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Chicago And North Western Holdings Corporation Business Information, Profile, and History
One North Western Center
Chicago, Illinois 60606
U.S.A.
History of Chicago And North Western Holdings Corporation
Chicago and North Western Holdings Corporation is the holding company for the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company, the eighth largest railroad in the United States. Chicago and North Western (CNW) operates about 5,800 miles of track, serving nine midwestern and western states. The company is a leader in the transportation of many materials, including coal, motor vehicles, grain, iron, steel, chemicals, and lumber. In 1991, CNW hauled approximately 40 billion ton-miles of freight. CNW's east-west main line between Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska, is a primary part of the transcontinental freight path across the center of the country, connecting the Union Pacific Railroad lines to those of major eastern railroads. CNW's five major business groups correspond to the classes of freight they haul: Energy; Agricultural Commodities; Consumer Products; Global; and Automotive, Steel, and Chemicals. Western Railroad Properties, Inc. (WRPI), a wholly owned subsidiary, is part of the Energy group. WRPI transports low-sulphur coal from the southern Powder River Basin in Wyoming, the nation's largest low-sulphur coal reserve, primarily providing for electric generating plants in the Midwest and the South. CNW also operates a commuter rail service in the Chicago area under a contract with the Regional Transportation Authority.
The system that was to become the Chicago and North Western Railway came to life in January of 1836, when the charter for the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (GCU) was granted. The goal of the GCU, according to its charter, was to reach from Chicago to the Mississippi River, with its nearby lead mines at Dubuque, Iowa, and Galena, Illinois. No work was done, however, until 1847, when the project was bought out by a group of Chicago businessmen led by William Butler Ogden, Chicago's first mayor. By the end of 1848, the first ten miles of the railroad were complete and the GCU's first locomotive, the 'Pioneer,' was in action.
The railroad grew quickly in its early years, partly because the main wagon roads were so unreliable. By 1850, the railroad was 42 miles long, reaching the Fox River at Elgin, Illinois. That year, over 37,000 passengers rode the line. In the next three years, its length nearly tripled, terminating at Freeport, Illinois, 120 miles from Chicago. In 1854, GCU started building a more direct line to the Mississippi. This line, from West Chicago to Fulton on the Mississippi, became part of what is now the main double-track Chicago-to-Omaha line. Several 'firsts' were achieved over the next few years, including being the first western railroad to operate by telegraph in 1856 and the first to use Pulman Hotel Cars west of Chicago in 1877. In 1864, GCU merged with the Wisconsin-based Chicago and North Western Railway Company (of which GCU President Ogden was a part owner), and though the Galena was the larger of the two railroads, the combined company adopted the name Chicago and North Western Railway, since it better reflected the planned direction of expansion.
By 1867, the CNW stretched to Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the Missouri River. Here it became an important supply line from the East for the Union Pacific, which was about to cross the Rocky Mountains. The first transcontinental line was finished in 1869 and included the CNW as a vital piece of the famous 'Overland Route.'
The CNW continued to expand quickly through the remainder of the nineteenth century. In addition to its westward growth, the railroad was transporting huge amounts of iron ore and lumber from northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. By 1880, the Chicago and North Western may have been the largest single railroad in the United States in miles of road. Two years later, CNW gained controlling interest in the 1,147-mile Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha Railway Company--or Omaha Road. This acquisition gave the CNW a connection with lines into Canada, and by 1885 the CNW system's gross revenues were third highest among the nation's railroads, trailing only the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading. The system's tracks totaled 5,820 miles that year, and 8,308 miles by the turn of the century.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, CNW became one of the first railroads to strongly emphasize safety. R. C. Richards, the company's general claim agent at the time, wrote a book in 1906 called Railroad Accidents, Their Cause and Prevention. This led to the creation of the first railroad department specifically geared toward safety and accident prevention. CNW's 'Safety First' campaign, begun in 1910, became a national slogan, and in 1912 Richards contributed to the founding of the National Safety Council.
The pattern of unhindered growth for railroads began to change in the 1920s. As competition from automobiles and trucks increased, the railroad system began to shrink. CNW's mileage peaked in 1925, after which secondary branches were closed because of highway and waterway competition and increasing regulation. The onset of the Depression made matters worse, and CNW foundered in the 1930s. Company revenues dropped from $154 million in 1929 to $72 million in 1932. In 1935 the company went bankrupt and petitioned for reorganization.
The reorganization of CNW took nine years to complete, the result being a much more streamlined operation. During this period, R. L. Williams, who became chief executive officer in 1939, sold or abandoned over a thousand miles of unproductive track, as well as 259 unnecessary depots, 777 other station buildings, 1,467 miles of right-of-way fencing, and a couple thousand other superfluous structures. CNW also began to rapidly switch from steam locomotives to diesel power. Its diesel-electric force grew from eight engines in 1940 to 146 in 1947. In that same span, the number of steam locomotives owned by the company fell from 1,252 to 890. Also during the reorganization period, CNW became a pioneer in streamliner passenger service. The first of its fleet of '400' streamliners was the Twin Cities 400, which first ran in 1935. By 1947 CNW was running daily transcontinental streamliners in conjunction with Union Pacific. As the railroad's first century of operation drew to a close, it ranked sixteenth among the nation's railroads in total operating revenues and eighth in passenger revenues. Farm products accounted for 27 percent of CNW's freight revenues, confirming its reputation as a granger railroad.
