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Chicago, the seat of Illinois's Cook County and the third largest city in the country, is the focus of a consolidated metropolitan statistical area that covers the primary metropolitan statistical areas of Gary, Indiana; Kankakee, Illinois; and Kenosha, Wisconsin. "Brawling" was the word Carl Sandburg applied to Chicago in his poem about the city. No longer the "Hog Butcher for the World," at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Chicago is still an enthusiastically combative city with a lively political life. A railroad hub in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when its population had already reached 300,000 people, Chicago became a major force in the nation's development. Today, it is a national transportation, industrial, telecommunications, and financial leader as well as a city of great architectural significance, ethnic diversity, and cultural wealth. The only inland urban area to rank with major East and West Coast metropolises, Chicago has achieved international status through the quality of its cultural institutions and its position as a world financial center.

The City in Brief

Founded:	1830 (incorporated 1837)
Head Official:	Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) (since 1989)
City Population
1980:	3,005,000
1990:	2,783,726
2000:	2,896,016
2003 estimate:	2,869,121
Percent change, 1990–2000:	4%
U.S. rank in 1980:	2nd
U.S. rank in 1990:	3rd (State rank: 1st)
U.S. rank in 2000:	3rd (State rank: 1st)
Metropolitan Area Population (PMSA)
1980:	7,937,290
1990:	7,410,858
2000:	9,157,450
Percent change, 1990–2000:	23.6%
U.S. rank in 1980:	3rd
U.S. rank in 1990:	3rd
U.S. rank in 2000:	3rd
Area:	228.4 square miles (2000)
Elevation:	578.5 feet above sea level
Average Annual Temperature:	49.8° F
Average Annual Precipitation:	35.82 inches
Major Economic Sectors:	Services, wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, government
Unemployment Rate:	6.4% (February 2005)
Per Capita Income:	$20,175 (1999)
2002 FBI Crime Index Total:	Not Reported
Major Colleges and Universities:	University of Chicago; University of Illinois at Chicago; DePaul University; Loyola University of Chicago
Daily Newspapers:	Chicago Tribune; Chicago Sun-Times

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Dictionary: Chi·ca·go (shĭ-kä'gō, -kô'-)

The largest city of Illinois, in the northeast part of the state on Lake Michigan. It is a major port and the commercial, financial, industrial, and cultural center of the Midwest. It is also the third-largest U.S. city. Chicago was nearly destroyed by a disastrous fire in 1871. Population: 2,830,000.

Chicagoan Chi·ca'go·an n.

WORD HISTORY People from Chicago ought to like onions. The name Chicago is first recorded in 1688 in a French document, where it appears as Chigagou, an Algonquian word meaning “onion field.” In explanation of this name, the document states there that wild onion or garlic grew profusely in the area. The name of the field or meadow was first transferred to the river and then was given to the city in 1830.

Computer Desktop Encyclopedia: Chicago

The code name for Windows 95.

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Chicago

City (pop., 2005 est.: 2,842,518), northeastern Illinois, U.S. Located on Lake Michigan and the Chicago River, Chicago has extensive port facilities. In the 17th century the name was associated with a portage between the Des Plaines and Chicago rivers connecting the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River. Fort Dearborn was built in the early1800s on a tract acquired from Indians. It expanded rapidly after the completion of the Illinois and Michigan Canal (1848) — which connected Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and thereby to the Mississippi — and also became the nation's chief rail centre. Rebuilt quickly after a hugely destructive fire in 1871, it was the site of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. It was the birthplace of the steel-frame skyscraper in the late 19th century, and it boasts designs by eminent architects, including Louis H. Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Nuclear scientists produced the first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago in 1942. After World War II the city underwent another building boom, but, as in other large cities, its population subsequently dropped as its suburbs grew. The third largest U.S. city, it is a major industrial, commercial, and transportation centre and is the site of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. Several museums and the Art Institute of Chicago are located there.

For more information on Chicago, visit Britannica.com.

