The first Fallout Shelter signs are installed in Chicago's Loop on November 11, 1962.

The public information officer of the Chicago District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Thomas Hicks, says that signs have been posted in 13 Loop buildings that have been designated as fallout shelters.  

The Chicago Loop Buildings Include:

• 13 West Wacker Drive.
• 160 North Franklin Street.
• 162 North Franklin Street. 
• 174 Randolph Street. 
• 177 West Lake Street. 
• 190 North Wells Street. 
• 236 West Lake Street. 
• 30 North Wells Street. 
• 310 North Michigan Avenue. 
• 314 West Washington Street.
• 316 West Randolph Street.
• 417 South Dearborn Street.
• 78 East Washington Street, Main Chicago Public Library.

The buildings will provide enough space for 6,200 people with “basement and upper floor shelter space to reduce radiation effects within the shelter to one-one hundredth of that outside,” according to Hicks. 

A 1962 Orginal Tin Fallout Shelter sign from my personal collection.
TEXT AT BOTTOM OF SIGN: DOD FS NO 1 - Not to be reproduced or used without Department of Defense Permission.

These buildings are the first of 495 Loop buildings and 2,500 buildings in the city that have been selected as fallout shelters. Most Chicago Public Schools will serve as Fallout Shelters. Loop shelters will provide space for 2.3 million people while 4.7 million people could be handled in shelters in the rest of the city.  It is expected that the posting of signs on the shelters will be completed within four months.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Oak Street tunnel from Michigan Avenue to Northbound Lake Shore Drive Opened on October 5, 1964.

The junction of Michigan Avenue, Oak Street, and Lake Shore Drive before the tunnel was constructed. Circa 1920s.

The $5 million tunnel at Oak Street was designed to move northbound traffic on Michigan Avenue onto a ramp providing access to northbound Lake Shore Drive, which opened for its first rush hour. The tunnel eliminates a bottleneck that has plagued Lake Shore Drive at Oak Street for years.

The tunnel extends under new northbound and southbound strips of Lake Shore Drive. The 27-foot wide underground roadway will handle only northbound traffic, which has been using a detour over what will become the new southbound segment of the drive.

The area today with the tunnel peeking out in the lower-left corner of the photo.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The First Chicago Project by Daniel Burnham (1909) Began on November 14, 1910.

The Chicago City Council takes the first step in implementing Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago when it voted to widen Twelfth Street ('12th' Street was renamed Roosevelt Road on May 25, 1919), from Ashland Avenue to Michigan Avenue.  

Twelfth Street, Chicago, before widening the street. Circa 1895.

The Chicago Plan was underwritten by the Commercial Club of Chicago as a framework for beautifying the city while, at the same time, making it run more efficiently.  Improving Twelfth Street directly relates to several of the plan’s goals. It will improve a major artery to and from the central business district while providing a more efficient way to view an improved lakefront, one of the major goals of the plan. The Tribune reports, “From even the more western sections citizens could make their way by such a broad, beautiful boulevard directly to Grant Park, and it is for that reason that it is one of the first changes urged for completion by the plan commission.” 

Although the council’s move is not in the form of an ordinance, it does charge the Board of Local Improvements with the responsibility of drafting an ordinance to obtain a strip of property 52-feet wide along the south side of Twelfth Street between Ashland and Michigan, providing the space necessary for a boulevard that will be 118 feet wide. It took some time to get there, but this, the first step forward in implementing a pathway to the “City Beautiful,” led to the street we know today as Roosevelt Road being widened in 1917.

Looking west on Roosevelt Road from Halsted Street, Chicago. 1940

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.