OVERVIEW: (How this got started)
I grew up in Chicago from the age of six and live here today.  Never thought much about it until I started traveling overseas.  And each time I returned it occured to me that Europe has nothing on Chicago.  Not that Europe isn't amazing, it is, but it also is the reason that I see Chi-town through new eyes. 

Thanks to Classmates.com I have reunited with friends that I schooled with on the northside of  Chicago in the sixties.  This re-kindled friendship has brought back unbelivable nostalgia for the city of my youth.  And once, before a recent visit to Nashville and Memphis to unite with some of these friends, I made a short video inside the grade school where I spent third to fifth grade. It is from this and visits from my transplanted Chicago friends whom with I would wander through our old neighborhood, that this project idea sprang.

Ralcon Wagner shared this vision and encouraged this site.  Lord Wagner is an avid train buff who writes for several periodicals, reporting on his adventures as he rides the last rails of a dying era.  Recently in Memphis we visited Edward Burnett, an academic colleague of ours and it was there we viewed the video and recounted hours of neighborhood stories, faces, pictures and tales of innocense lost.  Sir Burnett, Lord Wagner and myself have had a grand time reconstructing the memories that brought us together and would like to share some of them with you.

George B. Swift.  I keep meaning to look him up and see again why he had an elementry school named after him.  ( UPDATE:  Well I did. See link to left. )  But on the northside of Chicago where Swift School stands today, better than ever, preparing the minds that will someday get us out of Iraq.  An unusual school for Chicago as it is the only public elementry school in Chicago that was equipt with a swimming pool.  With it's crooked wrinkly black floors, stately potraits of Washington and Lincoln in it's grand auditorium, petrified tree stumps in front commemorating fallen soldiers, fully decked playground and fieldhouse on the "boys" side of the school as well as the "girls" gravel pit play yard on the opposing side of the school.

So, if you grew up on the northside of Chicago in the sixties, then this is the place for you. A virtual taste of Chicago, yesterday and today.  If you attended George B. Swift School then this will be a reawakening of your past as well.  Eitherway, please enjoy.

Keith Cooper
www.cooperweb.com

First off, Chicago has hosted some incredible events over the years.  An interesting partial listing is in order, but not in particular order:
 

• Chicago's founding in 1818
• The Great Chicago Fire in 1871
• Birth of the Stockyards
• Home of Carl Sandburg and Al Capone.
• Public enemy number one, John Dillinger gunned down in front of the Biograph Theater on Lincoln avenue.
• The World's Fair
• The Century of Progress Fair
• The St. Valentine Day Massacre
• Home of notable mass murderers Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy.
• The 1968 Democratic Convention riots
• Abbey Hoffman and the Chicago 7 Conspiracy trials.
• The World's tallest building, Sears Tower.
• Home of everybody's favorite clown, Bozo.
• Morse Beach Youth Quake
• WGN Superstation.
• Home of the Blues Brothers
• Second City Improvistaion Caberet
• The Illegitimate Players
• The Tylenol Poisenings
• The Untouchables.
• "Vote early and often" - R.J.D.
• The fine art of bootlegging for fun and profit.
• Ressurection Mary, the original urban legend ...or is she?
• Home of the T.J.O's
• The original Hollywood.

   CHICAGO - Carl Sanburg  (1878-1967)

    HOG Butcher for the World,
     Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
     Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
     Stormy, husky, brawling,
     City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
     have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
     luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
     is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
     kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
     faces of women and children I have seen the marks
     of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
     sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
     and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
     so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
     job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
     little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
     as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
          Bareheaded,
          Shoveling,
          Wrecking,
          Planning,
          Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
     white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
     man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
     never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
     and under his ribs the heart of the people,
               Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
     Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
     Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
     Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Incidently, All images on this project were taken from web sources.  A handful of them I am using without direct consent.  If I have not linked to you or gotten specific agreements to use them on this non-profit project, please contact me below and I will rectify the situation.  Please be specific about which graphic it references.   And thank you to all who have responded to my request to share these incredible images.
 

THE CHICAGO PROJECT
By Ralcon Wagner and Keith Cooper 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

See left top side

OUTSIDE ATTRACTIONS:

• Neighborhood Photos (Uptown included)