Chicago- cultural life

 

Cultural Life:

The cultural life of any major city involves two sharply different activities. The first is the creative act of composing, writing, or producing an artistic work. The second consists of collecting, displaying, and performing the various artistic creations. Chicago has long been a leader in both categories.

The arts in Chicago:

From the 1890s through the 1920s, Chicago was a magnet for artistically ambitious and talented but often little-known writers, many of whom had fled the Midwest’s dusty country towns. Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, George Ade, and Opie Read produced a gritty form of urban literature rooted in the everyday lives of ordinary people, as did Chicago-born Henry Blake Fuller, Finley Peter Dunne, and I.K. Friedman. Their works, which often debuted in newspapers, expressed a sense of awe at the skyscrapers, factories, varied people, and hectic pace of urban life. Novelist Hamlin Garland, meanwhile, emphasized negative aspects of farm and small-town life in his works. Most of the first generation of writers had left by 1910, but the city attracted iconoclastic poets. Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters helped Harriet Monroe launch the influential Poetry magazine.

The Great Depression of the 1930s reoriented another generation of writers away from awestruck downtown views. Such literary giants as James T. Farrell, Saul Bellow, and Nelson Algren set their stories of life’s struggles in their own ethnic working-class neighbourhoods. The emergence of Richard Wright heralded the arrival of African Americans to the literary scene, which included young postwar talents such as novelist Willard Motley, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and playwright Lorraine Hansberry. These same ethnic, racial, and social class themes continued to dominate 20th-century Chicago literature in the works of Harry Mark Petrakis, Stuart Dybek, Cyrus Coulter, William Brashler, Leon Forrest, Sandra Cisneros, and Ana Castillo. Meanwhile, other Chicago writers have drawn upon the gritty personality of the Windy City as a backdrop. Sara Paretsky and Scott Turow helped to create a new Chicago mystery genre. Studs Terkel elevated the oral history of ordinary people to an art form, much as Mike Royko, who revived the newspaper column as urban literature, used common sense to deflate pompous politicians.

Theatre in Chicago is also balanced between the lavish downtown venues and a tradition of low-budget experimentation among outlying groups that number more than 200. In the early 1970s, several small acting companies created storefront theatres in the Lincoln Park neighbourhood on the North Side. These include the Steppenwolf and Body Politic theatres, as well as the Organic Theatre, which was one of the first to showcase the plays of David Mamet. These off-Loop (often non-Equity) groups gained national acclaim for their productions and performers (many of whom later became famous in film and on television). Soon, actors who came out of the Chicago theatre scene carried a certain cachet. The famed Second City, which for decades has been performing improvisational comedy in the Old Town neighbourhood, spawned spin-off groups and inspired similar companies elsewhere. Meanwhile, dance has become increasingly important in Chicago, with the Hubbard Street Dance Company offering contemporary performances, the River North Chicago Dance Company producing hip-hop, house, and jazz dancing, Chicago Moving Company with modern dance, and the Muntu Dance Theater showcasing traditional and contemporary African American forms.

On any given day virtually all genres of music are performed somewhere in Chicago. There are specialized classical ensembles such as the Newberry Consort for Renaissance music, Music of the Baroque, and the Chicago Opera Theatre, which performs 20th-century and Baroque operas. The Old Town School of Folk Music (1957), on the far North Side, is the world’s largest permanent centre for the study of both traditional and contemporary folk music. The many African Americans who moved to Chicago in the 20th century have had a dynamic impact on music. As the home of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, and other greats, the city has long been internationally known as a centre for the blues, which can be heard in clubs throughout the city. Chicago has also played a critical role in the development of American jazz, through the work of such pioneers as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Jelly Roll Morton and, later, such innovative groups as the Jazz Ensemble of Chicago. Gospel music traces its roots to the city in the late 1920s, when Thomas Andrew Dorsey, the musician son of a Baptist preacher, combined blues with church music. During the summer Chicagoans can hear music at two long-established outdoor music venues. Ravinia Festival (1903), in north suburban Highland Park, is the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; it also features performances of popular music. The lakefront Grant Park area east of downtown has been the home of free classical concerts since 1935. It is also the site of a lively series of city-sponsored festivals of blues, jazz, gospel, Latin American, and other specialized music as well as the Taste of Chicago, one of the largest outdoor food festivals in the country.

