1.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
2.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Chicago "L"
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The Chicago L is the rapid transit system serving the city of Chicago and some of its surrounding suburbs in the U. S. state of Illinois. It is operated by the Chicago Transit Authority, Chicagos L provides 24-hour service on some portions of its network, being one of only five rapid transit systems in the United States to do so. The oldest sections of the Chicago L started operations in 1892, making it the second oldest rapid transit system in the Americas, the L has been credited with fostering the growth of Chicagos dense city core that is one of the citys distinguishing features. The L consists of eight rapid transit lines laid out in a spoke–hub distribution paradigm focusing transit towards the Loop. Although the L gained its name because large parts of the system are elevated, portions of the network are also in subway tunnels, at grade level, or open cut. In 2014, the L had an average of 752,734 passenger boardings each weekday,486,267 each Saturday, over the next year service was extended to 63rd Street and Stony Island Avenue, then the Transportation Building of the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. In 1893, trains running on the Lake Street Elevated Railroad and in 1895 on the Metropolitan West Side Elevated, which had lines to Douglas Park, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park. Two years later the South Side L introduced multiple-unit control, in which the operator can control all the cars in a train. Electrification and MU control remain standard features of most of the rapid transit systems. A drawback of early L service was none of the lines entered the central business district. The Union Loop opened in 1897 and greatly increased the rapid transit systems convenience, insull instituted many improvements, including free transfers and through routing, although he did not formally combine the original firms into the Chicago Rapid Transit Company until 1924. The construction of the Subway created the necessity to tunnel under the Chicago River, the State Street Subway opened on October 17,1943, the Dearborn Subway, on which work had been suspended during World War II, opened on February 25,1951. The subways were constructed with a purpose of serving as bomb shelters. The subways bypassed a number of curves and circuitous routings on the original elevated lines. In 1947, the Chicago Transit Authority acquired the assets of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company and the Chicago Surface Lines, operator of the citys streetcars. Over the next few years CTA modernized the L, replacing wooden cars with new ones and closing lightly used branch lines and stations. Later, after assuming control of the L, the CTA introduced a service known as the A/B skip-stop service. Under this service, trains were designated as either A or B trains, a trains would only stop at A or AB stations, and B trains would only stop at B or AB stations
5.
Near North Side, Chicago
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The Near North Side is one of 77 defined community areas of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is the northernmost of the four areas that constitute Downtown Chicago, the others being the Near West Side, Near South Side, the community area is located north and east of the Chicago River. To its east is Lake Michigan, and its boundary is the 19th-century city limit of Chicago. Of the downtown community areas, the Near North Side has the second largest total area, after the Near West Side, the highest number of skyscrapers, the Near North Side is the oldest part of Chicago. Today this is marked by Pioneer Court, the Gold Coast consists mostly of high-rise apartment buildings and stone mansions throughout. As with many neighborhoods, its borders are subject to dispute, but, generally, they are North Avenue, to the north, Chicago Avenue, to the south. The Gold Coast became the home of the super-rich in 1885, over the next few decades, Chicagos elite gradually migrated from Prairie Avenue to their new homes north of the Loop. Along almost every boulevard of the Gold Coast, upscale boutiques, also, Aston Martin, BMW, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Maserati, Rolls-Royce, and Tesla all have dealerships in the Gold Coast. Many of Chicagos best known restaurants are located here as well, carmines, Gibsons, Hugos Frog Bar, Lou Malnatis Pizzeria, Maple & Ash, the original Mortons, Nico Osteria, the Pump Room, Spiaggia, and Table Fifty-Two are in the area. The Gold Coast Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 30,1978, the Gold Coast is zoned to the following Chicago Public Schools schools, Ogden School, and Lincoln Park High School. The prestigious Latin School, is located in the neighborhood as well and it crosses portions of the community areas of southern Lincoln Park, as well as the northern Near North Side, and is part of Chicagos 43rd ward. This historic district sits within the Old Town Triangle Association, a Lincoln Park neighborhood bounded by the former Ogden Avenue right-of-way, Clark Street and it sits inside the community area of Lincoln Park and is part of Chicagos 43rd ward. Old Town north of North Avenue is in Lincoln Park, and it is now an affluent gentrified neighborhood. Old Town is now considered an affluent and historic neighborhood, home to many of Chicagos older Victorian-era buildings, the neighborhood is home to St. Michaels Church, originally built to serve German immigrants, and one of only 7 to survive the great Chicago fire. St. Michaels, Holy Name Cathedral, Immaculate Conception, many of the streets and alleys, particularly in the Old Town Triangle section, predate the Great Chicago Fire and do not all adhere to the typical Chicago grid pattern. In 1927, sculptors Sol Kogen and Edgar Miller purchased and subsequently rehabilitated a house on Burton Place, near Wells Street, through the 1930s, an art colony emerged in the neighborhood as artists moved from the Towertown neighborhood near Washington Square Park. Old Town was home to many gays and lesbians from the 1950s through the 1980s and this was the first gay ghetto in Chicago, predating the current Lake View neighborhood. There were numerous gay bars, now closed, along Wells Street
6.
