Chicago: Old Town

Old Town is a largely residential neighborhood on the Northside, bounded by Lake Michigan on the east and public housing and low income neighborhoods on the west.

Young Urban Professionals (YUPs) have settled here in large numbers.

In response to high rents and property values, investors and builders have gentrified the 19th-century brick apartments and built new buildings, both of which are shown in this photograph. View more photos of this area.

At The northern end of Old Town is the hub of gay life in Chicago, along North Halsted Street where such stores as the Bad Boys and Flashy Trash clothing stores, and the nightclub Manhole ("home of the undress code") are located. The City of Chicago, as part of its $2 billion 20 neighborhood restoration projects, spend $3.2 million to renovate eight city blocks in this neighborhood for widening streets, planting trees, installing antique-looking streetlights, and constructing two 24-foot steel sculptures which serve as gateways and nearly 50 smaller sculptures, all decorated with electric lights in the rainbow colors of the gay-pride flag. Boystown (not to be confused with Boys Town!) is the one of the largest gay populations in the USA with many gay bars, boutiques, clubs, hotels, restaurants, publications, and parades. This famous gay community lies just north of Old Town, from Addison Street on the north, Lake Shore Drive on the east, Belmont Avenue on the south, and Clark Street on the west.
 

Jake Schafer, a Geography 188 student, documented this Chicago gay cultural landscape in 2008.