North Lawndale, Chicago


North Lawndale, known to residents as simply "Lawndale", is located on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the well-defined community areas in the city of Chicago.

History

Once part of Cicero Township in 1869, the eastern section of North Lawndale to Pulaski Road was annexed to Chicago by an act of the state legislature. Thereafter, streets were platted and drainage ditches were installed between Western and Pulaski Road. The name "Lawndale" was supplied by Millard and Decker, a real estate firm which subdivided the area in 1870. In 1871, after the Great Chicago Fire, the McCormick Reaper Company constructed and occupied a new large plant in the South Lawndale neighborhood. As a result, many plant workers moved to eastern North Lawndale. The remaining area west of Crawford Avenue was annexed in 1889 by a resolution of the Cook County Commissioners.
By 1890 North Lawndale was beginning to be heavily populated by Bohemian immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The section most populated by the Czechs was the area from Crawford west, and from 12th St. to 16th St. Real estate firm W.A. Merigold & Co. was the chief developer of that part of the community, which resulted in the name "Merigold" being associated with the neighborhood. Czech institutions popped up in Merigold, beginning in 1890 with the Slovanska Lipa/Sokol Tabor at 13th & Karlov.
In 1892 the Bohemian Catholic Church, Our Lady of Lourdes, was established at the corner of 15th & Keeler. In 1909 the Czech Freethinkers School, Frantisek Palacky, was built at 1525 S. Kedvale. The Merigold neighborhood was also known as Novy Tabor by the Czech immigrants who settled there. The premier Czech institution, established in 1912, was the Ceska Beseda at 3659 W. Douglas Blvd. This club was attended by Chicago's Czech elite, as well as the visiting Czech elite of the rest of the United States and Czechoslovakia.
It was the place for its members to celebrate and enjoy literature, drama, and music by the most renowned and talented Czech artists. The ethnic Bohemians spread throughout the rest of the North Lawndale neighborhood; they were the original owners of many of the beautiful greystone buildings that graced the picturesque streets of the neighborhood. Many of the elite members of the Bohemian community resided in the vicinity of the 1800 and 1900 blocks of South Millard Avenue.
These wealthy men, as well as the rest of the Czech residents of North Lawndale, were strongly committed to their neighborhood, and were involved in civic affairs. Anton Dvorak Public Elementary School at 3615 W. 16th St. was named after the revered 19th-century Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. Several members of the North Lawndale Czech community occupied positions in city as well as county government. In the post-World War I years, the Czechs began leaving the neighborhood for newer housing in the western suburbs of Cicero, Berwyn, Riverside, and Brookfield.
By the 1920s many of the Czechs were gone, and Jews became the majority ethnic group of the neighborhood after having left the crowded confines of the Maxwell Street ghetto. North Lawndale later became known as being the largest Jewish settlement in the City of Chicago, with 25% of the city's Jewish population.
From about 1918 to 1955, Jews, overwhelmingly of Russian and Eastern European origin, dominated the neighborhood, starting in North Lawndale and moving northward as they became more prosperous. In the 1950s, blacks migrated into the area from the South Side and from southern states. Unscrupulous real-estate dealers all but evacuated the white population by using blockbusting and scare tactics related to the change in ethnicity. In a span of about ten years, the white population of North Lawndale dropped from 99% to less than 9%, but the number of total residents increased.
According to the Steans Family Foundation, in the decades following the 1960s
The poverty resulting from the loss of thousands of jobs due to restructuring of industries from the 1960s to the 1980s meant that money was not available for property maintenance. Houses were abandoned and thousands of structures were leveled during this time. Much land sat vacant until the building and real estate boom of the 2000s. Due to these factors, the total neighborhood population dropped from 124,937 in 1960 to 41,768 by 2000.
Writer, Jonathan Kozol devotes a chapter of Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools to North Lawndale. He notes that a local resident called it "an industrial slum without the industry." At the time, it had "one bank, one supermarket, 48 state lottery agents... and 99 licensed bars." According to the 1980 census, 58 percent of men and women 17 and older had no jobs.
In 1986 the Steans Family Foundation was founded to concentrate on grantmaking and programs in North Lawndale.
In the 1990s, the foundation noted signs of revitalization, "including a new shopping plaza and some new housing" associated with Homan Square, stabilization of the declining population, and a rise in new residents, mostly Hispanic. They constituted 4.5% of the population.
According to Charles Leeks, director of NHS, North Lawndale has the greatest concentration of greystones in the city. In late 2004, the City of Chicago enacted "The Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative" to promote the preservation of the neighborhood's greystone structures.

