Thursday, November 14, 6:15 p.m.
Architectural Lecture series: Cliff Dwellers, 200 S. Michigan Ave, Chicago
Lee Bey presents: Southern Exposure: the Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side
Bey’s is the first book devoted to the South Side’s rich and unfairly ignored architectural heritage. With lively, insightful text and gallery-quality color photographs by noted Chicago architecture expert Lee Bey, Southern Exposure documents the remarkable and largely unsung architecture of the South Side. The book features an array of landmarks—from a Space Age dry cleaner to a nineteenth-century lagoon that meanders down the middle of a working-class neighborhood street—that are largely absent from arts discourse, in no small part because they sit in a predominantly African American and Latino section of town that’s better known as a place of disinvestment, abandonment, and violence.
From a review of his book:
Bey proves his case most effectively when discussing James H. Bowen High School, 2710 E. 89th, designed by Dwight Perkins in 1910:
”Bowen High School would be a city landmark and on the National Register if it were located on the North Side. And that’s not empty talk. The North Side’s Carl Schurz High School … was built the same year as Bowen, and the two schools are virtually identical twins, both having been designed by Perkins. Schurz has been a city landmark since 1978 and made the National Register of Historic Places in 2011 … Bowen, which sits in the predominantly black and Latino neighborhood of South Chicago, was never given landmark status nor a National Register listing.”
Lee Bey is an Architectural Critic, Photographer, and Writer.
