NATURAL FEATURES OF CHICAGO: NECESSITY FOR COMPREHENSIVE TREATMENT OF THE STREET SYSTEM: STREETS WITHIN THE CITY: THE RESIDENCE STREET, THE AVENUE, AND THE BOULEVARD: STREET ARCHITECTURE: THE STREETS OF CHICAGO: PROPOSED NEW CIRCUITS Chicago has two dominant natural features: the expanse of Lake Michigan, which stretches, unbroken by islands or peninsulas, to the horizon; and a corresponding area of land extending north, west, and south without hills or any marked elevation. These two features, each immeasurable by the senses, give the scale. Whatever man undertakes here should be either actually or seemingly without limit. Great thoroughfares may lead from the water back into the country interminably; broad boulevards may skirt the Lake front, or sweep through the city; but their beginnings on the north, on the south, or on the west must of necessity be points that move along determined lines with the growth of population. Other harbors have channels winding among islands or around jutting promontories until the landlocked basin is reached; but Chicago must throw out into the open water her long arms of piled-up rock in order to gather in safety the storm-tossed vessels. Other cities may climb hills and build around them, crowning the elevations with some dominating structure; but the people of Chicago must ever recognize the fact that their city is without bounds or limits. Elsewhere, indeed, man and his works may be taken as the measure; but here the city appears as that portion of illimitable space now occupied by a population capable of indefinite expansion. Whatever may be the forms which the treatment of the city shall take, therefore, the effects must of necessity be obtained by repetition of the unit. If the characteristics set forth suggest monotony, nevertheless such are the limitations which nature has imposed; and unless the problem is faced squarely no treatment proposed will seem adequate or will prove lastingly satisfactory. On the other hand, the opportunity now exists to create out of these very conditions a city which shall grow into both convenience and order, and shall possess all the means of making its citizens prosperous and contented. It is in the grouping of buildings united by a common purpose—whether administrative, educational, or commercial—that one must find an adequate method of treatment; or again, in far-stretching lines of lagoons, inviting the multitudes to seek recreation along the endless miles of water front; or in broad avenues where the vista seemingly terminates with a tower by day, or in the converging lines of lights by night, in each case the mind recognizing that there is still space beyond. Always there must be the feeling of those broad surfaces of water reflecting the clouds of heaven; always the sense of breadth and freedom which are the very spirit of the prairies.