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Park No. 474

Parks in ChicagoSouth Side, ChicagoUse American English from April 2025Use mdy dates from April 2025
Park No. 474 Chicago Illinois
Park No. 474 Chicago Illinois

Park No. 474 is the smallest public park in Chicago, Illinois (and the smallest city park in the state), located in the Douglas community on the South Side. The area of the park is officially listed as the minimum 0.01 acres; however, the actual area is only a 54-square-foot granite rectangle. The Chicago Park District refers to Park No. 474 as a "parklet", but unlike other American parklets, the park is a permanent space away from sidewalks and listed as an independent park in the city records. It is within the historic Black Metropolis–Bronzeville District in Chicago's 4th Ward. The passive park is situated at 3231 S. Dearborn St., located on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, directly adjacent to the university's Perlstein Hall and Wishnick Hall. The park contains no natural features and two manmade features: a 6-foot-by-9-foot granite slab, which constitutes the entire area of the park, and the sculpture Man on a Bench by George Segal. The park is supervised by the nearby WIlliams Park's management.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Park No. 474 (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Park No. 474
West 31st Street, Chicago Douglas

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N 41.835277777778 ° E -87.6275 °
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Illinois Institute of Technology

West 31st Street
60616 Chicago, Douglas
Illinois, United States
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iit.edu

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Park No. 474 Chicago Illinois
Park No. 474 Chicago Illinois
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Illinois Institute of Technology Academic Campus
Illinois Institute of Technology Academic Campus

Illinois Institute of Technology Academic Campus or IIT Main Campus is one of five campuses of the Illinois Institute of Technology. It is located in the Douglas community area and has an official address of 3300 South Federal Street and is roughly bounded by 31st Street, State Street, 35th Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway. Its Main Building and Machinery Hall were designated a Chicago Landmark on May 26, 2004. The entire Academic Campus was designated as a National Register of Historic Places listing on August 12, 2005. Machinery Hall (built in 1901) and the Main Building (built between 1891–1893) are located across the street from each other at 33rd and Federal Streets northeast of the location of the former Comiskey Park. The buildings are both Victorian era red brick and granite structures built in the Romanesque revival architecture style that were designed by Patton & Fisher and their successor firm, Patton, Fisher & Miller. The buildings were constructed with the aid of philanthropy by Philip D. Armour, Sr. On the first landing of The Main Building's main staircase there is a stained-glass window dedicated to Philip D. Armour, Jr., located on the first landing. The two buildings are located adjacent to the Dan Ryan Expressway and Chicago Transit Authority red line from which they are highly visible. The original cost of the Main Building (3300 South Federal Street) in 1892 was $500,000 ($15.1 million today), and Machinery Hall (100 West 33rd Street) cost $150,000 ($4.9 million) in 1901.

Shimer Great Books School

Shimer Great Books School (pronounced (listen) SHY-mər) is a Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of Chicago, with a history of being in different cities in Illinois prior to that. Founded in 1853 as the Mount Carroll Seminary in Mount Carroll, Illinois, the school became affiliated with the University of Chicago in 1896 and was renamed the Frances Shimer Academy after founder Frances Wood Shimer. It was renamed Shimer College in 1950, when it began offering a four-year curriculum based on the Hutchins Plan of the University of Chicago. After the University of Chicago parted with both the college and the Hutchins Plan in 1958, Shimer continued to use a version of that curriculum. The college relocated to Waukegan in 1978 and to Chicago in 2006. In 2017, it was acquired by North Central College which established the Shimer Great Books School to continue offering its curriculum. It has a long reputation as being intellectually original, demanding, and rigorous. The current academic program is based on a core curriculum sixteen required courses in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. All courses are small seminars with no more than twelve students, and were based on original sources from a list of about 200 core texts broadly based on the great books canon. Classroom instruction is Socratic discussion. Considerable writing is required, including two comprehensive examinations and a senior thesis. Students are admitted primarily on the basis of essays and interviews; no minimum grades or test scores were required. Shimer has one of the highest alumni doctorate rates in the country.According to The New York Times, students "share[d] a love of books [and] a disdain for the conventional style of education. Many say they did not have a good high school experience". Students, who tend to be individualistic and creative thinkers, are encouraged to ask questions. Shimer historically averaged 125 students, and enrolled 97 in 2014. Most Shimer alumni went on to graduate studies.Shimer was, until joining North Central College, governed internally by an assembly in which all community members had a vote. In 2016, Shimer announced an agreement to be acquired by North Central College. The agreement came to fruition on June 1, 2017, when Shimer's faculty and curriculum were subsumed into North Central as a department known as the Shimer Great Books School of North Central College.