I am starting this blog site largely with the intention of providing information about the past and present of Chicago communities. In addition to developing a place to find facts about Chicago and its communities, I want to serve as the Chicago connection for various endeavors….
By Chicago, I mean the city itself and its environs (including Elgin? Kankakee? Milwaukee?)
Hopefully with the help of knowledgeable and skilled contributors, I will show and tell about the history, geography, culture, development, current events and other information of the metropolitan area.
I have developed an interest in this project by growing up in the city and living the vast majority of my life in and near it; by having worked as a journalist – first as a reporter and editor in sixth grade (1971) for a newspaper published by Miss Lynch and her pupils at a Catholic school on Chicago’s West Side, then as a reporter and editor in college (1979 to 1983) for the student newspaper, The Phoenix, at Loyola University Chicago, then as a reporter in graduate school (1984 to 1985) for Medill School of Journalism professors at Northwestern University, then as a reporter and editor in a professional career for the LaSalle Street Chronicle (1986), Nadig Newspapers (1986 to 1988) on Chicago’s Northwest Side, and Lerner Newspapers (1988 till my job was eliminated in 2004) on the North and Northwest sides and in nearby suburbs; by reading in various sources of the circumstances that led to Chicago’s creation; by continuing to read from the vast production of and about Chicago and Chicagoans; and by wanting to do something productive with my time since going on Social Security Disability in March 2006.
I’ll start by writing about the Chicago place where I lived for the first quarter-century of my life, the Austin neighborhood on the West Side.
Other neighborhoods might be chosen for expanded study if they are seen to be likewise rich in history.
I do want to name and outline all the neighborhoods in the city, all those recognized by people who live and work there, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant.
How will I define a neighborhood? A place that has been noted by other publications? By city bureaucrats? Will I make my own arbitrary decisions or rely on self-appointed local historians? Real-estate agents? Community organizations? Custom?
How did a place “come to be” (as my young daughter would say), come to be defined and named?
When I was growing up, I wasn’t even aware, until my 20s, that my neighborhood was part of the West Side. My family were members of St. Angela parish, and we siblings went to SA’s school, like my father and his siblings had.
As a member of Chicago’s large population of Roman Catholics, I identified the parish as my neighborhood. My awareness of the neighborhood’s secular name, Austin, grew as I did. When I was 11 or 12, or both, I delivered the Austinitte (SP?), the neighborhood newspaper. My route included the 1800 block of North Mason Avenue, where I lived, the two blocks of Mason to the south -- up to the first busy street, North Avenue -- plus the same parallel three blocks on the first street to the east of Mason, Mayfield Avenue, and, as I recall, not much else.
The parish extended west of Austin Avenue into Oak Park, a suburb then as today, which, along with Cicero, originally was part of Austin, when Austin was a town separate from Chicago (see the online Encyclopedia of Chicago). Eastern Oak Park was part of my neighborhood, defined, as I suggest, along parish lines, not municipal.
There was a boys athletic club called North Austin, which as a young boy I hadn’t mentally connected to the neighborhood. Its main significance to me was that it was a rival to the St. Angela School sports teams, overseen by my father, SA’s volunteer athletic director, John “Jack” Jordan, who died in 1993. North Austin Boys Club was a rival not as an opponent on the field, my father rarely allowed that, but as a recruiter of young talent….