US History Encyclopedia: Chicago

Chicago, the largest city in the Midwest, is located at the southwest corner of Lake Michigan. In 1673, the French explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette led the first recorded European expedition to the site of the future city. It was a muddy, malodorous plain the American Indians called Chicagoua, meaning place of the wild garlic or skunkweed, but Jolliet recognized the site's strategic importance as a portage between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River valley. The French government ignored Jolliet's recommendation to construct a canal across the portage and thereby link Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. Not until 1779 did a mulatto fur trader, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, establish a trading post along the Chicago River and become Chicago's first permanent resident. In 1803, the U.S. government built Fort Dearborn across the river from the trading post, but during the War of 1812, Indians allied to the British destroyed the fort and killed most of the white inhabitants. In 1816, Fort Dearborn was rebuilt and became the hub of a small trading settlement.

The state of Illinois revived Jolliet's dream of a canal linking Lake Michigan and the Mississippi Valley, and in 1830 the state canal commissioners surveyed and platted the town of Chicago at the eastern terminus of the proposed waterway. During the mid-1830s, land speculators swarmed to the community, anticipating a commercial boom once the canal opened, and by 1837 there were more than 4,000 residents. In the late 1830s, however, the land boom busted, plunging the young settlement into economic depression.

During the late 1840s, Chicago's fortunes revived. In 1848, the Illinois and Michigan Canal finally opened to traffic, as did the city's first rail line. By 1857, eleven trunk lines radiated from the city with 120 trains arriving and departing daily. Moreover, Chicago was the world's largest primary grain port and the point at which lumber from Michigan and Wisconsin was shipped westward to treeless prairie settlements. Also arriving by ship and rail were thousands of new settlers, increasing the city's population to 29,963 in 1850 and 109,260 in 1860. Irish immigrants came to dig the canal, but New comers from Germany soon outnumbered them and remained the city's largest foreign-born group from 1850 to 1920. In the 1870s and 1880s, Scandinavian immigrants added to the city's diversity, and by 1890, Chicago had the largest Scandinavian population of any city in America.

Attracting the New comers was the city's booming economy. In 1847, Cyrus McCormick moved his reaper works to Chicago, and by the late 1880s, the midwestern metropolis was producing 15 percent of the nation's farm machinery. During the 1860s, Chicago became the nation's premier meatpacking center, and in 1865 local entrepreneurs opened the Union Stock Yards on the edge of the city, the largest of its kind in the world. In the early 1880s, George Pullman erected his giant railroad car works and model industrial town just to the south of Chicago. Meanwhile, Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck Company were making Chicago the mail-order capital of the world.

The Great Fire of 1871 proved a temporary setback for the city, destroying the entire central business district and leaving approximately one-third of the city's 300,000 people homeless. But Chicago quickly rebuilt, and during the 1880s and 1890s, the city's architects earned renown for their innovative buildings. In 1885, William Le Baron Jenney completed the first office building supported by a cage of iron and steel beams. Other Chicagoans followed suit, erecting iron and steel frame skyscrapers that astounded visitors to the city. Chicago's population was also soaring, surpassing the one million mark in 1890. In 1893, the wonders of Chicago were on display to sightseers from throughout the world when the city hosted the World's Columbian Exposition. An estimated 27 million people swarmed to the fair, admiring the neoclassical exposition buildings as well as enjoying such midway attractions as the world's first Ferris wheel.

Some Chicagoans, however, did not share in the city's good fortunes. By the last decades of the century, thousands of New comers from eastern and southern Europe were crowding into slum neighborhoods, and disgruntled workers were earning the city a reputation for labor violence. The Haymarket Riot of 1886 shocked the nation, as did the Pullman Strike of 1894, during which workers in Pullman's supposedly model community rebelled against the industrialist's tightfisted paternalism. In 1889, Jane Addams founded Hull-House, a place where more affluent and better-educated Chicagoans could mix with less fortunate slum dwellers and hopefully bridge the chasms of class dividing the city.

Meanwhile, the architect-planner Daniel Burnham sought to re-create Chicago in his comprehensive city plan of 1909. A model of "city beautiful" planning, Burnham's scheme proposed a continuous strand of parkland stretching twenty-five miles along the lakefront, grand diagonal boulevards imposed on the city's existing grid of streets, and a monumental neoclassical civic center on the near west side. Although not all of Burnham's proposals were realized, the plan inspired other cities to think big and draft comprehensive blueprints for future development. It was a landmark in the history of city planning, just as Chicago's skyscrapers were landmarks in the history of architecture.

