Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront

By Lois Wille

Book Overview

Univ of Chicago

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226898725
• ISBN13: 9780226898728
• Release Date: June 1991
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

An outsider's port of entry to the Windy City

Here is the story the subtitle suggests: Chicagoans gradually realized that the lands fronting Lake Michigan were more than mere wastelands to be utilized variously by industrialists and conventioneers, and this realization led citizens from A. Montgomery Ward down to the plainest of the plain to do battle with a series of regimes which seemed to have a very odd construction of the phrase, from the city charter, "forever open, free and clear". It is the people, not the government of Chicago, whom we should thank that parts of Grant, Jackson, and Lincoln Parks are still "open, free and clear". Beyond her immediate theme, however, Lois Wille has written an excellent concise introduction to the history of Chicago, which will especially appeal to those who approach history from the viewpoint of non-conformism. And in a city like Chicago, you're either part of the Machine or a non-conformist. Lois Wille was a colleague of Mike Royko, all the way from the Chicago Daily News days. She has all of his creativity and productive skepticism, and, in her own way, did just as much to worry and afflict the destructive establishmentarians who by fair means and foul seem to wind up governing the City of Chicago.