This project simultaneously tracks the religious history and the ethnic evolution of Chicago's Jewish community. As Chicago's immigrant population grew during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jewish communities throughout the city moved to new neighborhoods, established new houses of worship, and helped build the dynamic culture of the changing city. Mapping the layout of these synagogues illuminates the spatial dimensions of this history in a visual manner, providing deeper dimension to the storied history of Chicago's Jews.

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This map does not represent all the synagogues that operated in Chicago between 1870 and 1970. Many of those not included here were smaller and harder to study. Learning more about these congregations would involve detailed research in the city's Jewish archives and with contemporary congregations. This would be a valuable project; we hope this map encourages and facilitates deeper research into Chicago's Jewish history.

 

The synagogues included here represent broad patterns of Jewish movement within Chicago, the effects of migration on Jewish communities, and the richness of Jewish culture in the city. The one hundred year period from 1870-1970 covers some of the most important events in Chicago's history and the history of its Jewish communities: the Great Fire of 1871, the expansion of the city south and west in the late nineteenth century, the flourishing of Jewish cultural life around the turn of the century, the impacts of immigration and technological developments--like cars and railroads--on Chicago, the devastating effects of two World Wars and the Holocaust, and evolution of the twentieth-century city. Together the stories of these synagogues demonstrate how integral Jewish history is to Chicago and how fluid the psychical space of this city has been.