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Named for a literal crossing of railroads, resting place of some of the country’s greatest lives, home of barbecue that draws pilgrimages, and street after street of brick built for keeping.
The name is literal: two railroads crossed here at grade, an 1853 collision forced the crossing that gave the area its identity, and the diagonal scars of those lines still shape the street grid. Oak Woods Cemetery, one of the city’s oldest, holds the graves of Ida B. Wells, Jesse Owens, Harold Washington and Enrico Fermi under its old trees, a walk worth taking slowly. Along 75th Street, the barbecue institutions, aquarium-smoker rib houses with lines out the door, have drawn the whole city south for generations.
The Gary Comer Youth Center and College Prep campus on South Chicago Avenue, with its rooftop garden and award-winning architecture, is the neighborhood’s boldest modern landmark.
The Red Line runs the neighborhood’s western edge at 69th and 79th, buses cover the grid, and the Skyway’s ramps sit minutes east for anyone working toward Indiana. Downtown runs about twenty-five minutes by L.
Brick bungalows and two-flats, stone-fronted rows near the boulevard ends, and frame cottages on the older streets, most of it solidly built and much of it long held in the same hands. For buyers priced out of Chatham next door, the same housing DNA runs here at a friendlier number; our brick guide and home styles field guide apply directly, and the buyers FAQ covers the rest.
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