New Britain herald., 1926-09-29
CHICAGO AND ITS
 UNUSUAL THINGS
News Gatherer Comments Upon
 This Strange City

This Strange City By tho Associated Press.
 There Is a quotation in the Bible about the insecurity of house built on the sand.
 Through the wonders of modern engineering, however the twentieth but an entire city built on the sand. and securely.
 The city Is Chicago. Virtually the entire shore line of Lake Michigan Is an expanse of sand. Down in h. diana the sand is blown into those weird mountains known as the dunes. In northern Illinoise there Is no surface sand to be blown about. An expanding metropolis has covered it with brick and steel and stone.
 But dig down a few inches for foundation and below the shallow
  but sand. In New York-a city built on lava rock-huge blasting operations are necessary to sink a foundation. In Chicago a steam shovel produces 8 hole In a few hours
 Then the trouble begins. A few feet down and water begins to ap- pear. The pumps are set to work and they are In action almost con- tinuously while the foundation Is go- ing in. For the great skyscrapers 1t is necessary to keep going down until something solid Is reached. This sometimes Is more than a hum dred feet below the surface.
 For structures of moderate heigth however, 1t is not always necessary to sink caissons to bedrock. The sand structure is given rigidity by . the driving down of a huge number Of wooden piles. For buildings of three or four stories a good concrete base Is sufficient
 Darkness closes in on the great city. roar and rush diminish, lights flash and into the tall chairs behind the cash registers of the all-night restaurants climb gray-haired digni- fled, be-spectacled old men.
 Patrons wonder where the come from and who they are. for sug- gestive of better days are the man. ners, the shapely heads, the clothes, the ensemble of these quiet change makers.
 Often it is asked what kind of enl- ployment they once had that in their twilight years they must work while others sleep. The answer is that the great majority are forced to 1t through straitened circumstances. Having suffered business reverses, dissipated fortunes or displacement by younger men, they thus continue In the producing class-snrall at their age--rather than be dependent They work twelve hour shifts, shuffling, sorting, changing money. Sheridan Road probably Is Chi- cago's most colorful street. It is eighty miles long, vending leisure ly course through the city proper. long string of northshore sub- burbs, and finally reaching a north ernmost haven in Milwaukee.
 Sheridan Road is aristocratic. It holds it's head high. The life that overflows it's long stretch is as varied as it is interesting. for the street passes through palatial hotel and apartment districts, bustling up town business centers. magnificent residential areas, and finally through the country estates of milionaires o poet, hynning the appeal of this thoroughfare once wrote: "The whistling, the honking, the
 riding, the walking,
 The crowds overcrowding our
 quiet abode,
 The bathcrs, the babies, the laugh
 ing. the talking
 Make life a queer mixture on
 Sheridan Road"
 The stree. noses out of Lincoln Park at Diyersay Parkway and fronts on the park and lake front through the first couple of miles This stretch is of double width. It is faced by a line of towering apart ments, similar to those on Riverside drive in New York. The road then twists and turns 10 follow the lake shore, passes through miles Of busi- ness and hotel areas, bends around a cemetery into Evanston. and then shoots on through a dozen shore line suburbs.
 A dozen miles north it leaves the table level lands of Chicago and slopes and curves around hills and onto wooded valleys, flanked on either side by vast estates and ex- elusive country clubs.