Cultural institutions:

Many of Chicago’s arts groups and institutions may be found in clusters. Michigan Avenue might fairly be called the main cultural thoroughfare of Chicago, because most of the major institutions are located on or near it. South of the Loop and east of Michigan Avenue is the Museum Campus (created in the 1990s by relocating part of Lake Shore Drive), which joins the south end of Grant Park to the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum (1930), the John G. Shedd Aquarium (1930), and the Field Museum of Natural History (1893). Several blocks farther north, the Auditorium Theatre (1889) is the site of touring plays, popular concerts, and visiting orchestras and is the home of the Joffrey Ballet, which moved from New York City to Chicago in 1995. A few more blocks north is Symphony Center (formerly Orchestra Hall), home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its training ensemble, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, as well as a venue for other musical events. Across the street sits the Art Institute of Chicago, a world-class art museum and school dating to 1893 at its present site; it surveys world art and is notable for its large collection of French Impressionist paintings. Just to the north is the old Chicago Public Library (1897) building, since 1991 the Chicago Cultural Center; graced with marble and mosaic interiors and a large Tiffany stained-glass dome, it provides a variety of spaces for performances and temporary art exhibits. The Cultural Center is on the edge of a burgeoning downtown theatre district, with large venues for touring plays and musicals, more-intimate stages for smaller groups, and the Goodman Theatre, which was founded in the 1920s. East of North Michigan Avenue is the Museum of Contemporary Art (founded 1967), which collects works created after 1945. On the west side of the Loop, the Civic Opera House (1929) on Wacker Drive is the home of Chicago’s Lyric Opera.

Another notable cluster of cultural institutions is found in the Hyde Park community on the South Side near the University of Chicago campus. The Museum of Science and Industry opened in 1933 in the heavily restored Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. It houses a five-story Omnimax theatre. The university’s Oriental Institute (1931) contains a collection of artifacts from archaeological expeditions to the Middle East and East Asia. The DuSable Museum of African American History (1961) is one of the country’s oldest museums devoted to the study of African American life and history. In addition, Robie House (1908–10), owned by the university, is one of the finest examples of Prairie-style architecture.

Chicago’s cultural life is by no means concentrated in a few places. Its voluminous libraries, located around the city, also make it a major research centre. After the Great Fire of 1871 destroyed private collections in the city, a gift of books from donors in England was used to create the Chicago Public Library. Philanthropists also established the private Newberry (1887) and John Crerar (1894) libraries, the latter now a part of the University of Chicago. The varied collections of institutions of higher education also help make Chicago one of the country’s leading library centres.

There are other specialized institutions scattered throughout the city, including the Chicago History Museum (established 1856; formerly the Chicago Historical Society), which focuses on local and American history. Ethnic diversity and pride are reflected in the many small museums devoted to the art and history of various national groups. Several gallery districts have also developed north and west of the downtown area to showcase the work of artists who have found relatively inexpensive space in scattered neighbourhoods.

Recreation:

Tourists and Chicagoans alike are drawn as culture and amusement consumers to the varied and lively leisure life of the city. The slogan “Urbs in Horto” (“City in a Garden”), which has appeared on the official seal of the city since 1837, reflects not only an extensive system of city parks as well as backyard and rooftop gardening but also public institutions dedicated to nature education and recreation. Within the city the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum of the Chicago Academy of Sciences (1999) is located near the Lincoln Park Zoo (1868), one of the country’s few remaining zoos offering free admission, and the West Side’s Garfield Park contains one of the nation’s largest conservatories (1907). The more-open space of the suburbs is home to other nature retreats, including a second zoological park, the Brookfield Zoo (formally the Chicago Zoological Society). The more than 1,500-acre (600-hectare) Morton Arboretum (1922) in Lisle and the Chicago Botanic Garden (1972) in Glencoe are outstanding open-air museums. Added to these are the belts of county forest preserves.

