Mural Update

posted by Elizabeth Fama

Today I happened upon this scene at 56th and Lake Park. Olivia Gude is restoring her original 1992 mural, "Where We Come From...Where We're Going." I had previously seen a young man (her assistant for the summer) power-washing William Walker's "Childhood is Without Prejudice" (1977), just east of the Gude mural.

Ms. Gude is responsible for restoring both murals, using money she says the Chicago Public Art Group got from the NEA. (For a list of all the CPAG mural restoration projects in Chicago, see this link.) I'm pretty sure that the University of Chicago has contributed money for the 56th Street murals, as well.

She told me that she had restored Mr. Walker's mural once before, in 1993, and when she had contacted him to discuss it Mr. Walker said, "Why don't you just paint something else over it?" which was unthinkable to her. Mr. Walker's art is considered to be historically significant.

Olivia Gude

Ms. Gude is hoping that while she works on her mural (for the next month, she estimates), people will stop and tell her what has become of the subjects in the mural. She might even add an update about some of them to the text in the mural.

I know one of the models, the small-ish redhead in the tan coat. Her name is Rachel, and she was one of my husband's PhD students. She was not terribly fond of Hyde Park. She now works for the International Monetary Fund.

William Walker (b. 1927), "Childhood is Without Prejudice." The loose paint has been power-washed away.

Street Cleaning Progress?

posted by Elizabeth Fama

Signs of progress are appearing in Hyde Park...or at least in strategic spots on campus.

Ever since my year-long stint in Los Angeles, where these signs are the norm, I've wondered why the City of Chicago still sends Streets and Sanitation workers out to hang cardboard street-cleaning signs by hand. It can't be efficient. First, there are the man-hours involved in putting up and taking down the temporary signs (don't get me started on the workers who do this job by car, with the engine idling). Second, many car owners don't see the signs in time to move their cars. Third, on street-cleaning days parking is unavailable for six hours (9AM - 3PM), although it takes approximately 2 minutes for the machine to clean any given block.

The above signs solve these problems, and possibly two more: people will be less inclined to abandon their cars (operable or inoperable) for months at a time in one spot, and folks going on vacation will know to have a friend move their car.

As far as I can tell, the signs are so far only installed on heavily-parked streets (Drexel, Ellis, and Woodlawn roughly between 55th and 59th Streets), where having a mere 2-hour moratorium on parking every month, on a predictable day, will help to ease parking woes for University visitors and employees.

But I'd like to have them on my block, too.

Nearer, Dear God, To Thee?

posted by Richard Gill

A couple of years ago, at some Hyde Park meeting about the Point, some priestess of Hyde Park's intellectual superiority arose and took direct aim at residents of Lincoln Park and Lakeview. "Most of THEM," she huffed, "don't know who their Alderman is. They probably don't even know what an Alderman is."

If I'd had the stomach to ask her, she probably would have told me that only those who are close to God, such as long-time Hyde Parkers, can possibly possess knowledge of the name of their Alderman.

What BS, I thought. But now, I'm starting to wonder if maybe she had (pardon the expression) a point. I mean, just look around. Hans Morsbach himself is achieving heavenly stature. Inside his own restaurant. In a great mural upon the wall.


What convinced me, though, was Hyde Park's burning bush. Around 3pm, July 6, there was a burning bush (honest, really) at 55th & Lake Park, outside Walgreens. It is unknowable whether it was caused by a cigarette or by spontaneous combustion from on high. The fire department came and poured enough water and foam on it to drown the bush and probably kill it, were it a mere mortal bush. But, no doubt, this heavenly shrub will regenerate upon the morrow. Take a look and let us know.

The Most Excellent and Truly Amazing Letter Ever Written to the Hyde Park Herald

posted by chicago pop

We reproduce, forthwith and herein, the above-said most awesome and amazing letter to the Herald ever written. The author is one Charles Stephen Thompson.

Note that you don't have to have a particular viewpoint on the issue at hand to recognize that this letter effectively demonstrates journalistic bias in the Herald's coverage of the issues. We'll also take this opportunity to note that this blog raised the issue, not of the 47th Street women's clinic, but of the nearby 47th Street pediatric clinic and overall UCMC administrative restructuring, A YEAR before the Herald decided to focus on the latest phase of this restructuring.

Because this letter is so excellent, it needs no further commentary, and we therefore pass on the the brief in full:

U of C Coverage Smacks of Bias (Hyde Park Herald, July 1, 2009)

To the Editor:

It amazes me that your newspaper can be so blatantly partisan. I have watched for weeks as the Herald has methodically torn the university apart for closing its women's clinic at 47th Street and for downsizing and outsourcing its emergent care operations to other, cheaper hospitals. In each instance, this was deemed front page news. Yet, when it was reported -- by the same reporter, mind you -- that the university was donating at least $5 million to Provident Hospital, an "underutilized hospital," to assist in facilities upgrades so that they could better serve some of the same patients that the university will be sending them, this was relegated to page 4.

