Historic Englewood Rail Station Celebrated with New Garden & Mural

July 14, 2010
Contact: Glenda Daniel

CHICAGO, IL—Today, residents, grassroots organizers, and community leaders in the city’s Englewood neighborhood joined Stay Environmentally Focus’d and Openlands to celebrate the grand opening of the Heritage Station Community Garden, at 549 W. 63rd St.

“This garden celebrates both the rich history of our community and a greener, healthier future for Englewood,” said Terina Cranshaw-Hodges, Executive Director of Stay Environmentally Focus’d and manager of the garden. Stay Environmentally Focus’d is a local urban conservation and sustainability network that “provides safe places where residents of all ages can come to play, relax, and discover.”

Although Englewood was once home to the city’s most vibrant commercial district outside the Loop, disinvestment over the last 40 years has left the neighborhood with one of the highest percentages of open space—in the form of empty lots—of any community in Chicago. The Heritage Station Garden site adds a vibrant new amenity right next to a low-rise affordable housing complex and near the new campus of the city’s Kennedy-King Community College.

“This garden aims to reposition one of our community’s most glaring problems as one of its greatest assets,” said John Paul Jones, head of the Greater Englewood Community and Family Task Force and its Sustainable Englewood Initiatives.

Today, with funding from The Exelon Foundation and volunteer assistance from many local individuals and groups, the Heritage Station Garden has established flower beds and fruit trees, a walking path, and benches.

The central feature of the garden is a colorful, larger-than-life-sized mural by noted local artist Rahmaan Statik Barnes, working through Chicago Public Art Group. The mural depicts the community’s history as an important rail junction—Englewood was called Junction Grove before being incorporated into Chicago in 1889. The former rail station on this site served as a terminus for African Americans arriving from the South during the Great Migration and was also a major stop for visitors arriving for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

The Heritage Station Garden is part of the larger Englewood Open Space Plan, a network of community and school gardens and parks also under development this summer by Englewood leaders with support from Openlands and funding from The Exelon Foundation. The Heritage Station Garden and a proposed new linear park and trail along an abandoned railroad route, near 59th St., were featured as Green Legacy Projects in last year’s citywide centennial celebration of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago.

Openlands is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the natural and open spaces of northeastern Illinois and the surrounding region to ensure cleaner air and water, protect natural habitats and wildlife, and help balance and enrich our lives. Founded in 1963, Openlands is one of the nation's oldest and most successful metropolitan conservation organizations, having helped secure and protect more than 55,000 acres of land for public parks, forest preserves, land and water greenway corridors, and urban gardens.

Click on the following links for more news coverage of this event:
NBC 5 Chicago News
FOX Chicago News
WGN TV
Chicago Tribune

#     #     #