Just a few decades ago, Chicago was tearing down its architectural landmarks with a vengeance. Among these were the work of legendary architect Louis Sullivan, and no one, it seemed, felt it was important to document and preserve them. No one, that is, except photographer Richard Nickel. This idealistic crusader's passion to save Chicago's architectural treasures consumed his life and ultimately caused his untimely death.
WTTW's Chicago Stories looks back at the World's Fair that celebrated a "Century of Progress" in Chicago in an episode from 2000.
John Callaway narrates the story of "Francis O'Neill: The Police Chief Who Saved Irish Music," a turn-of-the-century Renaissance man and the wide-reaching effects of his life's work. Watch the 2002 video from our archives.
See how Marshall Field's plans and puts together its holiday windows, and learn the history of the beloved Christmastime tradition.
WTTW's John Callaway hosts a Chicago Story about Riverview, the Chicago amusement park that from 1904-1967 delighted people with rides such as the Bobs roller coaster, Aladdin's Castle, a tunnel of love, and parachutes, all in the city at Western and Belmont.
Re-enactments and interviews trace Wells' career as a journalist, activist, and organizer in Chicago.
The life and legacy of Viola Spolin, the social-worker-turned-theater guru known as The Mother of Improv.
Jane Byrne never intended to get into politics. But after her life was turned upside down by a tragic accident, she volunteered for John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign and eventually caught the attention of the powerful boss of Chicago Democratic machine politics, Richard J. Daley. She became his protégée and held various positions, working her way up in city government. But after Daley’s death, Byrne called out corruption where she saw it, lost her job, and turned against the machine that shaped her. Her 1979 mayoral campaign as an anti-machine underdog appealed to many Chicagoans, including those in the city’s most marginalized communities. Though Byrne ultimately had a mixed record in office, her journey to get to the fifth-floor office of City Hall ended with her becoming not only Chicago’s first female mayor, but also the first woman to become mayor of a major U.S. city.
In the heart of Chicago’s Loop, 90 years apart, two very different disasters took place. First, the deadliest building fire in U.S. history: the 1903 Iroquois Theater Fire. Caused by hasty construction, missing and faulty safety features, and a botched evacuation, the tragedy shocked the nation and gave rise to many safeguards still in place today. Then, the Great Loop Flood of 1992: a $2 billion disaster with zero casualties. As downtown buildings mysteriously flooded with water – and fish – from the Chicago River, the city searched for answers in a long-forgotten tunnel system.
You may not have heard of Albert Lasker, Eugene Kolkey, Carol H. Williams, or Tom Burrell, but you most certainly know their creations. They’re Chicago’s own “Mad Men” – the local executives who created iconic figures such as the Marlboro Man, Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. In Chicago, advertising agencies created their own Midwestern style of advertising from which would emerge a spate of iconic characters, taglines, and jingles, and each of those has its own story.
Chicago was famously dubbed “Hog Butcher for the World” by Carl Sandburg in his iconic poem “Chicago.” The city was the center of America’s meatpacking industry for roughly a century, transforming the way livestock were sold, processed, transported, and eaten. Industrialist tycoons such as Philip Armour and Gustavus Swift created and then dominated an industry that changed Americans’ relationship to meat – and squeezed out massive profits at the same time. A century and a half after they first began processing “everything but the squeal” in Chicago, many of their abuses – an indifference to workers, health, the environment, or smaller business – are once again a part of the industry.
For decades, Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in the South Chicago neighborhood was a cultural center for the community’s Mexican-American families. In that church, families celebrated baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and other major milestones. But after the United States entered the war in Vietnam, funerals for 12 parishioners would take place at Our Lady of Guadalupe – a loss greater than in any other parish in the country. Many of the family members and friends of the young men who died, as well as other veterans, still feel the impact of that tragedy today. But what emerges from a memorial to the young men in the church’s nearby parking lot is a story of love, resilience, and memory.
