Anyone interested in the history of Chicago land values (and that should be everyone around here) will enjoy getting lost in the 1916 Valuations of central business property which I just found at the Internet Archive. As a period piece it’s fascinating, but it also provides interesting comparisons to real estate prices and practices of today.
And this brings to mind that I have set up a second blog, priceofprivilege, to focus on just that– the prices being paid and asked for land ownership and other privileges. This item doesn’t go there, because it’s nowhere near current. But other items, such as taxi medallion prices and land prices around the world are going to go there rather than here. The purpose is to possibly attract an audience more interested in speculation and profit than ending poverty and economic meltdowns, but the information can still be of interest to those of us with the latter objectives.