In spite of the reorganization and streamlining efforts, CNW struggled financially through the first half of the 1950s. At the end of the first quarter of 1956, the company showed an $8 million deficit. Poor management, high terminal costs, short hauls, and light traffic had led to a situation so severe that millions of dollars worth of track and scrap were being sold just to meet payroll costs.
A startling turnaround began when Ben W. Heineman was named chairman of the company in April of 1956. Heineman, a lawyer, was only 42 years old at the time and relatively new to the railroad business. He began making bold moves immediately. Many older executives were retired or demoted in favor of younger, more open-minded managers. He decentralized the departmental structure of the company to resemble the divisional organization used by other major railroads. Realizing that CNW already owned enough diesel engines to run the line, he abandoned the entire fleet of 287 steam locomotives without acquiring additional diesels. And he infuriated shippers by eliminating free pickup and delivery of less-than-carload shipments, saving the railroad about $1.5 million a year in trucking costs alone. Forty-five hundred people were cut from the payroll in a year and a half, as bookkeeping and accounting methods were mechanized and watchmen replaced by automated equipment at crossings.
CNW's financial situation steadily improved under Heineman's leadership through the next few years. The company showed a profit of $8.5 million in 1963 even though total revenues were lower than they were prior to Heineman's arrival. During this period CNW acquired some smaller railroads, including the Litchfield & Madison, the Minneapolis & St. Louis, and the Chicago Great Western.
In the later part of the 1960s, CNW began to actively take part in the trend among railroads to diversify their business in order to survive. First, two chemical companies were acquired in 1965; next, the company attached an old conglomerate, the Philadelphia and Reading Corp., which included Lone Star Steel and Union Underwear. In 1968, Northwest Industries was formed as a holding company for the whole collection of companies, with Heineman in charge. The railroad itself, however, was losing money. In 1969 alone CNW lost $14.8 million. By 1970, it was clear that the CNW was the biggest drag on the growth of Northwest Industries. Once again, a program of massive track abandonment was undertaken in order to cut costs and streamline the system. In spite of these efforts, Heineman decided that Northwest Industries should sell the railroad, and he began looking for buyers.
After failing to sell CNW or merge it with other railroads in the region, the idea of an employee buyout arose. The idea first belonged to Larry Provo, who had joined the company as an accountant at age 29 and would go on to succeed Heineman as president. After two years of negotiations, the employee buyout deal was completed in early 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, employee purchasers had to commit to buy at least $1 million worth of stock. In May, $3.6 million worth of shares were bought when the stock was offered, making the company the largest employee-owned corporation in the United States. One thousand of the 14,000 employees of CNW took part in the purchase, ranging from Provo himself, who invested $100,000, the maximum allowed, to secretaries who bought the minimum ten shares for $500. The official name of the company was then changed to the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company. CNW reported profits of $4.76 million for its first four months under employee ownership, compared to $4.4 million for its last full year as part of Northwest Industries. With assets in 1972 of $436 million, CNW was at that time the twelfth biggest railroad in the country.
The streamlining of CNW's operations continued throughout the 1970s. Twenty-four hundred miles of underused track were abandoned between 1970 and 1977, leaving just under 10,000 miles in use. During the recession of 1974 and 1975, eight percent of the company's work force was laid off, and hundreds of the company's obsolete 40-foot grain cars were disassembled at the Clinton, Iowa, repair shop and sold for scrap. Most of CNW's gains in earnings were generated by its 500-mile stretch of double track roadbed between Chicago and Omaha. Traffic along this stretch, which included the hauling of produce, coal, and piggyback trailers, more than doubled during the 1970s, reaching 350,000 cars in 1977. In spite of these factors, CNW lost $8.3 million in 1975.
In October of 1976, Provo died and James R. Wolfe became president of CNW. The company that Wolfe inherited was struggling, largely due to railroad wars in which too many carriers were competing for too few customers. Wolfe's solution was to adopt a strategy contrary to that of the other regional carriers. The Milwaukee Road and the Rock Island, CNW's primary competitors, both began to seek transcontinental business. Wolfe and CNW did the opposite, selling off rights-of-way and scrapping another 2,000 miles of track. These moves amounted to discarding 40 percent of the system that had accounted for a mere four percent of profits. Thanks to these measures, CNW earned $16.2 million in 1977 compared to a $389 million loss for the Milwaukee Road and liquidation for the Rock Island. These gains were partly due to increased interchange business from Union Pacific on its main east-west line as well as a rich new auto-carrying contract from Toyota and the company's first mail contract. By 1980, CNW had the preeminent routes through the Midwest going both east-west and north-south, having bought out the best lines of those two foundering competitors. The company's profits were up to $39 million that year.
