Women’s March on Chicago: How it compares with Chicago’s largest crowds

Excerpt from Jan. 21, 2017, coverage

The women of Chicago would not be stopped.

An estimated quarter-million demonstrators poured into downtown on Saturday, so many that organizers of the Women’s March on Chicago told the throngs that the event would only be a rally because there wasn’t room to march. But people marched anyway.

“Michigan Avenue is flooded with marchers,” event co-chairwoman Ann Scholhamer told the crowd at Jackson and Columbus drives a little before 11 a.m. “Wabash is flooded with marchers. State Street is flooded with marchers. People are still waiting for trains in Oak Park. We called, and you came.”

Reported crowd size: Capt. Michael Ahern, chief of traffic, estimated the crowds along the parade route proper at more than 3 million. Hundreds of thousands more lined 55th Street and Lake Shore Drive.

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Chicago’s population (2015): 2.72 million

Excerpt from Nov. 4, 2016, coverage

While there was no shortage of fans who came out to cheer the Chicago Cubs as they took a victory lap during the World Series championship downtown parade Friday, experts caution the crowd numbers may not be as robust as city officials have claimed.

Reported crowd size: By Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication’s count, an estimated 5 million people lined the 6-mile parade route and gathered at the rally in Grant Park. But — like other official crowd counts — there’s reason to be skeptical, experts say.

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Chicago’s population (2015): 2.72 million

Excerpt from April 27, 1951, coverage

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, ousted from his far eastern command April 11 by President Harry S. Truman, thrilled a vast audience in Soldiers’ field last night with a fighting defense of his stand on Korea. He electrified the crowd, which had expected no more than a routine greeting.

He brought the audience to its feet in a standing ovation when he closed his talk with these proud words:

“Without command, authority or responsibility I still proudly possess that, to me, greatest of all honors and distinctions: I am an American.”

Reported crowd size: Capt. Michael Ahern, chief of traffic, estimated the crowds along the parade route proper at more than 3 million. Hundreds of thousands more lined 55th Street and Lake Shore Drive.

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Chicago’s population (1950): 3.62 million

Excerpt from Aug. 14, 1969, coverage

The moment came yesterday that all Chicago had waited for, the moment awaited since the news first came that man had walked on the moon.

The Apollo 11 astronauts — Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin Jr., and Michael Collins — were here, alive and real with their families, and more than 2 million people came to see.

It was more than a parade. It was glory. The brilliant blue sky was filled with ticker tape that seemed without source. Streets and avenues were no longer thorofares but masses of humanity, and the cheers, the sirens, the ringing bells created so great a din that no other sound could be heard.

Reported crowd size: Police Superintendent James B. Conlisk, commanding the 1,600 men assigned to the event, said there were easily 2 million people present, the largest crowd since the 1951 parade for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, when more than 3 million gathered along a 23-mile parade route.

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Chicago population (1960): 3.55 million

Excerpt from June 11, 2010, coverage

In a celebration nearly a half-century in the making, Chicago hoisted the Blackhawks on its famed big shoulders Friday and threw one heck of a party.

They sang and danced. They took pictures with cellphones. They hugged in between long swigs of sparkling wine.

And those were just the Blackhawks.

Chicago feted the club with a massive parade and rally that will go down as one of the best-attended celebrations in city history. Dressed in hockey sweaters and caps emblazoned with the team’s cherished Indian logo, fans transformed Michigan Avenue into a red sea that only a Stanley Cup championship team could part.

Reported crowd size: The city estimated that 2 million people attended the event, which would far surpass the turnout for the White Sox’s World Series celebration in 2005 or any one of the six Grant Park rallies during the Bulls’ championship run of the 1990s.

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Chicago population (2014): 2.70 million

Excerpt from June 29, 2013, coverage

Welcome back to Chicago, Lord Stanley. We think you’ll notice how our Blackhawks have grown up.

Three years after a Champagne-soaked extravaganza on Michigan Avenue, the city hosted a more mature — but equally, if not more, jubilant — Grant Park celebration for a crowd estimated at over 2 million people. More mature, that is, if you don’t count the expletive-laced anatomy lecture from goalkeeper Corey Crawford.

