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One official name for a whole quarter of the near West Side: Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, East Village, Noble Square, Smith Park and River West all sit inside West Town, community area 24, between the river and Humboldt Park. The Blue Line runs down its spine and the 606 trail runs along its top edge.
West Town is the city’s name, not the neighborhood’s. When the University of Chicago drew the 77 community areas in the 1920s it grouped the blocks between the North Branch of the river (east), the Union Pacific tracks along Kinzie (south) and the old railroad embankment on Bloomingdale Avenue (north), with an irregular western edge that takes in Humboldt Park itself. Nobody says they live in West Town; they say Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village or Noble Square. The city keeps its numbers by the official name, which is why you will see it on census maps, crime maps and school boundaries.
The area is a grid of workers’ cottages and flats built after the Great Fire of 1871, cut by the diagonal of Milwaukee Avenue, with Division Street, Chicago Avenue, Ashland, Damen and Western as the working streets. About 88,000 people live here now, down from 187,000 in 1930 when the same blocks held a lot more people per building.
Wicker Park is the best known: the six corners at Milwaukee, North and Damen, the park the Wicker brothers gave the city in 1870, and the Victorian mansions on Hoyne and Pierce. Our Wicker Park guide covers it block by block.
Ukrainian Village runs south of Division around Chicago Avenue, with its three great churches and a landmark district of stone two-flats, and East Village sits between it and Ashland; our joint guide covers both. East Ukrainian Village is the newer name for the blocks just east of Damen.
Noble Square is the triangle around the Kennedy at Division, Ashland and Milwaukee, with the Blue Line at Division and the Polish churches that gave Milwaukee Avenue its old name of the Polish Downtown. River West is the loft and new-construction district along the river between Chicago Avenue and Kinzie, closest to the Loop. Smith Park takes its name from the park on Grand Avenue at its center, on the quieter western blocks toward Western Avenue; Pulaski Park is the pocket around the landmark fieldhouse on Blackhawk Street, north of Noble Square; and East Humboldt Park is the strip along the park’s eastern edge, which officially belongs to West Town even though the park gives the neighborhood next door its name.
Development came in two pushes: the fire of 1871 sent builders west of the river, and the Logan Square branch of the elevated, opened in 1895 (today’s Blue Line), filled in the rest. Germans and Scandinavians came first, then the Polish community that made Milwaukee Avenue its main street; between 1939 and 1959 an estimated 150,000 displaced Poles arrived in Chicago and many of them landed here. Ukrainians built their village around Chicago and Oakley.
The Kennedy Expressway, cut through in 1960, displaced thousands and split the area. The Latino share of residents went from under one percent in 1960 to 39 percent by 1970. The 1970s were hard, with factory closings and arson in East Village; artists arrived in the 1980s, the Around the Coyote festival launched in 1989, and the gentrification that followed has run for thirty years. The Ukrainian Village District became a Chicago landmark in stages between 2002 and 2007, and the Bloomingdale Trail, the 606, opened on the old embankment along the area’s north edge in 2015.
The Blue Line is the reason the area works without a car: Grand, Chicago, Division and Damen stations, all on the O’Hare branch, put the Loop ten to fifteen minutes away. The Kennedy runs through the middle for anyone driving out of town. Milwaukee Avenue is one of the busiest bike corridors in the country, and the 606 connects the north edge to Bucktown, Logan Square and Humboldt Park without a stoplight.
The classic West Town building is the brick two- or three-flat from the 1890s to the 1920s, often raised a half-story over an English basement, with a frame workers’ cottage or two left on most blocks and greystones on the better streets. Wicker Park’s mansion blocks are the exception. New construction has filled the vacant lots since the 1990s: three-flat condo buildings, single-family rebuilds and, along the river and Milwaukee, larger apartment buildings.
Before touring here, read our two-flat history and the building types guide; a well-kept two-flat with a rented unit is still the classic way to own on these blocks.
Yes. Wicker Park is a neighborhood inside West Town, Chicago’s official community area 24, along with Ukrainian Village, East Village, Noble Square, Smith Park, River West and Pulaski Park.
West Town is on the near West Side, between the North Branch of the Chicago River on the east and Humboldt Park on the west, from the Bloomingdale Trail south to the Kinzie rail corridor.
Written by our team, free, no sign-in.
We work every neighborhood inside it, from the six corners to the quiet blocks by Smith Park. Tell us what you are after and we will send what is coming up and walk any block with you.
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