As Milwaukee Avenue runs from downtown Chicago into Niles and the Park Ridge area, it has long been packed with Polish-American institutions, from St. Adalbert’s Cemetery to the Oak Mill Bakery and White Eagle Banquet Hall, as well as nearby Polish residents and heavily Polish churches.

Now, Milwaukee Avenue has an official state designation: The Polish-American Heritage Corridor.

The law, which took effect Jan. 1 after Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed it last year, makes Milwaukee Avenue from Sangamon Street in Chicago to Greenwood Road in Niles the heritage area.

Local business leaders hope the distinction will bring customers. But they also hope the designation will help preserve the existing Polish culture, institutions and identity in an area that’s seeing demographic shifts, especially in gentrifying Wicker Park and Logan Square.

The stretch of Milwaukee that’s now the Polish American Heritage Corridor includes the Polish American Heritage Museum and encompasses dozens of Polish churches like Holy Trinity Polish Catholic Church on the 1100 block of North Noble Street and St. Hyacinth Basilica on the 3600 block of West Wolfram Street.

Chicago’s earliest Polish and Polish-American residents congregated at the southeast end of Milwaukee Avenue near its beginnings in downtown Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago History Emeritus Professor Dominic Pacyga said, beginning with an early leading citizen named Anton Schermann.

“[Schermann] opened up a small store and then a travel agency,” said Pacyga, who has written books on Polish-American history. “And he brought in, supposedly, 1,000 Poles to the area.”

That was the beginning of Chicago’s Polish-American community around Noble Street and Division Avenue, he said.

“That area attracts a lot of Polish institutions, as well as Polish stores, taverns, dance clubs, things like that,” Pacyga said. “So this just became the capital of Chicago’s Polonia. And Chicago itself became sort of the capital of the American Polonia.”

As the Polish-American population grew and became more established, it began to build political influence.

The Polish newspapers, for instance, in the 19th century, [were] encouraging people to get their citizenship and to vote,” Pacyga explained. “They [were] saying, ‘Look, when you get stopped by a policeman, you don’t want an Irish policeman stopping you… You want a Polish policeman, who speaks Polish, stopping you.’”

Institutions also coalesced up Milwaukee Avenue and other nearby thoroughfares as the Polish-American community traveled northwest to Logan Square, Avondale, and beyond. They included the Polish Roman Catholic Union, the Polish Museum of America, the Polish Women’s Alliance and the Polish Veterans Association, Pacyga said – just to name a few.

One institution with roots in the Polish Triangle at Milwaukee Avenue, Division Street and Ashland Avenue also migrated northwest, settling at the 6800 block of Milwaukee Avenue.

Ted Przybylo originally purchased a boys’ club at the intersection of Division Street and Western Avenue to start the White Eagle Banquet Hall in 1947. His son, former Niles Mayor Andrew Przybylo, noted that the original location had a capacity for 750 people and very little parking.

“It was a testament to a community that basically walked to a location or to public transportation,” he said. “They could have driven, but only a few, and we’d have ample street parking and such.”

When the banquet hall moved out to Niles in 1967, it needed parking spots for about 300 cars, Przybylo said. He said by the time his family sold the institution in 2015, it had space for more than 800 cars.

Przybylo said he welcomed the official designation of Milwaukee Avenue as the Polish-American Heritage Corridor, saying it could help awareness of the area’s history.

“I just hope that they do something tangible to create a historical perspective of the corridor,” he said.

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Daniel Pogorzelski has one idea for how to create that perspective. Pogorzelski keeps a sign in his office that he hopes to see posted throughout the corridor to mark its heritage area status.

The sign depicts the Chicago Polish nickname for “Chicago’s Polish Village,” Jackowo, above representations of a Polish and an American flag and one of Poland’s provincial capital city crests. Pogorzelski said he’s hopeful that signs similar to this could be placed around Milwaukee Avenue, rather than the typical brown street signs that advertise honorary designations.

Pogorzelski said he hoped the change would help attract people to the street as a way to learn about the area’s history.

“People are more interested in experiences, and historical and heritage tourism is part and parcel of that for those who are interested in finding out more about the culture of Poles in both Chicago and Niles along Milwaukee Avenue,” he said. “I think they’ll find a wealth of experiences.”

Further to the northwest, Pogorzelski said he hoped the corridor would serve to highlight the institutions that served the members of the community throughout their lives – from groceries and delis to hospitals, places of worship and end-of-life care like funeral homes and cemeteries.

Two major cemeteries with Polish-American roots are located on the corridor in Niles.

“Niles is the final place of residence for much of the North Side Polish community,” Pogorzelski said, referring to St. Adalbert’s and Maryhill cemeteries.

As for the value of declaring an area a heritage corridor, Polish American Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Bogdan Pukszta said the significance was both symbolic and practical.

“As a motivational factor for businesses, I think it has value,” Pukszta said.

Pukszta added the pandemic had been hard on many businesses and said some Polish-American entrepreneurs might feel unsure about bringing their ventures to the area – or perhaps even about opening at all.

“The designation helps them identify with it, and I think maybe that others will identify with it and therefore would more often visit,” Pukszta said.

Then there’s the memory and tradition and sense of community he said the designation captured, particularly in a Chicago where once-concentrated communities have fanned out.

Pacyga concurred with Pukszta on the symbolic significance of the corridor.

“Look, the Milwaukee Avenue corridor is no longer the Polish Broadway it once was,” Pacyga said. “It’s getting gentrified – from Sangamon on, it’s going through a transformation.”

Though the Polish-American community is no longer concentrated as closely along the street as it once was, Pacyga said the designation is a good way “to honor this group, which gave so much to the city.”

State Sen. Christina Pacione-Zayas, and former State Rep. Delia Ramirez, both Chicago Democrats, sponsored the measure in Springfield to designate the Polish-American Heritage Corridor.