The ground beneath our feet.

I will not apologize for my fascination with manhole covers, although it may look like an obsession. Apparently there is an active Twitter community of those who collect or catalogue images of manhole covers. 

Manhole covers are tokens of the complexity urban life. They symbolize our thirsts, our wastes, our desires for power and to speak and hear, and maybe the shame that we have in our thirsts for power, our wastes, and our need to see and to say: how very neurotic that we conceal them. (Some may deny that power and light are needs, or that communication is a need: how very Freudian!)

So we hide these underground, concealed under 200+ lbs of steel. (Manhole covers on modern street need to be heavy because when vehicles pass over them at speed, the air pressure can vary widely in an instant -- an effect known as Venturi -- so that lighter manhole covers might pop out.)

Here are some that I've seen in my wanderings through Chicago. Hardly encyclopedic. (Also, some of my shoe wardrobe.)

Communication.

Communications started out as telephones. Then included data like stock prices, then cable and microwave and Internet.

Some of the evolution of "the phone company" in the United States can be seen here. Once upon a time, local phone service was provided by the "Baby Bells" or by independent phone companies. Here in Chicago, the local phone provider was Illinois Bell, or I.B.T. Co. Long distance service was provided by AT&T, known colloquially as "Ma Bell." Ma Bell also owned a portion of the Baby Bells, while the rest of the Baby Bells were owned publicly. Together, Ma Bell and the Baby Bells were known as "the Bell System." While there were a few non-Bell system players, everyone was tightly regulated.

Then came "deregulation", pursuant to a bunch of lawsuits between the Federal Communication Commission and AT&T. This history is complicated, and I likely don't know all the details. In my understanding, first, Ma Bell bought up all of the Baby Bells, including Illinois Bell. At the same time, other companies were allowed to offer telecommunications. The Baby Bells were then spun off into various regional operating companies (RBOCs). Here in Illinois, the RBOC was called Ameritech. (The names of RBOCs were objects of criticism.) Various RBOCs partnered with each other and with other companies, merged with them, changed their names and their business models. Hence MCI, Qwest, Nextlink, Verizon, etc. One of these RBOCs, Southwestern Bell, changed its name to SBC and started buying other RBOCs including Ameritech. Ultimately SBC bought AT&T itself, and then changed its name to AT&T.

This complicated history is relevant here only because it's reflected in the ornaments on our streets.

 

 

 

Crown Castle is an Internet Backbone company. 

 

Western Union was once a major provider of data communications services: think of all of those stock ticker machines. But they haven't been in that business for a long while. I can only guess why they had manhole covers in Chicago. But I can guess.

 

Most Western Union covers I've seen are between Chicago's loop and the Union Stock Yards. Perhaps they were reporting to the Loop on livestock transactions at the stock yards.

 

Water

Currently, the name of the water utility in Chicago is the Chicago Water Management Department, abbreviated CWMD. It was previously known as the Chicago Water Works, abbreviated CWW. Many currently produced covers still use that abbreviation.  

Sewers. 

Is it naive of me to be surprised that Water and Sewers are different utilities, and provided by different jurisdictions?

I believe that Sewers in Chicago come in a few varieties. The City of Chicago operates a few, but most are operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (aka the Chicago Sanitary District.) And some sewage systems are, I suppose, privately owned.

 

 

 

 

 

Power. 

There are several types of electrical power. The City of Chicago maintains its own power grid for its streetlights and I imagine its traffic control systems, which are marked ATS. Long ago the streetlights were gas, so I've encountered covers that say "City G. & E." The CTA has a separate system for powering the EL trains.

Foundries. 

By law, recent metal castings need to state where and by whom they were cast. This is part of a "buy American" law from the 1980s. While in NYC, some covers are clearly labeled "Made in India," most of them in Chicago are domestically manufactured, and the leading foundries are in Neenah WI and East Jordan MI. The foundry in East Jordan has grown substantially, buying up international players, and has recently rebranded itself as "EJ" with a new logo, which is now showing up on its castings.