Why is Ashland Avenue sometimes a boulevard?

Typos and misprints may be common mistakes in texts and emails (and on rare occasions, news articles). But what about city street signs? Yes, even street signs: The most observant Chicagoans have pointed out these anomalies many times.

“There was one up in Rogers Park several years ago where Rogers Avenue was spelled with a ‘d’ like Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback,” said Bill Savage, professor of instruction in the Department of English at Northwestern University.

Savage is writing a book about the Chicago grid. For all its precision, there are outliers that make the grid imperfect, like one road with two different names or a suffix change for one continuous street.

Ashland Avenue is among the city’s longest and oldest streets, so it comes with its own curious history. Even today, you’ll find this road isn’t always an avenue. Until recently, several street signs in the Uptown neighborhood on the North Side read “N. Ashland Blvd.” instead of “N. Ashland Av.” When Curious City asked the Chicago Department of Transportation about this, they called it a “legacy installation error.” The incorrect street signs were posted from at least 2007 until last month, when the city corrected them.

“Chicago's grid, it has some tremendous regularities and a lot of predictability, but it's also got a lot of confusing randomness,” Savage said.

Errors aside, in the 19th century, two distinct areas of Ashland were intentionally designated as boulevards. One was north in Rogers Park; the other was south near what is now the Illinois Medical District. These street designations happened around the turn of the century, when a comprehensive park and boulevard system was emerging in the city, according to the Chicago Park District. Park commissions at the time operated independently, but with a goal to create a unified ribbon of green around the city.

Ashland Boulevard to the parks

Unlike an avenue or a drive, a boulevard is one of the few kinds of roadways that has a legal definition.

In the Municipal Code of Chicago, a boulevard is a through street limited to specified classes of traffic.

However, in the 1800s, boulevards had a more expansive definition: a broad thoroughfare adjacent to a park, connecting two parks or having a landscaped median.

“These were where rich people lived. They were pleasant,” Savage said. “You didn't have a lot of smoke and other urban unpleasantness. You could take your carriage down the boulevards.”

During the 19th century, one stretch of Ashland between today’s West Lake Street (200 North) and West Roosevelt Road (1200 South) was controlled by the Chicago Park District, and the agency designated that stretch a boulevard. It came complete with ornate churches and mansions inhabited by the likes of then-Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison III.

According to CDOT, the street was meant to connect Union Park to Douglas Park by way of the boulevard extension of West Twelfth Street (now Roosevelt Rd.). But when jurisdiction was transferred to the city of Chicago in 1959, this part of Ashland became an avenue.

Ashland Boulevard today

One part of Ashland deviates from the avenue suffix today. In Rogers Park, Ashland from West Pratt Boulevard (6800 North) to West Fargo Avenue (7438 North) is legally a boulevard.

According to CDOT, it was controlled by the former North Shore Park District before jurisdiction was transferred to the city of Chicago in 1934. It’s unclear why this area was ever a boulevard; CDOT suspects the Park District may have considered a proposal to connect it to a public park at the north end of Ashland, known as Birchwood Beach.

The reason the road remains a boulevard is also unclear. Some city records indicate that this part of Ashland is both a boulevard and an avenue, and that lack of clarity has caused confusion with online forms.

“I've seen a lot of autocorrect. When it tries to look up for the exact match, it corrects it to Boulevard,” said Karim Nashashibi, a Rogers Park resident who lives on North Ashland Boulevard.

Other residents said online form corrections also change Boulevard to Avenue. Either way, Nashashibi says everyone in the area knows it’s Ashland Boulevard.

But common knowledge isn’t enough if a resident is running for public office.

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy also lives on Ashland in Rogers Park. She said when submitting nominating petitions, a candidate could be challenged and barred from the ballot for a myriad of inaccuracies. During her first run, she said not even the election attorney could establish whether she lived on Ashland Boulevard or Ashland Avenue.

“I was instructed at that time that for the rest of my career, whenever I write down my address, I should just leave it at Ashland,” she said.

Chicago’s grid is full of quirks, so it’s impossible to get everything right. Bill Savage had some advice for anyone befuddled by the anomalies.

“What I encourage people to do is embrace the randomness,” he said. “Just learn it and enjoy it and don't worry about it too much, because it'll just drive you up the wall.”

Erin Allen is the host of Curious City.