South Shore, Grand Crossing

South Shore, Grand Crossing continued...

Designed by the firm that created Michigan Avenue's luxurious Drake Hotel, the South Shore Cultural Center's clubhouse -- on the National Register of Historic Places -- projects that same grand-hotel feel. Three crystal chandeliers, thick carpets and potted palms greet visitors in its main hall. There's a beach and tennis courts, and a nine-hole golf course -- relatively short but with mature tree-lined fairways -- extends into Lake Michigan.

But its function as a cultural center is what truly binds it to its community, with dance programs ranging from steppin to ballet to country-western line-dance, as well as classes in painting, ceramics and cooking, and a variety of productions in its 600-seat Paul Robeson Theatre including performances by the South Shore Opera Company.

Also here is the fine-dining Parrot Cage, one of two teaching restaurants affiliated with the Washburne Culinary Institute and Kennedy-King College. This menu trends toward continental (fettucine, lamb shank, seared salmon); the other, the Pan African-themed Sikia, is across from the Kennedy-King campus in the Englewood neighborhood.

You may not go steppin, but dining is open to everybody.

Jackson Park Highlands is all the more astonishing because it's so unexpected. This residential pocket within the South Shore neighborhood, a Chicago Landmark District since 1988, includes four streets -- Euclid, Bennett, Constance and Cregier Avenues -- beginning at 71st Street (where those the Metra tracks run) and ending at the Jackson Park golf course on 67th. It is mostly single-family homes, homes that range from merely really, really nice to true mansions. They are seemingly of every architectural style from Tudor to Prairie Style -- comparable in many ways to the best of the Beverly and Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhoods -- and these blocks are ideal for a leisurely walk.

One more essential South Shore stop.

The New Regal Theatre began life in 1927 as the Avalon. Of Moorish design, the 2,300-seat former movie palace, on the 1600 block of 79th Street, has had its financial issues in its second life as a live-performance venue -- but open or closed it is a treasure. Check out the wonderful mural that covers its vast western exterior wall and try to identify the performers , all of whom played this city, many at the original Regal (now gone) on 47th Street in the Bronzeville neighborhood: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella, Miles, more . . .

Greater Grand Crossing, the neighborhood just west of South Shore, got its name from an early railroad crossing and, like South Shore, got its big boost as a developing neighborhood from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held just a mile north in Jackson Park.

The White City amusement park -- for a time a contemporary of Riverview, in the North Center neighborhood -- inspired by and named for the fair, was here (around 67th Street and Calumet Avenue) until the depression and competition from a second World's Fair doomed it in 1933.

Today, it is an attractive residential area with some interesting restaurants and shopping. Some of both are clustered on a stretch of 75th Street just east of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive called Renaissance Row because of the area's commercial revitalization.

One of those restaurants long preceded this particular Renaissance. Army & Lou's [now closed] had been serving up quality soul food at 75th Street and Vernon Avenue for more than 65 years. Among its customers: Dr. King, and Mayor Harold Washington. A couple of blocks farther east, the significantly newer Cafe Trinidad specializes in the cuisine of that island (roti wraps, curries). 5 Loaves Eatery, open for breakfast and lunch, moved to 75th Street from its South Shore location on 71st Street and, happily for its patrons, didn't mess with its chicken salad.

Of the shops on 75th Street, especially intriguing is the Woodshop Art Gallery, just east of Army & Lou's. From the street-side windows, it looks like a standard frame shop -- but step inside and discover a world of African and African American crafts and artwork on display. (Featured artists include popular painter Annie Lee.)

Also on 75th is the New Apartment Lounge, a popular jazz club where sax man Von Freeman and his band entertain on Tuesday nights. If blues is more your thing -- Chicago loves both, of course -- Lee's Unleaded Blues, on South Chicago Avenue at 74th Street, provides what you're looking for on weekend nights, for sure, and other nights sometimes. Better call ahead there, too.

And finally: On 71st Street just east of the Chicago Skyway, where Grand Crossing meets the Woodlawn neighborhood, is Oak Woods Cemetery, one of the city's more interesting. At rest here, among many others famous and not, are Mayor Harold Washington, Olympic star Jesse Owens, Cubs Hall of Fame player and manager Adrian "Cap" Anson and, with their own hill, thousands of prisoners of war -- the North's largest Confederate burial ground.

History lives here.

For more information about South Shore, Grand Crossing, please contact the Business and Economic Revitalization Association (BERA) (773.783.2636), or the South Shore Chamber, Inc. (773-955-9508).