Logan Square, Chicago
Logan Square is one of the 77 community areas of Chicago in Illinois, United States.
The Logan Square neighborhood, located within the Logan Square community area, is centered on the public square that serves as its namesake, located at the three-way intersection of Milwaukee Avenue, Logan Boulevard and Kedzie Boulevard.
Logan Square is, in general, bounded by Metra's Milwaukee District North Line on the west, the North Branch of the Chicago River on the east, Diversey Parkway on the north, and the Bloomingdale Trail on the south. The area is characterized by the prominent historical boulevards, stately greystones and large bungalow-style homes.
History
Name and Centennial Monument
Logan Square is named after General John A. Logan, an American soldier and political leader. The square itself is a large public green space formed as the grand northwest terminus of the Chicago Boulevard System and the junction of Kedzie and Logan Boulevards and Milwaukee Avenue. At the center of the square is the Illinois Centennial Monument, built in 1918 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Illinois's statehood. The monument, designed by Henry Bacon, architect of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and sculpted by Evelyn Beatrice Longman, is a single 70-foot tall "Tennessee-pink" marble Doric column, based upon the same proportions as the columns of the Parthenon in Ancient Greece, and topped by an eagle, in reference to the state flag and symbol of the state and the nation. The monument was funded by the Benjamin Ferguson Fund. Reliefs surrounding the base depict allegorical figures of Native Americans, explorers, Jesuit missionaries, farmers, and laborers intended to represent Illinois contributions to the nation through transportation as a railroad crossroads for passengers and freight, education, commerce, grain and commodities, religion and exploration, along with the "pioneering spirit" during the state's first century.Development
Originally developed by early settlers like Martin Kimbell in the 1830s, forming around the towns of "Jefferson", "Maplewood", and "Avondale", the area was annexed into the city of Chicago in 1889 and renamed Logan Square. Many of its early residents were English or Scandinavian origin, mostly Norwegians and Danes, along with both a significant Polish and Jewish population that followed.Milwaukee Avenue, which spans the community, is one of the oldest roads in the area and remains both a cultural and commercial artery. The road traces its origins prior to 1830 as a Native American trail and became known as "Northwest Plank Road" when it was constructed with wooden boards in 1849. In 1892, a streetcar line was extended along Milwaukee Avenue and, in 1895, the electrified elevated rail line was built alongside the road up to Logan Square itself, stimulating a new building boom. Milwaukee Avenue was finally paved in 1911 to accommodate motor cars. A baseball stadium at the corner of Milwaukee and Diversey hosted the Logan Square Baseball Club, which defeated both the Chicago Cubs and White Sox, who had just played each other in the crosstown 1906 World Series.
21st century
The neighborhood is home to a diverse population including an established Latino community, a number of ethnicities from Eastern Europe, and a growing number of millennials, due to gentrification. Known as the "Logan Square Boulevards District", the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and became a protected Chicago Landmark in 2005.Churches
Logan Square has churches along its boulevards including Minnekirken, a Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church, and St. Mary of the Angels.Neighborhoods
Belmont Gardens
Belmont Gardens spans the Chicago Community Areas of Logan Square and Avondale like neighboring Kosciuszko Park, located within its northwest portion, where the Pulaski Industrial Corridor abuts these residential areas. The boundaries of Belmont Gardens are generally held to be Pulaski Road to the East, the Milwaukee District North rail line to the West, Belmont Avenue to the North, and Fullerton Avenue to the South.Most of the land between Fullerton Avenue and Diversey Avenue as well as Kimball to the Milwaukee North rail line was empty as late as the 1880s, mostly consisting of the rural "truck farms" that peppered much of Jefferson Township. This began to change with the annexation of this rustic hinterland to the city in 1889 in anticipation of the World's Columbian Exposition that would focus the country's eyes on Chicago just a few years later in 1893.
Belmont Gardens' first urban development began thanks to Homer Pennock, who founded the industrial village of Pennock, Illinois. Centered on Wrightwood Avenue, which was originally laid out as "Pennock Boulevard", the area was planned to be a hefty industrial and residential district. The development was so renowned that the village was highlighted in a "History of Cook County, Illinois" authored by Weston Arthur Goodspee and Daniel David Healy. Thwarted by circumstances as well as the decline of Homer Pennock's fortune, this district declined to the point that the Chicago Tribune wrote about the neighborhood in an article titled "A Deserted Village in Chicago" in 1903. The original name of Healy station, "Pennock", was named after this now lost settlement.
