Chicago's Printers' Row a Guide for the Visitor, New Resident or Merely Curious

Nearly a century ago people and goods flowed into Chicago through four train stations. People transferring from train lines in one station to those in another fed local businesses catering to travelers and the good that arrived on those same trains supplied those businesses and industry in the surrounding blocks. One of those train stations, still standing though no longer in use, was Dearborn station. The trains coming into the city through it’s infamous stockyard supplied the paper and machinery as well as the eventual shipping of finished good to the printing companies that gave Chicago’s Printers’ Row it’s name.

Following the flight of Chicago’s meat-packing industry and the beginning of the rail system’s dismantling, Dearborn Station fell into decline as did the neighborhood surrounding it. By the time the last years of the 1970's arrived the area was largely deserted, it’s main inhabitants being the homeless attracted by the Pacific Gardens Mission and former railroad employees living off their pension checks in the area’s single room occupancy hotels.

However, in the final years of the 1970's a wave of urban renewal project started rolling through cities across the United State. It continues today with the hip 20-somethings from New York and Baltimore to Austin, San Francisco and Seattle living in newly 'transitioning' neighborhoods. Formerly small ethnic enclaves or simply run down the low rent, edginess of dive bars gone chic and empty store fronts turned art galleries in these neighborhoods now draw the post-college set.