LOST COMMUNITIES OF CHICAGO

Aldine Square.

Cleaverville. 

Conley's Patch.

Hyde Park Township. 

Lee's Place / Hardscrabble a Chicago Community.

Little Sicily "Little Hell" Neighborhood.

Mopetown, a Chicago Neighborhood.

Shanty Town, District of Lake Michigan, and Streeterville.

Swede Town Neighborhood.

Towertown Neighborhood. 

Town of Austin forced annexation to Chicago in 1899.

Town of Lake. 

Village of Jefferson. - Township of Jefferson.

Village of Pennock.

Lost Communities of Chicago - Aldine Square Neighborhood, 1874-1938.

Aldine Square was built on untouched prairie land on the South Side of Chicago.

Since the onset of the 20th century, Aldine Square has been one of the city's most fashionable neighborhoods for a few decades. Its big brick and limestone townhomes surrounded a wooded park with a lake and footbridge.

Built in 1874 between 37th Place and 38th Street, bounded by Vincennes Avenue (entrance) to the east and Eden Avenue (entrance) - no longer exists) to the west. 

Plot Plan of Aldine Square, Chicago.

Aldine Square Postcard.

Aldine Square was where judges, attorneys, and folk in society lived. In 1877, the Chicago Tribune called it "the most charming of all the beautiful places of residence in the city." It consisted of 42 houses built of brick and limestone that surrounded a park with a pond and was initially paved with Belgian Woodblock. Homes in the neighborhood carried an "Aldine Square" address.

Looking westward shows the Aldine Square main entrance on Vincennes, marked by two enormous stone pylons. Ragtime giant Jelly Roll Morton lived at 545 Aldine in 1918.

Towards the end-of-life of Aldine Square, near the Eden Street entrance, was a dumping ground over which a sign read, "No Dumping Here."

But by 1938, Aldine Square was gone, razed to build the now-demolished Ida B. Wells public housing project, and is all but forgotten. Fortunately, just before Aldine Square was demolished, the federal government sent photographers Joseph Hill and Robert Tufts to document the site. Their photographs, taken between 1934 and 1936, are among the few visual records of this spectacular Place that looked impressive even in its final days.

The original wood and iron footbridge.

So, what happened to Aldine Square? When black migrants from the South began settling in the Chicago area beginning in the 1920s, the white residents of Aldine Square and the surrounding neighborhoods moved away. 

The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 further exacerbated economic conditions, and the area quickly became slum housing.

Here you can tell the still-stately homes have seen better days. The simple wooden footbridge in the foreground replaced the more elaborate iron and wood original one.

The Chicago Tribune documented this in a 1929 story about a neighborhood reunion held by Aldine Square's original families. The article said the gathering was held at a downtown hotel by residents who "moved away from the path of the advancing Negro district."

That Negro district had some of the most substandard housing in the city, and the big, new, modern Ida B. Wells public housing project was supposed to fix those ills. Aldine Square, which occupied a small portion of the future public housing site, was in the path of progress.

Ironically, the Ida B. Wells homes have been demolished and replaced by upscale housing in the newly gentrified neighborhood.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lost Communities of Chicago - Mrs. Conley's Patch

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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The 1850s and 60s saw masses of poor immigrants, primarily from Ireland, building a shantytown of low, tumble-down buildings centered around Monroe and Wells Streets, known as "Mrs. Conley's Patch." Longtime alderman of Chicago's 1st ward and world-renowned John Joseph Coughlin or 'Bathhouse John,' was raised there as a child. However, Conley's Patch was also notorious in its day, not only for its decrepit dwellings but also for some of its residents' depravity and dark crimes. 

There were houses of prostitution, including most famously Madam Lou Harper's "Mansion" at 219 West Monroe Street (today; 228 West Monroe Street) between Wells and Franklin and Francis Warren's streetwalkers troupe resided between Clark and LaSalle.

The principal "King of Vice," among the city's first ─ and perhaps greatest ─ was Roger Plant. A Yorkshire-born Englishman, Plant arrived in the city about 1857. Legend had grown around Plant, who purportedly had been convicted of a felony in England and was scheduled to be exiled to Australia when he escaped and made his way to Chicago.

By 1858, Plant had built "Roger's Barracks," a set of poorly-constructed shacks centered on the northeast corner of 5th Avenue (Wells Street) and Monroe. The Barracks, later known as "Under the Willow" (1858-1868), so named after a single sad willow tree which stood on the corner, was the center for all vice in the city until the end of the Civil War (1861-1865). Plant popularized the catchphrase ─ "Why Not?" ─ which was emblazoned on each of the blue window shades in the complex.