Moreover, the Herald has routinely pointed out that other non-profit institutions are buckling under the weight of the economic decline ("Budget cuts threaten Hyde Park orgs," June 24; "McCormick seminary for sale," June 24), effectively giving those same institutions a pass as they cut back on service and support of the Hyde Park community. From what I have read, the university's endowment shrank by a similar amount; I fail to see why it is held to a different standard.

While I understand that the university is looked on suspiciously in whatever it does simply based on its past behavior, I think it is deplorable for a journalistic organization to so obviously disregard the facts in such a methodical and partisan fashion. If I wanted such biased reporting, I'd watch Fox News.

Charles Stephen Thompson

A Tale of Two Campus Towns: Hyde Park and Ann Arbor

posted by chicago pop

West Side Books, Ann Arbor
The Quintessential Campus Town Institution

One of the most frequent questions for those who have lived or studied in, or simply passed through Hyde Park for any length of time, is why it does not more closely resemble other campus towns they have known. Certainly, not all campus towns are desirable models. I can think of a number of larger state schools in the Midwest that have expanded in the form of parking lots and drab student housing to consume the old American village that once surrounded it.

This isn't the case with Ann Arbor, Michigan. To the immediate northwest of the University of Michigan campus sits a roughly 10-square block area that makes up the "old downtown." It is a remarkably diverse commercial district adjacent to a major American university. It has upscale dining, it has ethnic quick eats. It has a cupcake shop, and a Chinese bakery specializing in fresh steamed buns and at least two chocolate shops.

The Cupcake Station

Shakolad Chocolate Factory

It has fancy boutiques, whimsical ones, and non-profits that run storefronts for a variety of causes.

Robot Supply and Repair
Front for 826michigan, a Non-Profit Tutoring and Writing Center
Founded by Dave Eggers in San Francisco,
Opened in Ann Arbor 2005

The Workantile Exchange
A "Co-Working" Office Cooperative, With Cafe in Front

It has half a dozen bookstores and a comic book store, and its bars, restaurants, and independent cafes nearly all offer sidewalk seating.

Vault of Midnight

Sidewalk Dining in Downtown Ann Arbor

The Monkey Bar

It has a garden supply store, a contemporary furniture store, and a brand new gym fronted by a juice bar. And as far as I could tell, it has only one Starbucks.

Most importantly, old downtown Ann Arbor is a pleasure to walk around and explore. It seems to pull together most of what past surveys and workshops say people want in Hyde Park: lots of dining, lots of al fresco seating, independent retail, and boutique shopping.

Retail Diversity: An Interior Designer's Studio, A Workspace Co-op, and Ethnic Cuisine

It manages to sustain a core of local enterprises that does not resemble the Banana Republic/Restoration Hardware/California Pizza Kitchen real estate "product" that is so common in new retail development. In the midst of all this, there is room for alternative or non-profit operations that use their business to fund other operations.

Acme Mercantile

Of course, Hyde Park is a neighborhood in an economically distressed region of Chicago, and relies on a single large employer of around 12,000 people to drive the local economy. Ann Arbor is a city in its own right, with a Big 10 research university that itself employs around 38,000 people, while also hosting a cluster of tech and biomedical employers, all of which keep Ann Arbor's median household incomes higher than their Hyde Park equivalents. And as interesting as Ann Arbor's downtown area is, it is relatively low-density, and there are no major drug stores or supermarkets within walking distance. Since 2005, however, the city has embarked on a major effort to rezone downtown and outlying areas to encourage greater densities.

A Thriving Commercial District
Recently Added Density Around the Edges
"Since 2005, when Ann Arbor began rethinking building heights and downtown density, that small area of the city [downtown] has been in the spotlight." -- mlive.com

So Hyde Park is not completely at a disadvantage with regards to Ann Arbor. In the last two years, a number of positive changes, some small and some large, have taken place. There should be room for still more, assuming people understand what is required to bring them about.

Adding More Residential Density to Downtown Ann Arbor

What Makes Hyde Park Great?

posted by chicago pop

A note of interest from Chicago's very own Metropolitan Planning Council:

The nonprofit Metropolitan Planning Council is sponsoring a new photo and video contest to highlight Chicagoland's best public places.

The "What Makes Your Place Great?" contest is calling on architecture, urban design, photo and video buffs -- and anyone else who is interested -- to submit photos or videos of their favorite public places in Chicagoland, along with short written descriptions about why their favorite places contribute to their communities.

