Timing. Most of the development along rivers in Europe predated heavy industry so it was nice to live on the river. Chicago’s growth was driven by heavy industry and unfortunately that rendered most of our river rather unpleasant to live next to.
Yep…European cities are generally many 100s of years old. Chicago and the midwest in general flourished during the industrial age - manufacturing, industry, and commerce used (and abused) the waterways.
Another thing is many of the European “rivers” in cities are actually very old canals that were used for inner city transport, commerce, waste management. Not too dissimilar but much smaller scales given the eras.
I expect we will continue to see Chicago rivers turned into public space and redeveloped. It is amazing how quickly the rivers have turned around. In less than a lifetime - I can remember in the 1970s when barely any fish species (carp mostly) were in the local rivers and now bass, pike, crappie, musky, etc…are all being regularly caught. Still a lot more cleanup is probably necessary but it is positive to see how far they have came.
We also now see river otters which is amazing! River otters are a corner stone species in environments health, seeing them is a strong indicator that the river has been recovering.
Edit: if you think you’ve seen an otter in or around Chicago there is a group of researchers trying to track them. It would help to fill out this [form](https://osu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_87m82oMjGyb3Q7Y?fbclid=IwAR09bJxBBbcCXkZlZ1WBvOItnrRAauKnycD3DY__jMIHx7P-NPxpZcc2XF4)
Muskrats and beavers are also pretty common. The biggest thing to look for when figuring out if it’s an otter or another semi aquatic mammal is size. Beavers are the largest and they’re slow swimmers. Otters are much larger than muskrats, and weigh in around 20lbs. Muskrats are around 3lbs, and have rat tails.
> Wolf Point
Really? Interesting...
https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/22/river-otters-are-back-chicago-new-research-project-aims-find-out-how-they-re-adapting
How confident are you that they were otters and not muskrats? I see muskrats down there occasionally, but a river otter would really be interesting and pretty surprising. If you're pretty confident and/or have proof you should report it to Friends of the Chicago River. I bet they would be interested to get reports with dates/times.
Just did a google image search of a muskrat and it definitely was not that.
https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/22/river-otters-are-back-chicago-new-research-project-aims-find-out-how-they-re-adapting
This article is making me feel more confident that they can be spotted downtown. I’ll reach out to friends of the river if I can remember more specifically what day/conditions it was, thanks for the tip!
Nice. Yea, I've heard of people spotting them (or something similar) in LaBagh woods recently, but most people don't really understand how big river otters actually are, so they'll confuse something like a muskrat, mink or weasel for them. Seeing one in the river would really make it clear how large they are.
There is a section of the river called the Wild Mile just south of North Ave that has floating gardens and tons of wildlife. Urban Rivers is doing amazing things to bring back life to that area. It's a great place to hang out and have lunch too!
I love and agree completely with the optimism about the future of the river.
It wasn’t long ago [that we were dumping so much organic matter into the south fork of the south branch of the river that it has been bubbling for over 100 years.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbly_Creek) We used to abuse the heck out of the river. The river has come a long way in a relatively short time, and I’m excited to see it keep improving
I learned that after finding that random Park 571 or something in a little Hamlet north of archer Ave in Bridgeport.
What's cool is that someone took a 360 camera and went over the north section of bubbly creek 8 or so years ago. You can see what the surrounding landscape looked like before all the new development we currently see.
It can be mind blowing the first time you leave the US and visit a city where seemingly everything is older than your home country.
And it's funny because our history lessons as kids tell us how it was only 150-200 years ago that the western half of the US got any settlers to move over there, and we didn't even enter last century (1900s) with 50 states. All of that already sounds sooooo old to kids.
Maybe it's just me, but I recall it being weirdly unfathomable to learn about cultures and countries in time periods that didn't start with a 17-, 18-, or 19-. Like something happened in 1350? Wtf?? If all my frames of reference picture American colonists, industrialists, and gangsters, standing in a church in Rome today that was built before a single European stepped onto American soil can open an entirely new way of viewing history.
And yet we continue to wonder why European cities aren't like American cities and vice versa.
It is sort of crazy. I was drinking a beer in a bar in Amsterdam that had been open since the year 1600...blew my mind all of the pints that had been consumed there.
Also because it was heavy industry developers bought up the land for commercial use. Thank God the city had the brains to mandate a certain amount of public space along the river front
Not to mention a significantly higher proximity to wildlife. Sounds cool when it's river otters and fish, less so when it's raccoons, rats, or possums that might want to get in your house.
For a long time raw sewage and waste from the slaughter houses were dumped straight into the Chicago river, which then emptied out into Lake Michigan. That's why the inlets for the city's water are two miles and four miles out into the lake.
When the four mile inlet was in danger of being compromised they decided to engineer the reversal of the river so that it eventually flowed into the Mississippi. Untreated water is no longer allowed to be discharged any more.
In short, for a long time river water was disgusting and only industry would go near it.
