Po p -Up CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD NARRATIVE SUMMARIES ABOUT THIS SUMMARY INDEX I began with general histories of Chicago; drilled a little further The communities are in order into specific details that came up; and looked for ways that by number: those details illuminated the larger trends. Dunning 02 This summary isn’t an exhaustive presentation of my research, Belmont Cragin 07 but an overview of seven community areas, meant to provide Near South Side 13 an easy resource to drive conversation about next steps. I kept Armour Square 18 things separate for easy reference—for instance, so that we can Pullman 23 compare timelines in different community areas. In the sites/ Hegewisch 29 stories/opportunities section for each area, I’ve identi- New City 36 fied some things that I think might be good subject matter for Further Resources 42 further exploration, but I’ve kept the information broad, and I haven’t made any judgements about which to investigate. If none of them are interesting, we can always keep digging into that community area. Each section contains • Precis • Neighborhoods • Online Resources • Timeline • Sites/Stories/Opportunities • Reactions Reactions is the space for our written notes. Of course the rest can be filled out as well. I’ve kept the design simple so that it can be easily tied into the other, more graphic info if we want. Po p -Up DUNNING COMMUNITY #17 PRÉCIS Dunning history is almost entirely defined by its remoteness from Chicago’s central city. Its distance made it attractive as the site of an almshouse; its eventual train station gave the area its name, unofficial at first, and was the organizing trigger for the growth of the area. “You’ll go to Dunning,” the traditional threat of Chicago mothers, I think calls on not just the history of the mental hospital there, but the remoteness of Dunning as well. It’s as far as you can get and still be in Chicago; beyond that, notionally speaking, the empty prairie. Contemporary Dunning is a typical recent middle-class suburb. The relationship between the present and the past, and between Dunning and the rest of Chicago, is odd; Dunning as a neighborhood seems to want to forget, though many local residents have strong individual memories of the asylum. Most current inhabitants have not been there for more than a generation or so, it seems. NEIGHBORHOODS ONLINE RESOURCES West Portage Park: The first real See the sites for specific resources. estate development in the area. It’s now called Schorsch Village. Belmont Heights, Belmont Terrace, and Irving Woods are residential areas, but seem not to have real neighborhood identities as elsewhere in Chicago. They are essentially real estate brands. Po p -Up DUNNING COMMUNITY #17 TIMELINE 1839 Peter Ludby squats on some open prairie land northwest of Chi- cago. 1851 Cook County buys 160 acres from Ludby, and erects an almshouse and poor farm there. late 1860’s Andrew Dunning buys 120 acres south of the county property, setting aside 40 acres for a settlement (and the rest for a nursery). Settlers don’t materialize. 1870 A separate building is put up at the poor farm to house the men- tally ill. 1870’s 117 victims of the Chicago Fire are buried in the unmarked graves at Dunning. They join the hundreds of anonymous people buried there, from the poor farm and asylum. 1880’s Two more buildings are built, adding to the asylum. 1882 The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad runs a three-mile track from Chicago to the county facilities. The county names the station for Dunning, but the train is known as the “crazy train.” 1886 “Dunning had failed to build his dream community in the shadow of the looming asylum, and so in 1886 he decided to sell off some of his land to groups of immigrant families interested in burial plots. Sixty-five acres went to the Scandinavian Lutheran Cemetery As- sociation, and was later called Mount Olive Cemetery. Forty more acres went to local Jewish families for traditional burials.” 1886 An investigation of the county insane asylum finds “misconduct, gambling, patient abuse, and ‘influence’ in the hiring of medical personnel.” 1890’s Henry Kolze inherits a tavern in the area, and turns it into Kolze’s Electric Grove, a popular picnic grove. It takes advantage of new streetcar lines bringing people out from the city. 1909 Population is 1,305. 1910 The poor farm is moved to Oak Forest; the insane asylum remains. 1912 The state buys the Cook County mental hospital for a dollar. It is renamed the Chicago State Hospital, but Chicagoans still call it Dunning. 1916 Schorsch Brothers Real Estate buy a tract of land nearby. They call it Portage Park to avoid associations with Dunning (the asy- lum); the result is the first housing boom in the area. Po p -Up DUNNING COMMUNITY #17 TIMELINE (Cont.) 1918 Cook County Car #1 is built. This is a large industrial bus used to ferry patients from the medical hospital to Dunning. 