CNW and its subsidiary, Western Railroad Properties, Inc., began serving the gigantic Powder River Basin coal mines in 1984. The low-sulphur coal, needed to meet clean-air regulations in some industrial regions, was hauled along 210 miles of track from the Basin in eastern Wyoming to Joyce, Nebraska, where it connected with the Union Pacific. In 1987, this run produced a $59 million profit, for which CNW hauled about one-fifth of the area's coal output that year.
Nevertheless, the 1980s were a difficult decade for railroads in general. The deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980 eliminated some business, and railroads were also hard hit by the farm depression. In order to create an easier mechanism for diversifying, a new holding company, CNW Corporation, was formed in 1985. Subsidiaries formed or purchased soon thereafter included 400 Freight Services, Inc., and the snowplow manufacturer Douglas Dynamics, both of which were sold off in 1988.
In 1986, work was completed on Global One, a highly automated double-stack facility located near downtown Chicago. Double-stack container service, which had first been tested two years earlier by CNW and Union Pacific, had grown so popular that the company saw fit to invest $36 million in the facility, the first in the United States geared completely for double-stack service. Global One is capable of loading and unloading three double-stack trains at the same time, each 200 units in size. A second double-stack facility, Global Two, was opened in 1989 to meet growing demand. Global Two is located just west of Chicago, near CNW's Proviso Yard.
Robert Schmiege became Chief Executive Officer of CNW in August of 1988 after Wolfe's death. In 1989, CNW Corporation was purchased in a leveraged buyout by a group of investors that was led by Blackstone Capital Partners L.P. The group also included the securities firm Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette, the Union Pacific Railroad, and CNW senior mangement. The buyout was engineered in order to avert a hostile takeover attempt by Japonica Partners, a New York-based investment group. Valued at $950 million, the buyout exceeded Japonica's bid of $747 million. A new holding company, Chicago and North Western Holdings Corporation, was thus formed to take the place of CNW Corporation, which continued to exist on paper as a subsidiary to 'Holdings' and parent company to the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company.
Company strategy after the acquisition centered on controlling costs by, among other things, reducing personnel. This was made possible largely due to increased automation, facility consolidation, and reduction of train crew size. The average size of a CNW train crew fell from 3.7 persons in 1988 to 2.2 at the end of 1991, the lowest in the industry. The total number of company employees was reduced by almost 28 percent--from 8,194 to 5,910--during that period.
As part of a $1.2 million recapitalization of CNW, the company went public once again in 1992 with a $200 million stock offering. The largest stockholders were Blackstone, Union Pacific, the Management Investors, and Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette.
Transportation of both freight and passengers is by nature a volatile industry. Chicago and North Western, like other railroads, is at the mercy of the economy, since the amount of freight to be hauled is dictated by the nation's level of production. Railroads also frequently contend with the possibility of labor disputes, a problem that worsens as more jobs are lost to automation. And because railroads interchange freight with each other, a strike or lockout at one company can have a domino effect. Throughout its history, however, CNW has shown remarkable resiliency and has adapted to every crisis the industry has faced. For well over a century, the Chicago and North Western has been the only left-handed railroad in the United States, operating on the left track in two-track territory. Perhaps this willingness to go against the current will enable the company to continue finding ways to thrive and areas to pioneer.
Principal Subsidiaries: Chicago and North Western Transportation Company; Western Railroad Properties, Inc.
Related information about Chicago
41°53N 87°38W, pop (2000e) 2 896 000. Third
largest city in the USA; seat of Cook Co, NE Illinois, on L
Michigan; built on the site of Fort Dearborn; settled in the 1830s;
city status, 1837; developed as a result of its strategic position
linking the Great Lakes with the Mississippi R after the Illinois
and Michigan Canal was completed (1848), and after the railway to
the E was opened (1853); much of the city destroyed by fire, 1871;
notorious gangster activity in the Prohibition years (1920s),
notably by Al Capone; now the major industrial, commercial,
financial and cultural centre for the US interior; electrical
machinery, metal products, steel (one-quarter of the nation's steel
produced in and around the city), textiles, chemicals, food
products, printing and publishing; commerce and finance centred
upon ‘The Loop’ area; transport centre of the USA, with one of the
busiest airports in the world; major rail network and inland port;
seven universities; Sears Tower (1974), the world's second tallest
building in 1999 (443 m/1454 ft); professional teams,
Cubs, White Sox (baseball), Bulls (basketball), Bears (football),
Black Hawks (ice hockey); Lyric Opera, Art Institute, Museum of
Science and Industry, Shedd Aquarium, Planetarium; Chicago Film
Festival (Nov).
) is the largest city in
the U.S. state of
Illinois, as well as
the third-most populous city in the United States,
with nearly 2.9 million people. Located along the southwestern
shore of Lake
Michigan, it is the seat of Cook County.
