented
system did not deﬁne Chicago politics from the 18405 to the 18605. The case of railroad
development shows a Council that made a complete transition from boosterism to public
interest politics by the 18605; the segmented system was a part of the political transition,
but it was not a distinct stage in Chicago politics. Railroad development decisions
sometimes ﬁt within and sometimes fell outside of Einhom’s deﬁnition of the segmented
system. For example, booster alderrnen at times approved railroad rights-of-way despite
heavy opposition from abutting property owners; yet right-of—way ordinances often
required railroads to improve the street on which they ran, which seemed to correspond to
the segmented system philosophy of “you want it, you pay for it” (in this case, it was
“you want right-of-way, you pay to maintain the street”).

But the simple fact that railroad politics was about more than taxes is what truly

exposes the ﬂaws with proclaiming that special assessment was a “policy instrument”

rather than a “revenue expedient.”l9 Battles over railroad development often came down
to the protection of human lives. The fact that nearly all Chicagoans were simultaneously
experiencing the physical threat of railroads for the ﬁrst time may have made the issue
more tangible to wealthy booster-aldermen. Whatever the reason, these alderrnen took
heed of the petitions sent by workers and property owners alike about the need for
railroad safety laws. Though they may not have been in positions of power, the concerns
of working-class people, at least regarding the railroads, were being listened to. The rich

and powerful may often have had the ﬁnal say in political decisions, but Chicago city

 

‘9 Einhom, 229.

14

government of the 18405 through the 18605 was more democratic than Einhom’s
description of the segmented system made it out to be.

The opinions of the workers, small landholders, and small business owners were
heeded even more in the 18605 after the ward map was reshaped to reﬂect neighborhood
representation and the professional Board of Public Works replaced various aldermanic
boards as a central body for the execution of public works projects. Einhom claims
“Chicagoans created the BPW not to centralize decision making or to redistribute wealth,
but to coordinate administration in order to preserve property owners’ local control,” but
the truth is it did centralize decision making and redistribute wealth, and property

owners’ local control was challenged more frequently after the formation of the BPW

than before.20 Railroad safety ordinances were enforced and railroad viaducts were built
by the BPW; the construction of these viaducts was funded in large part by the city’s
general fund. Chicago city politics was deﬁned by a new public interest in the 18605, but
it was not just an interest built on upward redistribution deﬁned by the Gilded Age
millionaire elite; the public interest was to some extent about protecting the health and
safety of the general public. In other words, it was a public interest, not a special interest
in the guise of a public interest.

Finally, this work engages the historiography of American municipal political
development. It provides evidence for the broad analyses of historians Jon Teaford and
Eric Monkkonen. The changing political reaction by the Chicago Common Council
towards the railroads from the 18405 to the 18705 substantiates Monkkonen’s assertion

that nineteenth-century American cities made a transition from entities that were deﬁned

 

20113111., 183.

15

by a focus on economic regulation to ones that attempted to ameliorate problems
attendant with urban growth by providing services such as police and ﬁre protection and
water and sewage services. The actions of the Chicago Common Council in regard to the
railroads reﬂect this transition: the Council initially focused on economic development,

while it began to concentrate on improving the negative spatial consequences of railroad

development in the 18605.21

This further gives evidence for Jon Teaford’s story of American city government
during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. He showed in The Unheralded
Triumph: City Government in America, [870-1900 that city governments were quite
effective in providing services for city residents. Though the eclectic mix of
professionals, upper-class mayors, working-class aldermen, and state assemblymen
involved in various aspects of municipal governance and administration were often
distrustful of each other, Teaford demonstrated that city governments nevertheless
provided a level of service to nineteenth-century American city residents that was
unparalleled in cities throughout the world. This dissertation gives further evidence for
Teaford’s conclusions, for the transition of Chicago’s municipal government towards a
focus on making the city’s public spaces safer for city residents involved a mix of
professionals, aldermen, and mayors that was shaped by the frequent city charters drafted
by the Illinois General Assembly to cope with Chicago’s explosive growth. Though the

various parties may not have always been in perfect accord, they nonetheless worked

 

2] Eric Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban: The Development of US. Cities and Towns, 1780-1980
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

16

together to make Chicago a safer, more livable city by reshaping and regulating its public

22
spaces.

Chapter One discusses the early railroad era and describes how the Common
Council acted as unabashed boosters for the city of Chicago. Chapter Two focuses on
how railroads shaped Chicago’s public spaces by discussing the hazards and
inconveniences that railroads brought to the people of the city. Chapter Three examines
the transitional period in the 18505 during which the Common Council began to legislate
for the protection of the public safety, yet it often did not have the enforcement power or
the will to effectively enforce this legislation; in other words, economic development
continued to trump the public interest when the Council made laws regarding railroad
space. Chapter Four discusses the Council’s shift in the 18605 from booster to public
interest politics. Finally, the conclusion uses the Illinois Central lakefront case and the

Great Fire to resolve the key issues addressed in this dissertation.

 

22 Jon Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, I 870-] 900 (Baltimore, Md.: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).

17

CHAPTER 1: THE RAILROADS COME TO CHICAGO, 1848—1852

A steam locomotive ﬁrst rolled through the city of Chicago on October 26, 1848.
The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad—a corporation run by prominent Chicago
residents including William Ogden, J. Young Scammon, and John Wentworth—
purchased a second-hand engine that was shipped across the Great Lakes from upstate
New York. After having ﬁt the engine with a new boiler and some updated parts, the
railroad company sent the locomotive—~appropriately dubbed “Pioneer”—on its initial
journey from Chicago westward, towards the Des Plaines River. It traveled only ﬁve
miles—the additional ﬁve miles of track that were needed to reach the river would not be
completed until December. Nevertheless, this experimental journey validated the name
of the engine, for it pioneered locomotive transport for its parent company and for the
burgeoning frontier city of Chicago.1

Politicians and residents throughout the state of Illinois became caught up in the
nationwide push for internal improvements in the 18205 and 18305.2 They logically
viewed the development of transportation and communication links with the people and
money of the east as the key to the economic and demographic growth of the west.

Chicago’s connections to other parts of the country were expanded during this period, but

 

1 Chicago Journal, October 26, 1848. Cited in David Young, The Iron Horse in the Winay City: How
Railroads Shaped Chicago (DeKaIb, 111.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), 24. The early history of
the Galena Railroad and the initial journey is described in Bessie Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago:
Volume II: From Town to City, [848-1871 (New York: Alﬁ'ed A. Knopf, 1940), 35, and A.T. Andreas,
History of Chicago ﬁom the Earliest Period to the Present Time: Volume I: Ending with the Year 185 7
(Chicago: A.T. Andreas, 1884), 248.

For descriptions and analyses of the national push for internal improvements in Jacksonian America, see
Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of Canals and Railroads, 1800-1890 (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1960); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (New York:
Harper & Row, 1951); Balthasar Henry Meyer, History of Transportation in the United States Before 1860
(Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1917); Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America,
1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society,
Personality, and Politics (Homewood, Ill.: The Dorsey Press, 1969, 1978), 122-137.

18

not because of the actions of people in Illinois. The project that ﬁrst facilitated Chicago’s
connection to the east was the Erie Canal. Opening in 1825 and funded by the state of
New York, it connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie, and thus connected Chicago by
water to the East coast, though Michigan stood in the way of a direct link; ships had to

run the entire length of both Lakes Huron and Michigan to get their wares to Chicago

from the east.3 Nevertheless, the Erie Canal and its heavy trafﬁc excited the imaginations
of Illinois’s populace.

City boosters such as Scammon, Wentworth, and Ogden knew that access to
transportation networks was the key to Chicago’s growth, and they did what they could to
emphasize what they perceived as the city’s natural transportation advantages. One of
these advantages was Chicago’s location at the mouth of the languid Chicago River. The
river’s lazy ﬂow resulted in large deposits of sand that proved both fortuitous and
annoying for those arriving to Chicago by nautical means: fortuitous because it became a
natural protective barrier from storms for ships docked at the mouth of the river; but
annoying for large ships that ran aground on the sandbar. This less-than-ideal harbor was
a relative advantage for Chicago, for there were no other nearby locations on the
southwestern shore of Lake Michigan that even resembled a harbor. This would only
remain a viable port, however, through the constant dredging of sand, which was funded

in large part by boosters who believed in the importance of ship access to the growth of

the city.4

 

3 See Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862 (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1996) for a comprehensive history of the Erie Canal.

4 For discussion of the harbor’s tendency to ﬁll with sand, see William Cronon, Nature ’5 Metropolis:
Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991), 55-56. For discussion of the
Common Council’s attempts at funding the dredging of the harbor, see Robin Einhom, Property Rules:

19

Illinois also attempted to build its own canal soon after the early success of the
Erie Canal. The state government was bestowed a land grant by the federal government
in 1827 to aid in the construction of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, which was to join the
Chicago River with the Illinois River, and thus connect the Great Lakes (and, with the
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the east coast) to the Mississippi River system. In
1830, a commission was sent to survey the proposed canal site. During this survey, the
original town of Chicago was plotted for the ﬁrst time. Some lots were sold to fund the
survey, and in 1831 Cook County was given twenty-four lots with the understanding that
the proceeds from their sale would be used to construct public buildings for the city. The
lots sold quickly, and, though the construction of the canal initially fell through due to a
failure to secure Eastern capital, word of a canal eventually being built in Chicago
combined with the paciﬁcation of Native Americans in the area during the Black Hawk
War in 1832 led to a land boom in the city. From the beginning, Chicago was built on
speculation and a belief that the road to a city’s economic success started in the ability to

make property a private commodity, the value of which was tied directly to its

transportation networks.5

 

Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 66-67, 77, and “A
Taxing Dilemma: Early Lake Shore Protection,” Chicago History 18:3 (Fall 1989): 34-51.

5 For the history of the Illinois & Michigan Canal and its effect on Chicago, see Cronon, 64; Bessie Louise
Pierce, A History of Chicago: Volume I: The Beginning of a City, 1673-1848 (New York: Alﬁ'ed Knopf,
1937), 46; Andreas, I, 165-173; James Putnam, The Illinois and Michigan Canal: A Study in Economic
History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918); Michael Conzen and Kay Carr, eds., The Illinois and
Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor: A Guide to Its History and Sources (DeKalb, 111.: Northern
Illinois University Press, 1988); John Lamb, A Corridor in Time: I & M Canal, 1836-1986 (Romeoville,
"1.: Lewis University Press, 1987). Homer Hoyt’s One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago: The
Relationship of the Growth of Chicago to the Rise of Its Land Values, 1830-1933 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1933; reprint, Washington, DC: Beard Books, 2000), 3-44, describes the rise in Chicago
land values and the rampant land speculation that resulted from both the rumor of and the actual
construction of the canal. See Kerry Trask, Black Hawk: The Battle for the Heart of America (New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 2006) for a history of the Black Hawk War.

20

Chicago land speculators and residents who bought land during the initial
Chicago land boom would have to wait a few years to recoup their investments. The

nationwide economic panic of 1837 destroyed the value of property in the city and

brought the collapse of the ambitious state-sponsored internal improvements program.6
The Illinois & Michigan Canal was ﬁnally completed in 1848—-—twelve years after ground
had been broken and over two decades since the project was initially conceived—after
canal developers ﬁnally secured European funding and other loans. A number of other
projects, including some railroads, failed because of the Panic. Others, including the
Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, were resurrected; groups of individuals intent on
seeing these once-failed projects through to completion claimed their expired charters.

Though the Illinois & Michigan Canal—both the idea and the actual waterway—
played an important role in the initial growth of Chicago, the true catalyst for the
economic and demographic growth of the city was the development of railroads.
Railroads could run throughout the year, whereas water transport was at the mercy of the
elements: canal and lake transport slowed or came to a halt in the winter due to ice, and
canals and rivers became unnavigable during droughts or ﬂoods. Also, railroads could be
built nearly anywhere there was a perceived need; canals were geographically limited to
connecting larger bodies of water. Chicago’s advantageous location relative to the Lake
Michigan trade, and its ﬂat, swampy prairie that kept the price of railroad construction
low helped initially attract early railroads to the city. Though railroads did not

completely replace canals and other inland water routes as important modes of inter- and

 

6 Hoyt,'37-44.

21

intra-state transportation, they nevertheless became the chief form of long-distance

transport in the United States from the 18605.7
Once the “Pioneer” took its initial ﬁve-mile journey along the tracks of the
Galena & Chicago Union Railroad in 1848, little time passed before more railroads

whose intended terminus was Chicago applied for special charters of incorporation from

the Illinois legislature.8 From the initial land boom of the 18305, Chicago proved to be a
city where residents and investors were quick to jump on trends that had the possibility of
economic growth, even if the risk of loss was great. Railroads were one of these trends,
and the enthu5iasm for them in Chicago in particular led to a city ﬁlled with railroad
tracks.

In order for a railroad to build in the city of Chicago during the early years of
railroad development, permission was required from two levels of government. First, the
railroad needed to obtain a corporate charter from the state in which it sought to build.
The corporate business form was the only viable way to raise the large amount of capital
needed to start a railroad; in order to become a corporation, a railroad needed a charter

from each state in which it built. After having obtained a charter, the railroad corporation

 

7 See George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, [815-1860 (New York: Harper & Row,
1951), for a general discussion of the development of transportation in the United States during the
antebellum period. He argues that the transportation revolution of the era was a story of one primary form
of transportation succeeding another. In short, roads and tumpikes were succeeded by canals, rivers, and
lakes, which were in turn succeeded by railroads. Taylor admits that the trafﬁc on some canals and
waterways continued to grow even into the railroad era: “It is true that some canals, like the Erie and the
Delaware and Raritan were still greatly expanding their business, that natural waterways such as the
Mississippi and the Hudson had not yet reached the peak of their usefulness [by 1860, the year Taylor
maintains as the beginning of railroad supremacy]? (102) The Illinois & Michigan Canal appears to be
another example of a canal that expanded its business during the apex of the railroad era. The canal, which
ran ﬁ'om Lake Michigan at the south side Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago for a length of ninety-six
miles to the Illinois River at LaSalle, Illinois, lost its passenger traffic to the Chicago & Rock Island
Railroad, which ran parallel to the canal and began service in 1853. The rapid growth of industrial
establishments in Chicago kept the canal viable; it reached its peak shipping year in 1882, over twenty
years into Taylor’s railroad era, and thirty-four years after the ﬁrst train rolled through Chicago.

The ﬁrst general incorporation law was passed in 1870 as part of the new Illinois state constitution.

22

could go about selling stocks and bonds and soliciting loans in order to obtain the cash
necessary to purchase rails, engines, rolling stock, land and right-of-way, and any other
essentials.

In Illinois, railroad corporations received charters through acts of special
legislation during only the earliest years of railroad development. Though a general
incorporation act was not passed until 1870, railroad fever spread in the state at such a
rapid rate that the General Assembly found it necessary to pass an act to provide for “a
general system of railroad incorporations” in November of 1849. “It provided that not
less than twenty-ﬁve persons might form a railroad corporation, and elect directors when
$1,000 of stock per mile should be subscribed, and ten per cent paid in. Thirteen
directors were to be chosen, at least seven of whom must reside in counties through
which the road was to run. Rules were laid down for the conduct of the directors, making

the stockholders individually liable to the creditors of the company to the amount of stock

held by them.”9

The rule about the residency of the directors prevented the early eastern trunk
lines and ﬁerce rivals, the Michigan Southern Railroad and Michigan Central Railroad,
from obtaining charters to build in Illinois. Instead, the Michigan Central made an
agreement to share track rights in Illinois with the Illinois Central, and the Michigan
Southern did the same with the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad. The fact that, at the
time, there was no limited liability in the state of Illinois—a feature of the modern
corporation, where investors stand to lose only their investment if a corporation fails—

likely prevented some individuals with big dreams and bad ideas from applying for

 

9 Andreas, I, 252.

23

corporate charters. The general railroad incorporation act also laid down a variety of
other rules, from fare regulation to safety provisions. For safety, the state intelligently
made it illegal for a railroad to place a freight car behind a car containing passengers, and
a large bell or steam whistle was a mandatory feature on locomotives. The General

Assembly even mandated large warning signs at crossings; unfortunately, this did not

apply to crossings at city streets, where, arguably, they were needed most.10

The General Assembly granted 321 corporate charters to railroads from 1850 to
1869—nearly a ﬁfth of all corporate charters granted as special legislation from
statehood in 1818 to the end of special acts of incorporation in 1869. Two of the earliest
railroads to enter the city—the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad and the Illinois Central

Railroad—originally received their charters in 1836, though, because of the Panic of

1837, their charters lay dormant until the late 18405 and early 18505. 11 (Again, though
railroads after November 5, 1849, received charters under the act for general
incorporation of railroads, a true general incorporation act did not exist until 1870; they
are therefore considered special legislation.)

\ Many of these chartered railroad corporations found their way to Chicago, which
was the unquestioned railroad hub of North America by the mid-18505. If the railroads
hoped to enter Chicago, they had to request permission from the Common Council after
having received their corporate charters. Chicago held the rights of a chartered municipal

corporation, which meant that a business corporation could only enter the city limits after

 

'0 Ibid.

M John Eilbert, “Illinois Business Incorporations, 1816-1869,” Business History Review 37:3 (Autumn
1963), 169-181. Andreas, I, 246. Illinois and Virginia were the only two states to not allow limited liability
until after 1850. See Thomas Childs Cochran, Business in American Life: A History (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1972), 65.

24

an ordinance was passed that gave that corporation the right to do so. As a chartered

municipal corporation, Chicago was able to regulate commerce, collect taxes, provide for

public health and safety, and control the city’s streets and public spaces.12 The story of
Chicago’s railroad era was more than simply that of a city that grew as a result of
transportation technology and geographical serendipity. The railroads gave the political
representatives of the young city a chance to test the key components that made Chicago
a city. Public space and the public good, health and safety, the regulation of commerce—
the Council’s experience with the railroads on these issues played a key role in deﬁning
the city’s political culture for years to come, not to mention Chicago’s built environment
and economy. The members of the Chicago Common Council, in giving railroads
permission to enter the city, helped turn Chicago into the industrial and commercial
capital of the middle of the United States, and, in so doing, transformed Chicago into a
city of rails, smoke, and locomotives.

Chicago’s transition from a frontier outpost to a commercial and industrial center
began in 1848 with the arrival of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (G&CU). The
G&CU, unlike railroads that came later, was a local venture. It was funded primarily
though stock subscriptions of individuals along the line from Chicago to Galena, a
booming lead mining town near the Mississippi River. Real estate speculator and

original Chicago mayor William B. Ogden was the president the corporation; his partners

 

‘2 See Jon Teaford, The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 165 0-
1825 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) for a concise explanation of the early American
municipal corporation.

25

included such prominent Chicago citizens and fellow Whigs as banker and publisher J.

Young Scammon and merchant Walter Newberry.13

The G&CU’s great economic potential even brought political enemies together.
Its story shows that business was often more important than politics to the prominent
Chicago boosters who played important roles in the early years of the G&CU. “Long”
John Wentworth—the Democrat-then-Republican newspaper publisher, US.

Representative, and Chicago mayor—was a large stockholder and chairman of the

executive committee of the railroad’s corporate board. 14 Though Walter Newberry was a
Whig, Wentworth and Newberry stood together against the management of the railroad
as practiced by William Ogden and his successor, John B. Turner. Partisan politics were

not as important as sound railroad management that would make Wentworth, Newberry,

and their allies as much money as possible.ls

Despite William Ogden’s standing in Chicago politics and society, the initial
right-of-way ordinance he presented to the Council failed to pass. Even more surprising
is that he initially introduced the ordinance to the Council in 1847, during which time he
was an alderman for the newly formed Ninth Ward. The surprising aspect of this is not
that Ogden had a blatant conﬂict of interest—the ethics regarding this were different in

the nineteenth-century than they are today—but that he played such a proactive role and

still could not get it enacted the ﬁrst time.16

 

l3 Cronon, 65-8. Andreas, I, 247-251.
14 Andreas, I, 625.

15 Don Fahrenbacher, Chicago Giant: A Biography of “Long John” Wentworth (Madison, Wi.: American
History Research Center, 1957), 166-8, 215-16.
16 Saul Engelbourg’s Power and Morality: American Business Ethics, 1 840-191 4 (Westport, Conn.:

Greenwood Press, 1980), is one of the few publications that discusses the idea of conﬂict of interest during
the period, though he focuses speciﬁcally on conﬂict of interest within business—for example, board

26

The aldermen did not pass the ordinance in part because Chicago’s merchants felt
the railroad would threaten the wagon trade, a fact that demonstrates the transitional
nature of the economy in Chicago, from a pre-industrial economy based primarily on
local trade to an industrial economy based on processing, manufacturing, and interstate
commerce. Also, a number of individuals accused Ogden of trying to enrich himself by
having the railroad constructed along Kinzie Street—an east-west street that ran just
north of the main branch of the Chicago River, and thus immediately north of .
downtown—and having the depot built on the North Side, where Ogden owned
property.17 Of course, there were no illusions that Ogden and the other directors
attempted to shape the railroad so as to help augment their personal fortunes. Though
they and the executives of other railroads claimed that, above all, they built the railroads
for the public good, people could easily see through the altruistic claim. It must be noted,
though, that Ogden and many other men who were seminal in making the G&CU
operational were true city boosters, men who wanted to see Chicago grow and thrive;
they believed the railroad would help facilitate its growth. This seemingly irreconcilable
combination of pure greed and public spiritedness seemed a required dialectic among
Chicago’s booster elite, the do-it-all group who made—and sometimes lost—their
fortunes in speculative real estate, received their political education in the Jacksonian era
and frequently exercised it in local government, and often connected themselves to

railroad ventures, which were the perfect vessels in which to reconcile personal greed and

 

members of a corporation who pushed to contract out work to a business they owned. He does not discuss
the idea as I have seen it in my research, where politicians attempt to enrich themselves by swaying politics
to serve their business interests.

17 Cronon, 66. Hoyt, 55.

27

public good, since successful railroads brought prosperity to both the booster and the
boosted.
Without right-of-way into Chicago, the G&CU began construction outside of the

city in the spring of 1848. It also worked on its wharves, which were located on the

North Branch of the Chicago River, at Kinzie and Fulton Streets.18 Obviously, by
investing money and labor into their wharves that spring, the directors planned on the
railroad entering the city on Kinzie Street and were conﬁdent they would receive
permission from the alderrnen for it to enter there. The initial negative vote on their
ri t-of-way ordinance must have come as a surprise, but they nevertheless stuck to the
plan: they owned wharves on the North Branch of the river, and a Kinzie Street route
would give them easy access to Lake Michigan and the lake trade.

The directors had very little to worry about. They received permission in June to

build a temporary track along Kinzie Street to the river so they had track on which to

place the “Pioneer” when it arrived from New York.19 In July, the G&CU received right-
of-way in an ordinance passed by the Council. This ordinance would have a profound
effect on the built environment of the city, for, as the original right-of-way ordinance for
a steam railroad in Chicago, it would act as a model for future right-of-way ordinances.
The ordinance stipulated that G&CU:

introduce their road into the city on the Line of Kinzie street, commencing at the
west bounds of the city and extending to the north branch of the Chicago river,
and to occupy so much of said street as may be necessary for the purpose of
constructing, maintaining, using and occupying a single or double railroad track
through said street, with such turn-outs, tum-tables and branches extending to
adjoining lands as may be deemed necessary to the successful use and occupation
of said road: Provided, The space occupied by said road, except when turn-outs,

 

‘8 Chicago City Council Proceedings Files [hereafter CP], 1848/48 4530A 04/28.
19
Andreas, I, 248.

28

turn-tables, and branches occur, does not exceed twenty-two feet in width in the
centre of said street: And Provided, Said work be constructed that carriages may
pass along either side of said road, and may conveniently cross the same: And
Provided, also, The common council reserve to itself the right to regulate running
of locomotives on said road within the limits of the city.

Other sections of the ordinance allowed the company to build tracks on Water Street

“part of the way or all of the way to the east limits of the city”—in other words, to Lake

21

Michigan—and to construct a drawbridge across the north branch of the river.

    

I
c

Figure I. The Galena & Chicago nion Railroad. Its tracks entered from the west and followed just north
of the main branch of the Chicago River in Kinzie and North Water Streets to Lake Michigan. 1863.
(University of Chicago Library)

   

This ordinance bestowed broad powers and beneﬁts upon the G&CU. First, it
gave the railroad corporation free right-of-way into the city. The Council let the G&CU
enter almost unconditionally; it reserved “the right to regulate running of locomotives on
said road within the limits of the city” and the right to locate the portion of track in and

near Water Street “in such a manner as [it] may hereafter direct,” but that is all the

 

2° Chicago Common Council, George and John Thompson, eds. The Charter and Ordinances of the City of
Chicago, (T a Sept. 15, I 85 6, inclusive, ) together with Acts of the General Assembly Relating to the City.
and Other Miscellaneous Acts, with an Appendix (Chicago: D.B. Cooke & Co., 1856), 341-2.

2' Ibid., 343.

29

Council asked of the railroad in exchange for right-of-way.22 Next, the G&CU was given
the right to transform the built environment along its corridor. Most signiﬁcant was the
permission to build its track or tracks down the center of the street, a public thoroughfare.
Kinzie and Water Streets were each approximately forty feet wide, which means the

public would likely have had only about nine feet on each side of the tracks to share with

horses, carts, and pedestrians.23

In hindsight, the na’r'veté of the Council passing an ordinance that gave the railroad
such liberal terms to enter the city seems almost comical. Yet the Council let the G&CU
enter the city under the auspices of such an ordinance for reasons that are quite logical.
The alderrnen offered the liberal terms of right-of-way because they were city boosters;
they wanted to build Chicago into a thriving metropolis, and they believed railroads were
a part of the infrastructure that could help them achieve this goal. Liberal rights-of-way
to railroads ﬁt comfortably into the modus operandi of the city booster aldermen, for
word of Chicago’s welcoming atmosphere toward the G&CU would surely have attracted
more railroads, which would in turn have brought more business and trade into the city.
The aldermen were deﬁnitely thinking ahead, but they were not forward thinking. Their
booster mentality took shape in the Jacksonian era, when Americans witnessed the

growth of commerce. But they had not yet seen the furious pace at which railroads and

 

22 Ibid., 342-3.

23 Width of streets calculated by using the map entitled “Chicago: drawn from Davie’s atlas with the latest
recorded subdivisions by W.L. Flower and J. Van Vechten” (Chicago: Charles Shober, 1863). This may
not be a completely accurate calculation of the width because the scale on the map may not be completely
accurate, and, more signiﬁcantly, the map was made ﬁfteen years after the G&CU initially built. I assume,
though, that the street was, if a different width, narrower than it is portrayed on the map. In 1863, there
were many more people and much more trafﬁc on the street than in 1848, which means, if anything, the
street was widened to accommodate the population and trafﬁc growth.

30

the corporate business form they represented would transform not only the economy but

also urban space.24
In Chicago, this spatial transformation began when the alderrnen let the G&CU

build tracks in the middle of Kinzie and Water Streets. Streets were considered public

thoroughfares that the Council had exclusive power to control and regulate.25 It had the
power to let a corporation into the city under its terms, and, since the Council controlled
the streets, it could allow railroads to build there. Again, this was a logical decision on
the part of the Council: these streets were not heavily populated, and the tracks were to
run primarily through industrial areas where businesses would ﬁnd the location of a
railroad beneﬁcial. Nevertheless, a steam locomotive—which was larger, faster, and
more powerful than any preceding terrestrial transportation technology—was likely to
stamp a city street in any neighborhood with its new, unique presence and abilities.

The decision to let the G&CU build down the middle of a street goes deeper than
the fact that the aldermen held the power to give railroads permission to use public space.
It also resulted from how they deﬁned public space at the time—a deﬁnition that was
built on J acksonian boosterism. A remonstrance against the G&CU—one of the few

complaints to the Common Council against railroad development during the period—

 

24 For analyses of boosterism in Chicago and other Midwestern cities, see Richard Wade, The Urban
Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1959); Carl Abbott, Boosters and Businessmen: Popular Economic Thought
and Urban Growth in the Antebellum Middle West (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981); Don
Harrison Doyle, The Social Order of a Frontier Community: Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825- 70 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1978); Rima Lunin Schultz, “The Businessman’s Role in Western Settlement:
The Entrepreneurial Frontier, Chicago, 1833-1872,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1985);
Einhom, 28-60.

25 Chicago Common Council, George and John Thompson, eds. The Charter and Ordinances of the City of
Chicago, (T 0 Sept. 15, I 85 6, inclusive, ) together with Acts of the General Assembly Relating to the City,
and Other Miscellaneous Acts, with an Appendix (Chicago: D.B. Cooke & Co., 1856), 26. See also the Old
City Charter (1837), 503-22, for provisions about the use of streets and public space.

31

helps explain how members of the Council and other city property owners deﬁned public
space. William Johnston was “the owner of sundry lots of land in the City of Chicago
lying north of (Water Street)? the value of which “would be greatly injured by the
extension of (the G&CU)” across the north branch of the Chicago River and upon Water
Street. He was also not happy to have paid a special assessment to have Water Street
opened adjacent to his property a year earlier, just to have a railroad built upon the very
same street. Mr. Johnston paid taxes to have a public space—part of Water Street—
opened, and he had a speciﬁc idea of how that space should be used, or at least how it
should not be used. He was afraid that the presence of locomotives and their negative
aspects—noise and air pollution, the possibility of causing bodily injury, obstruction to
travel, spatial isolation that could harm local businesses—would negatively affect his
property. Also, he felt that he should have had some say into how Water Street could be

used since he paid $780 to have the road opened. The G&CU, on the other hand, paid

nothing for the privilege of laying track on Water Street. 26

The Common Council did not agree with Mr. J ohnston’s complaint. In its
response, which was presented at the next Council meeting only a week after William
Johnston’s lawyer submitted his remonstrance, the Council summarily discounted his
grievances. A committee of aldermen from the North Division—the area of the city in
which the G&CU built, which lies north of the north branch of the Chicago River—
claimed that “public works of great magnitude may occasion such grievances. . . [but] they
are only incidental to all public improvements, and of such character as tend ultimately to

the common good.” They believed the right-of-way ordinance was supported by

 

26 CP 1850/50 6664A 12/23.

32

overwhelming numbers of the city’s residents, that the actions requested by Mr. Johnston
could have a negative “effect. . .on the commerce of a growing and populous city;” they
also felt that backing out of the ordinance would be a breach of trust towards the railroad,

which would have been a slight towards William Ogden, an esteemed former member of

the Council.27

This reaction demonstrates how the Jacksonian booster mentality of the aldermen
shaped their understanding of the appropriate use of public space such as the streets. The
development of “public improvements” such as the G&CU were for the “the common
good;” thus they were allowed to build on streets, spaces that are set aside for public,
“common” uses. When we examine this language in the context of the alderrnen’s
understanding of railroad corporations, the Council’s administration of public space
becomes clear. The Council did not perceive of corporations as being motivated
principally by proﬁts; this characterization did not develop until a few years into the
industrial era, during which railroads played an important role in giving plenty of
evidence for the redeﬁnition of corporations as private, proﬁt-seeking bodies. It instead

deﬁned corporations using an Early National and J acksonian perspective: corporations

were chartered to carry out services that were considered to be in the public interest.28

Transportation interests such as canals and railroads were often given corporate charters

for the public good they provided as purveyors of internal improvements.29 This

 

27 CP 1850/50 6671A l2/30.

28 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, [815-1848 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 525-69.

29 See John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular
Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), for a

comprehensive discussion of the national push for internal improvements during the ﬁrst half of the
nineteenth century.

33

Jacksonian-era boosterism carried over into the early years of Chicago’s transition to an
industrial economy.

This episode also underscores the absolute power held by the Council over the use
of public space. William Johnston owned property and paid a special assessment to open
a street, which he hoped would boost the value of that property. But the only thing
guaranteed by his assessment was the opening of the street. Johnston had no ﬁrrther
power over the use of the street that he paid to open. This is evidence against historian

Robin Einhom’s assertion that Chicago politics of the period were deﬁned by a

segmented system based on special assessment.30 The power of the segmented system
stemmed from property owners’ ability to control their property by inﬂuencing
surrounding public space. Mr. Johnston’s inability to control this space despite the fact
that he paid for what he believed was the privilege to do 50 shows that special
assessment, in this case, was simply a “revenue expedient,” a tool of administration used

by the Council to raise city funds. Mr. Johnston’s assessment was clearly not an effective

“policy instrument.”31 The Council’s politics, at least regarding railroad development,
were not in complete accord with the wishes of taxpaying property holders. They did not
have to be, because the Council—not the taxpaying property holders—held absolute
control over the use of the city’s public spaces.

The Council administered the use of these spaces in the social context of
nineteenth-century cities, which saw diverse uses of city streets. Streets were set aside as
public spaces of transportation, commerce, and socialization. Most urban centers during

the middle of the nineteenth century were mixed use areas, and the streets of these

 

30 Einhom, passim.
3‘ Einhom, 229.

34

neighborhoods were analogous. People travelled in carts or carriages pulled by draught
animals; they rode on horseback; they walked. Men and women peddled goods; children
played with friends and siblings. Prostitutes solicited customers; policemen patrolled the
streets; drunks struggled to maintain balance on streets ﬁlled with mud and potholes. The
streets had so many uses, two of which were business and travel. Railroads were modes
of conveyance whose sole purpose was to promote commerce. They therefore seemed

like a perfectly logical addition to the streets, at least to most of the aldermen and a large

ntunber of Chicago residents.32 Also, streets in sparsely populated industrial areas were
the paths of least resistance on which to build the railroads: if the Council had allowed
railroads into the city only on private land, railroad development would have proceeded
at a much slower pace due to the requisite negotiations between the railroad corporations
and landowners.

Although the logic of opening streets to railroad use seemed sound, the fact is that
railroads marked a deﬁnitive transition in the use of urban space. The business, travel,
and socializing that had previously occurred in the streets of nineteenth-century cities had
been transient. Railroads, to the contrary, were ﬁxed parts of the built environment: for
example, tracks remained on the street even after a train had passed. Thus the use of
street space was limited by the existence of railroads. This change represented spatially

what Alan Trachtenberg called the “incorporation of America,” “the changed, more

 

32 For descriptions of the use of city streets in the nineteenth-century North American cities, see Peter
Goheen, “Negotiating Access to Public Space in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Toronto,” Journal of Historical
Geography 20:4 (1994), 430-49; Mona Domosh, “Those ‘Gorgeous Incongruities:’ Polite Politics and
Public Space on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century New York,” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 88:2 (June 1998), 209-26; Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York,
1789-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982, 1986); Mary Ryan, Civic Wars: Democracy and
Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997); and David Stowell, Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of 1877 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999).

35

tightly structured society with new hierarchies of control” that accompanied and deﬁned

the industrial era.33 Railroads played a signiﬁcant role in shaping this new society: they
brought about the standardization of time, provided the infrastructure that integrated
economic markets and created the context for the proletarianization of labor, and
pioneered the business form of the proﬁt-driven corporation. In cities, they shaped
society by rationalizing city space.

The G&CU was not the only railroad to shape the space of Chicago during the
late 18405 and early 18505. All other railroads that were granted permission to build in
Chicago during the ﬁrst ﬁve years of the city’s railroad era (1848-1853) received liberal
rights-of-way that were essentially free. The Chicago & Rock Island Railroad—the

second railroad to secure a right-of-way ordinance from the city—received extremely

advantageous rights from the city; it could essentially lay track on any street it wished.34
(I will show below that the Illinois Central Railroad was the one company in this group
that had to give the city something in return for its right-of-way, but, as you will see,
what they received in return was much more valuable than the right to build railroad
tracks on streets like all the other railroads constructed during the period.) The Council
attempted to limit its legal liability regarding railroads during the period, but it asked for
little other than to have the roads built.

In 1851, the Common Council was optimistic with the direction in which its city

was moving. The Illinois & Michigan Canal and the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad,

 

33 Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of A merica: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York:
Hill & Wang, .1982, 2007), 3. See Chapter 4, “Mysteries of the Great City,” 101-39, for discussion of the
urban history of Trachtenberg’s incorporation.

34 The Council had such faith in the C&RI that it recommended that the city subscribe to thousands of
dollars in stock.

36

each of which began operating in 1848, provided Chicago with some of the transportation
infrastructure needed to act as a catalyst for the city’s commerce. People began to take
notice of the city’s bustling economy and headed to there in droves: in the three years
since the canal and railroad had opened, Chicago’s population grew over ﬁfty percent, to
about 32,000. Chicago became the destination for more than individuals and families;

railroad directors observed the hefty proﬁts made by the G&CU and were summarily

attracted to the opportunity the city provided.35

In two years—1851 and 1852—the Common Council gave right-of-way to three
railroads. The Chicago & Rock Island built west, though, signiﬁcantly, it connected in
Chicago with an eastem-running railroad, the Michigan Southern. The Illinois and
Wisconsin Railroad (IW)—essentially a branch of the G&CU, as it was directed by

William Ogden but chartered separately—built north to Wisconsin, and the Illinois

Central Railroad (IC) built south, down the center of the state of Illinois.36 The IC also
established the all-important connection with the east; it shared a depot and tracks with
the Michigan Central Railroad. These lines quickly turned Chicago into the railroad hub
of the nation, as the rails radiated to all parts of the continent.

The request for right-of-way by the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad (C&RI)—
later known as the Chicago, Rock Island & Paciﬁc—was met with a great deal of
enthusiasm by the Council and a number of residents. It was to have been only the
second railroad to build in the city, but the relative novelty of railroads was not the chief

reason for the exuberance. The Galena & Chicago Union was a western road that had no

 

35 It paid a “10 percent dividend from earnings of $29,812 on revenues of $48,331 during its ﬁrst full year
of operation.” Young, The Iron Horse and the Winay City, 24.

36 Andreas, I, 256-257. The 1&W was consolidated with the Rock River Valley RR into the Chicago, St.
Paul & Fond du Lac RR in 1855.

37

plans of expanding cast; it was run fairly conservatively, and the directors seemed happy
with the tidy proﬁts they made from hauling western farm goods to Chicago and
manufactured goods from Chicago. The C&RI, from its inception, had the lofty goal of
becoming a great east-west railroad, one that stretched from the Atlantic to the Paciﬁc
Ocean (hence “Chicago, Rock Island & Paciﬁc”). The big dreams of the railroad were
matched by the enthusiasm of its investors: the C&RI quickly attracted enough capital to
extend its tracks to the Mississippi River in 1854. Though the idea of reaching the
Paciﬁc Ocean was exciting, the railroad’s connection with an eastern trunk line, the
Michigan Southern Railroad, was perhaps more important to investors. The C&RI thus
established a much more direct connection between the Mississippi River and the
Atlantic Ocean than did the water route of the Erie Canal, Great Lakes, and Illinois &
Michigan Canal.

The C&RI, under the direction of president Henry Farnum and with support from
wealthy eastern capitalists such as Joseph Shefﬁeld, excited the imaginations of many of
Chicago’s aldermen. The possibility of an east-west connection and the glory and wealth
that it would bring Chicago spurred residents to action. The railroad easily received
passage of a generous right-of-way ordinance that gave it the right to lay down a track “in
any one of the streets of said city, between the west line of State street and the west line

of Halsted street, from the south line of said city as far north as the north line of Polk
street.”37 Just over a month after having received permission to enter the city, thirty-two
prominent Chicago citizens signed and presented a petition to the Council, requesting that

the Council authorize “the City of Chicago to subscribe a sum not exceeding one hundred

 

37 Chicago Common Council, George and John Thompson, eds., Charter and Ordinances, 344.

38

thousand dollars to the capital stock of the Chicago and Rock Island Rail Road

Company. The Council wasted no time and quickly passed an ordinance to hold a
citywide vote on the subject. Though I have not been able to ascertain whether or not the
vote approved the stock subscription, the fact that the Council was willing to subscribe to

so much stock—the equivalent of approximately $2.5 million in 2008—indicates the

enthusiasm it held for railroad development in general and the C&RI in particular.39 The
Council pinned its economic hopes on railroads and, as a result, demonstrated that it

governed Chicago as avid city boosters even into the 18505, a period during which the

Council was generally known for its reluctance to spend money from its coffers.40

The vote on a subscription to $100,000 worth of C&RI stock demonstrates the
solid boosterism of the Council as practiced towards railroads during the period. The
generous right-of-way ordinances the C&RI and other railroads received add even more
evidence to this claim. A year after the C&RI was given permission to lay track in a vast
area of streets in the southeastern part of the city, the C&RI received even more rights-of-
way from the Council in “An Ordinance in relation to the Chicago and Rock Island
Railroad.” The railroad was allowed to build tracks “ﬁ‘om the depot ground belonging to

said company on the south branch of the Chicago river, northward through such streets as

the city may hereafter designate. . .through Market street to South Water street.”41 The

 

38 CP 1851/52 0660A 06/30

39 Historical currency value found at Lawrence H. Ofﬁcer and Samuel H. Williamson, "Purchasing Power
of Money in the United States from 1774 to 2008," Measuring Worth, 2009. URL
http://www.measurinworth.comfppowerus/z accessed 25 November 2009. Used two indicators—
Consumer Price Index and GDP deﬂator—to calculate the relative value.

