Bronzeville
The Forum
324 E. 43rd St.
Cultural/Community
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Saturday
10am - 5pm
Sunday
10am - 5pm
DETAILS:
Built in 1897, The Forum includes a beautiful social and assembly hall and several oversized retail slots located adjacent to the 43rd Street Green Line Station. For the first three quarters of the twentieth century, The Forum stood at the heart of Black Chicago’s social, political, cultural and commercial life. The iconic Forum Hall hosted music greats from Nat ‘King’ Cole to Muddy Waters to the Jackson 5 as well as political speeches, sorority balls, union meetings, dance classes, civil rights events, and so much more. Forum Hall shut in the 1970s, a casualty of decades of government and private sector disinvestment. Today, Urban Juncture is working to restore The Forum as a hub for cultural programming, hospitality and socializing as part of its Build Bronzeville initiative.
ENTRANCE RESTRICTIONS:
- - Guests must sign waiver.
VISITOR EXPERIENCE:
Visitors will be able to tour the iconic Forum Hall while enjoying a full program of live musical performances. They will see quarter scale reproductions of the recently discovered opening day scenic backdrops, and catch up on ongoing research to determine the backstory of several Black figures uniquely represented in this 1890s artwork. In addition, visitors may tour sections of the West Annex, which is in the final stages of rehabilitation and engage with community stories playing on the newly installed "Train of Thoughts" digital screen.
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