The Loop
Chicago's principal retail and entertainment district during the
early twentieth century was The Loop, so called because of the
horse-drawn cable-car routes that once used the district's streets to
loop back toward their points of origin. During the 1910s and 1920s, The
Loop boomed. Department stores expanded, movie palaces opened, and night
life thrived. The Depression of the early 1930s, however, hit the Loop
hard as cash-strapped Chicagoans reduced their spending and spent fewer
nights out on the town. The Century of Progress World's Fair of 1933 and
1934 helped temporarily revive Loop leisure activities, but it was not
until the Second World War, when military personnel and war workers
crowded the district's streets night and day, that the good times
returned in earnest. Just click on the sites below to explore the Loop
during Chicago's Jazz Age. |
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Chicago
Theater, ca. 1930 |
