1.
Hector Guimard
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Hector Guimard was a French architect, who is now the best-known representative of the Art Nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These rationalist ideas provided the basis for his form of Art Nouveau. In 1884 he was awarded three bronze and two medals at the school for his work. In 1885 he received awards in all of the competitions at École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs including four bronze medallions, five silver, and the schools Grande Prix dArchitecture. In 1885 Guimard began his studies at the École Nationale et Speciale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, later, in 1890, he was awarded a silver metal for modelled ornament at Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1891 Guimard became an Assistant professor in geometry, shadow. He was named a professor the year in 1892 of the girls section and was also named a professor of perspective in 1894. In 1893 he designed the lettering and street numbers for the Hotel Villa de la Réunion at 142 avenue de Versailles, Paris, the following year Guimard visited the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels, designed by Victor Horta, and the latters works was to become a profound inspiration. His first solo commission and breakthrough came in 1894, when he designed Castel Béranger at 14, rue La Fontaine, Paris, for Mme. Carried out over four years, he persuaded his client to abandon a more restrained design, in a single commission Guimard demonstrated how architecture and the industrial arts could be united in a single building to create a unified, modern scheme. The Castel Béranger made Guimard famous and he soon had many commissions and this approach culminated between 1909 and 1912 when he created his own home, Hotel Guimard where ovoid rooms contained unique pieces of furniture which are considered integral parts of the building. If the skylights favored by Victor Horta are rather absent in his work, Guimard made noteworthy experiments in space, but other buildings of his, like the splendid Nozal Hotel, employ a rational, symmetrical, square-based style like that of Viollet-le-Duc. The curious, inventive Guimard was also a precursor of industrial standardization and his greatest success here – in spite of some scandals – was his famous entrances to the Paris Metro, based on the ornamented structures of Viollet-le-Duc. The idea is taken up – but with less success – in 1907 with a catalogue of cast iron elements applicable to buildings, Artistic Cast Iron and his inimitable stylistic vocabulary suggests plants and organic matter, while remaining abstract. Flexible mouldings and a sense of movement are found in stone as well as wood carvings, Guimard created abstract two-dimensional patterns that were used for stained glass, ceramic panels, wrought iron, wallpaper or fabric. Despite Guimards innovations and talent, the press grew tired of him—not so much with his work and his relationship with the clergyman who commissioned him to build the Humbert de Romans Concert Hall became acrimonious by the time of its completion in 1901, and the clergyman left France. Within five years the magnificent concert venue was demolished, it is now known by photographs. A large number of his Paris Métro station entrances, including all of the large pavilions such as the one at Bastille, were demolished
2.
Grant Park (Chicago)
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Grant Park is a large urban park in the Loop community area of Chicago. Located in Chicagos central business district, the parks most notable features are Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, the Art Institute of Chicago, originally known as Lake Park, and dating from the citys founding, it was renamed in 1901 to honor Ulysses S. Grant. The parks area has expanded several times through land reclamation. It is bordered on the north by Randolph Street, on the south by Roosevelt Road and McFetridge Drive, on the west by Michigan Avenue, the park contains performance venues, gardens, art work, sporting, and harbor facilities. It hosts public gatherings, and several annual events. The park is often called Chicagos front yard and it is governed by the Chicago Park District. The original plans for the town of Chicago left the area east of Michigan Avenue unsubdivided and vacant, when the former Fort Dearborn Reserve became part of the townsite in 1839, the plan of the area east of Michigan Avenue south of Randolph was marked Public ground. Forever to remain vacant of buildings, the city officially designated the land as a park on April 29,1844, naming it Lake Park. When the Illinois Central Railroad was built into Chicago in 1852, the resulting lagoon became stagnant, and was largely filled in 1871 with debris from the Great Chicago Fire, increasing the parkland. In 1896, the city began extending the park into the lake with landfill, on October 9,1901, the park was renamed Grant Park in honor of American Civil War commanding General and United States President Ulysses S. Grant. At the 1868 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Grant had been nominated for his first presidential term, the legal restrictions prohibiting any buildings in the park were ignored in the 19th century, as various civic buildings were sited there. At various times, a post office, exposition center, armory, a 1904 plan prepared by the Olmsted Brothers recommended locating the Field Museum as the parks centerpiece, an idea integrated into Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennetts 1909 Plan of Chicago. Chicago businessman Aaron Montgomery Ward ultimately fought four court battles, opposed by nearly every civic leader, the one exception Ward consented to was for the Art Institute of Chicago, constructed in 1892. More landfill in the 1910s and 1920s provided sites for the Adler Planetarium, Field Museum of Natural History, and Shedd Aquarium, in 2004, a section of northern Grant Park, previously occupied by Illinois Central railyards and parking lots, was covered and redeveloped as Millennium Park. The park has been the site of large civic events. It served as the ground for the citys funeral procession for Abraham Lincoln. In 1911, the hosted the major Chicago International Aviation Meet. The park was the scene of clashes between Chicago Police and demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, pope John Paul II celebrated an outdoor mass to a large crowd here in 1979
3.
