For the six miles between these two industries the
street is lined with shops of butchers and grocers, with
dingy and gorgeous saloons, and pretentious establishments
for the sale of ready-made clothing. Polk Street, running
west from Halsted Street, grows rapidly more prosperous;
running a mile east to State Street, it grows steadily
worse, and crosses a network of vice on the corners of
Clark Street and Fifth Avenue. Hull-House once stood in
the suburbs, but the city has steadily grown up around it
and its site now has corners on three or four foreign
colonies. Between Halsted Street and the river live about
ten thousand Italians--Neapolitans, Sicilians, and
Calabrians, with an occasional Lombard or Venetian. To
the south on Twelfth Street are many Germans, and side
streets are given over almost entirely to Polish and
Russian Jews. Still farther south, these Jewish colonies
merge into a huge Bohemian colony, so vast that Chicago
ranks as the third Bohemian city in the world. To the
northwest are many Canadian-French, clannish in spite of
their long residence in America, and to the north are
Irish and first-generation Americans. On the streets
directly west and farther north are well-to-do English
speaking families, many of whom own their own houses and
have lived in the neighborhood for years; one man is still
living in his old farmhouse.
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