Living in Chicago I just have to laugh. The OP evidently has not been to the Suburbs of Chicago.): Hyde Park is not even close to being Surbuban. It’s one of the best neighborhoods Chicago has to offer with great racial diversity and mostly friendly people. As of University of Chicago it has one of the best theaters and jazz concerts in the city… Or is that too Suburban ?
I think the OPs point is it isn’t in the Loop, which to many is the City of Chicago. Technically you are right, but it is like 7 miles south of the loop, with a vast area of nothing worth noting other than the Museum Campus and Soldier field between Hyde Park and Millennium Park.
^ Not quite true! That portion of the SS by the lake has really changed. In addition to Kenwood there’s Bronzeville (IL Tech and other campuses) and South Loop has exploded. There’s also ChinaTown . . .
Also Pilsen, where increasing numbers of my kids’ friends are showing up, whatever the White Sox field is currently called, the IIT, and a huge multi-hospital medical campus.
I knew some locals would chime in. From an outsiders view, I stand by my statement. In NYC, I can hop off the boat at Battery Park and walk to Grant’s tomb and be in the middle of something the entire way. Similarly, I can walk to Brooklyn and feel the same way. When I sit in an NYU property or a Columbia building, I feel like I’m in NYC even though both are not in what most of us think of as NYC. When I sit in a UChicago property, other than the Gleacher Center, I don’t feel like I’m in Chicago. Sorry, my opinion. Whether it is an technically accurate assessment or not, my perception is my reality and apparently it isn’t just mine. That’s all I’m saying.
I’ll add that I felt the same way when I went to Kellogg. I never felt like I was in Chicago when I was in Evanston. (I know that Evanston is a separate entity and not a neighborhood of Chicago).
@BrianBoiler haha… . Evanston is the suburbs… Lol but the Northwestern campus is really nice. I totally get what you are saying and don’t 100% disagree with you. UChicago is not downtown /loop area. It is not a New York feel at all. Going to 55th street gives you some shopping and that grittyness but it’s not the same at all.
We are coming back to our starting point: HP is not Manhattan! But neither is it, by a long shot, Evanston nor Gambier, Ohio. Nor a centrally situated neighborhood in a middling city like Austin or Madison. More distinctions must be made than merely between the Urban and the Unurban. I still like the analogy of Hyde Park with Brooklyn, but all analogies and classifications break down in the end in the face of the irreducibleness of things as they are. That was a lesson imparted long ago in HUM II.
I don’t feel like I’m in NYC when visiting my older kid in Brooklyn. Brooklyn has a seriously different feel to it than Manhattan.
Say what? Greenwich Village is not what most of us think of as NYC? How much more NYC can you get?
Brooklyn: Brooklyn feels a lot like . . . most of Chicago. Except the streets in Chicago are wider and in better shape.
Hyde Park is extremely Chicago. You’ve got the greystones, the courtyard buildings, the Chicago windows… It’s not downtown, but it’s very distinctly Chicago.
Hyde Park is more Chicago than many other neighborhoods like Wicker Park - which nowadays is what people think of when they think about “living” in the city. No student, except grad students and fourth years, would really live in Magnificent mile, Soutjh Loop, Streeterville or Gold Coast (which would be the counterpart of Battery Park, West Village/Soho and the upper West/East Side). In NYC, students live there because NYU and Columbia are very close. It does not hurt that NYC subway provides better access to the rest of the city than the El does.
If we are looking for comparables, Cambride/Boston is a more appropriate for Hyde Park/Chicago Loop