July 11-15 Chicago - scraps of historical trivia - and other tit bits!

The City was founded in the 1770s by Jean-Baptiste DuSable, an African Haitian, who established a trading post along the river. Today it’s considered the architectural capital of the world but it was once a huge industrial port and a major US railway hub receiving goods to be shipped out via Lake Michigan to ‘the world’ presumably via the lake system and the Eerie Canal into New York. The river was a working one as well as the carrier of massive industrial waste and the city’s effluence. The river was highly toxic and as a result Lake Michigan became dangerously polluted and diseases like typhus raged. The solution? Reverse the flow of the river to preserve the Lake. Seems impossible but they did it. Of course the pollution flowed down the river to St Louis but the theory was that it would drop its toxic content along the way.  Hmmm did it? St Louis didn’t think so. 

Back then the river was lined with warehouses and the city’s first skyscrapers were granaries. It once boaster the largest Post Office in the world because it had a ginormous mail order catalogue companies selling almost anything you could name. Montgomery Ward and Sears, both based in Chicago, were the leaders of the early mail-order industry and became giant enterprises through catalog sales long before they began to open retail stores. 

Jean-Baptist’s DuSable



There are 60 bridges dating back to the 1900s - they still open.

Converted warehouse beside a bridge control 







A reminder that this is a port. This is where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan - one arm of the river is damned. A series of canals and sluice gates control the flow into the river. It’s quite a story so worth looking up Wikipedia.

A reminder about the devastation of fire that destroyed so much of the mainly timber built city in 1871.

History- so much more interesting where tasted outside the schoolroom!

This gorgeous fairy drew my eye. She is so beautiful growing out of the ground with vines forming her ‘skirts’.

One of the corridor lights in our hotel, Congress Plaza which dates back to 1890s. She has seen better days but is still quite grand.

Little scraps of nothing!

A flamingo 

This pretty clock looks like it is melting down the building - note the green streaks down the walls.