HR0702 102ND GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0702 LRB102 26548 MST 37186 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives wish to congratulate the City of Chicago on the occasion of the 185th anniversary of its founding; and

WHEREAS, Chicago, with a population hovering at approximately three million, is the State's largest and the country's third most populous city; and

WHEREAS, A drive across Chicago's lively immigrant neighborhoods is a trip around the world; the cultures of virtually every country can be found in food stores, restaurants, shops, places of worship, and street-corner conversations; and

WHEREAS, Chicago's first permanent non-indigenous resident was a trader named Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a free black man from Haiti whose father was a French sailor and whose mother was an African slave; he came to Chicago in the 1770s via the Mississippi River from New Orleans with his Native American wife, and their home stood at the mouth of the Chicago River; and

WHEREAS, Incorporated as a city in 1837, Chicago was ideally situated to take advantage of the trading possibilities created by the nation's westward expansion; the completion of the Illinois & Michigan Canal in 1848 created a water link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River; today, 50 percent of U.S. rail freight passes through Chicago, even as the city has become the nation's busiest aviation center, thanks to O'Hare and Midway international airports; and

WHEREAS, The buildings, streets, and sidewalks of Chicago in its early days were made of wood, and most of them burned to the ground in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; the Chicago Fire Department training academy is on the site of the O'Leary property where the fire began; the Chicago Water Tower and Pumping Station at Michigan and Chicago avenues are among the few buildings to have survived the fire; and

WHEREAS, Chicago rebuilt quickly; much of the debris was dumped into Lake Michigan as landfill, forming the underpinnings for what is now Grant Park, Millennium Park, and the Art Institute of Chicago; only 22 years later, Chicago celebrated its comeback by holding the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, with its memorable White City; one of the Exposition buildings was rebuilt to become the Museum of Science and Industry; and

WHEREAS, Chicagoans have demonstrated their ingenuity in matters large and small; the nation's first skyscraper, the 10-story, steel-framed Home Insurance Building, was built in 1884 at LaSalle and Adams streets and demolished in 1931; when residents were threatened by waterborne illnesses from sewage flowing into Lake Michigan, they reversed the Chicago River in 1900 to make it flow toward the Mississippi; the start of the Historic Route 66 begins at Grant Park on Adams Street in the front of the Art Institute of Chicago; and

WHEREAS, Chicago was the birthplace of the refrigerated rail car (Swift), mail-order retailing (Sears and Montgomery Ward), the car radio (Motorola), and the TV remote control (Zenith); the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, ushering in the Atomic Age, took place at the University of Chicago in 1942; the 1,451-foot Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, completed in 1974, was the tallest building in the world from 1974 to 1998; and

WHEREAS, Chicago has become a global city, a thriving center of international trade and commerce, and a place where people of every nationality and background come to pursue the American dream; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we congratulate the City of Chicago on the 185th anniversary of its founding and wish the city many more wonderful years; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the Mayor of Chicago as symbol of our respect and esteem.