GETTING TO KNOW AVONDALE

What’s the Appeal? Avondale was long a somewhat overlooked slice of Chicago’s Northwest Side, but that situation has been changing with increasing speed over the last 20 years. Its location immediately west of North Center and south of Logan Square, two of the city’s “hotter” neighborhoods, along with its excellent access to both the Kennedy Expressway and CTA Blue Line, have made Avondale an extremely attractive, lower-cost alternative for homebuyers and renters. The result has been a spurt of new residential development, both single-family homes and multi-unit buildings. Avondale also offers excellent shopping, with a convenient mix of small stores and eateries along Milwaukee and Elston avenues and big-box retailers. And increasingly, Avondale is attracting adventurous eateries, including high-end offerings, such as Parachute, and more moderately priced but well regarded alternatives, like Kuma’s Corner and Fat Rice.

Where Is It? Avondale sits on the west bank of the North Branch of the Chicago River between Diversey Avenue and Addison Street. Its western border follows the Soo Line rail tracks from Diversey north to Belmont, then jogs east to Pulaski Road where it continues north to Addison. The west end of the community is part of the Belmont Gardens neighborhood.

What’s in the Name? Twenty years before it became part of Chicago, Avondale was incorporated as a separate village in 1869. It likely was named in memory of a terrible coal mining disaster that took place near Plymouth, Pennsylvania, in September of that year at the Avondale Colliery, where 108 men died in a fire. At the time, it was the worst mining disaster in American history, attracting worldwide attention and contributing to the early development of the American labor movement and improved mine safety rules.

Who Were the Earliest Residents? The first settler in the area, Abraham Harris, arrived in 1853, and early development of Avondale was focused along Milwaukee Avenue, originally a meandering Indian trail that was later straightened and turned into a plank toll road. The same is true of Elston Avenue. The paving of these roads encouraged farmers to turn the former prairieland into fields. Before long, several railroad lines were built west of the river running parallel to Milwaukee Avenue. The road running along the North Western Railroad right of way was named Avondale Ave., and parts of it remain, although sections of it were replaced by the Kennedy Expressway, which was built just east of the rail line. Development in the area accelerated greatly once Avondale was annexed to Chicago in 1889, with many industries moving in to take advantage of both the rail and river access. Not surprisingly, the adjoining residential areas then developed as working class communities and attracted many immigrants. Initially, those were Germans, Swedes and Austrians. A bit later, many were Poles, who eventually became the dominant ethnic group. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, Avondale experienced an influx of Hispanic residents who were the largest group at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Claims to Fame: Avondale became one of Chicago’s first racially integrated communities when a group of about 20 African-American families settled just east of Milwaukee Avenue in the early 1880s and built the community’s first church known as the Allen Church, following in the religious tradition of Richard Allen, a former slave from Delaware who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794 in Philadelphia, Pa. While the toll road was a key to the area’s development, it also was a source of great friction between its owners and users. In 1888, Amos Snell, a wealthy landowner who had gained control of the road, was found murdered in his home, a crime that was never solved. Then in 1890, a group of 200 residents, most likely farmers angered by the cost of tolls on the Milwaukee Avenue plank road, dressed up as Indians, burned down the tollgate and gate house at Fullerton and Milwaukee, then destroyed the other tollgates over the next few days. On a happier note, Avondale more recently attracted thousands of visitors annually to the now vanished but much loved Olsen Park and Waterfall, built at Pulaski and Diversey in the 1930s and finally closed in 1971. Its builder was Walter E. Olsen, whose Olsen Rug Company headquarters shared the site. At its opening, the park was symbolically deeded back to Native Americans in observance of the 100th anniversary of the expulsion of the native tribes west of the Mississippi River at the conclusion of the Blackhawk War.