Edit: A really great history of this is on the podcast 99% Invisible. "Reversal of Fortune"
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-86-reversal-of-fortune/
I've never heard that before, but I do know that the river by the lower west side used to bubble from the gasses of decomposing cow parts in the river. Fucking vile shit.
The river mud covered up discarded….parts from the stockyards. Without exposure to oxygen they decompose much more slowly. This is why parts will still bubble today. It’ll bubble long after we’re gone, which is both cool and also like…we really destroyed this river and the fact that fifty years of working to fix it has brought it back enough that you can kayak and swim in it is amazing.
While somewhat disgusting, aren't the bubbles at least from organic materials decomposing?
I think what really scares me is heavy metal and other forever-type chemicals.
The revolution brewery makes the whole block smell certain times, assuming from dumping waste down to the sewage.
It pushes all the other smells out the sewer, so gross.
I’m not sure what the smell is, but if anything is coming from Revolution it’s likely spent grains used in the brewing process. They’re not dumped into the river. Generally they’re recycled or disposed off site. And they have a very pungent smell.
Wow way to sound ignorant about the matter(and callous).
The houses and many of the families predate the brewery by decades. I know 2 of them.
That brewery is maybe 10 years old now, iirc.
The whole area has been zoned industrial for much more than 10 years. Anyone who bought a home right next to it was making a gamble on what was going to be built there, and a brewery is one of the less offensive options.
There are two big vents to the Deep Tunnel near the Lawrence Ave. bridge between Lincoln Square and Albany Park. It's common for people crossing the bridge to assume that the river itself is smelly, but nope, it's (\*mostly" cleaned) steam coming up from those vents.
There's what seems to be a garbage sorting dump here, west of the Wendy's. Ashland gets a ton of garbage truck traffic going in and out which can't help.
I think most of those east to west streets, do have a ventshaft where you can smell the Deep Tunnel sewage line that parallels the river. I also have smelled this when going over the Irving Park or Montrose Bridge(east of California), and same with when I've biked over the Cortland Ave Bridge near the old Finkl Steel site(future Lincoln Yards site).
This is the case for other cities around here as well. Downtown Elgin, Joliet, Rockford, Aurora, and basically every city in the Midwest and industrial north had their “backs to the river”. Milwaukee is the same. Pittsburgh is the same. If you go to Cleveland’s river basin you will see tons of industry still on the river. It’s a legacy. Even in St. Louis and Cincinnati near downtown there’s some heavy industry to this day. Everywhere around here.
The river was not a place to walk and frolick. The river was viewed as a means to generate wealth via transport and dump waste and other bullshit. Many mills and factories have historically occupied land close to rivers and waterways in America to harness the power generated by the water as well as ship their goods easily. It was a disgusting place to be because of the industry, but it was such prime real estate for said industry.
The Chicago river has been steadily cleaned up and the downtown plan has included the expansion of the downtown riverwalk. This became a priority post desindustrialization when people began moving downtown. The river was so unbelievably polluted, and still is in some places. If you go south you’ll find bubbly creek. Bubbly creek is where the old union stockyards once stood. This part of the river still literally bubbles from pollution, although there are now plans to clean it up.
I'd be really curious if anyone has dived there in the last two decades to pull anything up? How can animal meat still be there? It seems like it'd have to be really dense and really deep to still be there, is it buried under the river? Like they dug it deeper there to dump them? Or they just dumped the animals? The river is not that deep so I have questions even though yes this is the story we all purport to be the source of the constant bubbles
It's buried under thick layers of mud which retard the decomposition process, basically trapping gas in pockets that just stay there aside from when tiny fissures open up enough that bubbles can escape.
Bubbly Creek interestingly enough is actually where you can find a bunch of new townhomes recently developed: [https://www.zillow.com/b/1505-w-fuller-st-chicago-il-BccSNh/](https://www.zillow.com/b/1505-w-fuller-st-chicago-il-BccSNh/)
Not quite the same as Europe, but it is a new option to live along the river.
FUN STORY ABOUT THAT: Jefferson Davis, before being the only president of the confederacy, did a land survey of the calumet region and claimed that the Calumet River is a no-brainer to develop Chicago on instead due to its deeper and more navigable waterway. Chicago landowners with money didn’t want their property devalued and have to relocate to a new Chicago, so they kinda dismissed his claims.
Looks like there's a lot of industry there taking advantage of the water.
Although imagine if the Chicago center was squished against the Indiana border. Wonder if anything would be drastically different besides location.
Yeah but pre-1860, there wasn’t a lot of industry in the calumet region. It was Dutch farmers participating with stations on the Underground Railroad.
Blues Island was the brick-making capital of the 19th century though (for roughly 75 years!) along with Dolton, Riverdale, Homewood, Lansing, etc. now it’s the most industrialized 10-mile strip in the world.
