DuSable Bridge (formerly Michigan Avenue Bridge)

Two steel leaves over the Chicago River carry Michigan Avenue: the upper level takes the main flow of cars, while the lower one connects the crossing to the riverside roadways. When the leaves rise, counterweights descend into deep chambers inside the abutments, clearing the way for vessels on the river. The bridge joined the former Pine Street to the avenue's southern section, and the neighboring crossing on Rush Street was dismantled afterward. Near Pioneer Court on the north bank once stood a large trading establishment with a house, mill, bakery, and livestock; nothing of it remains on the site.

At what is now DuSable Bridge (formerly Michigan Avenue Bridge), on August thirty-first, nineteen twenty-two, Vincent "The Schemer" Drucci was fleeing a police car. Drucci, a safecracker from the North Side Gang, had failed to appear in court on a charge of attempted robbery. Two sergeants recognized him at the wheel and began the chase: they needed the fugitive, and he needed the river's south bank.

The bridge was two years old at the time, and it was called Michigan Avenue Bridge. When Drucci approached from the north, the bridge operator was already opening the span for a steamship. The barriers were down, and both halves of the roadway were separating and lifting. Drucci smashed through the barrier in his car, sped up the sloping deck, and flew across the opening gap.

The police officers did not stop. While the span continued to rise, their car repeated the jump across the already widening gap. On the south bank, Drucci got caught in a traffic jam, abandoned the car, and ran. The sergeants caught up with him about a block from the river. The jump across the drawbridge gave the fugitive a few seconds and ended in his arrest.

Such a chase could have happened here precisely because of the crossing's design. City engineers had to carry traffic along Michigan Avenue while also allowing vessels to pass along the Chicago River. So they placed the road on two counterbalanced steel leaves. As they rise, counterweights descend into deep chambers inside the abutments, while the leaves pivot on fixed axes. The upper level carries the main traffic, and the lower one connects to the riverside roadways. In the nineteen twenties, the bridge opened more than three thousand times a year; now it does so about forty times.

The crossing was built here to extend Michigan Avenue across the river. Its northern segment had previously been called Pine Street. After the bridge opened, it became one street, and the old neighboring crossing on Rush Street was dismantled.

Its current name appeared only in two thousand ten. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a free Black trader, established his homestead at the north end of what is now DuSable Bridge (formerly Michigan Avenue Bridge) in the late seventeen eighties. He chose the river mouth for the route linking the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River basin: travelers went up the Chicago River, carried boats and goods across a short watershed, and continued along other rivers.

Du Sable's wife, Kittihawa, a Potawatomi woman, helped him conduct trade. Her family ties gave the family access to local trading networks; Du Sable himself maintained business with Indigenous, French, British, and Métis partners. Later drawings turned their house into a lonely cabin, but the inventory made at the sale shows a different establishment: a spacious wooden house, a mill with a pair of grindstones, a bakery, outbuildings, tools, and livestock.

In eighteen hundred, Du Sable sold the estate and left for the west bank of the Mississippi River. The reason for the sale has not been reliably established. The house passed to subsequent owners and then disappeared. Nothing remains here of the mill, bakery, and living quarters; Pioneer Court marks their site on the north bank, and the bridge bearing Du Sable's name adjoins it.