The Lincon-Belmont retail and entertainment district developed around the intersection of three of the North Side’s busiest thoroughfares: Belmont, Ashland, and Lincoln Avenues. During the 1920s and 1930s, retailers and amusement promoters were attracted to the area because of its convenient transit connections to both local and more far-flung neighborhoods, as well as the growing affluence of the city’s so-called Bungalow Belt, a ring of semi-suburban housing developed during this period. Bungalow homemakers often preferred shopping in outlying business districts like Lincoln-Belmont rather than trekking all the way downtown, a trip almost twice as distant and increasingly time-consuming due to growing central-city streetcar congestion. In the 1930s, local retailers dubbed the area “Nortown.” Though the area declined during the 1960s and 1970s, more recent waves of residential and commercial investment have revitalized the area.
JAZZ AGE CHICAGO 