Why the West stopped making land - Works in Progress Magazine

Large swaths of America’s cities were originally underwater. We stopped half a century ago, but there is plenty more land left to take.

Some of America’s most famous land was reclaimed from the sea. The Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and the Reflecting Pool all sit on earth reclaimed from Potomac River tidal flats in the early twentieth century. Treasure Island was built in San Francisco Bay for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exhibition. Chicago’s Northerly Island was filled in from Lake Michigan to complete Daniel Burnham’s 1909 plan of the city. In total, around eight percent of the land in America’s major coastal cities was underwater in the 1890s and has since been reclaimed. This includes the land…

saved by

• Anushree Chaudhuri

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