The official community boundaries established by the City of Chicago include Bloomingdale Ave to the north, the Union Pacific railroad tracks to the south, the train tracks running between Kostner and Cicero to the west, and Humboldt Park proper to the east (to the East side of California Ave).

[3] The area is home to many social service institutions, bars, restaurants, cafes and shops as well as two sixty-foot Puerto Rican flags on a stretch of Division Street designated Paseo Boricua.

K-Town is a nickname for an area in Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and West Garfield Park[note 1] between Pulaski Road and Cicero Avenue in which the names of many north–south avenues begin with the letter K (Keystone, Karlov, Kedvale, Keeler, Kenneth, Kilbourn, Kildare, Kolin, Kolmar, Komensky, Kostner, Kilpatrick, Kenton, Knox, and Keating).

The eleventh mile is the easternmost area in which the plan was widely implemented, as many neighborhoods to the east were already developed and had street names in place.

The park was named for Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), a Prussian naturalist and geographer, an early observer of human-induced climate change, was famed for his five-volume work Cosmos: Draft of a Physical Description of the World.

[7] His single visit to the United States in 1804 did not include Chicago, but citizens sponsored his monumental statue, unveiled in October 1892.

The park itself has 3 major historical public buildings, including the Boat House (designed by Schmidt, Garden and Martin), the Field House (which received a 1.5 million[9] dollar renovation grant, being implemented in 2013) and the Historic Stables (described more below).Chicago annexed most of the neighborhood in 1869, the year the park was laid out.

[citation needed] In 2009 Puerto Ricans were the largest ethnic presence in 11 census tracts in the Humboldt Park area.

[citation needed] In the 1970s, Humboldt Park became more dangerous with high levels of gang activity, crime, and violence.

[16] In June 2024, the part of the Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago known as Puerto Rico Town or Paseo Boricua officially changed its name to Barrio Borikén.

[20] The center stage for much of this crime, frequently stemming from gang activity and drug dealing, would be Humboldt Park.

[23][24] Members have been known to actively gangbang in or around the park, such as a group of 13 who maintained an open-air market where they openly sold crack and fentanyl-laced drugs.

[25] In 2023, Humboldt Park residents held several rallies protesting continued issues surrounding drug dealing and violent crimes, such as armed robberies and shootings.

[26] As of February 2013, the 26th Ward of the City of Chicago (which encompasses the majority of Humboldt Park) had a population of 28.0% Puerto Ricans.

[28] Increasing property taxes[29] during the past two decades have forced out the Latino and Eastern European residents that live east of the park.

This shift can be easily seen moving westward towards Kedzie Avenue past Humboldt Park and the reduced coverage and visibility of the Puerto Rican Day Parade.

At some point many ethnic Irish moved to suburban municipalities,[31] and in the 1950s, these sections of were characterized by the Italian American community.

The last point refers especially to the Puerto Rican community's (socio-economic-culturally forced) migration West in the city from Lincoln Park.

Vendor booths purvey the food as well as deejays playing traditional and new Chicago house music with Spanish vocals and soulful (often orchestral Latin-jazz laden) Afro-Caribbean syncopated rhythms.

In 2014, 160,000 people attended Riot Fest that had a lineup that included Jane's Addiction, Rise Against, and Slayer, The Flaming Lips, Wu-Tang Clan, The Cure, Weezer, Social Distortion, Primus, Tegan and Sara, Cheap Trick, and Patti Smith.

The coalition works within the Humboldt Park community area as well as the West Town community area, and mainly focuses on the health needs of Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Black residents within the neighborhood to support low-income residents who may not have access to health services.

Founded in 2007 to organize those who live East of the Park and participate in the Chicago Police Department's CAPS Beat 1423 initiatives.

The building's design highlights the Germanic character of the neighborhood in the 1890s and is a fanciful creation of Ludowici tile roofs, finials, brick, and half-timbering.

The turret on the Southeast corner of the building was part of the office of Jens Jensen, a landscape architect who left his mark on the impressive design of the park's natural hardscape and water features.

Humboldt Park figures prominently in the literary works that chronicled Chicago's blue collar life in the 1950s and 1960s.

[79] Annie Sweeney and Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune wrote that this hospital "played a crucial role" in giving medical treatment in that disaster.