In its early history, Chicago had floods frequently, especially in the spring, making the streets so muddy that people, horses, and carts got stuck. An old joke that was popular at the time went something like this: A man is stuck up to his waist in a muddy Chicago street. Asked if he needs help, he replies, “No, thanks. I’ve got a good horse under me.”
The city planner decided to build an underground drainage (排水) system, but there simply wasn’t enough difference between the height of the ground level and the water level. The only two options were to lower the Chicago River or raise the city. An engineer named Ellis Chesbrough convinced the city that it had no choice but to build the pipes above ground and then cover them with dirt. This raised the level of the city’s streets by as much as 12 feet.
This of course created a new problem: dirt practically buried the first floors of every building in Chicago. Building owners were faced with a choice: either change the first floors of their buildings into basements or lift the entire buildings to meet the new street level. Small wood-frame buildings could be lifted fairly easily. But what about large, heavy structures like the Tremont Hotel, which was a six-story brick building?
That’s where George Pullman came in. He had developed some house-moving skills successfully. To lift a big structure like the Tremont Hotel, Pullman would place thousands of jackscrews (千斤顶) beneath the building’s foundation and turn the jackscrews the same amount at the same time, thus raising the building slowly and evenly. Astonishingly, the Tremont Hotel stay open during the entire operation, and many of its guests didn’t even notice anything was happening.
Some people like to say that every problem has a solution. But in Chicago’s early history, every engineering solution seemed to create a new problem.
【小题1】Why was the joke about Chicago mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．To explain why horses were widely used. |
| B．To show the terrible road condition. |
| C．To prove Chicagoan were humorous. |
| D．To describe the lifestyle in the past. |
| A．Lower the Chicago River. |
| B．Build pipes above ground. |
| C．Fight against heavy floods. |
| D．Raise the level of streets. |
| A．It was hard to move its basement. |
| B．It was mainly made of wood. |
| C．It was too heavy to move easily. |
| D．There was no equipment to use. |
| A．Tremont Hotel was the biggest building in Chicago. |
| B．George became famous for moving Tremont Hotel. |
| C．It took great efforts to move Tremont Hotel. |
| D．Guests left Tremont Hotel before the move. |
