Made In America: Born In Chicago

POSTED: Jul 21, 2025

chicago blogFood

A lot of your favorite foods all have different origins. Some being other countries and some being major cities in the U.S. such as Chicago. Here is a list of famous foods first developed in the Windy City!

  • Deep dish pizza – 1949Brownies with plum jam isolated on white.
  • Brownie – 1898
  • Chicago style hotdog
  • Oscar Meyer
  • Twinkies – 1930
  • Kraft Food – Started first Kraft cheese factory in Chicago in 1914.
  • Italian beef sandwich – 1930Homemade Meat Gyro with Tzatziki Sauce, tomatos and French Fries
  • Gyros first introduced to the US in Chicago – 1975
  • Juicy Fruit gum – 1891
  • Cracker Jacks – 1912
  • Cream of Wheat / Shredded Wheat
  • Frozen Desserts (Sally Lee) – 1976

Inventions

This is a small list of inventions that first originated in Chicago.

  • Birth Control Pill – 1960
  • First U.S. Blood Bank – 1937
  • Playboy – 1953Multi-function remote control
  • Wireless Remote Control – 1955
  • Vacuum Cleaner – 1868
  • The Zipper – 1893
  • Softball – 1887
  • Dishwasher – 1886
  • The Ferris Wheel – 1983
  • Open Heart Surgery – 1893
  • Cell Phone – 1973
  • The Skyscraper – 1884
  • First Drive-In Bank – 1946
  • First Steel Rail Road – 1865

Milestones

Via CityOfChicago.org:

  • The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the largest and most extensive collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world.
  • Chicago was one of the first and largest municipalities to require public art as part of the renovation or construction of municipal buildings, with the passage of the Percentage-for-Arts Ordinance in 1978.
  • The Chicago Cultural Center is the first free municipal cultural center in the U.S. and home to the world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome.
  • When it opened in 1991, the Harold Washington Library Center, with approximately 6.5 million books, was the world’s largest municipal library.
  • The Lincoln Park Zoo, one of only three major free zoos in the country, is the country’s oldest public zoo with an estimated annual attendance of three million.
  • Four states are visible from the Skydeck Chicago (formerly the Sears Tower Skydeck). Indiana, Illinois, Michigan & Wisconsin.
  • The first mail-order business, Montgomery Ward & Co., was established in 1872.
  • The Adler Planetarium became the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere in 1930.
  • Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1949.

Politics

Via CityOfChicago.org:

  • The first Democratic National Convention televised coast-to-coast was held in 1952 at Chicago’s International Amphitheater. (The first televised Democratic National Convention, in 1948, only reached viewers in the Northeast.)
  • Maria Callas made her U.S. debut at the Lyric Opera in 1954.
  • The first televised U.S. presidential candidates’ debate was broadcast from Chicago’s CBS Studios on September 26, 1960, between John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Richard Milhous Nixon.
  • Sen. Carol Moseley Braun became the country’s first female African-American U.S. senator in 1992.
  • The late Mayor Richard J. Daley and former Mayor Richard M. Daley became the first father-son team to head the United States Conference of Mayors in 1996.

Images and Sources: WTTW, WBEZ, MentalFloss, ChicagoTribune

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