The Plan proposes consolidating the region’s existing railroad tracks (blue) into a shared network of “circuits.” An enormous freight center (gold area) used by all railroads would be linked to downtown and South Chicago harbors, and to central area freight houses.

Burnham sketched recreational areas along one side of a new peninsula (above left), with docks on the other. Instead, Navy Pier included a ballroom and promenades at both ends (above right), with freight sheds in the middle.

In the late 1920s, the South Branch of the Chicago River was relocated into a straightened channel near 16th Street.

Chicago has been made largely by the railroads, and its future prosperity is dependent upon them.

—Plan of Chicago, p. 61

“Freight Handler to the Nation,” Chicago in 1909 was being strangled by freight handling. Virtually all cargo moved long distances by railroad, so every railroad maintained its own freight house near the business district. Slow horse-drawn wagons carried freight through the Loop, impeding downtown traffic. Boxcars sat idle in railroad yards for days at a time.

The Plan proposed an ambitious scheme of shared freight railroad circuits, which would encircle the city at various distances and be used by all railroads, with a huge consolidated freight yard south of today’s Midway Airport. The Plan cited the example of Chicago’s tunnel system under downtown streets, which allowed small freight shipments to move from railroad freight houses to downtown basements without congesting surface streets. Whatever the merits of the proposals, the Plan had little influence over the railroads, which pursued their own business interests.

The Plan also recommended consolidating Chicago’s six passenger rail stations west of the river and south of Roosevelt Road, based on a scheme worked out by Frederic Delano. This in turn would free up huge amounts of railroad land south of Van Buren for expansion of the business district. In 1912, the Plan Commission tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Pennsylvania Railroad to locate the new Union Station south of Roosevelt Road. After a decade of construction, the new two-block station finally opened in 1925 between Adams and Jackson. Proposals to consolidate the several South Loop train stations continued until passenger trains declined in the 1960s.

South of the Loop, the South Branch of the Chicago River curved eastward to Clark Street, complicating rail approaches into downtown. As the Plan proposed, this bend was straightened in the late 1920s. That helped untangle railroad lines, but new streets through the area were never constructed.

Chicago was also one of the world’s busiest ports, where ships carefully threaded through the narrow river past center-pivot bridges. The Plan proposed a new lake harbor sheltered by piers at Chicago Avenue and Cermak Road, as well as new docks at the mouth of the Calumet River. Navy Pier was built in 1916 at Grand Avenue, but during the 20th century Great Lakes shipping operations both declined and shifted to port facilities at Lake Calumet.

Federal officials worried that devoting the lakefront to recreation would not provide adequate harbor facilities, so the Commercial Club sponsored the more detailed 1927 Harbor Plan of Chicago, which recommended one inland and three lakefront port facilities. It’s doubtful that Burnham envisioned commercial airports, but the Plan Commission in the 1920s recommended one attached to Northerly Island near 16th Street, one off the north lakefront near Irving Park Road, and the airfield that is today’s Midway Airport.

Despite the Plan’s recommendations, central area railroad facilities (in blue, above) were never consolidated.