“Reclaiming” the Land

Why “Reclaiming”?

The landscape of Chicago was significantly altered through construction, demolition, and episodes of landfill. Using urban refuse as fill to raise low-lying areas and to create new land was an essential component in Chicago’s growth.

 In 1914, the Pokagon Potawatomi Business Committee filed suit against the City of Chicago on behalf of their Nation for the ownership of unceded lands “reclaimed”—a technical term for returning lands to a (humanly) usable state—via fill from Lake Michigan. The 1833 Treaty of Chicago specified the “western shore of Lake Michigan” as a boundary in the cession. And yet, as early as 1834 the lakeshore was purposefully changed, advancing up to a half mile eastward in some spots by dredging and dumping fill, and by natural accretion due to currents and waves.

In the 1917 lawsuit Williams et al. vs. the City of Chicago (242 US 434), lawyers for the Pokagon Potawatomi instead employed the term “reclaiming” to describe the process of using the US legal system to gain back what were really unceded lands. This of course raises the question of why lands created after the 1833 treaty and beyond its eastern boundary on Lake Michigan—lands, moreover, created from waste materials—had to be “reclaimed” in that sense. It also suggests that, as long as people use this seemingly technical term to describe the process of making artificial land for use in their cities, the resonance of “reclamation” will persist.

The Charnley-Persky House Museum’s Land and Reclamation History

“Beginning in the 1830s Chicago’s lakefront shoreline edged eastward as new land cast as ‘improvements’ were made from both natural accretion (sandbars) and from dumping events (landfills). Landfill not only created additional land, this practice found a place to put municipal waste. For example, debris from the 1871 Great Chicago Fire was used to create new land, eventually moving the boundary of the shore eastward from Michigan Avenue, thereby creating Lakefront Park (now Grant Park). In 1886 George Wellington ‘Cap’ Streeter’s boat was purportedly stranded in Lake Michigan during a storm, after which he left the damaged ship in situ and declared the area his own sovereign territory, ‘The District of Lake Michigan’ (Ballard 1914:215–16; Seligman 2005b). The site continued to grow from the natural accumulation of sand and from Streeter’s practice of charging people for the privilege of dumping their refuse at his site (Ballard 1914:218,221). During the 1893 Chicago fair, Streeter repaired his boat and used it to ferry people to and from the fair site (Ballard 1914:220). Today the area is known as Streeterville, a neighborhood just southeast of the Gold Coast” (Graff 2020:18).

“The Charnley House sits a block from Lake Michigan but within the pre-1830 border of the lakefront, although by 1882 this border had already moved a block east due to landfill activity. That particular extension was due to the work of Potter Palmer, whose own mansion was located on Lake Shore Drive. Palmer owned most of the street frontage between the Water Tower (806 N. Michigan Avenue) and Oak Street and was the force behind the expansion of Lake Shore Drive north from Pine Street (Stamper 1991:xx). In 1882 Palmer received permission from the Lincoln Park commissioners to dredge ‘sand from the lake to fill up lots along the Lake Shore drive upon which he proposes to build’ and to place sidewalks in front (Chicago Tribune 1882a:8). Previously the area had been known as boggy and fetid: Captain Streeter referred to it specifically as the ‘stink pond’ where dead animals were often tossed (Ballard 1914:222–23). With rumors of ‘plague-spots’ or possible malarial conditions in the still swampy sections of Lake Shore Drive, other area homeowners received permission from the city to dredge the lake and fill in low-lying areas with up to eight feet of material (Chicago Tribune 1882b: 9). In 1900 the lakeshore was expanded half a block more, and again in 1930 (McClendon 2005)” (Graff 2020: 44).

What’s Next for Chicago’s Lakefront?

Many people are starting to reckon with the ways that Chicago’s lakefront land was created, altered, and “reclaimed”. The entry by Dennis McClendon in the Encyclopedia of Chicago on the changing lakefront and other scholarship has again drawn attention to the human-made changes to Chicago’s urban cityscape. The Whose Lakefront? project, a public art program that “foregrounds the occupation of Native land by marking the presence of unceded territory in the heart of Chicago’s downtown” has more recently shared this history with the larger Chicago community (Lee 2021). In the absence of progress on legal efforts, projects like land acknowledgements can contribute to recognition of Native presence on and claims to land.

< Previous Page | Next Page >