Chicago native and noted architectural photographer Lee Bey recently took PBS on a tour of his city’s overlooked South Side. 

Among the stops on the Sun-Times critic’s excursion were his former high school, pioneering local architect John Moutoussamy’s self-designed private residence in West Chesterfield, Jeanne Gang’s overshadowed SOS Children’s Village Lavezzario Community Center, and the Art Moderne First Church of Deliverance from 1939. 

Towards the end, he also mentions his optimism for young people, preference for the community-based development of religious projects, and what he called the “democratization” of historic preservation as the things that give him the most hope as a professional chronicler of the built environment.

Bey also talked about the well-documented “heyday” of Bronzeville, a neighborhood that is now experiencing a new, contemporary renaissance with multiple revitalization projects, a much-needed healthcare center, and its own energy independence plan. Its rebuilding could carry precedents for other communities in the West and South Side, a large portion of which made up the recent survey responses from mayoral challengers solicited by the AIA Chicago.

“Chicago for so long has floated on its world-class city status by building the tallest buildings [...] but it really can’t be a world-class city if it does these things and then allows the South Side, and the West Side, and the Southeast Side, to drift,” Bey says in closing. “And we’re seeing now the price of that in many ways. By letting these places survive as best we can, we see the quality of life in the entire city diminished in many respects. And if we want to fix that, we need to invest in rebuilding what’s here.”