One proposed bid for the former Shedd Elementary School - a community center

 I didn't update with regards to what's going on with Shedd School after that meeting that took place - which was a CPS meeting - with regards to what the plans are for that closed school. There are people who are coming up with plans for that school.

Recently I was alerted to an article from the Chicago Tribune which talks about one potential bid for the former Shedd Elementary School - branch of Bennett School.

I like how this article describes the building:

The low-slung building shows few signs of life: Ivy branches snake up the exterior walls, weaving through cracked brick and boarded-up windows. Its marquee sign reads like an epitaph, with faded block letters: “John G. Shedd Elementary School. A great place to learn!”

Would be nice if it could be again.

I snapped this shot in about 2009

Community meeting: Former Shedd Elementary School - TONIGHT

Cross-posted from Ninth Ward Chicago

Just saw this today via Concerned Citizens of Chatham. How many you already know about this? This meeting is with regards to the shuttered Shedd School property.

This meeting is happening tonight at Harlan Community Academy High School - 9652 S. Michigan between 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

 

I shot some 2025 photos of Shedd School recently

We've had a nice few days here in Chicago. Aside from some rain and sometimes snow. And spring is very close which means the frigid temps of winter are mostly behind us now.

I'm glad to get these pics before the tree and vines reactivate for the season and cover everything right back up. Only wish that my lenses were available to take even better pics. Better go look for them before everything blooms.

You're free to click on the pictures for a larger resolution.

Shot from 99th Street

You might be able to see here the front entrance is boarded up.

The board is devoid of any events and no flag on the pole.
We're looking towards Indiana Avenue here.

This is where my time started. The old Kindergarten classroom.

As always you're free to share your memories of this school whatever they may be. That's what this place is set up for although it seems I have a knack for covering other subjects here.

What if Shedd School had closed 30 years earlier?

During the past week I spoke with Mr. John McCormick. He was the former principal of this blog''s namesake school in addition to its sister at Bennett School. It was an interesting chat not only about the status of Shedd, his career and how he started in the education field, also his time as Bennett-Shedd's principal from 1984 to 1995.

Shedd was a school he said could run itself with a student population of at least 180 students. It was certainly different from Bennett School which had a student population of 600 and for an administrator who was in charge of two buildings or campuses the larger school would draw you in. The challenges of running two schools essentially even if philosophically they were really one school was mainly communication. Especially on those times when you might be at one school say Bennett, but there are situations where you had to drop everything and go to Shedd to address a situation.

With this being said we'll share more of what was shared between Mr. McCormick and myself during our conversation. I did want to share with you something that really rocked my world and could only cause me to wonder how different my childhood would've been if it happened.

Shedd School has been closed since 2013. What if Shedd had been closed in the late 1980s? According to Mr. McCormick the possibility was there. The reasoning wasn't much different that the decision to close 50 schools back in 2013. Perhaps concerns over underutilization and certainly concerns over demographics. One solution that helped keep Shedd open was to expand the attendance boundaries. Although any students from outside of the middle class neighborhood of Roseland Heights didn't always transfer to Bennett School at least the infusion of students outside of the neighborhood allowed the Shedd branch to remain open.

We both agree that hopefully the former Shedd School building will find a use within the neighborhood at some point in the future. When I heard things I've heard that Chicago State University was interested, and a private school was also interested. So far not a whole lot of movement on the building though if I learn of anything new I will share that with you all.

Unfortunately if one attends a meeting of Ward 9 Alderman Anthony Beale you might hear a member of the community call for Shedd's reopening. Unfortunately it's probably not likely usually the current answer is that the demographics doesn't justify Shedd's reopening. Once a decision is made to close a school it will be exceedingly difficult to get it reopened. Right now a small neighborhood school remains closed for the foreseeable future as the property waits for a new use.

Hopefully in the near future, I will share more about my conversation with former Bennett-Shedd Principal McCormick.

CTA Red Line extension update

Rendering 103rd Street Red Line station - CTA 

Over at The Sixth Ward on Tuesday I shared a tweet to a Curbed Chicago article with regards to various upcoming transit projects throughout the city. One project that many who live near the 95th terminal is the planned CTA Red Line extension. One reason that Curbed article was of interest to me is the seeming progress in which case is to merely fund engineering & design work.

Of course the reason for this interest is mainly the safety and activity of the area. The 95th terminal is one of the busiest of the CTA. The CTA Red Line connects with not only CTA and Pace suburban bus routes, also intercity bus services with Greyhound and Indian Trails buses. So there's definitely a lot of activity there especially during the week.