During the post–World War I era, violence blemished the reputation of the Midwest's largest city. Between 1915 and 1919, thousands of southern blacks migrated to the city, and white reaction was not friendly. In July 1919, a race riot raged for five days, leaving twenty-three blacks and fifteen whites dead. Ten years later, the St. Valentine's Day massacre of seven North Side Gang members con-firmed Chicago's reputation for gangland violence. Home of the notorious mobster Al Capone, Prohibition-era Chicago was renowned for bootlegging and gunfire. The Century of Progress Exposition of 1933, commemorating the city's one-hundredth anniversary, drew millions of visitors to the city and offered cosmetic relief for the blemished city, but few could forget that in Chicago bloodshed was not confined to the stockyards.

In 1931, Anton Cermak became mayor and ushered in almost fifty years of rule by the city's Democratic political machine. The greatest machine figure was Mayor Richard J. Daley, who presided over the city from 1955 to his death in 1976. Under his leadership, Chicago won a reputation as the city that worked, unlike other American metropolises that seemed increasingly out of control. During the late 1960s and early 1970s a downtown building boom produced three of the world's tallest buildings, the John Hancock Center, the Amoco Building, and the Sears Tower. Moreover, the huge McCormick Place convention hall consolidated Chicago's standing as the nation's premier convention destination. And throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the city's O'Hare Field ranked as the world's busiest airport.

Yet the city did not necessarily work for all Chicagoans. The bitter demonstrations and "police riot" out-side the 1968 Democratic National Convention signaled trouble to the whole world. By the 1970s, a growing number of African Americans felt that the Democratic machine was offering them a raw deal. A combination of black migration from the South and white migration to the suburbs had produced a marked change in the racial composition of the city; in 1940, blacks constituted 8.2 percent of the population, whereas in 1980 they comprised 39.8 percent. By constructing huge high-rise public housing projects in traditional ghetto areas, the machine ensured that poor blacks remained segregated residentially, and these projects bred as many problems as the slums they replaced. As the number of manufacturing jobs declined in rust belt centers such as Chicago, blacks suffered higher unemployment rates than whites. Meanwhile, the Democratic machine seemed unresponsive to the demands of African Americans who had loyally cast their ballots for the Democratic Party since the 1930s.

Rebelling against the white party leaders, in 1983 African Americans exploited their voting strength and elected Harold Washington as the city's first black mayor. Although many thought that Washington's election represented the dawning of a new era in Chicago politics, the mayor was forced to spend much of his four years in office battling white Democratic aldermen reluctant to accept the shift in political power. In any case, in 1989, Richard M. Daley, son of the former Democratic boss, won the mayor's office, a position he was to hold for the remainder of the century.

Despite the new skyscrapers, busy airport, and thousands of convention goers, the second half of the twentieth century was generally a period of decline during which the city lost residents, wealth, and jobs to the suburbs. Chicago's population peaked at 3,621,000 in 1950 and then dropped every decade until 1990, when it was 2,784,000. During the last decade of the century, however, it rose 4 percent to 2,896,000. Much of this growth could be attributed to an influx of Latin American immigrants; in 2000, Hispanics constituted 26 percent of the city's population. A growing number of affluent whites were also attracted to gentrifying neighborhoods in the city's core. But during the last two decades of the century, the African American component declined both in absolute numbers and as a portion of the total population. The black-and-white city of the mid-twentieth century no longer existed. Hispanics and a growing Asian American population had diversified the Chicago scene.

Bibliography

Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton, 1991.

Green, Paul M., and Melvin G. Holli, eds. The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Mayer, Harold M., and Richard C. Wade. Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Miller, Donald L. City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

Pacyga, Dominic A., and Ellen Skerrett. Chicago, City of Neighborhoods: Histories and Tours. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1986.

Pierce, Bessie Louise. A History of Chicago. 3 vols. New York: Knopf, 1937–1957.

