Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago

How did Chicago, a city known for commerce, come to have such a splendid public waterfront—its most treasured asset? Lakefront reveals a story of social, political, and legal conflict in which private and public rights have clashed repeatedly over time, only to produce, as a kind of miracle, a generally happy ending.

Joseph D. Kearney and Thomas W. Merrill study the lakefront's evolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Their findings have significance for unde...