what parts of chicago is considered a white, asian or hispanic ghetto? (Arlington Heights: how much, public schools)

[Chi-town Native]

you need to include Czechs/Bohemians - it was Tony Cermak who invented what we now call the "Machine," and I think they came here in far larger numbers than Irish (see: Pilsen), who really never had a majority population in any ward best I can tell. Irish have had influence far exceeding their numbers due to "advantage" of speaking English/being acquainted with the Anglo political system before they got here (I put that in quotes as in Ireland you wouldn't consider losing your native tongue to be a positive).

Germans otoh were here in such massive numbers it beggars description, it's only prejudice related to WWI and WWII that resulted in their cultural legacy being downplayed - especially during WWII, many institutions/organizations dropped "German" out of their names.

Greeks? Not many is my guess. Greektown is all about the restaurants, and has been for decades/

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

you need to include Czechs/Bohemians - it was Tony Cermak who invented what we now call the "Machine," and I think they came here in far larger numbers than Irish (see: Pilsen), who really never had a majority population in any ward best I can tell.

Good post Native, there are many newcomers to Chicago who think a Bohemian is a person with skinny jeans and a fixed gear bike, who drinks Pabst but never tried Old Style.

The University of Chicago site has old maps that show the city broken down by immigrants in the 1920s and 30s, very interesting.

Social Science Research Committee Maps

[Chi-town Native]

great link, thanks!

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by Organized Mess

Oh, and haven't a few of the shops on Armitage been robbed at gunpoint over the past few months? Silly me, I thought that only happened in the ghetto?

Shops get robbed everywhere. Your arguments are so ridiculous that you just need to stop.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by Chicagoland60426

Are the Vietnamese gangs mafias or street gangs?

We have southeast Asian gangs here in Uptown. But they rarely kill anyone. That's almost always the black Uptown gangs. Occasionally our little enclave or "Spanish Gangsta Disciples" in Buena Park will have an incident or two, but it's pretty rare.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

the problem for you is I actually grew up in these areas, and can state quite frankly you are full of it.

a grocery store doesn't even remotely prove your point. by that standard the new little cheese & wine shop in Logan Square on California makes it a French neighborhood.

show me some lasting contributions to LP that Puerto Ricans built. You know, a new school, a new park, etc. show me some STATS - I'm going to come right out and say you can't, because they don't exist.

The fact that the DePaul area was a Puerto Rican neighborhood has been pretty well documented. WTTW had a segment about it just a few months ago on a show about Puerto Ricans in Chicago. If you did in fact "grow up" there, you must be pretty young.

[Chi-town Native]

I know there was a Puerto Rican presence, certainly. But I'm hard pressed to find any evidence that the neighborhood "flipped" to Puerto Rican the way neighborhoods in Chicago have been known to do.

I don't mean for this to be some sort of thinly veiled insult or anything, but when I think of a Puerto Rican neighborhood, I think of Humboldt Park.

I don't believe LP was ever remotely as Puerto Rican as Humboldt Park is, as there's nothing that lasted such as the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (which looks to be very cool, btw), an actual commercial corridor, a new park/school named after a prominent Puerto Rican, local elected officials being Puerto Rican, etc.

Yes, I am in my late 30s, and going to elementary school in the neighborhood meant I was familiar with many, many German adults and old-timers - I completely agree that Puerto Ricans were moving into the area, but again, that to me does not equate to "it was a Puerto Rican neighborhood."

The Young Lords information available online suggests that the Puerto Rican influence/residents peaked in the 60s, so as by the late 70s gentrification was already substantial (and as many old German residents were there throughout, see Gepperths Market Chicago Finest Meat Market! for an example).

I'll happily revise my view if someone has better info I can incorporate, but a decade or so blip in renters doesn't do it for me. You need to have a few generations of people in a neighborhood before its fundamental character changes.

