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It's the 1850s on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan, where not too long ago,

this was just a frontier outpost built on marshy ground at the meeting point of great waterways.

Territories utilized by generations of native peoples.

Trading, hunting, traveling, living, according to the land.

But now this land is American territory, property, and against the odds a city has risen.

Chicago, and it's a boom town. Buildings are erected as quickly as people arrive.

Brick, limestone, and marble facades

supported by timber frames.

When it rains, the streets become wagon-churned mud.

When it's dry, there are clouds of dust.

The humanity, too, is a contrast.

For every rising industrial magnet,

stepping from mansion to theater to grand hotel, there are tenement

blocks of laborers newly arrived from Ireland and Germany, living between shifts in overcrowded,

squalid conditions.

The rivers, too, are crowded with boats and increasingly choked with waste.

It is growth without pause and not enough plan,

an unlikely city rising from uncertain ground

and straining against it.

...