Mud to Parks Brought Life Back To South Works

" Gov. Pat Quinn is spending this afternoon in East Peoria, visiting the dredge site of the Mud-to-Parks project. That’s the project that’s helped Chicago recover a piece of the lakefront that was previously thought to be uninhabitable -- the old U.S. Steel South Works.

South Works was built in 1880, on 73 acres of lakefront property. Gradually, the mill expanded atop its own excretions, piling slag into the shallows of Lake Michigan, like Holland reclaiming the sea, until it had built a 573-acre peninsula of limestone dolomite and phosphorous. Once U.S. Steel departed, this promontory of slag became the largest undeveloped plot of lakefront property in Chicago. Unlike other industrial cities, Chicago had always preserved its shoreline, in accordance with the plan set out by Daniel Burnham, the 19th century architect who declared that the city’s lakefront should be “forever free and clear.” The parks, marinas and bathing beaches, though, had ended at the gates of U.S. Steel, 10 miles south of the loop. The dismantling of South Works meant that Chicago could finally extend its green belt all the way to the mouth of the Calumet River. It also meant the land was open for development "

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