For generations, Black music has been one of the foundational sources for liberation, survival, salvation, and entertainment. Gospel music has been one of the most integral and sacred forms of that music. It birthed a generation of storytellers, influential musicians, and agents of social change, such as Mahalia Jackson, Shirley Caesar, Kirk Franklin, and many others. The origins of gospel music lie in the transatlantic slave trade, as African musical traditions blended with new forms born out of the horrors of slavery. The rich lineage of gospel music began in earnest as a young man named Thomas Dorsey came to Chicago during the Great Migration. His own spiritual rebirth at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago created a form of music that married blues influences with religious themes. Dorsey’s legacy ushered in a generation of Black artists who broke new ground by turning their voices of joy and pain into something powerful.
Our Lady of the Angels was an extremely tight knit, largely Italian parish in a vibrant community that flourished on Chicago’s West Side. But in 1958, tragedy struck when a fire broke out in the basement at Our Lady of the Angels and tore through parts of the building, trapping students and teachers in a terrifying inferno. The blaze killed 92 children and three nuns, shook a city’s faith, and stunned Chicago – and the nation – with sorrow. Now, 65 years later, survivors tell their story.
Chicago was growing by leaps and bounds throughout the 19th century. The frontier town quickly grew into the largest metropolis in the Midwest. But as Chicago’s profile and population grew, a hidden killer was taking lives. Sewage and waste was being dumped into the Chicago River and polluting Lake Michigan, the source of the city’s drinking water. Officials were left with no other option but to embark on a daring design to reshape part of the natural world – and reverse the flow of the Chicago River.
Railroad titan George Pullman’s name was once synonymous with luxury. His sleeping cars changed how some Americans rode the rails. But when his success didn’t trickle down to the people who built, operated, and staffed his cars, a rebellion ensued. While the first major strike ultimately failed, a group of Black workers later found success through organizing, paving the way for a Black middle class and a civil rights movement that forever changed the course of American history.
They called him The Boss. Richard J. Daley, Chicago’s mayor from 1955 to 1976, came into office at a time when American cities like Chicago were losing population and industry to the suburbs in a phenomenon known as white flight. Daley’s answer was to build. He pulled together a team of city planners to create his 1958 Plan for the Central City of Chicago and he used it as the blueprint to build a modern downtown. But Daley's vision for a modern Chicago came with a cost. Between 1948 and 1963, nearly 168,000 people were displaced in the city of Chicago. Old neighborhoods disappeared and newly constructed areas faced increasing racial pressures.
Jane Addams was an activist ahead of her time. Within the walls of Hull House on the Near West Side, she led a social movement and amassed an army of women to demand change, pushing boundaries and breaking barriers along the way. Ultimately, Jane Addams and the women of Hull House changed their community, their city, and the world.
Chicago famously has a sweet tooth, and why wouldn’t it? For much of the twentieth century, Chicago reigned supreme as the “Candy Capital of the World.” From Cracker Jack and M&Ms, to Snickers and Lemon Heads, many of the world’s most well-known sweets originated in the city. At its peak, 100 Chicago candy companies, including Wrigley, Mars, and Ferrara produced a third of all candy in the United States and employed more than 25,000 people. But however all-American this world of confection may appear, it was immigrants who came to Chicago in the nineteenth century who helped mold the industry.
Danny Sotomayor received what amounted to a death sentence in 1988 — he was diagnosed with AIDS. At the time, there was no cure, drugs designed to combat the disease were expensive and hard to come by, and people often died within weeks of the first failures of their immune systems. Twenty-nine-year-old Danny Sotomayor was terrified. Feeling the clock ticking on his life, the cartoonist set out to confront the AIDS crisis as only he knew how: by making a spectacle.
The catalogs of Sears, Roebuck, and Co., and Montgomery Ward were icons of Americana, beloved and eagerly anticipated. More than just a collection of necessities and Christmas wishes, the items within the many pages of those catalogs reflected the aspirations of American families, as well as the power of companies to shape how people shopped and what they bought. The rise and fall of these mail order giants is intertwined with the history of Chicago and the rest of America.
Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were the quintessential picture of privilege. Both brilliant and wealthy, the two University of Chicago graduate students had bright futures. But under the glossy veneer lurked something much more sinister. In 1924, after several months of meticulous planning, Leopold and Loeb kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks – Loeb’s second cousin – all for the thrill of committing a “perfect” crime. The men wanted to put their self-professed superior intellect to the test. The kidnapping and murder were quickly dubbed the “Crime of the Century” and provoked a media frenzy. In the sensational sentencing hearing that followed, they were defended by none other than Clarence Darrow, the most famous lawyer in America. This is the story of a crime that is no less compelling today than when it first captivated a horrified nation one hundred years ago.
