Once a swampy, remote outpost of fur traders and Native Americans, Chicago rose to become the CITY OF THE CENTURY. The film chronicles its transformation into the quintessential 19th-century metropolis, amid political struggles, labor unrest, and racial conflicts. Tour the city from every angle, from distinctive architecture and dramatic skyline to conversations with eminent and ordinary Chicagoans, in this rich saga of the Windy City.

City of the Century tells how in just 60 years Chicago grew from a remote, swampy frontier town into one of the most explosively alive cities in the world. It's the story of the wealthy and the indigent, the heralded and the forgotten, the shop assistants and the millionaire retail barons who together created Chicago. It describes how through innovation, ingenuity, determination and sheer ruthlessness, the captains of industry created empires in a marshy wasteland. And it explores the hardships endured by the millions of working men and women -- most of them immigrants from Ireland and Northern Europe -- whose labor helped a capitalist class reinvent the way America did business.