Based on Richard Lindberg’s forthcoming book Citadels of Sin, the author takes us back to Gilded Age and Progressive Era Chicago to explore the infamous criminal “Levee” vice districts. Featured are notorious but colorful incidents and characters including the Everleigh Sisters and Big Jim Colosimo who were permitted to operate disorderly houses, gambling dens, illicit saloons, and dance halls within the confines of a “restricted” district just a few blocks from Prairie Avenue. 

In words and pictures, Lindberg provides intriguing stories and solves the 120-year-old mystery of the death of Marshall Field Jr., rumored to have been fatally shot inside the Everleigh Club in November 1905.

FREE PROGRAM IN HONOR OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

The Barack Obama Presidential Center is currently under construction in a portion of Jackson Park in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood. Scheduled to open in the first half of 2026, the 19-acre campus will include a museum and library commemorating the presidency of Barack Obama, along with a forum building housing an auditorium and a branch of the Chicago Public Library, and a programs and athletics center known as Home Court. The Obama Foundation will also be housed here. The library will be the first fully digitized presidential library in the United States.

In 2016, the foundation selected New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Chicago-based Interactive Design Architects to jointly lead the design and engineering of the the three main buildings. Moody Nolan Chicago and Renauld Deandre Mitchell were selected for Home Court. Ralph Appelbaum Associates (which worked on the National Museum of African American History) will lead the exhibition design team, with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates as landscape architect. The complex will comprise four buildings in geometric shapes and covered in light-colored stone. The museum building is the tallest at 180 feet; the other buildings will be a single story.

The presentation will be given by Josh Harris, who serves as the Vice President of Public Engagement for the Obama Foundation where he oversees community engagement and government affairs, Chicago programs, and is charged with implementing a Chicago plan to advance youth outcomes and expand economic opportunity ahead of the Obama Presidential Center opening. 

Delving into the mind of one of America’s most renowned 19th-century architects is bound to be awe-inspiring. It’s especially true when a compilation is the first in-depth publication of his drawings—and that’s the case for this collection on Henry Hobson Richardson. The curated volume of 4,000 works, spanning 450 pages, includes masterpieces such as Trinity Church in Boston, the Ames Gate Lodge, and Glessner House (among many others) and was painstakingly reproduced to unveil Richardson’s design process as it explores the impact his work has had on the United States—as well as the world.

Join authors Jay Wickersham, Chris Milford, and Hope Mayo as they reveal Richardson’s design process through an examination of his drawings. with a special emphasis on Glessner House, regarded as Richardson’s urban residential masterpiece.