A Quick History of Chicago
The City of The Big Shoulders | Photo: Fineas Anton
““It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago. She outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them.” ”
A Snap Shot of Chicago History
Chicago was only 46 years old when Mark Twain wrote those words, but it had already grown more than 100-fold, from a small trading post at the mouth of the Chicago River into one of the nation’s largest cities, and it wasn’t about to stop. Over the next 20 years, it would quadruple in population, amazing the rest of the world with its ability to repeatedly reinvent itself.
And it still hasn’t stopped.
Chicago continues to be a place that many people from diverse backgrounds call home. Before it was a city, it was the home to numerous indigenous peoples, a legacy which continues to frame our relationship with the city, the land, and the environment.
Site of Chicagou on the lake, in Guillaume de L'Isle's map (Paris, 1718)
THE EARLY DAYS
At its first appearance in records by explorers, the Chicago area was inhabited by a number of Algonquian peoples, including the Mascouten and Miami. The name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called "chicagoua", grew abundantly in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687:
when we arrived at the said place called Chicagou which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region. (Swenson, John F. (Winter 1991). "Chicagoua/Chicago: The origin, meaning, and etymology of a place name". Illinois Historical Journal.)
Now we know, before Chicago was officially "discovered" by the team of Father Jacques Marquette, a French missionary, and Louis Jolliet, a French-Canadian mapmaker and trader, in 1673, the area served as a center of trade and seasonal hunting grounds for several Native American tribes, including the Miami, Illinois, and Pottawattomie. Villages kept close trading ties with the French, though scuffles with the Fox tribe kept the French influence at bay until 1779. That year, black French trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable built a five-room "mansion" by the the shore of Lake Michigan.
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was the first permanent non-indigenous settler in the area, having a house at the mouth of the Chicago River in the late 18th century. There were small settlements and a U.S. Army fort, but the soldiers and settlers were all driven off in 1812. The modern city was incorporated in 1837 by Northern businessmen and grew rapidly from real estate speculation and the realization that it had a commanding position in the emerging inland transportation network, based on lake traffic and railroads, controlling access from the Great Lakes into the Mississippi River basin.
THE GREAT FIRE
The city grew until 1871, when a fire in the barn of Catherine and Patrick O'Leary spread across the city, killing hundreds. (Contrary to the legend, it was probably not started by a cow kicking over a lantern.) A recent drought coupled with crowded wooden buildings and wood-brick streets allowed the blaze to take hold quickly, destroying 18,000 structures within 36 hours.
Chicago After the Fire | Source: Andreas. History of Chicago
Despite a fire in 1871 that destroyed the Central Business District, the city grew exponentially, becoming the nation's rail center and the dominant Midwestern center for manufacturing, commerce, finance, higher education, religion, broadcasting, sports, jazz, and high culture. The city was a magnet for European immigrants—at first Germans, Irish and Scandinavians, then from the 1890s to 1914, Jews, Czechs, Poles and Italians. They were all absorbed in the city's powerful political machines. Many joined militant labor unions, and Chicago became notorious for its violent strikes, but respected for its high wages.
GANGSTERS TO THE GREAT MIGRATION
Chicago, Illinois, has a long history of organized crime and was famously home to the American mafia figure Al Capone. World War I (aka the Great War) changed the face of Chicago. Postwar—and especially during Prohibition (1920–33)—the Torrio–Capone organization expanded its gambling and liquor distribution operations, consolidating its power during the violent "beer wars" from 1924 to 1930. Hundreds of casualties include the seven victims of the infamous 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In 1934 the FBI gunned down bank robber and "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater on the North Side, now a theater venue and a Chicago landmark.
Al Capone signs a $50,000 bail bond in Chicago | (Source: KBIA)
The Great War also led to the Great Migration, when African-Americans from the South moved to the northern cities between 1916 and 1970. World War I slowed immigration from Europe but increased jobs in Chicago's manufacturing industry. More than 500,000 African-Americans came to the city to find work, and by the mid-20th century African-Americans were a strong force in Chicago's political, economic, and cultural life.
Mexicans started arriving after 1910, and Puerto Ricans after 1945. The Cook Countysuburbs grew rapidly after 1945, but the Democratic party machine kept both the city and suburbs under control, especially under mayor Richard J. Daley, who was chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. Deindustrialization after 1970 closed the stockyards and most of the steel mills and factories, but the city retained its role as a financial and transportation hub. Increasingly it emphasized its service roles in medicine, higher education, and tourism.