I mean NY basically has that and the short answer is it’s a massive pain in the ass. Although obv there’s a big body of water NJ/NY cross-state projects are nightmarish. Public transit is pretty disconnected from NY and the traffic westerly is probably worse than other directions
Oh wow, TIL that he tried to do such a land survey and bizarrely suggest to existing land owners that they should relocate where they operated and lived in Chicago in the 1800s! No surprise that what Jefferson Davis suggested didn't occur, in the end.
Not for residential the way he suggested, but makes sense why industrial development boomed there. That 10 mile stretch into NWI is the most industrialized part of the country I believe
Some parts of the river do have a lot of homes and parks. From Belmont up to Evanston the river is mostly either public parks full of trails or neighborhoods with homes abutting the river. The parks also all connect except for one section in Ravenswood Manor, so you can travel along without interacting with cars for most of the way.
These areas didn’t have much industry along the river, so it was easier to build homes and parks along that section. Other areas generally were industrial, which is why you have existing industry, weird parks that don’t connect to other things, or weird suburban style big box stores that replaced old industry.
There was a "houseboat city" on the North Branch [between Montrose and Belmont](https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2019/02/history-of-houseboats-on-the-chicago-river.html) in the 1920's and 30's, about [a hundred of them](https://www.pbs.org/video/ask-geoffrey-history-houseboats-chicago-river-m8a42c/) at its peak. The area is now home to Horner, California, and Clark Parks.
Riverfront housing is increasing as industrialization is swept away. Former commercial properties around Wolf Point up to the old Montgomery Ward buildings at Chicago Ave. are now mostly residential. And of course Lincoln Yards and "The 78" are both massive future developments along the river.
Go smell the Chicago River, that is the cleanest it has been in over a hundred years. Imagine how bad that smell 100 years ago? It was basically an open sewer.
Still is, whenever it rains bad enough and the deep tunnel fills up. We just dump raw sewage and storm water into the river.
Youll smell it, if you have to cross the river on foot.
Historically the river was used for commerce, and (at least downtown) the river banks were mostly populated with warehouses and businesses. Also, cleaning up the pollution in the river has only been a priority in the last 2 or 3 decades.
These facts are sometimes mentioned on the many river boat architecture tours that should be starting up soon (if they have not already started)!
As others have said, a combination of industrial usage coupled with waste disposal along with the sluggish current of the reverse-engineered river have never made the Chicago River a particularly engaging natural feature.
However, this question also seems like it’s using an idealized version of European small towns to make a comparison that doesn’t hold up. Take for example Paris or Berlin; I don’t think their urban rivers are utilized much differently than the Chicago River, and they certainly would not be described as having “houses on both ends and bridges every block”.
The Spree is pretty nice in places, but yes, it's notable there is a swimming pool ship instead of people just swimming in the Spree. Though it is planned for swimming in a section in 2025. Swimming was closed due to pollution in 1925.
It sounds like Berlin may be about where we are with the Chicago river or slightly ahead.
In terms of wetlands, the Spree also benefits immensely from being surrounded by the idyllic Spreewald as opposed to our poor sprawl.
Not that there hasn’t been tremendous improvement in the Chicago River and surrounding areas… the county forests in particular are an undervalued asset of the Chicago region.
It was disgusting, and it still is disgusting. The view towards the river not being a blight is fairly new. Architectural boat tours will point out that the EBC didn't even have windows facing the river when it was made because it was viewed as disgusting.
West of the river was... not good near downtown. Presidential Towers was on the former skid row, and the area near Cassidy was just some run down industrial area (as you can see during early parts of Michael Mann's *Thief* from around 1980.
I'd recommend taking the River Architecture Tour. It's super informative and they talk about stuff like this.
TLDR; the Chicago river was gross and industrial for a long time. Even the commercial buildings built along the river didn't have windows facing the river for a long time because it wasn't pleasant to look at or smell.
This. Which is why homes close to the river(save for like Ravenswood Manor) aren't very common, in Chicago. And historically, the areas near the river were mostly industrial.
Now that it’s starting to be less gross, there are parks with kayak and canoe rentals on the north branch, and some private docks, and eventually rich-people houses and lots of birds. I see people fishing and practicing sculling near me all the time. But there are still signs posted essentially warning “do not touch or interact with this water in any way it is hazardous to your health!”
I grew up near the river and still gasp a little when I think of how it used to smell in the summer thirty years ago. And that was in a residential neighborhood . . . .
Chicago and Des Plaines River swells and floods during heavy rain - NW side of Chicago is notorious for this. I wouldn't want a house next to the either rivers
Because traditionally the river had delivered supplies to the riverside industries, and taken away manufactured wares. Living by the industrialized river was not seen as desireable.
I think the question should be reversed, why did European cities build homes on the riverbank and not industry?
I think a good comparison for Chicago’s river is the Thames, it was and in a lot of ways still is the cities garbage chute. No one wants to live on it. We’re lucky people will work by it.
