Y E S T E R D AY ’ S C I T Y

The Marseilles of
Lake Michigan
THEODORE J. KARAMANSKI

C
hicago’s nickname—before the “windy city,”
“the city that works,” or “the city with big
shoulders”—was the “Queen of the Lakes.”
In 1871, more ships arrived in Chicago than
in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Charleston, and Mobile combined. The port of Chicago
was the entrepot of the Great Lakes and one of the
greatest ports in the world. As a port city, Chicago grew
to prominence and its maritime industries shaped its
nineteenth-century character. Milwaukee and Racine,
Green Bay and Muskegon, and other ports of Lake
Michigan, while significant in their own right, took a
back seat to Chicago’s port in shipping on Lake
Michigan. Three-quarters of all cargoes shipped out of
Lake Michigan came from the Chicago harbor. Historian
James Parton accurately, if rather grandly, captured the
nature of this relationship when he referred to Chicago
as the “Marseilles of our Mediterranean.”
Chicago’s geographic position, where the prairie and
the lake meet, shaped the city’s economic destiny. The
schooner’s humble maritime technology allowed those
opportunities to be realized. Other types of sailing ships
frequented the port, but schooners—vessels with two or
more masts rigged with sails parallel to the hull of the
ship—outnumbered them all. The mast and sail arrange-
ment of the schooner made for a maneuverable vessel
that a small crew could man. Although steamboats fre-
quented Chicago after 1833, neither they nor the rail-
road dislodged schooners from their niche in interstate
commodity commerce. Schooners were to nineteenth-
century Chicago what tractor-trailer trucks are to today’s
city: ubiquitous, indispensable, and ignored, except
when they caused a traffic jam.

This 1864 Louis Kurz lithograph, highlighting pictures of the city’s

many ports and schooners, proclaims Chicago to be the “Metropolis
of the Northwest.”

40 | Chicago History | Spring 2000

Yesterday’s City | 41
 Chicagoans embraced that chaos for half a century.
“The blackened waters of the river,” described Frank
Norris in his novel The Pit, “disappeared under fleets of
tugs, of lake steamers, of lumber barges from Sheboygan
and Mackinaw, of grain boats from Duluth, of coal scows
that filled the air with impalpable dust, of cumbersome
schooners laden with produce, of grimy rowboats
dodging the prows and paddles of larger craft, while on
all sides, blocking the horizon, red in color and desig-
nated by Brobdingnag letters, towered the hump-shoul-
dered elevators.”
By the mid- to late 1800s, twenty-seven spans, which
pivoted on piers sunk in the center of the river, bridged
the busy stream that divided the business district. These
swing bridges, designed to facilitate both maritime and
pedestrian access to the central city, frustrated both. The
bridge piers reduced the already narrow river channel to
a needle-eye passage. The bridge’s constant opening and
closing maddened the masters of vessels moving up river,
and left pedestrians, suddenly cut off from their business
across the river, stomping their feet with frustration. On
a single day in 1854, twenty-four thousand pedestrians
and six thousand teams of horses crossed the Clark
Street bridge. Yet during that same day one hundred
boats passed under Clark Street and the bridge was open
for a total of three hours.