40 See Einhom, Property Rules for the Council’s reluctance to spend money and to raise it through
citywide general taxation. The Council relied on special assessments to build much of the infrastructure
needed for the quickly growing city.

 

1 Chicago Common Council, George and John Thompson, eds., Charter and Ordinances, 345.

39

Illinois & Wisconsin, for its part, did not receive the right to lay track down the length of

a street, but it was able “to intersect and cross any street or streets [it] may deem

proper.”42 Finally, the Illinois Central received perhaps the most valuable right-of-way
of any railroad that came into the city—along the city’s Lake Michigan shore—though its
right-of-way marked the ﬁrst instance of the Council demanding something in return
from the railroads for the right to enter the city.

The Council thus asked little in return for the privilege of right-of-way from the
railroads. Though the ordinances contained more conditions than that of the G&CU’s
right-of-way ordinance, the Council still asked for very little. The C&RI was asked to

follow one of the city’s earliest railroad safety provisions: its trains were to travel within

Chicago’s city limits at a speed of no more than ﬁve miles per hour.43 But that was all;
for the right to lay its tracks in Chicago’s public thoroughfares, the C&RI only had to
promise that it would follow the speed limit prescribed by the Council.

These liberal rights-of-way may or may not have attracted more railroads to
Chicago, though many more came in the 18505 and 18605. A consequence of these
ordinances that asked for so little from the railroads was that the railroads had to petition
the Council to make improvements to the streets on which they built. This, of course,
was the appropriate way to proceed. It was somewhat ironic, though, that the railroads
had to go to such great lengths to, for instance, pave a street or build a sewer, since
Chicago’s government was funded in large part by special assessments. This reﬂected .
more than simply the great reluctance of the Council to pay for improvements through

general taxation; it is further evidence of the tight control the Council held over the use of

 

42 lbid., 343.
43 Ibid., 344.

40

public space. The Council was more than happy to have private citizens or businesses

pay to make improvements that would beneﬁt the public, but it needed to approve the

projects before construction was to commence.44
So, when railroads petitioned the Council to make improvements to the streets, it
is not surprising that the Council willingly approved the petitions. The Michigan Central

Railroad asked to plank parts of Twelfth Street and Michigan Avenue, near the tracks it

shared with the Illinois Central, and its request was quickly granted.45 The Galena &

Chicago Union requested to open a part of North Water Street at its own expense. It

would grade and plank the street and build a sewer.46 Of course, the G&CU was
enthusiastic to bear such an expense only because the opening of the street would lead
them directly to the Lake Michigan shore. The Council was not concerned about the
G&CU’s motives; they were happy to see a railroad doing well, which could only help
the city grow, and they were more than happy to have a railroad pay to open and improve
streets. The G&CU received permission to make all the improvements they requested.
The Illinois Central was the ﬁrst company during the early years of Chicago
railroad development that met any resistance by Chicago residents. Also, it was the ﬁrst
to have to give something substantial to the city in return for right-of-way. The IC
proved a turning point in the Council’s dealings with railroads. Before the battle with the
IC over right-of-way, the Council gave generous rights-of-way, at least in part to attract

more railroads. After the IC ﬁnally came to the city, the Council was not as generous

 

44 See Einhom, especially 61-187, for a detailed description and analysis of the system of special
assessment that Einhom claims was the deﬁning system of municipal governance during from the 18405 to
the late 18605.

45 CP 1852/53 0416A 06/21.
46 CP 1853/54 0267A 04/25.

41

towards railroads. It knew by 1853 that more railroads were going to come to the city no
matter what, so the Council held a better bargaining position than it had previously. But
its experience with the IC showed the Council that railroads were more than simply
conveyances that would enhance the public good; they were large corporations that had
immense power and were not afraid to use it. In other words, the IC’s ﬁght over right-of-
way helped shift the response of the Council vis-a-vis railroads from one that was
informed primarily by boosterism that incubated in the J acksonian era to one that
responded to the realities of a new era built in large part on industrial capitalism.

Part of the conﬂict that the IC would experience came about because the shoreline
was viewed as a public asset before Chicago was even a city. On November 2, 1835, the
men of the town—Chicago was not a city yet according to the state of Illinois, it was
simply a swampy western outpost—met at the First Presbyterian Church, as they had for
a while, at least since a handful of people had moved in because of the rumored
construction of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. At this meeting, they resolved to purchase
twenty acres of the Fort Dearbom land “in a block having four sides of equal dimensions

as nearly as may be, one of which shall be fronting upon Lake Michigan, [which] shall be

reserved in all time to come for a public square, accessible at all times to the people.”4

This was, at the time, a meaningless declaration made by self-important men who fancied
themselves altruistic public servants; in reality they lived in a swamp near four hundred
other people and did not even hold the rights of a municipal corporation. Chicago grew
quickly, though, and the words and hopes of these men gained traction. The city—in

1837, Chicago gained this title from the Illinois General Assembly—received from the

 

47 Chicago Democrat, November 4, 1835, quoted in Lois Wille, Forever, Open, Clear, and Free: The
Struggle for Chicago’s Lakefront, 2nd ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972, 1991), 22.

42

federal government the right to twenty acres of land from what used to be Fort

Dearbom.48 Dearbom Park was an early example of Chicago’s attitude that, even in a
time of speculation and the privatization of land, the Lake Michigan shore was a different
kind of space, one that should be available to all the residents and visitors of the city.

A few months after the Chicago men declared that part of old Fort Dearborn
become a public park, three prominent Chicago residents—Gurdon Hubbard, William
Thornton, and William Archer—were made commissioners of the Illinois & Michigan
Canal and were charged with the job of plotting the canal lands. In so doing, they
proclaimed that the land between Michigan Avenue and Lake Michigan, from Madison

Street south to Twelfth Street, was “Public Ground—A Common to Remain Forever

Open, Clear and Free of any Buildings or other Obstruction Whatever.”49 At ﬁrst glance,
this appears to be a grand declaration in the public interest by three Chicago patriarchs.

This declaration was in fact at least partially grounded in self-interest. Gurdon Hubbard

owned a home on Michigan Avenue and thus had beautiful lakefront views.50 Further,
the canal commissioners were no doubt aware of the value of this land, especially to
shipping and warehousing interests, and they did not want this land, known as Lake Park,
to bedeveloped, for the views from their homes would have been destroyed if any
“Buildings or Other Obstruction Whatever” were built there. In what became a common
theme in Chicago’s development, public servants claimed to make decisions solely in the

public interest, when in fact self-interest played a key role.

 

48 Andreas, I, 167.
49Ibrd., 168. Wille, 23.

50 CP 1851/52 1256A 12/02. I have not been able to establish whether or not Thornton and/or Archer also
lived on Michigan Avenue.

43

Whatever the motivation, the results are a legacy of Chicago’s lakeshore as a
public asset. Hubbard, Thornton, and Archer acted in an ofﬁcial capacity when they
declared Lake Park “Forever Open, Clear and Free,” and their “ofﬁcial” words became
law. This legacy of the public lakeshore came into direct conﬂict with Chicago’s legacy
of capitalism and the commodiﬁcation of land during the IC’s ﬁght for entrance into the

city, the latter of which eventually turned the lakeshore into a space that historian Joshua

Salzmann calls a “safe harbor for capitalism.”51

In 1848, before any railroad rolled into Chicago, a remonstrance presented to the
Common Council presaged the battle over the IC’s lakeshore right-of-way. One of the
petitioners was Norman Buel Judd. N.B. Judd—as he signed a number of petitions
presented to the Council—moved to Chicago in 1836 to practice law, and he quickly
established himself as an important resident of the city. He was the city attorney from
1837 to 1839, was elected state senator from 1844 to 1860, was appointed ambassador to

Prussia by Abraham Lincoln from 1861 to 1865, and served as US. representative from

1867 to 1871.52 Judd’s standing as a distinguished Chicago resident was a common
characteristic among the signatories of the petition. Among the other petitioners were
lawyer, state politician (he served as representative, senator, and, somewhat ironically, on
the state internal improvement commission), and federal court judge Ebenezer Peck;
Peck’s law partner and future state attorney general James McDougall; lawyer, judge, and
local politician Buckner Stith Morris; lawyer, local politician, district attorney, and

railroad advocate Thomas Hoyne (ironically, he was killed in a railroad accident in

 

5] Joshua Salzmann, “Safe Harbor: Chicago’s Waterfront and the Political Economy of the Built
Environment, 1847-1918” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2008).

52 Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress; accessed at
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodi&_pl_ay.pl?index=J000277 on 4 March 2009.

44

1883); physician Dr. John W. Eldredge; merchants Samuel Bent Walker and Hart L.
Stewart; postmaster Charles Starkweather; and merchants who were also founding

members of the Chicago Board of Trade, Horatio G. Loomis, C.L. Harmon, and Matthew

Laﬂin.53

These men (and two others who I could not conclusively identify) signed a
petition that they presented to the Council that remonstrated against “the passage of an
ordinance as published in the Chicago Daily Tribune. . .having relation to the passage of

the Eastern or Indiana Branch of the Rail Road along the Park east of Michigan

Avenue.”54 The railroad to which they referred was likely the Michigan Central. This
ordinance did not pass, for the MC did not gain access to Chicago until it made a track-
sharing agreement with the IC tracks in 1852. Nevertheless, this petition, which was
presented to the Council before a single railroad serviced the city, demonstrates the
contested nature of the lakeshore during the period.

The petitioners’ arguments against letting the railroad enter the city along the
lakeshore are a preview of those used during the IC ﬁght three years later. The
petitioners claimed the railroad would violate “the rights of the citizens inasmuch as it
authorizes the use of Lake Park for purposes not [deﬁned]. . .by the laws of the land” and
would “greatly impair the beauty of and advantage to be derived from said Park.” The
railroad would not only violate the law that made part of the lakeshore—Lake Park—
public space; it would also compromise private spaces on the lakeshore by destroying the

value of property “on and near Michigan Avenue.” Hence, “no line of railroad should be

 

53 Andreas, I, 184, 250, 426-30, 451-3, 460, 582. Directory of the City of Chicago, Illinois, for 1843;

accessed at http://all-ancestors.com/chicago/chicagohtm on 8 March 2009.
54 CP 1848/48 4582A 05/12.

45

permitted to come within four hundred feet of the west side of the southerly end of
Michigan Avenue.” Finally, the petitioners claimed that the railroad should not enter the

city along the lakeshore because of public safety: “said road. . .would endanger the

buildings on the north end of Michigan Avenue, by ﬁre.”55

At ﬁrst glance, one would think that the petitioners had possessed selﬁsh motives
for remonstrating against the railroad. In other words, though they claimed to be
concerned with the public interest by trying to preserve the sanctity of Lake Park and by
protecting the city from a ﬁre hazard, it appears logical that the petitioners owned
mansions on Michigan Avenue whose beautiful view of the lake would have been
obstructed by trains. This, though, was not the case for the majority of the petitioners.
Though a petitioner or two may have ended up owning property on Michigan Avenue by
1848, it is highly doubtful that most or all of them did. According to an 1843 city

directory, not one of the petitioners held a Michigan Avenue address, and only four of

them owned Michigan Avenue property in 1851.56 Most of these men were not driven by
the urge to maintain an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan from their front window;
they saw the Lake as Chicago’s front window, and, as such, it was necessary to keep it
clean and clear for the city’s residents. Even these men, who were unabashed city
boosters, did not want to sacriﬁce the lakeshore to the interests of a railroad corporation.
Nothing came of the ordinance that, in 1848, would have let a railroad enter

Chicago along the lakeshore. But a battle ensued in earnest three years later when the

 

55 Ibid.

56 Directory ofthe City ofChicago, Illinois, for 1843; accessed at http://all-
grcestorscom/chicago/chicagohtm on March 24, 2009. CP 1851/52 1256A 12/02.

46

Illinois Central Railroad attempted to enter Chicago along the Lake Michigan shores7
This was the pet project of US. Representative “Long” John Wentworth and Senator
Stephen A. Douglas that resulted in a massive federal land grant to the state of Illinois,
which, in turn, gave the land to the Illinois Central Railroad Company. Most secondary
sources claim that the IC’s directors wanted to enter the city from the west to have direct
access to the manufacturing interests along the south branch of the river. Supposedly,
this was a route “largely already in the possession of interests that favored the Rock
Island Railroad?58 The Council enthusiastically supported the Rock Island and, by
extension, its eastern connection with the Michigan Southern. The Michigan Southern
was in stiff competition with the Michigan Central, the latter of which became the IC’s
eastern connection; thus, because of business rivalry, both the landowners on the west

side of Chicago and the Council were wary of the IC. Or so the argument goes. There is

little evidence, though, that the IC preferred to enter from the west.59

 

57 See John Bell Sanbom, “Railroad Land Grants. 1850-1857” (M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin-
Madison, 1897), 13-30, for a comprehensive description of the legislative process regarding the IC land
ant bill.

8 John Stover, History of the Illinois Central Railroad (New York: MacMillan, 1975), 43. Harold Mayer
and Richard Wade’s Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 38,
and Lois Wille’s Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago '5 Lakefront, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991, 1972), 26-9, also maintain that the railroad wanted to enter from the
west.

59 The only evidence I have seen is a letter from Michigan Central Railroad president J.W. Brooks to IC
counsel Mason Brayman, written from Detroit, November 15, 1851, quoted in Carlton Corliss, Main Line
of Mid-America: The Story of the Illinois Central (New York: Creative Age Press, 1950), 47: “I enclose. . .a
tissue sketch traced from a plan furnished me by Mr. Schuyler...which...has the line upon which the
Mayor of Chicago [Gumee] and Mr. Douglas agreed to, to wit: the blue line running through the NW.
comer of Section 3, thence on the most eligible route to the point where it touches the lake shore. . . .It
now. . . looks as if it might be impossible to purchase the right-of-way required on (sic) Section 27 for your
more westerly line?

This note, though it shows that the western entrance was a possibility, does not decisively
demonstrate that it was the ﬁrst choice of the IC’s directors. Though the italicized “impossible” makes it
seem as if the western route was more desirable to the IC, I have not come across any italicized words in
the many handwritten letters I have read in the course of my research, so I assume the italics are the
historian’s.

47

When the IC petitioned the Council for right-of-way, only the G&CU entered the
city from the west; the C&RI also held rights to build in the city limits from that
direction. The IC likely could have obtained right-of-way on Chicago streets, if the
strong support for the railroad that I will discuss below is any indication. Chicago’s
boosterism of the period can be partially deﬁned by two major characteristics: people
tried to make money in any way possible, and politicians usually made decisions that
they believed would be beneﬁcial to the growth of the city. For example, US.
representative and Chicago resident John Wentworth was a major proponent of the
federal land grant that made the construction of the IC possible. He also held numerous
shares of IC stock. As one will recall, Wentworth was also a major stockholder and
proponent of the Galena & Chicago Union, a rival railroad. He was a true booster: he

would not let business rivalries get in the way of making money for himself or for the

city as a whole.60 A railroad rivalry did not get in the way of Wentworth, and it likely
would not have gotten in the way of property owners in the western portion of the city
who would have had no problem selling their land at a nice price to a railroad.

The IC wanted to build along the lakeshore from the beginning. In 1.850, just
after having received their federal land grant and just before they were incorporated in the
state of Illinois, the Illinois Central bought the remaining unoccupied Fort Dearbom land
from the federal government, which was on Lake Michigan, immediately south of the
main branch of the river.61 From a terminal at this location, the railroad would have had

unparalleled access to Chicago’s Great Lakes shipping trade. The right-of-way was

virtually free of obstruction in a city that soon became known for horrible trafﬁc delays;

 

6° Wille, 28-9.
61 Andreas, I, 255.

48

it was not crossed by a single railroad until Grand Crossing, nine miles south of its

magniﬁcent terminal grounds that bordered both Lake Michigan and Chicago’s

downtown.62 Its location on the eastern side of the city would put it in a position
advantageous to establishing its connection with the Michigan Central. Its main branch
went to Galena and eventually crossed the Mississippi River, so it already had access to
the west; the IC’s directors wanted to make the railroad as proﬁtable as possible, so they
set their sights to the east and attempted to build on the Lake Michigan shoreline.

The IC’s intention to enter along the lakeshore becomes even more manifest when
one takes into account the railroad’s initial encounter with the city. The ﬁrst Chicago
Common Council record that mentions the IC is an attempt, from the point of view of
Chicago residents, to avert a disaster. According to this Council order, a large number of
Chicago residents caught wind of word that the IC “intend[ed] to divert the Chicago
branch of said Road from a direct line to this City, to the East, so as to connect with
Eastern roads, before coming to Chicago.” The residents wrote and signed a memorial
expressing their concern, and the Council in turn promised to “resist by every means in
their power such perversion of the grant and such violation of the contract on the part of
said Company.” To resist, the Council appropriated $10,000—equivalent to
approximately $250,000 in 2008, a hefty sum for a miserly Council—that was to be
“subject to the order of the Mayor for the purpose of defraying the expenses of making
such resistance.” The Mayor was to retain counsel, and he and a committee of ﬁve
aldermen were to write a memorial and send it to the President of the United States, the

Secretary of the Interior, and the Commissioner of the General Land Ofﬁce, “stating the

 

62 Howard Brownson, “History of the Illinois Central Railroad to 1870,” (Ph.D. dissertation: University of
Illinois, 1909), 54.

49

facts in regard to the matter and requesting them not to conﬁrm the grant of land to said
company, and to prevent the conﬁrmation of said grant, until satisfactory appearances are
given by said Company, that said road shall be located in accordance with the original
plan upon which the Act of Congress was passed.” He was also to send a memorial to
the Governor of Illinois, in which he would “urge [the Governor] to call a session of the
Legislature at an early day,” so steps would be taken “to protect the interests of the State”

by making certain that the railroad would not be built in such a way as to “divert the trade

and commerce from Illinois for the beneﬁt of Eastern roads.”63

Though the Council record is urgent and biased in tone, it does not sink into
hyperbole. It demonstrates that both the Council and their constituents tied the future of
Chicago directly to the railroads less than three years after the G&CU ﬁrst rolled through
the city. The IC was important to the city for a few reasons: it would be the ﬁrst railroad
to connect the city with the south and, through track-sharing agreements, with the east;
two of its chief proponents—Senator Stephen A. Douglas and Representative John
Wentworth—were Chicago residents; and Chicago wanted to be a terminus on a railroad
that was historic for a few reasons—it was the world’s longest contiguous railroad line
upon completion in 1856, and it was the ﬁrst railroad to be funded in large part by the
federal government, which gave the IC free land on which to build and to sell in order to
fund the construction of the nearly 1,000 miles of track, rolling stock, and structures.
Chicago’s politicians and their constituents knew that the [C was an important component
of the city’s economic growth, and they were going to do whatever they could to make

the IC connect with the eastern lines at Chicago to maximize that growth.

 

63 CP 1851/52 1029A 09/29.

50

Mayor Gurnee immediately went to New York to meet with the directors of the
IC to settle the dispute. He met with them individually and as a group, the latter in the
presence of a federal judge. The directors assured him that they would, in fact, make
their connection with the eastern road—the Michigan Central Railroad—within the
corporate limits of the city of Chicago, as opposed to some point east. The Mayor
declared that, as a result of the meetings, he “trusts that the interests of the city are fully

secured. . . [and] that henceforth there will be perfect harmony between our citizens and

64
the company.”

Luckily Mayor Gurnee’s political performance was not judged based on his
ability to predict the future; if it were, he would have been deemed a poor mayor indeed.
Not only was there no “perfect harmony” between Chicago’s citizens and the IC, but the
tension between the two manifested itself not even two months later, in December 1851.
At the beginning of the month, the IC’s intentions to enter the city along the lakeshore
became clear, and the Common Council records show that every meeting that month was
devoted to the subject. Some of the ﬁles are devoted to the question of taxation;
speciﬁcally, can the city government tax the Illinois Central, or do the terms of its
corporate charter exempt it from paying local taxes? Many of the records, though, focus
on citizens’ responses to the IC’s potential location on the Lake Michigan shore.

The most surprising aspect of the petitions regarding the IC’s lakeshore right-of-
way is the overwhelming number of petitioners who supported the railroad compared to
the small number who did not. There are four extant petitions that support the IC’s

lakeshore entrance into the city, and they consist of over 600 signatures. The opposition

 

64 CP l851/52 1150A 11/03.

51

to the IC—a group of rich and powerful citizens who owned property on Michigan
Avenue—could only muster seventeen signatures, though they formed a committee

whose chief purpose was to “use all honorable means to prevent the location of said road

& depot [in front of Michigan Avenue]?65

Despite the great importance of the issue, the men who petitioned against the IC
did not present a detailed argument, at least in writing: “They believe that the council has

no power to make such grant and that such an occupation of the lake shore would tend

”66 The petitions of support did not go

manifestly to destroy public and private rights.
into great detail, either; they generally maintained that “the location is not only most

advantageous to the general interests of the City and its several interests, but desirable to

the Company.”67 Signiﬁcantly, this massive show of support came with few
qualiﬁcations. In other words, the petitioners requested little from the railroad in their
petitions; they just wanted the IC to enter at the lakeshore.

Illinois Central historians Howard Brownson and Carlton Corliss, along with
journalist Lois Wille, have claimed that support for the IC’s entrance along Chicago’s
lakeshore came primarily as a one-for-one deal with the company: the railroad could

build along the lakeshore because it would fund and build a breakwater (which I will talk

about in more detail below).68 Further, they argued that the residents of the North and
West divisions of the city were the primary supporters of the IC and its lakeshore

entrance; they did not want to pay for any more lakeshore protection (which they saw

 

65 CP 1851/52 1255A 12/02.
66 CP l851/52 1256A 12/02.

67 CP l851/52 1312A 12/15. See also CP 1851/52 1313A, 1314A, and 1315A 12/15 for nearly identical
statements.

68 Brownson, 48-55. Corliss, 46-51. Wille, 26-9.

52

primarily as protection of the homes of Michigan Avenue’s wealthy residents in the
South division) with their tax dollars. They wanted the IC to remove this burden and
maintain a breakwater in return for entrance into the city.

The Council records do not completely corroborate this analysis, though. Not a
single petition mentions support for IC lakefront right-of-way based on the IC’s
willingness to build a breakwater. A petition signed by 191 people from the South
division shows that there was signiﬁcant support for the plan within the part of the city
that would be most directly affected by the entrance of the IC. The petitioners asked that
the IC’s property within the city would be taxed the same as other individuals—in other
words, they asked simply for fair and equal treatment of property owners by the city—
and that the IC would extend its tracks “up South Water and Market Streets,” streets
along the south branch of the Chicago River where many of the signatories owned

manufacturing and processing businesses that would have economically gained from a

connection with the railroad.69 These individuals saw a direct beneﬁt from the entrance
of the IC into the city along the lakeshore to themselves and to the city as a whole, and
they asked for little in return from the railroad.

The overwhelming support for the IC’s entrance along the lakeshore cannot be
completely attributed to direct business interest. A number of those who signed likely
held a booster’s vision of the city and supported wherever the railroad wanted to enter the
city limits. To these individuals, it was likely more important to bring railroads to the
city as quickly as possible than to quibble over where the railroads should build. For

example, Matthew Laﬂin, a founding member of the Chicago Board of Trade who three

 

69CP1851/52 1314A 12/15.

53

years earlier petitioned against the entrance of a railroad along the lakeshore, signed a

petition in support of the IC.70 Also, J. Young Scammon was an ardent supporter of
railroad development, so much so that he signed a petition on behalf of the IC’s entrance

along the lakeshore despite the fact that he resided on Michigan Avenue at a residence

that would have been directly affected by the lakeshore development of the IC.71 These
men and others linked the growth and success of Chicago directly to the railroads.

Yet another factor may have played a role in the overwhelming support for the
railroad’s chosen location of entrance in the city: the rumor, discussed above, of the
railroad’s attempt to connect with Eastern lines at some point east of Chicago instead of
in the city. Historian Howard Brownson maintained that the Council appropriated the
$10,000 and passed the resolution to ﬁght the eastern cut-off because of strong feelings
of rivalry and suspicion between Chicago residents who supported the Michigan Central
Railroad and those who supported the Michigan Southern Railroad: the IC was an ally of

the Michigan Central, 50 Michigan Southern partisans on the Council passed the

resolution that attacked the IC and, by proxy, its MC allies.72 Brownson did not have
access to the Common Council records that show that the resolution was more than a
simple knee-jerk reaction and attack on the IC: Mayor Gurnee and a federal judge
actually traveled to New York and met with the IC’s directors to resolve the situation.

In light of this evidence, the rumor appears to have been a well-timed leak on the
part of the IC’s directors. The IC submitted its initial petition to the Council for the right

to enter Chicago on July 12, 1851; it withdrew this petition a few days later because of

 

70 Ibid. CP l848/48 4582A 05/ 12.
71CP1851/521315A12/15.
72 Brownson, 49-50.

54

the Council’s opposition to the terms of the petition.73 The company was then aware that
it would not be able to completely dictate its terms of entrance into the city, so it ﬂexed
its corporate muscle two months later by letting Chicago’s residents know that it could
cost the city vast amounts of money by connecting with an Eastern railroad somewhere
other than within Chicago’s city limits. Chicago’s residents and political representatives

were then on the defensive and were likely to let the IC enter the city on terms the

railroad found favorable.74 A lakeshore entrance was all but guaranteed.

Though the IC would eventually gain access to the city along the valuable
lakeshore property, it took the company and the city quite some time to agree to terms
that both parties could accept. After numerous petitions and memorials had been
presented to the Council by individuals on both sides of the IC debate, the Council
acceded to the IC and its supporters. On December 18, 1851, a special Council
committee dedicated to the issue made a number of recommendations. They agreed to
allow the IC to enter the city along the submerged land east of the lakeshore, but they
recommended strict conditions for the company’s entrance. The railroad was to get a
right-of-way no wider than 300 feet, was to be no closer than 500 feet from Michigan
Avenue, was to build fences along its west line for safety, and, most signiﬁcantly, was to
build a stone wall that would act as a breakwater along the length of the railroad from
Twenty-Second Street to Randolph Street, a distance of over two miles. The committee

also recommended that the IC quite literally build more lakeshore by ﬁlling the space

 

73 Ibid., 49. The initial petition to the Council is not extant in the Council Proceedings.

74 The IC used nearly identical tactics a year-and-a-half later when it tried to change part of its route in
Galena, Illinois. The railroad was supposed to build a bridge over the Galena River in the city, but it
changed its mind and decided it wanted to build it at a point ﬁve miles south of Galena, at a point where
Galena residents argued it would obstruct river navigation. See Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1853, and
March 9, 1853 for stories on this issue.

55

between Michigan Avenue and the west line of the railroad tracks with earth and, from

. . . . . . . ,75
this new space, creating and marntarmng “a convement and safe public promenade.’

Not surprisingly, the IC was not happy with these terms. It objected to the
minimum distance it was to build from Michigan Avenue—500 feet—arguing that the
depth of the water at that point would make construction prohibitively expensive. It most
fervently protested, though, against the committee’s requirement that the railroad not
only build a breakwater, but also ﬁll in the spaces between the lakeshore and railroad
tracks. Mason Brayman, the IC’s chief counsel, responded tersely to this requirement.
His response is worth quoting at length:

[The requirement] is objectionable; wholly inadmissible. Rail Roads are
constructed to do a owing trade; to bring the producer and the consumer
together; to bear forth the treasures of the soil to proﬁtable markets; to bring back
articles of necessary use and luxury in exchange; to afford facilities for travel and
intercommunication between distant points. Rail Roads, like streams, seek
navigable waters.

There transshipments take place; thy is created a demand for labor,
capital, enterprise; m the Merchant, the Banker, the Forwarder, the ship owner,
and the thousand reviving inﬂuences which follow in the footsteps of commerce
are congregated together. Thus, gtjgs are made. Rail Roads are apt constructed
for the purpose of building cities, nor of adjoining cities, nor of repairing the
damages which they may have suffered from ﬁre or water; though all these results
may follow the construction of lines of Rail Roads to favored points. They are
incidents—inevitable and desirable incidents to such enterprises, but not the
object of them. While a rail road for its own convenience and advantage seeks a
termination at a point where natural advantages have already created a city, it
confers double beneﬁts upon the favored point. . ..Of the City [of Chicago], we ask
for no occupied streets, no public square; no paved and ornamented grounds, but
for the privilege of a building a track in Lake Michigan, far below low watermark,
and distant from the shore. Outside of this line, in the deep water of the Lake, the
company propose to erect, at an extra cost (beyond the cost of entering the city by
Ian—d) of several hundred thousand dollars, a permanent sea-wall which will afford
the city adequate security against the further advances of the Lake, rendering all
further taxation for Lake shore protection unnecessary. This protection is
regarded as a most abundant equivalent for the privilege of building and
occupying a Railroad track in Lake Michigan, in front of the public ground of the

 

 

75 CP1851/52 I340A 12/19.

56

city; to say nothing of the public advantage to be derived from the business of the
road. .

To go further than this, and expend the money of the company on works in
no way connected with the business of the Road, or promotive of its usefulness,
would be as palpable a perversion of its funds, as though the same amount were
donated to the city for planking streets or endowing institutions of charity. It
cannot be supposed that the Legislature intended M things, when it provided
that the road should not be located within an incorporated city without the consent
of its common council. May not the company be required to level the hills of
Galena, pave the streets of Bloomington, and ﬁll up the low grounds at Cairo, as
well as make a “public promenade” [in the space to be ﬁlled between Michigan
Avenue and the railroad tracks] at Chicago?

...[T]he company is willing to incur the large expense of building its track
and necessary works in the Lake, outside of the inhabited portions of the city, Q
the very purpose of avoiding the restrictions which otherwise the public safety

would require. . . .76

Despite its sarcastic tone, the letter gets to the heart of key issues regarding
railroads and the use of urban space in Chicago. The IC saw itself solely as a tool of
commerce and trade in a capitalist system. It deﬁned itself narrowly, as did most
J acksonian corporate charters: a corporation was only to carry out public good that its
charter speciﬁed. In a twist of pure irony, the Illinois Central lost a US. Supreme Court
case forty years later when Justice Stephen Field used the exact same logic to argue
against the IC’s claims on the submerged lands in Chicago’s harbor as Counselor
Brayman did to argue against the building of the public promenade. This legal principle,

known as ultra vires, is “the doctrine that prohibited a corporation from engaging in

”77 The IC proved adept at working

business practices not expressly stated in its charter.
between the different deﬁnitions of business corporations—the narrowly-deﬁned,

Jacksonian, “public good” corporation and the later, broadly-deﬁned, proﬁt-making

 

76 CP 1851/52 1376A 12/29. Underlining and strikethrough are attributed to Mason Brayman, the letter’s
author.

77 Salzmann, 107.

57

corporation—to ultimately prove that, at all times, the IC was primarily the latter. (This
Supreme Court case will be ﬁlrther discussed in the conclusion.)

Within this narrow deﬁnition of the IC as a business corporation, Brayman, to
reiterate, maintained the “adjoining,” “building,” and/or “repairing” of cities were but

incidental to railroad development: “inevitable and desirable incidents to such

enterprises, but not the M of them.”78 This may have been the case, yet Counselor
Brayman did not acknowledge that these “incidental” consequences could have been
anything but positive. This is not surprising since the letter’s purpose was to argue for
the interests of the IC, which were, at their base, to keep costs as low as possible while
maximizing the possibility of proﬁt for the IC. The reason there was any debate about
the [CS entrance into the Chicago was because of an undesirable incidental consequence:
a railroad would essentially take over Chicago’s ﬁ'ont yard—the lakeshore—which, as
was mentioned above, was generally seen as public space, or at least as space to which a
variety of people and interests were to have access. If the IC were to enter along the
lakeshore, the entire southern half of the city would more or less be cutoff from the Lake
Michigan.

Brayman attempted to assuage any negative sentiment aroused by the lakeshore
entrance by arguing that “the company is willing to incur the large expense of building its
track and necessary works in the Lake, outside of the inhabited portions of the city, f0!

the very purpose of avoiding the restrictions which otherwise the public safety would

require. . . 3’79 As I will show in the next chapter, railroad safety became a growing

concern in Chicago in the 18505, in large part because of the problems that could occur

 

78 CP 1351/52 1376A12/29.
79 Ibid.

58

when steam locomotives were allowed to share streets with residents. But when Mr.
Brayman argued that the IC wanted to build along the lakeshore in the interest of public
safety, the issue did not yet possess the potency it would a few years later. There was
only one railroad—the Galena & Chicago Union—in operation at the time (the Chicago
& Rock Island, though it procured right-of-way from the Council, had only done so seven
months earlier and was not yet operational). Though the G&CU shared Kinzie Street and
others with the public, it was located in an area that, during the passage of its right-of-
way ordinance, was primarily industrial in nature. Though the threat of accidents was
present, public safety was not yet a glaring concern at the end of 1851.

The wording of the sentence that discusses public safety reveals the true priorities
of the IC: “[T]he company is willing to incur the large expense of building its track and
necessary works in the Lake, outside of the inhabited portions of the city, for the veg

pu_rpose of avoiding the restrictions which otherwise the public safety would

require. . . 3’80 The [C was much concerned with the “restrictions” that were necessary to
protect the public safety, but not so much with the public safety itself. For the IC to
pursue its main objective—making money—it wanted as few restrictions as possible to
keep expenses low. Yet it realized it needed to compromise to obtain the coveted
lakeshore right-of—way from the Council, so it offered to build a breakwater to protect the
lakeshore south of the Chicago River’s main branch. This brilliant move blunted the
opposition of the wealthy Michigan Avenue residents—the most stalwart opponents to
the IC’s lakeshore entrance—and brought even more solid support from the many

residents who backed the IC’s lakeshore right-of-way. While Michigan Avenue residents

 

80 Ibid.

59

did not want their views of Lake Michigan ﬁltered through the railroad tracks,
locomotives, steam, and smoke—harbingers of the industrial era that would soon
overtake any remaining notion of a pastoral Chicago—their neighbors in the North and
West divisions of the city were happy to know they would not have to pay higher
property taxes to protect the front yards of people who owned Michigan Avenue
mansions. Also, the industry and manufacturing interests just to the west along the
southern branch of the Chicago River were excited for the possibilities of such
convenient access to transportation that the lakeshore entrance of the IC would provide to
them. The myriad supporters of the IC’s lakefront entrance saw a direct beneﬁt to
themselves from such a right-of-way. Though it was understood that a private
corporation would essentially take over much of the space that was historically seen as a
public asset, it was permitted to do so under the assumption that such an act was in the
interest of the public good.

This letter also brings into focus what quickly became a central issue in the
Common Council: the great impact the railroads would have on the built environment of
Chicago, and the single-minded focus on proﬁts by said railroads at the expense of the
safety and quality of life of Chicago’s residents. (As I will show in Chapter Four,
lackluster attention to safety sometimes got in the way of railroad business. When it did,
railroads willingly tried to improve safety standards.) Though Brayman was quick to
point out that “Rail Roads are constructed to do a giving trade” and are “no;

constructed for the purpose of building cities,” he failed to recognize that railroads

themselves substantially altered the built environment of cities.“ Some railroad

 

8‘ CP l851/52 I376A 12/29.

60

structures could be viewed in a positive light—for example, a number of beautiful and
opulent railroad terminals were built in later decades in Chicago—but many other
railroad structures could not be seen as aesthetically pleasing. Also, with the vast space
that rail yards, warehouses, stockyards, and other structures occupied, not to mention the
space that the trains and their clouds of smoke took up, one cannot deny that railroads
did, in fact, build cities. And, though the building of cities by railroads may have been
incidental, the consequences of their construction on urban space cannot be considered
positive, especially when the space was Chicago’s “front window,” the Lake Michigan
shore. When the Council committee recommended that the IC ﬁll in the submerged area
between the lakeshore and its future railroad tracks, it recognized the importance of the
shoreline to Chicago’s residents. It thus wanted to maintain, at least partially, the public
nature of the lakeshore by having the IC build a public promenade. The Council likely
believed this was the least it could do since it was ceding a large chunk of lakeshore to a
private corporation.

But the IC showed that it cared only that it got as much as it could for as little as
possible. In the long process of trying to attain right-of—way in Chicago, the railroad’s
directors and representatives showed that the IC was a very powerful corporation that, for
the most part, could and would do what it wanted. On December 29, 1851, with a 10 to 6

vote, the Council passed a right-of—way ordinance that acceded to most of the demands

made by Counselor Mason Brayman ten days earlier.82 The ordinance let the railroad
build their tracks only 400 feet from Michigan Avenue, as opposed to the 500-foot

distance recommended by the committee. Also, there was no provision that compelled

 

82
Brownson, 51.

61

the IC to ﬁll the space between its tracks and the lakeshore with earth, which meant that it
would not have to construct a public promenade. The railroad received a narrower right-
of-way than it had originally asked for—it wanted 500 or 600 feet, but was granted only
300 feet. It also had to build and maintain a breakwater from Randolph Street to Twenty-
Second Street, which protected all of Lake Park, a public park that was not to be used by
the IC, and additional lakefront property. This breakwater was the major item the city
received in return for the IC’s access to the lakeshore, but it is not surprising that the
railroad did not object to the provision, despite its formidable cost: the railroad would
have needed a breakwater to protect its tracks from the temperamental waters of Lake

Michigan whether or not Chicago residents requested it. In general, the provisions of the

ordinance were extremely favorable towards the railroad.83
Though the Council passed the ordinance, Mayor Walter Gurnee was skeptical of

it and, to the chagrin of most of the Council, the railroad, and many residents, he vetoed

the ordinance.84 The Council quickly again took up the matter and overturned the
mayor’s veto a few days later, after which the ordinance was sent to the IC’s headquarters
in New York City. The company was going to approve it, though, to their surprise, the
Council reconsidered the issue and drafted a new ordinance with which the wards in the

south division of the city were much happier. The IC’s directors, on the other hand, were
not happy with the newest version of the ordinance.85 There were more restrictions on
what and where the company could build—fOr example, they were not allowed to build

any structure along the length of Lake Park except for their tracks and the breakwater.

 

8’ CP1851/521377A 12/29. CP1851/52 1340A 12/19.
84 Brownson, 51-2. Wille, 26-8.

85 Brownson, 52.

62

Also, the new ordinance was more explicit about compelling the company to follow

safety regulations and give the city’s residents access to Lake Michigan by building gates
at the end of streets in the protective fence near the tracks.86 The IC thus decided to let

the ordinance expire in hope of receiving one that was more to their liking.87 The IC’s
president, Robert Schuyler, claimed that the IC had to “postpone” all of its operations due

to “a protracted delay of the General Land Ofﬁce in Washington” in bestowing the

railroad with its land promised in the federal grant.88 This likely was an excuse so the
Council would again have to consider the issue and perhaps give the railroad an
ordinance with terms it deemed more favorable.

In the end, the Council and the IC agreed to terms on which the railroad would
enter Chicago. Though the ﬁnal version of the ordinance—passed in the Council on June
14, 1852, and accepted by the company on September 17 of the same year—was not as

favorable to the interests of the IC as were earlier versions, it nonetheless was a coup for

the corporation.89 The Council tried to preserve the public nature of the lakeshore by
preventing the railroad from using Lake Park and building structures between Lake Park

and the railroad tracks, as well as by making the railroad build gates at the end of streets

in its protective fence that would give individuals the ability to access the lake.90 Though
the Council made valiant and sincere efforts to balance the economic and public interests
of its residents in the IC right-of-way ordinance, the hegemonic nature of railroads in all

space in which they built made any legitimate balance impossible. The railroad

 

8" CP 1851/52 1377A 12/29. cp 1852/53 0284A 04/21.
37

Brownson, 52.
88 CP 1852/53 0010A 03/26.
89 CP 1852/53 0352A 06/14. CF 1852/53 0717A 09/17.
90 CP 1852/53 0352A 06/14.

63

corporation had a single concem—proﬁt—and, as I will show, proﬁt and the public
interest oﬁen came into conﬂict in Chicago. When the railroad’s tools of proﬁt—trains—
and Chicago’s residents were expected to share public spaces, I will show that the spaces

were not democratically shared; the railroads shaped the space, and the residents had to

adapt to the change.

