1.Professor:But first let's look at the history of the area the park occupies.in the early 1800s.
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2.The land where Millennium park now sits was an empty strip of land that was owned by the city of Chicago.
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3.And then in the mid 1800s,officials became worried that if the water level in nearby lake Michigan got too high,the city would be flooded.
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4.So they wanted to build a break water,a kind of a wall out into the lake to protect the city.
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5.The problem was they didn't have enough money to build it.
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6.So,they made a deal with a railroad company,the Illinois central railroad.
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7.The deal was that the city would give the company the rights to lay railroad tracks across that strip of land.
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8.And in exchange, the company would finance the construction of the break water.
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9.Professor:At that time,it seemed like a great deal for Chicago.
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10.But then in the 1900s,the central business district gradually grew bigger,more sophisticated.
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11.And by the 1990s,you had all these modern skyscrapers right next to these ugly old train tracks sunk down in the ground below street level.
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12.Plus, the railroad company had also built a big parking area next to the tracks, which their agreement with the city didn't actually allow them to do.
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13.Now,the idea of a park over the tracks had been around for a while.and by then, the train station had been relocated underground.
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14.In the late 1990s,the mayor of Chicago really got things moving.
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15.Professor:Now,according to legend,the mayors dentist had an office in a high rise building that overlooked the train tracks in parking area.
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16.And one day,the mayor was looking out the dentist's window and got the idea of covering the train tracks and the parking lot with a roof,then covering that roof with a layer of soil and grass.
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17.And that field of grass could serve as ,you know,a little park.
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18.And that idea for that little park soon evolved into today's rather large Millennium park.
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19.Shortly after the mayor got that idea, however, he got it,he had the city's lawyers negotiate an agreement with the railroad company in which the company donated all of its rights to that property, back to the city,setting the stage for the park.
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