Large Scale Central

Chigaco elevated railroad

General Discussion
#1

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Hi there:

I do not have a scanner so I cannot post the historic photo of the intersection of West Lake Street and Oakley Blvd in Chicago of a Forney and single varnished coach posed for posterity atop the elevated railway. The photo was taken along the East - West compass line looking down Oakley Blvd. Oakley Blvd was then a very wide picturesque street with mature oak trees lining both sides of the Blvd. At the West corner was a hardware store and on the East corner was a tobacco store. Each wood sided building featured shuttered second storey windows and canvass awnings over the first floor shop windows. The sidewalks were built of boards and the streets were dirt. There is a horse drawn Candies vendor wagon, various youngsters posed with their straw hats and adult men wearing their bowler hats. Very reminiscent of Disney’s Main Street of the Florida Park. The paint on the buildings and the canvass awnings are perfect so this photo must have been taken just as this area of Chicago was newly developed.

Now look at what Oakley Blvd is today:

http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&q=lake+street+and+oakley+blvd+chicago&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=ca&ei=H46ISo-aMofIMa-dvfsO&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1

Google " lake street and oakley blvd chicago "

Oakley Blvd is now far narrower, about half its former width, and all the mature trees are gone.

Pretty depressing sight compared to the historic photo. Just an obervation. There are of course countless similar examples in all our cities. I don’t think that our fore fathers would be impressed with what we have done to our street scapes compared to the original city planning layout. On the other hand the youngsters in the photo would have been hard pressed to be able to afford candy and driving a horse drawn wagon compared to an automobile today are two negatives. I just wish more of the historic buildings could have been preserved.

Norman

#2

There’s an interesting curve on the north side of North Avenue, just east of I294.

#3

I heard a lecture recently from a historian at Georgetown, on the history of the US and oil. He argued that American cities reached their peak about 1900-1930. They had licked the sanitation problems, had good water and light, and they had excellent mass transit and enough population density so tat you could walk to everything you needed. He argued that the the automobile industry recognized by 1920 that it had saturate it market and it set out to dismantle public transit and get people into cars

#4

One aspect of that google street view is that you can pan up and have a good look at the bridge girders from below, could be a good tool for the right modeller looking for the more obscure details.
Got to agree though about the street scapes changing, same problem here in Australia. The transit authorities are extending the tram line in Adelaide by a few kilometres and have descimated parklands to make way for road widening so they can run the trams down the middle of the road, the price of progress, in this case it will be worth it.

#5

Hi Mike:

Yes you are absolutely right. There was a documentary special on TVOntario of the history of General Motors. Fascinating. General Motors actually bought a mass transit system in an American town and then shut it down to force people in that town to buy automobiles! Previously this the town was compact and the electric street car system provided excellent service.

Norman