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Local Landmarks & Heritage

  • The Legacy Walk
  • Rainbow crosswalks on North Halsted Street
  • Belmont CTA Station
  • Center on Halsted

Neighborhood History

The Halsted Street corridor took its identity from the LGBTQ community that began gathering along it circa 1970, when area residents marched in Chicago's first Gay Pride Parade. Through the 1970s and 1980s, gay-owned bars and businesses displaced from earlier enclaves near Old Town anchored a new commercial district here, and by the late 1980s the corridor had picked up an informal nickname, Boystown, coined in a local newspaper column. In 1997, Mayor Richard M. Daley made it official, designating the district Chicago's gay neighborhood — the first such civic recognition anywhere in the nation.

The area's history is now written directly into its streets. The Legacy Walk, a series of bronze and rainbow pylons chronicling LGBTQ history, runs along North Halsted and was formally designated a Chicago landmark in 2019 — the world's only outdoor museum of its kind. Rainbow-painted crosswalks mark nearby intersections, and the Belmont CTA station anchors the corridor's south end, carrying residents and visitors through one of the city's busiest transit junctions.

For a neighborhood whose name was claimed by its own residents before the city made it official, MY-NHD's Boystown pieces carry that same spirit of a community naming its own ground.

MY-NHD

Boystown - Chicago - Unisex Cotton Tee

Boystown - Chicago - Unisex Cotton Tee

Regular price $29.95 CAD
Regular price Sale price $29.95 CAD
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Boystown is the Halsted Street corridor where Chicago’s LGBTQ community gathered from around 1970. In 1997 the city designated it Chicago’s gay neighborhood, and the Legacy Walk’s rainbow pylons, a Chicago landmark since 2019, chronicle LGBTQ history along the street.

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