In 1848, a stockyard called the Bulls Head Market was opened to the public. Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator. Chicago artist Joe Miller tapped photos from the heyday of the old Union Stock Yard … In the 1900s decade many of the Irish and Germans had achieved some upward mobility and moved to Canaryville and Bridgeport or elsewhere. Garfield and Laflin. The rioting and brawling happened all around the New City neighborhood. In the 1880s Polish immigrants made their way into this town of Lake and took up employment in the stock yards, the yards loved employing them because they were seen as “strikebreakers,” which were newer employees that were more grateful to deal with low pay and the harsh and long working hours. Home back-of-the-yards-garfield-and-laflin back-of-the-yards-garfield-and-laflin. back-of-the-yards-garfield-and-laflin. These horrid conditions gave rise to Irish street gangs that roamed the neighborhood looking to steal food and other items and to also brawl with other Irish gangs. In the 1890s African Americans began taking up employment in the stock yards and in the 1900s decade Lithuanian and Slovak immigrants also began employment in the yards and took up residence. This neighborhood earned its name due to the former Union Stock Yards that once occupied the area. The state militia needed to intervene since the city had no interest in putting down the uprising. Discover what it would be like to live in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, IL straight from people who live here. The Satan Disciples settled at the intersection of 51st and Wood in the late 70s while Two Six settled at 47th and Damen right near the Saints in the late 1970s. Back of the Yards. The intersection of 54th and Bishop especially became a haven of black families and the Cobrastones took over that intersection. Workers lived in already dilapidated buildings with no toilets or running water. Back of the Yards, Chicago - Circa 1972 About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features © 2021 Google LLC South Damen Avenue and West 43rd, 47th, and 51st Streets are some of the main thoroughfares in Back of the Yards. Welcome to the official website for the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC), Ballet Folklorico , SSA #7 , SSA #10 , SSA #13, & SSA #39. This neighborhood was struggling with black and white race relations since the neighborhood was changing from white to black. The Latin Souls moved here in the same year and war went on for about a decade until the Souls left this section. The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) is one of the oldest community organizations in America still functioning. 1889. All images below are of vacant buildings at the time of the photo. The area was formerly part of the town of Lake until it was annexed by Chicagoin 1889. The Back of The Yards community had a very high rate of poverty especially after the stock yards closed in 1971. The New City neighborhood is the second site of extreme Chicago poverty and extreme gang activity that dates all the way back to the 19 th century, second behind the south west quadrant of the Near North Side neighborhood.. I’m back with an alternative to Pantheon! The city's Bureau of Parks and Recreation developed this Lower West Side park on Board of Education-owned property in the late 1940s, improving it with a gravel-surfaced playground and a spray pool. The Irish gangs fought savagely and from there on, Canaryville gangs became well known, and Canaryville was said to be one of the toughest of neighborhoods when in reality the Back of The Yards was much crazier as Canaryville has always been a neighborhood that tried to remain stable and middle class. The International Amphitheatre was erected after a fire destroyed the old horse auction barn at the Union Stock Yards in 1934. The Bishops also arrived around this time and settled at 53rd and Winchester developing a strong alliance with the Latin Kings. The New City neighborhood is the second site of extreme Chicago poverty and extreme gang activity that dates all the way back to the 19th century, second behind the south west quadrant of the Near North Side neighborhood. Though the stockyards closed down for good in the 1970s, no visit to Back of the Yards is complete without a visit to the gate, the neighborhood’s namesake and a humble monument to a place that has done so much to shape Chicago’s industry and history. Mixed use property or use it as 2 flats. The stock yards dumped gallons of carnal waste of animal remnants and refuses into the Chicago River polluting the water giving it the term “Bubbly Creek.”  