Where Western, Lincoln and Lawrence meet
Lincoln Square is about 2.5 miles south of our storefront in a straight line, and Western Avenue connects the two of us. Its commercial heart is the three-way corner of Western, Lincoln and Lawrence, where the 1956 Abraham Lincoln statue stands, with shops and restaurants running southeast along Lincoln Avenue.
The community area stretches from Peterson and Bryn Mawr down to Montrose, between the Chicago River on the west and Ravenswood Avenue on the east. Inside it are smaller pockets with their own names, and Budlong Woods and Bowmanville are two of them. The Budlong brothers started a pickle business near Lincoln and Berwyn in 1857 and later grew flowers for Rosehill Cemetery. The slice of Ravenswood west of Ravenswood Avenue and the Metra tracks counts as Lincoln Square too.
German roots still show in places like Merz Apothecary and the DANK Haus, and the Berlin Wall Monument has stood at the Western Brown Line station since it was installed in 2008.
Rosehill, the parks and finding the car
Rosehill Cemetery covers 350 acres in the northeast part of the area. It’s the largest cemetery in Chicago, with Western, Peterson, Ravenswood and Bryn Mawr along its edges. So “by Rosehill” could mean any of four long streets. Give us the street you’re actually on and the nearest corner.
Two parks make good reference points. Welles Park is at Lincoln and Montrose, and Winnemac Park, at Damen and Foster, holds Amundsen High School.
The housing is private homes and small apartment buildings, which means the car is probably at the curb, in a driveway or in a garage behind the building. Tell us which, and whether it rolls.
A guest pass for a car that isn’t yours
Sometimes the dead car out front isn’t registered to your address, say a parent’s old sedan or a car you inherited. On a residential permit zone block, that car needs a daily guest permit during the posted hours.
The City Clerk’s rules are specific. A daily pass is good for 24 hours from when it’s displayed, the date and time have to be written in ink, and it goes in the lower passenger-side corner of the windshield. Households buy them online through EzBuy with a Customer Code, up to 45 every 30 days. They can’t be refunded and they expire each year on December 31.
The paperwork for a car in someone else’s name matters more than the parking. Illinois rules decide which documents work for a scrap sale, so tell us whose name is on the title and what you have in hand, and we’ll confirm on the call. Our guide to signing over an Illinois title and our page on selling a car without a title go further.
Next door to Lincoln Square
We pay cash for junk cars in Lincoln Square on every block from Peterson to Montrose. South of Montrose it’s North Center. Over the river is North Park, and north of Peterson is West Ridge, home to our storefront. The service area page has the rest.