Old University of Chicago

The Stephen A. Douglas Tomb and Memorial or Stephen Douglas Monument Park is a memorial that includes the tomb of United States Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813 – 1861). It is located at 636 E. 35th Street in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois (part of the city's Douglas community), near the site of the Union Army and prisoner of war Camp Douglas. The land was originally owned by Douglas’ estate but was sold to the state of Illinois, when it became known as “Camp Douglas” serving first as training grounds for Union soldiers during the Civil War, then as a prisoner of war camp. The memorial is a 96-foot granite structure comprising three circular bases and a 20-foot diameter octagonal mausoleum which holds Douglas’ sarcophagus. Large bronze allegorical figures portraying “Illinois,” “History,” “Justice,” and “Eloquence” are positioned at the four main corners of the mausoleum. Four bas-reliefs in the panels of the main base depict the advance of American civilization. A ten-foot statue of the Douglas stands atop a 46 ft column of white marble from his native state, Vermont.Douglas, best remembered for debating Abraham Lincoln over slavery, died from typhoid fever on June 3, 1861 in Chicago, where he was buried on the shore of Lake Michigan. Immediately after his death an association of notable Chicagoans was formed to oversee the construction of a suitable tomb and monument, but its members failed to raise sufficient funds. In 1865 the state of Illinois purchased the tomb from Douglas' widow, Adele Douglas, for $25,000. On June 3, 1868, Douglas' body was placed in the completed portion of the tomb. Leonard Volk, a relative of Douglas, designed the tomb and monument. In 1871 the Great Chicago Fire destroyed Volk's plans for the unfinished structure. The tomb was completed in May 1881, after an expense of $90,000.The memorial was designated a Chicago Landmark on September 28, 1977. The tomb is maintained by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency as a state historic site. On July 14, 2020 three members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus called for the removal of the statue, dubbing it “a tribute to a widely known racist and sexist."

The Soldiers' Home is an Italianate style house in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The Soldiers' House is located at 739 E. 35th St. The house was built in a series of phases from 1864 to 1923 by William W. Boyington and other various architects. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on April 16, 1996. The Soldiers' Home is the last surviving building with exact association to the Civil War. During the war the home served as a hospital for injured soldiers. After the war it became a home for disabled Union Army Veterans.

The Light of Truth: Ida B. Wells National Monument is a bronze and marble public sculpture by artist Richard Hunt. Located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, the sculpture takes its name from a quote by civil rights activist and investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931): "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them". It was unveiled in 2021 by the Ida B. Wells Commemorative Art Committee.

The Supreme Life Building is a historic insurance building located at 3501 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in the Douglas community area of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1921, the building served as the headquarters of the Supreme Life Insurance Company, which was founded two years earlier by Frank L. Gillespie. The company, originally known as the Liberty Life Insurance Company, was the first African-American owned insurance company in the northern United States. Since white-owned insurance firms regularly denied black customers life insurance when the firm was founded, the firm played an important role in providing life insurance to Chicago's African-American community. The company ultimately became the largest African-American owned business in the northern states and became a symbol of the predominantly black Bronzeville neighborhood's economic success from the 1920s to the 1950s.In the 1990s, the building was nearly demolished before it was purchased by the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council. The group rehabilitated the building in 2005, and it now serves as the Bronzeville Visitor Information Center.The building was designated as a Chicago Landmark on September 9, 1998. It is one of nine buildings designated as part of the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District.

Burnham Park is a public park located in Chicago, Illinois. Situated along 6 miles (9.7 km) of Lake Michigan shoreline, the park connects Grant Park at 14th Street to Jackson Park at 56th Street. The 598 acres (242 ha) of parkland is owned and managed by the Chicago Park District. It was named for urban planner and architect Daniel Burnham in 1927. Burnham was one of the designers of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The park is an outgrowth of the 1909 Plan for Chicago, often called simply "The Burnham Plan". Land for the park has been acquired by the city's park district by a variety of means such as bequest, land reclamation, and barter. The park hosts some of the city's most important municipal structures, such as Soldier Field and McCormick Place. In the north, the park is adjacent to the Museum Campus in Grant Park and to the south it is adjacent to the Museum of Science and Industry in Jackson Park. The park includes several beaches, and boat harbors, as well as hiking and biking trails and nature reserves. During the presidency of U.S. President Barack Obama, the park was the landing site for Marine One when visiting his Kenwood home on Chicago's South Side.

