Garfield Park Research Ride #4/Pre-Ride

This is the final set of research rides for the final tour which will cover the wide swath that is East and West Garfield Park. This is an area with a storied past, and many brilliant examples of amazing residential architecture. Garfield Park itself, formerly the Central Park of the West Chicago Parks Commission three major parks, features brilliant landscaping by Jens Jensen and William Le Baron Jenney, a gilded-domed fieldhouse, formerly serving as district headquarters, and a brilliant Conservatory, which Jens Jensen designed and filled with exotic plant specimins, very different from his prairie-native planting design philosophy.

West of the park lay what was for a time, one of the hottest night-life sections of Chicago, the Madison-Crawford Distrtict. The booms were as magnificent, as the busts were difficult. A confluence of events sent the area spiralling into a economic tailspin that began with the construction of the Congress (Eisenhower) Expressway in the 1950s, and culminated in racial discrimination, industrial abandonment, and urban decay that saw a population decline of two-thirds in fifty years.

There is a lot to see, and a lot to contemplate riding through these streets. The research rides are designed to take survey of the various historical businesses, buildings, schools, houses, apartments, flats, synagogues, churches, industrial, civic and commercial buildings that survive. Significant sites are visited even to see the vacant lots once anchored by amazing buildlings, like the demolished Illinois Cycling Club. Riders on the research rides become part of the tour experience by adding voice to what should stay, or go, best angles of entry, safest routes, etc.

I hope you'll join me for what looks to be the last of them.

The other research rides are as follows:

Wednesday June 2 - 4PM to 7PM
Saturday June 5 - 11AM to 2PM
Sunday June 13 - 11AM to 2PM

The actual ride is on Saturday June 19 at 1:00 PM.

All of the above will leave from Garfield Park Fieldhouse at 100 North Central Park


Cheers and see you out there.


Best Regards - Lee