—Jon C. Teaford

Columbia Encyclopedia: Chicago

(shĭkä'gō, shĭkô'gō) , city (1990 pop. 2,783,726), seat of Cook co., NE Ill., on Lake Michigan; inc. 1837. The third largest city in the United States and the heart of a metropolitan area of over 8 million people, it is the commercial, financial, industrial, and cultural center for a vast region and a midcontinental shipping point. A major Great Lakes port, it is also an historic rail and highway hub. O'Hare International Airport is the second busiest in the nation. An enormous variety of goods are manufactured in the area. Despite an overall decline in industry, Chicago has retained large grain mills and elevators, iron- and steelworks, steel fabricators, and meatpacking, food-processing, chemical, machinery, and electronics plants. The city has long been a publishing center; the Chicago Tribune is among the most widely read newspapers in the country.

Chicago covers over 200 sq mi (520 sq km); it extends more than 20 mi (32 km) along the lakefront, then sprawls inland to the west. Its metropolitan area stretches in the north to the Wisconsin border and in the south to industrial suburbs on and beyond the Indiana border. In addition to its noted expressways and boulevards, Chicago has a system of elevated (partly underground) railways that extend into the heart of the city, making a huge rectangle, the celebrated Loop, which gives its name to the downtown section.

Neighborhoods and Points of Interest

In or near the center of the city are the Merchandise Mart, the world's largest commercial building; the Chicago Public Library, with the Harold Washington Library Center downtown as well as neighborhood and traveling branches; the Chicago Board of Trade building; and the homes of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Civic Opera. La Salle Street is the financial center. On the lakefront, which has many beaches, are Grant Park, with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Natural History Museum, the Adler Planetarium, the Buckingham Memorial Fountain, and the John G. Shedd Aquarium; and Millennium Park, with the Jay Pritzker Pavilion (designed by Frank Gehry). Nearby is Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears (National Football League). To the north is the Navy Pier recreation and entertainment complex (opened 1995) and along Michigan Avenue lies the “magnificent mile,” Chicago's famous shopping district.

In the residential district to the north lies Lincoln Park, with the Chicago Historical Society building, the Chicago Academy of Sciences, a zoological garden, and a conservatory; sculpture in the park includes the noted standing figure of Abraham Lincoln (1887) by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the John P. Altgeld memorial monument (1915) by Gutzon Borglum. The North Side is also the site of Wrigley Field, the home of the National League Cubs, one of Chicago's two major league baseball teams.

The American League's White Sox play on the South Side at U.S. Cellular Field. The South Side of Chicago also is the seat of the Univ. of Chicago, with its imposing Gothic buildings; the John Crerar Library of scientific books is there. Nearby is Jackson Park, with the Museum of Science and Industry. Much of the South Side, however, comprises poor and working-class residential areas, including the homes of the nation's largest African-American population. There, also, were the Union Stock Yards (founded 1865 and closed in the 1970s). At the southern edge of the city are once-enormous iron- and steelworks.

The vast West Side is usually spoken of as a region of nationalities because of the many groups living there, in close proximity yet more or less separate culturally. These neighborhoods grew rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th cent. In the West Side and the suburbs to the west are large industrial areas and two well-known parks—Garfield Park, with its noted conservatory, and Humboldt Park. The west is famous for Hull House, the settlement house founded (1889) by Jane Addams. In 1961 the Hull House location, part of an urban renewal project, was selected as the site of the Chicago campus of the Univ. of Illinois.

Other points of interest in Chicago are McCormick Place, the mammoth convention and exhibition center on the lakefront; the Auditorium, designed by Louis H. Sullivan; St. Patrick's Church (dedicated 1856); and a water tower that survived the great fire of 1871. Besides the Univ. of Chicago, the city's institutions include De Paul Univ., Northeastern Illinois Univ., Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola Univ. of Chicago, Mundelein College, Roosevelt Univ., St. Xavier College, Chicago State Univ., Columbia College, North Park College, parts of Northwestern Univ., and the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago (including the medical center). There are a number of theological seminaries, and schools of music, art, and law. The noted Newberry Library and the Library of International Relations are in Chicago, and the city has a vibrant theatrical community. The city's other major sports teams are the Bulls (basketball) and Blackhawks (hockey).

