Map of chicago 1930 full#

Thrasher estimated (conservatively) that there were 25,000 boys and young men in gangs in Chicago. As immigrants flooded to these urban centers, major shifts in social and spatial organization gave birth to gangs. “Some are good some are bad and each has to be considered to its own merits.”ĭuring the years between World War I and the Great Depression, many cities in the United States experienced a boom in both population and industrial production. “No two gangs are just alike,” Thrasher wrote. He also inscribed important locations and gang territories, such as “No Man’s,” “Gang Camp” and “Death Corner.” The gangs each had their own distinct characteristics, creating a mosaic of regions. He depicted parks, boulevards, cemeteries, and railroads in different shades of gray, and even showed if hang-outs had clubrooms by marking them in red triangles and circles.

Map of chicago 1930 full#

The map shows where certain gangs rule within the Gangland “empire,” which he explains isn’t just based on geography, but on “fissures and breaks in the structure of social organization.” The full map of Thrasher’s Chicago’s Gangland. Gangs are not only tied to their environment, but play a significant role in a city’s social distribution and structure, according to Thrasher. Chock-full of gray and red demarcations, the hand-drawn, multi-layered map provides detailed insider knowledge of Chicago’s gang activity. Published in 1927, Chicago’s Gangland is tucked into the back of Thrasher’s seminal book on urban crime and ethnography, The Gang, a Study of 1313 Gangs in Chicago. “Their distribution as shown on the accompanying map makes it possible to visualize the typical areas of gangland and to indicate their place in the life and organization of Chicago.” “No less than 1,313 gangs have been discovered in Chicago and its environs!” Frederic Thrasher wrote at the time.

Between 19, one sociologist at the University of Chicago endeavored to track down and map the favorite haunts and hang-outs of more than 1,300 gangs for the project Chicago’s Gangland. The maps were republished by the University of Chicago Press in Census Data of the City of Chicago, 1920 (1931), Census Data of the City of Chicago, 1930 (1933), and Census Data for the City of Chicago, 1934 (1934), although the versions found here are earlier editions published as separate pieces and held at the University of Chicago Map Collection.In the 1920s, the streets of Chicago were home to hundreds of secret clubhouses and hideouts-home bases to thieving, violent gangsters. Burgess was definitely among those who administered the analysis of the data that underlay them. It is not clear who actually made the maps, although Ernest W. Funded by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, this entity particularly focused on supporting Chicago research. of Sociology') were produced under the aegis of the Social Science Research Committee or its immediate predecessor, the Local Community Research Committee. All of these maps (even those that say 'Dept. The maps were republished by the University of Chicago Press in Census Data of the City of Chicago, 1920 (1931), Census Data of the City of Chicago, 1930 (1933), and Census Data for the City of Chicago, 1934 (1934), although the versions used in the construction of this Web site are earlier editions published as separate pieces and held at the University of Chicago Map Collection.