[14] The Southwest Side is home to the largest concentration of Gorals (Carpathian highlanders) outside Europe. The top five races for people living in Chicago are: White (44%), Black (32%), Asian (5%), Hispanic or Latino (28%), Two or more races (2%). [356], The Illinois Medical District is on the Near West Side. There were 1,152,868 housing units at an average density of 5,075.8 per square mile (1,959.8/km2). [222] A 2007 report on the Chicago music industry by the University of Chicago Cultural Policy Center ranked Chicago third among metropolitan U.S. areas in "size of music industry" and fourth among all U.S. cities in "number of concerts and performances". Around two-thirds of the area's 8 million inhabitants are Christians, who read the Bible, according to National Conference for Community and Justice figures. Since 1999, Judge Mathis also films his syndicated arbitration-based reality court show at the NBC Tower. Ford Motor Company has an automobile assembly plant on the South Side in Hegewisch, and most of the facilities of the Port of Chicago are also on the South Side. [186] The city has also been rated as having the most balanced economy in the United States, due to its high level of diversification. [citation needed], The government of the City of Chicago is divided into executive and legislative branches. [319], William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago, was instrumental in the creation of the junior college concept, establishing nearby Joliet Junior College as the first in the nation in 1901. In 2018, the Chicago Department of Health, estimated 7.5% of the adult population, approximately 146,000 Chicagoans, were LGBTQ. Religion The city has a large population of Bulgarians, Lithuanians,[23] Croats, Jews, Greeks and Serbs. [158], In the 1920s and 1930s, the great majority of African Americans moving to Chicago settled in a socalled "Black Belt" on the city's South Side. In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. From the last two decades of the 19th century, Chicago was the destination of waves of immigrants from Ireland, Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, including Italians, Jews, Russians, Poles, Greeks, Lithuanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Romanians, Turkish, Croatians, Serbs, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Czechs. It is home to a population of around 5.54 million individuals. The Museum Campus joins the southern section of Grant Park, which includes the renowned Art Institute of Chicago. [306], Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is the governing body of the school district that contains over 600 public elementary and high schools citywide, including several selective-admission magnet schools. frequency of prayer by metro area, Learn More: frequency of prayer, At least daily, Weekly, Seldom/never, % of adults in the Chicago metro area who attend prayer group, Compare: 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. ", "Ken Griffin and J.B. Pritzker's secret meeting: The origin of a political feud", "Chicago's snack bar wars: May the cleanest label win", "Chicago City Council raises minimum wage to $15 by 2021, but restaurant servers still will get lower tipped wage", "Opaa! In northern Illinois, ComEd (a division of Exelon) operates the greatest number of nuclear generating plants in any US state. [225] Upscale shopping along the Magnificent Mile and State Street, thousands of restaurants, as well as Chicago's eminent architecture, continue to draw tourists. [9] The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless,[10] but Chicago's population continued to grow to 503,000 by 1880 and then doubled to more than a million within the decade. Chicago's dedication to invest in better bike infrastructure made biking it safer and more comfortable for everyone in Chicago, regardless of age or ability. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. A popular modification is the Comboan Italian beef sandwich with the addition of an Italian sausage. [47][48][49], In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4km) long and 1-mile (1.6km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. [309] Northside College Preparatory High School is ranked second, Jones College Prep is third, and the oldest magnet school in the city, Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, which was opened in 1975, is ranked fourth. [42] The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.[43]. During the 1950s the Chinese population grew from 3,000 to 6,000. 40,000 of them came as refugees during the 1990s and early 2000s.[18]. The Chicago Police Department provides law enforcement and the Chicago Fire Department provides fire suppression and emergency medical services for the city and its residents. [180] In 2014 the Catholic Church was the largest individual Christian denomination (34%), with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago being the largest Catholic jurisdiction. [104] Landfill extends into portions of the lake providing space for Navy Pier, Northerly Island, the Museum Campus, and large portions of the McCormick Place Convention Center. The park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in South Side Chicago. WGN America eventually became NewsNation in 2021. [268] The building of the boulevard system continued intermittently until 1942. For every 100 females there were 94.2 males. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County. [citation needed], With an estimated completion date of 2020, the Barack Obama Presidential Center will be housed at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park and include both the Obama presidential library and offices of the Obama Foundation. Chicago is also home to a number of national radio shows, including Beyond the Beltway with Bruce DuMont on Sunday evenings. In 1990, Chicago's South Side and the adjoining south suburbs constituted the largest black majority region in the entire United States. "Chicagoan" redirects here. Today, the Chicago Park District consists of more than 570 parks with over 8,000 acres (3,200ha) of municipal parkland. Chicago has also been the home of several prominent talk shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Steve Harvey Show, The Rosie Show, The Jerry Springer Show, The Phil Donahue Show, The Jenny Jones Show, and more. Illinois. How Chicago Gobbled Its Neighbors", "Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise Aboard Chicago's First Lady Cruises", "The Public Art Scene You're Missing in Chicago", "Columnist Irv Kupcinet remembered with statue dedication", "Climate of Chicago Illinois State Climatologist", "Chicago, Illinois Kppen Climate Classification (Weatherbase)", Extreme cold in Midwest will finally begin to ease grasp, At 23 below, Wednesday marked Chicago's 4th coldest temperature recorded, University of Iowa student dies during polar vortex; 7 other deaths linked to wintry blast, "Top 20 Weather Events of the Century for Chicago and Northeast Illinois 19001999", "A Study of Chicago's Significant Tornadoes", "Ask Tom: Does Chicago Get Lake-Effect Snow? The Willis Tower has an observation deck open to tourists year round with high up views overlooking Chicago and Lake Michigan. [101] The overall grade of the city's central, built-up areas is relatively consistent with the natural flatness of its overall natural geography, generally exhibiting only slight differentiation otherwise. RELIGION CENSUS IS NOW COMPLETE. [85] Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. A number of statues also honor recent local heroes such as Michael Jordan (by Amrany and Rotblatt-Amrany), Stan Mikita, and Bobby Hull outside of the United Center; Harry Caray (by Amrany and Cella) outside Wrigley field, Jack Brickhouse (by McKenna) next to the WGN studios,[citation needed] and Irv Kupcinet at the Wabash Avenue Bridge. 35.2%. The City Council is the legislative branch and is made up of 50 aldermen, one elected from each ward in the city. Religion Census. For these figures, anything under 0.25% displays as <0.3%. [130] A number of Chicago's public art works are by modern figurative artists. [77], The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. [290], The number of murders in Chicago peaked at 970 in 1974, when the city's population was over 3million people (a murder rate of about 29 per 100,000), and it reached 943 murders in 1992, (a murder rate of 34 per 100,000). He was reelected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. The median age was 32 years. In the summer of 2016, Navy Pier constructed a DW60 Ferris wheel. From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. Click here to see how the data was gathered. Were also the home of renowned artists including Louis Armstrong, Jennifer Hudson, Earth, Wind and Fire, Chance the Rapper, Common Smashing Pumpkins, Rise Against,Muddy Waters, and Kanye West. Explore from one of the 150-plus buildings with behind-the-scenes tours. It is the principal city in the Chicago metropolitan area, situated in both the Midwestern United States and the Great Lakes region. [citation needed]. Religions Explore religious groups in the U.S. by tradition, family and denomination Christian 70.6% Evangelical Protestant 25.4% Mainline Protestant 14.7% Historically Black Protestant 6.5% Catholic 20.8% Mormon 1.6% Orthodox Christian 0.5% Jehovah's Witness 0.8% Other Christian 0.4% Non-Christian Faiths 5.9% Jewish 1.9% Muslim 0.9% Buddhist 0.7% [citation needed]. [106] The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce defines it as all of Cook and DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side. Chicago has one of the largest LGBTQ+ populations in the United States. Even before then, it was not unheard of for Republican presidential candidates to win handily in downstate Illinois, only to lose statewide due to large Democratic margins in Chicago. The city is the United States' third-largest convention destination. [31], After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. Ansari, Azadeh and Rosa Flores (January 2, 2017). At least 7.2% identify as a different race and 0.1% identifies as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. [citation needed], Chicago Public Radio produces nationally aired programs such as PRI's This American Life and NPR's Wait WaitDon't Tell Me!. PRRI has been collecting and aggregating data on religious diversity in America continuously since 2013. This marked the second consecutive year of population increase, while still not yet returning to the official Census 2000 population level. [295] In 2011, Chicago's murders fell another 1.2% to 431 (a rate of 15.94 per 100,000). [citation needed], The Chicago Sky is a professional basketball team playing in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Sign up to receive updates. [361] In addition, the Chicago Sister Cities program hosts a number of delegation and formal exchanges. [24] The city is the seat of the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. [4] In 1996, Chicago had the sixth highest foreign-born population in the United States.[5]. [citation needed] Lured by a combination of large business customers, federal research dollars, and a large hiring pool fed by the area's universities, Chicago is also the site of a growing number of web startup companies like CareerBuilder, Orbitz, Basecamp, Groupon, Feedburner, Grubhub and NowSecure.