Lakeview


A vibrant street life


Wrigley Field


Residential neighborhoods


Cornelia Avenue at Halstead
photo by Gerald Farinas

The neighborhood of Lakeview is one of the most sought-after areas of the city of Chicago.    Great dining, shopping, a vibrant nightlife, and  family friendly parks and activities are popular attractions.

Lake View is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas. It is bordered by Diversey Parkway, Irving Park Road, Ravenswood Avenue, and by the shores of Lake Michigan. The 2000 population of Lakeview was 94,817 residents, making it the second largest of the Chicago community areas.

Lakeview has a strong community feeling engendered by local activities such as "Summer on Southport", a 2-day community festival with live music, local artisans, great food, and activities for all ages, as well as the colorful, and safe, Halloween tradition, "Sunday on Southport", which occurs the Sunday afternoon before the 31st. This fun event brings hundreds of little ghosts and goblins and their families out to trick or treat at local shops.  

The area of Wrigleyville is home to the Chicago Cubs' Wrigley Field.  The wide variety of restaurants and bars/lounges are always full, especially during baseball season when they feed and entertain thousands of fans.

The pleasant surprise of Lakeview & Wrigleyville is that once you venture a few steps from the main shopping and restaurant areas, you'll find yourself in beautifully maintained tree-lined streets, with rows of lovely houses in all manner of architectural styles, ranging in age from near-century-old to new.   This is likely the other primary reason for this area's popularity - one can buy or rent a gorgeous house on a quiet, residential street, then walk for 5 minutes and be in one of the city's mecca shopping/nightlife districts.

Transportation in and out of this particular neighborhood is plentiful, with the Ravenswood El, Red, Purple and Brown line stops at Sheridan, Sheffield, Southport, Addison, Belmont, Wellington, and Diversey and CTA buses running on Sheridan, Halsted, Clark, Belmont, Lincoln, Diversey and Addison.

Lakeview History

Lakeview was originally used as a camp and trail path for the Miami, Ottawa, and Winnebago Native American tribes. In 1853, one of the first permanent structures, the "Hotel Lake View", a resort, was built on the corner of present-day Byron Street at Lake Shore Drive.  The early settlement continued to grow, especially due to increased immigration of farming families from Germany, Luxembourg and Sweden.   Lakeview's early industry was farming, especially crops of celery, and at the time was known as the celery-growing capital of the world.

Access to the new community was served by a wooden plank road connected to the Fullerton Parkway called "Lake View Plank Road" (now Broadway). From 1870 to 1887 the population of the township grew from 2,000 citizens to 45,000. As a result, there was growing need of more public service access and Lake View was absorbed into Chicago in 1887.  

In 1889, a real estate boom became a major economic stimulant, and over forty percent of its neighborhood's present-day buildings were constructed during that time.

Today

Today, gentrification, diversification and population shift have changed the greater area with many businesses, including large specialty chains and small boutiques.  The past 15 years have seen much growth in new home construction including new condos from $200,000 to $1 million, and single family homes priced from $1 million to over $3 million.

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Roscoe Village



Artist's Booth at
"Retro on Roscoe" annual street fair



Local color: baseball,
a perennial favorite in Chicago
and Roscoe Village Pub.

Roscoe Village is a neighborhood in the Lake View community on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. People have been living in Roscoe Village since the 18th Century, when the area was inhabited by the Fox Indians. Today the area is home to over 6200 residents.

Boundaries of the neighborhood are Addison Street, Belmont Avenue, Western Avenue, and Ravenswood Avenue. Offering proximity to the lakefront and downtown, Roscoe Village is located 15 minutes north of the Loop with direct access to downtown via the CTA's Brown Line, with a stop at Paulina. The primary features of Roscoe Village are its comfort, convenience and true village feeling.

Residents benefit from low-density living and a short walk to the local bakery. It's a quieter neighborhood that is stable and family-oriented, yet trendy enough to attract young professionals.

With its eclectic, independent-minded boutiques, antique shops and restaurants, Roscoe Street is reminiscent of a quaint small village.

Felger Park boasts a lovely playground where mothers and nannies bring their young children.  In summer, the sprinkling fountain is a great way to cool off.  Nearby Hamlin Park with its lighted baseball diamonds is another combined athletic and social gathering spot for folks with kids, dogs, and tennis racquets. “Retro on Roscoe” is a popular annual summer street festival.  

Less crowded than Lincoln Park and Lakeview, Roscoe Village is primarily comprised of post World War II bungalows and two- and three-flats. Many have beenconverted to single-family homes. It also offers many newer town home developments and loft conversions. The past 15 years have seen an explosion of new construction single-family homes with a market value starting at $1.5 million and ranging close to $3 million.

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Wicker Park is a wonderfully diverse, dynamic Chicago neighborhood northwest of the Loop with a rich cultural history. Wicker Park was originally a 4 acre park between Damen Ave. and Wicker Park Ave. donated by land developers Charles and Joel Wicker. The Wicker brothers purchased 80 acres of land along Milwaukee Avenue in 1870 and laid out a subdivision with various lot sizes surrounding the triangular park. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 spurred the first wave of development, as burned out Chicagoans sought to build new houses.

Wicker Park proved especially popular with German and Scandinavian merchants, who built large mansions along the neighborhood's choicest streets--particularly on Hoyne and Pierce. Avoiding the frame structures that had burned so quickly in the Great Fire, their Victorian-era architecture was predominantly brick and stone in a variety of styles, including Victorian Gothic and Italianate.  The owners and craftsmen showcased their ego and talents with individualistic touches of towering turrets, striking gables and stylized ornamentation.

At the end of the 19th century, the area was known as the “Polish Gold Coast" and Hoyne was known as "Beer Baron Row," as many of Chicago's wealthiest brewers built mansions there. Today, many grand examples of the period continue to be restored.

Not all early Wicker Park residents were wealthy.  In the late 1800’s an influx of working-class Eastern European immigrants and African-Americans lived in small cottages on Bell Avenue.  Labor activists also resided in that section of Wicker Park, including the martyrs of the Haymarket Affair. 
By 1930 Wicker Park began to undergo a dramatic racial and class transition.  The wealthy Germans and Scandinavians abandoned their mansions, while the area’s poor and working-class residency grew.

After World War II, many Poles moved further northwest and Spanish speaking populations moved in.  This transition coincided with a post-World War II housing shortage, and many of the mansions were divided into multifamily units and rooming houses.   Housing and demographic patterns continued to change over the next several decades as Wicker Park became more ethnically diverse.

Efforts by community development groups to stabilize the community through new affordable-housing construction in the 1980s coincided with the arrival of artists attracted by the neighborhood's easy access to the Loop, inexpensive loft space in the abandoned factories, and distinctly urban feel. 

In 1989, the "Around the Coyote" festival was launched to help the hundreds of working artists and micro-galleries in the neighborhood to gain a level of local and international prominence. Centered around the landmark 1930’s skyscraper The Northwest Tower, nicknamed the Coyote Tower by local artists, it has expanded to become an established part of Chicago’s cultural landscape.

The artistic contingent was soon followed by young college educated professionals.   Gentrification accompanied the building of exciting new homes and the restoration of older homes to their former glory.
  
Much of Wicker Park was designated as a Chicago Landmark District in 1991. 

Today, the neighborhood is best known for its eclectic commercial and vibrant entertainment establishments and for being a convenient place to live for downtown workers with its proximity to public transportation and the loop.

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