Ukrainian Village, Chicago
Coordinates: 41°53′46″N 87°41′01″W / 41.895989°N 87.683734°W
Ukrainian Village is a Chicago neighborhood located on the near west side of Chicago. Its boundaries are Division Street to the north, Grand Avenue to the south, Western Avenue to the west, and Damen Avenue to the east. It is one of the neighborhoods in the West Town community area.
By the 1930s, there were five Ukrainian parishes dotting Chicago's neighborhoods, reflecting a wave of immigration of Ukrainian Catholics. Some churches are built in the Byzantine-Slavonic style of St. Nicholas Cathedral. Built between November 1913 and January 1915, St. Nicholas is in the heart of the Ukrainian neighborhood south of Wicker Park and along Chicago Avenue, referred to by locals as Ukrainian Village.
This neighborhood, northwest of the Loop, was first settled by Polish and Slovak immigrants. With the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and the influx of political refugees during World War I, new immigrants gave it a Ukrainian cultural identity, which it retains.
Ukrainian Village, like neighboring East Village, began as farmland. Originally, German Americans, who came mostly as immigrants in the mid-19th century, formed the largest ethnic group in the vicinity. With new waves of immigration starting in the late 19th century, by the turn of the century, the neighborhood was largely Slavic. Similar to Chicago's Lithuanian Downtown in Bridgeport, Ukrainians settled in the district because of their familiarity with Poles who lived in the surrounding Polish Downtown. Dense settlement of the neighborhood was largely spurred by the 1895 construction of an elevated train line along Paulina Ave (1700 W), which provided access to workplaces. It was decommissioned in 1964.
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