Chicago+Side+Trips



** Travel Recommendations for the Feminist Conference Goer ** toc
 * Chicago Side Trips **


 * ** Google Map for Chicago Side Trips **

=Vivian Gordon Harsh Historical Marker= Vivian Gordon Harsh built one of the most important research collections on African-American history and literature in the country. The first black librarian in the Chicago Public Library system, she was appointed head librarian of the George Cleveland Hall Branch, Chicago’s first library built for an African-American community, when it opened in 1932. Harsh used her own savings and funding from the Rosenwald Foundation to assemble the black history collection, despite criticism from central library administrators, creating a resource center and nurturing environment for black artists and scholars, who used the library as a meeting place. In 1934, Harsh began a lecture series featuring writers such as Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.
 * 4801 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago **

=Jane Addams Hull-House Museum= Tuesday - Friday 10am to 4pm Sunday noon to 4 p.m., suggested donation is $5 per person, 312-413-5353 The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum serves as a dynamic memorial to social reformer Jane Addams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and her colleagues whose work changed the lives of their immigrant neighbors as well as national and international public policy. The Museum is located in two of the original settlement house buildings- the Hull Home, a National Historic Landmark, and the Residents' Dining Hall, a beautiful Arts and Crafts building that has welcomed some of the world's most important thinkers, artists and activists. Founded in 1889 as a social settlement, Hull-House played a vital role in redefining American democracy in the modern age. Addams and the residents of Hull-House helped pass critical legislation and influenced public policy on public health and education, free speech, fair labor practices, immigrants’ rights, recreation and public space, arts, and philanthropy. Hull-House has long been a center of Chicago’s political and cultural life, establishing Chicago’s first public playground and public art gallery, helping to desegregate the Chicago Public Schools, and influencing philanthropy and culture.
 * 800 South Halstead, Chicago[[image:janeaddamsportrait.jpg width="126" height="154" align="right"]] **

=Louise DeKoven Bowen Historical Marker= Louise DeKoven Bowen dedicated her life to social reform, focusing on the rights of women, children, and minorities. Jane Addams asked her to join the Hull-House Woman's Club in 1893 and after Addams died in 1935, Bowen became the president of the Hull-House Association. Bowen was an advocate for woman suffrage, leading a march of 5,000 women at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1916. Her writings were instrumental in helping women gain the vote.
 * 1430 North Astor Street, Chicago **

=Ida B. Wells-Barnett House= **3624 South Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, Chicago (not open to the public)** Journalist, civil rights advocate, and suffragist Ida B. Wells-Barnett lived in this three-story gray stone residence while fighting to end lynching, segregation and the economic oppression of African Americans. Wells-Barnett and her husband bought the building in 1919 and lived there until 1929. In 1913, with her white colleague, Belle Squire, Wells-Barnett founded what may have been the first black woman suffrage group, Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club. That same year Wells-Barnett was one of 65 delegates from Illinois and one of many black women who participated in a National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) parade in the nation's capital. The African-American women were instructed to gather as one unit at the end of the procession because the NAWSA forbade the integration of state affiliates in the march. Wells-Barnett refused to comply and lined up with her state contingent. NAWSA threatened to oust the entire Illinois delegation. When Wells-Barnett left the parade site delegates assumed that she had decided to march with the black contingent. But as the delegates began marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, she stepped out of the crowd to join white delegates Squire and Virginia Brooks. A photograph of the three appeared in the //Chicago Daily Tribune// giving the event and its participants local and national exposure.

=Lorraine Hansberry House= For its associations with the Chicago Black Renaissance literary movement and iconic 20th-century African American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the Lorraine Hansberry House possesses exceptional historic and cultural significance. Although subject to a racially-discriminatory housing covenant, this building was purchased in 1937 by African-American real estate developer Carl Hansberry. Despite threats, Hansberry moved his family into the building and waged a three-year-long battle culminating in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that was an important victory in the effort to outlaw racially-restrictive housing covenants. Hansberry's daughter, pioneering playwright Lorraine Hansberry, drew inspiration from this traumatic experience when writing //A Raisin in the Sun//, the first drama by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. //*Historical marker at 5936 South King Drive, where Hansberry lived while attending Englewood High School //
 * [[image:lorraine-hansberry.jpg width="134" height="160" align="left"]]6140 South Rhodes Avenue, Chicago* **

=Congress Hotel= Now the Congress Plaza Hotel, in 1920 this “Landmark of Chicago Hospitality” was the setting for the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s Victory Convention, held in celebration of the passage in Congress of the suffrage amendment. According to convention minutes, Carrie Chapman Catt called the session to order, after which “joy unconfined burst forth.” Among those present were Chicago reformers Jane Addams, Louise de Koven Bowen, and Ida Wells-Barnett. The NAWSA was disbanded that night, and a new and independent group took its place: the League of Women Voters, formed to counsel newly enfranchised women on how to use the ballot.
 * 520 Michigan Avenue, Chicago **

=Frances Willard House= **1730 Chicago Avenue, Evanston** Tours on Sundays from 1 to 4 pm (last tour at 3 pm) and by appointment; $10.00 (no charge to WCTU and FWHA members) Author and activist Frances Willard lived and worked in this house during the years of her presidency of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). For many of those years, the house also served as an informal national headquarters for the WCTU and a boarding house for its workers. Established as a museum in 1900, the Frances Willard House Museum has a collection of original furnishings and objects--including furniture, artwork, textiles, family photographs, books, and Willard's bicycle--all which help us tell the story of one of the most prominent social reformers in 19th century America.