Nickerson House
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The Samuel M. Nickerson House, located at 40 East Erie Street in the Near North Side neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, is a Chicago Landmark. It was designed by Edward J. Burling of the firm of Burling and Whitehouse and built for Samuel and Mathilda Nickerson in 1883. Samuel M. Nickerson was a prominent figure in the national banking industry. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Nickerson House was designed by one Chicagos earliest prominent architects, Edward J. Burling of Burling and Whitehouse. In addition, three decorators were contracted for the interiors, William August Fiedler and R. W. Bates & Co. of Chicago, and New York-based George A. Schastey & Co. The three-story,24,000 square-foot Nickerson House was reported to be the largest and most extravagant private residence in Chicago at the time of its completion, Nickerson spared no expense, spending $450,000 on the construction and decoration of his home. The mansions Italianate exterior is limestone and Ohio sandstone, although elegant, the restrained design of the façade belies the wealth of detail found within. This is seen in the variety of highly ornamented styles stemming from Japanese, Chinese, English, French, Moorish, ancient Greek, Renaissance Italian. Construction on Nickerson House began in 1879, shortly after the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, the mansion was lauded as one of the first truly fireproof residences in the city. The masonry is brick, with partition walls carried up to the roof, beneath the highly decorative flooring boards are flooring strips bedded in mortar, followed by brick arches supported by iron beams. Nickerson, his wife Mathilda Pinkham Crosby, and their son Roland lived in the house from 1883 to 1900, the mansion was used for many social gatherings characteristic of the Gilded Age, including a masquerade ball and a number of receptions. In 1900 the Nickerson Collection was donated to the Art Institute of Chicago, after the Great Fire, the Near North Side became a fashionable neighborhood for prominent Chicago business owners like Nickerson. Other notable residents of the Gilded Age period include Ransom R. Cable, Lambert Tree, Perry H. Smith, Joseph T. Ryerson, and Edward T. Blair. After purchasing the house, Fisher hired the Prairie School architect George Washington Maher to redesign Nickersons art gallery, making it into a trophy room, among other features, Maher had a stained glass dome built to replace the rooms skylight. As part of the remodeling, new cases and a monumental mantlepiece. The iridescent glass tile fire surround of the mantle was created by the Chicago firm of Giannini & Hilgart, the familys decision to sell the mansion after Fishers death in 1916 sparked what is believed to be Chicagos first successful preservation effort. The group raised the money to purchase the house as a civic effort and this gift spurred the College of Surgeons decision to make Chicago its headquarters. From 1919 to 1965, the organization utilized the former Nickerson residence as administrative offices, the house was acquired by Chicago businessman Richard Driehaus in 2003 who has since restored and opened the property to the public as the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in 2008
7.
Art Nouveau
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Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture and applied art, especially the decorative arts, that was most popular between 1890 and 1910. A reaction to the art of the 19th century, it was inspired by natural forms and structures, particularly the curved lines of plants. English uses the French name Art Nouveau, according to the philosophy of the style, art should be a way of life. For many well-off Europeans, it was possible to live in an art nouveau-inspired house with art nouveau furniture, silverware, fabrics, ceramics including tableware, jewellery, cigarette cases, artists desired to combine the fine arts and applied arts, even for utilitarian objects. By 1910, Art Nouveau was already out of style and it was replaced as the dominant European architectural and decorative style first by Art Deco and then by Modernism. Art Nouveau took its name from the Maison de lArt Nouveau, in France, Art Nouveau was also sometimes called by the British term Modern Style due to its roots in the Arts and Crafts Movement, Style moderne, or Style 1900. It was also sometimes called Style Jules Verne, Le Style Métro, Art Belle Époque, in Belgium, where the architectural movement began, it was sometimes termed Style nouille or Style coup de fouet. In Britain, it was known as the Modern Style, or, because of the arts and crafts movement led by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, as the Glasgow style. In Italy, because of the popularity in Italy of designs from Londons Liberty & Co department store, in the United States, due to its association with Louis Comfort Tiffany, it was often called the Tiffany style. In Germany and Scandinavia, a style emerged at about the same time, it was called Jugendstil. In Catalonia the related style was known as Modernisme, in Spain as Modernismo, Arte joven, in Russia, it was called Modern, and Jugendstil, and Nieuwe Kunst in the Netherlands. Some names refer specifically to the forms that were popular with the Art Nouveau artists, Stile Floreal in France, Paling Stijl in the Netherlands. The new art movement had its roots in Britain, in the designs of William Morris. Early prototypes of the include the Red House of Morris. In France, the style combined several different tendencies, in architecture, it was influenced by the architectural theorist and historian Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, a declared enemy of the historical Beaux-Arts architectural style. For each function its material, for each material its form and this book influenced a generation of architects, including Louis Sullivan, Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, and Antoni Gaudí. The French painters Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard played an important part in integrating fine arts painting with decoration, I believe that before everything a painting must decorate, Denis wrote in 1891. The choice of subjects or scenes is nothing and it is by the value of tones, the colored surface and the harmony of lines that I can reach the spirit and wake up the emotions
8.
