During the pre-depression days when the bridge was nearing completion, there were many different companies purchasing land and sub-dividing it, expecting to strike gold. However as the stock market crashed, these properties remained vacant, and along the way only a handful of these house were actually built.
The Great Lakes Land Co. Inc, based in Detroit was one of the larger land owners.
A view of some of the model homes that were built.
The one in the top left, is still around, standing at the corner of California and Algonquin.
The areas marked in red were lands owned by the corporation.
Many of the neighbourhoods were never built in. Following WWII, with a shortage of housing for retuning soldiers, the government got involved, and helped assemble these large tracts of land. Many time the properties were sold, but had never been built. Once the land had been reclaimed, many areas gave over vast areas of Victory Housing.
A view from Google maps below, shows how most the area above was never built.
Many of the streets laid out on this map, some that were never built at the time, are appearing today as new subdivisions, like this one highlighted in LaSalle. Often times, the streets legally exist and parcels are already divided, even though nearly 80 years has past.
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