West Side, Chicago

The community areas of Chicago.

According to the city's official division of its 77 community areas, nine community areas compose the West Side: West Town, the Near West Side, the Lower West Side, Humboldt Park, East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, North Lawndale, South Lawndale, and Austin. Within these community areas are smaller neighborhoods, some of which match the community area's name and boundaries, and some of which do not use the community area's name at all. The three main community areas that do not match their colloquial neighborhood names are the Lower West Side, which is widely known as Pilsen; North Lawndale, which is simply known as Lawndale; and South Lawndale, which is widely known as Little Village.

Neighborhoods within these community areas include East Ukrainian Village, Ukrainian Village, Noble Square, Pulaski Park, The Patch, and Wicker Park within West Town; Fifth City within East Garfield Park; Heart of Chicago within the Lower West Side; The Island within Austin; University Village, Greektown, Little Italy, and Tri-Taylor within the Near West Side; Homan Square and K-Town within North Lawndale; Marshall Square within South Lawndale; and West Humboldt Park within Humboldt Park.

When Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1834, settlers only lived as far west as Jefferson Street or Halsted Street, less than a half mile west of the Chicago River.[20] Land plotters and wealthier newcomers were more interested in developing land north and south of the original settlement because this land was adjacent to Lake Michigan.[21] As the central business district grew, retail stores set up shop along Lake Street, connecting the central business district with the slower-developing western part of the city. As Lake Street became a bustling thoroughfare throughout the 1840s and 1850s, wealthier residents decided to establish an affluent community on the West Side that could be a retreat from the bustling city center.[22] This was the impetus for the creation of Union Park. As the 1860s came, less affluent residents replaced the wealthier families around Union Park and increased immigration from Europe transformed the Near West Side into an ethnically diverse area. Chicago's first Black community along Kinzie Street and Lake Street became adjacent to an Irish community by the river, as well as German, French, Czech, and Bohemian communities. Polish immigrants settled further north along the river in West Town to work at factories and on the railroad.

View of Randolph Street after the Great Chicago Fire.

The area was transformed by the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, which made 300,000 residents of the city homeless. The resulting migration toward other parts of the city created very densely populated and overcrowded areas on the Near West Side.[23] Most of the Czech and Bohemian residents moved south establishing the neighborhood of Pilsen, named after the city of Plzeň in the Czech Republic.[24] The fire also began migration into the Lawndale neighborhood, which had advertised itself as a residential suburb with fireproof apartment buildings.

Jane Addams, one of the founders of the nationally acclaimed Hull House Settlement.

Immigration from Europe continued in the area at a rapid rate, and the older Irish and German community became eclipsed by newer Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. Large numbers of Italian and Greek immigrants began arriving in the area too.[25] The Jewish immigrants settled between 12th Street, now Roosevelt Road, and 16th Street, centering the community and businesses along Maxwell Street. The Maxwell Street Market continued from this time through the 20th century as an important economic and cultural center for the city. Italian immigrants settled along Polk Street and Taylor Street, establishing Chicago's main Little Italy. Greek immigrants centered their settlement at Harrison Street, Halsted Street, and Blue Island Avenue, calling their community "The Delta." As immigration continued, the area became unhealthily overcrowded, resulting in dilapidated tenements and pollution.[26] These poorer residents also lacked health services from the city. This situation was to be addressed by the creation of the Hull House settlement by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. Hull House was a settlement house that provided a range of services to the residents of the West Side.[27] A playground, a gymnasium, and language classes were provided for children, and services were provided for employment, garbage removal, and art programs. Hull House became a center of the Italian and Greek communities, however Black residents of the Near West Side weren't as welcome to use the services of Hull House and had to rely on finding or creating other community services.[28]

The Lake Street Elevated Railroad in its founding year, 1893.

