Looking South on Michigan Avenue

Sited along the river at the southeast intersection of what is now Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, and photographed here in 1949, was Fort Dearborn. Having served as the country's major military garrison in the "West," one can only imagine how Fort Dearborn might have appeared in 1803, the year it was built by U.S. Federal Troops. Except for a cabin once inhabited by Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, the fort was the only structure for miles amid wilderness and prairie. Having suffered from fire on more than one occasion, the fort was demolished in 1857, with any remaining structures lost forever to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. A portion of Fort Dearborn's footprint can be traced today by following a series of plaques and a line embedded in the street and sidewalk near the two upper towers of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Seen here, the 333 North Michigan Avenue building stands where the fort once was. Designed in 1928 by John Wellborn Root (Holabird & Root), the 333 building today remains an Art-Deco classic.