Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1892 — How Great Cities Grow, [ARTICLE]

How Great Cities Grow,

[Chicago Dally Kews-RecoiSJ Unthinking people suppose that big elties grow like jelly fishes, gradually expanding from a single center. But they don’t. They cover the ground just as a crop of parsley spreads over a new-ly-hoed garden. Bhoots spring up here and there from a great number of central roots. From these various centers It gradually extends until the ground is completely covered. The various root oenters are plainly discerniDle about Chicago,and the vacant spaces between them are just as plain. Leave the city and you run through a rapidly filling blank spot before you strike Englewood; a blank, then Auburn Park; another blank, then Pullman to the west, South Chicago to the ea6t, and just beyond you Hammond, with vacant spaces between each of them. Another blank and then you come to Griffith—a rapidly growing new center. This leads one to inquire what is necessary to make a root-center? What determines where they will grow? Evidently railroads. The junction of two or three railroads in the vicinity of any large city is sure to develop into a suburb. Therefore land near to a junction which is twenty miles from the center of a city is often worth more than land nearer the city but remote from any railroad or only on one. Griffith is at the junction of lour great railroads and two fuel oil pipe lines. One of its railroads is a complete belt line encircling Chicago and bringing twenty-four more railroads into immediate switch connection. It is strange such an important point was overlooked for so long. When a few months ago Jay B. Dwiggins & Co., of Chicago, laid out a town there, four factories immediately located, and houses and stores are springing up like magic.