"Buying Asparagus at Daley Plaza Farmer's Market"

The contest is part of one of our major projects, PlacemakingChicago.com, Chicago's hub for "placemaking" tips -- guidance for improving your neighborhood, one bench, flower pot, or dog park at a time.

"Softball Game in Pilsen"

After July 27, there will be an online public voting process to pick the People's Choice Award in each category. A panel of Placemaking experts also will select a Grant Prize winner in each category, for a total of four awards. The prize packages are pretty sweet (see below).

"Chicago Streetscape"

********

“WHAT MAKES YOUR PLACE GREAT?” CONTEST NOW ACCEPTING PHOTOS, VIDEOS OF PEOPLE’S FAVORITE PUBLIC PLACES IN CHICAGOLAND

(Chicago) … Chicagoland is a patchwork of thousands of great neighborhood places that define our lives by inspiring us, relaxing us, and encouraging us to sit and talk awhile with our neighbors. To find the best places in Chicagoland, Placemaking Chicago, a project of the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC), today launched the “What Makes Your Place Great?” contest on PlacemakingChicago.com.

From June 3 through July 27, 2009, entrants can e-mail original photos or videos showcasing their favorite public places across Chicagoland, along with a 250-word-or-less description, to placemakingchicago@metroplanning.org. (Complete rules and submission criteria guidelines are available at PlacemakingChicago.com. Entrants may feature places in the City of Chicago or in Chicago suburbs located in Boone, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties in Illinois; or in Lake, Porter, and La Porte counties in Indiana; or in Racine and Kenosha counties in Wisconsin.)

“Show and tell us not only why your favorite place is special to you, but also how it contributes to your community,” said MPC Associate Karin Sommer, who manages the Placemaking Chicago project. “Is it somewhere people go to relax or meet up with friends? What are some unique ways people use the space? And what is it about this place that keeps you coming back?”

Four winners, two photo and two video, will be announced on Sept. 25, 2009. One winner in each category will receive a Grand Prize award, selected by a committee of Placemaking experts; and one winner in each category will receive a People’s Choice award, selected by public vote on PlacemakingChicago.com from Aug. 10 to Sept. 14, 2009. Winners will have the opportunity to showcase their favorite places at an MPC event in October, and they will win prize packages including:

• Chicago Architecture Foundation walking tour tickets;
• A trio of “Co-op Hot sauce” made from chiles grown in NeighborSpace community gardens in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood;
• Passes to the Art Institute of Chicago, donated by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago;
• MPC roundtable tickets;
• A gift certificate from Branch 27, Browntrout, or Feast restaurants, or Seven Ten Lanes; and
• Boulevard Lakefront Bike Tour tickets and membership in the Active Transportation Alliance (a special prize for People’s Choice Award winners).

MPC and Placemaking Chicago are grateful for donations from these organizations and restaurants, as well as from The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Background:

Placemaking is a people-centered approach to community planning that starts with neighborhood residents and businesses creating a vision for a public space, and then working together to make that vision a reality. In 2008, MPC worked with the New York-based Project for Public Spaces (www.pps.org) to develop the first-ever city-specific guidebook on Placemaking, “The Guide to Neighborhood Placemaking in Chicago.” MPC and PPS co-facilitated two workshops in the fall of 2008 to train community activists, local leaders, and city agency staff in Placemaking techniques. In 2009, MPC teamed up with WPB (the Special Service Area for Wicker Park and Bucktown) and local residents and businesses to come up with ideas to transform the Polish Triangle at the intersection of Ashland Avenue, Milwaukee Avenue, and Division Street in Chicago into a great gathering place. More than 700 people contributed ideas through an online network, online public survey, and a two-day open house in March. MPC and WPB continue to work with residents to form a vision for the Polish Triangle based on the ideas they’ve generated so far. Stay tuned for news about summer events in the Polish Triangle!

Learn more about Placemaking – and read the complete “What Makes Your Place Great?” contest rules and submission guidelines – at PlacemakingChicago.com; or by contacting MPC Associate Karin Sommer, at 312-863-6044 or ksommer@metroplanning.org.

Since 1934, the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) has been dedicated to shaping a more sustainable and prosperous greater Chicago region. As an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, MPC serves communities and residents by developing, promoting and implementing solutions for sound regional growth.

On the Track of a Trail

posted by Richard Gill

Some bridges, such as this one above Wood Street, are badly deteriorated.

On Saturday, June 20, an organization named Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail hosted a walk/run/bike event to publicize their effort to create an urban trail on the right-of-way of a long-inactive railroad line.

Informally called the Bloomingdale Line, the railroad is elevated on retained earth-fill embankment, running east-west along its namesake street, at about 1800 North. The trail would essentially replace the track on the embankment from the Chicago River to about 3800 West. Neighborhoods traversed include Wicker Park, Bucktown, Logan Square and Humboldt Park. The neighborhoods seem to have adopted the railroad line and its structures.

