Kitabı oku: «Peculiarities of American Cities», sayfa 9

CHAPTER IX.
CHICAGO

Topographical Situation of Chicago. – Meaning of the Name. – Early History. – Massacre at Fort Dearborn. – Last of the Red Men. – The Great Land Bubble. – Rapid Increase in Population and Business. – The Canal. – First Railroad. – Status of the City in 1871. – The Great Fire. – Its Origin, Progress and Extent. – Heartrending Scenes. – Estimated Total Loss. – Help from all Quarters. – Work of Reconstruction. – Second Fire. – Its Public Buildings, Educational and Charitable Institutions, Streets and Parks. – Its Waterworks. – Its Stock Yards. – Its Suburbs. – Future of the City.

"See two things in the United States, if nothing else – see Niagara and Chicago," said Richard Cobden, the English statesman, to Goldwin Smith, on the eve of the departure of the latter to America. And truly, if one would obtain a proper sense of America's wonders and achievements, then Niagara and Chicago may be accepted as respectively the highest types of each. Niagara remains the same yesterday, to-day and forever. But if it were a desirable thing to see Chicago at the time of the visit referred to, how much more so is it to-day, when, Phœnix-like, she has arisen from her own ashes, turning that which seemed an overwhelming disaster into positive blessing; drawing her fire-singed robes proudly about her, crowning herself with the diadem of her own matchless achievements, and sitting beside her inland sea, the queenliest city of them all.

Situated upon a flat and relatively low tract of country, Chicago is yet upon one of the highest plane elevations of our continent. Lake Michigan represents the headwaters of the great chain of American lakes, through which, in connection with the St. Lawrence, much of the rainfall of that city finds its way to the Atlantic; while through the canal to the Illinois River, its sewage is borne to the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps no more hopeless site could have been selected for a city than that seemed half a century ago. A bayou or arm of the lake penetrated the land for half a mile or more, but a sand-bar across its mouth prevented the ingress of all but the smallest craft. This bayou, called by courtesy the Chicago River, separated into two branches, the course of one of which was in a northerly direction, and of the other in a southerly one. The land was barely on a level with the lake, and at portions of the year was a vast morass, some parts of it being entirely under water. Teams struggled helplessly through the black ooze of its prairies, and a carriage would sink three or four feet in mud and mire within two miles of where the court house now stands. Sometimes in this slough a board would be set up, with a rude inscription: "No bottom here." But American enterprise has found a bottom and reared a city, the history of whose seemingly magical building almost rivals the tales of the Arabian Nights.

Chicago is an Indian word, signifying the widely-varying titles of a king or deity, and a skunk or wild onion. In its early history, while drainage it had none, and its water supply was mere surface water, foul with all the accumulated impurities of the soil, and while from the lagoon, which lay stagnant for twelve or fifteen miles, a horrible, sickening stench constantly arose, the latter appellations seemed singularly appropriate, and no doubt originated in these conditions. But since the city has been purified by fire, and its sanitary conditions made such as they should be, it has earned its right to the nobler titles.

The first white visitors to the site of Chicago were Joliet and Marquette, who arrived in August, 1673. The year following his first visit Pere Marquette returned and erected a rude church. Later the French seem to have built a fort on the spot, but no traces of it now remain. Very early in the nineteenth century John Kinzie, an Indian trader, and agent of the American Fur Company, having traded with the Indians at this point for some time, probably influenced the government to build a fort here. Accordingly, in 1804, Fort Dearborn was built and garrisoned with about fifty men and three pieces of artillery. Mr. Kinzie removed his family to the place the same year.

In 1812, Fort Dearborn was the scene of a bloody Indian massacre. Captain Hull, then in command of the fort, having placed too great confidence in the professions of fidelity of the Pottawatomie tribe, and trusting to an escort of that tribe to convey the soldiers and inhabitants of the fort to Fort Wayne, saw his entire party either killed or taken prisoners, and found himself a prisoner. The fort stood at the head of Michigan avenue, below its intersection with Lake street. Abandoned and destroyed at this period, it was rebuilt in 1816, and finally demolished in 1856.

