Published April 30, 2021 •
Updated on April 30, 2021 at 1:55 pm
Charlie Wojciechowski
A proposal to rename a stretch of Chicago s Lake Shore Drive is one step closer to reality after a City Council committee voted to approve the measure in a meeting that was contentious and at times profane.
The Chicago City Council Committee on Transportation met Thursday to consider an ordinance to rename a portion of Lake Shore Drive as Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Drive. Don t miss local breaking news and weather! Download our mobile app for iOS or Android and sign up for alerts.
The ordinance was initially introduced by 17th Ward Ald. David Moore and co-sponsored by several other Chicago City Council members to rename the iconic roadway after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who arrived in Chicago in 1790 and was likely the first permanent non-Native American settler of the area.
According to the language of the initial ordinance, proposed in 2019, Lake Shore Drive would be renamed Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Drive from Hollywood Boulevard, located in the city’s Edgewater neighborhood on the North Side, to the South 71st Street merge on the South Side.
Moore later agreed to limit the proposal to Outer Lake Shore Drive from Hollywood to 67th, just impacting the city s harbors and not changing the addresses of businesses or residences along LSD.
Point du Sable arrived at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1790 and established a property near what is now Michigan Avenue. He sold his property in 1800, according to researchers, but the area where he settled is now marked by historic markers along the Chicago River.
click to enlarge John Greenfield
Judging from contemporary accounts, Chicago founder Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the Black trading post proprietor for whom local African American leaders propose renaming Lake Shore Drive, was a virtuous, cultured, likable, and good-looking man.
While there s little hard information available about DuSable s early life, according to tradition he was born in 1745 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti. By the late 1700s he was working as a trader in the Great Lakes region, and letters from other traders indicate that in 1779 he was living at the mouth of Trail Creek in present-day Michigan City, Indiana, a stone s throw from the current Shoreline Brewery location.
Portion of Lake Shore Drive Would Get New Name Under Amended Proposal The ordinance was initially introduced by 17th Ward Ald. David Moore and co-sponsored by several other Chicago City Council members to rename the iconic roadway.
Published December 11, 2020 •
Updated on December 11, 2020 at 12:14 pm
NBCUniversal Media, LLC
A proposed City Council ordinance has been revised to rename a stretch of Lake Shore Drive in honor of the man who is regarded by many historians as the first non-Indigenous settler of the city of Chicago.
The ordinance was initially introduced by 17th Ward Ald. David Moore and co-sponsored by several other Chicago City Council members to rename the iconic roadway after Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who arrived in Chicago in 1790 and was likely the first permanent non-Native American settler of the area.