Chicago Guide
Lakeview neighbourhoods
While the North Side area of LAKEVIEW was for a long time little more than the poor man's version of its southern neighbour Lincoln Park, in recent years, rising real-estate prices and increased congestion have turned the area into a similar yuppie haven, although some of its rough edge remains. Though there isn't much to see or do here besides window-shop, hang out in cafés or have a tipple, it's still pleasant to browse Clark Street, the main thoroughfare, on a weekend afternoon or stroll along the lakefront parkway. Incorporated as a township in 1857 by a group of German celery-farmers, Lakeview takes its name from the long-since-vanished Lakeview Inn, a local hotel with sweeping vistas of Lake Michigan. This chunk of land north of Fullerton Avenue remained a separate town (much like Hyde Park on the South Side, which was annexed by Chicago at around the same time) until 1889, when it was swallowed whole by the growing city.
As the settlement rapidly grew, its neighbourhoods took on individual identities, none more so than Wrigleyville, which in 1914 became home to the newly built Wrigley Field, stadium of the Chicago Cubs. Wrigleyville anchors more nebulous Lakeview, which rambles between Chicago's two most gay-friendly neighbourhoods. To the south, the "pink triangle" of Boystown occupies the blocks between Halsted Street, Broadway, and Belmont Avenue. Once a haven for silent-film cineastes and speakeasy patrons, Uptown, north of Wrigleyville, still has a few traces left of its Jazz Age past. Further north, Andersonville is a former Swedish settlement that, while holding onto its Scandinavian roots, has become another centre for the city's gay and lesbian community. Clark Street is the common thread that links all the neighbourhoods mentioned here, from Boystown in the south to Andersonville in the north.
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