OLD TOWN — Chicago, city of the big shoulders — and of the big birthday bashes.
The Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., celebrates the city's 180th birthday Saturday, with Carl Sandburg's poem "Chicago" on prominent display — and with free admission for Illinois residents.
Chicago was incorporated as a city by the State of Illinois on March 4, 1837.
The museum is open 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturday, with the birthday celebration running from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
The official program starts at 11 a.m. with guest speakers. One student will read an award-winning essay on the subject of pioneer Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, considered the first permanent resident of what would become Chicago when he established a trading post here in 1779.
Eli's Cheesecake will be served along with lemonade.
Sandburg's own handwritten 1959 copy of his poem "Chicago," published almost 50 years beforehand in Chicago's own Poetry magazine, will be on display in the museum's permanent exhibit "The Secret Lives of Objects." As every Chicago schoolchild should know, it begins: "Hog Butcher for the World,/Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,/Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;/Stormy, husky, brawling,/City of the Big Shoulders."
The museum will also be offering a 20 percent discount on all membership deals for those who sign up on site Saturday.