Contract Buyers League

The Contract Buyers League was a grassroots organization formed in 1968 by residents of the North Lawndale community. Assisted by Jack MacNamara, a Jesuit seminarian, and twelve white college students based at Presentation Roman Catholic Church, led by Msgr. Jack Egan, the CBL fought the discriminatory real estate practice known as "contract selling."
Groups similar to the CBL formed in cities around the country to combat contract selling. The CBL was the most influential in winning justice for exploited black homebuyers. The CBL renegotiated 400 contracts for its members, saving residents an estimated $25,000,000. The FHA finally responded to pressure from the CBL by reforming its discriminatory underwriting policies in order to lend to blacks.
The history of redlining was documented and broadcast by a 2014 cover story in The Atlantic monthly magazine titled written by journalist and award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates. North Lawndale was featured in an accompanying mini-documentary video explaining the impact of housing discrimination and predatory lending in Chicago titled

Subsections

K-Town

K-Town is a nickname for an area in Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and West Garfield Park between Pulaski Road and Cicero Avenue in which the names of many north-south avenues begin with the letter K. The pattern is a historical relic of a 1913 street-naming proposal, by which streets were to be systematically named according to their distance from the Illinois-Indiana border; K, the eleventh letter, was to be assigned to streets within the eleventh mile, counting west from the state line. The eleventh mile is the easternmost area in which the plan was widely implemented, as many neighborhoods to the east were already developed and had street names in place. The portion of K-Town bounded by W. Kinzie St, W. Cermak Rd, S. Kostner Ave, and S. Pulaski Rd was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places on September 9, 2010.
John W. Fountain wrote in his 2005 memoir:

Homan Square

The site of the former Sears headquarters was redeveloped beginning in 1988 as Homan Square. The development has included new construction of owned and rental mixed-income housing; adaptive reuse and restoration of historic properties for use as community center, school, and other facilities; a new community pool and recreation center; and associated retail. Homan Square is often used as an example of the revitalization of North Lawndale. The former Sears tower was rehabbed and reopened to the public as "The John D. and Alexandra C. Nichols Tower" in 2015. It now houses non-profit groups and youth association offices. Despite the renaming, the tower retains the "Sears Roebuck" plaque on top of the building. The 14th floor of the tower is now used as a space for parties and other community events. A windowless portion of the building indicates the tower's former connection to the Sears Merchandise Building. The complex before demolition was situated along the former Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad line.
Homan Square was the area that housed a police compound "likened to a CIA black site" in 2012, where people were held without their rights being respected.

Government and infrastructure

The United States Postal Service operates the Otis Grant Collins Post Office at 2302 South Pulaski Road.

Crime

Historian Paul Street, citing a 2001 demographic study by Claritas Inc., writes that more than 70% of men aged 18–45 residing in North Lawndale had criminal records.

Transportation

The Chicago Transit Authority's Pink Line serves this neighborhood. Stations are located at Kedzie, Central Park, Pulaski, and Kostner.

Education

The area is in Chicago Public Schools.
This area is served by Farragut Career Academy. and Frazier Preparatory Academy, a charter school.

Notable people

Since 2011, the neighborhood has been the primary filming location for the Showtime series Shameless, although the show is set in the city's Back of the Yards neighborhood.
Another Showtime TV series, The Chi, which debuted in 2018 and is set on the South Side of Chicago, films in the neighborhood.