"One of North America’s Most Exquisite Urban Campuses"

Colleges & Universities University of Chicago
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<p>[Obama’s</a> Chicago neighbourhood is a welcoming place for visitors](<a href=“Home | The Province Home Page | The Province”>Home | The Province Home Page | The Province)</p>

<p>Just 15 minutes from Chicago’s busy downtown with its internationally renowned attractions lies a quiet, historic neighbourhood featuring architectural gems, world-class museums and the homes of the rich and famous including, when he can get away from his current residence, Barack Obama.</p>

<p>This is Hyde Park, annexed by the city in 1889, site of the fabled Chicago World’s Fair and becoming a destination in its own right. “I love it here,” says Toby Hartnell, a native Australian who has lived in Hyde Park for eight years. “It’s so quiet that the birds make more noise than the cars.”</p>

<p>Hartnell is part of a 200-large battalion of Chicago “greeters,” enthusiastic urban ambassadors who show visitors their favourite parts of the city at no charge. Toronto and New York offer similar programs, but Chicago’s is the most diverse with nearly 70 different neighbourhood or themed walking tours that can last up to four hours.</p>

<p>We are walking along East 53rd St., Hyde Park’s main thoroughfare for shopping and restaurants. “That’s where Obama and Michelle had their first date,” Hartnell says, pointing to a former Baskin-Robbins, now a Subway. In his days as a community organizer, Obama used to drop in regularly at the Valois Cafeteria for a cheap meal. A poster inside lists his favourites, including New York steak and eggs, with grits, toast and coffee for $9.95 at today’s prices. Another 53rd Street eating institution is Harold’s Chicken Shack, a Muhammad Ali destination for fried chicken when he lived up the street.</p>

<p>Newer restaurants, like the 24-hour Clarke’s, serving breakfast and hamburgers around the clock, are popping up as part of a massive redevelopment undertaken by the nearby University of Chicago. A major property owner in the area, the university has been offering low-cost loans to spur high-end development. The plan is to make East 53rd St. a vibrant focus for the community, including faculty, students and visitors. The university sold one parcel to a developer for $1 million after acquiring it for $9 million. At the same time, it promised to lease the project’s entire 150,000 square feet of office space. Coming soon: more restaurants, shops, a movie theatre and a Hyatt, the first post-war hotel in the neighbourhood.</p>

<p>An easy walk from the parkland and beaches on Lake Michigan’s shore, Hyde Park evokes a small-town feel with its tree-lined streets, common gardens and lack of high-rises. It is one of the city’s few racially integrated communities, attracting professionals, artists and others such as Jesse Jackson and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (see photo). The area around Obama’s home is so tightly guarded these days that it is impossible for casual visitors to get a good view, but attendance at a synagogue across the street has reportedly doubled since he was elected president.</p>

<p>Chicago’s most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, had a number of Hyde Park clients. One of his first homes, foreshadowing his signature Prairie School style, still remains in private hands at 5132 South Woodlawn Ave., just north of 53rd St. in the neighbourhood’s mansion district. In the spring, the owners put the 6,100 square-foot home on the market for $2.5 million. It still contains Wright’s original oak floors and stained glass windows, along with seven bedrooms and four bathrooms.</p>

<p>A classic Wright open-concept, horizontal Prairie house, also on South Woodlawn, sits on the university campus, just six blocks away. Robie House, now a U.S. National Historic Landmark, was built in 1908 and includes a three-car garage built when even single-car ownership was a rarity. After decades of neglect and barely escaping demolition, Robie House is being gradually restored to its former grandeur. Open to the public.</p>

<p>Robie House is but one of several places worth visiting at the University of Chicago, one of North America’s most exquisite urban campuses. The mammoth Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, in honour of the university’s founder, tycoon John D. Rockefeller, occupies a full block, seats 1,700 people and boasts a 72-bell carillon, the second largest in the world. Visitors are sometimes welcome to climb the tower’s 271 steps for a panoramic view of the city and Lake Michigan.</p>

