Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront
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Book Overview
Of the thirty miles of Lake Michigan shoreline within the city limits of Chicago, twenty-four miles is public park land. The crown jewels of its park system, the lakefront parks bewitch natives and visitors alike with their brisk winds, shady trees, sandy beaches, and rolling waves. Like most good things, the protection of the lakefront parks didn't come easy, and this book chronicles the hard-fought and never-ending battles Chicago citizens have...
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0226898717
ISBN13:9780226898711
Release Date:June 1991
Publisher:University of Chicago Press
Length:214 Pages
Weight:2.60 lbs.
Dimensions:1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
An outsider's port of entry to the Windy City
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
Here is the story the subtitle suggests: Chicagoans gradually realized that the lands fronting Lake Michigan were more than mere wastelands to be utilized variously by industrialists and conventioneers, and this realization led citizens from A. Montgomery Ward down to the plainest of the plain to do battle with a series of regimes which seemed to have a very odd construction of the phrase, from the city charter, "forever open, free and clear". It is the people, not the government of Chicago, whom we should thank that parts of Grant, Jackson, and Lincoln Parks are still "open, free and clear". Beyond her immediate theme, however, Lois Wille has written an excellent concise introduction to the history of Chicago, which will especially appeal to those who approach history from the viewpoint of non-conformism. And in a city like Chicago, you're either part of the Machine or a non-conformist. Lois Wille was a colleague of Mike Royko, all the way from the Chicago Daily News days. She has all of his creativity and productive skepticism, and, in her own way, did just as much to worry and afflict the destructive establishmentarians who by fair means and foul seem to wind up governing the City of Chicago.
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