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Tuesday 1pm - 4pm Sunday 1pm - 4pm

Ridge Historical Society, 10621 S. Seeley Avenue, Chicago, IL (2026)

10/13/2026

P.D. Diamond's Concrete Block Homes

Scattered throughout Beverly and Morgan Park are about seventeen rusticated concrete homes that tend to stand out from their neighbors that are clad in brick or wood siding.

We recently reviewed an original plan drawing from the Ridge Historical Society archives of one of these houses, the Frank Ford house at 2249 W. 111th Place, built in 1905. Signed by local contractor P.D. Diamond (“The Home Builder”), the plan “No. 121” shows the two-story American Foursquare built entirely of molded concrete blocks.

Diamond initially lived near his office in West Lawn when he started putting up concrete block houses in Beverly and Morgan Park around 1905. He then built his own family home out of the blocks at 2211 W. 110th Place in 1906, including a matching concrete garage.

At the time, concrete block was the newest building fad in America. After Chicagoan Harmon S. Palmer patented a cast-iron molding machine in 1899, builders could build a fire-proof house often cheaper than stone or brick. Two workers on-site could mix cement, gravel, sand, and pigmentation by hand, shovel it into the mold, pull the lever, and turn out perhaps a hundred concrete blocks each day. Finished blocks could also be purchased.

The American Four-Square was rapidly becoming popular and the concrete blocks were a nice fit for the boxy form. Most of the concrete block houses in this neighborhood are American Four-Square. Basements for traditionally framed houses were also sometimes finished with rusticated concrete blocks around this time period.

Diamond didn’t stop pursuing new, low-cost building ideas. When concrete blocks went out of style after 1910, Diamond's interest in standardized housing led him to become the local South Side contractor for Frank Lloyd Wright's prefabricated American System-Built Homes in 1917.

Diamond's concrete house architectural plan "No. 121" for the Frank Ford house is one of perhaps 60 architectural plans and blueprints in the RHS archives. The architects and builders whose architectural plans are most represented in our archives are Kocher & Larson, Charles Tooker, and Luther & Christensen.

An anonymous donor is currently matching every gift to the RHS archives dollar-for-dollar, up to $10,000, to help fund trained archivists who can better organize and help preserve collections like our historic architectural plans and blueprints. Help us reach the full match by October 31.

To donate, visit our website at ridgehistorical dot org

Or donate by mail by sending a check payable to the Ridge Historical Society and write "Archives" in the memo: Ridge Historical Society, 10621 S. Seeley Ave., Chicago, IL 60643

10/11/2026

Open House Chicago by Chicago Architecture Center is coming October 17-18! Make the most of the weekend and design your own itinerary at OpenHouseChicago.org.

RHS will be open both days from 10am-5pm and welcomes more than 500 visitors annually for this event. Stop in to see our exhibit on the 50th Anniversary of the Ridge Historic District nd learn more about it's significance.

Add Ridge Historical Society to your itinerary, plus some of the other 200+ OHC sites!

10/05/2026

134 years ago this week, the University of Chicago opened its doors, and one of its first professors arrived on the newest invention of the age, a diamond-framed bicycle.

That professor was Ira M. Price, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages who lived right here at 2124 W. 112th Street in Morgan Park. The bicycle he rode to the new campus was donated to the Ridge Historical Society archives in 1977.

Price had taught Hebrew at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Morgan Park. In the spring of 1892, the seminary became the Divinity School of the new University of Chicago, and Price joined the university's founding faculty, teaching there until his retirement in 1925.

Thanks to Price's nephews, who shared notes from his diaries with RHS, we know how that first ride went. On September 19, 1892, Price bought a secondhand Humber bicycle for $80, a hefty sum at the time. On October 1, opening day, he left home at 6:47 a.m., reaching the university by 8:00 in time for his first class at 8:30. His trip was probably about 9 miles each way and he made it home by nightfall.

The novelty seems to have worn off quickly. Just three days later, his diary records that he took the Rock Island train to Englewood and walked the rest of the way to campus. The bicycle doesn't come up again until July 1894, when the Pullman Strike stopped the trains and Price once more "went to University on my wheel." As his nephews concluded, he likely found the ride something of a chore.

His bicycle was one of the most advanced of its day. A few years earlier, the penny-farthing bicycle was still dominant, with a towering front wheel, a tiny rear one, and a seat so high that a pothole could send the rider flying headfirst over the handlebars. Solid rubber tires transmitted every bump in the road. A nine-mile commute on one would have been punishing and risky.

In the 1880s, inventors raced to build something better. The first "safety bicycles" brought the rider closer to the ground with two wheels of similar size and a chain driving the rear wheel, but their frames came in all sorts of experimental shapes. English maker Thomas Humber helped settle the question of what a bicycle should be. His Humber bicycles were among the very first built on a diamond-shaped frame, the same basic design you'll find on nearly every bicycle today.

