Independence Park (Chicago)

Independence Park on Chicago's northwest side is a city park on Springfield Avenue, in the Irving Park area that developed after a rail connection in the eighteen seventies and was annexed to Chicago in eighteen eighty-nine. The commercial district along Irving Park Road developed through the early twentieth century as the surrounding residential blocks filled with bungalows and two-flats built for working-class and middle-class families, many of them Scandinavian, German, and then Polish immigrants who found the northwest side affordable and accessible by streetcar. The park opened on July fourth, nineteen fourteen, after neighbors had held Independence Day celebrations nearby since nineteen oh three, and its field house at first held the local women's club library.

The park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in two thousand nine. The library outgrew the field house and moved to Irving Park Road in nineteen twenty-eight.