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Cloud-Shrouded Skyline, Chicago, 1978

A blanket of clouds shrouds the Chicago skyline in the metropolis that poet Carl Sandburg dubbed "the city of the big shoulders."

The "stormy, husky, brawling" Chicago of Sandburg doubled and tripled in population after 1850. It saw the first skyscraper rise in 1885 and the tallest in 1974. Once known for its meatpacking industry, the city today runs on finance, shipping, and iron and steelworks.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Chicago!" April 1978, National Geographic magazine)

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Photograph by Steve Raymer