Topic: Chicago: The Loop and Wicker Park

[Keith M.]

Since it costs over $400 for a brief return flight from Mpls to Cbus, I went with Megabus and included an overnight stay each way and even including coffee shops, restaurants, bars, and the hostel it's a good deal cheaper still. So I did a little research and picked out a couple of neighborhoods to check out and the 1st is Wicker Park. But first, some shots of The Loop: bustling during the day, but dead at night (at least the southern portion is).



























The Damen station in the heart of Wicker Park: be sure to know which streets go north, south, southeast, northwest, east and west. Didn't get lost at all myself. The neighborhood has a reputation for the amount of hipsters there and of course, yuppies have made some inroads here.






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Oh wait, yes, that was a Back to the Future DeLorean just sitting there in the shop.



Time to head west for food and beer.











Life-size marshmallow peep.



















Chicago style tofu on focaccia: quite good.





Back to the hostel.

[ColDayMan]

Well done!

[NorthAndre]

Wonderful pics. I see you stayed at the HI. I liked staying there back before I moved here

[wootie]

Nice!  Was just there myself a few weeks ago.  Handlebar and The Worm Hole are both great!!

[mrnyc]

you were hostelling - very good!

[Cinncinnatus]

Chicago .. I was there  a lot of times .
my friend is the Vice President of SEARS ...

[surfohio]

WIcker Park looks to have super personality.

Thanks for posting!!

[neilworms]

^-You just happened to be right in the area of where my apartment is.  I'm going to miss wicker park, moving down to nearby Noble Square/Ukrainian Village thanks to astronomical increases in rents due to a tight real estate rental market.

[NorthAndre]

Funny you mention that.  I had a friend in Noble Square ranting about rent increases and moved down just south of Chicago Ave.  I was at Five Star recently and just shocked how that neighborhood has changed. 

[neilworms]

-^I thought Just south of Chicago and east of Ashland was still Noble Square.  Is it actually the East Village?

I was getting to the point where a few years ago I could have afforded a really awesome place in Wicker, but sadly I think I'm going to have to wait at least a few years longer...

[TBideon]

I can't believe how expensive Wicker Park has gotten. You should look at East Humboldt Park if you want the Wicker Park experience of ten years ago (inexpensive, a close walk to the cool parts of Wicker Park, a closer walk to some VERY rough areas, lots of hipsters, growing white population, etc).

[Keith M.]

Yeah, Humboldt Park on the east side next to Wicker Park is much different than the west side: I'm not sure where the dividing line is but I was already set on WP and didn't feel like having to research good vs really bad areas since I was visiting in the late afternoon and wanting to get a drink. I also hear Logan Square, like East Humboldt Park is where you'll find hipsters and others who were priced out of Wicker Park. I couldn't get over how eerily quiet the streets get once you go just a block away from a bustling commercial area: unnerving. Part of that came from a guy trying to make his way over to panhandle me on a rather empty street after getting turned down by a couple of other people loudly saying, "Hey, sir! You in the blue shirt! Sir!" while I just briskly walked forward without giving him attention figuring it's f$&king Chicago with millions of people and you're asking for the guy in the blue shirt: why that couldn't be me!

Oh, and Ohio's downtowns can easily match (maybe even best) Chicago's: still can't get over how dead it was at night ("but, but it's mainly a financial district blah blah blah", yeah, I don't care, it's Chicago).

[TBideon]

Yeah, you'll get that element everywhere but the bums and street people are mostly downtown. HP has a bad gang problem though it's not like Austin or Englewood. Logan Square is great too - a bit more residential than WP but with more hipsters - but you always need to be cautious, especially this summer. Hell, they had a murder at the Lincoln park zoo for crying out loud!

[neilworms]

Oh, and Ohio's downtowns can easily match (maybe even best) Chicago's: still can't get over how dead it was at night ("but, but it's mainly a financial district blah blah blah", yeah, I don't care, it's Chicago).

Read more: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,27585.0.html#ixzz20oWgOAhN

All the action in Chicago's downtown is north of the river - river north/the gold coast/mag mile - that's where it really has the feeling of MidTown Manhattan.   The South Loop hostel you stayed at is a bit underdeveloped, and what's there closes too early.  The folks with money in that part of town (read not students) are older anyways and there is less demand for late night stuff, and I'm guessing the rents are too high to support as much stuff for the student crowd - also its off the beaten path for tourists - they go to the area north of the river.

Its taken a few years to solidify but last couple times I was in Logan Square it was almost all hipster, they are slowly leaving Wicker and going there.

[City Blights]

Wicker reminds me of Northern Kentucky with lesser architecture.  Still, a really nice area with good nightlife.

[neilworms]

^-A  Walnut Hills in its heyday is probably a much better comparison as both have extremely dense commercial blocks surrounded by less dense residential streets.   Covington's Madison street isn't too bad a comparison but I think it would  be denser if not for the massive parking lot demos past the main drag (which really depress me, the area has a real 'Boston' kind of vibe to it if it were more active and had better transit).

[City Blights]

Walnut Hills residential doesn't match up as well with Wicker as NKY's.  NKY is pretty dense.

[Keith M.]

North of the river technically isn't "Downtown" is it? The Loop ends at the river, as far as I knew. Still, it has 29,000 residents and is noticeably deader than Downtown Mpls: 28,000 residents. During the day it's very big city, though with both crowds and big buildings.

Is Northern KY full of hipsters and yuppies? I can see the comparison to Walnut Hills, which has more consistently stately architecture. I'll never understand how that strip isn't already one of the best in the region: wouldn't be to hard to lure the hipsters there once Logan Park goes the way of Wicker Park, or until Northside runs out of space.

