The underground freight tunnel system beneath Chicago began in 1899 without the knowledge of Mayor Carter Harrison II. Albert Wheeler of the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Company was granted permission to lay telephone wires but instead constructed an extensive tunnel network to transport goods. By 1909 the tunnel network extended over 60 miles and moved thousands of tons of freight daily, relieving congestion on city streets. However, the unprofitable system fell into disrepair and closed in 1959, though flooding incidents continued until the tunnels were sealed after 1992.

1. 21B Chicago Tribune | Section 1 | Sunday, April 8, 2012
CHICAGO FLASHBACKBreaking history since 1847
Expanded
coverage in the
illegal tunnels” took the city to
task for the whole fiasco. And city
lawyers issued a report question-
ing the existence of the tunnels
themselves. “The city has never
admitted that the company is
entitled to build anything more
than conduits for the carrying of
telephone wires,” the report read.
Five people — Wheeler, a for-
mer alderman, the former city
clerk, the deputy city clerk and
the city printer — were indicted
in 1905 for forgery in the scandal.
But the charges were tossed by a
judge who, while ruling that the
company “knowingly intended to
defraud the city,” found a techni-
When the Chicago River
sprung a leak 20 years ago this
week, it wasn’t the first time the
city’s system of underground
tunnels was the source of an
unpleasant surprise.
On that Monday, April 13, 1992,
many Chicagoans learned for the
first time of the miles of freight
tunnels honeycombing down-
town. As Loop basements filled
with water and emptied of people
in a mostly invisible urban disas-
ter, the heads started rolling and
the cleanup bills piled up. An
embarrassed Mayor Richard M.
Daley immediately blamed a
bungling city bureaucracy, and
indeed it was revealed that city
officials had had at least a month
to fix the leak but failed to act in
time. It took four days to plug the
leak and weeks to pump out the
waterlogged basements, subbase-
ments and sub-subbasements,
like those at Marshall Field, Car-
son Pirie Scott, 29 E. Madison St.
and DePaul University.
But imagine Daley’s shock if he
or his staff hadn’t known about
the tunnels at all. That’s what
happened to Mayor Carter Harri-
son II at the turn of the last cen-
tury.
See, the tunnels themselves
were an audacious, legally sus-
pect land grab by a wealthy
businessman who received city
permission to lay telephone wires
under the Loop and parlayed that
into constructing an extensive
underground railroad.
In March 1899 the Illinois
Telephone and Telegraph Co. and
its president, Albert Wheeler,
received a 30-year lease “to con-
struct and operate in all the
streets, avenues, alleys, and tun-
nels and other public places of the
city … conduits and wires or other
electrical conductors … for the
transmission of sound signals by
means of electricity or other-
wise.”
Less than a year later, the com-
missioner of public works re-
ported, “The city will be unable to
head off the promoters of this
scheme. Something should have
been done long ago, but it is now
too late, I fear. More than two
blocks of the concrete tunnel
have been completed, beginning
in Powers & O’Brien’s basement
and running in Madison street to
La Salle, and then to Monroe and
Washington streets.”
Wheeler refused to explain
himself, saying only, “We don’t
want the question aired before
the public.”
As city officials blustered,
Illinois Telephone kept digging.
Harrison was told these big 7-
foot-high by 6-foot-wide tunnels
were needed to handle the hun-
dreds of thousands of telephone
wires intended to service the
Loop. But the surprises kept
coming. In March 1902, city offi-
cials found tunnels big enough to
“drive a load of hay,” 14 feet high
and 12 feet wide. Wheeler said it
was storage space.
A month later, Wheeler finally
came clean on his scheme. In a
blatant example of “ask for for-
giveness, not permission,” he
announced plans to use the tun-
nels to deliver packages, news-
papers, mail and other goods
throughout downtown. He ad-
mitted he would need the city’s
permission to operate such a
business, and said, “The wires …
will be strung in the roofs of the
tunnels, and we will have left
ample space to be devoted to
other uses.”
Of course, Wheeler got his
approval, but not before a Trib-
une editorial headlined “The
cality: The prosecutors failed to
show how the defendants ben-
efited.
But over the years, as the out-
rage faded, the wonder grew.
These tunnels were a marvel. A
1909 story, headlined “Under-
ground Chicago is as mysterious
as the sewers of Paris and as won-
derful as the catacombs of Rome,”
painted a vivid picture of thou-
sands of tons of merchandise,
coal, ash and refuse being trans-
ported 40 feet underground on a
narrow-gauge electric railroad. A
company could drop tons of mer-
chandise at a South Loop tunnel
depot and have it reappear as if by
magic at four different locations,
delivered in some cases directly
to a firm’s basement warehouse
or to any of the city’s main rail-
road depots. At its height, the
system of concrete-lined tunnels
ran for more than 60 miles, under
nearly every Loop street and
south to Roosevelt Road, north to
North Avenue and as far west as
Halsted Street.
The benefit went beyond the
speed and ease of delivery and
extended above ground. Loop
streets then were an almost im-
passable tangle, with multiple
streetcar lines competing with
pedestrians and hundreds of
horse-drawn wagons (and later,
automobiles). And don’t even get
a shipping manager started about
the vagaries of getting his goods
across the Chicago River via one
of the fickle lift bridges! As the
1909 story pointed out, that one
shipment of goods took 106 wag-
on loads of freight off the streets.
Also sent underground were the
hundreds of coal shipments, and
banished from the streets were
the three-horse drays groaning
under 5-ton loads the Tribune
called “one of the bugbears of the
Loop district.”
But the system never made
money, at least for the company’s
shareholders, who never saw a
dividend in the life of the venture.
In 1929, when the lease expired
and the tunnels became city prop-
erty, the various corporate en-
tities that owned the tunnels
owed the city more than $1 mil-
lion in unpaid franchise fees. A
new 30-year franchise was grant-
ed in 1932, but by 1949, a city
report found that the system was
deteriorating and accused the
company of diverting revenues to
avoid paying a portion to the city.
As late as 1954, the system still
moved 220 tons a day, but compe-
tition from trucks and a changing
economy forced the tunnels to
close in 1959.
But the tunnels didn’t go qui-
etly. In July 1959, in a spot very
close to the 1992 leak at Kinzie
Street, excavators punctured the
tunnel. Water poured in, but a
widespread disaster narrowly
was averted.
So could it happen again? Not
likely. After the 1992 flood, mas-
sive concrete bulkheads were
installed at the 30 spots where the
tunnels intersect the river.
Editor’s note: Thanks to Jill
Krupp, of Bartlett, for suggesting
this Flashback.
sbenzkofer@tribune.com
The narrow-gauge electric railroad that plied the tunnels, shown in this
photo from around 1937, transported thousands of tons of freight.
Land grab to Loop flood
For a century, underground tunnels played a key role in city’s history
By Stephan Benzkofer
More than a week after the April 1992 Loop flood, dehumidifier tubes snake from
a DePaul University building at Jackson Boulevard and Wabash Avenue.
The system of tunnels under the Loop began in 1899 as a simple
infrastructure for telephone wires. The tunnels were closed in 1959.
Relive the 1992 flood
Enjoy photos from the Great
Chicago Leak, plus more freight
tunnel images, at chicagotribune
.com/tunnels.
This illustration accompanied the Tribune’s 1909 story on the tunnels, begun 10 years earlier without the knowledge of the mayor or his staff.
You can help
If you have an idea for Flashback,
especially from the suburbs, share
it with Stephan Benzkofer at
312-222-5814 or sbenzkofer
@tribune.com
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