'Hoods #21: Prairie Ave/Motor Row/Record Row May 12 2012

I organized this one.
And learned a LOT about this part of Chicago just south of the Loop.

Participants: Kelly, Bill and Neal (small one!). Neal left before dinner, so this was the first of Bill and Kelly's accidentally romantic 'Hoods meals.

Highlights: lunch at Reggie's (starting with music)
  -a tour of Chess Records (which took a million
   years to start. In fact, we waited so long, we had to leave
   before the end of the tour, in order to make our
   NEXT tour. BUT, the tour was led by Willie
   Dixon's grandson! And we were such an interested
   group that he let us get into one of the storage closets 
   where they keep old instruments not on display.
   Neal and Bill got to handle Willie Dixon's upright
   bass. It was pretty cool.)
  -tour of the Glessner house on Prairie Ave (so cool,
   but why no pictures, Glessner house?)
  -and THEN a tour of the Clarke house, Chicago's
   oldest house. So many tours this day!
  -we then had a hard time finding somewhere to SIT
   DOWN for a second and have, like, a coffee. So there's
   THAT to know about the 'hood.
  -we pooped around Chicago's Women's park
  -then we scoped whatever other mansions were left on
   Prairie Ave.
  -we walked by a portion of McCormick place I'd never
   seen from the ground.
  -Quinn chapel, important in the civil rights movement
  -the Chicago Daily Defender and Illinois Auto Club
  -some old press/printing buildings, too. This neighborhood
   has a LOT of legacies.
  -rolling back up Michigan Ave we looked at the remains
   of both Record Row (old record companies) and of
   Motor Row (old car dealerships).
  -and then a romantic dinner for two at Gioco

On Dec 26 2012 Bill and I went back to supplement.
  -We had ANOTHER romantic meal, this time at
   the Chicago Firehouse restaurant
  -and then we took, like, a 3 hour tour of the Second
   Presbyterian Church of Chicago, with all of its Tiffany
   windows. We were the only 2 folks there visiting, and
   there were, I think, 3 docents on duty. So they were
   VERY thorough in their informal tour and let us crawl
   all over the place.

'Hoods Prairie Ave/Motor Row/Records Row May and Dec 2012 flickr album

'Hoods Prairie Ave/Motor Row/Records Row packet

map of 'Hoods Prairie Ave/Motor Row/Records Row

I LOVED this one. I didn't know ANYTHING about any of the 3 parts of this neighborhood until I started researching. I really feel like I took some ownership of this neighborhood that I definitely never had before.