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Kinzie Street railroad bridge

Bascule bridges in the United StatesBridges completed in 1907Bridges in ChicagoChicago LandmarksChicago and North Western Railway
Former railway bridges in the United StatesHistoric American Engineering Record in ChicagoPlate girder bridges in the United StatesRailroad bridges in IllinoisSteel bridges in the United StatesUse American English from November 2019Use mdy dates from November 2019
KinzieStRRBrdg08
KinzieStRRBrdg08

The Chicago and North Western Railway's Kinzie Street railroad bridge (also known as the Carroll Avenue bridge or the Chicago and North Western Railroad Bridge) is a single leaf bascule bridge across the north branch of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, Illinois. At the time of its opening in 1908 it was the world's longest and heaviest bascule bridge. The previous bridges on the same site included a pedestrian span that was the first bridge across the Chicago River; a second bridge that served as Chicago's first railroad bridge; and a third bridge that was one of the first all-steel spans in the United States. The Chicago Sun-Times, the last railroad customer to the east of the bridge, moved their printing plant out of downtown Chicago in 2000, and the bridge has been unused since. It was designated a Chicago Landmark in 2007. The bridge is lowered once a year and inspected by crew driving a Hi-Rail truck, and is still in "active" status.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Kinzie Street railroad bridge (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Kinzie Street railroad bridge
North Canal Street, Chicago Near West Side

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 41.888527777778 ° E -87.639166666667 °
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Address

Chicago & Northwestern Railway Bridge

North Canal Street
60606 Chicago, Near West Side
Illinois, United States
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Wolf Point, Chicago
Wolf Point, Chicago

Wolf Point is the location at the confluence of the North, South and Main Branches of the Chicago River in the present day Near North Side, Loop, and Near West Side community areas of Chicago. This fork in the river is historically important in the development of early Chicago. Located about 1.6 miles (2.6 km) from Lake Michigan, this was the location of Chicago's first three taverns, its first hotel, Sauganash Hotel, its first ferry, its first drug store, its first church, its first theater company, and the first bridges across the Chicago River. The name is said to possibly derive from a Native American Chief whose name translated to wolf, but alternate theories exist. Historically, the west bank of the river at the fork was called "Wolf Point," but in the 1820s and 1830s it came to denote the entire area and the settlement that grew up around the river-fork. Wolf Point is now often used more specifically to refer to a plot of land on the north side of the fork in the Near North Side community area owned by the Kennedy family as part of the larger Merchandise Mart Center complex. Today the north bank at the fork, is the location of a high-rise and a construction site, the west bank includes condominium high rises, commercial skyscrapers, and railroad tracks, while the south bank includes part of the Chicago Riverwalk and serves as the transition point of Wacker Drive from an east–west street to a north–south street.

Chicago River
Chicago River

The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of 156 miles (251 km) that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). Though not especially long, the river is notable because it is one of the reasons for Chicago's geographic importance: the related Chicago Portage is a link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Basin, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. The river is also noteworthy for its natural and human-engineered history. In 1887, the Illinois General Assembly decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago River through civil engineering by taking water from Lake Michigan and discharging it into the Mississippi River watershed, partly in response to concerns created by an extreme weather event in 1885 that threatened the city's water supply. In 1889, the Illinois General Assembly created the Chicago Sanitary District (now the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) to replace the Illinois and Michigan Canal with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a much larger waterway, because the former had become inadequate to serve the city's increasing sewage and commercial navigation needs. Completed by 1900, the project reversed the flow of the main stem and South Branch of the Chicago River by using a series of canal locks and increasing the flow from Lake Michigan into the river, causing the river to empty into the new canal instead. In 1999, the system was named a "Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium" by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).The river is represented on the Municipal Flag of Chicago by two horizontal blue stripes. Its three branches serve as the inspiration for the Municipal Device, a three-branched, Y-shaped symbol that is found on many buildings and other structures throughout Chicago.

Chicago and North Western Railway Power House
Chicago and North Western Railway Power House

The Chicago and North Western Railway Power House is the historic power house which served the 1911 Chicago and North Western Terminal in Chicago, Illinois. The building was designed by Frost & Granger in 1909; it was mainly designed in the Beaux Arts style but also exhibits elements of the Italian Renaissance Revival style. Construction on the building finished in 1911, the same year the terminal opened. The irregularly shaped building borders Clinton Street, Milwaukee Avenue, Lake Street, and the former Chicago and North Western tracks, which are now used by Metra for its Union Pacific District. The power house was built in cream brick with terra cotta trim, cornices, and ornamentation; the corner of the house at Clinton and Milwaukee features a 227-foot (69 m) brick smokestack. The building contained four rooms, a large engine room and boiler room and a smaller engineer's office and reception room. The Chicago Tribune reported in 1948 that the power house output enough power to serve a city of 15,000 people. The power house ceased to serve the station in the 1960s, but when the terminal was demolished and replaced by Ogilvie Transportation Center in 1984, the power house survived. It is one of two remaining railroad power houses in Chicago and the only remaining power house for the Chicago and North Western.The power house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 10, 2004. It was designated as a Chicago Landmark on January 11, 2006.Prior to its designation as a landmark, the building had long been slated for demolition, and its sub-basements were damaged by the 1992 Chicago Flood. A real estate developer purchased the building and, by adding two additional interior floors, re-developed the structure into a mixed-use office and retail building. The renovations won the Best Adaptive Reuse award from Landmarks Illinois in 2007.