Everything Chicago. Mostly random. Always local.

Everything Chicago. Mostly random. Always local.

Living in West Town: A Local’s Guide to Community Area 24

West Town is Chicago’s Community Area 24, the official umbrella over Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, East Village and a slice of the Humboldt Park neighborhood. Living here means 19th-century workers’ cottages, two- and three-flats and old mansions, four Blue Line stops strung along Milwaukee Avenue, and a park of roughly 200 acres on the western edge. Most of it east of Wood Street was inside Chicago’s original 1837 city limits.

Housing: cottages, flats and mansions with extra doorbells

West Town’s housing is mostly old and small-scale: workers’ cottages, two- and three-flats and some big Victorian houses, with new buildings filling in one lot at a time.

Ukrainian Village’s City landmark district, designated in 2002, protects a streetscape of workers’ cottages, two- and three-flats, single-family houses and larger apartment buildings. Nearly one in three of its buildings was developed by William D. Kerfoot, who reopened his office the day after the Great Fire under a sign reading “All gone but, wife, children and energy.”

East Village’s district (2006) covers four stretches of small, simply detailed cottages and flats on Winchester, Wolcott, Honore and Hermitage, between Chicago Avenue and Division.

Wicker Park went bigger. After 1871, large brick and stone mansions went up there, and Hoyne Avenue earned the name “Beer Baron Row.” In the 1950s many of those mansions were divided into apartments and rooming houses.

Getting around: four Blue Line stops and The 606

The Blue Line’s O’Hare branch stops four times in West Town: Damen, Division, Chicago and Grand. Damen, at 1558 N. Damen, is up on the elevated structure and has served riders since 1895. The other three are underground, in the Milwaukee-Dearborn subway, which opened in 1951. The CTA renovated Grand, Chicago and Division in 2019–20.

Above the subway runs Milwaukee Avenue, the diagonal that makes Damen/North and Ashland/Division six-way intersections. It’s often called an old Native trail; WTTW’s Geoffrey Baer reports that the stretch from Six Corners to downtown was more likely built across open prairie as a plank road.

Part of The 606, the elevated Bloomingdale Trail, falls inside West Town. It runs 2.7 miles along Bloomingdale Avenue (1800 N), from Ashland to Ridgeway, on a railroad embankment raised from 1910 to 1913. It opened on June 6, 2015, and in January it’s the only straight line around here without a stoplight.

Main streets: Milwaukee, Division, Chicago and Grand

Milwaukee Avenue is the main street, and much of it is a landmark. The Milwaukee Avenue District (2008) covers mostly the 1200–1600 blocks of North Milwaukee plus pieces of Damen and North Avenue. Its buildings date from 1870 to 1929 and run from Italianate to Art Deco.

Division Street crosses Milwaukee at Ashland, the heart of what was once called Polish Downtown, where the Chopin Theatre sits at 1543 W. Division. Farther west, past Western, Division becomes Paseo Boricua, a half-mile stretch to California marked by two steel Puerto Rican flags. They went up in 1995, stand nearly 60 feet tall, weigh 50 tons each and became Chicago landmarks in 2022. The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture is at 3015 W. Division, inside Humboldt Park.

Chicago Avenue has the West Town library (1625 W. Chicago) and Eckhart Park (1330 W. Chicago). Grand Avenue runs past Smith Park and, much farther east, crosses Milwaukee and Halsted at the Grand Blue Line stop.

Parks: Humboldt, Eckhart, Wicker and Smith

West Town has 18 Park District parks, and the biggest is a surprise: by the City’s community area boundaries, Humboldt Park (the park) sits almost entirely in West Town, not in the Humboldt Park community area next door. The Park District’s website lists it at 197 acres; the Park District’s own 2022 map data, used in the list below, counts about 211.

William Le Baron Jenney planned it in 1871. Jens Jensen later added the long “prairie river” lagoon and commissioned the Prairie School boat house that still stands. The inland beach reopened in June 2024 after four years closed.

Eckhart Park (8.85 acres) has an indoor pool in a natatorium by Illinois State Architect William Carbys Zimmerman.

Wicker Park (4.74 acres) started as a triangle donated by Charles and Joel Wicker in 1870. It had a lake until 1890; now it has a fenced dog area.

