Chicago — Visitors to America's third-largest city often hit the usual sites in or around the Loop. They window shop Michigan Avenue. They take in the Art Institute, the Sears Tower, Grant Park and the Shedd Aquarium.

But beyond the lakefront sits another Chicago, a city of low, brick buildings, highway underpasses and factories. It's a sprawling, gritty metropolis of ethnic neighborhoods, small churches and corner bars.

CAMERON McWHIRTER/AJC (ENLARGE)

Many sites of importance to the U.S. labor movement, such as Washington Square Park, are on Chicago's 'Labor Trail.'

CAMERON McWHIRTER/AJC (ENLARGE)

Sights along Chicago's 'Labor Trail' include this monument to the Haymarket Square bombing.

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It's the place that the late Mayor Richard J. Daley (the current mayor's father) proudly labeled "the city that works." This other Chicago is where Al Capone set up his speakeasies. It's where Nelson Algren and James Farrell set their gritty, working-class novels.

And it's a place most tourists never see.

A group of academics, union workers and volunteers have set out to change that by creating "The Labor Trail," a historic guide to Chicago's working-class sections. It's an off-the-beaten-path tour that, to the creators' surprise, seems to have caught on.

"The response has been incredible," said Bob Bruno, co-director of University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Led by Bruno and other labor historians at UIC, volunteers have developed a map and guide listing 16 walking tours and more than 125 sites in 10 neighborhoods across the city, from the North Side to the West Side to the South Side.

The map points out famous sites, including the scene of the Haymarket Square bombing, where police officers and protesters clashed in a rally for the eight-hour workday in 1886, and where Pullman railroad workers went on strike in 1894 on the South Side. Both events transformed labor relations in the United States. Visitors can see where bloody strikes were held, important speeches delivered and major unions organized.

The map gives you an easy way to explore workaday communities that tourists rarely hear about, such as Washington Square Park, Polonia Triangle, Bronzville and Pullman. Most of these walks are a brief drive or L ride from downtown. Visitors can use the map to spend a few hours seeing a site or two or days following several walks.

The walks vary. You can stroll by the stately homes — now all union offices — along "Union Row" on Madison Street west of downtown. Union Park, the site of many rallies, is nearby. You can walk the Polonia Triangle area on the Near Northwest Side. Once considered the Polish downtown as the commercial center for workers in nearby factories, that area has many Polish restaurants, shops and even a public bath. The nearby Polish National Alliance houses a museum. Or you can visit the sculpture marking Haymarket, a short walk from upscale restaurants and the stores on Michigan Avenue.

The organizers have launched a companion Web site, labortrail.org, that includes audio lectures, video walking tours and a gallery of historic photos. Using the map, guides have started offering tours during Chicago's warmer weather. For groups, tours can be arranged by contacting the Chicago Labor Education Program. Professors and students are contemplating a companion book.

Bruno estimates he has distributed about 19,000 maps (selling most for $5 apiece) since they first were printed two years ago. Everyone from schoolteachers, union leaders, convention groups and individual tourists have asked for copies. The Web site has generated e-mails from around the world.

Labor history

Chicago is the first major U.S. city to set up such a tour, and the reason is obvious: It's where the union movement really took hold and remains powerful to this day.

After the Civil War, Chicago emerged as an economic powerhouse, drawing hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe and migrants from the South.

Labor conditions were harsh. Beginning in the 1880s, riots and strikes erupted in the city as the labor movement organized to fight for an eight-hour workday and against child labor. Union organizers found eager new members. So did radicals such as the International Workers of the World, known as the "Wobblies," which held its founding convention in the city.

The industrialization of the city and the unions' efforts that followed transformed Chicago into what poet Carl Sandburg famously labeled the "City of the Big Shoulders."

"Chicago is the immigrant industrial city," Jeffrey Helgeson, the Labor Trail's administrative director, wrote in a recent e-mail. "The Labor Trail guides us to the places where workers mounted dramatic strikes and protests for workers' rights, as well as to the city's famous neighborhoods where Chicagoans raised families and built communities. By following the Labor Trail, visitors will explore the places that have defined the search for the good life in this city."

• Expect to pay about $300 round-trip from Atlanta to Chicago. Bargain fares to Midway Airport on the South Side can run about $200.

• For more information on the Labor Trail, or a map or walking tours, visit Chicago Labor Trail or write Chicago Labor Education Program, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Illinois at Chicago, Rice Building, Suite 110, 815 W. Van Buren St., Chicago, IL 60607.

• Budget: Holiday Inn Chicago-Downtown, 506 W. Harrison St. 1-888-400-9714
• Moderate: Essex Inn Hotel, 800 S. Michigan Ave. 312-939-2800
• Expensive: The Palmer House Hilton, 17 E. Monroe St. 312-726-7500
• Where to eat
• on the Labor Trail
• Far South Side: Club 81 Too (Polish), 13157 S. Ave M. 773-646-4292
• Pilsen neighborhood: Nuevo Leon Restaurant (Mexican), 1515 W. 18th St. 312-421-1517; Nuevo Leon Restaurant
• North Side: Tiffin (Indian), 2536 W Devon Ave. 773-338-2143
• Information
• Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, 312-567-8500, Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau.