During
the early twentieth century, Chicago's Uptown district was the largest
and most popular retail and entertainment area on the city's north side.
The district stretched along Broadway and Sheridan Road between Montrose
and Lawrence Avenues. The historic center of the district was the
intersection of Broadway and Wilson Avenue. In fact, prior to the 1920s,
Uptown was more commonly known as the Wilson Avenue District. By 1930,
the focal point of the district had shifted toward Broadway and Lawrence
Avenue, which neighborhood boosters and businessmen promoted as "Uptown
Square" in an attempt to increase the intersection's
distinctiveness and popularity. The name, however, never caught on with
the general public.
This section of the Uptown neighborhood developed more slowly than
adjacent areas. The earliest settlers to the area were German and
Swedish families, who built modest farm houses on the high ground along
present-day Clark Street as early as the 1850s and 1860s. The area east
of Clark Street remained largely undeveloped until the 1890s, owing in
part to its rough landscape of swampy marshes and sand dunes.
Uptown's greatest period of residential development began in the
mid-1890s. In 1894, the area's first residential subdivision was
developed on land bounded by Sheridan Road, Clark Street, and Montrose
and Lawrence Avenues. The project was the work of William Deering, head
of Deering Harvester Company, who had purchased the property with the
expectation of profiting from its development. That same year, another
subdivision was laid out on land near the lake between Lawrence and
Ainslie Avenues that same year. Wealthy Chicagoans, many in search of a
suburban lifestyle within easy reach of the city, quickly purchased lots
within these subdivisions and erected elaborate, all-brick homes with
broad porches, private gardens, and adjacent carriage houses. Lower
priced homes further inland were purchased by Swedish, German, and
Irish families as they moved out of the city's older, immigrant
neighborhoods. The area's first apartment building was completed in
1900 on the southeast corner of Kenmore and Lawrence Avenues.
Transportation improvements during the same period spurred
additional residential and commercial growth in the area. In 1896, the
Clark Street streetcar line was extended north through the district and
a new streetcar line was opened along Lawrence Avenue between Broadway
and Milwaukee Avenue. Four years later, the Northwestern elevated
railroad was extended north to Wilson Avenue, thus providing easy access
between the district and downtown Chicago.
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Somerset Hotel, ca. 1920 |
With the installation of new transportation facilities and the opening of the Wilson and Clarendon Avenue beaches for recreational purposes, Uptown became an increasingly attractive place to live during the 1910s and 1920s. As the demand for housing in the district grew, land values and property taxes pushed upward. Seeing both new burdens and new opportunities in the district's shifting economic fortunes, many property owners sold their homes to developers who replaced them with larger, more profitable apartment buildings, office buildings, or movie theaters. During the 1920s, several new eight- and twelve-story apartment hotels were built on land formerly occupied by handsome mansions. The largest and most luxurious of these new apartment buildings were the Somerset (1920), Sheridan Plaza (1920), Chelsea (1923), and Lawrence Hotels (1928). Sheridan Road, once lined by mansions with spacious lawns, began to remind some observers of the Loop or upper Manhattan as the new towers rose. Elsewhere in the district, dozens of other mansions were subdivided into multi-unit rooming houses.
Uptown's population grew rapidly as the supply of apartments increased. Between 1910 and 1930, the number of persons residing in Uptown rose from 44,562 to more than 65,000. A large percentage of those who moved to Uptown during the 1910s and 1920s were young, unattached men and women, many of them newcomers to the city of Chicago. Dozens of new theaters, cabarets, dance halls, cafeterias, restaurants, and retail stores—many of them catering specifically to the needs and desires of the area's increasingly leisure-minded youths—opened in Uptown during these years. These included the DeLuxe (1913), Lakeside (1915), Pantheon (1918), Riviera (1918), and Uptown Theaters (1925), as well as the Arcadia (1910) and Aragon Ballrooms (1926). The new establishments served to enliven Uptown's night life, but also troubled older residents who did not share their patrons' love of jazz, relaxed mannerisms, occasional rowdiness, and easygoing attitude toward sex and courtship.
The economic boom of the 1920s also brought several new office and commercial buildings to the Uptown district, prominent structures that not only attracted jobs and economic activity to the area, but also helped define the visual landscape. Most notable among these structures were the Sheridan Trust and Savings Bank on the southeast corner of Broadway and Lawrence (1926) and the headquarters of the Mutual Insurance Company on the southwest corner of Sheridan and Lawrence (1927). In 1927, plans were floated by banker-developer Victor J. Curto for the construction of a twenty-six-story, art deco skyscraper on the northeast corner of Broadway and Lawrence. Dubbed the Uptown Square Building, it would have housed a department store on its ground floor and been the largest office building north of the Loop. Construction of the tower, however, never got underway, doomed by the lack of interested tenants and the collapse of the real estate economy in 1929.
