Frank Leslie’s Weekly Illustrated Newspaper, January 16, 1886
THE CITY OF CHICAGO.
Chicago, viewed from the Lake front, as in our picture, presents the appearance of a rich, well-built and stately commercial city, which might have a record of hundreds of years. There is nothing in the prospect to help the imagination to realize the oft-mentioned facts that three-quarters of a century ago this spot was an uninhabited swamp; that the city was not incorporated until 1841; and that in 1871, having already become the wealth-producing capital of the West, it was nearly swept out of existence by the greatest conflagration of modern times, Chicago’s unprecedented activity of advancement is not to be spoken of past tense, The records and statistics of the year just completed, showing undiminished activity in traffic and the great manufacturing industries, as well as the steady increase of a population already bordering upon three-quarters of a million, prove that she is holding her own as a phenomenal city, the epitome of the Great West’s development in our time. Schoolchildren know that Chicago is the greatest railroad centre, live-stock market and primary grain port in time world. Not every stranger to the place is aware, however, that it is the best built of our American eities. Its thirty-six square miles are for the most part covered with fine, substantial buildings of brick, iron and stone, many of which may, without hyperbole, be characterized as palatial and magnificent. It lies superbly on the edge of blue Lake Michigan, into which flows a sluggish river, the two forks of which unite in the centre of the city. No city has finer parks and drives. Amongst the conspicuous architectural monuments may be mentioned the Court House and City Hall, the Post Office and Custom House, the new Board of Trade Building, the Chicago University, the Exposition Building, the grain elevators, the great railroad depots, and the Water Works tower.
- Bird’s-Eye View of the City of Chicago Looking From Lake Michigan.
From a sketch by C. Upham.—See Page 359.
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