The main thing is building this extension further south to the city's southern limits might mean less activity at 95th. Or perhaps hopefully for local leaders in the community less opportunities for criminal activity. Either way another stated and important purpose for this extension is to cut commuting times for those individuals who must use public transit who must travel to other parts of the city.

Governor's mansion history from Curbed...

I liked this history of the state's Governor's Mansion and of all the work done to that Springfield house since it was first built. Of course all is noted in light of the renovations that will start this month and end just in time for the holidays. Via Curbed Chicago

After $15 million update in 2018, the Governor’s Mansion will close for more renovations. https://t.co/ktq0b7Th5o pic.twitter.com/Iqjcl1NPJ0

— Curbed Chicago (@curbedchicago) October 4, 2019

One thing to remember is that Gov. J.B. Pritzker will pay for these renovations out of his pocket!

What's inside of the White House

[VIDEO] After many trips to Washington, DC over the years back in 2006 I was able to tour the White House. The tour I had back then never took me to the West Wing and the Oval Office which would've been cool.

This video above shows you the layout of the White House in addition to both the west and east wings of the complex. I wouldn't mind going on a tour of the White House again in the future. Perhaps this could be another "field trip" for this blog...

Former Johnson Publishing building turns residential

I've been wanting to post about this for a while. The original tenant of this building a skycraper (located at 820 S. Michigan Ave.) designed by Black architect John Moutoussamy has been going through their own issues with the former flagship publication on a "print hiatus". The skyscraper itself formerly the HQ to the famous Johnson Publishing has now found a reuse.

While the logos of both Ebony & Jet Magazine remains at the top of this building now instead  of housing a magazine publishing business it is now a residential building. As the building was designed during the 1970s, it's great the developers have made it a priority to preserve some aspects of this skyscrapers character.

You can read more about at Curbed Chicago

Chicago's iconic former 'Ebony' and 'Jet' magazine headquarters reborn as apartments. https://t.co/bhAOuknJO3

— Curbed Chicago (@curbedchicago) September 19, 2019

BTW, yes the skyscraper is 11 stories tall and of course perhaps not as tall as the former Sears Tower or even the former John Hancock Building or even still Trump Tower.

Photo by Lee Bey in 2007

Former CPS school to be adapted into a community center

I posted a quick blurb at The Sixth Ward about a community center to be located in a former CPS school named for an illustrious late president of the prestigious Morehouse College. It's a shame that the school had been closed since 2013, but it's great that it had found a reuse as a community center in Englewood.

As so far there have been no further updates that I know of with regards to the now closed Shedd School, I've always maintained this as one idea to reuse that property. Of course, it has to be reused with the right team to execute their plan. Here's hoping there are some updates as far as what's next for the former "John G. Shedd Public School".

Time for an updated pic of Shedd School

#tbt Decision at 83rd Street

[VIDEO] Last year at The Sixth Ward I posted this above video from a YouTube channel that refers to itself as Fuzzy Memories - which mostly posts old footage from Chicago TV stations. This documentary is 57 years old and illustrates the racial change that took place in the city during the 1960s.

On this blog and at The Sixth Ward I've showed a number of old pics of how various neighborhoods on the south side used to look like. As happens over time buildings are torn down, schools or churches close down, a streetscape looks vastly different from what it was decades ago. Or indeed looking at aspects of our transportation infrastructure which is vastly different from what we know about today.

Marynook on a map

In this case, WBBM-TV (or we can call them CBS 2 today) took a look at the racial change taking place in the Marynook area (which is the area between 87th and 83rd Streets north to south and the IC railroad tracks to Dorchester west to east. At issue here is the implications of the integration taking place and we hear a lot about things we associate with "white flight". We hear about "block busting" where unscrupulous real estate agents urge white homeowners to sell before the racial change of the neighborhood causes the value of their homes to depreciate.

These days Marynook is mostly Black, however, the character of that area is still basically middle class. It's often gotten attention for its mid-century architecture and could often be describes as a neighborhood that could resemble a suburban area.

BTW, as a side note I'm glad Fuzzy Memories is back. They were down for a while since YouTube tends to take down channels that are found to be uploading copyrighted materials. I've gotten away from following their channel in recent years, however, it's time to start back. It's fascinating what people saw on their TV years before I was even born. 

The Chicago Neighborhoods

Want to do a Pullman strike tour?

Credit: The Chicago Neighborhoods

I was awfully slow in sharing this. On July 13, 2019 there was a tour in Pullman related to the 125th anniversary of the Great Strike of 1894 and there are more scheduled through October. I believe this strike caused the President of the time a man by the name of Grover Cleveland to sent federal forces to end it.