At just over five feet tall and no more than 100 lbs, Plant himself was diminutive, but he was apparently a vicious fighter, skillful with a pistol, knife, and club, but especially with his fists and teeth. The only one who could ever whip him, it is said, was Mrs. Plant, a mountainous woman weighing at least 250 lbs. Plant kept order in the saloon on the premises and operated as a fence and a bail bondsman. While his wife ran a brothel with no fewer than 80 girls, they rented out cubbies on the property for use by streetwalkers and made a trade of "white slave girls."

During the civil war, Under the Willow ("that shadowy haunt of sin," as the Tribune put it) played host to battalions of soldiers and was rarely empty at any hour. However, it was a fearsome place with many men finding themselves robbed, beaten, or knifed, and discarded in the alleys (often by Mrs. Plant herself) after drinking too much or falling asleep in one of the decrepit cribs.

Some of the permanent residents of the Plant complex included Mary Hodges, an apparently fantastically talented shoplifter, who it is said, in tall-tale fashion, would drive a cart into the shopping district several times a week to bring back her takings. Another was Mary Brennan ("an audacious old sinner," says the Tribune), who was herself a thief but also the trainer of thieves and pickpockets. Mrs. Brennan's two daughters were caught breaking into a home whose owner was away on business one afternoon in 1866. As punishment, they were placed in the St. Aloysius Catholic Asylum on Prairie Avenue, separated from their mother until adulthood.

Another long-time tenant was Lib Woods. Miss Woods arrived in Chicago in 1855 and was described in 1860 as "one of the gayest, prettiest, most fascinating creatures that could be found among her class in this city… with a splendid head of hair that made her rivals all despair. It hung down below her waist, in long, glassy ringlets."

Woods was the girlfriend of Billy Meadows, a successful prizefighter. But when Meadows took sick and died in 1861, Miss Woods' declined into drunkenness, and sexual dissipation was quick. She took up residence at Under the Willow as a prostitute shortly after and was then seized with smallpox, disfiguring her beautiful features. She was frequently drunk and became increasingly violent as she aged. She died a sad death in 1870, found in a gutter on 5th Avenue (Wells Street).

Conley's Patch was leveled in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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NOTE: On October 9, 2021, I received an email requesting any additional info on Conley's Patch. In the email was the following statement: "The Chicago Historical Society had little on the subject and provided the link to your article."

Lost Communities of Chicago - Hyde Park Township.

Hyde Park Township was founded by Paul Cornell, a real-estate speculator and cousin of Cornell University founder Ezra Cornell. He paid for a topographical survey of the lakefront south of the city in 1852.

Paul Cornell, the founder of Hyde Park.

In 1853, following the advice of Senator Stephen Douglas, he bought 300 acres of speculative property between 51st Street and 55th Street. Cornell successfully negotiated land in exchange for a railroad station at 53rd Street setting in motion the development of the first Chicago railroad suburb. This area was 7 miles south of the mouth of the Chicago River and 6 miles south of downtown Chicago. In the 1850s, Chicago was still a walkable urban area well contained within a 2 miles radius of the center. 

He selected the name Hyde Park to associate the area with the elite neighborhood of Hyde Park in New York as well as the famous royal park in London. Hyde Park quickly became a popular suburban retreat for affluent Chicagoans who wanted to escape the noise and congestion of the rapidly growing city. By 1855 he began acquiring large land tracts, which he would subdivide into lots for sale in the 1870s.

The Hyde Park House, an upscale hotel, was built on the shore of Lake Michigan near the 53rd Street railroad station in 1857. For two decades, the Hyde Park House served as a focal point of Hyde Park's social life. During this period, it was visited or lived in by many prominent guests, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who lived there with her children for two and a half months in the summer of 1865; shortly after her husband, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The Hyde Park House burned down in a fire in 1879. The Sisson Hotel was built on the site in 1918 and was eventually converted into a condominium building (the Hampton House which still stands).

Hyde Park House at 53rd Street and Lake Michigan, Chicago.

Hyde Park was incorporated in 1861 as an independent township (called Hyde Park Township). Its boundaries were Pershing Road (39th Street) on the north, 138th Street on the south, State Street on the west, and Lake Michigan and the Indiana state line on the east.

In 1837, the City of Chicago incorporated, and by the 1870s the surrounding townships had followed suit. After 1850, Cook County was divided into basic governmental entities, which were designated as townships as a result of the new Illinois Constitution. Illinois's permissive incorporation law empowered any community of 300 resident citizens to petition the Illinois legislature for incorporation as a municipality under a municipal charter with more extensive powers to provide services and tax local residents. Hyde Park Township was created by the Illinois General Assembly in 1861 within Cook County. This empowered the township to better govern the provision of services to its increasingly suburban residents.