Nineteenth-century Chicago stood first and foremost Ships and grain elevators crowded the Chicago River in 1869 (left).
as a schooner port. Chicago’s enduring commodity mar- This 1892 view of the Chicago River entrance (below) shows stacks
kets grew from the city’s ability to provide cargoes for of lumber waiting to be shipped.
sailing ships. The need to manage the flow of scores of
ships daily, in and out of the Chicago River, challenged
the city’s young infrastructure. Supplying sailors, steve-
dores, drovers, and railroaders with shelter, refreshment,
and entertainment made Chicago the vice capital of the
lakes as well. Chicago’s status as a port contributed to
the city’s frantic, intense nineteenth-century image.
“Here on the shores of Lake Michigan,” wrote a much
impressed visitor, “has risen a great and growing city,
worthy to bear the title of the Empire City of the West.”
The key to the port of Chicago lay in the Chicago
River, which Theodore Dreiser praised as “the smallest
and busiest river in the world.” Dredging throughout
the nineteenth century, along the short main branch of
the river and up the north and south forks, increased
the port’s ample sheltered dockage. The Chicago River
wove its way through the heart of the city: ships could Some Chicagoans took foolish risks to avoid bridge
sail right up to grain elevators, lumberyards, or railroad delays. It became common for pedestrians to remain on
sidings; sailors could make a dash for hundreds of the bridges as they swung open, which reduced their
saloons and bordellos, or the YMCA and a complete delay somewhat, as they could at least walk to the other
range of churches. The river was the hub on which life end of the bridge while the ships were passing. Last-
revolved in nineteenth-century Chicago, but moving a minute leaps from the street to the turning bridge were a
hundred or more ships a day in and out of the bustling regular part of a nineteenth-century Chicagoan’s com-
city invited chaos. mute to work.

42 | Chicago History | Spring 2000

 In November 1863, these dangerous tactics had tragic
results on the Rush Street bridge. A drover moving a
herd of cattle to a northside stockyard tried to hurry his
beeves on to the span as it swung open for an
approaching ship. The bridgetender could have stopped
opening the span, but experience had taught him that
only moving the bridge away from the street stopped
traffic. Unfortunately the cattle, panicked by a tug boat
whistle and the moving of the bridge, stampeded to one
end of the span. The herd’s weight caused the span to
tilt and break in half. The cattle and a handful of terrified
pedestrians on the bridge fell into the filthy, cold water. A
mad rush to get boards down to the drowning people
and rescue boats into the water followed. A young girl,
the sister of the reckless cowboy, drowned, and the
bridge, valued at fifty thousand dollars, was destroyed.
The Chicago City Council struggled to manage the
conflict between busy street traffic and a burgeoning
port. In 1867, the council established an ordinance that
no bridge could be open for more than ten minutes at a

Above: Before the fire, the sturdy State Street Bridge boasted brick streets and a C. H. Dupee & Co. butcher stand. Below: A conglomeration
of cattle, horses, carriages, and cabs crowded downtown city bridges during rush hours.

Yesterday’s City | 43
 Left: The opening of a bridge, such as
the Michigan Avenue Bridge shown
here, could tie up traffic considerably,
and many pedestrians went to foolish
lengths to avoid getting “bridged.”
Below: This view of the Madison
Street Bridge just after the turn of
the century shows the frantic bridge
traffic, with carriages and cabs in the
middle and pedestrians sticking to
the outer walkways, just as they do
today. Opposite: Too much traffic—
including a herd of frightened
cattle—resulted in the collapse of the
Rush Street Bridge in 1863.

