The 100 year History of the Michigan Avenue Bridge

by Suzanne Hanney

The opening of the Michigan Avenue Bridge 100 years ago - on May 14, 1920 - began a transformation of the area directly north into the “New Gateway of the Greater Chicago” and the glamorous street of today.

Both north and south of the Chicago River, Michigan Avenue had been narrow and congested, a street of utility buildings. Between Randolph Street and the river, there were wholesale stores, industrial buildings and warehouses for the shipping canals and railroad spurs to the east, as well as the South Water Street Market, the city’s central produce market, to the west. North of the river, “Pine Street,” as it was then known, was an area of light industry, food processing, and warehouses. As early as 1904, however, the old Michigan Avenue Bridge and the Rush Street Bridge were termed inadequate for their volumes of traffic, according to a story in the Chicago Daily Tribune.

The idea of making Michigan Avenue a major north-south thoroughfare and of developing the area gained traction from Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett’s “Plan of Chicago” in 1909. Burnham had been the architect for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago’s Jackson Park. Afterward, he had continued his career in urban planning along the lines of the world’s fair’s Beaux Arts ideal, where “the goal was to produce structures of monumental grandeur, buildings that both delighted the eye and conveyed an image of rational order,” according to the Chicago Landmarks Commission. Three facets of the Plan of Chicago -- construction of the new Michigan Avenue Bridge, widening Michigan Avenue, and redesigning Michigan Avenue and East South Water Street as bilevel roadways -- shaped the city of today.

The Michigan Avenue Bridge shortly after it opened in 1920.

Library of Congress

The Chicago City Council passed an ordinance in 1913 and then a bond issue for construction of the bridge and widening of Michigan Avenue. The North Central Business District Association was formed that same year around the same two goals. Bennett, who headed the association’s architects’ committee, advocated public spaces at both ends of the bridge, to provide the setting for “a grand architectural ensemble worthy of the Chicago of the future," on what the North Central Association hoped would become "the World’s Greatest Thoroughfare,” according to the Landmarks Commission. Bennett himself designed the four Beaux Arts style bridge tenders’ houses.

In addition, the architects’ committee promoted the idea of monumental buildings at each of the four corners of the Michigan Avenue Bridge as gateposts to the new boulevard. Eventually, their vision was completed with construction of the Wrigley Building (1921), the London Guarantee and Accident Building (1923), Tribune Tower (1925) and 333 North Michigan Avenue (1927-28).

Meanwhile, land acquisition began in 1916, Michigan Avenue widening and bridge construction in 1918. When it was completed after two years at a cost of $14.9 million (equivalent to $222.4 million today), the Michigan Avenue Bridge was called the most important realization of the Plan of Chicago since its publication in 1909.

A month before the new bridge opened, William Wrigley Jr. announced that he had already laid the foundations for the first commercial structure on Michigan Avenue built north of the river after its widening. Wrigley was the world’s largest producer of chewing gum, with annual sales of $27 million by 1919, and he sought a new site for his corporate headquarters, which had grown rapidly and moved several times around Chicago.

“The site that Wrigley finally selected – a trapezoidal lot at the northwest corner of Pine Street and the Chicago River – reflected his astute business sense and a knack for seizing opportunities at the right time,” according to the Chicago Landmarks Commission designation report on the Wrigley Building.

Because the site was located at a bend in the Chicago River, a building there would seem to straddle Michigan Avenue and could be seen two miles south down the street. “A building at this site would set the tone of the new and undoubtedly important thoroughfare and would solidify the positive reputation of the Wrigley Building among its customers,” according to the Landmarks Commission.

Wrigley engaged the architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, which also produced Chicago landmarks such as the Field Museum of Natural History (1920), Union Station (1913-25), main U.S. Post Office Building (1921, expanded 1932) Pittsfield Building (1927), Civic Opera House (1929) and Merchandise Mart (1930). As the successor to Daniel Burnham’s firm, Graham, Anderson et al was conversant with the historical European and classical Greek and Roman designs of the Beaux Arts style used for the 1893 world’s fair, and the City Beautiful movement. Charles G. Beersman, the architect given the Wrigley commission, had also studied the needs of New York and Chicago real estate.

Beersman structured the building with a three-story entrance, a tall monumental middle zone of uniform floors and a 398- foot clock tower modeled after the Spanish Renaissance Giralda Tower of Seville Cathedral–just two feet short of what Chicago then allowed. He chose white terra cotta tiles – lightweight and fireproof – to clad the steel skeleton in a variety of fanciful 16th century French Renaissance, Francis I designs: urns, gryphons, fleur-de-lis, cornucopias and swags. Its total cost came to $8 million, and Wrigley paid in cash, from the financial reserves of the chewing gum company.

