The Lincoln Square residents who gather each summer Tuesday at the neighborhood farmers’ market, in the shadow of the el stop at Western Avenue just below Lawrence, are surely as familiar with another neighborhood amenity a few blocks southeast down Lincoln Avenue. But what few may know about their handsome regional library is that Conrad Sulzer, for whom it’s named, was a Swiss immigrant who more than 160 years ago raised vegetables and flowers in fields a little further south and east, in the area now sometimes called Ravenswood.
The land that farmers from England, Germany, and Luxembourg claimed in the 1840s had been Potawatomi fields. Lincoln Avenue was then Little Fort Road (its name a reference to its endpoint in Waukegan), traveled by farmers hauling their crops down to the city. When the Chicago and North Western Railroad laid the tracks in 1854 that would define the eastern boundary of North Center and Lincoln Square, farmers began to send their crops into Chicago by rail.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In 1879, a little farther north, at Belmont, a club of Prussian war veterans created a picnic grove and rifle range along the river’s east bank. Locals knew it as Sharpshooters Park. Over time, a bandstand, a dance pavilion, and food concessions were added, and the park opened to the public as a beer garden. Then rides and other attractions changed it once again—into Riverview Sharpshooters Park. Eventually, its more than 100 rides included the 212-foot-high parachute drop and the Bobs roller coaster, and it drew people from across the region for family outings, company picnics, and church fund-raisers. It finally shut down after its 1967 season. Today, the Area Three police headquarters, DeVry Institute of Technology, and a shopping center occupy the site.
Chicago was generous to the new and prospering neighborhood, setting aside such public spaces as Welles Park, east of Western Avenue and north of Montrose, and Horner and Gompers parks across the river to the west of Lincoln Square. The Catholic Archdiocese established Queen of Angels church and school across Wilson Avenue from Welles Park, and just up Lincoln Avenue the Chicago Public Library built the Frederick H. Hild Regional Branch.
