South of Roosevelt “resides an art community that is often invisible to the mainstream,” writes Andre Guichard in the first post on his new blog, Fine Art South of Roosevelt Road. As an artist and the director of Gallery Guichard in Bronzeville, Guichard is a tireless promoter of art of the African diaspora, and the blog promises to continue this work by introducing readers to more than one hundred artists and collectors south of Roosevelt. It will also include updates about art events and exhibitions.

(Grahm M. Balkany / Gropius in Chicago Coalition)

The City of Chicago finished demolition on its first building designed by renowned architect and founder of the Bauhaus movement Walter Gropius on the Michael Reese Hospital campus, the Gropius in Chicago Coalition is reporting. The Friend Convalescent Home, one of eight buildings on the Michael Reese campus designed in part by Gropius, was bulldozed this week in spite of the outcry from Gropius fans and preservationists. Architecture critic Lynn Becker, for one, is furious. The site was originally selected for the Olympic Village, but of course, the IOC had other plans. Now, after a quashed proposal for a casino, there are rumors of some sort of housing complex being built on the site, but no actual plan or developer. So why tear everything down? Becker has an idea: Read the rest of this entry »

In 2001, the Bronzeville Merchants Association (BMA) began a project to erect ten obelisks around Bronzeville with bronze plaques explaining the neighborhood’s history. Today the first two of those obelisks were unveiled at the northeast and southeast corners of 35th and State. Each triangular obelisk weighs four thousand pounds, stands six feet tall, and includes several Egyptian hieroglyphic characters that, according to historian Timuel Black, spell out “Bronzeville.”

Aldermen Preckwinkle and Dowell, at left, look on as State Rep. Burns reads from the obelisk's plaque.

The ceremony included remarks by aldermen Toni Preckwinkle (4th), Robert Fioretti (2nd), and Pat Dowell (3rd), as well as State Rep. Will Burns (D-Chicago), former State Rep. Elga Jeffries, Black, and BMA president Esther Barnett.  The BMA hopes to install two more obelisks at 35th and King next spring, and the remaining six after that in a circle around the neighborhood.

Chicago Defender, December 2, 1933

Compiled by memory and with the help of  some found news clippings, University of Chicago alumnus Leon H. Lewis’s (A.B. ‘28) Map of Chicago’s South Side Jazz Clubs ca. 1925-1940 from the Chicago Jazz Archives at the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago is a real topographical gem.  Lewis, a musician himself, was active in the music scene at the UofC, performing the banjo at fraternity events and dances on campus during his undergraduate career.  It appears, since he compiled his map from memory at the age of 80, that he was also a true jazz connoisseur, frequenting the clubs himself and most likely watching jazz greats like Louis Armstrong perform at the Sunset Cafe at 315-317 E. 35th Street with Armstrong’s band, the Sunset Stompers.

Deborah Gillaspie, Curator of the Chicago Jazz Archive, writes about how popular Lewis’s original 11″ x 17″ map was in its original form, and laments the difficulty of making it available to researchers abroad. “There have been jazz maps over the years — Paul Eduard Miller’s map on the endpapers of the 1946 Esquire Jazz Book comes to mind — but nothing as complete as Mr. Lewis’s, nor anything concentrating on the South Side venues,” she writes.  The map, in its new format, provides an interactive feature, where numbered locations direct to individual pages that feature historical paraphernalia from its heyday.