Friday, November 18, 2005
Chicagoland
Growing up in the Chicagoland area, it never occurred to me that the phrase "Chicagoland area" is a bit odd. Most cities have little phrases to describe the city and it's surrounding suburbs. New York is the "Tri-State Area." Boston ingeniously calls it the "Boston Metro Area." Detroit is "Dante's Inferno and the Nine Suburbs of Hell."
Loosely defined, the Chicagoland area is bounded by Green Bay to the north, Iowa to the west, Champaign-Urbana to the south, and South Bend (Indiana) to the east. It's about the same size as the state of Connecticut.
One thing that perplexes me is why the phrase is "Chicagoland." It seems as though they snuck an extra syllable in there and hoped that nobody would notice. After some investigating, I discovered that people in the 1900's frequently got the Windy City confused with the actual wind that blows through Chicago.
In 1928, Chicago officially decided it would have two names. The first was Chicagoland and the second was Chicagoair. It didn't take long for non-Chicagolandians to think Chicagolandians were nuts. So, to distance themselves from the nuts, the "land" was officially dropped from the name of Chicago, but it has enjoyed continuous use among the locals. (Chicagoair, by the way, was slaughtered in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and hasn't been used since.)
Loosely defined, the Chicagoland area is bounded by Green Bay to the north, Iowa to the west, Champaign-Urbana to the south, and South Bend (Indiana) to the east. It's about the same size as the state of Connecticut.
One thing that perplexes me is why the phrase is "Chicagoland." It seems as though they snuck an extra syllable in there and hoped that nobody would notice. After some investigating, I discovered that people in the 1900's frequently got the Windy City confused with the actual wind that blows through Chicago.
In 1928, Chicago officially decided it would have two names. The first was Chicagoland and the second was Chicagoair. It didn't take long for non-Chicagolandians to think Chicagolandians were nuts. So, to distance themselves from the nuts, the "land" was officially dropped from the name of Chicago, but it has enjoyed continuous use among the locals. (Chicagoair, by the way, was slaughtered in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and hasn't been used since.)
