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Chicago Skid Row  

Definition

  • When nineteenth-century Seattle lumberman Henry Yesler skidded logs to his waterfront sawmill, he rolled them down an inclined street lined with lodging houses, taverns, restaurants, brothels, pawnshops, and other stores. This original “Skid Road” later gave rise to the pejorative slang term “skid row,” referring to any place in a U.S. city where drunkenness and social pathology were said to concentrate. [Source: Encyclopedia of Homelessness; Chicago Skid Row]

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https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/Chicago_Skid_Row

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