Reported crowd size: Chicago feted the club with a massive parade and rally Friday that broke the 2010 attendance record and perhaps will go down as the best-attended celebration in city history. Dressed in hockey sweaters on an 80-degree day, fans transformed Grant Park into a red sea that only a few final celebratory refrains of “Chelsea Dagger” could part.

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Chicago population (2013): 2.71 million

Excerpt from June 19, 2015, coverage

A sea of red-clad hockey fans descended upon downtown Chicago on Thursday to celebrate the Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks, packing a parade route through the Loop, then cheering and dancing at a boisterous rally inside Soldier Field.

One by one, the players took turns kissing and lifting the trophy triumphantly above their heads as red-and-black confetti swirled around the stage. The Hawks beat the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday in front of Chicago fans at the United Center, the third Cup win in six years and the first at home since 1938.

Braving storms and crowded trains to get there, tens of thousands cheered for hours inside Soldier Field as players expressed gratitude and quipped wise for the crowd.

Reported crowd size: Officials put the total crowd estimate for the celebrations at about 2 million people, including those along the parade route who didn’t have tickets to enter the rally.

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Chicago population (2014): 2.72 million

Excerpt from Oct. 29, 2005, coverage

Most White Sox fans who endured the crush of humanity at the corner of Wacker Drive and Clark Street on Friday were more than happy to be stuck hundreds deep in an immobile crowd to catch a glimpse of their beloved world champions.

But the city’s choice of venue for the end of the tickertape parade left many fans feeling frustrated.

Police said the rally was very peaceful and presented no serious public safety problems. But many fans said they wished it would have been held at Grant Park or in some other open space that would have let thousands more see what was happening on stage.

Reported crowd size: Cindy Gatziolis, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Special Events, estimated the crowd, including those who lined the streets along the parade route, at 1.75 million. Some city officials and observers scoffed at such a high estimate — equivalent almost to the entire population of Houston. Nonetheless, the crowd was sprawling.

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Chicago population (2000): 2.90 million

Excerpts from June 28, 2015, coverage

As businesses, schools and public officials donned rainbow colors, flung beads and danced on floats at Chicago’s Pride Parade Sunday, attendees marveled at how far acceptance of the LGBT community has come since the city’s first parade 46 years ago.

Two days after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, Ky Dickens stood along Broadway Avenue in Uptown pointing and cheering with her wife, Kaisa Dickens and their 1-year-old daughter, Harlow.

Events like this parade are important, Dickens said, because they are part of the reason the couple can finally travel without worrying what would happen if one needed to go to a hospital in a state that did not recognize same-sex marriage.

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Reported crowd size: Officials estimate as many as 1 million people attended the parade.

Chicago population (2014): 2.70 million

Excerpts from Oct. 6, 1979, coverage

A huge crowd of diverse backgrounds, perhaps a million strong, became one large congregation Friday in the outdoor church called Grant Park.

Festive yet solemn, happy but devout, the crowd was brought together in the shadows of Chicago’s skyline by Pope John Paul II.

Bordered on one side by the natural boundary of Lake Michigan and on the other by the manmade structures of Chicago, it was probably the largest assembly of persons ever gathered in the city.

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Reported crowd size: “Official” estimates ranged from a half a million to 1.5 million, depending on the official making the estimate.

Chicago population (1970): 3.37 million

Excerpt from June 15, 1991, coverage

It definitely is not lonely at the top.

The Chicago Bulls celebrated their NBA championship Friday in Grant Park with several hundred thousand of their biggest fans in a rally that saw the tables turned on the players.

It was the enormous crowd that sweated during this event and the athletes who smiled from the stage of the Petrillo Music Shell. Instead of the fans providing the inspiration, it seemed as though most fans were inspired by the No. 1 team, uniting for an hour at least and forgetting the divisions that mark daily life.

North Side and South Side and West Side, city dweller and suburbanite, African-American and German-American and Italian-American … Bulls fans forever or even just for a Friday.

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Reported crowd size: The crowd was judged to have reached 1 million by police count. Based on past mega-events and the inflated estimates that accompanied them, that figure may not be accurate. But you can bet that if officials erred, it was on the high side.

This much can be said: It was comparable to the number of people who flocked to see Pope John Paul II in Grant Park in 1979.

Chicago’s population (1990): 2.78 million

Excerpt from May 12, 1924, coverage

Underneath the scarlet robes of Cardinal George Mundelein, a pastor returned to his people yesterday.

