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.

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Production

WTTW/Chicago, GBH

Language

Status

Ended

First Aired

January 13, 2003

Last Aired

January 15, 2003

Networks

PBS

Where to Watch

Region US · Lang EN

No providers available for this region.

Available in Your Library

Seasons & Episodes

Select a season to view episodes. Reddit links may contain spoilers.

Season

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.

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.

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.