The Rebirth of Chicago Neighborhoods: Polonia Triangle
“Melting Pot” is a term, which historically has been used to define the United States of America. It became prevalent when there were large waves of immigrants coming to the country to avoid issues in their country and join the land of the free. This term makes more sense when applied to the historical immigration of European groups, but especially as our country has evolved over time, this term is an inappropriate metaphor. The story told is that European immigrants first came to America, they learned English and took on the tradition of the residents around them. The reality, even for European immigrants, is different. Chicago is a great example of why the term “melting pot” is inaccurate. In Chicago, there are a multitude of ethnic neighborhoods that preserve their homeland’s culture. The Polish neighborhoods are fascinating examples of just some of the ethnic neighborhoods in the city of Chicago.
I am taking part in a 10 week visual sociology class which focuses on the city of Chicago. For my final project, I chose to focus on the remnants of the original polish settlement in Chicago called Polish Down Town. The Polish moved further northwest to neighborhoods such as Avondale after the Polish Down Town. Avondale in recent years has diversified to include people from other parts of Eastern Europe and Latin America. It is composed of three smaller neighborhoods. These are Polish Village, Belmont Gardens, and Kosciuszko Park. These three are demographically similar and comprise a 2.00 square mile radius with a population of approximately 40,000 people this area represents a little slice of Poland in the diverse city of Chicago. I am not studying this historic area nor the more heavily Polish areas on the Northwest side because I want to see what is left of the original settlement of the Polish.
I chose to study this area in Chicago because I myself and predominantly Polish and German. A lot about Germany is taught in school and is commonly talked about. Polish history and culture is less common. I want to learn about what it means to be Polish.
This topic is important because it is interesting to study how cultures change without even trying. It is important to see if sociology principles apply to this culture. It is important to see if universal norms are present in this society. Before entering a neighborhood to do sociological observation, it is important to have at least a brief historical understanding of the area which will be studied and the group of people.
Coming to America
Poland is a country located in Eastern Europe. It currently has a population of 38.53 million people. The country itself is a predominantly Catholic country. The Polish started to immigrate to America in the late 1800’s during the time when the switch happened of western Europeans to eastern Europeans immigrating to USA. The Polish settled in Chicago along with other ethnic groups which had previously arrived such as the Germans and Italians. The first wave of Polish Immigration was called Za Chłebem, which means, “for bread.” Many men came first and then sent for their families during the first wave. They were driven to move due to economic and political changes that were happening in their homeland during this time. By the 1930’s Polish people had replaced Germans as the largest ethnic group in Chicago. This happened because the Germans were predominantly male workers while the Polish immigrants had more families. The second wave came after the United States put immigration quotas and WWII displaced Polish families. The third wave took place in the 1980’s as the leadership of Poland was attempting to install a democracy. This wave was called “solidarity immigration” because it made a political statement as people left. This wave of immigration had more families than single men, unlike the other waves (Pacyga 1980).
Polish Chicago
Polish Chicago, commonly referred to as Polonia, takes up a significant amount of the northwest side of Chicago between downtown and O’Hare International Airport. The area currently referred to as Polonia Triangle was the first area of Polish settlement in Chicago during the late 1800's. This area is located in northwest Chicago and it is bound by Division, Ashland and Milwaukee Avenue. This area is part of West Town. This area was the original Polish settlement in Chicago. At its peak, Polish Downtown was the political, social and economic capital of the Polish communities of America.
Polish Downtown was started when Anthony Smarzewski-Schermann settled there in 1851. This area grew quickly and soon was a thriving neighborhood. The area experienced fluctuated success and growth until the start of World War II when there was a surge of immigrants. The Polish area began to decline in numbers not long after. 1960 marks the start of the decline of Polish Downtown and the rise of Avondale, Jefferson Park, and more. The Polish residents or “Poles” started to leave the area after Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics started to move into the area. The families wanted to live in a strictly Polish neighborhood. The xenophobic actions of the Polish who lived in Polish Downtown caused the new neighborhoods they moved to grow quickly causing the Polish region of Chicago to grow geographically.
After doing my library research, I decided to explore the region of Polonia Triangle in the old Polish Downtown to see how the area has changed and how the Polish citizens who stayed in the area maintained their ethnic identity. When the Polish were moving into the area they had conflicts with the neighboring German and Irish immigrants. I wanted to see how the conflict is present in the visual sociology of the area. I also wanted to see how the influx of Hispanics affected the area as well. I also was curious to see the gentrification of the area. I predicted that the area would still be mainly Polish but have Hispanic influences in the visual aspect of the neighborhood.
As someone who recently moved to the Chicago area for college, I was initially not well informed about the Polish areas in Chicago. I decided to ask freshmen who have lived in this area their entire life what they knew about the Polish neighborhoods here. Not one of the six students I talked to knew much information about the Polonia Triangle or Avondale. Most responded saying they had heard of it but that was the extent of their knowledge. As one of the oldest ethnic settlements in the area, I found it peculiar that it is not commonly talked about or visited by residents in the area. I planned to see if anything in the area I visited would give me answers to this question.
Exploration
To complete my observations I decided to travel to the Polonia Triangle area in Chicago. I took the Purple Line El train from the Noyes stop to the Howard stop. I then took the Red Line to the Jackson stop and boarded the Blue Line to the Division stop which exits at the center of the Polonia Triangle. I walked up and down Milwaukee Avenue and explored the surrounding streets, visiting the churches, taking pictures and visiting restaurants. Throughout my time in the neighborhood I learned many things and was surprised by many aspects of the neighborhood.
The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of the train station was the diversity of the people walking around. The whole time I was in the neighborhood walking around, I was pleasantly surprised to see a mix of white, black, and Hispanic people.
