Morgan Park, Mt. Greenwood

Morgan Park, Mt. Greenwood continued...

Separating the three neighborhoods can be tricky. That Beverly eases seamlessly into Morgan Park and Morgan Park glides imperceptively into Mount Greenwood makes it difficult to distinguish one from the other, even if official boundaries try.

Ask a knowledgeable local whether a Western Avenue pub is in Morgan Park or Beverly, for example, and you get an answer like this one from Grace Kuikman of the Beverly Area Planning Association: It just doesn't matter.

Nonetheless, to clarify as best we can, let's consider what two of the three neighborhoods offer visitors.

Morgan Park (like Beverly) has staggering number of historic homes, including one -- the Iglehart House (1857) -- that is one of the oldest standing structures in the city. Some are very large. Several of them are within the Longwood Drive Landmark District (which, of course, extends into Beverly), while others are elsewhere in the Ridge Historic District. (Lots of districts around here.)

Part of Morgan Park is also within the Chicago landmark Beverly/Morgan Railroad District (as is Beverly), with its restored train stations.

In fact, about the only significant features Morgan Park doesn't share with its cousin to the north are Morgan Park Academy, a respected private school that got its start in 1873; and, ironically, the Beverly Arts Center, a busy venue - in Morgan Park - that hosts live shows, film series and art classes for people of all ages in all three communities and beyond.

For visitors, the joy of exploring Morgan Park is in driving, or walking, along Longwood Drive, or Hoyne Avenue, or Prospect Avenue beside Prospect Park, and savoring the Prairie Style, Victorian, Queen Anne, Italianate, Colonial Revival and sometimes indefinable architecture along these shaded, winding streets. Most of the houses are on or just off this mound called the Ridge -- which we'll now explain.

The Ridge, spared by advancing and retreating glaciers, was once an island in an ancient lake. When its lake receded, it became a six-mile-long, mile-wide elevation -- a long hill, or ridge -- averaging about 60 feet higher than the surrounding plain.

Not only is it Chicago's only significant hill, but it turned out to be a terrific place to put stately houses.

So there are the houses, and there are the pubs on Western Avenue, a happy concentration of facilities with names that conjure memories of similar drinking establishments across the pond.

Turn west on 111th Street and, before very long, you're in Mount Greenwood, which may not have the splendid architecture or Ridge or rail stations of its neighbors but does have much of character to offer, including McDuffy's and Hinky Dinks Pub and, across from O'Shaughnessy Realtors, an emporium called South Side Irish Imports.

Here can be found "South Side Irish" tee-shirts - and Waterford and Galway crystal, Belleek china and, for those truly in need of a whiff of the auld sod, Irish peat incense (with burner) for $14.99.

Down the street is Mt. Olivet Cemetery, with links to two famous Chicagoans. Al Capone was briefly buried here, then moved when gawkers proved too much for everybody; and Mrs. Catherine O'Leary, whose cow didn't start the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, was buried here in 1895 and never left. Across from Mt. Olivet is Mt. Greenwood Cemetery, which gave the neighborhood its name.

On Kedzie Avenue just north of 111 Street is Grant's Wonderburger, a little restaurant whose founding family has been serving burgers with its special relish-laced red sauce in Mount Greenwood since 1954. It vies with Beverly's Top Notch burger (since 1942 but in Beverly since 1954) as the area's favorite retro-burger. There's also a DAT Donuts on 111th Street, for those who like the idea of buying single donut big enough to feed an entire band of bagpipers.

Back on Western, two record shops - Beverly Records (at 116th Street) and Mr. Peabody Records (at 118th), with new, old and common and uncommonly rare discs -- satisfy collectors and the merely musically curious. In between the two stores, there's Let's Get Poppin, which is not about finger-noises but about corn, popped and buttered, cheesed, carameled and (among other exotics) japalenoed.

And a mile west is about the last thing anyone would expect to see in the Windy City: the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, set on what was the city's last farm.

There are hoofed mammals living there. On good days, they can be seen behind the school building. In Chicago.

No blarney.

For more information about Morgan Park, Mt. Greenwood, contact the Mount Greenwood Chamber of Commerce at 773.238.6103.