        

Figure 2. The Illinors Central Railroad, from the river to Twelfth Street. lts grounds are at the mouth of the
river. The inner line in the lake represents the tracks, and the outer line represents the breakwater. Lake
Park is the thin strip of land of lakeshore land that runs from the railroad grounds at Randolph Street, south
to Twelﬁh Street, near the southern extent of the map. 1863. (University of Chicago Library)

64

The protracted battle over the IC’s right-of-way marked a turning point in how the
Common Council of Chicago dealt with railroads. The right-of-way ordinance for the IC
was different from any other in the city to that point. It focused on health and safety to an
extent beyond any of the previous ordinances by, for example, mandating that the
railroad build a fence to “prevent animals from straying upon or obstructing its tracks”
and to “secure persons and property from danger” and requiring the railroad to build

culverts—openings—in its breakwater so the water behind it would not become stagnant

and pestilent.” Also, the city asked for something tangible in return for the [CS right-of-
way: a two-mile-long breakwater that would protect the Lake Michigan shore south of
the main branch of the Chicago River. Finally, the IC ordinance stringently regulated the
railroad, at least compared to the extremely liberal provisions of the Galena & Chicago
Union Railroad’s and the Chicago &' Rock Island Railroad’s right-of-way ordinances.92
Besides the health and safety provisions, the ordinance prevented the railroad from
“erect[ing any] buildings between the north line of Randolph street and the south line of

said Lake Park,” thus attempting to avert the obstruction of a lake view. It also

prohibited intrusion “upon the open ground known as Lake Park” by the IC.93 As I will
show below, this expanded regulation of railroads became a normal feature of right-of-
way ordinances from 1853.

Though much of the content of the IC’s right-of-way ordinance was different

from previous ordinances, there was one important similarity: the IC received an

extremely generous right-of-way fromChicago. Though the G&CU and C&RI had

 

9' Common Council of the City of Chicago, compiled by Murray Tuley, Laws and Ordinances Governing
the City of Chicago (Chicago: Bulletin Printing Co., 1873), 286-7.

92 Ibid., 284-7.
93 .
lb1d., 287.

65

fewer restrictions than the IC, the IC was handed some of the most valuable real estate in

the city.94 The price for its right-of-way may have been higher, but, without a doubt, the

IC received the sweetest deal of any railroad to have entered the city of Chicago.

 

94 See Hoyt, 45-80, for general discussion of rising land values in Chicago during the railroad era. The
early years of railroad development brought a precipitous rise in values. Land near the downtown
lakeshore was the most valuable, as represented by Hoyt’s maps on pages 71-2, Figures II and 12.

66

CHAPTER 2: THE SPATIAL CONSEQUENCES OF RAILROAD
DEVELOPMENT, 1852-1871

Charles Glumer was walking home from a ﬁ'iend’s house on Chicago’s west side
one December evening in 1856, when “he was accosted and about to be attacked by two
rufﬁans, when he attempted to make his escape by running from them, and had thus
succeeded and gained upon his pursuers, when he [approached] Kinzie Street, where he
was suddenly stopped on account of the street being blocked up at this point by a long
train of cars: he then attempted to get around them, but being thus delayed he was

overtaken, and attacked by the rufﬁans, knocked and beaten down, and received severe

”I 9

bodily injuries. The man of ﬁfty-eight years lay on the ground for “about half an hour,’
after which time he had “recovered sufﬁciently to get up and found himself badly beaten
and injured: ten dollars of money taken from him, his portmanteau and private papers of
value taken, and a ticket to Detroit, for which he paid $7.50, and another to Milwaukee
worth $2.00.”2 As a result of this beating, Mr. Glumer was unable to deliver lectures in
Detroit and Milwaukee, and thus lost the money he was to receive for these engagements.
He was so badly injured by the beating, which, again, was facilitated by “the [railroad]
cars being left in Des Plaines Street, and this street being thus blocked up,” that “he was

conﬁned by sickness and prostration from the injuries for at least a month, and from

which he has never recovered, that he is thus reduced to great debility, penury and

 

' CP 1857/58 0156A 04/13.

2 Ibid. The tickets cost approximately $150 and $40, respectively, in 2007, according to
http://wwwmeasurimzworth.com; accessed 27 April 2009.

67

destitution, and would humbly and respectfully ask the Mayor and Common Council,
under these circumstances, for relief.”3

The Council, not known for its proclivity to easily part with the city treasury’s
money, responded, unsurprisingly, to Mr. Glumer’s petition with “sympathy and
compassion,” but also with a determination to reject the petition and give Mr. Glumer no
monetary relief.4 Their decision rode on the belief that if the Council helped Mr. Glumer,
it would have to thus “be prepared in all other cases to make good the losses by robberies
and pay full damages for injuries received in assaults by day or by night upon strangers &

”5 The Committee on Claims was

upon citizens upon all our public highways of the city.
not prepared for this, and one can surmise that their view represented that of the Council
as a whole at the time.

This episode shows more than the miserly nature of the Council during a time
when governmental social safety nets were few and far between. It is a prime example of
the great effect railroad development played on the built environment of Chicago.
Railroad development helped turn Chicago into a boomtown during the 18503 and 18605.
But as its population and railroad development grew, residents like Charles Glumer
began to experience an irony of modernity: even as the economy, technology, and
government progressed, these new technological and economic forms bred dependence
and quickly dispelled any notion that residents of an industrial society were autonomous

social actors. Charles Glumer’s story exempliﬁes this state of dependence: railroads, as

imposing pieces of new technology, tangibly shaped the city’s built environment and thus

 

3 cp 1857/58 0156A 04/13.
4 Ibid.
5 .

lbld.

68

circumscribed his movement. His escape route was blocked by train cars, which led to
his robbery and assault, which in turn resulted in his “conﬁne[ment] by sickness and

prostration from the injuries for at least a month, and from which he has never recovered,

and. . .reduced [him] to great debility, penury and destitution.”6 His state of dependence
was not only deﬁned by the way railroad construction restricted movement, but by literal
dependence on charity since his injuries prevented him from making a living.

Mr. Glumer’s story was the story of Chicago’s street-going public during the
industrial era. Railroad development limited the agency of Chicago residents and
ushered in a state of dependence by shaping the built environment in such a way as to
limit the movement of and create hazards for these residents. In most cases, the threat of
injury or death that resulted from railroad development did not come from “rufﬁans;” it
stemmed from the presence of the new locomotive technology, which was bigger, faster,
and more powerful than anything Chicago residents had ever experienced. The fact that
Chicago underwent economic and industrial growth at such an accelerated rate-ampliﬁed
the condition of dependence endured by its residents. As historical actors, individuals in
Chicago unknowingly conceded historical agency to the economic and technological
forces that in part brought them to historical relevance. The railroads limited agency not
only through the sheer power of the new technology, but also by shaping the built

environment of the city and thus bounding people’s movement.

Chicago grew at an alarming rate through the 1850s and 18605. When Chicago’s

railroad era began in 1848, just over 20,000 people called Chicago “home.” By 1853, the

 

6 Ibid.

69

population had nearly tripled, to 59,130. On the eve of the Civil War in 1861, it had
grown to an astounding 120,000.7 Only ten years later, just before much of the city
burned, 325,000 people lived there. Chicago was quickly climbing its way up the ranks
of American cities. In 1840, it ranked ninety-second out of the one-hundred most
populous cities in the United States; in 1850, it was twenty-fourth; in 1860, it was ninth;
in 1870, it was ﬁfth. The railroads helped create what, by 1890, came to be called the
“Second City;” only New York boasted a larger population.8 A town of only a few
thousand became a metropolis of over a million in only half a century.

The transportation infrastructure represented primarily by railroads promoted both
the economic and demographic growth of the city. Of course, these two developments
worked hand-in-hand: the development of the railroads encouraged commercial and
industrial establishments to locate in Chicago, the jobs of which in turn attracted migrants
and immigrants to the city; and the expansion of the railroads promoted the mobility of
said migrants and immigrants. In the 18503 and 1860s, migrants to Chicago came
primarily from the eastern United States; most of the city’s early leaders were Yankees
from New England and Mid-Atlantic states.9 There was substantial rural-to-urban

migration from surrounding rural areas to Chicago, but farm children did not begin this

 

7 Population statistics from Wesley Skogan, Chicago since 1840: A Time-Series Data Handbook (Urbana:
Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, 1976).

8 Campbell Gibson, “Population of the One Hundred Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United
States: 1790 to 1990; Population Division Working Paper No. 27” (Washington, DC: Bureau of the
Census, 1998); accessed at
http://www.censugoﬂnopulation/www/documentation/twpsOOZ7/twp50027.html on 2 May 2009.

9 For discussion of the migration to Chicago and the West from Eastern states, see Robin Einhom, Property
Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-I872 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 28-60;
Carl Abbott, Boosters and Businessmen: Popular Economic Thought and Urban Growth in the Antebellum
Middle West (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), 126-147; and Rima Lunin Schultz, “The
Businessman’s Role in Western Settlement: The Entrepreneurial Frontier, Chicago, 1833-1872,” (Ph.D.
dissertation, Boston University, 1985), 65-97; and Stewart Holbrook, The Yankee Exodus: An Account of
Migration from New England (New York: Macmillan, 1950).

70

trend until the extended period of economic uncertainty of the Long Depression that
lasted from the Panic of 1873 through the end of the century.10 In the 1850s and 1860s,
the Illinois plains were just beginning to gain a substantial population. People ﬁled into
Illinois and states to the west to take advantage of the relatively inexpensive fertile land
available. An exodus from the farm to the city was not yet in the purview of rural
Americans.

Immigrants to Chicago in the 18508 and 18608, though, were part of the original
movement of rural people to Chicago. Germans formed the largest ethnic group in the
city from 1850 until the turn of the century. These immigrants—who composed one-
sixth of Chicago’s population—came for a variety of reasons: some escaped religious
persecution; many more came because of economic stress that resulted from a cocktail of
population growth, insufﬁcient agricultural production due to partial inheritance, and
relatively slow industrialization in their home country; and yet others escaped political
persecution after the failed European revolutions of 1848.11 Though the goal of many
Germans was the pastoral life, a large number found their way to Chicago and opted for a

life in the city.

 

10 Walter Nugent, “Demography” in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical
Society, 2005); accessed at http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistoryom/pages/962.html on 4 May 2009.

ll Christiane Harzig, “Germans,” in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical
Society, 2005). Accessed at http://wwweng/clopediachicagohistory.org/pages/512.html on 4 May 2009.
For thorough discussion of German immigrants in Chicago, see also Rudolf Hoﬁneister, The Germans of
Chicago (Champaign, Ill.: Stipes Publishing Co., 1976); Harmut Keil and John Jentz, eds., German
Workers in Chicago: A Documentary History of Working-Class Culture from 1850 to World War I
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); and Harmut Keil and John Jentz, eds., German Workers in
Industrial Chicago, l850-1910: A Comparative Perspective (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press,
1983). For general discussion about German political refugees from the 1848 revolutions, see Adolf E.
Zucker, ed., The F orty-Eighters: Political Refugees of the German Revolution of 1848 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1950); Carl Wittke, Refugees of Revolution: The German F orty-Eighters in
America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952); and Charlotte Brancaforte, ed., The
German F orty-Eighters in the United States (New York: P. Lang, 1989).

71

The Irish formed another large, primarily rural immigrant community in Chicago
during the middle of the nineteenth century. The potato famines of the 18403 killed a
million Irishmen and pushed another 1.5 million to immigrate, mostly to the United
States. Thousands of the Irish ended up in Chicago. Many Irishmen were initially
attracted to the city by jobs constructing the Illinois & Michigan Canal and the various
railroads; they stayed as Chicago boomed and were able to ﬁnd regular work on the
railroads, lumber- and stockyards, and various other industrial interests.12

Other immigrant groups such as Canadians, Scandinavians, and Poles, started
settling in the city during the 18503, though Poles and Scandinavians did not become a
signiﬁcant presence in Chicago until after the Civil War.13 The various immigrant groups
together made up a signiﬁcant portion of Chicago’s population in the 18503 and 18603.
During the two decades, the city’s foreign-born population composed between 43% and
61% of its residents.14 Despite Chicago’s ﬂirtation with nativism, which was most
clearly manifested in the election of Know-Nothing mayor Levi Boone in 1855—the year
during which the city’s immigrant population hit a low of 43 percent—immigrants

continued to pour into the city.15 And after the Lager Beer Riot of April 21, 1855, which .

 

'2 Ellen Skerrett, “Irish,” in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society,
2005); accessed at http://www.encvclﬂedijjchicagohistorvorg/paees/652.html on 4 May 2009. For more
discussion on the Irish in Chicago, see Finley Peter Dunne (author) and Charles Fanning (ed.), Mr. Dooley
and the Chicago Irish: The Autobiography of a Nineteenth-Century Ethnic Group (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 1992, 1987) and Charles Fanning, Michael Funchion, Lawrence
McCaffrey, and Ellen Skerrett, The Irish in Chicago (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

Dominic Pacyga, “Poles,” Anita Olson Gustafson, “Swedes,” and Emily Brunner, “Canadians,” in the
Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005); accessed at
http://www.encvclopedia.chicagohistory.org/ on 4 May 2009.

‘4 Skogan, 18.

15 Ibid., 38. There was a slight dip in the percentage of Chicago’s population that was foreign born during
1855: it fell about 3.5% from 1854 and rose about 3.5% in 1856. The 43.93% of the population was the
lowest foreign-born percentage in two decades between 1850—the ﬁrst year Wesley Skogan found
sufﬁcient data to calculate the percent of foreign-born individuals—and 1871.

72

was a direct response by German and Irish immigrants to the nativist policies of the
Council, Chicago’s immigrants mobilized politically. They began to play a key role in
the city’s municipal elections, which had previously only drawn participation from a
narrow swath of the city’s population: the land-speculating Yankee elite.‘6

The many new Chicagoans needed to ﬁnd habitation within the city’s nine square
miles.17 Michigan Avenue—which was now promised the protection of the Illinois
Central Railroad’s breakwater—was home to the city’s elite, and few, if any, of
Chicago’s newest residents had the means to purchase a home along Michigan or any of

the city’s other “aristocratic” avenues.l8 Most migrants and immigrants who found their

 

‘6 The Lager Beer Riot occurred just over a month after Boone and a group of Know-Nothing aldermen
were elected to city office. In an intentionally provocative move, the politicians passed an ordinance that
raised the cost of a liquor license from $50 for a one-year license to $300 for a three-month license,
increasing the price of a license twenty-four-fold. This act, along with the tripling of a police force of
which immigrants were not allowed to join and the enforcement of a previously-ignored Sunday closing
law for drinking establishments, aimed speciﬁcally to control the leisure time of German and Irish
immigrants, two groups who generally spent a good amount of time in taverns. Many tavern owners did
not comply with the new licensing fee, and the courts were immediately ﬁlled with such cases. April 21
marked the ﬁrst of the cases, and a huge crowd assembled outside the courthouse to support the defendant.
Nine people in the crowd were arrested, and a group of German men took up arms and vowed to break the
prisoners out of jail. Further confrontation was postponed when Mayor Boone refused to let down the
drawbridge on Clark Street, but after it descended, a large number of North Side Germans surged across the
bridge into a hundreds of policemen. Shots were ﬁred, and the militia was called to quell the disturbance.
In the end, one person was killed and sixty were arrested. Robin Einhom argues that the riot marks the end
of non-partisan politics in politics in Chicago since it initially mobilized immigrants to participate in local
politics and vote out the Know Nothings in 1856; the immigrants’ political participation was ongoing in the
city from that time. For more discussion and references to this footnote, see Robin Einhom, “Lager Beer
Riot,” in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005); accessed at
http://wwwencyclopediachicagohistomorg/pages/652.html on 25 May 2009. See also Einhom, Property
Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833-1872 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 161-4, and
Richard Wilson Renner, “In Perfect Ferment: Chicago, the Know-Nothings, and the Riot for Lager Beer,”
Chicago History 5 (1976): 161-70. An excellent narrative of the event, including an even-handed
discussion of the national and local context of the Know-Nothing movement, can be found in John Flinn,
History of the Chicago Police, from the Settlement of the Community to the Present Time, under Authority
of the Mayor and Superintendent of the Force (Chicago: Police Book Fund, 1887), 53-80.

17 Chicago’s land area grew in later versions of the city charter. In 1860, Chicago was about 17.5 square
miles. By 1870, it had grown to about 35 square miles. A major annexation in 1889 brought the land area
within the city limits to about 178 square miles.

'8 See Harold Mayer and Richard Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1969), 54-66, for discussion of the class and ethnic character of various Chicago

73

way to Chicago were people of modest means who hoped to ply a trade, keep a small
store or tavern, or, most likely, labor on the railroads, in the various lumber- or
stockyards, or in industrial establishments such as the McCormick Reaper Works.
Though some of the newcomers settled in surrounding farm, industrial, and commuter
suburbs, the large number who moved to Chicago proper turned what had previously
been sparsely-settled industrial areas into mixed-use neighborhoods where men, women,
and children both lived and labored.19 These neighborhoods were not desirable
residential enclaves: the local soundtrack was the piercing, ubiquitous din of industry;
and the nose was assaulted with a persistent stench formed from a cocktail of wood and
coal smoke, animal waste (some combination of feces, urine, carcasses, and offal), the
stagnant, polluted water of the Chicago River, and the odors speciﬁc to various

manufacturing establishments.20 These areas were not pleasing to the eye, ear, or nose,

 

neighborhoods in the 18503 and 18603. The issue of social class and the avenues is discussed in Chapter
Four.

19 Ann Durkin Keating describes Chicago’s farm, industrial, and commuter suburbs in Chicagoland: City
and Suburbs in the Railroad Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Her description of the
process by which people came to live in industrial suburbs—the plant, factory, or stockyards were built,
and inexpensive worker housing soon popped up nearby—was similar to how it happened in the industrial
neighborhoods within the city limits. See pp. 65-91, especially 76-8. Also, Keating maintains that, despite
the popular conception that commuter suburbs are ethnically and socioeconomically homogeneous—this is
a teleology based on the homogeneity of many of these suburbs today—these suburbs “had a variety of
residents—commuters, local businessmen, local craftsmen, and workers” (105). Finally, the general
process by which worker neighborhoods grew in industrial suburbs—“Around all of these plants, which at
their height employed thousands of workers, seemingly instant neighborhoods and towns emerged”—is an
apt description for the residential growth in Chicago’s manufacturing and industrial districts in the 18503
(76). Though none of the companies hired “thousands of workers” at that point, the agglomeration of
businesses in those areas (for example, along the south branch of the Chicago River) attracted workers to
make them mixed-use neighborhoods in which they lived.

20 Descriptions of the polluted, insalubrious state of Chicago during the nineteenth century abound. For an
overview of the city’s environmental degradation, including water and air pollution, see Harold Platt’s
comparative study, Shock Cities: The Environmental Transformation and Reform of Manchester and
Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 78-195, 232-297. The use of livestock also made
its mark on the city; the “living machines” played a role similar to that of Chicago’s manufacturers: they
polluted the city with waste. Once they expired, their carcasses created another pollutant. Though horses
and other livestock waste createdmarkets through which much of the waste was taken care of—manure
was collected for fertilizer, and carcasses were rendered into leather, soap, glue, and other products—one

74

yet they were inexpensive in which to live, and they were within walking distance of
potential jobsites, which further saved money on commuting via train or horse-drawn
omnibus.21

As Chicago’s population grew, people came into contact with railroads on a
regular basis. Workers likely saw their lives touched by railroads more frequently than
the afﬂuent; they often lived and worked in neighborhoods ﬁlled with railroad tracks.
But Chicago so quickly became the railroad hub of North America that, by the early
18503, even wealthy Chicagoans could not escape contact with the smoke-belching
symbol of America’s industrial progress. The Chicago “aristocracy” who lived along
Michigan Avenue was not afforded an unadulterated View of Lake Michigan; the
Council’s deal with the Illinois Central guaranteed these residents a front-window view
of trains, tracks, and wood-and-steel construction that destroyed any naive notion of an
idyllic Chicago. Everyone who entered the city had to deal with the railroads.

And everyone who dealt with the railroads also dealt with numerous attendant
problems and inconveniences that ﬁrst surfaced with Chicago’s initial bursts of
population growth and railroad development in the 18503. Trains were powerful new
machines that threatened life and limb because of their size and the speeds they were
capable of reaching. The ability of the railroads to affect the everyday lives of the people
in Chicago was exacerbated by the fact that many of the railroads were given rights-of-

way that allowed them to build on public streets. But the extent to which railroad

 

can imagine that stockyards, stables, and rendering factories were not pleasant to live near. See Clay
McShane and Joel Tarr, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: '
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 18-30, 120-6 for the nuisances and economies created by horses in
cities. '

2] The omnibus and commuter trains became regular features of Chicago transportation beginning in the
18503. Mayer and Wade, 66-70; Keating, Chicago/and, 93-113; McShane and Tarr, 57-83.

75

development negatively affected the public went well beyond hazards caused directly by
the fast-moving metal body of the train. The railroads produced a complete sensory
experience that transformed urban life and space during the industrial age.

Railroad development shaped Chicago’s space before even a single train rolled
through or across any streets. Before a train could roll, track had to be laid. This was
quite a formidable task in Chicago in the 18403 and 18503; though the railroads were
happy to take any free right-of-way the city would give them, the streets on which they
were to build were in an abysmal condition. Charles Cleaver, a resident of Chicago since

”22 The water level was so

1833, described the city as “very low and exceedingly wet.
high that “there was not a cellar in Chicago” until the late 18503, at which time the
Common Council implemented a plan to raise the grade of the city by somewhere around
four or ﬁve feet.23 The raising of the grade was part of the sewerage system—the ﬁrst
comprehensive one of its kind in the United States—planned by sanitarian and civil
engineer Ellis Chesbrough. He maintained that the grade had to be raised to effectively

drain sewage from streets and buildings. As the grade was raised, water and waste

drained much more effectively off the surface and into the river.24 Thus, not only could

 

22 Mabel Mcllvaine, William Bross, Charles Cleaver, Joseph Jefferson, and A.T. Andreas, Reminiscences
of Chicago During the F orties and Fifties (Chicago: The Lakeside Press, 1913), 42.

23 Ibid., 43.

24 For discussion of the raising of Chicago’s grade, see Louis Cain, “Raising and Watering a City: Ellis
Sylvester Chesbrough and Chicago's First Sanitation System,” Technology and Culture 13:3 (July 1972),
353-72, and Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront Metropolis: The Case of Chicago (DeKalb, 111.: Northern
Illinois University Press, 1978); Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban
America from Colonial Times to the Present, Abridged Edition (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
2008), 65-7; and Robin Einhom, Property Rules, 138-40, and “Streets Grades, Raising,” in the Electronic
Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005); accessed at

ht_tp://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org[pages/ 1202.htrnl on 24 June 2009.

76

people construct cellars below their houses, streets no longer could aptly be described as
“sloughs.”25
' Just because Chicago streets could not ofﬁcially be considered bogs by the time
the railroads started laying their tracks in the city, they nevertheless were still muddy
messes. Early Chicago resident William Bross clearly illustrates this point:
I said we had no pavements in 1848. The streets were simply thrown up as
country roads. In the spring, for weeks, portions of them would be impassable. I
have at different times seen empty wagons and drays stuck on Lake and Water
streets on every block between Wabash Avenue and the river. Of course there
was little or no business doing, for the people of the city could not get about
much, and the people of the country could not get in to do it. As the clerks had
nothing to do, they would exercise their wits by putting boards from dry goods
boxes in the holes where the last dray was dug out, with signiﬁcant signs, as, “No
Bottom Here,” “The Shortest Road to China.” Sometimes one board would be
nailed across another, and an old hat and coat ﬁxed on it, with the notice “On His
Way to the Lower Regions.”26
Stories abound of near-death experiences with the quicksand that composed early
Chicago streets, as the topic of the poor condition of the city’s roadways is among the
favorites of old-timers who reminisced about early Chicago.27 The ubiquity of this theme
underscores the substantial degree to which poor street conditions affected the everyday
lives of Chicagoans.
The poor condition of the streets even prevented railroads from meeting their
deadlines. This was especially annoying to railroads, since time and schedules, from
initial construction to the moving train, were a primary concern for the companies. The

Chicago & Rock Island Railroad asked the Committee on Streets & Alleys for permission

to re-lay track on Clark Street because “the unsettled condition of the street, and the

 

25 Mabel Mcllvaine, et al., Reminiscences, 41.
26 Ibid., 15-16.
27 Ibid., 15-16, 39-45.

77

weather thus far [that] spring” made it impossible to lay track upon which a train could
safely run.28 “Unsettled” was likely a serious understatement.

To make matters worse, the special assessment system used by the Common
Council as the chief funding source for public works projects from the 18403 to the 18603
made it nearly certain that the streets would remain in poor condition unless wealthy or
middle-class people took the initiative to petition for an assessment.29 Even then an
improvement was not guaranteed, though it was fairly easy for property owners to claim

they had a consensus for an assessment, especially since there was no ofﬁcial numerical

requirement to reach consensus until 1861.30 In the industrial and working-class
residential areas through which the railroads generally ran, there were few people who
petitioned the Council to charge them an assessment in order to pave a road.31 The
residents of these areas did not want to spend the little money they had at their disposal
on a public improvement. Owners of the nearby industrial and manufacturing interests
often made hodgepodge improvements to streets to keep them functional, but few
assessments were requested and approved on these streets in the 18503 and 18603.
Most improvements made on the streets during this period—usually ﬁlling and
grading—were made in the late 18503 as part of the Council’s mandated grade raising
that came with Ellis Chesbrough’s citywide sewerage plan. There were, however, a few
petitions for special assessments made by local businessmen who sought to improve

streets. For example, early Chicago resident and booster George Dole petitioned the

 

28 CP 1852/53 0443A 06/28.
29 See Einhom, Property Rules, passim.
30 Ibid., 116-17.

3] Many of the business owners petitioned the Council to get permission to build sidetracks that connected

to railroads.

78

Council to plank parts of Kinzie St. It is not surprising that the petition passed, given
Dole’s standing in the community. Also, it seems only natural that he used special
assessment—a system developed by his fellow city boosters—to achieve his goal of
improved streets for the more efﬁcient functioning of his grain business.32 Yet Dole’s
petition was the exception rather than the rule in the industrial areas. Residents and
business owners were reluctant to pay for street improvement while railroads were given
permission to build on the streets. Thus bad streets continued to get worse.

The condition of the streets did not concern the railroad companies unless the
streets were in such a poor condition as to make it impossible to lay track on whiCh trains
could travel, as the C&RI showed with the example above. It did not matter, that is,
unless the streets around the depots were in poor condition. Even as early as the 18503,
when Chicago’s train stations were composed of little more than a roof and a platform—

the grand stations of note were not built until later in the century—businessmen

recognized the importance of the train terminal as an important social nexus.33 Anyone
who traveled on a train from Chicago boarded at the depot of its respective railroad or
railroads. A few of the earliest railroads participated in track-sharing agreements that
resulted in joint depots. The Illinois Central—the great north-south route that ran the
length of Illinois—believed that a connection to a railroad that ran east would be
economically beneﬁcial, so they made an agreement with the Michigan Central Railroad

to share track with the MC from the Indiana-Illinois border into the city of Chicago and

 

32 See petition at CP 1851/52 0547A 06/06; information on George Dole found in “The Man—Charles
Sidney Dole” (Crystal Lake, 111.: Crystal Lake Historical Society, date unknown); accessed at
http://www.widelegacyorg/charles-dole.html on 25 June 2009.

33 See Laura Milsk, “Meet Me at the Station: The Culture and Aesthetics of Chicago’s Railroad Terminals,
1871-1930,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Loyola University-Chicago, 2003), for discussion of the social
signiﬁcance of Chicago’s railroad terminals.

79

to also share a depot that was nestled at the mouth of the Chicago River on Lake
Michigan. The MC’s eastward-directed rival, the Michigan Southern Railroad,
participated in a similar track- and depot-sharing agreement with the Chicago and Rock
Island Railroad.34

Multiple railroads at each depot meant that the depots likely had more people
inside their walls at any one time than any other building in the city. And the ﬁerce
competition between rival railroads meant that it was a priority to keep travelers content
with all parts of the railroad journey. This is exactly why the superintendents of the
Chicago, St. Paul & Fond du Lac Railroad and the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad sent a
joint petition to the Common Council on November 17, 185 6. They requested that the
Common Council make an assessment to plank the streets near their depots, because such
a street improvement was “imperatively necessary in order to give the public suitable

facilities for access thereto.”35

The horrid state of the streets compelled the railroad
companies to push for planking so prospective customers would ﬁnd their experience
more pleasant than before the street improvement. The petitioners’ request was approved
under the predictable condition that the two railroads were to have fronted the money for
the planking. A special assessment would come, but if the railroads wanted the roads
planked in a timely fashion, they would have to do it themselves.36

Even ancillary railroad businesses found it necessary to maximize customer

satisfaction by dealing with the poor streets. Brothers David and George Gage started a

 

34 The MSRR and MCRR were unable to obtain right-of-way into Chicago in large part because of a
rivalry that became so heated that partisans on each side in the Council prevented the each railroad from
obtaining right-of-way.

35 CP 1856/57 1272A 11/17.

36 This likely did not come as a shock to the railroads since they owned most of the land that was adjacent
to the streets that were to be planked.

80

hotel and restaurant—the Tremont House—with business partner John Drake. The
Tremont House was to cater primarily to those who traveled on the Illinois Central
Railroad, as it was located across the street from the IC/MC depot, on land that was sold
to the Gage brothers and John Drake by the Illinois Central Railroad. With the land sale
came the right of the men to construct an iron footbridge from the depot to their
restaurant. Obviously they believed a direct passage to the Tremont House would draw
more hungry passengers. But they likely found it necessary to incur the expense of
building an iron footbridge sixteen feet above the street because the mud and excrement
that composed said street formed a barrier, instead of a passageway, to their restaurant.
The aroma and consistency of the streets probably did not help hungry travelers increase
their appetites, either.37

The poor condition of Chicago’s streets, especially before the Council raised the
grade of the city in the late 18503, helped shape people’s movement, too. The streets
would remain in poor condition with the general reluctance to make street improvements
during the era of special assessments. But the trains did more than wear out public
thoroughfares; they literally changed the shape of the streets and, in so doing, created a
hazard to those who traveled by foot or by animal power. Speciﬁcally, the tracks
protruded above the grade of the street, thus creating a hazard for those who needed to
cross them.

Injury due to protruding tracks became a quotidian occurrence beginning very
early in the railroad era. George Miller and S. McDowall—owners of George Miller &

Co.——- petitioned the Council for restitution because of just such an occurrence. They

 

37 CP 1856/57 0858A 0814.

81

were not themselves injured because of the hazard posed by the tracks; instead, a horse
that “was in constant use by them in their business for the carrying and delivering in
certain parts of said city of their goods and merchandise” was “permanently injured” after
having gotten its hoof caught between road planking and a railroad track at a Michigan
Southern/Chicago & Rock Island Railroad crossing on Van Buren Street. Their claim
was, of course, denied, as the Committee on Finance was informed that the crossing was
in “good condition” at the time.38 Not that it would have mattered if the crossing had not
been in good condition; the Council was loathe to give anyone money for any claim,
especially one where liability for incidents at such crossings lay squarely with the
railroads and the individuals, not with the Council.

The tracks, especially at grade crossings, led to more than just equine injuries.
Dan Brobston, a West Side resident, petitioned the Council on behalf of the residents of
his neighborhood. Brobston lived west of Halsted Street in the vicinity of the tracks of
the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, which ran along Kinzie Street. He claimed that
the crossings were “in a very dangerous condition and have been for a long time past,”
and that “several accidents” had occurred as a result, including an accident to “one of our
citizens Mr. Levi More [who] has been thrown from his wagon & his thigh bone broken
& otherwise injured. And said More who is a sober industrious & good citizen has been
obliged to apply to the county for assistance & support for his family & himself in

”39

consequence of said accident and neglect. Mr. Brobston went on to point out other

crossings in the area that needed repair. The Council granted his petition and ordered the

 

38 CP 1865/1866 0150A 07/10. CP 1869/70 0405A 02/28 is a nearly identical petition of a separate
incident.

39 CP 1855/56 1659A 12/10.

82

West Division’s Commissioner of Streets to “notiﬁed (sic) the severel (sic) Rail Road
Companys (sic) to construct sutible (sic) crossing (sic) at the severil (sic) streets when

Rail Road tracks cross the said streets in the West Division.”40

Mr. Brobston’s petition is
evidence of a trend that began early in Chicago’s railroad era: the Galena & Chicago
Union’s disregard for the maintenance of their grade crossings, even when ordered by the
Council to repair them.41

The hazard of tracks that protruded above the surface of the road did not go
unnoticed by problem-solvers of the day. The Tribune ran an article about Col. R.P.
Morgan, an inventor, who had “a plan for a new railroad track for city railroads, which he
thinks will obviate the principal objections to laying tracks in streets which are much
used as thoroughfares for vehicles, &c.”42 He developed a rail that would be ﬂush with
the street so as to reduce the risk of accident to people, animals, and vehicles that had to
cross said tracks. Morgan likely had the ear of some important people in the city, for he
had at one time been the superintendent of the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad.43
There is no evidence, though, that the Council compelled railroads to switch to any

particular type of rail. (There likely would have been extreme opposition by the railroads

to such a move because of the expense involved in switching out track.) The choice of

 

40 Ibid. Though this is only anecdotal evidence, 1 ﬁnd it curious that an order riddled with more spelling
and grammatical errors than any other Council document I’ve come across to this point was produced when
the Council was ﬁlled with nativist Know-Nothings. I’d venture to guess that a good number of the
immigrants that this alderman and/or his counterparts were trying to repress held a stronger command of
written English than this local politician.

4' An early example of this is CP 1853/54 12/ 19A 11/28, in which the Council ordered the Street

Commissioner of the West Division to “notify” the GCURR “to construct within ten days convenient
crossings for vehicles, where their track crosses the line of streets.” I will discuss the Council’s lack of
ability to enforce their orders in Chapter 3.

42 Chicago Tribune, “A New Plan for a City Railroad Track,” Nov. 21, 1859, p. 1.

43 New York Times, “Railroads,” Jan. 17, 1855, p. 7. Abraham Lincoln, “Letter to RP. Morgan, February
13, 1856,” in Roy Basler, ed., Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings (New York: DaCapo Press,
2001), 338.

83

track laid likely was made through a nexus of business decisions based on proﬁt and
improvements in the steel production process.44

Protruding tracks, muddy streets, and crossings composed of faulty planking were
not the most serious problems posed by railroads to the people of Chicago. Many of the
railroads were given the right-of-way by the Common Council to build their tracks in the
middle of Chicago streets. These streets were public thoroughfares that the trains shared
with Chicago residents, and this close proximity of humans to the daunting new
technology created a new, if obvious, hazard. The scale of the hazard created by trains
on city streets helps demarcate the beginning of the industrial era in the United States:
before the railroad, Chicagoans had to deal with bad roads and the occasional runaway
horse, the former, an inconvenience, and the latter of which could cause injury, but rarely
death; after the railroad, people had to be hyperaware while traveling on streets through
which tracks ran, for a lapse in concentration could lead to serious injury or death.

The most dangerous railroad encounters on streets usually happened at grade
crossings. Grade crossings—the intersections of streets and railroad tracks—became a
substantial problem fairly early in Chicago’s railroad era. I have not found any
systematic data that show statistics for grade crossing accidents or those that occurred on
streets through which tracks ran in 18503 and 18603 Chicago, but a few documents and

secondary sources give clues to the frequency of such occurrences. John Rauch,

Chicago’s sanitary superintendent, authored a report on railroad accidents for the

 

44 For example, most railroads used iron rails through the end of the century because they were
considerably less expensive than steel rails. In the 18703, railroads throughout the nation began to switch
to steel track, so that by 1880, 35% of the nations rails were steel. This occurred because of: 1) a drop in
the price of steel rails; 2) more uniform production of quality steel rails; and 3) proof that steel rails greatly
outlasted their iron counterparts by as much as sixteen fold. See Mark Aldrich, Death Rode the Rails:
American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006),
54-8.

84

Common Council. He reported that thirty-four people were killed in railroad accidents in
Chicago’s city limits in 1869, and that twenty people were killed in 1868.45 He alluded
that many of the deaths occurred at grade crossings. His numbers did not even include
people who were injured, however severely, by trains. This is a staggeringly high
number: nearly one death by train every ten days in Chicago in 1869; about one death
every eighteen days the previous year.

Another report made by the Council’s Committee on Railroads includes a list of
boys killed and maimed by trains from early 1866 to August of 1867. Five boys lost their
lives, and ten lost arms or legs.46 A startling fact of this case is that most of the accidents
occurred at grade crossings at Kinzie Street; the others occurred on the tracks that ran
upon Kinzie. In other words, they were all caused by one railroad, the Galena & Chicago
Union, which at this point was known as the Chicago & North Western Railroad (the
G&CU had merged with the C&NW in 1864).47 Perhaps even more surprising was that
every victim listed was considered a “boy.” The prevalence of children among the
victims can be explained two ways. The petitioners believed the Council was more likely
to respond to their petition if the victims were children, so they focused only on the
young victims and consciously neglected to mention any adults who had been maimed or
killed; or, the only accident victims during this period were boys. The latter is more
likely, for it seems the petitioners would have wanted to show to the Council the full

extent of the human suffering that occurred as a result of the railroad on Kinzie Street. In

 

45 CP 1869/70 0893A 07/18.
46 CP 1867/68 0512A 08/12.

47 David Young, The Iron Horse and the Windy City: How Railroads Shaped Chicago (DeKalb, 111.:
Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), 25.

85

other words, the higher the number of casualties, the more likely members of the
Council’s Committee on Railroads were going to take notice and respond to the safety
threat posed by the C&NW.

The fact that there were no girls listed among the ranks of the railroad casualties
comes as somewhat of a surprise, yet this can be adequately explained through a
combination of historical scholarship on gender in nineteenth-century America and
modern-day psychological studies on gender and risk-taking. A large amount of
psychology research has been undertaken over the past three decades on brain
development and on gender differences in relation to risk taking. The ﬁndings generally
show that men and boys are more likely to participate in risky or impulsive behavior than
women and girls, and also that children and adolescents behave more impulsively and are
generally less risk-averse than adults.48 A juxtaposition of these two ﬁndings suggests
that boys are and were generally more impulsive than both their female and adult
counterparts, which helps explain the large number of boys who became victims of
railroad accidents. Also, the gender norms of the day made it more acceptable for boys to
roam and play unsupervised than for girls to do the same.49 All told, boys were frequent

victims of the trains.

 

48 See Valerie Reyna and Frank Farley, “Risk and Rationality in Adolescent Decision Making Implications
for Theory, Practice, and Public Policy,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 7:] (September
2006), 1-44, for a summary of research on differences between adult and adolescent decision making. See
James Byme, David Miller, and William Schafer, “Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis,”
Psychological Bulletin 125:3 (May 1999), 367-83, for a summary of research described in the title.

49 See Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1982), especially, 55-61, 83-9, 185-91, 203-9, for analysis of gender norms among working-
class girls and young women in antebellum New York. She maintains that girls were generally more
restricted than boys from moving about on the city streets as a result of the patriarchal system. Stansell
maintains that “[p]rostitution was the only way girls could get away from home, but boys were less
constrained.” (206) Girls and young women did not have the same geographic mobility as boys and young

86

The newspapers were full of accounts of victims—men, women, and children—
who were killed by trains at grade crossings. Most of the numerous railroad accidents
listed in the Chicago Tribune that occurred in Chicago were accidents at such crossings.
Some men were killed while attempting to cross the tracks on a horse and wagon. These
crossings were made even more hazardous since they oﬁen consisted of multiple sets of
tracks on which trains would move simultaneously in opposite directions. This was the
unfortunate situation for John Weller and Thomas Low, who attempted to cross the tracks
of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy at Blue Island Avenue, near Sixteenth Street. They
misjudged the speed of the oncoming trains, which were “progressing at a very rapid
rate,” and avoided being hit by one train, only to be struck by another moving in the
opposite direction.50 Historical economist Mark Aldrich maintains that “[c]rossing
accidents reﬂected in part people’s inability to estimate risks, for trains covered distance
much faster than anyone was accustomed to,” which proved true in the deaths of John
Weller and Thomas Low.5 1 He also points out that crossings could be especially
treacherous if the visibility at the crossing was limited due, for example, to close
proximity to a curve in the railroad tracks or the street.52

Another man, Michael Somas, was driving a few cattle—“four head—two cows
and their calves,” to be exact—to his home west of the city limits at Junction, so named

because it was Illinois’s ﬁrst railroad junction.53 One of his cattle darted onto the tracks

 

men in intra- and inter-state travel, which often would occur for economic reasons or on a much smaller
scale of movement within the city.

