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Chicago Timeline

1779 Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable Establishes First Non-Indigenous Settlement of Chicago
Point du Sable's chief occupation seems to have been that of a trader who wandered from place to place in the customary manner, and fortunately left a record now and then. In 1779 he was ...
1803 Founding of Fort Dearborn
In the summer of 1803, Captain John Whistler, U. S. A., then stationed at Detroit, was ordered, with his company, to Chicago, to occupy the post and build a fort. The soldiers were conduc...
1812 Aug 15 Fort Dearborn Massacre
The Fort Dearborn massacre occurred on August 15, 1812, near Fort Dearborn, Illinois Territory (in what is now Chicago, Illinois) during the War of 1812. The massacre followed the evacuat...
1821 Aug 29 First Treaty of Chicago
The first treaty of Chicago was signed by Michigan Territorial Governor Lewis Cass and Solomon Sibley for the United States and representatives of the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi on Au...
1833 Aug 12 Incorporation of the Town of Chicago, Population 350
On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was incorporated with a population of 350. The first boundaries of the new town were Kinzie, Desplaines, Madison, and State Streets, which included...
1833 Sep 26 Second Treaty of Chicago
The second treaty of Chicago was signed by Michigan Territorial Governor George B. Porter, Thomas J. V. Owen, and William Weatherford for the United States and representatives of the "Uni...
1837 Mar 4 City of Chicago is Incorporated, Granted City Charter by the State of Illinois
In 1837 Chicago received its first city charter, which divided the city into six wards, allowed for a mayor elected to a one-year term, and legally incorporated Chicago as a municipality....
1857 Douglas Founds Baptist Seminary - The University of Chicago
A deeply religious man, but one also dedicated to the enterprise of higher education, Stephen Douglas founded a Baptist Seminary in Chicago which was called the University of Chicago in 1...
1860 Sep 8 SS Lady Elgin Sinks in Lake Michigan
The Lady Elgin was a luxury steamship that sank in Lake Michigan on the stormy night of September 8, 1860. Returning late from Chicago to Milwaukee and overloaded with passengers, the Lad...
1871 Oct 8 Great Chicago Fire
The Great Chicago Fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed over 17,000 structures, and left 100,000 people homeless. Although legend has it that the fire began when Mrs. O'Leary's ...
1873 Sullivan Works for William Le Baron Jenney
Laid off in November during the recession of 1873, Louis Henry Sullivan followed his parents to Chicago where Louis Henry Henry Sullivan found a position with the prominent architect Will...
1885 Home Insurance Building Built
The Home Insurance Building was built in 1885 in Chicago, Illinois, USA and destroyed in 1931 to make way for the Field Building (now the LaSalle National Bank Building). It was the first...
1886 May 1 Haymarket and May Day
On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. Between Apr...
1887 Wright arrives in Chicago and Works for Joseph Lyman Silsbee
In 1887, Wright arrived in Chicago in search of employment. Resulting from the devastating Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and recent population boom, new development was plentiful in the city...
1888
to 1893
Frank Lloyd Wright Works for Adler & Sullivan
After less than a year had passed in Silsbee’s office, Wright learned that Adler & Sullivan, the forerunning firm in Chicago, were "looking for someone to make the finish drawings for the...
1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Starr opens the Hull House in Chicago
Hull House, the most well known settlement house in the United States, was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located in the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, Hul...
1889 Jun 1 Frank Lloyd Wright Marries Catherine Tobin
On June 1, 1889, Wright married his first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin (1871–1959). The two had met around a year earlier during activities at All Souls Church. Sullivan did his part...
1892 Frank Lloyd Wright Establishes His Own Practice
After leaving Louis Sullivan, Wright established his own practice on the top floor of the Sullivan designed Schiller Building (1892, demolished 1961) on Randolph Street in Chicago. Wright...
1892 James Charnley Residence Completed
The James Charnley Residence is located in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood, in the 1300 block of North Astor Street. The house is now called the Charnley–Persky House. An Adler & Sulliv...
1892 Robert P. Parker House Completed; A "Bootleg House"
The Robert P. Parker House is a house located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States. The house was designed by famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1892 an...
1893 Fracis J. Woolley House Completed; A "Bootleg House"
The Francis J. Woolley House is located in Oak Park, Illinois, United States, a Chicago suburb. The house was designed by famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1893. The Queen A...
1893 Walter Gale House Completed; A "Bootleg House"
The Walter H. Gale House, located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and constructed in 1893. The house was commissioned by Walter H. Gale of ...
1893 May 1
to 1893 Oct 31
 World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also called The Chicago World's Fair), a World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival ...
1901 Feb Wright Published in Ladies' Home Journal
Between 1900 and 1901, Frank Lloyd Wright completed four houses which have since been considered the onset of the "Prairie style". Two, the Hickox and Bradley Houses, were the last transi...
1901 Oct 9 Grant Park is established
Lake Park is renamed Grant Park in honor of Galena, Illinois resident President Ulysses S. Grant.
1901 Dec 5 Walt Disney is born
Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901–December 15, 1966) was a multiple Academy Award-winning American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur and phila...
