Union Stock Yards

The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards, was the meatpacking district in Chicago for more than a century, starting in 1865. The district was formed by a group of railroad companies that acquired marshland and turned it into a vast centralized processing area. By the 1890s, the railroad capital behind the Union Stockyards was Vanderbilt money.^[1] The Union Stockyards operated in the South Side's New City community area for 106 years,^[2] helping Chicago become known as the "hog butcher for the world", the center of the American meatpacking industry for decades.^[3] The Yards, its workers, and its systems became inspiration for both literature and social reform, as well as study of industrial practice.

The stockyards became the focal point of the rise of some of the earliest international companies, whose ability to get product moved across the world became crucial. These companies and corporations refined industrial innovations and influenced financial markets. Both the rise and fall of the Yards reflect the evolution of transportation services and technology in America. The stockyards have become an integral in Chicago's cultural history. They are also considered one of the chief drivers that empowered the animal–industrial complex into its modern form.^[4][5]

From the Civil War through the 1920s, peaking in 1924, more meat was processed in Chicago than in any other place in the world.^[6] Construction began in June 1865 with an opening on Christmas Day in 1865. The Yards closed at midnight on Friday, July 30, 1971, after several decades of decline during the decentralization of the meatpacking industry. The neo-gothic Union Stock Yard Gate (1877) on Exchange Avenue was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 24, 1972,^[7] and a National Historic Landmark on May 29, 1981, and is the only remnant of the old stockyards, which largely became business and industrial parks after the closure.^[8][9]