As the district's population increased and less expensive apartments became the predominant form of housing, its ethnic and racial composition became more diverse. Increasing numbers of Russian Jews moved into the area from Chicago's west side, as did small numbers of Greek Americans and African Americans from other parts of the city. Of the approximately 500 African Americans residing in Uptown in 1930, most lived along a single block of Winthrop Avenue between Leland and Wilson. Although these groups comprised only a small percentage of Uptown's population, many residents and business owners resented their presence and organized to prevent additional Jews and blacks from moving into the neighborhood.
Beginning around 1928, an influential group of Uptown business leaders sponsored a drive for the adoption of a racial restrictive covenant in Uptown. By the terms of this agreement, completed in 1931, Uptown property owners agreed not to sell or rent their stores, houses, and apartments to African Americans. Covering more than ninety percent of the district's commercial and residential properties, the covenant made it all but impossible for blacks to move into or relocate within Uptown. Such discriminatory legal agreements were common in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s. Many whites and some blacks saw them as a peaceful and progressive alternative to the interracial violence sparked by earlier conflicts over housing access and neighborhood segregation. But restrictive covenants also denied African Americans access to quality housing and the opportunity to open businesses in prime locations. Prevented from moving into neighborhoods like Uptown, black Chicagoans were compelled to remain in the city's so-called "Black Belt," living in run-down apartments owned by unscrupulous white landlords who took advantage of their tenants' limited housing options by charging exorbinant rents and spending as little as possible on upkeep and maintenance. Uptown's restrictive covenant remained in force until the late 1940s. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court, ruling in the case of Shelley vs. Kraemer, declared such covenants unenforceable.
Uptown's overall population continued to increase between 1930 and 1950, albeit at a much slower rate. The district's population peaked in 1950 at 84,462, then began to decline. The neighborhood's loss of residents was both cause and effect of a decline in
residential construction and renewal of the existing housing stock that
began in the 1930s and became more pronounced during the 1950s
and 1960s. Most new residential development during the post-World War II
years was confined to the construction of high-rise, high-rent apartment
and condominium buildings along the edge of Lake Michigan. During the
1950s, many of the district's older residential buildings were converted into
nursing homes or subdivided into smaller apartments more suitable for individuals than couples or families. Some landlords, in order to attract tenants or reduce costs, slashed rents, waived security deposit requirements, or neglected their properties. As a result, Uptown became increasingly accessible to recent migrants and the city's poor. During the 1950s and 1960s, whites from Appalachia, Native Americans from Wisconsin and Oklahoma, senior citizens, and recovering mental health patients settled in Uptown's affordable but deteriorating housing.
Commercial activities declined during the 1960s and 1970s as the
social composition of Uptown changed and Chicagoans increasingly turned
to suburban shopping malls for their retail and entertainment needs.
Prominent employers—most notably Mutual Insurance Company—also
abandoned the district for suburban locations. City officials initiated
an urban renewal program for the district in the 1960s, but it failed to
curtail the loss of customers and residents. During the 1970s,
Uptown obtained a reputation as an unsafe, arson-prone neighborhood.
Years of neglect and captial disinvestment in Uptown have yet to be
completely overcome.
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Internet Resources
Link: History of Uptown [Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society]
Photograph:
Automobile on Sheridan Road, looking north from Wilson Avenue, 1923 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Intersection of Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road, with automobiles driving and pedestrians walking, 1929 [Library of Congress]
Photograph:
Intersection of Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road, with cafeteria and drugstore visible in the foreground, 1929 [Library of Congress]
Suggested Reading
· Todd Gitlin and Nanci Hollander, Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago (Harper Collins, 1970).
· Elizabeth Warren, Chicago's Uptown: Public Policy, Neighborhood Decay, and Citizen Action in an Urban Community (Center for Urban Policy, Loyola University Chicago, 1979).
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Sources: Local Community Fact Book: Chicago Metropolitan Area, 1950, ed. Philip M. Hauser and Evelyn M. Kitagawa (Chicago: Chicago Community Inventory, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1953), 18; Local Community Fact Book: Chicago Metropolitan Area, 1960, ed. Evelyn M. Kitagawa and Karl E. Taeaber (Chicago: Chicago Community Inventory, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), 20; Chicago Sunday Tribune, 28 June 1931, pt. 7, pg. 1; Uptown News, 9 June 1931, 1, 4-5; and Northside Sunday Citizen, 16 Jan. 1927, 5.
Illustration: "Somerset Hotel, Chicago, Ill.," postcard (n.p., n.d.), cropped.
Page authored: 7 February 2000
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