AtDDtA1: Windy City, Here We Come!

[Dave Monroe]

   "'Windy City, here we come!'" (AtD, Pt. I, p. 3)


Windy City

The earliest known "Windy City" citations are from 1876, and involve
Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy
City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the
bidding of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. All four of the
explanations below help with understanding the enduring popularity of
the "Windy City" term, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the
Columbian Exposition had both ended....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)

Q] From John Branch: "I've heard three explanations for the term Windy
City as an epithet for Chicago, Illinois: the common assumption that
it refers to the winds gusting through the city (understandable to
anyone who's been there); the boasting of Chicagoans to the rest of
America about the glories of their rebuilt city after the Great Fire;
and the blustering of Chicago politicians to the city's inhabitants.
My guess is that the first could easily be invention after the fact,
while the last is too local to account for the term's familiarity
elsewhere. What do your sources tell you?"

[A] It is indeed often said that the word windy in the name refers to
the long-winded and boastful speech of Chicago politicians.

The story you will commonly find is that it dates to shortly before
the great World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893. Chicago was putting
forward its claim with great verve and bombast. This really got up the
nose of people in New York, which was competing with Chicago to host
the exhibition. Animosity became so bad that Charles A Dana, editor of
the New York Sun, wrote an editorial telling New Yorkers to pay no
attention to the "nonsensical claims of that windy city. Its people
could not hold a world's fair even if they won it". The history books
tell us that Chicago did win it and did hold it (and even made a
profit from it). Books also tell us that the nickname of Windy City
dates from that editorial.

This story is wrong....

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-win1.htm

The accepted wisdom had been that "Windy City" comes from New York.
That's wrong.

Both Chicago and New York City were competing for what would become
the 1893 Columbian Exposition (World's Fair). New York Sun editor
Charles A. Dana allegedly wrote (about 1890) that the "Windy City"
couldn't hold the fair even if it won the bid. Chicago did win the bid
and held the fair successfully.

Charles Dana's alleged words have never been found. The Chicago
Tribune first mentions this theory in a 1933 article (below). Most
importantly, "windy city" has been found many years earlier than 1890.
Dana could not have either coined or popularized the term at that
time.

Many online computer newspaper databases showed that early citations
were coming from Cincinnati, Ohio. I made several trips to the Library
of Congress and found "Windy City" in the Cincinnati Enquirer of May
9, 1876. Our earliest "windy city" citation is now 1860, from
Milwaukee.

Chicago was called a "windy city" because of the wind off of Lake
Michigan. In the 1860s and 1870s, Chicago tried to sell itself as a
summer resort because of this wind.

Chicago is also known as a "windy city" from rival cities in the
Midwest, "windy" meaning "full of wind" or bombast. Cincinnati
newspapers used the term consistently in the 1870s, and are probably
responsible for the popularization of the term....

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/summary/

Thanks, davemarc ...


Chicago in the 1890s

Click on the links below to access scans of some of the sheet maps of
Chicago in the 1890s that are held at the University of Chicago
Library's Map Collection.

The 1890s were an extraordinary decade for Chicago, perhaps the only
period in the city's history when its status as a "world city" would
be disputed by few. The World's Columbian Exposition was held in 1893.
"Prairie-school" architects like Frank Lloyd Wright began to acquire a
measure of fame. Novels like Sister Carrie were inspired by the city's
peculiar mixture of wealth and squalor--and by its astonishing growth.
It is often said that Chicago grew more quickly in the second half of
the 19th century than any large city in the modern history of the
Western world. In the 1890s alone its population increased by 600,000.
In 1900, with 1.7 million people, Chicago was, by some measures,
(briefly) the fifth or sixth largest city in the world.

Transportation was inevitably a problem in the newly gigantic city,
but the adoption of "electric traction" in the 1890s eased the strain.
Horse and cable cars began to be replaced by electric streetcars, and
the first lines of the elevated railway system opened. At the very end
of the decade, plans were made for interurban lines to join steam
railroads in connecting the city and its suburbs. Other infrastructure
changes were also associated with rapid growth. The Sanitary and Ship
Canal, constructed between 1889 and 1900, reversed the flow of the
Chicago River (and its industrial wastes) away from rather than toward
Lake Michigan. In addition, the bicycle boom of the 1890s stimulated
the construction of paved roads into the countryside.

The maps are (with one exception) commercial maps. Their makers were
not primarily interested in creating a carefully dated record of the
built environment for future generations; they wanted to sell maps.
Their market consisted of Chicago's inhabitants and visitors, who used
the maps to get around. Hence, the focus of most of the maps is
infrastructure. Visitors to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition made
up the market of several of the maps; such maps inevitably focus on
the Exposition more than on the city....

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/maps/chi1890/

The city of Chicago.
Currier & Ives.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
New York, Currier & Ives, c1892.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/gmd:@filreq(@field(NUMBER+@band(g4104c+pm001500))+ at field(COLLID+citymap))

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/map_item.pl?data=/home/www/data/gmd/gmd410/g4104/g4104c/pm001500.sid&style=citymap&itemLink=r?ammem/gmd:@filreq(@field(NUMBER+@band(g4104c+pm001500))+ at field(COLLID+citymap))&title=The%20city%20of%20Chicago.

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/collections/pmap/thinking.html

Detail from Indexed Standard Guide Map of the World's Columbian
Exposition at Chicago (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1893). Newberry Library
call number: Map 2F oG104.C6:2W6

http://www.newberry.org/k12maps/module_17/chi_1893.html