Chicago Loop
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The Loop is the central business district of Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the citys 77 designated community areas, the Loop is home to Chicagos commercial core, City Hall, and the seat of Cook County. In the late century, cable car turnarounds and prominent elevated railway encircled the area. In what is now the Loop, on the bank of the Chicago River, near todays Michigan Avenue Bridge. It was the first settlement in the sponsored by the United States. Other research has concluded that the Loop was not used as a proper noun until after the 1895–97 construction of the Union elevated railway loop, Loop architecture has been dominated by skyscrapers and high-rises since early in its history. Some of the buildings in this district were instrumental in the development of towers. Chicagos street numbering system – dividing addresses into North, South, East, Chicago is still the nations rail transportation hub and passenger lines once reached seven Loop-area stations by the 1890s. Transfers from one to the other was a business for taxi drivers until the long-distance lines gave way to Amtrak in the 1970s with the majority of trains concentrated at Chicago Union Station. This area abounds in shopping opportunities, including the Loop Retail Historic District and it includes Chicagos former Marshall Fields department store location in the Marshall Field and Company Building, the original Sullivan Center Carson Pirie Scott store location. Chicagos Downtown Theatre District is also found within this area, along with numerous restaurants, Chicago has a famous skyline which features many of the tallest buildings in the world as well as the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. Chicagos skyline is spaced out throughout the area, giving it a graceful beautiful appearance. Chicagos third tallest building, the Aon Center, is located just south of Illinois Center, the complex is at the east end of the Loop, east of Michigan Avenue. Two Prudential Plaza is also located here, just to the west of the Aon Center, the Loop contains a wealth of outdoor sculpture, including works by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Marc Chagall, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alexander Calder, and Jean Dubuffet. Chicagos waterfront, which is almost exclusively recreational beach and park areas from north to south, the area also hosts the annual music festival Lollapalooza which features popular alternative rock, heavy metal, EDM, hop hop and punk rock artists. Trips down the Chicago River, including tours, by commercial boat operators are great favorites with both locals and tourists alike. The Loop is the seat of Chicagos government and it is also the government seat of Cook County, Illinois and houses an office for the governor of the State of Illinois. The century old City Hall/County Building houses the chambers of the Mayor, City Council, across the street, the Richard J. Daley Center accommodates a famous Picasso sculpture and the state law courts
4.
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
5.
