The area between 59th and 60th Streets is known as the Midway Plaisance, incorporating Midway Plaisance North (south of 59th Street) and Midway Plaisance South, north of 60th Street. Now dominated by a green space of low valleys, the Plaisance is widely known as the site of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, in which the green space was to be designated as the Fair location (but was never utilized). The Plaisance is now a well-maintained walking and bike riding thoroughfare amidst the University’s campuses. Between 60th and 61st Streets (with Stony Island Avenue to the east and Cottage Grove Avenue to the west) are several of the University’s South Campus buildings including: University of Chicago Press, the law quadrangle and law library, the School of Social Service Administration, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the National Opinion Research Center, the Center for Research Libraries, and Chapin Hall. Some of the University’s faculty and several hundred of its graduate and undergraduate students live south of 60th Street in University-owned real estate and dormitories, as well as in privately owned residences.

To replace the decaying Shoreland Hotel, the University of Chicago began construction in the summer of 2006 on a new fourteen-story residence hall on the corner of 61st St. and Ellis. The new residence was designed with input from residents of both Hyde Park and Woodlawn and was explicitly designed so as to minimize possible alienation of the Woodlawn community (which could occur via blank walls, etc.). Some see this as an attempt by the University to encroach upon Woodlawn, but it remains to be seen how this new development will affect Woodlawn residents. University police patrols extend two blocks farther south than the new dormitory, to 64th Street.

Jackson Park
Jackson Park is a 500 acre park on Lake Michigan in the neighborhoods of Woodlawn, Hyde Park, and bordering South Shore.

The land for Jackson Park was set aside in the 1870s. The area was originally a “rough, tangled stretch of bog and dune” until it was transformed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect of New York City’s Central Park. The park is connected by the Midway Plaisance to Washington Park on Woodlawn’s North end.

Jackson Park’s moment in the sun was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. For this event, hundreds of acres of undeveloped park was turned into the spectacular, but temporary, Beaux-Arts “White City.”

Some sites worth visiting are the pleasant Osaka Garden, the Jackson Park Golf Course, the gilded Daniel Chester French statue Republic (a replica of a much larger statue built for the Columbian Exposition), several lagoons, one of which features the Wooded Isle, and the 63rd Street Beach with its magnificent beach house.

The University of Chicago
In Hyde Park to the north, similar demographic and racial changes began in the 1950s but with radically different results. The University of Chicago, a large land owner with vested interest in the character of the neighborhood, fought through many avenues against what it saw as the encroachment of blight.

As Arnold Hirsch argues in his chapter “Neighborhood on a hill” in Making the Second Ghetto, the University, through the SECC and, at times, with brute force, made Hyde Park the site of one of the first “urban renewal” projects in the country. In an attempt to maintain a number of white families, the University tore down “slum” areas, often employing eminent domain powers. In the process, many African Americans were displaced from Hyde Park, and cultural centers like 55th Street were leveled.

After their success in Hyde Park, the University moved quickly to begin a second urban renewal project in Woodlawn. A one mile wide area from 60th to 61st in Woodlawn was scheduled for renewal and the University’s planned South Campus. The plans were drawn, there was a press conference, and the campus was eventually constructed.

At one time, the University of Chicago Law School raised more than $10,000 each year for charitable support for the children of Woodlawn but in 1999 it eliminated that support and shifted the funding to student scholarships for public interest jobs primarily outside the Chicago area.

Transportation

The Chicago Transit Authority’s Green Line stop is right in the middle of Woodlawn at 63rd Street and Cottage Grove.

Demographics

Population (2010)

• Total 25,983
• Density 13,000/sq mi (4,800/km2)

Demographics (2010)

• White 6.57%
• Black 87.19%
• Hispanic 2.09%
• Asian 2.18%
• Other 1.97%

Neighborhood Links

• The Woodlawn Organization
• Woodlawn East Community And Neighbors Inc.
• 5th Ward
• 6th Ward
• 20th Ward