Polish Downtown (Chicago)

Polish Downtown was Chicago’s oldest and most prominent Polish settlement. Polish Downtown was the political, cultural and social capital of not only Poles in Chicago but for Polish Americans throughout North America as well.Fact|date=October 2008 Centered around Polonia Triangle at the intersection of Division, Ashland and Milwaukee Avenue, the headquarters for almost every major Polish organization in the United States was clustered within its vicinity, beginning with the Polish National Alliance to the Polish Daily News [Granacki, Victoria: Chicago's Polish Downtown, Arcadia Press, 2004, p. 6-7] .

Description

The area of Polish Downtown shifted and expanded over time as Polish immigration to Chicago exploded along with other Eastern Europeans as Chicago's population boomed following the Civil War. Historian Edward R. Kantowicz gave the following boundaries for Polish Downtown: Racine to the east, Fullerton to the North, Kedzie to the West and Grand Avenue to the South [Edward R. Kantowicz Polish American Politics in Chicago, Map on p. 16] .

History

The beginnings of the "Polish Patch" that eventually became Polish Downtown are traced back to Anthony Smarzewski-Schermann who settled in the area in 1851. John Joseph Parot described the area at the time as follows in his book "Polish Catholics in Chicago":

"Schermann's property and surrounding environment must have reminded him of many Polish farming communities. From the still undeveloped and sparsely settled prairie on the outskirts of ante-bellum Chicago, he could see nothing but grassland stretching westward to the horizon. East of his land stood a thickly wooded area guarding both the both banks of the nearby North Branch of the Chicago River which swung noose like around Goose Island. The virgin land between Schermann's settlement and the river was populated at the time only by chickens and cattle belonging to neighboring farms; fifty years later this same land would support the highest population density in the city-more than 450 Polish immigrants on each acre of land, packed into tenement houses. But in the 1850s Schermann's rural outpost was a picture of serenity His only outlet was Plank Road, a clumsily built highway actually constructed of from wooden planks- a far cry from the bustling commercial thoroughfare later called Milwaukee Avenue along which Polish merchants in the 1920s built their own "Polish Downtown." Schermann's closest neighbors were other Polish settlers, perhaps landless tenant farmers, numbering approximately thirty families during the American Civil War. [Parot, Joseph, J. "Polish Catholics in Chicago, 1850-1920, Northwestern University Press (1981), p. 20] "

This rustic idyll would change dramatically as Chicago's population would grow exponentially in the period following the end of the Civil War. Fueled by the dramatic expansion of industry as well as its central role as a transportation hub, immigrants, predominately from Eastern and Southern Europe literally flooded into Chicago [Pogorzelski, Daniel and Maloof, John: Portage Park, Arcadia Press, 2008, p. 73] . By 1890, half of all of Chicago's Poles lived in Polish Downtown. The centrality of this area as the site of initial settlement for the large numbers of newly arriving Polish immigrants was reinforced after the first Polish parish, St. Stanislaus Kostka was founded in 1867 and Holy Trinity Polish Mission a few short years later in 1872 [Pacyga, Dominic "Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880-1922" University of Chicago Press, 1991,p. 126-127] and eventually led both to become the largest parishes in the world with a combined membership of over 60,000 in the early 1900s [Granacki, Victoria: Chicago's Polish Downtown, Arcadia Press, 2004, p. 7] . Polish Downtown was in every way "a classic ghetto"; in 1898, eleven contiguous precincts which contained the heart of the neighborhood at Polonia Triangle was 86.3% Polish, with one of these precincts reported as 99.9% Polish with only one non-pole among 2,500 inhabitants [Holli, Melvin G. and d'Ardt, Peter, "Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait",Fourth Edition, William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company (1995), p.175-176] .

Cultural significance

Historian Edward R. Kantowicz wrote in his essay "Polish Chicago: Survival through Solidarity" that "Polish Downtown was to Chicago Poles what the Lower East Side was to New York's Jews. [Holli, Melvin G. and d'Ardt, Peter: "Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait",Fourth Edition, William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company (1995), p.176] " Victoria Granacki in her book Polish Downtown went so far as to state that "nearly all Polish undertakings of any consequence in the U.S. during that time either started or were directed from this part of Chicago's near northwest side" [Granacki, Victoria: Chicago's Polish Downtown, Arcadia Press, 2004, p. 7] .

Polish Downtown was also significant in the literary output of Nelson Algren who lived in the area. Polish bars that Algren frequented for his notorious gambling, such as the Bit of Poland on Milwaukee Avenue figured in such stories such as "Never Come Morning" and "The Man With the Golden Arm" [Shay, Art:"Nelson Algren's Chicago", University of Illinois Press 1988, p. 118] . Algren, who famously compared Ashland avenue to "a bridge between Warsaw and Chicago [Shay, Art:"Nelson Algren's Chicago", University of Illinois Press 1988, p 118] had a complex if not troubled relationship with Chicago Polonia; his second wife Amanda Kontowicz was Polish, and would listen to old Polish love songs sung by an elderly waitress while gambling away [Shay, Art:"Nelson Algren's Chicago", University of Illinois Press 1988, p. 119] . Writing about the area's Polish American underclass against the background of prevalent anti-immigrant xenophobia was taken by Poles as blatant Anti-Polonism. [ [https://securesite.chireader.com/cgi-bin/Archive/abridged2.bat?path=1998/981120/ALGREN&search=%22polish%20triangle%22 Reader Archive-Extract: 1998/981120/ALGREN ] ] and resulted in the book "Never Come Morning" being banned for decades from the Chicago Public Library system over the massive outcry by Chicago Polonia [ [https://securesite.chireader.com/cgi-bin/Archive/abridged2.bat?path=1998/981120/ALGREN&search=%22polish%20triangle%22 Reader Archive-Extract: 1998/981120/ALGREN ] ] . Later controversies to commemorate Algren would bring these old wounds back to surface; first when an attempt was made to rename the portion of Evergreen Street where Algren lived to Algren Street [Lévy, Bernard-Henri. [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200505/levy In the Footsteps of Tocqueville] , The Atlantic Monthly, May 2005] and more recently when Polonia Triangle was to be renamed to honor the deceased author [ [https://securesite.chireader.com/cgi-bin/Archive/abridged2.bat?path=1998/981120/ALGREN&search=%22polish%20triangle%22 Reader Archive-Extract: 1998/981120/ALGREN ] ] .

Religion

Polish Downtown is perhaps most noted for its opulent "Polish Cathedrals", magnificently ornate structures that dazzle many of those driving through the area along the Kennedy Expressway. These buildings stand as a testament to the size and religious zeal of many of these newly arrived immigrant Poles. The combined membership of the exclusively Polish Roman Catholic parishes of Polish Downtown together had over 100,000 parishioners in 1918, all located within a one-mile radius. [Granacki, Victoria: Chicago's Polish Downtown, Arcadia Press, 2004, p. 9] . Although most of these are Roman Catholic churches, a schism that escalated into violence by parishioners of St. Hedwig's Church led to the founding of an independent Polish Catholic parish which eventually joined the Polish National Catholic Church. Raised to the status of a cathedral, the parish erected a new building designed by famed architect J.G Steinbach in 1930. The Cathedral of All Saints still stands today, occupied by the Presbyterian Church of America who bought the building in 1993.

References