Lincoln Square
Fieldwork Assignment

Walk down to Lincoln Square on a Sunday afternoon, and you will find yourself immersed in a world without problems. At least that is how it looks from the outside, just observing. People walk around with their families, pushing strollers or walking their dogs, conversing with each other and taking the time to talk to people they meet. You see nice cars and beautiful houses, restaurants and patios, library and cinema, the Old Town school of Music, Lillstreet Art Center and the Dank-Haus a museum slash cultural center, in other words it is an enclave where you can find everything you need without having to leave the area. It seems like everybody knows each other either because they live in the same area or because their usual Sunday afternoon or stroll time usually happens here and they got to know each other.
When I say Lincoln Square I am referring to the commercial heart of Lincoln Square neighborhood located where Lincoln, Lawrence and Western avenues meet. It is “the heart of the city’s German culture” (Solomon). Community area 4, 7 miles north of the loop serviced by the Brown Line, it is a part of the Greater Lincoln square along with other neighborhoods, namely Ravenswood Manor, Ravenswood Gardens, Ravenswood, Bowmanville and Budlong Woods( Wikipedia). The City of Chicago gave Lincoln square its name in 1925, three decades before a statue of the president was actually put here in 1956.
During the 1900 and 1950 Lincoln Square was a destination for Germans coming to Chicago. While there are still some German businesses left in the area and Oktober Fest happening every year, the area has now been for the last decades in a process of gentrification and multiculturalism (Francis). If you start right at the intersection of Lincoln and Western, the North side boundary of Lincoln Square the first business on the right side is Garcia’s a Mexican restaurant. Across the street is Barba Yanni, a Greek restaurant whose owner is Palestinian and everybody working there is Romanian. You go down further and on the right side again you finally can see some of the remaining German shops, like Apothecary pharmacy, Brauhaus restaurant and Salamander shoe store which has been there for over 30 years currently owned by Angela Aufegger (Francis). There are also Middle Eastern, Serbian, Indian, Thai, American diners and grills and Italian shops which is proof of how the neighborhood has changed in the last decades. Café Selmarie is everyone’s stop for some of the best desserts you could find, especially in the summer when they open their patio surrounded by trees, flowers and benches where you can sit, since it is rarely that you can find a table. Sitting outside and enjoying my fruit tart, I could see mostly families taking a leisure walk, a single man sitting on a bench reading the newspaper, kids running, around with their moms keeping an eye on them, old couples holding hands and smiling, shop owners at their doors waiting and greeting their neighbors. It looks like a picture perfect small island where everybody is content, where the pace and the troubles of the outside world can’t get to them, where the city surrounding the area with its high traffic, people rushing, the crimes and violence of it don’t affect them. Mostly, as I have observed, the residents or visitors of Lincoln Square are white, middle class to upper class driving mini coopers, BMWs and Mercedes which is usually a good indication of a higher income.
The German residents of Lincoln Square look back at the years when German spirit was still present in the area. “When we first opened, you could walk around and speak German in stores. In the 1980’s, the Davis Theatre still showed movies in German” (qtd. in Francis) sais Burrows a shop owner in Lincoln Square (Francis). Except for the few German shops left and the Oktober Fest, another important landmark for the German heritage is the mural created by German artist Lothar Speer in 1991 in the parking lot at the end of Lincoln square Road right off the stop at Brown line. The mural has images of German landscape and in 2008 a large piece of the actual Berlin wall, one of the largest outside of Germany, was dedicated to the Western Stop Brown line in front of the wall (Francis). During the summer time and late into the fall, from the beginning of June till the end of October, right in this parking lot, there is a farmer’s market every Tuesday where I get my fresh fruits and vegetables. Eventhough I live in North Center, a neighborhod just at the south of Lincoln Square, I always come to Lincoln Square for almost everything. Another reminder of the German heritage is the Lombard Lamp that was presented to Chicago in 1979 by the city of Hamburg. The lamp is similar to the ones you can see on the Lombard bridge in Hamburg (Lombard Lamp).

My own perception of Lincoln Square is that it is the closest to European piazzas where everybody hangs around and enjoys friends and family. For the most part you can see young families in their 30’s. Aside from age, if you walk through Lincoln Square you can hear all types of languages, but mostly from what I have observed are European: German, Greek, Serbian, Polish etc. Another good indication of European residents is the presence of a Soccer store where you can find your favorite soccer team’s uniform or t-shirts with your favorite player’s name and team number, soccer shoes, soccer balls etc. I think the owner did his homework before he opened the store. The king sport of Europeans is soccer.
As the night sets, people walk home, shops close and the Lombard Lamp lights up, while the lighting in the parking lot at the train stop make the mural stand out transporting you in a world of a rustic village. There is a lot of calm you can find here.