By Dominic Candeloro

There was never just ONE Little Italy in Chicago. If all Italian immigrants to Chicago had settled in the same neighborhood, the concentration of their political, economic, and cultural power would have produced a much different history. Because they came to Chicago to work, they lived near their places of employment. They clustered in the "River Wards" in all three directions from the Loop.

There were outlying colonies like Roseland, near the Pullman works and there were Italian settlements in satellite suburbs like Chicago Heights. As chain migration proceeded, newcomers naturally headed to neighborhood of their paesani and family, solidifying the dispersal of the Italian population in Chicago.

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Source: http://blogs.lib.luc.edu