North Lawndale (Chicago, Illinois)

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North Lawndale (also known simply as "Lawndale") located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of the well-defined community areas in the city of Chicago.

Once part of Cicero Township in 1869, the eastern section of North Lawndale to Pulaski Road was annexed to Chicago by an act of the state legislature. Thereafter, streets were platted and drainage ditches were installed between Western (2400 west) and Pulaski Road (4400 west). The name "Lawndale" was supplied by Millard and Decker, a real estate firm which subdivided the area in 1870. In 1871, after the fire, the McCormick Reaper Company (later International Harvester) occupied a new large plant in the South Lawndale neighborhood. As a result, many plant workers moved to eastern North Lawndale. The remaining area west of Crawford Avenue was annexed by a resolution of the Cook County Commissioners in 1889.

By 1890 North Lawndale was beginning to be heavily populated by Bohemians from Eastern Europe. The section most populated by the Czechs was the area from Crawford (Pulaski) west, and from 12th St. (Roosevelt Rd.) to 16th St. Real estate firm W.A. Merigold & Co. was largely responsible for the early development of that part of the community and as a result the name "Merigold" stuck as the name of that part of the neighborhood. Czech institutions popped up in Merigold with the Slovanska Lipa/Sokol Tabor (Czech fraternal & gymnastic organization) at 13th & Karlov in 1890.

In 1892 the Bohemian Catholic Church, Our Lady of Lourdes was established at the corner of 15th & Keeler, and in 1909 the Czech Freethinkers School Frantisek Palacky was built at 1525 S. Kedvale. The Merigold neighborhood would also became known as Novy Tabor (New Camp) by the Czech immigrants that settled there. The ultimate Czech institution to come to North Lawndale in 1912 was the Ceska Beseda (Bohemian Club) at 3659 W. Douglas Blvd. This club was attended by Chicago's Czech elite, as well as the visiting Czech elite of the rest of the United States and Czechoslovakia.

This was the place for its refined members to celebrate and enjoy literature, drama, and music by the most celebrated and talented Czech artists. The Bohemians spread throughout the rest of the North Lawndale neighborhood and were the original owners of many of the beautiful greystone buildings that graced the picturesque streets of the neighborhood. Many of the elite members of the Bohemian community resided in the vicinity of the 1800 & 1900 blocks of S. Millard Ave.

These men of wealth as well as the rest of the Czech residents of North Lawndale were heavily invested in their neighborhood, especially civically, with their influence being far reaching. An example of this was the naming of Anton Dvorak Public Elementary School at 3615 W. 16th St. after a revered 19th century Czech composer. There were several members of the North Lawndale Czech community that occupied positions in city as well as county government. In time the Czechs began leaving the neighborhood for the western suburbs of Cicero, Berwyn, Riverside, & Brookfield.

By the 1920s many of the Czechs were gone and the Jews became the majority ethnic group of the neighborhood having left the crowded confines of the Maxwell Street Ghetto. North Lawndale would later become known as being the largest Jewish settlement in the City of Chicago with 25% of the city's Jewish population living in just that one neighborhood.

From about 1918 to 1955, Jews, overwhelmingly of Russian and Eastern European extraction, dominated the neighborhood, starting in North Lawndale and moving northward as they became more prosperous. In the 1950s, blacks moved from the southern states and the south side of Chicago, and unscrupulous real-estate dealers all but evacuated the white population by using blockbusting and scare tactics. In a span of about ten years the white population of North Lawndale went from 99% to less than 9%.

During the turbulent times of the late 1960s and 1970s, much of North Lawndale's built environment was destroyed by the 1968 riots and by decay brought about by being an extremely impoverished area. Thousands of structures were leveled during this time and the land sat vacant until the building and real estate boom of the 2000s. Due to these factors, the total neighborhood population dropped from 124,937 in 1960 to 41,768 by 2000.

According to Charles Leeks, director of NHS, North Lawndale has the greatest concentration of greystones in the city. The City of Chicago has enacted The Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative in late 2004 to aid in promoting the preservation of the neighborhoods historic greystone structures.

According to the Steans Family Foundation, in the decades following the 1960s.

there were a series of economic and social disasters... Riots followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, destroying many of the stores along Roosevelt Road and accelerating a decline that lead to a loss of 75% of the businesses in the community by 1970. Industries closed: International Harvester in 1969, Sears (partially in 1974 and completely by 1987), Zenith and Sunbeam in the 1970s, Western Electric in the 1980s. By 1970 African-Americans who could were also leaving North Lawndale, beginning a precipitous population decline that continues to this day.

Lawndale was the site of the founding of the Vice Lords, a street gang which in the late 1960s attempted to transform themselves into a positive force for their neighborhood, setting up community centers and undertaking peaceful political actions. However, this transformation proved short-lived.

Jonathan Kozol devotes a chapter of Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools to North Lawndale, which he says a local resident called it "an industrial slum without the industry." At the time, it had "one bank, one supermarket, 48 state lottery agents ... and 99 licensed bars." and that, according to the 1980 census, 58 percent of men and women 17 and older had no jobs.

In 1986 the Steans Family Foundation was founded; it describes itself as "a small family foundation" that "concentrates its grantmaking and programs in North Lawndale" and "by dedicating time, money, and skills... works in partnership with local residents and institutions to build and enhance the North Lawndale community".

In the 1990s, the foundation sees some signs of revitalization, "including a new shopping plaza and some new housing," stabilization of the declining population, and a rise in the number Hispanic residents, currently constituting 4.5% of the population.