History

From the Early Days to 1850

Notable as dividing lines in the city are the two branches of the Chicago River. In early days the river was important because the narrow watershed between it and the Des Plaines River (draining into the Mississippi through the Illinois River) offered an easy portage that led explorers, fur traders, and missionaries from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains. Father Marquette and Louis Jolliet arrived here in 1673, and the spot was well known for a century before Jean Baptiste Point Sable (or Point DuSable or Point de Sable), a black man possibly of Haitian origin, set up a trading post at the mouth of the river. John Kinzie, who succeeded him as a trader, is usually called the father of Chicago.

A military post, Fort Dearborn, was established in 1803. In the War of 1812 its garrison perished in one of the most famous tragedies of Western history. Fort Dearborn was rebuilt in 1816, and the construction of the Erie Canal in the next decade speeded the settling of the Midwest and the growth of Chicago. Harbor improvements, lake traffic, and the peopling of the prairie farmlands brought prosperity to the city. The Illinois and Michigan Canal, however, authorized by Congress in 1827 and completed in 1848, was soon rendered virtually obsolete by the arrival of railroads.

The Fire and Industrialization

By 1860 a number of rail lines connected Chicago with the rest of the nation, and the city was launched on its career as the great midcontinental shipping center. Gurdon S. Hubbard had already contributed to the establishment of the meatpacking industry, with its large stockyards. In 1871 the shambling city built of wood was almost entirely destroyed by a great fire (according to legend started when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern), which killed several hundred people, rendered 90,000 homeless, and destroyed some $200 million worth of property.

Chicago was rebuilt as a city of stone and steel. Industries sprang up, attracting thousands of immigrants. Many ethnic groups contributed to the modern city, including Germans, Scandinavians, Irish, Jews, Italians, Poles, Czechs, African Americans, Lithuanians, Croats, Greeks, and Chinese. With industry came labor strife, highlighted by the Haymarket Square riot of 1886 and the great strikes at Pullman in 1894 (see Debs, Eugene V., and Altgeld, John P.). Upton Sinclair's novel of the Chicago stockyards, The Jungle, aroused public indignation and led to investigations and improvements.

Center of Culture

The city, although proud of its reputation for brawling lustiness, was also the center of Midwestern culture. Theodore Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra founded a great musical tradition. Chicago's literary reputation was established in the early 20th cent. by such men as Carl Sandburg, Theodore Dreiser, Eugene Field, Edgar Lee Masters, and James T. Farrell. Saul Bellow and Studs Terkel would continue this tradition later in the century.

Most notable in the development of American thought and taste in art was the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. One of the architects at the fair was Louis H. Sullivan, who, together with D. H. Burnham, John W. Root, Dankmar Adler, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others, made Chicago a leading architectural center. In 1909, D. H. Burnham and Edward Bennett devised their Plan of Chicago, later known as the “Burnham Plan,” a forward-looking piece of city planning containing many features that were implemented later. It was here that one of the distinctive U.S. contributions to architecture, the skyscraper, came into being. Chicago's continuing interest in this type of structure is seen in the John Hancock Center (1968), the Amoco Building (1973, now the Aon Center), and the Sears Tower (1974), which is the tallest building in the United States.

The Twentieth Century

Between World War I and 1933, Chicago earned unenviable renown as the home ground of gangsters—Al Capone being perhaps the most notorious—and its reputation for gangster warfare persisted long after that violent era had passed. Despite the worldwide depression of the 1930s, Chicago's world's fair, the Century of Progress Exposition (1933–34), proved how greatly the city had prospered and advanced. Perhaps the most significant event in World War II occurred (Dec. 2, 1942) under the stands of the Univ. of Chicago's Stagg Field, when Enrico Fermi and a group of scientists working on the government's atom bomb project achieved the world's first nuclear chain reaction. With the war came considerable growth in the Chicago metropolitan area, especially in outlying suburbs.

The city itself declined 23% in population between 1950 and 1990, although its diverse economic base spared it the worst of the economic decay of other large Midwestern cities. The population decline was reversed between 1990 and 2000, when it grew some 4%, largely due to the influx of Hispanic and Asian residents. Chicago's many cultural and other attractions make it a popular convention city; among the 25 national political conventions held there were the Republican national conventions of 1952 and 1960 and the Democratic national conventions of 1952, 1956, 1968, and 1996. The 1968 Democratic National Convention saw violent clashes between demonstrators and Chicago police and the National Guard. Mayor Richard J. Daley was criticized by the media for his manner of putting down the demonstrations, but Chicagoans overwhelmingly supported him. Chicagoans subsequently elected their first woman mayor (Jane Byrne, 1979–83) and their first African-American mayor (Harold Washington, 1983–87). Richard M. Daley was first elected to the office his father long held in 1989.

