Chicago’s Dunning is located about 8 miles northwest of the Loop. Dunning currently borders the villages of Harwood Heights, Norridge, River Grove, as well as Elmwood Park. Many of the neighborhood’s residents are city workers, including police officers and firefighters. The area is close to the Harlem Irving Plaza shopping center.The history of Dunning is a little “crazy” as this location was chosen in 1851 to host a poor farm and asylum for the insane. By 1863 the facility could host more than 1,000 patients. The infirmary, poorhouse, and asylum eventually became overcrowded and in 1886, an official investigation found misconduct, patient abuse, and other offenses. The property is now the site of the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center.Following the Civil War, Andrew Dunning purchased land just south of the county property and started a nursery. He also started to lay the groundwork for a village. Proximity to the hospital kept many settlers away. It wasn’t until the turn of the century when the area became known for picnic groves and taverns, that the population grew.Outside the state facility, the population had grown to only 1,305 by 1909. In 1916 the first housing boom occurred when Schorsch Brothers Real Estate bought a tract west of Austin and south of Irving Park. They called the area West Dunning to remove the stigma of association with Dunning.Following World War I the population rose to 4,019, with residents primarily of Swedish, German, and Polish descent. In 1934 Wright Junior College was built in the eastern portion. One in 3 people in Dunning is of Polish descent — the highest rate of any ethnic group in any Chicago neighborhood, according to the 2010 US Census. Dunning has the largest Polish community in the Chicago area. Scandinavian, German, Italian, and Irish families also moved in and the area became part of the famous “bungalow belt”.Dunning contains several smaller neighborhoods – Dunning North, Mayfair, and North Mayfair. The area had 64,124 residents as of the 2010 census. It has the Six Corners outdoor shopping district at Irving, Cicero, and Milwaukee.
