Analysis of Edgewater History 

(from my paper..)

The Neighborhood’s Origin and Transition

Edgewater was originally settled by Swedish and Luxembourger farmers. It was a part of Lakeview. The initial residents were mostly German and Irish, but Swedes also gathered along Clark Street (they called the area Anderso[e]nville.) In 1885, the developer, John Lewis Cochran started purchasing the land, and named it as Edgewater. He induced the Rail Road Company to build Bryn Mawr Sta, and the railroad in this area was connected to Howard in 1908 by the company which founded “EL.” Cochran built mansions for rich Chicagoan, or the City’s elites. In 1889, Edgewater was annexed in to Chicago city. The building boom came around 1920s, and Winthrop-Kenmore corridor was regarded the most prestigious neighborhood in Chicago. The glamorous Edgewater Beach Hotel was also built in 1916. The erections of residential hotels and Apartment buildings were encouraged in subsequent years. Amanda Seligman writes, “Residential Edgewater's wealth reinforced the glamour of recreational Uptown (Chicagohistory.org).” ..It seems to mean Edgewater used to be the wealthier area for the Uptowners..) When the city had faced housing crisis in ‘40s, the apartments were subdivided into small units, and the deterioration began. Seligman also writes,

Edgewater Beach Apt rent ad

“The area began to become overcrowded and landlords collected increasing rents while allowing their properties to deteriorate. When building resumed, more large apartment buildings replaced older ones.... Along Sheridan Road, most of the old mansions were razed and replaced with high-rises, giving the street the feel of a canyon (Chicagohistory.org ).”

Nookies - old day's Guild Hall

Although the neighboring “Uptown” used to be a thriving theater district (whose residents were 99% whites in 1940s,) these two areas seem to have altogether changed. “At that time Winthrop was a regular white neighborhood, not like now. Now it is mostly all black or Vietnamese.” it was stated by one resident of Winthrop, cited by Jacalyn Harden. Such neighborhood transition disturbed the feeling of Edgewater residents. “They regarded the Winthrop-Kenmore corridor as an eyesore that attracted transients, the ill, and the elderly.” According to Seligman, they established the local Community Council in 1960, and tried to improve local community. For example, they tried to halt the construction of local “residential health care facilities.”

Historic BrynMawr Ave

Meanwhile-by the mid-1940s, Japanese evacuees from the West Coast internment camps also mass-immigrated to Chicago, and they made biggest concentration in Chicago among the U.S. cities. (about 20,000 of them relocated in Chicago by 1950.) Harden (who traces the trajectory of the Japanese Americans on the North Side) mentions the neighborhood’s trend in this period:

” ..After WW2, Uptown, Edgewater, and Rogers Park gradually began to change with regard to race and class, Japanese American relocates led the way for Native Americans and blacks, who arrived in lesser numbers. By 1950, the neighborhoods were home to large pockets of Appalachian whites and Native Americans, who were encouraged by social welfare agencies and cheap rents to the Far North Side apartments that had been created from homes and larger apartments in the scramble to increase the number of housing units. By 1970s many, but not all, or the wealthy and middle-class white residents had moved to the suburbs or died.”
—Although the above may not be just about Edgewater, similar description about Uptown was found in Sonnie and Tracy’s “Hillbillies Heaven”— It talks about how Uptown area actually turned into “Hillbillies’ Heaven” ..a hot bed for multi-racial Civil Rights movement activists in ‘60s..

"In July 1969 a dozen self-identified hillbillies showed up to a Black Panther Party conference with Confederate flag patches sewn to their ragged jean jackets....The Young Patriots had come to Oakland, CA, for the United Front Against Fascism Conference. They arrived from Uptown, a Chicago neighborhood home to thousands of economically displaced Appalachians, mostly white, who had turned the area into a bastion of southern culture..(Sonnie and Tracy ).”.