Bibliography

See R. A. Cromie, The Great Chicago Fire (1958); C. Condit, The Chicago School of Architecture (1964); T. A. Herr, Seventy Years in the Chicago Stockyards (1968); H. M. Mayer and R. Wade, Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis (1969); B. Berry et al., Chicago (1976); I. Cutler, Chicago: Metropolis of the Midwest (1982); M. H. Ebner, Creating Chicago's North Shore (1988); W. Cronon, Nature's Metropolis (repr. 1992); A. Ehrenhalt, The Lost City (1995); D. L. Miller, City of the Century (1996); J. R. Grossman et al., ed., The Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004).

Geography: Chicago

Largest city in Illinois; located on Lake Michigan.

Originally called the “Windy City” because the city bragged about the 1893 World Expo that was held there. The term has since come to refer to the strong northern winds that blow off the lake in the winter.
For many years the second largest city in the United States, before being displaced by Los Angeles, and therefore referred to as the “Second City.”
During the time of Prohibition, Chicago was controlled by gangsters, Al Capone being the most notorious. Gangster warfare continued long after this particularly violent period.
Carl Sandburg, in his poem “Chicago,” called the city the “Hog Butcher for the World” because of Chicago's heavy involvement in the meat-packing industry.
Chicago's downtown is referred to as the “Loop” because it is enclosed by elevated railways, called the “El.”

Weather: Chicago, IL

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Local Time: Chicago, United States

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Maps: Chicago

Wikipedia: Chicago

City of Chicago

Flag

Seal

Nickname: "The Windy City", "The Second City", "ChiTown", "Hog Butcher for the World", "City of the Big Shoulders", "The City That Works"

Motto: "Urbs in Horto" (Latin: "City in a Garden"), "I Will"

Location in the Chicago metro area and Illinois

Coordinates: 41°52′55″N 87°37′40″W / 41.88194, -87.62778

Settled

1770s

Incorporated

March 4 1837

Government

- Mayor

Richard M. Daley (D)

Area

- City

sq mi (km²)

- Land

sq mi ( km²)

- Water

sq mi ( km²)

- Urban

sq mi ( km²)

- Metro

sq mi ( km²)

Elevation

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Population (2006)

- City

- Density

/sq mi (/km²)

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Website: egov.cityofchicago.org

This article is about the U.S. city in the state of Illinois. For other uses, see Chicago (disambiguation).

Chicago (IPA: /ʃɨˈkɑːgoʊ/ or /ʃɨˈkɔːgoʊ/; shi-kah-go, or shi-kaw-go) is the largest city in the state of Illinois, the largest in the Midwest. With a population of nearly 2.9 million people, the city is the third largest in the United States. Rich in history and renowned for its architecture, Chicago is classified as an alpha world city. It is the anchor of the Chicago metropolitan area, commonly called Chicagoland, which has a population of over 9.5 million people in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, making it the third largest metropolitan area in the U.S.^[1] The City of Chicago is almost entirely located in Cook County, Illinois, with a small portion in DuPage County, while the metropolitan area extends over several counties.

Incorporated in 1833 at the site of a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, it soon became a transportation hub and the business, financial, and cultural capital of the Midwest. Since the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, it has been regarded as one of the ten most influential cities in the world.^[2]

History

Chicago City Hall just before completion in 1911

Main articles: History of Chicago, Political history of Chicago, Windy City, Origin of Name (Chicago), List of nicknames for Chicago, and List of mayors of Chicago

The name Chicago is the French rendering of the Miami-Illinois name shikaakwa, meaning “wild leek”.^[3]^[4]^[5] Etymologically, the sound /shikaakwa/ in Miami-Illinois literally meant "striped skunk", and referred to wild leek, or the smell of onions, metaphorically.^[4] It was initially applied to the river, and came to denote the site of the present city later. The sound "Chicago" is the result of a French mis-transcription of the original sound. Chicago in its first century was one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Within the span of forty years, its population grew from slightly under 30,000 to over 1 million by 1890. In the next forty years the population tripled to over 3 million.^[6] By the close of the 19th century, Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world ^[7]-- and the largest of the cities that didn't exist at the dawn of the century.

