Hyde Park, Chicago
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It is the 41st of the 77
community areas of Chicago
Chicago, on Lake Michigan in Illinois, is among the largest cities in the U.S. Famed for its bold architecture, it has a skyline punctuated by skyscrapers such as the iconic John Hancock Center, 1,451-ft. Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) and the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower. The city is also renowned for its museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago with its noted Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works. Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation.
It is located on the shores of Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third-largest by surface area., after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that of Lake Huron through the narrow Straits of Mackinac, giving it the same surface elevation as its easterly counterpart; the two are technically a single lake.
Lake Michigan is the largest lake by area in one country. Located in the United States, it is shared, from west to east, by the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The word "Michigan" is believed to come from the Ojibwe word michi-gami meaning "great water".
It is also 7 miles (11 km) south of the Loop
The Loop is the central business district of the city and is the main section of Downtown Chicago. Home to Chicago's commercial core, it is the second largest commercial business district in North America and contains the headquarters and regional offices of several global and national businesses, retail establishments, restaurants, hotels, and theaters, as well as many of Chicago's most famous attractions. It is home to Chicago's City Hall and numerous offices of other levels of government and consulates of foreign nations.
It is the home of the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious universities in the world
The University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago) is a private research university. Founded in 1890, its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. It enrolled 16,445 students in Fall 2019, including 6,286 undergraduates and 10,159 graduate students. The University of Chicago is ranked among the top universities in the world by major education publications, and it is among the most selective in the United States.
Racial Integration, economic decline and urban renewal
Until the middle of the twentieth century, Hyde Park remained an almost exclusively white neighborhood (despite its proximity to Chicago's Black Belt). Hyde Parkers relied on racially restrictive covenants to keep African Americans out of the neighborhood. At the time, the use of such covenants was supported by the University of Chicago.
After the Supreme Court banned racially restrictive covenants in 1948, African Americans began moving into Hyde Park, and the neighborhood gradually became multiracial. In 1955, civil rights activist Leon Despres was elected alderman of Hyde Park and held the position for twenty years. Despres argued passionately for racial integration and fair housing on the floor of the Chicago City Council, and became known as the "liberal conscience of Chicago" for often casting the sole dissenting vote against the policies of Chicago's then-mayor Richard J Daley.
During the 1950s, Hyde Park experienced economic decline as a result of the white flight that followed the rapid inflow of African Americans into the neighborhood. In the 1950s and 1960s, the University of Chicago, in its effort to counteract these trends, sponsored one of the largest urban renewal plans in the nation. The plan involved the demolition and redevelopment of entire blocks of decayed buildings with the goal of creating an "interracial community of high standards." After the plan was carried out, Hyde Park's average income soared by seventy percent, but its African American population fell by forty percent, since the substandard housing primarily occupied by low-income African Americans had been purchased, torn down, and replaced, with the residents not being able to afford to remain in the newly rehabilitated areas.
The ultimate result of the renewal plan was that Hyde Park did not experience the economic depression that occurred in the surrounding areas and became a racially integrated middle-class neighborhood.
Architecture
For sheer eclectic value, it`s hard to beat the architecture of Hyde Park, Chicago`s first ''suburb.'' Hyde Park, designated a state Historic District in 1979 and extended in 1984, contains a collection of mansions, worker`s cottages, rowhouses and villas boast the ingenuity of such famous architects as Dwight Perkins and Frank Lloyd Wright. Houses and luxury apartments east of South Hyde Park Boulevard sprouted. South Lake Park Avenue became boarding-house territory, and from East 51st to East 56th streets west to Woodlawn Avenue a hodgepodge of six-flats, rowhouses and villas arose.
The St. Thomas Apostle Church, 5472 S. Kimbark Ave., is an example of Wright`s influence on an apprentice, in this case, Barry Byrne. Built in 1922, it has external sculptures, including a bas-relief of Christ, around the entrance and inside, the 14 Stations of the Cross carved in wood bas-relief by Alfeo Foggi.
Painting a perfect picture of civilized living in the late 1800s were Henry Ives Cobb`s neo-Gothic university buildings and numerous examples of Queen Anne-style homes. Their large lawns and brick, stucco and stone building materials gave a suburban feel to an area beginning to urbanize around busy East 53d Street.
The Laird Bell Law Quadrangle, with its large library on the west and auditorium on the east end, is elegant in design. The glass-walled library combined with the outdoor fountain in front of the north-facing building has a superb and harmonious effect.
Harper Court (East 52d to East 53d Streets and South Harper to South Lake Park Avenues), with its two-story brick townhouses, is interesting in that it, too, despite the uniformity of design, achieves a homey look with its terraces and semiprivate back yards.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. He held a belief that structure and space could create and convey cultural values led Wright to create entirely new types of architecture.
The Wright house built for Isadore Heller at 5132 S. Woodlawn Ave. in 1896. The Heller home shows Wright`s emphasis on the early ''prairie school'' philosophy, with an accent on verticality on the first two floors, its third floor a forerunner of what would become Wright`s trademark: horizontality.
Wright`s Robie House, built in 1909, is ''totally Midwestern'' in its conception, says Jean Block. A remarkable structure of long and low lines, its cantilevered roof represented a bold departure from classical design.
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Dwight Perkins
Dwight Perkins was a member of the “Prairie School” of architects. Over his long career, Perkins became a nationally known architect who designed over two hundred buildings in the Chicago area, including more than forty schools for the Chicago Board of Education.
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