Yesterday's post discussed a photo in the Forgotten Chicago Discussion Group on Facebook of the West Town Quality Bakery. I currently don't have permission to post the photo here, so I will describe it. There was a sign in the window indicating the proprietor was J. Klimacek, and the bakery would have its grand opening on Saturday, September 6. An awning above the bakery window had the bakery's name and the number "1143" on each side of it. That may (or may not) be part of the address.
The gentleman who posted the photo stated that "My grand-uncle and great-grandfather owned and operated this bakery in Chicago. We really have no memories or knowledge of where it was located exactly. Based on the name I would assume it might have been located in West Town. That side of the family is Slovak too."
In the 1930 census, I found a John Klimacek, born about 1883, a baker with his own shop, living at 1141 (S.) Western Avenue. When I asked if that was his family, the gentleman replied, "That would be my great-grandfather most likely. His son my grand-uncle is also named John." That matched with the other family members - son John in the family, wife Elizabeth, and five other kids, Elizabeth, Anna, Susie, Mary, and Steve.
I'm posting the images again, because I'll be referring to them in part 2 - this post. John and his wife are at the bottom of one page, the six children are on the next page. I've also included the addresses on either side of them, and the headings and footers for the pages, as I'll be coming back to some of this additional information. Click on the images to make them larger.
My immediate thought was that the bakery was next door at 1143 S. Western Avenue. Often a business would be on the first floor, and the owner (or others) would live upstairs (notice the people living at 1143 in 1930 are renters). So I decided to do some research to support that hypothesis.
But first, I needed to determine the time frame. That involved researching the John Klimacek family, to determine when they were in Chicago. That was
Part 1. My conclusion was that the West Town Quality Bakery, at an address beginning with 1143 in Chicago, had to exist sometime between November 1918 (when Maryan Klimacek was born in Heilwood, Pennsylvania) and April 1940 (when John Jr. was clearly not operating a family-owned bakery).
And an important note - when I checked all those Chicago city and telephone directories in Part 1 (1919 through 1939), I could not find a listing for a West Town Quality Bakery or a West Town Bakery in either the White Pages or the Yellow Pages. No easy answer there!
In this, Part 2, I'll show why I think 1143 S. Western Avenue was the address of the bakery at the time the photo was taken (which I think was 1930).
The name "West Town Quality Bakery" implies that it was located in the
West Town area. The
Encyclopedia of Chicago defines the West Town
Community Area as having "official boundaries roughly corresponding to Bloomingdale on the north, Kinzie on the south, the Chicago River's North Branch to the east, and a shifting western boundary that goes as far as Kedzie."
The description of the sign in the window of the bakery in the photograph is another big clue. It said the grand opening would be on Saturday, September 6.
September 6 fell on a Saturday in the following years that fit in our November 1918 to April 1940 time frame for this photograph: 1919, 1924, and 1930.
I'm not sure where John Klimacek, Sr., was living in 1919. He may still have been in Heilwood, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a coal miner, and where his youngest daughter Maryan was born in November 1918. He was definitely in Chicago by November 24, 1920, at 5800 S. Loomis St. (now S. Loomis Blvd.), which is on the south side, very far from the West Town Community Area. In any case, he had not been in Chicago long by September 6, 1919, so I think this is an unlikely time for the grand opening of the bakery.
John Sr.'s naturalization index card indicates he was living at 1531 W. 18th Place. He was naturalized on September 19, 1924 (so 13 days after Saturday, September 6, 1924), and the 1923 city directory also places him at this address. This was in the Czech-settled
Pilsen neighborhood of the
Lower West Side Community Area.
1924 is certainly more likely than 1919 for the grand opening of the West Side Quality Bakery, especially since buildings with an address numbered 1143 would be fairly close - those numbers were used as close as six blocks away, on streets running north-south just north of Roosevelt Road. Those would be in the
Near West Side Community Area, just south of the West Town area.
However, I think the most likely time and site for the West Town Quality Bakery grand opening was Saturday, September 6, 1930, at 1143 S. Western Avenue.
Why? For one thing, the 1917 Sanborn map for this area indicates that the building next door - 1141 S. Western Avenue, where John Sr. and family lived from at least 1928 to at least June 1937 - had a large oven, and a bake shop in the basement in 1917!
Above: 1917 location of 1141 S. Western Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, annotated and clipped from Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Sanborn Map Company, Vol. 7, 1917 [section 81, image 85]. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01790_024/> [https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4104cm.g01790191707/?sp=85&st=image&clip=834,2884,1917,1851&ciw=998&rot=0].
Look at the 1930 census again. John Sr. *owned* the building where he lived, 1141 S. Western Avenue, and it was valued at $15,000. He had two renters in the two-story outbuilding at the rear, which generated $90 a month in income. And the building next door, 1143 S. Western Avenue, a one-story brick building, was also occupied by a renter - perhaps he owned that building as well.
I decided to check the building permits index. I found an interesting one for the address 1141-43 S. Western Avenue, dated July 17, 1930, for alt[erations]:
Above: Building permit index card for 1141-43 S. Western Avenue alterations, July 17, 1930, from Chicago Building Permit collection street index, reel 116: West End Avenue 4112 to Western Avenue 4955 North, Chicago Building Permit Collection, https://digital.library.uic.edu/view/ark:/81984/d3st7f72b [record/image 1376].
Unfortunately, this card is stamped SUNDRY. All of the permit information is included on the index card, and there is no corresponding permit in the ledger books. This happens when minor alterations are being made to an existing structure. I was hoping there would be a ledger entry, as that would show the owner of the buildings. I suspect it is John Sr., but only research into the property records (which can only be done in person, in Chicago) would answer that question.
