The telltale landmarks are fewer now than they were when the Tribune offered readers concise directions to Greektown 70 years ago.
Chicago's Greektown in May 1969 was a cluster of a dozen or so businesses at the intersection of Jackson Boulevard and Halsted Street.
Greektown’s founding father was Christ Chakonas, who was born in Sparta and arrived in Chicago shortly after the Great Fire of 1871. Seeing opportunity in its ashes, he returned to his hometown and brought over relatives and neighbors, according to the late DePaul University professor Andrew T. Kopan.
Two decades later, the Greek American novelist Harry Mark Petrakis wrote of his first day as a stock boy at a similar store. The Greek owner asked what he saw. He said produce and cheese and was proclaimed a bonehead, Petrakis recalled in his memoir “Stelmark.” A group of displaced people from Greece arrive at Union Station in Chicago on March 23, 1951, after arriving from the east. At right, with portfolio, is George Rendas, chairman of a Chicago displaced persons committee.
[Most read] The Chicago Bears don’t have any 1st-round picks, so what will they do? Brad Biggs’ NFL mock draft 1.0.Greece is crisscrossed by mountains that isolate one region from another. So Greektown had a Messenia Brotherhood for immigrants from southern Greece, an Ephesians Society for Chicagoans from the Ionian islands, and a Macedonian Megas Alexandros Club, in honor of Alexander the Great.
That quirkiness made for a vibrant, fascinating neighborhood. But it couldn’t save it from Mayor Richard J. Daley’s decision to replace Greektown with the University of Illinois’ Circle Campus.
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