The Chicago Board of Trade building, built in 1930 and topped by an Art Deco statue of Ceres, Greek goddess of grain. (Think 'cereal.') There was a time when Chicago thought of itself as the economic capital of a great inland empire stretching from the Appalachians to the Rockies and from the Great Lakes to the Ohio and Missouri rivers,including notably the wheatfields of Kansas and Nebraska and the cornfields of Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. This was the Chicago of the Columbian Exposition, the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago, and this Board of Trade building.
Somewhere along the line, Chicago became a much more parochial place, given over to working-class politics, organized crime, and racial tension. The city's older sense of itself got lost in all that, but I think we need to get back to that older, greater vision.
For starters, Chicago should at least be the capital of Illinois. The idea that a flea-bitten backwater like Springfield should be capital of a state that includes a world-class city is ridiculous. Talk about the tail wagging the dog!
But I'd go even beyond that. I'd like to see Chicago become capital of a semiautonomous region on the order of a large Canadian province. Then this great city would achieve its true destiny.