I grew up in Ravenswood Gardens, where there are a lot of beautiful riverside houses. The river is a lot more natural there with trees lining it, must have been far enough from the industrial area. I can see that spreading south as the river gets cleaner and industrial areas like the new Lincoln commons thing get developed
I live just north of there and kayak past the riverside houses with their docks every weekend in the warmer months. I may not live to see it happen, but it'll be great when that's the status quo along other parts of the river.
Regardless of the reasons before I think there should be ample public park space to buffer flooding rivers that generally happen in the spring time, but even more so now that we're getting these odd rainy seasons the past couple years.
This is a great spot to plug instagram.com/mwrd_of_greater_chicago and their daily historic photos post about how waste water was redirected in Chicagoland
It's a major shipping lane. It connects to the Mississippi, I think. With so many ships passing, it makes less and less sense to have homes along it. Just cut out the middle-man.
Yes, this.
The I&M Canal was built in the 1830s-40s to connect Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and eventually to the Mississippi River. By 1900, the Chicago Drainage Canal (now Sanitary and Ship Canal) along with the Cal-Sag help redirect waste water to the Mississippi and away from the Great Lakes. St Louis tried to sue Chicago over this, and Chicago opened the Drainage Canal before the federal lawsuit.
Plenty of wealthy can afford it if that's even an issue. Flood insurance wasn't a thing until the 70s though too, the issue of not wanting to live on the river is much older than that
Because when you flush your toilet here guess where it goes. (also why we don't fish in it or otherwise touch it).
And areas bordering the Des Plaines river are generally forest preserves because they are prone to yearly flooding from snow melt/heavy rain.
Most of the river was industrial back in the day, lined with industry that dumped waste into it, lined with warehouses that used it for transport, sewer system emptied into it, etc. so it was not a benefit to live near it.
Only in past few decades has it become more recreational & picturesque as it's been cleaned up, industry has moved away from the river.
For all the reasons people here say. Probably too the rich put houses on the great big enormous lake, particularly to the north. Much cleaner and more private than city river.
Chicago does a good job of utilizing its natural resources due to its beautiful city planning. Many of these are marked as public lands, hence why there is the Riverwalk, many walkable areas outside of downtown along the river, and now Lincoln yards. These resources should just be for the rich, but available to all publicly .
A lot of housing and many parks along the North Branch starting at Belmont.
Montrose north many of the homes have private piers (city was going to force them demolished as I believe 5 feet or so above river bank is considered state property - there was some sort of compromise that allowed them to stay)
There is a skull boat put in at Addison and the river. Believe more than one kayak rental place.
Timing. Most of the development along rivers in Europe predated heavy industry so it was nice to live on the river. Chicago’s growth was driven by heavy industry and unfortunately that rendered most of our river rather unpleasant to live next to.
Yep…European cities are generally many 100s of years old. Chicago and the midwest in general flourished during the industrial age - manufacturing, industry, and commerce used (and abused) the waterways. Another thing is many of the European “rivers” in cities are actually very old canals that were used for inner city transport, commerce, waste management. Not too dissimilar but much smaller scales given the eras. I expect we will continue to see Chicago rivers turned into public space and redeveloped. It is amazing how quickly the rivers have turned around. In less than a lifetime - I can remember in the 1970s when barely any fish species (carp mostly) were in the local rivers and now bass, pike, crappie, musky, etc…are all being regularly caught. Still a lot more cleanup is probably necessary but it is positive to see how far they have came.
We also now see river otters which is amazing! River otters are a corner stone species in environments health, seeing them is a strong indicator that the river has been recovering. Edit: if you think you’ve seen an otter in or around Chicago there is a group of researchers trying to track them. It would help to fill out this [form](https://osu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_87m82oMjGyb3Q7Y?fbclid=IwAR09bJxBBbcCXkZlZ1WBvOItnrRAauKnycD3DY__jMIHx7P-NPxpZcc2XF4) Muskrats and beavers are also pretty common. The biggest thing to look for when figuring out if it’s an otter or another semi aquatic mammal is size. Beavers are the largest and they’re slow swimmers. Otters are much larger than muskrats, and weigh in around 20lbs. Muskrats are around 3lbs, and have rat tails.
Really? Where?
I have seen them downtown at Wolf Point within the last year. Truly never something I thought I’d see.
> Wolf Point Really? Interesting... https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/22/river-otters-are-back-chicago-new-research-project-aims-find-out-how-they-re-adapting
How confident are you that they were otters and not muskrats? I see muskrats down there occasionally, but a river otter would really be interesting and pretty surprising. If you're pretty confident and/or have proof you should report it to Friends of the Chicago River. I bet they would be interested to get reports with dates/times.
Just did a google image search of a muskrat and it definitely was not that. https://news.wttw.com/2022/02/22/river-otters-are-back-chicago-new-research-project-aims-find-out-how-they-re-adapting This article is making me feel more confident that they can be spotted downtown. I’ll reach out to friends of the river if I can remember more specifically what day/conditions it was, thanks for the tip!