The final piece arrived at almost the same moment. In 1888, John Boyd Dunlop developed an air-filled rubber tire to give his young son Johnnie a smoother tricycle ride, and by 1890 pneumatic tires were in commercial production. Paired with the new safety bicycle, they made cycling faster, more comfortable, and practical for everyday travel.

These innovations set off the bicycle craze across America and Europe. The Humber bicycle that Professor Price rode to campus in 1892 was a design so successful that it's barely changed in more than 130 years.

Ira Price's bicycle highlights the importance of a community-based archive. Through items like this, we can tell the story of the role Morgan Park played in the founding of the new University of Chicago in Hyde Park and how the staff transitioned to the new campus. Thanks to the Price family, we have not just the object, but also the provenance and story of the man who rode it, down to the minute he left home on opening day.

Collections like this help us understand where our community came from. The RHS archives support our exhibits and programs, and they're used by researchers studying everything from local businesses and institutions to architecture, family history, and the homes we live in.

An anonymous donor is matching every gift to the RHS archives dollar-for-dollar, up to $10,000, to fund the work of trained archivists who can preserve and organize treasures like Professor Price's Humber and make them more accessible. Help us unlock the full match by October 31.

To donate, use the link in the comments.

Other Ways to Give
• By Mail: Send a check payable to the Ridge Historical Society and write "Archives" in the memo: Ridge Historical Society, 10621 S. Seeley Ave., Chicago, IL 60643

10/02/2026

Save the Trees campaign 100 years ago

The Ridge is now one of the greenest parts of the City of Chicago in terms of tree cover, with Beverly second in tree cover only to Forest Glen on the Far Northwest Side. Before modern settlement, the area consisted of grasslands, prairies, savannas, meadows, and wetlands. Hardwood trees lined the slopes of the morainic ridge.

By the 1920s, the health of the existing trees and replacement of dead or diseased trees were a concern. As the community developed, many trees and natural environments were lost, but also many new trees had been planted. However, the building boom 100 years ago during the Roaring ‘20s brought considerable construction and new residents, neither of which were kind to the health of the tree population.

According to the Weekly Review on August 20, 1926, a tree expert claimed at a meeting of the local improvement associations and area residents that “twenty-five percent of the trees in the parkways of the district are going fast, and of these half are already too far gone to do much with.” He attributed this to careless construction during the laying of sidewalks, pipes, sewers, and gas lines.

One of the most majestic of oaks in the area stood at 95th & Longwood seen in the attached photo from the same year. Not long after this photo, it seems that development soon took this tree, which was directly adjacent to what is now the Ridge Wetlands, restored in 1995.

At the time in the 1920s (as is also the case today), care for trees was the prescription with 4,000 trees needing pruning and 2,000 to 3,000 trees needing spraying for scale or disease. The community meeting was poorly attended and the tree expert called for the creation of a committee whose job would include propaganda to waken the community to the issue.

A century later, proper tree care remains just as important as ever. Many trees are best pruned in late fall or winter, so now is a good time to connect with an arborist to line up pruning as well as spring care.

Also, as the saying goes, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." You can submit a 311 request if your parkway is lacking in trees. According to the Morton Arboretum, 32% of Beverly, 41% of Morgan Park, 51% of Mt. Greenwood, and 38% of Washington Heights are “plantable”, which is land that is potentially available for planting a tree where there currently are no trees.

October is American Archives Month and RHS couldn’t resurface illustrations, articles, and photos like this without our archives. The donation drive to support the archives and a professional archivist continues through October 31st with up to $10,000 matched by a generous donor. If you haven’t, please consider donating to help preserve our community’s heritage: https://ridgehistorical.org/challenge

10/01/2026

100 years ago today: Morgan Parker returns from a subarctic expedition

On October 1, 1926, the Weekly Review reported on Morgan Park resident Alfred C. W**d’s return from the Field Museum’s Rawson-MacMillan Subarctic Expedition. Aboard the schooner Bowdoin, the expedition had set sail from Wiscasset, Maine, on June 19 to carry out multidisciplinary surveys of Labrador, Greenland, Baffin Island, and Nova Scotia.

W**d joined the Field Museum in 1921 as assistant curator in the Division of Fishes, Amphibians, and Reptiles, arriving just in time to assist with the museum's massive move from its original Jackson Park home to Grant Park. It was still the golden age of field exploration, and the museum had twelve expeditions concurrently underway across the globe at the time of the Rawson-MacMillan Subarctic Expedition in 1926.

During the expedition’s 3-month tour through the subarctic, W**d and the team collected 52 mammal skins & skulls, 158 birds, 28 birds’ eggs, 625 fishes, and 931 invertebrates. Commander MacMillan was credited with collecting 210 objects from the indigenous Innu and Inuit communities during the expedition, including clothing, hunting implements, tools, carvings, and kayak.