50 Chicago Tribune, “Terrible Accident: One Man Killed and Another Fatally Injured,” April 1, 1868, p. 4.
5' Aldrich, 124-5.

52 Ibid., 125.

53 Chicago Tribune, “Sad Casualty,” January 7, 1860, p. l.

87

of the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad “[i]ust as the train had reached the crossing.”54
Mr. Somas “[i]mmediately. . .appeared, making hurried attempts to push the animal off
the track. . ..[E]vidently [Mr. Somas had] miscalculated his distance or the speed of the
train, for it was too late to prevent his being struck by the engine and thrown to one side.
He was picked up dead, a fatal blow having fallen upon his head.”55 As if Mr. Somas’s
death were not bad enough, the last paragraph revealed a cruel irony: “It is said [the]
deceased had a brother killed on a railroad in Ohio some time since. He had himself been
working on a railroad up to that time, but immediately left the employ, and has since
cherished and expressed an unconquerable dread of railroad accidents, from which
however he has met his own fate.”56
The grade crossings were so dangerous in part because the railroads often failed
to take appropriate safety precautions at the most treacherous crossings. The deaths of
John Weller and Thomas Low were attributed in part to the fact that “the bell attached to

”57 The coroner, a jury, and the editors of the Chicago

the locomotive was not being rung.
Tribune judged that a number of fatal accidents would not have occurred had there been a
ﬂagrnan at the crossing to warn individuals of oncoming trains.58 But sometimes the
presence of a ﬂagrnan did not even matter: “states discovered that protected crossings

usually averaged more accidents than those that were unprotected.”59 This can be

attributed to heavier trafﬁc at protected crossings and individuals routinely ignoring

 

’4 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
57 Chicago Tribune, “Terrible Accident: One Man Killed and Another Fatally Injured,” April 1, 1868, p. 4.

58 See Chicago Tribune, “Fatal Railroad Accident: One Woman Killed and Another Probably Fatally
Injured,” January 24, 1863, p. 4; “Inquest,” June 14, 1862, p. 4.

59 Aldrich, 125.

88

ﬂagmen, gates, or signs. Also, crossings that were protected with a ﬂagman or gateman
during the day could “act as a trap for the unwary” if, for example, the gates were left
open at night.60 But sometimes people simply misjudged the speed and distance of the
oncoming train, as Michael Somas, John Weller, and Thomas Low had; this was
especially a problem early in Chicago’s railroad era, when people were not yet used to
the speed of train travel.61
The hazard posed by grade crossings sometimes combined with other spatial
factors such as the abysmal, muddy streets mentioned above to lead to tragedy. At six in
the evening on January 23, 1863—nearly a decade-and-a-half since the railroad era
commenced in Chicago—Ann Turrell and Catharine Mack “were walking along the track
of the Michigan Southern Railroad, between Griswold and Polk Street,” just two blocks
east of the Chicago River’s south branch. The railroad tracks and roadbed on which the
tracks lay provided an alternative path for the two women, who walked along the railroad
ties “to avoid the mud in the street.” The city had grown to about 150,000 people at that
point, yet many portions of the city, including the heavily industrialized area near the
south branch of the Chicago River, continued to be plagued by lack of regular street
paving and maintenance. So the two women of Irish descent walked along the tracks
near their homes and thus avoided both puddles and “The Shortest Road to China.”
Unfortunately for Mrs. Turrell and Mrs. Mack, their less muddy path home happened to

be near the depot and rail yards of the Michigan Southern. When they spotted an

oncoming train as they walked along the main track, they quickly ran to a switch track.

 

60 Ibid.
6' Ibid.

89

As they did so, an oncoming train backed “towards them at a rate of four or ﬁve miles an
hour, and came upon them before the engineer knew they were there.” Mrs. Turrell died
instantly, “her skull broken in and her right arm and breast horribly crushed.” She, a
widow, left a seventeen-year-old son without parents. Mrs. Mack was injured severely:
“her left arm and shoulder [were] crushed, and, it is thought, [she had] received serious

internal injuries, which. . .probably prove[d] fatal.”62

la 37:“: l
W

l

Mat-rm” .

         

;. - memes anal: ._ .. _ﬁ h.
Figure 3. The area where Ann Turrell and Catharine Mack were killed. The Michigan Southern Railroa
tracks are to the east of the river, on the right side of the map. The women likely were killed on the tracks
near Harrison Street, where the single track splits into multiple tracks between the engine house and the
depot. 1863. (University of Chicago Library)

 

62 Chicago Tribune, “Fatal Railroad Accident: One Woman Killed and Another Probably Fatally Injured,”
January 24, 1863, p. 4.

90

The newspaper article that described this incident tells us more than that the
streets were in poor shape and that railroads created a new hazard in the city. It is a
column of six paragraphs, which exceeds the length of most newspaper articles that
mention railroad deaths in and near Chicago. (Most am only a paragraph or two.)
Besides the length, the content is slightly different. The ﬁnal two paragraphs editorialize
about the dangerous crossing where the women were killed. In so doing, they reprimand
the Michigan Southern and Chicago and Rock Island Railroads for failing to have “a light
at this crossing, and no ﬂagman stationed there,” both of which are especially important
since there “are several main and switch tracks belonging to the Michigan Southern and
Rock Island railroads, and several engines passing to and fro almost hourly.”63 By the
year this incident occurred—1863—this area had grown in population, and the tracks had
become a constant threat to life and limb: “The residents thereabouts state that persons
barely escape the trains and switching engines, daily.”64

The concern the writer of the Tribune showed in this incident likely stemmed
from the fact that the two accident victims were women. As historian Barbara Young
Welke has shown, women helped change American injury law and thus the American
conception of liberty during the end of the nineteenth century. Before the Industrial

Revolution, liberty “was deﬁned in terms of autonomous action—a nation of ‘free

men?"55 Liberty was gendered, for women were generally seen as dependent entities, in

 

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Barbara Young Welke, Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution,
[865-1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 41.

91

need of aid and protection by men.66 White men epitomized the American ideal of
liberty: they had the freedom to make decisions for themselves and their families.

As more women were injured and killed by streetcars and trains, the state of
dependence of all people in the Industrial Era—both men and women—became blatantly
obvious. During the nineteenth century, when men were killed by locomotives or
streetcars, they generally, in the eyes of American society, bore responsibility for their
own deaths: they made autonomous, if careless, decisions, and thus caused the accident.
When women were killed, on the other hand, it exposed the fact that humans could not be
held completely responsible for their actions when technology such as locomotives were
so much faster and more powerful than anything before their advent. If women could not
be protected from physical harm by locomotives and streetcars, perhaps the prevailing
idea of liberty that existed before the Industrial Era was insufﬁcient. As Welke
described, the change in the American conception of liberty was reﬂected in injury law at
the turn of the century—more lawsuits were ﬁled against the railroads, and many more
found for the plaintiffs than in earlier times. American liability law was an adaptation to
the modern condition, which was deﬁned by new technological and economic forms that
bred dependence and limited autonomous action. Railroad development in urban space
reﬂected the modern condition, and, in so doing, it clearly exposed the spatial, social, and
technological relationships that deﬁned that condition.

Though most of the bodily harm caused by trains in Chicago happened when a

train hit or ran over someone, the close proximity of railroads to people in the city

 

66 This concept of gender was informed by class. Middle-class women during the period experienced
“socialized helplessness,” the idea that women needed the aid of men, especially when in public, while
working-class women had to be more independent out of economic necessity. See Welke, passim,
especially 43-80. The concept of “socialized helplessness” is explained on page 57.

92

brought yet another hazard that could cause serious injury or death: the possibility of
boiler explosions. According to Alderman Russell in 1867, “there are frequent and
dangerous explosions of. . .engine boilers causing the destruction of human life and loss
of property.”67 The Chicago Tribune described in great detail one explosion that
occurred in 1853. It happened near Junction on a locomotive owned by the Galena &
Chicago Union Railroad. Just before eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, “the
neighborhood for miles around the Junction was alarmed by a terrible shock? The boiler
on an old engine had exploded, “blowing large portions to a great distance.”
Unfortunately, there were ﬁve railroad workers within the immediate vicinity of the
explosion, “three of whom were picked up in a dreadfully mutilated state. . . .One had the
upper part of his skull and brains taken completely off and carried many yards. Another
had one side of his face and head crushed to pieces, and the third unfortunate victim had
the back part of the head dreadfully mutilated. Two other men were severely bruised and
it is doubtﬁsl whether they will recover?‘58
Horrible catastrophes such as this occurred when a boiler did not contain enough
water, thus overheating and weakening the iron, or when too much pressure developed.
This usually combined with inconsistent boiler manufacturing quality—especially early
in the railroad era, during which the explosion described above occurred—and/or
inadequate maintenance, both of which led to weak spots in a boiler’s iron sides, or

malfunctions in its safety valves.‘59 Even if a boiler did not explode, the steam that had to

be released periodically from the boiler for safety reasons could burn individuals walking

 

67 CP 1867/68 1164A 12/30.
68 Chicago Tribune, “Boiler Explosion and Loss of Life,” January 31, 1853, p. 3.
69 Aldrich, 31-2, 98-9.

93

adjacent to a locomotive. Steam technology created a great risk to both railroad workers
and Chicago residents who shared the streets with trains.

Most of the accidents discussed above happened in the 18603. Though the deaths
and accidents in the 18503 were not as frequent since the city had a smaller population
and less railroad development than it did in the subsequent decade, one can reasonably
assrune that accidents became normal events in the 18503, when locomotives transformed
into much more than simply curiosities in Chicago. With the city’s rise in population
came simultaneous railroad development: while one railroad operated in Chicago in
1850, the city became the terminus for ten lines only six years later.70 This development
meant much higher railroad traffic in the city. In 1856, a total of ninety-six trains either
entered or departed Chicago daily; in 1872, after the city was rebuilt from the ashes of the
Great Fire, train trafﬁc more than tripled, to over 340 trains per day.71 Granted, the city
limits doubled in area as a result of new city charters, yet this does not diminish the fact
that Chicago residents increasingly encountered trains—sometimes with fatal results—
through the 18503 and 18603.

The risk of accidents and death are the most obvious negative aspects of railroad
development in a city, but they were not the most common. Many more Chicago
residents lived with—rather than died by—the railroads. Chicago residents had to deal
on a daily basis with a number of negative extemalities—unintended costs—concomitant

with railroad development in cities. Some of them were just annoying while others were

 

70 Harold Meyer and Richard Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1969), 35-6.
71 Ibid. Wilbur Storey, ed., Railroads of Chicago: A Comprehensive History (Chicago: Western News Co.,

1872), 27. The track mileage centered on Chicago also more than tripled from 1856 to 1872, Item over
3,000 miles of track to over 9,700 miles.

94

insalubrious, yet they each, to some extent, altered how Chicago residents had to live life
beginning in the 18503.

First, trains were loud. Their steam-powered engines created a ruckus; their
whistles—also powered by steam—screamed at a decibel—level and frequency that put
people on edge; their wheels were metal as were their tracks, a combination that scraped
and squealed more than it whispered. Though I have found little evidence that directly
discusses the noise produced by trains, I have found some that at least alludes to it. In
1855, the business partnership of Abbott & Kingman petitioned the Common Council for
restitution for a horse that “take (sic) fright at the locomotion on the Galena R. Road and
run (sic) off Canal St. into the River and drown at the west end of Kinzie St. Bridge.”
They claimed that a protective fence at the bridge would have prevented the horse from
jumping into the river; thus the absence of this fence led directly to the horse’s death.
There were few surprises with this situation. The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad was
again implicated in a negative occurrence, and the Council again found against the

petitioners. The Committee claimed that “the horse came by his death by bad driving or

”72 Whatever the validity of the petitioners’ claim, the fact that a

by being unmanageable.
passing train frightened the horse was not in question. The horse was, quite literally,
scared to death by a likely combination of two factors: the intimidating size of trains
mixed with the poor eyesight of horses, and the great din created by locomotives. The
aural and visual assault of a train was enough to send a horse careening into the drink.

Trains did not stop their bodily assault at the ears; the massive amounts of smoke

they produced attacked the eyes, ears, and lungs of Chicago’s residents and visitors.

 

72 CP 1855/56 1204A 09/24.

95

Early in the railroad era, locomotives were generally fueled by wood, while coal-burning
trains became the standard in the 18703. Both wood and the soft coal burned by most
locomotives produced profuse amounts of black smoke and soot that “continued to haunt
industrial cities, diminishing sunlight, soiling clothes, threatening health, and damaging
furniture, drapes, and any other surface on which they fell.”73 Of course, smoke became
a much greater nuisance to Chicago’s residents at the turn of the century, at which time
the city’s industrial base had developed into a large collection of coal-burning, smoke-
spewing factories, and it was not until this period that a coherent clean air movement
coalesced in Chicago and other major cities across the country.74 From 1848, smoke ﬂew
through the air of Chicago as an ever-present reminder that the industrial era had arrived.
The smoke was produced through combustion, and the ﬁre that caused the smoke
counts as another hazard with which Chicago residents had to deal. Fire was a daunting
problem that regularly plagued cities during a period when coal and/or wood was burned
to heat homes and power the industrial revolution. Fire, coupled with the fact that many
houses and buildings near railroads were constructed from wood—especially in working-
class and industrial areas—created a volatile mixture. Hot cinders could jump out of a
locomotive’s stove onto a wooden roof and cause a conﬂagration.75 Fire could also break

out if there were a collision at a crossing: the stove that powered the boiler, or, more

 

73 David Stradling, “Dirty Work and Clean Air: Locomotive Firemen, Environmental Activists, and Stories
of Conﬂict,” Journal of Urban History 28:1 (November 2001), 36.

74 See David Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in
America, 1881-1951 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), for a comprehensive discussion of
the clean air movement, especially 110-31 for discussion of Chicago. See also Maureen Flanagan, Seeing
with their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2002), 100-2, for discussion of how men’s focus on efﬁciency supplanted women’s focus
on the livable city to hinder the execution of effective clean air policies in Chicago.

75 See David Stowell, Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of I 877 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1999), 54-5, for examples of such roof ﬁre incidents in Buffalo, New York.

96

likely, that which heated wooden passenger cars could start ﬁres on the train or in a
wooden coach or horse cart that would kill or injure passengers and passersby alike.76 As
Chicago transportation journalist David Young observes, “[w]ooden coaches tended to
splinter and disintegrate upon impact and catch ﬁre afterward with disastrous results to
their occupants.”77 If a collision at a grade crossing was not enough to kill someone, a
ﬁre started by a locomotive may have been.

The Council was well aware of the risk that ﬁre posed to Chicago even before the
Great Fire of 1871 destroyed a third of the city. Though Chicago aldermen did not set
ofﬁcial ﬁre limits—boundaries that prevented wood frame buildings from being
constructed in prescribed parts of the city, generally in the most densely populated
neighborhoods—until 1845, even though the original 1837 city charter allowed them to,
the city’s politicians enforced a ﬁre limit in a piecemeal fashion even before Chicago was
ofﬁcially a city.78 Historian Robin Einhom correctly argues that “[t]he ﬁre limit could
have a powerful effect on local land values not only by forbidding cheap construction but
also by determining land use,” but she overextends her analysis when she asserts that
“ﬁre limits had little to do with the prevention of ﬁres.”79 City booster-politicians
attempted to improve the value of their real estate holdings by using the ﬁre limits as a de

facto zoning tool. They would designate certain blocks—usually in the densely

 

76 Aldrich, 79-82. These were not common incidents, but, as Aldrich states, “while ﬁres took relatively
few lives they seemed especially horrifying.” (79)

77 Young, 100.

78 CP 1845/45 02534A 04/22 and Einhom, 128-33 for discussion on early Chicago ﬁre limits. For
examples of ﬁre limit enforcement before Chicago held a city charter, see CP 1836/36 0239A 01/ 1 1;
1836/36 0240A 0103; 1836/36 0259A 07/29; 1836/36 0263A 09/02; 1837/37 0413A 08/03; and 1837/37
0282A 00/00. See also Josiah Seymour Currey, Chicago: Its History and Its Builders: A Century of
Marvelous Growth, Volume 1 (Chicago. S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1918), 222, for a discussion of ﬁre
prevention initiatives taken by the town council 1n the 18303.

Einhom,]29, 130.

97

developed portions near the city center—as falling within the ﬁre limits, which prevented
wooden structures from being built or remaining within those limits. From the 18303,
many city residents, especially members of the working class, opposed the ﬁre limits
because they saw the limits as a way to prevent working people from acquiring a home.
They believed home ownership was an integral part of the American dream and viewed
municipal ﬁre limits as just another barrier that prevented them from achieving that
dream.80 But the Council enforced ﬁre limits and other ﬁre safety ordinances not just to
zone neighborhoods, but because ﬁres were a constant and ever-present threat to densely
populated nineteenth-century cities.

The members of the Council spent some time with issues that involved railroads
and ﬁre safety. They reviewed petitions by railroads that wished to build temporary
wooden depots and a ﬁrewood storage shed within the ﬁre limits, and a petroleum
warehouse just south of downtown.81 Though the Council allowed the railroads to use or
build each of the structures, their decisions were not informed solely by a singular focus
on each building’s effect on property value. They carefully reviewed each case and made
decisions that fell in line with their tendency towards economic boosterism, yet took the
safety of the city’s residents into consideration on the way to making said decisions. For
example, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad petitioned the Council for
permission to maintain a warehouse for the storage of petroleum. The members of the
Committee on Fire and Water and the ﬁre marshal “have personally examined said

warehouse and premises adjoining,” and they found that the railroad “ha[s] constructed

 

80 See the examples of ante-city charter ﬁre limit enforcement in note 81. Also, see Margaret Garb, City of
American Dreams: A History of Home Ownership and Housing Reform in Chicago, I 8 71 -I 919 (Chicago:
University of ChiCago Press, 2005), for the working-class perspective on home ownership in Chicago.

81 CP 1853/54 1214A ”/26; 1858/59 0092A 04/05; 1866/67 1074A 03/11; 1866/67 1108A 03/29.

98

and [is] now using said warehouse in strict conformity to the ordinance regulating the
storage of said goods.” They then submitted an ordinance later enacted by the Council

that granted the railroad permission “to keep and maintain” the warehouse, though it

subjected the permission to “amendment, modiﬁcation, or revocation.”82 The Council
carefully considered the issue and came to a conclusion that both satisﬁed the railroad
and the Council’s imperative to protect the health, safety and property of the public.
Fire prevention and the railroads remained a concern not only regarding the
location and building material of railroad structures within the city, but also with the
acknowledgement that locomotives could be moving ﬁre hazards if inﬂammable
materials were allowed to be within their vicinity. Lumberyards, for obvious reasons,
were seen as potential ﬁre hazards, and, as such, the Council attempted to avert any
potential conﬂagrations. One example of this risk aversion is an ordinance generically
entitled “An Ordinance Concerning Rail Roads” that “repealed and rescinded” any
previous ordinances that allowed any railroads within the city “to lay down rail road
tracks into any lrunber yard or yards in the City of Chicago.” It further compelled the
city marshal to remove any such tracks within “twenty days aﬁer the passage of this

ordinance.”83

Though there is no extant explanation of the motive behind the ordinance,
it may have been motivated at least in part by ﬁre prevention. The Council usually tried
to promote commerce and was loathe to enact ordinances that made it more difﬁcult for

commercial interests to carry on their business, as this ordinance could have done for

lumber interests and railroads. This ordinance may have been part of an attempt by the

 

82 CP 1866/67 1108A 03/29.
83 CP1860/610126A 08/13.

99

Council to prevent price ﬁxing; yet ﬁre safety was at the very least a positive byproduct
of this legislation. Lumberyards fed many large conﬂagrations in cities during the
nineteenth century, and the Council took a step towards preventing such a catastrophe.
(Obviously it did not prove too effective in completely preventing ﬁre since 18,000
buildings were destroyed and 100,000 people—a third of Chicago’s population—were
left homeless after the Great Fire of 1871, ten years after this ordinance. Also, Bateham’s
mill—a large sawmill and lumberyard—played a key role in the early growth and spread
of the ﬁre“)

The Council also addressed the possibility of a locomotive as a ﬁre hazard, if
unintentionally, in a later resolution that prevented hay wagons from standing “within
three feet of any railroad track nor shall any load of hay be permitted to stand between
the railroad track and the sidewalk” on West Randolph Street.85 Alderman Russell’s
main goal likely was to alleviate trafﬁc congestion near the Haymarket when he
presented this resolution to the Council. Yet by legislating that the hay wagons stay away
from the railroad tracks, he may have prevented some stray coals from a boiler stove
from ﬁnding their way into a pile of hay. The fact that municipal legislation was put into
effect could have meant little in practice. Yet there would not be a major conﬂagration in
the Haymarket until 1886, when a bomb exploded and class war seemed a real possibility

in the Second City.

 

84 For a history of the Great Fire and what followed, see Karen Sawislak, Smoldering City: Chicagoans
and the Great F ire, I 8 71-18 74 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) and Carl Smith, Urban
Disorder and the Shape of Belief: the Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of
Pullman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 19-98. For details on the role that Bateham’s mill
played in the spread of the ﬁre, see Rev. David Swing, A Story of the Chicago Fire (Chicago: H.H. Gross,
1892), 14, and Michael Conzen, “Progress of the Chicago Fire of 1871,” in Electronic Encyclopedia of
Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005); accessed at
httn://www.encvclopedi_a@icggohistorvorg/pages/3710hm on 8 August 2009.

85 CP 1868/69 1539A 03/15.

100

As a direct byproduct of locomotives, smoke and ﬁre were hazards to the health
and safety of Chicago residents. But the railroads were connected to other health hazards
and nuisances of the nose. From the 18303, Chicago’s residents had been involved in
meatpacking and the livestock trade. As the nation’s railroad network grew and quickly
centered on Chicago, the city suddenly became a center of the nation’s livestock trade
and meat industry. By the 18603, it had overtaken Cincinnati as the nation’s largest
meatpacker and center of the meat trade.86

The meat trade became a nuisance even before Chicago became the nation’s
meatpacker. In 1853, Elliott Anthony, an attorney and politician, wrote on behalf of
residents who lived near the American Car Company, an early manufacturer of railroad
cars. He complained about a slaughterhouse that was “contiguous” to the factory,
maintaining that “it has become a nuisance of the most revolting character. . .being very
unwholesome and unhealthy by the noxious atmosphere constantly engendered by the
decomposition of large quantities of animal matter.” 87 It must be underscored that Mr.
Anthony presented his petition in June, when the summer heat turned animal waste into
an odorous contagion. The American Car Company was a large manufacturing ﬁrm of
250 workers. These employees lived in the area and therefore had to deal with the stench
of rotting ﬂesh while both at work and home. And, as Mr. Anthony correctly pointed out,

“said slaughter house is within the city limits, and that it is forbidden by the laws &

 

86 William Cronon, Nature '5 Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,
1991), 207-59.

87 CP 1853/54 0551A 06/21.

101

ordinances published & prepared by [the Council]?88 Thus Mr. Anthony requested that
the Council abate the nuisance of the illegal slaughterhouse.

This story shows the signiﬁcant effect railroads had on urban space even early in
the railroad era. The railroads helped facilitate the movement of livestock and meat to
and from Chicago and quickly made it a distribution center for animal ﬂesh. The Civil
War vaulted the city from the status of a major meat distribution center to the chief
distribution center in the nation and the largest in the world.89 Also, the railroads’
signiﬁcant presence in Chicago from the early years of the railroad era drew
entrepreneurs in ancillary industries, such as the owners of the American Car Company,
who hoped to capitalize on Chicago’s status as a railroad center. Both the meatpackers
and railroad car manufacturers needed to maintain a spatial presence near the railroads,
and the conﬂuence of the two led to conﬂict. The American Car Company drew
hundreds of workers and their families to the southern division of the city, and people did
not want to live and work in the insalubrious environment created by a slaughterhouse.

Slaughterhouses were not the only businesses in the city to draw the ire of nearby
residents. In July of 1857—again, during the summer—sixty-three women signed a
petition imploring the Council to prevent the rebuilding of the Curtis Distillery, which
was located on the banks of Lake Michigan in the southern portion of Chicago. The

distillery had burned down, and the owners immediately started rebuilding. The

 

88 Ibid. As of December 1865—as Chicago’s centralized Union Stockyards opened—John Reid & Co. was
given an exclusive monopoly on slaughtering done within the city limits (“except that done at the regular
packing houses for packing purposes”) for ten years. Before that, Slaughterhouses were prohibited from
operating within the city. See Chicago Common Council, Murray Tuley, compiler and arranger, Laws and
Ordinances Governing the City of Chicago (Chicago: Bulletin Printing Co., 1873), 349-52, for city
ordinances regarding Slaughterhouses. See Cronon, 207-13 for discussion of the Union Stockyards.

89 Cronon, 210.

102

petitioners submitted a petition to halt the construction of the new distillery. They
claimed that “for many years past [it] has been the source of very unwholesome and
obnoxious smell continually pervading our portion of the city and has been greatly
annoying to our comfort and injurious to the public health,” and thus asked the Council to
“stop the rebuilding of this nuisance in our midst and save us from further harm and
annoyance from it and the ladies of this community would be exceedingly grateful if your
honorable body would be prompt in abating this nuisance.”90

On the surface, the petition did not appear out of the ordinary. Distilleries, along
with slaughter and rendering houses, were strictly regulated in the city’s nuisance laws.”
The petition stands out, though, as an early example of direct political action by Chicago
women.92 The Council took the women’s concerns seriously and thoroughly investigated
their claims, though the Judiciary Committee ultimately concluded that the women were
“mistaken” in labeling the distillery a nuisance. The committee found that the
“unwholesome and obnoxious smell continually pervading” the women’s neighborhood
was directly attributable to the Illinois Central Railroad, whose

cattle trains. . .sometimes containing dead animals and sometimes partially ﬁlled

with other ﬁlth have been unloaded and the contents left exposed & the carcasses

unburied, and in addition to this there is between the embankment of the Illinois
Central Rail Road and the Lake a narrow strip of ﬁlthy, stagnant water made
worse by the ﬁlth unloaded from the cars, about ‘/2 a mile in length and from one
to 6 rods in width immediately north of the Car Works and extending north to
Curtis distilling. From this stagnant water an offensive efﬁuvia arises.93

 

90 CP 1857/58 0796A 08/10.
9] Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 82.

92 See Flanagan, Seeing With Their Hearts, for discussion of women’s political action from 1871 through
the 19303.

93 CP 1857/58 0796A 08/10.

103

The committee then recommended that the IC be ordered to ﬁll up the area occupied by
stagnant water and be prevented from dumping ﬁlth and carcasses in and near the Lake.
This episode clearly shows how the railroads and their connection to the meat
trade transformed Chicago into a place that was not only more dangerous to life and limb,
but also hazardous to people’s health, or, at the very least, extremely annoying to those
who resided in the city. It also begs the question of the motive behind the petition. Of
the many Council petitions I have examined regarding Chicago’s railroads, this was the
only one that was signed exclusively by women. The petitioners may have legitimately
believed the Curtis distillery was the primary cause of the noxious odors in their
neighborhood. This would have been a reasonable assessment considering the well-
established connection between distilleries and stench (as expressed in Chicago’s
nuisance laws, mentioned above); and the Committee on the Judiciary, which responded
to the petition, remarked “these ladies made their petition in good faith fully believing

”94 They may have had an additional motive,

that said distillery was a public nuisance.
though: closing down a distillery because it produced alcoholic beverages. Women took
active roles in the temperance movement of the nineteenth century, and this could have
been a roundabout attempt by the petitioners to abate the nuisance of alcoholism and
drunkenness. Whatever the motive, the women who signed the petition were the

precursors to the politically active Chicago women of the 1870s through the 19303

described by historian Maureen Flanagan. Whether they were temperance advocates,

 

94 Ibid. See Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 82, for Chicago’s nuisance laws. See
Christine Meisner Rosen, “'Knowing‘ Industrial Pollution: Nuisance Law and the Power of Tradition in a
Time of Rapid Economic Change, 1840-1864,” Environmental History 8:4 (October 2003), 565-97, for
discussion of the “traditional” nuisance industries—Slaughterhouses, rendering plants, breweries,
distilleries, and tanneries—in the antebellum US.

104

people ﬁghting for the urban environment, or both, these women tried to make Chicago a
more livable city.95 It was early “municipal housekeeping,” women attempting to use
their special women’s knowledge to push a local political agenda that would make the
city a better place to live.

The meatpacking industry continued to elicit strong reactions by Chicago
residents through the 18708. In many instances, the overlapping space that the railroads
and meatpacking industry inhabited provoked a passionate response by area residents and
business owners. The nuisance concomitant with the industry led to an even denser web
of railroad tracks on the streets. The Wahl Brothers and Lighthall was a large rendering
ﬁrm located in Bridgeport, the heart of Chicago’s meatpacking district. They used the
offal, bones, hooves, horns, and other parts of cattle and swine that could not be
consumed to make “glue, neatsfoot oil [a conditioner and softening agent for leather
which was also used medically for dry skin], and pure ground bone [a fertilizer].”96 They
petitioned the Council for permission to build sidetracks on Kossuth St. that connected
with the Pittsburgh & Fort Wayne Railroad to rid “the city of all the refuse of the large
packing establishments” by curing and thus deodorizing the waste, then transporting it to
the Calumet River, “far from the city limits.”97 The Wahl Brothers & Lighthall made the
request so they could stay within the boundaries of municipal nuisance law that generally

prohibited animal waste and other “ﬁlth” from entering the Chicago River or Lake

 

95 Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts.

96 James T. Hair, compiler, Chicago City Directory for the Year I865-6 (Chicago: John C.W. Bailey,
1865), 734f; accessed at http://www.uic.edu/orgs/LockZero/3image/GLUE _2_1d.html on 28 July 2009.

97 CP 1865/66 0731A 12/04.

105

Michigan.98 This was a palliative cure that attempted to prevent any more waste from
further polluting the stinking cesspool that was the Chicago River and its mouth in the
Lake, the latter of which just so happened to be the drinking water source for Chicago’s
population. In giving the Wahl Brothers & Lighthall a ﬁve-year franchise for sidetracks,
the Council chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils: rid the city of the nuisance of
animal waste at the expense of building more railroad tracks on streets shared with
packinghouse workers and their families.” Of course this was only a short-terrn solution
to the problem of pollution by animal waste. Much like the Chicago River, the Calumet
spilled into Lake Michigan just a few miles south of the city. Its contaminated waters
would ﬁnd their way into the Lake, and people would soon populate its polluted banks.

The Wahl Brothers’ attempt to gain permission to build sidetracks and a depot at
which they would load animal waste into railroad cars did not go unchallenged by local
residents. Even after the Council denied the ﬁrm the use of Kossuth Street and instead let
them cross only 26th and 27th Streets—the northern and southern borders of their offal
depot—to connect with the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad tracks at
Stewart Avenue, ﬁfty residents placed their signatures on a letter that remonstrated
against the petition. They opposed it because: “1. It would obstruct the fair and proper
use of [Stewart Ave., 26th Street, and 27th Street, the streets the tracks were to cross] 2.
It is also a fact that the premises of the said Wahl Brothers and Lighthall are now a

nuisance. 3. It is also a matter of experience when the weather grows warm said premises

 

98 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 82-4.
99 Ibid., 330.

106

& the business carried on there will be insufferable.”100 Residents of the area would have
to deal with even more railroad tracks and stench than they had to before, for the Wahl
Brothers and Lighthall gained permission from the Council to build their tracks and
depot.

Chicago was nearly saturated with railroad development by the 18603. The
ubiquitous nature of railroads and the fact that they shared and crossed the streets at grade
made them a massive obstacle that frequently created trafﬁc gridlock. Trains became a
part of the urban built environment, and, as such, obstructed people from moving about
the city. Chicago’s population and railroad development expanded simultaneously,
which made gridlock a frequent, palpable experience to Chicagoans and visitors
beginning in the 18503. And trafﬁc gridlock was more than an annoyance; it changed
schedules and helped dictate the pace of life in Chicago. As railroads “annihilated space
and time” between two points, they created time—waits and delays—and new spaces—
neighborhoods atomized by the railroads.101

The myriad grade crossings meant that people throughout Chicago would
frequently get stuck in trafﬁc jams caused by crossing trains. It could take minutes or
even hours for a train to clear a grade crossing. The three branches of the Chicago River
created gridlock even before the railroads, since trafﬁc from one division of the city had
to pass over a bridge to reach a different division; the presence of railroads near the river

ampliﬁed the trafﬁc congestion caused independently by either the railroads or the river.

For example, in industrial areas along the south branch of the Chicago River, trains

 

'00 CP 1865/66 1149A 04/16.

101 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19’”
Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, 1986). See Chapter 3, “Railroad Space and
Railroad Time,” 33-44, for speciﬁc discussion of “the annihilation of space and time.”

107

would sit for extended periods of time and make it difﬁcult for others in the area to carry
out their business.102 Often, trains were loading or unloading, which prevented them

103

from moving from crossings. The goods-in-transit were sometimes themselves trafﬁc

obstructions; lumber, for example, would be piled in the streets or alleys before it could
be moved to a nearby pier or warehouse. '04
These railroad obstructions did not always occur in areas that were purely
industrial; Chicago’s explosive growth led to the establishment of working-class
residential neighborhoods among the industrial establishments and thus near railroads.
These neighborhoods grew so quickly that the trafﬁc congestion and obstructions by the
railroads became signiﬁcant problems to these residents by 185 3, within the ﬁrst ﬁve
years of Chicago’s railroad cram Numerous residents petitioned the Council for relief
from the railroads’ obstructions. The Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad regularly used a
public alley to store some goods they were hauling. The amount of “shinglebolts” and
the like stashed in the alley made it difficult for Patrick O’Connor, Thomas Rutledge,
Charles Williams, James Waugh, and the eight other signatories to move their horses and
livestock to and from their stables and barns, which were located directly off the alley.
The petitioners maintained that “[i]f to make attempt to clear a passage to our stable or
barns we will be threatened with violence by some r[ail]road ofﬁcial.”'06 The residents

were convinced that the railroads had the power to inﬂict their will upon private citizens

by any means. Thus the railroad made a public alley an extension of their private

 

'02 CP 1853/54 0617A 06/27. CF 1853/54 0949A 09/26. CF 1853/54 1263A 17./12.

'03 CP 1853/54 0949A 09/26; 1853/54 1263A 12/12; 1854/55 1776A 03/05; 1854/55 l777F 03/05.
104 C? 1853/54 0617A 06/27; 1853/54 0949A 09/26; 1853/54 1263A 12/12.

105 See footnotes 77 and 78.

‘06 CP 1856/57 0164A 03/31.

108

corporation. There was no reason for the residents to doubt the power and will of the
railroad, for the Chicago & Milwaukee had not even obtained permission and right-of-
way from the Common Council to build track within the city limits when Mr. O’Connor
and his neighbors presented the petition. (They would not obtain permission until over

ten months later.107

) The railroad acted with an indifference to the law that sufﬁciently
justiﬁed the petitioners’ fear of violent retribution from railroad ofﬁcials.

The dispute between the C&M and the residents began months before the
aforementioned petition. The C&M initially petitioned the Council for right-of-way in
November of 1855. The railroad asked for permission to lay track on Jefferson and
Kinzie Streets in order to make a connection with the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad.
Immediately a group of area residents—most of whom also signed the petition mentioned
above—remonstrated against the railroad’s right-of-way petition. These individuals lived
just west of the Chicago River’s north branch, in an area that was bounded on three
sides—to the north, east, and south—by railroad tracks. The C&M applied for right-of-
way that would, according to William Wayman—the alderman who headed the Council’s
Committee on Streets and Alleys—“completely surround the property of the
remonstraneets with Rail Road tracks.”108 As such, the remonstrants claimed

that such use of Jefferson Street would be a public nuisance, greatly injurious to

the property on both sides of the same and to a very considerable extent beyond in

all the neighborhood. It is also to be considered that the vicinity above referred to
is already subject to great inconveniences & damages by the Galena Road & its

surroundings to which if there is to be added another track bearing northerly for
two more railroads the neighborhood will be almost entirely uninhabitable as a

 

107 CP 1856/57 1668A 02/02. Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 269-70.
108 CP 1855/56 1606A 11/26.

109

location for families & for business purposes to which it is now used quite
impracticable. ’09

The Committee on Streets and Alleys found for the remonstrants and against the
railroad’s wishes for right-of-way on Jefferson Street. But in the end it did not matter:
the Council passed the right-of-way ordinance that allowed the Chicago & Milwaukee
Railroad to build tracks on Jefferson Street over the Committee’s recommendations.l ‘0
Chicago maps from 1863 to 1879 corroborate the Council records: these six square
blocks composed of homes and businesses were completely hemmed in by railroads.
Though the property may have been owned and used by a variety of individuals for life
and livelihood, the hegemonic nature of railroads in cities marked it as de facto “railroad
space”—an urban area that was dominated by the built environment of the railroads.
Maps from 1886 and 1888 show something different from the earlier maps: the homes
that occupied the six square blocks had been replaced by railroad tracks. The area had

become ofﬁcial, as opposed to simply de facto, railroad space.Ill

 

'09 Ibid.

“0 CP 1856/57 1668A 02/02. Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 269-70.

111 I came to this conclusion by comparing a number of detailed Chicago maps produced between 1863
and 1888, which I accessed at http://www.lib.uchicagoedu/e/su/maps/chiﬁre/ and
httgﬂwwwencvclopedLa.chicagohistorv.org on 12 August 2009. Maps consulted at University of Chicago
Library website: W.L. Flower and J. Van Vechten, “Chicago: Drawn ﬁ'om Davie’s Atlas with the Latest
Recorded Subdivisions [map],” 126,000 (Chicago: Charles Shober, 1863); Charles Shober, “Guide Map of
Chicago,” 1:24,000, (Chicago: Charles Shober, 1868); Cartographer unknown, “Gray’s Atlas Map of
Chicago,” 1232,000 (Philadelphia: Stedman, Brown & Lyon?, 1873); Cartographer unknown, “Chicago
[map],” 1:31,680 (New York: G.W. & C.B. Colton & Co., 1876); S. Augustus Mitchell, “Chicago [map],”
l:36,000, (Philadelphia: S. Augustus Mitchell, 1876?); Rufus Blanchard, “Index Map of Chicago: Running
South to Seventy-First Street,” 1221,000 (Chicago: Rufus Blanchard, 1888). Maps consulted at
Encyclopedia of Chicago website: Rufus Blanchard, “Guide Map of Chicago,” (Chicago: Rufus Blanchard,
1871); Cartographer unknown, “New Guide Map of Chicago,” (Place of publication unknown: H.R. Page
& Co., 1879); Cartographer unknown, “Railway Map of Chicago and Environs: Situate in Cook County
Illinois and Lake County Indiana,” (Chicago: R.W. Dobson & George W. Waite, 1879); E. Robinson,
Robinson 's Atlas of the City of Chicago Vol. 3, Plate 6 (New York: E. Robinson, 1886).

110

    

. ’3 “9:; J - , . . ,3. _ _..- '._.- .. at

Figure 4. The Wabansna Addition, 1863. The plots within the semi-Circle of railroad tra

The neighborhood was bordered on two sides—along the river to the east and Kinzie Street to the south—
from the early 18505. The ﬁght over this space discussed above was over the construction of the track to
the west that curves from Kinzie Street north along Jefferson Street to the depots. The residents of the

Wabansia addition were completely hemmed in by railroad tracks from 1857. (University of Chicago
Library)

   

lll

 

Figure 5. The Addition, 1888. area was residential space years earlier had tracks
running through, notjust around, it, in 1888. It had become ofﬁcial railroad space. (University of Chicago
Library)

The owners of the land likely sold to the railroads when Chicago’s land market
bottomed out during the depression sparked by the Panic of 1873. The Depression lasted
through 1879, though the United States remained in a recession until the turn of the
century. Chicago, though, made a fairly strong recovery in both real estate and its overall
economy beginning in the late 18705. Of course the cruel irony of this whole episode is
that the railroads essentially co-opted space that was owned by private individuals simply
through the railroads’ proximity to the property, and they were able to succeed in this
through the aid of the Council, which gave them public space that they again undeniably

marked as railroad space. When the economic depression came, families in the area

112

likely sold their land for whatever triﬂe they could get. The railroads were there to pay
them a pittance and formally mark the area as “railroad space.”l '2

The language the unsuccessful petitioners used to remonstrate against railroad
development—the railroad would be “a public nuisance, greatly injurious to the property
on both sides of the same and to a very considerable extent beyond in all the
neighborhood”—speaks to a negative characteristic of railroad development that was in
large part caused by all the other negative extemalities discussed above: railroads could
drive down land prices, especially in residential and commercial areas adjacent to
railroads. Chicago was a city built on real estate speculation, so it is not too surprising
that the language of land value was used to argue against building railroads in certain
parts of the city. This is ironic since railroad development sparked speculation and drove
up land prices throughout the city years earlier. Railroads played a key role in Chicago’s
overall economic growth, yet they often damaged the value of property on the
neighborhood level. People simply did not want to live around trains because of the risk
and inconvenience attendant with their presence.

