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BKgirl,

Steam tunnels?! Underneath Rockefeller Cathedral?! Please do tell…

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What I remember: Summer nights in the mid-90’s, led by a soccer playing upperclassman and some of his friends, somehow getting into Rockefeller (a back door?  an unlocked window?).  It’s fuzzy — I was such a good girl, and panicked by the illegality of it all, sure that the University Police would catch us — but those guys knew how to get underground.  Once there it was all flashlights and adventuring.  I never did any research about it, didn’t even really understand what the tunnels were for, I was just blindly following cute boys.  Here’s what I found out about it online:

“Legend tells of a dank, labyrinthine network of tunnels running underneath the Midway, linking the Law School and Burton-Judson to the campus’s north side. It’s true. Tunnels containing steam pipes connect the quads to the University steam plant at 61st and Blackstone, extending west to the Hospitals and north to Pierce Hall at 55th and University. TheMagazine’s “Chicagophile” cartoonist Jessica Abel, AB’91, toured the underground system with steam plant assistant manager Mike DeSoto and recorded her journey in the April/99 issue, in which DeSoto described finding graffiti, beer bottles, and even students inside the tunnels. Since then, DeSoto says, the University has secured the entranceways, adding gates and welded bars. “There was a time when it was very common to see someone wandering in the tunnels in the middle of the night,” he says. “We’d call security, and they’d take the students back to their dorms. But to my knowledge there have been no new student intruders in quite some time.”

Some alumni had heard that the tunnels were closed in the 1960s because a female student was murdered there. “I have no knowledge of any murders,” DeSoto says, “nor have we ever found any bodies.” The lack of newspaper stories about steam-tunnel murders on the Midway further suggests that this tale is simply another urban legend.”