Little Italy, UIC

Plenty of Italian restaurants, businesses and institutions, like the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame and historic Roman Catholic churches, keep the heritage alive in this traditional stronghold of Chicago’s Italian-American community. The historic Hull House Museum, where 19th century social reformer Jane Addams looked after the needs of working-class immigrants, is located on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), which dominates the rest of the area. 

Little Italy/UIC: Benvenuta! 

Written by Alan Solomon, with research assistance from the Chicago Neighborhood Tourism Project.

They emigrated around the turn of the 20th century from Southern Italy -- from cities and villages, from Naples and Catanzaro and Vizzini -- first to Ellis Island, and then to New York.

If they continued on to our city, they knew this neighborhood.

"The history of Italian immigration to Chicago started right here on Taylor Street," says George Randazzo, founder of the Italian American Sports Hall of Fame.

Chicago's Little Italy -- this neighborhood around Taylor Street between Morgan Street and Ashland Avenue -- is smaller than it was. Expressways, starting in the 1950s, took a chunk. When the University of Illinois-Chicago moved its campus from Navy Pier -- affectionately called "Harvard On the Rocks" -- to the Near West Side in the 1960s, more was lost.

Continued below the map...