Honestly, Chicago makes no sense. Yes, it is sort of in the middle, and yes, it is a good place for trains to meet, but when you start to dig in you begin to ask questions and wonder why is this a good place for this city? Yes, there is a big lake, yes, there are some rivers, but otherwise, this was a swampy marsh. How did it become America’s third largest city, and America’s largest city not on the ocean?
We signed up for a Chicago Greeter tour, which I think is one of the best free things I have ever done. We got almost four hours with Rich, a retired retinologist, and a knowledgeable local. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy a tour of the Loop as much as I did - I asked for either a history or ethnic history tour, and I had done the Chicago Architecture Center’s river cruise which was very history and architecture focused.
Rich initially sat us down for a 15 minute introduction to the concept of the tour, and by the end, I was very confident that he succeeded. I will try to retell the story of how Chicago became Chicago here.
Chicagoland was first settled by indigenous tribes. They traded, had conflict, but most importantly, made use of the natural resources in the area, notably, the rivers. The influx of European settlers into the region introduced new tensions. In Chicago, Europeans didn’t mean British – European meant French. In fact, Chicago is a French corruption of “shikaakwa,” a Miami word for wild leeks that grew around the river. The French were in search of beaver fur. Having trapped all the beavers out of Europe, traders wanted more of the fashionable material and were desperate to find it. Chicago had beavers. Great! Natives had mixed feelings about this. Some liked the opportunity to trade, but the newcomers were often hostile.
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (who I just discovered was of African descent) was one such trader who settled here to trade furs and other items. He was not the first, only, or final one, and in fact departed Chicago after establishing permanent settlement. He is known for developing trading networks in several other cities.
The story we are interested in here predates du Sable by almost 200 years. In 1673, Jacques Marquette (missionary) and Louis Jolliet (mapmaker) made their to the bottom of the Mississippi River and decided to explore northwards. Their native guides took them all the way to Lake Michigan. To get there, they paddled all the way to the Illinois River, then the Des Plaines, then, their guides showed them the Chicago Portage. Jolliet recognized the brilliance of this. He happened to know about the St. Lawrence River, and realized that if you could dig a canal here, you could make an entirely inland route from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico! He sounded the alarm about this, but no one had the funds to do that (yet).
You learn about this part in middle school – French squabble with the British, the United States unites and fights a great big war and Illinois becomes part of the Northwestern Territory.
It is at this point that Mr. du Sable arrives and plants the metaphorical flag of Chicago. Chicago is the westernmost frontier at this point, and the United States builds Fort Dearborn, which sat on the edge where the river meets the lake.
Across the United States, another important project was happening. The Erie Canal was being dug by painstaking hand. In 1825, the canal could take you all the way from New York to the Great Lakes. You could now get to the Midwest without having to circle around Maine or Florida. Even better, the Illinois state legislature proposed building a canal from the Chicago River to the Des Plaines, actualizing Joliet’s idea. People liked this concept and speculatively moved to Chicago. From 1833, at Chicago’s incorporation as a town, to the 1837 incorporation as a city, Chicago’s population grew by 3,700, or over 1200%.
The rapid growth continued. By 1848, the canal was complete, and the journey throughout the whole United States was now possible. Chicago went from 4,000 people in 1837 to 300,000 by 1871. And in 1871, the city burned down. 1/3 of the population was homeless. Support flooded in from outside and from wealthy Chicagoans to rebuild their city.
Chicago’s establishment as a global city is very much defined by the fire. After the fire, Chicago wanted to rebuild. The best example of the proof that Chicago was world-class was the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where Chicago flexed its technical, industrial, economic, and cultural muscle to the world. 21 million people attended. This is really obvious, so we will look at something that flies more under the radar.
The British saw that it was quite sad that so many books burned in Chicago, and wanted to help them replenish their public library (Chicago had no such thing). Chicagoans were happy to receive a gift of books, and opened in a water tank at the intersection of LaSalle and Adams.
Being such a large northern city, Chicago also had thousands of veterans of the Civil War, and a branch of the Grand Army of the Republic. John Logan, a notable veteran, led these efforts, and has a statue in Grant Park and is the namesake of Logan Square. He is also why we have Memorial Day. The G.A.R. was a very popular lobby group, and pushed the Illinois government to give them a memorial building somewhere in Chicago to honor their efforts. The government promised them a spot of land near the edge of the city, where the waterfront used to be. By that point, the water immediately abutting Michigan Ave had been landfilled by all the rubble created by the Great Fire of 1871.
The state told the G.A.R. that they could have this site between Washington and Randolph, and the city spoke up, saying they wanted that site for a new public library building. It was in a good location right in the center of the city which was exploding in population.
The state split the difference and they decided to build a combination G.A.R. building (the north end) and public library (the south end). The green and white marble cannot be done justice in photos.
