engineering

Navy Pier

Navy Pier is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Navy Pier rather than just read about it. In short: Navy Pier is a 3,300-foot-long (1,010 m) pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The pier encompasses over 50 acres (20 ha) of shops, restaurants, live theaters, family attractions, parks (including Polk Bros Park), gardens, and exhibition facilities.

Key takeaways

Navy Pier belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Navy Pier to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Navy Pier from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Navy Pier is a 3,300-foot-long (1,010 m) pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The pier encompasses over 50 acres (20 ha) of shops, restaurants, live theaters, family attractions, parks (including Polk Bros Park), gardens, and exhibition facilities. Navy Pier is one of the top destinations in the Midwestern United States, drawing over nine million visitors annually. It is one of the most visited attractions in the Midwestern United States, and is Chicago's second most visited tourist attraction.

History

Military usage

Navy Pier opened to the public on July 15, 1916. Originally known as Municipal Pier, it was built by Charles Sumner Frost, a nationally known architect, with a design based on the 1909 Plan of Chicago by Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett. Its original purpose was to serve as a dock for freighters, passenger ships, and indoor and outdoor recreation; events like expositions and pageants were held there. The pier was built atop 20,000 logs imported from Oregon that were piled into the lake bed of Lake Michigan. In mid-1918, the pier was also used as a jail for draft dodgers. In 1927, the pier was renamed Navy Pier to honor the naval veterans who served in World War I. In 1941, during World War II, the pier became a training center for the United States Navy; about 10,000 people worked, trained and lived there. The pier contained a 2,500-seat theater, gym, 12-chair barber shop, tailor, cobbler shops, soda fountain and a vast kitchen and hospital. The pier was home to the USS Wolverine and USS Sable, training carriers that qualified 18,000 naval aviators.

Beginning in 1946, as the Navy was winding down from its mission, the University of Illinois held classes at the pier, especially to serve the high demand from returning service members. As the maximum capacity was exceeded, the school outgrew the pier, the University of Illinois at Chicago was partly founded as a result. After the university left, Navy Pier became underutilized.

Later use and redevelopment

In 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway opened and increased commercial shipping activity at the pier for a short time, though business died down and left for more modern facilities at Lake Calumet. In 1976, the East End buildings were renovated and for a brief period the pier was alive again, home to summer events like ChicagoFest. However, maintenance was not done and the pier went into decline. In 1989, the City of Chicago had the Urban Land Institute (ULI) reimagine uses for the pier. The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) was created; its responsibility was to manage and operate Navy Pier as well as McCormick Place. The MPEA undertook the redevelopment, incorporating some of ULI's recommendations. On July 12, 1995, Navy Pier was reopened to the public as a mixed-use venue incorporating retail, dining, entertainment and cultural spaces.

21st century

Efforts to update Navy Pier for the 21st century began on January 13, 2006, when the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority released a proposal for a major renovation of the pier, which included a monorail, a 260-foot (79 m) spokeless Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, floating hotel, and a water park with a Great Lakes theme. The plan would have included nearly double the current parking and a replacement theater with a greater capacity. At the time of the announcement, a price tag of $2 billion was announced. Following the reorganization of the agency that runs Navy Pier and McCormick Place, a new study was commissioned to reinvigorate the upgrade process. The new study, by the Urban Land Institute, was released on November 11, 2010, and recommended a more modest set of enhancements aimed at retaining the pier's role as a public space, rather than turning it into a theme park. Suggested elements include a concert venue, an enlarged Chicago Shakespeare Theater space, new restaurants, a renovated commercial area around the pier's entrance and additional park-like features to bring people closer to the lake. Possibilities, including the enlarged Ferris wheel and a hotel, are mentioned as more remote possibilities.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Navy Pier logo as of 2008

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Navy Pier

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Navy Pier claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Navy Pier before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Navy Pier ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Navy Pier

In research: Navy Pier appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Navy Pier in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Navy Pier is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1916 establishments in Illinois, Buildings and structures completed in 1916, Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Chicago, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Navy Pier outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Navy Pier in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Navy Pier means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Navy Pier out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Navy Pier in simple terms?

Why does Navy Pier matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Navy Pier?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Navy Pier.