South Shore, Grand Crossing

South Shore, a historically African-American neighborhood along the southern shore of Lake Michigan, has a lively, historic past that has helped contribute to the rapid gentrification and restoration this area has seen in the past decade.

Toward the end of the 19th Century, developers began promoting the area as a recreation and vacation area for the wealthiest of Chicagoans. In fact, what is today the South Shore Cultural Center began as a country club, with activities and amenities like horseback riding, skeet shooting, tennis courts, golf course and a private beach along Lake Michigan. Famous guests such as Amelia Earhart and Will Rogers made visits to the Country Club.

In the 1970s, the Country Club was sold to the city and renamed the South Shore Cultural Center. Today, the Mediterranean Revival style club house is the main building for the Cultural Center, which serves as a home for the South Shore Cultural Center School of the Arts, the Paul Robeson Theatre, two dance studios and numerous banquet halls. Additionally, the nine-hole golf course is open to the public, as is beach access, and visitors are encouraged to tour the many gardens and picnic areas. As a historic aside, the Cultural Center hosted President and Mrs. Obama's reception in 1992.

For the architecture buff, along the northern end of South Shore sits one of Chicago’s most intact and historically-valued outposts, the Jackson Park Highlands, which houses a number of American Four-Square, Colonial Revival and Renaissance Revival homes. South Shore is the perfect neighborhood for a history or architecture fan to spend the day exploring parts of Chicago that, in some ways, have changed very little since the 19th Century.

Located throughout the city, Chicago Tribute Markers of Distinction commemorate where notable Chicagoans lived and worked. A marker in South Shore honors novelist James T. Farrell.

Read, Learn, Discover at the Chicago Public Library. Search programming and event information at your neighborhood branch.