Canaryville

Canaryville is a predominantly Irish American community on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois that is also located within the New City neighborhood of Chicago. The borders of Canaryville are 40th to the 49th Street to the South. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Chicago. Canaryville is a close knit community that has a reputation for being hostile to outsiders. Canaryville enjoyed a reputation as one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city from the late nineteenth through much of the twentieth century.

A largely Irish community on the South Side adjacent to Bridgeport in the Chicago area, it stretches from Fortieth to Forty-Ninth Street between Stewart Avenue and Halsted Street, with the “Black Belt” to the east and the former Union Stock Yard to the west. Given its close proximity to the stockyards, the area's physical environment and economic life were shaped by livestock and meatpacking from the 1860s until the industry's decline in the postwar era. Today a sizeable number of Mexican Americans and Chinese Americans also live within the Canaryville community.

Canaryville's name may originally have derived from the legions of sparrows who populated the area at the end of the nineteenth century, feeding off stockyard refuse and grain from railroad cars, but the term was also applied to the neighborhood's rambunctious youth, its “wild canaries.” Gangs helped establish the neighborhood's truculent reputation, with such crews as The Irish Lords and The Flags S.A.C. Boasting a strong Democratic Party machine throughout the twentieth century, Canaryville also embraced a rich Irish Catholic cultural life centered on St. Gabriel's Parish. Canaryville is a working class neighborhood. It is made up of Irish Catholic families that take care of themselves. Such places that are popular are, Kelly's Pub, Canaryville Club, Flags S.A.C., Flappers, Patty's Pub, The Village, Mitchell's(Bravos),Tuxedo Junction, St. Gabriel School, Graham, and Boyce Park. The neighborhood sticks together. Restaurants such as TnT Pizza and Beef, Pizza Nova Express, and Paisan's Pizza. Canaryville is also close to Comiskey Park, a few blocks away,home of the White Sox.