The city formed the political base for national leaders of the Democratic Party, especially Stephen A. Douglas in the 1850s, Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s, and others in recent years.
THE NOTORIOUS 1968 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION
The Daley dynasty began when Richard J. Daley became mayor in 1955. He was reelected five times, and his son Richard M. Daley ran the city until opting out in 2011, when President Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, won.
The first Mayor Daley redrew Chicago's landscape, overseeing the construction of O'Hare International Airport, the expressway system, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a towering skyline. He also helped John F. Kennedy get elected.
Despite these advances, Mayor Richard J. Daley is perhaps best known for his crackdown on student protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Americans watched on their televisions as the Chicago police beat the city's youth with sticks and blinded them with tear gas. That incident, plus his "shoot-to-kill" order during the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his use of public funds to build giant, disastrous public housing projects like Cabrini–Green, eventually led to the temporary dissolution of the Democratic machine in Chicago. After Daley's death, Chicago's first black—and beloved—mayor, Harold Washington, took office in 1983.
Washington sparked debate by demolishing many of the city's vast public housing projects, which had deteriorated and were holding too many poor and dysfunctional families. Concepts for new affordable and public housing have changed to include many new features to make them more viable: smaller scale, environmental designs for public safety, mixed-rate housing, etc.
Mayor Washington in 1987 | Source: CPL Digital Collections
In the early 20th century, the Chicago Traction Wars were a dominant controversy in Chicago politics.
Mayor Richard J. Daley served 1955–1976, dominating the city's machine politics by his control of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee, which selected party nominees, who were usually elected in the Democratic stronghold. Daley took credit for building four major expressways focused on the Loop, and city-owned O'Hare Airport (which became the world's busiest airport, displacing Midway Airport's prior claims). Several neighborhoods near downtown and the lakefront were gentrified and transformed into "suburbs within the city".
Though it began as a Puerto Rican street gang, the Young Lords Organization became a civil and human rights organization in September 1968 in Chicago. | Photo: via Chicago Tribune
He held office during the unrest of the 1960s, some of which was provoked by the police department's discriminatory practices. In the Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Wicker Park and Humboldt Park communities, the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez marched and held sit ins to protest the displacement of Latinos and the poor. Headed by Jose "Cha-Cha" Jimenez, the Young Lords had a roller-coaster role in the turbulent politics of the 1960s and '70s. Afterward they descended into obscurity — rarely credited for the voice, however fleeting, they’d given to a Puerto Rican community silenced by poverty and isolation.
After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, major riots of despair resulted in the burning down of sections of the black neighborhoods of the South and West sides. Protests against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago, resulted in street violence, with televised broadcasts of the Chicago police's beating of unarmed protesters.
CHICAGO TODAY
The thriving commercial and financial "City of Broad Shoulders" is spiked with gorgeous architecture and set with cultural and recreational gems, including the Art Institute, Millennium Park, 250 theater companies, and 30 miles of shoreline. Approximately 2.8 million residents live within the city limits, and tens of thousands commute from the ever-sprawling suburbs to work downtown.
Today, Chicago has become a global city, a thriving center of international trade and commerce, and a place where people of every nationality and background come to pursue the American dream.
Cloud Gate is a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Sir Anish Kapoor, that is the centerpiece of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. | Photo: Antonio Janeski
The 2000 U.S. Census reported Chicago’s first decade-over-decade population increase since 1950. Immigrants still flock to the “windy city,” though now from Asia and Latin America more than Europe. Chicago remains a center of trade: Airports supplement the old rail and water transit hubs, and agricultural futures are traded electronically from the floor of its storied Mercantile Exchange.
The last Mayor Daley gave downtown a makeover, with his focus on ecofriendly building initiatives that led to a green roof on City Hall and new bike paths throughout town. But parts of the South and West sides remain mired in poverty and suffer the brunt of the gun violence that has made international headlines.
There are always controversies (former governor Rod Blagojevich was convicted of federal corruption charges in 2011 and current Mayor Emanuel is no stranger to contention), but true Chicagoans are fiercely proud to call the city home.
In all, Chicago has grown and developed greatly over the years.
And it still hasn’t stopped.