What did Chicago look like at the play of the last century?Yestervid , a video recording series showcasing motion-picture show compilations , answered that doubt by dredging up some of the oldest footage of theWindy Cityknown to exist . The vista in this five - bit - long telecasting show window the lakeshore , city streets , stockyard , baseball games , and more circa the early 1900s . Spoiler : There were a lot more cows .
A handy rip - screen with amappinpoints the approximative location and appointment of the footage , a useful creature for anyone who require to compare their own visuals ofChicagoto the urban views from past . While most of the footage come from around 1915 , there ’s also an audio recording from way back in 1893 .
The telecasting features footage from the backwash of theEastlanddisaster , which occurred on July 24 , 1915 . Employees of the Western Electric Company boarded the SSEastlandfor the fellowship ’s one-year picnic ; the passenger liner — which had a reputation for being unsound — begin listing and was righted several multiplication before ultimately capsizing , killing 844 people . allot to Britannica , “ hundreds more lives were miss in theEastlanddisaster than in theChicago ardor of 1871 . ” In another part of the video , you ’ll spot former presidentTheodore Rooseveltriding through the city in 1917 ( he was there tourge military preparednessin the face ofWorld War I ) and notorious gangsterAl Caponein 1931 .
To add to the list of discovery , the manufacturer believe they have identified the location of the oldest surviving cinema of the city , a few snap of a constabulary parade from 1896 . The building in that film has been demolished , but Yestervid pinpoints the locating as the corner of Michigan Avenue and Monroe Street business district .
condition out the footage above — and if you ca n’t get enough of videos from eras past tense , watchthis footageof New York City in the 1970s andthis colorized videoof aliveness in Victorian England .
A version of this story ran in 2015 ; it has been update for 2023 .
