The Encyclopedia of Chicago

Kudos to this excellent website!!! The Chicago Historical Society, the Newberry Libary and Northwestern University have created a fine, easy to use website, with room to expand significantly as funds and skills allow. Check it out at http://www.encyclopedia.chiagohistory.org

The main catgories to search are: Alpha list, Historical Sources, Maps, Special features and the User's Guide. The biographies and historical sources include better known leaders and businessmen, photos of their businesses such as Marshall Fields, as well as documentation of groups such as the Knoghts of Labor. The maps wowed me! For example, I viewed the "Business Portion of Chicago, 1862" lithograph and zoomed in on each block- the quality was excellent! What a magificent opportunity for students or anyone studying the time period to utilize a source most likely seldom ever seen so quickly and so easily!

The Special Features included Interpretative Digital Essays, Rich Maps, Galleries, such as "The Public Faces of Religion", and Indices, with a Biographical Dictionary citing the tradtional name, birth and death dates and short biographies. Again, an excellent source for a fmaily historian fleshing out the details of life in various time periods in a large Midwestern city.