The Wrigley Building was completely rented by the time it opened on April 1, 1921, and so in August 1922, Wrigley acquired leases on adjoining land for an annex, also designed by Beersman. Wrigley called his decision, “an expression of my personal faith in the future of Chicago. Chicago still lags behind New York in public improvements but I hold out great hope for the future and am staking little money on my belief,” according to the Landmarks Commission.

The building did indeed spur development along North Michigan Avenue, but not to the west, as Burnham had envisioned. Construction of the bridge alone had made the land highly desirable for those who wanted lower prices, more light, wide streets and less congestion near the Loop. Speculators bought up warehouses, commercial buildings and surviving residences, and banks went along with them, providing easy terms.

Wrigley sponsored two other improvements to the river intersection: the Bedford stone commemorative sculptures on the bridge tenders’ houses on the north side of the river. James Earle Fraser’s “The Discoverers” depicts Father Jacques Marquette and explorer Louis Jolliet, the first Europeans to travel the Chicago River, as well as the Native Americans of the region; Fraser’s “The Pioneers” shows Chicago settlers. On the southern bridge tenders’ houses, the Ferguson Fund, established to provide public sculpture, paid for Henry Hering’s depictions of the rebuilding after the Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Battle of Fort Dearborn, which had been located at that spot.

Wrigley was also a sportsman, who used bowling and semi-professional baseball to advertise his chewing gum. As an offshoot, he invested in the Chicago Cubs in 1916 and became majority stockholder four years later. In 1917, he was appointed to the Lincoln Park Commission in charge of Oak Street Beach, at the north end of what would become Michigan Avenue and the “Magnificent Mile.”

Lincoln Park began in 1860 as a portion of the city cemetery designated as parkland: from what is now North Avenue to Diversey Parkway, with a provision to extend Lake Shore Drive south to Oak Street, according to the Chicago Park District website. In 1870, in response to storms and erosion, the commission had built a breakwater of pilings, stone and brush between Oak Street and North Avenue. However, this breakwater inadequately protected Lake Shore Drive, which had opened in 1875, so the Army Corps of Engineers built a breakwall between Fullerton and North Avenues in the late 1880s.

Meanwhile, shoreline owners south of Lincoln Park asked the commission to extend Lake Shore Drive south from Oak Street to Ohio Street and they gave up their riparian, or shoreline land-use rights, to help pay for the landfill extension. The 1890s project included a 50-foot wide roadway, stone sidewalks, bicycle path, bridle path and a small sand beach at Oak Street. In 1899, the completion of the Chicago Drainage Canal meant that sewage was no longer dumped into Lake Michigan, which made it more attractive for swimmers. (The Chicago Drainage Canal, later renamed the Sanitary & Ship Canal, replaced the Illinois & Michigan Canal, see bridge story page 9).

Oak Street Beach had become popular by 1910, despite its small size. Surrounding mansion owners complained about the large numbers of bathers and the Lincoln Park Commission in 1917 limited the hours it was open to the public, to much protest. During hot summer days, the beach attracted as many as 55,000 bathers. It was a place to see and be seen.

Bathers gather at Oak Street Beach near the Drake Hotel in the 1920s

Drake Hotel

In 1934, soon after the formation of the Chicago Park District, federal funds also became available through the Works Progress Administration for improvements such as a tunnel underneath Michigan Avenue to Oak Street Beach and a comfort station. In the 1960s, shipments of sand from the Indiana Dunes augmented the beach.

The area around Oak Street Beach had seen development prior to 1920, thanks to hotel owner Potter Palmer and architect/developer Benjamin Marshall. In 1882, Potter Palmer had built a castle home for himself at what is now 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive. Marshall built 999 N. Lake Shore Drive, at the curve of Oak Street and the Drive, in 1911-12; the Stewart Apartments at 1200 N. Lake Shore Drive in 1912 and then 199 E. Lake Shore Drive in 1912-13, followed by 209 E. Lake Shore Drive and the Drake Hotel in 1920.

Raised within a wealthy Hyde Park family, Marshall was inspired to become an architect by the 1893 World’s Fair, said Brandon Womack, historian of the Benjamin Marshall Society. “He fully subscribed to the City Beautiful movement and its philosophies: orderly, beautiful, planned, with architecture that was inspiring.” He promoted the urban lakefront as a place for suburbanites accustomed to mansions and accordingly offered single-floor apartments with the same mix of rooms for specific functions: libraries, dining, orangeries, billiards.

