A small lot on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Adams Street in downtown Chicago that’s planned as a Chicago Symphony Orchestra Park may include a small Route 66 museum to recognize its location on Route 66, according to a story in DNAinfo.
The so-called pocket park would sit just west of the Chicago Symphony building. Vanessa Moss, the symphony’s vice president for orchestra and building operations, said the pocket park would be part of an overall plan to revitalize Wabash. According to the article:
Moss said Friday that the CSO could partner with Blue Plate catering to “enhance dining options there and create a really nice oasis for people in the city, and help bring more traffic to the CSO.”
She said the plaza could include a “Route 66 museum” that will explain the site’s historical significance. In 1926, Route 66 started down the street at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.
Officials didn’t elaborate on what they had planned for the museum, but a rendering did not appear to show a new building on the site. […]
If funds can be raised on schedule, the CSO hopes to start construction in the early spring and open the park by summer 2015, Moss said.
Based on the artist’s rendering, I suspect it’s not an enclosed “museum” per se, but a few well designed kiosks to tell the Route 66 story in that area.
Swa Frantzen at Historic66.com explains the Route 66 path in that area:
The start of Route 66 has moved a few times. Originally, Route 66 began on Jackson Blvd. at Michigan Ave. In 1933, the start (and end) was moved east onto the reclaimed land for the world fair to Jackson and Lake Shore Drive. In 1955, Jackson Blvd became one way west of Michigan Ave. and Adams St. became the westbound US-66. However the start of US-66 remained on Jackson at Lake Shore Drive.
So, even while currently Adams Street at Michigan Avenue is marked as the starting point, Route 66 never departed from there.
A short distance away in 1977, city workers took down the Route 66 signs at the highway’s eastern terminus at Grant Park at Jackson Drive. Twenty-five years later, Route 66 signs were reinstalled on that spot.
This quote from the DNAinfo article gave me a chuckle:
… “Believe it or not, there are a lot of international tourists that congregate on Adams Street,” where a sign marks the beginning of Route 66, O’Neill said. “The idea is to get them into a plaza with a ‘Route 66’ scene to get them off the sidewalk.” …
And this one, too:
“… O’Neill said the park has been underused “because it’s infested with rats,” but said that after the renovation it would make an excellent site for an outdoor cafe. … “
If there’s to be a marker of any kind commemorating the starting point of U.S. Route 66, it should be at the corner of Michigan and Jackson, the original eastern terminus. Adams wasn’t part of Route 66 for at least the first 29 years of the highway’s existence, and even then, it didn’t happen until construction downtown involving Jackson Boulevard made Jackson temporarily one way eastbound. Once construction was completed, pressure was on to keep Jackson one way, but it was up to the Chicago Park District, not the city, to accomplish that (the park district has jurisdiction over boulevards). So, on October 27, 1953, the park district commissioners finally voted to make Jackson one way; but apparently, it took until 1955 for this to go into effect. That’s when Adams became part of Route 66 … but **NOT** until then.
Someone please tell DNAinfo they screwed up and should stop promulgating the lie. Thank you.
Glad to see that you posted the correct info as a comment on the DNAInfo site. I hope the responsible parties get beyond the “So: which nitwit shall we blame for NOT fact checking: the clueless CSO, or the dumb reporters who should have double-checked everything anyway?? ” beginning.