Chicago residents justiﬁed arguments against railroad development in terms of
land values from the earliest days of the railroad era. In an episode discussed in Chapter
One, William Johnston maintained that his “sundry lots of land. . .lying North of [North

Water Street]. . . [would] be greatly injured by the extension of [the Galena & Chicago

Union Railroad.”l ’3 He was also upset that he had paid an assessment of $780 to open

 

I 12 See Homer Hoyt, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago: The Relationship of the Growth of
Chicago to the Rise of Its Land Values, [830-1933 (Washington, DC: Beard Books, 1933; reprint, 2000),
81-195, passim, for discussion about Chicago land values and the economy from the Civil War to the

World’s Fair of 1893.

”3 CP 1850/50 6664A 12/23.

113

North Water Street about a year earlier and was concerned “that he will have paid said
sum for the beneﬁt of said Company.”l ’4 The Council denied his claim for restitution
because the extension of the tracks was for “the public good.”1 '5 This episode shows
both the irony of railroad development—overall economic growth at the expense of that
of individuals—and the magnitude of railroads’ ability to shape space—the streets were
public, yet railroads reaped much more from the beneﬁt of their use than did other users.
The language of land value again appeared in a petition that remonstrated against
the building of railroad tracks by the South Branch Canal Company. The company
petitioned the Council to obtain permission to lay railroad track that connected their
grounds to those of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad. The people who owned land
between the Company and the Railroad—land that was used exclusively for industrial
business purposes—found this unacceptable and presented a remonstrance to the Council.
They argued that
[t]he laying down of said Road would... materially interfere with the interests of
the undersigned since it would obstruct the streets, retard the selling of lots, and
introduce a certain depreciation of in the value of their lands in aforesaid
subdivision. The order is one to beneﬁt a private interest by destroying a private

interest, and the undersigned look upon granting said permission to said road as
being a most serious damage to the said lands in Johnston & Lea’s subdivision.ll

6
The remonstrants go on to state that they were not against the Company building a
railroad connection to the G&CU; they in fact supported the connection through a

different route. But because the railroad connection as proposed was to run on streets

through the subdivision in which they owned all the land, they felt, quite reasonably, that

 

”4 Ibid.
”5 CP 1850/50 6671A 12/30.

"6C? 1856/57 1556A 01/05.

114

the railroad would have a negative effect on their real estate: it would obstruct streets,
which would interfere with their business and devalue their land.

William Johnston, Jr., William Johnston, Sr., Sam Johnston, C.L. Williams, and
EL. Fabian—the ﬁve remonstrants—made a reasonable argument to a Council, which
held strong J acksonian booster tendencies even as late as 1857. The aldermen understood
the language of real estate and likely held a strong general belief in the inviolability of
private property: “The order is one to beneﬁt a private interest by destroying a private
interest” likely struck a chord with a number of aldermen. As I will show in the next
chapter, a Jacksonian booster vision informed many of the decisions made by aldermen
regarding the railroads until the Civil War. An important part of this vision was a general
suspicion of big business and monopoly, and railroads were the big businesses of the era.
The idea that one business would be given preferential treatment over another (unless, of
course, the preferred business was their own) was likely anathema to the core beliefs of a
number of aldermen. As a result, there was an extremely close vote on the South Branch
Canal Company railroad ordinance: it was tied at nine aldermen’s votes for and against,
until the mayor, Thomas Dyer, broke the tie with a vote that ended up giving the
Company its railroad connection. This razor-thin vote on a railroad ordinance in a purely
industrial area contrasts sharply with many of the railroad ordinances in residential areas:
a collection of working-class individuals and families simply did not have the same
standing as a businessman in the eyes of Chicago aldermen in the 18503. Though the
wishes of the remonstrants were not heeded in the aforementioned case, the result—
which again came by a very close vote—nevertheless matched the recommendations of

the Committee on Streets & Alleys, which investigated and supported the petition of the

115

South Branch Canal Company. The families discussed above who lived near the Galena
& Chicago Union Railroad and the north branch of the Chicago River were cordoned off
by railroad tracks despite the recommendations of the investigating committee. Whatever
the thinking behind it, it was easier for the Council to justify railroad development as a
public good that used public space when the public bore the costs; if instead a private
business bore the cost, the Council was acting in a manner that it saw as anti-competitive
and preferential to certain business interests.

Perhaps it was also easier for the Council to justify railroad development as a
public good when the affected public was working-class. A concerned citizen from
South Clark Street—a mixed-use area of industrial, commercial, and working-class
residential development—sent a letter to the Tribune that neatly sums up the myriad
negative effects the railroads had on urban space in Chicago. The signiﬁcance of the
letter lays not in the fact that it describes the hazards attendant with the railroads in a city,
but instead that it explicitly discusses the implications of railroad development and social
class; the author underscores the point that the working class bore a disproportionate
burden of railroad development in Chicago. The letter is worth quoting at length:

It would be thought by a person unacquainted with the city, from reading the

publications on the subject, that the people on Michigan and Wabash avenues

were the worst sufferers in the city from railroad obstructions. It is sometimes
fortunate for the poor and medium classes in a city that the wealthy and “upper
ten” are subject to the same grievances as they, otherwise their grievances would
never be noticed. If the wealthy on the avenues are suffering from the steam cars
merely crossing their street once, what must be thought of their humble neighbors
on South Clark street, especially those living and owning property between

Twelfth and Twenty-second streets. Instead of a single crossing, that might be

remedied by a single bridge that would obstruct the view and thereby injure the

prospect and retard the fast driving on the street, they have the same C. B. & Q.

Railroad crossing, with the addition of switches rtmning in various directions, but

have, also, one railroad running lengthwise, and one less than one hundred feet
from them, running parallel with the street, rendering the lots on the west side of

116

the street almost worthless, and reducing to half its value the property on the east
side of the street. But then the people on Clark street are only common people,
most of them; only those who get their living by hard work, have no carriages and
fast horses, and their beautiful prospect up and down the street is obstructed, it is
true, but what business have they to spend their time looking up and down the
street? They would be satisﬁed if they could be permitted to get their lots with
their wood, coal, and other necessaries of life, if their view was not left so
beautiful, or even if they were not permitted to drive at a 2:40 gait the whole
length of their street without obstruction, or without crossing the C. B. & Q. R. R.
on a bridge. They have repeatedly petitioned the City Fathers for relief, but they
being nobodies, not living in palaces and driving fast horses, the Aldermen have
thought them unworthy of notice. I 17
Railroad development was so thorough in Chicago as to affect both “the wealthy on the
avenues” and the “common people. . .living hard by work,” yet, with an acerbic tone, the
author contrasted the plight of the two groups to argue that the “common people” had to
bear the brunt of railroad development in the city while being disempowered by a
Council that cared not for their plight. Much evidence bears out this argument—a
number of aldermen remained closely linked to railroad interests and brazenly supported
railroad development despite the social costs. Yet, overall, the Council’s actions
regarding the railroads changed from the earliest years of railroad development through
1871. Beginning as early as 1852, the Council started to move away from the unabashed
economic boosterism of the early years as they saw—and as their constituents made

known in numerous petitions—the deaths, injuries, and inconveniences wrought by

railroads in urban space.

 

”7 Chicago Tribune, “City Letters: South Clark Street,” July 31, 1870, p. 3. See Appendix I for the
complete text of the letter.

117

CHAPTER 3: THE ILLUSION OF REGULATION, 1852-1860

Benjamin Balch was ambitious man. He was similar in a few key ways to
Chicago’s political and civic leaders of the 18503: he was a Yankee, a resident of
Newburyport, Massachusetts; and, like the aldermen and mayors of period, he saw the
great potential of railroads to boost the economic fortunes of American cities west of the
Appalachians. As such, Balch made it his business to devise grand railroad schemes, his
main one being a plan to build a railroad to the Paciﬁc Ocean “based upon a loan of the
Government credit and upon a Free Banking System.” Of course, to get such a grand
plan in motion would take a tidy sum of money—$50,000 to $80,000 by Balch’s
estimation. The initial costs of lobbying Congress, including the printing of pamphlets
and room and board in Washington, DC, during a Congressional session would be about
$5000, of which he required only “an advance of $1000” from the Council “until the bill
is passed,” at which time he “would expect a further remuneration of $4000” for the
money he had advanced “& for [his] time.” He speciﬁcally requested money from
Chicago’s Common Council because he envisioned Chicago as “the starting point” for
his trans-continental railroad. He was originally going to make St. Louis the eastern
terminus for the railroad, but Chicago would take its place as long as the “city council
will m the plan and aid |him| in getting the support of [their] Representatives in
Washington next winter in getting [the] Billithrough Congress.”l

Balch, though ambitious, was little more than a swindler. He attempted to
persuade the Council into giving him money by playing two growing inland cities—

Chicago and St. Louis—against each other. He made a mild threat at the end of his letter:

 

1 CP 1850/50 6549A 11/01.

118

“I shall expect to hear from you within 6 weeks & if I do not hear from you by that time I

shall go to St. Louis and take the southern rout (sic) as originally proposed.”2 The
Council addressed Mr. Balch’s letter, and the outcome was not surprising. Though the
Board of Trade, which was contacted by the Council to consider Balch’s request, agreed
that it would like to see Chicago “be made ‘the most wealthy, if not the largest inland city
of our continent,’ it would nevertheless be neither proper or becoming to obtain this great
result at the expense of a sister city like St. Louis; And that as they have the most implicit
conﬁdence in the wisdom of the General Government, and the Congress of the United

States with whom the grand project now is, they would therefore request to be relieved

from further consideration of the subj ect.”3
Balch sent another letter with a request for money from the Council a few months

later to fund the production of a pamphlet that would promote a similar railroad proposal.

This letter was not even considered by the Council.4 The Council quickly saw through
Balch’s moneymaking scheme. But this incident is not signiﬁcant as an example of
ﬁnancial opportunism that came with the railroads so much as it is an analogy for the
Chicago Common Council’s actions regarding railroad development in the city during the
18503. Like Balch, the Council quickly saw the great possibility of railroads as a catalyst
for its own economic and demographic grth by physically connecting different parts of
the vast nation. To attract railroads to Chicago, the Council was willing during the ﬁrst
few years of its railroad era to give the railroads free rights-of—way in and along the city’s

streets, which altered the built environment of the city and negatively affected the pe0ple

 

2 Ibid.
3 CP 1850/50 6606A 1202.
4 CP 1852/53 1302A 03/09

119

who lived there. Balch’s scheme was supposedly aimed at promoting railroad
development also, but the Council deemed it more expedient to promote railroad
development by providing the railroads themselves with land it controlled than by
handing money over to an unknown middleman such as Balch.

The Council began to change the way it acted towards the railroads beginning in
1852. Though it still promoted development by generally giving favorable right-of-way
terms to railroads, it began to see the problems attendant with urban railroad
development, as described in Chapter Two. Chicago residents who lived near the
railroads petitioned the Council for relief, and the Council responded in kind. It passed
ordinances that focused speciﬁcally on protecting the safety of its citizens by regulating
the railroads. It also did not simply give away right-of-way as it had in its earliest
railroad right-of-way ordinances; it realized as early as 1852 that Chicago was sought
after as a railroad terminus, and it no longer needed to use free right-of-way as an
inducement in the competitive game of attracting railroads to up-and-coming cities. It
regularly began to require railroads that laid track in or across streets to maintain and
pave the portions of the streets in which they occupied. This was supposed to have the
desired effect of making streets safer and more accessible for residents; it also was a way
for the Council to avoid paying for street maintenance from the city treasury, or to satisfy
residents who lived near railroads who would themselves have to pay for street
maintenance through special assessments.

Unfortunately, the outcome of the Council’s actions towards the railroads
satisﬁed no one but the railroads and some booster-aldermen. The Council simply did

not have the power and, often, the will to enforce its safety ordinances and street

120

maintenance provisions. Its multiple public works committees and small police force
were largely ineffective at enforcement. The Council followed ordinances with orders,
but these statutory declarations did little to compel railroads to follow the letter of
municipal law. A number of petitions that complained of railroad violations were not
even considered by the Council. To make matters worse for the public, the railroads
acted much like Benjamin Balch: whereas Balch tried to bilk money out of the Council,
the railroads abused the right-of-way privileges imparted to them by the Council. The
railroads, like Balch, were going to take as much as they could from the city. Within this
context through the 18505, despite overtures to and glimpses of a different political
trajectory, economic development continued to be the Council’s main factor in shaping
the city’s railroad development, despite the apparent desire by increasing numbers of
residents that the local government regulate Chicago’s built environment for the public

good.

The late 18403 and early 18505 were a time of experimentation and hope
regarding railroads in Chicago. The mid— and late-18505 showed that the hope was
justiﬁed and that the experiment was successful. The quick proﬁtability of the Galena &
Chicago Union Railroad—Chicago’s ﬁrst railroad—and the notoriety that came with
Chicago’s location as the terminus of the Illinois Central—the world’s longest railroad at
the time—helped bring Chicago into the spotlight as one of America’s fastest growing
cities and quickly distinguished Chicago as a railroad hub. Enterprising men took notice,
and petitions for railroad rights-of-way into Chicago poured into the Common Council in

the 18503.

121

It was clear in the 18503 that the Council connected the city’sfuture to the
railroads, as they approved right-of-way for another half-dozen railroads from 1852 to
1860. But these right-of-way ordinances were different from those passed during the
earliest years of Chicago’s railroad era. Whereas the early ordinances gave railroads
extremely broad rights and asked for little or nothing from the railroads, the ordinances in
the 18505 asked that the railroads give the city something in return for the right to use
their streets.

This change occurred partially as a result of the Council’s ﬁght with the Illinois
Central over lakeshore right-of-way discussed in Chapter One. The IC was determined to
obtain right-of-way along the lakeshore, and its representatives did not shy away from
using outright threats to reach its desired ends. The battle over the IC’s right-of—way
educated the Council in dealing with business corporations. The Council saw that
railroads were interested in nothing but proﬁts; railroads did not care about the social or
spatial costs that came to a city because of railroad development. The Council took this
experience with them into their future dealings with railroads.

But the Council also took from its IC right-of-way dealings the realization that it
could require railroads to give the city something in return for right-of—way. Though
there is little doubt that the IC got the better end of the deal with its right-of-way and
terminal on the lakeshore, the Council did get from the railroad a much-needed
breakwater that protected the shore and the mansions along Michigan Avenue. Perhaps
more importantly, the Council came to the conclusion beginning in 1852 that Chicago

was a sought-after destination for railroads, and it no longer needed to give rights-of-way

122

free of charge in order to attract them. The railroads would do what they could to come
to the city, and the Council took advantage of its improved bargaining position.

Railroad right-of-way ordinances began to regularly feature provisions in which
railroads promised to pay the city for any damages or expenses that accrued because of
the actions of the railroads. The bonds required by these provisions protected the city
from liability if, for example, someone who was injured by a railroad was to sue for
damages, or if the railroad damaged city property while carrying out its operations. In
other words, these bonds diverted responsibility for accidents and carelessness in railroad
construction away from the city and towards the railroads. The supplemental ordinance
passed for the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad in 1852—the earliest example of an
ordinance that included such a provision—stated that “[t]he permission and authority
hereby granted is upon the express condition that [the C&RI] shall indemnify the city for
any damage and expense to which it may be legally subjected by reason of the occupying
of any of the streets, alleys or grounds of the city, with its track or other ﬁxtures.”5 This
provision tacitly acknowledges that the Council was aware that, since it was in charge of
deciding how public space such as streets was to be used, litigation that came about due
to a railroad accident within the city limits could target both the railroad and the city.

These provisions became a regular feature of subsequent right-of-way
ordinances.6 Most of these required the railroads to ﬁle a bond with the Council, which

likely was to make it easier to enforce the indemniﬁcation clauses. (The Council went to

 

5 Chicago Common Council, Murray Tuley, compiler and arranger, Laws and Ordinances Governing the
City of Chicago (Chicago: Bulletin Printing Co., 1873), 282.

For right-of-way ordinances that contain such provisions during the period under examination, see
Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 251, 253, 283, 303, 305-6. These include ordinances

from 1853-8 for the Chicago & Alton, Chicago & Mississippi, Joliet & Chicago, Chicago & Rock Island,
Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago, and Chicago, St. Paul & Fond du Lac Railroads.

123

especially great lengths to maintain and build the city’s treasury.) Only one of these
liability bonds exists in the Council’s pre-Fire proceedings ﬁles, but it likely represents
the standard for such bonds. The attorney for the Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad ﬁled
the bond with the Council in March of 1854. It promised that the railroad was “held and
ﬁrmly bound unto the City of Chicago in the penal sum of twenty ﬁve thousand dollars

for the payment of which will. . .be made to the said City of Chicago. The said oblige

doth hereby bind itself and its successors.”7 The “penal sum of twenty ﬁve thousand
dollars” was not given outright to the Common Council; it was to be used as a bank with
which to pay for damages to city property or for any liability that came as a result of an
accident.

The fact that the bond bound both the Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad “and its
successors” seems especially germane to an analysis of the railroads’ effect on the
politics of public space in Chicago. The aldermen had to that point respected the rights
of property owners—often at the cost of the public good—and dealt with issues regarding
private property on a case-by-case basis. The bond drafted by the Fort Wayne & Chicago
Railroad that was subsequently approved by the Council showed a slight change in the
way the Council perceived of railroads beginning in the early to mid-18505. Railroads
were seen as a speciﬁc kind of private interest, one that directly and tangibly altered
Chicago’s public space. With this bond, both the railroad and the Council tacitly
acknowledged that railroads were not transient parts of Chicago’s built environment. By

making a bond that bound itself and its successors, the Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad

 

7 CP 1854/55 0070A 03/27.

124

admitted that it was a permanent part of Chicago’s built environment and that it had a
substantial impact on Chicago’s public space and thus on the city’s residents.

This bond seems prescient on the part of the Council, for, as historian Barbara
Young Welke has shown, negligence law was far from placing all blame for accidents on
corporations before the late 18603; the law took into account the actions of the individual
accident victims when deciding culpability for an injury or death during the early railroad
era. It was not until the latter third of the nineteenth century that negligence law began to

place blame primarily on the railroads, which represented a technological and corporate

power that people could not control and were thus powerless against.8 Nevertheless, the
Council still thought it was a good idea to protect the city from lawsuits, despite the fact
that litigants had a good chance of being unsuccessful during the 18503 and 18603. This
legal protection, though, was very little to ask from a railroad; it was a preventative
measure that asked a railroad to simply take responsibility for its actions and negligence
when operating inside the Chicago city limits. Though the Council may seem pragmatic
for demanding such a provision, it actually demonstrates that the Council’s priority
during this period was economic boosterism: in writing such a provision, the Council,
though it protected its treasury, yielded some of its power to deﬁne the streets and public
spaces by relinquishing all legal liability to a railroad corporation. The railroad’s legal
liability for accidents and damages justiﬁed its claim to the public space of the street
further than a right-of-way ordinance alone could.

The indemniﬁcation clauses in railroad right-of-way ordinances and the bonds

that came with them in Chicago provide context for Welke’s argument by showing that

 

8 Barbara Young Welke, Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution,
[865-1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

125

the change in negligence law began as early as the 18505. The law took shape through
the turn of the century with many state and federal court cases involving women, but, if
the Chicago example is indicative of what occurred elsewhere, it started at the municipal
level as a proactive way to conserve city funds. In Chicago, the change was also effected
in part because of a shift in booster attitudes towards the railroads: the aldermen no
longer deemed it necessary to attract railroads to the city with rights-of-way that were
completely free, with few conditions.

This shows the importance of the urban environment in shaping negligence law,
the change of which reﬂected the evolving conception of American liberty. The
indemniﬁcation clauses and bonds were necessary speciﬁcally because the railroads were
built in a densely populated city. Railroads and people came into contact frequently, and
accidents were common. Also, Chicago had begun to develop its public infrastructure,
and the Council did not want to get stuck with the repair bill if a railroad damaged a street
or bridge, for example. Thus the nexus of railroads and people in Chicago helped shift
liability towards the railroads, which were the vanguard of the industrial era and a symbol
of the dependence—the loss of individual autonomy—that helped deﬁne the era.

The Council demanded more than simply a promise to pay the city for damages in
right-of-way ordinances beginning in the 18505. The railroads were given the right to
build in and across streets, public space that was used by the city’s residents and visitors
to travel by foot and animal power. These streets were necessary to carry out work and
daily activities necessary to run a household, and the presence of railroads presented a
new challenge to carrying out these quotidian duties. The Council was aware that that the

streets needed to be kept in working condition, but it was reluctant to pay for such

126

improvements with general city funds. The majority of street improvements during the
period were ﬁmded through special assessments, taxes paid by property owners whose
property was seen as being directly affected by the improvement. Property owners
abutting a street would petition the Council to pave or plank a portion of the street. If
approved, the Council would then send someone to assess the direct beneﬁt of the
improvement to each property owner and bill him as such.

In the 18505, the Council began to require railroads to improve and maintain the

sections of streets on which they ran. This was a direct extension of the special

assessment system that began in the 18405.9 Railroads were given permission to lay
track in and across streets; it seemed only fair that those same railroads would be required
‘ to pay for the improvement of those streets. The public had to deal with the hazards and
inconveniences caused by the railroads, and people who owned property that abutted
streets on which railroads ran had to additionally contend with depreciated property
values. It seemed only fair to the Council that the railroads pay for street improvements
as a condition of right-of-way. The aldermen and mayor were also conﬁdent that the
railroads would not be scared away from building in Chicago because of street
maintenance requirements. Chicago was already the nation’s railroad hub by the early
18503, and the Council correctly believed it was in a strong enough position to request
something in return from the railroads for rights-of-way in the city’s streets.

The maintenance provisions generally focused on two areas: crossings and streets.
Not every railroad was given the right to lay track in streets, but they all, at the very least,

had to cross streets. The Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Air-line Railroad was the

 

9 See Robin Einhom, Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1 833-18 72 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991, 2001), 61-103, for discussion on early special assessment.

127

earliest railroad to be required in its right-of-way ordinance to maintain crossings and

streets.10 It was given the right in 1853
to construct in the west division of [Chicago], one or more railroad tracks upon
any land south of Madison street or north of Lake street, which they may procure
by purchase or otherwise, and to lay down said track or tracks across any street
within the boundaries aforesaid, wherever any such street crosses their intended

line of railroad, and also to construct and use all depots necessary to
accommodate the business of said company: Provided, that convenient crossings

be made by said company where the said track crosses the line of streets. . . .H
The railroad was further given the right to lay track “on any street or streets in the west
division of the said city, south of Polk street, and extend the same to the south branch of
the Chicago river; and may occupy so much of said street or streets as may be necessary
for the purpose of constructing, maintaining, using and occupying a single railroad
track. . .for the period of three years.” This temporary track was to be constructed on the
condition that it was to be removed after three years, and the streets were to be placed “in
good orderfor ordinary travel” after its removal. Also, “the space occupied by said road,
except when turn-outs, tum-tables or switches occur [is not to] exceed ten feet in width in
the centre of said street or streets: And provided, said work be so constructed that

carriages may pass along either side of said road, and may conveniently cross the

same ”'2

 

'0 Air-line railroads followed routes that were generally very straight and thus direct. They chose shorter
routes despite more technically difﬁcult terrain. Most railroads chose routes where the terrain was easier to
manage even if the route was a little longer. The Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Air-Line Railroad was
not an air line any more than were the other railroads in Chicago. The terrain around Chicago was ﬂat to a
fault (it was quite swampy), so nearly every railroad route was straight and direct. The Chicago, St.
Charles & Mississippi Air-Line Railroad likely named itself as such as an advertising tool, to both set it
apart from other railroads and to have potential customers associate their name with the straight, direct air-
line railroads located elsewhere in the United States.

11 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 250.
'2 Ibid., 251.

128

In sum, the Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Air-line Railroad gained rights-of-
way partially in exchange for its promise to build “convenient crossings” and, on the
streets in which it would build tracks, to maintain the sides of the streets along which
carriages and people would pass. A few months later, it was given the right to build track
between Madison and Lake Streets, north of its original right-of-way; though it was not
allowed to build in streets, it could cross any street within the limits of the ordinance on

the condition that “convenient crossings” would be constructed. It further was given

permission to build a bridge across the south branch of the Chicago River. 13 Though the
Council was vague about what constituted a convenient crossing and in what state the
street along the side of the railroad tracks was to be maintained in order for people and
carriages to pass, this nevertheless is evidence of a change in the Council’s dealings with
the railroads.

The vague language in the aforementioned ordinance began to disappear in
subsequent right-of-way ordinances. Though the language on constructing “convenient
crossings” remained the same—the Council obviously believed that description was
sufﬁciently speciﬁc—the language regarding street maintenance provisions became much
clearer and more precise. The Council required the Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad to

“plank the carriage-way of the street so occupied, in and on each side of said track, so as

to render the same convenient for the passage of teams and travel.”14 The same railroad,
after having changed its name to the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad, was
given an amendatory right-of-way ordinance in 1856 that was even more speciﬁc in its

street maintenance requirements: “the tracks of said road shall be so laid as to interfere as

 

'3 Ibid., 251-2.
'4 Ibid., 303.

129

little as possible with the usefulness of said streets, as road or carriage-ways, by grading,
ﬁlling, and planking or macadamizing them in such a way as to allow free passage for
carriages across and alongside its tracks, and in such a manner as the common council

shall direct, and also by changing the grade of said streets at any time it may be ordered

by the common council.”15 In a right-of-way ordinance enacted the following year, the
J oliet & Chicago Railroad was required to “plank, pave or macadarnize. . .and forever
maintain such planking, paving or macadamizing in good order and condition” the

section of Archer Road and Grove Street through which the railroad was given

permission to lay its tracks.16 Later that satne year, the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad
was given permission to lay track in sections of Jefferson and West Kinzie Streets on the
condition that they “ﬁll said street up to grade with gravel, or other suitable material, and

shall also plank or pave said street, when required so to do by the order of the common

. 17
councrl.”

The increased and more speciﬁc street maintenance requirements in railroad right-
of-way ordinances in the mid- to late-18503 were not simply a result of the Council’s
improved bargaining position vis-a-vis the railroads; they were enacted simultaneously
with Ellis Chesbrough’s plan for a citywide sewerage system. The initial part of this plan
constituted raising the city’s grade to provide sufﬁcient drainage for “low, ﬂat” Chicago,

which—as if being low to the water table and having a ﬂat topography did not provide

 

'5 Ibid., 304.
'6 Ibid., 253.
'7 Ibid., 270.

130

,18
’ In

reason enough for poor drainage—was built “on soil that absorbed little moisture.
order to both facilitate rainwater drainage and bury the sewers that would drain waste into

the Chicago River, the Council enacted Chesbrough’s sewerage plan, which, between

1855 and 185 8, raised the city’s grade by around four or ﬁve feet. 19 Though private
citizens were responsible for the cost of raising their homes and businesses to the new
grade, most of the funding to raise the city’s public property, including the streets, came
from city coffers.20 The aldermen found a solution to partially alleviate these costs to the
city by requiring the railroads to pay the expense of raising the grade of the section of
street or streets in which they were given the right to build track.

The aforementioned maintenance requirements hint at actions by the Council on
behalf of the public interest: the Council required the railroads to maintain streets on
which they ran and over which they crossed, and it may have been at least partially
compelled to do so in order to ensure safety and convenience for the public. But the
public good was only part of the story. The Council—which could not spend large
amounts of public money during the 18505 due to municipal charters that capped its
spending and, more signiﬁcantly, to a treasury that was nearly empty—received public
improvements in exchange for use of the streets. Though aldermen could claim a direct

public beneﬁt as a result of their actions, there was plenty of evidence for the public

 

18 Robin Einhom, Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1 833-1872 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991, 2001), 138.

19 Robin Einhom, “Streets Grades, Raising,” in the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago
Historical Society, 2005). Accessed at http://www.encvclonedia.chicagohistogorgzpages/ l 202.html on 17
September 2009. For more discussion of the raising of Chicago’s grade, see Einhom, Property Rules, 138-
40; Louis Cain, “Raising and Watering a City: Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough and Chicago's First Sanitation
System,” Technology and Culture 13:3 (July 1972), 353-72, and Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront
Metropolis: The Case of Chicago (DeKalb, 111.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1978); and Martin
Melosi, The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban America from Colonial Times to the Present,
Abridged Edition (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 65-7.

20 Einhom, Property Rules, 139-41.

131

consequences of railroad development discussed in Chapter Two. These men were
boosters who tended to govern cities based on personal ideas about what would improve
the economic lot of a city; they were not beholden to the will of their constituents as they
would be in the 18603 when new charters expanded the number of wards and aldermen in
the city. The booster-aldermen may also have introduced the street maintenance
provisions in railroad right-of-way ordinances based at least partially on personal
economic interests, for, as I showed in Chapter One, Chicago boosters were deﬁned both
by their drive to simultaneously make Chicago an economic powerhouse and improve
their personal economic lot. With the street maintenance provisions, an alderman with
business or real estate on a street along which a railroad ran would receive the beneﬁt of
the improved street without having to pay a special assessment for its improvement.

Whether the Council enacted these provisions on behalf of the public interest or
for selﬁsh reasons, it took further actions regarding the railroads in the 18503, the
motivation for which could not have been mistaken for anything but the public interest.
Right-of-way ordinances included provisions that were produced speciﬁcally to protect
the safety of and limit the inconveniences to residents. The Council’s actions regarding
safety went beyond simply requiring a speciﬁc railroad to do something as a condition of
its right-of-way; the Council enacted its earliest orders and ordinances that regulated the
safety of all the railroads in Chicago during the 18505.

The speed limit was a common safety provision that ﬁrst appeared in early
Chicago right-of-way ordinances, beginning with that of the Chicago & Rock Island

Railroad in 1851. The railroad was to “er its trains by locomotives. . .at a speed not

132

exceeding ﬁve miles per hour.”21 Speed limits appeared in subsequent right-of-way

ordinances of railroads that, like the Chicago & Rock Island, received permission from

the Council to build tracks in streets.22 The Council quickly recognized the need to reign
in the power of the new steam technology, especially on streets where trains ran cheek to
jowl with people. A train traveling at even ﬁve miles per hour was a daunting and
dangerous obstacle during a time when locomotives were yet unfamiliar to people (just

ask Ann Turrell and Catharine Mack, the two Irish women discussed in Chapter Two

who were killed by a train traveling “at a rate of four or ﬁve miles an hour”23). The
aldermen believed it was their duty to keep trains from running at dangerously high
speeds along city streets and thus included speed limits among the safety provisions in
early railroad right-of-way ordinances.

It did not take long for the Council to acknowledge and act upon the danger posed
by grade crossings. As early as 1853, the Council included provisions in railroad right-
of-way ordinances that mandated “proper warning tables shall be erected in conspicuous
places at or near such crossings?” Obviously, a sign that advertised a railroad crossing,
no matter how conspicuous, was only effective if the people at the crossing took the time

to acknowledge the warning. Yet the inclusion of this requirement in right-of-way

 

21 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 281.

22 The Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Air-line; Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne, & Chicago; and Chicago, St.
Paul & Fond du Lac Railroads all were given right-of-way conditioned on a ﬁve-mile-per-hour speed limit.
Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 251 , 305, 307.

3 Chicago Tribune, “Fatal Railroad Accident: One Woman Killed and Another Probably Fatally Injured,”
January 24, 1863, p. 4.

4 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 302. See also Chicago Common Council, Laws and
Ordinances, 250 and 252 for ordinances with nearly identical requirements regarding the placement of
warning tables at grade crossings.

133

ordinances from the early 18503 shows that the aldermen were beginning to think and act
on the dangers that came with railroad development in urban space.

The Illinois Central Railroad was an exception among Chicago railroads in a
number of ways. It received much of its funding through the sale of federal lands that
were given to the State of Illinois, the General Assembly of which then gave the lands to
a private corporation in exchange for a percentage of revenues. It was the ﬁrst such
railroad to be built as the result of a federal land grant. Upon completion in the 18505, it
was the longest railroad in the world. But it was also an exception in how it used urban
space in Chicago. Whereas the other railroads in the city ran their trains in and across
public streets, the Illinois Central entered the city from the Lake Michigan shore; its
right-of-way near downtown Chicago was actually in the lake. The IC was able to avoid
many of the accidents and other problems that came when railroads and people shared
streets by, for the most part, avoiding development in and across the streets.

Just because the IC was able to reduce its risk of accident because of its favorable
right-of-way location did not mean that it posed no risk to Chicago residents. The
Council recognized that people needed access to Lake Michigan and that people in the
southern part of the city would have to cross the IC’s tracks to get there. It thus included
a provision in the IC’s right-of-way ordinance that ordered the IC to “erect and maintain,
on the western or inner line of the ground pointed out for its main track on the lake
shore. . .such suitable walls, fences or other sufﬁcient works, as will prevent animals from
straying upon or obstructing its tracks, and secure persons and property from danger.” It

further instructed the IC to “construct such suitable gates at proper places at the ends of

134

streets, which are now or may hereafter be laid out. . .to afford safe access to the lake.”25
The Council had the foresight to recognize the dangers and inconveniences that came
with the construction of the IC; it hoped the provisions in the ordinance would help the
city avoid these negative experiences.

The Council ﬁirther attempted to address the inconveniences wrought by urban
railroad development in an ordinance that gave the Chicago & Mississippi Railroad
permission to build track to connect with the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad in 1854.
The tracks were to be constructed across Taylor Street, near the intersection with Clark
Street, a bustling part of the city just south of downtown. The Council gave the Chicago
& Mississippi permission to build the connection only if the streets it crossed were “not

at any time. . .obstructed by the cars therein, nor shall the said street be obstructed longer

’9

than three minutes at any one time by the crossing of trains under way. 2 It recognized
quite early that the railroads could obstruct the streets, thus making travel through the city
difﬁcult for Chicagoans. So the Council tried to prevent the problem from occurring
through the use of its main power: legislation.

As was discussed above, the Council began to address issues of railroad safety
beginning in the early 18503, but it did so in a rather piecemeal fashion. It dealt with
these issues in individual railroad right-of-way ordinances, which meant that railroads
were not held to uniform standards on issues of safety and convenience. The call for
more uniform safety legislation came from a seemingly unlikely source: publisher and

lawyer J. Young Scammon. Scammon, like so many of his fellow boosters, played an

active role in bringing the railroads to Chicago. He helped sell stock so the Galena &

 

25 Ibid., 286.
26 Ibid., 252.

135

Chicago Union Railroad could be built; he himself was a large shareholder in Chicago’s
ﬁrst railroad. But despite his direct economic interest in the G&CU, Scammon
maintained a broad perspective regarding railroad development in the city. Perhaps
Scammon’s job as a newspaper editor incubated this perspective; or maybe it can be
attributed to his genuine afﬁnity for the city of Chicago and an authentic concern for the
well-being of its residents. Whatever the motivation, Scammon saw that railroads in
Chicago—especially the G&CU—were a threat to the safety of the city’s residents. He
drafted a petition that he and seven other prominent Chicagoans signed and presented to
the Council in 1852 that attempted to “call to the attention of the Common Council. . .the
immediate necessity of passing more stringent and salutary police regulations in relation
to the running of Rail Cars and Locomotives within the inhabited portions of the City.”
The primary concern listed in the petition was the need to alert the public “of the
approach of a Rail Car or Locomotive” at grade crossings “so as to prevent accident.”
The petitioners asserted, with impressive foresight, that it was the right time to enact such
safety legislation since “besides the G. & C. U. R. Road, other roads are about coming

into our city.” Further, “several serious accidents have been but just avoided at the

crossing of the G. & C. U. R. Road on Clark St.”27 The petition was referred to a Special
Committee on Railroad Matters (this committee was soon given permanent status), after
which it was ﬁled. It marked the beginning of a period of increased concern about the
hazards and inconveniences attendant with railroad development in urban space. It
tacitly asserted that these problems were of a public nature, and, as such, that it was the

responsibility of the Council to take action in order to solve them.

 

27 CP l851/52 1672A 03/09.

136

Over the next few years, the Council addressed railroad safety issues a couple

more times. In 1852, it ordered the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would

99

“regulate all rail road tracks now laid down. 2 This suggests that railroad tracks became
a common annoyance and hazard very early in Chicago’s railroad era. From this order,
no ordinance regulating the laying of railroad track was enacted, and there is no evidence
to suggest that any such ordinance was drafted. Two weeks later, the Committee on
Police responded to a petition that requested a policeman be stationed at the Galena &
Chicago Union Railroad depot to accompany the arrival of passengers. The Committee
agreed with the petition and, through a subscription of ﬁfty cents per day from each of

the city’s railroads, steamboats, and the Illinois & Michigan Canal, a police constable

was to be stationed at the railroad depots and docks upon the arrival of passengers during

the busy season, April 26 to November 15.29
This report regarding a policeman at railroad stations and docks is somewhat
difﬁcult to analyze. It may have been a response to J. Young Scammon’s petition that

was considered about a month previous: Scammon’s petition is entitled “Petition for

appointment of special police constable for passenger depots.”30 More likely, though,
Scammon’s petition was misﬁled, and it is a response to the petition referred to in the
Committee on Police report discussed above (which likely belonged in the ﬁle where the
Scammon petition resides). It appears that Scarnmon’s petition was considered and ﬁled,
though he likely would have been pleased that there was to be more police presence at

passenger depots. This report alludes that railroad space in Chicago created another

 

28 CP 1852/53 0099A 04/02.
29 CP 1852/53 0192A 04/26.
30 CP 1851/52 1672A 03/09.

137

hazard: passenger depots were high crime areas, so much so that a police constable from

a force that was already too small to deal with Chicago’s quickly growing population had

to dedicate himself to patrolling the places where passengers disembarked.3|
Unscrupulous characters could collect at the depots and docks, where a mix of vulnerable
travelers and their possessions—concentrated in a few bags—inevitably gathered. A
pretend porter or run-of-the-mill thief could make off with someone’s luggage; a sexual
predator could set his sights on a young girl traveling alone. The Council hoped the
police presence would discourage crime and give the travelers a positive ﬁrst impression
of Chicago, whether the city was to become their home or was simply a stopover on a
longer journey. The aldermen were boosters, and they wanted to portray Chicago in a

positive light. The fact that the police presence at the depots could actually make the city

32
safer was a bonus.

The Council did not attempt to address the issue of railroad safety in a
comprehensive manner until 1855, at which time the Council drafted an ordinance

entitled “An Ordinance Supplemental to All Ordinances Heretofore Passed Concerning

”33

Railroads. Only ﬁve years earlier, Chicago had one railroad, the Galena & Chicago

Union. When it drafted this railroad safety ordinance, eight railroads had received right-

 

31 There is no record of the number of policemen in 1852, though we can reasonably assume that there
were considerably fewer than the sixty people employed by the police department in 1857. A professional
police department was not formed in Chicago until 1855. See Wesley Skogan, Chicago since 1840: A
Time-Series Data Handbook (Urbana: Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of
Illinois, 1976), 85-92, for Chicago police department data and a brief discussion of Chicago’s early police
force. For discussion of Chicago’s train stations, see Laura Milsk, , “Meet Me at the Station: The Culture
and Aesthetics of Chicago’s Railroad Terminals, 1871-1930,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Loyola University-
Chicago, 2003).

32 The presence of an oath taken by John S. Corning as the watchman of the Chicago & Rock Island

Railroad depot shows that the Council was serious about its commitment to a police presence in the depots
even before Chicago fortned a professional police force in 1855. CP 1854/55 2207A 03/ 12.

33 CP 1855/56 0593A 06/07.

138

of—way from the Council and at least six of those were operational. The growth of
railroad traffic brought the attendant hazards and inconveniences into stark relief to the
point where the Council felt compelled to ﬁnally deal comprehensively with railroad
safety.