Chicago is known as the "Second City," the "Windy City," the "City of Big Shoulders", and
"Chi-town". When combined with its suburbs and nine surrounding counties in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana, the greater metropolitan area
known as Chicagoland
encompasses a population greater than 9.4 million, making it the
third largest in the United States.
Since its 1833 founding as a frontier town of the Old Northwest, Chicago has grown into one of the
ten most influential world cities.The World According to GaWC (2006).
Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network.
Chicago today is the financial, economic, and cultural capital of
the Midwest, and is recognized as a major transportation,
business, and architectural center.
Origin of name
The indigenous Potawatomi tribe called the marshes on which Chicago was later built "Checagou
(prounounced 'She-Ka-Gan')," which translates to "wild onion" or
"garlic." Before Chicago's founding, the name of the river was
spelled several ways, such as "Chetagu" or "Shikago."
The origin of Chicago's nickname as "The Windy City" is debated
(see List of nicknames for Chicago). The most common
explanation had been that the phrase was created by New York
newspapers in the 1880s during a national debate over which city
would host the 1893 World's Fair, making reference to the long-windedness of
the city's supporters.
History
During the mid-1700s, the Chicago area was inhabited primarily
by Potawatomis, who
took the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox people. In 1803, the United States Army
built Fort
Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Fort Dearborn
Massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later ceded the land to the
United States in the Treaty of St. Louis of 1816. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was
organized with a population of 350, and within seven years it grew
to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated
on March 4, 1837.
Starting in 1848, the city became an important transportation link
between the eastern and western United States with the opening of
the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, Chicago's first
railway, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which allowed
shipping from the Great Lakes through Chicago to the Mississippi River.
With a flourishing economy that brought many new residents from
rural communities and immigrants from Europe, Chicago grew from a city of 299,000 to
nearly 1.7 million between 1870 and 1900. The city's manufacturing
and retail sectors dominated the Midwest and greatly influenced the
American economy, with the Union Stock Yards' dominating the packing
trade.
After the Great
Chicago Fire of 1871, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and
growth.Bruegmann, Robert (2004-2005). Built Environment of the
Chicago Region. Encyclopedia of Chicago (online
version). During Chicago's rebuilding period, the first
skyscraper was
constructed in 1885 using steel-skeleton construction. In 1893, Chicago hosted the
World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the
present location of Jackson Park. The term "midway" for a fair or
carnival referred originally to the Midway, a strip of park land
that still runs through the University of Chicago campus.
The city was the site of labor conflicts and unrest during this
period, which included the Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886.
Concern for social problems among Chicago's lower classes led to
the founding of Hull
House in 1889, of which Jane Addams was a co-founder. The city also invested in
many large, finely-landscaped municipal parks, which also included
public sanitation facilities.
Lake Michigan -
the primary source of fresh water for the city - was already highly
polluted from population growth and the rapidly growing industries
in and around Chicago. The city responded by embarking on several
large public works
projects, including a large excavation project which built tunnels
below Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs which were two miles (3 km) off
the lakeshore. Beginning in 1855, Chicago constructed the first
comprehensive sewer system in the U.S. In 1900, the problem of
sewage was solved by reversing the direction of the River's flow
with the construction of the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal leading to the Illinois River.
The 1920s brought international notoriety to Chicago as gangsters
such as Al Capone
battled each other and the law during the Prohibition era.
Nevertheless, the 1920s also saw a large increase in Chicago
industry as well as the first arrivals of the Great
Migration that would lead thousands of mostly Southern blacks
to Chicago and other Northern cities. On December 2, 1942, the world's first controlled
nuclear
reaction was conducted at the University of
Chicago as part of the top secret Manhattan
Project.
Mayor Richard J.
Nevertheless, the city hosted the 1968
Democratic National Convention and saw the construction of the
Sears Tower (which
became the world's tallest building), McCormick Place, and
O'Hare Airport.
In 1983 Harold
Washington became the first African American to be elected to the office of
mayor; As a part of its environmentally friendly image, Chicago
declared Peregrine
Falcon, a protected species that started to build its nests in
Chicago skyscrapers, the official bird of the city in 1999.Peregrine Falcon:
Official City Bird of Chicago.
Geography and climate
Located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of
Lake Michigan,
Chicago's official geographic coordinates are . It sits on the
continental
divide at the site of the Chicago Portage, connecting the Mississippi River and
the Great Lakes
watersheds. The
city lies beside Lake Michigan and two rivers: the Chicago River in
downtown and the Calumet River in the industrial far South Side flow
entirely or partially through Chicago. The Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal connects the Chicago River with the
Des Plaines
River, which runs to the west of the city.
When Chicago was founded in the 1830s, most of the early building
began around the mouth of the Chicago River. According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, Chicago has a total area of 234.0 square miles
(606.1 km²), of which 227.1 square miles (588.3 km²) is
land and 6.9 square miles (17.8 km²) is water.
Since the first recorded earthquake in 1804,200th Anniversary of the First
Recorded Chicago Earthquake (9/14/2004). More recently, an
earthquake with an epicenter in Ottawa, Illinois,
registering about 4.3 on the Richter scale shook some buildings in Chicago on
June 28,
2004.