1919 Population is 4,019. 1920’s Swedish, German, and Polish immigrants move into the area. 1934 Wright Junior College is built. 1948 A citizen’s planning group recommends the moribund Kolze’s Electric Grove (among other sites around Chicago) for the site of a new park. 1950 Kolze’s Electric Grove is condemned, and most of the structures are razed. 1956 The new Merrimac Park is complete. The name is changed due to Kolze’s “unsavory” reputation, to the indignation of some. 1965 Charles F. Read Zone Center opens on Oak Park Ave. 1970 Population reaches 43,856, its height. 1970 Chicago State Hospital merges with Charles F. Read Zone Center. The existing buildings are razed; the new Chicago-Read Mental Health Center opens on its location. 1989 A backhoe operator discovers the first of many corpses to be un- covered in what used to be the poor farm. Genealogist Barry Fleig extrapolates that nearly 38,000 people were buried there. 1980’s & The nearby neighborhoods of Schorsch Village, Belmont Heights, 90’s Belmont Terrace, and Irving Woods become more popular as mid- dle-class suburbs. 1990’s Wright College’s new construction on the asylum grounds uncov- ers human remains from time to time. Apparently this has hap- pened throughout the 20th century, but without remark. 2001 Reed-Dunning Memorial Park is dedicated. Po p -Up DUNNING COMMUNITY #17 SITES/STORIES/OPPORTUNITIES Kolze’s ELECTRIC GROVE A picnic grove, developed by Henry Kolze after he inherited a tavern there. At Narragansett and Irving Park, the current location of Merrimac Park. “The site dated to the 1890s, when hotel owner Henry Kolze decided to create an attraction for riders of newly-reaching streetcar lines. Purchasing wooded land near his inn, Kolze strung large gas lamps, offered a nightly orchestra, and beer at a nickel a glass.” http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks/Merrimac-Park/#. U6HXOI1dVN4 COOK COUNTY ALMSHOUSE / POOR FARM / INSANE ASYLUM/ POtter’s Field This long and interesting article is a good resource: http://www. wbez.org/series/curious-city/story-dunning-tomb-living-106892 Also of interest: Cook County Car No. 1 http://www.abandonedasylum.com/dunning1.html “Cook County Car No. 1 was built in 1918, at the West Shop of the Chicago Surface Lines. The Glowczewski family, who lived on the Northwest Side of Chicago for many years, remembers it, “being painted an ugly dark green with oversized wheels, and it moved like a Sturmorser tank along Irving Park Road.” The car had separate sections for the male and female patients. The female patients were closest to the motorman.” http://cerablog.com/2013/10/25/i-love-a-mystery-photo-contest- answers-transit-trivia-3/ Po p -Up DUNNING COMMUNITY #17 REACTIONS SETH I’m interested in the binary comparison between the mental hospital and Kolze’s Electric Grove, both destinations at the end of a transportation line. Neither of them have much to do with the current nature of Dunning as a middle-class suburb. Po p -Up BELMONT CRAGIN COMMUNITY #19 PRÉCIS The placeless place. The things mentioned in the first paragraph of every description of the neighborhood have not only vanished, they’re not even memorialized. What’s left is a completely anonymous American city scene. However, Belmont Cragin has several distinct sub- neighborhoods, bringing up the question of focus—the entire community area, or one or more neighborhoods. Working here might require us to be aware of fairly subtle block-to-block differences, and to resist the urge to summarize. NEIGHBORHOODS ONLINE RESOURCES Cragin: industrial zone, grew up be- http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-05- tween 1890’s and 1930’s. 31/news/8702100006_1_shopping-center- retail-center-blue-collar Belmont Central: grew up as a com- Big photo essay: http://www.cyburbia. mercial district in the 1940’s. Histori- org/forums/showthread.php?t=17964 cally Polish, now 80% Hispanic. Hanson Park: a tiny area between the other two, originally a family farm. Centered around the namesake park and stadium, used by many Chicago schools. Po p -Up BELMONT CRAGIN COMMUNITY #19 TIMELINE After 1835 George Merrill opens a saloon in his home at Whiskey Point, at the intersection of Grand and Armitage Avenues (Grand was orig- inally Whiskey Point Road). There’s a story that he bought the land from Indians for a whiskey bottle. He catered mostly to truck farmers; few permanent residents. 1862 Michael Moran opens a hotel at Whiskey Point. Still a rural area. 1882 Cragin Brothers & Company opens a sheet iron processing plant on 11 acres near Whiskey Point, along the Milwaukee Road tracks near LeClaire Avenue.