Introduction: Twenty-One Tales of Old Chicago A city, in order for it to attain rightful grandeur among the capitals of the world, must first have a good story to tell. In its frantic pace to evolve from a desolate, marshy frontier town anchored by the wooden palisades of a military fort into a global rendezvous for international business, commerce, and the arts, Chicago has passed through many phases. Echoing the words of Richard Wright who reminds us that "Chicago, it seems, has a way of leaving its imprint upon those who live in it," the city has inspired its historians, chroniclers, and storytellers to pass down, from one generation to the next, in an affectionate manner of course, its fondest memories, saddest tales, ironic anecdotes, and keenest observations of people, places, and things that have gone before.1 Chicago, a city bathed in shadows and light. Chicago--the glistening jewel of the American heartland. Chicago, always notorious, lusty--a gawky, overgrown adolescent city in its most formative years--today, an international city and a hub for global business. Visit Chicago and see the world as it so often has been said. It still holds true.

Chicago always shall remain a city of imagination, a city of high hopes, and a refuge and sanctuary from the storm of life for the displaced, the poor, and the tired masses, and regrettably for some, a city of heartbreak. Presented in this volume are twenty-one tales drawn from the divergent worlds of politics, show business, invention and innovation, sports, and crime and punishment, with an ensemble cast of quintessential Chicago characters--famous and forgotten dreamers, society mavens, inventors, planners, politicians, schemers, actors and actresses, idealists, visionaries, philanthropists, social engineers, crooks, cons, gamblers, and work-a-day people, spanning the midpoint of the nineteenth century up through the second half of the twentieth. Within the broader framework of familiar historical currents such as the Great Chicago Fire and the saga of the sprawling Union Stockyards, the reader will find lesser known vignettes from the lost corners of Chicago. For example, who really started the Chicago Fire? I think I have come up with the answer and it's not who you might think. John Wilkes Booth spent some time in Chicago. So did Cardinal Mundelein, Lar Daly, Al Capone, Jane Addams, and history's bypassed young genius who invented the telephone. And his name is not Alexander Graham Bell. I have deliberately left out Mr.

Capone and Ms. Addams with all due respect to the latter, because their stories have been told and retold in countless books, articles, and electronic media. By design, I have chosen to sidestep the 1893 World's Fair in favor of the 1948-1949 Railroad Fair, because, after all, what more can possibly be said about Chicago's great "coming out party," the grand pageant of illumination and invention marking the earliest stirrings of globalization for Chicago. Yes, it is true that an inspired, awestruck L. Frank Baum fashioned the Wizard of Oz and his fabled, romanticized Emerald City from the spectacle of the White City in Jackson Park. I submit, however, that the spirit of any great city is best captured not by a handful of isolated historical events, but rather through collective storytelling about its people. I therefore present in twenty-one chapters, Chicago--in the estimation of many, the most American of all American cities--in all its unvarnished glory.