Tour of East and West Garfield Park

West Garfield Park is community area #26, sitting 5 miles west of The Loop. It's eastern neighbor East Garfield Park is community area #25, and sits a mile closer from eastern border to downtown Chicago. This is an area with a storied past, and many brilliant examples of amazing residential architecture. Garfield Park itself, formerly the Central Park of the West Chicago Parks Commission three major parks, features brilliant landscaping by Jens Jensen and William Le Baron Jenney, a gilded-domed fieldhouse, formerly serving as district headquarters, and a brilliant Conservatory, which Jens Jensen designed and filled with exotic plant specimins, very different from his prairie-native planting design philosophy.

West of the park lay what was for a time, one of the hottest night-life sections of Chicago, the Madison-Crawford Distrtict. The booms were as magnificent, as the busts were difficult. A confluence of events sent the area spiralling into a economic tailspin that began with the construction of the Congress (Eisenhower) Expressway in the 1950s, and culminated in racial discrimination, industrial abandonment, and urban decay that saw a population decline of two-thirds in fifty years.

There is a lot to see, and a lot to contemplate riding through these streets. I have learned much about the city doing these tours, and barring some better course of action than that I have pursued to this point, this looks to be the last of them. I hope you'll join me one more time..

There are also four research rides if you would dig seeing more of the area and seeing how we figure out the tours.


Wednesday June 2 - 4PM to 7PM
Saturday June 5 - 11AM to 2PM
Sunday June 13 - 11AM to 2PM
Thursday June 17 - 5PM to 8PM

The actual ride is on Saturday June 19 at 1:00 PM.

All of the above will leave from Garfield Park Fieldhouse at 100 North Central Park


Cheers and I hope to see you out there.


Best Regards - Lee