Lincoln Park, Chicago

• 1. Introduction

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  Lincoln Park, Chicago, began as a cemetery. In 1837, the same year Chicago became a city, the state of Illinois granted permission for residents to use land north of North Avenue as a burial ground. For decades, people were laid to rest there, until physicians and citizens grew alarmed. A growing residential area and a graveyard pressed against each other, and by 1860 the Chicago Common Council heard their petitions to repurpose the land as a public park.

  Then, in 1865, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the park was renamed in his honor. The neighborhood that grew around it took the same name. What followed was two centuries of migration, violence, politics, and transformation. Who were the people who shaped this place? What did they fight for? And how did a patch of Illinois prairie become one of Chicago's most storied addresses?

• 2. Before the Park

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  In 1824, the United States Army built a small post near what is now the intersection of Clybourn Avenue and Armitage Avenue. Before streets had names, the land was crossed by Native American trails. Green Bay Trail, which would eventually become Clark Street, ran as far as Green Bay, Wisconsin, and what is now Sheridan Road was part of that same corridor. Little Fort Road, now Lincoln Avenue, marked another ancient path through the region.

  Federally owned land in the area was ceded to the State of Illinois in 1828. Settlements grew along these old trails when the government offered land claims and widened Green Bay Road. The area was incorporated as Lake View Township, an administrative district separate from Chicago, until it was formally annexed by the city in 1898. The Arlington-Deming District, tucked within what became Lincoln Park, drew builders after the Great Chicago Fire. Stricter regulations within the city pushed construction outward, into areas like Lake View Township that were not yet subject to the new rules.

• 3. Immigrant Roots

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  In the postwar years, the area around Southport and Clybourn became home to a community of Kashubian immigrants who had arrived from what is now north-eastern Poland. They brought a distinct language and culture shaped by rustic traditions and close contact with German neighbors. In 1882, St. Josaphat's Roman Catholic parish was established specifically for this community. The neighborhood earned Polish nicknames: "Jozafatowo," meaning Josaphat's Town, and "Kaszubowo," meaning Cassubian Town. These names made it one of Chicago's Polish Patches.

  The current St. Josaphat's church, built in the Romanesque Revival style, was completed in 1902. A Pomeranian Griffin Crest still visible on the school south of the church acknowledges the parish that once anchored this enclave. Decades later, in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Lincoln Park became home to the first Puerto Rican immigrants to Chicago. Jose Cha Cha Jimenez transformed the local Young Lords gang into human rights activists for Latinos and the poor. They published newspapers and mounted sit-ins at Grant Hospital, Armitage Ave. Methodist Church, and McCormick Theological Seminary.

  In 1969, members of the Puerto Rican Young Lords mounted large demonstrations against the displacement of Puerto Ricans and the poor, including the demolition of buildings on the corner of Halsted and Armitage streets. They occupied the space and some administration buildings at McCormick Theological Seminary. Civil rights arrests followed, as did tragedies: the unsolved murders of United Methodist Rev. Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia Ransier Johnson, who had been strong supporters of the poor. Their history is now archived at DePaul University's Richardson Library and at Special Collections at Grand Valley State University.

• 4. Violence and Confrontation

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  On the 14th of February, 1929, seven mob associates and a mechanic were shot to death in an automobile garage at 2122 N. Clark Street. The incident, which became one of the most notorious events in American organized crime history, took place in a neighborhood already accumulating a complicated past.

  Almost four decades later, in 1968, a violent confrontation between demonstrators and police erupted in Lincoln Park during the week of the Democratic National Convention. One activist described his reasoning for gathering there: "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."

  Amidst that confrontation, the Church of Our Saviour opened its doors to shelter young people fleeing the violence. That act of hospitality began a decades-long tradition of services that eventually led to the creation of Care for Friends, a nonprofit that opened a separate community center behind the church building in 2025.

  On the 29th of June, 2003, a porch collapse during a party at 713 W. Wrightwood Ave. killed 13 people and seriously injured 57 others. It remains the deadliest porch collapse in United States history.

• 5. A Neighborhood of Notable Lives

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  Henry Gerber, the founder of the first homosexual rights organization in the United States, lived at 1710 N. Crilly Court. Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint, lived at 2520 N. Lakeview Ave., on what was then part of the Columbus Hospital site. The National Shrine of Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, the former chapel of that hospital, remains adjacent to the high-rise condominium development that replaced it.

  Henry Darger, the outsider artist, lived at 851 W. Webster Ave. and worked as a janitor at Children's Memorial Hospital. László Moholy-Nagy, the Bauhaus and IIT designer, lived at 2622 N. Lakeview Ave. Roger Brown, an important Chicago Imagist painter, lived at 1926 N. Halsted St.; the house is now the site of the Art Institute of Chicago's Roger Brown study center.

  Albert Parsons and Lucy Parsons, prominent union organizers and socialist leaders, lived at 1908 N. Mohawk St. Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy moved to Lincoln Park from the Near North Side shortly after Shriver was appointed President of the Chicago Board of Education. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, the film critics who became synonymous with American cinema culture, both lived in the neighborhood. Jelly Roll Morton recorded early jazz work in 1926 at the Webster Hotel ballroom, now called Webster House.

• 6. Food, Culture, and Commerce

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  From 1896 to 1903, the original Ferris Wheel stood at a small amusement park near Clark Street and Wrightwood Avenue, at a site running from 2619 to 2665 N. Clark Street. That address is now the location of a McDonald's and a high-rise residential building. The original Ferris Wheel's presence in Lincoln Park is one of those facts that quietly reframes the neighborhood's sense of itself.

  The Lettuce Entertain You restaurant company started at R.J. Grunts in Lincoln Park, which featured the first salad bars. The first Potbelly Sandwich Works opened in 1977 on Lincoln Avenue. Demon Dogs, a hot dog restaurant that stood under the Fullerton 'L' station, operated from 1983 until 2006. The Burwood Tap, founded in 1933, is considered one of the oldest continuously operated bars in the city.

  Lincoln Park also holds a three-Michelin star restaurant, Alinea, and Galit, a restaurant holding one Michelin star. A. Finkl and Sons Steel operated along an approximately 22-acre lot by the Chicago River for 113 years before the site became the planned Foundry Park residential community project. Lincoln Hall serves as a music venue in the neighborhood today, carrying forward a tradition rooted in spaces like the Webster Hotel ballroom where Morton once played.