ENGLEWOOD — Neighborhood boundaries are often up for debate because the lines can get a bit fuzzy.
Greater Englewood is so large that when DNAinfo Chicago launched an interactive Web app, asking readers to share what they thought were the boundaries of the neighborhood, many had different ideas.
Some drew Englewood ending at King Drive on the east, Western on the West and 79th Street on the South. Close, but that's not accurate.
Looking at the map, it’s obvious that people know where Greater Englewood is on a community map, but there was some uncertainty on the cutoff.
Englewood and West Englewood make up Greater Englewood. According to the City of Chicago community maps, the boundaries for Englewood are 55th Street on the north, 75th street on the south, May Street on the west and the Dan Ryan on the east. For West Englewood, the boundaries are 55th on the north, 75th on the south, Hamilton Avenue on the west and Racine Avenue on the east.
Glen Fulton, executive director of the Greater Englewood Community Development Corporation, said the east side of the Englewood boundary gets a little tricky.
“It goes from the Dan Ryan on the east, but actually it’s State Street on the east. What happens is the Dan Ryan takes a little curve around Marquette Road,” he said. “On the west, we say that it is Western Avenue, but it’s actually Hamilton Avenue.”
Asiaha Butler, president of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, or RAGE, said people like her who grew up in Englewood know the boundaries. It’s those from the outside that get it wrong.
“I think people not familiar with the area say Auburn Gresham is Englewood, sometimes they say New City is Englewood,” she said. “That’s fine they want to expand us, but [Greater Englewood] is pretty big already.”
Butler said she intentionally added the “greater Englewood” into her organization’s name because she didn’t want to create division between Englewood and West Englewood.
“Most people don’t even consider it a dividing point,” she said. “Most people in West Englewood say they live in Englewood. We really don’t hear that division, so Greater Englewood is both, we try to keep saying it intentionally.”
Fulton said the only time he sees a divide is when it comes to crime. He said that the media focuses on West Englewood. He said all of the development, such as the new Whole Foods Market, is happening east of Morgan.
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