=Emma Goldman Grave= Monday–Saturday, 8:00am–4:30pm Convinced that the political and economic organization of modern society was fundamentally unjust, Emma Goldman embraced anarchism for the vision it offered of liberty, harmony and true social justice. A fiery orator and a gifted writer, she became a passionate advocate of freedom of expression, sexual freedom and birth control, equality and independence for women, radical education, union organization and workers' rights. Known as "exceedingly dangerous", she was often arrested while lecturing and sometimes banned outright from speaking. Insisting on the right to express herself, Goldman became a prominent figure in the establishment of the right to freedom of speech in the U.S. Goldman died in 1940 in Canada, more than two decades after being deported for anarchist activities. She was buried in the Dissenter’s Row of this cemetery, near a monument to the four victims of the 1887 Haymarket labor incident which had helped spark her own activism.
 * Forest Home Cemetery (formerly Waldheim Cemetery), 863 South Desplaines Avenue, Forest Park, ****Lot 1044, Section N **

=Woman Made Gallery= We dnesday, Thursday & Friday noon to 7pm; Saturday & Sunday noon to 4pm WMG is a not-for-profit organization which aims to ensure the equal placement of women's art in the world, supporting women in the arts by providing opportunities, awareness and advocacy. Its exhibitions seek to raise public awareness and recognition of women's cultural contributions.
 * 685 North Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, 312-738-0400 **

=Woman's Athletic Club= Founded in 1898, this organization was the first athletic club for women in the nation. Created “by ladies for ladies,” members conceived of an oasis for women who sought a “retreat where health, grace and vigor can be restored.” The Club moved to the Michigan Avenue building, designed by Philip B. Maher, in 1929. In 1991 the building received landmark status in recognition of its beautiful and historically significant exterior.
 * 626 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, 312-944-6123 **

=Gwendolyn Brooks House= Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks resided in this Chicago home from 1953 to 1994. A dominant figure of 20th-century American poetry and a leading force in the Chicago Black Renaissance literary movement from the 1930s through the 1950s, Brooks is regarded by literary critics as one of the United States' most significant poets. Her first collection of poems, //A Street in Bronzeville//, appeared in 1945 and was followed by other major works including //Annie Allen// in 1949. In 1950, Brooks became the first African American in history to win a Pulitzer Prize; in 1985, she was named Poet Laureate of the State of Illinois.
 * 7428 South Evans Avenue, Chicago **



= Fine Arts Building=

In 1912 Harriet Monroe, founding publisher of Poetry Magazine, occupied a studio in the Fine Arts Building. Chicago-born Monroe helped shape the careers of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams. She was a writer, scholar, critic and patron of the arts. It was also home to the //Little Review//, the avant-garde literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson (for a half-year in 1914, unable to pay rent on her 837 West Ainslie Street* residence or the of <span style="font-family: Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">fice space, Anderson and the staff camped on the shores of Lake Michigan). <span style="font-family: Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.5;">With her partner, Jane Heap, Anderson offered a literary home to works considered too unconventional for publication elsewhere, most notably the serialization of James Joyce’s //Ulysses//, which subsequently led to an obscenity trial in which Anderson was convicted. //<span style="font-family: Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">*find historical markers at <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">837 West Ainslie Street (Anderson) and 543 North Wabash Avenue (Monroe). //
 * <span style="font-family: Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.5;">10 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago **

=Bessie Coleman Historical Marker= <span style="font-family: Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Bessie Coleman first worked in Chicago as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop and later running a chili parlor at 35th Street and Indiana Avenue. After learning about women pilots during World War I, Coleman became determined to fly. Because American aviation schools did not admit black women, Coleman applied to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in France, becoming the first licensed black aviator in the world. Returning to Chicago, prejudice prevented her from working as a commercial pilot. She traveled throughout the United States in stunt-flying shows, refusing to fly before segregated audiences. Coleman died in 1926; every year, African-American pilots fly low over Lincoln Cemetery in Chicago and drop flowers on her grave.
 * <span style="font-family: Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">41st Street and King Drive, Chicago **

=Sylvia Shaw Judson Sculpture= Sylvia Shaw Judson (also known as Sylvia Shaw Haskins) was an American sculptor and teacher. Her best known works in Chicago are //Girl with the Violin// and //Dancer//, both in Ravinia Park, and a fountain at Brookfield Zoo. Practically a secret is her relief sculpture //Spirit of Electricity// above a window at the building constructed in 1931 as the Commonwealth Edison Dearborn Street substation, in downtown Chicago's Block 37.
 * 115 North Dearborn Street, Chicago**

=Louise Nevelson's Dawn Shadows= The structure and configuration of Chicago’s elevated train system helped inspire Louise Nevelson’s 1983 sculpture //Dawn Shadows//, at Madison Plaza. Nevelson is best known for her large wooden relief sculptures composed of stacked box-enclosures and original and found objects. //Dawn Shadows// is intended to be viewed from any angle, but one of the best vantage points is from the elevated platform above.
 * 200 West Madison Street, Chicago**

**Sources**
 * Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame
 * Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
 * Chicago Tribute Markers of Distinction
 * City of Chicago. Chicago Landmarks
 * Jean S. Hunt. //Walking with Women Through Chicago History II//. AuthorHouse, 2007.
 * Lynn Sherr and Jurate Kazickas. // Susan B. Anthony Slept Here: A Guide to Women's Landmarks // . Times Books, 1994.
 * National Park Service. We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement