While city consultants and residents busily sketch out ideas for improving downtown Evanston this summer, the city’s first downtown plan sits on a shelf in the public library — harboring between its covers some of the same ideas people are talking about today.
Downtown parks
Folks who want to blow away everything on the Fountain Square block and replace it with a park? You’re pikers. Ninty years ago the authors of the Plan of Evanston were talking about that plus ripping down much of what’s now Sherman Plaza and opening up a clear vista from Orrington Avenue to the Metra tracks.
Their proposed public mall would have been framed on its Sherman Avenue frontage by what was then city hall on the southeast corner of the block and what was then the post office on the northeast corner.
What stood in their way?
Well there was the little matter of money. The planners, who included the namesake son of famous architect Daniel Burnham, estimated their downtown park plan would cost nearly a quarter million bucks, just to acquire the land, back at a time when the assessed value of the whole town was about $12 million.
And — does this sound familiar? Back then the Fountain Square block was owned by Northwestern University. The planners thought it would be a swell gesture if the university would just deed the land over to the city.
“It is just as important for this great educational institution to have a dignified entrance to Evanston as it is to the residents of the city,” said the planners, turning on the charm. The gift, they said, “would confer an everlasting benefit on the entire city.”
The university, which had left the north end of the block open for what was then called Commercial Park, apparently didn’t take too well to the plan, because by a decade or so later the park had been turned into the 708 Church St. building — now the proposed site for a 49-story condo tower.
A circa 1917 view southeast across Commercial Park with the twin towers of city hall in the background and part of the post office visible at right.
By the way, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that $250,000 in 1917 is the equivalent of a little over $4 million today — about what public records say the mortgage is on the Fountain Square Building that today’s planners would like to see torn down to expand the Fountain Square plaza.
Of course you can’t be a reformer unless you decry the way things are today.
In 1917 the planners described downtown as “mean, inadequate, and utterly unworthy a city of the size and importance of Evanston.”
Parking
While they didn’t complain about wind tunnel effects, they were already worried about parking.
They suggested that around the entire boundary of the new park on the Fountain Square block “would be a parking space for automobiles, large enough to hold all of the cars which now encumber Davis Street, thereby giving to Evanston the unique distinction of having solved the problem of parking automobiles in a business district.”
The Arts
Some sketches for the new downtown plan talk about creating a performing arts center.
Well, they were thinking big about that in 1917 as well.
The city’s first plan calls for an auditorium on what was then the site of Haven School and later became the Marshall Fields store.
And they proposed an art museum on the block now dominated by the Hotel Orrington.
Tax revenue anyone?
If the 1917 planners had gotten their way, perhaps three quarters of the land in the eight blocks or so that they thought of as the city’s core would have been devoted to tax-exempt activities. (The old Carnegie public library was already on the site of Evanston’s current library, and the planners penciled in fire and police stations on Orrington across from their monumental fountain and just north of what was then the YMCA.)
While the City Council eventually adopted the plan in 1919, little of what the planners called for was ever implemented.
The planners looked beyond downtown, and they did score at least one victory. Their call for a roadway along the North Shore Channel to relieve traffic congestion became the McCormick Boulevard we use today.
The cost of planning
Back in 1917 the planners — all citizen volunteers — said they’d spent “several hundred dollars,” all donated by local residents, to put together their plan.
If the costs totalled $500, that would be just over $8,000 in 2007 dollars or about 3 percent of what the city’s consultants are earning for this year’s study.
Looks like we had brighter people in Evanston in 1917
At least in 1917 we had brighter people in town, they did not waste the taxpayers money – we spent over $130,000 on the Central street plan. When all we need for the two alderpersons in the 6th and 7th ward to get a few zoning changes to protect the small business districts. I forgot one of them was busy wasting our tax dollars on affordable housing,
Beyond other nonsense such as planning NU stadium the plan for Central Street is worthless and will end up on a self.
I laugthed at the silly idea of the green space running down a street in down town Evanston that is total useless. I do not have the time to go to the down town meetings having gone to the one on Central street – I have better things to do with my time.
All one has to do is take a look at District 65 our elementary school district to see how years of poor planning has ran that public insitution into the ground,
For those interested, I have
For those interested, I have the entire 1917 Plan of Evanston on my website: http://www.urbanresearchlab.com/evanston.aspx
The actual cost for the Plan was around $2,000 which was primarily used for the production of the book.
The issue of traffic was extremely important in the Plan–what Bill doesn’t mention was the idea to essentially extend Sheridan Road on the lakefront essentially from the southern boundary to Clark Street. The idea was to harmonize an Evanston “Lake Shore Drive” with the one envisioned in Chicago that would extend to the latter’s northern limits.
Also, at the time of the plan the Federal government wanted to make Sheridan a “military road,” linking Chicago with Ft. Sheridan and the Great Lakes Naval Training facility. Burnham, Jr. and the other 1917 planners argued with the feds to have proposed road follow Dodge in order to serve as a “bypass” for North-South traffic.
Other important individuals associated with the Plan were Thomas Tallmadge and Dwight Perkins.
Perhaps the main obstacle facing implementation of the 1917 Plan was the US jumping into WWI in April. Burnham, Tallmadge and Perkins had worked through most of the summer and autumn of 1916 on the plan and sent the final manuscript to the printers in late-January or early-February of 1917. By the time the Plan was printed and presented to the City Council in May, war had been declared and the City was on a heavy pro-War footing.
There were numerous attempts by the planners to regenerate interest in the Plan following the war, but the Small Parks and Playgrounds Association–the citizens’ group that financed the Plan–became over-stretched. They moved on to issues like the controversial War Memorial and pushing for consolidation of the city’s park districts [something that still remains a problem today].
Hugh Bartling’s website
Besides the 1917 plan there is an analysis of the voting by ward in the 2006 Evanston referendum for an increase in the transfer tax to support affordable housing. The defeat in Wards 5 and 8 was interesting, as the residents would be the beneficiaries of such funding. Fascinating.