44 | Chicago History | Spring 2000

time. Bridgekeepers received a large red ball, lowered by
a rope, to signal approaching vessels that the span would
swing closed. In 1881, “much to the satisfaction of tens
of thousands who work down-town every day,” the city
council made it unlawful to open a bridge during the
morning (6:00–7:00 A.M.) and evening (5:30–6:30 P.M.)
rush hours. Another regulation required tugboat smoke-
stacks to be lower than the eighteen-foot clearance
afforded by the bridges, so that tugs pulling canal boats
or returning from towing sailing ships would not require
bridges to open. The volatile tug skippers immediately
went on strike. A clever invention, a hinged stack that
could be quickly raised or lowered, avoided the possible
economic nightmare.
All Chicagoans shook their heads knowingly about the
frustrations of being “bridged.” Traffic often backed up
for a quarter mile. “There was a great deal of scolding on
such occasions,” reported a journalist, “and—alas for
human nature!—sometimes I fear, a slight degree of pro-
fanity.” Still, as late as 1887, Frank Lloyd Wright, fresh
off the train from rural Wisconsin, took an unscheduled
ride on the Wells Street bridge. He was staring dreamily
at the river when:
Suddenly the clanging of a bell. The crowd began to
run. I wondered why: found myself alone and real-
ized why in time to get off, but stayed on as the
bridge swung out with me into the channel and a
tug, puffing clouds of steam came pushing along
below pulling an enormous iron grain boat, towing
it slowly through the gap. Stood there studying the
river-sights in the drizzling rain. . . . Later, I never
crossed the river without being charmed by somber
beauty.
The most loathed sight for a tugboat skipper was the
bridgetender’s red-ball signal that the span was about to
swing shut. Tug men considered bridgetenders petty
tyrants perched atop the spans solely to frustrate their
livelihood. Those in the high-profile, high-pay post of
bridgetender usually attained their position more as a
reward for faithful party service than for temperament,
marine background, or sobriety. The Republican Chicago
Tribune delighted in portraying a Democratic, usually
Irish, bridgetender as the cause of most accidents or
traffic delays on the river. During the hard times of the
1890s, Chicago bridgetenders received a lavish $2,700
for eight months’ work. Although the operators of the
first swing bridges opened and closed their spans with a
hand crank, the tender was relieved of manual labor
once the spans were electrified. Journalist Peter Finley
Dunne, best known for his colloquial stories about the
Bridgeport neighborhood, described the importance of
the bridgetender in a May 1897 story:
In Archer road the command of the “red bridge” is a
matter of infinite concern. There are aldermen and
members of the legislature in Archer road, clerks of
Yesterday’s City | 45
Above: Before the skyscraper era, grain elevators dominated Chicago’s skyline. Below: In his 1908 report to the Chicago Harbor Commis-
sion, George Sikes complained about traffic stand-offs between bridges and boats in the Chicago River.

the courts and deputy sheriffs, but their duties do

not affect the daily life of the road. Whereas the
commander of the bridge is a person of much con-
sideration, for every citizen sees him day by day; it is
part of his routine to chat loftily with the wayfarer,
and the children help him to turn the bridge.
The cussing between tug men and bridgetenders was
legend in nineteenth-century Chicago. “From 9 o’clock
until 11 a blue haze hung over the river near the Lake
Street bridge as a result of the promiscuous profanity
which the captains and sailors exchanged with the
bridge-tenders,” recorded the Chicago Daily News in
1893. The bridge’s power system had gone out and a
considerable backup of ship traffic resulted. “Pedestrians
stood on the bridge and listened in awe to the strange
oaths, known only to river men, which the boatmen and
bridge-tenders hurled at each other.”
The harbormaster reigned as the overlord of the
crowded, often chaotic Chicago river port. Usually a vet-
eran sailing master, the harbormaster had the difficult
job of keeping traffic moving on the congested river
while an assistant took his post atop the lighthouse,
which stood at the mouth of the river. When he spotted
ships approaching the river mouth, the assistant
telegraphed (later telephoned) a request for a tug to a
central dispatch office. Meanwhile, the harbormaster
patrolled the river, troubleshooting. At congested points
such as the lumber market, where vessels liked to tie on
three or four deep, he would order schooners to go to a
less crowded location lest they block the channel. When