As the 20th century began, Chicago had already annexed land west of Western Avenue, greatly increasing the West Side. East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, and Humboldt Park had been sparsely populated throughout the late 19th century, but the addition of transportation infrastructure increased the population quickly.[29] In 1892, the first elevated train line was constructed on the South Side and a year later, the Lake Street Elevated Railroad opened, providing transportation service from the city center to the West Side.[30] In 1895, the Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad opened, which provided elevated train service down Harrison Street on its Garfield Park branch and also elevated train service down North Avenue on its Humboldt Park branch.[31] Elements of these elevated train lines are used today for the CTA Green Line and Blue Line. Industry began to dominate this area further west. Sears, Roebuck and Company was founded in 1893, and in 1906 built its merchandise and catalog center in Lawndale near the intersection of Homan Avenue and Arthington Street. The North Western Railway had thousands of their employees establish a community in West Garfield Park.[32] At this point, the West Side had immigrant industrial employees from all over Europe. There was a Polish majority in West Town; the Danish, Norwegians, and Russian Jews populated Humboldt Park, and Italians were in East Garfield Park. However, a dramatic change in the city's population occurred with the Great Migration of Blacks from the Southern United States into the urban North.

Jacob Lawrence's artwork depicting Great Migration to cities like Chicago.

The UIC campus destroyed much of the Near West Side when constructed.

In 1910, Chicago's Black population was at 40,000, most of these people being concentrated on the South Side in an area known as the Black Belt. By 1940, the Black population rose to 278,000, and more of these residents increasingly lived on the West Side.[33] In the Near West Side, there were 26,000 Blacks by 1940, and this community was joined by a growing Mexican-American community and a smaller Puerto Rican community.[22] The Black population on the West Side was growing due in large part to the crowded conditions of the South Side, however crowding increased quickly on the West Side as well. Black residents began moving in small numbers to East Garfield Park, being met with even more housing discrimination than they faced in the Near West Side.[34] By this time, the Maxwell Street Market employed mostly newer Black residents and the market became an important center for Black Chicago blues musicians coming from the South.[35] The construction of the Eisenhower Expressway in the 1950s demolished many homes in the area, forcing residents to relocate further west. The announcement of a University of Illinois campus in Chicago to be constructed in the Near West Side brought the community head-to-head with Mayor Richard J. Daley, and the construction of the university displaced half of the community, including the Hull House settlement.[36] Nearly the entire Italian and Greek communities relocated to the Northwest Side and suburbs. The Black population moved further west into the Near West Side, Garfield Park and the eastern portion of Lawndale, and the Mexican population, losing much of their housing stock, moved in large numbers south to Pilsen.

The back porches of a three-flat apartment on West Side, 1973.

Street scene, West Side, 1973.

White flight and blockbusting drastically changed the demographics of the West Side by the 1950s. Throughout this decade, many white Chicagoans moved to the suburbs in a planned move by investors who, through scare tactics and instigating racial antagonism, encouraged white Chicagoans to sell their city homes and buy homes the investors built in the suburbs.[37] By 1960, Chicago recorded its first ever population drop. However, Black and Latino residents began filling the West Side to its maximum. Black areas of the West Side began to experience highly impoverished conditions moving into the 1960s. Many residents moved into housing projects that were built throughout the West Side the previous decade, the main housing projects being ABLA and Henry Horner Homes in the Near West Side, Rockwell Gardens and Harrison Courts in East Garfield Park, and Lawndale Gardens in Lawndale/Little Village. Many of these housing projects became predominantly Black and poor.[38] The Chicago Housing Authority was known for its segregationist policies and lack of building maintenance,[39] and police brutality was very frequent.[40] After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, the Blacks of the West Side rebelled in anger against the oppressive system made more apparent by King's murder. Long stretches of businesses along Madison Street in Garfield Park and Austin and along Roosevelt Road in Lawndale, the majority of which were owned by whites, were looted and burned down. Mayor Daley ordered 10,500 police and 6,700 National Guardsmen into the West Side, ordering "to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand... and... to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city."[41]

A Chicago Public Schools student on the West Side in 1973 reading a book on rulers throughout African history.

