Transport: Outer Drive

Like a great prehistoric alligator the City of Chicago suns its giant body along 35 mi. of Lake Michigan’s western shore. From the city’s fanlike tail to the south, from its huge bulbous head to the north and from many a populous suburb is pumped centreward a seldom ceasing stream of traffic, most of which flows into Chicago’s chief north & south artery, Michigan Avenue. In the heart of the city the stream congests & clots, to the extreme unhappiness of all motoring Chicagoans.

Twenty-eight years ago a group of Chicago’s civic minded citizens, headed by the late Charles Henry Wacker, envisioned a great outer drive system which would relieve this downtown snarl by skirting Michigan Avenue, route the main flow swiftly north & south along the very edge of the Lake away from the city’s downtown streets. Land was bought, drained, beautified. Sixteen hundred acres of lake shore: were filled in. To the north, Michigan Boulevard was widened into a four-lane local and a four-lane express highway. To the south on manufactured land, a chain of smooth drives converged toward the city. By 1935 the whole vast project, costing an estimated $100,000,000 was completed—except at the city’s most vital point, a scant quarter mile stretch of the old Boulevard across the Chicago River, which still clotted at each change of a traffic light.

Last week President Roosevelt, en route east after a triumphal tour of the Northwest, was on hand to dedicate and open for traffic the last connecting link between the new north and south side outer drives. What Franklin Roosevelt, his head filled with international affairs, had to say about the span he said in 29 vague words: “My friends, I am glad to come again to Chicago and especially to have the opportunity of taking part in the dedication of this important project of civic betterment.”

What Franklin Roosevelt saw, as he drove in an open car along thepack-jammed waterfront, was part of the 16 mi. highway that shoots north along the sandy shore past the 1933 Fairsite, Soldier Field, Field Museum and Grant Park, juts first right then left and north again to cross the Chicago River and the Ogden Slip with the Tribune Tower looming high on the left,* keeps on to wind around swank Gold Coast’s apartments and the Drake Hotel, then north once more on the express highway of Lake Shore Drive. It was at the Chicago River that President Roosevelt paused to make his speech and it was there that the last important link was last week completed at a cost of $11,500,000,$2,324,881 of which was contributed by Mr. Roosevelt’s PWA.

The links’ main span across the river which cost $2,885,000 is the biggest bascule bridge in the world. Locally dubbed Centennial Bridge, the double-leaf structure is 331 ft. long, wide enough (108 ft.) for eight traffic lanes, rests its 18,400,000-Ib. on 32 caissons, sunk to bedrock, 102 ft. below water level. It is so delicately balanced that no more than two 100 h.p. motors are required to lift its huge jaws skyward for occasional vessels to pass in & out. of the Chicago River. Some Chicagoans were disconcerted by the two right angle turns at its southern approach, with only a four-lane highway on Randolph Street for traffic midcity bound. And some complained of bottlenecks getting off & on the main outer artery north & south. But these were minor matters to a populace which now could save from ten to 20 minutes traveling from one end of the sprawling city to the other, and which could now boast, as Chicagoans like to boast, of a shorefront highway system second to none.

*Across its waterfront warehouse the New Deal-hating Chicago Tribune (“World’s Greatest Newspaper”) had erected, in time for the dedication ceremonies, a huge sign reading: CHICAGO TRIBUNE UNDOMINATED. Morning of Mr. Roosevelt’s arrival the New Deal-loving, Tribune-baiting Chicago Daily Times bannered across its front page: TRIBUNE PAINTS UP FOR PRESIDENT, ran a three-col. picture of the Tribune’s warehouse display.