Blog

By Ellen Shubart, Class of 2005

First Barbara Clark posed the question, then a number of docents sought the answer to the question: why doesn’t the Michigan Avenue Bridge go straight across the Chicago River, but rather travels at an angle?

Since CAC is now housed a hop, skip, and jump from the bridge, and it figures prominently in several tours, other docents may be asking the same thing. Here is a quick explanation for why the bridge was placed where it was. Kudos to Tom Stelmack who first discovered the reason. Thanks, Tom.

From Chicago’s Bridges by Nathan Holth (Oxford UK Shire Publications, Ltd., 2012:

“Officially renamed the DuSable Bridge in 2010 to honor Jean Baptiste Ponte DuSable, Chicago’s first non-native settler, the Michigan Avenue Bridge was an improvement proposed by the 1909 Plan of Chicago, intended to transform the already popular Michigan Avenue into a primary vehicular and pedestrian corridor.

Prior to the completion of the bridge in 1920, Michigan Avenue ended at the southern bank of the Chicago River. North of the river, Pine Street continued north, slightly east of where Michigan Avenue would have been if it continued straight across the river.

There was no bridge at this exact location, but a short distance to the west a bridge crossed the river at Rush Street. The Michigan Avenue Bridge provided a replacement for the Rush Street Bridge and a direct connection between Pine Street and Michigan Avenue. For consistency, officials renamed Pine Street to Michigan Avenue. Because of the slight misalignment between Michigan Avenue and Pine State, the Michigan Avenue Bridge does not cross the river on the north-south axis.”

And then, this added information, likely known by the those who give the River Cruise but probably new to those of us who don’t. From the same book:

“Michigan Avenue intersects Wacker Drive near the bridge, where both roads are two levels. As a result of this configuration, the Michigan Avenue Bridge is a double-deck bridge that carries vehicular and pedestrian traffic on two levels. … the actual superstructure is comprised of two parallel bascule bridges that share common abutments. As a result, it is possible to raise the northbound lanes while leaving the southbound lanes lowered and vice versa. This allows repair or maintenance projects to raise half of the bridge while keeping the other half open to traffic. The bridge has a span of 256 feet between trunnions.”

So there you have it.