Obama's neighborhood

Kenwood District

Address: Bounded by E. 47th, East 51st, S. Blackstone and S. Drexel Year Built: 1860-1920 Architect: Various Date Designated a Chicago Landmark: June 29, 1979

Once referred to as the "Lake Forest of the South Side," Kenwood developed as a pleasant residential suburb between the late 1850s and the 1880s. The area retained its suburban character even after annexation to Chicago in 1889. By the turn of the century, Kenwood's residents included lumber merchant Martin Ryerson, meatpacker Gustavus Swift, and Sears Roebuck executive Julius Rosenwald. Kenwood's large single-family residences, set on spacious lots, made the neighborhood unique in Chicago; among the influential architects who designed houses in the district are: George Maher, Benjamin Marshall, Howard Van Doren Shaw, and Frank Lloyd Wright. The district represents one of the city's best collections of architectural styles, ranging from Italinate and Colonial Revival to Queen Anne and Prairie School.

From USA Today: High achievement and diversity are hallmarks of his Hyde Park-Kenwood community, technically two adjoining neighborhoods but usually referred to collectively. The community has been home to a long list of well-known residents, from the nation's first black woman senator and Chicago's first black mayor to legendary Scopes Trial defense attorney Clarence Darrow and an assortment of Nobel Prize winners and business magnates.

With a university at its core, it's not surprising the community far outpaces surrounding neighborhoods when it comes to the number of residents holding advanced college degrees.

The neighborhood is also much more prosperous than some of the city's South Side communities that border it. Homes sell for a median price of almost $300,000, more than three times that of the nearby Woodlawn neighborhood.

The median family income of $57,460 in Hyde Park and $43,554 in Kenwood also are three times greater than the median incomes in some neighboring communities, according to the latest census data.

The face of the neighborhood is mixed. Hyde Park is close to evenly split between blacks and whites with a small Hispanic population and Kenwood, which is smaller, has almost four times as many blacks as whites. Surrounding communities are predominantly black.

Hyde Park-Kenwood is a community that prides itself on an independent-minded brand of politician -- something Illinois' junior senator is selling in his bid to become the country's first black president.

Rabbi Emeritus Arnold Jacob Wolf, whose landmark Jewish temple is across the street from Obama's home, said he sensed the political promise in the as-yet-unknown Obama when he met him a decade ago during Obama's successful run for the Illinois Senate.

"I said to him, 'Mr. Obama, someday you will be vice president of the United States,' and he said to me, 'Why vice president?'" said Wolf of KAM Isaiah Israel, a Chicago landmark that boasts the city's oldest Jewish congregation.

Obama came to the area when he moved to Chicago in the mid 1980s to work as a community organizer before he left for Harvard Law School. Later, the neighborhood was a natural fit for him and his wife Michelle, who grew up on the South Side, because they both had history there.

"Family and community are extremely important to us. We have a strong community of friends and of course my Mom lives in the area," Michelle Obama said in a written statement provided by the campaign. Michelle Obama's father died before she married Obama in 1992.

Today, the Obamas are raising their two young daughters in a million-dollar-plus home in a ritzy part of the neighborhood's Kenwood section, a landmark district.

With grand homes set back on deep lots, a street sign designating the historic district touts how it once was home to leading industrialists who had their residences designed by such famous architects as Frank Lloyd Wright.

Just down the block from where he lives is an honorary street designation for the pioneering black woman who in 1946 was the first to get her law degree from the University of Chicago. That woman, Jewel Lafontant-Mankarious, is also the late mother of close Obama adviser John Rogers Jr.

To Rogers, the neighborhood is an "oasis" of diversity and intellectualism. "What better way to define what you're all about than where you choose to live and bring up your family."