1,077,321,117 visitors served.

Chicago

Financial and industrial city in Illinois, USA, on Lake Michigan. It is the third-largest US city; population (2000 est) 2,896,000. Industries include iron, steel, chemicals, electrical goods, machinery, meatpacking and food processing, publishing, and fabricated metals. The once famous stockyards closed in 1971. Chicago grew from a village in the mid-19th century. The world's first skyscraper was built here in 1885 and some of the world's tallest skyscrapers, including the Sears Tower (442 m/1,450 ft high), are in Chicago.

History

The site of Chicago was visited by Jesuit missionaries in 1673, and Fort Dearborn, then a frontier fort, was built here in 1803. The original layout of Chicago was a rectangular grid, but many outer boulevards have been constructed on less rigid lines. As late as 1831 Chicago was still an insignificant village, but railroads from the east coast reached it by 1852, and by the time of the great fire of 1871 it was a city of more than 300,000 inhabitants. Around a third of the city was destroyed in the fire, producing rapid and innovative urban expansion, including the first telephone exchange in 1878, and the first skyscrapers in 1881. By 1900 the population had reached 1.5 million and Chicago was the second-largest city in the USA. Rapid development began again in the 1920s, and during the years of Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, the city became notorious for the activities of its gangsters. The opening of the St Lawrence Seaway in 1959 brought Atlantic shipping to its docks. In 1994, US government named the Robert Taylor Homes, the nation's largest public housing area, with 7,725 apartments in 28 high-rise buildings, the country's worst in terms of facilities and poverty. Plans to demolish and replace the homes were announced in 1998 and were ongoing in 2002.

Features The Museum of Science and Industry, opened in 1893, has ‘hands-on’ exhibits including a coal mine, a World War II U-boat, an Apollo spacecraft and lunar module, and exhibits by industrial firms.

The Chicago River cuts the city into three ‘sides’. Chicago is known as the Windy City, so called from the breezes of Lake Michigan, as well as from its citizens' (and, allegedly, politicians') voluble talk; the lake shore (‘the Gold Coast’) is occupied by luxury apartment blocks. It has a symphony orchestra; an art institute; the University of Chicago (1890), site of the first controlled nuclear reaction; DePaul (1898) and Loyola (1909, founded as a Jesuit college in 1870) universities; one of the three campuses of the University of Illinois (1868), and the Illinois Institute of Technology (founded as the Armour Institute in 1893). Chicago-O'Hare International Airport was the nation's busiest from 1961 to 1998, and in 2001. The Board of Trade, Mercantile Exchange, and Options Exchange are among the world's largest commodity markets.

Alsip Calumet (river) Chicago (river) Chicago Heights Chicago School (architecture)

East Chicago Illinois Illinois Waterway Sullivan, Louis Henry