South Shore Line
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The name refers to both the physical line and the service operated over that route. The line was built in 1901–08 by predecessors of the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, passenger operation was assumed by the NICTD in 1989. The public Monday-Friday timetable shows 20 eastbound trains operating,18 of those operate out of Millennium Station. Of those, five terminate at Gary Metro Center, seven at South Bend Airport, two daily trains begin at Carroll Avenue and continue to South Bend Airport. The South Shore Line was constructed between 1901–08 by the Chicago and Indiana Air Line Railway, revenue service between Michigan City and South Bend began on July 1,1908. The CLS&SB leased the Kensington and Eastern Railroad on April 4,1909 and that year the full line to Kensington on the Illinois Central was completed, and beginning on June 2,1912, the electric cars were coupled to IC steam locomotives and run to downtown Chicago. The Chicago, Lake Shore and South Bend entered bankruptcy in 1925 and was bought by Samuel Insulls Chicago South Shore, the line continued to handle both freight and passengers. Under Insull, the CSS&SB embarked on a rehabilitation program. This included new ballast and ties, 100-pound rail in place of 70-pound rail, brush clearance, in 1946 the company acquired three Little Joe electric locomotives for freight service. These locomotives had originally constructed for the Soviet Union. These locomotives continued in service on the CSS&SB until 1983. 803, is preserved in operating condition at the Illinois Railway Museum, trains began running to Chicago on August 29. That same year, the line between East Chicago and Indiana Harbor was abandoned. The Chicago South Shore and South Bend turned a profit during World War II due to the nature of Northern Indiana. However, highway competition and suburban growth led to ridership declines, by the 1950s all interurban lines were seeing a decline in rail travel as automobile use increased. On September 16,1956, a street running section in East Chicago was removed with the building of a new alignment alongside the Indiana Toll Road, a truncation to west of downtown South Bend removed street trackage in that city from July 1,1970. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway acquired the CSS&SB on January 3,1967, the ICC gave the state of Indiana a chance to reply and subsequently, the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District was formed in 1977 to subsidize service. When the railway went bankrupt, passenger service was assumed by NICTD on December 29,1989
6.
Island platform
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An island platform is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange. Island platforms are popular on twin-track routes due to pragmatic and cost-effective reasons, an alternative arrangement is to position side platforms on either side of the tracks. The historical use of island platforms depends greatly upon the location, the island platform layout is a popular, cost-effective and practical solution in modern railway systems. Island platforms allow facilities such as escalators, elevators, shops, toilets and this is essential for wheelchair accessible stations. An island platform makes it easier for users and the infirm to change services between tracks. Additionally, an island platform layout eliminates the need to construct a crossover or subway between two platforms, however, island platforms may become overcrowded, especially at busy stations, and this can lead to safety issues such as Clapham Common and Angel on the London Underground. However, for the tracks to diverge around the platform, extra width is required along the right-of-way on each approach to the station. Track centers vary for rail systems throughout the world but are normally 3 to 5 meters, if the island platform is 6 meters wide, the tracks have to slew out by the same distance. While this is not a problem on a new line that is being constructed, in addition, a single island platform makes it quite difficult to have through tracks, which are usually between the local tracks. A common configuration in busy locations on high speed lines is a pair of island platforms, high-speed trains can therefore pass straight through the station, while slow trains pass around the platforms. This arrangement also allows the station to serve as a point where trains can be passed by faster trains. The purpose of this design was to reduce unnecessary passenger congestion at a station with a high volume of passengers. Many of the stations on the Great Central Railway were constructed in this form and this was because the line was planned to connect to a Channel Tunnel. Island platforms are a normal sight on Indian railway stations. Almost all railway stations in India consist of island platforms, in Toronto,29 subway stations use island platforms. A slight disadvantage is that crossovers have to be rather long, in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, PATCO uses island platforms in all of its 13 stations, to facilitate one-person train operation. Most elevated stations in Singapores Mass Rapid Transit system use island platforms, the exception is Dover MRT Station, which uses side platforms as it is built on an existing rail line. The planned Canberra MRT Station will also use side platforms, as it also be built on an existing rail line
7.