Chicago is a city of innovation with natural resources. The river was a natural resource, the canal between the rivers and the lake was innovation.
With the canal now done, Chicago was the center of marine travel from the east to the west. The train first came to Chicago in 1848. Chicago now had a hold on both marine and land travel. In flowed the resources from the plains, where Chicago could process and export them to the east. The railroads made the stockyards possible. People brought droves of animals into the city to be fattened (using those grains) and slaughtered, leading to the consolidation (innovation) into the Union Stockyards (1865). There, they split the work of the stockyard into a disassembly line (innovation), predating the Ford assembly by almost 50 years. Henry Ford found it an inspiration.
The meat industry was very lucrative, and crowded out the metalworking industry which was relegated to cheaper Northern Indiana. This probably also saved Chicago, because Chicago had no vast metalworks to empty out leaving a shell of a city like Gary.
Chicago’s booming industry wasn’t because it had all the resources, but because it was a great place for the resources to meet. Indiana had abundant coal, you could take it to Chicago and put it to work. Wisconsin and Michigan provided wood. Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin brought wheat, corn, and oats. Goods could flow east and west – Chicago was the broker of the United States.
The Chicago Board of Trade was also founded in 1848, and people met to trade commodities. In the 1850s, grain grades were invented, making it possible to order grain deliveries at a future date. In the 1860s, the future contract (innovation) was standardized, making it possible to hedge against risk.
When you look at the growth of Chicago like this, the great fire almost seems like a small blip in time. I think the fire emboldened the city to look even higher. The refrigerated rail car allowed Chicago’s export radius to explode in the 1870s. The meatpacking industry found new creative ways to make use of every part of the animal. Rendering plants became popular in the 1870s, where animal fat was made into tallow for use in all of sorts of things, including soap and… glue!
The Great Fire also allowed Chicago to reinvent itself. So many homes, industrial buildings, and the commercial core burnt to the ground, meaning that the leaders of Chicago could plot a new course. The world’s first steel skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building, was built in Chicago around 1885. The skyscraper, which no longer needed the building to hold itself up by its walls, could now use a steel core for stability and could let in light with windows… that could even open! The Reliance Building is a prime example of the Chicago window, a new window type with a large center pane for light and two smaller side panes that opened.
Montgomery Ward started the first mail order catalog in 1872, and in 1893, Sears joined that business. By 1920, tens of millions of these books, bound by the glue of the stockyards and printed on the imported paper in the printing presses of Chicago, were being mailed all over the United States. And of course, with all these books meant that we needed glue. Good thing those rendering plants came in handy.
Chicago’s boom was helped along by the rich and powerful who benefited from it. They funded the 1893 World’s Fair, which gave us the Field Museum, the Art Institute, and the building that now houses the Museum of Science and Industry. The World’s Fair was also an opportunity for Daniel Burnham to make the model of what he thought a city should be, and was an architectural influence for decades alongside his 1909 plan.
The boom wasn’t just for the rich and famous, the World’s Fair also brought innovations for the people. Vienna Beef unveiled their famous hot dog at the expo. Brownies, which you can now buy a box of for $1.50, ironically were a new recipe introduced at the iconic Palmer House Hotel on State.
At this point, I will stop talking about the explosive growth, and skip around. You can hear about what happens at this point by going on an architectural boat tour – in short, Chicago continues to explode. Architecture, art, music, theater, culture, are all abound in Chicago, and pre-WW2 Chicago has some of the most impressive examples of these. Think of the Merchandise Mart, the Wrigley Building, the Tribune Tower.
You can find remnants of how Chicago became in the Loop, just by walking around. I have mixed feelings on the federal buildings, but at the western side of the base of the Kluczynski building, there is a plaque commemerating the city’s oldest Jewish congregation, which built a synagogue at that site in 1851. It is a small plaque on the ominously large building, and this small group of German Jews (now based in Hyde Park) was an example of the droves of immigrants who came to Chicago in search of opportunity and freedom. Irish, Germans, Poles, Italians, and later Eastern Europeans poured in, drawn by jobs in factories, railroads, and the stockyards. These communities built their own neighborhoods, churches, and social institutions. They were vital to the city’s growth.
In 1900, more than 77% of Chicagoans were either foreign-born or born in the United States with foreign parents. That year, 470,000 Chicagoans – that is, one of every four people in the city – were either born in Germany or had German-born parents.
When you read the story of Chicago’s astronomical rise, realize that that rise was powered by those immigrants. Those stockyard workers, railroaders, canal diggers, bridge builders, book printers, gardeners, metalworkers, all came in to make Chicago what it is now.
So, what is Chicago? In 1871, it was a boomtown brought to ashes. It is the city that was knocked down, and stood back up, ready to tell the world that it is here.