May 26, 2005

Chicago history comes alive through online encyclopedia

Electronic edition expands on print version, presenting thousands of entries on Chicago subjects from A to Z, as well as access to more than 1,300 historical sources

By Wendy Leopold

On the morning of May 11, in Chicago’s City Hall, Mayor Richard M. Daley literally “made history” when he marked the official launch of The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. A project of Northwestern, the Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library, the electronic encyclopedia presents the Windy City’s history with a richness and depth unparalleled by any other resource.

The free, online encyclopedia, at www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org, follows in the wake of the critically acclaimed, 1,000 plus-page print edition of The Encyclopedia of Chicago published late last year. The Web version, at no cost to users, contains all the material in that hefty, $65 book — and a whole lot more.

“The digital encyclopedia differs from the print version in the exponentially expanded amount of material it contains,” said Bob Taylor, director of the University’s Academic Technologies (AT) unit that specializes in “marrying” scholarship and technology. Taylor oversaw the team of media specialists that developed the Web architecture crucial to the encyclopedia’s success. 

Thanks to their efforts, it is as easy to search and explore the digital encyclopedia as it is to find green relish and celery salt on a Chicago hot dog.  And, ultimately, it is a meatier Chicago experience.

Like its print counterpart, the electronic encyclopedia presents more than 1,000 alphabetized entries, from AIDS to Zoroastrians. But the online edition also offers access to more than 1,500 historical sources. Digitized at “archive resolution” quality, the sources  — photographs, documents, maps and ephemera from the last three centuries — can be examined, scrutinized and manipulated in ways only the Web allows.

In addition, the electronic encyclopedia includes new and specially commissioned works of original scholarship by Northwestern historian Carl Smith and Ann Durkin Keating, two preeminent scholars of Chicago history. In authoring their “interpretive digital essays” — Smith’s on the 1909 Plan of Chicago and Keating’s about the role of water in Chicago’s social and cultural development — these two eminent Chicago historians fully incorporate the Web’s multi-media capacities.

“By providing many of the primary documents that underpin the A to Z entries, the digital encyclopedia is not only a repository of information. It becomes a powerful research tool,” said AT’s Taylor.

Together, the three institutions created a user-friendly resource that connects tens of thousands of pages of visual materials and text in a sensible, relational framework.

Custom-designed, innovative viewing tools developed by AT’s Jonathan Smith and Jeff Cousens allow encyclopedia users to view photographs and documents as they never before have been seen. Smith’s zoom function lets “virtual readers” zoom in on sources and magnify details of photographs, maps and other historical materials that maintain absolute focus and clarity.

“Photos taken in the late 19th century of seemingly faceless individuals can be manipulated to reveal not only facial features, but details of dress, vehicles and housing.

Using the zoom tool, the digital encyclopedia explorer can easily read an 1895 hand-written petition urging the governor to create a public bathing beach on Lake Michigan. Social historians can closely examine and put into context a 1908 poster titled “$acred Motherhood,” which depicts an overworked mother combining domestic and factory duties with dire results. Protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention may even discover themselves, friends or acquaintances in a newspaper photograph taken in those tumultuous days.

A tool called the bound volume viewer, also developed by Smith, enables users to read approximately 200 multi-paged documents in the format in which they originally appeared or easily peruse them page-by-page or from one section to another.

Among the documents lending themselves to such scrutiny are the entire (268-page) “1909 Plan of Chicago” and the 63-page “Wacker’s Manual,” which promoted the plan and was required reading for Chicago public school children.

Other examples are a 1929 letter and restrictive covenant banning  “colored people” from purchasing, using or residing in the Auburn Park District; the entire 1837 Act of Incorporation for the City of Chicago; and an album chronicling the creation of the Sanitary and Ship Canal from 1892 to 1900 and celebrating the ingenuity of the engineers who reversed the Chicago River.

Hyperlinks, or clickable text links, in the encyclopedia’s 1,400 plus entries can move “readers” in a flash from one related subject to related entries, photographs, drawings, maps, catalogues, advertisements, newspapers, posters, letters, magazine articles, journals, and legal and government documents. 

Because it otherwise could be easy for users to get lost in this resource-rich collection, Northwestern media specialists created a “breadcrumb trail feature” that appears on every page and allows users to easily retrace their “virtual” steps. In addition, each Web page contains a navigation bar pointing visitors to the many ways the encyclopedia can be explored, to related subjects and historical sources, and to a highly comprehensible user’s guide that makes navigating the encyclopedia simple. 

The in-depth essay about the 1909 Plan of Chicago by Smith, Franklyn Bliss Snyder Professor of American Studies, examines the roots of Daniel Burnham’s visionary plan for the city, its marketing and implementation, and its impact on the city’s built environment over almost 100 years.

“The Burnham Plan essay includes text, galleries of digitized primary source materials, and dynamic maps that together provide an understanding of the plan that simply could not take shape in print format,” said Northwestern’s Taylor. “Dynamic maps enable users to visually compare the recommendations of the 1909 plan with the realities of Chicago’s built environment in Burnham’s day, today and periods in between.”

A “rich map” called the “Worlds of Prairie Avenue” presents changes that occurred on that street between 1853 and 2003. By tracking 57 homes and estates, including the mansions of Marshall Field, George Pullman and other 19th century business giants, the map vividly tells the story of the street’s heyday as well as its eventual deterioration.

Prairie Avenue and its residents come alive through text and maps and via photographs, newspaper articles, personal letters and other documents of and about the powerful people who once lived there. The narrative continues through to the mid to late 20th century when the once elegant avenue became the province of light industry and of vacant, untended lots.

The “rich map” of labor unrest tells a different story. With 205 clickable “hot spots,” it marks the location of all labor unrest that occurred the week leading to and including May 4, 1886, the day of the Haymarket tragedy. The “hot spots” connect users to information about each highlighted labor action, including census and business data, union materials, flyers, photographs, posters and actual newspaper accounts of the day.

The labor map makes use of a rare five-volume 1886 atlas created by the Robinson Fire Insurance Company for use by the fire insurance industry. Consisting of more than 100 individual plates, these maps provide a wealth of information about the city, including the location, footprint and building materials of every structure, whether or not a street was paved, and the location of water cisterns.

Using a method pioneered by Northwestern media specialists developed when working on a project for an art history professor, a team headed by AT’s Harlan Wallach stitched together the atlas’s 128 plates. The result is an enormous (3.3 gigabyte) single image map that allows users to follow any street in Chicago from its beginning to its end. Wallach was responsible for the encyclopedia’s interface design and architecture.

Other members of Academic Technology who worked on the electronic encyclopedia include Bill Parod, who with Jeff Cousens , was responsible for the system architecture and implementation; Stefani Foster, photography and stitching of the Robinson Maps; Jeremy Brunjes, video gallery of the “Water in Chicago” essay; Will Beckley, “Plan of Chicago” essay and timeline; Chris Wallace, index navigation, general design, rich maps design and layout; Jon Fernandez, design and implementation of the encyclopedia’s front page and year pages; and Lauren Holliday, for creation of GIS maps from census data for the rich maps on unrest and the Plane of Chicago essay.