Chicago Tribune 1934 Chicagoland Road Map

January 14, 2015 10:46 AM

Chicago Tribune 1934 Chicagoland Road Map Pre-O'Hare Airport, pre-Interstate Highways. Click 'Download full resolution' to download file.
posted by goethean (13 comments total)

Amazingly, one of those three polo clubs still exists.
posted by theodolite at 11:00 AM on January 14, 2015

Before I realized that the thing on the right was a closeup of Grant and Lincoln Parks, I thought, how did I not know that there was a big fuckin artificial island in Lake Michigan and why did they get rid of it
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:25 AM on January 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Public service announcement at lower right:

Every Road Less Than 40 Feed Wide Is a Menace to Human Life
For the past thirty years the Chicago Tribune has fought for the construction, improvement and expansion of Chicagoland's highway system. Today Illinois has more miles of concrete highways than any other state in the Union. The Tribune's campaign for wider roads has resulted in a great increase in 4-lane pavements. But more must be built and the Tribune will continue to fight for their construction in the interests of public safety.

Related: Highway news c1928 from the Chicago Tribune archives
posted by parrishioner at 11:25 AM on January 14, 2015

My hometown is remarkably unchanged, at least from a road map perspective. The biggest obvious difference is that the trickle I know as "Weller Creek" is labeled as "Weller's Drainage Ditch."
posted by Iridic at 12:05 PM on January 14, 2015

So many gravel roads!
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:08 PM on January 14, 2015

Why they tore out the segment of Ogden that went all the way to Lincoln Park is a mystery.

Also a nice explanation of why Lake Shore Drive loses its US 41 designation north of Foster.
posted by hwyengr at 12:23 PM on January 14, 2015

Another version of it on a site with lots of other such things.
posted by sparkletone at 12:56 PM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Seems like a lot of "smaller" streets must have been left off the map. Can't be possible that Belmont did not run east of 4000W, for example. The inset seems to confirm this - no Lincoln Ave. on the big map but it shows up on the inset.
posted by Mid at 1:05 PM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Stockyards were right downtown. I always figured they'd be further south or west.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:19 PM on January 14, 2015

And Elston! Poor Elston!
posted by wotsac at 1:28 PM on January 14, 2015

Yeah, Mid, that took me a minute too.
posted by nebulawindphone at 2:14 PM on January 14, 2015

My father grew up on a farm in Bartlett, a bit east of South Elgin. There's still some old crumbling foundations of the farm buildings in the trees between a few subdivisions. It's now in a sea of housing that sprang up in the 90's and early 00's, so you'd never guess it used to be corn and cows.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 2:44 PM on January 14, 2015

Check out all those "marshy area" and "intermittent river" symbols in the west. There's a big whorl of mud around Schaumburg, which is one reason Woodfield Mall was built there: the few farmers dabbling out a living in the area were only too eager to sell their soggy, unpleasant acres to the developers.

Most of the wetlands have been drained, routed around, or plugged since this map came out, but here and there a few marshes remain, deep enough to drown in.
posted by Iridic at 3:12 PM on January 14, 2015 [1 favorite]