When you tell people you're from Chicago you get one of two lines of questioning. The first is from people who have never lived in Chicago : They ask you about the weather, or the crime, or how many (insert sport team here) games you have attended. The second is from people more familiar with the city: Their questions are along the lines of “Oh, yeah? What part?” to which you must answer with a neighborhood.
From that statement alone you are going to be judged. Certain probabilities exist for each neighborhood. If you live in Andersonville , for instance, you might be asked about the Swedish Bakery or the Neo-Futurists. But Chicago has always been that way. People are interested in where you are from. It is a city of neighborhoods, each distinct and very rich in its distinction.
Even in times past, neighborhoods mattered a great deal. Most people could guess correctly your neighborhood by your last name or accent. The city's population exploded with immigration at the end of the 19th century, and birds of a feather all lived together. The typical Chicago resident was an immigrant living among extended family with plenty of more family in the old country. Everyone wrote home to tell tales of big city adventure. The immigrant population and the development of Chicago as a large center of business created a lot of mail. By the middle of the century, so much mail was being sent throughout the country that the post office decided to create some sort of order.
A little known controversy about that system of order is that Chicago 's root ZIP Code, 606, is dedicated to a popular strip club's address. Now that's something to write home about.
A quick ZIP history
ZIP codes didn't always exist: They were instituted in 1963 as part of a larger reorganization of the entire postal service. The post office used to be known as the Post Office Department, and the postmaster was a member of the Cabinet. With the reform came the United States Postal Service, an independent agency of the government.
With several social, economic and geographic changes in the United States since beginning of the 20th century, there was a great need to change the way mail was delivered. The vast majority of mail previous to 1930 was personal correspondence. As business grew, so did business mail and mailed marketing material. The implementation of Social Security created a growing bulk mailing of checks. The post office responded with something called the Metro System, which was broken into 85 large populated areas with distribution centers used to collect and sort the rapidly increasing amount of mail.
By 1960, a more organized plan was needed. A Presidential-appointed Advisory Board of the Post Office Department recommended that a zoning system be created to better deal with the exponentially growing amount of mail. It was dubbed the Zone Improvement Plan, or ZIP for short.
The 85 centers of population were expanded to 552, each with 50 to 150 nearby post offices. The numbering system was simple enough: A five-digit code would be given to each of the small post offices, and mail with that code would be sent directly to the appropriate post office for hand delivery. The first digit of the ZIP code designated a general geographic area, ranging from 0 in the east, and 9 in the west. The next two reflected a further delineation of the region, and the last two were local. Most of the larger cities had already developed a numerical regional system. Here in Chicago , a letter sent to John Doe, Chicago , 26 would end up at the Rogers Park post office. The designation took hold fairly quickly and Postmaster General John A. Gronouski announced the ZIP code would take effect July 1, 1963 .
By 1983, the system was expanded again to include a four-digit extension. The system is so efficient now that when the ZIP+4 number is used, the only people touching the piece of mail are the ones who pick it up and deliver it to its final destination. Machines that read the code and sort it automatically do much of the work.