Movies | News | Relocation | Home Search | Schools

Chicago Area

Hyde Park , located on the South Side of Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois, United States and seven miles (11 km) south of the Chicago Loop, is a Chicago neighborhood and one of 77 Chicago community areas. It is home to the University of Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Oriental Institute and The Renaissance Society. It is formerly the name of a Township that included numerous other neighborhoods that have all been annexed by the city of Chicago.

Hyde Park was founded by Paul Cornell in the 1850s near the Illinois Central Railroad south of Chicago. In 1861, the Hyde Park Township was incorporated, extending from 39th to 63rd Streets. The southern border was later extended as far as South 138th Street and as far west as State Street. The township was independent of Chicago until 1889, when it was annexed to the city.

As a neighborhood, Hyde Park's definition has shrunk to a core area grouped closely around Cornell's development on 53rd Street and the lakefront. Today, the name Hyde Park is officially applied to the neighborhood from 51st Street ("Hyde Park Blvd.") to the neighborhood around the Midway Plaisance or simply "The Midway" (between 59th and 60th)^{[ 1]} The neighborhood's eastern boundary is Lake Michigan and its western boundary is Washington Park.

Some consider Hyde Park to include the area between 47th and 51st Streets ("E. Hyde Park Blvd."), although this area is actually the south half of the Kenwood community area. The area encompassing Hyde Park and South Kenwood is also referred to as "Hyde Park-Kenwood." It hosts two of the four Chicago Registered Historic Places from the original October 15, 1966 National Register of Historic Places list (Chicago Pile-1, & Robie House).

The Hyde Park Herald , a local newspaper, has covered neighborhood news since 1882. The neighborhood has gained particular fame in the 2008 Presidential Election as the home of President-elect Barack Obama.

Bronzeville

Bronzeville is a neighborhood located in the Douglas and Grand Boulevard community areas on the South Side of city of Chicago around the Illinois Institute of Technology and Illinois College of Optometry. It is accessible via the Green, Red Lines of the Chicago Transit Authority or the Metra Electric District Main Line.

In the early 20th century, Bronzeville was known as the "Black Metropolis," one of the nation's most significant landmarks of African-American urban history. Between 1910 and 1920, during the peak of the "Great Migration," the population of the area increased dramatically when thousands of African-Americans fled the oppression of the south and emigrated to Chicago in search of industrial jobs. Many famous people were associated with the development of the area including: Andrew "Rube" Foster, founder of the Negro National Baseball League; Ida B. Wells, a civil rights activist, journalist and organizer of the NAACP; Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman pilot; Gwendolyn Brooks, famous author and first African-American recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, actress Marla Gibbs, the legendary singers, Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls, and Louis Armstrong, the legendary trumpet player and bandleader who performed at many of the area's night clubs. The neighborhood contains the Chicago Landmark Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District.

47th Street was and remains the hub of the Bronzeville neighborhood and in recent years has started to regain some of the former glory of years gone by. Gone though for good is the Regal Theater (demolished in 1973) where many great performers took the stage.

During the 1950s and 1960s, a decision was made to replace the "slums" with several straight miles of high-rise public housing projects, managed by the Chicago Housing Authority, essentially isolating and simultaneously concentrating the poor black population in this section of the city. The largest complex was Robert Taylor Homes.