“Wait till next year!” is the perennial cry of the ever-optimistic Chicago sports fan. The city has produced some championship professional teams over the years—notably the Bulls (men’s basketball) during the 1990s—but, more typically, teams find themselves out of contention at the end of the regular season; the Cubs and White Sox, two of the oldest franchises in Major League Baseball, have made only a handful of World Series appearances between them. Other professional teams include the Bears (gridiron football), Blackhawks (hockey), Fire (football [soccer]), and Sky (women’s basketball).

The park district offers many opportunities for nonprofessional athletics of all types, while many local residents find great pleasure as weekend sailors and power boaters on Lake Michigan. In addition, crowds of runners, walkers, and cyclists take advantage of the paths that wind their way through the city’s lakefront parkland. Two newer venues, Navy Pier and Millennium Park, have become the most popular lakefront draws for visitors and residents alike. Navy Pier, extensively renovated in the 1990s, boasts amusements, restaurants, theatres, and docking facilities for boat excursions. Millennium Park, built largely over railroad tracks at the northwestern corner of Grant Park and officially opened in 2004, includes fountains, eye-catching sculptures, gardens, a large outdoor concert facility designed by architect Frank Gehry, a restaurant, and an outdoor ice skating rink.

Press and broadcasting

Chicago has always been one of the country’s great newspaper towns, but the once-numerous major metropolitan dailies have dwindled to only two: the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. Another daily, the Chicago Defender, is oriented primarily toward the city’s African American community, and Crain’s Chicago Business provides economic and financial news. In addition, there are dozens of daily and weekly foreign-language, neighbourhood, and suburban newspapers, including the weekly La Raza, which serves a growing Hispanic population.

Chicago had a central role in the development of both radio and television broadcasting, and it has continued to be a leader in both mediums. The public television station WTTW was one of the country’s pioneers in educational programming. There are scores of radio and television stations in the region.

 

History

The 19th century

Early growth

Chicago’s critical location on the water route linking the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River shaped much of its early history. It was populated by a series of native tribes who maintained villages in the forested areas near rivers. Beginning with Father Jacques Marquette and French Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet in 1673, a steady stream of explorers and missionaries passed through or settled in the region, but it was not until 1779 that the first nonnative resident made it his permanent home: Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable maintained a thriving trading post near the mouth of the Chicago River until 1800, when he moved out of the region. Within a few years the federal government had erected Fort Dearborn to establish a military presence in the area. The garrison was located on the south bank at the river mouth; it was destroyed during the War of 1812 but was rebuilt in 1816. By that time, numerous traders linked the region with international fur markets. Even after Illinois became a state in 1818, however, Chicago remained a small settlement. It was incorporated as a town in 1833 with a population of about 350.

Population growth remained stagnant until the federal government allocated funding that allowed work to begin on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a vital link between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. Because the project was to be financed largely by sales of adjacent land, which would benefit from the commerce it brought, the canal helped to fill Chicago with speculators. The boom led to a second incorporation, this time as a city, on March 4, 1837; the population was 4,170. That same year a devastating national economic depression delayed the city’s development for several years. Canal construction drew thousands of Irish labourers to the area, when what was supposed to be a simple ditch a few hundred yards long grew into a waterway of some 75 miles (120 km), often cut through solid rock. After the canal opened in 1848, it brought grain and other raw materials to the city, while providing what was then a fast and convenient means of travel to the interior of the state.

Emergence as a transportation hub

Chicago’s railway age also began in 1848, when a locomotive named the Pioneer arrived by ship from Buffalo, New York, and went into service for the new Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. The line’s 11-mile (18-km) track extended straight west from the city, but its namesake destination, the lead-mining metropolis in the northwest corner of the state, declined in importance before extensions even reached it. Other lines soon extended to the west, including the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, the Rock Island, and the Illinois Central. The Chicago and Milwaukee line linked the rival ports by rail. In 1852 two separate lines entered from the east and provided direct rail service to the Eastern Seaboard. By the beginning of the 20th century, no fewer than 30 interstate routes fanned out from the city, and the resulting ease in reaching both raw materials and markets contributed to the city’s rapid commercial and industrial development. Most important of all, Chicago was the terminus of every one of the railroads; passengers, raw materials, and finished goods all had to be transferred between lines in the city, thus contributing to an extraordinary development of hotels, restaurants, taxicabs, warehouses, rail yards, and trucking companies.