Following the June 29, 1889 elections, several suburban townships voted to be annexed to the city, which offered better services, such as improved water supply, sewerage, and fire and police protection. Hyde Park Township, however, had installed new waterworks in 1883 just north of 87th Street. Nonetheless, the majority of township voters supported annexation. After annexation, the definition of Hyde Park as a Chicago neighborhood was restricted to the historic core of the former township, centered on Cornell's initial development between 51st and 55th streets near the lakefront.

Two years after Hyde Park was annexed to the city of Chicago (1891), the University of Chicago was established in Hyde Park through the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller and the leadership of William Rainey Harper. The University of Chicago eventually grew into one of the world's most prestigious universities and is now associated with eighty-nine Nobel Prize laureates.

Hyde Park hosted the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The World's Columbian Exposition brought fame to the neighborhood, which gave rise to an inflow of new residents and spurred new development that gradually started transforming Hyde Park into a more urban area.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lost Communities of Chicago - Township of Jefferson - Village of Jefferson

Early settlers named the area’s first post office for President James Monroe. The name "Monroe" was already in use in another community in Illinois that was named Monroe, so they decided to honor President Thomas Jefferson instead. 

The State formed the Township of Jefferson in Cook County, Illinois, in 1850. When the township was founded, Chicago (population 30,000) was still a walkable urban area contained within a radius of a couple of miles. By 1855, the village had 50 buildings. On August 6, 1872, they changed from the township organization to the village organization.

This region comprised most of what is now known as Chicago's Northwest Side, including the entirety of the following community areas: Jefferson Park, Avondale, Logan Square, Hermosa, Forest Glen, Dunning, Albany Park, Portage Park, Irving Park, Montclare, and Belmont-Cragin.

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In 1872 Norwood Park Township was created from the northwest corner of Jefferson. In 1889, Chicago annexed the rest of the township and ceased functioning independently. Norridge, Harwood Heights, and the town of Norwood Park were all part of the Norwood Park Township that had been cut out of Jefferson Township before the rest of Jefferson Township was annexed to the city. Norwood Park would be annexed later, with the at-the-time unincorporated parts of Norwood Township (Norridge and Harwood Heights) remaining unannexed. 

A tiny bit of Norwood Park Township remains unincorporated (not part of any city or suburb, but directly under county control) along Bryn Mawr between Cumberland and Canfield.

NOTE: This was a comment from "Unknown" on Blogger. (I would have used their name if they didn't select unknown instead of their name and stuck to the facts.)

In 1889 the Village of Jefferson was annexed into the city of Chicago. Its borders were Devon Avenue on the north, Harlem Avenue on the west, Western Avenue to the east, and North Avenue to the south. It added 36 square miles of property t chicago. 

By the year of annexation, Jefferson had become active and prosperous. The Jefferson settlement was linked to the city of Chicago by the Milwaukee and Elston Plank Roads, both of which had been in operation since the 1850s. These roads had initially been Indian Trails, and they were later called the “Upper” (Milwaukee) and “Lower” (Elston) roads.  Elston got its name from Dan Elston, a former alderman and bricklayer who graded, maintained, and principally used the road. Both Milwaukee and Elston became toll roads owned by Amos Snell, and they operated until the annexation (tolls were necessary on planked roads to cover the costs of repair and maintenance). At that time, citizens burned down the toll gates in protest of first, having to pay the tolls and indignation over the extreme increase in traffic. 

Chicago Tribune, Thursday, February 9, 1888

Amos J. Snell, the West Side millionaire, was shot dead early yesterday morning by burglars in his residence, at the northwest corner of Washinton Boulevard and Ada Street. The murder was committed shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning.

The Amos J. Snell Mansion

The murder of Amos J. Snell has never been solved.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Communities of Chicago - The Town of Lake

The Town of Lake was bounded north by 39th street, east by State street, south by 87th street, and west by Harlem Avenue (Lyons, IL eastern border). It was incorporated as a village with the above boundaries in 1865. Two years later the charter was amended, giving the authorities additional power. Within the town of Lake many separate villages came into existence and gradually grew together and became a part of Chicago.

Among the first settlers were Hugh Chittick, John L. Gerber, Samual Beers, Joseph Oswald and Daniel Berckie, who located near 59th street and Ashland Avenue. A little later Ira J. Nichols, William Brooker and F. A. Howe located on what afterward became Englewood as early as 1856. Early in the 1850s John Caffrey and S. S. Crocker settled near where the Union Stock Yards were. Other early residents of this portion of the town of Lake were Milton F. Patrick, Michael Rich and George W. Wait.

