Hyde Park Murals | The Most Beautiful Places in Chicago with Geoffrey Baer

Hyde Park Murals

The colorful restoration work of a local coalition of artists adorns the viaducts along 56th and 57th streets in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The Chicago Public Art Group (CPAG) has rehabbed murals in the neighborhood over the last several years. One of those pieces is Childhood Is Without Prejudice, which was originally created by artist William Walker in 1977. Located near 56th Street and Stony Island Avenue, the mural depicts children of different races and ethnicities and is a reflection of the diversity of the school Walker’s daughter attended, according to the CPAG. The piece was restored twice, once in 1993 and again in 2018. Another Hyde Park mural is appropriately dubbed Spirit of Hyde Park, a 200-foot work of art that illustrates the history of the neighborhood near 57th Street and Lake Park Avenue. Artist Astrid Fuller created the piece in 1973 as an “ideal Hyde Park,” and it was restored in 2010. The Chicago Public Art Group also restored Where We Come From…Where We’re Going, an “oral history mural” first created in 1992 when artist Olivia Gude asked people in the neighborhood who were walking by where they were coming from and where they were headed. According to the CPAG, people had both literal and figurative responses. Their faces and answers are depicted on the Metra underpass near 57th Street and Lake Park Avenue.