While Homer Pennock's industrial suburb failed, Chicago's rapid expansion transformed the area's farms into clusters of factories and homes. At the turn of the 20th century as settlement was booming, Belmont Gardens and Avondale were at the northwestern edge of the Milwaukee Avenue Polish Corridor – a contiguous stretch of Polish settlement which spanned this thoroughfare all the way from the southern tip of Wicker Park's Polonia Triangle at the intersection of Milwaukee, Division Street and Ashland Avenue, north to Irving Park Road.
Belmont Gardens offered more than just a less congested setting for its new residents. Due to its proximity to rail along the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, the area developed a plethora of industry that still survives in the city's Pulaski Industrial Corridor. It was adjacent to his own factory that Walter E. Olson built what the Chicago Tribune put at the top of its list of the "Seven Lost Wonders of Chicago".
The Olson Park and Waterfall was a 22-acre garden and waterfall complex remembered by Chicagoans citywide as the place they fondly reminisce heading out to for family trips on the weekend. The ambitious project took 200 workers more than six months to fashion it out of 800 tons of stone and 800 yards of soil.
Latino settlement in the neighborhood began in the 1980s. Today the area still retains its blue collar feel as much of surrounding Logan Square and Avondale undergo increased gentrification.
Bucktown
Bucktown is a neighborhood located in the east of the Logan Square community area in Chicago, directly north of Wicker Park, and northwest of the Loop. Bucktown gets its name from the large number of goats raised in the neighborhood during the 19th century when it was an integral part of the city's famed Polish Downtown. The original Polish term for the neighborhood was Kozie Prery. Its boundaries are Fullerton Avenue to the north, Western Avenue to the west, Bloomingdale or North Avenue to the south, and the Kennedy Expressway to the east. Bucktown's original boundaries were Fullerton Avenue, Damen Avenue, Armitage Avenue and Western Avenue.Bucktown is primarily residential, with a mix of older single family homes, new builds with edgy architecture, and converted industrial loft spaces. Horween Leather Company has been on North Elston Avenue in Bucktown since 1920. The neighborhood's origins are rooted in the Polish working class, which first began to settle in the area in the 1830s. A large influx of Germans began in 1848 and in 1854 led to the establishment of the town of Holstein, which was eventually annexed into Chicago in 1863. In the 1890s and 1900s, immigration from Poland, the annexation of Jefferson Township into Chicago and the completion of the Logan Square Branch of the Metropolitan Elevated Lines contributed to the rapid increase in Bucktown's population density. Three of the city's most opulent churches designed in the so-called "Polish cathedral style" – St. Hedwig's Church, the former Cathedral of All Saints and St. Mary of the Angels – date from this era.
The early Polish settlers had originally designated many of Bucktown's streets with names significant to their people – Kosciusko, Sobieski, Pulaski and Leipzig. Chicago's City Council, prompted by a Bucktown-based German contingent with political clout, changed these Polish-sounding names in 1895 and 1913. In its place the new names for these thoroughfares bore a distinct Teutonic hue – Hamburg, Frankfort, Berlin and Holstein. Anti-German sentiment during World War I brought about another name-change that left today's very Anglo-Saxon sounding names: McLean, Shakespeare, Charleston, and Palmer.
Polish immigration into the area accelerated during and after World War II when as many as 150,000 Poles are estimated to have arrived in Polish Downtown between 1939 and 1959 as Displaced Persons. Like the Ukrainians in nearby Ukrainian Village, they clustered in established ethnic enclaves like this one that offered shops, restaurants, and banks where people spoke their language. Milwaukee Avenue was the anchor of the city's "Polish Corridor", a contiguous area of Polish settlement that extended from Polonia Triangle to Avondale's Polish Village. Additional population influxes into the area at this time included European Jews and Belarusians.
Latino migration to the area began in the 1960s with the arrival of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and later Mexican immigrants. Puerto Ricans in particular concentrated in the areas along Damen and Milwaukee Avenues through the 1980s after being displaced by the gentrification of Lincoln Park that started in the 1960s. The local Puerto Rican community lent heavy support for the Young Lords and other groups that participated in Harold Washington's victorious mayoral campaign. In the last quarter of the 20th century, a growing artists' community led directly to widespread gentrification, which brought in a large population of young professionals. In recent years, many trendy taverns and restaurants have opened in the neighborhood. There also have been a considerable number of "teardowns" of older housing stock, often followed by the construction of larger, upscale residential buildings.
Bucktown has a significant shopping district on Damen Avenue, extending north from North Avenue to Webster Avenue. The neighborhood is readily accessible via the Blue Line and has multiple access points to the elevated Bloomingdale Trail, also known as the 606.