The Drake Hotel when it was first completed.

Drake Hotel

Marshall partnered with the brothers John and Tracy Drake in building the hotel at the north end of Michigan Avenue, overlooking Oak Street Beach. He created a city within a city; the ground floor arcade had all the shops you would find on an old-fashioned Main Street: shoeshine, clothing, jewelry, barber, florist. “The idea was to refresh yourself,” Womack said. It was a concept Marshall repeated at the Blackstone and Edgewater Beach Hotels, which was supposed to have a long arcade adjacent to a golf course – and seaplane transportation from downtown.

A Gatsby-esque personality, Marshall drew from his travels and studies to design whatever fit the need for beauty at the time, Womack said. The Drake, in the Italian Renaissance style with elements of Art Deco, opened on New Year’s Eve 1920 to 2,000 of Chicago’s elite and “it remained high-society’s opulent first choice during the Roaring 20s,” according to the hotel’s website. Well into the 1930s guests at the urban resort like Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, George Gershwin and Charles Lindbergh could be seen sipping a cocktail and listening to Herbie Kay in its Gold Coast Room. In 1980 Hilton International acquired The Drake Hotel and restored it. In 2016, it became one of just 260 Historic Hotels of America as designated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Other notable Michigan Avenue buildings from this period include the Warwick Allerton Hotel Chicago, the InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile and the Palmolive Building.

Opened in 1924 as a residential hotel for single men moving into the city for white collar jobs, the Allerton was built to be seen from all sides, and in dark red brick to match the neighborhood rowhouses. In addition to private rooms, it featured a grille, libraries and lounges, a barbershop, miniature golf course and gymnasium with squash court.

The 42-story InterContinental opened in 1929 as the Medinah Athletic Club, with a 14th story Olympic pool – the first built above ground in a skyscraper. Befitting its original Masonic clientele, its architecture includes Assyrian style relief carvings on its eighth floor façade, three Sumerian warriors on its 12th floor setback above the entrance, and a golden Moorish dome. It is also an Historic Hotel of America.

Built for one of the world’s leading soap manufacturers between 1927 and 1929, the Palmolive Building was the first commercial skyscraper far from the Loop: at the north end of Michigan Avenue. Designed by Holabird & Root, which also did the Board of Trade, it uses the Art Deco “set-back” style influenced by municipal zoning laws. A navigational beacon named after aviator Charles Lindbergh that operated atop the building from 1930 to 1981 was restored in 2007. The building also was known as the Playboy Building when it served as the headquarters for the magazine founded by Hugh Hefner from 1967 to 1989. Since 2000 it has been condominiums.

Hoe the Drake Hotel looks today.

Drake Hotel

The Hancock being built in 1967.

Magnificent Mile Association

The Great Depression that began in 1929 “brought the dreams of a great avenue to a halt,” according to the website of the Magnificent Mile Association. It wasn’t until 1947, after World War II, that developer Arthur Rubloff launched a rebranding plan and coined the phrase, “the Magnificent Mile” for the avenue between the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

The 100-story John Hancock Center at 875 N. Michigan Ave. was the tallest building in the world when it opened in 1970. Commissioned by its namesake insurance company, the slope-sided building featured residential units above commercial ones. Water Tower Place, the nation’s first vertical mall, followed in 1975, with a mixture of retail, dining, entertainment, hotel and residential uses. Water Tower Place was built with setbacks to allow light onto Michigan Avenue.

However, the editor of ChicagoArchitecture.org groused in a Nov. 15, 2012 blog that the Hancock was “a bad seed” that had led to canyonization of Michigan Avenue. As a result, the nickname “Boul Mich” – a reference to the low-rise shopping streets of Paris – no longer fit. Michigan Avenue was now entering a new age, “transforming once again into a showcase of modern architecture.”

According to the Magnificent Mile Association, the boulevard’s second building boom, from 1988 to 2001, produced 900 N. Michigan, Chicago Place (700 N. Michigan), the Crate & Barrel building that is now home to Starbucks Roastery - the world’s largest - and the North Bridge Mall. Meanwhile, Trump International Hotel & Tower opened in 2009.

And in 1992, the BMO Harris Magnificent Mile Lights Fest got its start as a motorcade, perhaps a throwback to the small Italian lights that Saks Fifth Avenue had placed in its Erie Street elm trees in 1959. Today the two-day weekend festival starts the holiday season with activities, a parade -- and fireworks over the Chicago River.

The Starbucks Reserve Roastery

Dave Hamilton