​City of Bridges

​By the mid-1900s, Chicago’s river port was bridged by more spans than any other harbor in the world. The location of Chicago’s dynamic harbor in the heart of the city was a frequent source of frustration for pedestrians and teamsters. On a single day in 1854, a total of 24,000 pedestrians and 6,000 teams of horses crossed the Clark Street bridge. Yet during that same day, a hundred ships passed the bridge requiring the bridge to swing open for a total of three hours. Such inconvenience made many Chicagoans embrace proposals to relocate the city’s harbor to South Chicago.