Also, Harden argues Lakeview is a “Yuppieville,” which is known “as Chicago’s ‘Boystown’…the site for the annual Gay Pride Parade (Harden 97).” (Maybe it was the mecca of anti-segregation social movement.) Therefore, supposedly Edgewater’s today’s character was partially created because it been annexed to such areas, tolerant with “different people?” (While current high population rate of Asians in Edgewater must be because Chinese-Vietnamese people highly concentrated in Argyle: where Vietnam-War refugees relocated after the late 60s or ‘70s.) Amid such neighborhood change, Edgewater Community Council made some action:

“During the 1970s, ECC's strategy shifted to separating its identity from Uptown, which Edgewater residents regarded as the source of their plight. The opening of the Edgewater branch of the Chicago Public Library in 1973 was a major victory in this battle, which culminated in 1980 when the city government ratified the separation of Edgewater from Uptown by designating it Community Area 77. The success of the rehabilitation was reflected in Loyola University's increasing involvement in Edgewater. Although it had been oriented to Rogers Park, by the late 1970s Loyola began encouraging its faculty and students to recognize, and even to live in, Edgewater.(Chicagohistory ).” Harden also mentioned the consequence about how.. HUD has built some social aid facilities in Edgewater since the 70s. The Origin of the Concentration of elderly houses

Harden describes,
“(Since 1970s,) Many community groups formed in protest against the area’s high concentration of halfway houses and transient hotels. The area had become attractive to the federal government, and a large number of HUD-backed Section 8 housing developments were built. Some were high-rise, but others were built to look like town homes. Many of the high-rises were built exclusively for the elderly.” Today, I also see a nursery home or a CHA residence for disabled people near Sheridan-Devon. I heard the area around Bryn Mawr has at least 4 big HUD elderly houses, and number of other, private-run elderly houses.(Initially, I surmised such a current elderly residence concentration may be related to the area’s character with former lake side resort amenities, but it may not be the initial reason..)

senior residence.. Aldmore- Kenmore

Old bldg built by Architect Joseph Lyman

HUD Senior residence

CHA buldging for disabled people

Japanese community on the North Side

When it comes to the Japanese residents in the post-war Chicago, Harden summed it up. “There has never been a designated ‘Japantown’ in Chicago. Today the closest thing to a Japanese neighborhood is a few clusters of businesses and social service agencies—remnants of the years right after the war when Japanese relocates were advised out in the city and keep low profiles...”

Although Japanese were only less than 380 in pre-war Chicago, nearly 20,000 evacuees settled all over Chicago after 1945. Andersonville also had their concentration in 1940s. I visited the rare old Issei survivors at the Japanese elderly residence (built in 1981 near Lawrence.) She and her husband ran a cleaner at Andersonville. There used to be number of Japanese restaurants and businesses on Clark St (they also scattered in Lincoln Park , such as in Belmont..) The Japanese also built two Buddhist temples - Such as Midwest Buddhist Temple- in Chicago. According to Fujibayashi (a Uof C student in ’65,) there were significant amount of business investments made by “125 hotels, 450 apartment buildings, 200 cleaning and dyeing plants, 70 restaurants, 50 grocery stores, 22 art and miscellaneous stores” run by Japanese evacuees in Chicago in 1951.. Reportedly, he reason for them to be wiped out from the city and moved to the suburbs were about demographic change (a person said, it was because Puerto Ricans moved into the area, etc...)It must be also because: the Japanese major business concerns’ head offices started to concentrate in the suburbs since ‘80s (there is non of their main offices in the Chicago Loop anymore.)

Japanese Pavilion,Byodo-in Temple 平等院鳳凰堂in the
World Colombian Exhibition in 1893.. Its garden is partly
 remaining in Jackson Park near UofC..renamed "Osaka garden"..
as the black children's playing field

Japanese carpenters who built the pavilion

Currently, remaining Japanese North Siders seem to be aging (while young generation now prefer to live or work in the suburbs,) they are on the verge of extinction.

I suppose all the current characteristics of Winthrop Ave and Edgewater has come from these historical consequences.. while I thought the area has strange..integrated flavor of ethnic diversity. (Winthrop Ave, where Hillary's family used to live.. doesn’t have a segregation now: it has just..all kinds of people: almost half whites, 30-40% black, and all the other people...) I noticed there was also, a kind of racial integration movement existed in the Uptown; and current public policy is also reinforcing the integration.. And such an unusual diversity of this area is also, somewhat blended with the remaining atmosphere of the elegant…classic cosmopolitan culture which used to flourish in the old days in this area...

 ＊halfway house: [also called a “recovery house” or “sober house” is a place to allow people to begin the process of reintegration with society]

the bus can be kneeling