The stock yards would dump other waste in the streets and all around because there was no regulation due to the area being severely impoverished and neglected. $32.50. The 1960s and 1970s saw a larger influx of Mexican migration into the neighborhood and the last of the greaser gangs were active at this time including the Sherman Park Gaylords that arrived in 1966 but where gone by the later 1970s. We've also got some great historic photos of the stockyard. Previous image. Watch footage and interviews taken by a local filmmaker on the last day the yards were in operation. Previously known as Throop Park, Back of the Yards Park is one of many small city parks created to meet the growing recreational demands of post-World War II Chicago. The area was platted with several cheap homes and apartment buildings that could easily house the impoverished immigrants for a cheap rate. Places to eat. In 2011, "Chicago Tonight" reported on the 40-year anniversary of the closing of Chicago's Union Stockyards. Two Six and Satan Disciples were among the first of the migratory gangs to settle in the Back of the Yards in the late 1970s. The police did very little to stop the rioting as they were on the side of the white man. Part of the town of Lake until annexation by Chicago in 1889, Back of the Yards was settled by skilled Irish and German butchers, joined in the 1870s and 1880s by Czechs . If you are the site owner (or you manage this site), please whitelist your IP or if you think this block is an error please open a support ticket and make sure to include the block details (displayed in the box below), so we can assist you in troubleshooting the issue. The beach in Douglas had an unofficial racial divide at 29th Street and a black teenager accidentally crossed that line, and a group of white youths felt justified in drowning the boy which sparked a massive war on the south side between whites and blacks that even resulted in shootings and deaths. All photos are courtesy of Google Maps, West Town: Southern West Town (The Patch). The slaughterhouses got their livestock from Chicago's Union Stockyards: 475 acres of cattle, hogs and other animals shipped here from all over the country. Most of the white populace of New City is in Canaryville. South of 51 Street the houses in this part of the Back of the Yards became the home of severely impoverished black Chicagoans which resulted in many of the homes to become run down and many became vacant deteriorating properties. The 48th and Laflin La Raza became very notorious as they bopped heads with all the other gangs in the neighborhood. Before construction of the various private stockyards, tavern owners provided pastures and care for cattle herds waiting to be sold. For a hundred years, the Back of the Yards area on the south side of Chicago was home to the Union Stockyards, the legendary institution that put its stamp on the entire city. Irish and German immigrants were the first to arrive and settle in this area as they had no means for transportation nor could they afford public transportation. Illustrations, diagram, maps, notes, essay on sources, and index. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. xvi + 423 pp. The El Rukns took out the Mickey Cobras from 54th and Bishop and this intersection ended up becoming the capital of the Jet Black Stones, a Black P Stone branch in the mid-1980s. The Bishops also flipped many members of what was left of the Gaylords throughout the 1980s. Very good condition brick building. But in lieu of erasing the complicated legacy, the people of Chicago’s Southwest Side have leveraged physical assets and built upon decades of learning to fuel a physical and cultural transformation of their community. Zillow has 110 homes for sale in Back of the Yards Chicago. Credit: Max Herman/City Bureau At La Selva’s pop-up shop, Rolando Santoyo brings light to Back of the Yards history. New City, more specifically Back of The Yards is the birthplace of the Latin Souls, Saints, Party Players and the City Knights. The Story of Back of the Yards. The newer buildings include contemporary designs, brick flats, and multi-unit buildings. While the International Livestock Exposition was its centerpiece show, many other major events were staged there, from auto shows to the 1964 Chicago debut of the Beatles. in Back in 1800's, Back Of The Yards consisted of people from European decent. New City is still one the harder and more violent neighborhoods in Chicago and is the home to many hardened gang elements. The Irish gangs were controlled by crooked politics and by the Irish Mafia that originated in the Near North Side neighborhood. Stay Informed. Think raised ranch-style houses and three to seven bedroom homes with spacious front and/or back yards. In the 1930s the Great Depression era threatened to make conditions worse for workers and for this community living standards as a whole, but the now mostly Polish populace decided they had enough of this and began forming the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee and the Back of The Yards Neighborhood Council that worked tirelessly to force the stockyards to provide better working conditions in the yards and also to regulate the yards from polluting the neighborhood to death, by 1939 they had achieved their goal and better conditions and pollution control helped better the community. Crooked ward bosses, business men and crooked politicians found the area to be ripe with young thugs looking for any opportunity to make even a penny by doing a dirty