University Village

UIC is the largest university in the Chicago area, with 25,000 students, 15 colleges, and the nation's largest medical school. The UIC community encompasses more than 100 buildings located on somewhere around 240 acres and lends the "University Village" neighborhood of Chicago its name.

In the past decade, thousands of new construction townhouses, mid-rises, and single family homes have appeared in the University Village neighborhood and warehouses and industrial plants have been rehabbed into stunning residential lofts. The frenzied pace of development has brought droves of new residents to University Village.

The prodigious new development has transformed South Halsted Street into a thriving retail strip, replete with restaurants, coffee, deli, and sandwich shops, grocers, and boutiques.

University Village includes "Little Italy," which is on the northwest side of the neighborhood, above, on, and below Taylor Street, where you can find an abundance of outstanding Italian restaurants. Buildings in Little Italy generally tend to be older than the other parts of University Village, with many buildings having been built over a century ago. Many professors and their colleagues from the adjacent Rush-Presbyterian / St. Luke's Medical Center, as well as from UIC, live in this area, which is replete with traditional greystone two and three flats, courtyard buildings, and single family homes.

The Blue Line of the el traces the northern border of the University Village neighborhood, and the Dan Ryan and Eisenhower expressways circumscribe the northern and eastern boundaries.