One of Chicago's most enduring nicknames, "The Windy City" originally had nothing to do with the Illinois city's sometimes formidable atmospheric conditions, but was coined by a nineteenth-century New Yorker to describe the city's loud, "windy" boosterism. For chilled Chicago Bears football fans at lakefront Soldier Field, or holiday shoppers on Michigan Avenue's famed Magnificent Mile, however, the nickname has had little to do with political opportunism.

Also know as the "Second City" because of its historical status as America's second largest city behind New York, throughout much of the nineteenth century Chicago business promoters roamed up and down the East Coast loudly praising the city's cosmopolitan character and excellent investment opportunities in an effort to lure capital needed for growth and expansion. Trying to debunk the popular image of their city as a cultural backwater and a "cow-town," the boosters painted a picture...