Re: New City?
Posted by:
Mr Downtown
()
Date: September 24, 2013 02:38AM
Along the lakefront, the Community Areas track pretty closely our perception of neighborhoods, but many of the inland designations (Lower West Side, New City, North Center) are catchalls of convenience.
"Armour Square" is a perfect example of how much the Community Areas could be forced marriages. Even at the time it was drawn, it was a bizarre mashup of Chinese at the north, Italians in the middle, and Germans, Bohemians, Swedes, and Irish at the south—with Negroes along the eastern edge. They each had their own community institutions and businesses, their own leaders and politics. The only thing they had in common was that they lived between a pair of railroad viaducts, isolating their communities from the ones around them. But that didn't mean they had much in common with each other.