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The street-grid system in Chicago celebrated its 100th anniversary this week, a venture that began on Sept. 1, 1909 at the intersection of State and Madison and formed the basis for a new system that changed every address in the city and even carried over into several Chicagoland suburbs.
The map of the city was originally based off of the Chicago River; however its winding shape led to inconsistent building numbers, lack of directions (i.e., West or North) on street names, and duplicate street names, such as Lincoln Avenue and Lincoln Place. For a city already with a population of 300,000 at the turn of the century, Chicago was in desperate need of a makeover.
Enter: Edward P. Brennan, a facilities manager for a Chicago music company, who lobbied to change the names of streets and the way they were numbered. His hard work paid off in June 1908, when the Chicago City Council approved the grid system and made it effective the following year.
Dennis McClendon, who draws maps for the CTA, spoke about Chicago’s grid in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, “Chicago is one of the most emulated kind of systems for that fact that its [grid system] fits the city's character so well,” said McClendon. “Chicago really is the city as a sheet of graph paper.”
Post by Anna Deem
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i'm very pro-grid. it's dumbfounding how many chicagoans (lifelong, even) do not understand the grid system. you can have never been somewhere, but if you understand the numbers system of the grid, you can get there confidently.
i'm very pro-grid. it's dumbfounding how many chicagoans (lifelong, even) do not understand the grid system. you can have never been somewhere, but if you understand the numbers system of the grid, you can get there confidently just by following the numbers.
ditto. if you don't understand the grid... well, maybe you should take that elementary school math class again.
i KNOW! some of my friends act like i'm some directional goddess, but it's like C'MON!! it's a freakin' grid. there's logic in this, people.
i *am* a grid nerd, though, so i can generally pinpoint an address pretty fast, since i have most of the streets and their numbers memorized. i love the "squares" -- north and ashland (1600/1600), fullerton and western (2400/2400), chicago and halsted (800/800), irving and pulaski (4000/4000) -- you get the drift.
i finally figured a system to remember which sides of the streets are the odds and evens. i could NEVER remember that. i came up with that the southeast is odd (florida). that leaves the northwest = even.
people are surprised that i even know the "inbetween" streets -- wrightwood is 2600N, wolcott is 1900W, grace is 3700N, paulina is 1700W. i know this is old hand to most of you, but i swear this is gold and diamonds falling out of my mouth to most of my friends. it's SO bizarre.
grid nerd!! grid nerd!! i LOAVE it.
doh! loooked like it didnt go thru.
The Trib is only half right. The grid was started in 1909 but it excluded the Loop for 5 years. The Zero point of State and Madison was not but into effect until 1914. Just FYI.
Disclaimer: I was born in Indiana. I have never lived in Chicago proper as an adult. I live in the suburbs.
I understand the numbers of the grid; I get and appreciate the math of it. What I am seemingly incapable of is remembering the *streets* that go along with each number. Which is why I like numbered streets and avenues (a la the South Side) so much better -- it takes all the remembering out of it and boils it down to the essentials.
Same here!
You have to be born and raised here for it to be second nature.
That being said...the grid is awesome anyway. This is the first city I've ever lived in where I've never really been lost.
I might have gone off track, but it's easy to find your way back since everything is on this grid.
i wasn't born and raised here, but i've been here for 12 years. i happen to have a pretty stellar memory, so i have the streets thing down. the thing i don't care for about the south side is that there's avenues and places, right? 12th street and and 12th place? that's super confusing to me. why not just have 12, 13, 14, 15? why 12 and 12 part two?
and a lot of the streets don't have the same names that they do on the north side, which i think is sort of strange. why not the same name? these are the questions i have about the south side grid. oh, and the diagonals run in opposite directions of the ones on the north side. : )
because then the numbering wouldn't fit the 8 blocks to a mile rule. i mean, it already kind of doesn't on the near south side, but it gets back on track after 31st street.
Ingrid, I say this while risking a lot of wrath, but I spent a semester in Manhattan in college, and I understood that grid immediately. Because most of the island is just numbers. No names to confuse. :) That said, I appreciate grids in general, because they do make it easy to get back on track.
Smussy, yes, it's to try to fit it to the 8 blocks per mile thing.
granted i've only spent about eight days of my life on manhattan, so i may be wrong, but isn't the addressing on that grid done by some really convoluted formula? maybe it's because i'm good at memorizing street names, but i'd much rather have the addresses match the numbers on the street as they do here, than have an all-numbers street layout.
which is why i think the ny grid is easier to remember. it's all numbers.
I agree , Rachelle and that girl...normally I don't like numbers (balancing check books and doing math and such), but for streets it just makes so much more sense.
When I'm finding my way around town, I am more comfortable with numbers and landmarks.
as someone from a city where there is not a grid system in place, i LOVE LOVE LOVE the grid. i was born and raised in san antonio and i still get lost driving downtown. here my only issue is getting turned around if i get off the train at an unfamiliar stop. all i have to do is look at the numbers to determine if i'm going in the right direction. good on ya brennan!
I always feel like just having numbers is pretty lame- have a little imagination and name your streets after somebody already.
definitely. and i actually wish i knew more of who the street names were named after. who or what was fullerton, belmont or addison?