Social Justice Documentation Project

I interviewed my father about what life was like for him growing up. He lived in a few neighborhoods in Chicago and I wanted to know what that was like.

What neighborhood(s) have you grown up in?

I lived in Northcenter for the first part of my childhood. Then we moved to Mozart and Byron. After living there for awhile we moved to Summerdale and Ashland for about a month, and ended up moving to Irving and Whipple while I continued to grow up. Finally, we moved to Hoyne and Addison which, as you know, is the house we live in now.

How come you moved so much growing up?

Well in our first house we were renting and it got too small for us to live there. I have two sisters and a brother and once we were all born it got too small. Than we moved to our second house and [my sister] Rita began crying because she didn’t like the schools and wanted to leave. Than the house we moved to after that got really crappy and we moved to the house on Hoyne.

What were the neighborhoods like?

They were all blue collar, white, working neighborhoods, but that was in the beginning. They weren’t rich but they weren’t poor.

What was life like while you were living in these neighborhoods?

Well, the house on Irving and Whipple was good. It was like small town/mainstream America. Everything was within 5 blocks: the butcher, the baker, the shoe repair store, Woolworth’s, the music store, the drug store, the hardware store, the cleaners, a bar on every corner. We had everything we needed.

Did you notice or remember any changes that occurred?

It started to change while we were living there. It seemed like more Mexican families were moving in but that didn’t really affect anything except that the baker’s left and there was a Jewel there but they were building bigger ones elsewhere; little by little the bigger stores started goin’.

I know you hung out a lot in Lincoln Square, what was that like?

Lincoln Square was called German Town. It was all Germans; German stores and German restaurants.

What about Prosser where you went to high school?

Prosser was Polish and Italian. There were a lot of factories and railroad yards. That area was a changing area. The African Americans were on the other side of the railroad tracks. It was changing. It was white flight at that time. A lot of the families that lived in the small houses began leaving. Now, it’s mostly African American. The factories are gone and I think most of the railroad yards are gone. It’s mostly low-income people now because it’s a low income area now.