The Cortland Street Bridge has been closed to vehicles for the last year, lengthening drives across the river, snarling bus commutes and generating a daily mess of traffic North Side residents describe as a “huge inconvenience” and a “total nightmare.”
The 124-year-old bridge — which predates Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago, the construction of Wrigley Field and the publication of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” — is also a protected city landmark. It’s said to be the oldest model of a trunnion bascule bridge, an iconic movable bridge design native to Chicago’s landscape. The Chicago Department of Transportation shut the bridge down a year ago for what officials said would be an 18- to 24-month-long rehabilitation project.
But with the bridge in worse shape than previously thought and its closure now indefinite, two fed-up aldermen told the Tribune they want to revoke its city landmark status in hopes of speeding up the process toward a new, functional bridge at Cortland Street. CDOT, meanwhile, cautioned that removing its city landmark status wouldn’t eliminate the need for state or federal historical review of planned work on the bridge.
The aldermen’s push, spurned by historical preservation advocates, highlights an urban philosophical debate: What’s a city to do when its architectural heritage and aging infrastructure are one and the same?
When CDOT shut the Cortland bridge down last September, officials estimated it would reopen sometime in 2027. But now, CDOT says a structural assessment of the bridge has revealed it’s not capable of safely carrying vehicle traffic, necessitating “more extensive” work than originally anticipated. The effort, CDOT said, is now expected to last multiple years, and various options are on the table — including replacing the historic bridge entirely.
Ald. Brian Hopkins, who represents the 2nd Ward and would like to see the bridge de-landmarked, described the situation as “an abdication of duty” by CDOT.
“Their job is to make sure people can get from point A to point B,” said Hopkins, who plans to introduce an ordinance that would rescind the bridge’s city landmark status. “They’re not the historical museum.”
Hopkins and his colleague Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, described fielding a deluge of complaints about the bridge situation from constituents who call, email or approach them on the street or at farmers markets to vent. Compounding the traffic mess is the fact that two other bridges — at Lake Street downtown and Chicago Avenue on the Near North Side — are also closed.
CDOT has faced significant criticism over the last year for the simultaneous bridge closures, which prompted aldermen earlier this year to pass an ordinance requiring the department to notify the City Council and brief its members on any bridge closures slated to last more than a month.
“People are livid,” said Waguespack, whose ward includes the Cortland Street Bridge.
“If the engineers are saying that the steel is so degraded that a vehicle cannot go over it, then your options are limited,” Waguespack said. “And I think they’re limited to removing the bridge and replacing it.”
But preservation advocates say the Cortland Street Bridge is more than just a piece of infrastructure.
“Chicago’s bridges are a defining part of our city’s identity,” said Frank Butterfield, interim CEO and president of Landmarks Illinois. “The bridges have been a visible reminder of Chicago’s history as a transportation and commercial hub,” he said.
Chicago bridge designers invented the bascule bridge, Butterfield explained. Bascule means “seesaw” in French, and a bascule bridge can be raised vertically to allow boats to pass through. “That was a new design, and the world took note,” he said.
Ward Miller, executive director of the group Preservation Chicago, described the potential rescission of the bridge’s landmark status as a slippery slope.
“You could potentially start an avalanche that would undermine the Landmarks Ordinance in Chicago, which would undermine perhaps some of the most important buildings built in our city (which) are known around the world,” he said.
“It would make Chicago look foolish,” Miller said. “And I think it would be a huge embarrassment to our city.”
A city landmark designation requires proposed work on historical structures to be reviewed by the city’s Landmark Commission or its staff, according to the city’s Department of Planning and Development. The city’s landmark ordinance does include carve-outs for structures that are deemed imminently dangerous.
CDOT said that even revoking the bridge’s city landmark status — a maneuver that has happened only once in Chicago history, when the City Council revoked the landmark status of the McCarthy Building to pave the way for the Block 37 development — would not necessarily allow the city to immediately move forward with a bridge replacement.
“Because all City of Chicago bascule bridges have been designated eligible for the National Register for Historic Places by the Illinois State Historic Preservation Office, the project remains subject to certain state and federal environmental and historic-preservation reviews,” department spokesperson Erica Schroeder said, “regardless of the bridge’s designation as a City of Chicago landmark.”
In a newsletter last week, Hopkins noted those state and federal protections, but said “it is important to me that the level of government for which I am responsible not stand in the way of proper upkeep and improvements to this bridge.”
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CDOT has previously pointed to the age of the bridge, which was first landmarked by the city in 1991, as one of the barriers to a speedy fix.
“These early bridges were designed in a way that makes critical structural components extremely difficult to access for inspection, maintenance, and repair,” the department said in August.
Schroeder said the structural assessment of the bridge revealed certain steel components to be “more deteriorated” than the department previously thought.
“As a result, the repair approach that had been under consideration is no longer feasible, and CDOT is evaluating the appropriate scope of work needed to address the bridge’s condition,” she said.
When pressed about a new timeline for the bridge, Schroeder said bridge rehabilitation or replacement projects “of this scale” typically take around a year-and-a-half to two years of construction alone — not including design work or state or federal review.
Meanwhile, aldermen and residents — who argued the bridge closure has turned what used to be jaunts across the river into odysseys — questioned what progress had been made over the last year.
“Frustration is kind of boiling into a little bit of anger, because how did we not know? How did you not know how to repair this bridge before you closed it down?” said Sean Smith, president of the Bucktown Community Organization.
Smith noted that his wife, who takes the CTA’s Armitage bus, has sometimes chosen to disembark the bus, walk across the bridge, and then pick up another bus on the other side or walk the rest of the way home rather than subject herself to the circuitous reroute of the No. 73.
“Every day you go by, you don’t see people there,” Hopkins said. “You don’t see cranes, you don’t see construction equipment. You don’t see trucks. You don’t see people in orange vests.”
Schroeder said the department’s work on the bridge over the last year had involved seawall repairs, bridge-pier protection and stabilization of the bridge house, which at the moment is covered with graffiti.
“The closure also allowed for a more thorough assessment of areas that could not be fully accessed while the bridge remained open to traffic,” Schroeder said.
Though neither are city landmarks like the Cortland bridge, the other currently closed bridges at Lake Street and Chicago Avenue both went through federal historical review processes, Schroeder said.
The Lake Street Bridge “is being rehabilitated in a manner that preserves its original appearance and historic character,” she said, while the Chicago Avenue Bridge was replaced with a temporary bridge that is now itself being replaced by a permanent structure.
Schroeder acknowledged the “significant impact” simultaneous bridge closures can have on residents, saying CDOT was continuing to try and complete work “as efficiently as possible.” But, she said, “the size, age, and complexity” of Chicago’s system of more than 400 bridges and viaducts mean that “some overlap among major projects is unavoidable.”
The Cortland Street Bridge is currently open to pedestrians and to bicyclists, and one idea floated has been to keep the bridge open for walkers and cyclists but closed to drivers — while building an adjoining bridge for vehicle traffic, or adding another bridge nearby.
But CDOT said it is not considering that idea, noting that it would require “multiple years of right-of-way negotiations as well as design and construction.”
In Lincoln Park, one neighbor said she hoped middle ground could be found on the bridge.
Neighborhood resident Emily Marzonie acknowledged she’d been affected by the traffic mess in the area, which she said needed to be addressed.
But, Marzonie said, she would hope the bridge wouldn’t need to be totally destroyed for that to happen.
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“It’s worth saving things in the city,” she said. “The more that we remove that, we’re kind of losing what makes Chicago Chicago.”