The Chicago skyline seen from Lake Michigan. A city of tall buildings, foregrounded by a park-lined lakefront shore with sailboats moored along it.
24 August 2021
Chicago is known as the Windy City, but where does this nickname come from? Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. The nickname is a reference to the winds off Lake Michigan, with perhaps a bit of a double entendre referencing Chicago’s self-promotion as a bunch of hot air.
Many cities and towns have been labeled the Windy City over the years, and there are even more simple co-locations of the two words, windy and city, that do not constitute an idiom. For instance, in the 1850s and 60s, it was fashionable to label San Francisco as the windy city. There is this letter from the pseudonymous T.J. Sluice-Fork dated 14 July 1856 that was published a week later in San Francisco’s Golden Era:
Having told you a thing or two about Columbia, you must allow me to inquire about matters and things in the bay city. What are you doing there in the matter of reform? I see by other papers that your Committee have sent another batch of rogues to—the Atlantic states, or out of California, at any rate, and that they are smelling around after more. The great question with me is, how many rogues did you have down in the windy city in the first place, and how will your population foot up when the ballot box stuffers and rascals in general are all driven away?
And there is this item in Manchester, New Hampshire’s Dollar Weekly Mirror of 13 February 1858 that applies the term to that city:
Samuel Webber, Esq., formerly of this city, is about to establish himself at Manchester, N.H. He passed through this city on Tuesday, on his way to the windy city. He ought to find employment here. — Lawrence Courier.
It is the editor’s high living while he is here that makes him think this is a “windy” city.
But it is Chicago that most famously bears the sobriquet. The earliest reference to Chicago as the Windy City that I know of appears in the Chicago Daily Tribune of 7 April 1858. I give the article in full because not only does it show the purple prose and satirical exaggeration that was common in nineteenth-century American newspapers, but it also shows the violent antipathy that many Americans of the era had for Mormons:
The valorous young gentlemen of Chicago who have been burning with soldierly zeal to shoot, impale, transfix, or otherwise put to death a battalion, or if need be, a whole city of Mormons, but bottle up their ire, and keep it hot for some other occasion. Their dreams of rushing into Mormon harems, amid the horrors of an assault, and rescuing therefrom the imprisoned beauties in danger of death from bursting bombs or red hot cannon shot, all go for naught. Their visions of a “gel-o-rious campaign,” of scenes of high conviviality in camp, of hair’s breadth ’scapes in the field, of shining political rewards upon their return, of future histories in which their names would appear within halos of glory, shining out from the forum and field, were only mockeries. They can’t go! Their patriotic offerings are not accepted. The President, though each were a Curtius, will have none of them. He has taken a regiment of seedy rag-a-muffins from New York, another from Pennsylvania, and the third must come from the South. Oh, sad fate! A thousand embryo conquerors, doomed to die without chipping their shells or uttering a single peep! An hundred militia officers, from corporal to commander, condemned to air their vanity and feathers only for the delectation of the boys and servant girls in this windy city.
The Buffalo Express has a pair of uses of Windy City in reference to Chicago in November 1867. From the 11 November issue:
According to the mood which they happen to be in, depending upon the state of self intoxication prevailing at the moment, the Chicagonese claim anywhere from 250,000 to a million population. But some way, it contrives always to be the fact that the windy city, when it holds an election, shows a wonderful scarcity of voters, compared with the aggregate number of souls which it pretends to have in its keeping.
And there is this headline from the paper’s 30 November 1867 issue:
WESTON.
His Arrival and Reception at Chicago.
The Windy City in a State of Excitement.
Incidents of the Pedestrian’s Final March!
&c. &c. &c.
And this from the Cincinnati Daily Gazette of 9 August 1869:
A great many citizens have left for Chicago, during the past few days, to take a look at the windy city.
Word sleuth Barry Popik has found numerous examples of Windy City, referring to Chicago, emanating out of Cincinnati in the 1860s and 70s, and that seems to be where the term became popular and established. The nickname for the city has stuck for over 160 years.
There is a particularly common, but false, legend about the origin of the name that began to appear in the 1930s and persists to this day, often repeated by what should be quite respectful sources. The legend has it that the nickname was coined by Charles A. Dana, editor of the New York Sun in the early 1890s. At the time, Chicago and New York were competing to host the 1893 Columbian Exposition, in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus discovering America. Dana allegedly used the term to describe the overblown claims of Chicago.
It’s a great story. It evokes the rivalry between two great cities. It involves journalists, making it irresistible for newspapers to repeat without verification (for journalists love nothing better than to talk about themselves and their profession). But, unfortunately, it’s not true. There is no record of Dana ever using the nickname, and even if he had, we have seen that it was in common use long before the 1890s.
Also, there are those who criticize the nickname because Chicago is not the windiest city. Wellington, New Zealand tops most windiest-cities lists. For the U.S., Dodge City, Kansas is at the top of a lot of the lists (there’s a lot of variability in the sources, probably due to the time period of the measurements). But that’s not fair. Chicago is objectively pretty windy, and it’s a lot bigger than most of the other cities on those lists.
Sources:
Bierma, Nathan. “Windy City: Where Did It Come From?” Chicago Tribune, 7 December 2004, B1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
The Buffalo Express (Buffalo, New York), 11 November 1867, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
———, 30 November 1867, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Dayton Items.” Cincinnati Daily Gazette (Ohio), 9 August 1869, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Dollar Weekly Mirror (Manchester, New Hampshire), 13 February 1858, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. Windy City, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, second edition, s.v. windy, adj.1.
Sluice-Fork, T.J. “Letter from “Sluice-Fork” (14 July 1856). The Golden Era (San Francisco), 20 July 1856, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“The Would-Be Army of Utah.” Chicago Daily Tribune, 7 April 1858, 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Chris Taylor, 2009. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.