On July 27th 1919 a massive race riot broke out in Chicago when a black teenager was drowned to death at 29th Street and Lake Michigan in the Douglas neighborhood. Watch stories, review crime maps, check out nearby restaurants and amenities, and read what locals say about Back of the Yards. The stockyards closed 40 years ago, in 1971. In the midst of all the new gang violence by the early 1980s, there was a rise of party crew gangs. Discover what it would be like to live in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago, IL straight from people who live here. $32.50. New City, more specifically Back of The Yards is the birthplace of the Latin Souls, Saints, Party Players and the City Knights. The Back of The Yards community had a very high rate of poverty especially after the stock yards closed in 1971. 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. 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. Back Of The Yards (also known as New City), has been through much since its development. Search for: Search. Back of the Yards history is also shaped by the immigrant groups which formed their own parishes, sometimes just a block from another Catholic church. 1st floor office storefront can be use as business or living unit with bathrooms, kitchen in the back. 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. Many slept on dirt ground over pieces of cardboard. Think raised ranch-style houses and three to seven bedroom homes with spacious front and/or back yards. 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. Next image. 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 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. The area was formerly part of the town of Lake until it was annexed by Chicagoin 1889. 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. 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. Credit: Max Herman/City Bureau At La Selva’s pop-up shop, Rolando Santoyo brings light to Back of the Yards history. Home back-of-the-yards-garfield-and-laflin back-of-the-yards-garfield-and-laflin. 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.. In the 1900s decade many of the Irish and Germans had achieved some upward mobility and moved to Canaryville and Bridgeport or elsewhere. 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 48th and Laflin La Raza became very notorious as they bopped heads with all the other gangs in the neighborhood. The International Amphitheatre was erected after a fire destroyed the old horse auction barn at the Union Stock Yards in 1934. Mixed use property or use it as 2 flats. Workers lived in already dilapidated buildings with no toilets or running water. 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. BYNC is located at 1823 W. 47th Street in Chicago, serving a large area of Chicago’s Southwest Side that includes the communities of … Check out our store for Gang World Blog Shirts!https://music.apple.com/us/album/gang-world-blog-theme-music-single/1465411598 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. 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. Home places to visit places to shop Places to eat PlaCes to visit. The Two Sixs would eventually expand their territory and take 47th to 51st then Hoyne to Winchester which would later cause violence with the Satan Disciples at 51st and Wood by the later 1980s. 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. 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. 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. During World War I a small cluster of Mexican immigrants came to live and work in the Back of The Yards community making the yards and the neighborhood even more of a cultural melting pot. Here in 1889, developer Samuel Gross built one of his earliest subdivisions of cheap workingmen's cottages. The state militia needed to intervene since the city had no interest in putting down the uprising. 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. home for sale:. Back of the Yards. History of Back Of The Yards. 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. In 1848, a stockyard called the Bulls Head Market was opened to the public. Robert A. Slayton. Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator. In that same year of 1889 Samuel Gross built several “working man’s Cottages” that were small, affordable homes for workers; however, they would soon deteriorate just like the rest of the neighborhood. 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 — The 4800 block of South Laflin Street looks like many blocks on the Southwest Side: Decades-old houses and apartments dot the street a … A 17-year-old boy was reported missing from the Back of the Yards neighborhood on … 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. These two crews were dominant over the other many crews in the neighborhood. The gangs of Lake were harsh and violent even back in the 1880s; Irish gangs like the Bearfoots, Hamburgs, Old Rose Athletic Club, Shielders, Dukies were the dominating forces in the neighborhood and now had influence in Canaryville and Bridgeport. The Bishops also flipped many members of what was left of the Gaylords throughout the 1980s. Back in 1800's, Back Of The Yards consisted of people from European decent. 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. Garfield and Laflin. The Back of The Yards is one of the first gangster neighborhoods and still is an area full of gangs and violence. 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 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. Get Started. With the spreading service of railroads, several small stockyards were created in and around the city of Chicago. 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. All images below are of vacant buildings at the time of the photo. We've also got some great historic photos of the stockyard. The city of Chicago heavily discriminated against the Irish back in these days but the town of “Lake” was perfect for them as they had to live in these shanty towns. back-of-the-yards-garfield-and-laflin. 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. In 2011, "Chicago Tonight" reported on the 40-year anniversary of the closing of Chicago's Union Stockyards. in Chicago's Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century. 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 … 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. 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. in The Bulls Head Stock Yards were located at Madison Street and Ogden Avenue. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. xvi + 423 pp. 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. Subscription email: Search. 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. Life in this neighborhood was explored in Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle. 1865 BACK OF THE YARDS, CHICAGO. Welcome to the official website for the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC), Ballet Folklorico , SSA #7 , SSA #10 , SSA #13, & SSA #39. Chicago artist Joe Miller tapped photos from the heyday of the old Union Stock Yard … Saints and Two Six then broke out into a very nasty war being close in proximity. Most of the white populace of New City is in Canaryville. South Damen Avenue and West 43rd, 47th, and 51st Streets are some of the main thoroughfares in Back of the Yards. 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. This neighborhood was struggling with black and white race relations since the neighborhood was changing from white to black. In its first stages of growth, it wasn't a center for the South-side Latino community, as it is today. Back of the Yards is an industrial and residential neighborhood so named because it was near the former Union Stock Yards, which employed thousands of European immigrants in the early 20th century. The area was platted with several cheap homes and apartment buildings that could easily house the impoverished immigrants for a cheap rate. Illustrations, diagram, maps, notes, essay on sources, and index. Places to shop. In the 1880s the first generations of Irish gang bangers had grown up and were in alumni versions of these gangs as they took up many political positions while still being gang affiliated. 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. The neighborhood turned into a worse war zone especially as the 1990s rolled in. 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. Full size 770 × 828 pixels. Irish gangs bullied the German youths in the neighborhood and also newly arrived Czech youths in the 1870s. Previous image. Places to eat. 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. View listing photos, review sales history, and use our detailed real estate filters to find the perfect place. 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. Zillow has 110 homes for sale in Back of the Yards Chicago. The Irish gangs were controlled by crooked politics and by the Irish Mafia that originated in the Near North Side neighborhood. Most homes and condos have garages, or at least parking … This neighborhood earned its name due to the former Union Stock Yards that once occupied the area. 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. 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 Bishops also arrived around this time and settled at 53rd and Winchester developing a strong alliance with the Latin Kings. Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. History. Between 1852 and 1865, five (5) … The Hispanic youths also felt strongly about blacks moving in as well. The Latin Souls moved here in the same year and war went on for about a decade until the Souls left this section. 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. Black P Stones settled on 51st to 52nd and Marshfield too. I’m back with an alternative to Pantheon! By the year 1984 gang violence would escalate La Raza migrated into the neighborhood. The Woodlawn Organization, 1963. The Latin Kings settled in this community in 1971 at 51st and Ada opening a well-known chapter. 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.