Chicago skyline 1968

This photograph captures the skyline of Chicago in 1968, during a period of dramatic change and rapid architectural growth. Rising prominently above the city—still clad in scaffolding—is the John Hancock Center, then under construction. When completed in 1970, the sleek 100–story tower became one of Chicago’s most recognizable landmarks and, for a time, one of the tallest buildings in the world. Its tapered profile and exposed X-bracing would later become hallmarks of the city’s late-20th-century architectural identity.

Below the emerging skyscrapers sits a more industrial landscape—warehouses, smokestacks, and rail yards that once powered Chicago’s role as a national crossroads of shipping, manufacturing, and freight. In the foreground, the large painted sign for Curtiss Candy Co., makers of the Baby Ruth and Butterfinger bars, recalls an era when Chicago was one of America’s great food-processing hubs.

Vehicles move along the elevated expressway at the bottom of the frame, hinting at another transition taking place: the shift from railroads and waterways to the automobile era, reshaping the city just as powerfully as its soaring new buildings.

Seen together—the rising skyline, industrial base, and newly dominant highways—this image freezes a moment in time when Chicago was stepping boldly into the modern age, forever changing the shape of its horizon.