Chicago Transit Authority
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Chicago Transit Authority, also known as CTA, is the operator of mass transit in Chicago, Illinois and some of its surrounding suburbs, including the trains of the Chicago L and CTA bus service. In 1952, CTA purchased the assets of the Chicago Motor Coach Company, today, the CTA is one of the three service boards financially supported by the Regional Transportation Authority. The Chicago Transit Authority provides service to Chicago and 40 surrounding suburbs, the CTA provided a total of 532 million rides in 2011, a 3 percent increase over 2010 with ridership rising to levels not seen for 20 years. CTA operates 24 hours each day and on an average weekday provides 1.7 million rides on buses and it has approximately 1,800 buses that operate over 140 routes traveling along 2,230 route miles. Buses provide about one million trips a day and serve more than 12,000 posted bus stops in 10 suburbs. The Chicago Transit Authoritys 1,450 train cars operate eight routes and 222 miles of track. Its trains provide about 750,000 customer trips each weekday and serve 144 stations in Chicago and seven suburbs. Currently, the CTA operates within Chicago and the suburbs of Forest Park, Evanston, Skokie, Oak Park, Summit, Cicero, Berwyn, North Riverside, Rosemont. The CTA accepts payment with a Ventra card, a single-ride or 1-day Ventra disposable ticket, contactless credit or debit card, children under seven can ride free with a fare-paying rider, 3-child limit. Only buses allow riders to pay with cash, the bus fare is $2, the L fare is $2.25, and no cash transfers are available. The CTA no longer sells Transit Cards, all remaining Transit Cards must have been used by July 1,2014. In its place CTA has adopted the Ventra Card system, the Ventra Card can be purchased online, at any Ventra machine at CTA stations, and at authorized retailers. Ventra is a fare payment system for the Chicago Transit Authority and Pace that replaced the Chicago Card. Ventra launched in August 2013, with a full system transition slated for July 1,2014, Ventra is operated by Cubic Transportation Systems. Riders can pay a quarter for up to two transfers within two hours, the Chicago Transit Authority produced a monthly television show, Connections, from May 2003 through December 2011. The show was hosted by Dale Rivera, Jeanne Sparrow, Connections was broadcast on City of Chicago Public-access television cable TV channels 23 &49, as well as on Comcasts CN100 in the Chicago media market, including areas of Michigan and Indiana. Connections featured news and information about the CTA and services it provides, individual segments from Connections are available on CTAs YouTube channel. The majority of train stations CTA operates have elevators or ramps to access for customers with disabilities
8.
Metra
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Metra is a commuter railroad in the Chicago metropolitan area. The railroad operates 241 stations on 11 different rail lines and it is the fourth busiest commuter rail system in the United States by ridership and the largest and busiest commuter rail system outside the New York City metropolitan area. There were 83.4 million passenger rides in 2014, up 1. 3% from the previous year, the estimated busiest day for Metra ridership occurred on Nov.4, 2016—the day of the Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series victory rally. Using Chicagos rail infrastructure, much of which was created in the 19th century, the Illinois General Assembly established the RTA, Metras creation was a result of the anticipated failure of commuter service operated and owned by various private railroad companies in the 1970s. Freight rail companies still operate some routes, however, these operations are guided by contracted service agreements, Metra owns all rolling stock and is responsible for all stations along with the respective municipalities. Since its inception, Metra has directed more than $5 billion into the rail system of the Chicago metropolitan area. Since its founding in the 19th century, Chicago has been a major Midwestern hub in the North American rail network and it has more trackage radiating in more directions than any other city in North America. Railroads set up their headquarters in the city and Chicago became a center for building cars, passenger cars. By the 1930s Chicago had the worlds largest public transportation system, by the mid-1970s, the commuter lines faced an uncertain future. The Burlington Northern, Milwaukee Road, Chicago and North Western, to provide stability to the commuter rail system, the Illinois General Assembly formed the Regional Transportation Authority in 1974. Its purpose was to fund and plan the Chicago regions public transportation, in the beginning the Regional Transportation Authority commuter train fleet consisted of second-hand equipment, until 1976 when the first order of new EMD F40PH locomotives arrived. That F40PH fleet is still in service today, less than a decade later the Regional Transportation Authority was already suffering from ongoing financial problems. In 1983 the Illinois Legislature reorganized the agency and that reorganization left the Regional Transportation Authority in charge of day-to-day operations of all bus, heavy rail and commuter rail services throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. It was also responsible for directing fare and service levels, setting up budgets, finding sources for capital investment, due to the broad range of responsibilities entrusted with the Regional Transportation Authority, the Commuter Rail Service Board was created in 1984. It was renamed Metra in July 1985, the newly reorganized Metra service helped to bring a single identity to the many infrastructure components serviced by the Regional Transportation Authoritys commuter rail system. Metras operating arm, the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation, was created as a separate subsidiary which operates seven Metra owned routes. Contracts were set up with the Union Pacific and BNSF railroads to operate four other Metra routes, while Metra owns all rolling stock and is responsible for most stations on those routes, the freight carriers use their own employees and control the right-of-way for those routes. In keeping with Metras purpose to provide an identity for commuter rail in the region
9.
