Chicago Area Suburban Sidewalks

[Centropolis]

regardless of culture and class explorations it is kind of soothing to see the alleys in suburban north dallas, et al. the fences are always really good too there with steel posts...good fences make good neighbors as the methodists like to say.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i will say that i am pro-discussion of religion and how it pertains to the built environment.

That certainly would be an interesting avenue to explore, but I'm not seeing any connection between Catholicism and not having alleys, whether serious or more likely made in jest.

Chicago has long been one of the most catholic cities in the nation and had a damn near pathological obsession with sevice alleys.

I always chalked-up chicago's alley obsession as a reaction against the crowded "messy" cities of the east, with all of their garbage collection done in plain sight out on the front sidewalk. Out in here in the Midwest back in the day, land seemed infinite (it was in a practical sense), so why not spend a little bit of it to build a compressive secondary service street system for garbage collection, utilities, coal & ice delivery (and eventually car storage) and other such undesirable "back of house" aspects of urban life.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

That certainly would be an interesting venue to explore, but I'm not seeing any connection between Catholicism and not having alleys, whether serious or more likely made in jest.

Chicago has long been one of the most catholic cities in the nation and had a damn near pathological obsession with alleys.

I always chalked-up chicago's alley obsession as a reaction against the crowded "messy" cities of the east, with all of their garbage collection done out in plain sight on the front sidewalk. Out in here in the Midwest, land seemed infinite (it was in a practical sense), so why not spend a little bit of it to build a compressive secondary street system for garbage and utilities (and eventually car storage) and other such undesirable aspects of urban life.

alleys AND fences, lol. the huge front steel fence deal is kind of wild.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

the huge front steel fence deal is kind of wild.

That was a King Richard II fetish.

The story goes that he saw it somewhere in Europe and was instantly smitten, so he brought it back to sweet home.

[LA21st]

LA suburbs are similar, most of the metro is on a grid. My hometown county of Fairfax VA is horrible with sidewalks.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

That's interesting.

I'm curious how that same cultural aversion to street-facing garages didn't carry over into post-war suburbia in chicagoland.

I guess suburban chicagoans just weren't as snooty as those dallasites moving out of the city. It's a damn shame because alleys really do improve the look and feel of a residential street, IMO.

I'm not sure, but I assume the answer is also cultural. Alleys were everywhere in the city of Chicago (rich and poor areas alike) but when Chicagoans suburbanized they often wanted to leave everything about city life behind, alleys included. Aesthetics weren't as important to white-flight Chicagoans as the convenience of an easy access driveway and the sheer space to spread out a bit.

In Dallas those wealthy north neighborhoods never saw white flight (they remain wealthy today) and suburbanites never developed the same contempt for that style of urbanism.

One other possibility is that suburban Chicago was filled with LOTS of railroad suburbs that developed gridded street patterns before the automobile, without alleys. When postwar growth happened, those railroad suburbs had a lot of control over the new development and they probably saw no need for alleys, since their traditional grids didn't have alleys either.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

That was a King Richard II fetish.

The story goes that he saw it somewhere in Europe and was instantly smitten, so he brought it back to sweet home.

That makes sense for parks and schools, but doesn't explain why thousands of private homeowners also chose to do it.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe all the city's fencebuilding combined with Mexican immigration created a competitive industry for small steelwork and brought prices down to where homeowners could afford it.

Certainly anyone with sunken front yards needs a fence or railing to prevent falls, and the old-school pipe railings were probably rusting away by the 90s, not to mention that they didn't meet code for height/openness.

[Handro]

I grew up in a pre-war suburb in the Fox Valley about 40 miles west of Chicago. Our town and its neighbors had alleys:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9121...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8907...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9044...7i16384!8i8192

The towns of St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia developed mostly independently of Chicago in their burgeoning years, and had their own street car lines connecting them--long gone now, of course. Eventually, I think they connected the streetcar network to Elgin, a few miles north of St. Charles and already a relatively bustling Chicago-outpost (and where my ancestors moved after settling in Chicago in the 1830s-40s.) This made the Tri-Cities, as St. Charles/Geneva/Batavia are known, into official Chicago suburbs (Geneva would eventually get its own connection to Chicago) and to this day they are "where the sidewalk ends" in Western Chicagoland--figuratively and literally, as they make up the western border of the the Chicagoland region and you're unlikely to find any sidewalks until DeKalb, another 30-40 miles west.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by ardecila

In Dallas those wealthy north neighborhoods never saw white flight (they remain wealthy today) and suburbanites never developed the same contempt for that style of urbanism.