deed. The neighborhood is mostly Mexican in the northern part north of 51st Street and has very few shuttered homes and businesses, this is not a blighted area. Credit: Max Herman/City Bureau Rolando Santoyo has been collecting old gears and tools from the stockyards days to highlight the history of his neighborhood at the La Selva pop-up shop on 48th Street and Hermitage Avenue in Back of the Yards, on August 12, 2019. Carlos Pita was last seen Feb. 4 near the 5200 block of South Emerald Avenue. W alk inside the Back of the Yards Coffeehouse and Roastery on Hoyne Avenue just south of 47th Street and you'll find a tribute to one of Chicago's most … Back of the Yards’ history is austere and complicated. Life in this neighborhood was explored in Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle. LOCAL HISTORY AND SOCIAL HISTORY "BACK OF THE YARDS" James R. Barrett Louise Carroll Wade. The Irish gang members would be paid to terrorize voters, cause damage to businesses or even hurt someone in exchange for a small payment from the crooked ward bosses, and the cycle would continue once these Irish gang members grew older and became active in politics in Chicago’s corrupt political machine. Settled by those who worked in the nearby Union Stock Yard between the 1860s and 1880s, Back of the Yards is a neighborhood of immigrants, industry, and social activism. By the late 1970s the Saints and Latin Souls completely dominated all of the Back of The Yards community as white greaser gangs had completely faded out, the neighborhood was pretty much all Souls and Saints above 51st Street and these gangs swelled into hundreds maybe even in the thousands in membership by the early 1980s. A pig and a steer and a whole lot of history are packed into Back of the Yards mural. And you’ll get to see the fruits of their labor firsthand this November. in The neighborhood turned into a worse war zone especially as the 1990s rolled in. Chicago's Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century. Between 1852 and 1865, five (5) … Pershing Road on the north, Garfield Boulevard on the south, railroad tracks on the east near the Fuller Park park, Western Boulevard to the railroad tracks on the west; Back Of The Yards: Pershing Road on the north, Garfield Boulevard on the south, Halsted Street to the railroad tracks on the east, Western Boulevard to the tracks on the west; Canaryville: Pershing Road on the north, 49th Street on the south, railroad track on the east near the Fuller Park park, Halsted Street on the west. Find Something. Back of the Yards is located on the southwest side of Chicago, and is part of the New City community area, which also includes the bordering neighborhood of Canaryville. Many slept on dirt ground over pieces of cardboard. Ismael Lopez lived and died in a small patch of Back of the Yards thick with homicide memorials and gang graffiti. The area was first platted and settled in the year 1865 when the construction of the Union Stock Yards began that opened on Christmas Day of that year. 2nd floor was renovated back in 2010 with 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, hardwood floor thru out, central heat and a/c, huge wooden deck on 2nd floor unit back. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area was occupied largely by Eastern European immigrants and their descendants, who were predominantly … History. www.domu.com/chicago/neighborhoods/back-of-the-yards/history-in-back-of-the-yards, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.89 Safari/537.36. The Irish gangs of Canaryville gained a major reputation for battling invading gangs of blacks that were trying to cross over into the neighborhood or near it during the riots. When the neighborhood started to change and church attendance and school attendance/funds declined, the Archdiocese closed parishes (without community input) and parishes had to combine and adapt to a changing population and … Community organizer Saul Alinsky focused on improving poor communities all across the country, and he started in Chicago in the Back of the Yards in the 1930s. The streets were not paved and there was no sewage system in this town as trash was strewn about in the streets and especially the alleyways. The Union Stock Yards employed over 40,000 Chicagoans by their peak in the 1940s but by 1952 the development of trucking routes to export and import meat around the country called for a closing of several meat packing houses and as the 1950s progressed employment in the area began to downsize causing more poverty and socioeconomic problems this brought about another breed of street gangs known as greaser gangs. While you will find plenty of traditional Chicago bungalows in the neighborhood, you will also find that many of the homes built in this area are quite large. Puerto Ricans had also settled in the Back of The Yards in the south east section of the neighborhood near Sherman Park. One hundred years ago, more meat was processed in Chicago than anywhere on the planet. These two crews were dominant over the other many crews in the neighborhood. The