April 23, 2008: Chicago at night

IotD has always enjoyed the "at night" images, and here's one offered up with a Creative Commons license that permits us all to enjoy it as long as it's attributed to flickr user myelectricsheep.

My first instinct was to pull up a session of SimCity's latest incarnation; the game designers' approach usually gets you that grid pattern of roads and streets.

My second thought was: I've seen this. In Flight Simulator. There's O'Hare off to the upper left, Midway's actually one of those dark squares, but I'm going to bear right and aim at little Meigs Field... which no longer exists in real life.

Do I game too much? Well of course.

It's funny to think that it hasn't always been this color, and may not be this color forever. Before the bright sodium lights became the standard streetlight, it would have been dimmer and whiter. With all the research going into low-power lighting, maybe there will be a time when the light at night is once again a whiter, more natural shade. I don't think any of us would choose that particular shade of nighttime light, if we thought about it.

My first thought: I'm not driving into that.


pretty cool, UT, I love these night photos, too. thanks!

it's tomorrow already?

I'm confused!

Beautiful.

But I have to agree with Brianna. The thought of driving into that wouldn't appeal to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Undertoad snip-- It's funny to think that it hasn't always been this color, and may not be this color forever. Before the bright sodium lights became the standard streetlight, it would have been dimmer and whiter. With all the research going into low-power lighting, maybe there will be a time when the light at night is once again a whiter, more natural shade. I don't think any of us would choose that particular shade of nighttime light, if we thought about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigV Breathtaking!

I think I can see the Cubs losing from here...

Haha, it's April 23rd already? I thought that was a real picture at first, amazing that it's from a game.

It's April 23 in most of the world actually. Once our Aussie friends started posting I figured Aussie time was fair game.

And yeah, no, it's a real picture... I was just saying I'd seen it in context of a game. This is at 38,000 feet I think.

Thats what I like to hear Undertoad, Stop living in the past.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brianna My first thought: I'm not driving into that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce Quote: Originally Posted by Brianna My first thought: I'm not driving into that. Actually, for a big city, it's not that bad to navigate.

Sure, congestion is a feature of any big city, especially on the expressways, but not nearly as confusing as some big cities.

By the way, on the annotated version, I doubt that's Zion Nuclear Plant at the top. I spent considerable time working there, and think it's further north, out of the picture, halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee.

My kind of town...

Thanks UT. I have dual monitors now at work and needed a new wallpaper.

Chicago at Night by Spoon

Now When She Went To Chicago That Night She Faced A Wall
And She Woke Up Outside With All Those Leaves In Her Mouth
And Felt The Pall
And All Night The Rain Came On Down
But Then She'd Never Been To Chicago At Night Before The Fall
And It Don't Stop Not At All
It Falls All Around
In The City
Hits The Ground

And Now Everybody's At Disadvantage
Speaking With Their Second Language

She'd Never Been There Before They Went And Set Up The Wall
And Though Nobody'd Expected Much From This Reinvention
She Still Broke Right Down After All
Because She Knew That It Was All Over And We'd Hit A Wall
And Like The Fall This Was All
Now It's All Around
In The City
On The Ground

And Now Everybody's At Disadvantage
Speaking With Their Second Language

And I Never Been To The Wall
Never Been To The Wall
Never Been To The Wall
Never Been To The Wall
Never Been To The Wall
Never Been To The Wall
Never Been To The Wall

Oh, look up there at the top of the picture. That's the alley where they shot the mountain lion last week.

Cops kill cougar on North Side

At first glance I'm reminded of the opening credits in Tron.

... which reminds me of one of my favourite albums:

(listen here ...)

And now where did the cow kick over the lantern?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPUCK And now where did the cow kick over the lantern?

That's interesting. I've actually been down that way while walking on my lunch hour. No barns or cows in that area now. There is a nice Whole Foods store, though.

Late last night
When we were all in bed
Old lady Leary lit a lantern in the shed
And when the cow kicked it over
She winked her eye and said
It'll be a hot time in the old town tonight
Fire Fire Fire

(sang at Campfire Girls summer camp)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scriveyn Quote: Originally Posted by SPUCK And now where did the cow kick over the lantern? approximately here: Google Maps (formerly DeKoven Street) according to Wikipedia

Left: The O'Learys' house (please note correct apostrophe placement ) was spared, since the fire spread N and NE from their barn--4 miles! (Please see also this old map and this map-illustration.) The O'Learys' barn was in back of the structures pictured, viewed from about DeKoven & Jefferson (looking NE).
" 'The land was thickly studded with one-story frame dwellings, cow stables, pig sties, corncribs, sheds innumerable; every wretched building within four feet of its neighbor, and everything of wood.'
- Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, reporter, Chicago Evening Post" (from PBS page).
Center: Modern view of the O'Leary site, from closer up. The precise spot where the O'Leary barn stood is marked by a dramatic bronze sculpture by Egon Weiner in the plaza in front of the fire academy.
Right: Ich nein sprechen sie Deutsch, but I think "Egon Weiner" can be translated as "wiener agony," as commonly experienced in campfires.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scriveyn approximately here: Google Maps (formerly DeKoven Street) according to Wikipedia

I've been to the Billy Goat Tavern.