In 1861 the town of Hyde Park was formed from the town of Lake. The incorporation was effected in February of that year. Hyde Park village was organized in 1872. Its boundaries were Pershing Road (39th Street) on the north, 138th Street on the south, State Street on the west, and Lake Michigan and the Indiana state line on the east. Among the small villages in Hyde Park in early times were Colehour, Irondale, Rosedale, Kensington and Riverdale.    

In 1868 policemen in addition to constables were put at service throughout the township. A large increase in police was made in 1873 and again in 1880. One of the first improvements made by the town of Lake were works to secure pure water. The engine, etc., was located at 68th street and the lake, in 1873. At that time the town of Lake and Hyde Park constructed these works as a joint improvement. In 1880 the town of Lake became the sole owner of the improvement, and later Hyde Park constructed its own water system. 

As early as 1881 the town began to spend much money in properly draining many wet tracts of land. As the result, hundreds of acres which previously had been under water half the year appeared permanently above the subsiding water levels. A little later great improvements were rapidly made in the direction of good roads and streets. The most noticeable of many industrial improvements of the town of Lake were of course the famous Stock Yards. 

The railway roundhouse alone employed many thousands of men and furnished a living for their families. The manufacture of brick was an early enterprise of the town of Lake. The Union Stock Yards and Transit Company was incorporated in February of 1865. About one million dollars was spent to put the yards in efficient operation at the commencement. 

In 1889, the Chicago city limits expanded south to 138th and State Street and to the west 87th and Cicero by annexing the Town of Lake and the Village of Hyde Park. 

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lee's Place / Hardscrabble, Illinois, today's Bridgeport community of Chicago.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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A settler, Charles Lee (or Leigh), had come to the Chicago area in about 1804 with his family and had preempted a large tract of land. Charles Lee owned a farm on the South Branch about four miles from its mouth; his house stood on the northwest side of the river in a grove and was first called "Lee's Place" and later "Hardscrabble."

CLICK FOR A FULL-SIZE MAP

Lee and his family built a residence near Fort Dearborn (the fort was built during the summer and fall of 1803) and were thus residents of Chicago very early. Farm products such as cabbage and other vegetables, livestock, and hay were known to be produced here.

Hardscrabble Illustration.

At the Fort Dearborn Massacre of 1812, the families of John Kinzie, Lee, Burns, and Antoine Ouilmette (the first permanent white settler of Chicago in July of 1790), lived close to the fort. Charles Lee also had a cabin at the mouth of the Chicago River. 

The Lee house at "Hardscrabble" was occupied by Lee's employees or tenants; Liberty White, a Canadian Frenchman named John B. Cardin, a discharged soldier named John Kelso (or Kelson), a man named Debou, and a boy whose name no one has taken the trouble to record. 

The Fort Dearborn Massacre of 1812 was partially due to the attack of the Indians at Lee's Place. On April 6, 1812, a party of eleven Winnebagoes, dressed and painted, arrived at the house and, according to the custom among savages, entered and seated themselves without ceremony. 

Something in their appearance and manner excited their suspicions. One remarked, "I do not like the appearance of these Indians - they are none of our folks. I know by their dress and paint that they are not Potawatomi."
     
Kelso then said to the boy who was present, "If that is the case, we had better get away from them if we can. Say nothing, but do as you see me do."
    
As the afternoon was far advanced, Kelso walked leisurely towards the canoes, of which there were two tied near the bank. Some of the Indians inquired where he was going. He pointed to the cattle which were standing among the haystacks on the opposite [right/south] bank and made signs that they must go and fodder them, and then they should return and get their supper.
     
Kelso got into one canoe and the boy into the other. The stream was narrow, and they were soon across. When they had gained the opposite side, they pulled some hay for the cattle - made a show of collecting them, and when they had gradually made a circuit so that their movements were concealed by the haystacks, they took to the woods, which were close at hand, and made for the fort.
     
They had run about a quarter of a mile when they heard the discharge of two guns successively, which they supposed to have been leveled at White and Debou that they had left behind. On their way to the fort, they notified the family of Burns, living on the river at what is now North State Street, of their danger, and a squad of soldiers was sent to escort them to the fort. 

All of the families gathered in the fort, and the Indians left the neighborhood. Later, news reached the fort about White and Debou being stabbed, scalped, shot and mutilated.

