Down on Uptown
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“Uptown has a negative connotation,” admits Scott Kruger, a real estate agent with Koenig & Strey. Like most real estate brokers, Koenig & Strey advertises its Uptown properties under a number of pseudonyms, including Buena Park, Sheridan Park, East Ravenswood, and Lakeview (for a building at 4102 N. Kenmore, a block into Uptown).
Until about 20 years ago Uptown was Uptown; in fact it was more than Uptown. Back in the 20s a University of Chicago sociologist named Ernest W. Burgess partitioned the city into 75 “community areas,” labeling the entire lakefront between Irving Park and Devon “Uptown.” The city adopted his map and still uses it to draw census tracts and track demographic information like housing prices and median family income. Not all of the community areas are distinct neighborhoods (Burgess lumped Ravenswood and Lincoln Square into the same area, and his West Town included Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, and what some people are now calling Eckhart Park). But the map has been changed only once. In the 70s home owners north of Foster decided that the lowlifes around Wilson and Broadway were giving Uptown a bad name, so they lobbied the Planning Department for their own community area. Edgewater seceded in 1980, and though remnants of the old name live on (Uptown Auto Service at Broadway and Hollywood; Uptown Spring Wheel Service at Clark and Granville), Uptown has continued to shrink on Chicagoans’ psychic maps.
Much of this difference is generational; people moving into a neighborhood tend to accept what the real estate people tell them. “I don’t think Mama De Rosa or Tony the Painter, who have lived on the block for 50 years, are coming up with these cute names or these mythical boundaries,” said Lino Darchun of Coldwell Banker. “It’s the marketing people.” Chicago has far more blighted neighborhoods–Austin, Humboldt Park–but their names are not disappearing, because there’s no big demand for real estate there. If there were, Austin would probably become “East Oak Park.”
Gary Keller, cofounder of the Uptown Historical Society, insists that his neighborhood will regain its old prominence in the next few years. Once the Uptown Theater is restored, he says, residents will begin identifying themselves with that landmark. “Once that area’s transformed,” he says, “people will consider themselves ‘Uptown.’”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Nathan Mandell.
