We need to say frankly at the outset that the neighborhood is misnamed. The southern half may be shown on the maps as North Center, and the northern half as Lincoln Square, and since these names are now embedded in the city’s statistical compilations we may be sure they’ll endure. But the real name of the community is Ravenswood. It’s the ghost neighborhood of Chicago, whose presence isn’t acknowledged in any substantial way, only felt.
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It didn’t, at least not officially. This sank in for me by degrees. My family and I moved into a house near Irving Park and Ashland in the early 1990s and discovered it stood in the East Ravenswood Historic District. City maps inexplicably showed the district as part of Lakeview, although Lakeview as commonly understood was far distant. But Lake View High School happened to be at Irving Park and Ashland, and I presumed the mapmakers didn’t want it known that it had been built in the wrong place. No matter; if we were in East Ravenswood, I felt certain that Ravenswood lay to the west.
Not so. If you crossed Ravenswood Avenue—which runs parallel to the Metra tracks at 1800 West—you ended up in North Center. In fact, as I eventually discovered, Ravenswood was not to be found anywhere on the official maps. Signs of Ravenswood, on the other hand, could be found everywhere. In addition to the el line and the bank, there was Ravenswood Avenue, Ravenswood elementary school, and Ravenswood hospital; there was a Ravenswood Community Council and a Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce; out past the river there was even a small community known as Ravenswood Manor, although on investigation it turned out to be part of Albany Park. This evidence was widely distributed and to my mind suggested a Ravenswood of epic scale, which had risen to prominence in some golden era and then vanished, leaving only traces, like the Acropolis or Chichen Itza.
No doubt this explains Ravenswood’s present obscurity. One must suppose that when the University of Chicago surveyors organizing the city into community areas back in the 1920s arrived with their transits, stakes, and chains, they said, This can’t be it! and departed in search of something grander. One can’t fault the choice of Lincoln Square in this respect. As for North Center—well, the name is a bit generic, and the intersection it references (Lincoln, Damen, Irving Park) won’t make anyone forget Piccadilly Circus. But is it a hub? Sure.