Imigo Jones; Nice round up there..

Figgers they'd put a fire academy there!

Classic, xoxoxoBruce!

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce Pssst... they burned down.

Probably not, but then we do know how long these urban renewal projects can take.

Happy Monkey, the "Murder Castle" was blown up and burned down by explosive arson (or in an arsonous explosion ) before Holmes's 1896 execution, either by an accomplice trying to destroy evidence or by just anybody who considered the structure's continuing existence to be an abomination. The site is in the heart of the South Side, in Englewood, at 63rd St. & Wallace, between the Dan Ryan and Halsted. If you know where to look, it's in the aerial photo, about 1 mile SW of Washington Park. Next time I'm on 63rd, I'll have to keep an eye out for the post office that was built on the site in 1938.

_____


Disclaimer before someone suspects that my writing about Chicago is fraudulent: I've never lived in Chicagoland. Due to friends and relatives, though, it's been my own "second" hometown all my life. (Chicago was the city of my father's birth, and where he lived into his 30s; and Grandpa & Grandma still lived there when I was a kid; my family lived in Lake County for a few years [my luck: they moved up there 2 years after I'd moved out on my own--but at least they gave me their new address]; and several relatives, including a brother and his family, still live in the City and in the metro area.)

So, I'm uniquely unqualified to call myself a Chicagoan. Anyway, I'd been directly past the O'Leary / fire academy site, driving up Jefferson, I don't know, a dozen, 15, 20 times; indirectly past on Roosevelt (within sight of the academy) countless times. I'd slowed down, but all those times, I'd never once stopped to visit, on foot, the Chicago Fire's ground zero and the academy's little museum.

Until this month, that is! (Must be why I'm all hot on this topic. I'm setting a pace, or word & pic volume, as a site newbie I cannot possibly keep up through subsequent topics. :p) Three weeks ago I was in town and found myself going up Jefferson from Roosevelt. Once again I was just rushing by, looking out the window at the tall flame sculpture.

This time, though, I stopped up ahead and walked back down to the fire academy. Spuck, I hope you get a chance to visit sometime! Yes, a very apt site for its current function. Dar and Bruce, the Chicago Fire Academy building--not exactly an Adler & Sullivan design --was dedicated in 1961. The "Chicago" part of the name was replaced with "Robert J. Quinn" in 1978 in honor of a longtime Chicago Fire Department commissioner who, coincidentally, bore that same name. The "Chicago" part, though, remains in metal letters in the red brick wall:

.

So, coming alongside the west wall of the building and entering the plaza (from the left side of the pic), first you see the sculpture where the O'Leary barn stood, with a plaquelike disk around its base, and a plaque by the Chicago Landmarks Commission (or National Register of Historic Places or whomever) close by. Posed across the plaza, I think, are a bronzed helmet and boots to memorialize Chicago (and other) firefighters who died in the line of duty (not necessarily the ones pictured below, but you get the idea):



Inside the building entrance is a lobby with a few items on display. Most interesting are the old horse- (or man-)drawn fire engines from the 19th century, with steam boilers providing high pressure for the pumps.

To the right of the receptionist's desk is a hallway lined with basically two-dimensional displays of CFD history, which I looked at for the better part of an hour:
* Accounts (museum-type text with photos, newspaper reproductions, maps) of big Chicago fires and other disasters the CFD responded to, especially ones that were costly in terms of human life
* Other CFD history, such as the evolution of equipment and of the organization itself
* Plaques honoring annual (and other) award winners
* Memorials for firefighters killed in the line of duty
* Display honoring the brothers and sisters for 9/11

"Chicago Line of Duty Death Total 563"
Chicago Fire Department timeline, following a text history.

It's pretty poignant and sobering, standing there soaking in the tragic and sacrificial history, while behind you are heard the footsteps of current firefighters walking down the hallway to the vending machines in the cafeteria. On the hallway floor are a few more bronzed boots.



There is an area marked in the floor that says something like "On this site on October 8, 1871, began the Great Chicago Fire." I axed the receptionist about which was the actual site of the O'Leary barn: the hallway marker, or the plaza sculpture. She didn't know, and then she asked the firemen she was chatting with, and they weren't sure, either. From the wording on the plaque by the sculpture, that seemed more like the exact spot, though maybe it too was just referring to the general site.

.

The O'Learys' place, behind which stood
the barn in which stood
the cow which kicked over
the lantern in which burned
the flame which ignited
the hay and shavings which started
the Chicago Fire that Jack built.
Left: View to the NE from about DeKoven & Jefferson.
Right: View to the NW from DeKoven. In the background are probably other surviving houses on the other side of Jefferson.

Outside again, I stepped back and tried to visualize the 1871 O'Leary place and its relation to the streets. Considering 1871 street widths and structure sizes, the plaza seemed like the right distance from Jefferson. Given the small size of the O'Leary structures, the sculpture could have also been the right distance back from DeKoven (back at the cow's quarters). I like this sort of thing to be marked accurately . (Real Chicagoans: Did you know that the bronze outline of Fort Dearborn embedded in the pavement all over Michigan & Wacker is actually several feet south of the exact spot? The northwest blockhouse, for instance, would be down the steps and out in the Chicago River, which has been partially straightened since Fort Dearborn days.)

