Sketch Showing the Active Commercial Harbor Areas of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Galveston, Hamburg and Liverpool, Superimposed Upon the Shoal Submerged Lands Lying Off the Chicago Commercial and Industrial District

A striking contrast to Daniel Burnham’s vision for the Chicago shoreline.

This fascinating persuasive map of the Lake Michigan shoreline around Chicago was designed in 1915 by William Voorhees Judson, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Judson (1865-1923), a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, was a career Army engineer who, at the time, was stationed in Chicago and in charge of harbor improvements. He understood maritime infrastructure better than most and was convinced that the city held vast untapped industrial potential, notably in the underdeveloped waterfront along the relatively shallow Lake Michigan shoreline.

To emphasize this potential, Judson depicts the coastline between Evanston and the harbor at Gary, Indiana, with interior details limited to major cross streets and important waterways. Three depth contours mark the 30-, 36-, and 42-foot low-water lines, demonstrating the enormous extent of potentially usable submerged land offshore. Superimposed within this area are the physical outlines of six globally important commercial harbors: Liverpool, Hamburg, Philadelphia, Galveston, Baltimore, and New York. Geographically speaking, the scale and aggregate areas are largely accurate and surprisingly plausible. Judson surely knew that the comparison was deliberately provocative, but the visual juxtaposition effectively emphasizes his argument that Chicago possessed ample waterfront for greatly expanded commercial infrastructure.

The map was produced amid one of Chicago’s most contentious debates of the early twentieth century: who should control and determine the use of the city’s lakefront? Judson’s vision contrasted sharply with the recreational and aesthetic priorities articulated in Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, which famously envisioned a continuous public park system along the lakefront. Rather than treating the shoreline principally as a civic amenity, Judson presented the lakebed as an enormous potential engine of commercial and industrial growth.