HYDE PARK — Hyde Park history buffs who have searched for the exact spot where the world’s first Ferris wheel or the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Midway Gardens once stood are in luck.
Hyde Parkers past and present have collaborated to create a map of some of the most difficult to find and most significant spots in the neighborhood.
Michael Trosman has compiled the map from years of conversations on the Hyde Park Classics Facebook page, crowdsourcing memories from former and current neighborhood residents to pinpoint things like where Nicky’s Pizza or Jesselson’s Fish once were.
It is jammed with interesting morsels, like where George Williams College’s campus once was in Hyde Park before it was demolished in the 1980s and each location is often accompanied by several photos that Hyde Parkers have dug up.
The map is a good crash course for anyone trying to decipher the quixotic patterns of longtime Hyde Parkers, who often still refer to things in relation to Old Lake Park, a street that was largely obliterated during urban renewal in the 1960s, or Barack and Michelle Obama’s Hyde Park home, referring to the condo the couple lived in on the east side of the neighborhood before moving to Kenwood.
Though most of the locations are in Hyde Park, there are many things that are important to anyone who lived on the south lakefront in certain eras, like the original location of the Checkerboard Lounge, the plethora of theaters that once dotted Cottage Grove Avenue and the now-demolished stops when the CTA Green Line ran all the way to Stony Island Avenue.
The Facebook group still is active, so hopefully there will be more additions to the map in the future.
For those who want to dive into the history of the neighborhood in more detail, the Hyde Park Historical Society, 5529 S. Lake Park Ave., is holding the first of many open houses from 2-4 p.m. on Aug. 20.
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