The Organized Chaos of Downtown Champaign

                Today we took a very intriguing tour of Downtown Champaign. Let me mention a little background on Champaign-Urbana before I get started. Urbana was settled first by people from Urbana, Ohio. When the settlers started expanding, they expanded to the west. The new part of town was originally called West Urbana before it got changed to Champaign, and thankfully it got changed.

                While most of Champaign follows a typical city grid with streets running north and south and east and west, there is a certain part of Champaign that has streets offset by about 20 degrees. The reason for this is the train tracks that connect us to Chicago. When the roads were built, there was a small section that was offset from Springfield to Washington North to South and from Neil to First East to West. While in this offset grid, you can see both the typical style of small towns with parallel and perpendicular streets that figuratively connect them with Washington D.C. and the offset roads built in conjunction with the Illinois Terminal.

                From here, we walked along the most popular street name in the United States, Park Avenue, to West Side Park. This is the main park in Champaign and it is very easy to understand why. Located just a few blocks from Central High School, this park can serve as an easy place for P.E. classes to have an open field to use for exercise. This park is also surrounded by at least 3 churches: Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopalian. And not too far south, just a few blocks, is the Champaign Public Library. This park is so significant because in just one place, residents can practice physical, spiritual, and mental health, a major concept that coincides with the idea of Americana.

                This tour reminded me a lot of my hometown. It is built around a railroad track that helps transport the crop harvested every year. We have the typical road grid with the larger mile by mile grid present also. Along the railroad street runs Main Street with all the local shops that hope to gain the trust and service of the community. As we expand, we find the larger more elegant homes just off of Main Street, far enough away to not be affected by the farms and their grain bins, but close enough to town the be just a short walk away from anything they need.

                This tour definitely encouraged to not just accept that buildings are built the way they are, but to wonder why. I will definitely be able to “read” a city anytime I see one and compare it to the organized chaos of Downtown Champaign.