Until 1834, when a drawbridge was erected at Dearborn Street, Chicagoans crossed the river in canoes.
But by the mid-1880s, 35 movable bridges spanned the river and in 1920 a huge bridge was finally built over the river at Michigan Avenue.
We learned all of this-and much more-from a fascinating article called
”Bridges” in the Fall-Winter edition of the always enlightening Chicago History, the magazine published by the Chicago Historical Society.
”Viewed from all directions,” writes Janice Rosenberg in the article,
”Chicago`s bridges are works of art as well as wonders of modern engineering.”
This article could not be more timely, because for the last few weeks-hasn`t it been years?-crews and machines have been repairing the bridge and the sections of Michigan Avenue-upper and lower levels-that extend north to Ohio Street. This has made the area resemble nothing if not some section of a war-torn town.
You can peek over wooden barricades and see gaping holes in the street, thick girders and chunks of concrete. You can, if you are a comely young lass, get ogled by bronzed male construction workers. You can get headaches listening to pounding and, if you are foolish enough to drive this stretch of chewed roadway, get squished into the narrow lanes.
Amid all the dust and decibels, there is little time to appreciate the wonders of the bridge. As Rosenberg informs us: ”Two leaves, weighing 3,340 tons each, rotate on eight 26 1/2-inch trunnions. Concrete piers, 7 1/2 to 12 feet in diameter, are anchored to the bedrock beneath the river to support the bridge. . . .”
Even more impressive, because we can see them, are the pylons that sit at each of the bridge`s corners. When having to cross the bridge during this construction period we have made it a point to pause at the relief sculptures that adorn the pylons: ”Pioneers,” with John Kinzie, one of the city`s first settlers (northwest); ”Discoverers,” marking the exploits of explorers Marquette and Joliet (northeast); ”Defense,” our favorite, which depicts the Ft. Dearborn Massacre (southwest); and ”Regeneration,” which honors the city`s rebuilding after the fire of 1871 (southeast).
