Why We Love Chicago: 25 Fun Facts
We think Chicago is one of the world’s greatest cities! Here just some of the reasons why we love it. What do YOU love about Chicago?
- The world’s longest street is Chicago’s Western Avenue.
- The Chicago Post Office at 433 W. Van Buren is the only postal facility in the world which you can drive a car through.
- The term “Jazz” was coined in Chicago in 1914. The city’s native musicians included band leader Benny Goodman and drummer Gene Krupa.
- Chicago is home to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is one of the last free zoos.
- Chicago is home to the Harold Washington Library, the world’s largest public library.
- Chicago made a $110-million investment to move an eight-lane freeway to create a “Museum Campus” connecting three world-class museums – the Field Museum of Natural History, the Adler Planetarium, and the John G. Shedd Aquarium and Oceanarium.
- Nabisco, the world’s largest cookie and cracker factory, is located in Chicago.
- The world’s largest ice cream cone factory, Keebler, is also located in Chicago.
- The Taste of Chicago is the world’s largest free outdoor food festival. It attracted over 3.5 million people in 2003.
- Chicago’s McCormick Place has the largest amount of exhibit space of any convention center in the country at 2.2 million square feet.
- The William Wrigley, Jr. Company is the world’s largest gum manufacturer, producing more than 20 million packages a day.
- The Art Institute of Chicago holds the largest collections of Impressionist paintings in the world outside of the Louvre in Paris.
- The Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at 110 stories high.
- It has world’s busiest airport – O’Hare International Airport.
- America’s most trafficked highway – Dan Ryan Expressway [I-90/I-94]
- America’s highest indoor swimming pool is on the 44th floor of the “John Hancock Center”.
- Wrigley Field has hosted more professional football games than any other stadium in the nation.
- Chicago’s Oceanarium is the world’s largest indoor marine mammal pavilion and doubles the size of the John G. Shedd Aquarium, which is the largest indoor aquarium in the world.
- Chicago is home to eleven Fortune 500 companies, while the rest of the metropolitan area hosts an additional 21 Fortune 500 companies.
- Lake Michigan is the Biggest Lake (surface area), within one country, in the world.
- Chicago is the favorite road city for big-league baseball players, according to Sports Illustrated in 2003.
- In 1997 The Field Museum purchased Sue, the largest, most complete and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex ever discovered.
- The largest Latino cultural institution in the nation is Chicago’s Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum.
- The Chicago Cultural Center is the first free municipal cultural center in the U.S. and home to the world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome.
- Chicago’s central water filtration plant, located on the lakefront north of Navy Pier, is the largest in the world.