Climate
Chicago, like much of the Midwest, has a climate that is prone to extreme, often
volatile, weather conditions. Weatherbase. According to the
National
Weather Service, Chicago's highest official temperature reading
of 105 °F (40 °C) was recorded on July 24, 1934. The lowest temperature of −27 °F
(−32 °C) degrees was recorded on January 20, 1985.
Chicago's yearly precipitation averages about 38 inches (965 mm). Chicago's highest one
day precipitation total was 6.49 inches (164 mm) which fell on
August 14, 1987.
Cityscape
[[Image:DowntownChicagoILatNight.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Downtown
Chicago along the
Chicago River looking northeast]]
The city?s urban context is organized within a grid pattern. The Northwest
and Southwest sides of the city area also referenced with
frequency, though they tend to be subsumed under one of the three
aforementioned areas.
Since the first steel-framed high-rise building of the world was
constructed in the city in 1885, Chicago has been known for the
skyscraper.Chicago (2004).
Chicago Public Library. Today, many high-rise buildings are
located in the downtown area, notably in the Loop and along the
lakefront and the Chicago River. The three tallest buildings are
the Sears Tower
(also the tallest building in North America), the Aon Center, and
the John Hancock
Center. There are clusters of industrialized areas, including the lakefront near the
Indiana border, the area
south of Midway
Airport, and the banks of the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal.
Future building sites that will contribute to Chicago's skyline
include Waterview
Tower, 400 North Lake Shore Drive, and the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
Along Lake Shore
Drive, parks line the lakefront. The most notable of these
parks are Grant Park and Millennium Park, which border the east end of the Loop,
Lincoln Park on the north side, and Jackson Park
in the Hyde
Park neighborhood on the south side. Interspersed within this
system of parks are 31 beaches, a zoo and several bird sanctuaries, McCormick Place
Convention Center, Navy
Pier, Soldier
Field, the Museum Campus, and a water treatment plant.
Pushed along by the national real estate boom in recent years,
Chicago has seen an unprecedented surge in skyscraper construction,
most notably in the area directly south (South Loop)
and north (River North) of the Loop. However, these homes (and
others throughout Chicago) have been all but demolished in
Chicago's recent movement to replace public housing with
mixed-income, progressive new housing developments, known as the
Plan for Transformation (see The Chicago Housing
Authority).
Regardless of this, many areas of the South Side, despite
perceptions to the otherwise, are stable, middle-class, and
diverse. U.S. Bureau of the Census (accessed April 20,
2006).
As one of the largest cities in North America, the population of
Chicago is cosmopolitan. This encompasses about one-fifth of the
entire population of the state of Illinois and 1% of the population of the United States. The
population
density was 12,750.3 people per square mile (4,923.0/km²). The racial makeup of
the city was 36.39% Black
or African American, 31.32% White, 26.02%
Hispanic or
Latino,
4.33% Asian and
Pacific Islander, 1.64% from two or more races, 0.15%
Native American, and 0.15% from other
races.Chicago Demographics
(2003). US Census Bureau The city itself makes up 23.3%
percent of the total population of Illinois, down from a high of
44.3% in 1930.
Like most large American cities, Chicago is a minority-majority city.
Of the 1,061,928 households, 28.9% have children under the age of
18 living with them, 35.1% were married couples living together, 18.9% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 40.4% were non-families.
Of the total population, 28.1% of those under the age of 18 and
15.5% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
Chicago has a large Irish-American population on its South Side. The
majority of African Americans are also located on Chicago's South Side. Other European ethnic groups are the
Germans,
Italians and
Polish. Chicago
has the largest population of Swedish-Americans of any city in the U.S. with
approximately 123,000. After the Great Chicago Fire,
many Swedish carpenters helped to rebuild the city, which led to
the saying the Swedes built Chicago.Chicago Stories - Swedes in Chicago
(2006). Chicago is the home of the Evangelical
Covenant Church www.covchurch.org..
Chicago has the largest Bulgarian community in the world (outside Bulgaria) with more than
150,000 Bulgarians living in the city. The city has the largest
ethnically Polish
population outside of Poland, making it one of the most important Polonia centers.America the diverse -
Chicago's Polish neighborhoods (5/15/2005). USA Weekend
Magazine. Chicago is also the second-largest SerbianSerbian Delegation
(4/30/2004). WTCC Weekly News at www.wtcc.org. and
Lithuanian
city,Cities Guide Chicago -
A hard-knock life (2006). Economist.com. and the third
largest Greek city in the
world.Chicago Stories - The Greeks
in Chicago (2006). Accessed June 5, 2006. Chicago has a large
Romanian-American community with more than
100,000,About Us. The city is home
to the seat of the head of the Assyrian Church
of the East, Mar
Dinkha IV, the Evangelical Covenant Church www.covchurch.org.,
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
headquarters.Contact Us.
ELCA.org.
