Asia on Argyle
Between Broadway and Sheridan Road
The Hip Sing Association moved its Chicago offices to Argyle Street in 1971. The Chinese cultural group’s president, Jimmy Wong, hoped to establish Chicago’s “New Chinatown” on Argyle between Broadway and Sheridan. It was a street with a bad reputation. “At one time, there were 14 taverns in the three blocks, including a topless bar. There were all kinds of drugs on the street,” P.J. McCaffrey, who owned P.J.’s Laundry at 1128 West Argyle, recalled. It was “a kind of slum, and you were scared to walk out on the streets after dark. There were all kinds of problems: muggers and prostitutes,” said Gay Nergard, the owner of the Red Rooster Lounge, 1124 West Argyle.
“We want every part of it to be beautiful—even the alleys,” Wong said in 1974. “With imagination and hard work, we can give the new Chinatown an atmosphere and elements of fantasy that may someday make it one of Chicago’s biggest drawing cards.”
But when a hip injury forced Wong to retire, he was unable to complete his plans. Another Chinese American business leader, Charlie Soo, took up the reins, becoming known as the “Mayor of Argyle Street.” By the early 1980s, this stretch of Argyle was turning into a hot spot for dining—and not just for Chinese food. “In a sense, it is an Asiatic town,” Howard Shiroma, president of the Argyle Business International Association, told the Tribune. “Argyle Street is a focal point for Viets, Thais, Cambodians, Laotians, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese. Many of these people come into the neighborhood and bring their problems with them. Argyle Street is also a place to help them.”
The district just off the Argyle Red Line stop is sometimes also called Little Saigon, New Chinatown, and Little Vietnam. Asia on Argyle features a series of murals, and since 2013 hosts the Argyle Night Market on Thursday nights in the summer. (This year, the Market will run every Thursday night from 5-9 p.m. starting on July 3 and going until August 28). Entertainers, especially musicians, take part in the weekly Market, along with food venders. The Uptown Chamber of Commerce claims that “up to” 5,000 people visit the Market each week. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 2010. It has been the setting for several novels. Killer on Argyle Street is part of Michael Raleigh’s Paul Whelan mystery series. In Michael Allen Dymmoch’s White Tiger, police officer John Thinnes and psychiatrist Jack Caleb pursue a savage drug dealer in Little Saigon.
There's a mural dedicated to poet and rapper John Vietnam Nguyen on Argyle Street, in an alley between Winthrop and Kenmore avenues. Nguyen, born in Chicago on March 13, 1993, attended McCutcheon and Goudy Elementary and Lane Tech High School. He received a First Wave (hip-hop) scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, but before his sophomore year, on August 30, 2012, drowned in Lake Mendota saving the life of a friend. He was only 19 years old. According Adeshina Emmanuel, writing for dnainfo on March 17, 2014, “the 5000 block of Winthrop Avenue where [Nguyen] grew up will be named ‘Honorary John 'Vietnam' Nguyen Way’ and murals will go up at the corner of Winona Street and Winthrop Avenue to celebrate his legacy of positive artistic expression, community organizing and tolerance.”
