Written by Bobby Kennedy, Director of Artistic Development

Affectionately referred to as an “International Marketplace” and “The “Whole World on One Street,” Devon Avenue has been the heart of Chicago’s South Asian community for fifty years. Dhaba on Devon Avenue takes us inside a family restaurant that’s been open for much of that time, bearing witness to how the neighborhood has grown and changed over the years. 

Originally called Church Street until it was renamed in the 1880s after a commuter town outside Philadelphia, Devon Avenue is one of the major east-west roads on the far north side of Chicago—6400 N for those fluent in Chicago’s grid system. Beginning at Sheridan Road, adjacent to the lakefront campus of Loyola University Chicago, the arterial street runs west for around 11 miles until it merges with Higgins Road just east of O’Hare International Airport. From Ridge Boulevard to Kedzie Avenue, Devon Avenue traverses the community area of West Ridge, one of the 77 official administrative divisions that make up the city of Chicago. 

Ridge Boulevard, the eastern border of West Ridge, lies on a natural glacier ridge which Native American tribes used as a trail to navigate through the area. European settlers began arriving in the area in the 1830s and 1840s, and the land was included in the village of Rogers Park when the settlement incorporated in 1878. West Rogers Park later broke away into its own village in 1890, and three years later the rapidly expanding city of Chicago annexed both Rogers Park and West Rogers Park, which remain the northern boundary of the city today. 

Only 500 people lived in the West Ridge community at the beginning of the 20th century, whereas Rogers Park, with its railroad and streetcar connections to downtown, had a much larger population and more commercial development. Construction of the North Shore Channel, which brought water from Lake Michigan down through Wilmette and Evanston before emptying into the North Branch of the Chicago River, spurred development upon its completion in 1910, and industrial development accelerated along Kedzie Avenue. 

Following World War I, West Ridge developed more quickly and by 1930 it had a population of 40,000 people. Still rather isolated with no elevated rail lines and only two streetcar lines (Western Avenue and Devon Avenue) linking it to the rest of the city, the neighborhood mostly consisted of bungalows and two-flats. Larger apartment buildings were later built in the 1950s and West Ridge’s population soared to 64,000 by 1960. During this time of growth, Devon Avenue developed as a commercial district to serve the booming community.

Jewish residents from other parts of the city began relocating to West Ridge in greater numbers, and they were joined by new immigrants from eastern Europe. By the early 1960s, over two-thirds of West Ridge’s residents were Jewish. Devon Avenue became the home of many Jewish businesses, and the stretch between California to Kedzie was given the honorary title Golda Meir Boulevard, after the Israeli prime minister. Beginning in the 1970s, however, with the suburbs luring away many of West Ridge’s Jewish residents, the neighborhood demographics began to transform. 

Prior to 1965, immigration to the United States from Asian countries had been almost entirely banned. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 became the first US law to ban immigration from a specific national group, and subsequent Immigration Acts in 1917 and 1924 extended the ban on immigration to the entire Asia–Pacific region—with the exception of the Philippines which was a U.S. colony at the time. Quotas were set for the number of immigrants allowed from each country, a strategy designed to keep the American population primarily of northern and western European descent. These draconian policies came under increased scrutiny and public opposition during the Civil Rights Movement until the Immigration Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart–Celler Act after the two politicians who sponsored the bill) finally reformed federal policy and eliminated the quota system. 

Over the ensuing decades, immigrants from many Asian countries began to make Chicago their home. Argyle Street in Uptown became the heart of Chicago’s Vietnamese community, and Lawrence Avenue in Albany Park was for a time a hub for Korean Americans. Devon Avenue and the surrounding neighborhood became a home for the South Asian community, so much that today the area is often called “Little India.” 

Building a community takes time, however. The first wave of South Asian immigrants were mostly skilled professionals and students, often arriving in America alone. In a 2019 interview, Ranjana Bhargava recalled her experience as one of the first arrivals: “I moved to Chicago on July 4, 1968. There was no Indian restaurant, no Indian grocery and there were no Indian friends.” Bhargava was thrilled when India Sari Palace opened on Devon Avenue in 1973, the first South Asian business on the street. 

Brothers Mafat and Tulsi Patel, immigrants from the Indian state of Gujarat, similarly missed the smells and tastes of home. “There was a growing Indian community, but nothing for us to eat,” Tulsi Patel emotionally shared with Block Club Chicago in 2024. “There was only a sari store when I started, and it was very hard. The community that lived here before us did not want us to be here, so we had to buy our first store through a secondary person.” That 800-square-foot storefront grocery store, named Patel Brothers, opened in 1974 and has become an institution with a reach far beyond the neighborhood. There are now 52 Patel Brothers stores nationwide, including a new flagship store that opened on Devon Avenue in 2021.

More and more immigrants from South Asia arrived throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. Hindu and Sikh temples as well as mosques joines the existing synagogues in the area. So did general stores, electronics retailers, bookstores, and boutiques selling clothes and jewelry. Local cinemas started playing Bollywood movies. India Tribune, a Chicago-based weekly newspaper, began publication in 1977. The Indo-American Center opened in West Ridge in 1990 to assist recent immigrants arriving in the community. By the year 2000, over 15,000 Asian residents called West Ridge home, the majority of them South Asians. Sections of Devon Avenue were given honorary names to reflect the new community; signs for “Muhammad Ali Jinnah Way,” “Sheikh Mujib Way” and “Gandhi Marg” now line the street.  

However, like the Jewish community before them, people eventually began looking beyond the neighborhood for housing and opportunities. Sizeable South Asian communities grew in the suburbs of Naperville, Schaumburg, Skokie and Hoffman Estates, among others. The newly opened Mall of India is in Lombard and the National Indo-American Museum is located in Lombard. Suburbanites would make regular trips back to Devon Avenue for groceries, clothes and other supplies. But over time, businesses catering to these residents opened out in the suburbs closer to home, making a trip to Devon Avenue less necessary. Talking to WBEZ in 2023, Viral Shah, who helps organize the Indian Independence Day Parade in Naperville, said “Today, Devon Avenue is purely nostalgic. I don’t think I’ve been to Devon in the last, maybe, 10 years.” 

“Little India” may be too simplistic a title for Devon Avenue as it is today. People from many countries live and work in this corner of the city, and it continues to be a point of entry for many new immigrants. West Ridge remains the most diverse community area in Chicago, with census data showing significant numbers of residents claim ancestry from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Israel, the Philippines, Myanmar, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Turkey and Vietnam. Staff at the Indo-American Center estimated that over 30 languages can be heard in the community, according to a 2022 article from WBEZ.  

Sadruddin Noorani, a Devon Avenue business owner from Bangladesh, thinks multiculturalism is one of the neighborhood’s strengths. Last year he told a reporter from Block Club Chicago, “Even when there was conflict back home between different South Asian countries, here in Devon, you can find us all living like friends despite not having the same religion or nationality. Devon makes us united.”