The Places I’ve Lived
I was thinking of all the places I’ve lived in my life, and was wondering if they were all still there. For fun, I used Google Maps – I love “Street view”! – to find them.
3806 W. Montrose Ave, Chicago
This is where I lived when I was born. My parents rented an apartment here. My great uncle owned the building and the book bindery that took up the ground floor. Their main contract was with the Chicago Public
Library. Remember all those books rebound with the dark green canvas covers? Those were from this shop.
1935 W. Eddy St. Chicago
My paternal grandparents bought this house in the depression, and lived in it until they died and the family sold it in the late 1980′s. It was in a very German neighborhood, just a block or so from Lincoln Avenue. My grandparents both immigrated from Germany in the 1920′s. Cousins, aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles, much of that side of the family lived in the area on the north side. Other relatives lived in Milwaukee in that town’s German enclave.
My parents moved into the upstairs flat when I was about a year old. I lived here until I was four or five. It remained the geographical center of the extended families lives for years – kind of the family homestead. Even after we moved away, this house was my stopping place and refuge when I was in the city, which was often, because even though my parents moved the family out to Skokie later on, I went to high school and college in the city (in the downtown area), and often stayed over here when I didn’t feel like trekking home. My grandparents didn’t mind me crashing – there was always work to do. I helped or did most of the work on the place when my grandparents got older. My grandfather was a painter, and I apprenticed with him part time during a couple of summers when I was in high school – my introduction to the trades.
3448 N. Oakley St. Chicago
This was the first house my parents owned. It was a wreck of a three flat and they fixed it up. We live here until about 1964. Riverview amusement park was right down the street, within easy walking distance and we used to go there a lot. We could see the giant parachute ride from our back porch windows.
7534 N. Keeler Ave., Skokie
My parents bought this house when I was in the middle of second grade – about 1964-65. They had five kids and we needed more space. When we moved here we thought it was like out in the country! We never had much of a back yard before this, and parts of the neighborhood and area were still undeveloped. In the later years, I did most of the work on the house. I built a really cool kind of gazebo thing in the back yard. I wonder if it’s still there? Some of the large trees there I planted. My parents lived here until just after my dad died. I lived here until after college and I went back the city and moved in with my girlfriend.
7022 N. Rockwell St., Chicago
This is the first place my girlfriend and I lived together, for about two years. It was a great third floor flat! Looked out over Indian Boundary Park. The Park even had it’s own little zoo and a large pond with ducks and stuff. When the rent got too high for us, we moved around the corner on Estes.
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2560 W. Estes Ave., Chicago
My girlfriend and I lived here for two more years over looking the park, and the zoo. We got married the last year we lived here. No fancy wedding. Just us and a judge at City Hall.
6144 W. Warwick, Chicago
This was the first house we bought around 1983 and where both our kids were born. We lived here for about 11 years while I fixed the place up and restored it.
436 N. Elmwood, Oak Park
We moved to Oak Park in 1994 because I found this cool house. We closed on my wife’s birthday. It took nearly ten years to restore it. We lived here about 11 years. But we could no longer stand the noise living next to a very busy street and the taxes were getting ridiculously high. Still, it was hard for me to walk away. We sold it in 2005 right when values were starting to slide just before the housing bust.
1531 Monroe, River Forest
We lived here for about a year and a half so our daughter could stay in the district and finish high school. It was depressing to live here because it was very small (our condo was about 800 square feet) and most of our belongings had to be kept in storage. It was a cool building though, and we had some nice neighbors. It was also right near very busy!! and noisy!! North Avenue.
This is where we live now.
It took about six years to rehab it – it was kind of a wreck, and the property was a mess. It’s on two acres and is the best place I’ve ever lived. It’s still semi-rural around here, very quiet, very dark at night, and surrounded by natural areas with lot of birds and wildlife. I hope it doesn’t get ruined when the economy picks up and insane development starts again.