The railroad, along with the telegraph, the grain elevator, agricultural newspapers, and the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, facilitated the collection of commodities from the farm belt, which was rapidly developing to the west. The city soon became the focal point of a “golden funnel” that collected and processed grain, lumber, and meat and then sent them to markets in the eastern United States and Europe. Trade encouraged ancillary industries such as the manufacture of steel rails and railroad equipment, shipbuilding, packaging, and printing, as well as the development of hotels and restaurant facilities. However, nothing at that time personified Chicago industry more than meatpacking and the vast Union Stock Yards on the city’s Near Southwest Side.

Conflagration and rebirth

Chicago’s growth was unprecedented. The population reached nearly 30,000 in 1850 and was triple that a decade later. Cheap transportation to the outskirts of the city encouraged middle-class dispersal, but poor neighbourhoods near the downtown area were congested; structures there were also built of wood. Serious fires were frequent, but no one could have anticipated the events of the evening of October 8, 1871. Months without rain had parched the city, and a major fire the previous night had exhausted firefighters and damaged equipment. It is not known what happened in the De Koven Street barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, on the city’s West Side. Vandals, milk thieves, a drunken neighbour, spontaneous combustion, even (though unlikely) the O’Learys’ legendary cow—any could have started a blaze there that roared out of control in minutes. Misdirected fire equipment arrived too late, and a steady wind from the southwest carried the flames and blazing debris from block to block. The slums became kindling for the downtown conflagration, where even the supposedly fireproof stone and brick buildings exploded in flames as the destruction swept northward. Only rainfall, the lake, and stretches of unbuilt lots on the North Side finally halted the wave of destruction a full day after it started. The most famous fire in American history claimed about 300 lives, destroyed some 17,450 buildings covering almost 3.5 square miles (9 square km), and caused $200 million in damage. Roughly one-third of the city lay in ruins, and an equal proportion of the population—nearly 100,000 people—was homeless.

Chicago rebuilt quickly, reached more than a half million residents in 1880, and accomplished construction miracles. As a response to public health concerns, the newly formed Sanitary District of Metropolitan Chicago began work in 1889 on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the waterway that when opened in 1900 not only allowed larger vessels to pass through the port of Chicago but also made it possible to reverse the flow of the Chicago River; the improvement in public health once pollutants were carried away from Lake Michigan was dramatic. Meanwhile, a host of talented architects that included Louis Sullivan, Dankmar Adler, William Holabird, Daniel H. Burnham, John Wellborn Root, and William Le Baron Jenney, who had been attracted to Chicago by the postfire rebuilding opportunities, stayed on in the 1880s to design a new generation of even taller downtown buildings. Department stores and offices crowded into the central area, and industrial growth along the river branches and rail lines was equally phenomenal. Commuter railroads and transit improvements promoted outward residential dispersal of the middle class, a clientele served by a young Frank Lloyd Wright and the emerging “Prairie school” architects. This suburban boom prompted the city to annex some 125 square miles (324 square km) in 1889, which included many adjacent communities and also much open farmland.

Social strains and a world’s fair: the city comes of age

That same year two young women, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, arrived to take up residence in one of the congested slums that had sprung up in the tumbledown West Side of the city. Their Hull House programs in recreation, job training, day care, health care, thrift, workplace safety, and culture combated but did not eradicate rampant unemployment, crime, and other social problems that were endemic in urban tenements. Discontent with living conditions, in turn, helped to fuel outbursts against the low wages, unemployment, monotonous work, and steep production quotas that came with the city’s rapid industrialization. Outbreaks of labour violence became common, and the Chicago experience made the rest of the country fearful that the future would be filled with proletarian strife. Local workers battled police during the nationwide railway strike of 1877. But the Haymarket Riot of 1886 captured the world’s attention when police efforts to break up a protest meeting in the Randolph Street produce market were met with a bomb explosion that killed seven policemen and an unknown number of workers. The prolonged trial and the execution of those who were accused of plotting the blast deeply divided the community and the world. Eight years after that, violence once more erupted as workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company on the South Side walked off the job to protest wage cuts that were not matched by rent reductions at George Pullman’s model town where most were forced to live.

