On the third Thursday of every month, more than half the Gaslight Square families gather for a neighborhood association meeting. In February, they discussed ways to get more street lights, a health fair and a yard sale. There are door prizes. The meeting ends with cookies and punch. It is not uncommon for one neighbor to cut the grass of another when it gets too high.
Most residents say their neighbors and their families are the reasons they live here.
Gaslight Square's roots date to 1965, when plans were made for the first few houses at the former site of a drive-in theater. Most of the families who live here bought their houses in 1967. Many of them, or their children, still live in the inner-city neighborhood that has the Illinois Central railroad as a boundary. Their niche has been maintained while others, such as next door neighbors Dixie Heights and Bunker Hill, have declined. All these areas, including Gaslight Square, are part of the Bicentennial Neighborhood Initiative, a redevelopment plan for inner-city neighborhoods that are losing population and have deteriorating housing and problems with poverty, crime and unemployment.