Garfield Park Conservatory is showcasing neighborhood stories in “Meeting History: A Garfield Park Citizen Archive.”
The big picture: The small exhibition features vintage snapshots, modern portraits and audio recordings from local families telling stories of celebrations, sorrows and white flight.
What they’re saying: Organizers call the modest archive “a historical stamp of a moment in time for the neighborhood.”
Postcard from Monica’s great-grandfather Joe Eng’s Golden Pumpkin “chop suey cafe” and “dine and dance” jazz club on Madison Street circa 1923. Photo: Courtesy of Monica Eng
The intrigue: The show inspired Monica to dig up photos of her own family’s decades (1920s-50s) in Garfield Park with a home on Jackson, as well as the Golden Pumpkin restaurant and nightclub on Madison Street.
If you go: The exhibition runs through June 21.
Monica’s great-uncle Wayne Sit with an unidentified woman on the porch of the Eng family’s Garfield Park home on Jackson in 1942. Current photo of the still standing home. Photos: Courtesy of Elaine and Robert Sit
