ABSTRACT
The desolation was amazing. An area half as large as Manhattan, four miles long and one mile wide, was completely gone, except for the straight streets which Olmsted traversed in an omnibus which was operating in the midst of nothingness. The very stones and bricks of substantial buildings had disintegrated, and the level mud flat was newly raw. Across this open space, one could see a man standing upright three miles away. The shadow of this citizen, or any Chicago inhabitant, needed to be very long, if he were to re build what had been destroyed.