The Chicago Metropolitan area is also a major center for Indian-Americans and
South Asians.
Chicago has the third-largest South Asian population in the United
States, after New York
City and the San Francisco Bay Area. The Devon Avenue
corridor on Chicago's north side is one of the largest South Asian
neighborhoods in North
America. Chicago also has the second-largest Puerto Rican
population in the United States after New York City.
Population
Chicago's 2006 population of estimate of 2,873,790 is debated by
some since there has been signifcant construction in the city in
the 6 years since the 2000 census.
Over 1/3 of the population of Chicago is concentrated in the
lakefront neighborhoods of the city (from Rogers Park in
the north to Hyde Park in the south). This makes Chicago's lakefront
the most densely populated area in the United States outside of
New York City.
www.demographia.com/db-chi-nhd2000.htm
Economy
Chicago has the third largest gross
metropolitan product in the nation - approximately $390 billion. The
city has also been rated as having the most balanced economy in the
United States due to its high level of
diversification.www.worldbusinesschicago.com/
about/upload/20ChicagoSunTimes6-23-03.pdf Moody's: Chicago's
Economy Most Balanced in US (1/23/2003). Accessed 08/22/2006 from
'Site Selection Online' at
www.siteselection.com/issues/2006/mar/p176/.
Chicago is a major financial center with the second largest central business
district in the U.S. The city is the headquarters of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (the Seventh District of
the Federal Reserve). The city is also home to four major financial
and futures exchanges, including the Chicago Stock
Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), the Chicago Board
Options Exchange (CBOE), and the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange (the "Merc"). Chicago and the surrounding
areas also house many major brokerage firms and insurance
companies, such as Allstate Corporation and Zurich North America. Accessed
from 'SAGE Publications' at edq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/1/10?ijkey=50c44cb29d68315499a2aa3771131b328064bf28&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha.
Manufacturing (which includes chemicals, metal, machinery, and
consumer electronics), printing and publishing, and food processing
also play major roles in the city's economy. Encyclopedia of
Chicago (online edition). Several medical products and services
companies are headquartered in the Chicago area, including Baxter
International, Abbott Laboratories, and the Healthcare Financial
Services division of General Electric. Moreover, the construction of the
Illinois
and Michigan Canal, which helped move goods from the Great Lakes south on the
Mississippi
River, and the railroads in the 1800s made the city a major
transportation center in the United States. In the 1840s, Chicago
became a major grain
port, and in the 1850s and 1860s Chicago's pork and beef industry
expanded. Chicago is third in the U.S. behind Las Vegas and
Orlando as
far as the number of conventions hosted annually.Chicago falls to 3rd in U.S.
convention industry (4/26/2006). Crain's Chicago
Business. In addition, Chicago is home to eleven Fortune 500 companies, while
the metropolitan area hosts an additional 21 Fortune 500
companies.Fortune 500 2006 -
Illinois. CBRE - CB Richard Ellis, at
www.cbre.com/NR/rdonlyres/9326419A-60CC-47BC-9960-448BD4B32C52/0/MarketOutlook06FINAL.pdf.
In 2006, Chicago placed 10th on the UBS list of the world's richest
cities.
Law and government
Chicago is the county
seat of Cook County. The government of the City of Chicago is
divided into executive and legislative branches. The Mayor of Chicago is the
chief
executive, elected by general election for a term of four
years. In addition to the mayor, Chicago's two other citywide
elected officials are the clerk and the treasurer.
The City
Council is the legislative branch and is made up of 50
alderman, one elected from each ward in the city.
The council takes official action through the passage of ordinances
and resolutions.
During much of the last half of the 19th century, Chicago's
politics were dominated by a growing Democratic Party organization dominated by ethnic
ward-healers. During the 1880s and 1890s, Chicago had a powerful
radical tradition with large and highly organized socialist,
anarchist and labor organizations. For much of the 20th century,
Chicago has been among the largest and most reliable Democratic
strongholds in the United States, with Chicago's Democratic vote
totals' leading the state of Illinois to be "solid
blue" in presidential elections since 1992. The citizens of
Chicago have not elected a Republican mayor since 1927, when William Thompson
was voted into office. The strength of the party in the city is
partly a consequence of Illinois state politics, where the Republicans have come
to represent the rural and farm concerns while the Democrats
support urban issues such as Chicago's public school funding.
Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's mastery of machine politics
preserved the Chicago Democratic Machine long after the demise of
similar machines in other large American cities. During much of
that time the city administration found opposition mainly from a
liberal "independent" faction of the Democratic Party. Chicago
Tribune, found at
qrc.depaul.edu/djabon/Articles/ChicagoCrime20030101.htm. After
adopting crime-fighting techniques recommended by the New York Police
Department and the Los Angeles
Police Department in 2004,David Heinzmann and Rex W. City murder toll lowest
in decades Chicago Tribune. Chicago recorded 448
homicides, the lowest total since 1965. They have prompted some
calls of discrimination since these cameras tend to be prevalent in
Black and Latino communities with higher than average crime
rates.
