Chicago's location as a city is due to the excellent site and situation factors that enabled its earliest settlers to thrive. The original city sits at the confluence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan and allowed early settlers access to resources and trade. Additionally, the nearby resources of iron and coal helped Chicago become an industrial metropolis and a haven for migrants from all over looking to improve their lives. As the city began to expand outward first in rings and then along railroad lines (see changing city models here), the wealthier residents began to move further away from the polluted, congested central business district known to Chicagoans as "the Loop." The Rogers Park neighborhood is one of these distant places created by those Chicagoans moving up the ladder of success.
Rogers Park History
Like many Chicago neighborhoods, Rogers Park was named after the person who purchased the land and was populated with first wave immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Wealthy Chicagoans were able to access these formally distant communities because of the expansion of railroad lines out from the Loop. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, "by the end of the nineteenth century large houses on sizable lots clustered between Greenview and Ridge Avenues and north of Touhy along Sheridan Road." (Mooney-Melvin) However, as Chicago grew, the neighborhood changed from an owner to largely a renter community with apartment houses and multi-family dwellings. This increase in population density was further exacerbated after World War II due to the massive housing shortage following the return of soliders to Chicago. Landlords further divided up their apartments in order to cash in on the shortage and the quality of housing decreased while the population increased turning Rogers Park into a deteriorating neighborhood. The once economic vibrancy of the neighborhood can be seen in is cultural landscape along the commercial corridors within the community. The community's struggles can be seen in the once grand but now vacant movie theaters.
Demographic Changes
The changing ethnic makeup of Rogers Park residents parallel the changing demographics of immigrants to the United States throughout history. The earliest settlers, as stated above were largely Irish and Germans. However, "by the late 1960s became home to Russian and Eastern European immigrants." Another change occurred a decade later with the arrival of the current wave of immigrants from Asia and Latin America as well as a growing population of African Americans. Today Rogers Park is a rare find in Chicago in that it is a genuinely diverse neighborhood and has been so for quite some time. The graph below represents the racial diversity of the neighborhood.
Rubric requirements for this page
Background Page Requirements (40 points)
-At least one image (or video)
-Image/video must be relevant to content and either your own or source must be cited
-Text that explains the following:
-Brief history of Chicago (site/situation and growth as a city into an industrial metropolis)
-Brief history of your neighborhood (when was it created, earliest immigrants, demographic and economic shifts)
-Information about your neighborhood’s demographics (race/ethnicity, % of each age group, income, education, etc--you select relevant info)
-Description of the relative location of your neighborhood from the CBD and a description of your neighborhood’s “cultural landscape” or “sense of place”
-Text is in own words or quoted and spelling/grammar is correct
-ALL research is cited on bibliography page
-At least one image (or video)
-Image/video must be relevant to content and either your own or source must be cited
-Text that explains the following:
-Brief history of Chicago (site/situation and growth as a city into an industrial metropolis)
-Brief history of your neighborhood (when was it created, earliest immigrants, demographic and economic shifts)
-Information about your neighborhood’s demographics (race/ethnicity, % of each age group, income, education, etc--you select relevant info)
-Description of the relative location of your neighborhood from the CBD and a description of your neighborhood’s “cultural landscape” or “sense of place”
-Text is in own words or quoted and spelling/grammar is correct
-ALL research is cited on bibliography page