Living in Gage Park & West Elsdon: a neighborhood guide

The lay of the land

These are the blocks the bungalow belt built on its way south: Gage Park east of Pulaski, West Elsdon the pocket west of it, both filled in the 1920s and again after the war, both still overwhelmingly the same brick they started with. 55th Street and Kedzie carry the commerce, heavy on taquerias, supermercados and bakeries that draw from the whole Southwest Side, and the Orange Line at Pulaski turned the commute from a bus ride into fifteen minutes of train.

The park

Gage Park itself, at Western and 55th, brings a classic fieldhouse, a pool, courts and leagues, and Marquette Park’s 300-plus acres begin just south of the neighborhood line, close enough to count as the backyard.

The housing stock

Brick bungalows and Cape Cods in long unbroken runs, Georgians on the later blocks, and two-flats near the busier streets, one of the most uniform and best-kept stretches of the belt. Uniform stock makes value easy to read: condition and mechanicals decide it. Bring our brick guide and seasonal checklist to a tour, and the home styles guide names the variations.

The neighborhoods inside Gage Park

Gage Park is community area 63 of Chicago’s 77, on the Southwest Side, and one of the areas whose official name is the everyday one too: no neighborhood inside it goes by another name.

The community areas have been the city’s official map since the 1920s; the neighborhood names inside them are the ones people use. All 77 on one interactive map.

Guides worth reading before you tour here

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