Images of America

Visit Chicago Heights in this volume of images and a portait of the neighborhood from 1930-1970.

This is the long-awaited second volume on Chicago Heights in the Images of America series. Chicago Heights Revisited expands on the popular first volume, as the authors cover the period from 1930-1970 in greater detail. What emerges from this wonderful collection of images is a multi-layered portrait of a lively city striving as one to assist in a World War II Allied victory, even while supporting a large spectrum of differing religious,social, and ethnic institutions. When residents remember Chicago Heights, they remember downtown. Images of the Liberty Restaurant, Nick Guzzino's Barbershop, and Rau's Toyland will evoke fond memories for past and present Chicago Heights residents. The various industries of the city are captured in historic photographs, reminding us all of the hard working residents that created the thriving community of Chicago Heights. Images of the World War II era capture the contributions that the people of Chicago Heights made for their nation and community.

Discover Clark County, a community in Illinois affected by booms in oil and farming as well as housing award-winning writers.

The Wabash River, the National Road, and later the Vandalia Railroad and other rail lines brought settlers and prosperity to Clark County. Communities like Marshall, Martinsville, Casey, Westfield, Darwin, York, and West Union all flourished. The oil boom, which began in 1905, opened one of the most important industries in the county, and a local tank farm and pipeline both operate 100 years later. Farming has always been the main focus for Clark County, smaller grain mills having been replaced by large grain elevators, and the sale of farm equipment and supplies remains a vital business today. Yet Clark County is unique in having hosted a most unusual and successful writers' colony. Located on the west edge of Marshall, the colony produced numerous published authors, including James Jones of From Here to Eternity fame. In addition, several other Clark County citizens have authored books, and a Casey native was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for news writing.

The pictorial history of Assyrian immigration to Chicago that encompasses more than 100 years.

The first Assyrian pioneers came to the United States in the late 1800s. Eventually, by the turn of the century, they began to reside in Chicago. Following several waves of persecution in their homeland, these indigenous people of Mesopotamia continued to migrate to America, and now the largest concentration of them reside in Chicago.

Through the medium of historic photographs, this book captures the evolution of the Assyrian community of Chicago from the late 1800s to the present day. These pages bring to life the people, events, and industries that helped to shape and transform this vibrant ethnic community in Chicago. With more than 200 vintage images, Assyrians in Chicagoincludes photographs from the collection of the Assyrian Universal Alliance Foundation.

This book depicts the many faces of the Assyrian American in various facets of American life interwoven with traditions from their homeland.

The pictorial history of Filipino immigration to Chicago encompasses 100 years, moving from the Philippines to this country of unknown landscapes and uncertainties.

The pioneering Filipinos came in the early 1900s to seek the land of ""milk and honey."" They were mostly pensionados-government-supported students-and self-supported students who settled in the Garfield Park, Hyde Park, and Near North Side neighborhoods of Chicago. From the close of World War II to the present day, the Filipino American population became the largest urban group of Asians in Chicago Through the medium of historic photographs, this book captures the evolution of the Filipino community of Chicago from the early 1900s to the present day.

These pages bring to life the people, events, and industries that helped to shape and transform the Filipino community of Chicago. With more than 200 vintage images, Filipinos in Chicago includes many photographs from personal albums of Filipino American families. This book depicts the many faces of the Filipino American in various facets of American life interwoven with Philippine traditions from the homeland.

This book will give readers a glimpse into the life of a close-knit and highly active community, revealing groups like the Kerneir Pleasure Club, the American Aid Society, and the Society of the Danube Swabians. The German musical life of the city is featured, as is the Karneval season and other year-round festivities and celebrations of the Deutsch-Americans of Chicago and its suburbs.

