Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the southern periphery of the city. By
1873, the city's downtown business and
financial district was up and running
again, and 2 decades later, Chicago had
sufficiently recovered to host the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition com-
memorating the 400th anniversary of
the discovery of America.
The Great Fire gave an unprece-
dented boost to the professional and
artistic development of the nation's
architects—drawn by the unlimited
opportunities to build, they gravitated
to the city in droves. And the city
raised its own homegrown crop of
2000
The Goodman Theatre opens its
new $46-million theater complex in
the Loop, completing the revitaliza-
tion of a downtown theater district.
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2001
Chicago's second airport, Mid-
way, opens a new $800-million termi-
nal, attracting new airlines and giving
travelers more options for Chicago
flights.
■
2004
Millennium Park, Chicago's
largest public works project in
decades, opens at the north end of
Grant Park. The centerpiece of the
development is a modern, steel-
sheathed band shell designed by famed
architect Frank Gehry.
■
architects. Chicago's deserved reputation as an American Athens, packed with
monumental and decorative buildings, is a direct by-product of the disastrous
fire that nearly brought the city to ruin.
In the meantime, Chicago's population continued to grow as many immi-
grants forsook the uncultivated farmland of the prairie to join the city's labor
pool. Chicago still shipped meat and agricultural commodities around the
nation and the world, but the city itself was rapidly becoming a mighty indus-
trial center in its own right, creating finished goods, particularly for the markets
of the ever-expanding western settlements.
THE CRADLE OF TRADE UNIONISM
Chicago never seemed to outgrow its frontier rawness. Greed, profiteering,
exploitation, and corruption were as critical to its growth as hard work, ingenu-
ity, and civic pride. The spirit of reform arose most powerfully from the ranks
of the working classes, whose lives were plagued by poverty and disease, despite
the city's prosperity. When the sleeping giant of labor finally awakened in
Chicago, it did so with a militancy and commitment that were to inspire the
union movement throughout the nation.
By the 1890s, many of Chicago's workers were already organized into the
American Federation of Labor. The Pullman Strike of 1894 united black and
white railway workers for the first time in a common struggle for higher wages and
workplace rights. The Industrial Workers of the World, or the Wobblies, which
embraced for a time so many great voices of American labor—Eugene V. Debs,
Big Bill Haywood, and Helen Gurley Flynn—was founded in Chicago in 1905.
AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN CAPITAL
The major change in Chicago in the 20th century, however, stems from the
enormous growth of the city's African-American population. Coincident with
the beginning of World War I, Chicago became the destination for thousands of
blacks leaving Mississippi and other parts of the Deep South. Most settled on
the South Side. With the exception of Hyde Park, which absorbed the black
population into a successfully integrated, middle-class neighborhood, Chicago
gained a reputation over the decades as the most segregated city in the United
States. Today, although increased black representation in local politics and other
institutions has eased some racial tensions, the city remains far more geograph-
ically segregated than most of its urban peers.