1903 Dec 30 Fire kills over 600 people at Iroquois Theater in Chicago
The Iroquois Theater Fire (December 30, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois) was the deadliest single-building fire in U.S. history. The blaze took 571 lives within 20 minutes, and including those ...
1910 Robie House Completed
The Frederick C. Robie House is a U.S National Historic Landmark in the Chicago, Illinois neighborhood of Hyde Park at 5757 S. Woodlawn Avenue on the South Side. It was designed and built...
1910 Sep 22
to 1911 Feb 18
 Chicago Garment Workers Strike
Nationally, between 1880 and 1920, the needle trades were the third most strike-prone industry after mining and the building trades. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, th...
1914 Apr 23 Wrigley Field (originally called Weeghman Park) Opens
Originally known as Weeghman Park, Wrigley Field was built on the grounds once occupied by a seminary. * Weeghman Park was the home of Chicago's entry in the Federal League and was...
1914 Aug 15 Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Two Children Murdered
On August 15, 1914, one of Wright's recently hired domestic workers, Julian Carlton, murdered Mamah, her two children, three of Wright's associates, and a son of one of the associates. Ca...
1915 Jun 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' is Published in Poetry Magazine
"He has actually trained himself AND modernized himself ON HIS OWN. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other but never both. Most of the swine have done neither. It is su..." —Ezra Pound, writing to Poetry Magazine about T. S. Eliot
1915 Jul 24 S.S. Eastland flips over on Chicago River, killing over 800 people including 22 entire families
Early on the morning of Saturday, July 24, 1915, with a light rain falling and the air filled with much anticipation and excitement, thousands were gathering along the Chicago River f...
1918 Dec 30 Al Capone Marries Mae Josephine Coughlin
In 1918 Capone married Mae Coughlin, an Irish girl, who gave him a son that year, Albert "Sonny" Francis Capone. The couple lived in Brooklyn for a year. In 1919 he lived in Amityville, L...
1919 Jul 27
to 1919 Aug 3
 Chicago Race Riot of 1919
After World War I ended in November 1918, thousands of American servicemen, black and white, returned home from Europe and looked for jobs, as many of them had held prior to the war, in ...
1920 Al Capone Moves From New York to Chicago
Capone's departure from New York, with his family, to Chicago is believed to have occurred in 1921. Capone purchased a modest house at 7244 South Prairie Ave. in the Park Manor neighborho...
1921 Sep 3 Ernest Hemingway Marries Hadley Richardson
She was raised in St. Louis, Missouri and married Ernest Hemingway on September 3, 1921. Together they moved to Paris, France, and in the fall of 1923, as Hadley approached the term of he...
1923 Al Capone moves his gang's headquarters to Cicero, Illinois
After the 1923 election of reform mayor William Emmett Dever, Chicago's city government began to put pressure on the gangster elements inside the city limits. To put its headquarters outs...
1929 Feb 14 St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Capone's most notorious killing was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. On February 14, 1929, four Capone men entered a garage at 2122 N. Clark Street. The building was the main liquor head...
1931 Oct 18 Al Capone Convicted Of Federal Tax Evasion
The U.S. Treasury Department had been developing evidence on tax evasion charges - in addition to Al Capone, his brother Ralph "Bottles" Capone, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, Frank Nitti and...
1933 May 27 Opening of the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago
A Century of Progress International Exposition was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Chicago. Its theme, as given in A Century of Progress Chic...
1933 Jul 6 First Major League All-Star Game
The first All-Star Game was held as part of the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, Illinois, and was the brainchild of Arch Ward, then sports editor for The Chicago Tribune. Initially intended...
1936 Nov 24 Chicago Elevated Train Wreck
Twenty persons were killed and more than 60 injured here late this afternoon when a North Shore elevated electric train crashed into a wooden train, 'Shopper's Special'. Officials said t...
1938 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Moves to Chicago
In 1938 the Armour Institute of Technology, a modest technical training school on Chicago's near south side, engaged German- born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886- 1969) as the di...
1946 Apr 26 Naperville Train Disaster
The Naperville train disaster occurred on April 26, 1946 at the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad station in Naperville, Illinois when the railroad's Exposition Flyer rammed into th...
1949 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments Built
860–880 Lake Shore Drive is a twin pair of glass-and-steel apartment towers on N. Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. They were de...
1956 S. R. Crown Hall Completed
S. R. Crown Hall, designed by the German-born Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is the home of the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, ...
1958 Dec 1 Fire at Our Lady of the Angels School kills 92 students and 3 nuns
On December 1, 1958, a fire broke out in the basement of Our Lady of the Angels catholic school in Chicago, educational home to approximately 1,600 students in Kindergarten through 8th gr...
1961 Sep 17 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706 Crashes on Take-Off
Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706, registration N137US, was a Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft which crashed on take-off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport September 17, 1961. ...
1963 Nov 29 Northwest Expressway in Chicago is Renamed John F. Kennedy Expressway
The Kennedy was originally constructed along the route of Avondale Avenue, an existing diagonal street, and the northwest railroad corridor, in the late 1950s and completed on November 5,...