It’s been a lousy week for pedestrians.
With piles of melting snow turning to pools of foot-deep, puddinglike slush, walkers have had to tiptoe and wade their way across city streets–all the while blasted by icy gusts off the lake.
But for a handful of hearty souls, this seemed like perfect weather for a walking tour of the Loop. Though they traversed more than five blocks and visited six buildings, they were untouched by the blustery March weather.
That was the idea. About 30 people turned their backs on the cold this week to tour Chicago’s underground pedway system, learning more about this weatherproof way to walk the city.
They came from suburbs, foreign lands and even nearby apartments for the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Pedway Loop tour–and to hear about the architecture of the buildings connected by the tunnels. The foundation began offering the tours three years ago, and it now provides four each winter.
Like Ann Pettigrew, most had never ventured beneath the city streets, out of fear of getting lost in the maze of some three miles of tunnels, lobbies and skyways that make up the system.
“I’m a walker and it would be nice to know on days like today and yesterday how to get to buildings without the wind whipping through you,” Pettigrew said this week.
Pettigrew lives on East Randolph Street, just steps from a pedway entrance but had never tried the system. The tour, she said, taught her the tunnels were safe.
“People hear about the pedway, but are afraid to go down there by themselves,” said Penny Obenshain, one of three Architecture Foundation volunteers leading a tour this week. Obenshain is also the tour’s creator.
One of the reasons the system is so confusing, she said, is because it was built in bits and pieces during the last 40 years.
The piecemeal approach is apparent in one tunnel connecting City Hall with the James R. Thompson Center that slopes awkwardly, evidence of a miscommunication between government bodies. And though one could walk underground from the Fairmont Hotel at 200 N. Columbus Drive to Three First National Plaza at 70 W. Madison St., to reach the series of tunnels beneath the nearby Hyatt Regency, at 151 E. Wacker Drive, you must leave the subterranean tubes altogether.
Obenshain started the tour as a way of teaching visitors how to get around in the Loop in the winter. But she soon discovered that the pedway system was as foreign to many native Chicagoans as it was to the Japanese.
“People don’t know where they are going–it is easy to lose direction underground,” she said. “And they don’t know how to get in.”
Obenshain’s program begins above terra firma, gazing down from a balcony onto the lobby of the Three National Plaza building. But the group was eager to go below.
“I’ve always been fascinated by it,” Ulrike Dieterle of Madison, Wis., said of the pedway system. “It seems logical because of the weather.”
Indeed, Chicago’s first tunnel for people was created to protect pedestrians from weather woes.
“Peacock Alley” was built around 1894 to connect the Congress Hotel with the Auditorium Theater.
Though Peacock Alley was closed in 1911, the idea remained. In 1951, the city built the first links in today’s system–two one-block tunnels connecting the State Street and Dearborn Street subways. It grew as a means to avoid bad weather and reduce foot traffic on city streets.
With more than 20,000 people passing through those subway-connector tunnels each day, they are the busiest sections of the underground network.
Though the pedway system reveals few architectural gems, Obenshain emphasizes its function over form. Pedway users can buy flowers, bank, eat and even get a dental exam below ground.
Near the end of the tour, Obenshain passes out a coveted pedway treasure–the elusive pedway map.
For years, pedway novices, confounded by the system’s willy-nilly twists and turns, complained of the difficulty in finding pedway maps. Last year, the city came out with a color-coded version available in small quantities at the City Hall information desk.
