What Are Chicago’s Oldest Laws?

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2018

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Looking around Chicago today, you won’t find many stink balls or cannons—but did you know the city has ordinances regulating both? When these laws were first passed more than a century ago, aldermen may have believed they posed a real threat. But today, these old laws don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Logan Square resident Ty McCarthy was wondering whether Chicago had any outdated laws on the books. So he asked Curious City:

What are some of Chicago’s oldest and weirdest laws?

To find some weird laws, we pored over Chicago’s municipal code—which anyone can search online—and pinpointed several ordinances that were passed more than 50 years ago.

Click here to view our special presentation featuring nine of Chicago’s most obscure laws.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Planet Money helps you understand the economy.
0:02.7	We find the people at the center of the story.
0:05.1	Garbage in New York, that was like a controlled substance.
0:08.6	We show you how money influences everything.
0:11.6	Tell me what you like by telling me how you spend your money.
0:15.5	And we dig until we get answers.
0:17.5	I had a bad feeling you're going to bring that up.
0:19.4	Planet Money finds out.
0:20.7	All you have to do is listen. The Planet Money podcast from NPR.
0:26.2	It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate.
0:31.9	Report. Explore. From WBEZ.
0:38.6	Is it against the law to fly a kite in Chicago?
0:41.8	That's what several websites say,
0:43.7	including one called dumblaws.com.
0:46.1	But no, don't believe it.
0:47.4	You can't trust everything you read online,
0:49.3	and many of the stories you'll see about weird laws are just bogus.
0:53.7	I'm reporter Robert LaReselle,
0:55.1	and I've been delving into Chicago's actual laws. My mission, to answer a question posed by
1:00.8	curious city listener Ty McCarthy. He saw some of those stories about archaic laws in various
1:06.5	places, and that got him to wondering, what are the oldest laws in Chicago?
1:14.0	First of all, as it turns out, Chicago used to have a law about kites.
	...

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