The South Side of Chicago has always had a raw deal,
cursed with the presence of bad-neighbor heavy industries like the
sprawling Chicago Stockyards , the slaughterhouses and
meatpackers that Upton Sinclair exposed in his 1906 novel The
Jungle , and whose stink covered most of the South Side until
the 1950s. The overriding impression is one of misery and
downtrodden poverty, with block after block of deprived and
dangerous neighborhoods. That said, there are exceptions: not just
the Prairie Avenue and Hyde Park districts, but also
the buzzing Chinatown around Wentworth Avenue and 22nd
Street; the artsy, predominantly Mexican Pilsen district, a
few blocks north and west; and the largely Irish, blue-collar
Bridgeport , around Halsted and 37th - Mayor Daley's old
fiefdom, the home of Comiskey Park and baseball's White Sox. To
reach the South Side, double-decker Illinois Central commuter
trains run beside the lake to Prairie Avenue (a block from the 18th
St station) and Hyde Park (near the 59th St station). CTA bus #1
follows Michigan Avenue to the same places. Bus #8 runs every
fifteen minutes, 24 hours a day, south through Pilsen to
Bridgeport.
Two blocks east of Michigan Avenue, a mile from the Loop and
only a quarter of a mile from the lake, Prairie Avenue
started life as an exclusive suburb. Though just ten minutes' walk
south from Grant Park and the Field Museum, it's best reached by
cab, bus or train; the route is confusing and the streets are just
not safe. As the one part of Chicago to remain unscathed in the
Great Fire of 1871, this area had a brief moment of glory as the
city's finest address. However, by 1900 the railroads had cut it
off from Lake Michigan, and the expansion of the stockyards had
encouraged the wealthy to flee back to their traditional North Side
haunts.
One of the few structures to have survived the intervening years
is the Romanesque 1886 Glessner House , Chicago's only
surviving H.H. Richardson-designed house, standing sentry on the
southwest corner of Prairie Avenue and 18th Street. Behind the
forbidding stone facade, the house opens onto a garden court, its
interior filled with Arts and Crafts furniture and swathed in
William Morris fabrics and wall coverings. The place is maintained
by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, which gives guided tours
(Wed-Sun noon-3pm; $11 joint admission with Clarke House). A block
away stands Chicago's oldest building, the Clarke House at
1855 S Indiana Ave (details as for Glessner House), a plain white
1836 Greek Revival pioneer home that spent many years as a
community center before being gussied up as a minor museum of
interior decor. Much more interesting, and proof of the wealth once
concentrated here, is the lavish Gothic Presbyterian Church
, a block away at 1936 S Michigan Ave, with its Burne-Jones and
Tiffany stained-glass windows.
An island of middle-class prosperity surrounded by urban
poverty, Hyde Park is the most attractive and sophisticated
South Side Chicago neighborhood. It's also one of the more racially
integrated areas of the city, and among its more erudite: the
University of Chicago , endowed by Rockefeller in 1892 and
now among the top institutions in the US, has encouraged a
college-town atmosphere, with bookshops and numerous cafés around
its compact campus, especially along East 57th Street. On the
campus itself, two buildings are well worth searching out: the
massive Gothic pile of the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel , at
59th Street and Woodlawn Avenue, and the Prairie-style Robie
House , designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, two blocks north at
5757 S Woodlawn Ave. Campus tours start from the Ida Noyes Hall,
1212 E 59th St (Mon-Sat 10am).
Woodlawn Avenue runs north from the University of Chicago
campus, passing one of the South Side's most popular taverns,
Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap at 1172 E 55th St, before turning a
whole lot grander. Besides its enormous mansions, Woodlawn Avenue
illustrates the social and racial mix for which Hyde Park is
renowned. Within two blocks of each other are the Midwest's largest
Jewish temple, the ornate Isaiah Israel at 1100 E Hyde Park
Blvd, and the home of Minister Louis Farrakhan , leader of
the Nation of Islam, which was started here on the South Side in
the 1940s by the late Elijah Muhammad. In between, at 4944 S
Woodlawn Ave, stands the huge brick manor where boxer Muhammad Ali
lived for many years.
Just west of the university, on the eastern edge of lush
Washington Park, the Du Sable Museum of African American
History , 740 E 56th Place, takes a look at the experience of
Americans of African descent, from slavery to the present day
(Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; $3; ). Named for Jean Du Sable,
the Haitian-born Francophone who was Chicago's first permanent
settler, it focuses on the works of WPA-sponsored artists of the
1930s and on the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Washington Park wraps around the south side of the University of
Chicago campus, to join the long green strip of the Midway -
one of the few reminders that in the late nineteenth century
Chicago was the site of the World's Columbian Exposition .
Attracting some thirty million spectators in the summer of 1893 (45
percent of the US population at the time), the Midway was then
filled with full-sized model villages from around the globe,
including an Irish market town and a mock-up of Cairo complete with
belly dancers. These days it's used mainly by joggers and students
tossing Frisbees. A short stroll east, in Jackson Park, the
cavernous Museum of Science and Industry , 57th Street at
Lake Shore Drive (summer Mon-Fri 9.30am-5.30pm; rest of year
Mon-Fri 9.30am-4pm, Sat & Sun 9.30am-5.30pm; $9; free on Thurs;
), was Chicago's single most popular tourist destination (and
ranked second in the US) until it started charging admission in
1991. Besides interactive computer displays, the best of which
explores the inner workings of the brain, exhibits include a
captured German U-boat, a trip down a replica coal mine, and a
simulated space-shuttle journey. It's fun for kids, but adults may
not feel like staying very long. The complex also hosts a giant
OMNIMAX movie dome; admission is $6 extra.
Promontory Point juts into Lake Michigan east of the
museum, giving great views of the Chicago skyline, including a
close-up look at Mies van der Rohe's first high-rise, the
Promontory Apartments at 5530 S Lake Shore Drive.