CTA's Blue Line crosses above the Bloomingdale Line, just west of Milwaukee Avenue.

For most of its existence, the Bloomingdale Line was an industrial freight branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. Some twenty years ago, ownership was transferred to the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railroad. The Canadian Pacific Railroad is the present owner.

In the past few decades, many hiking/biking trails have been established on former rail lines in rural areas under various programs, such as Rails-to-Trails. The Bloomingdale Trail would be one of a few rail-trails right inside major cities. Saturday’s event was timed to help celebrate the June opening of New York City’s High Line, a path on an abandoned freight branch on the west side of Manhattan.

One developer on Damen encroached on the right-of-way. This practice is now prohibited.

The Friends caught a break in the recent stormy weather; it was a beautiful hot, sunny day. So, with camera in hand, I set off on a two-hour walking excursion along a segment of the Bloomingdale Line.

Homeowners have planted flowers and vines at the retaining wall. This is on Hoyne Avenue.

Lined with greenery, alleys and walkways along the retaining wall take on a bit of a European look.

As I walked, I was reminded that despite Hyde Park’s amenity envy vis a vis the North Side, at least we don’t have to struggle to acquire a trail. The best one in the city is right on our doorstep.

Nice mural work east of Western Avenue.

The Friends' literature dutifully said walkers ought not to climb up onto the trackway. The admonishment was largely ignored, and no doubt is ignored in general. I saw local residents jogging up there. These friendly folks seemed to be living on the track.

MAC Properties and Hyde Park -- Kansas City

posted by chicago pop

That's Not the Del Prado:
The Bellerive Hotel, Kansas City, Missouri

If and when Off-Off Campus does an improv routine touching on Hyde Park's second-largest landowner, MAC Properties, there's a one-liner they'd be foolish to pass up:

Eli Ungar: "I liked the Hyde Park neighborhood so much, I decided to buy another one."

In point of fact, things didn't progress in quite that order. Ungar's MAC Properties began acquiring residential properties in Chicago's Hyde Park at about the same time, in 2005, that it began to do the same in Kansas City's own historic Hyde Park neighborhood.

Vernacular Kansas City Two-Flats

The similarities between the two Hyde Park neighborhoods are curious. Both are linked to the larger city by a system of boulevards inspired by the City Beautiful movement. Both neighborhoods were platted in the mid- to late-19th century, and both are adjacent to smaller developments called "Kenwood." Both were annexed to their larger metropolitan neighbor after a few decades of municipal independence. Both are a mix of gracious, 19th century homes on broad, leafy streets, and taller 1920's residential hotels, with smaller 3-story apartment buildings sprinkled in between. Both are racially diverse, and both have suffered from urban decline.

And now, both neighborhoods are home to Eli Ungar's MAC Properties.

MAC's object in both neighborhoods, to quote MAC's Peter Cassel, is to develop "contemporary apartments in classic buildings." In practice, that translates into a $30 million project renovating vintage 20's transient hotels, together with smaller apartment buildings, and bringing them to market as middle-range rentals targeted at middle-class professionals.

In Chicago, examples of this strategy are the Del Prado, Windemere, and Shoreland Hotels. In Kansas City, it is the Bellrive and four similar buildings on Armour Boulevard.

The Bellerive's Casbah Room in its Glory Days

A local paper detailed the glamorous heyday of the Bellerive in the Roaring Twenties.

The ornate red-brick structure was Kansas City's fanciest apartment hotel when it was built in 1922, boasting a parade of famous guests: opera diva Ernestine Schumann-Heink, actress Mary Pickford, silent-film actresses Lillian and Dorothy Gish, contralto Marian Anderson and writer Edith Sitwall. Even Al Capone stayed there... Stars like Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Liberace, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis performed at the hotel's swanky Casbah nightclub. Partly because of its past and partly because of its neobaroque architecture, the Bellerive made it onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

That didn't keep it from falling victim to the declining fortunes of Hyde Park in general, which like those of it's Great Lakes sister, set in after World War II. It's a familiar story.

By the end of the Second World War, a profound change had occurred in the area. Many of the original owners had died or moved to larger communities, with newer addresses of quality. The large old homes were converted into apartments and sleeping rooms. The neighborhood began a long, slow decline which continued unchecked until the 1970's.

By the early 2000's, four the the five old hotels on Armour were vacant, and the Bellerive was traded from developer to developer as plan after plan fell through. The neighborhood was being polarized between affluent homeowners in the 19th century homes on smaller side streets, and the concentration of low-income renters in subsidized housing along Armour. Not long after MAC acquired the property, vandals began raiding it for copper pipe.

