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Wabash Avenue
44 E, from 908 N to 12484

"And the family would have to be moving soon.  When he'd bought this building, Wabash Avenue had been a nice, decent, respectable street for a self-respecting man to live with his family.  But now, well, the niggers and kikes were getting in, and they were dirty, and you didn't know but what, even in broad daylight, some nigger moron might be attacking his girls."8


Indiana Avenue
200 E from 1200 S to 13765 S

"Then he thought about Indiana Avenue.  It was a better street than Wabash.  It was a good block, too, between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth.  Maybe when his old man sold the building he'd buy one in this block.  It was nearer to the stores, and there were Catholics on the street, and in the evening the old man could sit on the porch talking with Old Man O'Brien, and his old lady could gossip with Mrs. O'Brien and Dan's mother, and Mrs. Scanlan."9

Washington Park
(pictured above)


"He [Studs] felt as if he was not in Washington Park, but that he and Lucy were in some place else, a some place else that was just not Washington Park, but was better prettier, and no one else knew of it.  He glanced about him.  He looked at the grass which slid down to the bank, and at silver-blue lagoon that was so alive, like it was dancing with the sun.  He watched rowboats, the passing people.  He took squints at everything from different angles, and watched them how their appearances would change, and they would look entirely different."10

58th Street
5800 S, from 1432 E to 7160 W

Prairie Avenue
300 E from 1600 s to 13358 S

"Guys had always wondered what sort of showing Studs would make in a scrap with the lads from Fifty-eighth and Prairie, but none of them had ever bothered
Studs."11

Calumet Avenue
334 E, from 1800 S to 13571 S
(Pictured above)


"... And the flower of this community, its young men were grouped about the pool
room, choking the few squares of sidewalk outside it.  The pool room was two
doors east of the elevated station, which was midway between Calumet and
Prairie Avenues.  It had barbor poles in front, and its windows bore the
scratched legend, Bathcellar's Billiard Parlor and Barber Shop."12

James T. Farrell used inspiration from his own life in contributing to the setting of Studs Lonigan. Having grown up across from Washington Park, spending a lot of time on 57th Avenue at The Slow Club or The Cube (two artistic havens for writers, poets, artists, and actors), as well as living on East Avenue in the South Shore District, Farrell was very familiar with the places mentioned in Studs Lonigan. The Indiana Avenue that is mentioned so frequently throughout the book, is extremely close to the 57th Street where Farrell spent so much of his time.