Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal

Chicago fixed its drainage twice, and the first fix created the second problem. Ellis Chesbrough, brought from Boston in 1855 to build the city's sewers, found the streets too low to drain, so Chicago raised its streets over the new sewers and jacked its buildings up to match, the six-story Tremont House included. Those sewers emptied into the Chicago River, which flowed into Lake Michigan, where the city drew its drinking water. Typhoid deaths averaged about 65 per 100,000 a year in the late 1800s and hit 174 in 1891. The Sanitary and Ship Canal, opened in January 1900, reversed the river and sent sewage away from the lake. Treating the water from 1912 cut typhoid sharply again, so credit the decline to both, not the canal alone.