Old Town, Chicago

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Chicago's Old Town

Old Town (sometimes called Old Town Triangle) is a neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, part of the Near North Side bounded by Armitage Avenue on the north, Division Street on the south, Larrabee Street on the west, and Clark Street on the east.[1] It sits inside the larger neighborhood known as Lincoln Park, and is part of Chicago's 43rd ward.

1 History of Old Town
2 Old Town Trivia
3 Photo Gallery
4 Quote
5 External links

[edit] History of Old Town

Old Town is in the upper right portion of this map of Chicago from 1875. Note how 'Sedgwick' is misspelled 'Sedgewick'

The land known as Old Town originally served as a home and trade center to many Nations including Potawatomi, Miami and Illinois.[2] Following the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, most of the indigenous people were forcibly removed, and the land was then settled by German-Catholic immigrants in the mid to late 19th century. Clark Street is a leftover of the culture, it being an old road which followed the high point next to Lake Michigan.

Old Town is today considered an affluent and historic neighborhood, home to many of Chicago's older, Victorian-era buildings. The neighborhood is also home to St. Michaels Church, originally a bavarian-built church, and one of 7 buildings to survive the path of the Great Chicago Fire [3]. Many of the streets and alleys, particularly in the Old Town Triangle section, predate the Great Chicago Fire and do not all adhere to a typical Chicago grid pattern.

A building in Old Town built in the 1920's

In 1927, sculptors Sol Kogen and Edgar Miller purchased and subsequently rehabilited a house on Burton Place, near Wells Street, into the Carl Street Studios. Through the 1930s, an art colony emerged in the neighborhood as artists moved from the "Towertown" neighborhood near Washington Square Park.

During the 1960s the neighborhood was the center of the yippie and hippie culture in the midwestern United States. This was mostly due to the fact that by the 1950s and 1960s many of the original families that had settled in the neighborhood had moved to the suburbs during white flight, leaving older, victorian buildings with storefronts available to rent for cheap. This dense storefront-laden area (Wells & North Ave.) became the nexus of hippie culture, (as well as the newly emerging out-homosexual culture) and gave rise to the boutiques in the neighborhood today. The violent events that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention transpired around the convention center, Grant Park, Old Town, and the park adjacent (on Clark St.) called Lincoln Park.

The intersection of North Ave. and Wells in 2006

	I pointed out that it was in the best interests of the City to have us in Lincoln Park ten miles away from the Convention hall. I said we had no intention of marching on the Convention hall, that I didn't particularly think that politics in America could be changed by marches and rallies, that what we were presenting was an alternative life style, and we hoped that people of Chicago would come up, and mingle in Lincoln Park and see what we were about.
	— Abbie Hoffman, from the Chicago 7 trial

The film The Weather Underground has a scene on La Salle Avenue in Old Town, which describes the zeitgeist of the era.

After the Martin Luther King assassination, and the subsequent riots [4], the neighborhood experienced a tense racial division during the 1970s and 1980s which left a de facto segregation between Old Town north of North Ave. and Old Town south of North Ave. In the early 2000s this trend has begun to shift towards a gentrification of the area south of North Ave. (known to realtors now as "SoNo") on Sedgwick, Blackhawk, Hudson and Mohawk streets.

[edit] Old Town Trivia

As of 2006, a few of the institutions from the 1960s era still exist, such as the Second City, the Old Town Ale House, Bijou Video, the Old Town School of Folk Music (since moved due to the MLK riots), the Up Down Tobacco Shop and the Old Town Aquarium.

The Old Town Art Fair is one of America's oldest art fairs, having started in 1950.

Old Town has one Brown-Purple Line El station at 1536-40 North Sedgwick Avenue.

Portions of the film Return to Me were shot at Twin Anchors in Old Town.

The Illegal Blues Brothers Bar operated in Old Town.

[edit] Photo Gallery

Loews Theater at Pipers Alley	The exterior of the Up Down Tobacco Shop	A window display at the Up Down Tobacco Shop	The sign outside The Old Town Aquarium
Home of a 19th century network engineer	The Midwest Buddhist Temple, with St. Michaels visible in the upper right	A German-style building	St. Michaels Church