Your first port of call should be the online edition of the magnificent Encyclopedia of Chicago:

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/

This landmark publication was sponsored and published by the Chicago History Museum which has a superb archive of photographs, newspapers and books about the city:

http://www.chicagohistory.org/

For a first class overview of Chicago history, click on this weblink to the PBS documentary Chicago, City of the Century:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/index.html

The Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum) posted this website covering major themes and events connected to Chicago. Click here for material on the World?s Fair of 1893 and the Union Stock Yard.

http://www.chicagohs.org/history/index.html

In 1893, the year of the Fair and our story, Rand McNally produced a wonderful series of Bird?s Eye Views of Chicago. See the city as Emily and Anna saw it at:

http://www.chicagohs.org/history/index.html

Chicago?s great network of railways and depots inspired many writers, including Theodore Dreiser in his novel Sister Carrie. See:

http://www.common-place.org/vol-03/no-04/chicago/

This site has a wonderful selection of stereograms of old Chicago, many of them hand-tinted:

http://www.erbzine.com/mag12/1275s.html

And this one also has wonderful visuals of the 19th-century city in the form of hand-tinted postcards:

http://patsabin.com/illinois/index.htm

For the work of Hull House and the life of the immigrant community of the city see this excellent site posted by the University of Illinois:

http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/urbanexp/

The World?s Columbian Exposition of 1893 is beautifully recaptured in this website:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/WCE/title.html

The archives of the Chicago Daily News have a wealth of photographs from the period 1902-33:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnSubjects18.html

Another brilliant site, this time about Chicago?s violent history, from 1870 to 1930:

http://homicide.northwestern.edu/

This very useful link at ?Places on Line? will take you to a wonderful selection of other sites about Chicago:

http://www.placesonline.org/sitelists/nam/usa/illinois/chicago.asp

Finally, as writers and book lovers our first port of call whenever we are in the city is John LaPine?s Fine & Rare Books on Printer?s Row. John is a passionate bibliophile, a great raconteur and a warm and funny man. The ambiance, conversation and books in his store are second to none:

http://www.printersrowbooks.com/main.html