Renovation Underway at an Old Hotel on Armour Boulevard

By 2010, MAC hopes to have turned the situation around. Of the 3,000 plus rental units in the Hyde Park neighborhood, MAC has approximately 250 units in service, and 400 in development. The neighborhood has received MAC warmly, with neighborhood groups advocating strongly for MAC in negotiations with the Kansas City government in 2006 and 2007.

Speaking of the Armour Boulevard Hotels, a representative of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association told a reporter in 2006, "The precedent that needs to be dumped is that this is an area for subsidized housing. These buildings need to be brought back and brought back now. Everybody agrees it needs to be a mixed-income neighborhood."*

Sullivanesque portal of a non-MAC neighbor on Armour Boulevard, the Newbern (1922)

Another representative of the Hyde Park group agreed with MAC in 2007 that the "neighborhood has maintained that the key to saving Armour is opening it to free market housing."** This view ultimately swayed city hall, convincing the relevant tax agency to wave certain fees for a 17 year period in the expectation that MAC's investment would help revitalize a centrally important part of Kansas City.

Renovated Lobby of a Hyde Park MAC Property

Stairwell of a Renovated Hyde Park MAC Property

As with Chicago's Hyde Park, MAC has made the bet that Kansas City, a growing Midwestern city with a healthy downtown just 3 miles away, home to a number of corporate headquarters, a major university, and a hospital complex, would support a growing market for middle-class renters in a neighborhood where they would add a much-needed demographic balance.

The scale is smaller in Kansas City, and there are no plans for major new developments like Solstice or the Village Center site. The neighborhood politics in Kansas City are also less convoluted, with the prominent neighborhood groups recognizing that an improvement in the housing stock -- or simply the preservation of Hyde Park's urban fabric, as opposed to clearance -- will benefit the entire community.

A MAC Building Near the Bellrive Hotel

So Hyde Park now has a sister city -- not Paris, Florence, or London, but good old Kansas City, Missouri.

* "Armour Projects Set Back. Five Building Renovations Stumble over Fee Wavers and Tax Abatements." The Kansas City Star, December 2, 2006.
** "Project to Redevelop Buildings is Revived." The Kansas City Star. February 21, 2007.

FIX THE POINT

posted by Elizabeth Fama

In the late spring a young woman's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of...swimming.

But if you want to swim at the Point, you'll have to do it illegally and at one of these three treacherous swimming access spots.

Now, it may have been a while since you've actually walked the promenade all the way around (and in some places it's physically impossible), so I've prepared this helpful slide show: A Walking Tour of the Point's Deterioration. Click on fama.elizabeth's Public Gallery, and then choose "slideshow." It will take you only 90 seconds to view it, and it will bring you up to snuff on just how bad the Point is getting.

It's time for us to demand The Compromise Plan, and the sanctioned deep-water swimming that goes along with it.

And don't forget to write to me if you want a free FIX THE POINT bumper sticker. They're all the rage.

fama.elizabeth{at}gmail.com

A Good Sign

posted by chicago pop

An improvement we noticed on East 55th Street. Thought we should call it out: thanks Snail Thai Cuisine!

Demolition Man: How Hans Morsbach Razed the Hyde Park YMCA

posted by chicago pop

"A vacant lot is not a pleasant site, but at this juncture, it is better than a decaying, dangerous building."*

-Hyde Park Herald editorial, on demolition of the 1907 Hyde Park YMCA in 1983

In light of recent events surrounding Doctor's Hospital, it is interesting to look back to the treatment of another historic building of the same vintage, the Hyde Park Division of the Chicago YMCA, at what is now the Dorchester Commons mini-mall.

Based on the Doctors Hospital episode, you may think you already know what happens when you have a historic, pre-World War I building, a neighborhood landmark that for several generations provided service to the community, that is suddenly shuttered and stands empty for several years.

The neighborhood rallies to save it, the effort is spearheaded by pillars of the community, including restaurant owner and concessionnaire Hans Morsbach, who use an obscure law to outwit a large and bumbling institution, thus preserving the historical integrity of the neighborhood, and keeping out unwanted commerce.

Wrong!

You don't do any of that. Instead, you tear down the blighted building within two years (Doctors Hospital has been vacant for nine). Instead of a labor union, you get the University to pick up your legal costs. And if any so-called "preservationists" make a ruckus and start floating conspiracy theories involving backroom maneuvers by the University, you call in the local newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald, to give you unconditional support and tell them what the neighborhood really wants: Tear down that old eyesore because it's within 1,200 feet of my property!

And you pave the way for its replacement, not by a top-notch building by a famous German or Italian architect worthy of Harper Avenue, but by ... a suburban-style minimall.