46 | Chicago History | Spring 2000

disputes between bridgetenders and tugs escalated, he
intervened to their mutual dissatisfaction. The harbor-
master towed abandoned and decrepit vessels, which
took up space in the river and could sink and impede
commerce, and scuttled them in the deep water beyond
the breakwater.
The weaknesses of Chicago’s port also stood as its
strengths. The narrow river that limited the flow of ship
traffic wound its way through virtually all parts of the
city. The congested river harbor, beset with thirty-seven
navigation-inhibiting bridges, resided in the heart of the
business district. Bulk cargoes shipped to Chicago
required less handling in its makeshift harbor than in
many larger natural harbors, because ships sent to
Chicago, particularly the adaptable schooners, could use
the river to directly access northside distilleries, south-
side slaughterhouses, or westside lumberyards.
On the north branch of the Chicago River, factories
and grain elevators lined the banks. Nineteenth-century
Chicagoans marveled at these grain towers. Until
William LeBaron Jenny invented the skyscraper in 1885,
the grain elevators dominated Chicago’s skyline as sev-
enteen hulking brick buildings cast dark shadows over
the north side of the city. Visitors from all over the world
This engraving from an 1857 issue of Chicago magazine displays a schooner in front of Munger & Armour’s Grain Warehouse at the north
end of the river, between Franklin and Wells Streets. A schooner could load three hundred thousand bushels of grain in an hour.
came to gawk at the giant vertical bins of grain. Chicago
dominated the grain trade, as it did the lumber business,
because its port brought railroad and maritime trans-
portation together. By the 1890s, the larger elevators
unloaded hundreds of railroad cars per day. In a single
hour, a schooner could load three hundred thousand
bushels of grain. Throughout the navigation season,
grain left Chicago by both train and ship. Nonetheless,
when winter closed the lakes for the year, the holds of
the hundreds of ships wintering in the river had to be
used as reserve storage for the grain elevators’ surplus.
Along with trade, Chicago’s busy river port also invited
vice. This city was a popular port-of-call for Great Lakes
sailors, and its popularity stemmed from its wide variety
of less-than-respectable offerings. As early as the 1860s,
the city housed more than two hundred brothels and
thousands of streetwalkers. The large number of people
passing through the city at any one time sustained vice on
this scale, with businessmen in the city’s best downtown
hotels; drummers and farmers in town to secure supplies
before quickly returning to the countryside; railroad men
operating the trains or repairing the track; canal boat
crews; and armies of the Midwest’s seasonal labor force:
harvest hands, lumberjacks, and packinghouse workers.
Yesterday’s City | 47
 Several thousand Lake Michigan sailors based in the city
and as many stevedores made up the core group of
rough and ready clients for the city’s gamblers, saloon-
keepers, and prostitutes. From the notorious “Sands,”
Chicago’s first vice district, to the “Levee,” arguably the
city’s last true red-light commune, Chicago vice was tied
to its river port.
Chicago’s wide-open port posed more than a moral
threat to incautious sailors. The infamous Micky Finn, an
unsavory barman of the Levee who was part pickpocket,
part thug, and part publican, developed a special
knockout concoction composed of grain alcohol, snuff
water, hydrate of chloral, and reportedly morphine. With
the help of streetwalkers and party girls, Finn set up
sailors and other newly paid men to drink the knockout

Vice prospered in Chicago’s busy river port, as seen in this “Night

Scenes” illustration (above) from the 1940 book Gem of the
Prairie. Only the bravest would walk through one of Chicago’s red
light districts unarmed (above right). Chicago prostitution houses,
such as the popular Everleigh Club at 2131 North Dearborn Street
(below left and right) thrived during this period.

48 | Chicago History | Spring 2000

potion, making them easy to rob. Dock rats and footpads
(robbers on foot) waited in the dark for any sailor foolish
enough to conclude his spree alone. Morning found men
slumped in the alleyways or all too frequently floating
facedown in the river.
“Those wharves are the most dangerous places in the
world,” complained Captain Fred A. Bailey in 1895.
“One doesn’t know the moment when he will be
knocked senseless, robbed of all he has on his person,
and flung into the river.” Bailey, like many vessel masters,
always carried a pistol when on the Chicago docks. Even
the police captain charged with protecting the docks
along the South Branch observed, “It would be folly and
sure death for an unarmed man to venture along the
river anywhere between Van Buren and Twenty-second

Chicago citizens protested the vice-ridden river district, as seen in

this 1913 City Club Bulletin headline, “Chicago’s Harbor Problem.”

