Woodlawn
Artist Games
Strange contraptions greet revelers who come to try their hand at King Ludd’s Midway Arcade, housed at the Experimental Station on 61st Street and Blackstone Avenue. Don’t expect to see Pac-Man, and leave your quarters at home. This arcade is different. Here, gaming meets art, and basic mechanics trump the digital age. The Experimental... »
The Bridge: The Woodlawn Collaborative connects students in Hyde Park with their neighbors to the south
Huge, empty fields spread across the Midway at 59th Street and the wide expanse of Washington Park borders Cottage Grove Avenue to the west. Few University of Chicago students, buildings, or student-targeted shops are spotted past these buffer zones, and fewer still go south of the traditional boundary of 61st Street. Private property stickers... »
It’s a No Grow
As bulbs emerge from the muddy thaw of winter and tight buds loosen their petals on tree branches, the dormant 61st Street Community Garden waits to be cultivated for another growing season in Woodlawn. And as members of the 61st Street Community Garden dust off their trowels and gloves in preparation for softening their... »
Golden Eggs: Angelic Organics Learning Center teaches chicken care and more
On Saturday, March 21, chicken enthusiasts from all over Chicago flocked to Woodlawn’s Angelic Organics Learning Center to attend a free workshop on basic backyard chicken care. It was the Center’s second such workshop and, like the first held in Lakeview last November, reservations for its thirty spots sold out quickly. The crowd that... »
Reality Check: Patients and activists protest the closure of mental health clinics on the South Side
The Woodlawn Center, a mental health clinic that serves the low-income community of Woodlawn, offers its clients a quiet refuge from the harsh and often bewildering realities of the outside world. But on Thursday morning, this inconspicuous one-story building became the site of a heated political protest, as a group of about thirty patients,... »
Cosmic Reverberations: Backstory Café introduces Wednesday night concerts with a community vibe
Since its opening last year, Woodlawn’s Backstory Café has established itself as a slow-food coffee shop, a used bookstore, and a “supporting member of the vibrant independent cultural infrastructure.” Last week, it took on another title: avant-garde jazz and jam venue. In a new musical program curated by Alex Wing, groups and solo artists... »
Greener Pastures: A Woodlawn developer transforms the neighborhood’s vacant lots into affordable new homes
Enter Woodlawn: Get off the Cottage Grove bus at Marquette Road. Turn east and cross the street. Keep trudging through knee-deep snow for as long as you can stand it; if there are no cars coming, it might be easier to walk in the less-snowy street. Use your judgment. Look around and you’ll see... »
Seminary City: Two of Hyde Park’s many theological schools are heading south to Woodlawn
In the city with the greatest number of theological schools in America, the neighborhood with the biggest fraction of these is Hyde Park. Besides the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, it is home to five of the eleven members of the Association of Chicago Theological Seminary (ACTS), a consortium of seminaries whose students can... »
