Origin of the name "Windy City"

This newspaper article was published by the Cleveland Gazette in 1885

The city of Chicago has been known by many nicknames, but it is most widely recognized as the "Windy City". There are three main possibilities to explain the city's nickname: the weather, as Chicago is near Lake Michigan; the World's Fair; and the rivalry with Cincinnati.

The earliest known reference to Chicago as the "Windy City" is from an 1858 Chicago Tribune article ^[1] The first known repeated effort to label Chicago with this nickname is from 1876 and involves Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. The term "Windy City" is often erroneously claimed to have been first used by The Sun editor, Charles Dana, in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, long after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition ended.

Weather

One explanation for Chicago being a naturally breezy area is that it is on the shores of Lake Michigan. Chicago is not significantly windier than any other U.S. city. For example, the average annual wind speed of Chicago is: 10.3 mph (16.6 km/h); Boston: 12.4 mph (20.0 km/h); New York City, Central Park: 9.3 mph (15.0 km/h); and Los Angeles: 7.5 mph (12.1 km/h).^[2]

The following "windy city" explanation is from the Freeborn County Standard of Albert Lea, Minnesota, on November 20, 1892:^[3]

“

Chicago has been called the “windy” city, the term being used metaphorically to make out that Chicagoans were braggarts. The city is losing this reputation, for the reason that as people got used to it they found most of her claims to be backed up by facts. As usual, people go to extremes in this thing also, and one can tell a stranger almost anything about Chicago today and feel that he believes it implicitly. But in another sense Chicago is actually earning the title of the “windy” city. It is one of the effects of the tall buildings which engineers and architects apparently did not foresee that the wind is sucked down into the streets. Walk past the Masonic Temple or the Auditorium any day even though it may be perfectly calm elsewhere, and you will meet with a lively breeze at the base of the building that will compel you to put your hand to your hat.

”

Chicago had long billed itself as an ideal summer resort because of its cool lake breeze. The Boston Globe of July 8, 1873, wrote that "a few years ago, Chicago advertised itself as a summer resort, on the strength of the lake breezes which so nicely tempered the mid-summer heats." The Chicago Tribune of June 14, 1876, discussed "Chicago as a Summer Resort" at length, proudly declaring that "the people of this city are enjoying cool breezes, refreshing rains, green fields, a grateful sun, and balmy air—winds from the north and east tempered by the coolness of the lake, and from the south and west, bearing to us frequent hints of the grass, flowers, wheat and corn of the prairies."

A typical summer weather forecast on TV or radio will predict a day's high temperature, with the appended comment: "cooler near the lake."

The February 4, 1873, Philadelphia Inquirer called Chicago "the great city of winds and fires."^[4]

Cincinnati rivalry

Cincinnati and Chicago were rival cities in the 1860s and 1870s. Cincinnati was well known in the meatpacking trade and it was called "Porkopolis" from at least 1843. Starting from the early 1860s, Chicago surpassed Cincinnati in this trade and proudly claimed the very same "Porkopolis" nickname.^[5]

The baseball inter-city matches were especially intense. The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were the pride of all of baseball, so Chicago came up with a rival team called the White Stockings to defeat them. "Windy City" often appeared in the Cincinnati sporting news of the 1870s and 1880s.

Four of the first known citations of "Windy City" are from 1876, all involving Cincinnati:

1. The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 9, 1876, headline: "THAT WINDY CITY. Some Freaks of the Last Chicago Tornado."
2. The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 13, 1876: "Only the plucky nerve of the eating-house keeper rescued the useful seats from a journey to the Windy City."
3. Chicago Tribune, April, 20, 1876, headline: "The WINDY CITY Jay-Rollers La-Crosse Team Wins Inaugural Game against Cincinnati Nannies." That High.
4. Chicago Tribune, July 2, 1876: "The Cincinnati Enquirer, in common with many other papers, has been waiting with great anxiety for the fulfillment of its prophecy: that the Chicago papers would call the Whites hard names when they lost. Witness these scraps the day after the Whites lost to the Athletics: There comes a wail to us from the Windy City."

For the Cincinnati papers, "Windy City" had meant a Chicago that was full of bluster.

World's Fair

The Columbian Exposition

As the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas approached, the United States planned to hold a world's fair to celebrate. This was considered an important time, due to the French successes at the previous World's Fair with the construction of the Eiffel Tower. The next world's fair was seen as a chance by many Americans to show the world that America was also a great country.

The prestige of holding the fair enticed several prominent cities to compete to host the fair. At the top, New York City, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. all fought hard for the right and many New Yorkers thought they had a win guaranteed. In the end, it came down to New York and Chicago. In 1890, Chicago won the bid to host the World's Fair, also known as the World's Columbian Exposition, after eight ballots.^[6] Many prominent New Yorkers were extremely irritated that a "frontier town" could beat them.

It is a popular myth that the first person to use the term "Windy City" was The New York Sun editor, Charles Dana. Charles Dana was New York's leading fair booster, but there is little evidence that he ever used the "Windy City" term. The first known attribution of Dana to the origin of "Windy City" was in the Chicago Tribune, "Chicago Dubbed 'Windy' in Fight for Fair of '93," June 11, 1933:^[7]

“

"Don’t pay any attention", wrote Charles A. Dana, day in and day out in his New York Sun, "to the nonsensical claims of that windy city. Its people could not build a World’s Fair even if they won it".

”

The Hawk wind, or Hawkins

Chicago's wind is often called "The Hawk". This term has long been popular in African American Vernacular English. The Baltimore Sun's series of columns in 1934, attempted to examine the origin of the phrase, "Hawkins is coming", for a cold, winter wind. The first recorded Chicago citation is in the Chicago Defender, October 20, 1936: "And these cold mornings are on us—in other words 'Hawkins' has got us."^[8]

The first line of Steve Goodman's song, "Dying Cub Fan's Last Request", is "By the shores of old Lake Michigan / Where the Hawk Wind blows so cold..."

The introduction of Lou Rawls' "Dead End Street" explains "The Hawk" pretty well.^{[clarification needed]}

Notes

1. ^ Popik, Barry (2004-10-11). "The Big Apple: Windy City (summary)". Barrypopik.com. http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/summary/. Retrieved 2011-10-01. 
2. ^ Dellinger, Dan (2004-01-04). "Wind - Average Wind Speed - (MPH)". National Climatic Data Center. http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/avgwind.html. Retrieved 2008-11-25. 
3. ^ Digitized citation available on NewspaperARCHIVE.com
4. ^ The Big Apple: Windy City (summary)
5. ^ The Big Apple: Porkopolis (Cincinnati and Chicago nickname)
6. ^ Chicago Tribune, Feb. 25, 1890, p.1 (reporting the Congressional votes for the host city)
7. ^ Bierma, Nathan L. K. (2004). "Windy City". nbierma.com. http://www.nbierma.com/language/column/windy/windy-cpl.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-26. 
8. ^ http://www.barrypopik.com/article/591/the-hawk

External links

Chicago portal

• Studies in Slang, VII, 2006, pg.50-71, Barry Popik, academic investigation of Windy City. See also a letter in USA Today by Popik.
• Windy City by Michael Quinion at WorldWideWords.org
• Windy City, The Straight Dope. Ongoing updates to the source of the name.
• Nathan Bierma, "Windy City: Where did it come from?", Chicago Tribune, Dec. 7 2004, Tempo section, pp. 1,5. Reprinted in Studies in Slang, VII, 2006, pg.72-77.