Chinatown/Armour Square

The Breakdown

Downtown is only a couple Red Line stops away.

An overview: In regards to just about everything, Chicago always boasts “one of the nation’s best”.  Its Chinatown is no exception.  It has everything you’d expect from a Chinatown: eccentric shops, ornate gateways, dim sum.  Yet, it has a Midwestern sensibility about it too.  Surrounding the strip on Wentworth, and the charming Chinatown Square pedestrian mall along Archer, are modest households and streets brimming with activity.

Interestingly, Chinatown and Armour Square (representing virtually all of the Chinatown neighborhood and the mile and a half south of it) are about as tucked away as you can get within Chicago.  They are surrounded by expressways, the River, and copious amounts of train tracks.  Thanks to the Red Line though, accessing Chinatown, and one of Chi-town’s two major league baseball clubs, is no difficult feat.

The boundaries: Armour Square is one of Chicago’s 77 defined community areas.  Its boundaries are essentially 18^th Street to the north, Federal Street to the east (just east of I-94), and Pershing Road (39^th Street) to the south.  To the northwest, Armour Square is bounded by the Chicago River, and to the west is Stewart Avenue and the railroad tracks.

Entry gate to Chinatown as seen from the "L".

Chinatown is the neighborhood making up the northern half of Armour Square.  The dividing line between Chinatown and the rest of Armour Square is 26^th Street.  The extension of Ping Tom Memorial Park, immediately to the north of 18^th Street, is considered part of Chinatown, but is the only part of the neighborhood located within the Near South Side community area.

Population make-up: A funny thing happened in Armour Square.  While Chicago lost 200,000 residents in the past 10 years, Armour Square was one of seven community areas that grew by over 10%.  At only about one square mile, it is one of the City’s smallest community areas, and yet it added 1,411 residents since 2000, bringing Armour Square to a total population of 13,443.

The demographic breakdown for 2010 isn’t available yet, but as of the 2000 Census, Armour Square was the only predominantly Asian community area in the City at 61% of the population (7,300 residents).  Although Asians make up three-fifths of the area’s population, there are community areas with larger Asian populations (notably West Ridge with over 16,000 residents of Asian heritage).  Among the other ethnicities represented in Armour Square, whites made up the next highest percentage at 19%, then blacks at 17%, and then Hispanics at just under 4%.

Armour Square’s median income in 2000 was $22,750, making it one of the ten poorest community areas in the City.

A brief history: Armour Square initially grew during the Civil War as an influx of western Europeans moved in, establishing a blue-collar culture that exists even today.  Contrary to popular belief, the South Siders don't play ball in Bridgeport.  The original Comiskey Park was built in Armour Square, at 35^th and Shields, in 1909.  Although they now occupy a newer stadium right next door to the previous one, the White Sox still play at home in Armour Square, and brought the Windy City a World Series Championship in 2005.  Boo-yeah!

Right around the time the Sox moved into Armour Square, so did the City’s Chinese population.  They moved from a small section of the Loop to the area around present-day Cermak and Wentworth, in search of lower rent.  Their continuous presence and investment has established one of the nation’s largest Chinatowns, a major destination for both residents and tourists in pursuit of great food and unique, affordable shopping.  The south-side Chinese influence continues to spread geographically, with many of the growing population moving into neighboring Bridgeport.

Getting there: By “L”, the Red Line is your best option.  Cermak-Chinatown drops you right off in the heart of Chinatown, while Sox-35^th takes you to the southern portion of Armour Square and drops you right off at U.S. Cellular Field and the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus.  You can also take the Green Line to 35^th-Bronzeville-IIT and walk west along 35^th to get to Armour Square.

By bus you have a few east-west options: Cermak (21), 35^th Street (35), and Pershing (39).  Going north-south, your lone direct option is the Clark/Wentworth bus (24).  Also, the Archer bus (62) is a northeast-southwest option to access Chinatown.

There is also a new Metra station slated to open in Summer 2012.  The 35^th Street/”Lou” Jones/Bronzeville stop on the Rock Island line will place you just east of Armour Square at 35^th Street and the Dan Ryan expressway (I-90/94).