This was the precursor to the Fort Dearborn Massacre later that summer. The Lee farm was abandoned following the Fort Dearborn massacre in August of 1812. While fur traders were thought to have still traversed the area, American activity did not resume until after federal troops returned (July 4, 1816) to rebuild Fort Dearborn.

1816 was also a new beginning for Lee's Place, though the name would be changed to Hardscrabble. Until roughly the Black Hawk War of 1832, Hardscrabble served as a fur-trading outpost consisting of several cabins, a trading post, and a lodging house.

Map of Hardscrabble, Bridgeport, Illinois area, 1830.

Mack & Conant, an extensive merchant in the Indian trade in Detroit, became the owners of this property in 1816. They sent Mr. John Craft with a large supply of Indian goods to take possession of it and establish a branch of their house there; the principal object was to sell goods to such traders as they could residing throughout this country without interfering with the interests of those traders who purchased goods from him. 

Mr. Craft repaired the dilapidated building, adding thereto and erecting others necessary for business convenience. He named it 'Hardscrabble;' whether he or someone else, it bore that name in 1818. 

Chief Alexander Robinson owned a cabin at Hardscrabble, and several members of the La Framboise family, who were French-Indian, lived there. Robinson had put up the Galloway family at his cabin when they were coldly received by agents of the American Fur Company at Chicago in 1826. One of the girls in the family later became Archibald Clyborne's wife. She recalled five or six cabins of the several persons living nearby.

Another early settler was Russell Heacock. He took up land on the South Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River near what is today Thirty-Fifth Street. Heacock was staunchly independent, which is probably the reason he had moved to the Hardscrabble area in the first place. He found it necessary to move closer to Chicago so that his children could attend school, himself becoming one of Chicago's early school teachers. In spite of moving to Chicago, he retained his property on the South Fork. Heacock is notable for two other reasons. First, he was the sole dissenter when a vote was called to incorporate the Town of Chicago (1833). He was second noted for his Illinois and Michigan Canal promotion. Because funds to build the canal were scarce, a plan was devised to make it less expensive by reducing the intended depth of the canal. Russell Heacock was perhaps the most vocal proponent of the plan, earning him the Shallow-Cut nickname. Maybe he hated the nickname, but the shallow-cut plan was ultimately successful.

Even before the canal construction began, Hardscrabble became the site of a quarry opened in 1833 to cut the stone needed to improve the Chicago harbor. And because of the relentless pounding of Lake Michigan waters, the harbor improvement project dragged on for many years. Later, the stone quarry became known as Stearns' Quarry. The quarry's opening and the canal's construction mark the transition from the frontier outpost of Hardscrabble to the Bridgeport that we know today. 

The canal commissioners platted what came to be known as the town of Bridgeport in 1836, although it was not yet going by the name of Bridgeport. Canalport (Canal Port) was platted by private interests in 1835 in one of the even-numbered sections not controlled by the canal commissioners. The beginnings of the settlement are somewhat obscure since they are so old and because many of the records pertaining to that period, such as those kept by the county, burned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The origin of the name Bridgeport is shrouded in myth, purportedly owing to a low bridge spanning one of the waterways, which forced cargo transfer from larger to smaller vessels. Some sources say this bridge was "at Ashland Avenue," while others say it was "near Ashland Avenue." It should be noted that there was no bridge at Ashland Avenue, nor was there an 'Ashland Avenue' per se. 

The nearby Canalport settlement would also indicate that the site was foreseen as a cargo transfer point. The Forks had already been marked as the 'Head of Navigation' in the 1821 survey. The bridge in question was presumably the bridge at the lock. Aside from the bridge altogether, the narrow width of the canal lock made cargo transfer necessary. A very low bridge would have, at most, compounded this fact, and if it were built low enough to impede traffic, the canal commissioners probably did so by design. The reason is simple; because the commissioners held the land in the odd-numbered sections (here, Section Twenty-nine), they naturally would prefer that the highest valued lots fall on canal lands rather than those (like Canalport in Section 30) promoted by private speculators. 

According to Michael Conzen, the commissioners were doing this in places like Lockport (vying with Joliet) and La Salle (in competition with Peru). The naming of Bridgeport probably had as much to do with the commissioner's efforts to distinguish their platting from Canalport as it had with any physical bridge. Moreover, the 1840 federal census information in A. T. Andreas' History of Cook County (1884) mentions the Bridgeport precinct of Cook County. There was no water in the canal at the time. In any event, whoever named it, Bridgeport became the real town, while Canalport remained a paper dream. A street by the name of Canalport Avenue is the only remnant left of the "town."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Communities of Chicago - Swede Town Neighborhood.

Later: Little Sicily "Little Hell" Neighborhood.
Later Still: Cabrini-Green Neighborhood.

