2nd wave of Poles calls suburbs home
A reinvigorated Polish community is settling outside the city--and bringing the sounds and flavors of their heritage with them
chicagotribune.com
By Colleen Mastony
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 22, 2004
Polish bakeries and delis have popped up on every block along a strip of Milwaukee Avenue in Niles. Polish-language schools catering to the children of second-generation Poles have begun Saturday afternoon sessions in Wauconda and other suburbs. And Bobak Sausage Co., a longtime fixture in Chicago's Polish enclaves, recently opened a store in Naperville.
All are signs of a Polish community that has been moving out of Chicago and into the suburbs in the last decade, according to a report being released Friday. Immigration has prompted a resurgence in the Chicago area's Polish population. The number of Polish immigrants in the region has reached nearly 138,000, a level that approaches the historic high of 165,000 in 1930.
But as second- and third-generation Poles have moved from the city, the image of the Polish American has changed from steelworker to suburbanite. In Chicago, trendy bars and Hispanic bodegas have replaced the Polish sausage shops and bakeries in some of the city's former ethnic enclaves such as Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park.
Researchers commissioned by the Chicago-based Polish American Association and funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services analyzed 2000 census data and found there are 933,000 people of Polish ancestry in Illinois, with 65 percent in the Chicago suburbs.
"All my old Polish restaurants on the North Side have been replaced," lamented Dominic Pacyga, a Columbia College history professor and author of the book "Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago." "There used to be a place called Patria by the `L.' That's gone. The one around the corner, The Busy Bee, that's gone too. As you travel through the North Side, the Polish landmarks are gone."
As Polish shops disappear from the city, more are opening in the suburbs where the Polish--new arrivals and second-generation Poles--line up for delicacies that remind them of home.
A Polish bookstore and another Polish deli have opened in the last two years on Milwaukee in Niles, a few doors down from a Polish music store. "Every other week, it seems a new Polish store opens up," said Jack Reich, 45, who moved from Poland when he was 9 and lives in Franklin Park. He shopped Thursday in Niles at the Bacik Deli, where clerks and customers bantered in Polish, sausages hung along the wall, and deli cases displayed authentic Polish hams. "Milwaukee Avenue is like little Warsaw," he said.
At the Oak Mill Bakery down the street, the smell of fresh pastries wafted out the door, and gleaming cases of cakes tempted customers as Janusz Jakubczak served up poppyseed kolacz. "A strudel with different dough," he said, offering a taste. There were sugar-dusted paczkis, which looked like doughnuts but Jakubczak said were "better than a doughnut."
"People come to the suburbs for a better life," he said. "And our pastries."
The stores full of food and newspaper racks packed with Polish magazines help soothe homesick immigrants. "Here, I have everything Polish," said Margerita Grzybowska, 26, who arrived from Poland this year. She reads the Polish Time magazine and the Polish Daily News. But, she said, "I still miss my family."
Metro Chicago has long boasted one of the largest Polish communities in the United States. But after several decades of declining immigration from Poland, the numbers began to rise again in 1990 after Congress increased the number of visas available for Poles. Soon after, Poland had the largest number of legal immigrants arriving in Illinois.
"For Polish institutions and social clubs, now you have new people coming and joining again," Pacyga said. "There's new life and new members."
Friday's report provides other details about the Polish community. Nearly one-third of Polish immigrants do not speak English well. Most buy homes, and a high percentage become citizens.
In the second generation, those born in the U.S. have high rates of homeownership, levels of income that closely match those of the general population, and high levels of education. Yet Polish-American elderly are nearly twice as likely to live in poverty as those of non-Polish ancestry, the report found.
Census data showed Polish immigrants as the second-largest immigrant group in the region behind Mexican immigrants, whose numbers reached 582,000 in 2000. In 2000, nearly half of the region's Polish immigrants had been in the United States less than a decade, the report said.
"No other immigrant group came in such large numbers 100 years ago and continues to come in such large numbers today," said Rob Paral, research fellow at the American Immigration Law Foundation and co-author of the study.
New immigrants from Poland are still more likely than other immigrants to move first to the city before leaving for the suburbs. In the 1990s, about 75 percent of new Polish immigrants who came to metro Chicago moved to the city, compared with 25 percent of immigrants from India, the report found.
A hub of new immigrants remains near St. Hyacinth Church on the Northwest Side, where a strip of stores and restaurants in the neighborhood, including the Little Poland Dollar Store and the Staropolska Delicatessen, supply everything Polish.
But the enclaves have pushed westward. The largest Polish community in Chicago is in Portage Park, where 20,854 people of Polish origin make up 32 percent of residents.
Many Poles who come to Chicago quickly strike out for the suburbs. On the South Side, people whose parents once worked in the stockyards have moved to suburbs such as Naperville. On the North Side, settlements follow Milwaukee Avenue, where Polish bakeries dot the roadside like sugar cubes, luring the community toward Schaumburg and Arlington Heights, the top two suburban enclaves behind Naperville.
At the Niles Polish Deli, Teresa Sordyl, 36, browsed and chatted in Polish with a clerk behind the counter. She moved from Poland to Chicago eight years ago but eventually moved to Glenview in search of open space and a suburban school. In the suburbs, she said, "you can find everything you want." |