Michelin Guide - Chicago Restaurants

Back in November, Michelin released their first ever guide for Chicago restaurants.  This is a prestigious honor for the Windy City and its restaurants.  New York and San Francisco are the only two other cities in the United States to have previously been bestowed such an honor.  The fact that the guide was made is vindication that Chicago is one of the country's, and world's, top restaurant destinations.  Whether you're familiar or not with the Michelin guides, the fact of the matter is this: the restaurants represented by stars are not the sort of places that your average Chicagoan can afford to eat at on a weekly basis.  But as Chicago magazine points out, it's great PR for the City and its dining community.  And frankly, while most of these restaurants are rather expensive, they are worth saving a little extra money and visiting maybe once or twice a year (would you be willing to stay in one weekend a year to save up some extra money to eat in one of the top restaurants in Chi-Town?)

What we've done with this entry is listed the restaurants by neighborhood.  Sure, about half are in the Near North Side.  However, there are GREAT restaurants to be found in the West Loop, Wicker Park, and even Logan Square.  We'll start out with the list by star rating (3 stars being one of the top restaurants in the world, but even a 1 star rating puts the restaurant in very elite company).  Twenty-three restaurants in Chicago were honored with Michelin stars.  Let's take a look where they're at...

West Loop

The Breakdown

The West Loop, where today meets the 70s...the 1870s.

An overview: The West Loop is one of the great Chicago neighborhood success stories of the past few decades.  A dangerous industrial wasteland as recently as the late 1980s, today the West Loop hosts a bevy of upscale residences and some of the nation’s most well-known and highly regarded restaurants.  Love her or loathe her, Oprah Winfrey’s sphere of influence takes much of the credit.  She curiously chose this area as the home of Harpo Studios in the mid-80s.  Her television program quickly became a tourist destination and an economic development tool for the West Loop.  Today, the neighborhood boasts numerous shops and dining establishments that have followed the successes of those before them, sprouting up around the home of Ms. Winfrey’s empire.

The West Loop is also home to Greektown, a small but wonderful ethnic strip along Halsted.  There are more than enough places to eat and drink in Greektown alone, so we’ll save that one for another entry.

The boundaries: Although adjacent to the Loop, the West Loop is located mostly within the Near West Side community area, however a small northern portion also resides in the West Town community area.  Its unofficial boundaries are usually regarded as Grand Avenue to the north, the Eisenhower Expressway to the south (I-290), Ashland Avenue to the west, and the Chicago River to the east.

Population make-up: The West Loop consists essentially of four census tracts: 2801, 2819, 8330, and 8331.  Unfortunately the latter two tracts don’t seem to have data available on the American Factfinder website.  Even though most of the West Loop is within the Near West Side, it’s such a diverse community area that it’s not reasonable to speculate demographics based on the data from the whole community area.  Sorry, we’re going to have to leave this one blank.

The House that Oprah Built...figuratively speaking.

A brief history: Chicago wasn’t founded in the West Loop, but it was re-born here.  On October 8, 1871 a fire broke out at the O’Leary residence.  Less than two days later, over two-thirds of Chicago had burned to the ground leaving hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.  The ultimate result of the Great Chicago Fire was not devastation, however.  Wooden homes and walkways were replaced by brick, building and fire codes were strengthened, and in just over two decades the residents of Chicago displayed their resurrected masterpiece to the world.

But this is not the only history seen in the West Loop.  It was also the host of the Haymarket Square Riot of 1886 that saw a peaceful labor demonstration turn violent.  The neighborhood has been an industrial district (especially meat-packing) since its foundation.  However, the last two decades have seen revolutionary change.  What was fairly recently a neighborhood that you didn’t venture to after dark is now home to condominiums and some of Chicago’s most noteworthy restaurants.  It’s here you’ll find arguably the most hyped-up restaurant in the City’s history: Next.  You’ll also find other highly acclaimed restaurants like Moto, Blackbird, and a few others you may have heard of, but we’re getting to that…

Getting there: Plenty of ways.  Via “L”, the Green Line has stops at Clinton to the northeast and Ashland to the northwest.  The Blue Line has three stops along the neighborhood’s southern boundary (from east to west): Clinton, UIC-Halsted, and Racine.  By Metra rail, you can visit the West Loop at Union Station or the Ogilvie Transportation Center.

By bus there are also many options.  Travelling east-west throughout the entire neighborhood: Grand (65), Madison (20), and Jackson/Van Buren (126).  East of the Kennedy (I-90/94), there are many other options, but it’s probably best to visit the CTA website than just taking it from us.  Going north-south, you have bus options along Halsted (8) and Ashland (9).