Yeah, Dallas was so much smaller in the pre-war area that it's large lot wealthy suburbia of that time was right in town.

It'd kinda be like Winnetka being only 3 miles north of the loop instead of 15 miles.

So a completely different spacial arrangement.


Anyway, I got curious about chicago's alley obsession, and subsequent alley aversion in the burbs, and found this article with some pretty good insights into the issue:

https://www.wbez.org/stories/shadow-...8-8fb3fceacdc4

[brian_b]

Originally Posted by Handro

The towns of St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia developed mostly independently of Chicago in their burgeoning years, and had their own street car lines connecting them--long gone now, of course. Eventually, I think they connected the streetcar network to Elgin, a few miles north of St. Charles and already a relatively bustling Chicago-outpost (and where my ancestors moved after settling in Chicago in the 1830s-40s.) This made the Tri-Cities, as St. Charles/Geneva/Batavia are known, into official Chicago suburbs (Geneva would eventually get its own connection to Chicago) and to this day they are "where the sidewalk ends" in Western Chicagoland--figuratively and literally, as they make up the western border of the the Chicagoland region and you're unlikely to find any sidewalks until DeKalb, another 30-40 miles west.

Interestingly, there are currently about 10 pre-civil war houses for sale in those 3 cities and they all have sidewalks. But hey! Head west one stop to the La Fox Metra station and check out the satellite view. La Fox Road north and south of the railroad has sidewalks being reclaimed by nature! My first thought was that there used to be more houses along that stretch of road, but the Kane County GIS doesn’t give the impression that the farm fields were ever legally subdivided (beyond the current state). So it’s probably safe to assume that sidewalks were put there in anticipation of growth that never occurred.

[KevinFromTexas]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

from my experience in chicagoland, the presence of sidewalks seems most closely correlated with lot size.

normal middle class suburban areas in chicago almost always have fairly complete street infrastructure: sidewalks on both sides, curbs, sewers, streetlights, etc.

but when you get into the larger lot "country" subdivisions, they tend to eschew sidewalks, curbs, sewers, and streetlights, i guess so that they can pretend that they're living out in the country or something.

i imagine this general correlation exists for most eastern cities (large lot "country" burbs aren't nearly as much a of thing out west), though chicagoland might have a higher than average percentage of its suburbia fully side-walked.



these two examples are less than a half mile from each other, and built in the same general era:

normal middle class surburbia: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.1920...7i16384!8i8192

large lot "country" suburbia: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.1932...7i13312!8i6656



i have no numbers to back this up, but it seems like there's less large lot "country" suburbia being built today compared to 60s/70s/80s.

I think the "country suburban" thing is because those areas may very well have been in the country. Our neighborhood was in fact in the country when it was built in the 1960s. The house I grew up in was the same my dad's family moved into in 1965, and they said prior to them living here there was cow pasture behind our neighorhbood. At that time, the land behind our neighborhood was ranch land with cows and bulls in the woods my parents used to play in. Oh, yeah, my parents were neighbors as teenagers. Anyway, this neighborhood didn't have sidewalks then and still doesn't. This area of South Austin is now completely in the middle of what is South Austin, but back then it was purely out in the country. Our neighborhood was named Oasis Village, sort of as a nod to the fact that it was the one new subdividision for a few miles. We have streetlights and storm drains, of course, and all the other city stuff, but still no sidewalks. There are sidewalks on the other streets in our neighborhood, but on ours and three others, they don't. And we get a good amount of foot traffic on our street being that it's the first one you come to off of the connecting street that intersects with a major artery nearby, and the fact that the high school students choose to take our street if they live south of here.

The same is true of the even older neighborhoods in Central Austin. Even the old 1880s streetcar suburb of Hyde Park north of downtown lacks them in some areas. It's really a mix of some having them and some not or only having one. I can think of plenty that don't, and it being Austin, the yards tend to be way overgrown because of the old hippie "let it grow" mentality that just sort of became an Austin thing.