As we here at Michigan Avenue celebrate those who make a difference in Chicago today, we should also take a look at those who made a difference yesterday. The first settlers arrived here in the 1700s, the city was founded in the 1800s and it grew to prominence in the 1900s. As fabulous as our current leaders are, we’d be remiss to forget those luminaries who got us here.

1700s
JEAN BAPTISTE POINT DU SABLE
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is best known as the first non-native resident of Chicago. He left his birthplace of Haiti around 1770 for colonial America, where he wanted to trap fur—a good choice since there weren’t a lot of fur-trapper openings in Port-au-Prince that year. He settled near modern-day Michigan City, Indiana, but was soon arrested by British soldiers who thought he was an American spy. He remained in detention for the remainder of the Revolutionary War, sent to work as a manager at a trading post on the St. Clair River. Point du Sable eventually made his way to present-day Chicago and settled on a plot somewhere near the Trump Tower (insert furtrapping joke here).

He eventually sold his land to French-Canadian trapper Jean LaLime for 6,000 livres (roughly $20,000 today), and since a deeded parking spot at Trump goes for $70,000, he enters the history books not only as our first settler, but also the first guy to get taken on a condo conversion.

1800s
WHITCOMB JUDSON
Even though Whitcomb Judson doesn’t have a street or school named after him, he may be the most famous Chicagoan ever. Well, at least his invention is. Judson submitted a patent request in 1891 for what he called the clasp-locker. At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, he unveiled... the zipper!

Just try to imagine the world if Judson had not been born. Button-fly would not just be a kitsch fashion throwback that quadruples the time it takes to put on your pants. “Zip it” would be a meaningless expression. The post office would probably refer to ZIP codes as postal regions and men of a certain insatiable desire would be accused of “not keeping their buttons buttoned.” Bless you Whitcomb Judson, wherever you are.

1900s
THE EVERLEIGH SISTERS
Minna and Ada Simms were true Chicago frauds. Although they claimed to be well-heeled Southern debutantes, they were actually two of seven kids from a reputedly dirt-poor Virginia sharecropping family. They ran away from home as teenagers, lied about their backgrounds and did what all drifting grifters do: they went into show business. Upon arriving in Chicago, they changed their names to Everleigh and in 1900 opened what would become the most famous brothel in the world. Located in the South Loop (trendy even back then), the Everleigh Club catered to every whim of America’s rich and famous, from boxer Jack Johnson to Marshall Field Jr., who was allegedly shot dead in the parlor after not properly tipping his server.

The sisters built one of the most luxurious establishments in America. The building was electrically cooled, steam heated, and even featured a Japanese Throne Room, presumably where Chicago’s political leaders could live out Imperial fantasies. The Everleighs employed dozens of working women and a non-horizontal staff of maids and cooks who prepared meals sophisticated enough to make Charlie Trotter blush. Come to think of it, everything there would have made Charlie Trotter blush.