Streets that violate the Grid tell crucial stories. Some aesthetes decry the purported monotony of the Grid, but it’s full of interruptions that provide texts we can read to learn our history. Daniel Burnham aspired to make the City Beautiful Brennan made the City Logical. We owe the Grid to Edward Brennan, a freelance city planner who convinced Chicago’s political and commercial powers that were to standardize things in the first decade of the 20th century. You can also tell which side of the street your destination is on: even- numbered addresses on the north and west sides of streets, odd on the south and east sides. Except in the Loop, every 800 addresses equal a mile, so you can find your way to any place by doing a little math. Now we all know the drill: State and Madison is the zero point of the east-west and north-south axes of a logical Cartesian grid. House numbers started at the lake or the river, so addresses didn’t match block to block. Chicago grew by annexing suburbs, so many street names were repeated. It is the system of street naming and numbering that makes Chicago comprehensible and easily navigated.īut it wasn’t always thus. The Grid is Chicago’s circulatory system: the residential and commercial streets, secondary arterials, grand boulevards, and teeming expressways, the gangways and alleys. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife.
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