Chicago's first Swedish settlement emerged in 1846, when immigrants destined for the Swedish religious colony in Bishop Hill, Illinois, decided instead to settle in Chicago. The boundaries indicated for the oldest Swedish district seem very narrow. The examination of the census lists and city directories indicates that nearly all of the 27 Swedish families which, in the summer of 1850 when the census was made, had their homes in the 7th ward on the city's north side, lived within an area near the river bounded by Erie street on the north and Franklin street ("the east part of the river branch") on the east.

Chicago Swedish Family

Swedish settlers in the river area were given notice of eviction by the real estate owners in 1853 or 1854. It has not been verified, but it seems credible in view of the industrial and commercial development of Chicago at that time. The areas along the river banks became quite important because of the city's growing industries, particularly after the opening of the Illinois-Michigan Canal, and of the first railroad, Galena-Chicago Union, in 1848.

Many of these earliest settlers came to work on the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Although the Swedish settlement remained small for the next two decades, reaching 816 people in 1860 and 6,154 in 1870, it represented the largest single cluster of Swedes in the United States. During the 1870s, the Swedish population in the city doubled, outnumbered only by the German, Irish, and British immigrant groups.

As the Swedish settlement moved, the area north of the Chicago River on the Near North Side became known as "Swede Town." It was bounded by La Salle Street on the east, Division Street on the North, Chicago Avenue on the South, and the Chicago River to the west. A second, smaller Swedish area developed on the South Side in Douglas and Armour Square. The third grew on the West Side in North Lawndale. Smaller settlements also emerged in West Town and the Near West Side.

Swedes began leaving "Swede Town" after the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The process accelerated in the 1880s as more and more folks left these initial neighborhoods of settlement for less dense surroundings as the community became increasingly prosperous and worked its way up to Chicago's economic ladder. By 1920 Swedes dominated North Side neighborhoods such as Andersonville (also sometimes referred to as "Swede Town"), Lakeview as well as areas such as Grand Crossing and Englewood to the south. The nickname would reemerge in these new Swedish-dominated districts as the original "Swede Town" became Little Sicily also known as "Little Hell" and later still the Cabrini-Green Neighborhood.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Communities of Chicago - Little Sicily "Little Hell" Neighborhood

Earlier: Swede Town Neighborhood.
Later: Cabrini-Green Neighborhood.

The name “Little Hell” was derived from the large gas house that was located at Crosby and Hobbie streets, whose nighttime flames lit the skies at night. The roaring thunder of the furnaces could be heard for blocks as coal was poured into the ovens and moistened with water from the Chicago River to create gas that was used for heating, cooking and lighting. Enormous tanks stored the gas during the day.

The Little Hell neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago was bounded by La Salle Street on the east, Division Street on the North, Chicago Avenue on the South and the Chicago River to the west. Between the 1880s and 1930, Chicagoans referred to the heart of the Little Hell slum as “Death Corner,” a wholly understandable moniker given that the intersection of West Oak Street and Milton Avenue (Milton Avenue changed names to Cleveland Avenue in 1909) was the scene of well over 100 unsolved murders. 

The North Side's first great gangster, Dion O'Banion, was a product of this district. Since most of the vice districts in Chicago were on the South and West sides of the city, this area was more or less ignored for many years in the city's fight against crime. It is said that, in the first 51 days of 1906, the police made over 900 arrests.

For two decades, Chicago police remained “hampered at every turn by the silence of the Italian colony” — a reference to the large Italian-American population in the neighborhood. 

Typically, as one newspaper story put it, victims would be “murdered before an audience that vanished with the last pistol flash, much as a loon dives beneath the sheltering water just at the moment the hunter’s gun spits out its flame and shot.” Death Corner, as the district’s “central gathering place,” had gained the “international reputation of being the site of more murders than any other territory of equal area in the world.” 

By the early 1920s, murders in Little Hell continued at the rate of more than 30 per year — more than one-third of the city’s total, although Italians made up only five percent of the population. By this point, many Death Corner victims were casualties of the Prohibition-era “alcohol rivalries” between the bootlegging gangs of Giuseppe “Joe” Aiello and the infamous  Al Capone “Scarface,” leader of Chicago’s most powerful mob. As notorious as Cabrini-Green would become, the violence of Little Hell may well have been worse.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Communities of Chicago - Mopetown

Mopetown was a tiny neighborhood tucked in between the Bridgeport and McKinley Park neighborhoods. Mopetown's borders were from Ashland to Hoyne Avenues and from 31st Street to 33rd Street.