In 1890 Chicago’s population pushed past the one million mark. That year the U.S. Congress granted the city the right to host the World’s Columbian Exposition, honouring the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 arrival in the New World. Delays pushed the opening into 1893. Set in Jackson Park, some 8 miles (13 km) south of downtown along the lakeshore, the event was a spectacular extravaganza that assembled more than a million artifacts representing the world’s industrial and cultural progress. Besides enlightening exhibits, performances, and off-site intellectual conferences, the fair offered the Midway Plaisance, a collection of ersatz travel experiences, bazaars, eateries, and rides, the most famous of which was the 255-foot (78-metre) Ferris wheel. The event attracted some 25.8 million visitors during its six-month run.

Chicago since c. 1900:

“No little plans”

The fair opened during a financial panic and closed during a deep depression, but the city’s recovery four years later was dramatic. Chicago’s population surged past two million in 1907 and three million in 1923. The city eagerly adopted every transportation innovation: streetcars moved first by horses, then by means of underground cables, and finally by electricity were supplemented in the 1890s by the first elevated rail lines. However, every transportation innovation seemed to produce only more congestion. The railroads also left their physical mark on the city. Concerns over grade-crossing safety forced the rail lines to construct tall embankments for their tracks, which, in turn, walled off neighbourhoods. The smoke and noise from thousands of freight trains and hundreds of passenger-train arrivals and departures each day saturated the city in gloomy soot and jangled its nerves.

Chicago was well on its way to choking on its growth when architects Daniel H. Burnham and Edward P. Bennett unveiled their 1909 Plan of Chicago. Commissioned by two private commercial organizations, the plan provided a rational transportation-based blueprint for urban growth, notably in the central area. It promised to replace ugliness and congestion with extraordinary beauty and efficiency. Although plans for relocating railroads were ignored, Chicago’s city government eagerly adopted ideas for plazas, major thoroughfares that bridged railway tracks, a double-deck street along the river downtown, monumental bridge structures, and the preservation of the lakefront for park purposes—inspired by Burnham’s now-famous credo “Make no little plans.” The document was never officially adopted by the city council, but it became a shopping list for projects started during the 1920s, including construction of the Michigan Avenue Bridge and the Outer Drive. In 1916 the city completed the 1.5-mile- (2.4-km-) long Municipal (later Navy) Pier as a combination shipping warehouse and public recreation retreat. But the city, under the leadership of Mayor William Hale (“Big Bill”) Thompson, went into debt far beyond its ability to repay, and the double-deck Wacker Drive and Outer Drive Bridge improvements remained unfinished at the onset of the Great Depression.

Chicago became notorious during the Prohibition years of the “Roaring” 1920s as a wide-open town, gaining a reputation for corruption, gangsterism, and intermittent mayhem. Al Capone, John Dillinger, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre became bywords worldwide. Furthermore, the city government was virtually insolvent years before the 1929 stock market crash. Republican Thompson was defeated by Democrat Anton Cermak in 1931, the first of a long string of Democratic mayors. Cermak, however, fell two years later to an assassin’s bullet intended for U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was visiting the city. The new mayor, Edward J. Kelly, gladly accepted federal relief funds that employed thousands on projects that completed the Outer Drive Bridge, built the State Street subway, and constructed hundreds of miles of streets, sewers, sidewalks, and curbs. Workers for other relief projects painted murals in post offices and schools, collected sources for historical research, and provided free music. Chicago’s WPA Federal Theatre created Swing Mikado, which later enjoyed success on Broadway, and also developed new techniques of improvisational comedy and puppetry. In 1933–34 Chicago played host to its second world’s fair, the Century of Progress Exposition, organized to mark the centennial of the town charter. Conceived initially to displace the Capone crime era from the city’s image, the fair turned into a celebration of technology as the saviour of the country’s economy. Its Art Deco–style architecture and brilliant colours were a lure for tens of millions of visitors during its run

Decline and confrontation:

World War II placed Chicago in a strategic production role because of its diverse industrial base, and the city’s economy boomed. In addition, the nearby Great Lakes Naval Training Center and Fort Sheridan were major induction and basic-training facilities, and Northwestern University operated the country’s largest naval midshipmen’s school. Thousands of naval pilots also passed through Glenview Naval Air Station, receiving flight instruction on two aircraft carriers on the lake that were converted from old passenger vessels. As the country’s rail hub, Chicago hosted traveling military personnel in four Chicago servicemen’s centres; one of them, the historic Auditorium Building, not only served 24 million meals by the war’s end but also saw its magnificent stage used as a bowling alley.

