Twenty-five years ago the Czechs in Chicago were concentrated along Twelfth Street between Canal and Douglas Park. Even in that period of storm and stress when the great mass of them were newcomers struggling for a foothold they began to put their impress upon the region. Douglas Park itself contains the first statue of a Bohemian ever erected in that state. It is a portrait in stone of the well-known Czech journalist, Karel Havlicek, the man who waged so heroic and desperate a fight for the independence of his people and who died after incarceration, a martyr to the cause of Bohemian freedom. His countrymen remembered him when they secured in America the blessings which he had struggled to win for them at home.

Libussa Hall on Roosevelt Road in the heart of the district, is another landmark to remind the student of current history that this was once the home of the Czechs in Chicago. And although changing conditions have shifted the center of the population to other places, sentiment still draws the old inhabitant 2to the semi-weekly concerts given there, and Libussa Hail remains to this day a social focus for the race that built it.

Pressure from newer immigrants long ago began to push the Czechs out of the region. They yield without resistance. Prosperity had come to them and with it a striving for higher standards. They willingly moved westward. Their progress was gradual. The first leg of the forward movement took them into the district around 14th Street. There, following the tradition set up by the earlier Americans they founded their "city" and named it Tabor, after the town in Czechoslovakia where John Zizka long ago assembled his forces in the Hussite wars. Sentiment likewise and filial affection for their Old World homeland, led them to rename various thoroughfares. Thus it happened that Chicago today has its Karlov Street, named after one of the picturesque summits of Prague; its Komensky Street, so called after the greatest of Czech educators, known to the world as Comenius; and its Kostner Street after J. Kostner the Bohemian philanthropist.

Ten years now have passed since the Czechs and Slovaks began moving into America taking their place, that is in the general and progressive community life of their 3adopted country. More recently the younger and more ambitious new generation has taken another leap ahead.

Suburbs like Cicero and Berwyn, offering opportunities for real homes, open spaces, gardens and a healthy community life, have attracted these native sons of the newcomers of yesterday, who were eager to get as far away from the tenement memories of their pioneer fathers as they could. Today these regions are beauty spots, gleaming with new brick and stucco dwellings, wholly detached or of the two-family type - a symbol suggesting that the Czechoslovak in America has arrived.

Already the vicinity is acquiring a character of its own. In the past year a community house containing a theatre and the inevitable Sokol gymnasium has been built on an entire city block. In it are concentrated every species of social activitincluding the building and loan association, an institution well known, it may be mentioned in passing, to the Czecho-Slovak in their native country.