Lower West Side, Chicago

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Lower West Side
—  Community area  —
Community Area 31 - Lower West Side
Location within the city of Chicago
Coordinates: 41°51′N 87°39.6′W / 41.85°N 87.66°W / 41.85; -87.66Coordinates: 41°51′N 87°39.6′W / 41.85°N 87.66°W / 41.85; -87.66
Country	United States
State	Illinois
County	Cook
City	Chicago
Neighborhoods	list Heart of Chicago Lower West Side Pilsen
Area
- Total	2.8 sq mi (7.25 km2)
Population (2000)
- Total	44,031
- Density	15,729.6/sq mi (6,073.2/km2)
	population down 3.56% from 1990
Demographics
- White	10.15%
- Black	1.76%
- Hispanic	86.9%
- Asian	0.27%
- Other	0.92%
Time zone	CST (UTC-6)
- Summer (DST)	CDT (UTC-5)
ZIP Codes	parts of 60608 and 60616
Median income
Source: U.S. Census, Record Information Services

Lower West Side located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of 77 well-defined Chicago community areas. The area is called Pilsen by Chicago area residents.^{[citation needed]}

Government and infrastructure

The United States Postal Service operates the Pilsen Post Office at 1859 South Ashland Avenue.^[1]

Neighborhoods

Heart of Chicago

Heart of Chicago is a neighborhood located in the southwest corner of the Lower West Side community area and has an Italian restaurant strip on Oakley.

Pilsen

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Pilsen is a neighborhood made up of the residential sections of the Lower West Side community area of Chicago. In the late 19th century Pilsen was inhabited by Czech immigrants who named the district after Plzeň, the fourth largest city in what is now the Czech Republic. The population also included in smaller numbers other ethnic groups from the Austro-Hungarian Empire including Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats and Austrians, as well as immigrants of Polish and Lithuanian heritage. Many of the immigrants worked in the stockyards and the surrounding factories. As many early 20th Century American urban neighborhoods, however, Pilsen was home to the wealthy as well as the working class and doctors lived next to maids and laborers amongst businessmen with the whole area knitted together based on the ethnicities, mostly of Slavic descent, who were not readily welcome in other areas of the city.^{[citation needed]}

The Czechs had replaced the Germans, who had settled there first with the Irish in the mid 1800s. Beginning in the late 1960s Pilsen saw an increasing population of Mexican as people were forced to move when their former small enclave to the North of Pilsen was torn down in the mid to late 1960s to make way for the University of Illinois at Chicago^[2] Latinos became the majority in 1970 when they surpassed the Slavic population. The neighborhood continued to serve as port of entry for immigrants, both legal and undocumented immigrants and mostly of Mexican descent. Many elderly central Europeans, some even without English language skills, also still reside in Pilsen. Pilsen's Mexican population is increasingly dwarfed by what has become the largest Mexican neighborhood in Chicago, Little Village. Famed author Stuart Dybek hails from Pilsen and explores issues such as ethnic change and acculturation through his short stories in Childhood and Other Neighborhoods and The Coast of Chicago^{[citation needed]}

There is also a former county seat in Poland named Pilsen (Pilzno) from which a number of Polish Chicagoans hail, and in 2004 their organization the 'Pilsen' Society of Chicago Klub Pilznian festively celebrated its 80th anniversary^[3] [1].

Many of the new residents to the neighborhood are not Hispanic and it is projected that the neighborhood will continue to become more diversified in the years ahead. Half of Pilsen's population in 1996 had turned over by 2000.^{[citation needed]}

Development adjacent to Pilsen grew significantly on its northern border over the past decade with new construction as well as restoration of National Historic Register properties such as the 800+ unit South Water Market, an old concrete cold storage warehouse, and the Chicago Housing Authority's plan for transformation of the ABLA projects. That development has now spilled over into Pilsen proper with the now nearly complete Chantico Loft development, Union Row Townhomes as well as the defunct Centro 18 on 18th Street in East Pilsen. Infill construction of condominiums and single family homes is now in full force on the east side of the neighborhood as Pilsen becomes one of the next major development area for that type of infill construction.^{[citation needed]} Some local advocacy groups have formed urging the neighborhood's alderman to curtail gentrification to preserve the Mexican-American cultural and demographic dominance. These groups have met with limited success, as many of the neighborhood's property owners are in favor of redevelopment and increasing property values. However, Pilsen became a National Historic Register District on February 1, 2006 at the behest of the alderman.^[4]