The FBI often does not accept crime statistics submitted by the
Chicago
Police Department, which tallies data differently than other
cities. As a result, Chicago is often omitted from studies like
Morgan Quitno's
annual "Safest/Most Dangerous City" survey.Locy, Toni (6/7/2005).
USA Today.
Education
Public education
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is the school district that
controls over 600 public elementary and high schools in Chicago.
Chicago Public Schools at www.cps.k12.il.us/AtAGlance.html.
is led by CEO Arne Duncan. The CPS also
includes several selective-admission magnet schools, such as
Whitney Young Magnet High School, William
Jones College Preparatory, Walter Payton
College Prep, Lane
Tech College Prep, and Northside College Preparatory High School.
Like many urban U.S. school districts, CPS suffered many problems
throughout the latter half of the 20th century, including
overcrowding, underfunding, mismanagement and a high dropout rate.
In 1987, then U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett named
the Chicago Public Schools as the "worst in the nation." Several
school reform
initiatives have since been undertaken to improve the system's
performance. Reforms have included a system of Local School
Councils, Charter
Schools, and efforts to end social promotion. The city is home to two of
America's top research universities: University of
Chicago in Hyde Park on the South Side and Northwestern
University in northside suburb Evanston. Several
private Catholic universities are located in Chicago, such as
DePaul
University (the largest private university in Illinois),
St. Xavier
University, and Loyola University.
The University of Illinois at Chicago is the city's largest
university and features the nation's largest medical school. The
Illinois Institute of Technology in Bronzeville has
renowned engineering and architecture programs. Dominican
University, outside Chicago in River Forest, teaches many
library courses at the Chicago Public Library's Harold Washington
Building. North Park University, a small Christian liberal arts
university affiliated with the Evangelical
Covenant Church, is located on the northwest side in the North
Park neighborhood. These accredited seminaries are joined in a
consortium known as the Association of Chicago Theological Schools
(ACTS).Association of Chicago Theological
Schools The Moody Bible Institute is near downtown. Chicago State
University and Northeastern Illinois University are other state
universities in Chicago. The city also has a large community college
system known as the City Colleges of Chicago. Additionally, there are
several smaller colleges noted for their fine arts education programs -
Roosevelt
University, Columbia College Chicago, and The
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Culture
Chicago has a major theater scene, and is the birthplace of modern improvisational
comedy. The city is home to two renowned comedy troupes:
The Second City
and Steppenwolf
Theatre Company (on the city's north side), the Goodman Theatre, and the
Victory Gardens Theater. Other theatres, from nearly 100 storefront
performance spaces such as the Strawdog Theatre Company in the
Lakeview
area to landmark downtown houses such as the Chicago Theatre, present
a variety of plays and
musicals. The
city is home to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, the Joffrey Ballet, and several modern and jazz dance
troupes. The city's classical music scene is also home to companies
including Music
of the Baroque, Chicago Opera Theater, the Chicago Chamber
Musicians, Chicago a cappella, and many others.
Chicago is known for its Chicago blues, Chicago soul, Jazz, and Gospel. The city is the birthplace of the House style of music, and
is the site of an influential Hip-Hop scene.
In the 1980s the city was a center for industrial, punk and new wave (spawning
the famous Wax Trax!
label); There is a flourishing independent rock scene, including
the recent explosion of Chicago emo acts, with multiple festivals featuring various acts
each year (Lollapalooza, the Intonation Music
Festival and Pitchfork Music Festival being the most
prominent).
Chicago has several signature foods which reflect the city's ethnic
and working-class
roots. These include the deep-dish pizza and the Chicago hot dog,
which is almost always made of Vienna Beef and loaded with mustard, chopped onion,
sliced tomato, pickle relish, celery salt, sport peppers, and a
dill pickle spear. Chicago is also known for Italian Beef sandwiches and
the Maxwell
Street Polish (always served topped with grilled onions and
mustard).
Sites of interest
In 1998, the city officially opened the Museum Campus, a
10-acre (4-hectare) lakefront park
surrounding three of the city's main museums: the Adler Planetarium, the
Field Museum of Natural History, and the Shedd Aquarium. Grant
Park is also home to Chicago's other major downtown museum, the
Art
Institute of Chicago, which is partnered with The School of the
Art Institute of Chicago. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, located in
the Hyde
Park neighborhood, is housed in the only in-place surviving
building from the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Navy Pier, a
3000-foot (900 m) pier housing restaurants, shops, museums,
exhibition halls, auditoriums, and a 150-foot-tall (45 m) Ferris wheel, is located
north of Grant Park on the lakefront.
The Chicago
Cultural Center, built in 1897 as Chicago's first permanent
public library,
now houses the city's Visitor Information Center, galleries, and
exhibit halls. The Oriental Institute, part of the University of
Chicago, has an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian and
Near Eastern
archaeological artifacts, while the Freedom
Museum is dedicated to exploring and explaining the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Other
museums and galleries in Chicago are the Chicago History
Museum, DuSable
Museum of African-American History, Mexican Fine
Arts Center Museum, Museum
of Contemporary Art, and the Peggy
Notebaert Nature Museum.
