Construction and World War I
Construction began in 1914 under the leadership of Charles Sumner Frost and took two years, at a total cost of $4.5 million. When it opened to the public in 1916, it was the largest pier in the world. The Pier was built both to handle shipping and as an entertainment site. The original Burnham Plan proposed five piers, but only one was commissioned. In 1917-18, during World War I (WWI), the Pier housed many Navy and some Army personnel, the Red Cross, and Home Defense units. It even had a jail for draft dodgers.
Read more about this topic: Navy Pier
Famous quotes containing the words war i, construction, world and/or war:
“One must know that war is common, justice is strife, and everything happens according to strife and necessity.”
—Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.)
“No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)
“Life is a search after power: and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,—there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,—that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Of course in war all madnesses come out in a man, that is the fault of war not of a man or a nation.”
—Frieda Lawrence (1879–1956)