Michigan Avenue

“ The South side park system is the most complete of any in the city, and it monopolizes the favor of visitors who desire to make a speedy circuit of the three handsomest parks in the town within the short space of half a day. The system of boulevards leading to these parks cannot be equaled in the whole world. Michigan avenue boulevard, which commences at Jackson street and the Lake Front, is the open sesame to a drive as delicious as the most exacting soul can desire. ”

“ Each of the thousands of electric standards in Michigan Avenue is a cluster of six huge globes (and yet they will tell you in Paris that the Rue de la Paix is the best-lit street in the world) , and here and there is a red globe of warning. The two lines of light pour down their flame into the pool which is the roadway, and you travel continually toward an incandescent floor without ever quite reaching it, beneath mysterious words of fire hanging in the invisible sky!... The automobile stops. You get out, stiff, and murmur something inadequate about the length and splendor of those boulevards. ”

“ No traffic is permitted on them, and consequently they are in superb condition for driving, summer and winter. The whole length of Michigan avenue you will never see a loaded team. These roads—that is, Michigan avenue and the others of the park system, and the park drives—are superb for driving or riding, perfectly made for drainage and permanency, with a top-dressing of pulverized granite. ”

“ Leaving the Court-house, run to the corner of Jackson Street, and Michigan Avenue Boulevard over granite-block pavement, thence on Michigan Avenue Boulevard to the corner of Thirty-fifth Street, where you may either turn to the left on Thirty-fifth Street and run over to the Grand Boulevard, or keep straight on Michigan Avenue Boulevard to Garfield Boulevard, turning left into this and running into Washington Park. The former route is better on account of the fact that by this route the rider has the opportunity of passing through the entire length of Washington Park. ”

“ Several important street openings and widenings have been undertaken in accordance with the commission’s major thoroughfare plan, such as New York Avenue beyond the limits of the L’Enfant plan, the opening of a new Louisiana Avenue from the Union Station to Pennsylvania Avenue at Union Square, straightening of Michigan Avenue, and extension of Sixteenth Street to the District line. The plan which follows the recommendations of the commission has been recognized by the District officials in the adoption of a 5-year highway program. ”

“ The automobile industry alone occupies nearly all of Michigan Avenue for two miles south of Twelfth Street.
Surrounding this crowded business section are most of the terminals of Chicago's many railroads. These connect the city with New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in the East; with New Orleans, Galveston, and Atlanta in the South; as well as with San Francisco and the other large cities of the West. The courthouse and city hall and the new Northwestern Railway Station are among the city's finest buildings. ”

“ The finest residence part of the south side, including the boulevards and parks, is surrounded and cut by them. There are a few viaducts, but for the most part the tracks occupy streets, and the crossings are at grade. Along the Michigan avenue water-front and down the lake shore to Hyde Park, on the Illinois Central and the Michigan Central and their connections, the foreign and local trains pass incessantly (I believe over sixty a day) , and the Illinois crosses above Sixteenth Street, cutting all the great southward avenues ”

“ During the past two or three days she has been doing Michigan and Prairie avenues in this city with a critical eye. “I noticed a good many houses,” she says, “that I did not like at all, but many others that are truly beautiful. The red brick ones and the yellow marble fronts are mostly exquisite in design and color. Here and there Michigan avenue reminds me of Brighton in England.”—Daily News.
[38] The company included His Worship the Mayor of Chicago (the Hon. Carter Harrison) ; G. M. Pullman (of Pullman City) ; J. Medill (editor of the “Tribune”) ; Murray Nelson; Mr. ”

“ The building is fifteen stories in height and the architecture is superb. Lady visitors will find it more than worth their while to inspect it.
The Permanent Art building, now in course of erection on the Lake Front, on the site of the old Exposition building, is to take the place of143 the old Art Institute, corner of Michigan avenue and Van Buren street, recently purchased by the Chicago club. The structure has a frontage of 320 feet on Michigan avenue, a length of 178 feet and a depth of 208, with a main entrance facing Adams street. ”

“ The huge Auditorium fronting on Michigan Avenue was erected at a cost of $3,500,000, includes a hotel and theatre, and is surmounted with a tower rising two hundred and seventy feet, giving a fine view over the city and lake. ”

“ The broad expanse of prairie was low, level and treeless originally, but abundant trees have since been planted, and art has made little lakes and miniature hills, beautiful flower-gardens and abundant shrubbery, thus producing pleasure-grounds of rare attractions. Michigan Avenue and Drexel and Grand Boulevards, leading to the southern system of parks and Lake Shore Drive on the north side of Chicago River, are the finest residential streets. ”

“ There are over 4000 miles of streets, over 1300 of which are paved, principally with wooden blocks, macadam, and asphalt, the mileage of the last-named material having increased rapidly in the last few years. Most of the main avenues are parallel with the lake. Of these, the Lake Shore Drive, Michigan, Drexel, and Grand boulevards, Prairie and Calumet avenues, Pine, Rush, and Cass streets, and La Salle Avenue, with Washington and Jackson boulevards running east and west, are conspicuous representatives of Chicago's more attractive residence avenues. ”

“ Earle predicted counties and cities and the state, even the federal government, eventually would coop­erate to build good highways and connecting roads. He was the first to urge a statewide system of roads, not just farm-to-market, hit-and-miss roads that ignored cross-country traf­fic. He also played a key role in construction of the nation’s first full mile of rural concrete highway. It was built on Woodward Avenue in De­troit between Six Mile Road and Seven Mile Road, a 17-foot, eight­ inch-wide marvel that drew observers from all over the world. ”

