I don't know if this was during the same time period or not, but in some parts of the city (mostly residential or smaller commercial areas) they didn't bother raising the buildings, they just built the streets up higher and added flying walkways from the new sidewalk height to the new front entrances on the second story of the houses. Many of them had stairs that went down to the old ground level and I think in most of them they had been converted to separate apartments.
My dad's small commercial building in Pilsen looked normal, but if you peeked into the holes in the sidewalk out front you could see a vaulted space underneath where the old sidewalk used to be, which was kind of unnerving when you realized the sidewalk was crumbling. You could even access it from the basement of his building (which I suppose used to be the ground level?), but he never let me go down there as a kid.
I also know of one or two old homes from around this time period in the neighborhood I grew up in (which wasn't part of Chicago at this time) that were later moved off what became the main avenue through the area to new locations about a block away. I think that happened much later though.
New construction will generally follow the old footprint as well.
My house was built in 1994 and the lower level is roughly 4ft or so below street/sidewalk/alley grade.
We call ours the basement, but in a 3 flat building in the same footprint it would typically be called a garden apartment as it opens to the same level as my backyard and front 'patio' area.
My garage is built to street grade, so my backyard is sunken about 4ft from the street to the alley. This holds true for all my neighbors on the block, thus water retention isn't quite as horrific as it might sound during heavy rains. Lots of sump pumps on the block that are 100% required during storms, but strangely mine had none installed and it's been fine.
Utilities (sewer) run about 1 foot or so under my foundation to the street, where they are about 5-6ft deep under the street if they need to do work.
New construction (tear downs) will typically build below street grade as well since you get an extra floor (4 stories vs. 3) for your new home while remaining under the zoning height restrictions for the neighborhood.
The whole concept is bonkers! By this i mean that i can not imagine many officials would even have the will to even try something so big and audacious nowadays. Also, my favorite note in the wikipedia entry (besides the whole article being awesome!), is this one: "Many of the city's old wooden buildings were considered not worth raising, so instead the owners of these wooden buildings had them either demolished or else placed on rollers and moved to the outskirts of Chicago. Business activities in such buildings continued, as they were being moved." Just crazy!
In 1930, the e Indiana Bell Telephone Company rotated an 11,000 ton functioning telephone exchange it had acquired merging with Central Union Telephone Company, whilst work continued inside, and with water, sewerage, gas, and electricity service continuing uninterrupted, 90 degrees.
The work was performed by the architectural firm of Vonnegut, Bohn & Mueller, co-founded by Bernard Vonnegut, father of the noted author Kurt.
There are some crazy things, but in terms of projects I've always thought that the time Sweden changed which side of the road traffic drove on has got to be up there:
At a glance, changing which side of the road to drive on seems not so big and complex...maybe its jarring, but it didn't sound so big, complex, and audacious...But then upon further thought, there are tons of big and not-so-big considerations - especially the many, many little things that might not be obvious until things were actually implemented - that would need to be addressed...so, yeah, agreed, that change in Sweden was a big doozy of a societal change! Thanks for sharing! :-)
Wow! Even the renaming of streets - which yes, would need physical work to swap out the physical street signs - seems to far fetched to be done nowadays! But, that's a pretty cool factoid; thanks for sharing!
Ah man - this is one of the cooler things i've ever heard of. I first heard of it in PBS doco "Chicago: City of the Century". That documentary - is one of the finest chronicles of modern society i've ever seen. The insights into psychology, civil engineering, and history are second to none. Most profound to me were the "design" of suburbs with the trappings we dont think very much of these days - libraries, pools, shopping centres and so on - were created to push "ideal lives" which were basically the dangled carrots of real estate empires. Brilliant stuff.
Miami Beach has been doing this for a couple of decades now. In a few places the street is 1 or 2 feet higher than the buildings. https://maps.app.goo.gl/eRJZvDHCgWQ73KZLA
I've told people about this event before and they couldn't believe it! Then I tried to research it more, find more depictions and there's frustratingly little online. Began to make me wonder whether it was a prank.
This past summer I worked a job off lower lower Wacker Drive, which is a trip to navigate but once you get the hang of the area the whole region is fascinating.