For four years the place was deserted by the whites, and even the fur traders did not care to visit it. In 1818 two families had established themselves upon the spot. In 1820 some dozen houses represented the future city, and in 1827 a government agent reported the place as a collection of pens and kennels, inhabited by squatters, "a miserable race of men, hardly equal to the Indians." The population numbered seventy in 1830. In 1832 there were six hundred people in the miserable little town. In September, 1833, the United States purchased of the Indians 20,000,000 acres of land in the northwest, the latter pledging themselves to remove twenty days' journey west of the Mississippi. Seven thousand redskins attended the making of this treaty, which was ratified by the chiefs in a large tent on the bank of the river. A year later four thousand Indians returned to receive an annuity of $30,000 worth of goods. The distribution of these goods was the occasion of, first, a fierce scramble, followed by a bloody fight, in which several Indians were killed and others wounded; the scene closing by a wild debauch, so that on the following morning few of the recipients were any better off for the property which had been given them. Similar scenes, with similar results, were enacted in 1835. But that was the last Chicago saw of the red men. In September, a train of forty wagons, each drawn by four oxen, conveyed away on their far westward march the children and effects of the Pottawatomies, while the squaws and braves walked beside them. It took them twenty days to reach the Mississippi, and twenty days longer it took them to attain a point which can now be reached from Chicago in fifteen hours.

In 1827, Major Long, a government agent sent to visit the place, spoke of the site as "affording no inducements to the settler, the whole amount of trade on the lake not exceeding the cargoes of five or six schooners, even at the time when the garrison received its supplies from the Mackinac." In 1833 the tide of immigration began. At the end of that year there were fifty families floundering in the Chicago mud. In 1834 there were nearly two thousand inhabitants of the town, and at the close of 1835 more than three thousand. In 1835-6 Chicago became the headquarters of a great land speculation. Multitudes of towns sprang up in every direction, on paper. The country was wild with excitement. Even eastern capitalists were seized with the mania, and fortunes were made and lost in this wild gambling in prospective cities. The bubble shortly burst, resulting in great business depression. The State was bankrupt, and Chicago languished. But not for long. Turning from the frenzy of speculation, its inhabitants wisely gave their attention to developing legitimate business interests. The United States had, in 1833, spent $30,000 in dredging out the Chicago River, and in the spring of 1834 a most timely freshet had swept away the bar at the mouth of the river, making it accessible for the largest craft. In 1838 a venturesome trader shipped from that port seventy-eight bushels of wheat. In 1839 four thousand bushels were sent. In 1842 the amount of wheat exported arose all at once from forty thousand bushels to nearly six hundred thousand bushels. In 1839 three thousand cattle were driven across the prairies, and sent to the eastern market; and every year thereafter showed a surprising increase. Yet with all this accumulating commerce, the streets of the city were still quagmires, and many a farmer came to grief with his load of grain within what is now city limits. Before there was a railroad begun or a canal finished, Chicago exported two and a quarter millions of bushels of grain in a year, and sent back on the wagons which brought it loads of merchandise.

The Illinois River is connected with the Chicago River, and through that to Lake Michigan, by a canal which enters it at La Salle, ninety-six miles from Chicago. This canal was begun in 1836 and completed in 1848. It gave a fresh impetus to the youthful western town, and established its future prosperity. Connected as it already was with the east by the magnificent lake and river system of our northern borders, this canal opened up communication with the south and west, and made Chicago the portal, so to speak, between the different sections of our country.

In 1849 the first railroad had approached within ten miles of the city. In 1852 direct communication with the east was gained by the completion of the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern railroads, while more than one western railroad was projected, and some of them were in actual progress of construction. To-day, Illinois and its adjoining States are literally gridironed with iron roads, nearly all of which centre at Chicago. In 1857 there were living beside the still stagnant waters of the Chicago River one hundred thousand people.

