Lower West Side, Chicago

**Lower West Side (Chicago, Illinois)**
Community Area 31 - Lower West Side Chicago Community Area 31 - South Lower West Side Location within the city of Chicago
Latitude Longitude	41°51′N 87°39.6′W / 41.850°N 87.6600°W / 41.850; -87.6600
Neighborhoods	Heart of Chicago Lower West Side Pilsen
ZIP Code	parts of 60608 and 60616
Area	7.25 km² (2.80 mi²)
Population (2000) Density	44,031 (down 3.56% from 1990) 6,071.6 /km²
Demographics	White Black Hispanic Asian Other	8.15% 1.76% 88.9% 0.27% 0.92%
Median income
Source: U.S. Census, Record Information Services

Lower West Side is a community area located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois. The area is almost universally called Pilsen throughout Chicagoland.

Neighborhoods

Heart of Chicago

Heart of Chicago is a neighborhood located in the southwest corner of the Lower West Side community area and has an Italian restaurant strip on Oakley.

Pilsen

Pilsen is a neighborhood located in the Lower West Side community area of Chicago. The district is named after Plzeň, the fourth largest city in what is now the Czech Republic. There is also a former county seat in Poland also named Pilsen (Pilzno) from which a sizeable portion of the Polish community hail from, and in 2004 the Pilzno Society of Chicago Klub Pilznian festively celebrated its 80th anniversary.^[1] In the late 19th century Pilsen was inhabited by Czech immigrants, who , as well as in smaller numbers other ethnic groups from the Austro-Hungarian Empire including Slovaks, Slovenians, Croats and Austrians, as well as immigrants of Polish, Swedish, Lithuanian and Dutch Heritage. Many of the immigrants worked in the stockyards and the surrounding factories. As many early 20th Century American urban neighborhoods, however, Pilsen was home to the wealthy as well as the working class and doctors lived next to maids and laborers amongst businessmen with the whole area knitted together based on the ethnicities, mostly of Slavic descent, which were not readily welcome in other areas of the city.

The Czechs had replaced the Germans, who had settled there first with the Irish in the mid 1800s]]. The Poles supplanted the Czechs as the dominant ethnic group in Pilsen in the beginnning of the 20th century and continued to dominate the area until the early 1970's. Beginning in the mid 1960s Pilsen became increasingly Mexican, as people were forced to move when their former small enclave to the North of Pilsen was torn down to make way for the University of Illinois at Chicago. Latinos became the majority in 1970 when they surpassed the Slavic population. The Slavs were the majority in the 1960s but the passage of the INS Act of 1965 caused a turn in the ethnic makeup of not only Pilsen but the United States as a whole. The neighborhood continued to serve as port of entry for immigrants, both legal and undocumented immigrants and mostly of Mexican descent, since. Many elderly central Europeans, some even without English language skills, also still reside in Pilsen. Pilsen's Mexican population is increasingly dwarfed by what has become the largest Mexican neighborhood in Chicago, Little Village.

Real estate values have increased as a result of Pilsen's rich Neo-Bohemian Baroque architectural heritage as well as its proximity to the Loop and the highway system. The neighborhood has begun to see a decline in the Latino predominance, which reached a peak of 89% in 2000, mostly made up of those with Mexican heritage. Many of the new residents to the neighborhood are not Hispanic and it is likely that the neighborhood will continue to become more diversified in the years ahead. Half of Pilsen's population in 1996 had turned over by 2000.

