Last Christmas in Chicago
Christmas Eve 1978: A Perseveranda Family Flashback at Barr Tower, Chicago
Before California was even a twinkle in our minds — Jonjo, Nati, and Joy at Apt 1202, 856 W Nelson St, Chicago, IL.
Jonjo, Nati & Joy • Christmas Eve 1978 • Apt 1202, Barr Tower, Chicago. Photo: Ronnie Perseveranda
It was Christmas Eve 1978. The tree was up, the presents hadn't been opened yet — a Perseveranda house rule — and somewhere behind that camera stood our dad, Ronnie, capturing what would become one of the most treasured photographs in our family archive. That's Jonjo (me), Mom (Nati), and my sister Joy, in the living room of Apt 1202 at Barr Tower, 856 W Nelson St, Chicago, Illinois.
We had made the move from the building's one-bedroom Apt 805 to the roomier two-bedroom Apt 1202 by then — Lola Rosita had joined us, and we needed the space. Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood was our world. California was not yet a twinkle in anyone's eye. That would change on June 3, 1979, when Dad, Mom, Joy, and I loaded up the white Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and pointed it west.
Chicago is home to one of the largest Filipino American communities in the United States. The Illinois Filipino community traces its roots to the early 1900s, when the first Filipino immigrants — many of them students and laborers — arrived in the Midwest. By the late 1970s, Chicago's northwest side and suburban areas had become vibrant hubs of Fil-Am life, complete with community organizations, churches, and cultural events that helped new arrivals preserve their heritage far from the Philippines.
Pasko (pas-KOH)
Christmas. From the Spanish Pascua, meaning "Easter" or "holy feast." In the Philippines, Pasko is the most celebrated season of the year — Filipinos are known for starting the Christmas season as early as September. No matter where in the world the diaspora has landed — Chicago, Dubai, London, or Vallejo — Pasko remains the most Filipino of feelings.
Barr Tower: Our Chicago Home, 1976–1979
We arrived in Chicago on August 19, 1976 — Lola Rosita, Joy, and me — joining Dad and Mom who had immigrated a year earlier on September 27, 1975. Our first home in America was Apt 805 at Barr Tower, a one-bedroom that somehow fit our entire world. Within a year or two, we upgraded to Apt 1202, a two-bedroom on a higher floor with a view of the neighborhood that, to a Filipino kid from Marikina, felt like the whole of America spread out below.
Those Chicago years — 1976 to 1979 — shaped everything. I fell in love with the city immediately. The seasons, the architecture, the energy of a big American city. I loved Chicago from point zero. I played basketball at Mormon church leagues. I discovered chess at age five and a half back in the Philippines, and I kept at it in Chicago. The neighborhood was my classroom long before Springstowne Junior High in Vallejo would be.
In that photograph, you can see a room still full of wrapped presents — because we opened gifts on Christmas morning, not Christmas Eve. That was the rule. Mom is there, the quiet center of our family. Joy is there too, little sister, the one who would later fall asleep on long drives and — as she always did on trips — get carsick. Dad was behind the lens that night, as he so often was.
The Last Christmas Before California
What makes this photo quietly remarkable is what it captures without knowing it: the last Christmas before everything changed. By June 3, 1979, we were heading west in that Cutlass Supreme, arriving in San Francisco on June 8. Vallejo and Hiddenbrooke and Hogan High and everything that came next — none of that had happened yet.
This is what Filipino diaspora history looks like at the ground level. Not a headline. Not a statistic. Just a family in Apt 1202, a tree full of unopened presents, and a father with a camera who somehow knew to take the shot.
Warren N Barr Tower — located at 856 W Nelson St in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood — is a residential high-rise named after Warren N. Barr, a prominent Chicago civic leader and philanthropist. The building sits just steps from Illinois Masonic Medical Center (now Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center), one of Chicago's major community hospitals, founded in 1923. The hospital has long served the surrounding Lakeview neighborhood and has been an anchor institution of the North Side.
For Filipino immigrant families arriving in Chicago in the mid-1970s, proximity to a major hospital was no small thing — especially for those who came as healthcare workers or who were navigating a new country without the safety nets of home. The Lakeview corridor, anchored by Barr Tower and Illinois Masonic, became a quiet but important node in the broader story of Filipino settlement in Chicago.
Sources
- Personal family archive — Ronnie Perseveranda (photographer), December 24, 1978
- J.F.R. Perseveranda, author recollections — PinoyBuilt, 2026
The Lakeview neighborhood on Chicago's North Side was home to a tight-knit Filipino American community in the 1970s. Many Filipino families who immigrated after the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 — which opened U.S. doors to Asian immigrants — settled in neighborhoods like Lakeview, drawn by its affordable high-rise apartments, proximity to public transit, and growing Fil-Am social networks. 856 W Nelson St, where the Perseverandas lived, sat in the heart of this community. Filipino families gathered in local churches, community halls, and each other's apartments — building the bayanihan spirit thousands of miles from the Philippines.
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