Douglas:
Located between 26th Street and Pershing Road, Douglas is the home to several neighborhoods. The Gap, a small neighborhood located in the eastern part of the community area, contains row homes dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The neighborhood gets its name because it escaped the redevelopment that affected other neighborhoods in the 1960s. Prairie Shores was built in 1962 by the Michael Reese Hospital and has since been adapted as a market-rate middle class community. Lake Meadows, which can be found just south of Prairie Shores, was a community developed by the South Side Planning Board in 1952 to serve as an interracial, middle-class community. Groveland Park, home of Stephen Douglas’ tomb, is the only remaining section of neighborhood originally developed by Douglas himself. The central region is also home to the site of the since shuttered Michael Reese Hospital, a major research and teaching hospital and one of the oldest and largest hospitals in Chicago.
Grand Boulevard:
Grand Boulevard is bounded by 39th Street to the north, 51st Street to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue to the east, and the Dan Ryan Expressway to the west. One of the areas that make up Bronzeville, Grand Boulevard has historically been known for its large number of black intellectuals, artists, writers and politicians.
Hyde Park:
Hyde Park is located between 51st Street to the north, 60th Street to the south, Washington Park to the west, and the lake to the East. One of the most racially diverse communities in Chicago, Hyde Park has been home to Chicago luminaries like US Senator Carol Moseley Braun, former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, and institutions like the University of Chicago.
Kenwood:
Kenwood’s boundaries are made up by 47th Street to the north, 51st Street to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue to the wast, and the lake to the east. The current home of former President Barack Obama and the headquarters of the civil rights organization the Rainbow/PUSH coalition, Kenwood was founded as a bedroom community for people leaving the congestion of an early Chicago.
Museum Campus:
Located south of Roosevelt Road and north of 25th and 26th Streets, the Museum Campus area is home to Chicago’s most iconic museums, including the Field Museum of Natural History, the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears, occupies the middle of the region with McCormick Place occupying the space at the southernmost portion of the region.
North Kenwood/Oakland:
North Kenwood/Oakland is located south of 35th Street and north of 47th Street with Cottage Grove Avenue serving as its western boarder for the majority of the area and the lake to the east. One of the neighborhoods that makes up the region, Oakland, was designed by Cicero Hine and is the site of various French and Spanish architecture styles. The Abraham Lincoln Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and founded as a space for the diverse residents of Oakland, is a historic landmark. Today, investment and development in Oakland have led to rehabilitated buildings and community spaces. The other neighborhood contained within, North Kenwood, was designated a Chicago Landmark district in 1993 because of its historic buildings and landmarks, including the Kenwood Evangelical Church, which is located on the National Register of Historic Places. Many of those buildings predate Kenwood’s annexation by the City of Chicago in 1893.
South Loop:
Located south of Congress Parkway, east of the Chicago River, and north of Roosevelt Road, South Loop is affectionately known as “Chicago’s front yard.” One of Chicago’s very first residential districts, this neighborhood flourished through the introduction of railroads and Printer’s Row, and today it has been transformed, once again, into a dynamic residential district.