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CHICAGO is in many ways the nation's
last great city. Sarah Bernhardt called it "the pulse of
America" and, though long eclipsed by Los Angeles as the
nation's second most populous city after New York, Chicago really
does have it all, with less of the hassle and infrastructural
problems of its coastal rivals.
Founded in the early 1800s, Chicago grew up with
the country, serving as the main connection between the established
east coast cities and the wide open Wild West frontier. This position
on the sharp edge between civilization and wilderness made the
city into a crucible of innovation. Many aspects of modern life,
from skyscrapers to suburbia, had their start, and perhaps their
finest expression, here on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Despite burning to the ground in the legendary fire
of 1871, Chicago boomed thereafter, doubling in population every
decade and reaching two million around 1900, swollen by Irish
and eastern European immigrants (Chicago
still has the largest Polish population in the world outside Warsaw).
In the early years of the twentieth century, it cemented a reputation
as a place of apparently limitless opportunity, with jobs aplenty
for those willing to work. : from 1900 to 1920 African Americans
poured in, with more than 75,000 arriving during the war years
of 1916-18 alone. Long hours, poor pay and squalid working conditions
were the catalysts that made Chicago the cradle of American trade
unions . By around 1900 most workers were organized under
the American Federation of Labor, and the 1894 Pullman strike
saw workers unite for almost the first time in the US. As hostilities
intensified, the city's workers became the driving force behind
the left-wing "Wobblies." Chicago has also long been
an important center for black organization both the Reverend Jesse
Jackson's Operation PUSH (People United to Save
Humanity) and the more militant Nation of Islam
, founded by Elijah Mohammed in the 1940s, have their national
headquarters on the city's South Side.
During the Roaring Twenties, Chicago's self-image
as a no-holds-barred free market was pushed to the limit by a
new breed of entrepreneur. Criminal syndicates, ruthlessly and
brazenly run by the likes of gangsters like Al
Capone and Bugsy Moran, took advantage of Prohibition to sell
bootleg alcohol. Shootouts in the street between sharp-suited,
Tommy-gun-wielding mobsters were not as common as legend would
have it, but the backroom dealing and iron-handed control they
pioneered was later perfected by politicians such as former mayor
Richard Daley father of the present mayor who ran Chicago
single-handedly from the 1950s until his death in 1976. His brutal
handling of antiwar demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic
convention remains notorious. These days, the
tourist authorities play down the mobster era; few traces of the
hoodlum years exist, and those that do owe more to Hollywood than
contemporary Chicago.
Today, Chicago's towering skyline
the city has one of the world's best collections of modern
architecture , from Frank Lloyd Wright houses to the
110-story Sears Tower dominates the pancake-flat
prairies for hundreds of miles around. Chicago's status as the
cultural and financial heart of middle America is beyond question.
The Loop downtown holds the head offices of many
major US companies and some of the nation's most important commodity
markets , which together handle the buying and selling
of one-third of the world's agricultural and industrial products.
For visitors, Chicago offers the Art Institute
of Chicago and a wide range of excellent museums
(many of which have one day of free admission per week), restaurants,
sports and highbrow cultural activities. However, its strongest
suit is live music , with a phenomenal array
of jazz and blues clubs packed
into the back rooms of its amiable bars and cafs. The rock
scene is also one of the healthiest in the country with a prolific
number of bands having come out of the city in the 1990s, including
Smashing Pumpkins, Material Issue, Veruca Salt and Wilco. And
almost everything is noticeably less expensive than in other US
cities eating out , for example, costs much less
than in New York or LA, but is every bit as good. Though locals
might deny it, the city has a surprisingly low-key and generally
welcoming population Chicagoans on the whole are proud of their
city and usually keen to point out its best features. Two great
ways to get a real feel for the city are to head out to ivy-covered
Wrigley Field on a sunny summer afternoon to
catch baseball's Cubs in action, or take a cruise boat under the
bridges of the Chicago River at sunset.
