History in North Lawndale

This historic district contains houses that Frederick B. Townsend built between 1892 and 1894.  The city designated this section as a landmark on March 2, 1994. 

Built in 1927, the jewish people's institute was the cultural center of North Lawndale in the early 20th century, when it was one of the nation's largest jewish communities.  The building contained classrooms and an auditorium with athletic facilities nearby.  It was designed by Klaber & Grunsfeld.  Today the lawndale community academy is located at this address.

Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, better known as the “Unabomber,” was raised in this house in Evergreen Park.  A child prodigy, he was twice bumped a grade level ahead of his peers and was admitted to Harvard University at the age of 16.  Following his graduation in 1962, he obtained a doctoral degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan, then taught briefly at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was reputedly the youngest professor in the school’s history.  In 1971, he moved to Lincoln, Montana, and lived a hermit’s life in a secluded single-room log cabin without electricity or running water.  He briefly returned to Chicago, but soon moved back to Montana and embarked on a mail-bombing campaign which claimed the lives of three people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995.  He ultimately wrote to former victims and media outlets and volunteered to stop his bombing attacks if a major newspaper printed his lengthy essay entitled “Industrial Society And Its Future.”   The manuscript appeared in both the New York Times and The Washington Post, and it confirmed the growing suspicions of David Kaczynski that his brother Ted was the culprit.  David Kaczynski, through an attorney, soon made the FBI aware of his belief and supplied additional evidence to corroborate it.  The Unabomber was arrested on April 3, 1996.  David Kaczynski donated the one million dollars in reward money, less his own expenses, to the families of the victims.  Ted Kaczynski is currently serving life without parole in a maximum security prison in Colorado.