<p>Around the corner from Robie House is the Oriental Institute, whose ancient Middle East collection attracts scholars from around the world. This is where Hartnell, 35, works. An expert on ancient Iran, he came to the University of Chicago for a PhD in archeology, fell in love with the university and city, and stayed.</p>

<p>One of the institute’s most stunning pieces is a 5-metre tall statue of King Tut, one foot placed majestically in front of the other. Other institute masterpieces include the colossal Bull of Persepolis, one of a pair that guarded the entrance to a Persian imperial palace, and a massive Assyrian human-headed, winged-bull bas relief, one of the largest such pieces in existence.</p>

<p>Hyde Park boasts more Nobel Prize winners per acre than anywhere else in the world. On campus, an outdoor Henry Moore sculpture, Nuclear Energy, pays tribute to Enrico Fermi and the university’s contribution to the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb.</p>

<p>The university’s Smart Museum of Art, a small and easily manageable gallery, has a 5,000-piece collection of Asian, European and Modern Art. Among its highlights: paintings by Albers, Rothko and Norman Lewis, a leading African-American artist.</p>

<p>Just off campus, and not associated with the university, is the Dusable Museum of African American History, a growing home mostly for exhibitions and programs about Black history and culture.</p>

<p>About a 15-minute walk from the university in the other direction is the world-renowned Museum of Science and Industry on Lake Michigan. The museum is the only surviving structure from the 1893 World’s Fair. That fair introduced the world to the Ferris wheel and its midway, where the likes of Little Egypt and Buffalo Bill performed, is now a 10-block green strip across the university campus.</p>

<p>Millions visited the fair, but things are quieter these days. Says Hartnell: “Other areas of Chicago may have more action, but none has all that Hyde Park offers. It’s unique.”</p>

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<p>I have never seen campus or downtown Chicago look more beautiful than when I was last there in the fall.</p>

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<p>It grows on you. When I went there with S1 in 2007 I was just short of horrified. I visited a “normal” off campus apartment shared by 4 students and I it took me back 37 years to when I went to college in a small southern town (in the worst sense, come on,this is the first decade of the XXI century, not the 70’s). My question was: "I’ve worked my behind off for 35 years to send my child to live like this (_____expletive deleted)? Then we went academic. I didn’t get it right away, but S1 did. He loved it and over 4 years he learned to love it even more and it made a believer out of me, incredulous as I was that anything good could come out of this journey. I wouldn’t go as far as beautiful, but wonderful I would have to agree wholeheartedly to. After a while you see that it all makes sense. Really great sense. The Life of the Mind: like looking at a Higgs boson for the first time. We got our money’s worth and then some. Thank you UChicago, you’ve seen nothing yet.</p>

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<p>Hyde park area is getting better and better these days.</p>

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<p>I was there in the 80s and loved it then.</p>

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<p>Don’t get me wrong, I like it. It was a lot of mixed feelings at the time of the first visit: unexpectedly urban campus, the cold, the rain, and the fog of early winter, trees without leaves including the ivy and the prospect of sending away my first born was a little too much for my tropical soul. It made me wonder if S1 was making the right choice by coming to school here and I wasn’t able to appreciate the urban beauty of the campus. S1 knew exactly what he was doing and by Orientation in September I knew he had made the right choice. Go to the top floor of the Logan Art Center or climb all 300 and some steps to the top of Rockefeller Chapel and take a look. You’ll like it.</p>

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<p>Hyde park’s gotten much better over the years. It used to be way more ghetto a couple of years ago. </p>

<p>Peace Out</p>

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<p>I personally love the Hyde Park neighborhood. I don’t really feel that I’m in any danger. It’s just a very nice neighborhood. UChicago’s campus is very safe as well. The only time I would be nervous is at night…but then again, I’d be nervous at night at any college campus.</p>

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<p>For those who ask about the neighborhood…</p>