State Street: 1973
Here's another installment in my never-ending quest to unearth Chicago's unbuilt plans and proposals---and, also, to re-use stuff from my old website whenever possible.
Today's offering: a 1973 rendering for a new State Street in Chicago's South Loop area. Under the plan, the then-bedraggled street--with its fading businesses, vacant parcels, panhandlers, homeless chaps and the like--would be remade into a Utopian commercial strip with uses divided as neatly as the columns on a business ledger. Retail? It's on the ground floor. Residences? Two flights above the retail. Transportation? If those Mercury Comets and AMC Matadors that are rolling down the lightly-traveled street above won't do, then hop the monorail to the left.
Then, look. Up in the sky. It's an enclosed skybridge where pedestrians could traverse above whatever urban hazard remained after old State Street was bulldozed---as safe as hamsters in a Habitrail.
I shouldn't poke fun. There are a few things here I do like. The design has a post-Habitat '67 vibe. And the green street-edge is okay by me. I rather approve of the subterranean business. Might they be jazz clubs? An after-hours library. Maybe a future foie gras speakeasy with a big guy at named Moe at the door.
It took 30 years but the South Loop did get much of what was proposed here. The dead zone has been revived with shops and residents running down State Street almost to Cermak. We didn't need the monorail and the skybridge after all.
