It’s always interesting to learn a little history about your neighborhood, including how a hometown like Kilbourn Park was officially named.

Kilbourn Park was developed along with Old Irving Park during the end of the nineteenth century, attracting mostly middle-class Protestants who sought the solace of quiet, tree-lined streets. The community was serviced by streetcars and light commuter rail, both of which have since been discontinued. Until the Great Depression, most of the area was relatively wealthy and it was noted for its large homes; however, during the Depression, many of those homes were converted into multiple-family units. In the following decades the racial makeup of the neighborhood began to shift from a solidly white, native-born population to one of greater ethnic diversity. Swedish and German immigrants arrived to Chicago in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and they were later followed by Polish and Russian Immigrants in the years following the First World War.

With the flood of immigration in the first half of the twentieth century, the demographic makeup of the neighborhood was shaken-up and the median income of neighborhood residents was greatly reduced. The population of community gradually shrank in the following decades as well, until new waves of immigration started in the 1980s. Mexican and Asian immigration increased dramatically beginning in the late ‘80s, and they now make up more than a quarter of Kilbourn Park’s population. Today, Kilbourn Park is an ethnically diverse working-class neighborhood in the northwest side of Chicago.