Wicker Park Landmark District to get early Christmas present -- signage

The Wicker Park Historic Landmark District will be getting a very special pre Christmas present this year in the form of historic district signage. Chicago historic landmark status was given to the Wicker Park District in 1991, twelve years after it was placed on the National Register for Historic Places on June 20, 1979.

Exact dates for the hanging of the eighteen by thirty inch signs will be determined by the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT). According to Heidi Sperry, Senior Architectural Historian in the Historic Preservation Division of the Department of Zoning and Land Use, the signs will be in place in the next three weeks or so.

It was in 1968 that a Chicago Ordinance established the Landmark Commission in the form as we know it today. No doubt issues of signage began then, though the first signs did not begin going up on light poles until the mid to late 90s.

Discussions of why a district should have signage and what it should look like have gone on with people in the various districts and Commission staff for at least the two decades.

To emphasize the community's diversity, three languages, English, Polish and Spanish were part of the Old Wicker Park Committee signs

The Old Wicker Park Committee, now known as the Wicker Park Committee (WPC), started celebrating the district in signage around 1980. The late Marion Smith worked long and hard to create and hang the signs. Residents paid, often for multiple signs, then got ladders and put them up.  A second batch of signs were made after the Landmarks designation, causing the design to be slightly altered. There are still a few hanging around on the side streets.

Spearheaded by the late Joseph DuciBella, the well known Chicago Theatre Historian, a small army of OWPC members worked long hours documenting the building stock in the neighborhood after the district was placed on the National Register. Then the even longer battle began to get the historic designation from the City.

The Ukrainian Village Historic Landmark District, a newer district, already has there signage in place while the two newest, East Village and Milwaukee Avenue, do not.

Editor's Note: If the heavens rumble during the signage being hung, it will no doubt be Joe and Marion doing a jig!