Louis Comfort Tiffany
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Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau, Tiffany was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists, which included Lockwood de Forest, Candace Wheeler, and Samuel Colman. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels and he was the first Design Director at his family company, Tiffany & Co. founded by his father Charles Lewis Tiffany. Louis Comfort Tiffany was born in New York City, the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company and he attended school at Pennsylvania Military Academy in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. His first artistic training was as a painter, studying under George Inness in Eagleswood, New Jersey and Samuel Colman in Irvington and he also studied at the National Academy of Design in New York City in 1866–67 and with salon painter Leon-Adolphe-Auguste Belly in 1868–69. Bellys landscape paintings had a influence on Tiffany. Tiffany started out as a painter, but became interested in glassmaking from about 1875, in 1879, he joined with Candace Wheeler, Samuel Colman and Lockwood de Forest to form Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated American Artists. The business was short-lived, lasting four years. The group made designs for wallpaper, furniture, and textiles and he later opened his own glass factory in Corona, New York, determined to provide designs that improved the quality of contemporary glass. Tiffanys leadership and talent, as well as his fathers money and connections and he commissioned Tiffany, who had begun to make a name for himself in New York society for the firms interior design work, to redo the state rooms, which Arthur found charmless. The Tiffany screen and other Victorian additions were all removed in the Roosevelt renovations of 1902, a desire to concentrate on art in glass led to the breakup of the firm in 1885 when Tiffany chose to establish his own glassmaking firm that same year. The first Tiffany Glass Company was incorporated December 1,1885, in the beginning of his career, Tiffany used cheap jelly jars and bottles because they had the mineral impurities that finer glass lacked. When he was unable to convince fine glassmakers to leave the impurities in, Tiffany used opalescent glass in a variety of colors and textures to create a unique style of stained glass. Use of the glass itself to create stained glass pictures was motivated by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement. Tiffany, Duffner and Kimberly, along with La Farge, had learned their craft at the same glasshouses in Brooklyn in the late 1870s. In 1889 at the Paris Exposition, he is said to have been Overwhelmed by the work of Émile Gallé. He also met artist Alphonse Mucha, in 1893, his company also introduced the term Favrile in conjunction with his first production of blown glass at his new glass factory. Some early examples of his lamps were exhibited in the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, he won a gold medal with his stained glass windows The Four Seasons He trademarked Favrile on November 13,1894
9.
Herter Brothers
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The Herters were born in Stuttgart, Württemberg. Gustave was born Julius Gustav Alexander Hagenlocher, with his mothers surname. She married Christian Herter in 1835, and he adopted Gustave, Christian Augustus Ludwig Herter, Gustaves half-brother, was born in 1839. Gustave and Christians father was a cabinetmaker and they followed him in the trade. Gustave Herter came to New York City in 1848 and by 1858 was working under his own name, Christian was in New York by 1859 and joined his brother in the firm by 1864. The Red Room of the White House was furnished with Herter Brothers furniture during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, several pieces of Herter Brothers furniture remain in the White House including a center table and a slipper chair. This center table bears the remains of the only known Herter Brothers paper label, generally the firm stamped their furniture, among their most prominent clients were the Vanderbilts. Between 1879 and 1882, Herter Brothers decorated William Henry Vanderbilts new Fifth Avenue mansion, at 634 Fifth Avenue, in 1880–1882, they decorated the mansion of Darius Ogden Mills, on the site of part of Rockefeller Center now occupied by the colossal bronze Atlas. At the same time they were furnishing the nearby Jay Gould residence at 579 Fifth Avenue, the White Houses interiors were extensively renovated during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. Executing the designs of architect Charles Follen McKim, Herter Brothers created the plaster ceiling, the firms workshops also provided the heavily carved paneling for the renovated East Room. Very few Herter Brothers interiors remain extant, elm Park in Norwalk, Connecticut was built 1864-68, and partially decorated by Herter Brothers. The recently restored drawing room retains a suite of Herter furniture purchased for it by the second owner. Furniture from an early Herter commission survives in Victoria Mansion in Portland, a notable surviving Herter interior is the John Thatcher home, now the Rosemount Museum, in Pueblo, Colorado. Examples of Herter furniture are in public collections in the United States. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented an exhibition, Herter Brothers, Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age, howe, Katherine S. Herter Brothers, Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age. Harry N. Abrams, Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,1994
