DEFUNCTSITE

This is the first (and maybe the only) installment of what may or may not be a very sporadic series of book reviews: Chicago Public Works: A History, edited by Daphne Christensen and published by Rand McNally & Company, 1972.

(All images in this post were scanned from my personal copy of the book
and are copyrighted by their respective owners. Please don’t sue.)

Chicago has tackled many major infrastructure projects since it was incorporated back in 1837. But after Richard J. Daley became mayor in 1955, the city’s built landscape underwent radical change. Neighborhoods were torn down to make way for expressways, and older downtown buildings were demolished to make way for skyscrapers and parking garages. Chicago Public Works seems to have been put together as a way for the Daley administration to show off these and other new (in 1972) additions to Chicago’s built environment. Pretty much everything that can be considered infrastructure is covered, as is suggested by some of the chapter titles: ‘Waterworks’, ‘Sewers’, ‘Expressways’, ‘Refuse Disposal’, ‘Parking Garages’, ‘Subterranean Passages’, and so on. It’s hard to imagine a major city publishing a book like this today, when public interest in the less visible elements of urban infrastructure is considered either a threat to national security, or just weird.

Chicago Public Works was assembled by the Chicago Public Works Information Section, so the text reads like something written by a government agency–detailed and dry, yet oddly enthusiastic (“The unequivocal success of these early incineration plants demonstrated beyond question the concept of economic refuse disposal…”) The many photos that catalog the built Chicago of the 1950′s and 60′s more than makes up for any lack of style in the writing.

Much has changed in Chicago since 1972, and more than a few of the urban features described in the book are now unrecognizable. Other parts of the book are so out of date as to be comical, like the description of ‘future plans’ to move the elevated Loop trains underground to create a new “Central Area Rapid Transit System”. Um, yea…I’m still waiting for that to happen.

As dated at this book is, I still find it to be valuable a reference tool. Anyone interested in the built history of Chicago, or American cities in general, should try and find a copy of Chicago Public Works. The book has been out of print for years, though you can probably find a copy at Amazon.com or Powell’s Books. I usually see a few copies at the Printers Row Book Fair every year. I found my copy in a dumpster.