1. Location
   
   • Lake Michigan - traditional importance of water
     
   • Native-Americans ("stinking onion") - French (Jacques Marquette 1675)
     
   • Fort Dearborn 1803
     
2. Economics
   
   • William Ogden and 1830 grid
     
   • Illinois and Michigan Canal 1848
     
   • Lake St. - commercial center
     
   • industry - Cyrus McCormick, Archibald Clybourn
     
   • Chicago Board of Trade 1848
     
3. Railroad
   
   • Galena and Chicago Railroad 1850
     
   • by 1856, 10 trunk lines - 58 passenger & 38 freight trains daily
     
   • Illinois Central - lakefront land, federal grants
     
   • brought immigrants from east, cattle from west
     
4. Stockyard
   
   • Union Stockyards 1865 by Octave Chanute - "8th Wonder of the World"
     
   • steam-powered overhead slaughtering machine - 1 hog every 3 minutes
     
   • Philip Armour and Oscar F. Mayer, Gus and Ben Swift 1875
     
   • 46 meatpackers by 1870 employed 2100 workers
     
   • Wilson Corned Beef in pyramid-shaped can 1875
     
   • Swift "dressed beef" in iced railroad car of Andrew Chase 1879
     
5. Great Fire
   
   • began at 9 pm, Sunday, Oct. 8, 1871 in barn behind Patrick O'Leary's cottage at 12th and Halstead on the near SW side; spread north by 25 mph wind burning 2124 acres and 1/3 of the property value of the city ($200m with only $44m covered by insurance) leaving 300 dead and 100,000 homeless after 3 days
     
   • "booster" spirit - faith in progress,the future, opportunity, uniqueness of own community
     
6. Architecture
   a. Beaux Artes School
   
   • academic, reproduction of historical styles, monumental, lavish elaborate ornamentation for the diplay of the wealth an status of the upper class
     
   • Potter Palmer house on Lake Shore Drive "Gold Coast"
     
   • White City of World's Columbian Exposition
   • McKim Meade White chitectural firm - also the White House
     
   • English teacher Katharine Lee Bates on railroad tour - poem "America the Beautiful" published 1895 - set to music 1910 written by Samuel A. Ward based on ancient hymn "Materna"
   b. Chicago School
   
   • engineering, modern styles, steel, glass, interior space, efficiency
     
   • William Jenney - Home Insurance Building 1885
     
   • Louis Sullivan - Stock Exchange 1894 - projecting oriels, Chicago window
     
   • Sears Tower 1454 ft., World Trade Center 1368 ft., Empire State Building 1250 ft., Big Stan 1136 ft., Big John 1127 ft.
     
7. Streetcar - pictures
   • horse-pulled omnibus 1856 - 1st urban mass transit
     
   • pollution by 50,000 horses creating 500 tons manure
     
   • electric trolley after 1886 start in Montgomery AL
   • "traction lines" out to suburbs
     
   • Charles Yerkes - model for Frank Cowperwood
   • in Theodore Dreiser's 1914 novelThe Titan
     
   • elevated railway around downtown "Loop" 1897
   • subway after Boston opened the "T" in 1897
   • where Marshall Field built department store
   • where Aaron Montgomery Ward started catalog
   • Richard Sears; Carson, Pirie, Scott
     
   • interurban lines developed region
     
8. Automobile
   
   • individual, not mass transit
     
   • by 1910 horse traffic almost disappeared
     
   • by 1920 motor truck industry
   • International Brotherhood of Teamsters created 1903
   • American Automobile Assc. created 1902
   • Yellow Cab created 1915
   • caused residential streets to become business streets, e.g. Michigan Ave.
   • caused suburbs to spread out, no longer tied to traction lines
   • contributed to downtown congestion
   • higher auto accidents
9. Immigration
   
   • 10 million 1860-90, and 18 million "new" immigrants 1890-1920
   • were 87% of Chicago's population in 1890
   • ghettos, ethnic cohesiveness, youthful, sought assimilation
   • obstacles of language, religion, nativism, restrictions
   • cycle of population mobility from inner city to outer suburbs
     
   • Germans to Humboldt Park, Italians to Grand Ave.
     
   • annexation of 1889 - 120 square miles
     
   • population grew by 1/2 million each decade
   • was 2nd largest city in U.S. 1890-1980, but in 1990 fell to 3rd place with 3,005,000 as Los Angeles grew due to immigration to 3,485,000
     
   • African-Americans segregated on South side
     
10. Reform
    
    • 1890 - only 600 of 2000 miles of streets paved
      
    • 1891 - typhoid death rate of 174 per 100,000
      
    • Sanitary District for drains and sewers in 1890s
      
    • Manufacturing District north of Stockyards
      
    • Daniel Burnham Plan of 1909 - "Make no little plans"
      
    • beginning of city planning and "city beautiful"
    • Michigan Ave. widened, Grant Park, Union Station
    • Dan Ryan expressway, University of Chicago

Links:

• Chicago History Society's History Files
• World's Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath from Julie Rose
• Chicago Architecture Foundation
• Chicago Tribune's Digital City pages on early skyscrapers and the Great Fire
• Chicago Museum of Science and Industry
• History of the Chicago "L" from the CTA
• Skidmore Owings & Merrill architects of the Sears Tower, John Hancock Center, 7 South Dearborn, Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai
• Pledge of Allegiance written 1892 by Francis Bellamy
• History of the Boston Subway
• Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
• Aaron Montgomery Ward and his first catalog of 1872
• Teamster union history
• Chicago Timeline from CPL

Books:

• Wade, Louise Carroll. Chicago's Pride: the Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
• Mayer, Harold M.and Richard C. Wade. Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis. With the assistance of Glen E. Holt. Cartography by Gerald F. Pyle. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969.