Ashburn

Ashburn continued...

No ash piles around, either. Toward the middle of the last century, coal use was fading, veterans home from World War II needed housing, and there was all this land with not much on it. By the mid-1950s, the air field (superseded long before by Midway Airport, two miles north in the Garfield Ridge and Clearing communities) was history -- and this was becoming a neighborhood with actual neighbors.

Today's Ashburn is a racially diverse middle-class community almost entirely of neat single-family homes. Not unlike post-war suburbs, development was powered in part by transportation (two Metra stations serve the community along Columbus Avenue, which bisects it); and not unlike those suburbs, the traditional commercial strips have been largely supplanted by the malls, especially Scottsdale and, just north in West Lawn, Ford City.

But like most Chicago neighborhoods, it has its home-grown institutions.

Vito & Nick's Pizzeria has been dishing out its thin-crust pies since 1949, and at this location on Pulaski Road and 84th Street since 1965. Its pie may or may not be what it insists is "the best pizza anywhere," but the crowds, especially on weekend nights, tell you something interesting is happening here.

Two blocks south on Pulaski is Rosario's Italian Foods. It opened just weeks after Vito & Nick's and, like the pizzeria, is owned and run by the founding family.
Facing the street is the animated neon sign that helped make it a local legend: pigs jumping into a grinder and coming out sausage.

"We get a little bit of hate mail once in a while," says Kathy Salus, whose parents (Roy Repole -- "Rosario" looked better on the door -- was her dad) began the business selling sausage out of their kitchen. "But most people like it."

Most people also seem to like their meats, cheeses and sauces for take-home. Their hot sandwiches (try the Italian beef, with sweet peppers) and subs (load 'em up) are neighborhood favorites as well, but Rosario's is most identified with its Italian sausage.

"The product we made 50 years ago is the product we make today," she says, standing not far from a flying pig suspended near the register. "It's absolutely the same product."

Halfway between Rosario's and Vito & Nick's on Pulaski is the Cake Walk, a bakery especially known for its butter cookies. Another option for something sugary is Cupid Candies, two miles east on Western Avenue, which has been producing high quality chocolate candies -- in that store -- since 1936 and now makes that longtime Chicago favorite, Frango mints for Macy's.

The open space didn't entirely disappear with development. Three parks -- Scottsdale, Rainey and Hayes -- have ballfields and other facilities. The meadows, woods and picnic areas of Dan Ryan Woods, a county forest preserve, extend from Ashburn into the Beverly neighborhood to the south.

There, you may see ashes. From the charcoal grills.

For more information about Ashburn, please contact the Greater Ashburn Planning Association at 773.436.2482.