Early history
The region of the present city was inhabited by Algonkin tribes, such as the Mascouten and the Miami. They had been driven westward by the Iroquois Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially the Beaver Wars. By 1700, however, they had returned. The Miami included six groups around this time, the Atchatchakangouen (the Miami proper), Kilatika, Mengakonkia, Pepikokia, Piankashaw, and Wea, though a hundred years later only the Miami, Piankashaw, and Wea remained. By 1720 they were living mostly in Indiana. From the Miami language comes the term shikaakwa (wild onion).
They traded with their neighbors, the Potawatomi to the east, the Fox to the north, and the Illinois to the southwest, the latter having separated from the Miami shortly before the arrival of the first Europeans. They dominated Illinois and thus the area of what later became Chicago. Of the numerous villages registered by the first French in 1673, only Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Peoria, Michigamea, Moingwena, and Tamaroa survived the epidemics that swept over them. At the same time, they left the Chicago area southwestward. In 1673 they numbered 12,000, but by 1736 they numbered only 2,500. In 1725 "Chicago," a Michigamea-Illinois chief, visited Paris - yet the name of the town does not come from him, for that place name existed as early as 1673. In 1800 the Illinois numbered only 100, and in 1833 the last family left the state. Jean Baptiste Ducoigne, a Kaskaskia Illinois chief and friend of President Thomas Jefferson, supported the United States in its rebellion against Great Britain and in the War of 1812.
From trading post to town (1673-1837)
In 1673, French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet navigated the area of present-day Chicago, which was called Checagou by the Native American population living there. In the 1770s, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable - son of a Québec merchant and a black slave - established a trading post at the exchange point of the local Miami, Fox, Sac and Potawatomi Indian tribes. "The first white man to settle here was a black man," they are quoted as saying.
Thanks to its convenient location on the water transportation routes of Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes, and the Chicago River, the trading post grew visibly in importance until the beginning of the 19th century. When Illinois joined the United States in 1818 and was therefore to be better served by transportation, Chicago therefore quickly gained a reputation as the "Gateway to the West" after the construction of the East-West railroad. It was now the most important trading center for raw materials and agricultural products far and wide.
Timber came by ship from the north and was resold locally or transported on by rail, and food was brought by farmers to the markets, from where it could in turn be transferred to ships or trains and shipped. Tools and other materials which (for the time being) were not produced locally, or were produced in insufficient quantities, again came from the East. Thus the trading post became a village. On August 12, 1833, Chicago was officially incorporated, and just four years later, on March 4, 1837, its 4200 inhabitants were elevated to the status of a city.
Rapid expansion (1837-1885)
More and more people moved to the city and the already pronounced trade was further driven, attracting even more immigrants. From a population of only 100 in 1830, Chicago's population rose to 100,000 by 1860, and land prices rose rapidly. When the construction of the "Illinois and Michigan Canal," begun in 1836, between the Chicago River and the Illinois River flowing into the Mississippi was completed in 1848, there was another extremely attractive transportation route. Six states south along the Mississippi River and three north and regions along the Missouri River, which flowed into the Mississippi, were now additionally served by a wide waterway.
Also in 1848, the first railroad was opened that also served Chicago: the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. Since the completion of the Chicago Sanitary Canals in 1900, the Chicago River no longer flows into Lake Michigan, but through the Illinois and Michigan Canal and subsequently the Illinois River into the Mississippi River.
In 1850, Chicago already had 30,000 inhabitants, and there was no end in sight to the influx - the conditions at the United States' transportation hub were too favorable. In 1855, the Beer Riot occurred. In this uprising, German settlers fought for their right to serve beer on Sundays.
Beginning in 1856, the ground elevation of all of downtown Chicago was raised piecemeal to improve the sewer system after various epidemics. The raising lasted about 20 years, with elevations ranging from less than a meter to 2.5 meters.
Between October 8 and October 10, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire raged, destroying most of the city. After the fire, 125 bodies were recovered. Estimates ultimately came to 300 dead and 18,000 homes destroyed. About 100,000 people were left homeless. Rapid reconstruction incorporated improved fire codes. Architects such as Louis Sullivan and later Frank Lloyd Wright came to the city, which now served as an experimental ground for urban innovation. In 1880, the "reborn" city already had 500,000 inhabitants.
Between 1880 and 1890, the population doubled and Chicago now had over one million residents. Although land prices in the inner city had already experienced extreme increases time and again since the city's designation, this time they entered a new price dimension. In 1880, a square meter cost 130 US dollars, but by 1890 the price had increased sevenfold to almost 900 US dollars per square meter. In order to be profitable, property owners began to maximize the use of their floor space, which meant building higher. This became possible thanks to new inventions such as electric elevators, more fire-resistant building materials, but above all the use of steel skeletons in building construction.
The Home Insurance Building, built in 1885 and demolished in 1931, was the first structure to incorporate the new technical achievements and, with its original ten floors and 42-meter height, is considered the world's first modern skyscraper. Built in 1889 by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, the Auditorium Building also featured - in addition to its near-perfect acoustics - air conditioning as a novelty. The Reliance Building was built between 1890 and 1894 and is considered the forerunner of the glass curtain wall construction that would later define the "International Style." It is considered a masterpiece of the First Chicago School.
