Avondale is one of 77 officially designated community areas. It is located on the Northwest Side of Chicago. The northern border is the Addison Street from the north branch of the Chicago River in the east to Pulaski Road in the west. The neighborhood extends further west along Belmont Avenue to the Union Pacific / Northwest Line. Its southern border is Diversey Avenue from the Union Pacific/Northwest Line to the Chicago River.HistoryThe first European settler in Avondale was Abraham Harris who settled the area three years after its 1850 incorporation into Jefferson Township. In 1869, Avondale was incorporated as a village. It has been speculated that developer and Pennsylvania native John Lewis Cochran named the village in honor of the miners and rescue workers who died in the Avondale coal mine fire. Atypical for the time, Avondale was racially integrated in the nineteenth century with twenty African American families moving to the area and building Avondale's first church in the 1880s. Avondale, along with the rest of Jefferson Township, was annexed by the City of Chicago in 1889.Factories and other industries sprang up around the start of the 20th century due to the Chicago River and Avondale's dense network of transportation corridors that were built in the 1870s and improved after its annexation into Chicago including replacement of cable cars with electric powered streetcars. The resulting jobs in the area were responsible for drawing the initial wave of European immigrants.