Here's what the Herald, that unwavering champion of unwavering community values, had to say about the sad fate of the old YMCA building.

The long-awaited demolition of the Hyde Park YMCA building has finally begun...

It was clear ... to the community at large that the outmoded building could not be salvaged at a reasonable cost. We are pleased that the developer ... has recognized that the community wanted that building removed before any serious incident occurred in this massive property which was becoming a haven for derelicts, thieves, and mischief-makers.

Here is the best part:

We do not give credence to the notion being bruited about the community that tearing down the building was a "conspiracy." If one wants to define a conspiracy in this case as a concerted effort by many people and institutions to keep Hyde Park-Kenwood from becoming a slum, so be it. It is always sad when a neighborhood landmark is torn down. In this case, it is doubly sad because this proud building rapidly deteriorated before our eyes.

Hyde Park YMCA, Front Door
[Source, Hyde Park Herald, June 17, 1959]

The essential details of the story are this: for financial reasons, the YMCA decided to close its Hyde Park facility in August of 1980. By the end of September, the 74 year old building was vacant. By the spring of 1981, a small group of neighbors, among them Hans Morsbach, and represented by the South East Chicago Commission (SECC), filed suit against the YMCA claiming that "the boarded-up property is a threat to their property because of its deteriorated condition," and that it was "an imminent threat to the health and safety of plantiffs, the plaintiff's neighbors, and the surrounding area."

The plaintiffs in the case invoked an obscure municipal ordinance according to which neighbors who lived or owned property within a certain distance -- 1,200 feet -- of an abandoned or dilapidated building could sue the owner to allow for demolition by the City. In 1981, the YMCA came close to finding a buyer, a developer who expressed an interest in gutting the structure and converting it to rental apartments which would include, it was stressed at the time, no Section 8 units.

The deal fell through, the lawsuit was successful, and Morsbach's group had the old building demolished.

Perhaps Morsbach's effort to keep the 1916 Doctors Hospital building vacant for nine years running somehow makes cosmic amends for helping to demolish a 1907 building that was vacant for only 2.

*[Source: http://ddd-hph.dlconsulting.com/cgi-bin/newshph?a=d&d=HPH19590617.1.2&e=00-00-0000-99-99-9999--20--1----YMCA+photo-all ]

Un-Fortressing Hyde Park

posted by Richard Gill

In March 2008, a public proposal was made, to open 57th Street to westbound traffic at Stony Island Avenue. The proposal went nowhere. For reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of the proposal, it didn’t get pushed. The time is past due to revive the proposal.

At Stony Island, the westbound side of 57th Street is blocked by a barrier that prevents cars from entering. (Photo above.) This has the effect of making 57th one-way eastbound between Lake Park and Stony Island. The barrier is decked out with signs displaying DO NOT ENTER, and directional signs to re-enforce that order.

Welcome to Hyde Park. You and your car may be permitted to come into our neighborhood, but only if you can negotiate our obstacle course.

The barrier has been there for so long, nobody (including CDOT traffic engineers) seems to know exactly when or why it was put there. Looking for clues, I found that it dates to the paranoid days of “the urban renewal,” nearly 50 years ago. According to the Hyde Park Herald edition of February 1, 1961, 57th Street was closed to westbound traffic at Stony Island in September 1960. The change at that time provoked the ire of many, such as residents at 58th & Dorchester who said the one-way designation required them to drive an extra four blocks, just to get home (It still does).

Since 56th Street is also one-way eastbound, this made it extremely difficult to get into Hyde Park, but really easy to get out. Mission accomplished: Build a moat, create an island, keep “outsiders” out. Even if there was any sound basis for insulating the neighborhood in 1960, there isn’t any now, and there hasn’t been for a long time.

Two public meetings were held (March 5 & 12, 2008), to discuss the proposed reopening of 57th Street. Those who objected to opening 57th Street hammered away with unsubstantiated predictions that the sky would fall. They said 57th Street would be choked with traffic, making life intolerable for both motorists and pedestrians. They offered no basis for that prediction, and professional city traffic engineers who had done an analysis debunked it.

It became clear that the objectors are residents along or near 57th Street who now have a semi-private street and want to keep it that way. Since that was their real position, and it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, they resorted to the tactic of bullying and disruption (remember the Point meetings). One of them pushed to the front and seized the floor. That was a sign that they really had nothing to back up their position. This antic wasn’t close to the level of disruption at the Point meetings, but the intent was the same.

So, there we had a handful of people who acted like living along the street meant they owned the street. Does this remind anyone of a recent hotel proposal whose defeat was engineered by a relative handful of people who, when the smoke cleared, simply wished to maintain their position of privilege and to hell with everybody else?

