From 1920-1950, 63rd Street was one of Chicago's largest commercial districts outside of the Loop...but today, many of its blocks seem quiet, even abandoned. How did this streetscape change so dramatically, in so short a period of time? These are the kinds of questions the Chicago Centuries Project (most recently, A Century on 63rd St.) aims to answer.
Above: 63rd and Halsted, 1952. (Photo from TrolleyDodger.com; original image by Stephen Scalzo, 1952 - see Illinois Railway Museum for more information.)
A Century on 63rd Street (1920-2020), AKA "Co63" is the second "chapter" of an ongoing undergraduate research project sponsored by Chicago Studies called the "Chicago Centuries Project." We aim to gain granular insight into ten decades of changes in the neighborhoods around our campus, including those due to the Great Migration, redlining, White flight, University-led urban renewal, and civic (dis)investment. We also plan to map and represent the information collected. Our research, which began on 55th Street/Garfield Boulevard, is building an open-access resource and digital archive. We hope this resource will serve as a stepping-off point for future classes, public programming, and further investigation, as well as more thematic and/or creative projects and exhibition(s) such as our collaboration with Expositions magazine, which published a special edition devoted to 55th Street in Fall 2023 and is preparing a similar issue about 63rd Street for Fall 2024. Students in the College (of any class and field of study) were able to contribute to this project as stipended research assistants.
During AY2024-2025, Chicago Centuries is cleaning data gathered during the previous two years of study in preparation for digital publication of our findings. Students who're interested in contributing to our ongoing work can contact Chris Skrable (cskrable@uchicago.edu) or Parker Otto (edward5@uchicago.edu).