stockyards closed 40 years ago, in 1971. BACK OF THE YARDS, CHICAGO. The neighborhood has not experienced much renovation over the years but has also not fallen into a severe state of decay unless you are looking at south of 51st Street. BYNC is located at 1823 W. 47th Street in Chicago, serving a large area of Chicago’s Southwest Side that includes the communities of … The southern part of this community borders the Englewood and West Englewood neighborhoods which are the most blighted and dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago, the crime and gang activity from these two neighborhoods has been crossing over the Garfield Boulevard border since the 1960s and has intensified since the 1980s, mainly because gangs that protected that border like the Gaylords and Latin Souls had left that area by the late 1970s, allowing black street gangs to take over. Next image. The neighborhood is officially located in the New City community area of Chicago. By the year 1984 gang violence would escalate La Raza migrated into the neighborhood. The Bulls Head Stock Yards were located at Madison Street and Ogden Avenue. Home places to visit places to shop Places to eat PlaCes to visit. The Rebels fought the “Blackstone Raiders” in the mid 50s which was the precursor group that would later become the Black P Stones. 1865 African Americans were attempting to settle in the southern part of the community south of 51st Street by the later 1960s and early 1970s and this resulted in a race war between whites and blacks in the community after blacks began to cross the Garfield Boulevard line this brought settlement of Black P Stones and Cobrastones in the area. Most homes and condos have garages, or at least parking … Man killed in Back of the Yards shooting He was standing outside a building in the 4500 block of South Racine Avenue, when a black car pulled up and two males wearing all black … Irish gangs bullied the German youths in the neighborhood and also newly arrived Czech youths in the 1870s. The Back of the Yards neighborhood was originally part of the Town of Lake until its annexation by Chicago in 1889. History of Back Of The Yards. The area was a part of Lake Township that was developed in the year 1850 and now Lake Township would offer a major stock yard, slaughterhouse, and meat packing plant that offered to employ thousands of newly arrived immigrants. 15 white men were killed in the riots while 23 blacks were killed. The Latin Kings settled in this community in 1971 at 51st and Ada opening a well-known chapter. Places to shop. The Back of The Yards and Canaryville had the most violent greaser gangs in the entire city that were known to be the toughest in the city. Saints and Two Six then broke out into a very nasty war being close in proximity. The 1960s saw the formation of several more greaser gangs and also the formation of the Puerto Rican Village Sharks gang. There are many abandoned and deteriorated buildings south of 51st Street, this southern part of the Back of The Yards in pretty much an urban slum that is often not spoken about. home for sale:. In the year 1889 the town of Lake was annexed into the City of Chicago and the community near the Union Stock Yards became known as the “Back of The Yards” while the mostly Irish neighborhood to the east was known as “Canaryville,” the whole area that encompassed both neighborhoods became the official neighborhood of “New City.”  The Back of The Yards name came from the fact that the community was built around the Union Stock Yards, it also referenced how the stock yards dumped all their waste into the back yards of the residents. Search for: Search. The expansion of the neighborhood began in the mid–nineteenth century with the establishment of the Union Stockyards and the concentration of railroads in the area. The cultures would clash throughout the years in the neighborhood and in the stock yards among workers. In its first stages of growth, it wasn't a center for the South-side Latino community, as it is today. African Americans were settling along Garfield Boulevard on the Englewood/Back of the Yards border as early as the mid-1950s but gangs like the “Rebels” fought viciously to keep blacks and other undesirables out. Here in 1889, developer Samuel Gross built one of his earliest subdivisions of cheap workingmen's cottages. Back Of The Yards (also known as New City), has been through much since its development. In the midst of all the new gang violence by the early 1980s, there was a rise of party crew gangs. The later 1950s brought even more gang violence as racial tensions between blacks, Latinos and whites in southern Back of The Yards and in the Englewood neighborhoods brought about the rise of new gangs and severe gang violence. Freshly arrived Mexican migrants began moving into the neighborhood north of 51st Street as Mexican gangs from other neighborhood infiltrated the area causing conflict with Latin Souls and Saints. The area was first platted and settled in the year 1865 when the construction of the Union Stock Yards began that opened on Christmas Day of that year.