Raising of Chicago

I don&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>My dad&#x27;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.<p>I also know of one or two old homes from around this time period in the neighborhood I grew up in (which wasn&#x27;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.

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: &quot;Many of the city&#x27;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.&quot; Just crazy!

I like that in the drawing of the men lifting the hotel, there&#x27;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 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;us-news&#x2F;2021&#x2F;feb&#x2F;22&#x2F;victorian-house-rolls-through-san-francisco-new-address" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;us-news&#x2F;2021&#x2F;feb&#x2F;22&#x2F;victorian-ho...</a><p>The Guardian also has an article written back then: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;us-news&#x2F;2021&#x2F;feb&#x2F;23&#x2F;san-francisco-victorian-house-moved" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;us-news&#x2F;2021&#x2F;feb&#x2F;23&#x2F;san-francisc...</a>

Ah man - this is one of the cooler things i&#x27;ve ever heard of. I first heard of it in PBS doco &quot;Chicago: City of the Century&quot;. That documentary - is one of the finest chronicles of modern society i&#x27;ve ever seen. The insights into psychology, civil engineering, and history are second to none. Most profound to me were the &quot;design&quot; of suburbs with the trappings we dont think very much of these days - libraries, pools, shopping centres and so on - were created to push &quot;ideal lives&quot; which were basically the dangled carrots of real estate empires. Brilliant stuff.

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.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wacker_Drive" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wacker_Drive</a>

I feel like only in places like Chicago could this have worked. It&#x27;s like the water system in Chicago, just massive. And everyone just shrugs and says, &quot;Dig 100 miles of deep tunnel and massive reservoirs? Yep. Let&#x27;s get &#x27;er done.&quot;<p>A lot of places I&#x27;ve lived, things like that wouldn&#x27;t fly. I was equally amazed at Phoenix with their, what I can only call a &quot;strategic water reserve&quot;.<p>A lot of thought and money goes into stuff like that.<p>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, <i>(Oh, and pay for it by the way)</i>, they would yank you from office and tell you to go F yourself.

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. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;eRJZvDHCgWQ73KZLA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maps.app.goo.gl&#x2F;eRJZvDHCgWQ73KZLA</a>

I&#x27;ve told people about this event before and they couldn&#x27;t believe it! Then I tried to research it more, find more depictions and there&#x27;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.

A fair number of cities have done this, Galveston, Sacramento, Seattle.

This will totally (have to) happen in Amsterdam within the century.