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Grand Boulevard — Washington Park Tour: Sites E & F
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Site E
Over the years, white Protestants, German Jews, Irish Catholics, and black families have lived in the brick flat buildings along Indiana Avenue. The Unity Baptist Church at 5129 S. Indiana offers a classic example of ethnic succession. It was built as a synagogue about 1912 by members of Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Anshe Dorum congregation, which moved here from the Douglas neighborhood. In 1928 Antioch Missionary Baptist Church purchased the building. Like earlier Jewish congregations, this black church also began on the Near South Side, at 3140 S. LaSalle Street In 1958 Antioch moved again, to 415 W. Englewood Avenue in the Englewood neighborhood and sold the Indiana Avenue church to Unity Baptist. When Antioch pastor Rev. Wilbur N. Daniels learned that Unity Church might lose the Indiana Avenue building in foreclosure he repurchased the church and sold it back to the congregation. The above photograph shows a detail of the former Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Anshe Dorum synagogue, now the Unity Baptist Church, in 1985.

Site F
Turn right at 47th Street and go two blocks east to King Drive. Forty-seventh Street between State and Cottage Grove was once the commercial and cultural hub of black Chicago. In addition to black-owned businesses and nightclubs, the 47th Street area included the five-story apartment complex at 4638 S. Michigan known as the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments financed by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald From its opening in 1929 through the 1950s, 4638 S. Michigan was one of Grand Boulevard's most fashionable addresses, home to scores of middle-class black families. Although the 47th Street business district has fallen on hard times, the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments recently received a facelift and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.

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