Aldine Square was a residential neighborhood of Oakland, Chicago, that existed from 1874 until it was demolished in 1938 to make way for the Ida B. Wells Homes. It comprised 42 brick and limestone houses that surrounded a park with a pond. Originally considered an elegant neighborhood for the wealthy, it had become dilapidated by the 1920s. It and its surroundings were demolished in the 1930s to make way for the homes.

The Ida B. Wells Homes, which also comprised the Clarence Darrow Homes and Madden Park Homes, was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project located in the heart of the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was bordered by 35th Street to the north, Pershing Road (39th Street) to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue to the east, and Martin Luther King Drive to the west. The Ida B. Wells Homes consisted of rowhouses, mid-rises, and high-rise apartment buildings, first constructed 1939 to 1941 to house African American tenants. They were closed and demolished beginning in 2002 and ending in 2011.

Erected in 1927, the Victory Monument, created by sculptor Leonard Crunelle, was built to honor the Eighth Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, an African-American unit that served in France during World War I. It is located in the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District in the Douglas community area of Chicago, Illinois. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 30, 1986. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on September 9, 1998. An annual Memorial Day ceremony is held at the monument.

Engine Company 21, organized in 1872, was the first Black fire company in the Chicago Fire Department. The company was known for arriving at fires quickly. The fire pole was invented by members of the company.

The Ida B. Wells-Barnett House was the residence of civil rights advocate Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) and her husband Ferdinand Lee Barnett from 1919 to 1930. It is located at 3624 S. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the Douglas community area of Chicago, Illinois. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on October 2, 1995. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark on May 30, 1974.

Camp Douglas, in Chicago, Illinois, sometimes described as "The North's Andersonville," was one of the largest Union Army prisoner-of-war camps for Confederate soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. Based south of the city on the prairie, it was also used as a training and detention camp for Union soldiers. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for volunteer regiments. It became a prisoner-of-war camp in early 1862. Later in 1862 the Union Army again used Camp Douglas as a training camp. In the fall of 1862, the Union Army used the facility as a detention camp for paroled Confederate prisoners (these were Union soldiers who had been captured by the Confederacy and sent North under an agreement that they would be held temporarily while formal prisoner exchanges were worked out). Camp Douglas became a permanent prisoner-of-war camp from January 1863 to the end of the war in May 1865. In the summer and fall of 1865, the camp served as a mustering out point for Union Army volunteer regiments. The camp was dismantled and the movable property was sold off late in the year. The land was eventually sold-off and developed. In the aftermath of the war, Camp Douglas eventually came to be noted for its poor conditions and death rate of about seventeen percent. Some 4,275 Confederate prisoners were known to be re-interred from the camp cemetery to a mass grave at Oak Woods Cemetery after the war.

The Martin Roche–John Tait House is a historic house located at 3614 S. Martin Luther King Drive in the Douglas community area of Chicago, Illinois. The house was the home of architect Martin Roche, half of prominent Chicago architectural firm Holabird & Roche, from 1888 until 1917. Roche designed the house for his sister Bridget Louise and brother-in-law John Tait; as he was unmarried and consequently a key part of their family, Roche moved into a third-floor suite to live with the couple. He gave the house a Romanesque design; the design has similarities with his work at Fort Sheridan at the time, though the Fort Sheridan homes are less plain. The flat, rough-coursed sandstone front facade of the house is a sharp contrast to the surrounding homes, many of which are Queen Anne designs with extensive detail work.The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 2000.