He returned bearing the highest honor, except the supreme office of Rome, that the Catholic church can bestow on one of her priests. He returned to a surpassing greeting, which took no heed of creed or race.

For a thousand miles from New York to Chicago, for fifteen miles from the south to the north side it was a progress of triumph for the first American cardinal west of the Alleghenies.

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Reported crowd size: His welcome began early in the morning. It started with a tiny group at Willard, Ohio, shortly after 6 a.m. It swelled to a gathering of 500 at Garrett, Ind., where he celebrated his first Mass in America on the chapel car attached to his special train. It concluded with Chicago’s million.

Chicago’s population (1920): 2.7 million

Excerpt from Oct. 10, 1893, coverage

No city in the world had ever before so many visitors within its walls in time of peace than Chicago yesterday. They had come to see the Fair and the celebration of Chicago day, but fearful of the great crowd or the lack of transportation in returning many who came spent the day looking at the sights down town or the parks. Chicago people left their occupations for a day and went out to jostle against the visitors of the Fair.

The stores and factories were closed and nearly all the streets had a holiday appearance. There was not much decoration or holiday attire on the streets, but there were placards on store windows that explained why. The scene of yesterday’s celebration was in Jackson Park. The cards read: “Closed for Chicago Day.”

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Reported crowd size: There were 713,646 paid admissions to the World’s Fair that day. The figure includes all tickets sold in advance or otherwise. There were, however, over three-quarters of a million of people inside the gates of the White City. Grand total: 751,026.

Chicago’s population (1890): 1.10 million

Excerpt from June 14, 1986, coverage

It was a happy parade, and a sad one, too, with open demonstrations of love as well as a touch of bitterness.

For nearly five hours, a police-estimated 200,000 marchers — clad in neat military uniforms, ragged khakis and even three-piece suits — walked in loose formation through the streets of downtown Chicago Friday, cheered and showered with confetti by an estimated 500,000 more, receiving their “welcome home” salute for a war that ended 11 years ago.

If the Christmas parade is for children and St. Patrick’s Day is for the Irish, the Chicago Vietnam Veterans Parade was for everyone.

Unlike most parades, there was little separation of parader and parade-watcher.

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Reported crowd size: 200,000 marchers; 500,000 spectators

Chicago’s population (1980): 3.01 million

Excerpt from Jan. 28, 1986, coverage

A thank-you note written on 10 tons of ticker tape was hand-delivered to the Bears, who returned to sweet home Chicago Monday packing pride and a silver souvenir from New Orleans.

Five hundred thousand fans, hoarse from days of revelry, shouted hosannas as a caravan of cars and buses carried Bears players and management through the streets of the city’s financial district. Gratitude rained down in the form of shredded canceled checks, Yellow Pages, tissue paper and computer printouts.

“Today, in this country, everyone is a Bears fan,” screamed team president Michael McCaskey as he hefted the gleaming Vince Lombardi Super Bowl trophy from the podium at Daley Plaza. “We are the Super Bowl champs … Woof, woof, woof, woof!”

The fans returned the now famous trademark of the Bears defense.

Along the parade route, which began at Jackson Boulevard and LaSalle Street and ended at the plaza, temporarily named Bears Plaza, businessmen with briefcases, construction workers with hard hats, lawyers in fur coats, students with backpacks and mothers with strollers withstood a windchill of 25 below zero to serve as hosts in the city’s welcome-home party.

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Reported crowd size: 500,000

Chicago’s population (1980): 3.01 million

Excerpt from June 25, 1926, coverage

The most colossal prayer meeting and song service in the authentic annals of Christendom has brought to a close the 28th International Eucharistic congress of the Catholic church.

The world’s records for throngs of that character have been broken.

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Reported crowd size: While even an approximation of accuracy is wanting, it is indicated that from 400,000 to 500,000 men, women and children have this day knelt in prayer and lifted their voices in praise while the magnificent pageantry of their mother church was unfolded before them by priests, pastors, and prelates whose parishes and episcopal aces make a roll call of villages in remote mountains and sequestered valleys and of ecclesiastical, political, and commercial capitals which command the key areas of this wide world.

