Hyde Park can sometimes seem like its own little world. In fact, it hosted one near the beginning of its existence: The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which attracted over 20 million people in six months, was held on the Midway Plaisance and in Jackson Park. Meanwhile, at the western end of the Midway, the nascent University of Chicago had just completed its first year of classes. Over the next 60 years, the rest of the neighborhood grew up around the expanding university and the hotels, transportation network, and neoclassical museum left behind by the World’s Fair. In the 1950s, two more events changed the course of the neighborhood forever: urban renewal and integration. Disturbed by the level of crime that came with Hyde Park’s status as a South Side entertainment destination, the University, in cooperation with the city and the federal government, managed to level almost all of the bars, nightclubs, and music venues that formerly lined 55th Street. Meanwhile, neighborhood residents united in the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference to try to ease the transition to a racially diverse neighborhood. From the looks of today’s Hyde Park, they seem to have succeeded: Where racial succession, riots, and gang warfare devastated other South Side neighborhoods, Hyde Park is a stable, tight-knit community that was ranked the third most diverse neighborhood in the city by a 2008 DePaul study. North of Hyde Park Boulevard lies Kenwood, a neighborhood whose leafy southern half, south of 47th Street, includes mansions and celebrities (Louis Farrakhan, Barack Obama) that are often grouped with Hyde Park. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Neighborhood Tours website boasts that Hyde Park and Kenwood are “where lakefront vistas, ancient history, architecture and Nobel Prizes meet.” Now that Senator Obama, who used to be the neighbor of thousands of proud South Side residents, has become President Obama, the tour company offers the opportunity to “admire distinctively designed dwellings in President Obama’s Kenwood neighborhood.” Read the rest of this entry »

“So have we solved all the world’s problems this evening?” he asked. Everyone chuckled and responded, “Again!” This group was no agency of the United Nations, nor was it even some sort of committee meeting for the city government of Chicago. What I just witnessed was the conclusion of yet another meeting of Café Society, which, every week, year after year, meets at Valois on 53rd Street to discuss matters of high importance in the political, economic, and social realms. Read the rest of this entry »

With the success of Barack Obama has come increased scrutiny of Hyde Park such as rarely seen before. Right-wing smears have painted the public consciousness with images of Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and ivory tower socialists run amok. Yet many cite the University of Chicago’s reverence of the Great Books, its vaulted economics program, and former professor/neocon forefather Leo Strauss as proof that the school is a bastion of traditional, conservative thought. What the debate misses entirely, however, is the cultural vibrancy of the neighborhood itself. Liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, anyone can (and everyone should) take the time to get to know the neighborhood and sample the best it has to offer. Read the rest of this entry »

One might as well just state the obvious: Hyde Park restaurants suck. This observation is not qualified with any real culinary justification (although it isn’t hard to do, really); it’s qualified on a moral basis. Last Saturday, the Hyde Park Transitional Housing Project hosted its third annual Taste of Hyde Park at the United Church of Hyde Park, a fundraiser for their program that finds housing for homeless families. The Taste of Hyde Park, inspired by an idea from Hyde Park Transitional Project board member Rita Glass, seemed logical; the concept that local Hyde Park businesses could be solicited to benefit a local neighborhood cause was reasonable enough. It’s too bad the realization of such an idea was so poorly received. Something so easily accomplished was so tragically underdone. Read the rest of this entry »