In the Spotlight

Exhibit Maps Chicago’s Route to Prominence

A new exhibit at Northwestern University Library illustrates the many ways in which Chicago’s choices about developing and utilizing its waterways, roadways, railways, and other transportation resources can tell us a lot, not only about the city’s colorful history, but about its unique character.

In 1900, for example, when Nature’s design for the Chicago River proved problematic—allowing sewage and pollution to flow into Lake Michigan, where it caused outbreaks of typhus and cholera—the City of Big Shoulders decided to reverse Nature’s decision, and completed one of the greatest engineering feats of all time: turning the river around so it would dump its detritus into canals that carried it away.

“Chicago, That Toddlin’ Town: The History of Transporation in the City,” on the first floor of the Main Library at 1970 Campus Drive in Evanston, is free and open to the public from December 12, 2006 through February 22, 2007. Kay Geary, the public services coordinator for Northwestern’s Transportation Library—which houses one of the most extensive transportation collections anywhere in the world—notes that from the time Chicago was little more than a trading post, it has been a major transportation hub for the Midwest. “Chicago is not a great city that became a great transportation center,” she says, “it’s a great transportation center that became a great city.”

The exhibit spotlights ways that the city has been unique or ahead of its times in transportation terms. For instance, the phenomenon of “snow parking”—asserting dibs on a parking space one has shoveled out during a blizzard by marking it with chairs or other personal property—is entirely unique to Chicago. Criticized by author and activist Studs Terkel as “a commentary on the growing oafishness in our lives,” it has been defended by Mayor Richard M. Daley on the grounds that: “This is Chicago. Fair warning.” The exhibit includes materials documenting the history of the custom, including commentary from the Journal of Legal Studies examining the underlying legal and philosophical implications of the practice.

Some of Chicago’s transportation innovations have been—for better or worse—short-lived. Around the turn of the last century, when the city’s increasing sprawl pushed its cemeteries out onto the fringes, laying a loved one to rest often meant an expensive and arduous journey over unpaved roads for the whole funeral party. As a solution, the El system briefly offered a funeral car service, which allowed the funeral party and the casket to board the train at specially equipped stations and ride to the cemetery in “the comfort and elegance offered by the rapid, smooth running of a high class electric car.”

“Many people don’t realize that the second automobile race held anywhere in the world went from Chicago to Evanston and back again,” Geary adds. Sponsored by the Chicago Times Herald, the race took place on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1895. Unfortunately, contestants woke to a frosty morning and an eight-inch snowfall, and only six cars were able to actually start. The 54-mile course ended up being a seven-hour journey (with several stops for major repairs and one for a sandwich), such a long time that all the spectators had wandered away from the finish line by the end. Only the representative of the Chicago Times Herald was present to watch the two cars that made it all way back; the winner being a Duryea Motor Wagon.

The exhibit can been viewed during regular library hours, which are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, and 8:30 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.

About the Transportation Library:
One of the world’s largest transportation collections, Northwestern’s Transportation Library also houses a major law enforcement collection and an extensive collection of federal environmental impact statements. While its primary clientele is the students, faculty, and staff of Northwestern University, it also welcomes and continually responds to the needs of researchers from other universities, from the transportation industry, from the law enforcement community, and from media. More information on the library and its resources can be found at www.library.northwestern.edu/transportation or by calling 847/491-5273.