Millennium Station
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Located under Millennium Park, the terminal was established in the 1800s by the Illinois Central Railroad. It was rebuilt in the early 21st century and is now owned by the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation, not counting commuters on the South Shore Line, over 18,000 people board Metra trains at Millennium Station each day. During peak periods, trains leave the terminal as frequently as twice a minute and it still received many trains thereafter, but was of secondary importance. Its importance increased dramatically in 1926 with the electrification of services on ICs main line and its Blue Island. Commuter trains from all three branches were now routed into the Randolph Street terminal, while intercity traffic continued to terminate at Central Station, originally, the station platforms were exposed and the ticketing facilities and the waiting room were located in the attached facility. The construction of Millennium Park gradually placed the station underground. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill was the architect for the station redesign, the pedway itself hosts a number of shops, eateries and services. Smurfit–Stone Building Chicago Cultural Center The Heritage at Millennium Park Randolph/Wabash L station Macys Lake/State L station Block 37 Washington/Dearborn L station Richard J
10.
Commuter rail
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Trains operate following a schedule, at speeds varying from 50 to 200 km/h. Distance charges or zone pricing may be used and they primarily serve lower density suburban areas, and often share right-of-way with intercity or freight trains. Some services operate only during peak hours and others uses fewer departures during off peak hours, average speeds are high, often 50 km/h or higher. These higher speeds better serve the longer distances involved, some services include express services which skip some stations in order to run faster and separate longer distance riders from short-distance ones. The general range of commuter trains distance varies between 15 and 200 km, sometimes long distances can be explained by that the train runs between two or several cities. Distances between stations may vary, but are much longer than those of urban rail systems. In city centers the train either has a station or passes through the city centre with notably fewer station stops than those of urban rail systems. Toilets are often available on trains and in stations. Their ability to coexist with freight or intercity services in the same right-of-way can drastically reduce system construction costs, however, frequently they are built with dedicated tracks within that right-of-way to prevent delays, especially where service densities have converged in the inner parts of the network. Most such trains run on the standard gauge track. Some light rail systems may run on a narrower gauge, some countries, including Finland, India, Pakistan, Russia, Brazil and Sri Lanka, as well as San Francisco in the USA and Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia, use broad gauge track. The fact that the terminology is not standardised across countries further complicates matters, most S-bahns typically behave like commuter rail with most trackage not separated from other trains, and long lines with trains running between cities and suburbs rather than within a city. The distances between stations however, are usually short, in larger systems there is usually a high frequency metro-like central corridor in the city center where all the lines converge into. Typical examples of large city S-Bahns include Munich and Frankfurt, S-Bahns do also exist in some mid-size cities like Rostock and Magdeburg but behave more like typical commuter rail with lower frequencies and very little exclusive trackage. A similar network exists in Copenhagen called the S-tog, in Hamburg and Copenhagen, other, diesel driven trains, do continue where the S-Bahn ends. Regional rail usually provides rail services between towns and cities, rather than purely linking major population hubs in the way inter-city rail does, Regional rail operates outside major cities. Unlike Inter-city, it stops at most or all stations between cities and it provides a service between smaller communities along the line, and also connections with long-distance services at interchange stations located at junctions or at larger towns along the line. Alternative names are local train or stopping train, examples include the former BRs Regional Railways, Frances TER, Germanys DB Regio and South Koreas Tonggeun services
11.
