Previously, the area was home to indigenous populations including the Cahokian, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Miami. Through legal trickery, the
Treaty of Chicago, U.S. government officials were able to obtain land around Lake Michigan.
1830s to late 19th century When Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1834, settlers only lived as far west as Jefferson Street or
Halsted Street, less than a half mile west of the Chicago River. Land plotters and wealthier newcomers were more interested in developing land north and south of the original settlement because this land was adjacent to
Lake Michigan. As the central business district grew, retail stores set up shop along
Lake Street, connecting the central business district with the slower-developing western part of the city. As Lake Street became a bustling thoroughfare throughout the 1840s and 1850s, wealthier residents decided to establish an affluent community on the West Side that could be a retreat from the bustling city center. This was the impetus for the creation of
Union Park. As the 1860s came, less affluent residents replaced the wealthier families around Union Park and increased immigration from Europe transformed the Near West Side into an ethnically diverse area. Chicago's first Black community along Kinzie Street and Lake Street became adjacent to an Irish community by the river, as well as German, French, Czech, and Bohemian communities. Polish immigrants settled further north along the river in West Town to work at factories and on the railroad. The area was transformed by the
Great Chicago Fire in 1871, which made 300,000 residents of the city homeless. The resulting migration toward other parts of the city created very densely populated and overcrowded areas on the Near West Side. Most of the Czech and Bohemian residents moved south establishing the neighborhood of Pilsen, named after the city of
Plzeň in the Czech Republic. The fire also began migration into the Lawndale neighborhood, which had advertised itself as a residential suburb with fireproof apartment buildings. , one of the founders of the nationally acclaimed Hull House Settlement. Immigration from Europe continued in the area at a rapid rate, and the older Irish and German community became eclipsed by newer Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. Large numbers of Italian and Greek immigrants began arriving in the area too. The Jewish immigrants settled between 12th Street, now
Roosevelt Road, and 16th Street, centering the community and businesses along
Maxwell Street. The Maxwell Street Market continued from this time through the 20th century as an important economic and cultural center for the city. Italian immigrants settled along Polk Street and Taylor Street, establishing Chicago's main
Little Italy.
Greek immigrants centered their settlement at Harrison Street, Halsted Street, and Blue Island Avenue, calling their community "The Delta." As immigration continued, the area became unhealthily overcrowded, resulting in dilapidated tenements and pollution. These poorer residents also lacked health services from the city. This situation was to be addressed by the creation of the
Hull House settlement by
Jane Addams and
Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. Hull House was a settlement house that provided a range of services to the residents of the West Side. A playground, a gymnasium, and language classes were provided for children, and services were provided for employment, garbage removal, and art programs. Hull House became a center of the Italian and Greek communities, however Black residents of the Near West Side weren't as welcome to use the services of Hull House and had to rely on finding or creating other community services.
Early to mid-20th century As the 20th century began, Chicago had already annexed land west of Western Avenue, greatly increasing the West Side. East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, and Humboldt Park had been sparsely populated throughout the late 19th century, but the addition of transportation infrastructure increased the population quickly. In 1892, the first elevated train line was constructed on the South Side and a year later, the
Lake Street Elevated Railroad opened, providing transportation service from the city center to the West Side. In 1895, the
Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad opened, which provided elevated train service down Harrison Street on its Garfield Park branch and also elevated train service down North Avenue on its Humboldt Park branch. Elements of these elevated train lines are used today for the
CTA Green Line and
Blue Line. Industry began to dominate this area further west.
Sears, Roebuck and Company was founded in 1893, and in 1906 built its merchandise and catalog center in Lawndale near the intersection of Homan Avenue and Arthington Street. The North Western Railway had thousands of their employees establish a community in West Garfield Park. At this point, the West Side had immigrant industrial employees from all over Europe. There was a Polish majority in West Town; the Danish, Norwegians, and Russian Jews populated Humboldt Park, and Italians were in East Garfield Park. However, a dramatic change in the city's population occurred with the
Great Migration of Blacks from the Southern United States into the urban North. In 1910, Chicago's Black population was at 40,000, most of these people being concentrated on the South Side in an area known as the Black Belt. By 1940, the Black population rose to 278,000, and more of these residents increasingly lived on the West Side. In the Near West Side, there were 26,000 Blacks by 1940, and this community was joined by a growing
Mexican-American community and a smaller Puerto Rican community. By this time, the Maxwell Street Market employed mostly newer Black residents and the market became an important center for Black
Chicago blues musicians coming from the South. The construction of the
Eisenhower Expressway in the 1950s demolished many homes in the area, forcing residents to relocate further west. The announcement of a
University of Illinois campus in Chicago to be constructed in the Near West Side brought the community head-to-head with Mayor
Richard J. Daley, and the construction of the university displaced half of the community, including the Hull House settlement. Nearly the entire Italian and Greek communities relocated to the Northwest Side and suburbs. The Black population moved further west into the Near West Side, Garfield Park and the eastern portion of Lawndale, and the Mexican population, losing much of their housing stock, moved in large numbers south to Pilsen.
