Our student researchers take one neighborhood at a time and work out how race shaped it, out of the deeds, the appraisal maps, and the plans the city drew. What they find becomes a free audio tour you can walk at your own pace, whenever you want.
The tours live in our iPhone app. Hyde Park in Chicago is finished, and more neighborhoods are being researched now.
Screens from the Hyde Park tour in the app.
You stand where it happened and hear what happened there, with the whole script under the player if you would rather read it.
Drawn over the government survey of the day, with every stop on it, your own dot, and walking directions between them.
Everything downloads with the app, so a dead zone does not end the walk. No account, no ads, and nothing recorded about your walk.
Hyde Park and the lakefront from the air, 1928. Chicago Aerial Survey Co. Public domain.
Hyde Park, Chicago
The tour goes through the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, stopping at sites that reflect its deep racial history and the inequality that still shapes the neighborhood today. It starts at Paul Cornell's stone by 53rd Street and ends at Harper Court.
Stops
13, plus 3 detours
On foot
About 4 miles
Audio
About 70 minutes
Price
Free
At Rooted Forward we run walking tours of the same areas of Hyde Park the app covers. Our student researchers lead them and they run about two hours.
Book on Viator
Cobb Lecture Hall about 1900, a stop on the walk. Detroit Publishing Company, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. No known restrictions on publication.
It is free, and every tour we finish shows up in it. Get it before you leave the house, since the whole walk works without a signal.
iPhone, iOS 17 or newer. Free.
