Chicago Today - Circa 1935

We've got an extra bedroom downstairs that is essentially a store room that needs to be sorted out. Going through some of my father's old stuff, I came across this soft cover guide to Chicago, that I'm guessing was published in 1936. For a booklet entitled "Chicago Today" you'd think somewhere it would have a date. I've copied the pages here in high resolution so you can double click to enlarge them and see how good the photos are. This is just a few of the 65 or so pages. (No page numbers either.)




Edward Kelly was mayor of Chicago from 1933 to 1947 according to the Chicago public library So that doesn't narrow the date down much - 1933 at the earliest.



But here it says "Chicago -one hundred and three years ago was a 'mud hole trading post.'" And further down the page it says "In the spring of 1833 Chicago was incorporated and numbered at that time 550 people." So I'm calculating 1833 + 103 years = 1936. I see I should have left all the pages the original color. I changed some to black and white thinking a) the pages were black and white (which you can see they really aren't) and b) you would be able to read them better (which you can if you click on them.) It also says, "...and destined to become the world's largest city by 1968."

State and Madison Streets

Lake Shore Drive from the Drake Hotel and Michigan Boulevard from Chicago Ave

Skyline showing Grant Park and Michigan Boulevard

Aviation - "Daily 110 planes arrive and depart bearing some 500 passengers. During 1934 - 40,226 planes arrived and 40,266 planes took off." Ok, this also means we are after 1934 and where did the 40 extra planes that took off come from anyway? And that means an average of 5 passengers per plane!

Famous Restaurants. I'm not a Chicago boy so I don't know what's still around, if anything.

Baseball - Wriggly Field and Comiskey Field

Chicago Leads and Interesting Facts - Among the facts are more clues about the date of the book. "January 1935 brought 6,231 buyers to the Furniture Mart..." This was the latest date I could find, also suggesting the book was published in 1936.


Well, it was chartered in 1833 and incorporated in 1837. So I'm sticking with 1936 as the date of publication for now. But someone looking closer might find a later automobile or some other reference that could put it later.