Friday, March 13, 2009

Chicago Architecture in Garfield Park, and more....


I subbed today in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago. This is a poor, run down neighborhood with a lot of history. Martin Luther King lived there, The famous Garfield Park Conservatory is there, and an abundance of amazing homes are scattered in between vacant lots and boarded up buildings. This USED to be a nice neighborhood, and then the Race Riots in the mid 1960's turned it into one of the worst places to live. The population of the neighborhood dropped from 70,000 people in 1960 to 20,000 in 2000. ANYhow, I've subbed at schools in this neighborhood before and am always in awe of the beautiful art deco mansions. I saw one today for sale, with a small coach house attached(future art studio?), and was curious how much such a gorgeous piece of architecture history sold for in a terrible neighborhood. http://www.atproperties.com/listing/6839577 $525,000! Yikes. Too much. Pretty low for how cool it is inside though, dont you think? I need to bring my camera with me on monday to take some more photos because it's really strange walking past these jaw dropping buildings in obvious war zone territory.

We made a terrible dinner last night. I watched Oprah the other morning and she had famous chefs go to these peoples(people who couldnt cook) houses. Some of the recipes looked easy and tasty, so i wrote down a few recipes. I made the Turkey Macaroni Sheperds Pie last night. I followed ALL the directions, and simmered, and reduced and allll that mumbo jumbo....and it turned out to look good but be very flavorless. If you'd like to see all the chefs recipe ideas, go to: http://www.oprah.com/menu/food/menus/20090227-tows-celebrity-chef-recipes

The Tyler guy was the flavorless recipe, so im recomending you skip him.

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting post. That mansion is gorgeous!
    Thanks for your heads up on those recipes seen on Oprah. I've learned to beware of some of those how-to shows that make things look soooo easy or yummy but don't tell the whole story on what the finished product is really like.

    ReplyDelete