West Argyle Street Historic District

The West Argyle Street Historic District is a conservation area in the Uptown Chicago, Illinois. The Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 2010. The district covers an area of ​​about 16 hectares and is roughly bounded by Broadway on the west, Winona Street to the north, Sheridan Road in the east and the Ainslie Street to the south.

History

The area of the historic district was originally developed in the 1880s as a suburb named Argyle Park. This suburb was named by the Chicago Alderman and building contractor James A. Campbell for his ancestors, the Dukes of Argyll in Scotland. The buildings centered around a railway station of the newly opened rail line from Chicago to Evanston the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, which was taken in May 1885 in operation. The settlement was annexed with the rest of Lakeview Township in 1889 by Chicago. 1908, the Northwestern Elevated Railroad from the Wilson Avenue from was expanded to the north, where the tracks of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad were exploited, thus the suburb to the network of Chicago Elevated was connected, and the area of ​​popularity, enjoyed at the population groups who wanted to live on the shores of Lake Michigan, but had limited funds available. The railway track was laid 1914-1922 on a railway embankment.

The Chicago restaurateur Jimmy Wong bought in the 1960s estate in the area and was planning a new birth of the quarter as the New Chinatown. In his vision, a mall was built with pagodas, trees and Reflektierbecken that should replace the empty store fronts. The Hip Sing Association, a Chinese Cultural Association, in 1971 moved its Chicago office here, and around 1974 had Wong and the Hip Sing Association eighty percent of the three blocks to the Argyle Street. Wong then had an accident in which he broke both hips, so he could not pursue his plans. In 1979 Charlie Soo, the founder of the Asian American Small Business Association, the cause of and the area was not only developed as a neighborhood Chinese residents but also Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians and Japanese settled there. Soo tried to convince the Chicago Transit Authority to renovate the station of the elevated railway on Argyle Street, and in 1979 granted the CTA &nbsap; 250,000 U.S. dollars for the renovation. 1981 called the one held annually culinary festival titled Taste of Argyle to life. Mayor Jane Byrne he could elicit finances to repair the sidewalks, the later incumbent Harold Washington, he convinced to fund the restoration of the facades. Because of its commitment to the district, Soo was later often referred to as Mayor of Argyle Street, known as the unofficial mayor of the road. Around 1986, it was assumed that in the Uptown approximately 8000 residents of Chinese and Vietnamese origin lived.

The concentration of Vietnamese restaurants and bakeries, craft shops and shops of Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian and Thai provenance on Argyle Street, the crowd around the station of the elevated railway, has the district gives the nickname of New Chinatown, Little Saigon and Little Vietnam.