Wednesday, June 1, 2011

School to Leave Uptown?

Our friends at the Center Square Journal found this zoning application from the Lycée Français to rezone the former Ravenswood Hospital site at 4550 N Winchester for a new school. This is an important development since their existing school is located in the heart of Uptown at 613 West Bittersweet Place. The school has not made their specific plans known to the public, but it would seem unlikely they would keep both locations for their programs.

The school is currently located in the former Immaculata High School building. If Lycée Français were to leave Uptown, this would create a void in a beautiful building (though some neighbors may not be sad to see some of the traffic problems during school drop-off and dismissal.)

6 comments:

  1. Yes, the Lycee will be moving in the next few years. They are building a new facility at the old Ravenswood Hospital.

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  2. It's been a really long time since I've lived in Uptown. But isn't that the picture of the Islamic College at Irving Pk Rd and Marine Dr?

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  3. @trunner, indeed, the building houses the Islamic College and the Lycee, as well as the Chicago location of Park View Montessori. There may be some other schools in there too, for all I know!

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  4. Built, I believe, to house Immaculata High School, and for a while it had Prologue HS. The Islamic college closed shortly after 9/11 and reopened last year.

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  5. Thank you, Gordon and TSNabr!

    I used to live just down the street from the Islamic College at 4180 Marine Dr, but moved long before 9/11. It was always a very quiet campus. I rarely saw anyone there, except occasionally when a solitary man would stand outside facing the lake in prayer.

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  6. Glad I saw this. I graduated from Immaculata High School in 1964. That Catholic girls high school closed in 1981. I know the Islamic college was there, also Park View Montessori, Prologue High School, and the Lycée Français.

    The last time in was INSIDE the building was in the mid 2000s. I spent a long time roaming the corridors, up and down, all four floors, looking in the classrooms, and remembering ... this was my freshman year homeroom - Rm. 100, this is where the biology lab was, here is Room 319 my junior year home room, Rm. 318 senior year, here in the basement in where the Art Club met and where I silk-screened Christmas cards to send one year (they were red and gold), here in the attic was the lunchroom/cafeteria (looked like it still was). There were students using the gymnasium while I was there so I only looked inside there. I went across and looked all around where the convent had been.

    It was good to know that the building was still being used for educational purposes. I hope it still is, though the loss of the Lycée Français will leave a gap. The part of the building they were using is the original 1923 structure. I moved away from Chicago to Wisconsin in 2008 so will be unable to revisit again easily.

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