The Field Museum has an extensive photo collection from the exhibition available on Flickr, which is worth checking out:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fieldmuseum/albums/72157644840666557/with/14546983307

The expedition marked several firsts for arctic radio communication. Alfred W**d even sent a message to his mother.

Morgan Park was home for the W**ds only briefly during their two decades in the Chicago area, which also included stays in Hyde Park and Oak Park. Their house at 11260 S. Hermosa Avenue (originally 11320 Fairfield Avenue before annexation) has likely been razed. It was located where the current turf field is at Esmond School.

When W**d finally retired from the Field Museum in 1943, he packed up and headed to Florida to dedicate himself to the obvious pursuit of fishing.

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It is thanks to the Ridge Historical Society’s collections that we are able to rediscover stories like this.
Help us unlock our $10,000 anonymous matching grant to support our archives. All tax-deductible donations to the archives made by October 31st will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

Donate here: https://ridgehistorical.org/challenge
Other Ways to Give: By Mail: Send a check payable to the Ridge Historical Society and write "Archives" in the memo: Ridge Historical Society 10621 S. Seeley Ave. Chicago, IL 60643

09/28/2026

Just over a month left. $10,000 is on the table.

For over 50 years, the Ridge Historical Society (RHS) has been the keeper of local history. But without professional handling, the RHS collections and archives are in jeopardy of degrading or – worse – being destroyed. An anonymous donor has stepped up with a $10,000 matching grant to fund the work of trained archivists, but we need your help to meet that goal by October 31.

Right now, your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Your support can go twice as far to help ensure the community's irreplaceable historical records are properly preserved and made more accessible than ever before.

The RHS collection uncovers the shares history of our neighbors, homes, schools, businesses, everyday life, and cultural institutions dating back to the early 1800s. Help us make sure these unique community resources last another 50 years or more.

Learn more and donate to help us unlock the match: https://ridgehistorical.org/challenge

Other Ways to Give
• By Mail: Send a check payable to the Ridge Historical Society to and write "Archives" in the memo: Ridge Historical Society 10621 S. Seeley Ave. Chicago, IL 60643

09/27/2026

It was great to welcome so many visitors to the Ridge Historical Society yesterday during the Beverly Art Walk. Mati Maldre was there to share his photography and our full exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Ridge Historic District.

Thank you to Horse Thief Hollow Brewing Co. for providing four distinctive b**rs for our guests to taste -- they were enjoyed by many of them.

Thank you also to the RHS Board members who spent the afternoon here to answer questions and share their knowledge.

09/25/2026

Discover the History of your Chicago House
– Tim Blackburn, Researcher

Ridge Historical Society is repeating this very popular event as we continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Ridge Historic District. You will learn how to research the history of your Chicago home, including the architecture, construction, inhabitants, and owners.

You’ll receive a workbook and develop research methods that will help you gain a new understanding and appreciation for your home’s history. Tim will cover the research methods covered will be useful for anyone researching a building older than 1955 in Chicago. You’ll learn about building permits, local history, Chicago street renumbering, Sanborn maps, and more.

The Ridge Communities of Beverly Hills, Morgan Park, Washington Heights and Mount Greenwood have an incredible collection of homes and housing styles – many with a rich history.

Members: $10 | Non-members: $20 | Students under 18: $5 (Cash or Check at the door)

Ridge Historical Society
10621 S. Seeley Ave., Chicago, IL 60643

Get tickets online: https://bit.ly/RHShome10

09/25/2026

Stop in at Ridge Historical Society to see the exhibit on Saturday. I and other Board members will be there to greet visitors.

09/24/2026

This Saturday, Sept. 26th, the Ridge Historical Society is a don’t-miss stop on the 13th annual Beverly Art Walk. Join us from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. as we continue our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Ridge Historic District.

When you visit, you can explore our ongoing exhibit featuring over 100 iconic architectural photographs by Mati Maldre. Mati will be here in person to discuss his work and his latest book.

You will also have the chance to meet with Pike House Foundation board members, who will be sharing the history and future plans for the Pike House, the upcoming home of the Beverly Area Arts Alliance. With b**r samples from Horse Thief Hollow available all afternoon, it is the perfect spot to take in local art, history, and a great brew.

This video highlights the first 30 of the 62 buildings listed on the district's original nomination form, which are featured in the exhibit.

Ridge Historical Society is open for Art Walk from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, 9/26, and for our regular hours from 1 p.m to 4 p.m. on Sunday, 9/27.

Ridge Historical Society
10621 S. Seeley Ave., Chicago, IL 60643

Find out more about the Beverly Art Walk here:
https://beverlyarts.org/beverly-art-walk-2026/

Ridge Historical Society

10/13/2026

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10/05/2026

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10/01/2026

09/28/2026

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09/24/2026

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