Chicago’s population (1920): 2.70 million

Excerpt from Aug. 14, 1927, coverage

Col. Charles A. Lindbergh was in Chicago on business yesterday and last night.

In the face of screaming holiday mobs, hero worshiping boys and girls and men and women, fluttering of confetti, and every exultant noise and display that Chicago could produce, Lindy stuck to his purpose. He came here to inspire citizens of Chicago with the necessity of developing commercial aviation. Three times he had an opportunity to speak to the public and every word he spoke had to do with the development of flying.

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Reported crowd size: An estimated 260,000 people, gathered at three principal points and packed along a 12-mile route from the municipal flying field, out at Cicero Avenue and 63rd Street to Soldiers’ field, saw Lindbergh himself. There were some 40,000 packed 15 deep back of the ropes at the flying field. Another 75,000 saw Lindbergh and became noisily happy when he smiled along the lines of process from the field to White Sox park. And in the park was a Lindbergh crowd figured at 35,000.

Chicago’s population (1920): 2.70 million

Excerpt from May 2, 2006, coverage

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to city streets Monday with a renewed call to legalize the nation’s undocumented immigrants–a chorus of voices more numerous and more forceful than at a historic rally in March that brought the issue home to Chicago.

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, Cardinal Francis George and other dignitaries shared the dais at twin rallies at Grant Park and Union Park with anonymous activists who have built a movement largely from scratch. Speakers, in English and Spanish, drew cheers from a peaceful gathering awash in American flags and banners from every corner of the world, from Ghana to Guatemala.

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Reported crowd size: “It was a very good march,” said Chicago Police Deputy Supt. Charles Williams.

While police said crowd estimates are part formula and part guesswork, authorities and organizers said the march topped the official estimate of 100,000 protesters at a March 10 rally. Assessing the size was difficult, because so much of the crowd was in motion, police said.

At the crowd’s peak, Williams said it was “nearly 400,000” strong. Earlier, during the march from Union Park, he said it was about 150,000 to 200,000.

Chicago’s population (2006): 2.81 million

Excerpt from Jan. 21, 2017, coverage

The women of Chicago would not be stopped.

An estimated quarter-million demonstrators poured into downtown on Saturday, so many that organizers of the Women’s March on Chicago told the throngs that the event would only be a rally because there wasn’t room to march. But people marched anyway.

“Michigan Avenue is flooded with marchers,” event co-chairwoman Ann Scholhamer told the crowd at Jackson and Columbus drives a little before 11 a.m. “Wabash is flooded with marchers. State Street is flooded with marchers. People are still waiting for trains in Oak Park. We called, and you came.”

Reported crowd size: Capt. Michael Ahern, chief of traffic, estimated the crowds along the parade route proper at more than 3 million. Hundreds of thousands more lined 55th Street and Lake Shore Drive.

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Chicago’s population (2015): 2.72 million

Excerpt from Sept. 9, 1954, coverage

A vast throng of worshippers, estimated by police at more than 200,000, prayed to Mary, the mother of the Son of God, last night in Soldiers’ field.

Prayer, song, and ceremony blended in an unprecedented outpouring of devotion to the blessed mother as Cardinal Samuel Stritch led Catholics of his Chicago archdiocese in the major tribute of the Marian year.

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Reported crowd size: Records for religious gatherings in Chicago were rivaled in a vast response, which overwhelmed advance estimates of attendance. Traffic was jammed for hours in the vicinity of the field. Delayed thousands were still arriving as the cardinal ascended the altar in midfield at 9:22 p.m.

Chicago’s population (1950): 3.62 million

Excerpt from May 1, 2007, coverage

The chants and drum beats Tuesday were familiar, and so was the sight of an estimated 150,000 demonstrators marching shoulder to shoulder through Chicago’s Loop, a sweaty, tightly packed throng waving American flags and hoisting signs as downtown traffic stood still.

But, after a year of stalemate over immigration reform, the tone of this year’s first major demonstration took a harder edge, with defiance and frustration driving the largest of several marches held simultaneously across the country.

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Chicago population (2007): 2.81 million

Excerpt from Sept. 23, 1927, coverage

Gene Tunney retained his title of heavyweight champion before a great throng of spectators last night at Soldiers’ field by unanimous decision of Judges Sheldon Clark and George Lytton and Referee Dave Barry at the conclusion of ten rounds of furious milling. The verdict was accepted as sound by a majority of the vast assemblage present.