streets.” Police officers would not venture unaccompa-

Chicago’s policemen (as portrayed in a “Street Types of Chicago
Character Study,” above) had their hands full fighting pirates,
wharf rats, and river thieves during the vice period. Even police offi-
cers would not walk by the docks alone at night.
nied on to the docks at night.
In 1883, a Chicago Times reporter described this mem-
orable scene of a midnight tour of the docks:
a narrow rotten footway, ill-lighted and unpoliced,
the abode of vermin, biped and quadruped. Occa-
sionally a drunken sailor or wharf rat is passed and
at rare intervals the solitude is broken by the
brawling of some inebriated dock-walloper who is
making [the] night hideous in one of the many low
doggeries that abound.
The reporter “recoiled with an ejaculation of horror” at
the discovery of a dead body floating in the water. He
referred to climbing the stairs up from the river as
returning to “civilization.”
Crime along the river rose during the winter. When the
navigation season drew to a close, between two and five
hundred schooners, steamers, and canal boats tied up in
the river and prepared to winter in the port. Sailors

Yesterday’s City | 49
Above: Captain Herman Schuenemann (center), c. 1909, sold
Christmas trees off of the deck of his ship docked in the harbor.
Right: This 1902 Century magazine illustration shows an old boat
shop under the Wells Street Bridge. Skippers spent the off season
repairing their damaged ships.

stripped sails and sent them to a loft for storage; they

secured the rigging below so that they could turn the
schooner over to a shipkeeper. Keepers remained particu-
larly vulnerable to riverside thugs as they spent a winter
alone on a ship. The numbers of pirates and other wharf
rats increased as the seasonal jobs of sailors and steve-
dores ended. “Look out for river thieves,” the Chicago Inter
Ocean warned in November 1876. “We will have from
2,000 to 3,000 idle sailors in Chicago this coming winter
and the desperadoes among them, will, without doubt,
work the fleet of fine large vessels laid up in the harbor.”
A maritime village existed every winter along the
frozen Chicago River. Wintering vessels were tied up
three and four deep with gangways linking them to the
dockside. Postmen delivered mail directly to the ships
each day. This community’s residents consisted mainly
of shipkeepers, veteran seamen whose job gave them a