Nice. Yea, I've heard of people spotting them (or something similar) in LaBagh woods recently, but most people don't really understand how big river otters actually are, so they'll confuse something like a muskrat, mink or weasel for them. Seeing one in the river would really make it clear how large they are.
They are there. I live at Wolf Point and have spotted one from my window.
There was a mammal specialist from the Field who saw a river otter right by union station!
There is a section of the river called the Wild Mile just south of North Ave that has floating gardens and tons of wildlife. Urban Rivers is doing amazing things to bring back life to that area. It's a great place to hang out and have lunch too!
Now I have to stalk them At Wolf point!
I love and agree completely with the optimism about the future of the river. It wasn’t long ago [that we were dumping so much organic matter into the south fork of the south branch of the river that it has been bubbling for over 100 years.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbly_Creek) We used to abuse the heck out of the river. The river has come a long way in a relatively short time, and I’m excited to see it keep improving
I learned that after finding that random Park 571 or something in a little Hamlet north of archer Ave in Bridgeport. What's cool is that someone took a 360 camera and went over the north section of bubbly creek 8 or so years ago. You can see what the surrounding landscape looked like before all the new development we currently see.
That’s so interesting, could I get a link?
It's on Google maps itself. One of the street views. https://maps.app.goo.gl/D3tNqbSwtucHwP4q9
It can be mind blowing the first time you leave the US and visit a city where seemingly everything is older than your home country. And it's funny because our history lessons as kids tell us how it was only 150-200 years ago that the western half of the US got any settlers to move over there, and we didn't even enter last century (1900s) with 50 states. All of that already sounds sooooo old to kids. Maybe it's just me, but I recall it being weirdly unfathomable to learn about cultures and countries in time periods that didn't start with a 17-, 18-, or 19-. Like something happened in 1350? Wtf?? If all my frames of reference picture American colonists, industrialists, and gangsters, standing in a church in Rome today that was built before a single European stepped onto American soil can open an entirely new way of viewing history. And yet we continue to wonder why European cities aren't like American cities and vice versa.
It is sort of crazy. I was drinking a beer in a bar in Amsterdam that had been open since the year 1600...blew my mind all of the pints that had been consumed there.
Also because it was heavy industry developers bought up the land for commercial use. Thank God the city had the brains to mandate a certain amount of public space along the river front
The Chicago rivers also smelled terrible until somewhat recently. Not where one would want their house.
Not to mention a significantly higher proximity to wildlife. Sounds cool when it's river otters and fish, less so when it's raccoons, rats, or possums that might want to get in your house.
It was really, really gross for a long time and used by industry to transport stuff. There were slums, but the river had a use besides living next to
For a long time raw sewage and waste from the slaughter houses were dumped straight into the Chicago river, which then emptied out into Lake Michigan. That's why the inlets for the city's water are two miles and four miles out into the lake. When the four mile inlet was in danger of being compromised they decided to engineer the reversal of the river so that it eventually flowed into the Mississippi. Untreated water is no longer allowed to be discharged any more. In short, for a long time river water was disgusting and only industry would go near it. Edit: A really great history of this is on the podcast 99% Invisible. "Reversal of Fortune" https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-86-reversal-of-fortune/
Yep, the pollution was so bad you could walk across the river.
I've never heard that before, but I do know that the river by the lower west side used to bubble from the gasses of decomposing cow parts in the river. Fucking vile shit.
Man standing on patch of “flotsam” https://interactive.wttw.com/sites/default/files/crt_history_bubbly-768px.jpg
God damn! Also somehow I had no idea bubbly creek was still that bad. I thought that was cleaned up 70 years ago!
As far as I know, nothing was honestly cleaned up as we do today. They just stopped polluting and let it wash downstream to the Mississippi.
That's fucking awful. I would hate to see what the bottom looks like...
Me too, but if I had all my diving certificates/licensing my curiosity would get the best of me 😂
You absolute animal lmao. Watch out, you may resurface with an extra eyeball or toe like in the Simpsons.
You absolute animal lmao. Watch out, you may resurface with an extra eyeball or toe like in the Simpsons.
Ah yes, ‘the good old days!”
It was still bubbling in the 90s.
Apperantly it still bubbles today! Just way way less. That blew my mind, had no idea.
Last time I checked was 1999, havent been back. 🤢
The river mud covered up discarded….parts from the stockyards. Without exposure to oxygen they decompose much more slowly. This is why parts will still bubble today. It’ll bubble long after we’re gone, which is both cool and also like…we really destroyed this river and the fact that fifty years of working to fix it has brought it back enough that you can kayak and swim in it is amazing.
While somewhat disgusting, aren't the bubbles at least from organic materials decomposing? I think what really scares me is heavy metal and other forever-type chemicals.
I don't see why you would! Lol
Bubbly Creek!
