Ain’t no road just like it

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

We could argue at length about the best view from Lake Shore Drive.

A lot of South Siders will tell you it’s the spot coming north at about 50th Street where the road takes a subtle twist just past some of those Hyde Park condos and everything unexpectedly opens up so that the skyline lays out majestically in front of you over the water as if downtown jutted into Lake Michigan.

Somebody else might say it’s the view you get further along going north just as you pass Navy Pier and the whole lake seems to present itself in all its vastness with the big shoulders of Streeterville and the Gold Coast on your left and everywhere else horizon — the view that lets the tourists know right off they aren’t in Kansas anymore.

My own preference is for the North Side commuters’ view, the one you see just as you cross southbound over the hump at Fullerton, where the skyline suddenly looms up in full glory with the lake and beach on the left and Lincoln Park lagoon on the right —the view that makes you think about being “Friday night trouble bound,” even if you never were.

By all means, let that debate begin.

But wait. The only point about Lake Shore Drive on which we can’t argue, the point on which there is no room for argument among Chicagoans because there is no disagreement on this matter among anyone who is sane, is forthrightly set forth in the title of a newlyreleased book: “Lake Shore Drive: Urban America’s Most Beautiful Roadway.”

Is there any disagreement with the title? I didn’t think so.

I’m only slightly surprised that authors Neal Samors and Bernard Judge didn’t just call it the World’s Most Beautiful Urban Roadway and dare somebody to prove them wrong.

After all, to paraphrase Aliota, Haynes & Jeremiah, there ain’t no road just like it, anywhere we’ve found.

This is one of those “coffee table books” that make a timely appearance during the gift-giving season with lots of great photos, many of them historic, in this case depicting the origins of the 17-mile road that helps define our city. I got a special kick out of the photos showing that the city’s early beaches were paved — with bricks, no retaining walls at that point —but the horse and buggy carriage road wasn’t.

The photos are stitched together with interviews of experts and prominent Chicagoans, plus a jacket cover essay from Skip Haynes on the origins of the song (he and the band didn’t much like it, he says, but their manager insisted on making a recording. Smart manager.)

It’s the 17th such Chicago book for Samors and the first for Judge, a veteran newspaperman who is a former editor and, by way of full disclosure, a good friend of mine.

Judge was a top editor at both the Tribune and Sun-Times before finishing up his career as editor and publisher of the Daily Law Bulletin. He’s a bit of a throwback to when this was still a brawling newspaper town, literally so in his case, but he doesn’t like it when we bring that up, and I mention it here only in case you’re even tempted to suggest there’s a more beautiful URBAN road in America, because the title was his idea.

(Please note: the Blue Ridge Parkway isn’t part of this discussion.)

Bernie, as he is known around town to more people than read this column, grew up in South Shore, so he personally prefers that first view from The Drive I mentioned looking north from around 50th. But he’s not going to fight about that.

Bernie brings the passion to this subject of a kid who spent many a summer day sitting alongside U.S. 41, as Lake Shore Drive is officially designated, reading off license plates of cars traveling cross country. Until the 1950s, he reminds us, Lake Shore Drive was the only expressway through the city — and the most likely place to spot a California plate.

What makes Lake Shore Drive special, he says, is that it made Chicago’s magnificent lakefront accessible to everyone.

“I think it’s Chicago’s number one attribute,” Bernie says.

After he got out of the Army in 1964 and before he got into the news biz, Bernie worked briefly at the old U.S. Steel South Works site, which is where the book says developer Dan McCaffery dreams of extending the southern end of Lake Shore Drive beyond where it currently cuts off at 71st.

Bernie predicts that will actually happen some day.

And he says you really won’t believe the view from down there.