During the late 1960s, the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party had its headquarters on the West Side on Madison Street near Western Avenue. The chapter chairman, Fred Hampton, helped his chapter establish a free breakfast program for children as well as free health clinics for the community.[42] Hampton was murdered in his sleep in a planned raid by Chicago police and the FBI on the party's West Side apartment on Monroe Street in December 1969. Over 5,000 people attended Hampton's funeral.[43] The drug epidemic began sweeping through the West Side in the 1970s, and crime continued to climb. Unlike the South Side, there weren't large middle, upper-middle, or affluent Black communities that developed on the West Side. They existed by block or in small pockets, mostly in the Austin neighborhood closer to the suburb of Oak Park. Black representation of the West Side in Congress began in the 1970s with the placement of George W. Collins in the seat of Daniel J. Ronan who died in 1969. After George W. Collins was killed in a plane crash at Midway Airport in 1972, his wife Cardiss Collins was elected to Congress, making her the first Black female representative from the Midwest.

Steel Puerto Rican flag at Division Street/Paseo Boricua and California Avenue in Humboldt Park.

Puerto Ricans displaced by gentrification and city-backed urban renewal projects in Lincoln Park began moving to West Town and Humboldt Park by the thousands during the mid-late 1960s.[44][45] In 1960, West Town had a Latino population of 1%. By 1970, that number had grown to 39%.[46] Polish residents, who remained less upwardly mobile than the West Side's former German and Russian Jewish immigrants, remained in relatively large numbers in West Town centered around Catholic parishes. Humboldt Park began to see larger influxes of Puerto Ricans as the 1960s ended. In 1966, the first major urban Puerto Rican rebellion in the U.S. happened on Division Street, an event later known as the Division Street Riots[47] As the 1970s began, Humboldt Park suffered from poverty, crime, and gangs, leading to another uprising in 1977. To combat this, Puerto Rican community members across the West Side created social service organizations such as the Latin American Defense Organization (LADO) and the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center.[48] The Young Lords, a former street turf gang from Lincoln Park, turned into a human liberation group, becoming warriors for the community by fighting further displacement and holding sit-ins at the Wicker Park Welfare Office and takeovers of institutions to implement free breakfast programs similar to the Black Panther Party.[49] In Pilsen, Mexican-Americans and Chicanos reclaimed the area as La Diesiocho because of the 18th Street business corridor. Pilsen became a large center for mural painting by those part of the Chicano movement and for those attempting to shift the view of Pilsen as a dangerous community.[50] La Villita, the neighborhood to the west of Pilsen and Heart of Chicago was being populated by even more Mexican-Americans, and the business corridor along 26th Street became the busiest after the Loop.[51]

A man walking in La Villita along 26th Street near Kedzie Avenue.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the communities of the West Side continued to struggle, but hopes were being held together by social organizations, movements, and programs. The election of Mayor Harold Washington in 1983 gave hope to the West Side, especially since his election opened the door for more political representation, but his sudden death in 1987 was viewed as a serious blow to Chicago's entire Black community.[52] Six years later, Washington's unofficial floor leader in the city council, Puerto Rican Chicagoan Luis Gutiérrez, was elected to the U.S. Congress as the Midwest's first Latino representative in Congress.

Chicago's homicides reached peak numbers in the early 1990s in Humboldt Park, Austin, Lawndale, and Garfield Park.[53] As numbers began to go down throughout the 1990s, another round of displacement began to take hold. Major gentrification efforts in the Near West Side and West Town began, where corporate investors supported the addition of high-end businesses and luxury-style residential condos.[54] Property taxes rose thus raising rents, forcing poorer Puerto Rican and Black residents to move yet again.[55]

