But often, upon arriving here, those immigrants found themselves packed into teeming tenements in worn-out neighborhoods near industrial areas. Immigrants on the upswingĬhicago is famously a city of immigrants chasing brighter economic futures.
The story of how that came to be is intimately tied to Chicago’s immigrant past-and to the American dream that those immigrants were chasing. Two- and three-flat apartment buildings make up a quarter of Chicago’s housing. There’s an intermediate step between Chicago’s iconic skyscrapers and the instantly-recognizable bungalows that surround them.