Are we out of Chicago yet? on the Highway 41 Streetview Trek

 

Now that Highway 41 is no longer Lake Shore Drive as it becomes a series of avenues in Chicago, the Chicago boundary cannot be that far away, and then the suburbs beckon, along with an engineering monument.  So let's go see some views.

Through the trees is Amundsen High School. Very famous alumni of this school are dancer/ choreographer/ director Bob Fosse, director Michael Mann (NOT the climate scientist), and actor Roy Thinnes.

At this not particularly noteworthy or noticeable intersection, Foster and Lincoln, Highway 41 turns north onto Lincoln. But for a moment, we're going to continue down Foster Avenue a little bit further to go see something truly historic, the engineering monument I mentioned in the introduction.

Speaking of Swedish (not actually speaking Swedish), this is the Swedish Covenant Hospital complex.



The historic place/engineering monument: The water being crossed here on Foster Avenue is the North Shore Channel, built between 1907 and 1910. It was built to enhance the flow of the North Branch of the Chicago River into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. So literally just south of here, the channel flows into the North Branch of the Chicago River. The channel actually originates at Wilmette Harbor, so the water from the lake flows out of the lake, into the channel, and then into the North Branch. The flow of the North Branch and South Branch was thus reversed, so both rivers flow out of the lake and into the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which flows to the Des Plaines River, which then flows to the Illinois River and finally the Mississippi River. (The North Branch of the Chicago River parallels the Skokie River; we aren't done with that yet.)

Read more: Reversing the flow. 

Now the trek returns to Lincoln Avenue and heads north.

Bearing to the northwest here in Peterson Park.

 

Passing by Mather High School. It's named after the first director of the National Park Service, who actually has his name on a lot of things, including Mather Gorge in Great Falls National Park north of D.C. Since it opened in 1959, it doesn't have really famous alumni like Amundsen. However, Max Levchin, who founded both PayPal and Yelp, graduated from here.

Here's where Highway 41 actually crosses the North Shore Channel AND

this is where Highway 41 leaves Chicago and enters the suburbs, which here happens to be Lincolnwood.



Suburbia beckons us.