In 1871 Chicago was the fourth city of the country, claiming a population of 334,000 persons. By a chef d'ouvre of engineering, the waters of the river had been turned backward, and made to carry away its sewage to fertilize the shores of the Illinois and the Mississippi. The streets had been drained, hollow places filled up, and their grade had been gradually raised, until it stood twelve feet higher than at first. Some of the buildings were raised at once to the latest established grade, and others remained as they had been built. The consequence was that the plank sidewalks became a series of stairs, adapting themselves to the buildings which they fronted. The principal streets were paved with stone or with the Nicholson pavement. The triple river was spanned by no less than seventeen drawbridges, while two tunnels afforded uninterrupted travel between the opposite sides. Efficient waterworks had been constructed to provide pure water for the use of the city. The total trade for the year previous to the great fire was estimated at $400,000,000. Its grain trade had reached such enormous proportions that seventeen large elevators, with an aggregate capacity of 11,580,000 bushels were required for its accommodation. Eighteen banks were in operation, with an aggregate capital of $10,000,000 and with nearly $17,000,000 of deposits. The city was beginning to give its attention largely to manufactures, and its lumber trade had grown into something almost fabulous. Miles of lumber yards extended along one of the forks of the river, and its harbor was sometimes choked with arriving lumber vessels. In a single day, three or four years before the fire, a favorable wind blew into port no less than two hundred and eighteen vessels loaded with lumber. One hundred passenger and one hundred and twenty freight trains arrived and departed daily; and seventy-five vessels unloaded and loaded at her wharves every twenty-four hours.

Chicago Redivivus should bear upon her shield a cow rampant. On the evening of the eighth of October, 1871, Mrs. Scully's cow kicked herself into history, and Chicago into ruin and desolation. Chicago is divided by the river and its branches into three different sections, known as the north, south and west sides. The principal business portion of the city is on the south side, and along the margins of the lake and streams. The "burnt district," which even yet the Chicagoan will outline to the visitor with peculiar pride, was confined almost wholly to the south and north sides.

On the evening of October seventh a planing mill had caught fire on the west side, and the conflagration had spread over a territory embracing about twenty acres, destroying a million dollars' worth of property. This fire, terrible as it seemed, probably saved the west side from destruction on that fatal night of the eighth, imposing as it did a broad banner of desolation, when the flames essayed to leap across the river.

At about nine o'clock in the evening of Sunday, October eighth, 1871, a cow kicked over a lantern among loose, dry hay, in a stable at or near the corner of Jefferson and DeKoven streets, on the west side. There had been no rain of any consequence for fourteen weeks, and roofs and wooden buildings were as dry as tinder. There was a strong wind blowing from the southwest, and before the engines could reach the spot, half a dozen adjoining buildings were wrapped in flames. The buildings of that quarter were mostly of wood, and there were several lumber yards along the margin of the river. The flames swept through these with resistless fury, and then made a bold and sudden leap across the river into the very heart of the business portion of the south side. Many of the buildings here also were of wood, while the wooden sidewalks, and wooden block pavements, the latter filled with an inflammable composition, seemed constructed especially to aid and hasten the work of the flames. The fire marched steadily toward the north and east, destroying everything in its course. Even fireproof buildings seemed to melt down as it touched them.

The wind increased to a gale, and all night long the fire wrought its terrible will, like a devouring demon; and at sunrise it had already leaped the narrow barrier of the river, and was devastating the northern side, sweeping away block after block of the wooden structures which occupied to a large extent that quarter of the city. The flames seized upon the shipping in the river, and when it left it only blackened hulls remained. The water supply, upon which the city had founded hopes in case of such extremity, failed. The walls of the buildings, weakened by the overpowering heat, had fallen in upon the engines, and hope was quenched in that quarter.

