Low brick storefronts under an elevated train carry stacked signage in Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai.
What Argyle Street looks like
Argyle Street runs as a narrow shared street between Sheridan Road and Broadway. It was repaved level with the sidewalk in 2016 and bent into slight chicanes that slow traffic, with stormwater planters set into the paving along both curbs. Two and three storey brick and terra cotta storefronts line the block. Their upper floors hold apartments and offices over painted and neon signs stacked in English, Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai.
At Argyle and Kenmore, a red brick corner building has a bracketed cornice over three storeys of windows, ground floor storefronts below. A similar corner near Winthrop holds arched window surrounds in pale brick. At Sheridan Road, a red and tan brick building curves around the intersection on bowed bay windows. Restaurant and grocery signs stack above money transfer offices on these corners, several deep in some shop windows.
The CTA's Argyle station sits at 1118 West Argyle, an elevated Red Line stop rebuilt in 2025 with wide translucent canopies and a widened platform. The concrete viaduct crosses the street on piers, the station entrance set underneath in red tile and glass.
Toward Broadway, the former at 1333 to 1345 West Argyle is a Chicago Landmark, now part of St. Augustine College. A block north on Kenmore Avenue, the former combines Romanesque Revival, Spanish and Art Deco details from 1922. Its sanctuary is now divided into apartments.
Shot in Argyle Street
The only confirmed screen credit on this stretch is a storefront dressed for a studio comedy. In 2011, The Dilemma used the storefront at 1124 West Argyle Street, a block of ground floor shops under the elevated tracks.
The Dilemma, 2011
The production dressed the storefront as a fictional massage spa called Chi Thao Massage and Spa, for a scene in which Ronny spies on Nick. The site was the former Red Rooster bar, near the Argyle station. Street View
The elevated 7 train runs over Roosevelt Avenue the way the Red Line crosses Argyle, with low rise storefronts stacked in several languages under the tracks. Both streets put the train structure, the signage and the sidewalk in the same frame. Roosevelt Avenue is a much longer, busier corridor with taller buildings in places, so a tight frame on one block reads closer than a wide shot. Try searching storefronts under elevated train now.
Inner Richmond in San Francisco, California
The same density of restaurant and grocery signage in English and Chinese lines Clement Street's two and three storey storefronts. The storefront scale and the stacked signage read close to Argyle in a tighter frame. There is no elevated structure here, so a wide shot gives away the difference. Keep the frame on the storefronts and skip the open sky above the roofline. Try searching stacked Chinese signage storefronts now.
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