The ordinance—which was originally to be applied to railroads within the most
densely settled area of the city, but was revised over subsequent years to apply to trains
traveling anywhere within the city limits—dealt with some issues that had previously
been addressed in individual right-of-way ordinances.34 Locomotives were to move at no
“greater speed than the rate of six miles per hour.” The second and third sections of the
ordinance attempted to alleviate trafﬁc congestion by prohibiting trains from occupying
streets or cross streets “longer than ﬁve minutes at any one time.” The rest of the
ordinance was dedicated to safety and convenience issues that had not been addressed
previously. Trains “running in the night time” were required to “have and keep while so
running, a brilliant and conspicuous light on the advancing end of such Locomotive
Engine, Car, or train of Cars;” they also were required to ring the bell “continually while
in motion.” To control the noise nuisance created by trains, locomotives were prohibited
from using their steam whistles “except as a necessary signal to avoid accident.” Finally,
to further control trafﬁc congestion, the Council prohibited the railroads from placing “in

the street. . .any lumber or other material, nor shall they load any car from the street with

any material deposited there.”35
The speed limit offers an interesting point of analysis. While most of the

ordinance’s requirements were not extant in previous laws or were the same requirements

 

34 See Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 110-12, for the version of the ordinance in 1873.
35 CP 1855/56 0593A 06/07.

139

written into right-of-way ordinances—for example, trains were allowed to block a street
for no longer than ﬁve minutes—which is evidence that the Council focused more on
protecting the public from the railroads as time moved on, the speed limit actually
appears to be a step back. The speed limit required of individual railroads in right-of-way
ordinances was ﬁve miles per hour while the general railroad safety ordinance mandated
that trains travel no faster than six miles per hour. Perhaps experience showed that ﬁve
miles per hour was too slow, or maybe one mile per hour did not make much of a
difference. A third interpretation may be the most likely: the railroads that were to follow
the ﬁve-mile-per-hour speed limit blatantly disregarded it, so the Council thought they
would give the limit another go with a speed that seemed more agreeable to the railroad
corporations.

If this ﬁnal interpretation is correct, it would be representative of the railroads’
actions vis-a-vis the Council through the 18503: though the Council addressed the safety
issues attendant with railroad development in urban space through mtmicipal lawmaking,
it did not effectively protect the safety of and prevent inconvenience to the public. This
was the case due to a combination of impotence, inefﬁciency, and ineptitude on the part
of the Council, and to apathy and opportunism by both the Council and the railroads. The
Council did not have the power to effectively enforce its ordinances; the railroads took
advantage of this, to the chagrin of the public; and the Council often ignored the
problems. Through the end of the 18503, though some aldermen appeared to legitimately
care about protecting public safety, the Council’s actions regarding railroad safety and
public convenience were not at all effective in solving the problems. For many aldermen,

economic development continued to be their main priority, to the disregard of the safety

140

and convenience of the public. Overall, the Council looked much like an obsolete
J acksonian governmental body that was unable to effectively deal with the industrial era
it encountered.

The example of Clark Street is representative of the political and social response
to the railroad development during the period. Clark Street has been one of Chicago’s
busiest, most bustling streets from very early in the city’s history. A cursory glance

through the 1843 city directory gives evidence for this: lawyers, bankers, and various

commercial interests had downtown addresses on Clark Street.36 Its status as the city’s
main artery and central business district was solidiﬁed in the 18403 and 18505 as
Chicago’s newspapers and the city’s post ofﬁce—during that era, an important social

center because of its role as the premier place to disseminate news from outside places—

moved to Clark Street.37
But Clark Street was important to Chicago as more than just a downtown business
district. South of downtown, Clark Street quickly became a chief thoroughfare for
industrial and manufacturing interests. This occurred in large part because of railroad
development. The Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, which received its right-of-way
ordinance in 1851, was given permission by the Council to
lay down in any one of the streets of said city, between the west line of State
street and the west line of Halsted street, from the south line of said city as far
north as the line of Polk street, a single railroad track, with necessary turn-outs

and turning tables. Said company may extend said track northwardly as far as the
south line of Van Buren street, upon any street between the west line of Clark

 

36 Robert Fergus, compiler, Directory of the City of Chicago Illinois for 1843 (Chicago: Fergus Printing
Co., 1843, 1896); accessed at http://all-ancestors.com/chicago/chicagohtm on 25 September 2009.

7 Harold Mayer and Richard Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1969), 33. For a discussion of the essential role played by the post office in the spread of

information from 1775 to 1844, see Richard John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from
Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995).

141

street and the west line of said Halsted street, and build all necessary turn-outs
and turning tables.38

The engineers of the C&RI chose to build their track on Clark Street, which appears to
have been a wise decision based on basic business principles. The street runs nearly
parallel to the south branch of the Chicago River, along which most of the city’s
industrial and manufacturing interests were located. At the point near Twelfth Street
where the river comes closest to Clark Street—a bend that marks the south branch’s most
eastward point—the C&RI built its depot, rail yards, and grain elevators, the latter of
which were conveniently located on the banks of the Chicago River. Also, Clark Street
was located completely to the east of the river’s south branch, which meant that the
railroad did not have to pay the expense of building, maintaining, and operating a bridge
that it would have had to have built if it chose to construct track on any street west of
Clark. Finally, Clark was a relatively wide street, which meant that horse-drawn vehicles
and pedestrians could travel fairly conveniently alongside the tracks. This was likely the
least important of the reasons the C&Rl chose to build on Clark Street, for, as I have
shown, public convenience was not foremost in the minds of railroad executives. Yet, in

this case, it was a pleasant bonus that made prime rights-of-way even better.

 

38 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 280.

142

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143

The Council did not want trains running too near the downtown business district,
which is why it diverted the C&Rl’s right-of-way to the west of Clark Street between
Polk Street to the south and Van Buren Street to the north (the C&RI actually diverted
west from Clark at Taylor Street, a block farther south from where it was legally required
to do so). Yet Clark Street did not become two completely distinct neighborhoods, as the
Council may have wanted: professional, downtown Clark Street immediately south of the
main branch of the Chicago River, where newspapers and lawyers kept their ofﬁces and
on which the city courthouse and post ofﬁce were located; and industrial Clark Street,
south of Polk Street, where railroads and manufacturing interests ruled the urban
landscape. Chicago began to attract people, especially working-class migrants and
immigrants, who wanted inexpensive housing near their places of employment.
“Industrial Clark Street” quickly became “residential and industrial Clark Street” as these

new Chicagoans moved into the city. South Clark Street bustled with not only the clatter

' of railroads and industry, but with the quotidian rhythms of home and family hie.”
The Council seemed to change its stance towards the presence of railroads on

Clark Street fairly soon after giving the C&RI permission to lay its track. It “[o]rdered

that the mayor be requested to enjoin or otherwise prevent the Chicago & Rock Island

Rail Road Co. from crossing Clark Street with theyr (sic) track to the (prejudice?) of the

 

39 By the 18905, Clark Street between Polk and Twelfth Streets also boomed as a red-light district. Over
half the properties on the east side of the street were brothels, which, like the decisions made by the C&RI
Railroad regarding their track location, seems to make good business sense. They are adjacent to a number
of manufacturing establishments, which means there were a large number of men with paychecks; and they
were near a number of railroad passenger depots, which means there were men on business or leisure who
were far ﬁ'om their families. See Agnes Sinclair Holbrook, “Maps Notes and Comments,” especially
“Wage Map No. 4” and “Nationalities Map No. 4,” in Hull-House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of
Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on
Problems Growing Out of the Social Conditions (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007; originally
published in 1895).

144

publick (sic) (?) or (private?) rights?”0

Despite the poor spelling, one can deduce that the
aldermen passed the order because tracks that were to cross Clark Street would have led
to serious trafﬁc congestion and inconvenience for area businesses and the public who
lived and worked nearby. Though the C&RI only crossed the entire width of Clark Street
near its depot, grain elevators, and rail yards just south of Twelfth Street, the aldermen
obviously saw these sidetracks as a signiﬁcant inconvenience given the heavy use of the
street. I

The response from property owners and the public seem to mirror that shown in
the Council’s order. The Council was presented at least three petitions in 1854 that
expressed discontent with the presence of railroads on Clark Street. One of them

complained that the C&RI built tracks in an alley off Clark Street; the tracks ﬁlled the

alley so it could no longer be used by anyone other than the railroad, which diminished

“the value of [adjacent owners’] lots. . considerably?“ Also, one-hundred individuals—
including many prominent Chicago residents—signed a petition that

respectfully represents—That the use of Locomotive Engines on Clark Street,
north of Twelfth Street, is attended with great dangers to the life, limbs and
property of our citizens who reside in that vicinity, and others who transact
business in that part of the city. That that part of Clark Street recently occupied
by the [Southern Michigan & Northern Indiana] and the [Chicago & Rock Island
Railroad] Companies is a thronged and busy part of the city, constantly in use by
teams and pedestrians.

We therefore respectfully pray your honorable body will pass an ordinance
prohibiting the use of locomotives by said Railroad Companies on their track

north of Twelfth Street.42

 

40 CP 1852/53 0868A 11/04.
4' cp 1354/55 1776A 03/05.

42 Ibid. Besides the signatures of prominent individuals, one could tell that the petition originated from a
person of means since it had been printed on a press (most petitions at the time were hand-written). Also,
the fact that they were trying to prevent locomotives from traveling on Clark Street north of Twelfth Street
clues one in to the socioeconomic geography.

145

Yet another petition attempted to stop the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, from being
“an insufferable nuisance” due to its “constant daily practice in preparing their trains, of
obstructing Clarke (sic) and Dearbom streets so that passengers, teams and carriages are

greatly impeded in passing said streets, and are in imminent danger. . .by horses becoming

frightened with the letting off [of] steam from locomotives.”43

These petitions show early dissatisfaction with the decision to let railroads lay
track on Clark Street. It did not take much time for people to realize that railroads
created a major inconvenience and danger to people, especially on one of the city’s
busiest streets. Yet these aforementioned petitions were in a ﬁle entitled “Papers
retained, not requiring action.” Though the Council during the 18505 appeared to be
more concerned with public railroad safety than it had been in the past, it nevertheless
remained inconsistent in its approach to safety issues. It would deal with Clark Street on
its own timeline, not on that of the public. Its laissez-faire stance towards the railroads
shows a booster Council that appeared more interested in helping business than
protecting the public.

It did not take long for Clark Street and the railroads to appear once again in the
Council proceedings. The comprehensive railroad safety ordinance discussed above that
was enacted in June 1855 seems to have been at least partially inspired by experience
with the railroads on Clark Street. Though the ﬁnal draft of the ordinance does not
speciﬁcally mention Clark Street, an earlier draft includes three sections that attempt to
prevent trafﬁc congestion at some of Clark Street’s busiest grade crossings by limiting

the amount of time a train could remain at a crossing and by limiting the length of trains

 

43 CP 1854/55 1777F 03/05.

146

on Clark Street.44 Though these sections were not included in the ﬁnal version of the
ordinance—the sections in the ﬁnal version that attempted to prevent trafﬁc congestion
covered streets within a certain section of the city then, later, throughout the city limits—
they show that there was palpable concern with railroads on Clark Street among the
members of the Council.

An ordinance in 1856 shows that, though the Council began to demonstrate
concern for the public safety in the 18505, it was still more concerned with attracting
business and keeping those business interests content than it was with protecting the
safety and well-being of its constituents. In other words, the 18505 Common Council
continued to act like Jacksonian boosters in regard to the railroads. The Chicago & Rock
Island and the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana Railroads were given permission

in January of 1856 to “lay down an additional track in Clark street from its southern

terminus to where their present track diverges from said street.”45 This ordinance came
after the public had expressed its concerns about Clark Street railroad development in
petitions and even after the Council had shown doubt about its initial decision to let the
Chicago & Rock Island Railroad build tracks on Clark Street. The railroads were given
permission to lay the additional track on the condition that the railroads “plank the whole
surface of each street, including sidewalks, between the points ﬁrst above indicated, and

put in good, complete and proper sewers on both sides, and forever maintain such

Planking and sewers in good order and condition.”46‘

 

44 CP 1855/56 0593A 06/07.
45 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 282-3.
46 Ibid., 283.

147

The public quickly spoke up about this ordinance. “[O]wners. . .of property in the
vicinity of the Rock Island Freight Depot” signed a petition against giving the railroads
permission to lay a second track on Clark Street. “We claim to be governed by a liberal
spirit in regard to all great enterprises which beneﬁt the family of man but we cannot
permit so great an injury to our individual interests without entering this our solemn

protest against any further incumbrance (sic) of Clark street by additional railroad

facilities.”47 They used the argument of property value and utility as opposed to that of
public safety. Yet the nearly one hundred petitioners were unsuccessful. Their petition
was considered after the ordinance had been enacted, so the argument and petition were
moot. The railroads got their second Clark Street track, and so did an unhappy public.

A ﬁnal example of the railroads on Clark Street demonstrates a common problem
by the Council in regard to public safety and convenience during the period: the Council
had little power to effectively enforce its ordinances. In 1860, it “[o]rdered that the city
marshal forthwith stop the various Rail Road companies from having cars stand in South
Clark Street from Twelfth Street to Archer Road for loading and unloading said—ears (?)
detrimental to the traveling public along said street, and to enforce the ordinances made
and provided for in such cases & order that [a] copy of this order be sent to [the] RR
[companies].”48 This order substantiates the claims of petitioners who maintained that
railroad development on Clark Street would be an inconvenience and hazard to the
public. It also alludes that previous ordinances, which attempted to regulate railroad
safety and control attendant inconveniences, had not effectively achieved their intended

ends. The Council had the power to legislate, but in the 18508 it had little power to

 

47 CP 1855/56 1838A 01/10.
48 CP 1860/61 017013 09/10.

148

effectively enforce its legislation. The police force was small and not professionalized
until 1855; public works issues were decided by Council committees that lacked
professional expertise and were in over their heads with the phenomenal growth of
Chicago. Often the Council’s only actual enforcement tool was the ability to write more
orders and ordinances; in other words, the Council followed paper with more paper.

The railroads could easily get away with breaking the municipal laws that were
meant to control them and keep the public safe; and they did. Numerous petitions and
remonstrances complained of railroads ﬂaunting the laws and thus endangering and
inconveniencing the people of the city. The Council acted towards these petitions in a
manner represented in its treatment of the railroads on Clark Street: it lacked the ability to
effectively enforce its safety ordinances; and it overwhelmingly favored the interests of
the railroads while it ignored the prayers of the public.

It did not take a year after the general railroad safety ordinance was enacted for a
petition to appear that complained of violations by the railroads. William Butler and four
other residents of Chicago’s west side wrote that

hardly a day passes, but for some unfortunate person is deprived of life or limb, &

not a week has passed for some months, but some family has been called to

follow the mangled remains of a dear ﬁiend to the grave, all of which arises from
the most gross & barbarous neglect upon the part of the [Galena & Chicago Union

Railroad]. It is a constant practice to run their trains at the rate of ﬁfteen miles per

hour within the limits of the city & through quite a thickly settled portion of the

town. . . .[Y]our petitioners ask, yea demand, that the ordinance regulating the
speed of cars within the city limits be enforced, or those living upon the line of

road will be compelled to seek redress at the hands of some other tribunal.49

 

49 CP 1856/57 0836A 08/14.

149

Though the petition begins with what seems to be hyperbole, the petitioners likely did not

exaggerate much about the human toll of the Galena & Chicago Railroad in Chicago.50
The threatening tone at the end of petition—“your petitioners ask, yea demand, that the
ordinance regulating the speed of cars within the city limits be enforced, or those living
upon the line of road will be compelled to seek redress at the hands of some other
tribunal”—underscores the desperation felt by the petitioners because of the dangerous
actions of the railroad. The Council’s Committee on Police responded by referring the
matter to the police captain, who was given instructions to “report to the city attorney any
violation of the ordinance regulating the speed of cars within the city limits, and he to

cause suits to be brought against such Rail Road companys (sic) as shall hereafter be

known to have violated said ordinance.”51 The Council dealt with the issue as best they
could: they referred the issue to the police captain of an underrnanned police force, who
was to refer violations to the city attorney, who was to bring suit against the railroads that
violated the law. Enforcement was more likely to get lost in a ﬂurry of inefﬁcient
bureaucracy than it was to be successfully meted out.

The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad was a frequent target of petitioners who
hoped to stop the railroad’s constant safety violations. Besides running at two-and-a-half
times the city’s legal speed limit, the G&CU tended to neglect the maintenance of its
grade crossings. This issue was magniﬁed with the G&CU as compared to other

railroads because of its location: its track was built in east-west running Kinzie Street

 

50 The petition was likely not a complete exaggeration. The fact that the Chicago & North Western
Railroad—the successor of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad—was listed as the railroad with the
highest death toll of any in the city in 1869 lends credence to the claims of the petition. See CP 1869/70
0893A 07/18.

5 1 CP 1856/57 0836A 03/14.

150

from the city’s western limits to the northern branch of the Chicago River, over which the
railroad passed just south of Kinzie; it then continued on North Water Street immediately
north of the river all the way to Lake Michigan. In other words, the railroad bisected the
city. Also, Chicago’s streets were set up on a grid, which meant that the G&CU crossed
nearly every north-south street in the city at grade.

The G&CU had many grade crossings to maintain so that “carriages. . .may

conveniently cross.” 52 The railroad, though, was not altogether successful at fulﬁlling
this provision of their right-of-way ordinance. In November 1853—ﬁve years after the
G&CU received the ﬁrst railroad right-of-way ordinance to enter Chicago—the Council

ordered the railroad to “construct within ten days convenient crossings for vehicles,

where their track crosses the line of streets.”5 If the railroad failed to comply, the Street

Commissioner of the West Division was to “construct the same and report the expense

”54 Obviously the railroad

thereof to the Council to be assessed against said Company.
had ignored the provision of its ordinance that required it to build crossings that
“carriages. . .may conveniently cross.” It likely had gotten away with neglecting its grade
crossings for ﬁve years—or so the urgent tone of the Council’s order would make one
suspect.

Yet the order appears to not have been effectively enforced. Two years after the
aforementioned order, west side resident Dan Brobston presented the Council with a

petition that claimed the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad crossings near Halsted Street

were “in a very dangerous condition and have been for a long time past,” and that

 

52 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 268.
53 CP 1853/54 1219A 11/28.
54 Ibid.

151

“several accidents” had occurred as a result.55 The mere existence of this petition shows
that the railroad ignored its obligations to the public safety, and the Council during the
18508 could do little to compel the G&CU to meet those legal obligations. Mr.
Brobston’s claim that the crossings had been “in a very dangerous condition. . .for a long
time past” gives speciﬁc evidence to these claims. The Council often turned a blind eye
to railroads’ violations of safety ordinances during the 18508; when it did not, its actions
usually resulted in little more than a written threat, to which the railroads paid little heed.
The most frequent remonstrances and petitions came in response to obstructions
caused by railroads. The Illinois & Wisconsin Railroad illegally laid track on West
Water Street in the city’s Wabansia Addition, a triangular tract of land bordered to the
south by Kinzie Street, to the west by North Jefferson St., and to the northeast by the
north branch of the Chicago River. In this case it appears the railroad followed the orders
of the Council and tore up its illegal track.56 Even though the residents appear to have
had one a small victory, they lost in the end. These were the residents mentioned at
length in Chapter Two who petitioned against allowing the Chicago & Milwaukee
Railroad from building a track on North Jefferson Street, for their property would have
been surrounded on all sides by railroad tracks if the C&M were granted this right.
Though the Committee on Streets & Alleys found in favor of the petitioners, the Council

nevertheless granted the C&M’s wishes and gave the railroad permission to build its

track on Jefferson Street.57 The Council acted in the interest of the railroads even though

members of the Council who sat on the Committee of Streets & Alleys believed the

 

55 CP 1855/56 1659A 12/10.
56 CP 1854/55 0339A 05/15.
57 CP 1856/57 1668A 02/02. Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 269-70.

152

residents correct in claiming harm by further railroad development. It is not surprising
that the residents of the Wabansia Addition—the mixed residential-industrial
neighborhood marked with heavy railroad development, shown above in Figures 4 and
5—submitted another remonstrance to the Council a month later that called for the
removal of goods hauled by the C&M that were illegally stored in an alley. The residents

used this alley to reach their stables and barns, and feared violent retribution by C&M

employees if they moved the goods.58 The Council ordered the city marshal to clear the
alley. Yet, even if the marshal cleared the alley, the railroad likely remained a constant
annoyance to the residents. The railroad was conﬁdent enough to illegally use the alley
as a warehouse, and rightfully so. The partiality the Council displayed towards the
railroad justiﬁed the arrogance of the railroad employees.

The railroads continued to ﬂaunt the city’s ordinances, and the Council displayed
inconsistent and ineffective enforcement of violations through the end of the decade. In
response to the multitude of petitions discussed above, the Council responded in October
1856—just over a year after the general railroad safety ordinance was enacted—with an
order for the city marshal, police captain, and “other ofﬁcers of the City. . .to enforce the

R[ail] Road ordinances and prevent trains from crossing and recrossing streets utterly

regardless of all ordinances as they now do.”59 This order was less evidence of effective
enforcement than it was an expression of frustration on the part of the Council at the
ineffectiveness of their safety legislation.

But, again, though the Council expected the railroads to follow city ordinances, its

inconsistent and ineffective enforcement opened the door to abuse of the laws by the

 

58 CP 1856/57 0164A 03/31.
59 CP 1856/57 1190A 10/27.

153

railroads. And the Council’s favorable treatment of the railroads at the expense of the
public and small business owners was likely another factor that emboldened the railroads
to break the law. One example does a particularly good job at illustrating this pro-
railroad bias of the Common Council. A number of property owners along Beach Street
remonstrated against an ordinance that gave the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago
Railroad permission to build railroad tracks along the recently opened thoroughfare. The

street had been opened in 1855 and 1856 after property owners petitioned for a special

assessment for such purposes.60 The property owners paid their assessments in full, and
the road was opened. Only months after Beach became a street, the Pittsburgh, Ft.
Wayne & Chicago Railroad petitioned the Council for the right to lay more railroad

tracks. The Council granted the petition and allowed the railroad to “lay down, maintain

and operate a track or tracks. . .in Beach street to Harrison street?“

Not surprisingly, a number of property owners along the stretch of Beach Street
that was to be adorned with railroad tracks were unhappy when they heard news of the
right-of-way ordinance. They were so unhappy, in fact, that they wrote and signed two
separate remonstrances. The ﬁrst was a strongly worded petition that likely represents
the initial heated reaction that the property owners had towards the news of the Beach
Street right-of-way. The petition was so strongly worded, in fact, that one of the

petitioners—JG. Hamilton—wrote in parentheses after his signature that “J .G. Hamilton

 

60 CP 1855/56 1385A 10/22.
6] Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 303.

154

does not wish to endorse the veg strong language used in the ﬁrst two clauses of the last

paragraph above.”62 The clauses of which he wrote are as follows:
It is understood that the applicants for the most injurious license or permission
represented to your Hon. Body that they had obtained the consent of the property

owners to the same. We say to your honors, emphatically and deeply aggrieved,
no such consent was obtained and we insist and rightly demand respectfully that

our rights & interests be protected in the premises.63
In sum, the petitioners claimed the railroad lied to obtain their franchise from the
Council.

The second petition was presented to the Council four months after the initial
remonstrance as a last-ditch effort to convince the aldermen to revoke the right-of-way
ordinance of the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad. The petitioners also sought
to obtain a refund for assessments they had paid to the Council. In a three-page letter that
included an additional page of signatures and a chart listing special assessments, the
petitioners claimed that

sometime during the year 1855 . . .the said City proceeded to and did lay out and

designate for a public street in said city what is now known as Beach Street; and

also proceeded to and did make large assessments upon the said lots of your

petitioners for the purpose of opening, grading and making passible (sic) the said
street and afterwards collected the same from your petitioners...; and also

appropriated the lands of your petitioners for the purpose of the said street.64
They further claimed that “said City has done little or nothing towards opening said street .
save only to mark out the same, and to designate its location, not towards grading said
street or making the same passible (sic) in any manner...; and that said street or pretended

street has not since the same was laid out been used by the public more than the grounds

 

62 cp 1856/57 1569A 01/05
63 Ibid.
64 CP 1857/58 0292A 05/04.

155

adjacent thereto.”65 Even more damning to the Council than the claim of inefficiency in

executing a public works project was the assertion made in the next paragraph:
Your petitioners. . .are informed that certain persons who were at the time
stockholders of the Chicago Fort Wayne & Pittsburgh Rail Road Company
were. . .instrumental in procuring said Beach Street to be opened through the
premises of your petitioners and at your petitioners’ expense[.] . . . [The
stockholders] thus endeavor[ed] to enable the City Government to obtain control
of that portion of your petitioners’ premises whereon said Beach Street is laid
out. . .with the design of placing it in the power of the Common Council. . .to
relinquish to the said Rail Road Company the right of way upon and along that

portion of said Beach Street[.] [The Council] thereby compel[led]'your
petitioners to pay for the right of way of said Rail Road Company. . . [and to

provide] land therefore free of cost.66
In other words, the petitioners essentially accused the Council of corruption; at the very
least, they laid blame on the Council for working in the interest of the railroads instead of
on behalf of them, their constituents.

It is not at all surprising, given the Council’s reluctance to part with money, that
the members of the Committee on Streets & Alleys found against the request of the
petitioners. Their grounds for denial of a refund for the assessments are sound: the
assessments were solely for the opening of the street, not for grading it and thus making it
usable.67 Also, the Committee found “no evidence of informality or fraud” in the process
by which the railroad obtained right-of-way.68 Yet despite the fact that there is no
evidence of any fraud, it is difﬁcult deny that this episode seems suspicious. The special
assessment system, which was used to fund public works projects by affected property

owners, was abused in this case. Though the Council acted within their rights, there can

 

65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.

67 This claim is corroborated with CP 1854/55 0497A 06/12; 1854/55 0634A 07/17; 1855/56 1385A 10/22;
1855/56 2072A 02/25; and 1857/58 1036A 10/05.

68 CP 1857/58 0292A 05/04.

156

be no denying that the spirit of the special assessment system was violated. Unhappy
property owners were simply collateral damage.

In this case and many others during the period, the members of the Council acted
as boosters, just like they had in the 18308 and 18408: economic growth was the

Council’s primary concern, and they saw the railroads as the key to growth, or “a great

public beneﬁt.”69 They believed they were acting in the public good, despite petitions
that displayed public disapproval of their actions. This unilateral decision-making by a
Council primarily formed of the Yankee elite shows continuity in Chicago’s political
culture from the 18308 through the 18508. The Council had a difﬁcult time adjusting to
the problems and issues attendant with a quickly growing industrial city, as is
exempliﬁed in the Council’s response to the railroads in the 18508. Its Jacksonian
boosterism was ill-equipped to deal with urban problems in the industrial era.

The Council’s Jacksonian-style boosterism was further displayed in the presence
of the anti-monopoly theme found throughout much of the Council’s railroad legislation
from the 18508. Nothing displays this theme better than the ﬁle entitled “An Ordinance
Regulating the business and location of Rail Road Companies within City of Chicago.”
This ordinance included numerous provisions, all of which attempted to prevent railroads
from obtaining a monopoly in transportation and ancillary industries in order to promote
competition among railroads, thus giving the City of Chicago the greatest economic
beneﬁt possible. First, it permitted the free use of tracks laid in certain streets to “all
persons and corporations which may wish to draw or have drawn their cars thereon. . .;

and no preference shall be given to one class of cars, or to the cars owned or used by one

 

69 CP 1856/57 1569A 01/05.

157

person or corporation, over those used by another, so that all persons and corporations
wishing to use the track shall be entitled to equal privileges and facilities in the use of the
same? It further compelled every railroad within the city to “permit and give every
reasonable and proper facility for the construction of any connexuns (sic) or side tracks
for the accommodation of business which may be desired by any person engaged in
business in said city.” It also prohibited any railroad from “engag[ing] in or transact[ing]
any storage or warehousing business for hire” and ﬁned any railroad that was found to
charge customers for storage within the city limits. If a railroad needed to store goods, it
was to “deliver the said goods or merchandise to any responsible person or persons in
said city engaged in the storage or warehousing business. . . provided that such company
shall make no unfair or partial discriminations or preferences in the selection of the said
person or persons.” Finally, the ordinance attempted to promote competition, thus

preventing monopoly, by mandating that each railroad company “shall use a 8[e]perate

depot—distinct apart & removed from the Depot of any other Rail Road Company.”70
This ordinance was never enacted. If it had been enacted and enforced, the
railroad geography of the city likely would have looked much different, with depots
peppering Chicago and more tracks on its streets. Yet this ordinance was not enacted
because it likely drew a negative response from railroads: they wanted to share depots
with other railroads to save money; they did not want to build tracks only to have to share
them with competitors; and they did not want to be prohibited from making money in the
storage business. This ordinance was a prototypical J acksonian response to monopoly: it

focused on circumscribing “exclusive privilege.” As historian Walter Hugins explained,

 

70 CP 1852/53 I303A 03/09.

158

“[t]o the Jacksonians, the source of monopoly was to be found in the statutes, in legal
privileges created and protected by legislative enactments; moreover, these monopolistic

privileges, while generally found on the state level, could also originate in city ordinances

and Congressional acts.”71 The Jacksonian conception of monopoly was not one of

“economic monopoly, developing from the interaction of production and the market

situation;” this would not come until later.72 The J acksonian idea that exclusive privilege
came from legislation likely resulted in the drafting of this ordinance. The Council was
the last line of legislative defense against exclusive privilege, which was seen as a threat
during a period when railroads were so new and few in the city. At least some of the
Council’s members believed it needed to promote competition and ﬁght this privilege by
enacting the ordinance. But it was shelved, likely because of the signiﬁcant inﬂuence of
the railroads.

But the spirit of this aforementioned ordinance lived in right-of—way ordinances
enacted throughout the 18508, beginning only a month after the “Ordinance Regulating
the business and location of Rail Road Companies within City of Chicago” was ﬁled.
The Jacksonian suspicion of exclusive privilege compelled the boosters to include
provisions in at least ﬁve 18508 right-of-way ordinances, all of which opened the tracks
of the railroad receiving the franchise to the use of other railroads. For example, the
earliest of these ordinances, which was passed as a supplemental right-of-way ordinance

for the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, maintains that “[s]aid tracks, side tracks,

 

7] Walter Hugins, Jacksonian Democracy and the Working Class: A Study of the New York Workingmen ’8
Movement (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1960), 149. See Chapter 8, “The War Against
Monopoly,” 148-71, for a thorough discussion of the Jacksonian concept of monopoly and the
Workingmen’s Party’s reaction thereto.

72 Ibid.

159

switches and turn-tables, so far as the same are laid in any street, shall be open to the use
of other railroad companies and railroad corporations whose cars come into the city, with
all proper, necessary and suitable connections for such companies as may desire to use

such tracks, upon just, safe and equitable terms, to be agreed upon by the parties
interested, and, in case of disagreement, by arbitration.”73 At least four other right-of-

way ordinances enacted between 1852 and 1857 contain a similar provision.74 These
provisions attempted to subvert the exclusive privilege of railroads in the one area the
Council controlled: the space of the streets. Yet exclusive privilege was an economic
entity. The railroads, though, were, at their essence, spatial in nature; they made proﬁts
by essentially shrinking time and horizontal space. But in a city, railroads had the
opposite effect: instead of annihilating space, they created barriers that fragmented urban
space. The Council held good intentions by enacting these right-of-way provisions; but
the spatial outcome would be the same whether it was a Chicago & Rock Island train or
one from another company that road the tracks. The booster Council may have prevented
“exclusive privilege,” but it did not adequately avert the near monopoly by railroads of

any street in which tracks were laid.

 

73 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 282.
74 See ibid. (in chronological order), 286, 303, 253-4, and 305.

160

CHAPTER 4: TOWARDS A MORE LIVABLE CITY, 1861-1871

In 1863, David Walsh was elected the ﬁrst alderman of Chicago’s Sixth Ward.
This version of the Sixth Ward was formed by a new Chicago city charter enacted only
months before by the Illinois General Assembly. It was bounded on the east and south by
the south branch of the Chicago River and on the north and west by Van Buren and
Jefferson Streets, respectively. This ward was home to thousands of primarily working-
class people who lived among industrial and manufacturing establishments, the polluted
Chicago River, the grounds and depots of three railroad companies, and miles of railroad
track. It is not surprising that Alderman Walsh quickly took point on making railroad
legislation in the council.

In June of 1863—only about a month after the newly elected council sat for the
ﬁrst time—Walsh introduced his railroad ordinance, the most notable sections of which

called for “a complete revolution in the present mode of transacting the Rail Road

transportation business in this city.”l It proposed that, with some exceptions, railroads
that run on and across streets within the city limits be prohibited from using steam power,
substituting instead animal power to move their train cars. Alderman Walsh “waxed
vehement” during the Council debates on his ordinance that railroads had been accorded

an “equal right to the streets of the city with ordinary vehicles;” this was “unwarranted by

law and by precedent.”2 He suggested—in a phrase that clues one in to his motivation

 

1 CP 1863/64 0264A 08/24.
2 Chicago Tribune, “Common Council: On Railroads,” August 25, I863.

161

for introducing the ordinance—that “citizens aggrieved by railroad annoyances. . .bestir

themselves in enforcing the ordinances.”3

Not surprisingly, Walsh’s railroad ordinance elicited opposition from grain and
lumber interests and from all the railroads in the city except for the Illinois Central,
which, since its tracks avoided streets by being laid near and in Lake Michigan, would
have been at a considerable economic advantage if the ordinance had passed. The
petitioners claimed that, though the change in motive power was proposed “under the
pretence of preventing interference with travel upon streets,” if implemented it would
have increased trafﬁc congestion and the chances of accident and injury and—the point

most emphasized by the petitioners—would have increased costs to the railroads, which

would have been passed onto consumers.4

At ﬁrst, one might think that the Walsh ordinance was, for all intents and
purposes, a joke. It appears to express the ideas of some Luddite lunatic, or at least those
of a brand new alderman unabashedly trying to make a name for himself among his
constituents. The latter is more likely; yet it does not appear that the businesses that
petitioned against the ordinance—the railroads, as well as the grain and lumber
merchants—took Walsh’s ordinance lightly. Representatives of all the railroads in
Chicago, except for the Illinois Central and their partner, the Michigan Central, signed a

five-and-a-half page remonstrance that gave a detailed explanation for each section of the

 

3 Ibid.

4 CP 1863/64 0264A 08/24.

162

ordinance they opposed. The grain and lumber interests drafted a ﬁve-page remonstrance

that was similar in content and form to that of the railroads.5

In the end, the ordinance did not pass. The Committee on Railroads generally
agreed with the analysis of the petitioners and recommended against its passage, and it
was thus defeated. Yet the Walsh ordinance, despite its defeat, is indicative of a change
that occurred in Chicago in the 18608. The Common Council began to react towards
railroads in a way that consistently took public safety and convenience into account. But,
unlike the 18508, during which booster aldermen wrote safety ordinances only to ignore
them or to not have the ability to enforce them, the 18608 Council started acting in the
public interest in both railroad legislation and enforcement. The railroads and their allies
knew this and did not dismiss out-of-hand seemingly radical ordinances like David
Walsh’s. They knew that public remonstrances and petitions regarding railroad
development in the city were coming into the Council at an alarming rate; the fact that
these were taken seriously in the Council explains how a ﬁinge ordinance received such a
serious response from its opponents. As the case of the railroads shows, municipal
government in 18608 Chicago became proactive in trying to make city space safer and
more convenient for the public. It matured from a J acksonian booster government to one
that was equipped to deal with the problems and challenges of a large industrial

metropolis.

In Chicago, there was little ambiguity about where the loyalty of its residents lay
after the outbreak of hostilities at Ft. Sumter brought the Civil War on April 12, 1861.

Chicago was heavily pro-Union and anti-Confederacy, and its residents strongly

 

5 Ibid.

163

supported fellow Illinoisan, President Abraham Lincoln. Partisan battles continued at a
local level during the war: Democrat Francis Sherman—Chicago’s second mayor, a
booster and founder—was re-elected mayor two decades later, from 1862 to 1864. But
“Democrat” in Chicago was not synonymous with “disloyal:” in Chicago, there was “no

toleration towards traitors,” and, as such, Sherman made sure everyone knew he was a

. 6
“Union man.”

Chicago residents focused ﬁrst and foremost on the Civil War during the duration
of hostilities. Men from Chicago willingly volunteered, to the point where no one was
drafted in Chicago until September of 1864, and from then only ﬁfty-nine Chicagoans
were conscripted into the army.7 But as blood ﬂowed in battleﬁelds to the south and east,
Chicago prospered. In Bridgeport Slaughterhouses, pigs and cattle were stuck, drained,
processed, and packed, then sent to the battleﬁelds to feed soldiers that sometimes, in a
horrible parallel, met their fate at the end of a bayonet. The Union Army’s blockade of
the lower Mississippi River brought to a standstill commerce and trade in New Orleans
and at Chicago’s regional rival, St. Louis. Chicago stepped into this vacuum and grew
into the largest meatpacking city in the world during the Civil War.8 It was also the
nation’s largest market for grain. The Union Army’s need to feed its troops translated

into an economic boom for the city. As a result, Chicago’s population grew at an

 

6 Chicago Daily Journal, April 20, 1861. Quoted in Bessie Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago, Volume
2: From Town to City, 1848-1871 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940; paperback edition, 2007),
254.

7 Robin Einhom, Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1 833-1872 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press: 1991, 2001), 198.

8 Ibid., 192-3. William Cronon, Nature ’8 Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., 1991), 230. .

164

astonishing rate: from about 100,000 in 1860, to over 200,000 in 1866, to 325,000 on the
eve of the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.

Chicago did not simply luck its way into a wartime economic boom. As William
Cronon has shown, Chicago’s proximity to meat, grain, and lumber-producing

hinterlands gave Chicago an economic niche, but the railroads made it possible to get

those commodities—in both raw and processed forms—in and out of the city.9 The
transportation infrastructure, as represented primarily by railroad development, was key
to Chicago’s massive wartime economic growth and its concomitant increase in
population. Chicago was North America’s railroad hub by the mid-18508, and, as such,
the railroads that centered on the city transported food, troops, arms, and other materials
for the Union Army. They also transported the thousands upon thousands of people who
came to Chicago from within and outside of the United States to take advantage of the
city’s wartime boom.

Chicago’s residents focused on the war during its duration, but this did not mean
that railroad development in the ever more densely populated city came to a halt. New
railroads came into the city, and railroads that were already there expanded their
infrastructure. The most signiﬁcant railroad development during the Civil War occm'red
with the entrance of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in 1862. Directed by
Boston railroad magnate John Murray Forbes, the CB&Q was a granger line—a railroad
whose primary business was hauling grain from Western farmers—that built its tracks
west from Chicago, across the Mississippi River to Burlington, Iowa, and eventually

farther west. The CB&Q—originally known as the Aurora Branch Railroad—was

 

Cronon, passim.

165

actually the second railroad to service Chicago; it did so over tracks it shared with the
Galena & Chicago Union Railroad beginning in 1850. But in 1862, the railroad received
right-of-way from the Common Council and thus was given permission to build and
operate its own tracks within the city limits. It received three additional right-of-way
ordinances—two in 1864 and one in 1866—that gave the CB&Q the right to build its
track on streets within the city (the original ordinance allowed it to build in an alley and
upon property it had purchased). 10

Railroad development in Chicago continued after the war. Not only was the track
laid in the city representative of a national postwar railroad boom—over 35,000 miles of
track were constructed in the United States between 1866 and 1873—but, in a trend
initiated by railroad magnates such as Jay Gould, James Fisk, Jr., and Cornelius

Vanderbilt, some of the individual lines that terminated in the city were purchased and
consolidated.ll The story of the Northern Railroad illustrates these issues and gives
insight into the attitudes of Chicago’s residents and local politicians towards railroad

development during the 18608. It engages not only national trends of railroad growth and

 

'0 For a history of the CB&Q, see Richard Overton, Burlington West: A Colonization History of the
Burlington Railroad (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1941) and Burlington Route: A History
of the Burlington Lines (New York: Knopf, 1965). For right-of-way ordinances, see Chicago Common
Council, Murray Tuley, compiler, Laws and Ordinances of the City of Chicago (Chicago: Bulletin Printing
Company, 1873), 263-7.

For statistics on annual U.S. railroad mileage, see Association of American Railroads, A Chronology of
American Railroads, Including Mileage by States and by Years (Washington, DC: Association of
American Railroads, 1957). For discussion and analysis of railroad consolidation during the period, see
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., “The Railroad System,” in Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams,
Chapters of Erie and Other Essays (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1871), 332-429. See especially
“Railroad Consolidation,” 380-98. There are also a number of recent biographies of railroad magnates.
See Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986);
Edward Renehan, Jr., Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the
Robber Barons (New York: Basic Books, 2005) and Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New
York: Basic Books, 2007); and T]. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).

166

consolidation, but also trends in the local public and political reactions to railroad
development.

