In the Twentieth Century, Chicago’s Midway Airport had a sign that read “Crossroads of the World,” and during its heyday Midway literally was the aviation center of the world.  From a historical perspective the same has been true for Chicago reaching back a century earlier as a critical hub of the railroads, during the Industrial Age as a center for trade and manufacturing, and for centuries before a meeting place for uncounted generations of Native Americans.  

The geographic reality was that where the Chicago river and estuaries of the Chicago region meet the southwest corner of Lake Michigan attracted indigenous peoples, Potawatomi, Miami, Anishinaabeg, Ho-Chunk, or Sauk and assuredly others portaging the divide, arriving by canoe or on foot.  Sometimes they stayed for a while or moved with the migration of the game and seasonal changes. Hence this place called Chicago despite the low lying, swampy, muddy, and unattractive ground due to it’s elemental location and convenient waterways has continued for centuries to be a key to the continent.

This juxtaposition has spawned innumerable books on Chicago. In this episode we talk with author and Associate Professor of History John William Nelson Ph.D. about his recently published book Muddy Ground; Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent. This exhaustive history underpinned by impressive research re-enforces the basic fact that geography frequently dictates the destiny of an area and out of this meeting place and important key transportation link to the continent this muddy ground eventually gave rise to a mighty city.  Dr. Nelson’s book brings important new insights and a fresh perspective on the Canon of portage history for Chicago to offer the reader a fresh perspective of the region and its importance for Native Americans and foundational story of Chicago’s origin and settlement.

In this special episode of the Windy City Historians we revisit our discussion of 17th Century French explorer Jean Nicolet with the late historian John Swenson, J.D.. This was his last interview in which, John presents a new take, context, and history of Samuel de Champlain and Jean Nicolet’s adventures to establish New France, after the colony was taken by English privateers in 1629.

Join us to learn more about this amazing history of exploration to better understand the roots of the Western European conquest of the new world and Great Lakes region. Did Jean Nicolet really venture into Green Bay? Could he have surveyed the mid-continental divide and been feted by Illinois tribes? Listen in as we honor and give tribute to Chicago historian John Swenson, a great friend to the podcast, and some fascinating history.

In this Special Episode we take a view of Chicago History — Cicada style. For in the world of entomology, 2024 was a big year.  As two cicada broods The Great Southern Brood, which emerge every 13-years and is the largest of all periodical cicada broods and The Northern Illinois Brood which emerges every 17-years, coincided in 2024.  In places like Springfield, Illinois one could witness both broods in a cacophony of ear-shattering buzzing.  

The last time these broods coincided was in 1803, the same year Fort Dearborn was built near the lakefront at a bend in the Chicago River — what is now the intersection of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue.  For those paying attention walking through this intersection will see rectangular brass inserts marking the boundaries of Fort Dearborn.

It turns out the arrival of the 17-year cicadas offers an interesting metronome for the study of Chicago history.  These emergences have come at momentous times throughout the city’s history, and coincide with at least two events memorialized as stars on the Chicago flag. Join the Windy City Historians as we buzz through 221 years of history to see how cicadas left their mark on Chicago’s history. 

Chicago is blessed to still have two daily newspapers, while many other U.S. cities are lucky to have one. And too many these days have none. In light of such loss, it is remarkable to learn that at one time, Chicago had at least nine newspapers and in that age reporters and editors would do just about anything to get a scoop. The era is epitomized by the stage play “The Front Page” authored by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who mined their experiences as Chicago reporters into Broadway and Hollywood fame.

One of the most infamous men who lived through this Front Page Era and beyond was Harry Romanoff. As the resourceful night editor of the Chicago American “Romy”, as he was best know, would regularly outwit his competition armed with little more than a telephone to purloin gritty details, suss out the story, and get the scoop. 

Today my co-host Chris Lynch has scored a historic scoop! So the Windy City Historians can bring you a 54-year-old, previously unknown, and never before available audio of Harry “Romy” Romanoff spinning tales from his 50-year career. Do not miss hearing these incredible stories from the 1920s to the 1960s from the man himself. Stories about the rich and famous, murderers, high-society scandals, gangsters and more. Join us in this extended episode for the colorful antics and anecdotes of a key newsman who not only witnessed but helped create Chicago’s newspaper heyday. Also catch a rare recording of Romy’s friend William Sianis founder of the famed Billy Goat Tavern & Grill and the Cubs curse of the goat.

All too often history repeats itself — with tragic results. During the last 100-years, the killing of one person becomes symbolic and spawns a larger tragedy. Irregularly bubbling to the surface these crises rise from elemental rents and systemic failures in the fabric of society. We call to mind the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020 and beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles on March 3rd, 1991 and so on cascading back to the stoning and subsequent drowning of Eugene Williams on July 27th, 1919 off Chicago’s 29th Street Beach.

The violence inflicted on these three men (and countless others) focused outrage to rally outcries, spark civil unrest and riots lasting multiple days. The conditions fanning the flames did not occur in a vacuum nor isolation, but built over time, due to compounding slights, inequality, and oppression. Although intermittent riots sprang up in different eras and regions of the country, the basic facts were the same; Black men were killed or beaten by white policemen or in Eugene Williams’ case, stones thrown and the palpable anger of whites against Blacks caused the drowning of the 17 year-old.

In the aftermath of these deaths and days of violence people asked, “Why did this happen?”

In Windy City Historians podcast Episode 29 – “The Chicago Race Riots of 1919” we explore the conditions of that hot, “Red Summer”, where Chicago, (and other cities) wrestled with the chaos of civil unrest. Through interviews with Claire Hartfield, the author of “A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919”, as well as commentary from Professor Charles Branham, Ph.D. we walk through the riot’s lasting legacy on Chicago, it’s Black community, and the many questions raised by an oppressive summer a century ago. Questions that are still being raised today, more than a century later.

