No Little Plans: The Roads of Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago and Historic Route 66: A Journey through History

Windy City Road Warrior David G. Clark looks at Burnham and Bennett’s concepts for road building that included grand boulevards as well as a system of radiating and encircling highways throughout Chicago and the suburbs.The Roads of Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago presentation considers the highways proposed by the Plan, and how that plan differed markedly from our current dependence on tollways and expressways. Clark demonstrates how different Chicagoland might be if we had not dismantled our streetcar and much of our passenger rail system in favor of near-complete dependence on cars and trucks.
Complementing the "Roads" program will be a video montage of contemporary Route 66 scenes, a video slide show and a virtual tour comprise this brief history of road building in the United States, noting that many of our current highways (including Route 66) follow trails first blazed by Native American footpaths, 19th century canals and railroad trunk lines. David G. Clark explores why Route 66 “winds from Chicago to L.A.” and looks at the historic biography of the local thoroughfares that carried the highway’s traffic in the Chicago area.