Chicago River
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a stream in the city of Chicago, which formerly emptied into Lake Michigan, but which, by the construction of the Chicago Drainage canal, has reversed its direction. The Illinois and Michigan canal connects the Chicago river at Bridgeport with the Illinois river at La Salle, a distance of about 100 miles. CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF, a coeducational (non-sectarian) institution in Chicago, Ill., founded by John D. Rockefeller, dating from Sept. 10, 1890, when the institution was incorporated under the laws of Illinois. A previous institution known as the University of Chicago had gone out of existence, owing to financial difficulties, in 1886. A number of Baptists, which denomination had been interested in the old institution, desired to have a college in Chicago , and succeeded in interesting John D. Rockefeller in the plan. He promised $600,- 000 toward the establishment of the college if $400,000 more should be raised by June, 1890. This amount was duly raised, and the plan was enlarged in scope so as to include a university, instead of a mere college. Further large gifts were made by Mr. Rockefeller and by others, and the doors were opened for instruction Oct. 1, 1892. The site of the University includes six blocks of land, containing about 35 acres. a frontage on the Midway Plaisance, between Washington and Jackson Parks. A general architectural plan was adopted at the outset, and to this plan new buildings were successively adapted. The It lies with grounds are covered by a series of quadrangles, the buildings, in the English Gothic style, being constructed of gray Bedford stone, with red roofs. In 1919 there were in the institution a total of 5,650 students. These were divided as follows: Graduate, 681; undergraduate, 2,531; professional, 1,490; university college, 1,219. The faculty comprised 346 members. There were 570,849 volumes in the library. The income for the year was $1,874,182. The productive funds amounted to $32,537,- 886. Harry Pratt Judson, LL. D., was president.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, the striking fact was that the river had been made to run backwards, the reversal completed in 1900 by the Sanitary and Ship Canal. That reversal still holds, but almost everything around it has moved: the Illinois and Michigan Canal Collier's names lost its commercial traffic in 1933 and became a National Heritage Corridor in 1984, and the Supreme Court capped how much Lake Michigan water Illinois may divert down the river, a limit now averaging 3,200 cubic feet per second. Since 1975 the Deep Tunnel project has been built to catch the storm sewage that once poured straight in, and the water is clean enough that the downtown banks were rebuilt as the Chicago Riverwalk, finished in 2016. The newest engineering problem is the opposite of the old one: electric barriers and works at Brandon Road Lock now try to stop invasive Asian carp using the reversed river to reach the Great Lakes.
Written for this edition, 2026.