Little Italy, Chicago

History

Taylor Street became known as Chicago's Little Italy as the primary destination for Italian immigrants in the city. During the mass European migration around the start of the 20th century, the Near West Side was home to Italians, Greeks, and Jews, but other groups left by the early 1900s, leaving the Italian enclave as the dominant community. Italians began arriving in Chicago in the 1850s, and by 1880 there were 1,357 Italians in the city. The foreign-born Italian population reached 16,008 in 1900 and peaked at 73,960 in 1930.

Italian cookery became one of the most popular ethnic cuisines in America by the 1920s, and by 1927 Italians owned 500 grocery stores, 257 restaurants, and 240 pastry shops in the city. The Italian population in Little Italy peaked in the 1950s and 1960s but began declining after the decision to build the University of Illinois in the area was finalized in 1963. The area was also home to the Genna crime family.

Landmarks

Two significant Catholic churches in Little Italy were Our Lady of Pompeii and Holy Guardian Angel, the latter founded by Mother Cabrini and established in 1898 as the first Italian congregation in Chicago. Holy Guardian Angel was razed for expressway construction, while Our Lady of Pompeii became the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii. Hull House, Jane Addams' settlement house, was also located in the area. The National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame, founded in 1977 in Elmwood Park, was later relocated to a new building in Little Italy.

Italian enclaves in Chicago

Taylor Street is popularly known as Chicago's Little Italy, but other areas also had significant Italian populations. On the Near North Side, a Sicilian enclave called Little Sicily or Little Hell was home to 20,000 Italians by 1920 but no longer exists due to the construction of the Cabrini–Green public housing projects. An Italian enclave along Grand Avenue to Chicago Avenue between Aberdeen Street and Washtenaw Avenue still features private men's clubs and hand-made sausage markets.

On the Lower West Side, a community called Heart of Italy or Little Tuscany, centered on 24th and Oakley, is composed mostly of Northern Italian immigrants. The largest concentration of Italian businesses and residents in present-day Chicago may be along Harlem Avenue on the Northwest Side and in neighboring Elmwood Park. Another area from the river to the Dan Ryan, 26th to 39th, excluding the Wentworth Gardens housing project, has a large Italian population, with the Old Italian American Club founded by Angelo La Pietra in the early 1980s.