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Lincoln Square is a neighborhood located on the North Side of Chicago. Greater Lincoln Square encompasses the smaller neighborhoods of Ravenswood Gardens, Ravenswood Manor, Bowmanville and Budlong Woods. Although it is sometimes known by these other names the City of Chicago officially designated it as Lincoln Square in 1925. About 44,000 people live in the neighborhood along with over 1,000 small and medium sized businesses. It is accessible through the Brown Line of the 'L'. It is bounded by Peterson Avenue and Bryn Mawr Avenue on the north, Montrose Avenue on the south, Ravenswood Avenue on the east and the Chicago River on the west. It is somewhat trendy and its housing stock consists of private residences and small apartment buildings.

The commercial heart of Lincoln Square is located at the intersection of Lawrence, Western and Lincoln Avenues. Lincoln Avenue south east of this intersection is home to a wide variety of restaurants and shops. Lincoln Square is historically known as a heavily German influenced and populated neighborhood, but now one is just as likely to see shops catering to Thai or Middle Eastern cultures. Still, the neighborhood is home to a number of German businesses, notably the Chicago Brauhaus, Meyer's Delicatessen, Merz Apothecary and Lutz Continental Café, and is the home of the Chicago branches of DANK (the German-American National Congress) and the Niedersachsen Club. The German-language weekly newspaper Amerika-Woche was born in Lincoln Square in 1972, though its original headquarters above the Brauhaus is now only a bureau.

Neighborhoods

Budlong Woods

Budlong Woods is a neighborhood of the Lincoln Square community area. It is named after the Budlong farming family of Chicago, who owned the Budlong Pickle Company.

Ravenswood

Ravenswood is a neighborhood encompassing Lincoln Square along with a portion of the Uptown community area, between Ravenswood Avenue and either Ashland Avenue or Clark Street, depending on the source. It is bounded on the south by Montrose Avenue and on the north by Foster Avenue; historically it ended at Western Avenue, the Lake View township line. Immediately to the west are Ravenswood Gardens (between Western and the Chicago River) and Ravenswood Manor (between the River and Sacramento Avenue). Ravenswood Manor is part of the Albany Park community area.

Ravenswood was developed with the intention of becoming an exclusive commuter suburb, but between 1868 and 1906, it was a sparsely populated area of the city largely occupied by farms and small homesteads. A development boom followed the construction of the Ravenswood elevated train line in 1906 and 1907, and the area filled up with small houses, two-flats and apartment buildings. Lincoln Square began to form as a commercial community in the heart of Ravenswood shortly after World War II. In the 1920s, the entire Ravenswood/Lincoln Square area was designated by the city as the "Lincoln Square" community area. By the 1990s, the name "Lincoln Square" had acquired the cachet of gentrification, while "Ravenswood" had come to be associated with late 20th century blight. As a result, even those parts of the area that are not in Lincoln Square proper are often referred to in real estate advertising as "Lincoln Square," and there is no longer a clear consensus on what "Ravenswood" comprises: to some it now refers specifically to Ravenswood Gardens and Ravenswood Manor, west of Lincoln Square proper, while to others it refers to the area around Ravenswood Avenue, east of Lincoln Square, where the Ravenswood Metra station (formerly the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad) is located.

Points of interest

Hospitals

Schools

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Lincoln Square, Chicago".

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