Old Town Triangle Historic District

About this property

Old Town is a neighborhood and historic district in Near North Side and Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois. It contains many of Chicago's older, Victorian-era buildings, including St. Michael's Church, one of seven buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire. In the 19th century, German and Luxembourgish immigrants moved to the meadows north of North Avenue and began farming what had previously been swampland, planting celery, potatoes, and cabbages. This led the area to be nicknamed "The Cabbage Patch", a name which stuck until the early 1900s. During World War II, the triangle formed by North Avenue, Clark Street, and Ogden Avenue (since removed) were designated a 'neighborhood defense unit' by Chicago's Civil Defense Agency. In the years immediately after the war, the population of "North Town" (as it had come to be known by the 1940s) sponsored annual art fairs called the "Old Town Holiday". The art fairs were popular attractions for the neighborhood, and the name "Old Town" was used in the title of the Old Town Triangle Association when it was formed in 1948, by residents who wanted to improve the condition of buildings that were suffering from physical deterioration. In the 1950s, much of Old Town was an enclave for many of the first Puerto Ricans to come to Chicago. They referred to the area as part of La Clark. It is important to stress that there is no such legal entity as Old Town. Old Town is where you make it. This neighborhood is supposed to be as much a sound as a place, and it's from the bells of St. Michael's Church. The story goes you only really live in Old Town if you can hear them. ... it was said that all who lived within hearing distance of the church's bells were Old Towners. The land known as Old Town originally served as a home and trade center to many Native American nations, including the Potawatomi, Miami, and Illinois. Following the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, most of the indigenous people were forcibly removed, and the land was then settled in the 1850s by German-Catholic immigrants. Clark Street is a leftover of the culture, being an old road which followed a slight ridge along Lake Michigan. Old Town is the site of many of Chicago's older, Victorian-era buildings, as well as St. Michael's Church, originally a Bavarian-built church and one of seven to survive within the boundaries of the Great Chicago Fire. Many of the streets and alleys, particularly in the Old Town Triangle section, predate the Great Chicago Fire and do not all adhere to a typical Chicago grid pattern. Old Town has one Brown-Purple Line 'El' station, at 1536–40 North Sedgwick Street. It is one of the oldest standing stations on the El, built in 1900.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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