Canaryville (Chicago, Illinois)

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Canaryville is a predominantly Irish American neighborhood, with borders from 40th to 49th streets between Union Pacific railroad tracks to the east and Halsted Street and the former site of the Union Stock Yard to the west. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Chicago and has a reputation for insularity or hostility to outsiders. Given its close proximity to the stockyards, the area's physical environment and economic life were shaped by livestock and meatpacking from the 1860s until the industry's decline in the postwar era.

Canaryville's name may originally have derived from the legions of sparrows who populated the area at the end of the nineteenth century, feeding off stockyard refuse and grain from railroad cars, but the term also applied to the neighborhood's “wild canaries”, i.e. gangs such as The Irish Lords and The Flags S.A.C.