Talk:Windy City, Origin of Name (Chicago)/Archive 0

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Windy City Name

Actual research needs to be done on the origin of the name "Windy City." I can't remember where I read it, but it was a historical study disproving that the name came from the competition from the world's fair; that Chicago was already being referenced as a windy city in attempts to attract new residents and real estate development (because when you don't have air conditioning, a naturally breezy city is nice).

Simulcra 11:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

What an interesting question, I've started re-editing my comments because I keep finding new twists to this story. I thought I knew the three prevailing theories pretty well (Weather, Politics, World's Fair) but another wrench has been thrown into this. When you look at the three theories each makes sense as a source for the name but the earliest known use for each is the World's Fair reference published by Charles Dana in 1893. After doing further I found the following newspaper article published by the Cleveland Gazette in 1885:
This article was published before Charles Dana wrote his comments but it is more of a news blotter and it's hard to discern from the title why Chicago is the windy city. If I imagine myself as a person living at that time and I had to guess what Windy City meant I might think of the weather first. Perhaps Chicago was in the news earlier that year for bad weather?
Below I've put some information on three of the theories for the meaning of the name, of these three it's hard to say when number 1 (Weather) and number 2 (politics) became part of common conversation but number 3 (World's Fair) was first used in 1893.
1. Weather
Geographic conditions in the area (i.e. proximity to Lake Michigan, local prevailing winds, etc.) make Chicago a naturally windy area. Another contributing factor is how the city was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire. With a clean slate planners modeled new streets on the grid system. In high density areas, such as the loop, man-made wind tunnels are created on high windy days as there are even "columns and rows" for wind to travel down and pick up speed.
2. Politics
Others say that the name comes from our political history. Specifically referencing the "spectator sport" style of politics practiced in the last century. It is meant to be a jab towards the Chicago Democratic Machine which for the most part has been led by the Daley family for the past 50 years. Machine politics may have fallen out of style every where else in the country but it is for the most part alive and well in Chicago. To sum it up our when our politicians speak they are "blowing a lot of wind".
3. World's Fair
Now the actual source of the name comes from the New York Sun editor Charles Dana. In 1893 Chicago won the bid to host the World's Fair, also known in that year as the Columbian Exposition. This was a big deal because the French had just put the Americans to shame at the previous World's Fair with the building of the Eiffel Tower. The next world's fair was seen as a chance by many Americans to show the world that we were great country. Another factor that made this bid competitive was the list cities competeing for the right to host the fair. At the top New York, St. Louis and Washington D.C. all fought hard for the right and many New Yorkers thought they had it in the bag. In the end it came down New York and Chicago. Chicago finally won in a run off vote and many prominent New Yorkers were extremely irritated that a "frontier town" could best them. Of course over time national press coverage was given to the fair from start to finish. Dana railed against the city's raucous boosterism: suggesting that no one pay attention to the "nonsensical claims of that windy city. Its people could not hold a world's fair even if they won it."
Jasenlee 19:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


I've added a new section below to faciliate some other research others can do. I'm still searching for earlier uses of the name and credible sources to back it up. Some of what I've included below shows even earlier references but I can't find more source info.


Further Research & Sources
  • NBierma.com - Nathan Bierma lists several references to the name compiled from sources at the Chicago Public Library stretching from 1890 to 1939.
  • USA Today - The transcript of a letter from Barry Popik, who is an historian of American slang and a consultant to Oxford English Dictionary.
  • The Straight Dope - Ongoing updates to the source of the name.


Jasenlee 21:36, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd say what you've done so far is the good basis of another article: "Windy City, Origin of Name (Chicago)" or somesuch, which we could link to the main Chicago article - because there is going to be a lot of material for the subject as we'd need to cover the multiple origin stories otherwise the article will become some big edit fight of camps of disputing origin theorists. I'd put the article together out of what you've done so far but you deserve the credit for having done so much work so far. Robovski 23:13, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Good idea, I've done just that with the article name. I've copied this thread in there for now. Unfortunately I can't finish writing a more proper article as I have to make dinner but at least it will give us one place to start the proper dialog on this.
Further discussion and editing has been moved to the new article at Windy City, Origin of Name (Chicago).
Jasenlee 23:42, 18 March 2006 (UTC)