| North Lawndale
(also known simply as "Lawndale") located
on the west side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of the
well-defined community areas in city of Chicago. According
to Charles Leeks, director of NHS, North Lawndale has
the greatest concentration of graystones in the city.
The City of Chicago has enacted The Historic Chicago
Greystone Initiative. From about 1900 to 1950, Jews,
overwhelmingly of Russian and Eastern European extraction,
dominated the neighborhood, starting in North Lawndale
and moving northward as they became more prosperous.
In the 1950s, blacks moved in and "unscrupulous
real-estate dealers" all but evacuated the white
population, which dropped from 87,000 in 1950 to 11,000
in 1960.
According to the Steans Family
Foundation, in the decades following the 1960s there
were a series of economic and social disasters... Riots
followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
in 1968, destroying many of the stores along Roosevelt
Road and accelerating a decline that lead to a loss
of 75% of the businesses in the community by 1970. Industries
closed: International Harvester in 1969, Sears (partially
in 1974 and completely by 1987), Zenith and Sunbeam
in the 1970s, Western Electric in the 1980s. By 1970
African-Americans who could were also leaving North
Lawndale, beginning a precipitous population decline
that continues to this day.
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