West Argyle Street Historic District

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West Argyle Street Historic District
National Register of Historic Places
Historic District
West Argyle Street, at Argyle Station on the 'L'

West Argyle Street, at Argyle Station on the 'L'

West Argyle Street Historic District (Illinois)
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location Uptown , Cook County , Illinois
Coordinates 41 ° 58 '24 "  N , 87 ° 39' 25"  W Coordinates: 41 ° 58 '24 "  N , 87 ° 39' 25"  W.
surface 16  hectares
NRHP number 10000311
The NRHP added June 3, 2010

The West Argyle Street Historic District is a conservation area in the uptown of Chicago , Illinois . The Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 2010 . The district covers an area of ​​about 16  hectares and is roughly bounded by Broadway to the west, Winona Street to the north, Sheridan Road to the east and Ainslie Street to the south.

history

The area of ​​the historic district was originally developed as a suburb called Argyle Park in the 1880s . This suburb was named by the Chicago Alderman and building contractor James A. Campbell after his ancestors, the Dukes of Argyll in Scotland. The development was concentrated around a station on the newly opened Chicago to Evanston rail line on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway , which went into operation in May 1885. The settlement was annexed by Chicago with the rest of Lake View Township in 1889. In 1908 the Northwestern Elevated Railroad was extended northward from Wilson Avenue, utilizing the tracks of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad, thereby connecting the suburb to the Chicago Elevated network, and the area enjoyed popularity with the People who wanted to live on the shores of Lake Michigan but had limited financial resources. The railroad tracks were laid on a railway embankment between 1914 and 1922.

Restaurants in a one-story building on a street corner
Vietnamese and Thai restaurants on the corner of Argyle Street and Broadway

Chicago restaurant owner Jimmy Wong bought properties in the area in the 1960s and was planning to rebirth the area as New Chinatown . In his vision, a mall was created with pagodas, trees and reflecting basins to replace the empty shop fronts. The Hip Sing Association, a Chinese cultural association, moved its Chicago offices here in 1971, and by 1974 Wong and the Hip Sing Association owned eighty percent of the three blocks on Argyle Street. Wong then had an accident in which he broke both of his hips so that he could no longer pursue his plans. In 1979 Charlie Soo, the founder of the Asian American Small Business Association, took over and the area developed not only as a district of Chinese residents, but also Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians and Japanese settled. Soo tried to convince the Chicago Transit Authority to renovate the elevated train station on Argyle Street, and in 1979 the CTA approved $ 250,000 for the renovation. In 1981 he started an annual culinary festival called Taste of Argyle . He was able to elicit funds from Mayor Jane Byrne to repair the sidewalks, and he persuaded the later incumbent Harold Washington to finance the repair of the house fronts. Because of his dedication to the neighborhood, Soo was later often referred to as Mayor of Argyle Street , the street's unofficial mayor. Around 1986 it was assumed that around 8,000 residents of Chinese and Vietnamese origin lived in the uptown.

The concentration of Vietnamese restaurants as well as bakeries, craft shops and shops of Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian and Thai provenance on Argyle Street, which crowd around the elevated train station, has earned the neighborhood the nicknames New Chinatown , Little Saigon and Little Vietnam .

See also

Web links

Commons : West Argyle Street Historic District  - Collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ^ West Argyle Street Historic District on the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed August 12, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b c Uptown's Argyle Street Named To Historic Register ( English ) In: CBS2 Chicago: Chicago Area Local News . CBS Broadcasting Inc .. June 14, 2010. Archived from the original on June 21, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 26, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / cbs2chicago.com
  3. ↑ Weekly list of actions taken on properties: 6/01/10 through 6/04/10 ( English ) National Park Service. Retrieved August 26, 2010.
  4. ^ Edward Callary: Place names of Illinois . University of Illinois Press, 2009, ISBN 0252033566 , p. 13.
  5. ^ The Chicago & Evanston (English) . In: Chicago Daily Tribune , May 22, 1885. 
  6. ^ Suburban (English) . In: Chicago Daily Tribune , November 8, 1885. 
  7. ↑ Ten New Sister Ward (English) . In: Chicago Daily Tribune , July 20, 1889. 
  8. ^ Electrification of the Evanston Suburban Line of the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul . In: The Railway Age . 44, No. 14, October 4, 1907, p. 467. Retrieved August 26, 2010.
  9. ↑ Aamer Madhani: Jimmy Wong 1914-2001 - Restaurateur helped start 'new Chinatown' (English) . In: Chicago Tribune , July 6, 2001. 
  10. ↑ a b Dean Congbalay: Argyle Street shopping strip weaves pattern of prosperity (English) . In: Chicago Tribune , March 31, 1986. 
  11. ↑ Kenan Heise: N. Side's Argyle Street takes on Far East flavor (English) . In: Chicago Tribune , November 20, 1981. 
  12. ↑ Lynch, Kevin, Janega, James: Charlie Soo 1945-2001: Argyle Street 'Mayor,' bold promoter of Asian shops (English) . In: Chicago Tribune , April 4, 2001.