Immigration and industrialization

Main articles: Immigrants to the United States and Industrialization

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri

By the time of the American Civil War, European immigrants bypassed the East Coast of the United States to settle directly in the interior: German immigrants to Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri; Irish immigrants to port cities on the Great Lakes, especially Chicago; Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians to Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas; and Finns to Upper Michigan and northern/central Minnesota. Poles, Hungarians, and Jews settled in Midwestern cities.^{[citation needed]}
The U.S. was predominantly rural at the time of the Civil War. The Midwest was no exception, dotted with small farms all across the region. The late 19th century saw industrialization, immigration, and urbanization that fed the Industrial Revolution, and the heart of industrial domination and innovation was in the Great Lakes states of the Midwest, which only began its slow decline by the late 20th century.^{[citation needed]}
A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy.^[53]
In addition to manufacturing, printing, publishing, and food processing also play major roles in the Midwest's largest economy. Chicago was the base of commercial operations for industrialists John Crerar, John Whitfield Bunn, Richard Teller Crane, Marshall Field, John Farwell, Julius Rosenwald and many other commercial visionaries who laid the foundation for Midwestern and global industry.^{[citation needed]}
In the 20th century, African American migration from the Southern United States into the Midwestern states changed Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Detroit, Omaha, Minneapolis and many other cities in the Midwest, as factories and schools enticed families by the thousands to new opportunities. Chicago alone gained hundreds of thousands of black citizens from the Great Migration and the Second Great Migration.^{[citation needed]}
The Gateway Arch monument in St. Louis, clad in stainless steel and built in the form of a flattened catenary arch,^[54] is the tallest man-made monument in the United States,^[55] and the world's tallest arch.^[55] Built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States,^[54] it is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and has become an internationally famous symbol of St. Louis and the Midwest.^{[citation needed]}