As late as the 1870s, the area now known as Birchwood Beach, along Lake Michigan from Touhy Avenue to Birchwood Avenue, had no paved streets and was a sandbank filled with birch and oak trees. Samuel B. Chase, a developer of Rogers Park, named the area after his farm in the Lake View section of […]

The small, almost indiscernible, point of land that juts into Lake Michigan on the southeast border of Rogers Park is not particularly remarkable from a topographical perspective. This area was once called Cape Hayes and its official boundaries were the lake on the east, Devon Avenue on the south, Sheridan Road on the West and […]

Chicago is famous as a city built on a grid of streets, each laid out one-eighth of a mile apart from the other, many of them stretching for miles through the city, out into the flat Midwestern horizon. Some Chicago streets do not fit into that grid, however. Ridge Boulevard is one such street. How […]

The area of Rogers Park known locally by the name of its block club, “Lunt Avenue Neighbors” lies in a low pocket of land between the prehistoric lakeshores marked by Ridge Avenue on the west and Clark Street on the east, from Pratt Avenue on the south to Touhy Avenue on the north. Although often […]

by Hank Morris People are frequently confusing Rogers Park as East Rogers Park and West Ridge as West Rogers Park. There is some basis in fact for these names. But, it’s not what you may think. There actually WAS an East Rogers Park and West Rogers Park and both were in Rogers Park. Neither were […]

by Mary Jo Doyle Named after Philip McGregor Rogers, Rogers Ridge, as it was called for a time, was originally 600 acres of land located along the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad’s right-of-way (today Metra). A lakeshore road was planned to run in front of the village and this land lay 22 feet above Lake Michigan […]

by Hank Morris Confusion existed (and apparently still exists) about the location of the western boundary of Rogers Park. The original plat marked the boundary line at Ridge Avenue. And, Ridge Avenue was the western boundary on Monday, April 29, 1878, when the Village of Rogers Park was chartered by the State of Illinois. Note, […]

by Colleen Taylor Sen Edward Joseph Kelly (1876-1950), the 46th Mayor of Chicago, was born in Chicago and in the 1920s served as Chief Engineer of the Sanitary District of Chicago. In 1933, he was appointed Mayor by the City Council following the assassination of Mayor Anton Joseph Cermak (1873-1933). He held this post until […]