Three community areas hold 176 of the 458 murals on Chicago’s own Mural Registry — West Town with 66, Uptown with 56, and the Loop with 54, about 39 percent of the 453 murals the map below places. The registry’s recorded install years run from 1971 to 2024, its busiest years are 2017, with 75 murals, and 2019, with 72, and 55 of the city’s 77 community areas hold at least one registered mural. One scope note before anything else: this is the city’s registry, not a census — a mural exists on this page because someone registered it, and Chicago has walls the registry has never counted.
Mural Registry, Chicago data portal · the registry’s file last updated February 28, 2025; retrieved August 15, 2026 · 458 entries as recordedEvery community area’s count, in text
West Town 66; Uptown 56; Loop 54; South Lawndale 23; Lake View 22; Rogers Park 21; Logan Square 19; Lower West Side 16; Near West Side 14; Edgewater 10; Near North Side 9; Avondale 8; Hyde Park 8; Irving Park 8; Portage Park 8; South Shore 8; Lincoln Park 7; Near South Side 7; Grand Boulevard 6; Humboldt Park 6; West Englewood 6; Woodlawn 6; Bridgeport 5; Calumet Heights 4; Englewood 4; New City 4; Dunning 3; East Garfield Park 3; Jefferson Park 3; Kenwood 3; Lincoln Square 3; North Lawndale 3; Austin 2; Forest Glen 2; McKinley Park 2; North Center 2; Oakland 2; West Garfield Park 2; West Ridge 2; Albany Park 1; Armour Square 1; Ashburn 1; Auburn Gresham 1; Beverly 1; Brighton Park 1; Chatham 1; Chicago Lawn 1; Clearing 1; Hermosa 1; Norwood Park 1; Pullman 1; Roseland 1; South Chicago 1; West Elsdon 1; West Lawn 1.
No registered murals: Archer Heights, Avalon Park, Belmont Cragin, Burnside, Douglas, East Side, Edison Park, Fuller Park, Gage Park, Garfield Ridge, Greater Grand Crossing, Hegewisch, Montclare, Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood, North Park, O’Hare, Riverdale, South Deering, Washington Heights, Washington Park, West Pullman.
Reading the registry
The Mural Registry dataset carries a registration ID, artist credit, title, media, install year, restoration year, and coordinates for each work. It is a slow file: its last recorded update is February 28, 2025, so this page reads the registry as it stood then — murals painted or registered since are not in it, and the thin recent install years below should be read with that in mind. It is also an imperfect file, in ways this page counts rather than hides: the registry’s own community-area column, where it is filled in with a usable value, disagrees with the registry’s own coordinates on 136 of 283 rows — nearly half — so this page ignores that column and places murals by their coordinates instead; 453 of the 458 place, with the accounting in the method note.
The pace, as the registry records it
The registry’s install dates sketch two eras. A thin early ledger runs from 1971 through the 2000s — a handful of entries a year at most — and then the counts climb steeply through the 2010s to a peak of 75 murals installed in 2017 and 72 in 2019. After 2020 the recorded counts fall away — 25 in 2021, 24 in 2022, 4 in 2023, 9 in 2024 — but on a file this slow, a thin recent year says as much about what has been registered as about what has been painted, and this page does not read it as a decline in murals. Four entries carry no install year at all, and 28 of the 458 record a restoration year alongside the original date.
The 1970s corner of the file
The registry’s oldest entries reach back to the start of the 1970s: two 1971 works credited to John Pitman Weber — “Rompiendo Las Cadenas/Breaking the Chains” and “Together We Overcome/Unidos Para Triunfar” — and a 1972 class that includes William Walker’s “Childhood is Without Prejudice” and Aurelio Diaz’s “Galeria del Barrio.” Titles, credits, and years here are printed exactly as the registry records them; the registry itself carries no history of the works beyond its fields, and this page adds none.
Who the registry credits
- Justus Roe32
- Marry Tonnu23
- Tony Passero11
The registry’s 458 entries carry 293 distinct artist-credit strings. Counted as exact strings — no folding of variants, no splitting of collaborations — the most frequent credits are Justus Roe (32 entries), Marry Tonnu (23), and Tony Passero (11). A credit here is the registry’s text, sometimes one name, sometimes a team or organization; the same artist under a variant spelling would count separately, so these are floors, and this page ranks no one beyond the exact strings. Media is recorded on 289 of the 458 entries, and the most common recorded media value is simply “Paint,” on 175 entries.
Known limits
Registration is the registry’s unit, and it says nothing about a mural’s quality, size, visibility, or whether it still exists — a registered mural can be painted over, and an unregistered one can stand for decades. The file’s February 2025 state bounds every count here. Five entries record coordinate values outside the valid latitude-longitude range and sit outside the map and area counts; three more record valid values in swapped order and are placed after swapping. The area counts count murals, not wall area or artistic significance, and this page takes no position on where anyone should live or visit.
- Sources Mural Registry (we8h-apcf, 458 rows, file last updated February 28, 2025) and Boundaries — Community Areas (igwz-8jzy), both retrieved August 15, 2026.
- Geography Each mural is placed in a community area by testing its own recorded point against the city boundary polygons (point-in-polygon, even-odd rule). 453 of 458 place: three entries record latitude and longitude in swapped order (each value valid only for the other field) and place after swapping; five record values outside the valid range and are not placed. The registry’s own community-area column was tested against the coordinates and disagrees on 136 of its 283 usable rows, so it is not used; the data portal’s own computed area stamp agrees with the coordinates on 449 of 450 rows.
- Counting Install years, restoration years, artist credits, and media are the registry’s fields as recorded. Artist credits are counted as exact strings with whitespace collapsed; nothing is merged. The busiest-years and area counts describe the registry, not the city’s full mural stock.
Computed by KCM Desk from records retrieved August 15, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
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