The Lincon-Belmont retail and entertainment district developed around the intersection of three of the North Side's busiest thoroughfares: Belmont, Ashland, and Lincoln Avenues. During the 1920s and 1930s, retailers and amusement promoters were attracted to the area because of its convenient transit connections to both local and more far-flung neighborhoods, as well as the growing affluence of the city's so-called Bungalow Belt, a ring of semi-surburban housing developed during this period. Bungalow homemakers often preferred shopping in outlying business districts like Lincoln-Belmont rather than trekking all the way downtown, a trip almost twice as distant and increasingly time-consuming due to growing central-city streetcar congestion. In the 1930s, local retailers dubbed the area "Nortown." Though the area declined during the 1960s and 1970s, a recent wave of residential and commercial investment has begun to revitalize the area.
General Information
Map of the Lincoln-Belmont District, 1923 [pdf 228k]
Department Stores
W.A. Wieboldt & Co.... H.C. Struve
Theaters
Belmont... Lincoln
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