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Amazing stuff: During the 1850s and 1860s engineers carried out a piecemeal raising of the level of central Chicago. Streets, sidewalks and buildings were either built up or else physically raised up on jacks. This work was paid for both out of the public purse and by private property owners.
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Homeowners that didn't have access to government funds and couldn't afford to have their houses jacked up with money out of their own pockets simply had to create a new front door out of the 2nd story of their home and build a wooden bridge across their front yard - which was now below street level - to get to the sidewalk in front of their house.
If you look carefully at some of the old buildings in traditionally poor and working class neighborhoods, you might spot a few of theses houses sill standing, with their foundations and even their entire front and back yards below street level.
These are some pics I took a couple of years ago of the house where my Grandfather, Len Kody, was born in 1924, on Archer Ave. in the McKinley Park neighborhood, where he lived until he was married--
Jacking? Did it stop?
Len, so that's the front of the house?
The first 3 pics are of the front of the house. I'm on the sidewalk on the north side of Archer, facing north.
Might be kinda hard to judge the depth in a 2D image, but beyond the chain link fence, the front yards of all the houses on this block are 4 feet or so below street level.
For that last pic up there I went around back to the alley and shot facing south. So that's Archer Ave. in the background, and the yard below.
Here's a wider shot of the whole scene that I took from the south side of Archer, facing north, which might help to give the above pics some context--
Yes, I did know Chicago was raised from the mud. It is amazing, but true.
This is the way George Pullman first made his money. More of it went on after the fire. Most of Streeterville is landfill (begun, somewhat accidentally, by Capt. Streeter, who should be far better known as a figure of local history than he is. He's at least as colorful as San Francisco's Emperor Norton).
When the World Science Fiction Convention was in Chicago in 2000, there was a "Planet Chicago" exhibit, showcasing Chicago as a "terraformed" city, due to the raising of the city, the rearranging of the coastline, the reversal of the Chicago River, and so on.
Chicago as a "terraformed" city. Ha! I love it. That's the perfect way to put it.
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