During the mid-18th century the Chicago area was inhabited primarily by Potawatomis, who took the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox people. The first settler in Chicago, Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, arrived in the 1770s, married a Potawatomi woman, and founded the area’s first trading post. In 1803 the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Fort Dearborn Massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later ceded the land to the United States in the Treaty of St. Louis of 1816. On August 12 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of 350, and within seven years it grew to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on March 4 1837.

Starting in 1848, the city became an important transportation center between the eastern and western United States. Chicago’s first railway, Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, opened. The Illinois and Michigan Canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect through Chicago to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought many new residents from rural communities and Irish American, Polish American, Swedish American, German American and numerous other immigrants. The city’s manufacturing and retail sectors dominated the Midwest and greatly influenced the American economy, with the Union Stock Yards dominating the meat packing trade.

The Chicago River at night

Beginning in 1855, Chicago constructed the first comprehensive sewer system in the U.S., requiring the level of downtown streets to be raised as much as 10 feet (3 m). However, the untreated sewage and industrial waste flowed from the Chicago River into Lake Michigan, polluting the primary source of fresh water for the city. The city responded by tunneling two miles (3 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. Nonetheless, spring rains continued to carry polluted water as far out as the water intakes. In 1900, the problem of sewage was largely resolved when Chicago undertook an innovative engineering feat. The city actually reversed the river's flow with the construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal leading to the Illinois River which joins the Mississippi River.

State Street in 1907

After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed a third of the city, including the entire central business district, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and growth.^[8] During Chicago's rebuilding period, the first skyscraper was constructed in 1885 using steel-skeleton construction. In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered among the most influential world's fairs in history.^[9] The University of Chicago had been founded one year earlier in 1892 on the same location. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects Washington and Jackson Parks.

The city was the site of labor conflicts and unrest during this period, which included the Haymarket Riot on May 4 1886. Concern for social problems among Chicago’s lower classes led to the founding of Hull House in 1889, of which Jane Addams was a co-founder. The city also invested in many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities.

The 1920s brought notoriety to Chicago as gangsters (including the notorious Al Capone) battled each other and law enforcement on the city streets during the Prohibition era. The 1920s also saw a large increase in industry with arrivals of the Great Migration which led thousands of Southern blacks to Chicago.

In 1933, Mayor Anton Cermak was assassinated while in the presence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On December 2 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world’s first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.

Mayor Richard J. Daley was elected in 1955, in the era of so-called machine politics. Starting in the 1960s, many upper- and middle-class citizens started leaving the city for the suburbs, as was the case in many cities across the country, leaving impoverished neighborhoods in their wake. (Since the 1990s, the city has undergone a revitalization where some lower class neighborhoods were transformed into pricey neighborhoods.) The city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, including full-scale police riots in city streets. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (which in 1974 became the world’s tallest building), McCormick Place, and O'Hare Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. When he died, Michael Bilandic was mayor for three years. His loss in a primary election has been attributed to the city’s inability to properly plow city streets during a heavy snowstorm. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, was elected. She popularized the city as a movie location and tourist destination.

In 1983 Harold Washington became the first African American to be elected to the office of mayor in one of the closest mayoral elections in Chicago. After Washington won the Democratic primary, racial motivations caused Democratic alderman and ward committeemen to back the Republican candidate Bernard Epton, who ran on the slogan Before it’s too late, a thinly-veiled appeal to fear.^[10] Washington’s term in office saw new attention given to poor and minority neighborhoods, and reduced the longtime dominance of city contracts and employment by ethnic whites. Current mayor Richard M. Daley, son of the late Richard J. Daley, was first elected in 1989. New projects during the younger Daley’s administration have made Chicago larger, more environmentally friendly, and more accessible.^[11]

Since the early 1990s, some of Chicago’s formerly run-down neighborhoods are now highly sought after. Areas such as the South Loop, West Loop, Wicker Park/Bucktown, Uptown and others have attracted young middle and upper-class residents. The city has made considerable investment in infrastructure, has also revitalized downtown theaters and retail districts, and improving lakefront and riverfront cityscapes.