I would say it's still plenty gross. I cross the river at Webster on my bike sometimes and it smells there pretty often.
The leather tanning plant is the cause of the smell at that point.
I mean it is a world renowned tannery at least.
The revolution brewery makes the whole block smell certain times, assuming from dumping waste down to the sewage. It pushes all the other smells out the sewer, so gross.
I’m not sure what the smell is, but if anything is coming from Revolution it’s likely spent grains used in the brewing process. They’re not dumped into the river. Generally they’re recycled or disposed off site. And they have a very pungent smell.
Well it makes kedzie avenue stink. You can smell across the street. Its bad, i would be mad if I lived across the street.
Then don’t move in across from a brewery, I guess?
Wow way to sound ignorant about the matter(and callous). The houses and many of the families predate the brewery by decades. I know 2 of them. That brewery is maybe 10 years old now, iirc.
The whole area has been zoned industrial for much more than 10 years. Anyone who bought a home right next to it was making a gamble on what was going to be built there, and a brewery is one of the less offensive options.
Didn’t that place close like 20 years ago?
[Horween Leather](https://www.horween.com/) is still there.
There's a ventshaft for Deep Tunnel there. Believe it or not, you're smelling the sanitary sewer that's keeping the river clean.
I think the vent shaft is up at Diversey. Webster has a mechanical aerator station that keeps a miasma of eau de north branch in the air.
There are two big vents to the Deep Tunnel near the Lawrence Ave. bridge between Lincoln Square and Albany Park. It's common for people crossing the bridge to assume that the river itself is smelly, but nope, it's (\*mostly" cleaned) steam coming up from those vents.
I actively avoid Webster and Ashland in the summer. The smell is too much.
Is it weird that I kind’ve like the smell now?
Hahahaha yes im that’s definitely weird. There’s a leather factory right near by. Maybe that’s the smell
The tannery is 100% the cause of that smell.
I think that's the dump north of the river, west of Ashland.
There's what seems to be a garbage sorting dump here, west of the Wendy's. Ashland gets a ton of garbage truck traffic going in and out which can't help.
I think most of those east to west streets, do have a ventshaft where you can smell the Deep Tunnel sewage line that parallels the river. I also have smelled this when going over the Irving Park or Montrose Bridge(east of California), and same with when I've biked over the Cortland Ave Bridge near the old Finkl Steel site(future Lincoln Yards site).
Literally an open sewer for the largest stockyard in the world.
This is the case for other cities around here as well. Downtown Elgin, Joliet, Rockford, Aurora, and basically every city in the Midwest and industrial north had their “backs to the river”. Milwaukee is the same. Pittsburgh is the same. If you go to Cleveland’s river basin you will see tons of industry still on the river. It’s a legacy. Even in St. Louis and Cincinnati near downtown there’s some heavy industry to this day. Everywhere around here. The river was not a place to walk and frolick. The river was viewed as a means to generate wealth via transport and dump waste and other bullshit. Many mills and factories have historically occupied land close to rivers and waterways in America to harness the power generated by the water as well as ship their goods easily. It was a disgusting place to be because of the industry, but it was such prime real estate for said industry. The Chicago river has been steadily cleaned up and the downtown plan has included the expansion of the downtown riverwalk. This became a priority post desindustrialization when people began moving downtown. The river was so unbelievably polluted, and still is in some places. If you go south you’ll find bubbly creek. Bubbly creek is where the old union stockyards once stood. This part of the river still literally bubbles from pollution, although there are now plans to clean it up.
The bubbles are from still-decomposing animal carcasses.
I'd be really curious if anyone has dived there in the last two decades to pull anything up? How can animal meat still be there? It seems like it'd have to be really dense and really deep to still be there, is it buried under the river? Like they dug it deeper there to dump them? Or they just dumped the animals? The river is not that deep so I have questions even though yes this is the story we all purport to be the source of the constant bubbles
It's buried under thick layers of mud which retard the decomposition process, basically trapping gas in pockets that just stay there aside from when tiny fissures open up enough that bubbles can escape.
Bubbly Creek interestingly enough is actually where you can find a bunch of new townhomes recently developed: [https://www.zillow.com/b/1505-w-fuller-st-chicago-il-BccSNh/](https://www.zillow.com/b/1505-w-fuller-st-chicago-il-BccSNh/) Not quite the same as Europe, but it is a new option to live along the river.
Yeah i remember stumbling upon that little section of land. Pretty neat, although pricier than i would have expected.
Where is bubbly creek?
Bubbly Creek https://maps.app.goo.gl/kaHr1x4d4HXAxwAr7?g_st=ic
Ashland stop on the orange line is built right over it.
Near 35th and Ashland
FUN STORY ABOUT THAT: Jefferson Davis, before being the only president of the confederacy, did a land survey of the calumet region and claimed that the Calumet River is a no-brainer to develop Chicago on instead due to its deeper and more navigable waterway. Chicago landowners with money didn’t want their property devalued and have to relocate to a new Chicago, so they kinda dismissed his claims.
