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The West Loop, Fulton Market, Greektown, Little Italy, University Village, Tri-Taylor and the medical district are one official area: the Near West Side, community area 28, from the river out to the old railroad line and from Kinzie down to 16th Street. The Great Fire started here in 1871; the city’s restaurant row is here now.
The Near West Side is bounded by Kinzie Street on the north, the Chicago River on the east, 16th Street on the south and the former Chicago and North Western tracks on the west, a rectangle that holds two railroad terminals, the largest urban medical district in the country, a state university, the United Center and the West Loop. About 68,000 people live in it, and the number has climbed every year since the produce markets on Fulton and Randolph began turning into restaurants and offices.
It reads north to south: Fulton Market and the West Loop nearest the river and the trains, Greektown along Halsted, the medical district and Little Italy on Taylor Street, then University Village and Tri-Taylor toward Roosevelt and 16th.
The West Loop and Fulton Market share our West Loop guide: the meatpacking and produce blocks that became the city’s restaurant row, then a headquarters district, with the Morgan station opened for it in 2012. The Fulton River District is the loft pocket between Fulton Market and the river.
Greektown is Halsted between Van Buren and Madison, with the National Hellenic Museum and the restaurants that outlasted the expressway and the university that took the rest of the old Greek Delta. Little Italy is Taylor Street, University Village the newer blocks south of it built on the old Maxwell Street market, and Tri-Taylor the landmark triangle of Italianate rowhouses west of the medical district; our joint guide covers all three.
The Illinois Medical District holds Rush, the University of Illinois hospital and the county hospital, whose cornerstone was laid in 1876; the blocks around it are where residents and medical staff overlap.
The Great Chicago Fire started in a barn on De Koven Street on the Near West Side in October 1871; the fire academy stands on the site. The hospitals came in the decades after: the county hospital in 1876, Rush Medical College’s building in 1877, Presbyterian Hospital in 1883. The Lake Street elevated, the oldest piece of the L still running, opened in 1893. Jane Addams’ Hull House on Halsted served the immigrant wards from 1889.
The state acquired the old West Side Park for the university in 1917, and the University of Illinois Chicago campus of the 1960s replaced most of the old Greek and Italian neighborhood around it. The United Center opened in 1994. The Randolph Street produce market was sold for redevelopment in 2003, the change that made the West Loop what it is now.
No part of the city has more trains: the Blue Line along the Eisenhower (Clinton, UIC-Halsted, Racine, Illinois Medical District), the Green and Pink Lines on the Lake Street elevated (Clinton, Morgan, Ashland), the Pink Line at Polk, and both Metra terminals at the eastern edge. The Eisenhower and the Kennedy meet at the Jane Byrne Interchange. Randolph, Madison and Taylor are the walking streets.
Timber-loft conversions and new glass towers in the West Loop and Fulton Market; 1990s and 2000s townhouses and mid-rises in University Village; Italianate rowhouses and greystones on the landmark blocks of Tri-Taylor and around Little Italy; and larger new apartment buildings along Madison and near the United Center. The West Loop went from warehouses to one of the most expensive addresses in the city in twenty years, so the age and quality of buildings varies more than anywhere else on this list.
Read the building types guide and, for the lofts, our note on how a building’s systems work; a timber loft and a 2019 tower are different purchases.
Yes. The West Loop, Fulton Market, Greektown, Little Italy, University Village, Tri-Taylor and the Illinois Medical District are all inside the Near West Side, Chicago’s official community area 28.
Kinzie Street on the north, the Chicago River on the east, 16th Street on the south and the former Chicago and North Western railroad line on the west.
Written by our team, free, no sign-in.
From a Fulton Market loft to a Tri-Taylor rowhouse, we work the whole area. Tell us what you are after and we will send what is coming up and walk any block with you.
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