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Local Landmarks & Heritage

  • St. Michael's Church
  • Henry Gerber House (National Historic Landmark)
  • Carl Street Studios
  • Old Town Triangle Association / Old Town Art Fair

Neighborhood History

Old Town Triangle takes its name from the wedge of land bounded by North Avenue, Clark Street, and the old Ogden Avenue alignment, first settled by German immigrants around 1850 who farmed the marshy ground so thoroughly that neighbors nicknamed it the Cabbage Patch. The name Old Town emerged decades later, popularized in the Chicago Tribune, and stuck permanently after residents organized the Old Town Triangle Association in 1948 to restore a neighborhood left rundown by the Depression.

St. Michael's Church, one of only seven structures to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, still anchors the neighborhood's skyline. The Henry Gerber House on Crilly Court, where the nation's first gay rights organization was founded in 1924, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2015. The Carl Street Studios, rehabilitated by sculptors Sol Kogen and Edgar Miller beginning in 1927, remain a testament to the neighborhood's early art colony.

From a nineteenth-century cabbage farm to a National Historic Landmark and a nationally known art fair, Old Town Triangle's layered history is exactly the kind of story worth wearing on your chest.

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Old Town Triangle - Chicago - Unisex Heavy Blend Hoodie

Old Town Triangle - Chicago - Unisex Heavy Blend Hoodie

Regular price $46.95 CAD
Regular price Sale price $46.95 CAD
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Old Town Triangle is the wedge of streets between North Avenue, Clark Street and the former path of Ogden Avenue, farmed by German settlers from around 1850. St. Michael’s Church survived the 1871 fire, and residents formed their association in 1948.

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