The flames spread southward as far as Taylor street, and to the northward they only paused when, at Fullerton avenue, the broad prairie lay before them, and there was nothing more to burn. The track of the fire was nearly five miles in length, running north and south, and averaged a mile in width. It continued from nine o'clock on Sunday night until daybreak Tuesday morning, and then nothing was left of all the business portion of Chicago, save a vast blackened field on which the flames still smouldered, with piles of rubbish, formed by fallen buildings, and here and there portions of walls still standing. Every bank, insurance office, hotel, theatre, railroad depot, law office, newspaper office, most of the churches, all but one of the wholesale stores, and many of the warehouses and retail stores, six elevators, fifty vessels, and sixteen thousand dwellings, including many elegant mansions, besides numberless humble homes, were destroyed; two hundred persons killed, and a hundred thousand people suddenly found themselves homeless and penniless, without food to eat or clothes to wear.

The scenes accompanying the fire were terrible and heart-rending. They were a mingling of the horrible and grotesque, the tragic and the ridiculous, such as was probably never witnessed before on so grand a scale, and we trust will never be repeated; and over it all the smoke hung like a pall, stifling and blinding, and the flames cast a baleful glare, which lit up the scene and made it seem like a literal inferno.

The fire spread with a rapidity which baffled all attempts to check it. Many made a feeble effort to save their household goods, an effort which was too often futile, while others barely escaped with their lives, clad only in their scant night garments. The streets were filled with a frantic multitude; vehicles of every description, laden with movable property; men, women and children, some of them burdened with their belongings, and others nearly naked, forgetful of all but the terrible danger of the hour, all wild with the insanity born of fear, and all fleeing from the pursuing demon which pressed on behind them, and whose hot breath scorched their garments and singed their hair. Many took refuge in the river or the lake; but the hissing flames stooped down and licked the water, and the poor victims were made to feel the tortures of a double death. Very few of these escaped with their lives.

The progress of the flames was so swift that many were overwhelmed by the crumbling walls of their houses or workshops before they had time to escape, and found in them a fiery tomb. Others were suffocated by the smoke. Children were separated from parents, and young and old sought safety wherever they could find it, and a mad panic reigned everywhere. Many saloons were thrown open, and whisky flowed freely, and the turbulent riot of drunkenness was added, to increase the confusion and despair of the dreadful night. Sneak thieves and larger depredators found spoil on every hand. In this terrible calamity each one seemed to throw off his mask, and become what he really was – the brave man, the noble gentleman, the selfish coward, the bully or the thief.

A single leaf of a quarto Bible, charred around its edges, was all that was left of the immense stock of the Western News Company. It contained the first chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which begins with the following words: "How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her."

The amount lost by the insurance companies, American and foreign, by the Chicago fire, was $88,634,133. More than 2,200 acres were swept by the flames in the space of thirty hours. The value of buildings alone consumed was estimated at $75,000,000, while their contents were at least as much more. The total loss probably was not much less than $200,000,000.

No sooner had the news of the dreadful calamity gone abroad to the world, than the spirit of generosity prompted efficient aid from all quarters. St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Cleveland, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Montreal, cities and towns in the north, south, east and west, sent generous, and some of them princely, donations. Even China forwarded $1,290. By December first the public cash donations had reached $2,508,000. The naked were clothed, the hungry fed, the homeless housed in at least temporary quarters, and Chicago set herself to the task of reconstruction.

The smouldering ruins were yet glowing with heat, and the smoke was still ascending here and there, when, on Wednesday morning, the work of regeneration began. Within a month, five or six thousand temporary tenements had been erected. Meantime the foundations for the permanent structures were being laid, on a scale far surpassing those of the past. In a year not a trace of the fire remained.

Nearly three years later, on July fourteenth, 1874, another great fire swept over the devoted city, destroying eighteen blocks, or sixty acres, in the heart of the city, and about $4,000,000 worth of property. Over six hundred houses were consumed, but by far the larger number were mere wooden shanties.

To-day Chicago counts her great fire as one of her chief blessings. The city is entirely rebuilt, but not with rickety wooden structures, the previous plenitude of which had rendered her so easy a prey to the devouring element. Solid, substantial, handsome, and in many instances magnificent, the stranger can scarcely realize that these blocks of buildings are not the growth of a century, or of a generation even, but have sprung from the ground almost in a night. The new Chicago is surpassingly beautiful and grand. The visitor will walk through squares and squares of streets, each teeming with life and commercial activity, and bearing no trace, save in increased elegance, of the disaster of little more than a decade ago; and is forced to the conclusion that, for courage and enterprise, Chicago has proved herself unsurpassed by any city in the world.