The postwar years began a period of many adjustments. In 1947 Mayor Kelly was replaced by a reform-oriented businessman named Martin Kennelly, whose eight years in office ended with the election of Richard J. Daley in an intra-party coup. Chicago reached its population peak of 3.62 million in 1950, but by that time there were already signs of impending industrial decline. In addition, the city’s social fabric was changing. Chicago went through many difficult years of increasing racial tensions, as its expanding African American community sought to escape the boundaries of segregated neighbourhoods. Some efforts to achieve this were peaceful, such as the crusade that brought civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to Chicago in 1966. However, Black frustrations also spilled over into violence, including riots in the summer of 1967 and even larger ones following King’s assassination (in Memphis, Tennessee) in 1968. Whites generally responded by leaving the city in increasing numbers for the suburbs.

The bloody confrontation that erupted between anti-Vietnam War protesters (and other demonstrators) and police at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago focused negative attention on the city and the last major old-fashioned big-city political machine in the country. However, the growing difficulties and uncertainties of the postwar era that, essentially, came to a head at the convention help explain why so many Chicagoans held on for so long to the Democratic machine, especially as it developed under Daley. His leadership gave them jobs, representation by nationality, and, most important, some sense of predictability in a changing world.

Although some of Chicago’s neighbourhoods decayed and much of its industry moved either to the suburbs, out of state, or overseas, the city’s central area began to revive in the late 1950s under Daley’s leadership. The John Hancock Building, the Sears (now Willis) Tower, and dozens of other new office structures in the Loop and Near North areas, as well as the emergence of O’Hare International Airport as the country’s air hub, provided enticements for attracting corporate headquarters. By the mid-1970s the downtown office revival was beginning to produce the first signs of gentrification in nearby neighbourhoods. The political upheaval that followed Daley’s death in 1976 drew headlines away from the nascent downtown revival. The initiation of Chicagofest, a music and food extravaganza that was later transformed into the Taste of Chicago, signaled the beginning of what has been a continuing city effort to lure suburban leisure spending back to the city through a series of outdoor special events.

In 1989 Daley’s son, Richard M. Daley, took office as mayor and placed even more emphasis on attracting corporate headquarters, trade, tourism, and the convention business. The influx of new residents to downtown, as well as growing Hispanic and other ethnic communities, brought a halt to half a century of population decline, and Chicagoans numbered some 2.8 million by the early 21st century. Two events held in Chicago in the 1990s—several opening matches of the 1994 World Cup football (soccer) finals and the 1996 Democratic National Convention—were great successes for the city and garnered it considerable national and international notice. In 2007, shortly after Daley was reelected to his fifth (and fourth full) term as mayor (his first had been for two years), the city was selected as the U.S. entry for hosting the 2016 Olympic Summer Games; however, it was eliminated in the first round of voting by the International Olympic Committee. (Rio de Janeiro was chosen in the third round.)

The second Daley era began drawing to a close when the mayor announced in September 2010 that he would not seek reelection to a seventh term, and a mayoral election was called for February 22, 2011. An initially wide field of hopefuls was ultimately winnowed to six candidates. The front-runner was Rahm Emanuel, who stepped down from his position as White House chief of staff under Pres. Barack Obama in order to run for Chicago mayor. Emanuel won the election and took office on May 16. His first term was characterized in part by a controversial decision to close dozens of public schools. In his 2015 bid for reelection, Emanuel failed to win a majority in the first round of voting in February and faced his nearest challenger, Jesús (“Chuy”) García, a longtime public servant, in the city’s first-ever mayoral runoff election. Emanuel was victorious, however, in the April contest.

Creativity, a fascinating mix of cultures, bold new buildings, a vital economy, and the dichotomy between wealth and poverty continue to mark life in Chicago. While it deservedly celebrates a rich cultural past, Chicago remains the innovative cultural centre of the Midwest. Much as it did more than a century ago, the city continues to attract talented young artists, musicians, actors, and writers from throughout the region.