Chicago

Chicago is a city of 2.696 million¹ and a metropolitan population of 9.506 million² located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan,³ in the state of Illinois in the United States of America. South of downtown is the original site of the Chicago Portage, a connection between the Saint Lawrence/ Saint-Laurent system, which includes North America's Great Lakes, and the Mississippi River system. In 1900, the Chicago River, which originally flowed into Lake Michigan at downtown Chicago, was re-engineered and extended by canal to draw water from the lake and send it into the Des Plaines River, part of the Mississippi River system.⁴

Chicago is famous for its buildings. The tallest were: the original Holy Name Cathedral (245 feet, 1854, destroyed by the Chicago Fire in 1871); Saint Michael Church (290 feet, 1869, rebuilt in 1873 after being partly destroyed in the Chicago Fire in 1871); the original Board of Trade Building (322 feet with its clock tower, 1885, clock tower removed in 1895, demolished in 1929); the Masonic Temple (302 feet, 1892, demolished 1939, and having the world's highest occupied floor at one time); 6 North Michigan (formerly the Mongomery Ward & Company Building, originally 394 feet, 1899, pyramid and its sculpture removed in 1947, reducing the building's height to 282 feet); the Wrigley Building (438 feet, 1922, with a clock tower modeled after one in the Sevilla Cathedral); the Chicago Temple Building (568 feet, 1924, a mixed use building whose primary purpose is a Christian church); the current Board of Trade Building (605 feet, 1930, topped by a statue of the goddess, Ceres); the Richard A. Daley Center (648 feet, 1965, with a Picasso statue whose subject--Mayor Daley--is only apparent when viewed from the northeast); the John Hancock Center (1499 feet, 1969, featured on a 25 cent USA coin in 2003); the Aon Building (formerly the Standard Oil Building, 1136 feet, 1973, with a music-making sculpture split between its east and west plazas); and the Willis Building (formerly the Sears Tower, 1729 feet, 1974, with a moving sculpure by Alexander Calder in its lobby).⁵

Other famous buildings include the Water Tower Place (860 feet, 1976), with glass hexagonal elevators; the Chase Tower (850 feet, 1969) in the center of the 'loop' defined by elevated train tracks); the Merchandise Mart (340 feet, 1930), the city's largest office building; 860 Lake Shore Drive (270 feet, 1951), designed by Ludvig van der Rohe; the Sullivan Building (207 feet, 1903), designed by Louis Sullivan; and Robie House (1910), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.⁵

The city is a tourist destination.⁶ It is served by two airports, O'Hare International and Midway International, both among the USA's busiest.⁷ Its position on the continent's most important east-west waterway and adjacent to the USA's corn (maize) belt made its port one of the busiest grain ports.⁸

Historical maps

Wrigley and Tribune towers, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Footnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_Illinois, accessed January 23, 2018.
2. Metropolitan 2012 figure from world-gazetteer.com, accessed February 6, 2013. The combined statistical area had a 2011 population of 9.730 million according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_statistical_areas, accessed January 23, 2018.
3. Lake Michigan is connected by strait to Lake Huron, which is connected by two rivers and a normal sized lake to Lake Erie, which is connected by river to Lake Ontario, which is the source of the Saint Laurence/ Saint-Laurent River, which flows into a gulf that is part of the Atlantic Ocean.
4. The Des Plaines River joins the Kankakee River to form the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico/ México.
5. Emporis.com, accessed February 13, 2018.
6. http://www.touropia.com/best-places-to-visit-in-illinois/, accessed January 23, 2018.
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_the_United_States, accessed January 23, 2018.
8. The Times Atlas of the Oceans (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1983), "commodity loading ports" map.
9. Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), "Tables of the World's Largest Cities." Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world in 1900, and the largest in Illinois then and today.