Blue Island, Illinois
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Blue Island is a city in Cook County, Illinois, located approximately 16 miles south of Chicagos Loop. Blue Island is adjacent to the city of Chicago and shares its boundary with that citys Morgan Park neighborhood. The population was 23,706 at the 2010 United States Census, nowhere about Chicago is there to be found a more pleasant and desirable resident locality. Beginning in 1883, Blue Island was also host to the car shops of the Rock Island Railroad, a large regional hospital and two major clinics are also located in the city. By 1850, half of Blue Islands population was either foreign-born or the children of foreign-born residents, later, significant groups came from Italy, Poland, Sweden and Mexico. The city is one of ten incorporated areas in Illinois to have been designated by the White House as a Preserve America community, today, downtown Blue Island is better known for its antique stores, art galleries, ethnic delicatessens and fine dining. Much of this shift in business activity has been brought on by big box development outside of town that space constraints make it impossible for uptown to accommodate. The Blue Island Opera House was built by Blue Islands first mayor John L. Zacharias to replace the Robinson Block, the opera house was host to vaudeville and repertoire shows until 1913, when it became the Grand Theater and a venue for motion pictures. In later years the building was home to the Blue Island Sun-Standard newspaper, the building has been designated as a landmark by the Blue Island Historic Preservation CommissionMoraine Valley Community College operates a satellite facility uptown. The market was a place where farmers from an area surrounding Blue Island came to town to sell their wares to each other. As the postcard image to the shows, items offered included produce, farm equipment. After it was discovered in the early 1850s that rich deposits of clay surrounded the ridge, by 1900, the Clifton Brickyard alone—which had opened in 1883 under the name of Purington at the far northeast corner of the village—was producing 150,000,000 bricks a year. In 1886, the Chicago architectural firm of Adler and Sullivan designed a complex for the Wahl Brothers brickyard on the west side of the Grand Trunk tracks between 119th and 123rd streets. These buildings had been demolished by 1935, and all of Blue Islands brickyards were re-purposed by the part of the mid-20th century. The larger ones for a while become landfills, and the Wahl Brothers location is now the site of the Meadows Golf Club, some sources state that the city of Blue Island was once officially known as Portland. On April 13,1839, Peter Barton and his partners registered the plat of Portland with the state of Illinois, Portland had been laid out on land purchased from the federal government which was situated south of Vermont Street and east of Wabash Road. The Little Calumet River ran through the center of the platted area and they used their influence to have the local post office name changed from Blue Island to Portland, and on May 1,1839, this was accomplished. Portland was never incorporated – it existed for years by
12.
Gary, Indiana
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Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States,25 miles from downtown Chicago, Illinois. The population of Gary was 80,294 at the 2010 census, from the middle of the twentieth century to the present, Gary has experienced drastic population loss, falling by 55 percent from its peak of 178,320 in 1960. Gary is adjacent to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and borders Lake Michigan, the city is known for its large steel mills, and for being the birthplace of The Jackson 5 music group. Gary, Indiana, was founded in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as the home for its new plant, the city was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation. Gary was the site of civil unrest in the Steel Strike of 1919, on October 4,1919, a riot broke out on Broadway, the main north-south street through downtown Gary, between striking steel workers and strike breakers brought in from outside. Three days later, Indiana governor James P. Goodrich declared martial law, shortly thereafter, over 4,000 federal troops under the command of Major General Leonard Wood arrived to restore order. The jobs offered by the industry provided Gary with very rapid growth. At that time,19. 3% of the population was classified as foreign-born, Gary was also becoming increasingly racially diverse, with 17. 8% of the population classified as black, and 3. 5% as Mexican. Garys fortunes have risen and fallen with those of the steel industry, the growth of the steel industry brought prosperity to the community. Broadway was known as a center for the region. Department stores and architecturally significant movie houses were built in the downtown area, in the 1960s, like many other American urban centers reliant on one particular industry, Gary entered a spiral of decline. Garys decline was brought on by the growing overseas competitiveness in the steel industry, the U. S. Steel Gary Works employed over 30,000 in 1970, declined to just 6,000 by 1990, and further declined to 5,100 in August of 2015. As the city declined, crime increased, rapid racial change occurred in Gary during the late 20th century. Non-whites were primarily restricted to live in the Midtown section just south of downtown, Gary had one of the nations first African-American mayors, Richard G. Hatcher, and hosted the ground-breaking 1972 National Black Political Convention. Since the 1930s, Gary had developed a reputation as a city due to rampant political corruption, racial violence & segregation, labor unrest. In the 1960s through the 1980s, surrounding localities such as Merrillville and Crown Point experienced rapid growth, including new homes. Owing to white flight, economic distress, and a perception of skyrocketing crime, many middle-class, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gary had the highest percentage of African-Americans of U. S. cities with a population of 100,000 or more, 84%. This no longer applies to Gary since the population of the city has now fallen well below 100,000 residents, as of 2013, the Gary Department of Redevelopment has estimated that one-third of all homes in the city are unoccupied and/or abandoned
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CTA Bus
