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Many of you have probably experienced some weather-related inconveniences at UIC. Most people on campus, if you ask them, can relay a tale of rushing to class during a torrential downpour sans umbrella, or having to trudge from the ARC to the Student Center in order to get a square meal despite 6 inch snow drifts on the ground. Would you believe me, then, if I were to tell you there was once a way to get around campus shielded from the elements (save for wind and mud)?
From its founding all the way until 1993, the campus at the University featured concrete walkways, which spread over a vast range from Harrison St (At the modern day site of the ARC) all the way to Science & Engineering South, with an offshoot going through University Hall and into BSB. There were still paths below the walkways as well, making UIC essentially a double-decked campus.
This is something you can visibly still see the scars of on campus: if you've ever wondered why the second floor of SCE is so roomy and spacious compared to the subterranean-feeling first floor, this is why; the patio outside the Inner Circle used to be a massive entrance to the building. If you've ever wondered why there are staircases to nowhere in several of the school's buildings, and bridges to nowhere sticking out of the Daley Library, this is why.
In addition to providing shelter, these walkways were designed to encourage student gatherings and socialization, something UIC students are famous for their struggles with (I don't make the stereotypes; don't shoot the messenger). The design featured a massive amphitheater-like space smack-dab in the middle of the modern-day quad, dubbed the 'Great Forum', or simply the forum. This was the central meeting place for students in the 30 years the elevated design was used; the Vietnam war was even protested here (one such protest pictured above).
The walkways, forum, and second-floor entrances to most buildings on campus were all part of the master design of famous Brutalist architect Walter Netsch, who wanted the UIC campus to radiate out from a central point like a drop of water, according to Stewart Hicks, an associate professor at the school of Architecture at UIC. Netsch's design predates the addition of areas and amenities like University Village and the Credit Union 1 Arena to UIC, and his design would be interesting to see adapted to modern times. However, there were a plethora of reasons the walkways had to go.
For one, many a UIC alum from the 20th century can express how uninviting and hostile the walkways made walking around campus feel. Either you were up on top, exposed to the open air and wind, or trudging down the often muddy and cavernous paths below, with columns supporting the structure obscuring your way. Another factor? Increasing maintenance costs; icy and slick winters, along with the salt that treated them, eroded the walkways at incredible rates, and they were deemed too dangerous to let stand in the 1990s and demolished over a 6-year period. In an era where the University is only now able to address years-old maintenance concerns, it's probably a good thing they were torn down.
In an ideal world, though, I think we could have found a way to make these things work, or at least preserved certain sections which would be useful later. Yes, they were burdensome hulks of concrete, but they could have been retrofitted with something as simple as planters to absorb excess moisture and provide shade. The same idea goes for the underside of the walkways, where changing the column layout could have solved a lot of the problems with perception the original design had.
This may seem like a crackpot idea, a white elephant project wasting billions just like the trains in California, but there's actually a precedent behind this. If you've ever gone from campus to the UIC-Halsted Blue Line station, you've walked on the results of a similar project. In 2013, the Peoria Street pedestrian bridge which crossed across I-290 was demolished and rebuilt to create a more inviting, modern, and lively environment, which, at least in my view, has made the bridge feel like a safer, more sociable place. Don't believe me? Look at the before and after, it's a night and day comparison.
If we had rehabilitated the walkways the same way the Peoria Street bridge was rehabilitated, UIC's campus would have undergone a transition far more revolutionary than the transition from walkways to no walkways we saw in the 90s. Despite the reputation of the walkways from the 20th century, there's little statistical evidence to suggest they had crime at higher rates than the current campus design. In fact, bringing back the walkways at key pedestrian crossings would likely save lives; I've seen my fair share of students take their life into their own hands and dash across Harrison or Halsted street despite oncoming traffic, and the walkways would mitigate that. I guess we'll never know, though, since the trouble of bringing back the walkways would be magnitudes more expensive than if we had chosen to retrofit them while they stood.
What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment concerning whether we should rebuild these mammoth walkways or not. Bonus credit to Steven Hicks, as well, because I had absolutely no idea that anyone working at UIC had some 560k-odd subscribers on YouTube.
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