A brief history of... 300 North State Street Bordered by North State Street, West Kinzie Street, North Dearborn Street, and the Chicago River, Marina City is located on the site of the original Block 1 of the Chicago township, designated before Chicago became a city in 1837. (Left) Approximate location of Marina City today (center frame) in 1892 Currier and Ives lithograph of Chicago. The bridge in the lower left corner is a swing bridge at Rush Street. It was replaced in 1920 by the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Above that, at where the river starts to turn is the present location of the State Street Bridge.

The United States government granted the land to Illinois in the 1820s as part of “canal lots” on a ten mile wide strip of land along the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The canal ran 96 miles from the Chicago River to LaSalle, Illinois, on the Illinois River. Completed in 1848, it established Chicago as a transportation hub by allowing boats passage from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico. With the popularity of railroads, canal traffic slowed in the 1890s and eventually shifted to recreational use.

To raise money to help build the canal, lots were auctioned and many of the buyers were early settlers. Shortly before he died, Dr. Alexander Wolcott, Jr. (1790-1830) purchased Block 1 from the Board Canal on September 27, 1830. He paid $685 in cash.

(Left) Dr. Wolcott’s receipt for his purchase of Chicago’s Block 1 in 1830. It is signed by Board Canal Commissioners Edmund Roberts, Dr. Gershom Jayne, and Charles Dunn. It is hereby certified that in pursuance of Law, Alexander Wolcott, has this day purchased at public Sale, Lots number One, two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight, in block number One on the plan of the Town of Chicago, for Six Hundred and eighty-five Dollars, for which he has made payment in full.

Wolcott was born in East Windsor, Connecticut and graduated from Yale in 1809. He moved to Chicago in 1820 as the U.S. Government’s Indian Agent.

His predecessor, Judge Jowett, had started work on an agency house, a simple log cabin on the north side of the river near what is now North State Street. Wolcott finished the cabin and it became the first building erected on the property. It would soon earn the nickname “Cobweb Castle” due to Wolcott’s poor housekeeping.

In the early 1820s, Wolcott presided at a gathering around the cabin of 3,000 Indians.

Wolcott was the first physician to reside in Chicago. North State Street was previously known as Wolcott Street.

When he died in October 1830, his will was the first will probated in Cook County. The property went to his wife, Eleanor Marion Kinzie (1804-1860), who was the daughter of pioneer merchant John Kinzie. Eleanor was the first person born in Chicago who was not a native American. Kinzie had the only other cabin north of the Chicago River, just east of what is now Michigan Avenue.

The Wolcotts married in 1823 – it was the second marriage performed in Chicago – and lived at nearby Fort Dearborn from 1823 to 1828 but then returned to the cabin. Better known as Ellen or Nell, Eleanor Wolcott moved to Fort Howard in Wisconsin in 1831. She remarried in 1836.

The next owner was Thomas Dyer (1805-1862), who was mayor of Chicago, 1856-1857, and the first president of the Chicago Board of Trade. Dyer sold the land to John S. Wright (1815-1874), a Chicago merchant. publisher, and real estate investor whose fortune was wiped out twice before he formed a land company designed to interest eastern capitalists in the midwest. In 1835 at his expense, he built the first public school in Chicago. Shortly after the Chicago fire of 1871, Wright was committed to an asylum.

Wright paid for the property in four installments over three years.

The next owner was Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, which in 1848 connected Chicago with lead mines at Galena. In 1850, the railroad was completed as far as Elgin. During this time, the population of Chicago tripled over six years and Chicago became the largest railroad center in the world.

Galena & Chicago Union Railroad merged with several other rail lines to form Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. C&NW was a major midwestern railway system until 1995, when it was acquired by Union Pacific.

When it was sold to Marina City developers in December 1959, the property was a vacant lot except for a 34-foot wide strip of railroad tracks that ran through the north half of the site, and extended west to Merchandise Mart.

Below the site was part of Chicago’s extensive tunnel system. When caissons were being drilled for Marina City, they went through some of the long-abandoned tunnels.