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Map of Chicago
A grid that runs right up to the water of a lake so big it looks like a sea, and a Y-shaped river that splits it in three. On the map, Chicago is pure geometry.
What you see on the map
The grid. After the Great Fire of 1871 the city was rebuilt on a grid stretching for kilometres to the west and south, with a major street every mile. In the centre the blocks are small and tight.
The river. It comes in from the lake and, a kilometre and a half inland, splits into a north and a south branch: a Y that encloses downtown. Its bascule bridges, one per street, follow one another like rungs.
The Loop. The financial heart, named after the ring of elevated railway around it, in the angle between the river and the lake.
The shore. To the east, the city stops at a strip of parks separating it from the lake: Grant Park and Millennium Park, with their geometric gardens, and to the north, Navy Pier, the kilometre-long pier jutting into the water.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:20,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, covers 5.6 km: the Loop, the whole river and the lakeshore. The city is drawn as blocks, here with their outline.
1:8,000 on A3 moves in on the Loop, with every skyscraper and every bridge.
A 50 × 70 portrait poster follows the lakeshore north, with Lincoln Park and its lagoons.
Make it yours
Open the example and move the frame: Lincoln Park, with the zoo and the harbours, or Hyde Park, with the university campus and the gardens of the 1893 World's Fair, deserve a map of their own.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, coral, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
