Wicker Park Blather: Make no little plans 3, If at first you don't succeed, try, try...

Streets

It is important to realize that all the things we consider as the very model of a modern urbanist plan, things like increased transit infrastructure, increased density near transit stations and employment centers and walkable neighborhoods, were the cornerstones of these earlier plans as well.

The difference was that they wanted to reinvent the neighborhood.

To the plan commission, each neighborhood was an area bounded by four major (1/2 mile) streets. Each neighborhood would have sufficient grade schools for its intended population located on the interior with a park connecting them and perhaps a neighborhood shopping center (strip mall) on the edge.

Several neighborhoods would form a community area. Each community area would contain sufficient high schools and a large community shopping center at their junction.

Several communities would be bounded by the new expressways. Ours included not just the Kennedy, but ones on California and Grand Aves as well.

In the neighborhoods, through traffic was the nemesis of walkability. They planned to widen the major streets to provide traffic capacity, and interrupt the flow through the side streets with cul-de-sacs and loops. They also felt that alleys were a waste of land and, that the rights of way of the side streets could be reduced from a typical 66 feet down to 50 feet.

This is what they saw a model for the new neighborhood. This one was an example they found in Columbus, Ohio.

Using this as a model this is what Wicker Park could look like.

The parks and shopping centers are taken from the actual plans, but more on land use in a later segment.

Their plan for the major streets varied widely. In ‘42s plan for residential land and ‘48s preliminary comprehensive plan they were not specific, although it is a safe bet that they hoped to widen North Avenue to match the portion west of Western. But in 1952. their plan for the northwest central area, went out on a limb.

They wanted North ave (currently 100’ west of Western, 66’ east) widened to 200 feet (incorporating the Humboldt Park Elevated ROW). Milwaukee should be widened to 250 feet (currently 66’) at least as far south as Grand. And they felt that it would be cheaper to acquire the necessary land on streets like Damen and Racine than on Western and Ashland, so Damen, Racine, Chicago and Armitage should be widened to 200 feet.

The extra width of North and Milwaukee was to provide space to bury the rest of the Elevated lines. It was cheaper to put them in a trench and that was their plan.

By 1958, they softened somewhat. A few things had happened. For one the Humboldt Park El line closed about the time of their last plan. Another thing that happened is that the area fought for and succeeded in getting the “East Humboldt” area classified as a conservation area. This curtailed widespread land clearance and increased certain forms of federal funding for building improvement and FHA mortgages.

In a preliminary traffic study CDoT greatly reduced their road widening goals.

Milwaukee was to remain at 66’, North, Chicago and Damen widened to 100’ and Armitage widened to 80. They also seem to have given up on the Grand Ave Expressway, it was now recommended to be widened to 100’.

Milwaukee, however was not immune from further planning. In 1968 they wanted to deemphasize the diagonal streets. They presented three possibilities for Milwaukee between North and Division. All of them involved closing it to through traffic. One was to tear out all the commercial and make it a residential street, another to keep it a commercial strip, with residential infill replacing the deteriorated structures, and finally to tear out everything, build shopping malls at either end and turn the rest into a park.

The thing that surprised me the most, while researching these plans, was the disdain the urban renewal planners held for the street grid. They seemed to be of the opinion that the middle class was being driven from the city by the unrelenting monotony of parallel streets.

Paul K, Dickman