What Is Chicago In The 1940s

Chicago, Illinois was a popular city in the early United States. Chicago was a center for trade due to the water sources running through it. The two rivers located in Chicago, the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River, connected the city to the Mississippi river and Lake Michigan. Railroads through Chicago also helped it become a transportation center in the United States. Thousands of immigrants came to Chicago every year. Settlers and visitors arrived constantly by wagon, ship, or even train. There were around ten railroads that congregated in the city. Many people saw Chicago as a great opportunity. Merchants, tradesmen, and business from the East Coast scrambled to the new businesses opportunities in the city. In 1870, only one year before the Great Fire, around 300,000 people lived in Chicago.

An outburst in growth of America’s big city population, places of 100,000 people or more jumped from about 6 million to 14 million between 1880 and 1900, cities had become a world of newcomers (551). America evolved into a land of factories, corporate enterprise, and industrial worker and, the surge in immigration supplied their workers. In the latter half of the 19th century, continued industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force. The country's transformation from a rural agricultural society into an urban industrial nation attracted immigrants worldwide. As free land and free labor disappeared and as capitalists dominated the economy, dramatic social, political, and economic

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair had a major impact on today's culture and America as a whole. New products and inventions were influenced by the fair and made the ideas fun, new, and exciting for the world to see. Architectural and technological aspects during the fair were the starting foundation of some of America's greatest accomplishments. The fair was a chance for the world to acknowledge America's ingenuity and perseverance in times of struggle and conflict.

In addition to this major shift from rural to urban areas, a new wave of immigration increased America’s population significantly, especially in major cities. Immigrants came from war-torn regions of southern and eastern Europe, such as Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, Croatia. This new group of immigrants

Cities in the Midwest grew as they attracted huge numbers of immigrants. In 1860, the city's population was around 110,000. In 1890, more than a million people lived in Chicago. Chicago became one of the largest city in this period.

The Progressive Era began in the year 1890 through 1920; During this time many things in the country were evolving such as Social Justice, Government Efficiency, Suffrage Movements, Prohibition, and the list continues. Jane Adams being a fighter and standing up for what she believed in was described as being “bold as a lion” (20 yr) growing up and, through her adult years when initiating change in the way the government and society assist with the impoverished. Adams established the Hull House with Ellen Gates Star “on the 18th of September, 1889”(20 yr.). This started the movement that is know as the Settlement House Movement. “The purpose of the Hull House as stated in its character was “to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago”(Addams, 1910, p. 89)”(Jane addams and social reform a role model for the 1990s). Although Jane Adams was mainly known for her work in the Hull House and being the 'mother of social work ', she also caused many reforms that affected the entity of the way the United States went about reforming.

The manufacturing jobs promised by large corporations brought many people to the cities and effected widespread immigration and urbanization during the Gilded Age. Living conditions were harsh and the familiarity of small towns disappeared in the crowds of the cities. Technological advances in architecture allowed for taller buildings and higher concentrations of people. Upper and middle class families escaped to suburbs as an influx of immigrants and lower class workers flocked to the cities to find employment. The flood of “new immigrants” from southern and eastern Europe resulted in the creation of many anti-immigration groups (Digital History).

Urbanization in the progressive era was a huge factor, with millions of immigrants flocking to America for jobs. African americans flooded north also in search of jobs. Cities exploded outward and upward, condensing people into building and houses. This, given the time was highly unsanitary, with waste and filth in the streets, disease spread rapidly. Pollution caused poor living conditions often crowded and unsafe. Often there was little clean water or paved roads for transportation. Many people in the city's began to push for urban reformers. A Progressive reformer named Jane Addams stepped up and opened one of the first settlement houses in Chicago with Ellen Gates Starr, which greatly helped out local immigrants by producing education and even social services. Many reformers supported laws that would improve living conditions in the center city and fought to get rid of political corruption, which had been widely spreading.

American urban housing system was not in a very good state at the end of Second World War. Hundreds of thousands

Cities throughout the north and Midwest, riddled with factories, warehouse’s and work areas needed people to fill jobs left by people who were drafted or enlisted into military ranks for World War I. New York had many jobs and opportunities in places such as the pier’s and docks. Detroit had automobile factories with tons of open job opportunities. African American’s flocked to these large urban areas. Also, with the onset of World War I, the creation of

Everything in Chicago was made out of wood through the buildings to streets and buildings were full of coal and alcohol and there was not enough rain it only rain a few times in July and October but it did not help for it was still unusually dry so that did not help.

Chicago in the 1920s was a turning point for the development of ethnic neighborhoods. After the opening of the first rail connection from New York to Chicago in the 1840s, immigration sky rocketed from that point on. Majority of the immigrants to Chicago were Europeans. The Irish, Italians, eastern European Jews, Germans, and Mexicans were among the most common ethnicities to reside in Chicago. These groups made up the greater part of Chicago. The sudden increase in immigration to Chicago in the 1920s soon led to an even further distinguished separation of ethnicities in neighborhoods. The overall development of these neighborhoods deeply impacted how Chicago is sectioned off nowadays. Without these ethnicities immigrating to Chicago

In the 1920s, America began to experience a lot of modernization with the era of prohibition, lively spirited flappers, and a clash between science and religion. Just after World War I, Americans had to make the hard transition from farm life, to work in the cities. Life in the cities was very different from the small life in small towns. With many immigrants in America, city life offered Americans change socially with its tolerance with drinking, gambling and dating life. Just after World War I, prohibition to manufacture, sell, and transport alcohol took place because of the Eighteenth Amendment.

After World War II, the United States of America became a much wealthier nation. As America gained wealth and the populations in urban cities and transportation technology increased, many Americans spread out, away from the urban cities, to fulfill the common dream of having a piece of land to call their own. The landscape constructed became known as the suburbs, exclusive residential areas within commuting distance of a city. The popularity and success of the suburban landscape caused suburbs to sprawl across the United States, from the east coast to the west coast and along the borders between Canada and Mexico. By the 1990s, many suburbs surrounding major urban cities developed into being more than merely exclusive residential areas.

My capstone project was to go to Chicago and to see many high quality art in art museum and murals/monuments in public in the city. It was also to study the diverse art culture of Chicago.