I found out about this event through Curbed Chicago earlier this month, however, all I did was retweet this information. It would've been cool for me to take part in this as I know more about Pullman's story and architecture, but very little of some of the labor drama that took place there.

Tour the site of the Great Pullman Strike on its 125th anniversary https://t.co/IxFHGZDoQo pic.twitter.com/NkOtsl9jWh

— Curbed Chicago (@curbedchicago) July 5, 2019

According to the above link:

Labor history tends to get short shrift in history books.

The Pullman National Monument Preservation Society, created by Barack Obama’s presidential proclamation in 2015, is trying to change that. During the Great Pullman Strike’s 125th anniversary, the group is giving guided tours each month through October.
...
The next tour is scheduled for July 13 at noon. Admission is $25, and each ticket includes post-tour reception and dessert.

WTTW has more on the history of this strike in 1894 with regards to the perfect company town that was Pullman.

The site of the former Halsted Indoor Mall #tbt

I snapped these shots of the site of the former shopping center on 115th & Halsted Michigan during the summer of 2014. I never released the shots back then, but I wanted to share the context of this site with this article from the Chicago Reader which was actually published in 2003.

It illustrated the history of the former Halsted Indoor Mall which was once housed in a building that once contained a Zayre store. The shopping center here contained both a Foot Locker store and a beauty supply as well as a Jewel-Osco. However at some point all these stores have since closed. The Jewel-Osco closed once a new store was built at the new shopping center located at 119th Street and Marshfield (or on the west side of I-57) should be around 2007 or 2008.

I do remember shopping with my family at the old Zayre store and the old Jewel store you see in the photos below was another shopping destination over the years until the new store opened across the I-57 expressway. One ominous piece of information I learned shopping here one day, my mother was told by another customer that they did snatch purses in that store. YIKES!

At some point after 2012 the former Halsted Indoor Mall was razed, I see this looking at Google Streetview. And that largely ends the saga of the former space which seemed to riddled with some issues involving it's management by the people who operated the space and certainly the people who owned it. The property itself remains vacant with the idea of at some point perhaps something else will be developed here. Perhaps more retail or even some mixed-use retail and residential.

Below are the photographs from summer 2014. I wish I had a pic of the sign on the corner of 115th & Halsted which even the last time I drove by here still had a sign for the Halsted Indoor Mall although the building no longer stands.

Recent shot of the Gately's ruins #Ward09

Drove through earlier this week. Sad to see this great big building along Michigan Avenue being demolished. I see the sign's gone, excited to find out any news of this local landmark. It's reminder of a business that no longer exists but many of a certain age still remember.

A posted this recent pic on ig embeded below

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Sixth Ward (@thesixthward) on Jun 27, 2019 at 10:43am PDT

Gately's Peoples store...destroyed... #Ward09

[VIDEO] This past Friday I posted about the former Gately's store located at 113th & Michigan. The store from what I can tell doing some Googling had long closed in 1981, with another store located in Tinley Park until 1994.

Usually me and my family would drive on Michigan Avenue to head to River Oaks Mall in Calumet City, we'd often pass this store. Of course by the time I came of age all I would recognize is that antiquated sign for a store that was no longer there. Whoever owned this property if it wasn't the Gately family who previously operated their location there never removed this sign. It was just a great reminder of the history of the retail strip of south Michigan Avenue between at least 107th Street to 1115th Street.

#fbf 111th Street & Michigan Avenue

The photo above was taken in 1907 and the building you see in the front foreground according to Chicago history blogger J.R. Schmidt remains at the corner of 111th & Michigan Avenue. If I recall correctly for many years it was a Walgreen's until that location moved across the street. Though now the former Walgreen's store on the north side of 111th Street is now a dollar store.

Of course the progress of time over the course of 111 years ago (111th street and 111 years ago hmmm), we see a lot of the buildings are no longer standing. And of course the city ran its last streetcar in 1958. Even better according to Schmidt who posted this late last month:

A century ago traffic was so light on this stretch of Michigan that small children could wander around aimlessly in the street—not advisable today, in the era of the automobile.

Yeah totally agree with that statement! Click the link to see the photo Schmidt took in 2018 of this same area.

Pullman Communicy Center opened on Thursday

[VIDEO] Sorry to have missed this. The new Pullman Community Center located near 103rd & Woodlawn has finally opened. We start with the above video from CBS 2 and then excerpt from this Sun-Times article

After nearly a decade of planning and a frenzied round of corporate fundraising, a $20 million, 135,000-square-foot sports, recreation and educational center opened its doors at 10355 S. Woodlawn Ave.