[Chi-town Native]

From the Chicago Encyclopedia:

Puerto Ricans

Puerto Ricans Although a handful of Puerto Rican men and women moved to Chicago from New York in the 1930s, the first significant wave of Puerto Rican migration to Chicago began in the late 1940s. Unlike other newcomers, Puerto Ricans did not face legal barriers in moving to the United States. The Jones Act of 1917 conferred U.S. citizenship to all island and U.S.-born Puerto Ricans, which facilitated the large migration of Puerto Ricans to cities such as Chicago beginning in the late 1940s. Beginning in 1946 a private Chicago-based employment agency, Castle, Barton and Associates, recruited Puerto Rican men to work as unskilled foundry laborers and Puerto Rican women to serve as domestic workers in Chicago and suburbs such as Waukegan. Generally, single men and women moved to Chicago and sent for family members once they established stable jobs and residences.
These early migrants lived in various neighborhoods, including Woodlawn, the Near North Side, Lake View, Lincoln Park, Uptown, West Garfield Park, East Garfield Park, and the Near West Side. By the 1960s most Chicago Puerto Ricans were concentrated in Lincoln Park, West Town, and Humboldt ParkMexican and Polish immigrants as well as African Americans. In Lincoln Park, Puerto Rican residents established a small, ethnic enclave along Armitage Avenue that included small grocery stores and businesses providing goods and services for Puerto Rican neighbors. By the mid-1960s, however, Puerto Rican and other low-income residents of Lincoln Park were displaced by urban renewal programs and the redevelopment of Lincoln Park. Puerto Rican residents relocated to West Town and Humboldt Park, where their concentration facilitated the creation of Chicago's first Puerto Rican and shared these neighborhoods with barrio, or neighborhood, along Division Street, or, as residents frequently refer to it, la Division.


This is what I thought - saying that the existing Puerto Rican population was concentrated in LP for a while does not mean that LP "was" Puerto Rican, which to me implies a majority of the residents were Puerto Rican.


I'll grant that Armitage had some shops, but you're talking about one street in a neighborhood of 70,000+ people, and my recollection is those were pretty much limited to the stretch between Halsted and Sheffield.



This is like people who insist Bridgeport is an Irish neighborhood just because they've heard the Daleys are from there, it's more a chest-thumping/pride issue than anything else.



Same source, from the Lincoln Park entry (http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/746.html): (broken link)


During the Great Depression, Lincoln Park's housing stock deteriorated as owners subdivided and neglected their properties. After World War II, residents of Old Town, in the southeastern section of Lincoln Park, worried that their neighborhood hovered on the verge of becoming a slum. They formed the Old Town Triangle Association in 1948, which inspired residents of the mid-North neighborhood to create a similar organization in 1950. In 1954 the Lincoln Park Conservation Association was organized to cover the entire community area. LPCA pursued neighborhood renewal by encouraging private rehabilitation of property and the use of government tools such as federal urban-renewalconservation area, and in the 1960s the city began implementing its “General Neighborhood Renewal Plan.” Although the LPCA had consciously tried to avoid the wholesale clearance that took place in Hyde Park, it incurred the wrath of poor people who lived in the southwestern quarter of Lincoln Park. The Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park argued that Puerto Ricans and African Americans were being displaced from their homes and priced out of the renewing neighborhood. Developers bought land near the park and built high-rise apartment buildings, to the consternation of LPCA, which had hoped to keep the district congenial to families.

[Lookout Kid]

I don't think I said that LP was Puerto Rican--just the DePaul area. But of course, the real area in question is south of DePaul.

[Chi-town Native]

gotcha, the other fella wasn't making that distinction. to be honest, I consider DePaul a relatively recent "neighborhood," once they got the student housing built it took off quite a bit, I wonder if the enrollment skyrocketed in the 90s or something.

I do get persnickety about these things, as I have seen first hand how labels are used rather insidiously. really, I'm not adamant in my position on this, it's just hard to really research given that the census records didn't break out Latino populations back then (much less breaking out the Puerto Rican population from the Mexican). I grew up with lots of Puerto Ricans & Mexicans, but the LP and LV neighborhoods were really mixed and changing rapidly back then, I don't think I could accurately say either of them were dominated by one particular group (at least, not until "money" became a group).