The buildings were composed of a mix of older-looking buildings (which I expected) and semi-modern architecture. I was surprised that there were very few examples of very current style buildings. The area looked like it stopped renovations after the 1990's. This was surprising to me. There was one building which was an exception to this statement. An apartment building recently built at 1611 W. Division street is one sign of change in the area.
The first restaurant I walked into was a small cafe which looked like another building built around the 1970's on the outside, but the inside was recently renovated into a modern coffee shop. It was called the Filter Cafe. Both the cafe and the apartment building symbolizes changes happening in the neighborhood which relates to gentrification: the building of new more expensive buildings causing the current residents to move out and inviting people of a higher economic class to move into the area.
As I roamed up and down Milwaukee Avenue, I was surprised to see a large amount of chain stores. I really didn’t expect to see this many in an ethnic neighborhood. I saw fast food stores such as Wendys and Dunkin Donuts, clothing stores such as Foot Locker and signs on the windows of the original shops such as different bakeries. Later in the day I visited a Polish restaurant which had been there during the peak of the neighborhood.
When I walked into Podhalanka, I was greeted by a man and women who were in their mid to late 60's. I sat down at the bar and the man walked up and asked me how hungry I was. He suggested Pierogi and cabbage soup. I followed his advice as he poured me a glass of their homemade prune juice. The hospitality at this restaurant was unlike anything I had experienced before. I chatted with the owner as I waited for my food to come.
He talked about what was happening in their neighborhood. The Polonia Triangle is trying to modernize. This is not to force people out but rather to try to fill the space which was left when the Polish moved to Avondale and the other Polish regions around Chicago. Latinos moved in years ago, but never fully reached the capacity of the area. In an attempt to reenergize the somewhat stagnant community, especially since the recession, changes were being made. As I left the restaurant I kept this in mind as I spent the rest of my time there. I spent my afternoon exploring the area churches such as the Holy Trinity Parish.
The church was one of the first built in the area during the late 1800's when the first wave of Polish immigrants came and faced anger from the German and Irish communities who did not want the Polish to attend their own churches. The Holy Trinity is just one of the examples of a visible manifestation of the ethnic identity which was present in the neighborhood. I was surprised to see a lack of street art which was present in some of the areas we have studied in class. I saw one example, but I was mostly confused as to what it symbolized or what the artist was trying to get across to the public.
As I was walking to the edge of the area I still saw traces of the Polish Roman Catholic Union which was created in a response to the discrimination against their people by the Germans and the Irish.
Overall, I was surprised by my findings. I was expecting to see an older neighborhood with mostly Polish stores present and see either very old buildings or very modern ones. It was really in-between both of these assumptions.
A cultural object is something which, among other things, has the potential to represent an era, a generation, or a community. It can be a tangible object or an idea (Griswold 33). The most prominent cultural object I observed in this area is Polish Catholicism. It is the most prominent aspect of the neighborhood I viewed.
Polish Catholicism was also used as a political response to discrimination. Once the Polish people founded their own church, the area flourished. This also follows Durkheim’s theory that every society must have some sort of collective representation which holds them together and connects them to each other (Griswold 2013: 50ff.). Forming their churches did this. It formed bonds through congregation members meeting people around them who shared a common idea and culture.
I was rather surprised by the lack of ethnic visual culture present in this neighborhood. Visual culture is a cultural representation of a society through the form of paintings, pictures, or buildings.
The community I visited was straddling the line in-between the broader culture and this smaller, more distinct cultural area. It had changed to reflect society as it was flourishing in the mid 1900's, but as the demographics changed, the community stopped growing. Today it is slowly growing and drawing on the broader Chicago culture. The Polonia Triangle area is in a transition period. The neighborhood is moving in modern chain stores to attract the newer generation of people to fill the void left by the people who moved to surrounding Polish areas.
The main question which remained after I visited the area was: Why is the Polish community and culture in Chicago overlooked in stories and studies of Chicago? My theory to this question is that people do not think of it as a subculture. Polish falls under the white caucasian umbrella. It is part of European culture and Poles are considered mainstream whites. Europeans were some of the first immigrants to move to the Chicago area, so current residents have just always thought of them as being a part of Chicago, whereas the latino population is relatively new to the area. The latter are just starting to form their roots and become a part of the neighborhood culture. In many ways the existing infrastructure inherited from the Polish, such as the plethora of Catholic Churches, seems well suited to the predominantly Catholic Hispanic population that has moved into the neighborhood over the past two or three decades.
Final Thoughts
Overall my project shows that people are not always aware of the fact that their culture is formed by a combination of other cultures and those that came before. The findings in this project reflect a community in transition and I think that is important because most people think of ethnic communities as places already occupied by people. If I had more time, I would have liked to visit all of the Polish areas in Chicago. As a college student, most of my free time is taken up with working, volunteering, or studying. It would be a great addition to the project to have visited Avondale, Jefferson Park, and the surrounding areas. It also would have been good to visit another ethnic area to compare neighborhoods. This project has a lot of room for expansion if I had sufficient time. Although visiting my site was nothing like I expected, it was a great experience and I learned a lot.
References
Erdmans, Mary Patrice. 1998. Opposite Poles: Immigrants and Ethnics in Polish Chicago, 1976–1990. University Park: Pennsylvania. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Griswold, Wendy, 2013. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World:Fourth Edition. Thousand Oaks: California. Sage Publication.
Harper, Douglas. 2012. Visual Sociology. New York: New York. Routledge
Pacyga Dominic A. 2005. Encyclopedia of Chicago:Poles. Chicago:IL. Newberry Library.
