Many universities have extensive archives that document their institutions' growth, development and evolution, and the University of Chicago is no exception. Their current archival photo files digitization project began in February 2002, and the first stage was recently completed and made available for the general public on this website. This first set of images to be made available comes from the...

Police, Protestors Prepare for NATO Summit http://www.voanews.com/content/nato_chicago_summit_protests_voa/666389.html NATO, Protests Getting Attention in Chicago-Area Classrooms http://www.teachhub.com/nato-protests-getting-attention-chicago-area-classrooms Preparing for Battle in a War of Ideas at Protest...

Do you ever wonder what Chicago looked like before the Great Fire of 1871? The University of Chicago's Map Library has digitized an entire slew of wonderful maps that document Chicago's urban landscape before and after that traumatic conflagration. The growth of the city during that time was great indeed, transforming the small city from a population of 109,000 to more than one million by the...

Scout Report readers with a penchant for urban transportation (past and present) will find much to catch their attention while visiting the Chicago "L" site. Created by transportation history guru and expert Graham Garfield, this site provides videos, historical and contemporary photographs, essays, and other items related to Chicago's elevated transit system. Under the "What's New" banner,...

If you want to peer into Chicago's past, block-by-block, you should definitely give the Chicago Ancestors website a look. The site is a project of the Newberry Library and its goal is "to help genealogists and local historians discover and share historical information about Chicago." The funding for the project came from the Illinois State Library, which used funds provided by the Institute for...

Located in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago, the Newberry Library is one of the country's most distinguished private research libraries. This particular corner of its lovely website brings together digital collections as well as a detailed research guide to all things Chicago and Midwestern. Here, visitors can avail themselves of cartographic resources, city directories, manuscript...

From the artistic statements of Louis Sullivan to the brutally Modern statements of Walter Netsch, architecture in Chicago is nothing if not eclectic. Given the important legacy of those architects practicing in and around Chicago, it is refreshing to note that the Art Institute of Chicago has been collecting the oral histories of these men and women since 1983. With substantial financial support...

William Randolph Hearst was a titan of the 20th century newspaper world, and he purchased and started papers in dozens of American cities. One of his morning papers was the Chicago Examiner, which began its run in 1902. The Chicago Public Library has an impressive archive of the Examiner from 1908 to 1918. Although the collection is incomplete, it remains the longest run of the paper still...

The Chicago History Museum has a "big tent" approach to their fine Flickr account where they ask visitors to offer up their own Chicago photographs to supplement their own exhibits. On the homepage, visitors can look through some of the tags to get started, such as "urban," "CTA," and "architecture." Currently, there are over 6600 photographs and visitors can search at their leisure and contribute...

The city of Chicago has long been a haven for African American intellectuals, artists, and activists. This digital collection from the Chicago Public Library offers up bits of ephemera from the Chicago Renaissance that took place on the city's South Side from the early 1930s to the 1950s. Visitors will find almost two dozen items of interest here, including a self-portrait of Gordon Parks, images...