The massive U.S. Bank Pullman Community Center is one of the largest indoor sports facilities in Illinois and the fifth-largest in the country. It includes three basketball/tennis courts and three synthetic turf fields that can be used for baseball, football and soccer.

The facility also includes community meeting rooms and classroom space.

“We’re looking at keeping 1,100 kids a week off the streets, doing something positive and constructive. A facility that’s gonna be open probably 12 to 14 hours a day. That gives people opportunity. It gives ’em hope,” Beale said Thursday.

“If you’re struggling in school and you’re enrolled in this facility, we’re gonna provide free ACT, SAT and tutoring in whatever subject that you need.”

Chicago Mag: Pullman’s Renaissance #Ward09 #BuildingwithBeale

Published on October 26th, 2018 I'm sorry that I only found out about it recently. A lot of good things is going on in that part of the city.

The iconic South Side neighborhood is on the brink of a transformation.https://t.co/hDbTfQbe15

— Chicago magazine (@ChicagoMag) October 26, 2018

In the coming weeks, construction crews will begin meticulously restoring the roof and upper floor windows of the landmark Pullman Clock Tower and Administration Building, the former headquarters of the company that developed the neighborhood and forever changed rail travel in the 19th century.

Nearly lost in an arson attack in 1998, the structure is being overhauled for its next life as the visitor center for the Pullman National Monument, Chicago’s first ever site in the national park system. The roof work, funded by a $2.2 million grant from the National Park Service, is expected to take six months.

Construction on the old administrative building comes more than three years after President Obama dedicated the site as a national monument, setting into motion a restoration that Pullman residents and preservationists have long called for. According to Kathleen Schneider, the first superintendent of Pullman National Monument, there are a mix of public and private funds earmarked for the restoration, including more than $13 million from the National Park Foundation.

“We’re only three years old with a staff of three people,” Schneider says of the new national monument. “Although it may appear that not a lot is happening, we’ve been working hard with the State of Illinois and community on the 2020 opening of the visitors center.”

Schneider says the site’s educational programming will center on Pullman’s legacy as a planned neighborhood and as an integral site in the labor and civil rights movements. Specifically, the visitor center will spotlight the internal clashes that led to the Pullman Strike of 1894 and formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

As for community partners, Schneider highlights the Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives (CNI) group, a nonprofit developer that has helped bring investment to the greater Pullman area in recent years. While the Clock Tower’s restoration represents a symbolic rebirth of the historic district, newer facilities including a Whole Foods distribution center, an expanded greenhouse by produce supplier Gotham Greens, and soap maker Method have reinvigorated the neighborhood’s identity as an industrial hub.

Great to see the progress in nearby Pullman.

Decline of Black Chicago

I shared a Sun-Times editorial about the decline in the Black population of Chicago Monday morning over at The Sixth Ward.

Decline of Black Chicago https://t.co/Nk2Xoewhlq

— The Sixth Ward (@TheSixthWard) July 30, 2018

Curbed Chicago: Englewood residents organize to take back their block

Via @buyblackeconomics

Over at The Sixth Ward we've discussed the "dreaded G word" especially as it pertained to the now open Whole Foods Market in Englewood. I always figured that the activists of Englewood - I'm mainly referring to the Resident Association of Greater Englewood - would find a way to stop gentrification.

If there was a fear that long-time small businesses or long-time low-income residents could eventually be displaced by long term economic redevelopment then perhaps Englewood residents who "buy the block" will change the direction of redevelopment. For many the Whole Foods store would likely be the beginning of this, but then if I recall the history there were some Englewood residents who fantasized about Whole Foods coming in and they did.

As you see in this article below buying the block is about buying up residential properties. Check it out below from Curbed Chicago.

Englewood residents organize to take back their block https://t.co/yJgcs9KsBA pic.twitter.com/M7wjJjoR3S

— Curbed Chicago (@curbedchicago) July 23, 2018

If you bought a whole city block or a vacant lot, what would you like to do with it?

Chicago Reader: Pullman to get first new residential building in nearly 50 years

Via Chicago Neighborhoods

More changes coming to the historically and architecturally significant Pullman neighborhood.

The $18 million Pullman Artspace Lofts will be built on land that's been vacant for 88 years.https://t.co/BlW7gLqdgk

— Chicago Reader (@Chicago_Reader) July 10, 2018