Chicago, 1858: The City That Raised Itself

Spend one ordinary winter day in Chicago in January 1858, the winter the raising of Chicago began: from the gas lamps lit on Lake Street at dusk to the next day's sunset. The city is built so low beside the lake that its streets turn to mud every spring, so Chicago has decided to lift itself out of the mud. On the corner of Randolph and Dearborn, a four-storey brick block stands on two or three hundred iron screws, and men turn them by hand, a little each day, while the shops inside stay open. We walk the plank streets and the sidewalks that climb up and down in wooden stairs, watch whole houses waiting on rollers, keep the moonless watch with the man in the Court House cupola, follow the trains and the grain before dawn, and see the sun come up over the frozen lake on a city that is quietly rising. Settle in, pull the blanket close, and let the city rise around you. Chapters 0:00:00 The Lamps on Lake Street 0:04:23 A Block on Screws 0:17:37 Why the City Had to Rise 0:31:34 The Grade 0:43:51 Evening in the Planked Streets 0:56:39 Houses on Rollers 1:08:12 The Watch in the Cupola 1:20:09 Trains and Grain Before Dawn 1:32:03 Before the Sun 1:44:02 The Screws Turn 1:58:02 A Street of Open Doors 2:09:46 The Lifted City About this video The story is researched from records of the time: Chicago newspapers of 1855 to 1859 (the Daily Tribune and the Weekly Chicago Times), "Chicago in 1856" in Putnam's Monthly, Ellis S. Chesbrough's Report and Plan of Sewerage for the City of Chicago (1855), the photographs of Alexander Hesler, and A. T. Andreas's History of Chicago. Where a source comes from a few years before or after 1858, we follow the city as it was in those years. The images are AI-generated recreations. The narrator's voice is synthetic. Map: Bird's-eye view of Chicago, 1857, drawn by J. T. Palmatary, published by Braunhold & Sonne (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division; public domain). #history #chicago #raisingofchicago Sound credits (Wikimedia Commo