Industrial Great Power (1885-1918)
On May 1, 1886, Chicago's labor unions organized a strike to reduce work hours from twelve to eight hours a day. When police cracked down on May 3, and strikers were killed, a riot ensued that went down in history as the Haymarket Riot; since then, it has been commemorated annually on May 1, Labor Day. The end of the 19th century was not a quiet period in other respects either. Corruption experienced its first heyday. Many of the city's politicians were for sale. About a quarter of the aldermen owned saloons and were considered boodlers ("greased"). Hempstead Washburne, mayor from 1891 to 1893, campaigned for re-election by saying it was "wiser to vote for a man who has already stolen enough than for a new one." Election fraud was also commonplace. Washburne did not succeed in his re-election in any case.
From May 1 to October 30, 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition, known as the World's Columbian Exposition, was held in Chicago. It had a great influence on the development of art and architecture of the time. The event shaped Chicago's self-perception and strengthened the population's optimistic view of industrial progress, especially since Chicago was able to win the race against the unloved New York City.
In 1890, one million people lived in the city, and by 1910 this number had doubled to two million. By 1900, the city had 1.7 million residents, including many German, Irish, and Eastern European immigrants. By this time, Chicago's reputation as a place of seemingly unlimited opportunity was solidifying, with numerous jobs available for anyone willing to work. Most attracted to this promise were black residents from the southern states. Between 50,000 and 75,000 African Americans moved to the city in the period 1916 to 1919 alone.
During this time Chicago also became known as the hog butcher for the world. The city was the main transshipment point for the agricultural products of the Midwest, in addition to grain and wood, this was primarily livestock. Within a few decades, the slaughterhouses at the so-called Union Stock Yards had developed into the most important in the world. Especially the assembly line production in meat processing was worldwide trend-setting. At the turn of the century, up to 12 million animals were slaughtered annually at the Stock Yards and approximately 82 percent of American meat was processed. The poor working conditions and lack of hygiene became known, among other things, through Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle.
Long hours, low pay and inhumane working conditions, but above all the traditions of self-organization brought by immigrants, led to Chicago becoming the cradle of the American trade union movement. By 1900, most workers had organized in the American Federation of Labor. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a revolutionary union that still exists today, was also founded here in 1905. The play St. Joan of the Slaughterhouses by Bertolt Brecht is set in Chicago in the late 1920s and focuses on the poor working conditions and the workers' struggle against them. When, on July 27, 1919, a white police officer refused to arrest an accused white man after stoning a black youth swimming in the lake, a six-day riot ensued, leaving 38 dead.
City of Jazz and Gangsters (1918-1945)
From 1922 onwards, Chicago became a jazz metropolis. Greats such as Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines and Jelly Roll Morton enlivened the "black clubs" and shaped Chicago jazz. In that year, the Tin Pan Alley composer Fred Fisher, who had emigrated from Cologne to Chicago, created Chicago (That Toddling Town), a much-covered homage to the city.
It wasn't just jazz that came to Chicago through African Americans: the city also became a center of black organizations - both PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), founded by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and the more militant Nation of Islam (actually The Lost-Found Nation of Islam, also known as Black Muslims), started by Elijah Muhammad in 1930, are headquartered on Chicago's South Side.
During the Roaring Twenties, criminal syndicates under ruthless gangster bosses like Bugs Moran, Johnny Torrio and Al Capone took advantage of Prohibition and sold illegally manufactured alcohol. Firefights between police and gangsters were not as much the order of the day as many movies would have you believe, but the Mafia-like system worked.
In 1933 and 1934 a World's Fair was held for the second time in Chicago under the motto A Century of Progress, to which the German airship LZ 127 made a visiting trip in 1933.
On October 5, 1937, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his "Quarantine Speech" in the city on the occasion of the dedication of the Outer Link Bridge on Lake Shore Drive, which caused a sensation worldwide and was the first time that the USA claimed to have a say in the future political order of the world.
In 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction as part of the Manhattan Project, whose goal was to build nuclear weapons.
Downturn and recovery (From 1945 to the end of the 20th century)
The population reached its maximum in 1950 (3.62 million inhabitants); thereafter it declined steadily by a total of about 840,000 inhabitants until 1990 due to the (mostly white) middle class migrating to the suburbs. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the population has recovered again.
From 1955 to 1976, Richard J. Daley played a major role in shaping Chicago politics as mayor; he also played an important role in the Democratic Party, for example in supporting the presidential candidacies of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Hubert Humphrey in 1968. His time in office included the brutal crackdown on anti-war demonstrators in 1968. During the Democratic National Convention in August 1968, there were violent riots against the Vietnam War. In 1969, the Chicago Seven were indicted for this.
In 1979 Jane Byrne became Chicago's first female mayor and in 1983 Harold Washington became its first black mayor. The challenger to Washington, a Democrat, in the 1983 mayoral election was Republican Bernard Epton, who was supported by many white Democrats and grassroots organizations. Epton received 90 percent of all votes in precincts with predominantly white populations and only three percent in those with predominantly black populations. For Washington, the numbers were reversed. Overall, Harold Washington won by a four percentage point margin. He won re-election safely in the spring of 1987. He governed Chicago until his death in November 1987.
Centre of the region (21st century)
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the city's status as the cultural and economic center of the region has been undisputed. However, the city also faces a high number of gunshot victims. In 2016, there were about 4300 people shot, of whom about 760 died.
) is a city on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan in the state of Illinois in the United States of America. With a population of 2,716,450, it is the third largest city in the United States. The agglomeration is home to 8.7 million people, and the Chicago metropolitan area to 9.7 million (2007).
