• Park West Park (established 1916, renamed 1979)
• Lincoln Park Zoo
• Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
• Lincoln Park (renamed 1865)

Park West takes its name simply from its position west of Lincoln Park, the 1,208-acre lakefront park for which the community area is named. The park began as a cemetery in the 1860s; when physicians and residents raised sanitation concerns, the city ceased burials, exhumed the grounds, and renamed the reclaimed land Lincoln Park in 1865 following President Lincoln's assassination. The neighborhood along its western edge developed as part of Lake View Township before annexation to Chicago in 1889.

Park West Park itself began as a 1916 fire station site on Wrightwood Avenue before the city converted it to a playground; it was known simply as Wrightwood Playlot until the Chicago Park District renamed it for the resurgent neighborhood in 1979, at the request of 43rd Ward Alderman Martin J. Oberman. A few blocks east, the neighborhood borders the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, both anchors of the park it takes its name from.

From a repurposed cemetery to a zoo-adjacent neighborhood named for its own renamed playlot, Park West's history is written entirely in relation to the park next door — a legacy worth wearing wherever your walk takes you.