Southside Modern Trolley Tour

Sunday, September 12, 2021

2-4:30pm

$30 all ages

$20 students (with valid ID)

Join Farnsworth House for a narrated trolley tour of Midcentury Modern architecture in the Chatham, Marynook and Pill Hill neighborhoods. This educational tour highlights three historically Black communities where African-American architects and clients built Midcentury Modern homes, churches, schools and businesses in suburban-feeling enclaves.

These and many other 1940s-70s buildings on Chicago’s South Side are part of a largely uncelebrated collection of Midcentury Modern Architecture deserving of national and local attention. This tour will continue the critical global conversation around the importance of preserving and promoting Black History and providing equity in the documentation and teaching of 20th Century design and social-history.

Award-winning Chicago-based journalist Lee Bey, author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side and Tiffany Tolbert, Associate Director, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at National Trust for Historic Preservation will narrate the tour.

This program is funded by the NTHP African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF).

For the health and safety of ALL participants, face coverings will be REQUIRED at the loading site and while onboard the trolley.

Participants will meet here:
Neil Elementary School
8555 S Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60619

This program is funded by the NTHP African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF)

LEE BEY is a photographer, writer, lecturer and consultant who documents and interprets the built environment – and the often complex political, social, and racial forces that shape spaces and places. His writing on architecture and urban design has been featured in Architect, Chicago magazine, Architectural Record, and many news outlets. HIs photography has appeared in Chicago Architect, Old House Journal, CITE, and in many international designs publications. A former Chicago Sun-Times architect critic, Bey is also a senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and served as deputy chief of staff for urban planning under former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley.

TIFFANY TOLBERT is Associate Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF) at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In her position she directs high-profile national preservation campaigns associated with African American cultural heritage such as the Nina Simone Childhood Home, the John and Alice Coltrane Home and the HBCU Cultural several degrees including, History and Master of Historic Preservation from Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA). She has previously worked for the Alabama Historical Commission and the Georgia Historic Preservation Division as African American Programs Assistant. Tolbert currently serves on the board of Indiana Humanities and as chairperson of the Hobart (IN) Historic Preservation Commission.