The neighborhood's popularity is growing and the area just to the north has exploded with new construction as well as restoration of National Historic Register properties such as the 800+ unit South Water Market and an old concrete Cold Storage Warehouse. That development has now spilled over into Pilsen proper with the now nearly complete Chantico Loft development and the just starting Centro 18 Development on two full city blocks which is anchored by two ten and two six story loft buildings. These are just two of the several large projects either under construction or in the pipeline. Infill construction of Condominiums and Single Family homes is now in full force on the East Side of the neighborhood as Pilsen becomes the next major development area for that type of infill construction as well. Some local advocacy groups have formed urging the neighborhood's Alderman to curtail gentrification and to preserve the Mexican-American cultural and demographic dominance. These groups have so far met with limited success, as many of the neighborhood's property owners are in favor of redevelopment and increasing property values. As can be expected, many in Pilsen are fearful of increased rents and the displacement this may cause. The neighborhood is under intense development pressure and the construction of new loft buildings as well as renovations of existing lofts are fully underway.

Pilsen became a National Historic Register District on Feb 1 2006 at the behest of the Alderman which allows residents to reinvest in their properties while freezing their property taxes for 8 years if their renovations comply with National Park Service standards for the rehabilitation of historic properties. This allows those who want to remain in the area to make the transition as the neighborhood's real estate values and property taxes continue to climb. In order to qualify a Pilsen homeowner need only reinvest 25% of their Assesed Market Value which is substantially less than the Open Market Value. The investment needed to participate averages from $10,000 to $25,000, with most properties in the mid range, and can include electrical, roofing, and most other general maintenance issues as well as the labor of the homeowner themselves written off at fair market making it possible for almost any homeowner to participate.

18th Street is a lively walking district, with Mexican bakeries, restaurants, and groceries though the principal district for Mexican shopping is 26th Street in Little Village, Chicago's other formerly majority Pan-Slavic community, which is currently the main area of successful Mexican immigrant commerce. The East Side on Halsted is one of Chicago's largest art districts, and the neighborhood is also home to the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum. St Adalbert's dominates over the skyline with the opulence typical of churches in the Polish Cathedral style. Pilsen is also famous for it's murals. The history of the murals is often mispoken of as a purely Mexican cultural type which is historically and factually innaccurate. The original murals in Pilsen along 16th Street started as a cooperative effort between Slavs and Mexicans when the neighborhood was undergoing change. If one looks closely one finds amongst the latter Mexican images the earlier ones which are decidedly non-Mexican and include storks, scenic European farms, and Lipizzaner Horses.

The Blue Line and Pink Line El stops at 18th Street, in the northwest corner of Pilsen and the Orange Line stops at Halsted and Archer Avenue, just south of Pilsen. Buses run east- and west-bound on Cermak Road and 18th Street, and northeast- and southwest-bound on Blue Island Avenue; while north and south buses run along Western, Damen, Ashland, and Halsted. (For Chicago Transit Authority system map section which includes Pilsen, click here.) Metra's BNSF Railway Line [1]stops on the east at Halsted and 16th Street, and on the west at Western and 18th Street and highways run near the eastern and southern parts of the neighborhood.

A source of pollution in Pilsen has been a 374 MW coal-fired power plant called the Fisk Generating Station. The Fisk power plant is exempt from modern Clean Air Act emission standards though will soon fall under stricter Illinois Law. A 2002 Harvard School of Public Health found communities near these older coal power plants showed significant increased asthma rates. Fisk Generating Station was one of the named plants in the study, as well as the Crawford Generating Station in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. The new legislation will start to address this problem which will be put behind us in the future.

Pilsen is also home to a foundry, H Kramer and Company. H. Kramer has a long history in Pilsen (over 80 years at its current ___location) and has also started to address neighborhood pressure to clean up its emissions and site. In the past H. Kramer was the largest lead polluter in Cook County. They now have entered into a voluntary agreement with the IEPA and work is proceeding on a cleanup as H. Kramer moves towards being a cleaner greener industrial neighbor.

References

External links

^ Kurier Codzienny, a Chicago area polish daily, from the weekend edition dated January 30th-February 1st 2004 p.24, 58-59.

[1] Kurier Codzienny, a Chicago area polish daily, from the weekend edition dated January 30th-February 1st 2004 p.24, 58-59.

[1]