The village name Bourbonnais is attributed to Fran§ois Bourbonnais. He was a 19th-century French Canadian fur trader who maintained a post in a grove of trees along the east bank of the Kankakee River. This location became known as Bourbonnais Grove. Noel LeVasseur, a former American Fur Company employee, bought two sections of land in the grove in 1834 and established a settlement of immigrant French Canadians. At first, the village was called variously La Point, La Ville, and Vasseurville. A post office named Bourbonnais Grove opened in 1838. The village was known as Bourbonnais Grove until 1875, when it was incorporated as Bourbonnais. By the 1860s, Bourbonnais Grove had 1,719 inhabitants, a blacksmith shop, livery stable, hotel, and a new church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Nativity and built of native limestone. The images in this book depicting life in Bourbonnais have been gathered from local private and museum collections.

Images of America: Hyde Park features vintage images of this famous IIlinois park.

Since the early twentieth century, Hyde Park has been known as a refuge and incubator for intellectuals, artists, novelists, poets, and freethinkers. Its best known institution, the University of Chicago, drew many of these persons close to its boundaries with the promise of a steady diet of conflicting ideas and lofty conversations. Throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century, Hyde Park went through a steady period of growth, both in residents and the construction of a dense network of walk-up apartment buildings and commercial facilities that offered a stark contrast to the more bucolic atmosphere of Hyde Park before the Columbian Exposition of 1893. By the late 1940s, parts of Hyde Park were showing signs of blight, as the area continued to house larger numbers of migrants from other depressed areas of the United States and programs of deferred or nonexistent maintenance began to have irreversible effects on the built environment. Images of America: Hyde Park, Illinois, focuses most of its attention on the period after World War II, all the way through the creation of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Urban Renewal Project, the first major urban renewal project in the United States.

See the story of Western Pennsylvania's Homestead and the Steel Valley, home to the great furnaces of America that supported the nation in wars and the immigrants that provided labor and build the area's proud heritage.

Western Pennsylvania is dotted with what are known locally as mill towns, but few of these communities epitomize this definition more than the municipalities of Homestead, West Homestead, and Munhall. Commonly referred to as the Steel Valley, these towns were home to some of the greatest steel-producing operations in the world. As the Mon Valley's steel production answered the nation's call during two world wars, so did the workers who unloaded countless barges of coal and fed the mills' great furnaces that produced the material needed for weapons, armament, and tanks. Workers emigrated from every country in Europe to make their mark in America. Many of these people spoke little or no English and endured long hours of labor in often hazardous conditions. Their families brought with them the traditions of their varied European cultures, filling their communities with ethnic diversity. Through 200 photographs, Homestead and the Steel Valley conveys the proud heritage of three communities and their role in the nation's history.

Many Chicagoans and tourists from outside the city are rediscovering this colorful and historic neighborhood. Let this history book serve as their guide.

For nearly 150 years, Pilsen has been a port of entry for thousands of immigrants. Mexicans, Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians, Croatians, and Germans are some of the ethnic groups who passed through this "Ellis Island" on Chicago's Near Westside. Early generations came searching for work and found plenty of jobs in the lumber mills, breweries, family-run shops and large factories that took root here. Today most jobs exist outside of Pilsen, but the neighborhood is still home to a loyal population. Pilsen is compact but abounds with close-knit families, elaborate churches, mom-and-pop stores, and sturdy brick homes. Nearly 200 photographs from libraries, personal scrapbooks, and museums provide the evidence. Some notable people who walked the streets of Pilsen include Anton Cermak, Amalia Mendoza, George Halas, Cesar Chavez, Judy Barr Topinka, and Stuart Dybek. Today the Pilsen schools are nurturing another generation of artists, athletes, and activists.

Considered to be one of the largest neighborhood-based St. Patrick's Day parades outside Dublin, Chicago's South Side Irish Parade began quite modestly, with 17 children under the age of 10 marching twice around the block.

Dubbing themselves the ""Wee Ones of Washtenaw and Talman,"" the founders of this great parade marched with homemade signs, costumes, and a baby buggy while neighbors and family members cheered them on. Over the next 31 years, the parade grew into an annual event, attracting hundreds of thousands who came to celebrate Irish heritage with family and friends. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama encouraged Taoiseach Brian Cowen of Ireland to visit the parade, calling it ""one of the great events in America.""