Chicago has a water frontage of thirty-eight miles, of which twenty-four are improved, without including the lake front, where an outer harbor is in process of construction. The rivers are now spanned by thirty-five drawbridges, while a tunnel, 1,608 feet long, with a descent of forty-five feet, connects the south and west sides of Washington street, and another tunnel, with a total length of 1,854 feet, connects the north and south sides on the line of La Salle street.

State street, on the south side, is the Broadway of Chicago. Randolph street is famous for its magnificent buildings, among which are the city and the county halls. Washington street is one of the fashionable promenades, lined with retail stores, though Dearborn street closely rivals it. The United States Custom House and Post Office, a magnificent structure, costing upward of $5,000,000, occupies the square bounded by Clark, Adams, Jackson and Dearborn streets. The Chamber of Commerce, a spacious and imposing building, with elaborate interior decorations, is at the corner of Washington and La Salle streets, opposite City Hall Square. Its ceiling is frescoed with allegorical pictures representing the trade of the city, the great fire and the rebuilding. The Union Depot, in Van Buren street, at the head of La Salle, is among the finest buildings of the city. The Exposition Building is a vast ornate structure of iron and glass, occupying the lake front, extending from Monroe to Jackson street, and with a front of eight hundred feet on Michigan avenue. The centre of the edifice is surmounted by a dome one hundred and sixty feet high and sixty feet in diameter. Annual expositions of the art and industry of the city are held here every autumn.

Among the hotels of Chicago the Palmer House takes the lead. This house was destroyed by the fire, but has been rebuilt with a magnitude and elaborateness far exceeding its former self, and constituting it one of the finest, if not the finest, in the world. It is entirely fireproof, being constructed only of incombustible materials, brick, stone, iron, marble and cement. It has three fronts, on State and Monroe streets and Wabash avenue, and the building and furnishing cost $3,500,000. It is kept on both the American and European plans, and continually accommodates from six hundred to one thousand guests. The Grand Pacific Hotel is but little inferior to the Palmer House. It occupies half the block bounded by Jackson, Clark, Adams and La Salle streets. The Sherman and Tremont Houses are fine hotels and centrally located.

There are about three hundred churches in Chicago, including those untouched by fire and those which have been since rebuilt. The great Tabernacle, on Monroe street, where Messrs. Moody and Sankey held their meetings, is used for sacred concerts and other religious gatherings, and will seat ten thousand persons.

In literary and educational institutions Chicago holds a foremost place. Its common schools are among the best in the country, with large, handsome, convenient and well-ventilated buildings. The University of Chicago, founded by the late Stephen A. Douglas, occupies a beautiful site overlooking the lake, and boasts the largest telescope in America. It has a Public Library containing 60,000 volumes. The Academy of Sciences lost a valuable collection of 38,000 specimens in the fire, but has erected a new building and is slowly gathering a new museum and library. There are three Theological Seminaries, and three Medical Colleges, three hospitals, and a large number of charitable institutions within the city. The fire department is most efficiently organized, and its annual expenses are scarcely less than $1,000,000.

Chicago has the most extensive system of parks and boulevards of any city in the United States. Lincoln Park, lying upon the lake to the northward, contains 310 acres, and served, during the great fire, as a place of refuge for thousands of people driven thither by the raging element. The Lake Shore Drive, the great north side boulevard, extends from Pine street to Lake View, and is one of the finest drives in the world. Humboldt Park, Central Park and Douglas Park extend along the western boundaries of the city, are large, contain lakes, ponds, walks, drives, fountains and statuary, and are connected with each other by wide and elaborately ornamented boulevards. The great South Parks are approached on the north by Drexel and Grant Boulevards. Drexel Boulevard is devoted exclusively to pleasure, all traffic over it being forbidden. The most southerly of the two south parks extends upwards of a mile and a half along the shore of the lake. Union Park is located in the very centre of the residence portion of the west side.

