Северный Лоундейл: История и современность района Чикаго

Community area in Chicago
Reinvestment efforts in the decades following 1990 include proposals of new raised greenway parks and new affordable/mixed income housing development, though the community has raised concerns of how to reinvest into the area without gentrification pricing out longtime residents. In 2022, the area had a new grocery store to alleviate the area food desert and received a proposal for a new STEAM academy.

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 (2400 west) and Pulaski Road (4000 west). 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 (later International Harvester) constructed and occupied a new large plant in the South Lawndale neighborhood, and 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. Czechs moved most heavily to the area from Crawford (Pulaski) west, and from 12th St. (Roosevelt Rd.) 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 (Czech fraternal & gymnastic organization) 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 (New Camp) by the Czech immigrants who settled there. The premier Czech institution, established in 1912, was the Ceska Beseda (Bohemian Club) 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 87% to less than 9%, but the number of total residents increased.

In 1966, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited North Lawndale and "stayed in an apartment there to highlight the deplorable conditions, which included broken doors and rodent infestations. He used the experience to campaign against discriminatory housing practices nationwide, which helped pave the way for the Fair Housing Act." According to the Steans Family Foundation, in the decades following the 1960s: At the time, it had "one bank, one supermarket, 48 state lottery agents and 99 licensed bars."

Though the departure of Sears and other businesses from the area had devastated the neighborhood, the repurposing of the Sears complex – known as Homan Square – would aid in rebuilding the community. Beginning in the mid 1990s, homeowners came to fill approximately 350 affordable housing units, and a new grocery store and the neighborhood's first Starbucks opened. However, the financial crisis of 2007–2008 set the area back; the grocery store and Starbucks closed, replaced with a grocery store with more limited options and creating a food desert. This followed a black owned health food store that opened in the neighborhood in 2018.

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 (Karlov, Keating, Kedvale, Keeler, Kenneth, Kenton, Keystone, Kilbourn, Kildare, Kilpatrick, Kirkland, Knox, Kolin, Kolmar, Komensky, and Kostner). 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:
K Town is a city within a city, a fifteen minute drive from downtown Chicago's skyscrapers I used to joke that the "K" stood for "kill." I was only half joking it had developed a reputation for being one of the rougher places in the city. K Town is where my grandfather and all the other black folk that flocked to the West Side during the mid to late 1950s bought proud brick houses on tree lined streets with crackless cement sidewalks.

The site of the former Sears headquarters was redeveloped beginning in 1988 as Homan Square. In 1993, residents at a community discussion expressed fear of being developed out, with renters having few protections from rising rent. 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. The former Sears tower was rehabbed and reopened to the public as "The John D. and Alexandra C. Nichols Tower" in 2015.

The United States Postal Service operates the Otis Grant Collins Post Office at 2302 South Pulaski Road. The Chicago Transit Authority's Pink Line serves this neighborhood. Stations are located at Kedzie, Central Park, Pulaski, and Kostner. In 2022, the city heard proposals for the Altenheim Line, an elevated park similar to the Bloomingdale (606) Trail, that would be developed on the site of former rail lines with existing rail running near the park. Some residents expressed concerns about gentrification; Alderman Michael Scott Jr. expressed that he was confident the community could avoid gentrification and keep residents there due to being able to control the market price with much land being owned by both the city and the Cook County Land Bank Authority. Beginning in 2021, violence prevention groups led by READI Chicago, Communities Partnering 4 Peace, and Chicago CRED began using large scale relationship based intervention tactics in the neighborhood. Flatlining Violence Inspires Peace provided street outreach workers, a major component of the joint movement. The initiatives also included providing the residents – with a focus on young men – with social services such as trauma informed cognitive behavioral therapy and economic opportunities such as job training and legal support. Three years ago, the city's budget for violence prevention had been less than $1 million per year. which allowed violence prevention groups to work collaboratively instead of competing for grants. The funds also supported the summer 2021 creation of a new, community led Community Safety and Coordination Center, a central site for resources for gender based violence, housing initiatives, youth programs, and physical and mental health, as well as job readiness programs partnered with labor unions. In 2022, the budget accounts for $85 million towards similar services. The Crime Lab further stated that there is "about 85% confidence that for every dollar invested in a program like READI Chicago, society reaps $3 to $7 in return." and North Lawndale College Prep High School. As of 2020, North Lawndale experienced much student loss, much of it due to people leaving the city but also due to having "the most charter schools and [the] highest percentage of students enrolled in charter schools" out of all Chicago community areas. Less than 30% of students in the West Side attended their zoned public schools.

Julius Rosenwald, co founder and president of Sears, Roebuck & Co.

Hyman G. Rickover, United States Navy Admiral known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy"

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.