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Griswold opens his chapter on these years with a "civic awakening," and the machinery of it was the Commercial Club. In 1909 the club — through its president Howell C. Rockhill, with Charles H. Worden, Robert B. Hanna and others — entered actively on a campaign of civic betterment. Professor Charles Zueblin of the University of Chicago was engaged to deliver a series of lectures on municipal improvements; delegations of citizens visited other cities and returned with practical ideas; and the club's circle brought in the two men whose reports remade the city's map, Robinson and Kessler. The city council meanwhile created a River Front Commission of officials and citizens, funded by a tax levy of four and a half cents on each $100 of assessed valuation, and engaged George E. Kessler of St. Louis, landscape architect, with Metcalf and Eddy, sewer experts, "to consider in full the city's needs." The disastrous flood of March 1913 — told in full in the Wars, Unrest and Disasters chapter — turned attention sharply to the rivers: the council appropriated $5,000 for a special commission, the River Improvement Association, to investigate protection against a recurrence. The planning decade thus ran on two tracks that met in Kessler's drawings: beautification and flood control, both laid along the three rivers.
Sources: Griswold (1917), Ch. XLVIII ("Civic Awakening" narrative; River Front Commission; flood of 1913 cross-reference).