CITIES: Time of Their Life

Shuh-CA-go, Shuh-CA-go, That toddling town, toddling town, Shuh-CA-go, Shuh-CA-go, I'll show you around . . .

Rare is the man who has gone home from a Chicago convention without some choice memento locked in his suitcase of memories. For one middle-aged Texas oilman recently, it was the long, goose-pimpled wait for a rendezvous with a $50 floozy in a plum-colored parlor; for a life-insurance salesman from New Jersey, it was a harmless evening in an elegant and naughty North-Side Key Club; for a mackinawed Dakota farmer back in 1906, it was a dinner at the old Saratoga Hotel, where after ordering a fancy city dish called oysters on the half shell, he devoured the oysters and then crunched through the shells. But though Chicago, in its own sullen and grimy way, has afforded millions of conventioneers a variety of pleasures, its convention facilities have grown woefully inadequate over the years. Last week the city solved that problem with the opening of a brand-new hall, the $35 million lakefront McCormick Place, "larger than the Circus Maximus of ancient Rome and more durable than the Colosseum."

Named for the late Chicago Tribune Publisher and Chicago Booster Colonel Robert McCormick, the new two-floor convention hall can feed 25,000 banqueters, boasts exhibition space equal in size to six football fields. Its central location and modern facilities practically guarantee that Chicago, with its 931 conventions a year (and 1,155,000 visitors), can better even this year's $250 million convention business and maintain its position as the nation's No. 1 convention city.

Pickles & Pies. Chicago got that way partly because of its advantageous geographical location, partly because progress has somehow never stifled the quality of its raw frontier-town spirit. It held its first major convention just 100 years ago, when its streets were still being laid out. The convention hall was a hastily built two-story frame building, the famed Wigwam, where delegates to the Republican National Convention, after brawling with each other in the streets, nominated Abe Lincoln for the presidency.

Since then, the town has played host to 14 G.O.P. and nine Democratic conventions, not to mention the Pickle Packers, Lawn Bowlers, Button Collectors, Flying Farmers, Moms of America, Amalgamated Poultry Sexers, Cigar Box Manufacturers, Match Cover Collectors, Chihuahua Clubbers, International Twins Association, National Cherry Pie Bakers, National Curled Hair Manufacturers, and the Egg Case Fillers of America.