18th Street is an active commercial corridor, with Mexican bakeries, restaurants, and groceries though the principal district for Mexican shopping is 26th Street in Little Village, Chicago's other formerly majority Pan-Slavic community, which is currently the main area of successful Mexican immigrant commerce. The east side of the neighborhood along Halsted Street is one of Chicago's largest art districts, and the neighborhood is also home to the National Museum of Mexican Art. St Adalbert's dominates over the skyline with the opulence typical of churches in the Polish Cathedral style. Pilsen is also famous for its murals. The history of the murals is often misspoken of as a purely Mexican cultural type which is historically and factually inaccurate.^{[citation needed]} The original murals in Pilsen along 16th Street started as a cooperative effort between Slavs and Mexicans when the neighborhood was undergoing change.^{[citation needed]} If one looks closely one finds amongst the latter Mexican images the earlier ones which are decidedly non-Mexican and include storks, scenic European farms, and lipizzaner horses.^{[citation needed]}

Robb Walsh of the Houston Press said that the Mexican restaurants in Pilsen are "unconsciously authentic" to original Mexican cuisine. Rick Bayless, the chef and owner of Frontera Grill in Chicago, said that this is because Mexican-Americans in Chicago do not encounter a substantial Chicano community that tells them how to cook food in the United States, so the immigrants use the same frame of reference that they had in Mexico.^[5]

Education

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Chicago Public Schools operates public schools in Pilsen.

Whittier Dual Language School, a member of the Chicago Public Schools, is located in the Pilsen area.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago operates Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in the Pilsen area.^[6]

UNO has also opened up a new school called Bartolome De las Casas.^{[citation needed]}

Transportation

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The Pink Line El stops at 18th Street, in the northwest corner of Pilsen and the Orange Line stops at Halsted and Archer Avenue, just south of Pilsen. Buses run east- and west-bound on Cermak Road and 18th Street, and northeast- and southwest-bound on Blue Island Avenue; while north and south buses run along Western, Damen, Ashland, and Halsted. (For Chicago Transit Authority system map section which includes Pilsen, click here.) Metra's BNSF Railway Line^[7] stops on the east at Halsted and 16th Street, and on the west at Western and 18th Street and highways run near the eastern and southern parts of the neighborhood.

References

• Polorg.com "Club Pilznian- Banquet, Sat, 1/24/2004, 89th Jubilee Club Pilznian Banquet". Retrieved on April 3, 2007.
• http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/voorheesctr/Publications/Gentrification%20before%20Gentrification.pdf
• http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featlydersen_7_p.htm
• http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_opinion_letters/2006/03/neighborhood_ge.html
• http://www.newcommunities.org/communities/pilsen/about.asp?communityID=10
• http://mesh.medill.northwestern.edu/mnschicago/archives/2006/05/pilsen_the_prop.html
• http://geography.asu.edu/civic/Neighborhoods/preserving_Pilsen.doc
• http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=3946237

Mobility Rates amongst Renters in Gentrifying neighborhoods- Freeman and Frank Braconi; and a Boston study by Jacob Vigdor

External links

	Chicago portal
	Latino and Hispanic American portal

• Official City of Chicago Lower West Side Community Map
• Pilsen Portal
• Art-Pilsen
• Antena
• Chicago Arts District
• Pilsen Alliance
• Whittier Dual Language School
• Holy Trinity
• Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum
• Medill School of Journalism
• The Resurrection Project
• Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization
• Pilsen Neighbors
• Polvo
• Pros Art Studio
• St. Procopius Church
• Thalia Hall
• Stuart Dybek Q & A on growing up in Pilsen by Chicago Public Library
• Stuart Dybek Bio by Lannan Foundation
• Stuart Dybek Bio by Western Michigan University
• Stuart Dybek Bio by Northwestern University
• dai5ychain community computer lab

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