1960s to 21st century White flight and blockbusting drastically changed the demographics of the West Side by the 1950s. Throughout this decade, many white Chicagoans moved to the suburbs in a planned move by investors who, through scare tactics and instigating racial antagonism, encouraged white Chicagoans to sell their city homes and buy homes the investors built in the suburbs. By 1960, Chicago recorded its first ever population drop. However, Black and Latino residents began filling the West Side to its maximum. Black areas of the West Side began to experience highly impoverished conditions moving into the 1960s. Many residents moved into housing projects that were built throughout the West Side the previous decade, the main housing projects being
ABLA and
Henry Horner Homes in the Near West Side,
Rockwell Gardens and Harrison Courts in East Garfield Park, and Lawndale Gardens in Lawndale/Little Village. Many of these housing projects became predominantly Black and poor. The
Chicago Housing Authority was known for its
segregationist policies and lack of building maintenance, and police brutality was very frequent. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, the Blacks of the West Side
rebelled in anger against the oppressive system made more apparent by King's murder. Long stretches of businesses along Madison Street in Garfield Park and Austin and along Roosevelt Road in Lawndale, the majority of which were owned by whites, were looted and burned down. Mayor Daley ordered 10,500 police and 6,700 National Guardsmen into the West Side, ordering "to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand... and... to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city." student on the West Side in 1973 reading a book on rulers throughout African history. During the late 1960s, the Illinois chapter of the
Black Panther Party had its headquarters on the West Side on Madison Street near Western Avenue. The chapter chairman,
Fred Hampton, helped his chapter establish a free breakfast program for children as well as free health clinics for the community. Hampton was murdered in his sleep in a planned raid by Chicago police and the FBI on the party's West Side apartment on Monroe Street in December 1969. Over 5,000 people attended Hampton's funeral. The drug epidemic began sweeping through the West Side in the 1970s, and crime continued to climb. Unlike the South Side, there weren't large middle, upper-middle, or affluent Black communities that developed on the West Side. They existed by block or in small pockets, mostly in the Austin neighborhood closer to the suburb of Oak Park. Black representation of the West Side in Congress began in the 1970s with the placement of
George W. Collins in the seat of
Daniel J. Ronan who died in 1969. After George W. Collins was killed in a
plane crash at Midway Airport in 1972, his wife
Cardiss Collins was elected to Congress, making her the first Black female representative from the
Midwest. and California Avenue in Humboldt Park.
Puerto Ricans displaced by gentrification and city-backed urban renewal projects in
Lincoln Park began moving to West Town and Humboldt Park by the thousands during the mid-late 1960s. In 1960, West Town had a Latino population of 1%. By 1970, that number had grown to 39%. Polish residents, who remained less upwardly mobile than the West Side's former German and Russian Jewish immigrants, remained in relatively large numbers in West Town centered around Catholic parishes. Humboldt Park began to see larger influxes of Puerto Ricans as the 1960s ended. In 1966, the first major urban Puerto Rican rebellion in the U.S. happened on Division Street, an event later known as the
Division Street Riots. As the 1970s began, Humboldt Park suffered from poverty, crime, and gangs, leading to another uprising in 1977. To combat this, Puerto Rican community members across the West Side created social service organizations such as the
Latin American Defense Organization (LADO) and the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center. The
Young Lords, a former street turf gang from Lincoln Park, turned into a human liberation group, becoming warriors for the community by fighting further displacement and holding sit-ins at the Wicker Park Welfare Office and takeovers of institutions to implement free breakfast programs similar to the Black Panther Party. In Pilsen, Mexican-Americans and Chicanos reclaimed the area as
La Diesiocho because of the 18th Street business corridor. Pilsen became a large center for mural painting by those part of the Chicano movement and for those attempting to shift the view of Pilsen as a dangerous community.
La Villita, the neighborhood to the west of Pilsen and Heart of Chicago was being populated by even more Mexican-Americans, and the business corridor along 26th Street became the busiest after the
Loop. During the 1980s and 1990s, the communities of the West Side continued to struggle, but hopes were being held together by social organizations, movements, and programs. The election of Mayor
Harold Washington in 1983 gave hope to the West Side, especially since his election opened the door for more political representation, but his sudden death in 1987 was viewed as a serious blow to Chicago's entire Black community. Six years later, Washington's unofficial floor leader in the city council, Puerto Rican Chicagoan
Luis Gutiérrez, was elected to the U.S. Congress as the Midwest's first Latino representative in Congress. Chicago's homicides reached peak numbers in the early 1990s in Humboldt Park, Austin, Lawndale, and Garfield Park. As numbers began to go down throughout the 1990s, another round of displacement began to take hold. Major gentrification efforts in the Near West Side and West Town began, where corporate investors supported the addition of high-end businesses and luxury-style residential condos. Property taxes rose thus raising rents, forcing poorer Puerto Rican and Black residents to move yet again. As the 2000s began, Pilsen began to see more major gentrification efforts. However, the community put up a substantial fight against this displacement process and gentrification progressed more slowly. During this time, the ABLA homes were demolished along with the Henry Horner Homes and Rockwell Gardens. Some of these areas have been replaced with new housing developments with the intended purpose of creating mixed-income communities. However, these areas are now mainly populated by younger, white, middle-class to upper-middle class professionals whom have been displacing the poorer residents at a rapid rate. In 2014,
Redfin named Humboldt Park to be the nation's 10th hottest neighborhood, demonstrating high interest in gentrifying the community. The new
Chicago High School for the Arts has moved from the South Side into the closed Lafayette Elementary building in Humboldt Park near a growing community of gentrifiers. A new Pete's Fresh Market has been opened at Western Avenue and Madison Street, helping a long-time food desert; however, the poorer residents of the neighborhood are being displaced into other neighborhoods that are currently food deserts. homes were completed by 1961 and demolished by 2004. ==Community events==