The Northern Railroad was a venture backed by European capital whose right-of-
way came under consideration by the Common Council in February 1866. Though the
exact nationalities of the Northern Railroad investors cannot be determined—they are
referred to in the Council proceedings ﬁles as “foreign capitalists of high repute,” and
newspaper and other documentary sources are silent on the subject—it can be safely

assumed that the investors were European, most likely British, German, Dutch, or some

combination thereof. '2 Large-scale European investment in Chicago railroads began at
the commencement of Chicago’s railroad era. For example, in 1854, the Illinois Central
Railroad was considered a foreign company by many Americans: approximately half of
its stock was held by the British, and another quarter was owned by the Dutch; a measly
ﬁfteen percent of IC stock was owned by Americans at that point. The company regularly
held annual meetings in the United Kingdom to appease its large base of British and
European investors. 13 Dutch investors had enough clout to elect two Dutch members to
the Chicago & North Western Railroad’s board of directors. '4

This profusion of foreign investment likely grew from more than a belief in the
merits of locomotive technology. It showed that there was at least a tacit belief from the

international community from the early 18508 that Chicago had the potential to grow into

 

12 CP 1865/66 0909A 02/05.
1
3 John Stover, History of the Illinois Central Railroad (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 36.

M David Young, The Iron Horse in the Windy City: How Railroads Shaped Chicago (DeKalb: Northern
Illinois University Press, 2005), 25 . For the most comprehensive discussion of foreign investment in
American railroads, see William Ripley, Railroads: Finance and Organization (New York: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1920), especially pp. 1-10. Ripley was extremely critical of “absentee ownership”—his term
for foreign investment—because it made the American economy dependent on Europe.

167

one of the most important cities in the United States. Obviously the foreign money
backers of the Northern Railroad were not concerned about the possibility of a complete
dissolution of the union when they subscribed to stock and purchased bonds, for their
business plan was formed as the Civil War raged. Chicago’s grth during the war
likely gave these capitalists assurance that they would receive a return on their
investment. The hope that Chicago would grow into an important American city had
become a reality by the 18608.

The Northern Railroad was going to build exactly where its name suggests: north
from Chicago to Wisconsin and Minnesota. At the time, there were only two Chicago-
based railroads that serviced the north—the Chicago & Milwaukee and the Chicago &
North Western. Though the presence of two railroads gives one the initial impression
that there was at least some healthy competition between the two lines, this was not the
case. The Chicago & North Western grew from the ashes of the Illinois & Wisconsin
Railroad, which received its charter from the state of Illinois in 1851 and obtained right-
of-way in Chicago the subsequent year. It was a poorly managed railroad that
reorganized in 1853 under the leadership of Galena & Chicago Union Railroad president
and former Chicago mayor William Ogden. Even Ogden’s able guidance and the
ﬁnancial backing of eastern capital from individuals such as New York attorney and
future presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden were not able to save the railroad from the
Panic of 1857.

Ogden continued to lead the railroad even after it was sold in foreclosure and
reorganized as the Chicago & North Western Railroad in 1859. This time Ogden would

be more successful, as he led the railroad to the iron and copper mines of Michigan’s

168

Upper Peninsula during the Civil War. This episode is signiﬁcant beyond its story of
economic success for the railroad itself. It shows that Chicago’s economic reach had
begun to expand beyond livestock, timber, and grain, to include a chief element of the
industrial era: metal. This Civil War expansion marked a further consolidation of
Chicago’s status as the continent’s premier railroad city.

The C&NW continued to expand after its Civil War success. It absorbed a
number of connecting lines in Wisconsin and consolidated with the Galena & Chicago
Union—Ogden’s ﬁrst railroad—in 1864 to form a network of nearly 900 miles of track
throughout the Midwest. The Chicago & Milwaukee remained an independent entity

through the Civil War, but could not avoid the power and inﬂuence of the Chicago &

North Western system: it was absorbed by the C&NW in 1866'.15

Thus Chicago’s two northerly-directed railroads were actually part of the same
system. This was a point of discussion during the Chicago Common Council’s debates
over the Northern Railroad’s right-of-way. In a minority report of a joint session of the
Committee on Streets & Alleys—North Division and the Committee on Railroads, two
aldermen presented a thorough list of reasons they believed the Northern Railroad should
have received the right-of-way as described in the original draft of the ordinance, which
was drafted by the president of the Northern Railroad and would have given it favorable
right-of-way terms. Among the reasons is the issue of monopoly:

We beleive (sic) that every citizen of Chicago is fully aware that there is growing

up against us in the Country a feeling of hostility arrising (sic) from the conduct

of ﬂat great railroad monopoly which owns and controls all of the Railroads

leadingfrom Chicago to the northwest thereby controling (sic) the entire carrying
made of the country. and that a vote a ainst this new and com eatin sic line is a

 

'5 Young, 34.

169

vote to fasten on the people of the northwest that gigantic monopoly for all time
to come, and will be so regarded by the people throughout the northwest.16

These aldermen further argued that the ordinance should pass to help maintain a
competitive advantage over St. Louis and Milwaukee; because “nearly all of our
merchants and businessmen are in favor of this new railroad;” and because the men
funding the railroad “are foreign capitalists of high repute, and are represented in this
country by men of the highest standing.” Finally, the aldermen addressed issues
regarding the railroad’s effect on Chicago’s public space. They maintained that there
should have been no qualms about letting the railroad enter the city through streets in the
North Division because it was “the most obscure & unfrequented part of the city;” even if
it were in another part of the city, “the use of the streets [was] vested in the corporation

for the beneﬁt of the public,” and, as the report tried to argue, this railroad was most

 

deﬁnitely a public beneﬁt.17

Many individuals did not agree that the Northern Railroad beneﬁted the public.
Nearly 800 Chicago residents, most of whom were ﬁ'om the North Division—“the most
obscure & unfrequented part of the city”—8igned a petition against allowing the railroad
into the city under the generous terms given to previous railroads. Their primary concern
was the deleterious effect the railroad would have on public space and private property.
The Northern Railroad was to receive “the use and monopoly of the whole of Shefﬁeld
Avenue and Roberts street: and a large portion of Hawthorn Avenue, Kingsbury street,
Larrabbee street, &c. Therefore we remonstrate against giving up any more streets for

railroad purposes, without compensating the owners of the property abutting on the same,

 

16 CP 1865/66 0909A 02/05.

'7 Ibid.

170

for all the damages done to their property. . ..[W]e believe it would be wrong. . .to sacriﬁce
private rights for the beneﬁt of Railroad Corporations, without just compensation.” The
residents of the North Division were much less concerned with the shipping prices paid
by a farmer in Wisconsin or the intangible economic stimulus that the entrance of another
railroad would have on the city than they were onthe hazards, inconveniences, and

property devaluation attendant with a railroad running through the streets of their

neighborhoods. ’8

’Not surprisingly, many Chicago merchants and businessmen supported the
entrance of the Northern Railroad into the city. Two hundred “sundry merchants” signed
petitions of support, and both the Board of Trade and the Mercantile Association drafted
letters on behalf of the railroad. They asked that the Northern Railroad be allowed
entrance on the same terms as preceding Chicago railroads, and their justiﬁcation, like

that used by the authors of the committee minority report described above, was to help

the farmers of the Northwest by introducing a competing railroad into the region.‘9
Implied in the request that the railroad be given right-of-way on the same terms as
previous railroads is a response to the remonstrance that requested compensation for
damages: previous railroads did not have to pay for damages, and the Northern Railroad
should not either. The minority report made these sentiments explicit: since “the use of
the streets is vested in the corporation for the hem of the public,. . .a property holder

who happens to own property fronting on the street has no more right to claim damages

 

‘8 Ibid. I counted 779 signatures, though there were likely quite a few signatures that did not appear in the
microﬁlm version of the ﬁles that I used. The petition does not state that all the signatories were ﬁ'om the
North Division, but it can be reasonably assumed that most signatories were from there, because the
railroad was to be built there. Also, an abundance of surnames were German, and there was a large
German settlement in the North Division. Finally, the majority report ﬁ‘om the Council’s committee that
considered the matter referred to the petition as “a remonstrance from the inhabitants of North Chicago.”

19 CP 1865/66 0922A 02/ 12; 1865/66 0923A 02/ 12; 1865/66 0924A 02/12.

171

which may be caused to his property, by reason of the use of the street for any purpose,

than any other citizen who happens to live within the bounds of the city.”20

It was correct that the Common Council—the representative of “the
corporation”—had complete power to determine the use of the streets within the city
limits, and the logic of that section of the minority report seems sound. Yet so does that
of the nearly 800 petitioners who remonstrated against the Northern Railroad’s entrance.
They argued that the railroad could damage property value, and thus the railroad should
compensate property owners for that damage. This argument seems to ﬁt with the logic
of the special assessment system: if a property owner wanted to boost the value of their
property, they needed to pay for street paving or sidewalk construction of the area of
street or sidewalk their property abuts. Thus it seemed logical that if a private entity like
a railroad were given the use of streets and that use caused a drop in the value of property
abutting the street on which the railroad ran, the railroad should compensate property
owners for damages. This was similar to logic used in earlier remonstrances against
railroad development. Most did not request damages, though; they generally asked that
the Council deny the permission of the railroad to be built. By the 18608, Chicago’s
residents had wholeheartedly accepted that the railroads were integral to the prosperity of
the city, but they would continue to stand against development that they perceived as
harmful to their property or the social well-being of their neighborhoods.

The logic of the remonstrants seemed perfectly sound to the members of the
Council’s joint committee who drafted and signed the committee’s majority report on the

Northern Railroad. It recommended that the railroad “pay such inconsiderable sums as

 

20 CP 1865/66 0909A 02/05.

172

may be awarded to those persons actually sustaining damage by reason of the laying
down of their track.” It also believed that the original draft of the right-of—way ordinance,
which requested that the railroad be given “the right ‘to lay down their railroad track with
all necessary switches, side tracks and turnouts that they may deem necessary to the

9”

successful operation of their road, be revised to take away the railroad’s power to lay

down “all necessary. . .side tracks” in the city’s public spaces. Not only did “no

road. . .entering Chicago” at the time possess such a right; the committee deemed “it

highly improper for the Council to grant such a privilege now or hereafter to any road.”

It went on to argue “if this road is worth being built at all, the company can afford to pay

for its own yard room, instead of using the streets of Chicago for that purpose.” Finally,

the committee explained how it regarded railroad right-of-way issues:
[We] view this matter of franchises in the light of a business transaction between
the city authorities, and the shrewd representatives of a railroad company, who
propose to make the best trade they can for their employers, and in these times of
railroad monopolies. . .and ninety nine year swindles, it behooves the
representatives of the people too, to make use of a reasonable amount of
understanding, and not to allow themselves in their simplicity, to be deluded by
the specious arguments of. . .professional railroad hirelings, who are ever ready to
prostitute themselves to those who are willing to pay for such services.

The report then went on to say that it would be easy for the Council to modify the

ordinance if it “imposes too many restraints upon the railroad company,” but it should not

give the railroad “all it has the right to grant,” for “[the Council’s] control of the matter

has gone from them for all time?”

The scathing, anti-railroad tone of the report marks a transition in the Council’s
attitudes and actions towards railroads during the 18608. This change incubated in

Chicago’s eighteen-year-old railroad era. The aldermen saw the accidents and death and

 

2' CP 1865/66 0909A 02/05.

173

the severe gridlock caused by railroad development on and across the streets of the city.
They likely attributed blame to the railroads that so often disregarded the safety of the
public and to the Common Council that either stood idly by as laws were broken or
lacked the power to effectively enforce railroad statutes.

In the end, the right-of-way ordinance the Council enacted did not include all the
provisions recommended in the committee’s majority report. The committee tempered its
fervor after further discussing the issue and submitted a report stating that, though “the
taking of Streets for Rail Road purposes is in our view of the ease to be wary. . .the end
sought for seems to justify the taking of such streets.” Not only was the railroad “of grate
(sic) importance to the commercial interest of the city;” its building and operation would
open and thus make productive some property in the North Division and would give the
farmers of the North West a “compeeting (sic) line of road.” Finally, the committee
drOpped its insistence that the Northern Railroad pay damages to people whose property
fronted the streets on which track would be laid. It was “not aware of any damages being
paid by any of the various Rail Roads which now occupy our streets & it would seem to
be hardely (sic) just to prohibit a leading track road from entering the city upon as
fayvorable (sic) termes (sic) as other Roads which have obtained their franchises in times
past.” The obvious issue with this reasoning is that it only considers equity in the
Council’s treatment of railroad right-of-way; the property owners and residents abutting
the streets on which the track was to run were not considered in the equation.22

The ﬁnal version of the ordinance did not include compensation for damages to

property, but the railroad did not receive everything it asked for in its original draft. It

 

22 CP 1865/66 0925A 02/12.

174

was not given the right to lay sidetracks in public spaces such as any streets or alleys. If
it wanted sidetracks, it had to purchase land on which to build them. Also, the railroad
was required to improve the streets upon which it laid its track and to employ ﬂagmen at
certain grade crossings to ensure the public safety. Finally, the ordinance included a
provision that attempted to prevent monopoly among the railroads in the city. These
provisions sound similar to those described in right-of-way ordinances during the 18508,
but the debate and passage of the Northern Railroad’s right-of-way ordinance represents a
clear departure during the 18605 from the Council’s focus on economic development and
its disregard of public anger with railroads’ negative effects on public spaces.

The transition occurred in part because of one characteristic that remained
consistent from the earliest years of the railroad era: strong opposition from the public to
any railroad development in public space. Nearly 800 people—a huge number of

remonstrants, at least compared to similar petitions—signed the petition against the

Northern Railroad’s right-of-way ordinance.23 The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad
received massive opposition to the extension of their track on Kinzie and Water Streets to

Lake Michigan, mostly due to the devaluation of abutting real estate and to the gridlock it

would create by crossing the busy streets of Wells and Clark.24 And the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy Railroad successfully attempted to build tracks on 22nd Street, a

“most public thoroughfare” on which the petitioners claimed that if tracks were built,

9,

“our wifes (sic) and families would be in constant danger. 2 More strong opposition to

railroad development during the 18603 generally came about because a street in which a

 

23 . . . . . . .
Most Councrl petitions regarding railroads numbered between a few to a few score sngnatones, but very
few even reached 100.

24 CP 1861/62 0142A 09/1 1.
25 CP 1865/66 0908A 02/05.

175

railroad wanted to lay tracks was a busy public thoroughfare; a railroad wanted to lay
tracks across a street and thus cause gridlock at a grade crossing; or a railroad wanted to

build more tracks in a street, nearly ﬁlling it with railroad tracks and thus making the

street unusable to the public.26

In the 1860s, as compared to the 18503, aldermen appeared more willing to speak
up and to act on behalf of the public that so often opposed railroad encroachment in their
neighborhoods. The majority report on the Northern Railroad’s right-of-way ordinance
in 1866 and David Walsh’s proposed railroad ordinance in 1863 are two examples of this
trend. Though decades of negative experiences with trains and tracks in Chicago’s public
spaces likely conditioned these aldermen to stand with the public against the railroads,
the change occurred when it did because of change to the structure of municipal
government in Chicago.

Since the city received its ﬁrst charter from the Illinois General Assembly in
183 7, it had been ruled by a mayor elected by the constituents of the city at-large and by
aldermen who were elected from geographically speciﬁc wards. Chicago’s phenomenal
growth necessitated multiple new charters in the 18405 and 18505 that expanded the city
limits and the number of wards to assure adequate representation in the Council.27 But
the city was growing so quickly that nine or ten wards with two aldermen representing

each ward was not enough. The 1863 city charter expanded the number of wards from

 

26 CP 1862/63 0150A 09/22; 1862/63 0227A 12/01; 1863/64 0563A 02/01.; 1864/65 0198A 08/22.

27 The city’s 1837 charter split the city into six wards; in 1847, there were nine wards; in 1857, the number
of wards expanded to ten. For discussion of the evolution of Chicago’s charters, see Maureen Flanagan,
“Charters, Municipal,” Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 2005).
Accessed at http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistomorglpages/Z3 l .html on 23 October 2009. See Bessie
Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago: The Beginning of a City, [673-1848 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1937, 2007), 322-4, and A History of Chicago: From Town to City, 1848-1871 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1940, 2007), 305, for a concise explanation of the changing ward maps and Council
representation.

176

ten to sixteen while simultaneously annexing the Irish (and heavily Democratic) enclave
of Bridgeport. Though the General Assembly changed the ward map in 1863 in part
because the Democrats, who controlled both the Council and the General Assembly,
wanted to strengthen their hold over Chicago government, the change was effected

primarily as a direct response to the practical needs of a growing industrial metropolis,

not as a tool of political partisanship.28

The result of the increase in the number of wards and aldermen was greater
accountability by the aldermen to the wishes of their constituents. The 1863 wards more
accurately represented neighborhoods than did the ten wards from the 1857 charter; as
such, they were usually smaller and more compact in area than those from 1857. This
made a Chicago alderman someone who likely was more familiar with his constituents
and their concerns than were aldermen from previous administrations. Also, each
alderman represented on average a smaller number of people in 1863 than they did under
the previous ward map. In 1862, as part of the ten-ward system, each ward had an
average population of just under 14,000; in 1863, under the sixteen-ward charter, the
average population of each ward dropped to under 9,400.29 In other words, each
alderman’s constituency likely dropped by about a third. Fewer people in a smaller area

meant that, more than during any previous time, aldermen had to keep their constituents

 

28 See Einhom, 182-3, for discussion and analysis of the 1863 Chicago city charter. Einhom sees the I863
ward map as “the ﬁrst partisan gerrymander.” Though the Democrats drew the map to their advantage, it
did not have the telltale signs of gerrymandering. The ward boundaries fell on major streets, the Chicago
River, or Lake Michigan, and the wards did not have irregular borders that allude to gerrymandering. The
area of the wards also appears to accurately represent the population density of different Chicago
neighborhoods. For example, the smallest wards were those that had the biggest population—two
downtown wards south of the main branch of the river—and the largest were in the sparsely populated
neighborhoods in the north and west.

29 Based on 1862 and 1863 Chicago population statistics by Wesley Skogan, Chicago since 1840: A Time-
Series Data Handbook (Urbana: Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois,
1976)

177

happy, or they had a good chance of losing their seat on the Council. The times had
changed; no longer were aldermen able to make decisions solely based on what they
believed was good for the city and themselves, like so many of the booster aldermen of
18503 had done. They now had to take the wishes and sentiments of the public into
consideration. It is thus not a surprise that Alderman David Walsh, whose Sixth Ward
was saturated with railroad tracks, introduced, immediately upon being seated on the
Council in 1863, a radical ordinance aimed at ameliorating railroad hazards; or that
aldermen on a committee considering the Northern Railroad’s right-of-way ordinance
reported on railroads with a tone of suspicion and righteous indignation. The Chicago
city charter of 1863 made aldermen more accountable to their constituents, and
aldermen’s actions reﬂected this change.

In regard to railroads, aldermanic accountability meant one thing: aldermen had to
protect the safety of their constituents, and they had to try in earnest to limit gridlock and
delays that resulted from railroads sharing streets with the public. They did this on a
consistent basis throughout the 18603 by enacting safety legislation. For example,
Alderman David Walsh’s ordinance did not accomplish Walsh’s primary goal of
removing steam locomotives from Chicago’s streets, but it strongly inﬂuenced a
comprehensive safety ordinance that was passed and enacted two weeks later. The
ordinance, among other stipulations, prohibited the use of the steam whistle, prohibited
the release of steam while on public streets, and mandated the ringing of the warning bell
while in the city limits. It attempted to protect people from harm by warning them of

oncoming trains and by ensuring that they would not be burned by steam while using the

178

streets. It further aimed to improve the quality of life by ridding the city of the noise

pollution caused by the steam whistle.3O

One of the primary safety foci of the aldermen was the danger posed by grade
crossings. Experience showed that caution signs were not at all effective in preventing
people from being maimed or killed at grade crossings. A petition signed by hundreds of

west side residents declared there was “inadequate protection afforded to human life upon

the public streets where steam cars are permitted to run.”31 To prove the validity of the
statement, the petition included a list of ﬁfteen boys who had lost limbs or had been
killed at Galena & Chicago Union Railroad crossings at Kinzie Street during an eighteen-
month period. The railroads were taking their toll, and the west side residents expected
action.

And action they got. Most right-of-way ordinances enacted during the 1860s
included provisions that required the railroads to hire ﬂagmen that were to be stationed at
grade crossings. Each ordinance speciﬁed the crossings, usually at high-traffic areas, that
ﬂagmen were required to watch.32 At the time the Council received the aforementioned
petition from the west side residents, it decided to bring ﬂagmen to grade crossings
through general legislation rather than solely through piecemeal right-of-way legislation.

An ordinance enacted in 1867 required railroads to station ﬂagmen “on all streets. . .on

which horse railroad cars run.”33 Four years later, the Council greatly expanded its

requirements. Railroads were required to hire and station a ﬂagman at all crossings north

‘

30 CP 1863/64 0301A 09/07.
3' CP 1867/68 0512A 08/12.
32 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 256, 292, 294, 309.
33 CP 1867/68 1102A 12/09.

179

of Egan Avenue (today, 39th Street/Pershing Road) and east of Western Avenue.34 In
other words, by 1871, the law called for a ﬂagman at nearly every grade crossing in the
city.35

Legislation was one thing, but enforcement was quite another. Throughout the
1850s, the Council had little power with which to enforce its safety legislation. It
sometimes simply ignored calls from its constituents to enforce railroad safety and
maintenance provisions. But a change came in the 18603. The increased aldermanic
accountability attendant with the new city charter of 1863 created the local political
conditions for improved enforcement. It was coupled with other acts by the Illinois
General Assembly that gave the Council the tools with which to effectively enforce
railroad ordinances.

A bill enacted by the General Assembly established a Board of Police in 1861.
Chicago’s ﬁrst professional police force was established in 1855, during which it
reorganized its informal constabulary into a professional force based on a rigid hierarchy
with a Chief of Police at the helm. This early force was run by the mayor, a fact that led
directly to the formation of Chicago’s Board of Police. Chicago’s mayor in 1860 and
1861 was John Wentworth, a strong willed individual who, as a newspaper editor, four-

term U.S. representative, and two-term mayor of Chicago, rubbed plenty of people the

 

34 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 112.

35 Grade crossings had become such an obvious danger by the late 18605 that the Illinois General
Assembly drafted a railroad crossing law in 1869 that attempted to protect the public by placing appropriate
safety precautions at crossings that did not lie within cities (municipal corporations had the power to
regulate their own grade crossings). The law called for the county surveyor to investigate each grade
crossing in a county outside any city limits and recommend the safety precautions to be taken at each
crossing. If it was a busy crossing, they would likely require a ﬂagman to be stationed there; if not, perhaps
a caution sign or gate was enough. Even in sparsely populated villages and rural areas, railroad grade
crossings were a tangible threat to the health and safety of the public. See Chicago Tribune, “The Railroad
Crossing Law,” May 12, 1869, p. 2, for a reprint of the law that was enacted March 31, 1869.

180

wrong way. (His regular use of fear as a political tool—a tool that came in the form of a
six-foot, six-inch, BOO-pound frame, and a penchant for whiskey and ﬁghting—may have
contributed to this.) As mayor, Wentworth employed the police force essentially as his
personal army. He played an active role in even the most trivial matters that faced the

force; be cut the numbers of the police force even as the population and crime rate rose;

and he used the police as his personal army for city crusades against vice.36
Wentworth’s heavy handedness in regard to all police matters gave his opponents
in Springﬁeld an opportunity to politically emasculate and publicly shame him.
Chicago’s new city charter set up a Board of Police that was run by three
commissioners—one each from the North, South, and West Divisions. The mayor was
stripped of nearly all power vis-a-vis the police department. Though the Board of Police
came about because of simple political rivalry, the law that led to its formation was not a
careless plan thrown together by spite driven legislators. As Chicago police historian

John Flinn stated, “[t]he act went into minute details as to the jurisdiction of the board,

the duties of officers and men, questions of discipline, etc.”37 It led to a geographical
organization of the police force in the North, South, and West Divisions of the city and
soon became organized under smaller precincts. The increased efﬁciency that resulted
from the formation of the Board of Police gave the police force the ability to more easily
and effectively respond to problems throughout the city.

Among these problems were issues regarding the railroads. The new law required

the police, among other things, “to protect the rights of persons and property, to guard the

 

36 John Flinn, A History of the Chicago Police: From the Settlement of the Community to the Present Time
(Chicago: Police Book Fund, 1887), 92-8. Don Fehrenbacher, Chicago Giant: A Biography of “Long
John ” Wentworth (Madison, Wisc.: American History Research Center, 1957), 142-161.

’7 Flinn, 94.

181

public health,. . .to remove nuisances in public streets, roads, places and highways,...[and]

to protect strangers and travelers at. . .railway stations.”38 In other words, the police were
compelled to enforce railroad ordinances to protect the public safety and convenience,
and they were able to operate from a more efﬁcient bureaucracy and deal with the issues
of a quickly growing industrial city. Further, the Council was given power to decide how
many patrolmen it needed to hire. The politicians in Springﬁeld essentially conceded that

Chicagoans knew better how to deal with their own problems and crime than they did.

As a result, the number of police ofﬁcers steadily climbed through the 18605.39

The Board of Police bill produced a police force that could more efﬁciently and
effectively enforce Chicago’s laws and ordinances. In addition, the 1861 Illinois
legislative session produced a new Chicago city charter that created a city bureau that
played a much more signiﬁcant role than even the police in the enforcement of railroad
ordinances: the Board of Public Works (BPW). The BPW replaced “the independent
boards, street commissioners, superintendents, and special assessors” that had previously
made the city’s public works decisions with three commissioners—generally engineering
professionals—who devoted their time to coordinating and executing the public works
plan of the quickly growing city.40 Public works projects had, to that time, been mired in
inefﬁciency. The multiple decision-making bodies that grew out of city charters from the
1830s and 18408 had no uniﬁed vision; the segmented system of special assessments that
generated, for example, sidewalks built on different grades that were only uniﬁed with

many sets of stairs, represented a plan that was, at best, scattered and myopic, and, at

 

’8 Ibid.
39
See Skogan, Table 8.

40 Einhom, 182. See also Bessie Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago, Volume 2, 316, for an overview of
the form and function of the BPW.

182

worst, non-existent. The BPW centralized public works decision-making and gave the
city of 150,000 people a much needed, uniﬁed plan that sought to ensure the health,
safety, and convenience of the public.

But the BPW did more than replace the multiple Council committees composed of
politicians with one board made up of professionals; it created a central body that could
effectively enforce city ordinances that dealt with large-scale public works and
infrastructure projects. The decentralized mass of politician-run public works
committees was both inefﬁcient and inept at the enforcement of infrastructure ordinances.
As was shown in the previous chapters, railroad safety and street maintenance provisions
were often ignored or enforced by the ineffective method that politicians knew best: by
drafting and enacting more legislation. The BPW played an important role in giving the
Council’s railroad ordinances some teeth. In thus becoming an effective enforcement
arm of the Council, it began in the 18605 to tame the dangerous public spaces created by
the introduction of railroads into Chicago’s streets.

In regard to railroads, the BPW primarily dealt with railroad maintenance
provisions and grade crossings. The maintenance provisions, which became a regular
feature of railroad right-of-way ordinances beginning in the early 1850s, generally
required railroads to pave and maintain the section of street in which their tracks lay. The
provisions also called for the railroads to maintain “convenient crossings.” As was
discussed above, railroads often ignored these provisions. Residents regularly petitioned
the Council to compel the railroads to maintain the streets and crossings, but the Council
had little enforcement power; it followed the original ordinance with an order to follow

the ordinance. Unsurprisingly, ink and paper proved ineffective enforcement tools.

183

The creation of the BPW gave the Council a way to enforce these provisions. The
BPW dealt with all infrastructure and public works matters, so all railroad maintenance
and many grade crossing issues were sent directly from the Council to the BPW
commissioners, who then sent their employees to execute the project. The Northern
Railroad provides an early example of the role played by the BPW in enforcing railroad
provisions. Its right-of-way ordinance required the NRR to raise the grade of the streets
in which its track lay “when ordered [to do so] by the common council or the board of
public works.” It also was to lay its “track. . .in such a manner that a good travel way
shall be maintained for the use of the public, and shall keep the said roadway in good
repair at all times, the said impravement (sic) to be done under the direction of the board
of public works.” If the railroad failed to improve the street in a reasonable amount of
time, “then the work may be done by the city, and the cost thereof assessed by the board
of public works on said company, and collected as other assessments, from any real or
personal property of said company.” And if the NRR refused to pay the assessment for
the work performed by the city within twenty days, the city would “collect the cost
thereof by suit at law in any court of competent jurisdiction?“

Before the BPW, there was no municipal legislation that explained the procedure
to be followed and consequences for railroads that failed to fulﬁll the responsibilities of

their ordinances. Other right-of-way ordinances enacted in the 18603 include provisions
similar in content and wording to the Northern Railroad ordinance.42 But the BPW made

it possible to not only enact new railroad ordinances with conditions that could be

enforced; it also enforced the provisions of ordinances enacted in the 18505. For

 

4] Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 293-4.
42 Ibid., 255, 257, 295.

184

example, the Joliet & Chicago Railroad agreed under the terms of its right-of-way in
1857 to “plank, pave or macadarnize the whole surface of [Archer Road, between Grove

Street and North Street], and forever maintain such planking, paving or macadamizing in

good order and condition.”43 The J oliet & Chicago did not keep its promise. Archer
Road fell into disrepair, which made travel by horse, carriage, or foot difﬁcult. To
ameliorate this problem, the Council passed an ordinance in 1866 that essentially
reiterated the maintenance provision from the 1857 right-of-way ordinance: it required
the railroad to macadarnize Archer Road. This time, though, the Council was able to

enforce the requirement by ordering the BPW to oversee and, if necessary, carry out the

paving of the road.44

The Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad leased the Joliet & Chicago less than a
year later, in 1867. The J oliet & Chicago did not fulﬁll its obligation to improve Archer
Road, but now the responsibility for street maintenance had passed to the Chicago, Alton

& St. Louis. So the BPW, on the basis of the 1866 ordinance, took action and paved

Archer “with wooden pavement.”45 It then assessedthe railroad $18,000 for materials
and labor. One of the railroad’s stockholders, Morris J essup, disapproved of the
assessment; he claimed that it was “illegal and invalid” and thus brought suit in the US.
Circuit Court to avoid payment. Perhaps Jessup claimed that the use of wooden
pavement instead of macadam made the assessment “illegal and invalid;” or maybe he
hoped that simply bringing suit would compel the city to drop its claim. In the end, the

railroad and the Council came to a compromise: the railroad paid $10,000 and persuaded

 

4’ Ibid., 253.
44 Ibid., 255.
45 Ibid., 257.

185

Mr. Jessup to drop the suit, and the Council released the railroad “from the obligation to

forever maintain such pavement on any portion of said avenue.”46 The city got some
money, and the railroad was given the legal right to do what it had done during its
decade-long tenure in the city—ignore the condition of the streets upon which its tracks
lay. But the true winners of this compromise were the people that used Archer Road for
business, pleasure, and everyday life. The compromise likely made neither the Council
nor the railroad completely content, but the public was able to bask in a rare victory.
Although the Council had the BPW at its disposal since 1861, it was used only

once to enforce railroad street maintenance provisions during the ﬁrst ﬁve years of the

BPW’s existence.47 It did not begin to actively enforce these until 1866, at which time
the Council became aggressive in its enforcement. This change can be attributed to two
factors: war and law. The Council, like the nation, focused its attention on the Civil War
during its duration. Railroad matters were considered much less frequently in the
Council than they were both before and after the war. But perhaps more signiﬁcant was
the fact that the railroads played a key role in the Union war effort. Railroads transported

hundreds of thousands of troops from Chicago, as well as food, horses, ordnance, and

other supplies.48 The Council and Chicago’s residents likely believed that to focus

attention on enforcing city railroad ordinances was to impede the war effort. After the

 

4" Ibid.

47 The Chicago & Fort Wayne and Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroads were ordered in 1861 to improve
Stewart Avenue by ﬁlling the street to the grade of the track and constructing culverts at crossings. The
BPW was to perform the street improvements and assess the railroads the costs if they did not comply with
the order within thirty days of its enactment. This was the lone law of its kind during the BPW’s first ﬁve
years. See CP 1861/62 0185A 10/21.

48 See John Stover, History of the Illinois Central Railroad (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 85-107, for an
in-depth discussion of the Illinois Central’s role in the war effort. See also John Stover, American
Railroads, 2"d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, 1997), 35-60, for a discussion of the role
played by railroads in the Civil War.

186

war’s conclusion, there was a rash of Council business that dealt with railroad street
improvements. Attention once again could focus on issues at home.

The interpretation of law by the state courts also played a role in the wartime
paucity and postwar profusion of the enforcement of railroad street improvement
provisions. The BPW was able to effectively enforce these provisions because of the
threat of assessment: if the railroad did not improve the streets as required, the BPW
would improve the streets and assess the railroad for labor and materials. In 1865, the
railroads challenged in court the Council’s ability to make these assessments. The
Superior Court found in favor of the Council, but the BPW was cautious and held off
improving the streets while the decision was appealed to the Supreme Court. The

Supreme Court also found for the city, so the Council and BPW forged ahead on railroad

street improvement.49 Soon after the decision, the Council enacted a general resolution
as follows: “Resolved. That many of the streets, upon which railroad tracks are laid are
in such a condition that travel upon them, with teams and carriages is inconvenient and

dangerous, and that the Board of Public Works be ordered to enforce all city ordinances

relating thereto immediately and vigorously.”SO Right around the time of this resolution
and the aforementioned court decisions, the Council and the BPW began enforcing
railroad street improvement provisions. Both the Northern Railroad right-of—way

ordinance and the Joliet & Chicago/Chicago, St. Louis & Alton Railroad street

 

49 Chicago Board of Public Works, 5th Annual Report (Chicago: Chicago Common Council, 1866), 23,
and 6th Annual Report (Chicago: Chicago Common Council, 1867).

50 CP 1866/67 0240A 07/23.

187

improvement compromise mentioned above originated in 1866, as did another three

similar orders.51 Such enforcement continued through the late 18603 and early 18705.52
Despite the Council’s power to ﬁnally enforce street maintenance ordinances and
thus make streets safer and more convenient for public use, its power to do so was not
absolute. As was discussed above and in previous chapters, the Galena & Chicago Union
Railroad, which was consolidated into the Chicago & North Western Railroad network in
1864, was a source of constant complaint by people from the west side. It was frequently
accused of breaking city laws, from speed limit violations to creating street
obstructionss3 Its violations sometimes sparked stricter general railroad safety
ordinances. For example, a petition by residents of the West Division maintained that the
G&CU had “enjoyed the privilege [of blocking the crossing at Jefferson and Kinzie
Streets] so long that they seem[ed] to regard it as a matter of right and frequently [had]
their empty cars standing directly over this crossing when there [was] plenty of room for
them elsewhere, thus compelling pedestrians, ladies and all, to turn out into the mud to
pass.” The Council’s Committee on Streets & Alleys-West Division agreed that the
’ petitioners’ description of the obstructions as an “‘intolerable nuisance’. . .is none too
strong, and that the same term might with equal propriety be applied to similar
obstructions which are well known to exist at all principal street and Rail Road crossings
in the City.”54 It is not surprising that this phrase was penned by the faithful champion of

the public in issues regarding railroads’ negative effects on public space, Alderman

 

51 CP 1866/67 0092A 06/18; 1867/68 0679A 09/09.; 1867/68 0797A 10/07.
52 CP 1869/70 1499A 09/26; 1869/70 2197A 12/01.

53 For speed limit violations, see CP 1856/57 0836A 08/14. For street obstructions, see CP 1854/55 1777F
03/05 and 1863/64 0563A 02/01.

54 CP 1863/64 0563A 02/01.

188

David Walsh. This episode yielded two responses by the Council: an order for the BPW
to abate the nuisance at the crossing and the passage of an amendment that more strongly
regulated the behavior of railroads at crossings.

But the outcome was not always so successful for the public. The constant hazard
and inconvenience posed by the G&CU led the Council to attempt to ascertain “what
right if any the [G&CU/Chicago and North Western Railroad]” had in “occupying and
monopolizing the south half of West Kinzie Street” and whether the Council had “any
power by ordinance or otherwise to compel] (sic) said G. & C.U.R.R. co. & N.W. co. to
keep said W. Kinzie Street in good repair.” To the chagrin of Alderman George von
Hollen, who introduced the order to the Council, and to that of his Eleventh Ward
constituents and the countless other residents who were regularly inconvenienced by the
G&CU and other railroads, the city attorney found no respite for the public from the
railroad’s neglect of street maintenance. He found that, per the 1848 right-of-way
ordinance, the railroad had the right to occupy Kinzie Street, and the ordinance contained
“no provision requiring the Railroad Company to make repairs upon said street for the
accommodation of the public travel;” as such, he knew of “no way in which the Common
Council [could] compel the company to keep the street in good repair.”55 The Council
had been much more effective in the 18608 than it had previously in enforcing railroad
ordinances, which made public space safer and more convenient for the city’s residents.
But it was not able to undo the liberal rights-of-way that it gave gratis to some of the

city’s earliest railroads, and, as a result, the public paid the price.

¥

5
5 CP 1864/65 0232A 09/19.

189

The Council proved with its 1860s railroad ordinances that it was concerned about
the threat of monopoly beyond the G&CU’s “monopolizing the south half of West Kinzie
Street.” The Northern Railroad’s 1866 right-of—way ordinance and that of the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy Railroad in 1864 included anti—monopoly provisions that are
substantively different from those included in the right-of—way ordinances from the
18508. The Northern Railroad was given permission to enter the city on the condition
“that the said company shall not consolidate with, or be controlled by, any other company
having a trunk road entering in said city, and in case the said company shall ever be
controlled by any such road, either by sale, purchase of stock or otherwise, this
permission or grant shall cease to be of no force or effect, and the city may enter upon

said streets, avenues and alleys, and take up and remove said track. . .and repossess the

same.”56 The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad received permission to build track

on Brown Street in 1864 with the express condition that “[t]he right hereby granted shall
not be used for the purpose of building up a lumber business in one locality in said city
and destroying it in another;. . .the authority hereby conferred is granted upon the distinct
understanding that said. . .Railroad Company shall receive all lumber delivered at its
depot. an..d transport the same in the order of its delivery.”57 To further prevent the
CB&Q from privileging one lumber yard over another, if it “[took] or [sent] its cars off

its own tracks, and to or into the lumber yards of any one locality in said city to be loaded

 

56 Chicago Common Council, Laws and Ordinances, 294.
57 Ibid., 266.

190

it. . .also [had to] take or send its cars to and into the lumber yards of every other locality,

in said city, which is to be reached by railroad.”58

Whereas anti-monopoly provisions in the 18505 ordinances had a Jacksonian tone
that focused on preventing monopoly by circumscribing exclusive privilege, the
provisions from the CB&Q and the NRR ordinances concentrated instead on economic
monopoly that arose from a crucible of production and other market forces. The NRR
was granted entrance into the city in part because it provided competition to the Chicago
& North Western Railroad. The Council saw a rash of railroad consolidation in the
18608. There was little federal regulation to control monopoly and its anti—competitive
tendencies, but the Council was able to temper the negative effects of railroad monopoly
by using legislation to prevent it at the municipal level. Its control over the use of city
streets coupled with Chicago’s privileged position as North America’s railroad hub gave
the Council real power in the regulation of railroad monopoly. The CB&Q ordinance
took up an issue that became common knowledge a few years later with the Grange
Movement: preferential pricing by the railroads. Again, the Council was able to wield its
inﬂuence on decisions regarding the use of streets to effect regulation of the railroads in
order to ensure a level of fairness and competition in the city’s commercial activities. In
other words, the Council began to appropriately adapt and respond to industrial
capitalism and its negative effects. It no longer tried to solve problems from the
industrial era with Jacksonian solutions.

The Council’s solutions to the city’s spatial problems also took a different

direction in the 1860s. The BPW enforced railroad maintenance provisions that

 

’8 Ibid.

191

improved the quality of the streets upon and across which railroads ran. Though this
enforcement made travel slightly less hazardous and inconvenient for people, the key
element that created danger—railroads sharing streets with the public—remained. In the
18603, the Council began to solve this issue by separating the railroads from people.
First, the city began to reclaim its busiest streets from the railroads by ordering the BPW
to remove track from the streets and sidewalks. Second, the Council began to rid the city
of dangerous grade crossings by having the BPW plan and build both viaducts that led
foot and horse trafﬁc above the railroad tracks and tunnels through which trains traveled
under the grade of public trafﬁc. As the city became more densely populated, the
dangers attendant with railroads became more apparent. The Council made it a priority
in the 18605 to make Chicago a more livable city by dramatically altering its railroad
spaces. It was able to do this in large part because of the BPW, which spearheaded the
reshaping of public space.

