
Chicago: City of the Century
2003
Documentary
In just 60 years Chicago grew from a remote, swampy frontier town into one of the most explosively alive cities in the world. Captains of industry built empires through innovation, ingenuity, determination, and sheer ruthlessness, while the labor of millions of working men and women -- most of them immigrants from Ireland and Northern Europe -- helped reinvent the way America did business.
Production
WTTW/Chicago, GBH
Language
EN
Status
Ended
First Aired
January 13, 2003
Last Aired
January 15, 2003
Networks
PBS
Where to Watch
Region US · Lang EN
US
No providers available for this region.
Seasons & Episodes
Select a season to view episodes. Reddit links may contain spoilers.
Season
E1
Mudhole to Metropolis
Air date: 2003-01-13
Chicago's location at the end of a canal linking the Mississippi to New York makes it attractive to Yankee speculators as well as Irish laborers. In just a few decades, the remote fur trading post explodes into the metropolis of the West. Not even the great fire of 1871 can slow the city's development.
E2
The Revolution Has Begun
Air date: 2003-01-14
From the railroads to Marshall Field's department store to Cyrus McCormick's reaper factory to the stockyards, workers struggle for their share of a new industrial capitalism. The Haymarket Affair becomes the most sensational labor incident of the 19th century.
E3
Battle for Chicago
Air date: 2003-01-15
Chicago develops the world's first skyscraper downtown, with a unique American architectural style. In its shadows are gambling, prostitution, corruption, poverty, and disease. In 1893 Chicago's business elite hosts a World's Fair, proudly showing 27 million visitors a glistening, sanitized city of the future.












