George Streeter - Streeter in Reality

Streeter in Reality

'Cap' Streeter was born in Flint, Michigan in 1837, he served in the Civil War but he wasn't a captain. He was a salesman, the owner of a traveling circus, a logger, and a miner. After his first wife left him to join a vaudeville troupe, he moved to Chicago and acquired the steamship Reutan. He and his common-law wife planned to use the Reutan to run guns to Latin America. But fuel was expensive, and the distances great, and he saw an opportunity close by, in Chicago.

Streeter clearly lied about his discovery of the "District of Lake Michigan" in 1886, referencing a map published in 1821 to determine that his "District" was outside of City limits. A storm did not smash Streeter's ship into a sandbar on the night of July 10, 1886. Weather reports for that night make no mention of a storm. Streeter did not really believe that he could fill in the shoreline and legally claim the new land; a witness in Streeter's 1902 land fraud trial testified that Streeter had purposely set out to contest the claims of the wealthy shoreline owners. Contractor Hank Brusser told the court that Streeter asked him to fill in portions of the shoreline in order to create confusion over land titles. According to Brusser, Streeter said that: "They (the owners of the shoreline) will have to buy us off" and that "We'll get a million out of it". The recorder of the general land office, Chester H. Brush, testified that Streeter's title was "a clumsy forgery" with signatures mismatched with offices. Silas Lamoreaux was commissioner and not recorder; Hoke Smith was Secretary of the Interior, not secretary to sign patents...

In reality, Streeter orchestrated an elaborate scheme to steal valuable shoreline property. He did not crash his ship on a sandbar, he piloted it to the foot of Superior Street and then obtained permission from the shoreline owner, Fairbank, to leave his ship there temporarily. He left it there for years. Streeter refused to move his ship insisting that he had title to the shoreline, producing a forged land title, concocted his story of crashing on a sandbar, and then proceeded to sell lots that he did not legally own. He even began collecting property taxes for the lots he sold and kept detailed tax records.

In 1893 police removed Streeter and his boat from Fairbank's land. Streeter then moved to the posh Tremont Hotel from where he proceeded to expand his operations. He sold shoreline belonging to Fairbank, the William Ogden estate, the Farwell family, Potter Palmer, the Pine Street Land Association and the Chicago Title and Trust Company. In all, Streeter claimed to own 186 acres (0.75 km2) of land between the mouth of the Chicago River and Oak Street. The reality was that the Lincoln Park Board had worked to fill in the shoreline in that area, allowing them to build Lake Shore Drive on the infill.

Streeter continued to sell lots to people who either believed his story or believed his forged federal land grant. To bolster his claims, pressure owners to pay him off and to assuage those who had bought lots from him in earnest, Streeter staged a series of "invasions", when he would lead a small group of squatters carrying shacks to the lake shore to quickly set up settlements. The shoreline owners would respond by sending thugs and/or police to evict them. Streeter would then vociferously complain that he was a victim of a capitalistic conspiracy to rob him of his land. This repeated itself again and again until Streeter was convicted of manslaughter, in 1902, and sent to prison. Streeter died at the age of 84 in 1921 of pneumonia.

The site of Streeter's shanty is currently occupied by the John Hancock Center, and the surrounding Chicago neighborhood is known as Streeterville.