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 hydraulic power for the use of the city. The Illinois and Michigan Canal has been supplemented by the Illinois and Mississippi Canal, commonly known as “the Hennepin,” from its starting at the great bend of the Illinois river 1 m. above Hennepin, not far below La Salle; the first appropriation for it was made in 1890, and work was begun in 1892 and completed in October 1907. Its course from Hennepin is by the Bureau Creek valley to the mouth of Queen river on the Rock river, thence by the Rock river and a canal around its rapids at Milan to its mouth at Rock Island on the Mississippi river. This barge canal is 80 ft. wide at water-line, 52 ft. wide at the bottom, and 7 ft. deep. Its main feeder is the Rock river, dammed by a dam nearly 1500 ft. long between Sterling and Rock Falls, Illinois, where the opening of the canal was celebrated on the 24th of October 1907.

Beginning with 1892 steam railways began the elevation (or depression) of their main tracks, of which there were in 1904 some 838 m. within the city. Another great improvement was begun in 1901 by a private telephone company. This is an elaborate system of freight subways, more than 65 m. of which, underlying the entire business district, had been constructed before 1909. It is the only subway system in the world that seeks to clear the streets by the lessening of trucking, in place of devoting itself to the transportation of passengers. Direct connexion is made with the freight stations of all railways and the basements of important business buildings, and coal, building materials, ashes and garbage, railway luggage, heavy mail and other kinds of heavy freight are expeditiously removed and delivered. Telegraph and telephone wires are carried through the tunnel, and can be readily repaired. The subway was opened for partial operation in 1905.

Parks.—The park system may be said to have been begun in 1869, and in 1870 aggregated 1887 acres. Chicago then acquired the name of “The Garden City,” which still clings to her. But many other cities have later passed her (until in 1904, though the second largest of the country, she ranked only thirty-second in her holdings of park area per capita among American cities of 100,000 population). In 1908 the acreage of the municipal parks was 3179 acres, and there were 61.4 m. of boulevards. After 1900 another period of ambitious development began. The improvement of old and the creation of new “internal” parks, i.e. within the cordon of those older parks and boulevards that once girdled the city but have been surrounded in its later growth; the creation of a huge metropolitan ring—similar to that of Boston but vaster (35,000 acres)—of lake bluffs, hills, meadows, forests and river valley; and a great increase of “neighbourhood parks” in the poor districts, are included in the new undertakings. The neighbourhood park, usually located near a school, is almost all-inclusive in its provision for all comers, from babyhood to maturity, and is open all day. There are sand gardens and wading ponds and swings and day nurseries, gymnasiums, athletic fields, swimming pools and baths, reading-rooms—generally with branches of the city library—lunch counters, civic club rooms, frequent music, assembly halls for theatricals, lectures, concerts, or meetings, penny savings banks, and in the winter skating ponds. These social centres have practically all been created since about 1895. There are also municipal baths on the lake front and elsewhere. The older parks include several of great size and beauty. Lincoln Park (area 552 acres), on the lake shore of the North Side, has been much enlarged by an addition reclaimed from the lake. It has fine monuments, conservatories, the only zoological garden in the city, and the collections of the Academy of Sciences. A breakwater carriage drive connects with a boulevard to Fort Sheridan (27 m.) up the lake. Jackson Park (542 acres), on the lake shore of the South Side, was the main site of the World’s

Columbian Exposition of 1893, and contains the Field Columbian Museum, occupying the art building of the exposition. It is joined with Washington Park (371 acres) by the Midway Plaisance, a wide boulevard, intended to be converted into a magnificent sunken water-course connecting the lagoons of the two parks with Lake Michigan. Along the Midway are the greystone buildings of the University of Chicago, and of its (Blaine) School of Education. On the West Side are three fine parks—Douglas, Garfield (with a fine conservatory), and Humboldt, which has a remarkable rose garden (respectively 182, 187 and 206 acres), and in the extreme South Side several others, including Calumet (66 acres), by the lake side, and Marquette (322 acres). Jackson Boulevard, Western Avenue Boulevard and Marshall Boulevard join the South and the West Park systems. Neither New York nor Boston has preserved as has Chicago the beauty of its water front. The shore of the North Side is quite free, and beginning a short distance above the river is skirted for almost 30 m. by the Lake Shore Drive, Lincoln Park and the Sheridan Drive. The shore of the South Side is occupied by railway tracks, but they have been sunk and the shore otherwise improved. In addition to Calumet and Jackson parks there was another just below the river, Lake Park, which has since been included in Grant Park, mostly reclaimed from the water. Here are the public library and the building of the Art Institute (opened in 1893); the park had also been proposed as the site of a new building for the Field Museum of Natural History. The park and boulevards along the lake in 1905 stretched 10.78 m., within the city limits, or almost half the total frontage. The inner “boulevards” are broad parked ways, 150 to 300 ft. wide, joining the parks; Chicago was the first American city to adopt this system.

Art.—Among the monuments erected in public places are a Columbus by D. C. French and a bronze replica of French’s equestrian statue of Washington in Paris; statues of John A. Logan and Abraham Lincoln by St Gaudens; monuments commemorating the Haymarket riot and the Fort Dearborn massacres; statues of General Grant, Stephen A. Douglas, La Salle, Schiller, Humboldt, Beethoven and Linnaeus. There is also a memorial to G. B. Armstrong (1822–1871), a citizen of Chicago, who founded the railway mail service of the United States. A city art commission approves all works of art before they become the property of the city, and at the request of the mayor acts in various ways for the city’s aesthetic betterment. The Architectural Club labours for the same end. A Municipal Art League (organized in 1899) has done good work in arousing civic pride; it has undertaken, among other things, campaigns against bill-board advertisements, and against the smoke nuisance.

The Art Institute of Chicago contains valuable collections of paintings, reproductions of bronzes and sculpture, architectural casts, and other objects of art. Connected with it is the largest and most comprehensive art school of the county—including newspaper illustration and a normal school for the training of teachers of drawing in the public schools. The institute was incorporated in 1879, though its beginnings go back to 1866, while the school dates from 1878. The courses in architecture are given with the co-operation of the Armour Institute of Technology. There are also a number of notable private art collections in the city. In 1894 the Chicago Public School Art Society was founded to secure the placing of good works of art in the public schools. Picture collections are also exchanged among the neighbourhood-park homes.

Music in Chicago owes much to the German element of the population. Especially noteworthy among musical organizations