Chicago, Illinois

City: Chicago

County: Cook

State: Illinois

Lat/Long: 41.8500, -87.6500

Sporadically settled up to 1833, the citizens of Chicago voted to incorporate the city in 1833, although Illinois did not officially organize it until 1835. The Illinois General Assembly proclaimed Chicago a city only two years later and it became the fastest-growing city in the world for much of the nineteenth century. It eventually became not just Illinois' largest city, but one of the largest in the United States. Providing the main transit point from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, it soon became a major railroad center and a locus for American manufacturing and shipping. It was the site of the 1860 Republican National Convention, which selected Abraham Lincoln as the party's presidential nominee, and the subsequent Civil War only fostered Chicago's rapid development.

Frank A. Randall, History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago, 2d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 1-10; A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1884), 1:28-149, 244-263; Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 1856, 1860 and 1864 (Minneapolis, MN: Charles W. Johnson, 1893), 83-174; An Act to Change the Corporate Powers of the Town of Chicago; An Act to Incorporate the City of Chicago.