Chicagoland

Abstract

This article looks at the origins of 233 settlements established in the Chicago region by 1900, now suburbs or city neighborhoods. Four basic kinds of settlements were found in nineteenth-century Chicagoland: fortyone percent began as farm centers, thirty percent as industrial towns, fifteen percent as residential railroad suburbs, and thirteen percent as recreational/institutional centers. The Chicago metropolitan area is characterized by these basic settlement types—which change over time—as well as by interrelationships between settlements and settlers living within these different landscapes.