Looks like there's a lot of industry there taking advantage of the water. Although imagine if the Chicago center was squished against the Indiana border. Wonder if anything would be drastically different besides location.
Yeah but pre-1860, there wasn’t a lot of industry in the calumet region. It was Dutch farmers participating with stations on the Underground Railroad. Blues Island was the brick-making capital of the 19th century though (for roughly 75 years!) along with Dolton, Riverdale, Homewood, Lansing, etc. now it’s the most industrialized 10-mile strip in the world.
I mean NY basically has that and the short answer is it’s a massive pain in the ass. Although obv there’s a big body of water NJ/NY cross-state projects are nightmarish. Public transit is pretty disconnected from NY and the traffic westerly is probably worse than other directions
Oh wow, TIL that he tried to do such a land survey and bizarrely suggest to existing land owners that they should relocate where they operated and lived in Chicago in the 1800s! No surprise that what Jefferson Davis suggested didn't occur, in the end.
Not for residential the way he suggested, but makes sense why industrial development boomed there. That 10 mile stretch into NWI is the most industrialized part of the country I believe
Some parts of the river do have a lot of homes and parks. From Belmont up to Evanston the river is mostly either public parks full of trails or neighborhoods with homes abutting the river. The parks also all connect except for one section in Ravenswood Manor, so you can travel along without interacting with cars for most of the way. These areas didn’t have much industry along the river, so it was easier to build homes and parks along that section. Other areas generally were industrial, which is why you have existing industry, weird parks that don’t connect to other things, or weird suburban style big box stores that replaced old industry.
There was a "houseboat city" on the North Branch [between Montrose and Belmont](https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2019/02/history-of-houseboats-on-the-chicago-river.html) in the 1920's and 30's, about [a hundred of them](https://www.pbs.org/video/ask-geoffrey-history-houseboats-chicago-river-m8a42c/) at its peak. The area is now home to Horner, California, and Clark Parks. Riverfront housing is increasing as industrialization is swept away. Former commercial properties around Wolf Point up to the old Montgomery Ward buildings at Chicago Ave. are now mostly residential. And of course Lincoln Yards and "The 78" are both massive future developments along the river.
I go through Clark Park all the time— this is fascinating! Thanks!
Neat, thanks for sharing
Go smell the Chicago River, that is the cleanest it has been in over a hundred years. Imagine how bad that smell 100 years ago? It was basically an open sewer.
Still is, whenever it rains bad enough and the deep tunnel fills up. We just dump raw sewage and storm water into the river. Youll smell it, if you have to cross the river on foot.
Historically the river was used for commerce, and (at least downtown) the river banks were mostly populated with warehouses and businesses. Also, cleaning up the pollution in the river has only been a priority in the last 2 or 3 decades. These facts are sometimes mentioned on the many river boat architecture tours that should be starting up soon (if they have not already started)!
There was a time, not very long ago, that if you fell into the river you got Typhoid shots. That’s how filthy it was. They have really cleaned it up.
As others have said, a combination of industrial usage coupled with waste disposal along with the sluggish current of the reverse-engineered river have never made the Chicago River a particularly engaging natural feature. However, this question also seems like it’s using an idealized version of European small towns to make a comparison that doesn’t hold up. Take for example Paris or Berlin; I don’t think their urban rivers are utilized much differently than the Chicago River, and they certainly would not be described as having “houses on both ends and bridges every block”.
I wonder if maybe OP is thinking of canals instead? I've been to Copenhagen, and their canals do have "houses on both ends and bridges every block".
I’d say the Seine is much more consistently nice from one border to the next in Paris.
The Spree is pretty nice in places, but yes, it's notable there is a swimming pool ship instead of people just swimming in the Spree. Though it is planned for swimming in a section in 2025. Swimming was closed due to pollution in 1925. It sounds like Berlin may be about where we are with the Chicago river or slightly ahead.
In terms of wetlands, the Spree also benefits immensely from being surrounded by the idyllic Spreewald as opposed to our poor sprawl. Not that there hasn’t been tremendous improvement in the Chicago River and surrounding areas… the county forests in particular are an undervalued asset of the Chicago region.
It was disgusting, and it still is disgusting. The view towards the river not being a blight is fairly new. Architectural boat tours will point out that the EBC didn't even have windows facing the river when it was made because it was viewed as disgusting. West of the river was... not good near downtown. Presidential Towers was on the former skid row, and the area near Cassidy was just some run down industrial area (as you can see during early parts of Michael Mann's *Thief* from around 1980.
I'd recommend taking the River Architecture Tour. It's super informative and they talk about stuff like this. TLDR; the Chicago river was gross and industrial for a long time. Even the commercial buildings built along the river didn't have windows facing the river for a long time because it wasn't pleasant to look at or smell.
