Bronzeville Elevated Trail
Creating new murals and sculptures for a $100M, two mile long elevated trail that joins the east and western halves of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, providing lakefront access to all.
Also curating the restoration of the old classic murals from some of Chicago’s most important muralists, as well.
About one year ago I joined an effort to develop a 606 Bloomingdale Trail like trail along the old abandoned Kenwood “L” line embankment elevated train line that runs through Bronzeville from the Lakefront to State Street, into a linear walking, running, and biking park trail. The CTA train line originally was built at grade level in 1865 and was primarily a commercial line. In 1903 the city council voted to raise the train line to assure the safety of local pedestrians. At that time, more than one person per day was being killed by ground level trains. It was actually raised in 1910.
The line and embankment play an important part in the history of Chicago and Black Chicago and the Great Migration because Black Chicagoan's used to board it at the 40th and Indian station, which was a junction and transfer between the commercial line and the CTA passenger line and take the train to work in the stockyards. At the time, Chicago was America's biggest meat supplier and the huge number of available jobs attracted Blacks up from the south, helping spur the migration. From 1910 to 1940 it was primarily a commercial train line but in 1947 it became a full time CTA train line.
I will be hiring local muralists and sculptures as well. Artists should contact me if they’d like to be considered.