Back to the O'Leary hood: I stepped over to the sidewalk and looked up Jefferson, up the initial path of the fire. Off in the distance are the four tall Presidential Towers (condos), on Madison near the NorthWestern depot. This seemed pretty far off, but Madison is just 1 mile from Roosevelt, and a bit less from where I was standing. The fire had jumped the South Branch of the Chicago River and had not actually burned the site of the Presidential Towers, but east on Madison all would have been destroyed from the river to the lake--which today would include the Civic Opera, First National Bank, and Carson Pirie Scott. That's just on Madison. I was imagining the fire sweeping up everything in its path between where I was standing and to Madison, then another mile up across the river and to Chicago Avenue and the Water Tower. Then yet another mile to North Avenue, along the south edge of Lincoln Park, where fire refugees were seeking refuge in the cemetery then there (and when the lakeshore wasn't nearly as far east). And then yet another mile parallel to the park to Fullerton.



Let me leave you with a Fun Fact culled from the CFD timeline:

1871.10.02 [6 days before the Great Fire]: "Benjamin Bullwinkle selected to head the newly formed Chicago Fire Insurance Patrol."

The Cellar: I now know more about something than anyone I know knows anything about.

Thank you

City fire now thats carbon emission

Scientific evidence has allowed Mrs O'leary and her cow to be exonerated as the cause of the Great Chicago Fire.

Wasn't it Mrs O'Leary's son Jimmy, reading Playboy under the covers with a lantern?

No I believe he was lighting farts!

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce Quote: So, I'm uniquely unqualified to call myself a Chicagoan. We really don't give a rat's ass if you're Chicagoan or Martian. The information, pictures and links, you've posted, are interesting and informative. That's all that matters.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned spontaneous combustion of the hay as a possible cause. It does happen from time to time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dar512 It does happen from time to time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glatt Even in the Cellar.

Hay-hay!

Quote:

Originally Posted by dar512 I'm surprised no one has mentioned spontaneous combustion of the hay as a possible cause. It does happen from time to time.

I'd bet it was loose hay as baling wasn't around until the late 1800s and not widespread until the 1930s.

Mowing the hay, waiting for the sun to toast it to a golden brown, raking it into winrows, hand forking into stacks, then loading it onto a wagon and offloading in the barn, is a tedious process.

Add typical summer weather, with thunderstorms popping up with little or no warning, and it becomes a very hectic ballet. Putting hay away, a little on the wet side to beat a thunderstorm, is quite common, even with modern machinery that sped up the process considerably.

We always tried to spread greenish hay out over the hay mow, but that doesn't mean it will be completely dry before the the next load arrives, because of humidity and lack of circulation in the barn.

Oh, and two ton of hay ain't shit.... yet.

Thanks for the handy firsthand farmhand perspective, Bruce.



Shouldn't that be "heighth"?



Haystack Colonna :p

The City of Chicago has a great site I'd never seen before tonight, getting you close-up aerial photos and various maps, including, it seems, most of the real estate plats and building footprints in town. The aerial photo alone couldn't be posted, but here's the interactive page for the O'Leary homestead / Quinn (Chicago) Fire Academy site.

Jefferson is the unnamed street along the west edge. You can see the Weiner plaza sculpture marking the exact spot where the O'Leary barn stood. (Typing in any other address, you'll see that the site isn't centered in the map--the street is. The star is always placed in the street, so not on the actual site.)



Not from City of Chicago site, but kinda a daytime version of the OP view, and from closer to the Loop

Here's something weird with the footprint type of map (with building outlines): The academy building's footprint is given the address of "1310 S" Jefferson. Notice, though, that this is between 1010 S and 1113 S. The real 1310 S. Jefferson is a few blocks away, on the other side of Roosevelt (1200 S). Also, DeKoven is such a minor street, it doesn't even get its own outline.

Going for the plat doesn't show most of the details of this block, for some reason. You can see, though, how Jefferson has been widened (especially if you zoom out; solid line showing current street edge, dashed line showing former street and alley edges) to eat up most of the corner lot, reducing the distance between Jefferson and the O'Leary site.



Chicago History Museum diorama. In 1871, Michigan Ave. was actually on Lake Michigan. The city had blocked the Illinois Central Railroad from running tracks on this nice real estate, which it needed to get access from 12th Street (Roosevelt Road) to the mouth of the Chicago River. So, the railroad simply built its tracks on a causeway parallel to Michigan Avenue, the lake being under the jurisdiction of the more agreeable State of Illinois.

Rubble from the fire was thrown into the water between avenue and tracks, contributing mightily to the development of Grant Park (hafta check its history; I think some of the space between avenue and tracks had already been turned into a boating lagoon, but fire debris was the first fill). The tracks are still there, going under the Art Institute and Millenium Park. Go to this page and click "Previous" and "Next" for more of the diorama.

Check out these HDR photos of Chicago at night.