I feel like only in places like Chicago could this have worked. It's like the water system in Chicago, just massive. And everyone just shrugs and says, "Dig 100 miles of deep tunnel and massive reservoirs? Yep. Let's get 'er done."
A lot of places I've lived, things like that wouldn't fly. I was equally amazed at Phoenix with their, what I can only call a "strategic water reserve".
A lot of thought and money goes into stuff like that.
I get the strong sense that in most American cities if you would have told the population that we all need to undertake a massive public work, (Oh, and pay for it by the way), they would yank you from office and tell you to go F yourself.
They massively re-landscaped most of downtown seattle, in one phase by using hoses to blast hills down and extend the waterfront. In another phase they built the streets up like 12' or more. I think stuff like this happened in many places.
Really it still does. I'll trigger many bostonians by invoking the dig. Seattle has bored some massive tunnels recently and re-scaped its waterfront
I think there is a misunderstanding of the engineering challenges in some of these projects.
The Big Dig was less than 10 miles, never deeper than roughly 100 ft. TARP is over 100 miles always deeper than 100 ft. And because of intended use, it all has to be dug through solid limestone bedrock. The engineering challenges are non trivial in both, but one is on a massive scale that the other is just not.
Speaking to the Seattle example, the reason for building the streets higher is that, in Seattle, people would have revolted if they had decree'd "All shalt raise thine buildings 12 to 24 feet as did the multitudes in Chicago." That's what I mean. Seattle is the example that proves the rule. No one had the political capital to force a Chicago style raise on Seattle.
That said, between you and me, as an engineer, I would have done things the Seattle way and left the buildings at ground level. Raised the streets and then turn the formerly ground level floors into basements. It's not the end of the world if basements flood from time to time. And some drainage might even help with that. Chicago, on the other hand, wanted the "complete" solution. They were done with dealing with floods. Even in basements, they were intent on eradicating flooding. Which is a laudable goal, and Chicago has been much better off because of it. But the risk and the cost is just a whole lot higher than I would have felt comfortable with given the tech available to me at the time.
>I feel like only in places like Chicago could this have worked
the original downtown of Seattle got moved up 1 floor: they didn't raise the buildings, they raised the street, the old 2nd floors became first floors.* You can still visit the underground Seattle in some places.
That's kind of different because they were kicking out a relatively small number of people with not much wealth or power to resist as opposed to doing those sorts of projects in urban areas.
You can visit the reservoir area and see the razed town centers that are miles from the actual water. It's kind of a sad monument to the "messy" consequences of central planning.
I don't know if this was during the same time period or not, but in some parts of the city (mostly residential or smaller commercial areas) they didn't bother raising the buildings, they just built the streets up higher and added flying walkways from the new sidewalk height to the new front entrances on the second story of the houses. Many of them had stairs that went down to the old ground level and I think in most of them they had been converted to separate apartments.
My dad's small commercial building in Pilsen looked normal, but if you peeked into the holes in the sidewalk out front you could see a vaulted space underneath where the old sidewalk used to be, which was kind of unnerving when you realized the sidewalk was crumbling. You could even access it from the basement of his building (which I suppose used to be the ground level?), but he never let me go down there as a kid.
I also know of one or two old homes from around this time period in the neighborhood I grew up in (which wasn't part of Chicago at this time) that were later moved off what became the main avenue through the area to new locations about a block away. I think that happened much later though.
My family is originally from the Pilsen neighborhood, you can see examples all over the place of houses lower than the street.
Example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/F39JxUPZoobGMgiq9
I know between Division and North there’s some remaining blocks like that too: https://maps.app.goo.gl/NHriGdh1cvL193487
Though so many are gone now and replaced with new construction.
New construction will generally follow the old footprint as well.
My house was built in 1994 and the lower level is roughly 4ft or so below street/sidewalk/alley grade.
We call ours the basement, but in a 3 flat building in the same footprint it would typically be called a garden apartment as it opens to the same level as my backyard and front 'patio' area.