The digitized building permits cover the years 1872-1954, and contemporary Chicago building permits (from 2006 to the present) can be searched online in the
Chicago Data Portal Building Permits. I didn't find any other relevant references to either 1141 or 1143 S. Western Avenue in either (other than the facts that the original permit to build 1141 was issued May 3, 1888; and a sundry permit to build stairs in the rear part of 1141 was issued July 28, 1927). Chicago building permits issued from 1955-2006 are only available by submitting a Freedom of Information Act request.
Since the next Sanborn map from this area is dated June 1950, it would show all the changes to the footprints of the buildings from the digitized building permits:
Above: June 1950 location of 1141 S. Western Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, annotated and clipped from Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Sanborn Map Company, Vol. 7, June 1950, [section 81, image 87]. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01790_093/> [https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4104cm.g01790195007/?sp=87&st=image&clip=843,2505,1933,2359&ciw=890&rot=0].
My hypothesis is that John Sr. either acquired ownership of 1143 (or had it earlier), or permission from the owner, to make the alterations to 1141 and 1143 in July 1930. I think what he did was turn 1143 from a dwelling to a storefront for the bake shop that he might have previously been operating in the basement of 1141.
George Fritz (his first name was recorded incorrectly as Joseph on the 1930 Census) and his wife Anna apparently moved from 1143 to 1139 S. Western Avenue sometime between April 10, 1930, and October 28, 1933, when
George died at the latter address.
So is the photograph from September 6, 1930, and taken at 1143 S. Western Avenue in Chicago? It's hard to say for certain. Looking at Google Maps Street View, the front of the building does not match - but it could have been altered between 1955 and 2006, and that would require a Freedom of Information Act request to research.
There's another possibility to consider. In the September 1936 and June 1937 telephone directories (White Pages), John Jr. has a listing for a bakery, at 3329 W. North Avenue. It is also listed in the Yellow Pages under Bakeries, Retail, in August 1936 and in August 1937. (See
Part 1 for the directory images.)
The Sanborn map for this address from 1922 shows no buildings at this address.
Above: Future location of 3329 W. North Avenue, clipped from Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Sanborn Map Company, Vol. 11, 1922 [(before May), section 7, image 9]. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01790_028/> [https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4104cm.g01790192211/?sp=9&st=image&clip=2527,369,1037,1163&ciw=955&rot=0].
However, the
key page for the volume this map came from shows that Volume 11 was filed in the Map Division of the Library of Congress on May 6, 1922. Just a couple months later, on June 29, 1922, a building permit was recorded for a one-story brick building at 3325-3329 W. North Avenue - filling the three empty lots on the 1922 map.
Above: Building permit record for 3325-29 W. North Avenue construction, June 29, 1930, from Chicago Building Permits, Book 24, West: Apr 18, 1922 - Jun 19, 1923, Chicago Building Permit Collection, https://n2t.net/ark:/81984/d3d21rt5v [page 126, image 68].
Here are the buildings on the August 1950 Sanborn map. Note that there were actually four addresses for the three lots, so apparently some renumbering happened between June 1922 and August 1950.
Above: August 1950 location of 3329 W. North Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, annotated and clipped from Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Sanborn Map Company, Vol. 11, August 1950, [section 7, image 11]. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01790_097/> [https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4104cm.g01790195011/?sp=11&st=image&clip=2686,467,1218,1186&ciw=1005&rot=0].
In the photograph posted, the words "Grand Opening" and "Sat. Sept. 6" are quite faint - almost as if someone had tried to remove them. Perhaps the sign was re-used at 3329 W. North Avenue sometime around 1936-1937, when John Jr. definitely operated a bakery at that address, and that's when the photograph was taken.
Unfortunately, these buildings (everything with addresses between 3311 and 3331 W. North Avenue, inclusive), were torn down sometime between August 1950 and March 2009 (based on Google Map Street View). So unless some other old photographs exist, there's no way to compare the photograph posted with a building at this address.
Here is a Google My Map I created to mark all the locations relevant to the John Klimacek family and the bakery in Chicago from 1920 through 1950. House markers are mapped residences, stars are mapped bakeries (with the purple one being both a residence and bakery). The purple color is associated with John Sr., the red with John Jr. Yellow marks a bakery where John Jr. worked, but for someone else. The green dots mark the corners of the West Town Community Area - since a bakery called West Town Quality Bakery could theoretically be in or near that area. And black is used to mark locations proposed by different artificial intelligence models for the bakery, based solely on the 1143 number on the sign, and a location in West Town. I have already ruled one out (marked with an X) because that address does not and never has existed.
I think the best next thing for the person trying to find this photo's location and date to do is a search in historical newspapers, for "West Town Quality Bakery" and/or "Klimacek," in the date range of 1919 through 1939 (and more particularly, 1930 through 1937). Various Chicago newspapers are accessible through the
Chicago Public Library online with a library card, or from personal subscriptions or other libraries with subscriptions to such services as newspapers.com, ProQuest, or NewsBank.
I would also look at Czech-language newspapers published in Chicago in that time period, such as
Denní Hlasatel. The years 1891 through 1955 have been
digitized so far by the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International. Such newspapers often ran opening announcements and ads for local businesses.
Here again is a link to Part 1:
https://abt-unk.blogspot.com/2026/09/looking-for-address-of-west-town.html
© Amanda Pape - 2026 -
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