The Council was able to remove tracks from some of the city’s streets by
enforcing railroad ordinance violations and by making deals with railroads that were
given the right to lay track on busy streets. The Galena & Chicago Union Railroad had
consistently violated the city’s railroad safety ordinances since it became the ﬁrst railroad
to enter the city in 1848. As was mentioned above, the G&CU had become a constant
headache for business owners and residents in the vicinity of Kinzie Street. It had
“occup[ied] and monopoliz[ed] the south half of West Kinzie Street” from the time it ﬁrst

received its right-of-way ordinance; yet that ordinance did not even require the railroad to

. . . . . . 59
maintain or improve the street on which it was such a prominent presence. Thus West

 

59 CP 1864/65 0232A 09/19.

192

Kinzie Street fell into disrepair while the railroad ﬂaunted other laws such as the speed
limit and street obstruction provisions. Yet the Council was determined to reign in the
G&CU and its parent company, the Chicago & North Western Railroad. In 1868, it
found that the railroad had not complied with its 1848 right-of-way ordinance.
Speciﬁcally, the railroad was not to have exceeded “twenty-two feet in width in the

center of [Kinzie Street]? and it was to have constructed a carriageway along each side
of the tracks.60 It far exceeded its maximum prescribed width, “occupying one half the

width of the street thereby rendering the street nearly useless.”6| So the Council ordered
the railroad to remove its tracks from the north side of the street to bring it into
compliance with its right-of-way ordinance; if it ignored the order, the BPW was to
remove the tracks and charge the company for labor costs.

The Council also cleared streets of railroad tracks by compromising with railroads
that were within their rights to have tracks on said streets. Clark Street south of Taylor
Street was a sparsely populated thoroughfare in an industrial area in the early 1850s, at
which time the Common Council gave the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad and its
partner, the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana Railroad, the right to lay track in it.
The area’s proximity to railroad and industrial jobs drew working-class people and
quickly turned South Clark Street into a major thoroughfare and a bustling area
composed of manufacturing and industrial interests, small businesses, and working-class
homes. As was shown in previous chapters, remonstrances against railroads on Clark

Street became a regular feature of Council business starting in the mid-18505. By the

 

60 Chicago Common Council, Laws & Ordinances, 268.
61 CP 1868/69 2004A 07/19.

193

18603, the Council could no longer ignore the hazards faced by residents of South Clark
Street.

In 1869, the Council was presented an opportunity that it used to remove some
railroad tracks from Clark Street. The Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana Railroad
bought a large amount of land between 16th and 22nd Streets for “right of way and other
purposes connected with its business in said city?62 It needed from the Council the right
to lay its tracks across the streets and alleys that lay between the two major east-west
thoroughfares. The Council accepted the railroad’s proposal, but on one important
condition: the railroad was to “relinquish all rights to use Clark Street” between 16th and
22nd Streets.63 The railroad accepted the ordinance “providing for removal of track from
Clark Street,” and the residents of Clark Street had fewer trains and tracks with which to
deal on an everyday basis.64

Removing tracks was the most effective way to make public spaces safer from the
dangers attendant with railroads, but it was not usually the most sensible solution in
Chicago, which was so economically dependent on the railroads. The trains needed to
run, and the growing population needed to be kept safe from those trains. Beyond
preventing bodily harm, it was in the economic interest of the city to prevent trafﬁc
congestion caused in large part by railroads, for safer and more efﬁcient travel meant
more economic production. Karl Marx illuminated this connection between time,

efﬁciency, and economic production, by positing that “[t]he less time the society requires

 

62 CP l868/69 2418A 09/06.
63 Ibid. Chicago Common Council, Laws & Ordinances, 292.

64 CP l868/69 2428A 09/07. Other Council Proceedings ﬁles that discuss the removal of railroad tracks to
accommodate the public include 1863/64 0510A “/30; 1867/68 0300A 07/22; 1868/69 1270A 01/04;
1869/70 0802A 07/11; and 1869/70 2198A 12/01.

194

to produce wheat, cattle etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or

’65 This quote describes the transition from a pre-industrial to an industrial

mental.’
economy, but it can also help illuminate the spatial processes that occurred in the
industrial transition of Chicago. The sporadic negative events that helped determine the
success of a preindustrial subsistence farmer—crop failure, drought, hail, etc—were
replaced by analogous events in the new industrial city, such as delays due to railroad
traffic that occurred on a more regular industrial schedule than the farmer’s acts of
nature. Some of the “time [society] wins for other production, material or mental” was
used, for example, waiting at a grade crossing for a passing train. That “material or
mental” time gained by the rhythms of the industrial capitalist economy was often wasted
due to inefﬁciencies that occurred as the result of new spatial relations in industrial cities.
The transition between preindustrial and standardized, industrial/railroad time was
still occurring in Chicago in the 18603, ﬁfteen years after Chicago’s railroad era began.

A petition by agents and superintendents of various railroads that entered the city called

for “the Rail-Road and city time [to] be regulated by the same person so that irregularities

”66

will be avoided and that the public will have an uniform time. The Council ﬁnally

contracted with Giles Brothers & Co.—a local manufacturer of timepieces—to
standardize timekeeping in the city in 1865.67
As timekeeping became standardized and regularized in Chicago, the Council

sought to remove both the inefﬁciency of travel through the city and the threat of bodily

 

65 Karl Marx, The Grundrisse, (London: Penguin, 1973), 173; accessed at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ l 857/grundrisse/ch03htm on 3 November 2009. See also
E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38, 56-97.

66 CP 1862/63 0068A 06/23. This duty of railroad and city time standardization was given to Giles
Brothers & Co. in 1865. See CP 1865/66 0121A 0606.

67 CP 1865/66 0121A 06/26.

 

195

harm caused by grade crossings. The Council’s solution to make Chicago simultaneously
more livable and more efﬁcient and proﬁtable was to remove the city’s busiest grade
crossings by separating the grade on which trains traveled from that on which all other
trafﬁc traveled. It did this by occasionally mandating trains to pass under grade through
tunnels and much more frequently by ordering the construction of viaducts over railroad
tracks. This vertical separation—a precursor to the grade separation that occurred with
Chicago’s public transit system, the elevated railroad, at the turn of the century—was not
a perfect solution to the hazards caused by railroads in public space, but it was an
important step in making Chicago a more livable place.

The ﬁrst mention of a railroad viaduct in Chicago appeared in 185 7. Residents
from the west side petitioned the Council to compel—to no surprise—the Galena &
Chicago Union Railroad to build a “bridge over the Rail Road at the Crossing of Paulina
Street,” because they “labour[ed] under a very great inconvenience” without the viaduct.

The Committee on Harbor & Bridges agreed with the petitioners and ordered “a Bridge

be immedeately (sic) Built by the Proper parties.”68 Like so many other railroad matters

during the 18505, nothing came of this order. It was referred to the Committee on Streets

& Alleys—West Division; there is no record after that.69

Three years later in 1860, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad
received permission from the Council to build a freight and passenger depot. The PF&C,
which ran parallel to and immediately west of the north and south branches of the
Chicago River, was to share the depot with other connecting railroads on the banks of the

south branch of the Chicago River between Madison and Adams Streets. It received

 

68 CP 1857/58 0158A 04/13.
69 CP 1857/58 0556A 06/08.

196

permission to build its depot and temporary tracks on the condition that it did not cross
Madison, Randolph, or Lake Streets at grade. The depot grounds were at a prime
location just west of downtown, and the railroads gladly accepted the conditions. The

PF&C tunneled underneath each of the three streets, thereby avoiding three grade

crossings.70 Madison, Randolph, or Lake Streets were chosen for tunnels by the Council
because each was a busy thoroughfare that led into downtown. As such, there were
bridges where each street crossed the river, and trafﬁc was thus channeled onto the
streets. It was important to the council to relieve the heavy trafﬁc congestion at the river
crossings, so they required the tunnels. Finally, Randolph and Madison Streets were also
the locations of horse railway lines. The intersections of horse and steam railways had
been especially prone to accidents, so this was an even more signiﬁcant victory for public

safety and convenience.

 

70 Chicago Common Council, Laws & Ordinances, 308-11. See W.L. Flower and J. Van Vechten,
“Chicago: Drawn from Davie’s Atlas with the Latest Recorded Subdivisions [map]? 116,000 (Chicago:
Charles Shober, 1863) for an accurate representation of the tunneling at each cross street. Accessed at
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/maps/chiﬁre/G4lO4-C6-1863-V3-NEC/ on 3 November 2009.

197

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.. "a. star], g

'9

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-. wartime:
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' ' is ’ -.
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Figure; 7. Thenpittsburgh, Fort Wayne &hChicago Railrxad Tunnels. Notice the tunnels at the intersections ,~;
of West Water Street and Madison, Randolph, and Lake Streets. 1863. (University of Chicago Library)
Though there was no tunneling or viaduct construction between 1860 and 1864
(again, domestic railroad issues were generally put on hold during the Civil War), the
Council, with the planning and execution of the Board of Public Works, became
extremely active in construction with the purpose of avoiding grade crossings during the
second half of the 18603. The ﬁrst viaduct in .the city was built across the Galena &

Chicago Union tracks on Water Street at State Street beginning in 1864. The viaduct,

like most of Chicago’s early viaducts, also served as a bridge across the Chicago River

198

(this one was at the main branch). The railroad gave the city land between the river and
Wolcott Street so the BPW would open the street and thus build a bridge/viaduct to
connect Wolcott with State Street on the south side of the river. It also provided $1500
towards the initial cost of the bridge and promised $400 annually for maintenance. The
BPW’s engineers planned the bridge/viaduct, and the city covered the remaining costs.
This agreement was mutually beneﬁcial to both the city and the railroad. The railroad
would have a direct link between its freight depot and the downtown area; the bridge

gave city residents another much needed connection between the north and south sides of

the city.” As the Board of Public Works underscored, the Chicago River divided the city
“into three distinct parts. All interruption of communication between these natural

divisions tends to isolation. Nothing will so much contribute to the prosperity of the city

as reliable and convenient means for intercourse between them.”72 The BPW declared
this ﬁve years after the construction of the State Street viaduct, in 1869. These bridges
and viaducts were of the utmost importance in connecting the city. They were especially
valuable in the mid-18603.

Through the second half of the 1860s, eleven viaducts were constructed in the
city. Most were designed like the G&CU State Street viaduct: they were “near the river,
and [were] connected with a pivot bridge across the river. The street having attained the

elevation necessary for the bridge [was] simply continued at about the same elevation

”73

above the railroad tracks, and then descend[ed] to ordinary grade. The Halsted Street

viaduct, which crossed the multiple tracks of both the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and

 

7] CP 1864/65 0102A 07/11. Chicago Common Council, Laws & Ordinances, 272-6.
72 Chicago Board of Public Works, 8th Annual Report (Chicago: Chicago Common Council, 1869), 3.
73 Chicago Board of Public Works, 9th Annual Report (Chicago: Chicago Common Council, 1870), 22.

199

the Chicago & North Western Railroads that ran near 16th Street, was of a completely
different design. It was not adjacent to the river, so the hybrid viaduct/bridge was not
possible. Instead, the viaduct, the “ﬁrst of its kind” in the city in 1869, was “wholly for
the purpose of elevating the street, so that the railway trains may pass beneath it.”74 The
public was then able to continue along Halsted Street without the annoyance and hazard
of crossing railroad tracks at grade. Though someone traversing the viaduct may have
received a mouthful of coal smoke when a locomotive passed underneath, this

inconvenience was deﬁnitely preferable to a bodily run-in with a train at grade.

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Figure 8. Design of the Chicago, Burlington'& Quincy railroad viaduct at Halsted Street. Perspective is
east, Sixteenth Street (on the right) is to the south. 1869. (Chicago Board of Public Works, 9th Annual
Report)

The Halsted viaduct was not pushed on the railroads by the city. Instead, the
railroads brought their idea to the BPW and offered to pay for the majority of
construction expenses.75 Most Chicago railroads were willing to pay an assessment for a

viaduct. After the aforementioned Illinois Supreme Court case found that railroads were

 

74 Ibid. CP l868/69 1505A 03/08.
75 Chicago Board of Public Works, 9th Annual Report, 23. CP l868/69 1505A 03/08.

200

subject to special assessments, they likely resigned themselves to the fact that they would
have to pay for viaducts if they wanted to remain operational within the city of Chicago.

Occasionally they tried to pay less, but most at least tacitly agreed that the viaducts were

needed in the places the Council and the BPW wanted them built.76 In some cases, such
as the aforementioned G&CU State Street viaduct, there was a demonstrable business
advantage to building the viaduct that made it easy for the railroad to justify the cost; the
viaduct created a much needed connection with another part of the city, thus opening up
economic Opportunities. In the case of the Halsted Street viaduct, accidents likely
became a major distraction for the C&NW and the CB&Q, railroads that were
responsible for the most and second-most deaths of any railroad within the city limits in
1869: ten people were killed by the C&NW, and six people were killed by the CB&Q.
Fatal accidents were so common that the railroads’ business likely was adversely

affected. It is not surprising that they were willing to pay for almost the entire cost of a

viaduct.” The increased willingness by the railroads to help ﬁmd viaduct construction
was coupled with the fact that the profusion of viaduct construction in the 1860s was
planned and partially funded by the city. This showed that the Council acted in the
public interest by taking steps to protect the safety of its residents and make the social
experience of Chicago more convenient and pleasant.

Not everyone was happy with all the viaducts, though. Residents along Michigan,
Wabash, and Indiana Avenues heard that the BPW was exploring the possibility of

building viaducts that would cross each of the three avenues plus Clark and State Streets

 

76 The Chicago & North Western successfully got the city to pay more for a viaduct at Wells Street, which
reduced its assessment. See CP 1866/67 0682A 11/12.

77 See CP 1869/70 0893A 07/18 for the city Sanitary Superintendent’s report on railroad deaths in Chicago
in 1868 and 1869.

201

at the CB&Q track near Sixteenth Street. These wealthy residents of the avenues
immediately called for a meeting to express opposition to the viaducts. Their words were

heated, as they accused the railroads of having “a majority of the Council in their

pockets.”78 They further claimed that the BPW “held a love feast with the railroads” and
that the Board of Public Works president and commissioner, W.H. Carter—referred to

6‘

derisively only as “Carter”— had not brains enough to overstock a moderate sized
mosquito.”79 Their primary reason for the heated opposition and claims of abuse of
personal property rights was that “their beautiful avenues [would] be ruined” because
their unadulterated view down the avenues would be blocked by viaducts seven feet in
height (railroad viaducts needed to be sixteen feet tall, but the railroad supposedly was
going to sink its track nine feet). Besides the hurling of insults, the residents called for
the tracks to be buried in tunnels, for the railroads to be removed from the city altogether,
or for the tracks to be left alone, to continue to cross the avenues at grade. Of course,
their concern lay with the avenues only; they did not seem to care what happened with
the State or Clark Street crossings.

These wealthy individuals appeared not to hold popular opinions regarding
viaducts. A working-class individual from South Clark Street attacked the wealthy
opponents of the viaducts for essentially being arrogant and clueless: while the avenue
dwellers complained about a ruined view and having to drive their horses more slowly

because of the slight incline of the viaduct, the “common people” on Clark Street dealt

with worthless, devalued lots and massive trafﬁc congestion because of the proﬁision of

 

78 Chicago Tribune, “Viaducts: Objections to their Construction on the Avenues,” July 10, 1870, p. 3.
79 Chicago Tribune, “Anti-Viaduct: Meeting in Opposition to Bridging the Avenues,” July 22, 1870, p. 4.

202

tracks and switches at the CB&Q crossing.80 Writers for the Chicago Tribune also
editorialized in strong support of the viaduct construction. The viaducts

would remove the present frequent obstructions to driving, and. . . [those made] by
trains stopping on the crossing, and the present hazard risked by every street
vehicle of being run over by trains that dash suddenly across the streets. Drivers
are liable to misunderstand the ﬂagman, and horses frightened by an approaching
train are liable to become unmanageable just on the most dangerous spot, and
there will, of course, be more accidents, than have already occurred, unless the

bridges are adopted.81
The writer goes on to address the main objection of the anti-viaduct contingent—that the
seven— or eight-foot high viaduct would be “unsightly”:

many persons would think the [gradual] elevation [of the viaduct]

ornamental. . . .The ‘dead level’ of our streets is desirable for the traction of
heavily-loaded wagons, but it imparts to them a sort of railroad stiffness that is
not an element of the beautiful, and by many is regarded as an actual defect in the
natural site of the city. A railroad track on a level with the street will often
impress the casual visitor with the notion that the ground on which he stands is as
‘low and ﬂat and swampy’ as some of our envious Eastern and Western
competitors delight to call it, while a railroad nine feet below the surface would
effectually dispel that notion from the minds of those who cross it. But be this as
it may, it is apparent that something must soon be done with the railroad
crossings, as they are now a dangerous nuisance, and the citizens must either

attempt turning the railroad out of the city or accept the bridges.82
Another Tribune writer also strongly supported the viaduct construction, but he used
slightly different logic to build his argument: “We have a high regard for the sanctity of
the rights of individuals, but we confess that we do not discover any substantial or

technical injury in the supposed obstruction to the view. All rights of individuals must

yield to those of the public convenience?”

 

80 Chicago Tribune, “The C.B. & Q. Crossing,” July 31, 1870, p. 3.

81 Chicago Tribune, “Real Estate: The Proposed Viaducts over Michigan and Wabash Avenues,” July 17,
1870,p.3.

82 Ibid.
83 Chicago Tribune, “Viaducts on the Avenues,” July 17, 1870, p. 2.

203

This Tribune writer beautifully summed up the political tenor that had developed
in Chicago during the 18603. The segmented idea that individuals should only get what
they paid for in public works began to fade, and public interest politics that looked to
make Chicago both proﬁtable and livable took hold. This change was reﬂected in the
politics of railroad development. By the late 18603, the actions and beliefs of the
Council, the public, and even the railroads had begun to coalesce regarding the effect of
railroads on public space. This conviction, combined with the Council’s ability to
enforce its ordinances, led to a city that could ﬁnally shape its railroads to best meet the

needs of both business and the public.

204

CONCLUSION

In late fall of 1868, J .M Walker, a representative for the Illinois Central, the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Michigan Central Railroads contacted the
Common Council about “acquiring the title to and possession of. . .Lake Park.”1 The
three railroads shared a passenger terminal at Randolph Street that was quickly becoming
inadequate to accommodate the trafﬁc of the booming city of over a quarter-million
people.2 They wanted to purchase a three-block section of Lake Park—the narrow strip
of lakeshore land that lay between Michigan Avenue and Lake Michigan. On this land,

which lay directly south of the railroads’ existing passenger depot, they wished to build a

magniﬁcent lakeshore passenger terminal on the lakeshore.3
The Council’s Committee on Judiciary received Mr. Walker’s request and

responded in early December. The committee members observed that the “land is in the

very center of the business part of Chicago and is among the most valuable in the city.”4
They estimated its value to be “not far from four millions of dollars,” and this assessment
did not even include the value of “the shore or riparian right in the harbor in front of this
tract.”5 Because of the great value of the land and its prominent location, the committee

declared “it is not desirable for the city to open negotiations for the sale of any portion of

 

CP 1868/69 12538 12/28.

John Stover, History of the Illinois Central Railroad (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 179.
CP l868/69 12538 12/28.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Eli-huh).—

205

Lake Park,” though it suggested leasing the land “at a six per cent valuation” annually,

which would have brought $240,000 per year to the city in rent.6

The railroads were not interested in renting, however. They wanted to own the
Lake Park land for their passenger terminal. Perhaps more importantly, the Illinois
Central wanted Lake Park’s attendant riparian rights to the shallow waters of Lake
Michigan. With these rights, the IC would have been able to use the submerged land
fronting its property for its own purposes. There is little doubt the railroad planned to
develop the harbor for its own proﬁt.

The railroads initially got their wish. As historian Joshua Salzmann has shown,
there was considerable ambiguity over who held legal title to Lake Park and its adjacent
submerged lands during the late 1860s, though the Common Council had made all
decisions regarding the Park since the Illinois & Michigan Canal commissioners declared

the land “Public Ground—A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear and Free of any

Buildings or other Obstruction Whatever.”7 The railroads combined this ambiguity with

political bribes to obtain passage of a bill by the Illinois General Assembly in April

1869.8 The Lake Front Act of 1869, as it was popularly known, granted the three-block

 

6 Ibid.

7 Joshua Salzmann, “Safe Harbor: Chicago’s Waterfront and the Political Economy of the Built
Environment, 1877-1920” (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Illinois-Chicago, 2008), 76-81. See also
Chicago Tribune, “Who Owns Lake Park?, ” June 23, 1867, p. 2.

8The political corruption was well documented. See Salzmann, 80-1, 85. See also John Wentworth’s
speech delivered in February 1886 at a public meeting about the lake front and the railroads as quoted in
A.T Andreas, History of Chicago, ﬁ'om the earliest period to the present time, Volume III: From the Fire of
1871 until 1885 (Chicago: A.T. Andreas Co., 1886), 192. For further discussion about railroads and
political corruption during the period, see, for example, Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America 's Unﬁnished
Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 465-9; Thomas Summerhill, Harvest of Dissent:
Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 114-46; and
Charles F. Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie and Other Essays (Boston: James R. Osgood &
Co., 1871), 1-99.

206

section of Lake Park between Randolph and Monroe Streets to the Illinois Central, the

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Michigan Central Railroads “for the erection
thereon of a passenger depot” for a compensation of $800,000 to Chicago’s park fund.9

(This was between one-ﬁfth and one-third of the estimated value of the landlo) The IC
was also given the right to all submerged lands extending from their railroad tracks up to
one mile east into the lake, essentially from the main branch of the river to 12th Street. In
other words, the IC was handed the valuable, under-developed outer harbor. Lake Park
was to no longer be “Public Ground—A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear and
Free of any Buildings or other Obstruction Whatever” as the Illinois & Michigan Canal
Commissioners had declared in 1836. The “public ground” was to be the private
playground of railroad corporations, and the harbor—nearly two square miles of

submerged land—their private pool. To add insult to injury, none of the land, dry or

submerged, was to be subject to municipal taxation.11 The IC was to pay the seven
percent of its revenue to the state guaranteed in its charter, but the city of Chicago was to
receive nothing more than a pittance for public land that held great economic potential

and acted as the front window of the city.

 

9 Common Council of the City of Chicago, compiled by Murray Tuley, Laws and Ordinances Governing
the City of Chicago (Chicago: Bulletin Printing Co., 1873), 290. The act further stipulated that if the
Council did not sign a quit-claim to the Lake Park tract thus legitimating the railroads’ claims to the land
within four months of the act’s passage, then the railroads could occupy the land for a total of one $200,000
payment. See 291.

Most estimates were near Governor John Palmer’s $2.6 million, though the Council’s Committee on
Judiciary estimated the Lake Park land to be valued at $4 million. See Salzmann, 82-3; CP l868/69 12538
12/28; and Illinois Anti-Monopoly League, Report of the Present Status of the Claims of the Illinois
Central Railroad to the Lake Front, and Submerged Lands Adjoining, under the “Lake Front Steal” of
1869 (Chicago: Anti-Monopoly League, 1881), 5.

H Anti-Monopoly League, 5. Andreas, History of Chicago 111, 191-2.

207

Gov. John Palmer vetoed the act, but the Illinois legislature overrode his veto.‘2
The Lake Front Act was law, yet the railroads were able to do little with their new depot
grounds in the northern portion of Lake Park. Individuals opposed to the railroads’
occupation of Lake Park obtained an injunction from the United States Circuit Court
“restraining the city from releasing, or the railway companies from occupying, the land

granted for depot purposes, by the Act” almost immediately after the law’s enactment in

April.13 The act was repealed by the Illinois General Assembly in 1873, though the IC
continued to claim ownership of much of the harbor. After numerous other suits and
injunctions, the case was ﬁnally decided in the United States Supreme Court in 1892.
The majority, led by Justice Stephen Field, used public trust doctrine and ultra vires to
substantiate the claim that the original grant was invalid. In other words, the justices
believed there was a strong public interest in the lands submerged in navigable waters;
the state of Illinois thus did not have the right to confer them to any outside party. They
also argued with ultra vires that Illinois Central’s charter conferred on the railroad the

right to transport goods over land; it was not chartered to use or manage Chicago’s
harbor. '4 The people of Chicago would not have to hand their park and harbor to a

railroad.15
Ironically, the rationale of ultra vires used by the Supreme Court justices to argue

against the Illinois Central’s claim on the submerged lands represented the exact same

 

12 See Salzmann, 82-3, for a detailed discussion of the reasons Palmer gave for his veto.
‘3 Andreas, History of Chicago Ill, 191-2.
'4 For an in depth analysis of the justiﬁcation for the decision, see Salzmann, 99-109.

15 Other Council proceedings ﬁles that discuss the details of the lake front case include l868/69 2124A
08/12, 1868/69 2126A 08/12, 1868/69 2138A 08/16, 1869/70 0143A 01/03, 1869/70 0144101/03, 1869/70
0637A 05/16, and 1869/70 0744A 06/13.

208

logic used by the IC’s attorney, Mason Brayman, to argue against a request by the
Common Council during negotiations over the railroad’s entrance into Chicago forty
years earlier. The Council requested that the railroad ﬁll the submerged land between its
railroad tracks and the lakeshore with earth to build a public promenade. Brayman

contested its request, maintaining that railroads “are constructed to do a owing

trade[,]. . .no_t. . .for the purpose of 1_)u_ild_ing cities.”[6 In other words, the IC was chartered
to transport, not to ﬁll submerged land and manage the resultant promenade. Brayman
billed the IC as a narrowly-deﬁned corporation of the Jacksonian mold that was chartered
to carry out a public service; it was only to carry out the purposes speciﬁed in its charter.
The fact that the Supreme Court thwarted the IC’s dreams of a commercial empire
in Chicago’s harbor using this logic is deﬁnitely ironic, but the railroad corporation was
not acting at all hypocritically. Alas, it was amazingly consistent considering forty years
had passed between its right-of—way and Supreme Court battles. Simply, the IC’s
overriding goal from its inception to the “Lake Front Steal” to the present day (it
currently exists as a subsidiary of Canadian National Railway) has been to maximize its
proﬁts. Mason Brayman argued against the construction of the public promenade
because it would have cost the corporation both time and money; and, as I have shown in
this dissertation, the public interest and the private pursuit of proﬁt were usually at odds.
The IC wanted to develop the under-developed harbor of a major American port city, and
it would have stood to gain astronomical sums had it been successful in its appeal to the
Supreme Court. In sum, the IC has always been a corporation of the more modern ilk: a

broadly-deﬁned, proﬁt- and growth-seeking entity. The IC thus represents all other

 

'6 CP1851/52 1376A 12/29.

209

railroads that entered Chicago’s city limits. Whether the Common Council would have
reacted differently to the railroads had it viewed them as such from the commencement of
Chicago’s railroad era can never be known.

The “Lake Front Steal” marked an appropriate end to Chicago’s railroad decade
of the 18605. The battle between the railroads and residents for Chicago’s public space
had been played over and over in the 1850s and 1860s, but it had never before actively
involved the federal government in the disputes. (It is poetic that the foundation of the
IC’s power—the land grant—came from the federal government, as did the Supreme
Court’s check on its economic pursuits.) The “Lake Front Steal” was more than just a
battle over public space writ large by federal participation, however. It was the
culmination of a local political trend that began in the 18505 in which the Chicago
Common Council moved away from a philosophy of economic boosterism towards one
that looked to uphold and protect a public interest in shaping the built environment of the
city. Chicago’s politicians and public stood together against the railroads’ intrusion into
public space. A report by the Council’s Committee on Judiciary represented this uniﬁed
interest by declaring that the city, due to the Illinois & Michigan Canal commissioners’
dedication more than three decades earlier,

cannot in good faith to such citizens and property owners permit said grounds to

be used for other than Public uses. Even if the sum which said act declares the

City shall receive. . .were an adequate compensation for the property (which it is

not) your committee believe that it would be a most ﬂagrant and unjustiﬁable
breach of trust upon the part of the city to sell this property or. . .to consent that

this land shall be appropriated to other than public uses.l7

 

'7 CP 1869/7O 0744A 06/13.

210

Of course, the public who was to use Lake Park remained secondary to the public
composed of the owners of property who had “a view and outlook upon and over this
public ground,” the latter of whom owned property that had value directly linked to an
unobstructed view of Lake Michigan. Nevertheless, the Council stood with Chicago
residents of all classes against the appropriation of its lakeshore and harbor by private
railroad corporations.

The true end of this era cannot be marked by the ﬁght over the lakefront, though.
On the night of Sunday, October 8, 1871, a ﬁre started near the intersection of DeKoven
and Jefferson Streets on Chicago’s west side. Fires were common occurrences in cities,
but this one started under circumstances that would allow it to grow into a massive
conﬂagration. It began after months of drought in a neighborhood ﬁlled with ﬂimsy
wood-structured houses and out-buildings, the latter of which contained such
inﬂammable materials as lumber and hay. Strong winds then blew the ﬂames to the north
and west, to the lumber yards along the south branch of the Chicago River. The inferno
then found its way across the river via wooden bridges, viaducts, and wind, to the central
business district of the city. Finally, the ﬂames crossed the main branch of the river and
burned a large swathe of homes and property between the river and Lake Michigan,
moving all the way to the city’s northern limits at Fullerton Avenue. The ﬁre ﬁnally died

on the morning of Tuesday, October 10, after reaching a few blocks north of the city,

only to be extinguished by a rainstorm.‘8

 

18 The story of the Chicago ﬁre has been told often. Descriptive narratives of the ﬁre include Robert
Cromie, The Great Chicago Fire (New York: McGraw Hill, 1957); Robert Cromie and Herman Kogan,
The Great Fire: Chicago 1871 (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1971); and David Lowe, ed., The Great
Chicago Fire (New York: Dover, 1979). Many of the standard general histories of Chicago employ the
Great Fire as a watershed moment during which the city was able to rise like a phoenix and develop into an

211

The ﬁre’s effect was devastating. Nearly a third of the city’s 300,000 residents
were rendered homeless, and the entire downtown business district lay in ruins. The
working class was disproportionately affected by the ﬁre, in large part because they
tended to live in wood-frame homes, though the ﬂames did not discriminate based on
class, as many of the downtown homes and business transformed to soot and stone. The
railroads were also hit hard. The Illinois Central, the grounds of which were directly in
the path of the ﬁre, lost its depots, though employees were able to move much of its
rolling stock out of harm’s way. Most of the city’s passenger depots, which were
relatively near downtown, were destroyed, though the freight terminals that lay on the

city’s periphery escaped damage, as did most track. Overall, the railroads emerged from

 

even greater metropolis than the one destroyed in the ﬂames. In A.T. Andreas, History of Chicago: From
the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Volume II: From I 85 7 until the Fire of I 871 (Chicago: A.T.
Andreas, 1885) and Volume III: From the Fire of 1871 to 1885 (Chicago: A.T. Andreas, 1886), he
separates the volumes of his encyclopedic history by recounting the story of the ﬁre at the end of Volume II
and narrating the rebuilding effort at the beginning of Volume 111. Donald Miller uses the same method of
organization in City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1996): he ends Part 1 with the story of the ﬁre and begins Part II with the rebuilding of the city.
Bessie Louise Pierce begins A History of Chicago, Volume III: The Rise of a Modern City, 18 71-1893
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957; paperback edition, 2007) with a short discussion of the ﬁre
and follows with an extended narrative of the rebuilding effort. Harold Mayer and Richard Wade’s
Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), though a general history,
focused on the changes to the built environment and transportation that came as a result of the ﬁre.

The Great Fire also plays a central role in a number of analytical histories. Carl Smith argued that the ﬁre
played an important role in deﬁning the Gilded Age industrial city as a site of disorder in Urban Disorder
and Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995). Karen Sawislak explored the political dimensions of class and ethnic
conﬂict during the period subsequent to the ﬁre in Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 187]-
1874 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Christine Meisner Rosen looked at the local political
response to urban ﬁres in the United States in The Limits of Power: Great Fires and the Process of City
Growth in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and maintained that most American
cities that experienced large ﬁres failed to use the ﬁres as opportunities to enact large-scale city plans.
Margaret Garb argued in City of American Dreams: A History of Home Ownership and Housing Reform in
Chicago, 1871-I919 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005) that the ﬁre limits passed by the Common
Council immediately following the Great Fire sparked opposition by working-class individuals who
depended on wood-frame houses as an important economic investment and viewed home ownership as an
American right. Finally, Maureen Flanagan begins Seeing with their Hearts: Chicago Women and the
Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002) with a discussion of
the difference in ﬁre relief response by men and women in Chicago: men wanted to make all decisions and
distribute relief based on worthiness, while women believed relief needed to be distributed much more
liberally because of the scale of the horrible tragedy caused by the ﬁre.

212

the ﬁre in relatively decent shape, as did much of the economic infrastructure of the city:
the stockyards were untouched, only a quarter of the city’s grain and lumber had been
destroyed, and much of Chicago’s manufacturing base was operational. The city had the
foundation for a phoenix-like rise after the last of the ﬁre was doused on October 10,
though that was cold comfort to the individuals who lost one of hundreds of people to

succumb to the ﬂames or had a home or business that numbered among the 18,000

buildings and 2,000 acres destroyed, the losses of which added up to over $200 million.19

Chicago experienced a remarkably quick recovery. The analogy of Chicago as a
“phoenix rising” likely became a cliché in only slightly more time than it took the city to
get back on its feet; yet it became a cliche because it so aptly illustrated Chicago’s
emergence from the devastating event. A number of factors contributed to the
revitalization. Citizens from all over the United States offered generous relief to the
victims of the ﬁre. The wealthy businessmen and boosters of Chicago such as J. Young

Scammon and Cyrus McCormick led the immediate action to rebuild Chicago

businesses.20 And as was mentioned above, the city was lucky that much of its grain,

lumber, meat, and manufacturing infrastructure had sustained minimal damage.

 

19 Stover, 181-3. Mayer and Wade, 117-24. David Young, The Iron Horse in the Windy City: How
Railroads Shaped Chicago (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), 101-3.

Pierce, 10.

213

 

 

 

Qt:

{a"'~.é$

 

Image 9. The Chicago Fire. Chicago is destroyed by the Great Fire of 1871 and rises like a phoenix from
the ashes. Cliches are cliches for a reason, and there is no other that can so accurately capture Chicago’s
recovery and growth after the ﬁre. (from Rev. David Swing, A Story of the Chicago Fire, 1892)

The railroads form a ﬁnal part of the story of Chicago’s quick recovery. The fact
that relatively little damage had been done to the tracks made it possible for the railroads
to quickly spring into action in the relief effort to help rebuild the city. It simultaneously

aided the relief effort and helped spur the railroads’ freight business: Chicago needed

214

building materials, and the railroads had the tracks to transport them. Passenger trafﬁc

took a hit for a while after the ﬁre, but it was not long before Chicago was again a

destination for not only visitors but residents.”
The ﬁre actually sparked Chicago’s growth. The city’s increase in population

from 1871 to 1872 marked both the largest percentage and absolute increase in

population during the decade of the 18703.22 The massive rebuilding effort drew workers
to build the skyscrapers, magniﬁcent railroad terminals, and thousands of new buildings
that came in the wake the ﬁre. A number of people likely moved to Chicago in 1872 for
the same reason that motivated so many of Chicago’s original settlers: Chicago was a
fresh start and a place of opportunity. Yet the start was not completely fresh, as the
massive post-ﬁre population grth combined with even more railroad development: the
Council gave right-of-way to ﬁve railroads in 1872 alone. This ensured a continued
presence of railroads in public space. As the Council fought the Illinois Central to retain
the harbor and Lake Park, the stage was set for the reprise of a struggle against the

railroads and the hazards and inconveniences their presence brought to a city.

 

21
Stover, 181-3. Young, 101-3.

2 .

2 Wesley Skogan, Chicago since 1840: A Time-Series Data Handbook (Urbana: Institute of Government
and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, 1976), Table l. The city’s population grew from 325,000 in
1871 to 367,396 in 1872, an increase of 42,396, or 13%.

215

Appendix 1: “The C., B. & Q. Crossing” from Chicago Tribune, “City Letters,” July
31,1870,p.3.

It would be thought by a person unacquainted with the city, from reading the publications
on the subject, that the people on Michigan and Wabash avenues were the worst sufferers
in the city from railroad obstructions. It is sometimes fortunate for the poor and medium
classes in a city that the wealthy and “upper ten” are subject to the same grievances as
they, otherwise their grievances would never be noticed. If the wealthy on the avenues
are suffering from the steam cars merely crossing their street once, what must be thought
of their humble neighbors on South Clark street, especially those living and owning
property between Twelfth and Twenty-second streets. Instead of a single crossing, that
might be remedied by a single bridge that would obstruct the view and thereby injure the
prospect and retard the fast driving on the street, they have the same C. B. & Q. Railroad
crossing, with the addition of switches running in various directions, but have, also, one
railroad running lengthwise, and one less than one hundred feet from them, running
parallel with the street, rendering the lots on the west side of the street almost worthless,
and reducing to half its value the property on the east side of the street. But then the
people on Clark street are only common people, most of them; only those who get their
living by hard work, have no carriages and fast horses, and their beautiful prospect up
and down the street is obstructed, it is true, but what business have they to spend their
time looking up and down the street? They would be satisﬁed if they could be permitted
to get their lots with their wood, coal, and other necessaries of life, if their view was not
left so beautiful, or even if they were not permitted to drive at a 2:40 gait the whole
length of their street without obstruction, or without crossing the C. B. & Q. R. R. on a

bridge. They have repeatedly petitioned the City Fathers for relief, but they being

216

nobodies, not living in palaces and driving fast horses, the Aldermen have thought them
unworthy of notice. “Their petitions have generally been referred to some committee and
there resied (sic). A person might think that, if these people in moderate circumstances
were worthy the notice of our Aldermen, the railroads had something to do with killing
our petitions. But everyone knows that our Aldermen are above suspicion, and that none
of them would be inﬂuenced by a pass on the railroad, or by their offer of pecuniary
compensation, and they are vile slanderers that say the railroads own or inﬂuence the
action of the City Fathers. The Michigan Southern Railroad had to get out of Clark
street, and purchase their right of way into the city, as most other railroads have done.
Part of the consideration, it is true, was in clearing Clark street: that part has not yet been
paid. The Chicago, Rock Island & Paciﬁc Road appear to be the especial favorites of our
city fathers. I am so obtuse that I cannot see why they should be, as they have made
more efforts to cut trade and travel to the city than all other railroads combined. First,
they formed a junction with the Southern Michigan, six miles south of the city, for the
purpose of transferring passengers without coming into the city; next, they formed a
junction with the cut-off at Joliet, to take both trade and travel from the city, and, no
longer ago than last winter, they made a desperate effort to get through Congress an act to
construct a railroad from some point in Indiana—I think Logansport—to a point on their
railroad about 100 miles southwest of Chicago, and thereby direct the trade from the
Paciﬁc away from the city. It is to me, therefore, something of a mystery why the Rock
Island Railroad, that is a curse to the city, should receive from the city such special
favors; that they should be allowed to traverse, free of cost, one of the best streets in the

city, taking millions in value from the property of citizens, without rendering either the

217

property-holders or the city any compensation. Too mean to pay for their right of way,
they ask the city fathers to aid them in stealing it from citizens that are illy able to lose it.
The last petition of the inhabitants on the street was referred to a committee that has
repeatedly agreed to meet the property-owners but have as yet not done so. Will they
ever report any method to relieve the inhabitants who are having their property destroyed
and their lives constantly endangered? Several have been killed on that street already, I
think, at least one a year, by their fast and careless way of using steam on that street. No
one supposed when the right was given to the railroad to run their cars on Clark street
that it was to be permanent occupancy of the street.

SOUTH CLARK STREET. CHICAGO, July 30, 1870.

218

Appendix 2: Chicago Railroad Right-of-Way Ordinances to 1871 (in chronological
order; does not include railroads that entered the city solely on track-sharing

agreements)

Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, July 17, 1848

Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, May 26, 1851

Illinois Central Railroad, June 14, 1852

Illinois & Wisconsin Railroad, October 4, 1852

Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Air-line Railroad, April 1 1, 1853

Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad, February 13, 1854

Chicago & Mississippi Railroad, September 11, 1854

Joliet & Chicago Railroad, January 5, 1857

Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad, February 2, 1857

Chicago, St. Paul & Fond du Lac Railroad, August 16, 1858

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, December 15, 1862

Northern Railroad, February 5, 1866

Chicago & Great Eastern Railway, October 8, 1866

Chicago, Alton & St. Louis Railroad, April 22, 1867

Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railway, August 16, 1869

Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana Railroad, September 6, 1869

219

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