Rail Industrial Sectors

51. Track Elevation at 23rd Street, Chicago, ca. 1907. View of work on Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad shows that the railroad and industrial neighbors often formed a continuous lineal city within the metropolis. Library of Congress

52. Calumet Harbor-Gary Industrial Strip, 1908. Six railroads and artificial harbors for ore boats nourished a sixteen-mile strip of heavy industry, since the late nineteenth century a basic element in Chicago's economy. Here, the new Universal Portland Cement Company plant, next to the Gary steel mills (out of picture, at right), with Calumet Harbor plants of South Chicago down the tracks (upper left). Library of Congress

53. Western Electric, Hawthorne Works, Cicero, ca. 1910. In 1903 this manufacturing subsidiary of American Telephone and Telegraph moved its giant plant out to the fringe of the city, where land was plentiful and its operations could be served by the circumferential belt railroads that tied together all the lines of the metropolis. Chicago Historical Society

54. Casting Pig Iron, Iroquois Smelter, Calumet Harbor, South Chicago, 1906. A few workers in the army of hand laborers required by large-scale industry during the early and middle stages of its mechanization. Library of Congress