Geography

Main article: Geography of Chicago

Topography

Landsat image of the Chicago area

Chicago is a midwestern city, located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan. Chicago's official geographic coordinates are 41°53′0″N, 87°39′0″W. It sits on the continental divide at the site of the Chicago Portage, connecting the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes watersheds. The city lies beside Lake Michigan, and two rivers—the Chicago River in downtown and the Calumet River in the industrial far South Side—flow entirely or partially through Chicago. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal connects the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River, which runs to the west of the city.

When Chicago was founded in the 1830s, most of the early building began around the mouth of the Chicago River, as can be seen on a map of the city's original 58 blocks^[12]. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which analyzes the city using 77 official community areas, Chicago has a total area of 234.0 square miles (606.1 km²), of which 227.1 square miles (588.3 km²) is land and 6.9 square miles (17.8 km²) is water. The total area is 2.94% water.

The city is built on quite flat land; the average land elevation land is 579 feet (176 m) above sea level. The lowest points are along the lake shore at 577 feet (176 m), while the highest point at 735 feet (224 m) is a landfill located in the Hegewisch community area on the city's far south side ( 41°39′18″N, 87°34′44″W).

Lake Michigan

The history of Chicago is closely tied to that of Lake Michigan. Since before Chicago was founded, ships were bringing people and supplies from all points on the compass. Lake Michigan is the third largest of the Great Lakes, with a maximum depth of feet ( m) and a size slightly greater than the country of Croatia. The average depth off Chicago’s shore averages 15–35 feet. To reach greater depths, one must travel several miles out in the lake, or head north to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The lake bottom off Chicago’s shore is littered with shipwrecks, ranging from schooners and tugboats to car ferries and even World War II airplanes. Scuba diving is a popular recreation for local residents, as are lakefront cruises. Zebra mussels were discovered in Lake Saint Clair in 1988, and soon spread, impacting the ecosystem.

Climate

Main article: Climate of Chicago, Illinois

The city lies within the humid continental climate zone, and experiences four distinct seasons. In July, the warmest month, high temperatures average 84.9 °F (29.4 °C) and low temperatures 65.8 °F (18.8 °C). In January, the coldest month, high temperatures average 31.5 °F (−0.3 °C) with low temperatures averaging 17.1 °F (−8.3 °C). According to the National Weather Service, Chicago’s highest official temperature reading of 105 °F (41 °C) was recorded on July 24 1934. The lowest temperature of −27 °F (−33 °C) degrees was recorded on January 20 1985.

Chicago’s yearly precipitation averages about 37 inches (965 mm). Summer is the rainiest season, with short-lived rainfall and thunderstorms more common than prolonged rainy periods.^[13] Winter is the driest season, with most of the precipitation falling as snow. The snowiest winter ever recorded in Chicago was 1929–30, with 114.2 inches of snow in total. Chicago’s highest one-day rain total was 6.49 inches (164 mm), on August 14 1987.

Weather averages for Chicago, IL
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Average high °F (°C)	32 (0)	35 (2)	46 (8)	59 (15)	70 (21)	81 (27)	85 (29)	83 (28)	76 (24)	64 (18)	48 (9)	36 (2)	()
Average low °F (°C)	17 (-8)	21 (-6)	29 (-1)	40 (5)	50 (10)	60 (16)	66 (19)	65 (18)	56 (14)	45 (7)	33 (1)	22 (-5)	()
Precipitation inch (cm)	1.9 (4.9)	1.6 (4.0)	2.7 (7.0)	3.5 (8.9)	3.6 (9.2)	4.0 (10.2)	3.7 (9.5)	3.5 (8.8)	3.2 (8.0)	2.8 (7.0)	2.7 (6.9)	2.3 (5.7)	()
Source: Illinois State Climatologist Data^[14] Jul 2007

Cityscape

Chicago Skyline stretching from Shedd Aquarium to Navy Pier taken from Adler Planetarium.

Architecture

Main articles: Chicago architecture and List of Chicago Landmarks

See also: List of tallest buildings in Chicago, Parks of Chicago, and Chicago neighborhoods

Carter Harrison Crib

Chicago Harbor Lighthouse