Whatever Chicago accomplishes is on so gigantic a scale that strangers almost hold their breath in astonishment. Among the titanic achievements of this youthful giant are the waterworks, which supply pure drinking water to its six hundred thousand population. The water supply is by means of a tunnel sent out under Lake Michigan for a distance of two miles, the water being forced by numerous engines into an immense standpipe, 154 feet high. The works are situated at the foot of Chicago avenue. In tunneling under the lake, excavations went on simultaneously at the land end and two miles out in the lake; and so accurate were the calculations that when the two tunnels met in the centre, they were found to be but seven and one-half inches out of the line, and there was a variation of but three inches in the horizontal measurements. This tunnel, which is made of iron, protected by heavy masonry, is large enough for a canoe to pass through it when it is but partially filled with water, it being nine feet in diameter. The exit at the lake end of the tunnel is protected by a breakwater, and securely anchored to its place by means of heavy stones. Storms never affect it, save sometimes to produce a light tremor; and even large fields of ice, which grate by it with a fearful, crunching noise, have thus far failed to shake its foundations.

Chicago ships a considerable portion of her grain in the shape of flour, there being extensive flouring mills in the city. The present annual export of flour is probably not less than 3,000,000 barrels. Chicagoans have also found it possible to pack fifteen or twenty bushels of corn in a single barrel. "The corn crop," remarks Mr. Ruggles, "is condensed and reduced in bulk by feeding it into an animal form, more portable. The hog eats the corn, and Europe eats the hog. Corn thus becomes incarnate, for what is a hog but fifteen or twenty bushels of corn on four legs?" The business of pork-packing has attained enormous proportions in Chicago. It has entirely superseded Cincinnati, the former "Porkopolis," in this branch of trade. Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Milwaukee do not together furnish a total number of head slaughtered equal to that of Chicago.

The stock yards, just outside the city limits on the southwest, are the largest in the world. They cover hundreds of acres, and constitute what has been styled "The Great Bovine City of the World." This bovine city is regularly laid out in streets and alleys crossing each other at right angles. The principal street is called Broadway, and it is a mile long and seventy-five feet wide. On either side are the cattle pens, and it is divided by a light fence into three paths, so that herds of cattle can pass one another without wrangling, and leave an unobstructed road for the drovers. These yards are connected with all the railroads in the west centering in Chicago. The company have twenty-five miles of track. A cattle train stops along the street of pens; the side of each car is removed, and the living freight pass over a declining bridge into clean, planked inclosures, where food and water is quickly furnished them. A large and comfortable hotel furnishes accommodation for their owners; there is a Cattle Exchange, a spacious and elegant edifice; a bank solely for the cattle-men's use; and a telegraph office, which reports the price of beef, pork and mutton from all parts of the world. The present capacity of the yards is 25,000 head of cattle, 100,000 hogs, 22,000 sheep, and 1,200 horses. A town of five thousand inhabitants has grown up in the immediate vicinity of these stock yards.

In some of the yards not less than five hundred beeves are slaughtered daily. Much of this beef is sent in refrigerator cars to the Atlantic cities, while enormous quantities are cooked and packed in cans and sent all over the world.

Suburban towns have spread out from Chicago, in every direction, over the prairie. South Chicago, one of the principal of these, is twelve miles to the southward, at the mouth of the Calumet river, and has a large amount of capital invested in iron and steel works. The sloughy morasses which still exist between the parent city and its thrifty offshoots are fast being filled up, and bridged over with pavements, so that the mud, which a generation ago was the chief distinguishing feature of Chicago and its vicinity, but which is now confined to outlying sections, will soon be a thing of the past. Chicago is itself extending rapidly in all directions, and numberless suburban streets are lined with pretty cottages, whose rural surroundings have given to the city its appropriate name of "The Garden City."