| Lower West Side
located on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, is one
of 77 well-defined Chicago community areas. The area
is called Pilsen by Chicago area residents.
Heart of Chicago is a neighborhood
located in the southwest corner of the Lower West Side
community area and has an Italian restaurant strip on
Oakley.
Pilsen is a neighborhood made
up of the residential sections of the Lower West Side
community area of Chicago. In the late 19th century
Pilsen was inhabited by Czech immigrants who named the
district after Plzeň, the fourth largest city in
what is now the Czech Republic. The population also
included in smaller numbers other ethnic groups from
the Austro-Hungarian Empire including Slovaks, Slovenes,
Croats and Austrians, as well as immigrants of Polish
and Lithuanian Heritage. Many of the immigrants worked
in the stockyards and the surrounding factories. As
many early 20th Century American urban neighborhoods,
however, Pilsen was home to the wealthy as well as the
working class and doctors lived next to maids and laborers
amongst businessmen with the whole area knitted together
based on the ethnicities, mostly of Slavic descent,
who were not readily welcome in other areas of the city.
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