It’s the most notorious scandal in the history of professional baseball. Eight Chicago White Sox players conspired to throw the World Series in 1919. It was an event that ruined the reputations and careers of some of the greatest players of all time, including “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and broke the heart of a nation. As the favored White Sox lost the series, word got out that the once-noble game of baseball had been compromised. At trial, the players were found not guilty – but they were later banned from professional baseball for life. The Black Sox Scandal is a story that forever changed America’s pastime.
Thrill-seeking Chicagoans have been lining up at local amusement parks for nearly a 150 years. From the early trolley parks of the nineteenth century, to the famous Ferris wheel of the World’s Fair, to the golden age of roller coasters, to the white-knuckle, gravity-defying rides of the modern age, the business of fun has always been central to Chicago. Beloved parks such as Riverview Park and Kiddieland, among others, served as a beacon for laughter, thrills, and childhood fun for a generation of Chicagoans.
There was a time, from the late 1940s through the 1960s, when the now-upscale Lincoln Park neighborhood served as the beating heart of Chicago’s huge Puerto Rican community, and the base of operations for a band of Puerto Rican revolutionaries known as the Young Lords. Led by a young man named José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, the activist group – which evolved from a social club to a street gang to a political force – banded together with the Black Panthers as the Rainbow Coalition to wage war against what they called Mayor Richard J. Daley’s “urban removal of the poor” and the area’s eventual gentrification.
The Playboy Bunny is one of the most recognized logos in the world. But the brand now synonymous with sex was launched in the conservative 1950s, an era when talking about sex was taboo. Twenty-seven-year-old Hugh Hefner saw an opportunity to test the limits of the First Amendment and bring sex into the mainstream. From his kitchen in Hyde Park, he launched Playboy, an aspirational lifestyle magazine aimed at young, single men that attempted to associate sex with sophistication. Hefner pushed boundaries and created controversy. He sparked debates about feminism and erotica, advocated for free speech, and was committed to tearing down the walls of segregation and social oppression, all while spearheading a sexual revolution.
In the days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, columns of smoke rose above Chicago’s West Side. The murder of a man who preached nonviolence in the face of struggle ignited grief and rage as uprisings spread in cities across the United States with violence, looting, and fires. On the West Side, the anguish was palpable as 11 people died, hundreds were injured, thousands were arrested, and approximately 200 buildings were destroyed.
During the Prohibition-era 1920s, a young man named Al Capone succeeded his mentor, Johnny Torrio, to run the Chicago Outfit. An Italian-American crime syndicate first established by “Big Jim” Colosimo at the turn of the century, the Outfit amassed an estimated $100 million in revenue – more than $1.5 billion today – through its nearly 200 brothels, illegal alcohol production and sales, gambling, and racketeering. For several years, the mob had a chokehold on Chicago politics, influencing elections through intimidation and violence and working in cahoots with the aldermen who ran the city’s political machine. This quintessentially Chicago story traces the powerful criminal enterprise from its inception through its 1920s heyday and to its gradual demise. At the center of it all, wearing a sleek fedora and a knowing smirk, was Capone – “Public Enemy No. 1” – and one of America’s most notorious gangsters.
Chicago’s secret is very much out in the open now: house music DJs headline clubs and festivals from London to Cape Town. But this electronic dance music was born behind closed doors at underground venues. In the early 1980s, a band of mostly Black, gay artists created house music in old warehouses. Led by such DJs as Frankie Knuckles, a group of artists created a mechanical, bass-heavy sound using drum machines and synthesizers. It became the soundtrack of safe spaces that were free from the racism and homophobia of the outside world.
The fire of 1871 caused Chicagoans to face destruction, rebuild, and prepare the city for a thriving future.
t's the most notorious scandal in baseball history. Eight Chicago White Sox players are charged with throwing 1919's World Series--ruining the reputations and careers of some of the game's greatest players and breaking a nation's heart.
