Hello Internet

In big cities, land just doesn't simply sit around. In the last 180 odd years, almost every parcel of land in city limits has been built on, transformed, somehow modified from it's natural state. That means the empty ones stand out! Every weed-choked field, sun-baked parking lot, oddly suburban strip mall, every single one only exists at the cost of something that came before. Unfortunately, outside of a few famous developments, what came before is largely forgotten. In 10 or 20 years, with their foundations overgrown or built over and their addresses removed from maps, these pieces of urban history quietly disappear into the gravel & weeds that buried them.

This blog, "What Used To Be There?", endeavors to answer that simple question by digging up the history of the empty and out of place lots in the city of Chicago, unearthing the people and industries that long ago made Chicago home.

I'm starting this up on somewhat of a whim after sitting on this idea for some time, so I don't want to make any grandiose claims- but drop a bookmark, or dust off your RSS feed, and check in every once in a while, if you think you'd be interested in the lost buildings of Chicago.