As the 2000s began, Pilsen began to see more major gentrification efforts. However, the community put up a substantial fight against this displacement process and gentrification progressed more slowly. During this time, the ABLA homes were demolished along with the Henry Horner Homes and Rockwell Gardens. Some of these areas have been replaced with new housing developments with the intended purpose of creating mixed-income communities. However, these areas are now mainly populated by younger, white, middle-class to upper-middle class professionals whom have been displacing the poorer residents at a rapid rate. In 2014, Redfin named Humboldt Park to be the nation's 10th hottest neighborhood, demonstrating high interest in gentrifying the community.[56][57]

The new Chicago High School for the Arts has moved from the South Side into the closed Lafayette Elementary building in Humboldt Park near a growing community of gentrifiers.[58] A new Pete's Fresh Market has been opened at Western Avenue and Madison Street, helping a long-time food desert; however, the poorer residents of the neighborhood are being displaced into other neighborhoods that are currently food deserts.[59]

The ABLA homes were completed by 1961 and demolished by 2004.

Illinois Medical District Blue Line station near Malcolm X College and Rush University.

There are several institutions of higher education throughout the West Side. The largest and most well-known is the University of Illinois at Chicago, more commonly referred to as UIC. The school was originally called Circle Campus in reference to its proximity to the Circle Interchange, now named the Jane Byrne Interchange.[36] The school has an enrollment of nearly 30,000 students, and has its own athletics program, the UIC Flames. UIC also operates the University of Illinois College of Medicine, a major component of the Illinois Medical District. Rush University, also located in the medical district, operates Rush University Medical Center and the Johnston R. Bowman Health Center.

The City Colleges of Chicago operates two colleges on the West Side. In the Near West Side, there is the long-established Malcolm X College. Located on Van Buren Street near Damen Avenue, Malcolm X College is linked to Chicago's first city college Crane Junior College, later Herzl College, which was originally located in Lawndale near Douglass Park. In 1968, the West Side community urged the city to rename the college after Malcolm X, who was assassinated three years earlier. The request was granted, and the school was moved from Lawndale to its present location. In January 2016, Malcolm X College is planning on completing a new, larger facility across the street on Jackson Boulevard with a new health science center and auditorium. The other city college located on the West Side is the Arturo Velasquez West Side Technical Institute, a satellite campus of Richard J. Daley College located near Little Village.[63]

St. Augustine College, the first bilingual institution of higher learning in Illinois,[64] has a campus near Little Village, and another campus immediately north of Humboldt Park, serving Chicago's Spanish-speaking community.

Chicago Public Schools operates the public schools on the West Side, including many elementary schools. The West Side was heavily affected by Mayor Rahm Emanuel's school closures of 2013.[65]

High schools in the area include Crane High School, Clemente High School, Orr High School, Marshall High School, Juarez High School, Manley High School, Wells High School, Farragut Career Academy, and the Little Village Lawndale High School Campus.

Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, one of the highest-performing high schools in the city and nation.

Two selective enrollment high schools are located on the West Side: George Westinghouse College Prep and Whitney M. Young College Prep. Students from all over the city can apply to these schools and admission is based on grades, attendance, and exam scores.

There are many charter schools throughout this section of the city. The Noble Network of Charter Schools operates numerous campuses throughout the West Side, and its original location, Noble Street College Prep, is located in West Town.

The Chicago High School for the Arts has moved from its former location on the South Side in Bronzeville to its new location in the recently closed Lafayette Elementary school near Augusta Boulevard and California Avenue. This gives a new high school option to the new gentrifier white, middle-class residents of the area whose homes are zoned to poorly performing, predominantly Black and Latino-populated high schools such as Wells High School and Clemente High School.[58]

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School located in Humboldt Park is an alternative school created in the 1970s to remedy the high drop-out rate of Puerto Rican youth in Chicago. The school uses a critical pedagogy to engage students in restoring and empowering their community by teaching students the history of figures such as Pedro Albizu Campos and Oscar López Rivera.[66]

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago operates area Catholic schools, most notably St. Ignatius College Prep.