My garage is built to street grade, so my backyard is sunken about 4ft from the street to the alley. This holds true for all my neighbors on the block, thus water retention isn't quite as horrific as it might sound during heavy rains. Lots of sump pumps on the block that are 100% required during storms, but strangely mine had none installed and it's been fine.
Utilities (sewer) run about 1 foot or so under my foundation to the street, where they are about 5-6ft deep under the street if they need to do work.
New construction (tear downs) will typically build below street grade as well since you get an extra floor (4 stories vs. 3) for your new home while remaining under the zoning height restrictions for the neighborhood.
I had a relative that lived in this house in Ukranian Village. It's kind of cute how it resisted any change for 100+ years.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/jUL4G1DJXfqEggoz8
It’s a lot broader than that. Goes at least to Fullerton.
The whole concept is bonkers! By this i mean that i can not imagine many officials would even have the will to even try something so big and audacious nowadays. Also, my favorite note in the wikipedia entry (besides the whole article being awesome!), is this one: "Many of the city's old wooden buildings were considered not worth raising, so instead the owners of these wooden buildings had them either demolished or else placed on rollers and moved to the outskirts of Chicago. Business activities in such buildings continued, as they were being moved." Just crazy!
In 1930, the e Indiana Bell Telephone Company rotated an 11,000 ton functioning telephone exchange it had acquired merging with Central Union Telephone Company, whilst work continued inside, and with water, sewerage, gas, and electricity service continuing uninterrupted, 90 degrees.
The work was performed by the architectural firm of Vonnegut, Bohn & Mueller, co-founded by Bernard Vonnegut, father of the noted author Kurt.
<https://www.archdaily.com/973183/the-building-that-moved-how...>
That's mindbogglingly insane!
There are some crazy things, but in terms of projects I've always thought that the time Sweden changed which side of the road traffic drove on has got to be up there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H
At a glance, changing which side of the road to drive on seems not so big and complex...maybe its jarring, but it didn't sound so big, complex, and audacious...But then upon further thought, there are tons of big and not-so-big considerations - especially the many, many little things that might not be obvious until things were actually implemented - that would need to be addressed...so, yeah, agreed, that change in Sweden was a big doozy of a societal change! Thanks for sharing! :-)
> I can not imagine many officials would even have the will to even try something so big and audacious nowadays.
How about renaming 567 streets on a single Friday?
https://chicagology.com/chicagostreets/streetnamechanges/
Wow! Even the renaming of streets - which yes, would need physical work to swap out the physical street signs - seems to far fetched to be done nowadays! But, that's a pretty cool factoid; thanks for sharing!
I like that in the drawing of the men lifting the hotel, there's people in the hotel. I would be so pissed at them lol
Apparently Sna Francisco also has the tradition of moving houses, most recently in 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/22/victorian-ho...
The Guardian also has an article written back then: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/23/san-francisc...
Ah man - this is one of the cooler things i've ever heard of. I first heard of it in PBS doco "Chicago: City of the Century". That documentary - is one of the finest chronicles of modern society i've ever seen. The insights into psychology, civil engineering, and history are second to none. Most profound to me were the "design" of suburbs with the trappings we dont think very much of these days - libraries, pools, shopping centres and so on - were created to push "ideal lives" which were basically the dangled carrots of real estate empires. Brilliant stuff.
I just came across American Experience for the first time over the last week. What I've seen so far is incredible.
This is their YouTube profile: https://www.youtube.com/@AmericanExperiencePBS/featured
Unfortunately, the doc you mention isn't on there. They do have the transcript on their site tho: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chicago/
Those three American Experience episodes on Chicago can be found here (#s 157–159): https://archive.org/details/american-experience_20220511
Thanks so much for linking this - wouldnt have thought to look for them at IA! Silly of me tbh :)
Indeed, Ken Burns docos are brilliant!
Miami Beach has been doing this for a couple of decades now. In a few places the street is 1 or 2 feet higher than the buildings. https://maps.app.goo.gl/eRJZvDHCgWQ73KZLA
I've told people about this event before and they couldn't believe it! Then I tried to research it more, find more depictions and there's frustratingly little online. Began to make me wonder whether it was a prank.
Are all the raised areas sitting on top of the jackscrews (where used) from 170 years ago? That itself is astounding.
No the Jackscrews would have been removed for reuse after the lift.
By the way you can still buy jacks like these. They're considered safer than hydraulic jacks and are often called "house jacks":
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Jet-20-Ton-Screw-Jack-441320/306...
No, as the article states they raised the buildings then built a new foundation underneath.
A fair number of cities have done this, Galveston, Sacramento, Seattle.
This will totally (have to) happen in Amsterdam within the century.
This past summer I worked a job off lower lower Wacker Drive, which is a trip to navigate but once you get the hang of the area the whole region is fascinating.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wacker_Drive
(In)famously:
<https://yewtu.be/watch?v=NB5bMyir4-g>
(The Blues Brothers, 1980)
I feel like only in places like Chicago could this have worked. It's like the water system in Chicago, just massive. And everyone just shrugs and says, "Dig 100 miles of deep tunnel and massive reservoirs? Yep. Let's get 'er done."
A lot of places I've lived, things like that wouldn't fly. I was equally amazed at Phoenix with their, what I can only call a "strategic water reserve".
A lot of thought and money goes into stuff like that.
I get the strong sense that in most American cities if you would have told the population that we all need to undertake a massive public work, (Oh, and pay for it by the way), they would yank you from office and tell you to go F yourself.
They massively re-landscaped most of downtown seattle, in one phase by using hoses to blast hills down and extend the waterfront. In another phase they built the streets up like 12' or more. I think stuff like this happened in many places.
Really it still does. I'll trigger many bostonians by invoking the dig. Seattle has bored some massive tunnels recently and re-scaped its waterfront
I think there is a misunderstanding of the engineering challenges in some of these projects.
The Big Dig was less than 10 miles, never deeper than roughly 100 ft. TARP is over 100 miles always deeper than 100 ft. And because of intended use, it all has to be dug through solid limestone bedrock. The engineering challenges are non trivial in both, but one is on a massive scale that the other is just not.
Speaking to the Seattle example, the reason for building the streets higher is that, in Seattle, people would have revolted if they had decree'd "All shalt raise thine buildings 12 to 24 feet as did the multitudes in Chicago." That's what I mean. Seattle is the example that proves the rule. No one had the political capital to force a Chicago style raise on Seattle.
That said, between you and me, as an engineer, I would have done things the Seattle way and left the buildings at ground level. Raised the streets and then turn the formerly ground level floors into basements. It's not the end of the world if basements flood from time to time. And some drainage might even help with that. Chicago, on the other hand, wanted the "complete" solution. They were done with dealing with floods. Even in basements, they were intent on eradicating flooding. Which is a laudable goal, and Chicago has been much better off because of it. But the risk and the cost is just a whole lot higher than I would have felt comfortable with given the tech available to me at the time.
I'm presuming TARP is the Chicago Tunnel and Reservoir Plan?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan>
That's been in process for 30 years, anticipated completion in 2029.
>I feel like only in places like Chicago could this have worked
the original downtown of Seattle got moved up 1 floor: they didn't raise the buildings, they raised the street, the old 2nd floors became first floors.* You can still visit the underground Seattle in some places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
* carefully worded to also work on European floor number systems.
Port Angeles, WA has a similar, but smaller Underground.
It was done in other cities. Boston flooded a bunch of towns 60 miles to the west to build a water supply:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quabbin_Reservoir
New York City built three long aqueducts to bring in water:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_sys...
I doubt you could get anything even resembling those projects built today due to environmental concerns.
That's kind of different because they were kicking out a relatively small number of people with not much wealth or power to resist as opposed to doing those sorts of projects in urban areas.
You can visit the reservoir area and see the razed town centers that are miles from the actual water. It's kind of a sad monument to the "messy" consequences of central planning.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_N...
Likely not as greenfield development but they’re still building.
Would the Phoenix, AZ, water plan be the "Water Resource Plan", or something else?
<https://www.phoenix.gov/waterservices/resourcesconservation/...>
To be fair, it took an epidemic that killed six percent of the city's population for them to take it seriously.