COURTHOUSE AND CITY HALL
Of Chicago's nearly 2,500,000 inhabitants a large percentage are foreign born, Germans, Poles, Irish, and Jews having settled here in great numbers. About forty languages are spoken, and newspapers are regularly published in ten of them.
With its suburbs, Chicago stretches nearly 30 miles along the shore of Lake Michigan and reaches irregularly inland about 10 miles. The city limits inclose an area of over 191 square miles, which the two branches of the Chicago River cut into three parts, known as the South, West, and North sides. The three divisions of the city are connected by bridges and by tunnels under the river.
Though business is spreading to the West Side, the central business section is still on the South Side and extends from the Chicago River beyond Twenty-sixth Street. Most of the great wholesale and retail houses, banks, theaters, hotels, and public buildings are crowded into this area, and here is the largest department store in the world, in which over 9000 people work. The automobile industry alone occupies nearly all of Michigan Avenue for two miles south of Twelfth Street.
Surrounding this crowded business section are most of the terminals of Chicago's many railroads. These connect the city with New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in the East; with New Orleans, Galveston, and Atlanta in the South; as well as with San Francisco and the other large cities of the West. The courthouse and city hall and the new Northwestern Railway Station are among the city's finest buildings.
Elevated railways and a freight subway have been built in recent years and have somewhat relieved the crowded condition of the streets. This subway, opened in 1905, connects with all the leading business and freight houses, and carries coal, ashes, garbage, luggage, and heavy materials of every kind to and from them.
THE NORTHWESTERN RAILWAY STATION