Picture from Chicago Tribune Web Site

CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOODS - PROFILE

77. EDGEWATER

BOUNDARIES:  Edgewater's boundaries are Devon Ave. on the north, Ravenswood on the west, Foster on the south, and the lake on the east.

Basic Demographics: According to the 2000 Census there are 51,730 people in the Edgewater Neighborhood.  This is a very diverse area ( 16.5 Percent Hispanic, 20.8 Percent Black, 11.5 Percent Asian, 4.7 Percent Multiracial, and 46.5 Percent White).  The area has 7445 people under 18 (14.39 percent).

HISTORY:  Edgewater, along the lake between Rogers Park and Uptown, is numerically out of order on the list of community areas because it was the most recent one designated a distinct area.  It was broken off from Uptown in 1980.  The neighborhood's recorded residential history dates back to 1848 when former Luxembourger Nicholas Krantz built a residence at Clark and Ridge.  It was seven miles from downtown Chicago and thus was called the Seven Mile House.  Immigrants from Luxembourg settled here and founded a parish in the middle of what is now Devon Avenue.  A Catholic church, St. Henry's was moved to the corner of Devon and Ridge.  Its cemetery holds the tombstone stories of these pioneers.  Edgewater was annexed to Chicago in 1889.  The area had a beautiful lakefront and beach a block east of Sheridan Road.  A famous hotel, the pink stuccoed Edgewater Beach, capitalized on the beach.  The hotel complex with its boardwalk was widely considered the finest resort in the Midwest.  When Lake Shore Drive was extended north in the 1950s, the hotel was cut off from its beach and slowly withered away.  It was demolished in 1969.  "Andersonville" between Bryn Mawr and Foster on Clark, is noted for its Swedish restaurants, gift shops, chamber of commerce and bakeries.  Not as predominantly Swedish as it once was, Andersonville retains the aura of Sweden and continues the long-honored tradition of taking pride in the neighborhood's neatness.  Andersonville was named after a local public school. 

Edgewater has been a port-of-entry community for a wide-range of  immigrant groups who enter and then move on.  The latest influx of  people are from South East Asia and the Middle East.  Besides the original population of German, Swedish and Irish descendants, Edgewater today includes American Indians, Hispanics, Koreans, Greeks, blacks and Jews. The influx of minority groups into Edgewater during the 1970s and 1980s, without rapid White flight, makes the neighborhood one of the most racially stable and ethnically diverse communities in the city. Adding to the ethnic mix is the increasing social mix of married couples without children, a low percentage of single-mother headed households, and a growing middle-class gay and lesbian population which is located mainly in Andersonville. 

Broadway Avenue divides the community in terms of the quality and type of housing.  Between 1950 and 1970 many large homes east of Sheridan Road along Lake Michigan were torn down and a strip of highrise apartments was constructed.  This created three clearly defined sections of Edgewater: the highrise apartments on Sheridan; the multi-family and midrise apartment complexes along the Winthrop-Kenmore corridor, including many subsidized housing units; and single-family homes west of Broadway..  With internal pockets of both low-income and middle/upper income residents, home selling prices suggest that Edgewater is on an economic upswing.

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For further research information go to: 

Internet Search:  Historic Chicago Neighborhoods
Chapter 7:  Rogers Park, Edgewater, Uptown, and Chicago Lawn, Chicago - Michael T. Maley & Michael  Leachman
From:  Cityscape:  A Jounal of Policy Development & Research, HUD, Vol. 4 No. 2

Edgewater Historical Society
5358 N. Ashland
Chicago, IL
773-907-1872
email:  Info@EdgewaterHistory.org