I suspect every large city/metropolitan area has one. That street that has everything you would ever need and some things you don’t. A street that runs for miles through all kinds of neighborhoods and areas, from city to suburban, where on the same street you can find housing projects and Maserati dealers, albeit miles apart but connected by the same road. It’s a street that as you look back on the past 30 or 40 or 50 years you recall significant events in your life that shape your views and opinions today.
For Chicago, that street has to be Ogden Avenue.
The street is named after William Butler Ogden who was an American politician and railroad executive and served as the first Mayor of Chicago. He was referred to as “the Astor of Chicago”. He was, at one time, the city’s richest citizen. Ogden designed the first swing bridge over the Chicago River and donated the land for Rush Medical Center. Ogden was also a founder of the Chicago Board of Trade. After the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act, Ogden was named as the first president of the Union Pacific Railroad. On October 8, 1871, Ogden lost most of his prized possessions in the Chicago Fire. He also owned a lumber company in Peshtigo, Wisconsin which burned on the same day.
Ogden Avenue had everything a major thoroughfare with lots of traffic would have – car dealerships, body shops, restaurants, banks, small retail outlets and self-owned businesses that could fix or repair anything on or in your home. Typewriter, vacuum, automobile, lawn mower and appliance repair shops seemed to be on every block. Armenian, Bohemian, Croatian, German, Greek, Lithuanian, Polish or Ukrainian restaurants could all be had within a few miles of any of the others.
To get downtown you would go east on Ogden until it ended. If you went west it would be known as Route 66 and take you to Arizona or California, if you had a need to go there. The street intersects I-90/I-94 (Kennedy Expressway), I-355 and the Illinois Tollway. And passes over railroad tracks.
For me, Ogden Avenue is where I would get my first job, at a body shop. It is also where I worked later in a car wash, and another car wash. It’s where I got my second Schwinn and later my second road bike. It’s where I bought my first car and sold my first car. Ogden had a couple of Radio Shacks where my parents bought me my first computer, a TRS-80 complete with a tape deck. It’s where I would subsequently upgrade my computer to a VIC-20 and later, a Commodore 64. Radio Shack also had kits and components to make electrical projects and build things. We would build our own radio-controlled cars from components from one of the Ogden Avenue Radio Shacks.
The street is where the dentist, orthodontist and the general surgeon/emergent care clinic was for the occasional suture or dislocated bone. My wisdom teeth were extracted by an oral surgeon located on the street. My first savings passbook account and first time I bought beer with a fake ID were both on Ogden. My first kiss was on Ogden. Hockey games, picnics, and plenty of garage sales at some point involved taking Ogden to get there.
Occasionally when I went to work downtown with my father he would take Ogden Avenue and drive through the westside of Chicago where those less fortunate than us lived. I think that’s why he really did it – to show me although he claimed it was faster than taking the Eisenhower Expressway. My father used to say, “If you can’t find it on Odgen, you don’t need it.”
While much has changed of course, the variety of restaurants, goods, services still remain along with the super markets, franchise fast food, big box stores and coffee shops and corporate-owned car washes.
If you needed photography equipment there was a store it seemed in every town on the street. Pet shops were almost as numerous. My first snakes, tropical fish and iguanas all came from pet shops on Ogden Avenue. And of course, every town had its own hobby store with models, trains, puzzles, paints, decals and magazines.
I still drive on Odgen Avenue and think about what it was like when I rode my bike to the pet shop along the street or where I saw my first accident and the aftermath of that. I think about the small pet stores, hobby shops, Radio Shacks, delis, hot dog places and repair shops.
Like most of what one remembers, it isn’t what it used to be and will never be again.
