Chicago Neighborhoods: Austin

Chicago Austin Historic District

One of Chicago’s largest community areas, both in terms of population and area, Austin was originally neighboring Cicero Township’s seat of government before it was annexed by Chicago in 1899. The former town hall was modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and survives today as one of Austin’s most well-known landmarks. The neighborhood is also home to the Jens Jensen-designed Columbus Park, which features a waterfall, lagoons, golf course and Prairie-style refectory.

Its signature park is a masterpiece by a master. Some its churches, if churches were ranked, would be among the city’s most impressive. Leading architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright (who worked in a studio a few blocks west of here), created homes for this neighborhood that a century later still amaze and inspire.

And its “town hall” — a nearly full-size replica of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall — has a swimming pool inside. More about this later. This is Austin, sometimes troubled but nonetheless one of the city’s more interesting community areas for visitors, particularly visitors interested in architecture.

Renowned landscape architect Jens Jensen’s designs can be appreciated in many of Chicago’s grandest parks — Jensen put the babble in the Garfield Park Conservatory’s brooks, and he tweaked existing designs in Humboldt and Douglas Parks, among others — but Columbus Park, in Austin, was his baby, and it shows.

This, a National Historic Landmark, is a park with berms and brooks and Prairie Style character throughout, along with a 9-hole links-style golf course (also Jensen’s design) and the requisite ball fields.

Midway Park is not a park but a parkway — a calm residential street (calm despite being just a block north of the CTA Green Line ‘L’ tracks) with a grassy median. It also happens to be the heart of the Austin Historic District, listed on the National Register, and with reason.

On this street, and on Race Avenue a block north, is a collection of homes that represent the vision of top architects of the late 1890s and early 1900s, including John Chubb, Robert Hyde, Holabird & Roche, John Krall and four houses by Frederick R. Schock.

One of the Schock homes (at the northwest corner of Midway Park and Menard Avenue) was the architect’s own residence and a must-see. He threw everything into it — rock, shingles, leaded glass and other elements — while somehow retaining the Queen Anne essentials.

Out of the district but just a few blocks away, on Central Avenue near Madison Street, is Walser House (1903), a Frank Lloyd Wright design that’s unmistakably a Frank Lloyd Wright design. That it’s on this busy street surrounded by apartments and across from a schoolyard makes it a wonder that it’s survived all these years, but here it is.

Attractions

Dining