The Town of Chicago is organized after the US government imposes the second Treaty of Chicago on the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples, the inhabitants of the area that is today known as Chicago. As part of the treaty, the Potawatomi are forcibly removed from their land and sent west of the Mississippi River.

Once part of Cicero Township, the eastern part of North Lawndale is annexed to Chicago by an act of the state legislature. The real estate firm Millard & Decker build “Lawndale” as a residential suburb.

Chicago is incorporated as a city.

The Great Chicago Fire forces the McCormick reaper plant to relocate west, to an incorporated area near Lawndale, leading to a working-class population consisting mostly of Dutch, Irish, and German workers.

McCormick Reaper Works. 1875.

Bohemian immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire begin to move to North Lawndale. Czech institutions pop up in Merigold, like the Slovanska Lipa/Sokol Tabor, a Czech fraternal & gymnastic organization, at 13th and Karlov. The Bohemian Catholic Church, Our Lady of Lourdes, is established at the corner of 15th and Keeler.

Sloko Slavic Gym. Photo published in 1910 in a book named “Sokol Expedition to America 1909”.

Chicago-based general merchandise company Sears, Roebuck, and Co. expand their mail-order catalogue system throughout the country. This expansion allows African-Americans living in the rural South greater consumer freedom, because remote ordering allows them to purchase anonymously, avoiding some of the discrimination they faced in Southern stores. Country general stores were owned by white people, often the same property owners whose land they were sharecroppers on. Black customers faced such blatant racism as being forced to pay more than white consumers for the same products, being served last, and only being permitted to purchase the lowest quality goods. Sears accepted orders by writing and phone, further increasing access to illiterate consumers. But when the owners of general stores began to su.er from the competition, they started rumors that the Sears executives were black. In response, Sears owners published photographs of themselves to prove they were white.

North Lawndale quickly became predominantly Jewish, becoming the largest Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. Some of the residents moved to the neighborhood from Maxwell Street, but many were Polish and Russian immigrants. German and Irish-American residents refused to rent housing to Jews, so they instead purchased property. As they subdivided properties into smaller rental units, the population increased drastically, becoming the most densely populated neighborhood in Chicago. By 1930, Lawndale was the third-largest Jewish community in the world, and a thriving center of cultural life, with Yiddish theaters, educational institutions, and over forty synagogues. Balaban and Katz opened the Central Park Theater, where “King of Swing” Benny Goodman made his debut, and went on to open many other theaters across Chicago.

Sears Roebuck & Company Mail Order Plant, Merchandise Building, 924 South Homan Avenue, Chicago, completed 1905 – 1906, Documentation compiled after 1933.

Sears Roebuck & Company Mail Order Plant, Merchandise Building, 924 South Homan Avenue, Chicago, completed 1905 – 1906, Documentation compiled after 1933.

Polish and Russian Jews begin to move into the neighborhood, where they are met with discrimination, and the population increases to 46,000 people. The neighborhood was mostly two-flats, but the Jewish immigrants constructed larger apartment buildings with 10-30 units. The Jewish community begins to found cultural institutions, including the Hebrew Theological College, on Douglas Boulevard, and the Jewish People’s Institute, which o.ers a library, sports, educational forums, and arts and dances.

The Central Park Theater, which is the first air-conditioned theater, is built in North Lawndale. The first moviehouse to be run by theater entrepreneurs Balaban & Katz, its opera house-inspired architecture influences the Chicago, Uptown, and Tivoli theaters, as well as many others throughout the Midwest.

Central Park Theatre, 3535 W. Roosevelt Road. 1918.

Red Summer | race riots.

Mt. Sinai hospital is founded as a 60-bed hospital to serve Jewish immigrants in the West Side and to train Jewish physicians denied educational opportunities elsewhere.

The Hebrew Theological College at 3448 West Douglas Blvd, 1921.

The Jewish People’s Institute is the cultural nucleus of Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood during the first half of the 20th century. Its classrooms, auditorium, and athletic facilities provide a rich variety of social, recreational, and arts activities for generations of both children and adults. 1927.

With a population of 112,000, North Lawndale becomes the third-largest Jewish center in the world with 40 Orthodox synagogues.

Employment in the neighborhood was divided between large companies like General Harvester and Sears Roebuck and Co., which moved its business headquarters to Homan Square in 1906, and independent businesses. Roosevelt Road became a major commercial corridor, with many shops catering to its Jewish residents with Kosher butchers, delicatessens, and Polish and Russian restaurants. Shoppers came from outside of the neighborhood to frequent these businesses.

In 1906, Sears, Roebuck & Co. opened a 40-acre business complex in North Lawndale. Known as Homan Square, the complex became the center of the neighborhood and a primary employer until the company moved its headquarters to downtown Chicago in 1969. Photo from americanbusinesshistory.org.

Rosen Drugs, at 1400 South Kedzie Ave., was established in 1936 by Abe Rosen, a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy. His son Maurice Rosen moved the business to Rogers Park in 1955. Rosen Drugs, Douglas Boulevard, and Kedzie, CAPP_0001_0001_014, Chicago Area Pharmacy Photographs, Department of Special Collections, the University of Ill. at Chicago Library.

In the 1940s, the first black families, most of the middle-class homeowners, moved into the Eastern edge of the neighborhood. Initially, there were relatively few incidents of racial attacks against blacks from the Jewish community. But the neighborhood demographics began shifting for several reasons. As Jewish North Lawndale residents became more affluent, and with racially restrictive covenants declared unconstitutional, they began to move out to other neighborhoods in the North Side to Rogers Park and suburbs like Skokie.