50 | Chicago History | Spring 2000

small income, but, more important, saved them from
having to shell out money for a boarding house during
the winter. Keepers did light chores about the ship,
including minor repairs and shoveling snow.
Masters who owned their own vessels sometimes
moved their families onto the ship for the winter. Heated
with a pot-bellied stove, the cabin of a schooner could be
a snug, if somewhat cramped, winter home. When the
river froze over, adults and children alike took to their
skates. Adventurous skaters followed the iced river as far
west as Riverside, ten miles away. The less youthful
would gather around the stove to read newspapers or
share checkers, cards, songs, and stories. The annual sale
of Christmas trees, from the decks of the last schooners
to tie up for the winter, brought Chicago’s terrestrial and
maritime residents together.
During the winter, many unemployed sailors headed
north to the lumber camps of Michigan and Wisconsin.
Men with carpentry skills found work in Chicago’s
thriving shipyards. The shipyards resounded with the
bang of caulking hammers throughout the winter as older
vessels were repaired and new commissions executed. In
the depths of winter, the shipyards took advantage of the
numerous unemployed in the city by paying their carpen-
ters and caulkers a modest wage ($1.75 per day in 1861).
As outdoor work increased in February and March, the
wages of skilled ship workers rose (to $2 a day and higher
in 1861). The Miller Brothers Shipyard led Chicago’s ship-
building industry during the schooner era. Located on the
North Branch of the Chicago River, just above the Chicago
Avenue bridge, Miller Brothers had the largest dry-dock in
the harbor during the 1860s and 1870s, and frequently
had two ships on the stocks at the same time. The com-
pany built propellers, tugs, and schooners. Smaller ship-
yards dotted the banks of north and south branches of the
river, many merely undertaking ship repair, others special-
izing in canal and small boat construction. John Wesley
Powell purchased the hardy boats that descended the Col-
orado River from one such Chicago yard.
Even more important than the dry docks and ship-
builders were the ship chandleries. Gilbert Hubbard &
Company dominated the ship supply business in
Chicago with their stock of sails, cordage, and flags, the
largest on Lake Michigan. Many ships built in Wisconsin
or Michigan came to Chicago to be fitted out with
Gilbert Hubbard’s rope, canvas, tackle blocks and
anchors. Chicago’s river port also boasted a substantial
maritime hospital. In an early example of government
health care, Congress created the United States Marine
Hospital Service in 1798. Port duties and a special tax
paid by seamen provided a system of medical care for
sailors. Larger ports had actual hospitals run by the
Marine Hospital Service; in lesser ports the service was
arranged with preferred private care providers.
Chicago’s first Marine Hospital was established in 1852
at the site of the old Fort Dearborn. As grain elevators and
warehouses began to crowd along the river and the need
for a larger facility became obvious, the Marine Hospital
moved to then-suburban Lakeview. For a good portion of
the nineteenth century, the Marine Hospital was the best
of the handful of medical institutions in the city.
A sailor in search of spiritual repair could find various
safe harbors on the river. The Seamen’s Mission, which
began in the 1840s, was replaced by an actual Mariner’s
Church for Chicago sailors in the 1860s. Capt. Henry
Bundy directed revivals from the deck of his evangelical
schooner Glad Tidings at Wolf’s Point, where he was sure
to attract a crowd and distribute bibles and advice.
Another popular benevolent institution in the port was
the hospital ship, an old schooner rented for the summer
as a supervised playground for inner-city children.
During the summer, between ten and fifteen thousand
children would visit the ship in the 1870s and 1880s.
Toward the turn of the century, despite its massive trade
activity and its riverfront community, the port of Chicago
became a victim of its own success. The city that had
grown up at the nexus of rail yards and wharves now had
no room for either in the central business district. Urban
planners, commuters, and many of the business commu-
nity wanted to see freight traffic banished from the heart of
Chicago. Mayor DeWitt Cregier, a member of the Democ-
ratic machine, called for filling in the river. Carter Harrison
seconded him. Most Chicagoans, a federal official noted,
regarded the Chicago River, “as a nuisance to be abated.”
For a time the city’s maritime interests found an ally in
the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The chief
engineer told Congress that the Chicago River was “the
most important navigable stream of its length in the
world.” The engineers succeeded in widening and deep-
ening the navigation channel, even forcing the haughty
railroads to remove their obstructions to shipping.
But the army could not turn back the clock for
Chicago’s downtown harbor. In 1889, the harbor han-
dled eleven million tons of cargo, ranking Chicago with
London, Hamburg, and New York as one of the greatest
ports in the world. But Chicago’s port never reached
this height again. Although the cramped Chicago River
could be adapted to the comings and goings of the
small sailing ships, no amount of improvements by the
Corps of Engineers could make it an effective port for
the new steel vessels that were beginning to dominate
the lakes. These five-hundred-feet long steel cargo ves-
sels could not navigate the inner harbor, as they were
also sixty feet wide. To take even a three-hundred-foot
vessel up the river as far as the grain elevators at
Twenty-second Street required tugboat charges that
equaled one-half the cost of transporting the cargo from
Chicago to Buffalo.
Yesterday’s City | 51
Above: When Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago called for beachfronts instead of red light districts, Chicagoans clamored to get rid of the
vice-ridden harbor. Kaufmann & Fabry photograph of Oak Street Beach, 1922. Below: Sailors eventually opted for the wider Calumet River
over the crowded Chicago River. Bird’s eye View of East Side and Calumet River, South Chicago.