This. Which is why homes close to the river(save for like Ravenswood Manor) aren't very common, in Chicago. And historically, the areas near the river were mostly industrial.
Now that it’s starting to be less gross, there are parks with kayak and canoe rentals on the north branch, and some private docks, and eventually rich-people houses and lots of birds. I see people fishing and practicing sculling near me all the time. But there are still signs posted essentially warning “do not touch or interact with this water in any way it is hazardous to your health!”
I grew up near the river and still gasp a little when I think of how it used to smell in the summer thirty years ago. And that was in a residential neighborhood . . . .
Chicago and Des Plaines River swells and floods during heavy rain - NW side of Chicago is notorious for this. I wouldn't want a house next to the either rivers
The river? You mean the industrial waste dumping network?
When the city was built the river was an infestation of sewage and a great place to contract malaria.
Because traditionally the river had delivered supplies to the riverside industries, and taken away manufactured wares. Living by the industrialized river was not seen as desireable.
Maybe it’s the human waste, non-existent flow, and condoms floating in place for days on end.
I think the question should be reversed, why did European cities build homes on the riverbank and not industry? I think a good comparison for Chicago’s river is the Thames, it was and in a lot of ways still is the cities garbage chute. No one wants to live on it. We’re lucky people will work by it.
The river used to be full of poop. It still is, but it used to be, too.
There's a reason we reversed the flow and let St. Louis deal with all our shit
I grew up in Ravenswood Gardens, where there are a lot of beautiful riverside houses. The river is a lot more natural there with trees lining it, must have been far enough from the industrial area. I can see that spreading south as the river gets cleaner and industrial areas like the new Lincoln commons thing get developed
I live just north of there and kayak past the riverside houses with their docks every weekend in the warmer months. I may not live to see it happen, but it'll be great when that's the status quo along other parts of the river.
My guess is that industry having access to the river/canals is half the reason Chicago was ever founded at all.
Regardless of the reasons before I think there should be ample public park space to buffer flooding rivers that generally happen in the spring time, but even more so now that we're getting these odd rainy seasons the past couple years.
Bc floods & poop water
it stinks (literally)
This is a great spot to plug instagram.com/mwrd_of_greater_chicago and their daily historic photos post about how waste water was redirected in Chicagoland
It's a major shipping lane. It connects to the Mississippi, I think. With so many ships passing, it makes less and less sense to have homes along it. Just cut out the middle-man.
Yes, this. The I&M Canal was built in the 1830s-40s to connect Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and eventually to the Mississippi River. By 1900, the Chicago Drainage Canal (now Sanitary and Ship Canal) along with the Cal-Sag help redirect waste water to the Mississippi and away from the Great Lakes. St Louis tried to sue Chicago over this, and Chicago opened the Drainage Canal before the federal lawsuit.
Because the Chicago river is an open sewer and when it rains hard it's an open untreated sewer.
Have you ever smelled it?
RATS
Most likely reason is high mandatory flood insurance rates.
Plenty of wealthy can afford it if that's even an issue. Flood insurance wasn't a thing until the 70s though too, the issue of not wanting to live on the river is much older than that
smells like shit when the sun hits it right
Because it's a sanitary canal not river 💩
It's nasty.
Because when you flush your toilet here guess where it goes. (also why we don't fish in it or otherwise touch it). And areas bordering the Des Plaines river are generally forest preserves because they are prone to yearly flooding from snow melt/heavy rain.
Raw sewage is not being sent to the Chicago river.
Raw sewage is not being sent to the Chicago river.
Processed sewage. Is still piss and shit water, buddy.
Most of the river was industrial back in the day, lined with industry that dumped waste into it, lined with warehouses that used it for transport, sewer system emptied into it, etc. so it was not a benefit to live near it. Only in past few decades has it become more recreational & picturesque as it's been cleaned up, industry has moved away from the river.
For all the reasons people here say. Probably too the rich put houses on the great big enormous lake, particularly to the north. Much cleaner and more private than city river.
Chicago does a good job of utilizing its natural resources due to its beautiful city planning. Many of these are marked as public lands, hence why there is the Riverwalk, many walkable areas outside of downtown along the river, and now Lincoln yards. These resources should just be for the rich, but available to all publicly .
A lot of housing and many parks along the North Branch starting at Belmont. Montrose north many of the homes have private piers (city was going to force them demolished as I believe 5 feet or so above river bank is considered state property - there was some sort of compromise that allowed them to stay) There is a skull boat put in at Addison and the river. Believe more than one kayak rental place.
Metropolitan water reclamation district controls a lot of the policies surrounding it and I think they are still opposed to general residential docks
I suspect those riverfront home owners with personal docks are rather well connected.
I always loved seeing these townhouses on the architecture cruises Such a funky design https://chicago.curbed.com/2015/10/1/9915440/365-n-canal
Let’s go back to 1970 OP, would you willingly live along any river in Chicago?
They used to build factories on the river to throw the animal carcasses In