It is time to re-start the street-opening proposal.

Some of the benefits are: more exposure for local businesses; enhanced overall neighborhood traffic flow; easier access to Hyde Park; less circuitousness (with the potential for cleaner air); enhanced safety in front of Bret Harte elementary school with some traffic diverted away from 56th Street: and opportunity for weather-protected direct access for campus buses at the 57th Street Metra station.

Looking east on 57th St. at Lake Park. Signs direct eastbound traffic under the Metra viaduct. The westbound side of 57th is unused and wasted.

The city traffic engineers at the March 2008 meetings said that the proposal is feasible, would result in traffic compatible with residential/commercial streets like 57th, would not compromise traffic safety, and could be implemented with relatively minor and inexpensive signing, marking and channelization. They suggested the change could even be made on a trial basis.

This proposal, which has had local residents’ and merchants’ support (with those exceptions noted above), will also require support by the University of Chicago and Alderman Hairston.

Let’s at least try this idea. Yes, there would be some more people around --visiting, shopping, dining, sightseeing -- but that’s the idea. Hyde Park has begun to emerge from its past as a dull, unwelcoming, and lifeless urban island. Removing the barrier at 57th Street will help that process along, and will make life easier. It isn’t 1960 anymore.

It is time to stop small groups of people from preventing positive and beneficial changes. That would be real Hyde Park Progress.

Missing the Towers

posted by Richard Gill

Lever bank of 67th Street Metra Control Tower
[Photo by Mark Llanuza]

On May 18, Metra Electric shut down the 67th Street control tower and transferred its function to the Central Control Facility downtown. The 67th Street tower, technically known as an interlocking, was the last of its breed on Metra Electric, and probably the last on all lines of the former Illinois Central Railroad. The electro-mechanical operation embodied in the 83 year old tower has been long surpassed by generations of electronics and communications technology.

I suppose this was an insignificant event, as events go. However, because this last remaining old workhorse happened to be in our neighborhood, its passing may carry with it a bit of a local historical edge. Ok, I worked there in the 1960s, so its passing also carries a bit of a personal edge.

Facilities like the 67th Street interlocking were responsible for controlling and routing train traffic through railroad crossings and junctions like the track complex at 67th Street. Through a tangle of manual levers, steel blocks, rods, mechanical relays, and small electric motors, operators would move switch points and set signals to keep the railroad fluid. The “interlocking” feature prevented the operator from clearing conflicting train movements and from moving switch points under a train.

51st Street Metra Control Tower
[Photo by Mark Llanuza]

The 67th Street tower is a nondescript two-story brick building on the west edge of the right-of-way near 67th Street. Its companion building, closed 46 years ago, sits on the west side of the tracks at 51st Street. The 51st Street building now serves as a store room, and 67th is expected to do the same. You’ve probably seen and barely noticed one or both of these structures. Unremarkable though they may appear, they have been immensely important to the mobility of people and goods through the years.

Towers, I miss ye.

The Piano Lesson @ Court Theater

posted by chicago pop

A.C. Smith portrays Doaker in August Wilson's The Piano Lesson
at Court Theater*

At the center of a room in Pittsburgh stands an ancient, upright piano, its legs and body decorated with distinctive carvings. In the house that holds the piano lives a widow with her young daughter, and her widowed uncle. Into their home enter two men from Mississippi -- family -- the widow's brother, whose father was killed a quarter century before, and a young man hoping to flee the injustice and hard rural labor of the South.

All this family can claim as its patrimony, a family strained by the dispersal of the Great Migration, and ruptured by the violent destruction of its men, is the 137 year-old piano.

The fate of this object is the subject of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1987 play, the fourth in his epic "Century Cycle" of dramas exploring the experience of African-Americans across each decade of the twentieth century.

With a story of two siblings drawing the remnants of their kin into their dispute, Wilson presents a classic tale of sibling rivalry and, in the conflict over how to divide the family's inheritance, a struggle to achieve reconciliation with the past.

For this family, that past is dominated by slavery. The piano formerly belonged to the owner of the family's ancestors, and was bought by the slave owner in exchange for the grandmother and father of Doaker (above), whose likenesses were then carved onto the piano's body.

The piano is thus an ambivalent object, one with a sentimental link to a horrible past, and a money value that recalls the commodification of the slaves it was once bartered against.

Berniece (Tyla Abercumbie) and Boy Willie (Ronald L. Conner)
Argue Over the Family Piano*

What should be done with this object? Boy Willie , up from Mississippi, wants to sell it and use the money, fulfilling the long deferred promise of Emancipation by buying land and gaining independence as a free, yeoman farmer.

Berniece, Boy Willie's sister, resists her brother's entrepreneurial plans, and wants to keep the piano as a link to her dead mother in the past, as well as with her living daughter in the present, who is receiving formal piano lessons but knows nothing of its story.

