How to make the most of a trip to the new Obama presidential center and South Side Chicago

It may be a new way to visit Chicago

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Arts

When folk-rocker Jim Croce sang in 1973 that the south side of Chicago was “the baddest part of town,” he was reinforcing an image of blight and crime that has remained hard to shake.

The Obama Presidential Center, which opened in June, is positioned to propel tourism to this area of Chicago. The 19-acre campus is 10 miles south of downtown’s lakefront museums, theater in the Loop, Millennium Park and Navy Pier’s boardwalk.

Barack and Michelle Obama’s stylishly rugged complex of buildings and grounds in Jackson Park seems atypical for reasons beyond its location. Most presidential museums concentrate on an era of service and leadership; this one also nudges visitors to work toward a greater good and takes a big-picture look at activism.

Four floors of interactive exhibits bring a mix of tears, inspiration and hope. Twenty-eight commissioned art installations, indoors and out, add dramatic flair. Panoramic views of city and lake extend miles from the eighth-floor Nelson Mandela Sky Room.

Timed-admission museum tickets are released online monthly; availability is unlikely until mid-autumn. Access to much else on campus is free, but expect slow-moving lines to enter the gift shop, have a meal or take a selfie with statues of the presidential couple (I gave up on that trio of options during a recent visit).

My museum ticket was timed for a 2:15 p.m. entry, and I arrived around noon. That was enough time to contentedly walk paths through playgrounds, wetlands and gardens. I loved the coziness, photos and mishmash of book titles in the President’s Reading Room at the onsite Chicago Public Library outlet.

Inside the museum, so much immersed me: from video clips of Obama as a rising star to a candid chat between him and Michelle about their relationship. It was fun to see a dozen of her first lady gowns, and a surprise to read how 13 species (bird, bugs, fish, lizard) have been named after the president. I learned that he carries lucky charms in his pocket, and I read letters from average constituents that made a difference to him.

I spent three hours in the museum and could have used five. I stayed downtown — but next time I would consider an overnight or two in adjacent Hyde Park. It’s worth getting better acquainted with this part of Chicago.

The neighborhood: Hyde Park/Kenwood areas

“Chicago is where almost everything that is precious to me began,” Barack Obama has explained.

South Side tour guides typically stop at the Obamas’ Kenwood home (easy to spot because of steel fencing, FBI signage and concrete street barriers). More elusive is a stone marker, near an ordinary strip mall, that marks the spot of their first kiss.

Much of note is walkable, within a mile or two of the Obama center and not annoyingly commercial.

Sophy Hyde Park, an artsy boutique hotel, is a stroll north. Hamlin House, a mansion bed and breakfast, is less expensive and northwest. Nearby are DuSable Black History Museum, trendy shops and indie restaurants (including century-old, cafeteria-style Valois, a Barack favorite).

Closest lodging to the center is The Study and its comfort foods restaurant (a fine alternative to the center’s in-demand Tafari’s Kitchen) near the University of Chicago.

The university has produced myriad award winners – Nobel laureates, Pulitzer journalists, MacArthur Fellows, Presidential Medal of Freedom honorees, actors (Ed Asner), authors (Philip Roth) and directors (Mike Nichols). When classes resume, so do carillon recitals at the 1928 Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on campus. Tour the stone landmark on your own or wait for a carillon tower tour that heads up a 271-step spiral staircase.

Add a visit to Smart Museum of Art (for works by Warhol, Picasso, Chagall, others), the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts and Court Theatre productions. Take a slow walk to gawk at Woodlawn Avenue architecture — in the 5600 block are two National Historic Landmarks (Millikan House and Compton House, both privately owned). Tours are offered at Robie House, the 1910 Prairie-style house by Frank Lloyd Wright that is a UNESCO World Heritage site; linger at the adjacent Plein Air Café.

Just north of the Obama center is the massive Griffin Museum of Science and Industry (this area’s only remaining building from the 1893 Columbian Exposition). It’s big enough to easily display a German submarine, Zephyr train, commercial aircraft, underground coal mine and, in place until early 2027, a full-scale copy of the hidden annex where Anne Frank and her family and four other Jews evaded Nazi capture for two years. Anne Frank’s childhood account of that time is the best-selling diary ever published, with more than 30 million copies, printed in 70 languages. “Anne Frank The Exhibition” also includes photos, film clips and 100-plus artifacts from the Franks’ harrowing World War II years.  Admission, which includes an audio guide, is by timed entry. Allow at least one hour (I stayed two).

The personalized tour

“Hyde Park feels like a suburb, but you’re only 15 minutes from downtown,” notes Kineret Jaffe, a cultural historian and 40-year Hyde Park resident. We meet through the Chicago Greeter program, a free program from the city tourism office that matches volunteer guides with tourists.

Jaffe met me downtown, provided bus passes and spent two hours pointing out Hyde Park highlights and history. Our walk ended at the center, after having seen the mile-long Midway — a thick strip of parkland where much of the 1893 World’s Fair was staged (and world’s first Ferris wheel introduced).

Hyde Park began as a neighborhood for the affluent to escape Chicago pollution, but many moved away as Black families moved in during the Great Migration. Jaffe considers it a nicely integrated neighborhood today.

Tours by bus

At least two independent businesses conduct group tours with multicultural themes in Chicago.

Shermann “Dilla” Thomas, self-taught historian and social media influencer, in 2021 began two-hour Chicago Mahogany Tours to various “overlooked neighborhoods” and has won awards for his efforts.

“The city hyper-focuses on downtown,” he says. “There’s lots of good stuff to talk about beyond downtown.”

The father of seven uses humor and a laid-back approach in his tours. Subjects include blues music in Bronzeville and railroad history at Pullman National Historic Park.

Operating since 2024 is South Side Tours, and options include a two-hour Obama-themed outing. Narratives pay particular attention to Michelle Obama’s childhood: where she was born, raised, went to school. But her husband and other South Side icons (Jesse Jackson, Harold Washington) certainly are not ignored.

South Side Chicago “doesn’t get as much recognition as it deserves,” says tour guide Kiara Hill.

The Obama tour begins and ends at South Shore Cultural Center, which opened at Lake Michigan and 71st Street in 1905 as a country club for whites only. It closed in the 1970s, as the area’s Black population increased, and much of once-thriving 71st Street remains an area of compromised buildings.

The cultural center reopened as a city park and “palace for the people.”  Pretty lake views, a golf course, beach, well-tended gardens and glistening chandeliers remain.

How special is this place? The Obamas’ wedding reception was here in 1992, as was a memorial service for the first lady’s mother, Marian Robinson, in 2024.