Millennium Park
is a rebuilt section of Grant Park that was planned for unveiling
at the turn of the 21st century, though it was delayed for several
years.
Media
Chicago is the third-largest market in the U.S. (after New York City and Los Angeles).Nielsen Media - DMA Listing (September 24,
2005). All of the major American television networks have subsidiaries in
Chicago. WGN-TV, which is
owned by the Tribune
Company, is carried (with some programming differences) as
"Superstation WGN"
on cable
nation-wide. The city is also the home of the Oprah Winfrey Show,
while Chicago
Public Radio produces programs such as PRI's
This American
Life and NPR's Wait Wait...
Other television news programs include ABC 7, NBC 5, CBS 2, FOX 32,
WGN 9, and CLTV
There are two major daily newspapers published in Chicago: the Chicago Tribune and the
Chicago
Sun-Times, with the former having the larger circulation.
The Chicago Cubs of
the National
League play at Wrigley Field, which is located in the North Side
neighborhood of Lakeview, commonly referred to as "Wrigleyville." The
Chicago White
Sox of the American League play at U.S. Cellular Field,
in the city's South Side Bridgeport neighborhood.
The Chicago Bulls
of the National Basketball Association is one of the world's
most recognized basketball teams. The Bulls play at the United Center on Chicago's
Near West side. The Chicago Bears of the National Football
League play at Soldier Field. The Chicago Fire,
members of Major
League Soccer, won one league and three US Open Cups since 1997.
Other major league sports teams in Chicago include the Chicago Blackhawks of
the National
Hockey League and the Chicago Sky of the Women's National Basketball Association
The city has offered an official Olympic bid for
the 2016 Summer
Olympics, and is considered a strong contender among the three
candidate American cities.Kathy Bergen and Gary Washburn
(5/11/2006). Chicago Tribune. Chicago also hosted the
1959 Pan
American Games, and Gay Games VII in 2006.
Infrastructure
Health and medicine
Chicago is home to the Illinois Medical
District on the Near West Side. It includes Rush
University Medical Center, the University of Illinois at Chicago medical center, and
John H.
The University of Chicago operates the University
of Chicago Hospitals, which was ranked the fourteenth best
hospital in the country
by U.S. News and World Report. It is the only hospital
in Illinois ever to be
included in the magazine's "Honor Roll" of the best hospitals in
the United
States.
The University of Illinois College of Medicine at
UIC is the largest medical school in the United States
(1300 students, including those at campuses in Peoria, Rockford and
Urbana-Champaign).About the College - A Brief History of the
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine (2005).
UIC College of Medicine at
www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/history.shtml. Chicago is also home to other
nationally recognized medical schools including Rush Medical
College, the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of
Chicago, and the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern
University. In addition, the Chicago Medical
School and Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine
are located in the suburbs of North Chicago
and Maywood,
respectively. The Midwestern University Chicago College of Osteopathic
Medicine is in Downers Grove.
The leading healthcare informatics organizations are located in
Chicago, including the American Medical Informatics Association and
the Health Information Management Systems Society. These
organizations include as members many healthcare IT vendors and
the CIO/VP Technology leaders of most American healthcare
operations. The American College of Surgeons, American Dental
Association, American Hospital Association, American
Medical Association, and the American
Osteopathic Association are based in the city. It is an
important component in global distribution, as it is the third
largest inter-modal port in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore.
Madigan, p.52. Additionally, it is the only city in North America
in which all six Class I railroads meet.Appendix C: Regional
Freight Transportation Profiles. U.S. Department of
Transportation - Federal Highway Administration (April 2005).
Seven interstate
highways run through Chicago. Other named highway segments are
the Stevenson Expressway (I-55) and Eisenhower Expressway (I-290).
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) handles public
transportation in Chicago and a few adjacent suburbs. The CTA
operates an extensive network of buses and a rapid transit system known
locally as the 'L' (for "elevated"), which among other things provides
rail service from downtown to Midway and O'Hare airports. The
Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) provides service
in forty surrounding suburbs with some extensions into the
city.
Metra operates commuter
rail service in Chicago and its suburbs. The Metra Electric Line
shares the railway with the South Shore Line's NICTD
Northwest Indiana Commuter Rail Service, which accesses Gary/Chicago Airport. Pace operates a
primarily-suburban bus service that also offers some routes into
Chicago.
Chicago is served by Midway Airport on the south side and O'Hare
International Airport, one of the world's busiest airports, on
the far northwest. Gary/Chicago International Airport, located in nearby
Gary, Indiana,
serves as the third Chicagoland airport. Their service territory
borders Iroquois County to the south, the Wisconsin border to the north,
the Iowa border to the west
and the Indiana border
to the east. In northern Illinois, ComEd (a division of Exelon) operates the greatest number of nuclear
generating plants in any US state.
Additional topics
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