Marquette Park, Gage Park

The neighborhoods of Marquette Park and Gage Park are both anchored by namesake public parks. Officially designated as Chicago Lawn, the Marquette Park neighborhood was once a hotbed of civil rights unrest in the 1960’s, and is now a diverse residential community with plenty of green space. Many area restaurants and businesses still bear the influence of the neighborhood’s former position at the heart of Chicago’s Lithuanian community. Gage Park, a predominantly residential neighborhood to the north, is home to many Eastern Europeans, Irish Catholics and Hispanics. 

Marquette Park, Gage Park: One of Chicago's Most Diverse Communities

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

For generations, this was a neighborhood where, in many homes, English was a second language. First language: Lithuanian. It remains a neighborhood where, in many homes, English is a second language. First language: Spanish.

In restaurant kitchens, though, the languages are all over the world map.

Marquette Park is today among the city's most diverse neighborhoods. And, while it takes some exploration to fully appreciate that diversity, it takes no work at all to discover the land mass that dominates this community.

Marquette Park – the actual park – is the largest of the southwest side parks. It's a 600-acre sprawl of green real estate, beautifully maintained, that includes soccer and baseball fields, a 9-hole golf course and a bridge and lagoon that made a splash: Remember when Jake and Elwood forced Nazi demonstrators off a bridge into a lagoon in "The Blues Brothers" movie? That lagoon was in Marquette Park.

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