MICHIGAN BOULEVARD AND GRANT PARK, CHICAGO, VIEWED FROM THE WEST SHORE OF LAKE MICHIGAN

1. Blackstone Hotel 2. Harvester Building 3. Congress Hotel 4. Auditorium Hotel 5. Fine Arts Building 6. Chicago Club 7. McCormick Building 8. Stratford Hotel 9. Railway Exchange 10. Orchestra Hall 11. Pullman Building 12. Gas Building 13. Lake View Building 14. Illinois Athletic Club 15. Monroe Building 16. University Club 17. Ward Building

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Chicago (shĭ-kä´gō), Ill. [The “Windy City”], probably received its name from the Indian Checagua, meaning “wild onion” and “pole-cat.”

It is the second city and largest railway center of the United States, and is situated on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouths of the rivers Chicago and Calumet, five hundred and ninety feet above sea level and fifteen to seventy-five feet above the lake. It is eight hundred and fifty miles from Baltimore, the nearest Atlantic port, and two thousand four hundred and fifteen miles from San Francisco.

Chicago is noted for the magnitude of its commercial enterprises; for the greatness of its financial institutions; for the excellence of its parks and public playgrounds—particularly in the number, equipment, and splendid use of its small parks in congested localities; for its universities, its efficient public-school system, and for other educational, artistic, and morally uplifting institutions that give to it an enlightened, a cultured, and a progressive citizenship.

It is estimated that not more than 350,000 of the inhabitants are of native American parentage; about 550,000 are Germans, 250,000 are Irish, 225,000 Scandinavians, 160,000 Poles, 110,000 Bohemians, 40,000 Italians, 60,000 Canadians, and 100,000 English and Scottish. There are some fourteen languages, besides English, each of which is spoken by ten thousand or more persons.

The city has a water-front on the lake of twenty-six miles and is divided by the Chicago River and its branches into three portions, known as the North, South, and West Sides, to which must be added the “Loop,” or business part of the city. The site of the city is remarkably level, rising very slightly from the lake; and its streets are usually wide and straight. Among the chief business-thoroughfares are State, Clark, Madison, Randolph, Dearborn, and La Salle Streets, and Wabash Avenue. Perhaps the finest residence streets are Prairie and Michigan Avenues and Drexel and Grand Boulevards, on the South Side, and Lake Shore Drive, on the North Side.

A splendid bird’s-eye view of Chicago is obtained by ascending to the top of the tower of the Auditorium on Congress Street and Michigan Boulevard. This huge building, erected in 1887-1889 at a cost of three million five hundred thousand dollars, includes a large hotel and a handsome theater. The Fine Arts or Studebaker Building, adjoining the Auditorium, on Michigan Boulevard, is one of the show buildings of Chicago, and has deservedly been described as the focus of the artistic and intellectual life of Chicago, containing as it does a theater, concert, assembly, and lecture rooms, studios of leading artists, and the meeting-places of several clubs. The beautiful Romanesque building to the north of the Fine Arts Building is the Chicago Club. A little farther to the north, at the corner of Jackson Boulevard, is the tall Railway Exchange Building, erected in 1903-1904, and cased in tiles. Next to this on the north is the new building of the Chicago Orchestra Association, on the roof of which is the house of the “Cliff Dwellers,” a literary and artistic club. A little to the south of the Auditorium, at the corner of Harrison Street, is the Harvester Building, erected in 1907, beyond which is the palatial Blackstone Hotel. A little farther to the south is the Illinois Central Station.