Mopetown grew up as a collection of cottages inside a triangle surrounded by the tracks of the Santa Fe and the Chicago and Alton railroad lines.

The residents were a mix of Irish, German, Italian, Polish, English and Bohemian. The name Mopetown came from a German family name that somehow was translated to "Mope." 

Mopetown was one of the last places in the city to get paved streets and sidewalks. The neighborhood was impossible to find. Pizza delivery? Forget it! Mopetown was isolated. Wolcott was the only street that gained access to the neighborhood.

No one ever worried about their electric bill because they never got one.
Just about everyone had a 'jumper,' an illegal tap to the utility pole.

The death blow to Mopetown came from the Stevenson Expressway (I-55) which wiped out much of it. The City of Chicago condemned the houses, the families moved away, they tore the houses down, leveled the neighborhood and built the expressway. After the expressway was built, there were six houses left. Then there were four. Then there were two.

"I remember Mopetown with good memories, oh, yes, I do," said Edith Vitalo, a South Sider who lived there on 31st Place as a child. "It was a desolate area out there, past Archer by the tracks, with all prairie around it. We were all as poor as church mice and everyone knew everybody else. Nobody had nothing, so there were no jealousies. We all shared what we had."

"During the tough times, during the Depression and Prohibition, a lot of them made ends meet by making booze -- white lightning," said Hopkins' wife, Janet. Her uncle, Dennis Starr, a local Republican organizer, held political meetings in the back of Funk's Pool Hall and was called 'The Mayor of Mopetown.' 

"My family was quite poor then when we'd go down to Mopetown to see Uncle Dennis and Aunt Ellie Starr," Janet Hopkins said. "You could always get something to eat down there. I remember my Aunt Ellie would be standing in the kitchen of her small cottage over a black fire-burning stove. She'd be wearing her apron and Uncle Dennis' shoes, and there'd be two big pots cooking on the stove. One was homemade soup and one was homemade white lightning. The houses that sold the hooch down there were called 'blind pigs.' Uncle Dennis ran one, and you never knew who'd you meet in Uncle Dennis' house down in Mopetown."

"It was an easy place to raise kids and a great little place to live," said Mary Wilkens, whose tidy house belies the expressway traffic that rumbles past her front door. "My windows were always open, my door was always open and the kids could sleep outside on the porch. Everyone had big families, everyone was poor and everyone watched out for each other."

"No one in Mopetown went hungry or went cold during the tough times," Mary Wilkens said. "We all walked the track," she said, referring to Mopetowners' habit of going over to the railroad tracks and getting coal that fell off the railroad cars [to heat their homes]. They also would go over to the railroad yard where the train employees habitually threw out sacks of fruit and vegetables because there would be some spoilage.

Russell Wilkens and his wife, Mary -- the last family -- in the last house, in Mopetown has finally moved out in 1990. The Wilken's family had to. One side of their simple brick-frame home at 1845 West 31st Place simply crumbled and collapsed. The old place couldn't remain standing any longer.

Understandably, Mary Wilkens, 71, the last housewife remaining in Mopetown, left with tears in her eyes. "We've lived here in Mopetown for 60 years," she said. "I loved it down there. We had all sorts of privacy. We were the hidden neighborhood. The kids could run free, you could move and breathe and never lock a door. It was paradise even though nobody was rich. But it's over now. Mopetown has disappeared into a dream and I'm still alive. I'm lost not living down here anymore."

So that's it for Mopetown. It doesn't exist anymore... except in historical stories like this one.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Lost Communities of Chicago - Shanty Town and the District of Lake Michigan. (aka The Sands; Streeterville)

Captain George Wellington Streeter

George Wellington Streeter was born in Flint, Michigan, in 1837. Before the Civil War, he wandered the Great Lakes region, working at various times as a logger and trapper, an ice cutter on Saginaw Bay, a deckhand on Canada's Georgian Bay, and a miner. 

He married his first wife, Minnie, and then traveled west in a covered wagon, returning to Michigan on the eve of the Civil War. He joined the Union Army as a private and served in the Tennessee theater.

After the war, he became a showman, lumberjack, and steamship operator. After his wife left him (she ran off with a vaudeville troupe), he came to Chicago in the mid-1880s and married again. 

He and his new wife, Maria, decided to become gun runners in Honduras. Streeter bought a steamship and named it "Reutan." 

Before piloting it down to Central America, Streeter took a test cruise in Lake Michigan in 1886 during a gale. The ship ran aground about 450 feet from the Chicago shore.

The Steamship "Reutan" docked on the Chicago River.