The piano is the capital accumulation of one family, but is understood as a different type of capital by Boy Willie and Berniece, in a way that reflects the distinct gender roles of 1930's America: for Boy Willie the piano is economic capital, a commodity to be converted to cash for the purposes of investment and economic self-improvement, a prospect which is not equally available to Berniece, for whom the symbolic capital of the object, a sort of shrine to a tattered family heritage, far outweighs its selling price.

Perhaps the strangest thing about Wilson's play is its reliance on a literal haunting of the piano by a deceased white landowner to move the plot to resolution. But it works, whether taken literally or figuratively as the haunting of 1930's American with Jim Crow and the unfulfilled promises of the post-Reconstruction era.

In other ways, Wilson's play draws upon many genres and conventions, from slapstick to musical: the most moving sequence is arguably the field worker's song joined in by the men as they remember days in the South. The production suffered from only a few flaws, such as unintentional bumping of furniture, or a noticeable pause in Smith's recitation at one point.

My fellow theater-goer that evening, originally from the East Coast, remarked that anywhere else, he would expect a theater of Court's quality to be in the liveliest, most vibrant entertainment district of a large city, steps away from the after-theater bars, bistros and restaurants.

At one time, 55th Street might have filled that role, and the washed up piano man Wining Boy in Wilson's play, when he exited the stage, might have felt comfortable crossing the street and pounding the ivories till the early morning.

Though those days are gone, the attraction of the Court's productions is consistently high enough to accomplish what we spend so much time encouraging on this blog: draw people to the neighborhood from the rest of the city. On the night we were there, people were being turned away from the box office. That's the kind of problem we could use more of in Hyde Park.


*Image source: http://www.courttheatre.org/season/show/the_piano_lesson/

The Landlords of Hyde Park: How to Go Ghetto at 55th and HP Boulevard

posted by chicago pop

I'm very fond of the intersection of Hyde Park Boulevard and 55th Street. It's got good bones. Take away the bus stops and contemporary signage, and a location scout might be able to convince a Hollywood producer that the panorama was vintage Chicago, ca. 1925. Looking down HPB to the south, the lawn and majestic facade of the Museum of Science and Industry; to the east, Promontory Point; to the north, the wide, tree-shaded boulevard.

It's too bad, then, that the landlord of one prominent building at this intersection has decided to go ghetto with their property, and grace it with this classy little establishment:

Extra Cheeseball Points for Big Vinyl Banner at
You Roll-em Smoke Shop
(they sell phone cards, too)

You may know the building I'm talking about. It's the handsome structure on the SE corner of Hyde Park Boulevard and 55th that has been a dynamic incubator of Hyde Park small retail, or at least an incubator of awesome cosmetology signage:

Lotsa Plastic Earns Respectable Cheeseball Points

...or,

Ooops! Mr. & Mrs. Hair Weave Don't Live Here Anymore...
All Cheesball Points Forfeited

The latest addition, the smoke shop at 5503 1/2 S. Hyde Park Boulevard, is not to be outdone in in the aesthetics of cheesy signage, which happens to spill over into public space:

Urban Loveliness of "Tobacco for Less" at the 5500 building of S. Hyde Park Boulevard

This is simply an atrocity.

Especially when you know something about the backstory of the little walk-down space at 5503 1/2: the ceiling collapsed on the former tenant, a high-end bike shop, raining mold and asbestos throughout the space. The tenant relocated elsewhere in Hyde Park, and 5503 1/2 sat empty for over a year. It's not clear what repairs were made and whether the environmental hazard was addressed. What is clear is that the former tenant, Tati Bike Shop, was the kind of unique, boutique retail operation that everyone in Hyde Park says they want.

What replaced it is not.

We happen to know that the owner of this building is also the proud landlord of a similarly maintained property at the SW corner of 53rd and Harper Avenue (west of Pizza Capri, and directly south of the old Herald Building), where you can also get bongs, smokes, phone cards, maybe a few extra cardboard cut-out Wild Turkey signs, and knock-off perfume laced with pheremones that will "drive him wild."

So we've decided to give this landlord our quarterly HPP's Favorite Landlord Award. Contestant must score high points in each of the following categories:

1) Plentiful, Cheesy Retail Signage
2) Overall Ghetto Flavor and Wide Selection of Cheeseball Products
3) Locating as Many Hair and Nail Salons on One Strip as Possible
4) Giving a Lease to the Guys who Run That Other Bongs-Smokes-and-Pheremones Place on 53rd St.

This quarter, the award goes to the landlord of 5500 S. Hyde Park Boulevard, hands down. Congratulations! Hyde Park welcomes you!