Home | Nelson Algren | Theodore Dreiser | Richard Wright | James T. Farrell

 

Damen Avenue
2000 W, from7546 N to 10058 S

Division Street
1200 N, from 90 E to 600 W

“The little petit-larceny punk [Sparrow] from Damen and Division and the dealer [Frankie Machine] still got
along like a couple playful pups.” 19

“The tenants of 1860 West Division Street Landlord Schwabatski was seldom
referred to as the landlord.”20

 

Milwaukee Avenue
500 W at 200 N to 6543 W at 6556 N

The area was home to a variety of first and second generation immigrants,
including a prosperous enclave of wealthy German-Americans, many of whom owned
businesses along Milwaukee Avenue. During the 1930s and 1940s, the corridor
increasingly catered to the Northwest Side's growing Polish-American
population.

“…when they reached Milwaukee Avenue and Division Street.  They entered Antek
Witwicki's Tug & Maul Bar together.  At the corner table the little terrier
called Drunkie John was scolding Molly Novotney, a gril scarcely out of her
teens who supported hustling drinks at the Club Safari in the early morning
hours.” 21 

“Louie never had the sweet-roll horrors any more.  Yet sometimes himself sensed
that something had twisted in his brain in those nights when he'd gotten the
monkey off his back on Milwaukee Avenue.” 22
  
   

 

Ashland Avenue
1600 W, from 6800 N to 7426 N

“In twenty seconds the abandoned Ashland Avenue midnight was thronging with
sprouts who should have been in bed for hours and windows began blazing with
light as if everyone had been sitting around in the dark just waiting for an
accident to happen and here they came, lurching with age and skipping with
youth, the lame, the sick and the lazy, the fearful, the cheerful and the
tamed, recalling with laughter other local disasters—jostling, jumping and
shoving eagerness—all those for whom nothing had yet happened in the world
shouting that it had happened at last, they'd always known it would happen
sooner or later, that corner had always looked so unlucky.” 23