Chicago is the financial, business, and cultural capital of the Midwest. Founded in 1833 at the site of a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, it soon became a transportation hub of North America. By the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, it was one of the ten most influential world cities, a distinction it continues to hold.
During the mid-18th century the Chicago area was inhabited primarily by Potawatomis, who took the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox people. The first non-native settler in Chicago, the Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, arrived in the 1770s, married a Potawatomi woman, and founded the area's first trading post. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Fort Dearborn Massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later ceded the land to the United States in the Treaty of St. Louis of 1816. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of 350, and within seven years it grew to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on March 4, 1837.
Chicago in its first century was one of the fastest growing cities in the world, heavily promoted by Yankee entrepreneurs and land speculators. Its population reached 1 million by 1890.
Starting in 1848, the city became an important transportation link between the eastern and western United States with the opening of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, Chicago's first railway, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect through Chicago to the Mississippi River. With a flourishing economy that brought many new residents from rural communities and Irish American, Polish American, Swedish American, German American and numerous other immigrants, Chicago grew from a city of 299,000 to nearly 1.7 million between 1880 and 1900. The city's manufacturing and retail sectors dominated the Midwest and greatly influenced the American economy, with the Union Stock Yards dominating the meat packing trade.
Although the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, destroyed a third of the city, including the entire business district, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and growth.[3] During Chicago's rebuilding period, the first skyscraper was constructed in 1885 using steel-skeleton construction. In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered among the most influential world's fairs in history.[4] The University of Chicago was founded one year earlier in 1892 on the same location. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects Washington and Jackson Parks.
The city was the site of labor conflicts and unrest during this period, which included the Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886. Concern for social problems among Chicago's lower classes led to the founding of Hull House in 1889, of which Jane Addams was a co-founder. The city also invested in many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities.
Beginning in 1855, Chicago constructed the first comprehensive sewer system in the U.S., requiring the level of downtown streets to be raised as much as 10 feet (3 meters). However, the untreated sewage and industrial waste flowed from the Chicago River into Lake Michigan, polluting the primary source of fresh water for the city. The city responded by tunneling two miles (3 km) below Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. Nonetheless, spring rains continued to carry polluted water as far out as the water intakes. In 1900, the problem of sewage was largely solved by definitively reversing the direction of the river's flow with the construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal leading to the Illinois River.
The 1920s brought international notoriety to Chicago as gangsters such as Al Capone battled each other and the law during the Prohibition era. Nevertheless, the 1920s also saw a large increase in Chicago industry as well as the first arrivals of the Great Migration that would lead thousands of mostly Southern blacks to Chicago and other Northern cities. On December 2, 1942, the world's first controlled nuclear reaction was conducted at the University of Chicago as part of the top secret Manhattan Project.
Mayor Richard J. Daley was elected in 1955, in the era of so-called machine politics. Starting in the 1950s, many upper and middle-class citizens left the inner-city of Chicago for the suburbs and left many impoverished neighborhoods in their wake. Nevertheless, the city hosted the 1968 Democratic National Convention and saw the construction of the Sears Tower (which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), McCormick Place, and O'Hare Airport. When long time mayor Richard J. Daley, died, Michael Bilandic was mayor for three years. His loss in a primary election has been attributed to the city's poor performance during a heavy snow storm. In 1979 Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She popularized the city as a movie location and tourist destination, but also failed to manage its finances well.
In 1983 Harold Washington became the first African American to be elected to the office of mayor in one of the closest mayoral elections in Chicago. Republican candidate Bernard Epton ran on the slogan "Before it's too late," viewed by critics as a veiled appeal to racial politics.[5]
Washington's term in office saw new attention given to poor and minority neighborhoods, and reduced the longtime dominance of city contracts and employment by ethnic whites. Current mayor Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was first elected in 1989. New projects during the younger Daley's administration have made Chicago larger, more environmentally friendly, and more accessible.
Since the early 1990s, Chicago has seen a turnaround with increased ethnic diversity and many formerly abandoned neighborhoods starting to show new life. Several of these neighborhoods, such as the South Loop, West Loop, Wicker Park/Bucktown, Uptown, and others, have attracted middle-class and younger residents. The city has also made considerable investment in infrastructure, revitalizing downtown theaters and retail districts, and improving lakefront and riverfront cityscapes.