“ There are no fewer than seventy-five musical societies in the city.
Grand Avenue, which runs east and west, contains many of the chief buildings and best shops, while Wisconsin Street and East Water Street are also busy thoroughfares. Among the most prominent buildings is the Federal Building, a handsome structure of granite in a turreted baronial style, occupying the block bounded by Jefferson, Jackson, Michigan and Wisconsin Streets, and containing the Post Office, Custom House and United States Court House. The interior is finely finished in marbles, mosaics, mahogany, and oak. ”

“ Traffic jams and stop-and-go traffic were commonplace in the pre-freeway era as millions of families became auto owners. This is US-25 (Gratiot Avenue) in Detroit just before the outbreak of World War II in 1941. three-fourths of his staff into the project, and called on road contrac­tors all over the state for help. Crews worked day and night, seven days a week, and the expressway was built in 11 months. Thousands of workers were able to get to and from their jobs without traffic snarls. VanWagoner dedicated the highway Sept. ”

“ The great organ from the Chicago World's Fair is also placed in this building as a memorial to Professor Henry S. Frieze, the pioneer in Michigan's development as a musical center.
The University now has four dormitories or halls of residence for women. Two of them were completed in 1916; the Martha Cook Building on South University Avenue, given by the Cook family of Hillsdale, in memory of their mother, and the Newberry Hall of Residence on State Street, a memorial to Helen Handy Newberry, the wife of John S. Newberry, '47, given by her children. ”

“ He preferred the more plebeian trails, the department-store infested thoroughfare to the west, with the clattering "El" road overhead; or Fourth Avenue to the east, beginning at the statue of "George the Veracious," running between the silent and terrible mountains, finally, with a shriek and a crash, to dive headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth Street, and never to be seen again; or even some purlieu of the great East Side, where he could sit listening at ease in the humble shop of Fitbad the Tailor. ”

“ Of all the blocks in the stretch of tradition that carries the Avenue up to Fourteenth Street, the richest in interest is, naturally, that which lies immediately north of the Square. Dividing this block in two, and running respectively east and west, are Washington Mews and MacDougall Alley. When Fifth Avenue was young and addicted to stately horse-drawn turnouts, it was in these half streets that were stabled the steeds and the carriages. ”

“ It is not only the vast scale of the street as measured by its width, which seems enormous when one looks at the sea of traffic, but which seems narrow when one looks at the towering buildings, nor the beauty of those buildings or the delicacy of their detail that give Fifth Avenue its peculiar character and interest. Without the great masses of well-dressed men and women which crowd its wide pavements all day long it would seem dull and heavy. ”

“ Of all the monuments that have graced Madison Square that which first comes to mind is one that has gone. Twenty years ago a splendid white arch spanned the Avenue, with one pier close to the sidewalk in front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the other touching the edge of the opposite Park. It was in direct line with Washington Arch seventeen blocks away. Under it, on September 30, 1898, passed the victor of Manila Bay, whose name it bore, bowing right and left to the city's riotous welcome. For months it remained there, and then disappeared. Why was the beautiful structure not made permanent? ”

“ But in the bustling New York of fifty or one hundred years hence the dreamer or the student wishing to feel how the inhabitants of Manhattan lived three or four score years ago, or how we are living today, will not disdain to turn over pages originally designed to lighten the tedium of idle hours.
Now and again, in the novels of the fifties and sixties, there are glimpses of the stretch from Washington Square to Fourteenth Street, but the greater Fifth Avenue, as a factor in fiction, dates from about the time when Daisy Miller became a type. ”

“ Nearly all the houses are built on the same design, which gives to it an air of sameness and tameness that is not pleasing. But it is a magnificent street, nevertheless, and has not its equal in the great and unbroken extent of its splendor in the world. It is a street of palaces. Madison and Park avenues, and portions of Lexington avenue, are nearly as handsome, as are the cross streets connecting them with the Fifth avenue, and many of the streets leading to the Sixth avenue are similarly built. ”

“ The sharp rise to what was the old summit and to the modified hill of the present does not begin until Thirty-third Street is reached. But there is perceptible a grade of a kind as soon as the Avenue leaves the northern line of the Square. Today it is a slope in transition. Here and there the change has been wrought. A modern structure reaches superciliously skyward. Beside it and below it the buildings of yesterday give the impression of feeling acutely conscious of their impending doom. They know. Their race is almost run. ”

“ It is fortunate for the University and the community that the problem of the future development of the institution in relation to the city is being carefully considered. The expansion of the Campus to the north and northeast is now established, and it is probable that at some future period the Mall, lined with monumental buildings, and laid out in co-operation with the city, will extend to the river. Ann Arbor has already taken far-sighted measures in establishing a series of boulevards and parks along the river with connecting links which will eventually encircle the town. ”

“ Fifth Avenue, from Washington to Madison Square, was, in the opinion of the writer, one of the finest residence streets anywhere. At most hours of the day the people on the sidewalks were comparatively few and there was a very small proportion of business wagons and trucks that used the roadway as compared with the numbers that do so to-day. University Place was a street of nearly the same character, as was also Second Avenue from Seventh Street to Stuyvesant Square. ”

“ Northward from Madison Square the great street stretches up the aristocratic grade of Murray Hill, with its rows of stately buildings. Parallel and a short distance eastward is Madison Avenue, also a street of fashionable residence, and second only to Fifth Avenue in grandeur. At Twenty-ninth Street is the plain and substantial granite Dutch Reformed Church, and to the eastward is an odd-looking little church that has attained a wide reputation. ”

“ When the light of morning touches the buildings and pavements of a city, it always seems to borrow their hardness and to lose in some degree its quality of flowing detachment. The Sunday morning that fell upon Ninth Avenue, New York City, gave you a sense of invisible stiffness in its very air. The buildings, with their smudged, flat fronts and tops, presented the impression of huge warehouses stretching down both sides of the street—the appearance of holding commodities rather than human beings. ”