[City Blights]

North of the river technically isn't "Downtown" is it? The Loop ends at the river, as far as I knew. Still, it has 29,000 residents and is noticeably deader than Downtown Mpls: 28,000 residents. During the day it's very big city, though with both crowds and big buildings.

Is Northern KY full of hipsters and yuppies? I can see the comparison to Walnut Hills, which has more consistently stately architecture. I'll never understand how that strip isn't already one of the best in the region: wouldn't be to hard to lure the hipsters there once Logan Park goes the way of Wicker Park, or until Northside runs out of space.

I ask you, are the residential structures of Walnut Hills similar to Wicker?  The answer is no.

NKY has it's fair share of young professionals, but is it thriving in the manner that Wicker is?  No.  Wicker is lined with rows and garden units.  NKY has tons of rows and townhomes.  The commercial streets of NKY are powerful and extremely rich in architecture.  Some of the finest architecture in Cincinnati is in NKY.  I don't see this Walnut Hills comparison.  Walnut and Wicker are markedly different in feel and style despite Walnut being blessed with fancy and large-scale commercial districts.  Wicker in totality has much more in common with NKY.  Is Walnut Hills filled with hipsters?

[neilworms]

I guess the east side of Wicker does feel a bit more like NKY.  Though the two neighborhoods are of different architectural eras.   There are only a small number of Cincinnati-like detached Italianates, (there are way more gabled roof ones than the "flat front" style in Cincy) there are a lot more workers cottages, and newer larger apartment buildings post 1890s when the EL was pushed through.   I've researched it a bit, there is very little left in Chicago prior to 1890, the majority of older areas were torn down either due to high rise construction or massive urban renewal mid century.  Cincinnati has a lot more stuff that is high caliber "big city" style from 1860-1890, but less post 1890.

The main commercial districts though are similar in character, though one is falling apart/a bit underutilized (if you count East Walnut Hills) and the other is prosperous.  Wicker Park has more newer buildings in it 1900-1930 (and due to the condo boom, more from the late 1990s through 2006) but still plenty of stuff from the late 1880s/1890s.  The majority of buildings I've seen dated circa 1870s in Chicago were frame and much much less ornate than what Cincy was building at the same time.


One weird question I want to throw out there: I've always wondered why so many Italianates are missing their cornices in Chicago, you can see very clearly where they used to be on those buildings where there is brighter newer brick, its really weird.


Oh and I'm simply talking about aesthetics of the built enviornment.  NKY, Walnut Hills and Wicker Park have vastly different people living in them.   Imagine the Gateway Quarter in OTR as the whole neighborhood (yuppie with some hipster bias and a few lingering ones hanging around) - that's wicker park these days, though with rising rents its increasingly just Yuppie.   An interesting thing is that there are even still a fair number of Puerto Ricans in pockets left over from an earlier era in the neighborhood.

[City Blights]

^I agree that Cincinnati's bones are older and more stately, there's no question.  I feel the city is severely undervalued in regards to just how much mid-19th century/Reconstruction era architecture it has.  Even folks from a bigger market such as Detroit who experience Cincinnati's core recognize that it has more of a big-city structural environment than their own town.  Cleveland has something of a complex about being the biggest in Ohio, so I don't hear them concede those sorts of things as often.  But among the "Old East" if you will (Milwaukee, STL, Chi, Det, Cle, Buf, Pit, East Coast), here's how I would rank them in big-city feel based on 19th century structures, neglecting population.

1. NYC
2. Philadelphia
3. Boston
4. Baltimore
5. Cincinnati
6. Chicago
7. St. Louis
8. Pittsburgh
9. The Rest

I wasn't trying to squeeze all of Wicker and its many faces under the NKY umbrella, I just don't see the Walnut Hills comparison because that area largely developed as a wealthy area, hence the large plots comparatively for a cramped city like Cincinnati.  NKY fills many niches for the Cincinnati region and has to because of it's location on the border of two states with vastly different cultures.  Wicker doesn't have to be that.  It's free to be Yuppieland because it doesn't have to be the most desirable place for born Kentuckians within 50 miles of Cincinnati, desirable for monied Cincinnatians, and at the same time a dumping ground for the region's poor.  Wicker wasn't always what it is now, and as Cincinnati continues to evolve at a faster rate than it has in the previous 50 years, NKY may start to look like Yup City before we know it.  Kudos to Cincinnati's Over the Rhine for not letting those income-spenders flee to Kentucky, but it will happen, and soon.  A streetcar loop to/through NKY will be the central catalyst for such a demographic shift.

[neilworms]

Wicker wasn't always what it is now, and as Cincinnati continues to evolve at a faster rate than it has in the previous 50 years, NKY may start to look like Yup City before we know it.  Kudos to Cincinnati's Over the Rhine for not letting those income-spenders flee to Kentucky, but it will happen, and soon.  A streetcar loop to/through NKY will be the central catalyst for such a demographic shift.

Its Wicker's story (along with many other neighborhoods) and the fact that I came well after people's mentality towards at least the north and near downtown sides of Chicago shifted that makes me really interested in what's going on in Cincinnati right now.  Its really fun to watch as I'm only seeing the end results of a pretty massive cultural shift for Chicago but in Cincinnati its developing and evolving into exactly what happened years ago in cities like Chicago. (not to say Chicago doesn't have challenges but its further along the path than Cincy is right at the moment, even if its own momentum has been slowed the last few years due to the economic crisis).

It was real recent too, still a lot of signs in the neighborhood that it used to be a bad part of town.  There is literally a sign warning of a gang enforcement zone right around the Milwaukee North intersection, and a lot of buildings all around the neighborhood with bars over the windows showing just how bad the area used to be not so long ago.