In the days that followed, Streeter surveyed the situation and decided to leave his boat where it was. At the time, Chicago was amidst a building boom after the great Chicago fire of 1871. Streeter found excavation contractors who were eager to pay a fee for the right to dump fill on the beach near his boat. 

He eventually amassed 186 acres of newly created land. Consulting an 1821 government survey, Streeter determined that his man-made land lay beyond the boundaries of both Chicago and Illinois and therefore claimed that he was homesteading the land as a Civil War veteran.

Unfortunately, prominent Chicagoans such as Potter Palmer and N.K. Fairbank owned the land adjacent to Streeter's land accretions. These men claimed that Streeter was a squatter and had no legal rights to the land. Streeter argued differently, declaring, "When I come here ther warn't a particle of land for me to squat on!"

Sensing that his enemies would try to oust him, Streeter replaced his ship with a homemade two-story tar-paper "castle." The first floor was his war room; the second floor was his residence.

Captain Streeter's Converted Boat Fortress/Home

When private detectives and thugs attempted to serve allegedly specious warrants on Streeter, he and his wife responded with sawed-off muskets filled with birdshot. On one occasion, Streeter's wife drove off three deputies by dousing them with boiling water.

Click for a full-size map.

Several times, assailants were killed during their attempts to storm what Streeter called his "District of Lake Michigan." But the city found it challenging to keep Streeter in jail, and one time he was acquitted of self-defense. 

Another time he proved that the birdshot in his rifle could not possibly have killed the policeman found with a piece of lead in his heart. When he was arrested for refusing "to disperse," he successfully argued in court that he could not disperse as he was only one person. 

But in March 1902, John Kirk, an imported Western gunman, was killed in Streeter's district. Streeter was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, and Streeter claimed he was framed; the governor of Illinois agreed and pardoned him nine months later. But while Streeter was in prison, his wife died.

Streeter resumed control over his domain. To finance his side of the battle, Streeter sold lots to upward of 200 prospective homeowners, as well as refreshments, alcoholic beverages, and snacks to real estate shoppers and the just plain curious. 

Unable to oust him by force, his foes turned to the courts. However, the law of riparian rights was murky, and Streeter's lawyers - paid with deeds of land - proved to be able adversaries. 

Streeter offered various theories about why the land belonged to him in real life. Sometimes he claimed it by squatters' rights, and other times he'd bought a deed from a mysterious John Scott "someplace in Michigan."

The longest-running explanation was a purported land grant from President Grover Cleveland that Streeter waved in front of judges for 25 years — until, that is, a handwriting expert took the witness stand in a 1918 trial and put a chemical test to the document's signatures, as the Tribune reported. "Lo and behold, the signature of Cleveland faded away, and there arose in its place the quaint and sturdy signature of President Martin Van Buren!" Streeter's name vanished by a similar process, revealing the actual grantee was Robert Kinzie, a pioneer Chicagoan. The judge ruled that the document "was and is now a clumsy forgery," adding that weather bureau records showed no evidence of a storm the night Streeter claimed to have been shipwrecked.

But finally, shortly after his arrest in 1918 for selling liquor without a license and assault on a police officer, agents of Chicago Title and Trust Company, armed with warrants, put the torch to Streeter's castle. 

By now, Streeter had married a third time, and his wife, Emma "Ma" Streeter, charged the group with a meat cleaver, but to no avail, and the couple retreated to a nearby boat to wanly continue the fight. He never returned, and Streeter spent the next few years operating a floating hot dog stand in East Chicago. The old rogue died on January 24, 1921, at age 84.

Many dignitaries, including William Hale Thompson, the mayor of Chicago, attended his funeral. His wife continued to wage war both inside the courtroom and on the shores of Lake Michigan. In 1925 the federal district court in Chicago ruled that because Streeter never divorced Minnie, his first wife, "Ma" Streeter, was not legally married and thus ineligible to file claims for Streeter's property. The last suit brought by alleged heirs was dismissed in 1940, thus finally ending a half-century of colorful warfare and litigation concerning the sovereignty of the District of Lake Michigan - to this day still called Streeterville, in honor of its founder. 

Shows Expanding Chicago Shoreline by Year. 

The land that Streeter so ardently fought for is now the most expensive part of Chicago. It is on the Near North Side of the city, bounded by Oak Street on the north, Michigan Avenue on the West, Grand Avenue to the south, and Lake Michigan on the east.

Today this area is a named neighborhood called Streeterville. The property continues to be valuable, and the John Hancock Center now towers where the Reutan fortress used to be.

A statue of "Cap" stands at Grand Avenue
and McClurg Court, Chicago, Illinois.

Read Captain Streeter, Pioneer. Published in 1914.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.