George Streeter Could've Kicked Every One of our Asses

By Alicia Dorr in Miscellaneous on May 8, 2007 6:00PM

While thumbing through the morning paper, we couldn't help but chuckle (read: guffaw) at the Tribune headline, "Streeterville relic - history or just junk?"

Apparently, while some dude was toolin' around under the corner of Illinois St. and McClurg Court, he found an anchor that he joked probably belonged to Captain George Streeter. He researched the anchor for fun and found, to his surprise, that there was a distinct possibility it may have actually belonged to the infamous "settler". The problem is, it "may" also belong in a trash can.

Clearly, we weren't laughing at the Tribune's headline. We were just laughing at the irony: if it is trash it probably did belong to Streeter.

It is our all-time favorite Chicago history quirk that the ritzy neighborhood now named after the "Captain" is actually built on heaps and heaps of trash, something that we highly doubt would have been a top selling point for any of the buildings with condos in them in Streeterville now.

Basically, Streeter anchored a boat off what was then the Gold Coast and encouraged Chicagoans to bring their trash and rubble, much of which was still clogging up the city 15 years after the Great Fire, to where he was moored — for a small fee. It naturally didn't sit well with city officials when they looked out of their fancy homes and businesses toward the lake and saw squatters drinking in a shantytown on a pile of trash, or, as Streeter called it, "The District of Lake Michigan." He actually had legal precedent to call the land sovereign, to the point that it actually declared neutrality during WWI and blocked people from planting war gardens on its sandy soil.

You'll have to excuse us for the history lesson, but we really think it's just the greatest example of Chicago entrepreneurism, in the most backward, hilarious and fascinating way. As for the anchor, we hope someone would be willing to spend as much on it as they would on their high-rise condo in the Gold Coast because, trash or not, it certainly is George Streeter's legacy.

Image of Streeter and his boat, via K.C. Hustad, Paul Lewin, Craig Steinbeck, and Ben Zale's web site on George W. Streeter and Streeterville.