We are still living with many of the changes brought about by the Great War. The war to end all wars as World War I was called and the war’s impacts dramatically changed Chicago and the world. As we discuss, WWI tipped society to institute Prohibition, playing the national anthem at sporting events, spurred The Great Migration, suppressed of Chicago’s German culture, and made Jazz popular. All of these changes and more still affect and resonate in Chicago today.

In this episode join us as we talk with historian Joe Gustaitis about these fascinating stories from his third book Chicago Transformed: World War I and the Windy City. Don’t miss this great discussion about the early 20th Century transformation by WWI of Chicago from a strongly German city into an even more diverse patchwork quilt of peoples and ethnicities of today.

In American history, we were taught that pioneers and homesteaders moved from east to west settling the continent in the greater pursuit of “Manifest Destiny” — killing and obfuscating the First Nations peoples’ way of life.  However, another American pattern often overlooked is the migration from south to the north.  Starting less than a century after a Black man of Haitian decent named Jean Baptiste Point DeSable became Chicago’s first non-indigenous settler; African Americans in large numbers began leaving southern States and moving to the north, which historians now call “The Great Migration”. 

Their motives were that of people everywhere seeking jobs, opportunity, and a better life. Northern States offered jobs and a relief from the weight of Jim Crow. For many Chicago had became a beacon of hope as Black-owned newspapers and in particular the “Chicago Defender”, distributed by Pullman Porters, gave hope to generations of former slaves, farmers, and sharecroppers. 

Beginning as early as the 1880s and then from approximately 1910 to the 1970, rural southern Blacks by the thousands made their way north throughout these decades. And, just as the journey changed them, their music, culture, and customs changed Chicago. 

Northern cities, and Chicago in particular, were not always welcoming, as decent  housing was scarce as restrictive covenants and red-lining forced African Americans to live in “The Black Belt”. This tightly constrained strip of blocks on the city’s south side, initially between 22nd and 31st Streets, later extending south to 39th and eventually to 95th Street and roughly sandwiched between the railroad tracks of the Rock Island on the west and Illinois Central to the east.  But even with forced segregation, many black businesses thrived, and a sense of place was established creating Bronzeville and its famous “Stroll”.

Join the Windy City Historians as we delve into the Great Migration with Dr. Charles Brahnam, author and professor, and the perfect guide to take us on a journey into the Great Migration. A trip populated by famous brave and fearless black Chicagoans such as Ida B. Wells, Oscar DePriest, and Robert S. Abbott and into a better understand of this massive cultural shift for the nation and Chicago in particular.

In 1909 Chicago changed dramatically both physically and intellectually. Having grown through fits and starts via annexation and experiencing the most rapid population growth of any city in history, to that point, the Chicago City Council approved a new street and address system in 1908. The new address system took effect in 1909 and employed the Philadelphia and furlong systems to renumber, rename, and rationalize street names and addresses across the city.

1909 also ushered in a momentous intellectual shift in perceptions of what Chicago was and could be. Authored by architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett The Plan of Chicago offered an idyllic and revolutionary vision for Windy City that still resonate. Join us in this episode as we interview cartographer, historian, and geographer Dennis McClendon to delve into these concrete and esoteric plans that forever changed the physicality and vision of Chicago. Plans and improvements that are still relevant and reverberate acros Chicago’s streets, city planning, development and architecture to this day.

The path to riches is not often associated with journalism, but in the case of George Ade, writing for Chicago newspapers was his road to wealth and fame. Ade, (1866-1944) who was born and raised in Kentland, Indiana, attended Purdue University and then came to Chicago to work as a reporter in the heydays of newspapers.

Today George Ade is rarely remembered, with his books out of print, and decades since his musical comedies were performed. But from the 1890s to the early 20th century, he was compared to Mark Twain, a friend of his, and had not just one, but two hit plays on Broadway at the same time. Ade earned so much money from his successful books, plays and syndicated newspaper columns, he built an English Tutor on a 400-acre estate in Indiana, named Hazelden. There Ade threw big parties and was visited there by U.S. Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Calvin Coolidge. In fact, Taft began his Presidential campaign of 1908 from Hazelden.

Ade’s name lives on through his philanthropy, like the donation of 65 acres, with fellow alum David E. Ross, to Purdue University, for a football stadium in 1924, which is now known as Ross-Ade Stadium.

What was true then about Ade’s writing is also true now, and that is Ade’s stories are hilarious. His final book “The Old Time Saloon” (1931) is laugh-out-loud funny and a recent edition from the University of Chicago Press is annotated by Bill Savage.

Bill Savage, Ph.D. is a professor of English at Northwestern University and our guide through not only the work “The Old-Time Saloon: Not Wet – Not Dry, Just History” and this podcast. Dr. Savage paints a picture of the Chicago Ade knew from the high-class Saloons downtown to the more seedy establishments frequented by his friend, Finely Peter Dunne, whose literary bartender, Martin T. Dooley, delighted a nation with his quips.

Writers like Ade and Dunne started out as journalists, and along the way captured the rhythms of speech and the vernacular of the working man, and in doing so gave birth to a new type of literature. A style practiced later by authors such as James Farrell, Nelson Algren, Mike Royko and Stuart Dybek. We hope you will enjoy this dive into Chicago’s literary and drinking past.

October is Railroad history month in Chicago. Although we already released Episode 24 – The Railroads on the history of railroads in Chicago there was too much good stuff to stop there. So we are sharing this Bonus episode from our interview with retired railroad engineer and historian David Daruszka about his experiences as a locomotive engineer. We hope you will enjoy this additional segment in honor of Railroad History Month we are calling “Working on the Railroad.”