Immediately after the bout a great cry arose from the Dempsey camp that Jack had been robbed by a slow count in the seventh round when Champion Gene for the first time in his career was spread upon the canvas. Two left hooks to the jaw and a right cross to the jaw produced the upset during a furious fusillade launched by the Manassa Mauler as the two principals were upon the ropes at the west side of the ring.

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Reported crowd size: 145,000

Chicago’s population (1920): 2.70 million

Excerpt from Nov. 5, 2008, coverage

Barack Obama won the presidency Tuesday, the first African-American to claim the highest office in the land, an improbable candidate fulfilling a once-impossible dream.

A nation that in living memory struggled violently over racial equality will have as its next president a 47-year-old, one-term U.S. senator born of a Kenyan father and Kansan mother. He is the first president elected from Chicago and the first to rise from a career in Illinois politics since Abraham Lincoln emerged from frontier obscurity to lead the nation through the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.

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Reported crowd size: A crowd of 125,000 gathered at the downtown park, and thousands more spilled onto nearby streets.

Chicago’s population (2000): 2.90 million

Excerpt from Nov. 27, 1927, coverage

In the presence of 117,000 enthusiastic fans, Notre Dame defeated Southern California yesterday on Soldiers’ field, 7 to 6, in the greatest intersectional football game ever played in this country.

The crowd was treated to some splendid line crashing, end running, and beautifully executed forward passes. It also saw hard tackling and blocking by some of the nation’s leading players. The spectators saw Capt. Morley Drury of the Trojans and Christy Flanagan of Notre Dame tear off the tackles, smash into the line, and block in a manner that stamped them two of the greatest backs on the college gridiron.

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Reported crowd size: Early assembly sounded for many of the record breaking 117,000.

Chicago’s population (1920): 2.70 million

Excerpt from Nov. 28, 1926, coverage

In one of the greatest football games ever played, a struggle featured by a variety of offensive play, the Army and Navy elevens battled to a 21 to 21 tie yesterday on Soldiers’ field before 111,000 the largest crowd that ever saw a football game in this country.

It was a striking example of a strong offense being the best defense, a theory which many coaches have worked on for years. The offensive of both elevens was so much stronger than their defensive that scoring took place with regularity and neither eleven once let up in its effort to score the extra points to win.

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Reported crowd size: A multitude that was worthy of the multitude on Soldiers’ field yesterday afternoon. The multitude — 111,000 happy men, women, and children — cheering beneath a kindly sky.

Chicago’s population (1920): 2.70 million

Excerpt from Aug. 2, 2015, coverage

After 11 years in Grant Park, Lollapalooza is starting to show its tween age. Chicago’s largest music festival appears to be struggling between appeasing the sea of belly-baring teens dancing in the streets with its 130-plus band lineup and activities and Lollapalooza veterans … who are not there for the daylong boozefest.

In just two years, there has been a 10 percent decrease in the number of concertgoers between the ages of 35 and 54 and a corresponding increase in the number of patrons from 18 to 24, according to information for the 2012-14 festivals posted on the Lollapalooza website. Representatives for Texas-based promoter C3 Presents did not return a request for comment.

Even with this year’s headliners Paul McCartney and Metallica playing to the 35-plus crowd, the logistics of navigating Lollapalooza may be a tougher sell to an older audience. There’s about a mile between the northernmost and southernmost stages in Grant Park. Shaded seats are not easy to come by when temperatures top 80 degrees, as they did over the weekend. And wading through an estimated 100,000 music fans each day just to get into a long food line can be tiresome.

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*Single-day total

Chicago population (2014): 2.70 million

Excerpt from March 11, 2006, coverage

In a show of strength that surprised even organizers, tens of thousand of immigrants poured into the Loop Friday, bringing their calls for immigration reform to the heart of the city’s economic and political power.

What started as a word-of-mouth campaign, then spread through the foreign language media, grabbed the attention of the entire city by midday, as a throng 2 miles long marched from Union Park on the Near West Side to Federal Plaza.

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Reported crowd size: Police estimated the crowd as large as 100,000, making it one of the biggest pro-immigrant rallies in U.S. history, according to national advocates.

Chicago population (2006): 2.81 million