historic Jewish neighborhood change

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by Manigault

Outside of Detroit in Grosse Pointe, Italians and Poles were very restricted in their ability to buy property. There was a quota for the number of ethnic minorities who would be admitted. A point system was used, based on their skin tone and other factors, for their acceptability. This was discrimination against people who were predominantly Catholics and who are classified as white.

http://www.law.msu.edu/clinics/rhc/MI_Housing_Disc.pdf

the North Shore being Chicago's equivalent of Detroit's Grosse Pointe, Kenilworth was known as the most restrictive community. the fact that it was (is) exceedingly small allowed that policy to be played out fairly well.

Highland Park, on the other hand, had gained a reputation of being receptive to Jews during the era when summer cottages/resorts existed along that portion of the lakefront and thus became more welcoming when the area converted to year round residential.

[King of Kensington]

Interesting thread. In Toronto there was a similar west then north shift of the Jewish community. The original settlement area for Eastern European Jews was downtown just north of City Hall in an area known as "the Ward." By 1914 most had moved west along the streetcar lines of Dundas and College streets to the Kensington Market/Spadina now area (including today's Chinatown). The westward continued probably through the 1930s and even 1940s, stretching to about Dovercourt Road but no further than that. They didn't go to Parkdale, a once prosperous neighborhood on the decline, to middle to upper middle class WASP High Park or beyond that to the wealthy Kingsway Park area west of the Humber River which had developed in the 1920s. The wealthier Jews in the late 1920s started moving north to the Annex and around Hillcrest Park and Oakwood-St. Clair with the wealthiest of all going to the wealthy suburb of Forest Hill and neighboring Cedarvale . The city's most prestigious synagogue, Holy Blossom (Reform) decided to move "uptown" to its present Forest Hill location in the late 1930s because most of their membership had already moved north of St. Clair Avenue, even though only 8% of Toronto Jews lived north of St. Clair in 1941. It was after 1945 that the northward shift out of the heart of the Jewish community (roughly University to Dovercourt, Bloor to Queen streets) became a mass movement. The wealthier Jews went to Forest Hill and more middle class Jews went to the post-war suburb of North York particularly the Lawrence Manor and Bathurst Manor areas. By the 1960s the old area was mostly an elderly remnant. Today there is a more or less contiguous band of Jewish neighborhoods running along Bathurst St. from St. Clair Avenue into the suburb of Thornhill with varying concentrations of old money Jews (around St. Clair/Eglinton), Orthodox Jews (around Lawrence and Wilson), Russian-speaking Jews (Bathurst/Sheppard), etc. In the 1960s and 1970s saw a secondary suburban concentration develop around Bayview Avenue and York Mills, one of the wealthiest areas in Canada. In addition there has been a revitalization of the city core Jewish community since the 1970s, with many yuppies living in Yorkville and the Yonge St. corridor (not previously areas of Jewish concentration) and academics and "creative" types in the Annex and near the University of Toronto. A sign of this shift was the First Narayever congregation which shifted from an Orthodox shul of elderly Jews to a liberal egalitarian synagogue in the 1970s. Like in Chicago, there was a shift from west to north and that movement began in the inner city rather than in the postwar mass movement to the suburbs. It was probably the wealthy "pioneers" of the 1920s and 1930s going to Forest Hill that started the trend.

[King of Kensington]

^ Apologies for the wall of text, but every time I edit it still appears as one paragraph. I include maps of the locations of First Narayever and Holy Blossom: https://maps.google.ca/maps?ie=UTF-8...&ved=0CIMBEPwS https://maps.google.ca/maps?ie=UTF-8...&ved=0CKMBEPwS

[Larry Siegel]

Originally Posted by dcisive

...the South Side was all but an Exodus of Jews fleeing what was perceived as a major shift towards the denigration of that area of the city.

I'm sure you didn't mean anything bad by the word "denigration" but it kind of sticks out.

[North Side Brandon]

Originally Posted by latikeriii

Oh, didn't read your whole post. Basically, the Jewish "fled" Lawndale due to city neglect, very poor housing conditions, improved income status, and new African-American migrants moving from the South in huge numbers(late 50s). My great aunt moved from Mississippi to the West Side in the 50s. The traditional South Side Black Belt was way too overcrowded therefore, many new Blacks were steered to Lawndale. Terrible housing stock was affordable to the new migrants and also, the predominantly Irish city government didn't care much about the Jewish. The Jewish didn't put up a fight when Blacks moved in like the Irish and Germans on the South Side. Lawndale was in terrible shape toward the end of the Jewish era.

Neighborhoods on the SE side like Pill Hill, Jeffrey Manor were predominately middle-class Jewish neighborhoods but changed rapidly during the White Flight era of the late 60s. Many of those residents moved to the North Burbs, mainly Skokie and Des Plaines.

Chicago for most of the 20th Century was defined in many ways by the battle between Ethnic Catholics on one side Irish, Italian, Polish, Southern German, Slovak, Czech and Lithuanian Catholics on one side and African Americans on the other side. Ethnic Catholics were the majority in the city and many resented African Americans. It was sad in many ways as the African Americans came North for a better life just like our Catholic ancestors who came across the ocean but Catholics saw them as a threat. Look at the 1983 election with Harold Washington VS Bernie Epton the ethnic Catholic wards almost totally voted against Washington.