By the early 1900s, even Chicago’s politicians had

become alarmed at the decline of the port. “It is a noto-
rious fact,” intoned Mayor Fred Busse, “that the lake com-
merce of Chicago, once the pride and boast of this city,
has been steadily decreasing for a number of years,” and in
1912, he appointed a commission to investigate the
matter. One proposal called for a seven-hundred-foot wide
canal from the forks of the Chicago River to Western
Avenue and a link to the Sanitary and Ship Canal. Other
commission members favored building a commercial
harbor along the lakefront. While the Harbor Commission
produced its recommendations, Daniel Burnham was
preparing his gleaming beaux arts vision of Chicago. For
civic leaders and citizens alike, the choice between the
chaos and congestion of maritime commerce and the
prospect of miles of lakefront parks was an easy one.

52 | Chicago History | Spring 2000

 The Burnham Plan sealed the fate of Chicago’s down-
town port. During the late 1880s, the Army Corps of
Engineers improved the Calumet River, making it more
attractive to navigation by lake-going vessels. South
Chicago Harbor, near the Illinois-Indiana state line,
became the scene of a tremendous building boom in the
1890s. This harbor was built on the “big shoulders” bulk
cargoes that had once characterized Chicago—grain,
coal, and iron ore—while the Chicago River Harbor
began a long but steady decline. Passenger ships still
steamed into the river, but when the Eastland rolled over
in 1915 at the cost of more than eight hundred lives,
much of the joy in cruising the lakes went with it. Three
years later, Chicagoans bought Christmas trees from the
deck of a schooner for the last time. Even this old tie to
the past was a fraud, however; by 1917, the trees actu-
ally had come to the city by rail, their sale from the
schooner a mere marketing ploy.
By the early 1900s, the river had gone from congested
Above: Passenger ships frightened many Chicagoans after the
and dynamic to insipid and still. The gray waters, and per-
horror of the Eastland Disaster in 1915. Below: Today the Chicago
haps a few gray beards at the mariners hall, alone remem-
River sees only a fraction of the water traffic it once did. View of
bered, as the Grand Haven Times described it, “the merry
Chicago River east over State Street and Wabash Avenue Bridge.
sound of the ‘Heave-Ho,’ the cranking of the windlass,
heaving the heavy anchor, and the shaking of the unfurled
canvas in the wind, the stentorian voices of the officers
giving their various orders, and the “aye-aye” of the active
seamen,” the sounds of a schooner getting ready to leave
Chicago and embrace the broad, blue expanse of the lake.
When the age of sail ended on Lake Michigan, the
Chicago River’s glory as a port waned. The gray water
awaited a future generation of Chicagoans to define a
new role for the river.

I L LU S T R AT I O N S | 40–41, CHS, ICHi-05769; 42 left CHS,

ICHi-03731; 42 below CHS, ICHi-25523; 43 above CHS; 43
below CHS; 44 top CHS, G1987.210; 44 bottom CHS, ICHi-
19151; 45 CHS; 46 above CHS, ICHi-17111; 46 below CHS,
George Sikes, Report to the Chicago Harbor Commission, 1908;
47, CHS, engraving from 1857 Chicago magazine; 48 above left,
“Night Scenes from Custom-House Place” from Gem of the
Prairie; 48 above right, “Map of One of Chicago’s Red Light Dis-
tricts, 1893” from Gem of the Prairie; 48 below left, CHS, ICHi-
00367; 48 below right, CHS, ICHi-0384; 49 left, CHS,
ICHi-18333; 49 right, CHS, The City Club Bulletin, Tuesday,
December 10, 1913, “Chicago’s Harbor Problem;” 50 above,
CHS, DN-6926; 50 right, from The Century magazine:
“Chicago’s Great River Harbor” by Elliott Flower, February 1902;
52 top, CHS, ICHi-00122; 52 bottom, CHS, ICHi-30117; 53
above, CHS, ICHi-02034; 53 below, CHS, ICHi-05777.

Theodore J. Karamanski is a professor of history at Loyola Univer-

sity Chicago. This article is based on his book Schooner Passage:
Sailing Ships and the Lake Michigan Frontier, to be published in
December 2000 by Wayne State University Press.

Yesterday’s City | 53