Smith Park (about 10.5 acres, 2526 W. Grand) sits on a former city dump. It and Pulaski Park have outdoor pools.

Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and the official map

Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and East Village are neighborhoods; West Town is the official community area that contains them. On the City’s approximate neighborhood map, it holds those three, a neighborhood also called West Town, and about a fifth of the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Bucktown is not in it. The City puts Bucktown in Logan Square, though the Encyclopedia of Chicago’s West Town entry mentions “the Bucktown section north of North Avenue” as part of West Town’s story. And the library branch at 1701 N. Milwaukee is called Bucktown-Wicker Park.

Sources draw neighborhood lines differently. The Encyclopedia puts Wicker Park between Ashland and Western, Division and Bloomingdale. It puts Ukrainian Village between Division, Damen, Chicago and Western, about 160 acres. Mayor Jane Byrne made Ukrainian Village an official neighborhood on January 18, 1983, the first such designation in city history. Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, designed by Louis Sullivan, and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral are both there.

West Town at a glance

West Town is official community area 24 of Chicago’s 77. Inside its lines: 4 CTA L stations, 18 Chicago Park District parks, 2 public library branches and 24 Chicago Public Schools buildings. Neighborhood names on the City’s map that fall at least partly inside: East Village, Humboldt Park, Ukrainian Village, West Town, Wicker Park.

L stations

  • Chicago: Blue Line (not accessible)
  • Damen: Blue Line (not accessible)
  • Division: Blue Line (not accessible)
  • Grand: Blue Line (not accessible)

Parks

  • Humboldt Park: 211 acres; beach, outdoor pool, playground, gymnasium, community center; on the western edge; despite the name, it sits almost entirely inside West Town, not the Humboldt Park community area next door
  • The 606 (Bloomingdale Trail): 16.8 acres
  • Smith Park: 10.5 acres; outdoor pool, playground, gymnasium
  • Eckhart Park: 8.8 acres; indoor pool, playground, gymnasium, community center
  • Wicker Park: 4.7 acres; playground, dog-friendly area, gymnasium, community center
  • Pulaski Park: 4.2 acres; outdoor pool, gymnasium
  • Walsh Park: 2.2 acres; playground, dog-friendly area
  • Commercial Club Playground: 1.5 acres; playground, gymnasium, community center
  • Maplewood Park: 1.3 acres; playground, community center
  • Dean Park: 0.66 acres; playground, community center
  • Snowberry Park: 0.22 acres; community center
  • Palmer Park: 0.16 acres; community center
  • Smaller parks and mini-parks: Bickerdike Square, Park No. 529, Superior Park, Park No. 536, Western Park, Park No. 399

Library

Public schools

These are the Chicago Public Schools buildings located inside the community area. Being near a school is not the same as being in its attendance boundary: to see which schools serve a specific address, use the CPS School Locator.

More on the neighborhood

Sources: Encyclopedia of Chicago: West Town; Encyclopedia of Chicago: Wicker Park; Encyclopedia of Chicago: Ukrainian Village; City of Chicago: Wicker Park District (landmark details); City of Chicago: Ukrainian Village District (landmark details); City of Chicago: East Village District (landmark details); City of Chicago: Milwaukee Avenue District (landmark details); City of Chicago: The 606 opening press release (June 6, 2015); The 606: History; Chicago Park District: Humboldt (Alexander Von) Park; Chicago Park District: Eckhart (Bernard) Park; Chicago Park District: Wicker (Charles, Joel) Park; Chicago Park District: Smith (Joseph Higgins) Park; Block Club Chicago: Humboldt Park’s Puerto Rican flags are officially Chicago landmarks (July 21, 2022); WTTW: Ask Geoffrey: What Exactly Does Division Street Divide? (2016); DNAinfo: Damen Blue Line station overhaul (Sept. 2014); Chicago-L.org: Division (Milwaukee-Dearborn subway); Chicago-L.org: Grand (O’Hare branch); East Village Association: Alderman adds Polish Triangle to landmark mix (2008); City of Chicago, community area boundaries; City of Chicago, neighborhood boundaries; City of Chicago, CTA ‘L’ stops; Chicago Park District parks; Chicago Public Library locations; CPS school locations, 2025–26. Lists checked October 19, 2026; park features are from Park District data last updated in 2022.